While We're Twins (Episode 14) Transcript
The audio version of this episode can be found here.
Hannah: A movie about the shifty and harsh life of the seven friends Rasputin.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea then we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Rachel Kulik.
Rachel: Hello.
Hannah: Hi. I'm so happy we could have you on the podcast. When I first started planning this, you were on my list of people to ask, because you had such interesting things to say about literature and about literature for youth. And specifically today what I want to talk with you about is about literature for or by or about folks on the autism spectrum. I know autistic representation is really important to you, so maybe tell us a little bit about-- Maybe for somebody who hasn't even really thought about this, what does this mean for you, and what are maybe some examples of why it's important?
Rachel: Yeah. So I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 18. I didn't get a diagnosis previous to that legitimately because I'm a girl. I was in and out of therapy and they gave me a million other diagnoses and they told my parents like, "She can't be autistic. She's a girl." Yeah. So welcome to the 90s, my friends. But there's a huge push now with autistic women specifically, because one of the things is that we tend to mask our symptoms better than men do. So that's part of the reason why we've been so underrepresented in our community. So I have always felt really passionate about reading books that are about and by people in the communities that I'm reading about. Because as a kid, I always wanted to read books so that I could learn about other people. I feel like the best way to learn about people is to hear from personal experience, if that makes sense. There's a whole push right now in the publishing industry called "own voices," which is basically just that, people from marginalized communities writing characters in those marginalized communities. I've been like terrified to read any books about autistic characters, because I'm so picky about it. Recently I decided to kind of take the plunge and give it a chance, because I think autism is something that's very different than other underrepresented communities, because our brain is literally set up completely different-- not completely, but differently than neurotypical people. And I like to explain it to people like, if you think, like, a Mac computer and a Windows computer, they both exist in the same world. Right? They both are created to do the same thing, which is survive, but they do them in very different ways, and one is not significantly worse or better than the other. It's just whatever you're used to. So that's why I personally identify as an autistic person rather than a person with autism, because I feel like it defines my experience. So when it comes to autistic representation in literature, I tend to only read books by autistic people when they're about autistic people, because otherwise it doesn't feel genuine to me.
Hannah: That is a newer trend, to really be pushing for these stories about these marginalized communities to be written by members of them, so it's not somebody else kind of-- Even no matter how well researched, there's something that does get a little bit lost in trying to communicate that. I think it's really important to have these voices heard as genuinely as possible because they haven't been for a very long time.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Hannah: Were there any stories that you saw or media or story representations of autistic people that you saw as a kid that you think informed your... that either resonated with you, not knowing where you were yet, or that defined your perception of what autism was?
Rachel: As a kid, I don't know. I don't know that there was a lot out when I was a kid about that. I think that any autistic representation when I was a kid was geared more towards autistic people who also are intellectually disabled. While there's nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong with my intellectually disabled brothers and sisters, that's not who I am. So I think the closest I could come was I found a lot of representation in Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books, because she was so smart. She was really good in school, but really didn't have a lot of friends. She knew who her friends were, but like ... For me, I was like, "Oh, that's me. I'm the girl who like sits and reads books all day and really has no interest in anything else," so, whether autistic or not is up in the air. But that as a kid was definitely probably my closest relation.
Hannah: We'll obviously give you some time at the end of the episode to share any story you want, but I really would love to ask now that you've kind of started delving into some of these "own voices" stories. Are there autistic authors you would especially suggest people check out?
Rachel: Yes. So if you like romance novels, there's an author named Helen Huang and she is fantastic. She writes "own voices" novels. They're open door romance, so for those of you who don't know what that means, that means there's kind of some explicit scenes in there. It basically means the bedroom door's open, and she has two books out. One is called The Kiss Quotient. One is called The Bride Test. Both of those feature autistic women as the main characters, and she is also Asian. So it's kind of like ... you get like a triple whammy there of marginalized groups. Then I just recently finished a book by an author named Ada Hoffmann called The Outside. So if you're interested in speculative fiction or like very hard sci-fi, the main character is an autistic female doctor figuring out space stuff. And I'm trying to think... There's another author, his name is Yoon Ha Lee. He is transgender and also autistic. I'm reading one of his books for middle grade readers right now, the main character's not autistic, but if you're interested in autistic authors, he is another one to check out.
Hannah: Awesome. I'll definitely be adding all of these to my reading list. Cause I'm, yeah, always ... I've been making such a more concentrated effort in recent years to really seek out voices that have not been represented, especially in publishing, to the extent that they are today. And I am always, always looking for more to add to that list, whether I'm part of that community or not. It's something that I think is so important. So I'm so glad that you're able to give us a couple of really solid recommendations for folks who maybe want to check some of that out.
Rachel: Yeah. And definitely check out the ... it's #ownvoices. It's typically on Twitter, you can reach out and on Thursdays there's things called ask a librarian, where you just hashtag #askalibrarian. Librarians from all over the world will respond to you, and you can just say, "I'm looking for #ownvoices about Latinx characters," or whatever, and they usually have some great recommendations.
Jennie: Nice.
Hannah: Oh man, I'll have to just get a whole list of what I want to search for, because that sounds amazing.
Rachel: It's dangerous. I once was like, "I'm looking for books that are like The Bachelor," and I got literally 20 recommendations from all over the country. I was like, "This is so bad."
Hannah: All right. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us a little bit about this, Rachel, and this aspect of storytelling. And we are with that, going to jump into our story, which as a reminder, our plot is, "A movie about the shifty and harsh life of the seven friends Rasputin." Usually because of the way that the generator works it sometimes pulls things in odd combinations and we miss grammar and different pronouns go the wrong way. But, and usually I tweak them a little bit to make them coherent English.
Jennie: Maybe adding an "of" after "seven friends."
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Or the fact that they all apparently share one life. Little things like that. But this time I was like, I feel like I need to keep this as is. This is just its own beast, I think.
Jennie: Are they all named Rasputin, or is their group of seven named Rasputin?
Rachel: Are they like different like moods? Does he become a different Rasputin as he changes mood?
Jennie: Does he have DID?
Rachel: Yeah.
Hannah: Yeah. Or you can lean into the magical elements of the Rasputin narrative, and he could literally maybe literally do a shapeshifting kind of thing.
Jennie: Well, that would make his life shifty for sure.
Hannah: The shifty life. That would explain how they all have one life.
Rachel: Now I'm just imagining him physically shifting, like sci-fi-esque, like he just physically shifts around the room into seven different people.
Hannah: Yeah. Well now the word shifty is in there, I feel like I have to go with that route. He literally becomes different people. So the seven friends. Are we saying-- are those friends to himself?
Rachel: The only true friend Rasputin ever had was himself.
Hannah: Was himself, His six other Rasputins. So is this like a cheery buddy friendship comedy, but it's all Rasputin?
Jennie: Rasputin sitting at the table with the newspaper. And then another Rasputin with the apron on cooking breakfast, and another Rasputin out mowing the lawn.
Rachel: I can't decide if it would be funnier for Rasputin to keep the same like clothing and facial expressions in every single one, or if it's like one Rasputin just sits and looks absolutely terrifying. One has like a man bun and plays the drums.
Hannah: Yes. This is officially a movie. Usually this leaves it pretty open what medium this is, but this is a movie. So are these all being played by the same actor or is it multiple actors? Is this James McAvoy from Split, or is this seven different-- I kind of am digging the seven very different actors who are completely different people.
Rachel: They look nothing alike. There is a brown haired terrifying Rasputin. Then there's like a red head Rasputin with curly hair. Then there ...
Jennie: Yeah, could be flower child Rasputin, and then like female Rasputin, you got to have one of them in there.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Jennie: Grandma Rasputin.
Rachel: This is such a weird sideways angle into this.
Jennie: One of them is a dog.
Rachel: Okay. So all seven Rasputins, they all live together in a house. Do they all have different rooms or do they all have to share the same room?
Hannah: I'm trying to figure out if more than one of them could exist at the same time. Does he project a piece of himself using his magic to sit across from him and talk to him? Does he do that, but that's very magically draining? Or does he just change his own body shape from person to person as needed? And is he doing this on purpose or is this an accidental-
Jennie: Interesting. Okay. So Rasputin, as in Anastasia's Rasputin, right?
Hannah: Yes.
Rachel: Correct.
Jennie: I'm trying to recall the original story with him. He's keeping himself alive, artificially, magically, because he needs to get revenge on the family. Right?
Rachel: Are you thinking historical Rasputin or Rasputin from the movie Anastasia Rasputin?
Jennie: Both. The myth and the fact, like what's his original deal?
Rachel: His original deal-- I love the Russian Revolution. I mean, I don't love it, but I mean I'm obsessed with it.
Jennie: That revolution was just so great.
Hannah: Not "in favor of," necessarily.
Rachel: "My favorite revolution happens to be the Russian." No. So basically the historical aspect is Alexei, which is the youngest and the only son of the Tsar and the Tsarina, he had hemophilia but they had to hide it from the Russian people because they didn't want them to think that the Tsarevich would be weak. So but as he gets older, it's more severe because it's one of those bloodline hemophilia where it's like that because there's so much inbreeding. So basically Alexei has this really terrible fall or something like that. And somehow the Tsarina, Alexandria, gets connected to Rasputin who says, "I'm a man of God. I could heal him." And so she basically becomes convinced that Rasputin is the only way that her son can survive. But on the outside it looks like she's having this really creepy man come into her house all the time, because they won't tell the people why he's there. So then there's all these rumors that the Tsarina is having an affair with him, because Rasputin is actually in this weird cult version of Christianity that requires him to sin as much as possible to be closest to God. He's off having orgies and stuff like that. So there's just all this crazy stuff. Then when they finally tried to kill him, it took eight different ways of killing him for him to actually die. He had to be drowned and shot. Then they found his body under the bridge that they drowned him in and he wasn't dead, but then he died of cold or something like that. So he's just wild.
Jennie: Okay. So I'm wondering if him being seven of him isn't somehow a result of all of that shenanigans.
Hannah: So, it's him post-his death.
Jennie: I had a reason for asking that, it's because so he's like his seven different selves all split up and he's just trying to exist, and this is the only way he can figure out how to do it is the seven individuals of himself. What do you think?
Rachel: Maybe the reason he had to split is because he had to die all those different ways.
Hannah: He split every time he died.
Rachel: Yeah, so each time he died, he created another personality.
Hannah: Some of the legends are saying that he was killed seven times.
Rachel: Shut up, what?
Hannah: For real, like one of the ones that I'm finding right now, one of his number of deaths is seven. So, this could be like modern day. This could be before like-
Jennie: He can't figure out how to die all the way. So he's like, "Okay, that's it. This is enough of me. We're not dying anymore. We're just going to live like this now." His pronounces are "we/us/them."
Rachel: Oh my gosh. So he's just living on-- He decides, "This is clearly not working for me. The life that I have right now, I keep being killed." And he goes off with his selves that he's splintered off to save himself with.
Jennie: Right. Eventually immigrates to America or something, starting over.
Rachel: Yeah. The revolution was just too much for him. He had to get out.
Hannah: Yeah. That clearly was not working for him.
Rachel: I really need like some flashbacks to like him of ... like the big thing in the 30s when everybody was claiming to be Anastasia, and I really need flashbacks of him being like, "Why do you guys care about her so much? She was boring. She was vastly uninteresting."
Jennie: Because there's seven of him. He would develop seven different ways. And that's why they're they're so different personalities.
Rachel: The tone of this feels like, yeah. Cozy ensemble.
Jennie: With just a little bit of maybe existential horror layered over that.
Hannah: Well, and I'm trying to figure out if we need to incorporate political aspects into this, like around coming out of the revolution, how Rasputin is responding to the rest of the world.
Rachel: Rasputin doesn't know how he feels about Vladimir Putin. Like he admires his strength, but at the same time, it's just a little excessive.
Hannah: This feels a little bit like the movie-- it didn't turn out to be like this, but it feels a little bit like the movie I thought Jojo Rabbit was going to be. It feels like that sort of like weird, charming, funny magic realism version of something was very dark and grim. And I'm really intrigued by this. We are at the point where I'm going to give us a name.
Jennie: A title.
Hannah: Oh my gosh. The title is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The title is While We're Twins.
Jennie: Yes. It's perfect.
Hannah: I have never seen it match so beautifully. Okay. So maybe, with twin specifically, he's obviously septuplets. But maybe it's a thing where there are seven of him, but only two can exist at a given time.
Jennie: Okay, I like that.
Hannah: So he's twins at various points, so he can bring people in and out--
Jennie: All the different combinations of him, does anybody know how to map that? How many combinations of two does seven have?
Rachel: 21.
Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they all get mentioned twice. Okay, so they're 21 different combos. Is this a series of vignettes? Is this 21 short movies about the 21 different Rasputin combos and their lives in the world?
Rachel: Each would be like two minutes.
Hannah: Yeah. In a movie you've got, give it a good hour and a half, each one gets a couple minutes, and yeah, that's about five minutes a piece, right?
Jennie: And each vignette would tell a different part of the story. Some would be in the past.
Hannah: And you don't realize until partway through what has happened, you just keep seeing these stories about these different characters and slowly, piece by piece, this weird, weird unraveling comes out.
Jennie: Which ones would he argue with? Which two would argue, and which two would be best buds?
Hannah: Which two just go off on their own and don't really interact? They're just like, "We have our own thing."
Jennie: Are any of the peers romantic?
Hannah: Oh, that's fascinating.
Jennie: Narcissistic, like, "Darling, you're looking beautiful today." "Why, yes, thank you. I am."
Hannah: And that way you could touch on, if you did want to play around with any of the darker aspects of it, you could do it for an episode or two, maybe we have an episode, or a vignette or two, maybe we have one who is very deeply troubled by this.
Jennie: This isn't something that I think should be overt with it at all, but just a suggestion of a possible facet. So, right. So we just said Rasputin was part of this cult that said you have to sin more to be closer to God, right? There's seven of them. What if each of them takes after a different deadly sin?
Hannah: Oh, that's fun.
Rachel: Oh, that would be so good.
Jennie: Right. So not necessarily overt. So maybe the flower child is like the sloth one, like, "It's cool, man." Then the one who likes-
Rachel: You've got maybe the last one there who has been killed multiple times. Maybe he's the wrath one, because he's had to go through being murdered multiple times, and he's just holding onto all this anger from how badly he was treated.
Jennie: Maybe, maybe.
Hannah: He should get mad at all of the others for just existing.
Jennie: Instead of getting a death, he just got more of himself. Go away.
Rachel: And he's having the most trouble adapting to the life afterwards because he's just so upset that this is where this went.
Jennie: He lives for the times where none of the other six are there. "I have the house to myself. Thank goodness." Then flower child shows up and is like, "Hey, you want a joint, man?" "No, go away."
Rachel: Oh yeah. And I agree. I like it not being overt, but just being like a subtle, like, this is just a way to differentiate them in really interesting ways.
Jennie: A way to flavor the different personalities. An Easter egg for people to pick up on.
Rachel: Oh my gosh, this is so good, guys. So good. This is perfect. I would probably buy this movie.
Hannah: I would too. This would be so interesting. It'd be just so much fun to write, so much fun to play with. We are actually right at the 15 minute mark of talking about this, so I think we are going to wrap it up because I think, yeah... I want to see some of these vignettes, like somebody please write a couple of these. Write Envy Rasputin and Sloth Rasputin going shopping. I so want this, and you can set it during different times throughout Rasputin's actual history. So where people are unsure for a while where and when this is actually set, because it seems to be the same characters, but we're in a different time period, like 40 years later.
Jennie: What are the different occupations he tries to support himself? How does he go with the landlord who said only one person can live here.
Rachel: We do. I really need Rasputin in West Germany. Like that's what I really need someone to write for me, is Rasputin in west Germany, just like glaring at Stalin. That's what I need.
Hannah: Yes. Oh, man. There's so many.
Jennie: You could go totally political with this. You could do adventure, like exploring new worlds. You could go into the future and put them on a space ship. He could colonize other planets with himself.
Hannah: The beautiful thing about this is that you don't like have to nail down and do like exactly one of them. You could have all of them and have them kind of cohere together in the end.
Jennie: Oh, my gosh. I love that.
Hannah: Oh, man. Well, we're going to toss this over to our listeners to please, please. Oh my gosh. Do something with this. Just too fascinating for me.
Jennie: We need details about these personalities and how they developed, which ones came first, from which death, and ...
Hannah: Yeah. Do the deaths impact like who it is? So interesting.
Jennie: There's many questions. Interesting ones you can do with this. And we want to see all of it.
Hannah: Yes. Yes. All 21 vignettes.
Jennie: It's going to be like the best short story collection ever.
Hannah: I should just put this up on the blog is like, which ones have been written so far? Which combinations has somebody written? See if we can get all 21 of them and release a little anthology.
Jennie: We can get the episode on the writing prompts Reddit, right?
Hannah: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's so interesting. Listeners, you know what to do. This is so rich and so interesting. So, I really hope we get some of these back. That'd be so fascinating. Before we close out today we're going to go ahead and we're going to do our typical thing and share a story that we think our listeners should check out. This time around we're actually going to start with Jennie. So, Jennie, go ahead and tell us what story would you like to recommend to our listeners?
Jennie: I'm not actually suggesting a story. I'm suggesting a place to find stories. If you like short horror fiction, creepy short stories. I highly recommend, whether you're Redditor or not, to check out on Reddit, the no sleep subreddit, just reddit.com/r/nosleep. If you've never been to Reddit before, that's how you get there. The reason I like this area, it's a place for original horror stories, and the first rule is that everything on no sleep is real, even if it isn't. So, that's the way they're all written. They're all first person accounts or transcripts of recordings of things that have happened. I've just come across some incredible writing on there, some truly creepy stuff. They also have a podcast available of some of their best stories being read out loud, if you'd rather listen. But if you like horror fiction, that's a great resource for you.
Hannah: This week I am going to recommend another podcast. It is a fiction podcast that was one of the earliest podcasts I got into. It's called The Bright Sessions. The premise of it is that it's a series ... the episodes are short. It's a series of conversations between a therapist and her patients. As the story goes on, we learn more and more about these patients. We learn that it gets into some Scifi. It plays with their relationships a little bit and ends up growing into this really fascinating story. I don't want to say too much. I don't want to spoil too much, but it really takes an interesting turn. I think it's really ... I like that audio fiction is coming back. I like that radio plays are coming back in the form of podcasts. So if you haven't checked it out yet, The Bright Sessions is absolutely worth a listen, and yeah, check it out. It's super fun. Rachel, we're going to toss it over to you. What is a story from anywhere of any type that you would like to recommend to our listeners?
Rachel: So I'm going to go kind of with this vibe, this Rasputin vibe that we have going on. There is an amazing mini series on Netflix called The Last Czars. It is both documentary and period drama. They kind of mix it up so you get the historians talking about it, but then you have actors playing the people, but it's not really recreations. You get really invested in these like "characters". It's so amazing. I think there's six episodes. I flew through it, but I'm also on a huge Russia kick this year. So I've been reading books about Putin and all this kind of stuff this year, which we talk about on my podcast. So if people are interested in that, it's called Checking Out. So you can hear me talk more about Russia there. But yeah. So The Last Czars on Netflix is amazing and well worth the six hours while you're in quarantine.
Hannah: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Rachel. Is there, you mentioned it briefly, but yeah, is there anything you would like to plug for yourself, social media, podcast, YouTube channel, whatever you want to put out there for any listeners who might be interested to find the work you're doing?
Rachel: Yeah. So I have a good reads, which is GoodReads.com/RachelReading14. And then I run a podcast with one of my best friends, Hannah. We both read pretty voraciously, both. She read 300 books last year and I read about 127-ish. So we both just come on twice a month and just talk about what we're reading. We try to come up with maybe either a book or a topic to discuss. So you are welcome to check that out. The podcast is called Checking Out. You can find it on basically any podcast area. I think that's it for me.
Hannah: Awesome. Again, thank you so much for joining us. This was a ride and I'm so glad you got to be here to be part of this.
Rachel: This is so fun. Absolutely. Anytime.
Hannah: All right, folks, that is our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or any of those 21 vignettes, please email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the pearl is found in mud.
Hannah: A movie about the shifty and harsh life of the seven friends Rasputin.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea then we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Rachel Kulik.
Rachel: Hello.
Hannah: Hi. I'm so happy we could have you on the podcast. When I first started planning this, you were on my list of people to ask, because you had such interesting things to say about literature and about literature for youth. And specifically today what I want to talk with you about is about literature for or by or about folks on the autism spectrum. I know autistic representation is really important to you, so maybe tell us a little bit about-- Maybe for somebody who hasn't even really thought about this, what does this mean for you, and what are maybe some examples of why it's important?
Rachel: Yeah. So I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 18. I didn't get a diagnosis previous to that legitimately because I'm a girl. I was in and out of therapy and they gave me a million other diagnoses and they told my parents like, "She can't be autistic. She's a girl." Yeah. So welcome to the 90s, my friends. But there's a huge push now with autistic women specifically, because one of the things is that we tend to mask our symptoms better than men do. So that's part of the reason why we've been so underrepresented in our community. So I have always felt really passionate about reading books that are about and by people in the communities that I'm reading about. Because as a kid, I always wanted to read books so that I could learn about other people. I feel like the best way to learn about people is to hear from personal experience, if that makes sense. There's a whole push right now in the publishing industry called "own voices," which is basically just that, people from marginalized communities writing characters in those marginalized communities. I've been like terrified to read any books about autistic characters, because I'm so picky about it. Recently I decided to kind of take the plunge and give it a chance, because I think autism is something that's very different than other underrepresented communities, because our brain is literally set up completely different-- not completely, but differently than neurotypical people. And I like to explain it to people like, if you think, like, a Mac computer and a Windows computer, they both exist in the same world. Right? They both are created to do the same thing, which is survive, but they do them in very different ways, and one is not significantly worse or better than the other. It's just whatever you're used to. So that's why I personally identify as an autistic person rather than a person with autism, because I feel like it defines my experience. So when it comes to autistic representation in literature, I tend to only read books by autistic people when they're about autistic people, because otherwise it doesn't feel genuine to me.
Hannah: That is a newer trend, to really be pushing for these stories about these marginalized communities to be written by members of them, so it's not somebody else kind of-- Even no matter how well researched, there's something that does get a little bit lost in trying to communicate that. I think it's really important to have these voices heard as genuinely as possible because they haven't been for a very long time.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Hannah: Were there any stories that you saw or media or story representations of autistic people that you saw as a kid that you think informed your... that either resonated with you, not knowing where you were yet, or that defined your perception of what autism was?
Rachel: As a kid, I don't know. I don't know that there was a lot out when I was a kid about that. I think that any autistic representation when I was a kid was geared more towards autistic people who also are intellectually disabled. While there's nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong with my intellectually disabled brothers and sisters, that's not who I am. So I think the closest I could come was I found a lot of representation in Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books, because she was so smart. She was really good in school, but really didn't have a lot of friends. She knew who her friends were, but like ... For me, I was like, "Oh, that's me. I'm the girl who like sits and reads books all day and really has no interest in anything else," so, whether autistic or not is up in the air. But that as a kid was definitely probably my closest relation.
Hannah: We'll obviously give you some time at the end of the episode to share any story you want, but I really would love to ask now that you've kind of started delving into some of these "own voices" stories. Are there autistic authors you would especially suggest people check out?
Rachel: Yes. So if you like romance novels, there's an author named Helen Huang and she is fantastic. She writes "own voices" novels. They're open door romance, so for those of you who don't know what that means, that means there's kind of some explicit scenes in there. It basically means the bedroom door's open, and she has two books out. One is called The Kiss Quotient. One is called The Bride Test. Both of those feature autistic women as the main characters, and she is also Asian. So it's kind of like ... you get like a triple whammy there of marginalized groups. Then I just recently finished a book by an author named Ada Hoffmann called The Outside. So if you're interested in speculative fiction or like very hard sci-fi, the main character is an autistic female doctor figuring out space stuff. And I'm trying to think... There's another author, his name is Yoon Ha Lee. He is transgender and also autistic. I'm reading one of his books for middle grade readers right now, the main character's not autistic, but if you're interested in autistic authors, he is another one to check out.
Hannah: Awesome. I'll definitely be adding all of these to my reading list. Cause I'm, yeah, always ... I've been making such a more concentrated effort in recent years to really seek out voices that have not been represented, especially in publishing, to the extent that they are today. And I am always, always looking for more to add to that list, whether I'm part of that community or not. It's something that I think is so important. So I'm so glad that you're able to give us a couple of really solid recommendations for folks who maybe want to check some of that out.
Rachel: Yeah. And definitely check out the ... it's #ownvoices. It's typically on Twitter, you can reach out and on Thursdays there's things called ask a librarian, where you just hashtag #askalibrarian. Librarians from all over the world will respond to you, and you can just say, "I'm looking for #ownvoices about Latinx characters," or whatever, and they usually have some great recommendations.
Jennie: Nice.
Hannah: Oh man, I'll have to just get a whole list of what I want to search for, because that sounds amazing.
Rachel: It's dangerous. I once was like, "I'm looking for books that are like The Bachelor," and I got literally 20 recommendations from all over the country. I was like, "This is so bad."
Hannah: All right. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us a little bit about this, Rachel, and this aspect of storytelling. And we are with that, going to jump into our story, which as a reminder, our plot is, "A movie about the shifty and harsh life of the seven friends Rasputin." Usually because of the way that the generator works it sometimes pulls things in odd combinations and we miss grammar and different pronouns go the wrong way. But, and usually I tweak them a little bit to make them coherent English.
Jennie: Maybe adding an "of" after "seven friends."
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Or the fact that they all apparently share one life. Little things like that. But this time I was like, I feel like I need to keep this as is. This is just its own beast, I think.
Jennie: Are they all named Rasputin, or is their group of seven named Rasputin?
Rachel: Are they like different like moods? Does he become a different Rasputin as he changes mood?
Jennie: Does he have DID?
Rachel: Yeah.
Hannah: Yeah. Or you can lean into the magical elements of the Rasputin narrative, and he could literally maybe literally do a shapeshifting kind of thing.
Jennie: Well, that would make his life shifty for sure.
Hannah: The shifty life. That would explain how they all have one life.
Rachel: Now I'm just imagining him physically shifting, like sci-fi-esque, like he just physically shifts around the room into seven different people.
Hannah: Yeah. Well now the word shifty is in there, I feel like I have to go with that route. He literally becomes different people. So the seven friends. Are we saying-- are those friends to himself?
Rachel: The only true friend Rasputin ever had was himself.
Hannah: Was himself, His six other Rasputins. So is this like a cheery buddy friendship comedy, but it's all Rasputin?
Jennie: Rasputin sitting at the table with the newspaper. And then another Rasputin with the apron on cooking breakfast, and another Rasputin out mowing the lawn.
Rachel: I can't decide if it would be funnier for Rasputin to keep the same like clothing and facial expressions in every single one, or if it's like one Rasputin just sits and looks absolutely terrifying. One has like a man bun and plays the drums.
Hannah: Yes. This is officially a movie. Usually this leaves it pretty open what medium this is, but this is a movie. So are these all being played by the same actor or is it multiple actors? Is this James McAvoy from Split, or is this seven different-- I kind of am digging the seven very different actors who are completely different people.
Rachel: They look nothing alike. There is a brown haired terrifying Rasputin. Then there's like a red head Rasputin with curly hair. Then there ...
Jennie: Yeah, could be flower child Rasputin, and then like female Rasputin, you got to have one of them in there.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Jennie: Grandma Rasputin.
Rachel: This is such a weird sideways angle into this.
Jennie: One of them is a dog.
Rachel: Okay. So all seven Rasputins, they all live together in a house. Do they all have different rooms or do they all have to share the same room?
Hannah: I'm trying to figure out if more than one of them could exist at the same time. Does he project a piece of himself using his magic to sit across from him and talk to him? Does he do that, but that's very magically draining? Or does he just change his own body shape from person to person as needed? And is he doing this on purpose or is this an accidental-
Jennie: Interesting. Okay. So Rasputin, as in Anastasia's Rasputin, right?
Hannah: Yes.
Rachel: Correct.
Jennie: I'm trying to recall the original story with him. He's keeping himself alive, artificially, magically, because he needs to get revenge on the family. Right?
Rachel: Are you thinking historical Rasputin or Rasputin from the movie Anastasia Rasputin?
Jennie: Both. The myth and the fact, like what's his original deal?
Rachel: His original deal-- I love the Russian Revolution. I mean, I don't love it, but I mean I'm obsessed with it.
Jennie: That revolution was just so great.
Hannah: Not "in favor of," necessarily.
Rachel: "My favorite revolution happens to be the Russian." No. So basically the historical aspect is Alexei, which is the youngest and the only son of the Tsar and the Tsarina, he had hemophilia but they had to hide it from the Russian people because they didn't want them to think that the Tsarevich would be weak. So but as he gets older, it's more severe because it's one of those bloodline hemophilia where it's like that because there's so much inbreeding. So basically Alexei has this really terrible fall or something like that. And somehow the Tsarina, Alexandria, gets connected to Rasputin who says, "I'm a man of God. I could heal him." And so she basically becomes convinced that Rasputin is the only way that her son can survive. But on the outside it looks like she's having this really creepy man come into her house all the time, because they won't tell the people why he's there. So then there's all these rumors that the Tsarina is having an affair with him, because Rasputin is actually in this weird cult version of Christianity that requires him to sin as much as possible to be closest to God. He's off having orgies and stuff like that. So there's just all this crazy stuff. Then when they finally tried to kill him, it took eight different ways of killing him for him to actually die. He had to be drowned and shot. Then they found his body under the bridge that they drowned him in and he wasn't dead, but then he died of cold or something like that. So he's just wild.
Jennie: Okay. So I'm wondering if him being seven of him isn't somehow a result of all of that shenanigans.
Hannah: So, it's him post-his death.
Jennie: I had a reason for asking that, it's because so he's like his seven different selves all split up and he's just trying to exist, and this is the only way he can figure out how to do it is the seven individuals of himself. What do you think?
Rachel: Maybe the reason he had to split is because he had to die all those different ways.
Hannah: He split every time he died.
Rachel: Yeah, so each time he died, he created another personality.
Hannah: Some of the legends are saying that he was killed seven times.
Rachel: Shut up, what?
Hannah: For real, like one of the ones that I'm finding right now, one of his number of deaths is seven. So, this could be like modern day. This could be before like-
Jennie: He can't figure out how to die all the way. So he's like, "Okay, that's it. This is enough of me. We're not dying anymore. We're just going to live like this now." His pronounces are "we/us/them."
Rachel: Oh my gosh. So he's just living on-- He decides, "This is clearly not working for me. The life that I have right now, I keep being killed." And he goes off with his selves that he's splintered off to save himself with.
Jennie: Right. Eventually immigrates to America or something, starting over.
Rachel: Yeah. The revolution was just too much for him. He had to get out.
Hannah: Yeah. That clearly was not working for him.
Rachel: I really need like some flashbacks to like him of ... like the big thing in the 30s when everybody was claiming to be Anastasia, and I really need flashbacks of him being like, "Why do you guys care about her so much? She was boring. She was vastly uninteresting."
Jennie: Because there's seven of him. He would develop seven different ways. And that's why they're they're so different personalities.
Rachel: The tone of this feels like, yeah. Cozy ensemble.
Jennie: With just a little bit of maybe existential horror layered over that.
Hannah: Well, and I'm trying to figure out if we need to incorporate political aspects into this, like around coming out of the revolution, how Rasputin is responding to the rest of the world.
Rachel: Rasputin doesn't know how he feels about Vladimir Putin. Like he admires his strength, but at the same time, it's just a little excessive.
Hannah: This feels a little bit like the movie-- it didn't turn out to be like this, but it feels a little bit like the movie I thought Jojo Rabbit was going to be. It feels like that sort of like weird, charming, funny magic realism version of something was very dark and grim. And I'm really intrigued by this. We are at the point where I'm going to give us a name.
Jennie: A title.
Hannah: Oh my gosh. The title is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The title is While We're Twins.
Jennie: Yes. It's perfect.
Hannah: I have never seen it match so beautifully. Okay. So maybe, with twin specifically, he's obviously septuplets. But maybe it's a thing where there are seven of him, but only two can exist at a given time.
Jennie: Okay, I like that.
Hannah: So he's twins at various points, so he can bring people in and out--
Jennie: All the different combinations of him, does anybody know how to map that? How many combinations of two does seven have?
Rachel: 21.
Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they all get mentioned twice. Okay, so they're 21 different combos. Is this a series of vignettes? Is this 21 short movies about the 21 different Rasputin combos and their lives in the world?
Rachel: Each would be like two minutes.
Hannah: Yeah. In a movie you've got, give it a good hour and a half, each one gets a couple minutes, and yeah, that's about five minutes a piece, right?
Jennie: And each vignette would tell a different part of the story. Some would be in the past.
Hannah: And you don't realize until partway through what has happened, you just keep seeing these stories about these different characters and slowly, piece by piece, this weird, weird unraveling comes out.
Jennie: Which ones would he argue with? Which two would argue, and which two would be best buds?
Hannah: Which two just go off on their own and don't really interact? They're just like, "We have our own thing."
Jennie: Are any of the peers romantic?
Hannah: Oh, that's fascinating.
Jennie: Narcissistic, like, "Darling, you're looking beautiful today." "Why, yes, thank you. I am."
Hannah: And that way you could touch on, if you did want to play around with any of the darker aspects of it, you could do it for an episode or two, maybe we have an episode, or a vignette or two, maybe we have one who is very deeply troubled by this.
Jennie: This isn't something that I think should be overt with it at all, but just a suggestion of a possible facet. So, right. So we just said Rasputin was part of this cult that said you have to sin more to be closer to God, right? There's seven of them. What if each of them takes after a different deadly sin?
Hannah: Oh, that's fun.
Rachel: Oh, that would be so good.
Jennie: Right. So not necessarily overt. So maybe the flower child is like the sloth one, like, "It's cool, man." Then the one who likes-
Rachel: You've got maybe the last one there who has been killed multiple times. Maybe he's the wrath one, because he's had to go through being murdered multiple times, and he's just holding onto all this anger from how badly he was treated.
Jennie: Maybe, maybe.
Hannah: He should get mad at all of the others for just existing.
Jennie: Instead of getting a death, he just got more of himself. Go away.
Rachel: And he's having the most trouble adapting to the life afterwards because he's just so upset that this is where this went.
Jennie: He lives for the times where none of the other six are there. "I have the house to myself. Thank goodness." Then flower child shows up and is like, "Hey, you want a joint, man?" "No, go away."
Rachel: Oh yeah. And I agree. I like it not being overt, but just being like a subtle, like, this is just a way to differentiate them in really interesting ways.
Jennie: A way to flavor the different personalities. An Easter egg for people to pick up on.
Rachel: Oh my gosh, this is so good, guys. So good. This is perfect. I would probably buy this movie.
Hannah: I would too. This would be so interesting. It'd be just so much fun to write, so much fun to play with. We are actually right at the 15 minute mark of talking about this, so I think we are going to wrap it up because I think, yeah... I want to see some of these vignettes, like somebody please write a couple of these. Write Envy Rasputin and Sloth Rasputin going shopping. I so want this, and you can set it during different times throughout Rasputin's actual history. So where people are unsure for a while where and when this is actually set, because it seems to be the same characters, but we're in a different time period, like 40 years later.
Jennie: What are the different occupations he tries to support himself? How does he go with the landlord who said only one person can live here.
Rachel: We do. I really need Rasputin in West Germany. Like that's what I really need someone to write for me, is Rasputin in west Germany, just like glaring at Stalin. That's what I need.
Hannah: Yes. Oh, man. There's so many.
Jennie: You could go totally political with this. You could do adventure, like exploring new worlds. You could go into the future and put them on a space ship. He could colonize other planets with himself.
Hannah: The beautiful thing about this is that you don't like have to nail down and do like exactly one of them. You could have all of them and have them kind of cohere together in the end.
Jennie: Oh, my gosh. I love that.
Hannah: Oh, man. Well, we're going to toss this over to our listeners to please, please. Oh my gosh. Do something with this. Just too fascinating for me.
Jennie: We need details about these personalities and how they developed, which ones came first, from which death, and ...
Hannah: Yeah. Do the deaths impact like who it is? So interesting.
Jennie: There's many questions. Interesting ones you can do with this. And we want to see all of it.
Hannah: Yes. Yes. All 21 vignettes.
Jennie: It's going to be like the best short story collection ever.
Hannah: I should just put this up on the blog is like, which ones have been written so far? Which combinations has somebody written? See if we can get all 21 of them and release a little anthology.
Jennie: We can get the episode on the writing prompts Reddit, right?
Hannah: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's so interesting. Listeners, you know what to do. This is so rich and so interesting. So, I really hope we get some of these back. That'd be so fascinating. Before we close out today we're going to go ahead and we're going to do our typical thing and share a story that we think our listeners should check out. This time around we're actually going to start with Jennie. So, Jennie, go ahead and tell us what story would you like to recommend to our listeners?
Jennie: I'm not actually suggesting a story. I'm suggesting a place to find stories. If you like short horror fiction, creepy short stories. I highly recommend, whether you're Redditor or not, to check out on Reddit, the no sleep subreddit, just reddit.com/r/nosleep. If you've never been to Reddit before, that's how you get there. The reason I like this area, it's a place for original horror stories, and the first rule is that everything on no sleep is real, even if it isn't. So, that's the way they're all written. They're all first person accounts or transcripts of recordings of things that have happened. I've just come across some incredible writing on there, some truly creepy stuff. They also have a podcast available of some of their best stories being read out loud, if you'd rather listen. But if you like horror fiction, that's a great resource for you.
Hannah: This week I am going to recommend another podcast. It is a fiction podcast that was one of the earliest podcasts I got into. It's called The Bright Sessions. The premise of it is that it's a series ... the episodes are short. It's a series of conversations between a therapist and her patients. As the story goes on, we learn more and more about these patients. We learn that it gets into some Scifi. It plays with their relationships a little bit and ends up growing into this really fascinating story. I don't want to say too much. I don't want to spoil too much, but it really takes an interesting turn. I think it's really ... I like that audio fiction is coming back. I like that radio plays are coming back in the form of podcasts. So if you haven't checked it out yet, The Bright Sessions is absolutely worth a listen, and yeah, check it out. It's super fun. Rachel, we're going to toss it over to you. What is a story from anywhere of any type that you would like to recommend to our listeners?
Rachel: So I'm going to go kind of with this vibe, this Rasputin vibe that we have going on. There is an amazing mini series on Netflix called The Last Czars. It is both documentary and period drama. They kind of mix it up so you get the historians talking about it, but then you have actors playing the people, but it's not really recreations. You get really invested in these like "characters". It's so amazing. I think there's six episodes. I flew through it, but I'm also on a huge Russia kick this year. So I've been reading books about Putin and all this kind of stuff this year, which we talk about on my podcast. So if people are interested in that, it's called Checking Out. So you can hear me talk more about Russia there. But yeah. So The Last Czars on Netflix is amazing and well worth the six hours while you're in quarantine.
Hannah: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Rachel. Is there, you mentioned it briefly, but yeah, is there anything you would like to plug for yourself, social media, podcast, YouTube channel, whatever you want to put out there for any listeners who might be interested to find the work you're doing?
Rachel: Yeah. So I have a good reads, which is GoodReads.com/RachelReading14. And then I run a podcast with one of my best friends, Hannah. We both read pretty voraciously, both. She read 300 books last year and I read about 127-ish. So we both just come on twice a month and just talk about what we're reading. We try to come up with maybe either a book or a topic to discuss. So you are welcome to check that out. The podcast is called Checking Out. You can find it on basically any podcast area. I think that's it for me.
Hannah: Awesome. Again, thank you so much for joining us. This was a ride and I'm so glad you got to be here to be part of this.
Rachel: This is so fun. Absolutely. Anytime.
Hannah: All right, folks, that is our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or any of those 21 vignettes, please email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the pearl is found in mud.
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