That Name is a Tragedeigh (And That’s the Point)

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way.

Renesmee.

The name that launched a thousand jokes while people tried to remember how many vowels are legally allowed to exist for one child.

Is it realistic? Not remotely. Do I smile every single time I hear it? Absolutely.

Because here’s the thing: fiction has never signed a contract promising to behave itself.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve convinced ourselves that every book should hold up under real-world scrutiny. Meanwhile, dragons are flying overhead, vampires are sparkling in direct sunlight and someone just got married after making eye contact for seventeen minutes.

Let’s maybe suspend our reality for five minutes.

(And before anyone sharpens their metaphorical pitchforks: this is fantasy. The whole point is we don’t live there. Read what makes you happy. Love what you love. If your favorite book contains magical wolves, improbable romances or names assembled from Scrabble tiles, I support your journey.)

The Shark Scene™

If you’ve read Does It Hurt?, you already know exactly what I’m talking about.

If you haven’t… congratulations on the peaceful life you’ve led.

Without spoiling anything, let’s just say there’s a scene involving a shark that had me setting the book down to stare thoughtfully into the “camera” like I’m on an episode of The Office.

Could it happen? Maybe. Would I make the same decisions? Respectfully, absolutely the fuck not.

But that’s the same magic trick fiction pulls on us. We willingly climb aboard the Roller Coaster of Questionable Choices because it’s thrilling to ask, “what if someone actually does this?”

Life rewards caution. Stories reward curiosity. Those are two very different things.

Not Everything is Phallic

College taught me many things.

One of them was that if you stare at literature long enough, someone will eventually argue that every object is secretly symbolic.

A tower? Phallic. A sword? Definitely phallic. A tree? Believe it or not… somehow phallic.

At some point I wanted to raise my hand and ask, “What if it’s just a lamp?”

Sometimes the curtains are blue because they’re blue. Sometimes the spooky house exists because haunted architecture is fun. Sometimes the author just said, “it was raining.”

As a writer, I can confirm that occasionally the symbolism is incredibly deep. Other times I just thought the mushrooms were neat.

Even My Stories Don’t Make Sense

I’m guilty of this too.

There are details in my own stories that would immediately fall apart if someone tried them in real life. Would that spaceship actually function? Would that fantasy creature obey the laws of biology? Would two characters survive that sequence of increasingly terrible life decisions? 

Let’s call it “narrative optimism.” In reality, no, it wouldn’t work, but I’m okay with that, because stories aren’t instruction manuals, they’re playgrounds. They’re laboratories where we get to ask impossible questions and chase impossible answers from the safety of a comfy chair. 

That’s a gift.

Reading has always been one of the safest ways to explore dangerous, impossible, hilarious, or completely impractical ideas. We can survive shipwrecks, solve magical mysteries, argue with dragons, and somehow accept a character named Renesmee without questioning our sanity.

None of it has to make perfect sense. It just has to make us feel something.

So embrace the weird names, question the shark, and for the love of all that is holy, leave the lamp alone.

And remember that escapism isn’t a flaw, it’s one of storytelling’s greatest strengths. Especially when you’ve somehow finished every episode of Love Island and reality has become just a little too… real.