For no one.

Tristan’s encounter with West marks the vulnerability of perceived male resilience - where Tristan's ignorant beliefs about how easy it is to manipulate and abuse the charitable nature of strangers, leads to his own downfall when stepping into an upper-class world of money, power, and greed. This story is a cautionary tale to young men at a peak time, where red-pill conspiracies encourage the push for hyper masculinity; leaving victims unguarded to their own weaknesses.

The novel also endeavours to bring awareness to topics close to Tristan’s soul, such as psychopathy and the effects of a negative perception of said illness; homosexuality, and the contention it brings with stereotypical male values such as husbandry and fathering; and finally, male loneliness, and the societal expectation to conceal emotions, and deny fragility. 

Writing this story required both a great deal of self-reflection and outward research of other human beings, including research into personality disorders; Psychopathy, and Borderline Personality Disorder. Aiming to compile a broad spectrum of how these disorders bloom individually in different people, this is then built onto the foundations of our protagonist, Tristan Adler, to create a unique blueprint of a human being - so as to not simply copy the traits of an individual already in our world, but to create new life. 

As well as reflecting the timeline of the experiences I’ve had that converged to the creation of this story, not only focusing on my Turkish heritage and memories spent in Bodrum, but into the finer details of why such a place would inspire creativity, or a desire to depict the coastal city through the eyes of a character who is quite the opposite to me. 

This story comes from the mind, not the skin. I find myself living with the idea, the concept of what defines a man, incessantly nagging at the ridges of my female brain. Yet, despite the undeniable fact that I’m not a man, I’m certainly not a bystander. What a man is, isn’t just intriguing, but it’s also necessary for an artist like me who, oh-so-enjoys writing male characters. It’s undeniably complex, and as the puppet master, it’s not as simple as writing a woman and then switching out all her pronouns and physical descriptors to that of a man. I have already written a plethora of men and women both over the years, but with this project in particular, I aim to put gender at the forefront. It’s no longer a question of putting other ideals above my male lead's train of thought, when his way of life relies so heavily on his privilege as an athletic, capable, man.

Perverse Expectations, is about a man who is at odds with the dichotomy between him, and a callous millionaire. Peering into an unempathetic world where I attempt to solve separate puzzles; the psychopathic coldness of trauma,  and a diagnosis of Anti-Social Personality Disorder, and the monetary coldness of a life without poverty; always getting what one wants. This story encompasses the psychological side of the male ego, pride, and duty, when conflicted with the sociological topics of financial superiority and the behavioural change in humans by the wealth gap. 

Its basis as a fiction novel is to keep one core subject at the forefront; entertainment. Where the subject of the male gender has thrived in academic discussions thus far, I now wish to bring it into the creative field. I believe this novel to be both a challenge to myself, and a challenge to the reader, to trust, that despite my physical appearance, I can appease their curiosity into the inner monologues of my male lead. 

I often question how I can have the audacity to ask male readers to listen to my interpretation of how they think, to which my answer is; wrong body, same mind.