Temple Cloud

As I described in a previous post , after reading a fanfiction chapter in which someone seemed to draw comparison between depression and being transgender, I worried that this implied that depression is hardwired and unchangeable.  After all, being transgender, like being gay – and like being autistic, as I am – is something that people are born with.   Children aren’t likely to show signs of autism until they’re a year old, and probably won’t realise that they are transgender until they are old enough to notice that there is a difference between boys and girls, or won’t realise they’re gay until they’re old enough to feel sexual attraction, but the neural wiring was there from before birth, and it isn’t going to go away.   Attempts to ‘correct’ any of these by training young children to behave in a socially acceptable way do nothing but hurt the child and teach them that they are unacceptable. So, is depression something similar?   Some people consider being sui...

I love fanfiction. I’m not sure how much I need to clarify this.   One person to whom I mentioned my hobby of writing fanfiction asked in puzzlement what the term meant, and whether it was short for fantasy fiction.   I explained that no, it just meant not-for-profit stories written by fans of any book, film, TV series, comic etc, imagining other episodes in the lives of the characters.   However, I must admit that most of the fanfics I have written have been based on science fiction or fantasy series. Fanfiction offers almost limitless possibilities for exploring the lives of characters.    I love humour, exploration of the interactions between characters, missing scenes of conversations the characters might have had when the original author wasn’t looking, and crossovers where characters from two different stories meet.   But in particular, I enjoy stories about characters recovering from emotional or psychological trauma.   There often aren’t e...