The Trouble with (Re) Introductions

I’ve never been good at introductions. When I started at my last job, whenever we did the round-the-table hellos, I would admit I had no idea what to say, which would earn me some chuckles. After that, I’d quickly say something, anything, and popcorn it to someone, anyone to get the focus off me. Back then, I thought it was better to be a face in a crowd rather than saying the wrong thing, or worse, saying too much. In due time, I managed to lock in a tight five—name, position, portfolio, how long I’ve been with the company, looking forward to working with you in the future. Unfortunately, things have changed and that tight five is no longer relevant.

I was DOGE’d back in April (though technically due to the Stop Work orders, I haven’t been working since February). My colleagues and I, all punished for the crime of wanting to make the world a little bit of a better place through USAID grants. It still hurts. I’m still getting used to the sting. But what that means for us is that I don’t know how to introduce myself anymore. I don’t have a position, a portfolio, nothing.

So, here goes nothing.

My name is Sarah. I’ve been writing fan fiction since I was little. As I’ve matured as a writer, my fics have largely existed under the AO3 tag, “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” (basically, take characters from a beloved IP and stick ’em in a DC corporate office. As the Lord intended). With each new Modern AU I wrote, the closer I got to that blurry line dividing transformative works (fic) from original works (ofic). At the end of 2024, I finished an 80,000 word fic that got me smack against that border. So, while things are still rotten here in the DMV (that’s the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, not the Department of Motor Vehicles), I figured, let’s push this sucker over the edge. I’m not going to get any more free time than now.

In fandom, we call this process of pushing this sucker over the edge, “filing the serial numbers off.”

Pathologic (Patho) is a rich text. If not for the unforgiving health meters and time constraints, it would feel more like a visual novel a la Disco Elysium. Patho tells the story of three healers trying to save a fictional Siberian town from a deadly epidemic. There is the Bachelor, Daniil Dankovsky; the Haruspex, Artemiy Burakh, and the Changeling, Clara. Each have their own perspective on how the story should unfold, and how—nay, if—the town is spared or if the Polyhedron should take its place. The 2005 version of the game is all three routes in one. The soft-reboots (2, 3, and inshallah, 4) are separate games for separate routes. Patho 2 came out at the end of 2019, and it, uh, rather suddenly became extremely culturally relevant. This, in addition to YouTuber HBomberguy’s two-hour review of the game, led to an explosion in popularity. For a weird rebooted fifteen year old indie game from Russia, that is.

In light of all of Ice Pick Lodge’s (IPL) duly deserved praises, the fictional indigenous community they created is, how you say, problematic. The Kin, as they are known, are one of four antagonistic forces. They are not any less drawn out than the game’s other factions, but what is rendered does lead one to pause. They are depicted as backward facing, almost childlike, brutish, and the term “hivemind” is used more than once, even by the Kin themselves! The screen drips with Russian colonial tropes and a nonchalance towards women, especially of the Kin, that raises eyebrows. I will talk about these subjects later, just know for now that there are several in-game moments that made me, and others, blanch.

The idea for the fic, then called The Wonderbull Cafe, came out of conversations with my best friend. Like I said, I consider myself a Modern AU “specialist,” so regardless of the IP, I’m going to bring it back to real world events and real world consequences (ask me about my Soviet-Afghan War Star Wars fic). For Patho, I wondered how might the Kin think about birth control. That got us talking about what the society might look like post-communism, post-Yeltsin, post-rise of Putin. Nearly one hundred years of repression and inter-ethnic marriage would lead to serious cultural disruption. How would they resuscitate their culture? How do you reconcile preserving what was lost and what is struggling to be born? I wanted to explore the clash of past, present, and future. I wanted to unravel the hurt that crosses over generations, the trauma that follows subjugation, the meaning of being of a place and of people.

There are two types of folk in far-flung Novochetroisk: Townies, ethnic Russians whose kin came to this town to work the manganese mines, and the Ovatchiy whose blood seeps thick into the soil when their cattle first overturned the earth here. Townies don't leave, the Ovatchiy won't, and newcomers are rare. Death brings Artemiy, Lyosha, and Maksim to Novochetroisk. Maksim, because his time soldiering in Chechnya is over. Artemiy, because she must fulfill her mother’s spiritual leadership among the Ovatchiy. Lyosha, to claim his inheritance—the long abandoned and believed to be cursed, Cafe Guiding Voice. Artemiy wants to be anywhere but here. Lyosha wants to be anywhere but home, St. Petersburg. And Maksim wants to stay, though no one else in town wants him to. In the summer of 2014, circumstance brings the three of them together around the Cafe Guiding Voice, rebuilding it, and in their own way, themselves and each other.

The Places We Call Sacred is literary fiction and will be 95,000 words. It asks readers to consider the contours of grief and the shape of healing, within ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. This is for fans of Stephen Markley’s Ohio, Marlowe Granados' Happy Hour, and Alexandra Chang's Days of Distraction, or those who enjoy a strong authorial voice, rich environments, and complex lives behind the characters you've certainly met at the bus stop before.

I generated a lot of ennui wondering if this is my story to tell. I’m not Russian by citizenship or ethnicity, nor am I of the country’s dozens of ethnolinguistic minorities. I am American—born and raised, mixed race Black and white—so much so that a European colleague once called me, “aggressively American.” I didn’t then nor do I now know what she meant by that.

Here are my professional bone-fides. I helped build democracy and defend human rights in Ukraine and Moldova. Before that, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia were points of fascination in grad school. I spent years crawling myself to a B2 Russian level (I could not do what i am doing now in that language). I studied abroad in St. Petersburg in 2012, and in 2019, I spent about ten days in the outskirts of Kyrgyzstan. But am I not myself exercising American chauvinism by observing these cultures as an outsider like a scientist examining a sample culture beneath a microscope? This discomfort was not an unfamiliar feeling.

Eventually, though, I came to the conclusion that while this wasn’t my story to tell, it was my story to tell. In fact, my Americanness is an important element to the shape and feel of the prose. It will provide a backdrop for the performance of Russianness to play on, rather than trying to create a Russian veneer. There is so much in common between the two nations, songs in different keys, but the melody remaining the same. I think recognizing that shared music is authenticity. I saw Sinners again. Music is heavy on my mind.

Either way—the serial numbers had to come off.

I plan to use this space to talk about the process of filing the serial numbers off my fic to draft a fully original manuscript, The Places We Call Sacred.

To do a proper filing, you have to do more than just ctrl+f and change the names. You have to dig past the skin and the viscera, straight to the bone and render some alchemy to make something new. I’ll talk about the structural changes, the changes to the prose—put them side by side so you can see what’s different and why. I’ll talk about how the characters will change after crossing the ofic threshold. I’ll talk the things I’m happy with and the things I’m frustrated with.

I’ll talk craft, my comp titles, and art in general (books, movies, paintings, dances, music, any form of human expression). I’ll talk about my research and threads of inspiration. This will likely lead to discussions about current events and politics, so reader beware, you’re in for a scare. In another world, this would have been a LiveJournal and not a newsletter, but, as I’m reteaching myself every day, we must make due with the tools we have, not what we want.

The schedule is tentatively once a month, to correspond with my internal deadlines to get this thing finished and queried.

I won’t put this content behind a paywall (who the hell am I to do so), but in the future, I might set up something if you want to buy me a coffee or whatever if you think my stuff is cool.

I’m excited to see where this path takes me and I’m so thankful you’re here for the ride.

Until next time,
Sarah K.