Canwen Xu

Yes, exactly.

And that's where I wanted that relatability to come in.

So even though she is

probably a lot more toxic than, you know, the average person reading this book, I wanted you to still be able to see glimpses of maybe your worst version in her.

And if you really let yourself feed into your own delusion, since everyone feels jealous at some point, everyone feels like, you know, they want to trade lives with someone else.

And what would happen if you just really, you know, let those feelings blossom and just acted upon them and let yourself rationalize all of the terrible things that you feel?

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that, you know, particularly when I was going to college, Instagram felt like everything.

It was like, you know, the first time you meet someone, you're going to their Instagram.

And that became just a representation of your personhood, where sometimes you would see someone in person that you had only known through Facebook and

Instagram, and it almost feels like the person on their social media is more real than the person that you're seeing in real life, where you're so used to forming an image based on the type of photos they post, that when you actually see them in real life, you're like,

Well, like they're not like that's not what they look like.

They look like this photo that, you know, is on their profile or, you know, they OK, I'm seeing them in class now, but that's not their actual life.

Their actual life is them going on really nice vacations on their Instagram.

And it's something that, you know, is talked about a lot.

At the same time, I think we can't ever talk about it enough, which is that social media is just not it's just really not real.

Yeah, and I think this is one of the most fun parts about being an author.

It's that you start to notice your details about your own life more since those are the details that ultimately...

get fed into your writing.

So I think ever since I started really taking writing seriously, it's almost like I see the world around me in a more precise light.