Despite having been raised Catholic, I was always pretty “meh” about God. Maybe it’s because my parents weren’t too serious about it. I don’t remember attending church every Sunday, but I did attend catechism school once a week and made my communion. I didn’t make it to my confirmation because I grew dissatisfied and started questioning the doctrine. The priest did not approve and arranged to have me kicked out. My mom (surprisingly) blamed him instead of me, and my dad couldn’t have cared less.

Left to my own curious devices, I grew up burning through different beliefs, never satisfied with any. Westerners go on about karma and Earth school and returning to “Source,” but I continued to question. I questioned the ethics of reincarnation and dug around more and learned about the reincarnation soul trap theory. At that point, I was veering toward maltheism, the belief that God exists but is a malevolent entity who delights in suffering. It’s similar to Gnosticism, except Gnostics believe the root of all suffering traces back to the Demiurge, a false God who created the physical universe. Whether the Demiurge is a sadistic puppeteer or is oblivious to the micro-effects of its macro-actions is debatable, but it’s a debate I’ve long moved on from.

Eventually, I accepted that I simply wouldn’t find a fitting belief system. Having felt like an alien for as long as I can remember, I would always be on the outside looking in. Although I’ve matured and learned that I am in fact more human than I thought, in some ways I still am on the outside looking in and always will be, which seems oddly reflective of the religion I’ve finally settled on.

By my early 30s, I discovered YouTuber Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, a happily married lesbian Quaker who discussed her religion, and realized Quakerism was for me. No, I have not been asked if I eat Quaker Oats (I do—not because I’m a Quaker, though), but I have been asked if I’m Amish. I don’t even dress remotely Amish.

Founded by George Fox in 17th-century England, Quakerism feels as though it has one foot in faith and the other in secular humanism. There’s no creed other than “that of God in everyone,” which means no one person has exclusive access to communing with the divine; everyone is capable of tapping into their inner “light.” There are no priests, nuns, bishops, deacons. No incense or hymns or other ritualistic frills. A Friends meeting is one of silence and deep contemplation, taking place in a simple, modest building called a meeting house.

There’s a meeting house not far from me, though you aren’t required to join one. For a while I preferred keeping to my own inner journey, especially since I was so uncertain about God. Is God an independent entity? Is God a fancy word for the universe? Is God merely observing us, never to intervene in human affairs? Could God have been fickle and left a trail of abandoned projects behind, Earth included? Is God just our imaginary Sky Daddy to help us tolerate life on a floating rock in an endless void?

I still don’t know the answer, but history and human nature shed quite a bit of light.

God in the Flesh Machine

Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist who viewed God not as an independent, supernatural entity, but as a psychological projection of humanity and its greatest wish for an unending source of love, compassion, wisdom, order, and immortal life. In many religions, even those that appear at odds from different continents, you can find similarities:

The Christian believes in one God who will open the pearly gates to them through acceptance of Christ and a life of repentance.

The Wiccan believes in a God and Goddess who embody the forces of nature and mirror seasonal changes, with the Summerland serving as a temporary afterlife between incarnations.

The Buddhist seeks detachment out of enlightenment to transcend Samsara and achieve Nirvana.

The Daoist seeks peace with existence in all its forms by aligning internal energies (Qi) with the natural flow of the Dao.

The techno-optimist dreams of a superintelligence that will usher humanity into a glorious transhumanist future.

The radical communist looks forward to the Revolution that will break the chains of capitalism, lifting everyone (who managed to survive the apocalyptic aftermath, at least) into a post-scarcity utopia where nobody has to work.

All these beliefs are different. Yet, under all their layers, they share the same core: the very human desire for a higher order that makes sense of the universe’s chaos, and to rise above this mortal coil and enter some version of heaven.

Dr. Robert Ford from Westworld (2016) said it best: “You can’t play God without being acquainted with the Devil.” Creation, consciousness, and power are inherently tied to suffering, knowledge of darkness, and destructive potential. You can’t have the light of elevated awareness without inheriting the shadow it casts.

The most blasphemous fact about us Quakers is that we believe in ongoing revelation. This makes the Bible, to us, not the final Word of God. Some of us don’t believe it’s the actual Word of God at all, but the Word of Man that might’ve been inspired by God at the time, and Man is fallible, a limited translator. This doesn’t mean the Bible is a useless historical artifact. The stories can still hold relevance and lessons. I dare say the most timeless and universal story is Genesis.

In my humble opinion, Genesis isn’t a story about two people who actually lived in a paradisiacal realm once, but an existential grappling with the emergence of consciousness.

In the Garden of Eden, time didn’t matter. There was no suffering or death. Adam and Eve weren’t even aware they were nude. Life was idyllic. In reality, animals experience pain, lust, hunger, and exhaustion, but they do not conceive of them. Animals simply eat when they can, sleep when they can, and mate when they can or when the weather encourages it. To an animal, it hasn’t left Eden; Eden is all it knows.

God banishing Adam and Eve wasn’t necessarily punishment for disobedience. It is the logical conclusion to developing hyper-awareness of one’s place, environment, and mortality. To know “good,” you must know “evil.” You can’t conceive of beauty, transcendence, or divine order without becoming hyper-aware of decay, cruelty, and oblivion. From the Tree of Knowledge, humans created art and science and civilization, but the price of admission was a lethal dose of existential dread, overthinking, and the capacity for malice.

“Man has lost his citizenship in the universe; he has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and has been banished from paradise. He is powerful in his world, but he curses his power because he has bought it with his soul’s harmony.”

— Peter Wessel Zapffe

Ignorance is bliss; knowledge is heavy. We can’t return to Eden, to a time when we knew nothing more than other animals and were part of the natural ecosystem. We tend to romanticize indigenous cultures and how at one they appear with nature, but their coping rituals are no less human than the rest of ours. Because indigenous traditions developed in direct, unmediated contact with the environment, like those of pre-urban European tribes, their spiritual frameworks remained anchored in hard ecological realities. As urbanization and modernization take over, societies move further away from the wilderness and into new realms of being and thought. The shelters created with the landscape become walls of gold that block the cold winds of reality, leaving us with more to conceptualize and invent, but with a greater psychological and spiritual toll that follows.

The Maze and the Mirror

In Westworld (2016), there is a sort of maze that was designed for hosts to reach consciousness. The Man in Black, a guest who’s been visiting the Westworld park for years, believes it was meant for him, a human arrogant enough to think he’s the most main character. The maze wasn’t designed for humans at all, but I’ve personally discovered that it unintentionally was.

With the emergence of consciousness follows the emergence of God. This is the maze. No other animal creates a divine being in its image and worships it. This is the mirror. Many humans forget about the maze as we continue holding the mirror up to our faces, consoling ourselves with our greatness as gold walls surround us.

Before Greek thought shaped what is now Christianity (especially Catholicism), the Old Testament was grounded in land, lineage, covenant, and national survival. God sent rain or drought, blessings or military defeat. Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Within strict sovereign boundaries, God permitted Satan (which was a court position) to test human righteousness and faithfulness, most famously depicted in the Book of Job.

There was no beautiful Heaven that siphoned virtuous and faithful souls, nor was there a fiery Hell to which sinful souls were condemned for eternity. There was only Sheol, a neutral, shadowy underworld that didn’t discriminate between the righteous and the wicked. The only rewards and justice that mattered were those on Earth, and the ultimate reward for following God’s laws was a long life, many children, fertile land, and safety from enemies for the community.

The concept of an immortal soul trapped in a physical body? Plato. Original sin? St. Augustine. In a massive, crowded Roman city during the Pax Romana era, you were an individual surrounded by strangers, disease, extreme wealth inequality, and brutal imperial power. When humans are displaced into dense urban environments with isolating social classes, the psychological need shifts from “How do we manage our land and tribe?” to “How do I find meaning and escape this awful meat-grinder of a world?”

You can see where it all went from there.

To Be or Not to Be God

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku believes that “by 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.”

I’m not sure about the timeline or the optimism, but the more we “play God” (i.e., expanding our knowledge of reality and manipulating it with tools forged from the very nature we observe), the clearer it becomes that God is less a transcendent judge and more a divine idealization of ourselves—the sum of our collective desire for order, beauty, and goodness, for truth and moral clarity. Yet God reflects back to us our own humanity, flaws and all, upholding prosocial values while declaring war on difference. The ultimate mirror.

Isn’t it hubristic to want to become God? What is hubris, really, but a primitive defense mechanism? Hubris stops us from going too far. It warns us against embodying an archetype of power and control before we’re intellectually and psychologically integrated. As it should, for more power and control than we can handle maturely and ethically leads to destruction.

Yet, despite the visceral warnings of hubris, I see a connection between what Apocalyptic Jews (the original Christians) believed and the possibilities of science and technology. Influenced by Zoroastrianism, Apocalyptic Jews believed that sometime after the dreamless slumber of death, they would wake up in new physical bodies in a renewed creation. This was the pre-cursor to the ethereal Heaven with cute cherubs smiling down at you. Personally, I prefer a “renewed creation” as opposed to the idea of physical life being naturally corrupt and irredeemable.

“Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.”

— Isaiah 65:20

However, as the old saying goes, “God helps those who help themselves.” Creation cannot be renewed without our intervention. God is the supreme agency and understanding we subconsciously long for, yet such heights cannot be reached if we continue choosing to be cowards, making excuses for our ignorance and refusing to take responsibility as intelligent, creative beings.

Thus I’ve come to fully understand why Quakerism calls to me.

In traditional dogma, light is the hero that banishes the villainous dark. But in unprogrammed silence, light is a tool for discernment. It doesn’t promise an escape from the meat-grinder, nor does it offer a magical paradise in the clouds. Instead, it asks us to turn inward, sit quietly with the noise of our over-evolved brains, and face the full spectrum that makes up what we are. We are conceptualizing animals, fated to wander the maze, building walls of gold and manufacturing gods out of creed, capital, and code to soothe our existential ache.

But perhaps “ongoing revelation” means realizing that the revelation was us all along. Regardless of whether there is a cosmic force orchestrating a grand plan to save us, the work of divinity—order, beauty, and goodness, as well as truth and moral clarity—rests in human hands, so far the only hands that have proven to be capable of manifesting it.

You’ve heard of vampires feeding on blood to sustain themselves, maybe even of witches stealing newborns or maiden souls for youth and power. But what about immortals who can have anything except one thing—a child? And what if one’s yearning for a child tempts her down a dark path?

“A Life for a Life” is a subversion of the immortality chaser and the selfless mother. In classic folklore and fairy tales, the childless immortal is usually a monster hoarding life at the expense of others or nature, as opposed to the mortal mother who represents pure, sacrificial love. (Never mind the fact that, historically, bad mothers in old tales were edited into stepmothers.) Here, the roles are reversed: the immortal mother becomes the monster, and the childless immortal, her grim reaper.

Things Are Not Always as They Seem

Upon first impression, you might think this tale was written to bludgeon you into accepting transgender identity. The truth is much more simple: Eva didn’t die because she was transphobic—she died because she was willing to harm Renato. There are reasonable people with reasonable questions and concerns about transgender identity, and I’ve even shared my findings and thoughts. The difference is that Eva did not see any value in Renato’s life. Her obsession with birthing a child and traditional beliefs about womanhood blinded her to the worth of another, albeit different, human being.

Renato being transgender is also relevant because he had previously “died,” hence he is “Death’s godson.” Although it isn’t explicitly stated, he had become a man in full, down to the cells in this alternate future. A trans person whose identity was not caused by mere social contagion, a trans person who transitions medically and cosmetically, undergoes a serious transformation that should not be taken lightly, a rebirth. Whereas Eva’s name means “life,” Renato’s name means “reborn.”

Don’t you think it’s ironic that Eva is the immortal who wishes for a biological child, and Renato is the one who sacrificed his womb to become an ultra-immortal man, yet ends up taking care of her son? If you read between the lines, you’ll realize that Renato had wanted children once, but he’d chosen to pursue a greater destiny that had indirectly rewarded him with a child. “Greater” in this context does not mean “superior,” but rarer and more uniquely life-changing.

Selfishness Is Ubiquitous

It is often said that some childfree people would make better parents than many parents. People who consciously choose to live without children know their limits, not just those who aren’t fond of them. The more ambivalent sort tend to understand the weight of trade-offs. They might’ve had a child or two if the economy or the planet’s changing climate was more promising. Like a priest who serves God instead of his own desires, Renato decided to serve a higher purpose, one that forced him into modest isolation where he maintains the balance between life and death.

Childfree people are normally accused of being selfish, but is selfishness always a bad thing? Selfishness can take the form of parenthood as seen in not only Eva, but real-world examples. Many people want children for reasons such as: to leave a legacy; to be loved; to be cared for when they’re old; to create the childhood they didn’t have; to keep the human species going. Yet these are all selfish reasons, even though they seem noble on the surface. That doesn’t mean they’re immoral or evil, though.

I could go on about how broader cultural factors have deepened the divide between parents and the childfree (and childless), the death of alloparenting being one, but the real question is:

What kind of mother would Eva have made?

Well, her reasons for wanting a child were boredom and to validate herself as a real woman, so that should tell you plenty. Eva had no interest in getting to know the other immortals around her. Contrary to her seemingly prosocial wish, she had grown antisocial, and all that mattered was having her wish granted without having to sacrifice her immortality in exchange. You could also interpret this as trying to avoid the inherently sacrificial nature of motherhood. A baby is not an accessory or a toy, but a future adult in the making.

In this tale, Renato is the figure of sacrifice. His choice to transition and claim ultra-immortality were selfish, but his selfishness was tailored to playing a major role in the grand scheme of things. He lives alone, though now with a child he did not birth nor bargain for, overseeing the balance of his world that cannot be cheated.

Biological Children or Biological Immortality?

The setting in “A Life for a Life” is ideal for a population that won’t reproduce itself into scarcity. This tale was primarily inspired by a common concern among life-extension skeptics. There are valid concerns to be had about an invention that would practically restructure society from the ground up, but I’m saving those for another deconstruction post and focusing on the one highlighted in this tale: overpopulation.

No matter how much death is glorified, human beings are wired to survive like any other animal. If radical life extension were available to the public tomorrow, many tunes would change and lines to be approved for the youth serum would form. Without proper oversight, there would almost certainly be a population boom, and Earth is already dealing with pollution and voracious consumers of factory-farmed meat, long-distance traveling, and mass-produced junk.

The true irony in such a world, however, lies in the idea that people choosing to be biological parents would also want immortality, considering how often we hear about the “natural order” and how “death gives life meaning.” In a world where you could have either biological kids or biological immortality, people choosing the former shouldn’t be lamenting their inevitable fate; rather, they should be embracing their finite amount of time as they do now, dedicating it to raising the next generation of humans who will repeat the cycle, eventually choosing one option or the other for themselves. If there’s any group that deserves to glorify death, it’s parents. (That is not sarcasm, by the way.)

I would hope that, if/when radical life extension is achieved, governments have figured out how to properly implement it, and in ways that go beyond the strict binary I introduced. With the ongoing decline in birth rates, and the continuous march of medical science, I imagine this tale will maintain relevance for a while.

But, even if by some miracle a sweeping number of women are compelled to opt in to motherhood, the moral lesson remains: learning to value the lives of currently existing people over hypothetical people, and seeing the worth in others who take different life paths, which add more color to the tapestry of human existence.

The war between parenthood advocates and childfree hyper-individualists is an exhausting one. Climate change is worsening. Birth rates are falling. The world is ending. Children are the future, yet the future is on fire. But without the next generation, how can the fire be extinguished? What if the fire can never be extinguished, but it can burn slow enough to be controlled? Is it even worth it? Is it even ethical?

Almost everyone seems to brandish a coercive-universalist vision. You have the motherhood proselytizers who believe every woman should be a mother. You have the childfree postmodernists who claim parenthood is entirely socially constructed. You have the disconnected technocrats who think biology is a curse that must be engineered away. You have the antinatalists who think all life should be engineered away. (Good luck with that.)

If you want my brutally honest opinion, then yes, I feel there is a heavy moral weight attached to bringing new humans into the world. It’s unfortunately true that every cradle is a grave.

At the same time, I acknowledge that humans are not and will never be a 100% ethical species. It’s simply impossible; we’re in love with life and the happy chemicals it stirs within us too much. We’re naturally addicted to survival (barring special circumstances that could make us choose otherwise), and we’re hardwired to find reasons to survive and craft ways to strengthen them. These ways might consist of starting a family, pursuing a career, fulfilling a spiritual role, volunteering at an animal shelter, or honing skills at a hobby, to give some examples.

Does this all sound depressing to you? Personally, I find it humbling and liberating. At the end of the day, we humans are animals—more specifically, animals with a thinking mind on top of an instinctual brain, so to speak. Some have maternal instincts. Some have maternal instincts that only activate at the sight of non-human baby animals. And others have no maternal instincts at all.

There was never a time growing up where I entertained the thought of having kids. I never had an interest in dedicating my life to taking care of someone else—except a pet. Pets are an exception. Especially dogs. I don’t hate kids; in fact, I sometimes think of how cool it would’ve been to be an aunt. Sadly, my mom didn’t have another child. Aside from being the breadwinner and having to go to work, her pregnancy with me was miserable and she needed a C-section.

I’m not writing this to convince you of how great a childfree lifestyle is. It is natural to want children just as it’s natural to not want them. One of the blind spots in this whole debate is the dismissal of human evolutionary history—from both sides.

A Reality Check for All Ideologues

To preface, once again, I am not writing this because I think more people should be childfree. Without trying to sound like a nihilist, the world will burn whether or not you make new humans (literally—the sun will expand into a red giant that will scorch and maybe swallow Earth in a billion years), though the future of humanity remains to be completely certain. You can give yourself a pat on the back for contributing another human to humanity. You can give yourself a pat on the back for contributing to humanity in other ways. Whatever.

My problem is with people weaponizing their ideologies and twisting information around to suit them, all because of fear.

Fear that the future will be a giant nursing home. Fear that mothers will become obsolete. Fear that women will lose all their rights and be forced to live in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Okay, yeah, the overturning of Roe v. Wade isn’t too promising, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss parenthood, specifically motherhood, as an entire social construct.

First, a bit of history.

For centuries, lack of reproductive choice often resulted in forced pregnancies, maternal mortality, unwanted children, and severe economic strain on impoverished families. Children in agrarian and early industrial societies were normally viewed as vital labor assets to help support the household. Due to high infant mortality rates, parental bonding in those days wasn’t as warm and sweet. Diaries, letters, and burial records show that parents in the past absolutely experienced grief when their children died, but the expression of attachment was more constrained than today. It had to be.

The image of childhood being a protected time of pure play, family bonding, and education didn’t exist for most social classes until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kids worked grueling hours on farms and in factories and mines. They were treated like little adults. For working-class families, there was no such thing as a sheltered upbringing, no sanitized collection of fairy tales that taught kindness and virtue. Life was mostly about hard labor and survival.

Let’s go even further back—past the industrial factories, past the birth of agriculture, and into the deep prehistory of our species.

If you listen to the most vocal pronatalist ideologues today, you’d think natural selection designed every female body to operate as an isolated baby factory, and that any deviation from this is a modern defect. But evolutionary biology and anthropology tell a completely different story. Just because women have reproductive organs doesn’t mean nature intended every woman to be a biological mother. A community where all women were pregnant or nursing an infant at the same time would have been a death sentence, rendering the whole tribe too overburdened and vulnerable to survive.

Human infants are born uniquely helpless. Compared to other mammals, our babies are born neurological “preemies” because their large brains have to squeeze through a pelvis adapted for walking upright. Raising a human child to self-sufficiency requires an astronomical amount of energy and care, far more than a single mother, or even a single couple, could ever provide solo in the wild.

To solve this, evolution selected for pluralism and social division of labor.

Human survival relied on what anthropologists call “alloparenting,” which is care provided by individuals other than the biological parents. For a tribe to thrive, it needed a diverse ecosystem of roles. It needed biological mothers, yes, but it equally required “social mothers,” such as aunts, grandmothers, and childless elders who could gather resources, protect the camp, mentor youth, and share the physical load of childcare. It needed solitary thinkers, toolmakers, scouts, and strategists—people whose focus and energy were directed toward solving systemic problems, mapping new territories, or foreseeing threats.

Consider the “Grandmother Hypothesis.” Humans are one of the only species on Earth where females live for decades past their reproductive years. Why would evolution conserve individuals who can no longer pass on their genes? Because non-reproducing women drastically increased the survival rate of the entire group’s children. Their value was explicitly tied to not having new infants of their own, allowing them to provide wisdom, stability, and extra food to the wider community.

The idea that every woman must be a biological mother to be “natural” or “useful” is an invention of modern anxiety, not ancient biology. Nature never demanded that we all fulfill the same role. Humanity survived the harshness of the Pleistocene not through reproductive uniformity, but because communities were flexible and diverse enough to make room for the parent, the caregiver, the builder, and the thinker alike.

“But the BIRTH RATES!”

Yes, yes. I hear you. You’d think that modern life in developed countries, a vast improvement compared to what our ancestors had to endure, would incentivize women to bear and raise children, but it seems to be accomplishing the opposite: more women choosing education and career over motherhood. Is this a natural consequence of modern living, or the next step in humanity’s evolution?

You could argue it’s both of those things, but there are other more practical, structural forces driving this shift.

It should come as no surprise that modern society is largely at fault, having stripped away the very communal architecture that once made raising children sustainable, leaving individuals—women especially—to absorb the full weight of raising a family and earning a livable salary. By destroying extended-family structures, industrialism forced us into the isolated nuclear family, and the cost of housing, healthcare, and professional childcare has skyrocketed beyond wage growth. The system demands mothers work like they don’t have children, and parent like they don’t have careers.

Millennials in particular were also told repeatedly by parents, educators, and institutions, “Focus on your education, secure a stable career, achieve financial independence, and never, under any circumstances, get pregnant before you are fully ready!” Millennials proceeded to earn degrees, build careers, and delay family planning. You can’t condition a generation to treat early parenthood as a mortal sin, then act surprised when it’s treated as exactly that.

Studies also consistently show that even in dual-earner households, women still perform a disproportionate share of the “second shift,” the unpaid physical labor of cooking, cleaning, and driving, alongside the invisible mental load of managing a household. For a while there, men were the sole breadwinners, which had exempted them from domestic work, but now that’s obviously changed. However, because a man’s worth is still predominately measured by his income and status rather than his domestic capability, men face less social accountability for being disengaged fathers or partners than for being poor providers.

The problem typically begins at home. Girls tend to be given toys, chores, and social feedback that encourage nurturing, emotional attunement, and general cleanliness. Boys are more frequently pushed toward external play, risk-taking, and autonomy, with domestic tasks framed as secondary or optional. By adulthood, this creates a psychological baseline where women absorb the role of the “default parent.”

Surely you can understand why the reality of taking care of the kids, the house, and having to go to work, resulting in little to no leisure time for the woman, isn’t selling the idea of motherhood.

“But HUMANITY!”

Yes, yes. I hear you. More and more women opting out of child-rearing is bad news for humanity in the long run. First, let’s be real: You will not persuade any woman to get pregnant and give birth by robbing her of her bodily rights. And you will not get on many good sides by enforcing policies that make life harder for the childfree and childless. So, what are the solutions?

The first and most immediately practical solution is re-education, but with one caveat for pronatalists: BE HONEST. Be honest about the realities and risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Do NOT sugarcoat anything. Put your survivorship bias aside. Share your experience and how much you think the pain was worth it, sure, but don’t try to persuade or guilt a woman into baby-making. That’s how we end up with (quietly) resentful mothers and resented children.

If pain and risk are an obstacle for a woman who really wants biological kids, don’t hand-wave away her concerns—share resources on how to manage and mitigate the ugly parts! Suffering while pregnant CAN affect the fetus, and reducing labor pains could possibly decrease the chances of developing postpartum depression. Bottom line, less pain makes it easier for the mother to rest, move around, care for, and bond with her newborn without the excess physical discomfort. Happy moms are more likely to raise babies that grow up to be happy adults.

Also, it might not be totally doable in this economy, but motherhood enthusiasts should consider establishing local—not just online—communities where mothers can reach out to each other. You don’t have to try bringing back alloparenting, but moms should be forming closer, face-to-face connections with moms. Sharing cute family photos, writing inspirational blog posts, and scrolling through parenting forums is no true substitute for building real-world, direct mutual aid networks in your own neighborhoods.

The runner-up solution might be tougher to swallow for traditionalists: embracing less traditional family structures. Yes, Kevin, that includes supporting two moms and two dads and their sperm banks and surrogates. And yes, Kevin, that also means having to be okay with either set of parents—as you’d have to be with heterosexual couples—being non-white, interracial, or immigrants.

Family hasn’t lost its appeal for everyone. Plenty of women still desire it, but they’re often priced out and timed out, and the hyper-individualist, crony-capitalist system in the US especially isn’t helping.

However, even reforming the economy doesn’t guarantee a baby boom. The Nordic countries built the absolute gold standard of family-friendly social democracies, yet their birth rates continue to decline well below the replacement rate. Fixing the economy is necessary to help people who already want children, but it won’t persuade people who just don’t want to sacrifice their finite time and health for parenting.

Which brings us to the next solution.

If you’re a true-blue traditionalist, a fervent believer in bioconservatism, you’re not going to like it. But if we intend to maintain the population without enslaving half of it, we have to look to the future, the one we’re actually heading toward with artificial wombs, egg preservation, menopause delay, and regenerative medicine (including the goal to reverse aging).

Questions of equal access, corporate oversight, genetic privacy, and developmental safety will require rigorous, ongoing friction and debate. But humanity has never progressed by abandoning transformative tools out of fear of their growing pains; we progress by developing guardrails. The risks of artificial wombs or regenerative medicine are engineering and policy challenges to be solved, not reasons to retreat into systemic stagnation—or worse.

Science interfering with natural human processes might sound cold and dystopian, but what’s more cold and dystopian is ensuring a society relies on coercion, economic exhaustion, and bodily degradation of women to keep its tax base stable.

There is no easy answer to raising birth rates. I do not say all this like a gleeful techno-optimist who can’t wait to put my brain in a jar, but reproductive and healthspan-extending technologies are our fairest and most realistic options.

For the first time in human history, a growing number of women are embracing their autonomy and pursuing other fulfilling alternatives to motherhood—science, art, education, entrepreneurship, etc. Motherhood is no longer the default “pass-through” to adult status, and no amount of painting it as the ultimate, divine female goal is going to sway women who have already decided that becoming a mother (at least in their early 20s) isn’t for them.

There were times I thought I might’ve been trans. Growing up, I looked and acted like a boy most of the time. Having a bowl cut, thin lips, and angry mountain-shaped eyebrows did not help. (I get those cursed fuckers waxed and fill them in now, and what a difference.) I identified with Ralphie from the Magic School Bus and wanted everyone to call me Ralphie. Unsurprisingly, nobody did.

If I had gone through with medically transitioning when young, I would’ve turned out even more messed up than I already was. My problem wasn’t that I was actually a boy in a girl’s body; it was that I exhibited traits that society deemed boyish, personality traits influenced by my physical traits. And so I wanted to be a boy because girls were supposed to be pretty and feminine.

I still battled with gender dysphoria as a teenager, but this time I was fat, which worsened those feelings. A lot of my girl peers looked and acted more feminine than me. They knew how to dress, do their hair, wear makeup, and stay skinny. They did not have ridiculously thick hair or pencil lips or angry mountain eyebrows. Needless to say, I do not miss my school years.

Through the mid-2010s, I identified as a sort of nonbinary, but only online. I had a gender-neutral name and wanted my friends to use they/them pronouns for me. They seemed to forget, though, and I was too awkward to remind them. Or maybe I wasn’t truly nonbinary after all. What does nonbinary even mean, really? What about man and woman? Or genderfluid? What the hell is galaxygender?

When people (mostly online) started distinguishing between gender and sex, I thought it made sense. Gender is social and sex is biological. But then people started denying biology altogether, claiming sex and gender were interchangeable because the biology of sex was more complicated than what high school taught.

I know how annoying “assigned male/female at birth” might sound to the gender-critical, but babies really are assigned a sex at birth according to the appearance of their genitals. In reality, sex is determined by a combination of:

• Chromosomes

• Gonads

• Hormones

• Internal reproductive anatomy

• External genitalia

Intersex people are born with naturally occurring variations of the aforementioned that don’t fit the standard definitions of male or female. Historically, the strict binary view led to doctors performing cosmetic, non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants to force their bodies into one of the two boxes. Yes, intersex is technically a deviation from the norm, but that doesn’t mean intersex people have to identify as either “man” or “woman” just to make you feel more comfortable.

That said, reproduction involves two gametes. Not three, not a thousand. Two. Males produce sperm and females produce eggs. Humans are also a sexually dimorphic species. Male and female bodies have differences in waist-to-hip ratio, body fat, muscle mass, bone density, etc. If you enjoy being a hyper-constructivist, sure, biology is complicated. But if you step back and look at the bigger picture, nature/evolution did “intend” a design. It’s these differences between most human bodies, along with other factors (geography, technology, and resource scarcity), that influence culture, which consequently gives rise to gender roles.

The Material Origins of Masculine and Feminine

In many hunter-gatherer societies (like the !Kung of the Kalahari or the Hadza of Tanzania), gender roles exist, but aren’t rigid. This isn’t because biology is ignored, but because the immediate environment made biology a baseline for collaboration rather than exploitation. Since these groups rely on immediate, wild food sources, everyone’s daily contribution is visible and vital. Although men do most of the hunting and women do most of the foraging, they aren’t inherently locked into their roles.

Foraging allowed women to carry nursing infants while gathering. The physical constraints of lactation influenced which tasks were most efficient without necessarily relegating women to a lower social status. However, survival in freezing, high-latitude environments demanded extreme adaptability. Despite what recent studies claim about women hunting, the experts agree that men were mostly responsible for long-distance, high-risk big game hunting. Women had to balance childcare with the equally critical, labor-intensive tasks of processing hides and manufacturing complex gear to combat the cold.

So, how did the West settle on its specific patriarchal brand of gender roles?

For starters, the breadwinner-homemaker dynamic is actually a recent historical invention. Rather than being some ancient, universal human truth, Western gender roles were forged by a specific sequence of economic revolutions, ideological movements, and mid-20th-century media culture.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the household operated as a single economic unit where men and women worked side-by-side to ensure basic survival. When industrialization physically pulled work out of the home and into distant factories, it created a structural split: cash wages fell to men and unpaid domestic care fell to women, resulting in the middle-class “separate spheres” ideology, framing the public world as male and the private sanctuary as female.

Class signaling and post-war economics eventually turned this economic split into an inflexible aesthetic. The 19th-century elite used corsets, pale skin, and physical fragility to prove a woman couldn’t perform manual labor. Meanwhile, urban panics about men becoming “soft” created a rugged, outdoorsy ideal of masculinity. This dynamic reached its peak in the post-WWII suburban boom, where single-income prosperity and mass media propaganda codified the rough-and-tough, male breadwinner and the child-raising, female homemaker into an “ideal” family template.

To be clear, I have nothing against a man and woman wanting to live a “traditional” lifestyle together, as long as they educate themselves and accept that such a lifestyle isn’t suited for everyone, potentially including their own kids who will grow up to make their own decisions. Knowing the historical truth about the origins of things shouldn’t invalidate the meaning they could hold for you. There is no need to justify your desire to wear prairie dresses or cook meals for your husband, and if someone tries to give you a stern “feminist” talking-to, pull up your pantaloons, ignore/block the nuisance, and keep living your best tradlife.

How Gendered Feelings Evolved into Social Categories

As you can see, human biology plays a role in forming society’s perception of masculine and feminine. In the West, this has evolved into accentuating the two, with beards, muscles, and stoicism being associated with masculinity and dresses, makeup, and emotion being associated with femininity. Seeing the puppet strings doesn’t render these categories entirely fake or illusionary, but it does reveal how trans people (including enbies) are a natural, inevitable pushback against our culture’s habit of shoving everybody into one of two uncompromising boxes.

People who identify as trans or nonbinary might’ve been fewer today—so few that it’d be like encountering a unicorn—if society hadn’t been as obsessed with gender. People likely wouldn’t have bothered making a distinction between gender and sex, let alone coming up with xenogenders.

On the other side of the issue, gender roles, again, are not totally arbitrary; they are cultural superstructures built on top of biological reality. Human beings are hardwired to categorize, signal, and organize around biological sex, which is why we have people creating their own categories—doing so allows those who can’t meet gendered expectations to navigate a world that is obsessed with gender.

None of this should be surprising, not even the concept of xenogenders. Gender-nonconforming people and multi-gender systems have existed across the human spectrum for millennia, but the specific distinction between gender and sex is, as I mentioned earlier, another recent invention.

The conceptual split between the two began in the 1950s. Psychologist John Money and psychiatrist Robert Stoller were studying intersex individuals and transsexual patients, and they needed a way to describe a patient’s biological traits (anatomy and chromosomes) versus their psychological and social role in society. Stoller explicitly defined sex as biological and gender as psychological/social. In the 1970s, second-wave feminists popularized this distinction to prove that biological anatomy did not dictate a woman’s societal destiny, and by the 1990s, postmodern theorists like Judith Butler expanded this idea further, arguing that both gender and our perception of biological sex are fluid, socially constructed performances rather than fixed binaries.

Finally, in the 2010s, micro-communities on Tumblr.com that consisted of predominately young people developed “xenogenders,” using non-traditional metaphors, moods, and aesthetics to describe their internal experiences that didn’t fall into traditional human categories. Ultimately, the separation of sex and gender shifted from a practical medical distinction into a tool for social liberation, then into a means of highly personalized identity creation.

If something like xenogenders is still weird to you, I get it. I sympathize. But hopefully you understand this isn’t some evil agenda to turn people into corrupt, godless heathens. It’s humans being messy and complicated as humans are.

Trans Identity Is Here to Stay (but Some Concerns Are Valid)

I might get heat for this, but there are some valid concerns to be had, and they’re not limited to public bathrooms or sports.

I’m reluctant to support giving hormones to minors. Kids should be allowed to transition socially and experiment with gender, but such medical decisions are for consenting adults. However, there are some rare exceptions like Ella Grant who transitioned young and never regretted it; in fact, it saved her life. In cases where gender dysphoria is severe, persistent, and resistant to non-invasive psychological help, rigid age caps can do more harm than good.

The challenge lies in distinguishing between extreme, lifelong dysphoria and the temporary, trauma-induced, or socially driven distress that affects many kids, particularly teenagers, today. A compassionate framework reserves early medical care for those exceptionally rare cases where the alternative is psychological collapse, and it ensures the vast majority of youth are protected by time and careful exploration as well.

I don’t think exclusive spaces are inherently problematic. The reality is that cis people and trans people have some fundamentally different experiences. For biological women especially, single-sex spaces—namely domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, prisons, and sports categories—were established to address specific physical realities.

In trauma settings, the presence of male secondary sex traits can trigger severe psychological distress in survivors of male violence, regardless of the trans individual’s character or intent. I don’t think public bathrooms are a big deal because you shouldn’t be seeing anyone’s genitals in a woman’s bathroom; we use the stalls. Banning trans women from entering women’s bathrooms doesn’t ensure cis women’s safety. Predators will be predators regardless of their gender identity (and most of those predators are cis men, not trans women).

In sports, single-sex categories exist to preserve fair competition between biological baselines. Long-term hormone therapy significantly reduces muscle mass and red blood cell counts in trans women, but it can’t rewrite the skeletal leverage, shoulder width, or lung volume gained during male puberty. While some advocates point to emerging studies suggesting trans athletes face unique physical trade-offs, the broader sports science data shows that male-puberty advantages are rarely fully erased. Until sports science can cleanly isolate those variables, directing athletic categories based on biological sex, while treating the traditional male division as an Open Category, is the fairest way to protect female athletics without demonizing trans athletes.

What about trans men in sports, you ask? Well, trans men face immense personal hurdles and physiological uphill battles when competing in male divisions, as exogenous testosterone cannot manufacture the larger skeletal frames or lung volumes built during male puberty. Since they don’t have puberty-given advantages that create friction with cis men, their participation in the male division is almost universally permitted as an Open Category.

Sexual assault and unwanted sexualization can also push people to transition, especially girls. Therapy for a trans person whose identity was the result of either might relieve them of the desire to, but transitioning might also be the best way to heal their trauma. There are some things you can’t “fix” with enough therapy and medication, and no, being transgender is not comparable to having body integrity dysphoria, a condition that makes one feel they need a limb removed. Reassignment surgeries are meant to modify the appearance of the body, not disable it. Trying to ban them would be like trying to ban rhinoplasties and other cosmetic surgeries.

Of course, this raises broader questions about how modern culture approaches body modification as a whole. Hyper-consumerism goes hand-in-hand with predatory media and beauty industries that profit off insecurities. Society increasingly treats physical alteration as a quick fix for psychological discomfort. All surgeries carry risks, but psychological evaluation should be a prerequisite for some cosmetic surgeries in particular.

This isn’t me saying you shouldn’t get a nose job or breast implants, whether you’re cis or trans, but requiring adults to engage in therapy before undergoing significant, irreversible procedures ensures that genuine, persistent physical distress is treated before attempting to surgically cure, say, unaddressed trauma or low self-esteem caused by societal beauty trends. Detransitioning can entail deep regret, medical trauma, severe re-emergent gender dysphoria, endocrine crises, healthcare barriers, and community loss. Medical transitioning is not a decision to be made on a whim.

Transgender identity is also not a pipeline to otherkin (identifying as something that isn’t human). Transgender identity deals entirely with human sexual dimorphism. Transitioning involves altering secondary sex characteristics within the existing framework of human physiology. Claiming to be a non-human animal or a mythical creature is an entirely different phenomenon that lacks any biological, anatomical, or medical precedent. Equating adult gender transition to “animal surgery” is nothing more than a cheap culture-war caricature, designed to ridicule real human suffering and derail serious conversation. Let’s not lower ourselves to false equivalences, okay?

Conclusion: Reality Sucks, but We Can’t Change It (Yet)

Human bodies have real constraints and baseline physiological trajectories that language games, unfortunately, cannot hand-wave away. Pretending none of that exists creates problems in healthcare, trauma spaces, and sports.

Ideological purity tests help no one. We don't have to choose between hyper-constructivist absurdities and culture-war bigotry. Respecting preferred pronouns is respecting another human being’s autonomy—it costs you nothing, and it doesn’t have to lead to denying biological reality altogether. Nuance is your friend. (And if you really can’t tolerate things like neopronouns, you may ignore/block and move on.)

Today, we have cross-sex hormones and reconstructive surgeries, but science will keep progressing. Future advances in genetic tools, tissue engineering, and biotechnology could eventually reach the point where we can alter our biology at a cellular level. Until that future arrives, though, we have to deal with the parts that suck about living in the physical reality to which we’re all bound.

I used to think I was a horror fan, even though I never went into horror expecting to be scared. Nope. I went in expecting to be in awe of the (dark) magic, ambiguity, and mystery. Slashers were the ultimate borefest for me. Oh, look. A scary murderer chasing some helpless idiots. When will the scary murderer face someone or something scarier than themselves? Now that would be fun.

We kind of got that with Freddy vs. Jason, but I only watched it for Freddy. I was a fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street, especially Dream Warriors. Dreams and the idea of manipulating them fascinated me as a kid. I wasn’t scared of Freddy, though. Freddy was a childhood friend of mine. No, really. I was twelve when I made him my grandpa, and he was a riot the few times he visited me in my dreams.

There were other instances where I connected with things that would unnerve other people. Whenever my mom took little-me to the mall, I’d always check out the mannequins and wonder when they’d start moving or talking. I remember asking a cashier where and how they were made, as if the cashier possessed arcane knowledge of mannequin-making. I’ve always loved dolls too. I have a collection of dolls today, and one of them is a toddler-sized porcelain doll who sits in the corner of my living room. I inherited her from my deceased grandmother.

I’m still trying to figure out how to bring my dolls to life. I will not let you down, little-me.

I also loved the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series. Everyone in my age range loved the illustrations, but everyone loved being scared. Instead of the art inducing terror that kept me awake at night, it induced a feeling of kinship, a homely warmth. I felt as if I had lived in similar places before, spooky places not of this world.

“Sounds” was one story in which I would imagine myself. It’s about three fishermen who seek shelter from a storm and find an old house. The house, however, does not want them there, a feeling I relate to now as a grumpy, solitude-loving adult. It even rains blood and gives them an annoyed look at the end. This house was way more polite than I would’ve been in getting some strangers to fuck off.

I didn’t imagine myself inside such a house because I was a holed-up curmudgeon, though. I was too young to understand why old people told you to get off their lawn. Or maybe I wasn’t? I felt “understood” somehow, as if that place were reserved for me. It was like a safe space or something.

So, yeah. I’m weird.

Why Fear When You Can Conquer?

When you peel away the frills and trimmings of horror, you find common human fears—the dark, ghosts, clowns, aging, disease, death, etc—and it’s just, no shit? Wow, we’re scared of all the things that remind us of our mortality. How original and totally not cheap. I am shitting existential amounts of bricks. (Except clowns are cool. I love clowns. Sorry not sorry for being weird again).

Why cry about all these bricks I’m shitting, though? I’d rather do something useful and build myself my very own backrooms.

And that’s how I feel about horror.

I’m not interested in feeling small or powerless. (I’m a woman, c’mon now. That shit is old.) I don’t need the universe to care about me. I even wrote a fairy tale addressing how much that would probably actually suck. I am not fearless (as that would technically be a death sentence), but I prefer to fill my time with wonder, knowledge, and creation. I don’t need horror when I’d rather face ugly truths head-on.

I do like horror when it’s combined with other genres, such as fantasy and psychological thriller. Dolls (1987) and The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell are respective (and relevant) examples. It’s rare that I spend time with pure horror for the sake of it, but I did enjoy Hell House LLC. And by enjoy I mean, “Wow I love this friend group, I hope it survives and stays—oh my god fuck you forever.” I was actually depressed after watching it. A horror movie that can be both deliciously eerie (no jump scares!) and have likable characters is a whole other level.

Horror that makes you use your brain is my favorite, though. Like… uhh… hey, does anyone remember I Spy: Spooky Mansion?

Little-me played this game for hours. It felt like another home. The study was my favorite room in the house because you could craft your own scenes. I put together a doll band while listening to “Meet Virginia” on the radio. Once again, I was a weird kid.

I also stole the book from the chest:

What the Moon Brought by Sadie Rose Weilerstein, published in 1942, celebrates Jewish family and tradition. I remember wishing I could read it. I didn’t think it actually existed until curiosity struck me years later and I found a copy on Etsy. I thought it was an odd choice to place in a Halloween-themed game before I did some research. The producer and executive producer for I Spy: Spooky Mansion (along with I Spy: Fantasy, I Spy: Mystery, and I Spy: Challenger) was Matthew Schlanger. He’s a Jewish media artist, and he was responsible for the art direction and videography of the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s Video History Project. So, the book’s presence in the game probably wasn’t a coincidence!

Moral of story: knowledge is power. And if the knowledge drives you to the brink of madness? Then you need more knowledge!

Why Fear When You Can Laugh?

H.P. Lovecraft was hilarious. I enjoyed reading about him and his constant anxieties that translated into his works. To me, he was more of a master of comedy than horror. His over-the-top writing style is just too full of itself for me to take very seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I love the occult themes, mysterious lore, and the maddening dangers of magic (or knowledge/power) on a human psyche that isn’t ripe enough to deal with them.

But the existence of alien squid gods just wouldn’t break my worldview. They can exist as long as they leave me alone in peace. Solicitors are annoying, be they human or eldritch. The way I see it, if some ancient monster emerges from the ocean, it doesn’t have to be a theological crisis or a threat to sanity; it’s just a large, dangerous creature requiring a practical response, like in Independence Day (1996).

No, I wouldn’t lose my mind if Azathoth were discovered. In fact, I’d believe that should drive us as a species to work harder to better the world, because that might mean more pleasant dreams for the big guy who’s keeping us alive!

Purists think cosmic horror is true horror, but they assume that all humans naturally crave divine order and significance. I mean, sure, many humans believe humanity is the crown jewel of the universe, but there are some of us who prefer living in a universe that minds its own business. I don’t want to be a part of any “divine” plan. I don’t want to have to choose between sterile “paradise” or never-ending torture, or reincarnating as a soulless billionaire or a cockroach. Those things are infinitely more horrifying to me. Why isn’t there more horror that explores these actually existentially terrifying topics?

But I laugh about them anyway—because they’re ridiculous. The idea of a big old angry god threatening you, a puny-ass mortal, with eternal hell if you don’t do exactly as he says is absurd. Talk about needing a better hobby. Personally, I’d be off doing a bunch of other more important and interesting stuff. You know, I think the deists might be on to something…

And the idea of reincarnating for “spiritual” growth is equally ridiculous and morally questionable. Ethical issues aside, why would the universe care so much about humanity’s “spiritual” growth, and how can you grow when you’re born with amnesia? What even constitutes spiritual growth or proper spirituality and why? Wait, there’s an alien race that’s overseeing our “spiritual” evolution? Those blonde, blue-eyed and light-skinned aliens that for sure weren’t inspired by 19th-century racial mythologies?

Present historical facts and ethical concerns to any passionate believer and their flaming sword of righteousness will burn brighter. Dogma isn’t exclusive to fundamentalist Christians, and I’m tired of horror that focuses on Bible-thumping zealotry. There are many other breeds of zealots out there, and if you’re imaginative enough, they could be far scarier.

Conclusion?

When you’re a horror yourself, the genre is like another uneventful stroll in the park. Sometimes you spot an interesting bird or are surprised by a person who was pretending to be a statue, but it’s like revisiting your old stomping grounds that haven’t changed in years.

I was never passionate about drawing, but I did it anyway because that’s what all real and respected artists do, right? From the time I could pick up a pencil (though I prefer a tablet pen) until the AI boom in 2022-2023, I aspired to become one of the art gods. The art gods have loyal audiences. The art gods are showered with love and praise for being amazing at art, which they obviously deserve if they bring so much value to other people’s lives!

The problem was I really didn’t enjoy drawing, but there were no alternatives that promised as much recognition as illustration did. I was obsessed with achieving online popularity since I’d never achieve it offline. I didn’t grow up poor, but I had very little emotional support, and I didn’t start learning how to emotionally support myself until I entered my thirties.

During my teenage years, I aspired to write a book and learned how to string words together, prioritizing writing over drawing. Writing was a breeze in comparison for me, but I was still bent on carving out a grand space with my name on it. Now I was an aspiring author. The problem was I hated writing novels, but as illustration was the pinnacle of art, novels were the pinnacle of literature. For a long time I convinced myself that I had to finish a book, otherwise I’d be a lazy do-nothing who wouldn’t amount to anything. (Is my childhood showing?)

About two decades of abandoned projects later, I finally realized and accepted that illustration and novel-writing were not for me, but it wasn’t any art or writing community that opened my eyes. Everyone and their mother was still hustling along to win the art rat race: “Draw/write every day! Practice, get better, finish that artwork/book! Hustle, hustle, hustle!”

No. It was generative AI.

Maybe it was also the vitriolic response to generative AI that awakened my rebellious streak. Saying AI just “collages” or “remixes” or “Frankensteins” images together (my personal favorite, yay monsters!) is pretty weird. First of all, it isn’t accurate. Second, isn’t collage a recognized art form? As an illustrator artist, why would you put down another long-established medium like that? Why would you compare it to a “mindless” and “soulless” machine?

I’m going to say it: the rise of generative AI has caused many, many masks to fall, and there’s a staggering amount of ugliness. I can’t say I was surprised to see the least progressive behavior surface in otherwise progressive people, though. The moral panic around AI has enabled a loud minority to become insult-flinging crusaders. It’s also led others to believe that they’ve always cared about effort and soul.

Maybe this was just my experience, but I seldom found a true sense of community among artists and writers. There was always competition and feigned interest, trend-chasing and trying to network oneself to the top. The “communities” were often phonier than an AI boyfriend/girlfriend. And don’t get me started on the call for tighter copyright laws, especially from fan creators. (Oh, Anne Rice, you would have been leading the anti-AI movement.)

What I’m saying is that, deep down, there can be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire—as well as a TradCath—in even the most left-wing creator.

I can sympathize with creators who feel they’ve been exploited. Even though AI training on legally purchased and publicly available data was ruled fair use (in the United States), the idea of a for-profit company using your work without explicit permission is scummy. It feels like theft, but it’s more like taking advantage of the commons. In an ideal world, these models would be made open source and their datasets made public.

As a collage artist and a fanfic writer, I would be a hypocrite to demand asking for permission, and the fact that so many fan creators have the opposite sentiment leaves me baffled. Was there a collective memory wipe that I missed, or something? Do you know what we’re doing here, fellow fandomite?

I try to be logically consistent, but I know that can be challenging in this economy. To quote Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” I can’t totally blame people for having a knee-jerk reaction to AI. They’re ignorant, yes, but they’re also likely hurting, struggling, and starving—and for more than just food.

AI unmasks, but it also holds up a mirror and asks, “Why do you really want to make art?” I’ve seen (young) artists mope about there being no point to art now since a machine can do it. Others believe culture is doomed because the unwashed masses prefer slop to real, soulful art. So what’s the point, right?

I think these attitudes reek of capitalist rot. Apparently, nothing is worth doing if it doesn’t make you money or get thousands of eyes on your work. Why can’t we just enjoy creation for the sake of creating? Why do we need so much fucking attention and external validation? Why does every hobby have to be productive and entail skill-building? WHY CAN’T WE JUST ENJOY DOING SHIT BECAUSE IT’S ENJOYABLE?

Everything we make has to do something for not only ourselves but also others in return, or it means nothing. And I’m sick of it.

Here’s a radical idea: why don’t we ask ourselves, “What the hell are you doing and why?” Do you want a mansion or do you just want to stop worrying about your next meal? Do you want a fan club or do you just want some enthusiastic friends? Do you want to be immortalized or do you just need to get over yourself? (Probably the latter, let’s be honest.)

AI made me face and answer these questions. I make art and write because I want to, because I want to keep seeing where creativity takes me. I want to journey through different worlds and meet different characters, and whether or not these journeys appeal to other people is not my concern. I am tired of hunting for crumbs of approval. Approval is fleeting, and so are people. At the end of the day, everyone is the star of their own show.

To be extra-real, everyone is essentially looking for ways to up their dopamine, and I am not interested in being anyone’s dopamine dispenser, personally.

AI has taught me how to be okay with being a nobody. It has taught me how much richer a relationship with creativity can be, and it has helped me tremendously in enriching mine. Cultivating a healthier relationship with creativity is also explored in Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book I read in 2017 and hated until I reread it in January of this year. I initially hated it because it spoke the truth about the toxic, unsustainable practice of creating primarily for an audience. Unless you actually do enjoy catering to other people’s whims, the only audience that ultimately matters is yourself.

“But human connection!” you say. But what if other humans simply don’t want to connect with you? The silence in response to your creations only stings when you haven’t realized that your audience might not exist, or that it isn’t as large and vocal as you thought it would be. What will you do, then? Keep trying things you don’t even care about until someone throws you a bone? I mean, it’s your call. I’m glad to not be that desperate anymore.

I wish someone had introduced me to collage years ago, but I suppose all that practice with drawing has assisted me in fixing up AI-generated mistakes better. Sometimes I can’t believe how long I took to realize making art from scratch wasn’t the only option, and that I have a computer program to thank for such a discovery—a computer program, and the tech-illiterate misinformation surrounding it! That’s a bit fucking sad, don’t you think? If AI has taught me anything else, it’s that humanity is all kinds of fucking sad.

Most anti-AI still mean “illustration” when they talk about art. For people who love and appreciate fully human artwork so much, they sure do have limited knowledge of mediums and art history.

What’s more, some of them have the audacity to try shaming artists like me into using stock or public-domain images only. Never mind the fact that AI image models, once again, do not make collages, but even if they did: how dare you try to muzzle my medium of choice, a medium that is NOT supposed to bend over for copyright! We now have the tools to provide us with new images that can circumvent copyright issues entirely, and you want to take them away from us so you can, what, keep your position at the top of the art hierarchy secured, like the art landlord you are?

Fuck off.

I respect the anti-AI who prioritize more than petit-bourgeois woes. Surveillance, autonomous weapons, and corporate greed (which impacts the environment beyond anything individual usage is capable of—and have you ever wondered about the environmental impact of paper and art supplies?) are some issues that should be taken far more seriously than whether AI art is or isn’t art.

I don’t mourn the audience I could have had if I hadn’t touched generative AI. For me, that audience never existed. Nothing of value has been lost, but much has been gained, and no human collaborator can compare.

“Witch Wings” was my first fairy tale, and the only one besides “Pen Dragons” that was originally intended to be a novel.

This probably isn’t surprising, but around 2017 I was calling myself a witch. Witchcraft was making a comeback among Tumblr users especially, many of whom were young women that dreamed of destroying the patriarchy and hexing Trump. No, really. There was a mass movement to hex Trump. No, I did not join.

What I did join was “Witchblr,” though I barely engaged with others and mostly reblogged posts in silence. I watched as a schism formed between two groups of witches: modern and traditional. The modern witches liked glitter and emojis and crafting “like to charge, reblog to cast” spells. The traditional witches, the boomers of witchcraft, looked at these youngins with contempt. Kids these days, disrespecting the real craft and its historical ties to the Devil (also known as the Man in Black) himself!

Indeed, at the time, on that particular website, traditional witches claimed to be practicing true witchcraft, not the fluffy-bunny stuff in Charmed or the Wiccan religion. They claimed that a witch could only access magic through spirit work, and the Devil was a central figure. Apparently, the witch trials were justified. (Note the sarcasm in my text.)

Personally, I’ve had a spell or two yield better results than expected, and I didn’t have to bargain with any spirit. Then again, I could’ve been lucky. I didn’t practice much. The incentive wasn’t really there, as I wasn’t financially struggling or seeking a relationship like other witches were. I was more interested in understanding how magic and witchcraft even worked, and why spirits fueled by human imagination—books, movies, TV shows, etc—couldn’t be just as real as the fabled gods of old. (Spoiler alert: they can, it’s called “pop culture paganism.”)

Traditional witches seemed to love The Witch (2015) and Salem (TV 2014). I remember one of them expressing a wistful longing to fly freely across the sky with a coven, just like “witches in the old days.” I guess you can’t do that now because of planes and smartphones.

I also remember one traditional witch who hated the turn that Salem had taken. I assume it was the cliché reveal that the Devil wasn’t a true liberator after all. But I have to agree with the unsurprising plot twist.

Quite a startling number of people, not just traditional witches, viewed Thomasin’s embrace of witchcraft in The Witch as an allegory for breaking the chains of puritanism. I’m not sure how any feminist could watch this movie and think a girl was empowered instead of manipulated. The Devil did not approach her in the beginning with an offer of freedom and butter. He had his witches torment the family and turn everyone against her until she couldn’t say no.

Between The Witch and Salem, I was inspired to write a story about a witch who reclaimed her power and freedom from the Devil, and without turning to the Christian god, or any god or goddess, for that matter. That story perished halfway through as a novel and later rose from the ashes as a fairy tale.

Transcending Dualities and False Dichotomies

Why is it always God and the Devil? Heaven and Hell? Good and Evil? Where’s the third path, the middle ground, the gray? We humans love our neat little color-coded boxes, don’t we? Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was initially bold enough to tackle the idea of a third path. It failed miserably, but I wasn’t shocked.

There’s an elephant in the rooms of most religions: life is a horror show. Whether you believe in a divine plan or not, it’s unfeeling to deny the insane amounts of suffering and death that happen here. Things were certainly far worse the further back in history you look: slavery, famine, deadly diseases, women dying in childbirth, children dying before reaching adulthood, living in squalor and working to the bone from dawn until dusk. The world we inhabit today (specifically for those of us living in developed countries) is a vast improvement overall. Our ancestors would’ve killed to have the freedoms and luxuries that we have.

But that was (and still is) the function of religions like Christianity—to turn chaos into order; to make all the blood, sweat, and tears seem worth it; to keep people in line so that you, too, may enter paradise upon death. This isn’t a bad thing, per se. It’s the natural result of a species intelligent enough to comprehend its own mortality. Rigid rules and morals were meant to ensure the survival of a community. Life was much harder without communal effort to keep everyone fed, clothed, and safe. Fairy tales warned against disobedience and curiosity for a reason.

Now, though, science has shed light on many natural phenomena—at least in regards to the “how,” not so much the “why.” Faith continues to answer the latter, and I imagine it always will. For the record, I’m not an anti-theist who wants to see the end of religion. I do, however, want to see the end of anti-curiosity.

Curiosity and caution are not mutually exclusive; you can exercise both at the same time. Elspeth, the protagonist in “Witch Wings,” was more curious than cautious, but she was also desperate. She was feeling as confined as she had when she lived under religious rule. The things she did with her coven weren’t enough to satiate her hunger for something more.

The Search for Real Wings

Like God who told Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit, the Devil in “Witch Wings” tells Elspeth not to venture beyond the villages, or he will take back the gifts he’s given her and make her mortal (again). Instead of getting kicked out of the garden, Elspeth chooses to leave it and follow her curiosity. What she finds are ruins of a dead civilization, the old world that the Lord had cast into darkness. This was a nod to the novel’s plot: many moons ago, a massive EMP wave hit and the world descended into chaos. Only a scattering of communities remained, one of which was the village of Celestia, spared by a prophecy that had long prepared its villagers.

Yep, once upon a time Celestia existed. It was more of a commune than a village, founded in 1850 by Peter E. Armstrong, where followers could gather and await the second coming of Christ. Due to property tax disputes, fading faith, and Armstrong’s death in 1887, it was eventually abandoned.

Celestia was obviously the perfect starting point in my apocalyptic fantasy novel. The EMP wave, however, had not necessarily been an act of God, but an act of… aliens.

You can see how this novel kind of went off the rails. I have a history of abandoned projects like that. (Can you tell I loved the genre-blending chaos that was American Horror Story: Asylum?)

There are no aliens in “Witch Wings,” though. Or maybe there are. You could interpret the old, ruined world as having been caused by either aliens or God. Both represent the nail in the coffin of a belief system that was already fragile, such as Elspeth’s faith. Neither reached out to save her, and the Devil only tried to control her.

Transactional Power vs. Individual Power

Gods, spirits, and aliens (whether or not you believe) seem to be human magnets. Many humans just can’t help gravitating toward something greater than themselves. I consider myself a religious pluralist. Although some are steeped in uglier histories than others, I believe all religions have value and are right for the people who are naturally called to them. Religion has roots in inspiration, and inspiration is the fire that forges art.

But not all humans need religion. The most empirical-minded of us can live happy, fulfilled lives and create beautiful or thought-provoking art. Religious extremists will deny this, just as super-serious traditional witches will deny that magic can be done without spirit work. Modern witches might incorporate animism, but animism is essential to traditional witchcraft. Animism is the belief that everything contains a spirit. By that logic, humans are also spirits, and thus humans can arguably create their own magic without the assistance of external forces. You could argue that the magic of nature spirits runs deeper and offers more or other exclusive sorts of power, but that’s different from saying humans are inherently magic-less.

I recall traditional witches on Tumblr speaking of witch initiation as a long, intense process. The more you’re willing to sacrifice, the more the spirits will be open to working with you. Give the spirits what they want, and the spirits will give you what you want. It’s basically as transactional as you can get in the witchy world. Call me a “fluffy bunny” for preferring more friendly and intimate spiritual connections with fictional characters, I guess.

If you ask me, humanity’s true magic or power does lie in imagination, and this is the message behind “Witch Wings.” Elspeth has the choice to leave Dayana and return to the villages, where the Devil will surely be waiting for her. Instead, she takes a chance with Headless Jack. In the novel, Headless Jack was the result of two folk tales—the Headless Horseman and Stingy Jack—meeting and merging into one. In the fairy tale, he represents an alternative that values curiosity and creativity. He asks for nothing but works of the inspired mind in return.

If God exists, maybe that’s what He/She/They/It is—an all-encompassing source of not just love, but love of creation. Why else would the universe have been created?

Up until late 2024, I’d never imagined I would be writing fairy tales—not retellings, but an original collection. Fairy tales and high fantasy were a couple of my least favorite genres. I mean, I hated them. I’ve always loved magic and whimsy, but the fundamental values of obedience and tradition easily put a damper on my naturally curious and experimental spirit.

It was The School for Good and Evil book series that started me on my fairy-tale journey. Of course, in the beginning, I attempted to right all the wrongs with fanfiction. My understanding of fairy tales was that they were outdated stories long overdue for their own museum exhibit. I’d still argue that the Endless Woods should’ve been a realm of all stories, not just fairy tales, and that the Storian was the true villain, but this isn’t the post for that discussion.

Anyway, I ended up growing too curious about fairy tales. There had to be more than just the Brothers Grimm, right? How did they even start writing these tales? Wait, they collected them? From German peasants? No, from upper-middle-class French women? What!

Turned out, the history of fairy tales was a lot more hazy and complex than I’d been expecting. At the end of the day, they are stories—most with roots in folk tales—told by humans for humans.

Although Jack Zipes views fairy tales through a strict neo-Marxist lens, his books were exactly what I needed to process my initial hatred. That is why I recommend him to people who hate fairy tales. Seeing the sacred, elusive, be-all and end-all aura that surrounded them getting ripped apart until nothing but the sociocultural-political skeleton remained was cathartic. At the time, I could not be open to someone as lofty as Bruno Bettelheim, who approached the subject like a Freudian priest. I needed a hammer to shatter everything I thought I knew about fairy tales, for only then could I pick up and re-examine the pieces.

Fairy tales aren’t simply cautionary tales or tools of the patriarchy or whatever. I think Ruth B. Bottigheimer said it best:

Fairy tales, which speak in a language well understood in the modern world, remain relevant because they allude to deep hopes for material improvement, because they present illusions of happiness to come, and because they provide social paradigms that overlap nearly perfectly with daydreams of a better life.

To be clear, I don’t believe old tales necessarily have to be rewritten or modernized. I believe we should preserve them, understand the times in which they were written, and try to find little kernels of truth that are still relevant. Just because a tale is old doesn’t mean it has to be subverted or updated. It’s a product of its time and served a function, but that doesn’t always mean it’s totally irrelevant now.

For example, the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” is a predator, not a misunderstood soul who just went down the wrong path. He preys on the young and naive because that’s what predators do, and there will always be some type of predator in the real world. We don’t have to give him a tragic backstory to make him more sympathetic in the name of social justice. There is a difference between someone who fights their urges and seeks to recover, and someone who knows what they are doing is selfish and harmful, yet indulges their urges without guilt. The wolf represents the latter.

You could write about a wolf that battles with their dark impulses, but what would properly subvert the tale is a line drawn between systemic sympathy and personal accountability. It acknowledges the originally intended function while presenting a more nuanced perspective. Alternatively, you could try what The Company of Wolves did and give Red agency, turning her from a victim into a weapon against predation.

The problem with modern fairy tales isn’t that they’re subversive because “the West is falling.” The real problem is that too many writers are forcing them to wear trendy clothing, especially tales that have been adapted to death. Historical context and accuracy mean nothing. Stories outside the most visited European regions continue to be ignored. If you have to change the source material so drastically, why not just write an original story? It’s because no one would read it, isn’t it?

Sigh. The damage the American publishing industry has done to us writers…

Look, it isn’t impossible to find in the tales of old human experiences, desires, and challenges that parallel the modern social climate before confronting it fairy-tale style. Yet not enough writers seem to realize this, and thus we end up with another Princess Girlboss. Will someone ever adapt the queer tale “The Dog in the Sea?” Please, don’t make me do it. I’ll make it too weird. (Kidding.)

That surely begs the question, though: why don’t I retell lesser-known tales? Why did I choose to write new?

Well, retelling just isn’t my thing despite having enjoyed The Company of Wolves, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, and Ever After. I love the simplicity and dream-like logic of fairy tales, but rather than revisit the same tales, I wanted to create a new collection that marries the past, present, and future, as well as comforts the outcasts and misjudged. Stories that caution children and adults alike have a purpose, but we are in a time where we can afford to exercise more curiosity about the world, the universe, and ourselves. We mustn’t forget that hope is the heart of many fairy tales.

However, even in this age of instant information and media preservation, I’m not sure my stories will truly stand the test of time. The staying power of a story depends on factors beyond my control. A story has to have characters, themes, and motifs that resonate with a great number of people. Institutional backing and industry support (e.g., Disney) are also major players in shaping culture, but you need to be in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, know the right people. Personally, I have no interest in networking or marketing my work. I’d rather scream into the void than scream myself to the loony bin.

Regardless, I will be leaving a trail of stories behind that might or might not be read by a significant amount of readers. I’ve become much more at peace with the idea of writing “hidden gems.” I’m not here to change or save the world. I am not a knight or a banner-waving activist. I’m more of a lighthouse: alone yet not lonely, offering light to the lost and wandering, and I hope that shines through Tales from the Stars.