Can You Write an Entire Book as One Person Rambling?¶

I was on the phone with a friend a while back, telling them about a TV show I was watching. And I was doing that thing—you know that thing—where you can't stop talking, you're interrupting yourself, going back to explain something you forgot, jumping ahead because you're so excited about a moment that comes later, getting WAY too invested in describing how a character looks in a specific scene. That manic energy you have when something just GRABS you and won't let go.

And I realized: I sound exactly like I did when I was 16.

No pause. No organization. Just pure, unfiltered enthusiasm spilling out in this chaotic, breathless stream. My friend was being patient (bless them), and I was being completely unhinged, and somewhere in the middle of describing a particularly well-lit scene I stopped and thought: Could you write a whole book like this?

Just one person. Telling a story. With all the jumps, the wrong memories, the tangents, the self-corrections. An unreliable narrator not because they're deliberately lying, but because they're so caught up in their own experience of the story that they can't help but color it with their feelings, their obsessions, their blind spots. Can you hold that energy for an entire book? Can you keep a reader interested in something that's essentially just one half of a phone conversation?

So I started writing it. Just as an exercise, just to see if I could. One person—let's call them the narrator, no name yet, no details—telling their friend about an anime they're obsessed with. And I gave myself the rule: stay in that voice. Keep that manic energy. Don't clean it up. Let it be messy.

The Anime Itself¶

Pretty early in this process, I had the shape of the story I wanted to tell. A manufactured catboy, Series Gamma Unit 1, escapes from a brothel called The Doll House and goes on a revenge quest. Along the way he discovers his memories are fake, pivots to hunting his actual creators, finds community with outcasts, destroys the facility where he was made, and kills Cardinal Lawrence—the 200-year-old clone who created the entire catpeople program.

And the title came early too: Bloody Catboy. Because why not? It's a 90s anime. They were UNHINGED. They were ART. Some were beautifully written masterpieces with lore spanning 20 manga volumes and 5 novels. Some were one-season wonders with gorgeous animation and devastating emotional depth. And some were... well, they were the ones you'd watch once and never see again. The ones nobody talks about. The ones with logical errors, missing links, scenes that don't quite connect, worldbuilding that's 70% vibes and 30% "just go with it."

Bloody Catboy is one of those.

Not because it's BAD—it's actually got incredible moments, powerful themes, stunning visual storytelling. But it's flawed. It's imperfect. There are gaps in the worldbuilding. Some things don't get explained. The pacing is uneven. It's the kind of show where if you asked "wait, how did Jax plant that bag in the van?" the answer is "anime logic, don't worry about it."

And that's PERFECT for this project. Because the narrator is retelling it from memory, from obsession, from their own emotional experience. They're going to miss things. Get things slightly wrong. Focus intensely on scenes that gut them and rush through plot that doesn't. If someone asks "wait, they never explained how—" the answer can be: yeah, the show didn't either. Or they forgot. Or they were too busy describing how Jax looked in that scene to mention the logistics.

The imperfections of the source material give me freedom in the retelling. It's not a perfect anime. It's not trying to be. It's trying to be the kind of show that MATTERS to someone, even if—maybe especially if—it's a little rough around the edges.

From the start, I knew this story needed gender fuckery. Jax escaping and finding himself (or themselves? I genuinely don't know. I have no fucking idea at this moment and I think that's part of the point). The femboy aesthetic as both armor and identity. Soft and deadly at once. Presentation as choice, as reclamation, as defiance. I knew it had to do something with queerness—with bodies that don't fit boxes, with identities that are chosen rather than assigned, with finding your people outside the structures that tried to define you.

The Arc Problem¶

But pretty quickly I ran into a problem: if it's JUST plot summary with enthusiasm, it gets boring. There needs to be something HAPPENING to the narrator, some reason we care about them beyond just using them as a vehicle to learn about this anime.

So I asked myself: what kind of person would get THIS obsessed with a story about a character discovering who they are, choosing how to present themselves, finding their people? What kind of person would spend hours on the phone at 2am dissecting every detail of how a character looks, getting defensive when their friend notices they're paying a LOT of attention to this one specific character?

And the answer came: someone touched by the show so deeply that it changed something in them.

Because here's the thing—and this is shared queer history, especially for people my age—a LOT of us had our queer awakenings through anime and animated TV shows in the late 90s and early 2000s. There was something about the combination of: characters who didn't fit neat gender boxes, stories about transformation and becoming yourself, aesthetics that were soft and hard at once, and the DISTANCE of it being animated (not "real" people, so it felt safer to feel things about them).

I can't tell you how many queer people I know who will cite some anime character or animated series as the moment they started questioning, started noticing, started KNOWING. It's practically a rite of passage.

So that became the narrator's arc: they're watching this anime about a character who escapes captivity and discovers who they are and chooses their own presentation. And through watching it, through obsessing over every detail, through calling their friend at increasingly unhinged hours to process what they're feeling—they're having their own queer awakening. They're having the realization. They just don't have the language for it yet. They can't say it. But we—the readers—can see it happening.

And if the narrator doesn't preserve this somehow, it's like it never happened. Like it never mattered. But it DID matter. It changed something fundamental. Things like this—things that touch you that deeply, that shift how you see yourself—those things deserve to be remembered. Especially when they disappear. Especially when they're queer things that existed in the margins, on sketchy streaming sites, in the spaces between what's considered "important" media.

Building Tim¶

Once I knew the narrator was having a queer awakening, I needed to figure out who they were. I played with a few options—different ages, different backgrounds, different relationships to the friend they're calling.

Eventually it solidified: Tim, 15-17 years old, somewhere in that uncertain high school space. A geek—loves anime but also sci-fi and fantasy, reads Asimov and Le Guin alongside Tolkien, plays D&D with some guys who aren't really friends, just people who happen to share a hobby. Has exactly one real friend: Chris. They're in the same class, they nerd out together, Chris has a girlfriend but always picks up when Tim calls.

The calls happen during October fall break because... why not? It's a liminal time. School's out but not for long. It's autumn, that time of change. It felt right.

And I gave Tim that voice—the one I recognized from my own 16-year-old self. The one that can't shut up about something they care about. The one that interrupts itself. The one that gets defensive before anyone's even said anything. The one that notices EVERYTHING about a character and then has to justify why they noticed.

What I just recognized while developing this: I built one of the three protagonists after myself. And no, I'm neither Jax nor Chris. Of course I'm not. But Tim—that energy, that obsession, that need to SHARE and PROCESS through talking—yeah. That's familiar.

The Challenges¶

Then came all the actual work of figuring out the details: What exactly IS this anime? What are the themes? How do I make sure it's rich enough to support both Jax's journey AND Tim's realization?

I went through so many iterations. Early versions were too complicated—Jax's "defect" was this whole pain-pleasure inversion thing that felt overwrought. I simplified: he just won't follow orders to kill. He can only kill by his own choice. That's it. That's the defect. And that makes EVERYTHING about the story cleaner because it's all about agency and autonomy.

I struggled with how Jax discovers his memories are fake. First version: he meets another catperson who explains everything. Too convenient. Why would they know? Second version: gradual discovery across multiple sources. Too slow, killed momentum. Final version: he confronts people from his memories, they're all confused, he finds a surgeon and forces the truth out. One scene, full revelation, immediate emotional crisis. Much better.

I debated the found family. Originally they were other catpeople he freed from The Hatchery. But that made the story too insular, too much about "his kind" rather than about finding YOUR people across difference. So I changed them to human outcasts—punks, queers, mods, people who've rejected "normal" society. They recognize Jax as one of them not because he's a catperson but because he's an OUTCAST. That universalized the theme and made it hit harder.

The aesthetic was tricky too. How do you show Jax becoming himself? I had versions with multiple wardrobe changes, gradual development, scenes where he "chooses" his look. All too noisy. Final version: the transformation scene in Episode 4. One scene. He strips off the property jumpsuit and puts on clothes he's been stealing and hiding for WEEKS. Every piece chosen. The hoodie, the jeans, the arm warmers—all his. It's not gradual. It's REVELATION. He knew who he'd be when he got free. Now he IS.

And Tim's arc needed those beats too. When does he get the package (the hoodie that mirrors Jax's)? When does he nearly say it? When does he break down crying at 4am because the series ended and "it feels like I LOST something"? When does he realize "wait you can just CHOOSE family?" Each call needed to build on the last, show him getting closer and closer to understanding, until by the end he KNOWS but hasn't said it yet.

I'm 45 now. I have my found family. Damned, I had my time to find these folks. I found them late, but I found them. So this isn't about me today. This is about a generic queer kid who doesn't know yet and sees a TV show. Who feels something shift. Who can't name it but can't stop thinking about it. Who needs to share it with someone, anyone, because it feels too big to hold alone.

That's who this is for. That's who Tim is. And that's why I'm writing it. Because it could have been me.