Alike but Different

When characters become mirrors of the self

If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my ongoing “Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time” series where I deep-dive into my writing fiction to heal method as field work and a case study. To begin, I will be working through my story, The Archive, which you can find more information on here.

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In my apocalypse dreams, I'm always either perfectly prepared or completely winging it. There's no in-between. Writing Demi and Ari has made me realize this tension exists in how we all approach survival - not just in fiction, but in our everyday apocalypses.

Demi is my prepper fantasy - the self-sufficient farmer who saw it coming and built her ark. She's got her greenhouse full of medicinal herbs, her carefully maintained crop rotations, her systems within systems. She represents what I wish I could be: someone who looked at the future clear-eyed and said "I will be ready."

But Ari? Ari is closer to who I actually am - someone whose survival skills consist mainly of knowing weird historical facts and having read too many books. She's the part of me that hopes knowledge itself might be a kind of preparation, even if it's not the practical kind. The part that believes understanding how humans have survived past catastrophes might help us survive future ones.

I keep coming back to this question: What actually prepares us for survival? Is it Demi's controlled environment, her carefully maintained illusion of mastery over chaos? Or is it Ari's adaptability, her willingness to improvise and evolve? Maybe it's both - the tension between preparation and innovation, between building systems and being ready to abandon them when they fail.

The truth is, both approaches have their blind spots. Demi's control can become rigid, while Ari's adaptability can look a lot like aimless reactivity. But together? Together they might represent our best shot at not just surviving, but rebuilding something worth surviving for.

The Cost of Connection

Trust feels different after the world breaks. It becomes both more precious and more dangerous – like water in the desert. Too little and you die alone. Too much and you might still die, just with more witnesses.

I see this tension playing out between Ari and Demi in ways that feel achingly human. Ari carries the weight of Finn's death like a shield, while Demi guards her shed's secrets with the vigilance of someone who knows exactly how valuable knowledge has become. They're both right to be cautious. They're both right to be afraid.

Yet what fascinates me is watching how trust begins to grow between them anyway, like stubborn weeds through concrete. Not because either of them particularly wants it, but because isolation is its own kind of slow death. Their gradual shift from wariness to dependence maps the way we might all have to rebuild our social bonds after collapse – carefully, pragmatically, and with our eyes wide open.

The stakes are almost unbearably high. Every shared meal, every exchanged secret, every moment of vulnerability carries the weight of potential betrayal. But it also carries the seeds of something essential to human survival – connection. Their relationship is teaching me that perhaps the real question isn't whether to trust, but how to trust wisely in a world where mistakes can be fatal.

Their contrasting approaches to survival only heighten this dance. Demi thinks in seasons and years, in carefully tended gardens and preserved knowledge. Ari lives in the urgent now of immediate survival. Watching them negotiate these differences – through shared resources, through teaching and learning, through tentative collaboration – feels like watching a microcosm of how human society might rebuild itself. Not through grand plans or heroic gestures, but through small, daily choices to risk connection over isolation.

In their cautious partnership, I see a question that haunts all of post-collapse fiction: Can we survive alone? Should we even try? Their story suggests that true survival requires both practical skills and human connection – a delicate balance of self-reliance and interdependence that neither of them has quite figured out yet. But they're trying, and maybe that's the point.

When Weakness Becomes Strength

We often picture survival as purely physical - stockpiles of food, weapons, medical supplies. The tough guy in his bunker, the homesteader on her fortified farm. But writing Ari and Demi has shown me how limiting that view is.

What if the person who survives isn't the strongest, but the one who can MacGyver a solution from scraps? What if it's not the lone wolf who makes it, but the person who knows how to rebuild community from strangers? What if my own battles with anxiety - the hypervigilance, the constant scanning for threats, the ability to function through panic - are actually preparation for a world where those responses make sense?

Through Ari and Demi, I'm discovering that survival is more constellation than single star. Physical preparation matters, yes. But so does the archivist's drive to preserve knowledge, the farmer's patience to think in seasons rather than days, the trauma survivor's hard-won resilience.

Maybe that's what draws me to these characters - they're teaching me that survival isn't just about having enough food or knowing how to fight. It's about maintaining our humanity when everything falls apart. It's about finding ways to carry forward not just our bodies but our stories, our knowledge, our capacity to trust and connect and create meaning, even in the darkest times.

I wonder if that's why lone wolf survival fantasies ring so hollow to me now. Because survival - real survival - isn't just about making it through. It's about what we choose to carry forward, and who we choose to become in the process.

Knowledge as Currency

Knowledge is a double-edged sword in their world - something I keep coming back to as I write their story, perhaps because I see myself reflected in both of them. Demi embodies the Crone, the Wise Woman, the Baba Yaga in her forest sanctuary - keeper of healing wisdom, guardian of growth and decay. Her knowledge gives her an almost priestlike status, yet like all wise women throughout history, that same power makes her a target.

And then there's Ari, the eternal Seeker, the Holy Fool walking into darkness with only questions for company. I recognize myself in her compulsion to document everything, this endless archiving that feels both futile and sacred. Like Scheherazade, she weaves stories to stay alive, to make meaning of catastrophe. There's power in being the one who writes the story, who decides what future generations will know about how it all fell apart.

I find myself playing both roles in my own life - sometimes the sage dispensing hard-won wisdom from my garden sanctuary, sometimes the wandering fool asking uncomfortable questions, documenting everything in case it matters later. Knowledge is dangerous currency in this new world, whether you're the witch with her herbs or the storyteller with her tales. Share too much and you're exposed. Share too little and you might doom others to repeat past mistakes.

They're both trying to build bridges between what was and what will be, each in their archetypal way - the Wise Woman preserving practical magic, the Seeker preserving stories and questions. Like medieval monks protecting their manuscripts, like village healers passing down their secrets, like storytellers keeping cultural memory alive - they're keepers of different kinds of light against the darkness.

I wonder sometimes if this is why their story speaks to me so deeply - because I'm living out these same ancient patterns, dancing between wisdom and seeking, between preserving knowledge and questioning everything I think I know. There's something almost sacred about this dance when everything else is falling apart.

Finding Hope

I keep thinking about how Demi and Ari fit together like two halves of survival's puzzle. Demi has those calloused hands that know exactly how deep to plant seedlings, while Ari's mind catalogs and connects everything she sees – each approach incomplete without the other. It's making me wonder about my own prepper tendencies, how I stockpile knowledge like canned goods but sometimes forget that survival needs both the practical and the philosophical.

There's something beautiful in how their differences create wholeness. When Demi's hands are deep in the soil, Ari's mind is reaching into the future, preserving not just life but meaning. One builds the shelter while the other makes it a home. One feeds the body while the other feeds the soul. Their partnership feels like a metaphor for what we'll all need to survive: not just skills or smarts alone, but the sacred marriage of both.

In their dynamic, I see hope for how we might all navigate collapse – not by becoming self-sufficient islands, but by learning to weave our different strengths together. Demi knows how to keep bodies alive, but Ari knows how to keep stories alive. And maybe that's the key: survival isn't just about making it through. It's about carrying forward everything that makes us human.

No matter how messy and complicated and tragic and beautiful it may be.

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To read the backstory to why I’m writing this series:

Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time

To read the backstory on why I’m serializing “The Archive,”:

The Backstory 📖