It is my objective to make about 80% of things I write take place in Texas, for a variety of reasons. The primary reason being that there is not a lot of pop culture out there that treats places in the South and Texas like normal America rather than some big ol’ stereotype. I’ve always felt that huge elements of Southern and Texan life are never ever used for settings, especially if they don’t fit in with a stereotype of hicks, rednecks, rurality, cowboys, and desert. It seems ridiculous to me that at least 12.5% of the country lives in Texasand yet there are very few different non-stereotypical depictions floating around. Worse still, 6/20 of the biggest U.S. cities are in Texas and these cities almost never appear as legitimate settings in pop culture.
This is why I was so goddamned stoked when I realized that Dave from Homestuck is from Houston. I was like, finally, someone that ACTUALLY comes off as a Houstonian of my generation and not some 100-year-old Texan stereotype. It’s refreshing to see that in something really popular. This isn’t a totally accurate comparison, but it’s kind of like seeing a character that is just casually gay in a work of fiction, where “gay” isn’t something that’s made a huge part of their character—it’s just something that’s there. The cultural image of “Texas” is stagnant, and it’s a huge contributor to why I have to explain to everybody that asks that most people my age in Texas have no form of accent whatsoever, and no, I’m not hiding an accent.
I also find the potential for storytelling in Texas to be huge considering the speed of cultural and population change there. Since my family moved back in 1994, the increase in population has been about double the increase in population for the U.S. (by percentage). Also, it’s about 38% hispanic, with those populations being especially present in El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston. Texas is also seen as heavily Republican—it is Republican, but the picture’s a bit more complicated than that. In the cities, there is a definite lean towards Democrats, especially in Austin (duh) and El Paso, while the Republicans are in the ‘burbs. Texas is not what you think it is.
I just think it’s kind of dumb to keep ignoring Texas as a great place for an “American” story. So I’ve started writing a lot of my stuff to take place in Texas and Houston. And really, it’s not like I have to really change the stories that much to fit the setting.
Oh, and Four Tales takes place in east Texas, by the way. If you pay attention this chapter, you’ll probably realize that via a town name mentioned and the change of seasons (not quite as obvious in the last chapter unless you’re enough of a wildflower buff and can handle my shitty drawing of flowers enough to recognize where bluebonnet, crimson clover, indian firewheel, black-eyed susan, and pink primrose are likely to coincide). I’m also pretty bad at drawing pine trees, so that probably doesn’t help.
