Why did I write the bonkers CONSTELIS VOSS trilogy?
What if a book was a mission, and characters were tools? Well, here's to me trying that out.
I guess it's time I got real about why I make what I make, who I am, and what the point of this [still yet being written] ambitious queer indie book project actually is.
To start off, let's talk about themes. Then, we'll talk about me. Finally, we'll talk about you. Yes, you.
We're going to talk about all of it.
Media literacy is dead, readers are lost
CONSTELIS VOSS aims to change that
I had a lot of concerns going into writing a political, queer science fiction series, all of which were about symbols, systems and perspectives.
You see, I have a thing for FLUXUS, which was an art movement made to be critical of elite art institutions. It impressed that everyone is an artist, that art is a conversation and that ideas are art. Many FLUXUS artists were teachers, feminists, socialists and philosophers.
I also have a thing for Stuart Hall, a cultural theorist and Marxist who spent much of his life dissecting semiotics and cultural signifiers. He was invested in making sense of social reality, showcasing how transformative media operates, and critiquing hegemonic semiotics, basically.
Tying those two together: I wanted to explore stereotypes, society, semiotics and ask readers to make meaning from books. Then, carry it with them like a knowledge-tool.
Everyone remembers teachers asking questions in highschool like: what does the blue wall in this paragraph mean? Few know that they were being asked this not because their teachers wanted to bore them. Your teachers were trying to teach media literacy.
Therein, we come full circle with this concept.
It seems to me that a lot of books now are made as escapes from reality. Those serve their valuable purposes, but as I come from the world of fine art and I'm invested in social change, they don't serve mine.
That's not what CONSTELIS VOSS does and it can't be read that way.
It is a literary beast that dissects much through the methods of Hall, Joseph Beuys (of FLUXUS) and more. Teachers teaching meaning, but this time, with queer robots in a dystopian capitalist hellscape, fighting a technocracy, stomping a one-dimensionally evil dictator.
To enter the work, one needs to know the author is clever enough to pull all of this off. I realize me saying I'm knowledgeable and dedicated isn't enough. Hence this article.
Readers must also be quite brave, considering I've sold this book off of Alex's butt, but truthfully, I'm peddling media literacy. I'm also creating work critical of institutions, not unlike my inspirations.
Now you know what I'm attempting, here's how I'm doing it:
Characters as symbols that defy their tropes
Metaphors as injustices that get destroyed
Alex is the false protagonist of this work. He's a 90s-era soul shoved into a robot body because he was compatible/disposable, thrust into an unjust future, ripped of his memories—and is forced to grapple with not only himself and his past—but the cyberpunk hell all around him.
He is the slutty bisexual trope, yet he's monogamous. He's the stereotypical trans sex worker, while also being a hardened criminal enforcer, while also being a hero who toppled a sex trafficking ring in 90s NY, while also being a murderer, while also being a friend.
He's an Übermensch who cares, a beneficiary and victim of patriarchy, the queer-coded anime-villain-hero, wrong and right, an AI burdened by human feelings, and he defies all tropes because he's too much.
Every stereotype he has can't stick. The same can be said for the entire cast, that is where the media literacy comes in, and that is what I aim to teach with art.
You will, perhaps, think I've made an error with a trope. It could be something as simple as Diana being a dishwasher in her past-life, which is a stereotype hoisted on Hispanic characters.
But what if she was also a model/singer/actress? What if she's the femme fatale, yet asexual? What if she's unfairly labeled viperous, when she's actually a maternal, caring figure?
What happens when you lodge so much damn human data on a cast? A cast so cohesive that there's no way to write them off, all save the conveniently evil villain?
What happens when you ask readers to sit in the discomfort of stereotypes, but then ask them to see past this? To, in the final act, witness characters rebelling against an entire world order, stereotypes included? Surviving?
Winning?
Never in a million years will real heroes be perfect and so mine aren't. They are earnest, the worst and the best, and they love hard enough to grow. They love hard enough to force their world to grow, too.
That's what heroes do.
When all is said and done, my first offering of lgbt+ sci-fi books is the starter-kit. CONSTELIS VOSS is the blueprint: From tropes, to motifs, to systems-thinking, to garbage data, to society and beyond.
It is the first 3 works in a total of 10. Each character, as there are seven of them, will get their own backstory. I aim to explore their lives on earth before this synthetic, planet-sized ship made in humanity's worst image.
Their perspectives, so very different than the series, will take center-stage.
Therein, we get to another important theme of the work.
Who are we to the ones we love?
Who are we to ourselves?
In this hellish future, every character is filtered through social data, perceived by an omnipotent/busted AI, slapped with tropes, forced down a track and asked to break free.
All of them do, because that's who they always were.
In these prior stories, they are heroes that break free, that love deeply, that suffer greatly and have their own perspectives.
I aim to write a series of novels that intersect for just that purpose.
What happens in Alex's backstory will have events referenced in others. His perspective of, say, an event with the bottle-blonde barbie once named Percy will look very different on her end.
While he is a belabored autistic trans man and trauma victim who finds her communication style cruel, she will think she's helping.
It's all about perspectives. Who are we to the people we love? Who are we to ourselves?
Like real people, these characters are lonely in their contexts. Unlike real people, they are uniquely capable of extreme empathy, loving despite differences, and challenging themselves to be better.
They hold hope even when all hope should be lost. They create hope for each other, by risking all to protect love, even breaking reality to do just that.
That is what I want people to do, and so, I teach by writing.
Hoist FLUXUS and Hall inspirations about semiotics on all of these future installments, and you get a work hard to categorize. A work made to create empathy, ask questions and perhaps even talk about some very real lives.
One of which is mine, another of which belongs to someone I love dearly.
I write stories to teach and make sense of people, systems and society
I also write stories to make sense of pain
If I were to explain how many sorts of lives I've lived, what I've struggled with, and why it's so important for me to write this work, we'd be here for hours. I will try to be as brief as I can.
I'm an autistic bisexual bipolar trans man with a teaching background. I've won an award for my teaching, have a fine arts background and am skilled across various art and technical disciplines.
I've also been forced to be the single competent adult in the room, despite being disabled, exploited and abused throughout most of my life.
My fascination with making sense of the nonsensical, cruel social reality we live in comes from trying to understand it, as someone not aware they were autistic, and suffering reality's cruel fiction for decades. I came out stronger, stranger and kinder for it.
One has to be kind when they suffer through things that would kill most people. It's either that or jaded, and I haven't yet lost hope in mankind.
I haven't yet lost hope that we can learn to create less flavors of "Alex" in the world, as he's a self-insert, for all his damage. A lost thing I pressed upon to grow, as I grew into myself.
It's not a coincidence I came out as trans when releasing CONSTELIS VOSS, as it's a work that comes from my guts.
It's also not a coincidence that I harpooned unjust social systems in this work when I did, as I had steeped for years and was only free of them then, and worried about what would come to pass. For all of us.
And then there's you: the open-minded reader
A reader that I hope cares about people
CONSTELIS VOSS is a warning. A technological hell built not just on analyzing symbols and critiquing media concepts, but acts to address social garbage as well.
As I have a freelance tech-creative background, I thought on what could someday happen, should we keep on with our current chaotic tailspin through unfettered capitalist hell-world.
Currently, we live in a world of systems that benefit few. We live in garbage, created by monoculture, force-fed for forever, because those in power benefit when they suck everyone else dry like parasites.
You are someone who cares and thinks that sucks. At least, I hope you are. Someone who wants a better world, and knows that weeding through our current predicament—though challenging—is necessary.
But knowing a thing and acting upon a thing are very different.
For that reason, this work exists, as art propaganda. I hope that, upon reading it, you will ask questions not only of systems, symbols and perspectives, but of yourself.
Of what you know, what you don't, and what things mean. Not solely in the written work, but out there, all around you.
This work is for the brave reader who wishes to challenge themselves and face the world head-on, in vast humility and love. Who wish to think and act.
It's also for the messy marginalized folx who are stuck where I've been stuck. Who have suffered, made mistakes, and don't yet know that by surviving the hell of a cruel, absurd world...they are true heroes.
You are the missing piece in this work that is still yet being written. I want you to see yourself in its pages, question everything and carry it with you. It's a tool.
And maybe, if you're particularly engaged, you'd like to write a story in this universe of unlimited ideas. I would love to see your interpretations.
In fact, I'd even help you make them shine, because that's what it's all about: growing and making, together.
K. Leigh is an ex-freelancer, full-time author, and weirdo artist. Read their lgbt+ sci-fi books, connect on Twitter, visit their site, or send them an email if you’d like to work together. 🌈 🏳️⚧️
