A New Book Series with an Ace Protagonist! ft. Sarah Moon

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here as always with my spouse Royce. Together we are the Ace Couple, and today I am so delighted that we have a guest to speak to. We are talking to Sarah Moon. I feel like this interview has been a very long time coming, so I’m elated that we are finally here. But before we get into it, please, uh, introduce yourself.

Courtney: Who are you? Why are you here?

Sarah: Okay. I, uh, I go by Sarah Moon on the internet. That’s not my legal name, but it’s what I go by.

Sarah: Uh, I am a translator, YouTuber, writer at the moment. In the past, I have also been an um improv coach and performer and a choreographer and a dancer, mostly ballet and modern, and costumes as well. Those are like all of the things that I have done for money. And I’m very proud to say that pretty much everything I’ve ever done for money is something that I love doing and would do for free anyway.

Sarah: Uh, yeah, and I’ve recently pivoted to writing. So I guess that’s mostly what I’m here to talk about today, but who knows where this conversation will go.

Courtney: Yeah, that is incredible. Not many people can say that, but I can tell from your current and past professions, um, as well as your book, which I loved, by the way, and I’m so excited, uh, that we’ll get to talk about it a little more in a bit here.

Courtney: We have a lot in common. I too have been a theater kid. I too have been a dancer.

Courtney: But that’s not the only thing we have in common. We’ve been on each other’s uh internet radar for— uh we were discussing before this— we think at least five years.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Um and I want to talk a little bit about that.

Sarah: I think we met on Twitter.

Courtney: Oh yeah, back when um Twitter was still Twitter.

Sarah: Yeah, when it was less of a Nazi site.

Courtney: A little less, a little less. Uh, yeah, we have not even posted on social media in maybe two years now. But, uh, we, you know, it’s not good for business, uh, but it’s great for mental health is what we’ve learned.

Sarah: I am nodding.

Courtney: But I believe our first, like, major thing that got you on our radar was a YouTube video that you made, and you mentioned being a translator. It was about the Japanese translation of BoJack Horseman and talking a bit about like Todd’s asexual journey from that angle. Could you tell the audience a little bit about that?

Courtney: We loved that video. We thought it was so cool.

Sarah: Yeah, so um I have been using my YouTube channel to like kind of as a translator educator in a way, like I try to um communicate to people what goes into translation, I started noticing a backlash from a certain subset of fans who— they don’t like the way things are translated sometimes, let’s just say. Um, they are very, um, alt-right adjacent, that kind of person, right?

Courtney: Ah, yes.

Sarah: And so I wanted to push back against this and teach people how translation actually works, uh, that it is not a science, it is more an art form. And so I found that actually sort of reversing it, um and rather than trying to tell people, hey, see, the way that I translated this anime from Japanese to English actually is correct because yada yada, it’s easier to say, well, look at this show that was originally written in English. Look at how the Japanese translators translated that. Look at how many things they changed to accommodate subtitle length and cultural differences and stuff like that.

Sarah: And then I thought, okay, this is a better way to approach this, perhaps, because they can see— oh, they have this idea that Japan is one of these last bastions of pure right-wing conservative culture.

Courtney: Oh!

Sarah: And they’re like, that they would be appalled by how the woke translators in America are changing and butchering their stuff. So um I’m like, well, let’s show them how the Japanese translators butcher, I’m putting in air quotes, uh, our work.

Sarah: And I looked at BoJack Horseman just because it was an animated show that I really liked a lot. And I thought, okay, this is, this would be a good, um, point of entry for people. And yeah, I, I wasn’t like hoping to approach the whole thing as, and this is Todd, like the ace character.

Sarah: I just kind of happened to mention as an aside, like, yeah, it’s kind of funny how in the Japanese version, BoJack just straight up calls him gay. in like the English version in that one scene, he didn’t say that. And I was like, oh no, look, it’s the Japanese translators inserting their anti-gay agenda. And it’s like, well, actually, this actually, this is pretty authentic to the ace experience where a lot of people often think we are gay at the start before they know better. And we might think we’re gay too at the start before we know better.

Courtney: Mm.

Sarah: And I’m like, this was actually in an odd way kind of affirming. And then I mentioned as an aside, I’m ace. Um, I was not like closeted exactly at the time, but it’s not part of my main branding. I don’t like lead with that.

Sarah: So a lot of my viewers then were like, oh, she’s ace? That’s really cool. Like, I was really happy that that was mostly the reaction. There wasn’t any, uh, you’re one of those weird purple people.

Courtney: I don’t know.

Sarah: Um, and then you guys reached out. You’re like, oh yeah, wow, that’s really cool that, that this person happens to be ace. This video we happen to find, and then she happens to be an ace in the wild.

Sarah: And I was already following you guys on social media, so I was like, oh, hey, those guys. So that was just kind of a cool connection.

Courtney: Sometimes it’s better that way. Because obviously, our podcast, like, it’s about asexuality, we’re leading with the fact that we are both ace and married. And that’s fine. There is space for that. But I think it’s so much more fun to find aces in the wild, especially when they’re already doing very cool work that you otherwise love, like BoJack Horseman was a show we liked before Todd’s plotline.

Courtney: So that was—

Sarah: Yes, same.

Courtney: Such a delight that this is already a show that we like. And uh learning about translation is so interesting, especially with the Japanese to English, because we’ve been, you know, big anime fans and manga and all that. So it’s like, here’s like sort of a culmination of our interest, and it’s being done by this really cool ace over here. So I love when uh everything comes together.

Sarah: Yes. But then I was, as I was mentioning before we pressed record, there’s more to the BoJack lore or saga, I guess I should say. So I made a big video essay on that channel that you guys were actually in. I basically went through the history of anime fandom in mostly North America and how we grew, how we built, uh, the anime industry in North America, how fans built it. And I wanted to talk to a lot of fans, particularly elder fans who were around in the ’90s and the aughts. And so you were two of the people I spoke with, um, and had contributed to the video. Um, that was gonna be my last video, and it was— it wound up being like my second to last video. It’s like, this is a culmination of everything I wanted to say.

Sarah: I’m getting kind of burnt out. I’m making video essays. I wanna buckle down and focus on, you know, translating instead of YouTubing.

Sarah: Um, and that was it for me. I, I went on an indefinite hiatus.

Sarah: I’m making quotes. For almost two years.

Sarah: And then the algorithm randomly picked up my BoJack Horseman video. It uh just blew up randomly. And I got like thousands more subscribers. And all these people who all seemed, from the comments, they all seemed like very lovely people. And like a lot of them were younger as well. And they weren’t even around for the chud wars about the anti-localization discourse.

Courtney: Ah. And I was like, oh, this is, this is really pleasant.

Sarah: This is nice. Meanwhile, one of my main clients stopped giving me as much work. And I was wanting to pivot to novel writing. And so I was like, well, this is kind of serendipitous.

Sarah: I should just, I should start making YouTube videos again. Like, I kind of had some ideas. I wasn’t as burnt out on it anymore because I’d taken a break. And I thought, okay, I’m just gonna make YouTube videos again. Uh, so it was actually the BoJack Horseman video that, like, had me start making YouTube videos again on that channel.

Sarah: And here we are.

Courtney: That’s so, so funny how the algorithm works sometimes in its mysterious ways. But, uh, for the listeners, if you have not previously been familiar with Sarah Moon’s work, I know we have offhanded, uh, mentioned, uh, these videos before. So if this is all news to you, we will be putting a link to, uh, the BoJack video, the, um—

Sarah: I did one on, um, she loves to Cook, she loves to eat too.

Courtney: Oh, she loves to Cook, she loves to eat. Yes, we’ve talked about that one. Um, remind me, what was the title of the video that was meant to be your last?

Sarah: Um, it’s— I think it’s by fans for fans. It’s either by fans for Fans or for Fans by fans.

Courtney: That sounds—

Sarah: Something in that order.

Courtney: That sounds familiar. We’ll, we’ll put links to those in all the usual places so you can check these out as well if you haven’t seen them yet.

Courtney: But that’s so fascinating that, you know, I— uh after the algorithm picked it up again and you’re trying to pivot into more novel writing, um, how is that shaping how you engage online and what you’re trying to create now.

Sarah: Well, like, I was lowkey like you guys about a year and a half ago and wanting to just quit social media altogether, like, at least publicly. Like, it was after another round of dogpiling from re:Zero fans. I was translating the side story light novels, and a certain subset of those fans were belonging to that toxic subset of fans who don’t understand translation.

Sarah: Um and yeah, it was after another one of those dogpilings. I was like, you know what, fuck social media. This this is just, it’s more bad than good. I’m not getting anything out of this. And now it’s almost by necessity that I came back. But like I said, um, with most of my new followers from the BoJack video, I’m finding that everyone is nice now.

Courtney: Oh, that’s nice.

Sarah: I don’t know, maybe I’m just attracting nicer— yeah, maybe I’m just attracting nicer people now. And I keep, I’m really nervous because whenever I check my analytics with that YouTube channel, like 90% of my viewers are male ages 18 to 35. And that usually when you see that demographic, the the react— the fight or flight instinct kicks in.

Sarah: It’s like, ugh, but these are all generally good people from what I can tell from the comments. Like, sure, I still get the odd mean comment, but for the most part, most of my new followers seem to be really nice and like, I enjoy engaging with them now. And I also have drawn, you know, stricter boundaries where I don’t read comments after a certain period of time has passed.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And yeah, the only— well, I was gonna say the only social media site that I’m on besides YouTube is Bluesky, but I literally two days ago got a public Instagram just for my novels. We’ll see if that even does anything. It— I just got it to have it. I don’t know if I’m gonna like do a lot with it.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But yeah, Bluesky is a nicer, uh, platform because it’s not algorithmic. So your posts don’t go out to randos. I mean, sometimes they still do, but not as badly as they do on a platform that’s more algorithmically based.

Sarah: And then you’re just more likely to find more like-minded people there, and it’s much easier to block people or you know, mute something so that your posts don’t— are less likely to breach containment and like find the wrong audience that doesn’t understand you and will take you in bad faith. So, uh, like, I’d say overall my relationship with social media is a bit nicer now than it was in the past. And I don’t know if it’s just because people are kind of nicer or if I just am attracting nicer people now than I used to. But like overall, I’m having a better experience now. Like pivoting to novel writing, it’s going. Like it’s, it’s hard to pivot to a different thing when you’re known for one thing.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Like people follow me translating. If I post something about translating, they’re really excited. If I post something about my novel, like, some of them are excited and the rest of them are like, okay, yay, whatever.

Sarah: Now tell us more about Japanese. Um so, you know, it’s hard and I understand, but I’m optimistic about social media.

Courtney: Well, that’s awesome. Because yeah, so often the algorithm does make you feel like if you want to do or talk about something else, you need to like compartmentalize everything and set up a new account for this because it won’t work on your old account.

Courtney: And I can see. I mean, back when we were more present on social media, I recall uh after we were uh mutually following each other, like some of your other, like, personal or side projects, like we were like, we have so much in common. We were following like your cooking at one point.

Sarah: Oh yeah, I got a cooking channel too. I forget.

Courtney: Well, and it’s like uh humans are multifaceted and that’s what’s so incredible about us. And so often, especially with like queer identities or any marginalized identity, really. Um you get this with racial identities, you get this with disabled identities.

Courtney: So often the, like, people you don’t want to attract on social media will say, like, why are you making this your entire personality?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: That’s a thing you see and hear all the time, but that has never, ever been the case. But to the wrong people, social media can often uh sort of box you in, uh, to one area, which, I mean, if there’s one thing the queer community does not like, it’s boxes. Boxes and binaries.

Sarah: Yeah, if we ever get into the labels part of this conversation, you’ll, you’ll see how I feel about labels and boxes.

Courtney: Well, let’s go there. I, I’d be delighted. Let— yeah, let’s, let’s go there.

Courtney: So you, you uh are an ace creator, but what what does that mean to you? Tell us more.

Sarah: Well, like you’ve mentioned many times, you prefer stories to describe your identity rather than labels. And that’s kind of literally why I wrote this book. When I sat down to write it, I didn’t know I was ace. I didn’t know I was neurodivergent. I didn’t know I was bi. And it was more just, I feel alone and alienated. I’m going through some tough things.

Sarah: I want to write something fluffy, but also sincere.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah: And I just want to express myself and be understood by theoretical readers. So I wasn’t like, I’m gonna write a book about the ace neurodivergent experience. But then as I’m reading it years and years later, now that I understand myself better and I’m out, um I’m like, oh, this was totally an anthem to what it’s like to be a neurodivergent ace bi person. Like, it’s not like what the story is about about, but it informs the protagonist a lot, like how she interacts with people, how she sees the world, how they see her. and everything. So yeah, I mean, my aceness is always going to be in everything that I create, just because it’s, it’s affecting how I see the world and how people see me, and then how I want to then express myself to— like, there’s a very common thread with neurodivergent people where we are misunderstood, and we’re so used to being misunderstood that we have this tendency to just want to explain and want people to understand us.

Sarah: And so like, I look back on a lot of the dances I’ve choreographed, um, like, one of them was very obviously like a bisexual dance. At the time, I was just like, we’re two women in a relationship of, you know, some undisclosed variety.

Sarah: But like, looking at the choreography, I’m like, oh my God, this is so sapphic. And like, I actually had a crush. I actually had a crush on her, like my other dancer, and that I didn’t exactly acknowledge was a crush at the time. And she also is sapphic, but at the time she was not out. So like, it’s really interesting watching that dance later with that context and knowing, oh, there were sapphic undertones in this. I wasn’t just, you know, imagining it. And then I had this other dance that I choreographed that was a big performance art piece about the feeling of being alienated. And looking back on that, I’m like, oh, that’s such a neurodivergent piece right there. So yeah, it’s, it’s a part of everything that I create. And then as far as micro labels go, like, again, stories are a better way of describing me.

Sarah: But I, if I had to pick labels, I would say— just broadly gray ace, possibly also gray romantic, I don’t really know. And also just bi on both of those things as well. It’s like, those are, those are kind of the labels I’ve settled with.

Sarah: I know, what is it, aegiosexual? I don’t know how to pronounce it.

Sarah: I’ve only seen it written down, the one where you like, you like sexual imagery maybe, or like reading erotica and stuff.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, I like reading erotica, and I like writing erotica. But I, you know, I like the idea of it more than the actual act. Um I am sex favorable slash indifferent.

Sarah: I’m making a weird gesture with my hand.

Courtney: Somewhere in that zone.

Royce: That’s always a difficult thing to articulate.

Sarah: Yeah, like my, my favorableness with it is more I have an allo partner. And if he’s really enjoying himself, like that makes me enjoy it.

Sarah: And also, I think it’s very, very, um, um unattachable, if that’s a word, from my neurodivergence in that—

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: For me, it’s more about sensuality than sexuality. Like, I enjoy the sensations in the same way that I would enjoy a— somebody brushing my hair or massaging my feet. And then I also enjoy just, you know, the closeness and connection with somebody that I love and trust.

Sarah: It’s not so much like, I feel this desire that’s like a hunger and then I must quench it. with this act, which is kind of how allos have described it to me. So I know that even though I enjoy sex, and I have sex, it’s not like— I don’t experience it the same way that allos do.

Courtney: Yeah, it’s— so I do want to hear a little more about sort of the timeline, because publishing the book is a new endeavor to you. But you wrote it a while— how long ago was it now? It’s been a while.

Sarah: In 2009 to 2010.

Courtney: Okay, so in the timeline the book takes place in.

Sarah: Yeah, basically. It’s been like 17 years since I sat down to write it. And then book two, which I’m publishing next year, also I wrote immediately after the first book in 2010. And then book three, I started writing in 2011, and I didn’t finish it until last month. So it’s kind of going all over the place.

Sarah: Books four and five, I wrote in the last couple of years. So like, we’re finally— once we get to book four, it’s like, okay, this is current me writing this. But yeah, the past two books are, they’re relics. I revised them, of course, quite heavily, um, in more recent years. But yeah, I wrote them a long time ago.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And that’s what’s so interesting to me because, I mean, you talk about all the little signs that were there before we necessarily have language for our identities, be it neurodivergent or asexuality. Um, I mean, to go back to your previous comment, like, I was bullied for being a lesbian in middle school.

Courtney: I never identified as a lesbian. But yeah, with the, with the translation of BoJack Horseman calling him gay, I’m like, yeah, a lot of aces are.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: That, that resonates with me. And I, I did quite a lot of writing in my younger years, uh, before I sort of developed language for a lot of these things. But I also went through many phases where I just had a great big old fire and burned everything I made and everything I wrote. I’ve been through many cleanses like that where I’m like, oh no, this all has to go.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And it was cathartic at the time. I don’t even necessarily regret that I don’t have those things. But I’m sure if I were reading something from my younger self, I would also see these seeds of what I would eventually come to understand more. So this book is like very much a time capsule, and it felt like that reading it too.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Especially being familiar um with your more recent work over the years, um, I was able to sort of see these seeds. I’m like, oh yeah, I can see. And a casual reader who is not familiar with you or the, you know, intention of this protagonist being ace might not pick up on that.

Courtney: But I’m like, oh, I see those seeds. I see those seeds being planted.

Courtney: And I immediately, being neurodivergent myself, picked up on like, oh, this, this is a neurodivergent character.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: 100%.

Sarah: It is.

Courtney: So what did some of those revisions look like? Because you, you saw these in your old writings, the seeds of neurodivergence, of queerness, but it was before you understood these things about yourself in the way you do now. So how did that inform the revision process when you went to do some rewriting and with the intention of publishing?

Sarah: Yeah, like some of it was just made a little bit more explicit. Or, or like, I just kind of expanded upon some of the things.

Sarah: Like, there’s a scene towards the beginning of the book where Lara is having flashbacks about her first ever relationship, her first ever romantic relationship. And the first time she’s hanging out with this guy at her place, and she info dumps to him, because, you know, she kind of is feeling comfortable around him. She’s like, oh, I’m gonna tell him about my special interest, this, you know, visual KJ rocker that I’m into, who incidentally was originally Gackt.

Sarah: But I changed him, A, for legal reasons, B, because he’s kind of a right-wing Japanese nationalist.

Courtney: Oh, uh-huh.

Sarah: And C, yeah, and C, I just, you know, I thought it’d be more interesting to make something original. So I invented a visual kei artist named Makoto.

Sarah: That’s her special interest. But yeah, like in the original version, she didn’t like info dump for so long. She more just was like talking a little bit about him and was just kind of worrying, oh no, this is really weird and esoteric. Like, is he gonna think this is weird? Most people would think this is weird that I’m talking about this, but then he actually accepts her.

Sarah: And she’s like, oh my god, that’s so cool. I feel so accepted.

Sarah: And then as far as the ace stuff goes, again, also just being a little more explicit with— there’s a scene later in the book where one of the characters is implying, oh, are you, you know, sexually involved with this close friend of yours who is— um he’s nonbinary, but, you know, people think he’s a guy. And then Laura, she says, oh, you know, I’m not like that.

Courtney: And then— yes, that was one I picked up on.

Sarah: Yeah. And like, I added a bit there where I’m talking about like, oh, she was really familiar with this crossroads and like, oh no, like, I am not ashamed of who I am, but I’ve noticed that other people are when I tell them that. And then she’s worried that this character would weaponize that information against her as well. So she’s like, m I’m not going to come out to this person right now. She doesn’t even know that it’s coming out, really. to her, it’s just like, oh, I’m sex repulsed, or, you know, I’m just, I’m kind of unsure about all of this. But she’s kind uh of, uh you know, she herself feels okay about it somewhat, but she knows that other people aren’t. So she’s like, I don’t know. So I made that part a little more explicit of her having that internal struggle. The original draft was more her just, you know, saying, I’m not like that, and then kind of wincing, like, oh, did I really just say that? um and then I internally know why she’s wincing, but I’m like, ah, you know, readers won’t necessarily know.

Sarah: I’m going to make this a little more explicit. So it’s just stuff like that. It’s just making things a little more explicit.

Sarah: Like, Adomir’s character too, the guy who— it’s a guy who’s not a guy. He’s an alien. We haven’t even gotten into the lore of this series yet, but basically he comes from a continuum where there’s this race of beings called Ilumae who have no physical presence, but they come to Earth to do studies on humans, and these humans can give them physical presences. And he was like, yeah, before I got a physical presence, I didn’t really think much of humans other than, hey, they’re interesting, but I want to, you know, and I want to study them.

Sarah: And he’s like, now that I have this body, I have all these urges. And he’s like, I’m attracted to everyone. And like, and then he says, I took the form of a man, but I don’t really feel like a man.

Sarah: Um so I made things like that a little more explicit too. They were in the original text, but I’m like, oh, this guy’s totally non-binary and bisexual.

Sarah: I’m going to bring that out a little more.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So it’s just stuff like that, making it a little more explicit, because in my mind, it was explicit. But like, now going back, I’m like, oh, there’s a name for that. There’s a word for that. And there’s some more explicit things I could say about that.

Sarah: But at the same time, I didn’t want to use language like ace or, you know, non-binary even, because like, of course non-binary people existed back then, but they just were not that visible. And like, I didn’t know anybody who used they/them pronouns until like 2012. And then like it started exploding more later in the teens. But it is interesting writing about this in a time where, like, AVEN didn’t even exist yet then, right?

Sarah: Weren’t they like 2011?

Courtney: Uh, no, AVEN was around by then. Um, it was— 2009 would have been like, AVEN was still there. We didn’t have the ace flag yet. So that was sort of the intermediary time there.

Courtney: Like, the ace flag will, will be made soon. But that’s still, in terms of just online presence and number of people who are convening in the ace spaces, was definitely not what it is now. Much smaller number.

Sarah: Yeah. And like, I wasn’t very— I wasn’t online very much back then either. So I didn’t uh even have an opportunity.

Sarah: The only other like, more out ace person I had ever met um by then was this uh girl who was in my major, she was a theater major. And everyone would kind of, you know, gossip occasionally about her like, God, she’s never had a boyfriend. She’s never been kissed. Her first kiss was on stage.

Sarah: And everyone gathered excitedly to watch it.

Courtney: And of course, milestone, right? Yeah.

Sarah: This is all hearsay. Like, I wasn’t around. But at one point, like, I heard this through a friend who was like telling me, oh my god, did you hear, like, like, uh I was talking to her. And she’s like, oh, I heard that sexless marriage is a thing.

Sarah: And that’s really cool. That’s what I want.

Sarah: And then she’s like, isn’t that weird? And I was like, yeah, that’s weird. Wait, that sounds cool, actually.

Sarah: That um was like the only other exposure I had had um to asexuality. And like, at that point in my life, like, I was sex and romance repulsed until like, I had my first attraction at age 22. And then I had the attraction and I was like, oh, I guess maybe I am just a late bloomer, or I did just need to find the right person. And maybe I was just pretending all that time. So I thought, okay, I guess I am just a normal straight person.

Sarah: But then after like, a failed, you know, flirtation and a failed relationship, and still like, it wasn’t like a switch flipped. And uh now all of a sudden, I’m allo, and I experience attraction normally and stuff. I was at that weird space where I’m like, okay, like, I know I do want romance. And I theoretically want sex. At that point, when I wrote this book, I had not had sex yet.

Sarah: So I was like, I’m not even sure I want it. I’m curious, but I’m not sure I actually want it or would enjoy it.

Sarah: Um so I was in this weird space at the time where I’m like, okay, I, I used to be comfortable with the idea of not wanting sex in relationships. And then I wanted it a little bit. And now I’m not sure if that’s even who I am. But I feel like I can’t interact with people who want that because they’re on a different timeline than me.

Sarah: They like, expect to at least kiss on the first date, if not have sex on the first date. And I’m just like, I don’t even know if I want to do that at all. And like, are you still gonna go out with me? And so yeah, and I didn’t know that there were other people like me too. So it was a very strange place to be in.

Courtney: Yeah, the timeline in which this book takes place is very interesting, because it’s not so old that like asexuality is completely unheard of. But for the average person, even the average ace, you kind of had to go out of your way to learn about it a lot of the time. So it was a period of time where it’s sort of right on the precipice of a lot of aces’ like self-discovery.

Courtney: And I do feel that in the book. But also, it’s just funny reading it because like, I giggled at the Blockbuster mention. Yeah, I remember Blockbuster.

Sarah: And people using flip phones and like iPhones being this new invention, like, smartphones, how cool.

Courtney: Smartphones being brand new.

Sarah: And everyone’s still using Facebook too.

Courtney: Oh, yeah.

Sarah: Every time they mention Facebook in there, I cringe.

Courtney: I laughed so hard at the first uh Facebook status because 2009 was the era where Facebook status was like, this person’s name is, and then you’d fill in the blank after is. And yeah, I— that brought back a memory. I had forgotten temporarily that that’s how Facebook statuses used to be.

Courtney: But as soon as I saw that format, like, uh, I think it was, uh, the romantic interest of the book, Jimmy. I think it was like, uh, Jimmy Wong is, uh, and then the fill-in status.

Courtney: I was like, oh yeah, all of the Facebook updates used to be like that.

Sarah: Yearh. And it was awkward too because like they’d tell you every time everyone got in a relationship or broke up, like it would be like announced, right? It was like, oh.

Courtney: Yeah. Yes.

Sarah: I always felt really awkward whenever I’d see that pop up.

Courtney: Yeah, that was, that was very interesting, uh, to read. But yeah, hearing that you, you have these elements and you were just trying to go a little deeper and explore it more is, you know, just, just fascinating to me because that moment of like, oh yeah, I’m not like that. Because then we get to hear like her internal thoughts a little bit and her conflict about like, do I go into this conversation right now? Do I not?

Courtney: And she sort of gets like right to the edge of explaining something explicitly. But what’s more the focus is her internal conflict about it, which I think a lot of, a lot of aces, a lot of queer people, a lot of neurodivergent people have had that internal, like, uh do I go into this?

Courtney: Is this gonna be a whole thing?

Sarah: Mhm.

Courtney: What’s the best way to explain this? So that definitely uh hit me. There were also just a couple of lines which I know are going to hit aces in a way that it wouldn’t hit an allo reader, because they’re so quick, but they’re so deep for our community.

Courtney: I believe there was a character at one point, uh, just describing the protagonist, Lara, and just said, oh, you know her, she’s innocent. And that uh word, innocent.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Courtney: It’s, it’s so innocuous to a reader who hasn’t felt the weight of that word as an ace person. Because I, I was the innocent friend in every friend group for so long, and I owned it for so long. Like, yes, I am the innocent one.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But once you get into the broader ace community and you meet more ace people and you hear more of these stories that we’ve lived, it can be a very burdensome label for a lot of aces. And a lot of people reject that innocent label. But at the same time, it’s like, yeah, maybe this is a bad stereotype for the community that innocent has been tacked on to us.

Courtney: But also, it’s a really tangible part of a lot of our histories too. So yeah, I just had this moment where I was like, this is such a complicated word that’s hitting me in a way that it’s not going to hit every reader.

Courtney: But since I know, I know. Yeah.

Sarah: Well, yeah, I was the innocent one too. But again, it’s sort of like at the different stages of my life, like in high school, I was like, I didn’t use the word asexual. But like, I very proudly without shame would tell people, I don’t want to have sex, I don’t want to get married, I don’t want to date anybody.

Sarah: It grosses me out. I’m not interested.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Um, and like, I had a group of friends who were nerdy and weird. And like, some of them themselves might have even been on the ace spectrum looking back. But also, like, I’ve— I found out sort of after the fact that sometimes I was excluded from certain conversations or events because like, they knew I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable. I also grew up in the evangelical church on my dad’s side of the family.

Sarah: So that purity culture was also driving that a little bit. Like, I was kind of proud, almost just like, you all are the weird, deviant people who want to have sex.

Sarah: I am sitting pretty over here, like being enlightened. Um but then later, when I was starting to question, I didn’t like, you know, being perceived that way. And so I was one of those aces that used to like joke about sex all the time. I mean, to me, it was a joke. But like, it was a way that I could connect with people and like talk about it in a way that made me comfortable because, you know, it was a joke to me. But because of that, like, my crass sexual sense of humor, people then— at one point we were like hanging out talking, us dance majors, and they were talking about sex or whatever. And one of them was like, oh, of course Sarah’s not a virgin. And like, they meant that in earnest. They’re like, that would be hilarious. And I was like, oh, haha, haha, no way. It’s like, oh no, I cosplayed allo so well they didn’t notice.

Courtney: Oh no.

Sarah: And then there was a time where I was like typecast as the sexy character, like, or the sexy dancer in all of our departmental shows. And even in the community theater, I was like cast as Sheila in a Chorus line.

Sarah: And she’s like one of the more voluptuous characters.

Courtney: Oh, wow.

Sarah: And like, that became what I was typecast, which I was like, wow, uh if only they knew. And uh it was just really oddly validating in a weird way.

Sarah: It’s like, okay, I can pass. But at the same time, it’s like, this isn’t me. So it was weird.

Courtney: That’s uh fascinating. Because I mean, as someone who has a very Sheila-esque body and has since I was 11, I also very much had those side comments and the, you know, implications of like, we know you’re actually very sexual. But I wasn’t like, oh, good, I’m passing. I was like, adamantly opposed I was like, don’t you dare say those things about me.

Sarah: Don’t sexualize me.

Courtney: Don’t do it. Yeah.

Sarah: And yeah, like, I was uncomfortable with being sexualized.

Courtney: Yeah. It’s— oh, wow.

Courtney: Yeah, reading this also as a theater kid, uh there is a lot of theater kid energy in this book. It takes place, I mean, in a theater department a lot of the time. Why don’t you give— because I guess we kind of just got into it and didn’t really give the, uh, listeners a plot synopsis.

Courtney: So maybe we ought to do that.

Sarah: Oh, I will read the back cover blurb because I am terrible at synopsizing my own book. Um, okay, so the back cover blurb says, aside from a talent for painting, Lara Winters never drew much attention.

Sarah: But the summer before her senior year at Riovalle State University, she becomes the target of a race of beings called Ileme, who can manipulate matter at will. A good illume, Audimir, enrolls at RV State to hide Lara in plain sight and protect her from her pursuers who have done the same thing. The game of cat and mouse unfolds in the RV State theater department, where Lara faces one of the biggest challenges of her life: taking an acting class with her ex and his new girlfriend. But it is in this acting class, with the threat of her mysterious illume pursuers looming over her, that Lara starts to blossom and make friends, including a pretty transfer student named Elise. who has a secret of her own.

Sarah: Dot, dot, dot. Ooh, ominous music.

Courtney: I had a lot of fun. There was— there were nostalgic elements reading this book for me, for sure, because I recognized the theater kids. I recognized the Blockbuster and the Facebook, and even just the interpersonal social dynamics of, you know, teenage, young adult relationships. And it was— it’s uh truly just a joy to read all around.

Courtney: And I do want to ask, since you’re talking about uh more books on the horizon, uh when can we expect those? Because I want to read more. As soon as I got done reading this book, I was like, what?

Courtney: I need to know what happens next. I need the second one.

Sarah: Yeah, so the rest of the series, uh I have a pretty aggressive publishing schedule for next year. Like I said, I’ve already written, like, I’ve written five books in this series, in the Illuminae series, plus, this might surprise some of the listeners and be a curveball, but um there’s a side story that I wrote about one of the supporting characters um that is a smutty romance novel. I was just randomly, a couple of years ago, I want to write a smutty romance novel. I just had this weird compulsion, and I poured it out of me in two and a half months.

Sarah: And I kid you not, it’s one of my favorite things I have ever written.

Courtney: Really?

Sarah: Yeah, there is an aroace agender autistic um side character in there who’s like one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written. But it’s about a band. Um, but anyway, um, yeah, this, this series next year, um, I’m gonna publish, I hope, books two and three, because that closes out the first arc. And it also basically closes out a lot of the books that I wrote, you know, 15 years ago.

Sarah: I just kind of wanted to get all that out as quickly as I could. Um, and then I also hope at the very, very end of next year— so three books, haha, I’m crazy. Um, I’m writing another series that I kind of started on a whim. I want to say four years ago. four years ago.

Sarah: It’s basically, the concept is, what if magical girls defeated the big bad, and then they grew up and went their separate ways, and then the big bad came back, and they had to defeat the big bad again as women? Um, and it’s called Magical Women. Oh, that’s cute. And I wrote the first book in that series, like, a few years ago, and I’m like, I need to get this one going too, because, like, my audience was— is more primed for that story.

Sarah: And it’s so much easier. The elevator pitch, I could do it off the top of my head just now.

Sarah: It’s that simple. It’s that easy. Um, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s about like, um, it’s four different women and each of them is going through different struggles unique to women. It also is taking place now in the modern era where there’s a lot of climate doom and, um, doomerism and just the world is falling apart kind of like it is now. And I kind of want to publish that now because I want some hope out there.

Sarah: But yeah, that series also features an ace protagonist um who does not know that she is ace, and also a bi protagonist who is in love with her. So yeah, I want to get that one out quickly too, but um it’s not as involved as um the ilome one that I started, you know, 17 years ago.

Courtney: You are really, really hitting the ground running with the novels.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: That is such an impressive output already, because how— and I mean, you’ve been writing professionally in some capacity for some time, and you mentioned translating being more of an art than a science, which all of our translator friends we’ve ever spoken to agrees. But how is the creative process different for you? And do you have sort of a uh preference towards one or the other, or do they feed different parts of your creative soul?

Sarah: Yeah, I actually made a video about this, I want to say about a year ago, where I explain how writing novels and translating novels are quite similar to each other. And I think that’s partly what has fed into me being so fast. Like, I’ve been writing I’ve been writing one.five novels a year since the year, like, 2022. I’ve been writing very quickly. I’ve been pumping them out very quickly.

Sarah: But part of it is because I translate light novels at a breakneck speed also. I have been translating light novels for four years now, and I am just about to finish, I think, number 46. And a light novel is about half the length of a normal novel, or two-thirds the length of a normal novel. So that’s, you know, 20+ novels that I’ve translated in just the past four years or so. That’s like five novels a year. that I’ve translated.

Sarah: So it has primed me to just be a lot faster at writing.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Because what translating novels is like is, when you write them, like, I imagine the scene in my mind, and then, like, a lot of this happens, you know, in the middle of the night in bed, or when I’m on a walk or something. I see and imagine the scenes in my mind. I outline them a little bit, you know, but then when I sit down to write, I’m kind of imagining the scene in my mind, and then I’m translating what my mind imagines onto the page. When I’m translating novels from Japanese to English, the first part of that process is done for me. It’s like beamed directly into my brain via uh Japanese language, but it’s still, when it’s beamed into my brain via the Japanese language, my brain processes it as images. Like I imagine and I envision these images and then I translate those onto the page.

Sarah: So, like, the second half of the process is almost the same, translating versus writing. It’s just like, I’m taking it from somebody else. And then, of course, I go back and I look at the original Japanese and I take, you know, sentence composition into consideration.

Sarah: It’s like, okay, what is this? More purple prose? Is this more beige prose? Am I, you know, is there a reason that the author, like, worded those two conjugations in this way specifically?

Sarah: And, like, I’ll look at things like that. But—

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: it’s still a very similar process, translating and writing novels. And I think that’s why I’ve become just so primed for writing. They say, like, I think I’ve heard, you know, advice from writers saying, oh, just sit down and write every single day, and that will make you better at it, and that will make you faster at it.

Sarah: And it’s like, yeah, it’s true. And it’s easier if, you know, the imagining part of that task is already done for you, and you just translate it.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So, yeah, that’s why I like— I like them both. Uh, I think I prefer writing my own novels. Like, I’ll, I’ll be translating my, my light novels and like, my mind will wander. Oh, I feel like writing my own stuff right now. And I’m like, nope, nope, nope.

Sarah: I have to translate this thing. And it also, especially if it’s a light novel that I just don’t personally vibe with, like, I like everything that I translate to some extent, but some things I, I relate to so much better.

Courtney: Mhm.

Sarah: And like, the writing style is so much more similar to me. Whereas other projects, the writing style is so different to me, or it’s writing about a subject that I personally am not as interested in.

Sarah: And I have a— I struggle with those ones, like, in terms of like what I want to do versus what I have to do.

Courtney: So uh we know that a reader can expect, you know, ace vibes, neurodivergent vibes, um, 2009s nostalgia. But let’s talk just a little bit more about the Ilumae, because this is like such— it’s the unique— I don’t know that magic system is the right word— the unique aspect of this fiction.

Courtney: Yeah, I don’t think it was. Well, you used the word alien earlier, and I want to ask about that. Is that the right word, or is that just a shorthand?

Sarah: It’s shorthand.

Courtney: I have um tried to think how I would explain this to other people, and— yeah, there’s no quick, easy answer because I think the concept is so cool, and lack of binaries and proper language is kind of the point. Sometimes. So I’m like, well, no, it’s kind of like, you know, this, it’s kind of like this, kind of like that. Yeah.

Sarah: So one of my beta readers, the one who um clued me into the term urban fantasy to describe the genre, I was asking my beta readers, okay, like, what, what fucking genre is this? Like, I had, I was struggling so hard. Like, is this romance? Is this fantasy? Or is it sci-fi?

Courtney: Is it?

Sarah: And like, they kind of struggled with genre too. But um the one who told me urban fantasy, like, she’s a pretty avid reader. So I really trust her opinion. But she said that the Illamay to her were like fae.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And I’m like, yeah, I could kind of see that. And they’re sort of mischievous and doing things behind the scenes that we don’t necessarily know about. But they’re also, they’re also kind of like gods. Like they are actually in, in this universe, the Illamay created matter, basically. The original time, m not time traveler, the original traveler, the original Illamay who kind of thought herself into the universe and then thought matter into existence, you know, the basic building blocks of everything. That’s kind of how it all started.

Sarah: So in a way, they are gods, like any, any gods or, you know, deities or spirits from mythology, religion, that’s them. And then they’re just kind of behind the scenes manipulating stuff.

Sarah: But there’s also a continuum that I call the Illumi Realm that technically doesn’t exist because they have no physical presence. That’s the thing about these creatures. They’re not even creatures. They don’t— they’re just consciousness, like a stream of consciousness, and they don’t have physical forms, but they can interact with the physical world and then take on physical form via human connection.

Sarah: So yeah, like alien is shorthand, fae, fairy. I think on my website I say, I describe this as like an urban fantasy series with fairies and theater kids.

Sarah: ’Cause it’s like shorthand, right?

Courtney: Right, right.

Sarah: I don’t really know.

Courtney: I—

Sarah: they’re deities, fae, and aliens all at the same time. So that’s what they are.

Courtney: Yeah, fae and fairies was sort of the closest word I had in my mind for what these things are. But at the same time, there’s an element like Ademir and Lara have a very unique, like, human to Illamay relationship. And this is a thing established in the books that, like, an Illamay sort of gets a human. I’m gonna butcher the way to explain this.

Courtney: Um, I—

Sarah: I have an alternative explanation.

Courtney: It’s sort of like having a roped fae creature who’s just sort of like attached to you in a very unique way. And—

Sarah: Yeah, I use the term tethered.

Courtney: Tethered, that’s a good one. Yes, because we happen to also be on the tail end of making our way through the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson, I at ah one point explain Adomir as having a little bit of spren energy because they’ve got these spren creatures that sort of rope onto and select a human, and then they have a very specific bond. And I was like, so there’s a little bit of that energy going on, but it’s a very cool concept.

Courtney: I like it. It’s difficult to explain, but that’s part of why I like it.

Sarah: The origins of that are extremely cringed. Would you like to hear them?

Courtney: Oh, please give us the cringe.

Sarah: Okay, so you mentioned that there were like things that you wrote that you like burned down, deleted, um and got rid of. Um when I was in high school, um I used to be— I was on like track to being a professional ballet dancer. And then the beginning of my senior year, I broke my foot. And so I was no longer in ballet classes. And I was kind of having— I kind of wasn’t sure I even wanted to be a ballet dancer at this point. So I was at a bit of a crossroads.

Sarah: And I was also obsessed with an anime called Fushigi Yuugi at time. It’s an old shoujo isekai from the ’90s. And this character, Tasuki, was my favorite character. And so I wrote a self-inclusion fanfic about myself and Tasuki. And in this fanfic, he comes into my world, he gets isekai’d into my world. He’s a book character, you know, or an anime character that’s not real.

Sarah: Um, I bring him into this world by kissing a tapestry, like a wall scroll with him on it. And he’s invisible. To everyone except me.

Sarah: And that’s kind of where that concept originally came from. And like, my original idea when I sat down to write the series was for it to be a romance between Audemir and Lara. Like, it was not going to be what it, what it turned into.

Sarah: I was like, I want to do the opposite of write a master’s thesis, because I was finishing up my master’s degree at the time, and I was supposed to write a thesis. And I was like, I don’t want to do this.

Sarah: I want to do the opposite of writing a thesis. What’s the opposite of writing a thesis? A romance novel.

Sarah: Oh, let’s make it really cheesy. And let’s take that idea that I had when I was younger and it was really cringy.

Sarah: Let’s go with this. And that’s kind of how I started the whole thing.

Sarah: It was extremely cringe.

Courtney: I love that. Cringe, yes.

Courtney: However, uh makes perfect sense and checks out after you uh evoked uh egosexuality earlier. Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me.

Courtney: I’m, I’m on board. I, I see.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s like, I liked the concept of it’s sort of an adult imaginary friend, and then I thought, well, it’s, it’s a little bit limiting if, like, he can only be seen to her. It would be cool if she could give him a physical form. I know, how about if she says his name?

Sarah: That makes him physical. Um, and so that’s kind of how the whole thing came into being.

Courtney: That’s funny. But see, this is so cool because that’s the creative process. Not everything you make is going to feel great or be something you want to put out into the world, and you live and learn and grow.

Courtney: And sometimes those old concepts can still be repurposed into something very, very cool.

Sarah: Mhm.

Courtney: So I also saw, because, uh, spoiler alert, uh, you are gonna be our featured Marketplace vendor today. I saw on your website, I’m gonna pull it up right now because I laughed out loud.

Sarah: Was it the reviews?

Courtney: Well, yes. Okay, I laughed a couple of times.

Courtney: So the reviews were really good.

Sarah: I’m really proud of the reviews.

Courtney: Because we got like a review from your husband that was like—

Sarah: Yep. He’s my editor also.

Courtney: Oh, really?

Sarah: He really liked your book. Yeah. So he was editing editing the book. He wasn’t originally going to be my editor.

Sarah: I had somebody else lined up, but uh it fell through. So I was like, okay, fuck it, I’m just gonna have you edit it. And I was very nervous to have him even— he hadn’t read the book at this point. And I was just very nervous because I thought he wasn’t gonna like it.

Courtney: Ah.

Sarah: It went beyond just the basic imposter syndrome. It’s like, I just don’t think this is his kind of story. I don’t think he’d really vibe with it. And I, you know, he’s he’s also neurodivergent and very brutally honest.

Sarah: And if he didn’t like it, he would tell me. And I was like, on the one hand, I don’t want him to lie. It wouldn’t be like him to lie and say he liked it. But on the other hand, I’m like, oh, if he doesn’t like it, this is going to kind of crush my spirit a little bit.

Sarah: Like, this is my person. This is my safe person and my partner.

Sarah: And like, what if he doesn’t like the thing that I like poured my soul into? So like, I think we were, we were both very relieved when he liked it. Like the day he finished, he like, we were in the kitchen and he just kind of pulled me into his arms and he’s like, I’m so relieved I liked your book.

Courtney: That was so funny. And you put it on your website.

Courtney: Yes, in quotes, um I’m so relieved I liked your book, attributed to Sarah’s husband. Yeah, not, not even his name, just Sarah’s husband. Hilarious.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, it came right after the review from my younger self where I’m like, this book is derivative and boring and nobody’s gonna like it. Like I wrote, I found that in a journal entry that I wrote like in 2010. I was just kind of like, yeah, I finished writing. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I finished writing my book.

Sarah: I mean, it’s derivative. And I wasn’t thinking of publishing at the time.

Sarah: Like, in the back of my mind, I was like, what if? But I was like, nah, like, nobody’s gonna like this. It’s dumb.

Sarah: And so like, I thought that would be a great um review.

Courtney: So this review right here, this book is cheesy, self-indulgent, has lazy prose, and nobody will want to read it, were verbatim words you wrote around 2010.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Outstanding. Love that. Yes, I laughed at all of those.

Courtney: But also, I really liked this because this has been a persistent thorn in our side for the Recommended if you like, among other things, teen dramas that should have just taken place in college.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Is that also a gripe of yours?

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Like, whenever I’ve watched any teen drama well, God, I’m thinking specifically of One Tree Hill, which I watched through because my, um my gay husband had a huge crush on Chad Michael Murray. So we had the series. And I’m like, I’m bored, I’m gonna watch this. It’s oddly engrossing, as dramas are.

Sarah: But yeah, you have like, a teen character has to emancipate himself from his parents. And another teen, like, who’s 16, gets permission from her parents. So these two teens can get married at 16. And it’s like, it should have just taken place in college. uh and then you have like all this intense, like, sexual relationships and betrayals and murders and all this other stuff that it’s just like, uh this should just take place in college. I’m sorry.

Sarah: I mean, I guess that’s part of the fantasy for some teenagers is they want to grow up, they want to get married or be in those situations. And so they’re like, ooh, let’s imagine a world where that does happen to me. But it’s like, the actors are in their 20s, all these very adult things are happening to them. Let’s just have it take place in college. So yeah.

Royce: We’ve gotten particularly frustrated with some TV shows who put the characters in the later stages of their high school year. So, like, half the cast is already 18.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Just to circumvent um certain legal things. And so, yeah, you could have been the same year. It could have just been in the fall instead of the spring.

Sarah: Yeah, and there’s a lot of parallels between high school and college, too. You can still do the whole, oh, I have class and we’re in this class together. And people still live at home in college, too, if you want that angle.

Sarah: So it’s just like, yeah, I— I guess it’s because, like, their audience, their target audience is teenagers, so they think, oh, we have to make the characters their age so that they can be more relatable. But it’s like, plenty of people in their 20s and older watch those shows too, so I don’t know.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: So one thing I will say, one thing I’ll add to this, for— based on my experience of reading this, I was delighted at how, uh, the, the twist caught me off guard, ’cause there’s no secret that there will be a twist.

Sarah: Ooh.

Courtney: There are little sprinklings of, like, just a line of dialogue here that had me, the reader, going like, wait a second. Something— something else is going on here. Something else is at play.

Courtney: And so, it made it, uh, that much more of a page-turner, because now I wanna know what the deeper secret underneath all of this is.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: And so, I was just plowing through it, and even knowing something bigger was at hand and waiting to find out what it was, it still surprised me, and I don’t get surprised with twists very often anymore. So I was like, ah, what a delight! It, it all made sense to me. I was like, now that I see what happened, I’m looking back, it makes sense. But it, it did take me off guard. So, and it was a page-turner, so it was very fun to read.

Courtney: My full endorsement.

Courtney: Yeah. And I’m gonna need you to publish the second one.

Sarah: No, it will be. I mean, I can send you guys an advance copy too. I’m currently revising it. I like just literally revised chapter seven this morning. So uh it’s in, it’s in the works.

Sarah: But yeah, the twist is interesting because I asked all my readers at the end, uh when did you find out? And it was really interesting because like there was a spread. One or two of them like guessed it at the very, very beginning, just because it’s the kind of thing.

Courtney: Really?

Sarah: Yeah, it’s the kind of thing you might expect. But like, a couple of them did not get it until the actual reveal. And then a few others got it sort of like, m towards the middle end, like, um but yeah, it was really interesting to see.

Sarah: Part of why I asked that question is because I actually kind of thought it was obvious. But I’m like, well, of course, I think it’s obvious.

Sarah: I wrote it.

Courtney: I— you know where it’s going.

Sarah: Yeah, but actually, when I started writing this, I did not know about the twist. Because like I said, it started out as just a sappy romance novel. And then it was when I thought of that twist that it changed everything.

Sarah: I’m m like, oh, no, no, this is what this is actually about. But yeah, like, I was actually surprised to hear from people that they didn’t know until later, because I was wondering if I should even include it in, like, the back cover blurb or the marketing, because, like, I was worried that without knowing that in advance, people wouldn’t necessarily be interested in picking it up to read.

Courtney: Mm.

Sarah: If it’s just like, oh, a person and these, these creatures and nothing happens. But if you, if you know that there is a twist, perhaps it’s more interesting. Secrets also, speaking of cringey origins, the title.

Sarah: This series was untitled until a year ago.

Courtney: Oh.

Sarah: And I, I literally got the title, well, the series title, Secrets of the Illuminae, from a um young adult fantasy novel title generator meme on Facebook.

Courtney: No kidding! Why is that actually so fitting?

Sarah: Like, I saw like one of, one of the— it’s like combine, you know, this side with this side, and on the left was Secrets of, you know, and I’m like, oh, you know, there’s a— there’s actually a lot of secrets and deception in the series. It actually works. I knew I wanted Ilumet in the title because it’s a unique word, and looking back, it has amazing SEO. Like, if you Google Ilumet, like, the top results are all going to be my and there’s like one artist, I think Brazilian artist, who has that.

Sarah: It’s basically the— speaking of cringe, it’s the girl’s name Emily backwards plus an extra L. Um, that’s always been one of my favorite names. So I’m just like, that’s how I named a lot of my characters at the start. I’m just like, here’s a word or an anime character’s name. Let’s, let’s make it backwards and see what it turns into.

Sarah: Um, so yeah, it— there’s all kinds of cringe on this series. Uh, but yeah, the title, that’s, that’s where I got it as a meme.

Courtney: That is so funny. I like it.

Courtney: So you didn’t know that that twist was going to be there when you first wrote it. So you would have had to go back to drop, like, the very subtle hints throughout.

Sarah: It’s like, I want to say it was around, like, chapter three or four when I was really just getting into the lore of who the Illimae are and, like, getting into, like, rewriting Christianity, how it was them, and, and, like, Adam and Eve and everything, and just kind of getting back into all of that. That was, I think, when I started thinking, wait a minute, and then, um and then, yeah, I did go back.

Sarah: Um God, I mean, just in general, the first three, four chapters are extremely heavily revised. Like, components of them from the original draft are still there. But like, those chapters, I— and the prologue also, like, a lot of that’s just new, like, freshly written. Because yeah, I did have to go back and change quite a bit, like, after I figured out the twist.

Sarah: Like, oh, shit.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. So since, uh, whether or not the sort of word asexual is used is always something we pay attention to when we’re analyzing ace rep, um, yeah. You mentioned that in this book, you know, she doesn’t have that language, she didn’t use it, you tried to make that a little more obvious. But we know there are several more books coming down the pipeline.

Courtney: Is that something you’ve had to sort of grapple with? Like, do I eventually say the word? Do I what has that thought process been like?

Sarah: So yeah, I mean, and also the neurodivergence too, because she’s not diagnosed. Um I actually think it’s important if you’re looking at this as a piece of ace history of what it’s— what it was like to be ace in that time period. Um I think it’s important to not use these words sometimes just because we didn’t use those words back then. Um however, she does actually have an ace-affirming conversation and the term asexual is used in book five.

Courtney: Wow. Coming way down the pipeline. Yeah.

Sarah: And also the word bi comes out as well in that conversation. So like, it does come out eventually, like with, with the language and everything. And also the word autistic comes out later as well. But it takes a while.

Sarah: Um and again, it’s like, it just was not, there was not as much visibility. There was not as much education or advocacy. You know, so it was a very common thing in the asexual experience back then to be closeted or to like not even be sure who you were and to not have the words to be able to describe who you were, especially if you were somewhere in the spectrum as I am, where it’s like, okay, I, I feel like I could be quote unquote normal, but I also am not.

Sarah: So what do I do?

Courtney: Well, I’ll tell you what I really, really love about that. Because so many novels that we’ve read with an ace protagonist are either so far back in history that using the word asexual was never on the table, so they’d have to convey it in other ways, or it is a much more modern book. And what I find in a lot of novels that have modern ace protagonists the story does sort of become um about them coming out, or a lot of the story is about some sort of asexual journey. And so it all sort of happens right at once and right in the first book, or if it’s an only book, if it’s not a series. And I cannot think of many examples where right from the jump we have an ace protagonist, but then we get to spend many, many books with her. And so I’m really excited to see her journey as as it plays out over time, especially because 2009 is such an interesting year to me for ace history.

Courtney: Like, it is post-aven but pre-flag. And a lot of people in 2009 had never heard the word asexual yet.

Courtney: Wow. But um that sort of first wave of asexual representation is a few years away still, but it’s coming in the near future. So I really like that as an exploration for a series. I’m very excited.

Sarah: You know what’s interesting about flags and whatnot? It was actually, I want to say, 2016 or so that I started using the term demisexual to describe myself. And the person who alerted me to it in the first place was my husband. Like, at the time, he was not my husband.

Sarah: But like, really, he saw it just— yeah, I think it was originally a Tumblr post that he then saw on Facebook. And I had kind of seen this post as well. I’d seen the demisexual flag and the description, and I was like, this sounds a lot like me. Ah, but it’s, it’s fake, whatever.

Sarah: And then like my husband later was like on Facebook and, and he shared the post to me and he is like, this is you. And, and I was like, you know, you’re right. It is.

Sarah: He’s also the person who like years later, uh, told me I was bi. Like, I think we were having some conversation and I just kind of offhandedly was like, yeah, I’m straight or whatever. He just started laughing and he is like, you’re not straight. And I sort of like, that’s kind of what it was.

Sarah: It was him both times. Like, I already knew, like, what I was, but he was the one who, like, said, no, like, you are this, this thing. And, um, yeah, I just think it’s kind of funny that it was him both times.

Courtney: That is interesting because you say you already knew, but he kind of still had to say that to you. Does hearing it from someone who knows you really well sort of give you permission to start owning it? Or—

Sarah: Yeah, it’s the permission and the validation. But like, well, because like, he was my first and only at this point. And at the start, like, our relationship was extremely messy at the start. Like, it wasn’t even a relationship. It was a situationship for several years. And at this point, even when he tells me I’m demisexual, we’re still sort of in a situationship. But like, yeah, at the start, when, uh when I was, you know, in so many words coming out to him saying, hey, this is, you know, he’s like, hey, I’m very attracted to you. I would love to have a sexual relationship with you. And I’m like, I’m sorry, I am a virgin. I don’t even know if I want to have sex.

Sarah: I’m curious about it. But I don’t know. And I would probably want a relationship, you know, I need to achieve some level of trust first, before I would explore anything in that regard.

Sarah: And he was actually very understanding, like, and he’s like, that’s cool. I would like to be platonic friends with you. Like, he genuinely just wanted to have me in his life, which, again, that was very nice. Because other people in the past, it’s like, oh, you don’t want to be involved with me in that way, I get frustrated, and then I leave sort of thing.

Sarah: But he was like, no, I’ll stick around. At the start, though, he would sometimes write off my experience as, oh, you have sexual hangups, or, oh, it’s your upbringing.

Sarah: And like, I thought that about myself as well. Like, oh, it might just be my, you know, Puritanist uh Upbringing in the evangelical church that I still haven’t completely deconstructed. And they’re like, oh, maybe it’s just because I’m a late bloomer and this is my first time and I’m new to all of this. But like, uh hearing it from somebody who like went through all of that experience with me and was like, no, I kind of know now from being with you all these years, like this, this is a more accurate representation and description of who you are.

Sarah: And then also the bi part of it. At the time, here’s another plot twist.

Sarah: When we met, neither of us knew he was nonbinary. Um and it wasn’t until like six years ago or so that he started coming out that way. And like, it was around when I was also like being like, yeah, I’m bi. Like we both embraced those labels kind of at the same time. And in a way it was almost like me embracing the bi label gave him permission to embrace the nonbinary label.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And vice versa. And it’s funny because like when going through all the micro labels within non-binaryness, he actually kind of settled on agender.

Sarah: And so we’re sort of an ace couple.

Courtney: Yay!

Sarah: He’s very allosexual and alloromantic, but like, he does like agender specifically because he— his relationship with gender is I don’t have gender. Gender is dumb. I don’t care about gender.

Sarah: And so he finds like, he personally just likes the agender label. So it’s kind of interesting.

Sarah: So one of the aces did the agender thing. Exactly. That’s why I’m like, you know, we’re sort of an ace couple.

Courtney: That’s so interesting. Well, because I know so many agender people, almost all of them are asexual and/or aromantic. I know very few allosexual and alloromantic people that are agender, maybe one or two, but not many by comparison um to how many other aspecs I know.

Courtney: So that’s great. That’s awesome that you’ve been able to um explore identities together and affirm each other in that way and publish a book together. You writing?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: I’m editing.

Sarah: Yeah, and he’s gonna edit the other ones as far as we know. So yay, that way I don’t have to pay him.

Courtney: Can’t get away with editing!

Sarah: Um, uh, it’s, it’s actually not something he’s done before, but like, he is— he has been an avid reader all his life, and like, he has a pretty good attention to detail. So I trusted him to, you know, be a pretty good editor, uh, to pick up on things that I missed. And like, another interesting thing about this series, um pretty much everybody involved in every— like my artist, my uh cover designer, my web designer, we’re all queer and/or neurodivergent. So it’s really nice. And non-men.

Sarah: So it’s really nice to just kind of keep that consistent.

Courtney: Absolutely love that. Is there anything— because I want to make sure we get um anything out that you definitely want to talk about pertaining to the book or yourself or your other work. So are there any any other things you want to make sure we touch on? Want to make sure we’re not forgetting anything?

Courtney: Oh, geez.

Sarah: I do so much stuff.

Courtney: You really do. And I’m interested in all of it. I mean, as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher myself, we have that interest.

Courtney: Um I’ve loved watching your—

Sarah: I wear so many hats.

Courtney: Your vegetarian recipes. I mean, we’re vegans, so we’ve—

Sarah: Yeah. I remember you liked my Bob’s Burgers. I went through every single burger from the Bob’s Burgers Burger book and I cooked them all.

Courtney: We’ve been doing that for years. We’re going through slowly, but we’re like probably three/four of the way through the book at this point.

Courtney: And I think we started when we were still just vegetarian before going completely vegan. So it was like, okay, we can just do a veggie patty and still do everything. But about halfway through the book, it’s like, okay, now we have to fully veganize all of these and, you know, find cheese substitutes.

Sarah: What recommendations do you have for plant-based cheeses? I’ve tried like three different kinds, like to varying levels of success.

Sarah: But like, what vegan cheeses do you guys like? Like melty cheeses and then like snacking cheeses.

Courtney: The best ones we found are kind of spendy and you need to buy a lot uh at one time to make it effective, but we really like Rebel Cheeses.

Sarah: Rebel? Okay.

Sarah: I’ve seen ads for them all over the place.

Courtney: We like special occasions, like usually around our anniversary, we’ll like order a box and we’ll do like um a wine and cheese night with them. And like maybe twice a year we’ll order a big box of Rebel Cheeses and then it’ll just be like a treat because, I mean, it is more expensive than the cheese alternatives you’ll find in the store, but they are very, very good.

Royce: Those are more comparable to fancy cheeses that you’d buy.

Sarah: Yeah, like charcuterie cheeses, not melty, run-of-the-mill pizza, burger cheeses. Yeah, because I’ve tried— I remember when I did like a vegan week for my cooking channel, God, a while, like 12 years ago now.

Sarah: It was 2014. And like the vegan cheese I had that time, I forget the brand.

Sarah: Was it like Eden or Edam or— I think it was something like that. But anyway, it was like a block of extra firm tofu before I melted it. But then when I melted it, it actually melted pretty well and it was like somewhat passable. And I was like, hmm, interesting. And then I did, um when I did a vegan month like a couple years ago, I did like the American cheese Single kind.

Sarah: I think it was Daiya or Daiya. I don’t know how you pronounce it.

Courtney: That’s a promising one.

Sarah: Yeah, like that, that was passable as, um, as American cheese. I don’t really like American cheese, actually. But I felt like that was a pretty passable American cheese.

Sarah: But yeah, that’s like, like plant-based dairy for me has been a bit of a journey. Like, I found plenty of plant-based milks I like, okay, but cheese is a lot harder.

Courtney: Especially affordable and like in the grocery store. Yeah. But I mean, Daiya in most grocery stores these days. And so the options are out there. Some are better than others, but there, there hasn’t been anything uh comparable to Rebel cheese that we’ve been able to find in grocery stores. So.

Sarah: Yeah, like I said, I had seen Rebel advertisements, so I was intrigued about them. I just didn’t know if they were any good.

Courtney: We like them. We like them a lot.

Sarah: Cool. But yeah, I cooked through Bob’s Burgers. I was considering briefly after the BoJack Horseman video of doing a uh Bob’s Burgers in Japanese video. But it’s just, to be honest, it just takes so long going through the series in another language and then like finding all the clips and finding what angle I’m going to do. I was even specifically thinking about looking at just Gene’s fart jokes from all the episodes in Japanese.

Sarah: Because, I mean, you’ll see this in, in my book too. Like, I have a weakness for fart humor.

Sarah: Um I was planning to do like a whole video on that, but I realized, no, Sarah, this, this, you don’t need this side quest. It’s going to take you like 100+ hours just to research this video. Uh, yeah, it’s one of those things where if time was not an issue, I would like to make a video like that. Doing another one where I explore another series that originally was written in English and then see how it’s translated in Japanese.

Sarah: And I love Bob’s Burgers. Like, my husband and I both love that show.

Courtney: uh yeah, us too. That’s a really good show. It’s one where if we just want something to put on in the background to relax to that isn’t new, that we know we’re going to like, just putting on an episode of Bob’s Burgers at random has been uh one of our go-tos on and off for several years now.

Sarah: Oh, God. And I wanted to say, I recently listened to your episodes about Big Mouth. And my husband and I have watched Big Mouth all the way through. I was, I was very, very amused at the commentary. Uh, yup.

Sarah: I have, I have mixed feelings about that show personally too, but it was very interesting to hear about.

Courtney: That is a show we, we would never watch on our own. It is not our kind of humor.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Well, like I said, I went through a phase where I had a very crude, like, sense of sexual humor. I would have enjoyed that show so much more in that phase in my 20s.

Sarah: Um, my husband still has a very crude sexual sense of humor. So, and he’s allo, so he loved it. And like a lot of the show, watching it with him was me turning to him and being like, are you people really like that? And he’s like, yep. And me being like, is that really what it feels like? And he’s like, yep. And it’s just a lot of like me being like, what? And him being like, yep. Yeah.

Sarah: And we uh both loved the autistic character too. Like we bonded a lot over the autistic character. And Elijah, the ace character, when he first came in, like, because we didn’t— we weren’t watching the show knowing in advance that he’s ace, right? We’re just watching it as casual viewers.

Sarah: And so when he first comes in, I’m like, calling it now, he’s ace. And my husband at the same time was like, oh, I was gonna say he’s Christian. And then like, when both were revealed, we’re like, yeah, both right.

Courtney: Why not both?

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: That’s really funny.

Sarah: And yeah, I saw a lot of parallels too with, with myself and Elijah in that regard, because because I also was like, it looks like the church he’s in is that uh cultish evangelical variety, the same one that I grew up in. So with the purity culture, so I definitely related pretty hard to that.

Courtney: Yeah. What has uh trying to detangle that while also trying to understand your own ace identity looked like over the years? Because we have many friends who are currently Christian and ace, many friends who who are not Christian, but grew uh up in that.

Courtney: And it’s never easy from what I understand.

Sarah: Yeah, a lot of it’s just like trying to figure out, okay, all those years that I was sex repulsed and like not wanting uh any of that, like, was that genuinely me? Or was that just me conforming to my upbringing?

Sarah: But then at the same time, there’s layers, because in the church, the messaging is always, you must resist these temptations. You are, you are experiencing so many temptations at this age.

Sarah: And I’m like, not really, but okay. And they’re like, but you must resist them.

Sarah: And the virtue is more in the resisting of the temptation, rather than like, just, just not having sex is not enough. You have to not have sex, even though you so desperately want it. You resist it and save yourself, you know, for marriage. And that’s the other thing, like marriage, the sanctity of marriage, procreation, having children.

Sarah: I did embrace that uh narrative when I was a teenager of, oh, I’m saving myself for marriage. But I didn’t really want to get married. I definitely did not want kids. I have never wanted kids.

Sarah: So yeah, it was always was this weird sort of, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing as a good Christian. But at the same time, I knew that I was kind of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Courtney: Mm.

Sarah: And then yeah, being, being older, and like I said, with um my husband at the start of our relationship, how he would call, you know, what I had sexual hangups. And it’s like, were they also sexual hangups, like from my Christian days? Or or is this entirely just me as an asexual person feeling uncomfortable with certain sex acts or, you know, timelines? It’s just really hard figuring out what— which part of that was actually me, and which part of that was imposed upon me, especially years and years after the fact. Like, I started deconstructing when I was 18, like, as soon as I moved out of my dad’s house and I spent my first year in Japan.

Sarah: Really, it was just like, these are all such wonderful people. They all have a strong moral compass, and hardly any of that nation is Christian under the church I grew up in.

Sarah: Those people are all going to hell.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And I’m like, fuck this God. If, if that’s what God is, if God is going to send all of these, like, nice people to hell just because they’re not this specific brand of Christian, like, I don’t want to worship this God.

Sarah: That was kind and the seeds were already planted because my mom was not in the church. My parents divorced when I was very young and she was agnostic. And, you know, she didn’t like indoctrinate me and be like, ah, I’m agnostic, your father’s wrong. But, you know, she was open, like, yes, this is what I believe. It’s not what he believes.

Sarah: So I knew that there were other options and I already had that seed of doubt planted in like, my mom is going to hell. I don’t really like that. I’m not comfortable with this idea.

Courtney: Mhm.

Sarah: And then um being in Japan and seeing, oh, they’re, they’re going to hell. I’m not comfortable with that idea. So that’s what already started getting me to deconstruct.

Sarah: But I, I’d say like, it takes so long, like, because it, it gets in every single part of your life. It gets in every single part of your philosophy and your way of thinking. And with that, a lot of sexism and racism and, and queerphobia and ableism and all the isms.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, are very deeply embedded in that church also. So. So there’s just so many layers of deconstruction to get through. And sexuality is also part of that.

Sarah: So it’s always a little unclear, like I said many times, what is me and what is them imposing something on me? And to this day, I still don’t know.

Courtney: And there may not ever be a clear answer. And, and that can be very frustrating.

Courtney: But it can also be, you know, I uh obviously all queer identities, uh when tied in with religious trauma, evangelical Christianity, uh, what have you. Strict upbringings are always complicated, but it does seem like aces have a very unique experience with that because of the purity culture lumped in with it. And because aces may have varying degrees of sex repulsion that might be innate, might not be. And there’s such a um narrative in a lot of the sex-positive community that sex is always good.

Courtney: We should talk about it more. It shouldn’t be the shameful thing.

Courtney: And it’s not wrong, but it does make it very, very complicated when an ace person is like, but I don’t actually resonate with this in the way allosexual people do. But we kind of have that bug in our ear where if you have an issue with sex, if you don’t want it, or if, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, that’s just the purity culture. That’s just the religious trauma.

Courtney: And it makes so m many aces uh doubt themselves. And it makes me very sad how many people have had to go through that.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: And I mean, it doesn’t help that there is also a little bit of exclusion within the ace community or even outside of it when you say, well, this is my experience, it’s somewhere in this gray area. Then imposter syndrome is just the name of the— and bi also, imposter syndrome is the name of the game.

Sarah: I’m literally married to a non-binary person. I still don’t feel bi enough.

Sarah: It’s really hard to escape.

Courtney: Well, that’s why there’s such a long history, right? That’s why there’s such a long history of like bi-ace solidarity, because the specific types of exclusion that we get from within the broader queer communities have so many overlaps.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And a lot of aces are also some flavor of bi.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, yeah, that was an odd connection to, um, when I was a lot younger and didn’t have language and was questioning. Like, I did question occasionally if I was gay, just because it’s like, okay, I’m not sexually attracted to men, and lesbians are not sexually attracted to men. Maybe I’m lesbian. But then I would immediately shut myself down with, well, you’re not sexually attracted to women either. And like, I I wouldn’t even use the word either.

Sarah: I would say you’re not sexually attracted to women, so you’re not gay. And then just— yeah, compet made me then revert to, oh, the default, okay, therefore I must be straight. Um and it kind of took me making that connection.

Sarah: Well, I’m not sexually attracted to women so much, but I’m also not really sexually attracted to men either. That’s what finally made me go, aha, wait, all those times I was attracted to women, that was attraction. That wasn’t just me thinking she was meet.

Sarah: Like, it’s really hard still to draw those distinctions of like, what, what makes these attractions different from each other. But like, mhm once I was able to contextualize it that way, where it’s like, well, I kind of feel about women similarly to how I feel about men.

Sarah: It used to be I don’t want either of them. But now it’s like, well, I kind of want both of them, but in very specific ways.

Sarah: And it’s also like that meme you see thrown around a lot about bisexual women where it’s like, I’m a bisexual woman, that means I’m attracted to like literally every woman in the world and five very specific men. That kind of describes my experience. I’ve only really been attracted to like three men and then like many, many more women.

Courtney: Yeah. Have you had— I’m curious in your personal experience, because I’ve heard that similar ah from many, you know, neurodivergent or otherwise disabled aces too, where, you know, know, is it asexuality? Or is it purity culture?

Courtney: I’ve also had people go like, well, is it— am I ace? Or am I just autistic? Am I ace?

Courtney: Or is it just, you know, trauma?

Sarah: And I feel that really strongly, too. I feel like my neurodivergence and my queerness are intrinsically linked. Like, I feel like I almost would go so far as to say I am more neurodivergent than I am queer. Because like a lot of my— um like I mentioned earlier, it’s more more about sensuality than sexuality. It’s like when I have that kind of connection with somebody, it’s more about just the sensory pleasures. Kind of similarly, it’s like eating dessert versus eating dinner. I eat dessert for pleasure purely because it tastes good. It has good textures.

Sarah: I never eat dessert because I’m hungry. And that’s why I have sex, not because I need it or I feel horny or anything. It’s because it feels nice.

Sarah: And also there’s this closeness with a person who, again, I’ve described my husband as my person or my safe person, rather than like my love or like, I do love him. But it’s more like, I feel more like I get to be myself around him, I get to unmask. That’s like a huge thing.

Sarah: I’ve struggled with roommates in the past because I don’t get to unmask in my own and I would often wonder, am I ever going to be in a serious relationship with somebody? Am I ever going to be m able to be married? Like, if I can’t be my true self in my own home, I’m gonna go crazy. But this is somebody that I can be my true self around. So that’s kind of more what it is to me. Then you have the other layer.

Sarah: I didn’t even mention this earlier with the book, but this comes out a lot in the book.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Uh, limerence. I didn’t even mention that yet.

Sarah: This is often linked with ADHD people, but you’ll find it across, you know, in other neurodivergent identities. But uh limerence for a person is more about the dopamine that you get from being around this person. And it will feel very similar to a crush or infatuation, when in fact, it’s really more just a neurodivergent special interest. kind of connection. And like, I definitely have experienced that with the people that I had crushes on in the past. And with my husband also a little bit, I’ve experienced a little bit of limerence uh for him as well, like more in the periods where we were off and like not really together.

Sarah: That’s when the brain will long for the dopamine and will start to yearn. But again, it’s different from like a romantic sexual yearning. It’s more a brain uh dopamine yearning for this other person who is your special interest in your so yeah, huge overlap there for me.

Royce: That was a very difficult part about early relationships for me. I felt like, like looking back on them, I felt like I developed a special interest that would run its course very quickly. And so I’d be like two to four weeks into a relationship and something would flip and I’d be like, I don’t know what happened. Am I not actually supposed to be in this relationship? Am I supposed to just, you know, see the course?

Royce: How do I try explaining this to the other person and uh not have it sound like, I’m not sure if I like you anymore?

Sarah: Let them down gently. I’m not sure I like you anymore.

Sarah: Yeah, with me, actually, it’s kind of the opposite. Um because I’m ace and gray ace, you know, I do experience attraction. It’s just so incredibly rare.

Sarah: That if I’m limerent about somebody that I’m attracted to, it’s extremely difficult for me to move on. Like, I was limerent about a guy I dated in college briefly for like three years after the breakup.

Sarah: It was really bad. And it’s like, if I had known that that’s what it was, and, and I had like had a bit more of a roadmap of how to deal with that, it would have been so much easier. But yeah, like I was stuck on him for years because my source of dopamine was gone uh all of a sudden. And friends were telling me, oh, there’s plenty of fish in the sea, you can do better, move on, you know, find a new person to be attracted to. It’s like, well, I’m not attracted to people that often.

Sarah: So what do I do? It’s just really hard to move on.

Sarah: And this also happens in the book. Like, you’ll see Laura is pretty limerent about her ex, and actually him about her also. Like, there’s a little bit of that.

Courtney: Yeah, everything you’re saying does sound, uh, so familiar, especially in, you know, Royce’s experience, uh, not only with those early relationships but even with newer friendships. Uh, sometimes we will get to a level of comfort with a friend where all of a sudden it doesn’t quite register on the social battery the same way as the average person does. Uh, because you have a very limited social battery.

Courtney: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: And like, limerence doesn’t have to be— like I said, it isn’t romantic or sexual. It can feel like it is, especially if you’re ace and you don’t really experience those attractions at all or much.

Sarah: M you can mistaken limerence for that. But it’s— it is something different.

Sarah: And yeah, I’ve experienced it also for people that I’m not, you know, romantically interested in. Yeah, it’s a thing.

Courtney: So I’ve thought the same thing too. Before I met Royce, I did not think I wanted to to live with anyone else. I was like, I like my house. I like living alone. I have experienced not enjoying living with someone else.

Sarah: Mhm.

Courtney: And it was an odd trajectory because I, as, you know, teenager, did want to get married. I did not ever want to have sex. I didn’t know what that would look like.

Courtney: But in my mind, you know, real— even though I wasn’t like, I didn’t grow up in a church, I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious family, The, you know, I’m waiting till marriage was for a time a very convenient excuse as a young ace person.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: And so it’s like, oh, I do want to get married. I don’t want the sex part. Then when I finally did have my own house and I’m living alone, I was like, why would I want to not do this?

Courtney: So it does. Um and I’ve often said, like, I don’t know a single other person on this planet that I could live yeah.

Sarah: And I, I feel that way about my husband. I mean, surely there are other people I could live with. Like, I remember, um, I call this guy my gay husband, my best friend in college. I, I was okay living with him. But looking back, like, a lot of people in my life that I have been okay with living with to some extent, I’m pretty sure they’re also neurodivergent.

Sarah: It’s just like, Mm-hmm. I think as long as you have that kind of connection with another person and, and you can build upon that, that and like feel safer with this person over time. Like it can happen. Like I could probably live with somebody else other than my husband.

Sarah: It just took us a very long time to get here.

Courtney: Yeah.

Sarah: Like there are still, there are still layers of my mask that have not come off yet. And like when they do, um like my husband might walk in on me, like this started happening about a year ago. He would walk in on me when I was talking to myself or like singing to myself or just having a monologue. And I would freak the fuck out. I’d be like, oh my God, he thinks I’m insane. He’s gonna leave me. This, this is gonna freak him out. But then he would just giggle and say, that’s so cute.

Sarah: And so, yeah, like, I’m, I’m still not entirely comfortable taking off the entire mask. But it’s, it’s very, very, very slowly over the years coming off.

Courtney: Yeah. And how long have you been together? Um I know it’s been stages. It was situationship.

Courtney: And now you’re married, but weird math.

Sarah: Yeah, very weird math. I sometimes, I sometimes say like, oh, we’ve been together for like eight years divided by two minus five plus— yeah. Um we’ve been married, we just celebrated our seven-year anniversary, and we’ve been living together eight years. And then before that, we were in basically an unofficial monogamous relationship by accident for like two, three years. It wasn’t officially a monogamous relationship, but like, in practice, it kind of wound up being that.

Courtney: Mhm.

Sarah: And then before that, before that, it was situationship. But yeah, we’ve been together we’ve been together, like, in each other’s lives since 2011. But, you know, living together married eight years.

Courtney: So yeah, it does take time to, to unpeel um that mask sometimes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Courtney: Yeah, I know, uh, not too long ago we were having a conversation with a friend because Rice has a much more limited social battery than I do. M and Rice will very much say, like, I have limited social battery, but with a good friend of ours, they were like, you know what, you don’t register as a person anymore.

Courtney: And like, that’s what happened with me. Like, very quickly, very early on in our relationship, it’s like, oh, you are not hitting like people do in my social battery. You are not registering as a person in that social battery.

Courtney: And so that uh definitely helped the uh living together and spending all our time together situation. But every now and then a friend will be like, oh yeah, you’re not a person I, yeah, I will sometimes say you’re not people.

Sarah: I will say something like, I can’t be around people for very long, but then I’ll say, oh, but you’re not people. That’s kind of how I describe it too, is you’re not people.

Courtney: Yeah, you don’t count. It’s okay.

Sarah: Yeah, for me, it’s like people are— it’s varying levels, like, you know, stages of being a people. My husband is not people at all. Um, our friends and neighbors upstairs are people, but only slightly people.

Courtney: Partial people.

Sarah: Yeah. And then like my online online relationships are also, you know, slightly more than people because they’re online.

Sarah: That’s a different sort of situation. But then like people that are trying to make small talk with me when I’m on a walk or in a grocery store, those are people people.

Sarah: Those are very like, nope, nope.

Courtney: I will nod at you. People plus.

Sarah: I will acknowledge your existence and I might smile slightly at you and I will nod. It’s like, that’s what I really liked about Japan. I could just bow at people and they would accept that. But it’s like in the US, it’s like I’ve had people under my breath after I passed them on a walk and they tried to talk to me, they’ll be like, geez, you’re nice, or like, wow, what a bitch. And it’s like, excuse me, you’re like invading my space when I’m just trying to enjoy a uh pleasant walk by myself. This is when I do my best thinking. But you know, I get it.

Courtney: How long did you spend in Japan, by the way?

Sarah: Uh, just a year. Like, that was— I went there, I went there three times. I went there once just on vacation in high school, and then I spent the year there going to high school after I graduated actually in the States. But I went to high school there just so that I could be around people my age and learn the culture and language. I went to an agricultural high school actually, so like I was in the course that was more the culture course. So we did things like tea ceremony and cooking and, um, oh, I’m forgetting, uh, wassai, which is Japanese arts. So like in one of the semesters I made myself a yukata. Like we all did that as part of our project.

Sarah: So that and then I went back to Japan like two years after that to see the World Cup. That was for like a month, and that was it.

Sarah: I haven’t been to Japan in 24 years now.

Sarah: So—

Courtney: Wow, long time.

Sarah: Yeah, and book three takes place in Japan, which is kind of cool.

Courtney: I would love to visit Japan someday. Rice does not like traveling quite as much as I do.

Sarah: I hate traveling.

Courtney: Do you really?

Sarah: If it— if I could go Star Trek style, if I could just like zap myself immediately there, then okay, I’d be fine with traveling. I like being in other places just fine. I hate the traveling. I’m also very scared of flying. Like, I, I have meltdowns when I— like, the last time I flew on a plane, I was like screaming and crying in the lobby before we went on.

Courtney: Oh no.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s really bad.

Royce: uh I, I have said if I could teleport, I would travel a lot more, but the, the process of traveling is very draining, and I yes. Going back to the social battery thing, while we’re traveling, if we’re like spending a week somewhere, like I can only ever get back up to like 70 or 80%. Like I can never fully recharge while we’re away from home.

Sarah: I have to take a vacation after my vacation if I travel. Like I have to take a few days off after to like have my actual time off, my actual vacation.

Sarah: Um like I still enjoy it.

Courtney: Like I enjoy being other places and seeing things and experiencing different cultures and stuff, but yeah, yeah, although Japan is the one place where I said, you know, I might be interested in that. Maybe not anytime soon.

Sarah: I recommend if you guys do— yeah, if you do go, I would recommend northern Japan. I mean, it’s where I lived, but also it’s just uh there, there’s much fewer tourists. You’re gonna get more of the actual Japan experience there. They’re— they like— they still have the big cities, they still have the, you know, shrines and temples up in northern Japan. Also, northern Japan has like, I think Fox Island is up in northern Japan.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And like, I think some of like the Cat Islands are also up in northern Japan. Um, but yeah, I, I specifically was in Iwate Prefecture, which is like the second, it’s like just below Aomori Prefecture, which is the northernmost prefecture on the main island. So I, I recommend that region just ’cause it’s, it’s very pretty. The air is clean, the people are really nice, and, um, and yeah, you’ll get a lot of the same culture there, just without all the tourists.

Sarah: Cool.

Courtney: Well, if we ever do get around to planning a big international trip with the two of us, uh we’ll, we’ll hit you up ahead of time and get those recommendations.

Sarah: Hey, Sarah Moon travel agent. No, I’m not going to add that to my list of hats.

Courtney: But you have so many hats. What’s one more? What’s one more hat?

Sarah: I love crocheting. I’ve crocheted pretty much m all my life.

Sarah: And yeah, it’s just something that I always kind of do in the background. Sometimes I’m way more into it than other times.

Sarah: Currently, I haven’t been crocheting that recently. Uh but yeah, I love crocheting clothes. I have a bunch of crocheted blankets. I went through a huge amigurumi phase where I crocheted every single character. I crocheted every single character from Sailor Moon in the— actually, around when I was writing these books, it was the late aughts and early teens. I crocheted every single character, every protagonist and antagonist. Like, so all the— not all the monsters of the day, but like the main antagonists from each series.

Sarah: Uh there were over 100 dolls in total, and they were all hanging from my walls. I sold most of them now because I’m just like, this is too many. I have way too many of these things.

Sarah: Uh, but yeah, I love crochet, and I wish I could do that more often, but time, you know.

Courtney: I’m, I’m a very casual crochet dabbler as of the last, I don’t know, maybe four years ago. I picked up crochet and started making amigurumi. So haven’t made a ton of things, but luckily we have some like really cool uh vendors in the marketplace who like make patterns. So I have picked some of those up to make some patterns, and that’s always very fun to, you know, support other ace ah crafty artist people.

Courtney: But I relate to having too many hats. I really do.

Courtney: Very busy.

Sarah: You make things out of human hair. That’s just really rad.

Courtney: Someone actually just yesterday, um I was at a little mutual aid event locally that I help run, and a friend of mine was trying to introduce me to a new person, and he was like, oh, have you met Courtney? She does. And he furrowed his brow and he was like, uh Victorian Hair Art and uh an asexual podcast. Ah, ah, ah. And opera and swords, tai chi, and, and it just like goes down the m line.

Courtney: He’s like, did I get everything? I was like, close enough. Yeah.

Sarah: And it’s like, I never do all of my hobbies at once. Like, my husband was even asking me last night if I wanted to do choir again, because it’s been at this point now eight years since I’ve sung in a choir. And that’s always been a huge part of my life too. Like, I’ve never been paid for that, but it’s always been something that I’ve done in the background.

Sarah: I’m like, yeah, I really miss that. I really wish I could sing in a choir.

Sarah: But time.

Courtney: Time. Well, my, my last question, uh, is a personal selfish one for me as someone who has learned another language, uh, to the point of proficiency that it is your profession. What advice do you have for me who has recently started learning Chinese?

Sarah: Oh my goodness. Uh, yeah, I always feel, again, speaking of imposter syndrome, I always feel like an imposter whenever anyone asks me for advice on becoming a translator or learning a language because oh. I honestly just kind of, I just kind of fell ass backwards into it. Um, it was my special interest.

Sarah: I just fell in love with the Japanese language and with anime. And I just obsessively read a bunch of manga in Japanese, watched a bunch of anime in Japanese, learned and sung a bunch of songs in Japanese. And I just obsessively did that every day for years until I picked up the language.

Sarah: And that’s, I mean, that, that is an advice that can map onto people if it’s not your special interest. Just do things that you enjoy already in that other language. So, if you like music, listen to music in that language.

Sarah: If you like reading books, well, that’s a bit difficult, but comics are a really great place to start. Like, uh especially comics for children.

Sarah: Like, they’re still easier to follow um if it’s in another language. And then, like, yeah, watching shows in that other language.

Sarah: There—

Sarah: God, there’s some app. I don’t know what it’s called.

Sarah: And this is not an endorsement because I have not used this app, but there is apparently an app now that, that has a few uh TV shows in your target language you want to learn. And it’ll have like more detailed subtitles that like break down the sentences.

Courtney: Yeah. Is that Lingopie?

Courtney: I’ve—

Sarah: I don’t, I don’t know what it’s called. I’ve seen, I’ve heard people talking about it a little bit and I don’t know if it’s any good.

Sarah: So again, this is not an endorsement, I’ve seen it advertised.

Courtney: Yeah, I’ve been curious. I mean, I haven’t pulled the trigger yet.

Sarah: Yeah, but I, yeah, I would say just do things that you love doing in that language and, and that’ll help you. And obviously also, you know, learn the textbooky way as well.

Sarah: I did have a foundation in Japanese. I did take like two years of high school Japanese before and during my own just, I’m gonna consume all the media possible in Japanese and pick it up through osmosis.

Sarah: You do need the foundation of, you know, a textbook, a teacher, an actual class. Uh and it also depends on what your language goals are. Do you want to just be able to understand uh media in this language? In that case, you don’t have to focus as much on pronunciation or speaking or writing. Do you want to be able to have conversations with people in this language?

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Well, then you should probably focus more on conversational, actually talking with people, there are apps for that as well, for having conversations with people in that language. Because yeah, your goals are not necessarily going to be, I want to be fully bilingual in this other language.

Sarah: Right, right.

Courtney: It might be for something specific.

Sarah: Cater to that specific thing. Like my Japanese is, like my spoken Japanese is shit. I don’t speak in Japanese. I have not carried on a conversation. No, like if I lived in Japan for a year and spoke only Japanese, it would come back pretty quickly, I think.

Sarah: Like, I just don’t use that in my daily life. I exclusively read, like, I read Japanese every single day because I translate it and I listen to Japanese quite a bit. But yeah, I never really speak it or write in it very often either, unless I have to compose a business email, which is a whole other beast. Uh, I’m like on Japanese Google looking up, how do you write a business email? And like all these other native Japanese people are like, how do you write a business email?

Sarah: Because they don’t know either.

Courtney: Uh-huh.

Sarah: That’s— it’s very comforting to see those posts from native Japanese people being like, is it itashimasu or just masu in this case? So yeah, what are your goals? And have fun. Those are— those— that’s my advice.

Courtney: I am having fun. I actually— I did enroll in a college course, so I am taking elementary Chinese right now. So unfortunately, as of uh a couple of months, I am no longer able to say I, the only college classes I’ve been to were the ones I was teaching, which is a little sad for me because I, I felt a little, uh, badass saying that.

Courtney: It’s a flex. It felt good as someone who was systematically kept out of college when I wanted to go. I was like, haha, take that, college. I got here anyway. But no, I, I did enroll in my first uh official college class.

Courtney: It is elementary Chinese, and I am having so much fun. Although I’ve found I I am learning to read so much faster than I can, like, do anything else, like writing. If we have to have a test where we’re writing the characters, I need to spend so much more time memorizing how to write because I just pick up reading so quickly. So even the flashcards that, like, our professor has given us doesn’t help me do that because as soon as I see the character, oh, I know what that means, I know what that means. But then if I need to write it from memory, that’s like a different part of my brain that I need to train differently.

Courtney: So, but yeah, it’s been fun. Yeah, I’m like that with kanji.

Sarah: I can read so many more Japanese kanji than— and like, I can read them and understand them without knowing how they’re pronounced. And like, I’ll see kanji compounds and it’s like, I know what that kanji means on its own, and I know what that kanji means on its own, so I know what they mean together, but I don’t know how it’s pronounced.

Sarah: Like, that happens to me so often.

Courtney: Now I see how that works. Like, starting to learn about those characters, um, now I, I know why that happens now. But there are several people in my class who have in intermediate to advanced Japanese classes, and they’re all like, oh, Chinese is so easy. The characters are so easy because I already, you know, took these Japanese courses.

Courtney: So yeah, I can talk a lot about that.

Sarah: Yeah, I can read some Chinese. Mhm like, it is weird. Like, sometimes when I’ve gone back to Silicon Valley where I originally grew up, and I’ll see like the signs on buildings and I’m like, oh, that’s a bank.

Sarah: Oh, that’s a— you know, like, I can read the characters. I don’t know how they’re pronounced in Chinese, but I can kind of read them, so it’s pretty cool.

Courtney: It is very cool. I love languages. I’m having fun, uh, learning more.

Courtney: But, uh, that said, um, anything else, uh, before we sign off today?

Sarah: I think that’s it. I have to pee anyway, so this is a good place to stop.

Courtney: Well, great timing. Um, then we will leave you all off. Uh, dear listeners, our featured Marketplace vendor today is Sarah Moon.

Courtney: Please check out this book. I had a lot of fun. I’m very much looking forward to the second one. Secrets of the Illamay, book one.

Sarah: The incorporeal. That was my best, um, that was my best movie uh trailer voice.

Courtney: Movie trailer voice. It did sound like a movie trailer.

Courtney: I will give you that. So links to find those are going to be in all the usual places, the show notes on our website, along with the full transcript for this episode. as well as the show notes if you happen to be listening on YouTube. And while you’re at it, you can check out the other links to see some of Sarah Moon’s, uh, YouTube videos that we have referenced in today’s episode.

Courtney: And with that all being said, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time. Bye-bye! Bye!