5 Questions with Nic Anstett
Today, we published the final installment of “Season Finale.” Michael Colbert spoke with Nic about world building and climate change, queer horror, and killing your darlings.
The Rejoinder: I first read “Season Finale” during the WGA strike, and I was so compelled by how this was reflecting and interacting with some of the discussions that were going on at the time. What first inspired you to think about acting and writing in this way?
Nic Anstett: This story originally came into being as a way for me to explore a very literalized version of "kill your darlings." I was fascinated with this idea of there being a more real world cost to killing off fictional characters. Making the "babies" of the story actual actors in the way they exist in our reality didn't seem to fit what I was going for, mostly since there's a degree of agency there that I couldn't really work around. Similarly, I didn't want to do something with robots or AI because it lacked the sort of in the moment messiness that I wanted to exploit for the world of the story. So making the babies custom, bioengineered replacements for actors to avoid having to work with unions kind of came about to solve a storytelling problem.
When I first wrote "Season Finale" in 2019, we were starting to have discussions about what would happen when digital recreations of actors and AI reached a point where danger to the livelihood of actor's was likely. I didn't really anticipate that it would end up being a key point of contention in the currently ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike and it was maybe a little ignorant of me to assume that writers wouldn't also be on the chopping block. It does, however, speak to a lot of what I was hoping to engage with in this story which is how at odds corporate entertainment is with not only artistic impulse but the humanity of that impulse.
TR: In many ways, this story is also about media, genre, and storytelling. I love all of the different TV shows that appear throughout the story–LawyerGuy, Sad Hospital Blues, Crime Circus. What were you interested in looking at as you got deeper into this world of television and media?
NA: Partly I was coming up with show ideas that I found funny. Crime Circus in particular was a lot of fun to draft. I love the idea of a whole show being dedicated to a murderous clown and the hapless circus performers that have to deal with his violence.
I did also want to make the shows that exist in the world of "Season Finale" feel ridiculous and lowbrow. It felt important that the babies are bred, raised, and killed so they can star in productions that could barely be called art. They aren't sacrificing themselves for the creation of some kind of meaningful narrative, but the futuristic equivalent of a CBS procedural or ABC sitcom. The babies are made to be cogs in a product and that product should seem worthless and ridiculous because so often corporate productions like this end up existing in that space. It's the human touch that often makes these shows worth anything at all and "Season Finale" sort of provides a look into a world where the human element of Hollywood production has been stripped away even further. Even if the writers themselves aren't computers or birthed in a tank, they are still losing their humanity every day by propping up a system that uses and kills living things for the sake of empty spectacle.
TR: From a craft perspective, I was so impressed by your world building in this story. It wells up around us so seamlessly, and the concepts and changes you imagine are extremely original. Can you share a bit about how you develop and think of a world, or how you did so with this one?
NA: I forget where I originally heard this, but I was particularly struck by the notion that any future set speculative fiction that doesn't engage with climate change in some form immediately shifts genre into fantasy. You can't really write about the future of our planet, or species, in any way and not acknowledge that environmental danger that our world is facing. So even though "Season Finale" isn't explicitly about climate change, I felt that any future reality I make for this world had to account for this. Doing so allowed me to sneak in some details to make the world feel more fleshed out, but also, hopefully, expand the characters a little. I wanted Morgan to feel drawn to extinct animals like whales because he is also a living thing whose existence rests on the wants and needs of a corporate system that's way outside his control. Even if he doesn't comprehend the entirety of that scenario, he at least sees some kinship in a kind of life that has ceased to exist.
Outside of the climate/environmental aspects of the story, I've always enjoyed narratives that allow you to experience their fantastic/speculative realities on a scene by scene basis. It feels more elegant from a storytelling standpoint and allows you to keep surprising your reader. As long as you aren't introducing wildly new concepts late in the story or contradicting the rules that you've already established, it feels rewarding to continue to sneak in new small details that make the reality feel more lived in. There's also just the fact that "Season Finale" is a first person story and I don't see why Zach, our narrator, would spend a lot of time explaining things to our reader that aren't relevant to him at the moment in the story. Nothing feels more forced to me than when a character pauses to explain aspects of a world they should be familiar with only so a reader in our reality can understand. It would be like reading a realist story and having your first person narrator pause to explain a smartphone.
TR: I saw you recently published an article about queer horror on them. What’s exciting to you in fiction these days?
NA: Thanks for reading that article! It was a lot of fun to write! I've always enjoyed fiction that felt comfortable dipping its toes into plot elements that might be considered "genre" or "genre-adjacent." I grew up reading sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels and I think part of that love for things that are weird or otherworldly has stayed with me. I also love when fiction feels unique to its author. Not that it should be made entirely of original plot elements, but that it feels like only this particular person with this particular sets of experiences and identities could have written this story this way. Often I find that in queer fiction, but not exclusively. I'm also an absolute slut for funky POV or plot structure decisions in fiction. Give me a story that is queer and weird both in story and prose, and I'm absolutely sold. A few of my favorite 2023 releases have been: Tell Me I'm Worthless by Allison Rumfitt, White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link, Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, and People Collide by Isle McElroy
TR: What are you working on right now?
I'm currently revising a collection of short stories that will hopefully go out on submission to publishers early next year! I'm also in the midst of writing a novel that engages in some of the same ideas of "Season Finale," but instead through the lens of kaiju movies because I love Godzilla.
