The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

One of the most common critiques of my stories is always that they never end with traditional justice. The creepy boss who sexually harasses my heroine never gets fired or censured. The racist, unscrupulous politician gets voted in or gets their way, empowering them to turn prejudice into policy. The bigoted neighbor or coworker never gets arrested or punished for terrorizing my characters.

I’m told that it leaves readers feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled to not see Bad People punished and Good People win.

Yes, I know. Welcome to the point.

Mind you, I don’t begrudge anyone who would write those stories. I understand and support the opinion that fiction is often aspirational or prescriptive or even self-care escapism. I cannot argue with writers who write those kinds of happy endings for marginalized characters who would likely never get such in reality, often written that way BECAUSE they are too often not allowed such in reality. I think that is admirable and necessary. A thing cannot exist until enough people believe it can.

But I’m not that kind of writer. Even in fiction, I can’t imagine a world—a system—that works for those in the minority. That could ever consistently and reliably grant justice to marginalized people. That is why none of my stories work that way. I don’t know how to realistically write that kind of justice. Would that I did. Would that we lived in a world, under a system, that would show me what that looks like often enough for me to understand the whens and hows enough to write them. Imagine employers or police or judges or politicians or a public as a whole who both actually care and/or could actually do anything about it?! Truly speculative fiction, indeed.

That is why my characters never find justice or joy or safety WITHIN the system. For me, justice is found in communities rebuilding themselves after being broken. For me, joy is found in the support and protection of loved ones. And, yeah, I’m a smutty writer so, for me, sometimes happiness is found in stolen moments of pleasure and intimacy in a world that does not guarantee either and, in fact, actively seeks to deny them for so many.

For me, the point is not to “defeat” the Bad Guy—whatever that means in a society that too often sees you as the bad guy. The point is to survive it. To find ways to live and love and thrive despite it. Sometimes, just to spite it. I write about those on the margins and, from everything I’ve seen, that is where—outside a system never intended to, and too often seems thoroughly opposed to, protect us—our happily-ever-afters too often lie.