Weird Girl Lit For Real

You guys, I was just zombiecruising on reddit (zombiecruising is the new doomscrolling) and found out about a thing called Weird Girl Literature (Weird Girl Lit/Weird Girl Fiction). I don’t know why I didn’t know it was a thing before, all I know is that it kind of feels like I’ve stumbled into a very comfy place.

As someone who has always had a penchant for the “strange and unusual” (Lydia Dietz, my heart) but at the same time always felt kind of unable wear it outwardly on my sleeve, for… reasons… none of them good, I’ve kept my weirdness mostly on the inside. Until it comes out in the things that I make, because creativity is supposed to be weird, right? And then the… Reasons, None of them Good ™ inevitably show up to make me feel stupid about it, which is pretty much why I wrote Maladaptive, and why Cara, its protagonist, exists.

A lot of what I've written has weird girl vibes, and I can’t help feeling that Cara is the most weird girl character I’ve ever written, and Maladaptive is the most weird girl thing I’ve ever made. I mean, the whole point was that I didn’t hold back. I brought Cara into the world when no one was looking, when I was hiding from the Reasons… None of them Good ™ which, contradictorily, gave her a voice and the freedom and power to tell a story I didn’t know how to tell.

As far as physical appearances go, Cara may not look like much of a weird girl. She’s pretty outwardly normcore, honestly. But inside… I mean anyone who spends as much time as she does on another plane of existence avoiding reality and consequently making everything a millionty-billion times harder for herself is going to be someone who weirds out the Anti-Weirds™ of the world (a dominant subculture belonging to the Reasons… None of them Good ™ peoples).

From her job writing sex toy manuals, to writing herself instructions to get through the next hour of the day to her choice in witchy best friends to her maladaptive daydreaming... well, I could list all of Cara’ weirdnesses, both wonderful and worrisome, but what would be the point of that? I’ve already written the book about it. Read that if you want the full picture. The point is, I’m pretty sure I wrote Weird Girl Fiction without realizing it, and that, as weird as it sounds, might be the thing that makes the most sense about me in my 50 years of life on this plane of existence.