PURE FICTION
My Inspirations for “Spectrum of the Sea”
Story Of My HeArt Pure Fiction Challenge
When the story “Spectrum of the Sea” came to my mind, it was based on a prompt I was given on another writing platform. When I follow prompts for contests, I like to incorporate personal, meaningful aspects to my fiction. I’m sure many fiction writers, if not all, follow the same type of concept when creating a new world with new people.
The story can be read here:
The Characters
Immediately, you’ll note that my main character is named Viola. Viola is a special name to me.
When my mother was pregnant with me, my great-grandmother Viola was ill and taking turns for the worst regularly. When she found out that she would be gaining a new grandchild, she told my Grandmother, “I will do everything in my power to live until that baby is born.”
Unfortunately, she passed away five months before my birth. My Grandmother always looked at me as someone extremely special when I was born, as she knew me to be the great-grandchild her mother anticipated having the most. My great-grandmother never got that chance, so I chose to honor the name of the woman who missed my birth by using her as my main character.
As I started to develop Viola’s personality, I thought of my great-grandmother and how I knew so little about her. All I’ve been told is that she was a warm, loving, gentle soul — and those qualities reminded me of my daughter.
See, my daughter is autistic, and her heart is bigger than anyone I’ve ever met. My heart told me that my daughter and my great-grandmother combined would create a beautiful soul, so I incorporated some of what I know about her along with my daughter. However, the story takes place in the early 1900s, before autism was understood and studied — so using the time period I chose to highlight the difficulties autistic people must have faced in that time (with no knowledge of how to help her) and that helped me cope with the challenges we still face today with autistic people.
When I chose personalities for Viola’s parents, I opted to choose traits from family members of my own. Her parents do not know how to cope with Viola’s “oddities” and she is treated like glass, which is something many people do when they’re unfamiliar with autistic characteristics (including my own family). The character set was my fictional therapeutic session to make things better and more accepted for my darling Viola. To give a world to an autistic person where they did not have to be anything besides who they were born to be. Not only that, I felt it important to highlight the discrimination autistic people have to suffer at the hands of those who refuse to understand and accept differences. This is something we’ve dealt with in personal life, so sharing this in fictional format was important.
The Setting
I chose to put Viola and her family close to the ocean because my darling daughter is in love with the water. Plus, the setting included H.P. Lovecraft-inspired tales of Cthulhu. I chose to incorporate this because, to me, magic and fantasy make everything better. Perhaps the horrors of Cthulhu are simple misunderstandings; perhaps Cthulhu is some sort of loving and providing deity of sorts. Why make him evil when my goal was to find some kind of happily ever after?
Because autistic people deserve that, too.
Plus, with it being my story, I had no issue taking liberties with Lovecraft’s original ideas.
Conflict
When Viola discovers the Cthulhu cult, she reacts in a way that I know my daughter likely would react. She voices her discomfort and reacts exactly as she should — what I wanted was something full of love to respond to such things, so I made the cult full of humans who were compassionate and accepting of her differences. Viola is treated well and revered as something special, whereas the rest of the world may not always feel that people like her are even approachable.
My favorite part of the story I wrote was this:
“He knows how to make me normal?”
The woman smiled, her straight teeth flashing reassuringly.
“You don’t need to be normal, you need to be free.”
Viola’s internal conflict of worrying that all people want to do is “fix” her. The cult, which (in most cases) would consist of people who want to sacrifice or harm others, had no issue accepting someone so different. Perhaps my goal was to show that those who appear to be evil or twisted may be the best people at heart if you take the time to get to know them. I wanted Viola to be free from the burdens of humanity that lacks understanding and compassion.
A Happily Ever After
Cthulhu himself takes who Viola is and, rather than “fix” what some may view as problems, created her into something mystical and magical — thus, Viola becomes a mermaid. With her love of water and seashells, Cthulhu granted her an entire underwater world where the pressures of humanity lacked and the freedom of being oneself was plentiful. It gave me an inner, sincere joy to give a character reminiscent of my daughter something so free and perfect for her.
While it may be argued that my story still aimed to change someone who was fine as is, I do not view it that way. I gave my main character hope, a new purpose, and a place to belong. Her parents and doctors clearly would never get her there. Did her parents even love her at all if they couldn’t learn to accept who she was?
When I wrote that Cthulhu did not intend to corrupt her but to empower her, I chose to use a classically famous horror legend to show that even the most monstrous of beings can find it in them to grant serenity to those who need it the most. Horror characters are complex, so why not add complexity to the being that is Cthulhu?
Overall
In the end, Viola does not need to reconnect with her human family. While she loved them, there was not much lost in terms of parental love and guidance, and she accepted that. She views her home one last time, taking in the good without remembering the bad, and moves forward (to play with the ship of cultists).
Oh, how I wish moving forward could be so easy on all of us, but my darling Viola deserved it. Realistic or not, the ending I wrote gave me peace, and I felt incredibly proud of my dedication to my great-grandmother, my daughter, and the idea that those with horrifying reputations might have that sliver of good in them. I’m a sucker for believing the best in anyone and anything, and I applied that to my favorite tale of H.P. Lovecraft in this.
We don’t see many stories about autistic people, so this story is my favorite because I address specific challenges autistic people have and I gave it all I could in helping people who read it understand that people who are different don’t need to be changed.
They probably just need the right environment to thrive, and that environment was needed for Viola. The story fulfilled so much in my heart, it will remain a favorite for the rest of my life.