By
Aurelia T. Evans (Guest Blogger)
A
person doesn’t decide to write about a circus best known for its
oddities, some of which are human and others demon,
lightly—especially with erotica. There were times when I wanted to
hide Arcanium and never let it see the light of day for fear of doing
it wrong.
The
same issue cropped up to a lesser degree while I was writing the
Sanctuary trilogy, when it came to Renee’s mental illness. I drew
from my own experience, adding some legitimacy to the fantasy. But
did I have a legitimate claim to marvels and oddities, and if I
didn’t, what did I have to do to write the subject right? I had to
look at this from every mortifying angle to make sure it was the
right thing to do. I’m neurotic that way. It’s not always a bad
thing.
I
eventually realized I was overlooking many cases of the obvious. The
biggest one was that asking the questions at all suggested I was
writing in the right direction.
Every
time I considered pulling the series, I ended up resisting. Because I
love Arcanium. I love its cast of characters, from the most tortured
soul to the most gleeful demon. Sideshow acts and freak shows by
their nature require some objectification—as in all the performing
arts—but not to the point of dehumanization. That’s not okay. But
every one of my Arcanium characters has a rich life, demons and
humans alike, and a series lets me approach such a varied cast from
all sorts of angles. I’m in love with this freak show of a circus
so much, and when I love something, I have to share it.
I
don’t write from the perspective of all the oddities, and I admit
that I start out relatively mild in terms of average vs. non-average
characters with Fortune and Carousel. An oddity isn’t
part of the central romance until Aerial (Book 3), and I don’t
write from the perspective of an oddity until Ringmaster (Book
4)—although I’d originally planned for Ringmaster to be
the second book. Part of it is that there’s a difference between
backstory and story—some of the characters don’t inspire a story
in me, no matter how interesting they are as characters.
However, the Behind the Curtain short stories/vignettes give glimpses
into some of the cast members for whom I don’t write novels.
I
care about all of them and want all their stories told one way or
another, and I think I help them represent a collection of human
experiences when dealing with being non-average. We have the people
brought into Arcanium involuntarily and punished with non-average
traits, and they suffer for it. It’s experienced as profoundly
negative. Then there are the people brought in involuntarily and
transformed, but while they struggle, it isn’t intended as a
punishment and is eventually perceived as more neutral. Some of them
learn to accept what they’ve become. Others use the transformations
to punish themselves. Others just wait for the time when they can
leave, as either normal again or still non-average.
Then
there are those who have entered Arcanium willingly and who embrace
their oddities, who see value in what they add to human variety and
who don’t want to return to whatever ‘normal’ is.
But
definitely not everyone in Arcanium is okay with the way things are.
That’s reality. Not everyone is some kind of ‘inspiration,’ as
though that’s what their aspiration should be, and it’s not fair
to those who view what happens to them as negative to disregard that
experience as weak or a bad representation.
I
think it was writing Kitty in Ringmaster (Book 4) that the
second obvious part occurred to me. Kitty is a voluntary oddity in
Arcanium. She’s not just the Bearded Lady—she has hair all over
her body. She’s not always thrilled with herself, but she’s come
to accept and embrace what she is and has no problem being in a freak
show, because it’s not making her hide who she is like she’d have
to do in most cases in the real world.
Kitty
is my other half. She’s my complement. She’s covered in hair
because of some unknown congenital condition (not a typical case of
hypertrichosis), and I have a pernicious form of obsessive compulsive
disorder that causes me to pull out my hair (and pick holes into my
skin), which has led me to regularly shaving my hair off to keep from
doing so. I’m still a little self-conscious about it. I have yet to
give a vocal performance without my hair and usually wait until after
a performance to shave it off again. However, I’m not
self-conscious enough to wear a wig and a shit-ton of foundation the
rest of the time to hide the fact that I have trichotillomania and
other body-focused repetitive behaviors. That means that my girlie
bald head goes out in public often, and I have scabs all over my face
(as well as places the public doesn’t see).
When
I’m bald, I haven’t had to deal with the same discrimination that
Kitty has, at least not overtly. No one’s told me I walked into the
wrong bathroom. I’ve been lucky thus far that the jobs I’ve
worked at are okay with it. However, it’s one thing to be bald
voluntarily and another to be bald because your illness has overtaken
your will—frankly, having to shave my head got old about three
years ago. And people can’t tell whether I’m bald because I’m
rebellious, a lesbian (my hair has nothing to do with my sexuality,
and what is this, the nineties?), or because I’m sick.
Trichotillomania or alopecia probably don’t even come up in their
considerations.
When
I go into the salon to get my head shaved, the salonists often ask me
several times whether I’m sure. I have to reassure them that I’ve
done it many times before, and I often have to explain what trich is
(although I think all hair-loss conditions should be part of any
cosmetology curriculum). Educating people about trich is just
something that I’m going to have to do, probably for the rest of my
life.
Cancer
survivors have asked me whether I was fighting, and it always feels
weird telling them I’m not sick, at least not in that way—as
though I’m somehow invalidating their struggle, which is stupid.
I’ve had kids point at me in the grocery stores and department
stores and ask their parents why that boy was shopping in the girl’s
section or why that girl doesn’t have hair. It’s the kids that
stare, mostly. They’re already prone to staring, because they
haven’t learned not to. I value their curiosity and honesty, so it
usually doesn’t bother me much, although that ‘boy’ thing was a
bit of an ego puncture.
If
the kids stare, it’s not a stretch to assume the adults do too.
They’ve just learned to be more circumspect. Or they deliberately
don’t look, which is more insulting. It’s a way of ignoring
difference, pretending it doesn’t exist, so they don’t have to
confront it or their own discomfort with it.
I
think realizing that I am a non-average person—hell, more
than half the time, I barely feel like a human being—was what
finally allowed me to give myself permission to write Arcanium
without nearly as much anxiety (before, I was still writing through
the first three books and loving it, but damn, I was stressing out,
because that’s what I do). I’m not the same kind of non-average,
because I could pass if I valued passing more than comfort and wore a
wig. It’s a choice that I don’t, although trich isn’t a choice
and it sometimes feels like passing isn’t a choice either. I’ll
never have the hair I want, never have the skin I want. And people
will always notice. Some may even work up the courage to ask about
it.
The
fact is, I’m always going to be weird. I’m always going to be
perceived as an oddity to the people around me when I pick at my
skin, pull out my hair, or shave it off entirely. I can’t escape
it. I’m surprised it took me this long to figure that out—maybe
because I’m mostly used to it and most people around me are good
with it. Aside from the stares in real life, though, what brought it
home to me was watching characters in several TV shows who had some
of my body-focused repetitive behaviors, most of them troubled and
some of them psychotic or psychopathic…and wondering in horror if
that’s how people see me when I painstakingly search for or pull
out an offending hair or pick at my skin until I bleed.
These
are things I have trouble accepting, and sometimes I even cry. I’m
upset that normal isn’t always a choice (oh man, so much more to
say about that…). That’s how I know for a fucking fact that not
all non-average people are sunshine and puppies about it. Sometimes
it feels like a punishment or a cosmic joke.
I
might not have the same level of oddness as the Arcanium
oddities—even my other half, Kitty—but just as my mental
illnesses aren’t as debilitating as Renee’s, I can draw from and
extrapolate from my own experience, plus respect other people’s
accounts of their own.
The
key for average people writing about non-average people: remembering
that their bodies might throw you, but their minds resemble yours.
Sometimes there’s mental illness. Sometimes there are developmental
disorders. Sometimes they’re perfectly average in the mind. Just
like average-looking people. We have feelings. We just want to live
our lives. We want to be acknowledged, accepted, and ultimately
treated as though nothing is wrong because we aren’t wrong.
Which isn’t the same as treating us as though we aren’t
different.
One
of the things I fought for while hashing out details during my
development of the Arcanium series was not making the non-average
characters plot tools for the more average-looking characters. That’s
why it was so important to me that Kitty’s story get told in
Ringmaster (and there are other Arcanium novels from the
perspective of an oddity or with an oddity as a romantic interest,
both written and not yet written). That’s also why it was important
to write the Behind the Curtain short stories— which will be free,
by the way. You’re welcome.
However,
these are just the characters with physical differences.
There’s some serious mental shit that all my characters have
to go through, which is a whole other kind of difference. Invisible
conditions can be just as problematic, although for different
reasons. I know that much through personal experience as well.
In
the end and after much deliberation, I signed the contracts for the
Arcanium series because I’m a huge fan of embracing the amazing
beauty of human variety (although I sometimes don’t practice my own
advice, because I’m only human and share the generalized pressure
and desire to be normal). I also think there’s something of a
homogenization in the erotica pool. While I understand that people
use fantasy to get away from reality, the lack of variety within our
own fantasies sometimes seriously disappoints me.
I
want non-average people, non-average bodies, non-average beauty, to
be brought to the erotica table. That’s part of the awesomeness of
the BBW (big, beautiful women) erotica movement. I think Kitty is
gorgeous, for instance, and most of my characters come to a similar
conclusion in their own ways. I want us weirdos to get Happily Ever
Afters and Happily For Nows. I want us to be perceived as beautiful
and erotic not because of the fetishization of the ‘exotic’ (bald
woman fetish is a thing—it’s not attraction that’s the problem,
but objectification), but because we are beautiful and erotic.
Not in spite of our weirdness or even entirely because of it, but
because we are people, full of richness and history and amazing
things and not-so-amazing things. Fantasies need a little weirdness.
Erotica needs a little weirdness.
So…let’s
get weird, people. Welcome to Arcanium.
Blurb
for Fortune (Arcanium Book 1):
He’s
the reason to be careful what you wish for.
After
her jealous boyfriend makes an angry, careless wish, Maya DeLuca
finds herself trapped in a traveling demonic circus and at the mercy
of a devious jinni, Bell Madoc. She joins the other lost souls of
Arcanium who suffer in perpetual purgatory under the weight of their
wishes, all making the best of a cursed situation.
But
Maya’s not even cursed because of her own wish, which means she
still has three for Bell to grant.
He
may be fond of her—the passion they share is as hellfire hot as it
is wrong—but that doesn’t mean she’s safe from his endlessly
inventive, wicked imagination. He might twist her wishes at his whim
for his own pleasure. Or he might just give her what she wants…which
could be even worse.
Links:
Arcanium
publishing schedule:
Carousel
(Book 2) early download: June 5
Carousel
(Book 2) general release: July 3
Aerial
(Book 3, prequel) early download: July 10
Aerial
(Book 3, prequel) general release: August 7
Ringmaster
(Book 4) early download: August 7
Ringmaster
(Book 4) general release: September 4
Contortion
(Book 5): TBD
Bio
Aurelia
T. Evans is an up-and-coming erotica author with a penchant for
horror and the supernatural.
She's the twisted mind behind
the were/shifter Sanctuary trilogy, demonic circus series Arcanium,
and spiritual gothic urban fantasy series Meridian (publication TBD).
She's also had short stories featured in various erotic anthologies.
Aurelia presently lives in Dallas, Texas (although she
doesn't ride horses or wear hats). She loves cats and enjoys baking
as much as she dislikes cooking. She's a walker, not a runner, and
she writes outside as often as possible.
.jpg)