Behind-the-scenes of Revolving Door, a web serial novel.
Now that I’ve outlined all four volumes of Revolving Door, I decided to make covers for all 4 planned volumes, each featuring a character relationship. Being a story about the way people connect, with each pair being both foils to each other and interdependent in different ways, I sought to capture a different kind of symmetry in each image.
We’re currently at the tail end of Vol. 2, so the series is about half done!
The only characters I have whom others ship despite their relationship not really being romantic are Pala & Fen, and to be honest, I am OK with that. They do have a lot going that makes it appealing, so I completely get it! And the fact is that if people have headcanons on the matter, then I’d be quite honoured because, to me, it is pretty cool for others to have their own interpretations of my characters.
The truth is, I have complicated and evolving feelings on the matter. See, I know their entire story, past and future, I know how the RD story will shape this relationship and it’s much more than has been revealed anywhere else.
Their bond is very close and devoted, and I could develop it either way, and full disclosure, I love nonsexual romance. But because I hesitated so much on whether it was a romance, I eventually thought to myself, “why do I have to label it?”
Exploring their relationship made me question my own preconceptions on what counts as romantic, what platonic affection looks like. Setting down that their relationship is queerplatonic seems like a natural conclusion—the idea that the strongest bond in my story was not a romantic one felt good. I am deeply invested in the notion that all boundaries between relationship types can be blurred and more examples of such non-normative relationships need to be presented.
Additionally, I have always seen Pala as somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, as it feels right for her, so the conclusion seemed right to me.
Part of me does still like to imagine if I had developed it as a cute first love scenario, and I do have AU headcanons about that. But in canon, this is what I have decided, partly because of feeling and partly because I am conceptually very drawn to the idea.
So, I’m not really unhappy on a personal level at anyone who assumes they have a romantic relationship. It is just always a little tragic that so many have such a narrow view of affection that any affection reads as romantic to them, and I’d love to challenge that in this story.
