To Keep Her Safe is All I Know

Behind the Scenes

Hello everyone! Welcome to the Behind the Scenes chapter of "To Keep Her Safe is All I Know" where I'm going to tell you all of the hidden concepts and ideas that went into the making of this story.

While the main "barrier" I broke down in this story was gender again, there were a lot of other barriers that I broke down too that you may have missed, so I thought I'd list all the barriers broken in the making of this story:
         1.) It is possible for children to know that they wish to change their gender or that something about their gender or sexuality isn't right.
         2.) Conversion therapy is still a thing; it's alive and well, actually, and it needs to be stopped.
         3.) Homophobia and transphobia are also still alive and well and they also need to be stopped.
         4.) Sometimes, women make more money than men with their jobs, and that's okay.
         5.) Sometimes, men are more emotional than women, and that's okay too.
         6.) The entire Muslim population is not responsible for 9/11.
         7.) Mental illnesses are real things and they need to be treated like real illnesses.
         8.) Suicide is awful, and it changes everything. One of the causes is often mental illness.
         9.) Mexican immigrants do not deserve the discrimination they receive because of their nationality or because of Spanish being their first language.

There were probably more that I missed, but those were the main ones that were super important.

The idea for Melanie's profession came from a friend of mine who, at the time, wanted to become a pathologist and learn how to perform autopsies on dead bodies.

I came up with my first little bits of ideas for this story when Caitlin Jenner first became big news because articles about transgender people and their stories started to show up EVERYWHERE when she came out, and a lot of them were actually about children who started to question their gender at a young age, which was where my inspiration for Sadie came from.

My original intent for breaking down the barrier about Muslim people was to have a Muslim character in the story somewhere, but I couldn't find a good way to fit it into the story line, so I changed it to make Melanie's sister involved in 9/11. I WILL have a Muslim character in a future story though for helping to talk more about that barrier.

Speaking of things in this story that will also be done in future stories, I have not and will not fully specify whether or not Sadie grows up to be fully transgender, but I will note that I WILL have a legitimate transgender character in a future story as well :)

I didn't originally plan to have flashbacks in every single chapter. I was originally going to just have them in the prologue and epilogue, but I realized that flashbacks throughout the entire story made the plot more interesting and it increased my chapter lengths.

I would just like to note that I hope my making John (the villain of the story) bipolar wasn't disrespectful to any readers who may be bipolar or dealing with mental illnesses, that wasn't my intent. John was not the bad guy BECAUSE of his mental illness or even solely because he didn't treat it the way he should have (although, that was a big contributor). John was a bad person because he was a bad person. Period, the end.

When Melanie's sister, Tori, was killed in 9/11, Melanie's parents were actually off celebrating their anniversary. The problems in their marriage and Sandrine's obvious alcoholism developed after Tori died due to depression and a number of other things. This is another reason why when Melanie and John divorce and Melanie is sitting in her living room with a bottle of wine, she says "I really did turn out to be just like my mother" because the problems with Melanie and John began when they lost a child (the miscarriage) and losing a child was how the problems with Melanie's parents began too.

Melanie was on the swim team in high school.

Sadie is ambidextrous (which means she can use both her left and right hand to write, draw, etc.) which, in a way, is symbolic to her character.

Not really anyone else in John's family was homophobic. They weren't huge LGBTQ activists or huge supporters or anything, but they didn't really mind or care, either. John just sort of took the homophobic approach on his own, and it obviously spiraled into something much bigger...

Sadie knew there was something different about her gender long before she told anyone about it, but just figured that everyone felt like both genders once in a while because she was raised around Motionless in White, and they did "feminine" things around her like putting on makeup, painting their nails, etc. So she just figured it was normal to go back and forth between which gender you felt like being until classmates at school told her they didn't feel that way, which was when Sadie took it upon herself to tell Chris how she felt.

Rico's biological parents were teenagers when he was born. His father was killed in a gang fight and his mother gave him up to an orphanage as soon as he was born, giving him only a letter from her for her to read when he turns 18. He was raised in the orphanage and grew up learning both Spanish and English. He always knew that something about him was different, but he could never quite tell what exactly that thing was...At age 7, Rico was finally adopted by two women who lived in Pennsylvania, both of whom are Latina so they could communicate with Rico in both English and Spanish. Once he moved to America with his mothers, Rico first started schooling with a private teacher before going to public school, as his mothers wanted to make sure he was ready. This was when Rico finally decided to confess to his new family that sometimes he felt like a girl and didn't know what to do about it. Luckily, his moms did. When he began public school, Rico was extremely confident and happy and he wore a dress on his first day.

The title of this story, "To Keep Her Safe is All I Know" are lyrics from the Motionless in White song Wasp. The title is symbolic to the story because, since Chris had known Melanie almost literally his entire life, the most important part of their friendship to Chris is that he is able to keep Melanie safe and happy, and Sadie too, once she comes along.

In the end, Chris and Melanie and their family lived an incredibly happy life that they wouldn't change for the world. I'll let you guys decide the gender of Chris and Melanie's new kid and I'll let you decide what Sadie's gender turns into in the future. Maybe you saw her fully going transgender or maybe you saw her sticking with being gender-fluid. I didn't really think too far past her childhood, so if you'd like a resolution with that, feel free to make up your own and tell me where you think Sadie will end up in life as far as her gender and relationship with Rico :)

That's all, folks!

xoxo, Scissorhands