Conversations About the Books
The People Who Recognize Each Other

INTERVIEWER
In For Glass Sake, Rissa arrives in a world where people seem to approach relationships, communication, and even being human rather differently from what she's used to. But there's also a sense that you're naming something already familiar, if not usually spoken about. When you began imagining the Scarrae, were you inventing a different way of being human, or giving form to something you'd already encountered?

AUTHOR
Oh, I've said it before. I make very little up. The Scarrae are both a name I gave to a set of characteristics shared by people in the real world, and since I see it popping up in unrelated places around the world, I theorized, maybe it is a liminal part of the human social spectrum... And if so, what if those people began to recognize themselves as part of a people, much like neurodivergent people are beginning to declare themselves, much like deaf communities have done, and many other subcultures. Does that answer your question fully enough? 😉

INTERVIEWER
It does! Although now I'm wondering about recognition. In the books, Scarrae people have a shared language, customs, and expectations. In the real world, the people you're describing may not have those things in common. So what makes someone Scarrae before there's a culture—or even a name—to belong to?

AUTHOR
It's a way of perceiving the world. And I'd challenge that notion that they don't recognize each other. I've seen punks from completely different languages and cultures meet and instantly have rapport, same with JETs, participants in the Japanese program. I was one and recruited for many years. From the Philippines to Scotland, New Zealand to Canada, we meet and say JET and instantly we even know the same mix of 'JETpanese', which incidentally inspired the Scarrae language, among other similar registers and pidgins... again, much of it is not made up.

INTERVIEWER
Fair challenge. I've been assuming that shared recognition needs a name or a visible set of cultural signals, and your examples suggest otherwise.

So how do Scarrae recognize one another, when the common ground is a way of perceiving?

AUTHOR
The real Scarrae or in the books?

INTERVIEWER
The real ones. I'm interested in what you've observed firsthand. Have you seen that recognition happen before people have a name for what they share?

AUTHOR
So even in the books Scarrae don't always know each other right off. So same goes IRL. It takes a minute. There are visual signals but they are deep and subtle. There's a lovely moment where two people see each other seeing each other see. And that's when it happens. Now leaping forward... say my word, or any name gets adopted in wide use, there is great danger of it getting polluted. But I address how that might be prevented in the books.

INTERVIEWER
“Two people see each other seeing each other see.” I want to hold onto that image for a moment. Recognition goes both ways. But you've also raised a risk: once there's a name, people can claim it without understanding what it means. In the books, how do the Scarrae guard against that without turning belonging into a test of who is “Scarrae enough”?

AUTHOR
The main way is that Scarrae is as Scarrae does. Little is explained. You get it, you catch it, or you don't. That's how they survived the persecutions. The sigils are one important piece. The language is another, but it's the perception. Here's an example from Cut Glass. Say some kid is tetrachromate. They'll see millions more colors than most of us. But they'll be taught all these amazing shades are just “blue”, “red”, etc. And when they say, “Yeah, but what about all those other colors in the rainbow?” Maybe they draw a picture of it in school, and their teacher will say, if they're gentle, “Sweetie, let's only use the real colors, ok?” And what then? If they argue they get punished, labeled impaired, so they just start believing something is wrong with them. Their whole life! This leads to hurt, addiction, dissipation. But then one day, maybe decades later they meet someone who drops the tiniest hint about all those colors and ZAP! They cue in. But they are scared. They've been convinced they are broken. But if they carefully meet on this awareness, now they aren't alone. You can see where I'm going with this. So what if there were people who consciously sought those extra perceptive people and helped them realize who they are and what's happening to them... that's the Scarrae. Not the ability. The choice to live that way.

INTERVIEWER
That's an important distinction. The unusual perception isn't itself what makes someone Scarrae; it's also about what people choose to do when they recognize that difference in themselves and others. Does that mean someone like Rissa could become Scarrae even if she doesn't share the same abilities?

AUTHOR
Now that's what I'm exploring in the third Window Panes novella! And by the way, in the books, I call the perceitive abilities, not just tetrachromacy, mind, Tharmenae... there's a whole mythology behind that. And IRL these people emphatically do exist. And so do those who recognize the traits and choose to treat them as what they are: a recurring and categorizable, nonlinear human type... a people. I'm just asserting, and I'm not alone in this either, that they deserve recognition as such because our perception requires a special lifestyle. And trust me, we IRL Scarrae do recognize and help each other and gravitate to certain environments.

INTERVIEWER
“Our perception requires a special lifestyle.” That sounds like a practical consequence of everything we've discussed, not merely an identity.

What does that look like in everyday life?

AUTHOR
Hmm. This one gets big, ne. Oops, see there's a clue right there. Ha. It is diverse so I don't want to claim authority or observations I don't have. But in my experience, it tends to be sensory softer. We all don't have the same level of perception or even senses. But softer tends to work for most of us. Quieter, less sharp sounds, vibrations, more natural sounds, easy lighting, freedom of movement, because a lot of us have to stim to keep the overstimulation in check.

INTERVIEWER
And there's ne slipping into the answer quite naturally. 😉 The needs you've described won't be identical for everyone. Someone's comfortable level of light or sound might still be painful for someone else. How does Scarrae culture handle those differences within the community?

AUTHOR
Ok, well there's a margin of safety, right? Perception is a spectrum... do not code me to autism! Autistic people may be Tharmenae, many I have met are, but not all Tharmenae are autistic... But some may like lights dim, but no one likes staring at the sun. So everyone gets it. The key is understanding that others may find a light I tolerate painful. So if we build a system around that, it isn't built on majority wins, that just tells outliers they aren't included. It has to be built on lowest adequate level. Then individual accommodations can be made within that and those are normalized. Here's another example from my books. Scarrae don't call them disabilities, they call them differences and downsides. They stay low noise and low light, but they offer task light, letter boards, and most of them know a verbal communication system for low verbal ability called Kala. Because some characters are blind, have cerebral palsy, and have severe autism. But their culture is built to allow them. Not out of pity, because they all know how it is to be excluded and what they can't do themselves.