Okay, Go Off
On being a Virgo, staying curious, and accidentally writing better characters
Hanging around my office staring at my Jeffrey Dahmer screensaver while listening to a Spotify playlist called 80’s Cocaine Cardio. Craving a coffee hangout with someone. Anyone. But sadly everyone else is at work while I hang here in a Losers Club t-shirt I’ve been wearing for days and trying to think of things to write about on Substack since it’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything.
I’ve done Zona articles and had creative things published. But nothing on here.
I’m pretty ready to give up when September by Earth, Wind & Fire shows up on the playlist for some reason. Always vibed that song but sadly the song no longer makes me think of going for long drives back in the 2010s anymore but TikTok. An app that I have become weirdly addicted to even though I post close to nothing on it. I’m mainly there to stay current and to swap content with my nieces.
Then the sad reality hits me.
I don’t like to think of myself as a regular aunt. I’m a cool aunt.
Which mostly just means I try whatever they’re into so I don’t feel out of place. If they obsess about something, I try it. Snapchat. TikTok. Some reading app they’re using in place of Goodreads. Anything they’re psyched about. I don’t fully commit to it, but I always download it and see what the hype is about.
So at some point a few years ago, they pushed me to get on Co–Star, I didn’t immediately say no. I considered it and within 48hrs we were sharing horoscopes with each other.
Eventually, they started explaining my personality exclusively using astrology and I was like, okay, go off.
And they weren’t vague about it either. It wasn’t just “you’re emotional” or “you overthink things.” It was specific. Organized. The kind of breakdown that makes you realize you’re talking to people who have already categorized you and are just waiting for you to catch up.
They kept circling back to the same thing anytime I displayed certain quirks.
Virgo.
Never really in a flattering way. More in a “this explains why you do that annoying af thing you keep doing” way. Observant. Analytical. Detail-oriented. Noticing things you don’t always need to notice. The kind of traits that feel chill or neutral until someone points them out and suddenly they’re not.
It was something I had already known because let’s face it, most people know their sign, but it started coming up here and there after that. People using it casually, like shorthand for explaining why someone like me exists the way I do.
A while back, I was recording an episode of Textual Healing with Jillian Luft for her book, Scumbag Summer, and in the middle of talking about that and all weird things Florida, she mapped my full birth chart and just started walking me through it. Like it was the most ordinary thing to do mid-conversation and the vibes were immaculate. I remember laughing throughout, because of course this was happening to me, but then she started getting into specifics. Not the vague, flattering generalities that you read on Buzzfeed. Actual traits, contradictions, and things that didn’t resolve into one clean personality.
And I just remember thinking, okay, that all kinda tracks.
Not in a “I believe this now” way. More in a “you got there really fast” way. It wasn’t neat. It was a bunch of things that shouldn’t fit together but somehow did.
That was the first time it felt less like a label that Co-Star was giving me and more like a system. And as anyone who’s into astrology knows, Virgos like systems.
More recently, I recorded an episode of Textual Healing but with Kirsti MacKenzie this time with the intention of talking about her book, Better to Beg, and at some point toward the end when we were meandering hardcore off topic as if there truly was one in the first place, she casually referred to me as a Virgo. Just dropped it in and kept going off.
When we were done with that episode I went back to writing my novel that I always hint at here and never give facts about but got stuck for hours.
Very Virgo of me.
It wasn’t in a dramatic way. I was stuck in the way where the words I had written technically worked but still felt kinda flat. The character I was introducing, made sense in my head but not on paper. Every decision checked out. Every reaction lined up. But the longer I stared at my computer screen, the more obvious it became that she didn’t feel like a real person.
I didn’t have the language for her. I was writing a character, but I needed a human.
And humans contradict themselves constantly. There’s friction. They react in ways that don’t match who they think they are. Who other people think they are. They ignore things they shouldn’t ignore and notice things they should leave alone.
Without knowing a clean way to build that into this very frustrating character, I tried something different.
Instead of inventing traits and hoping for the best, I built the character the way Jillian Luft, Kirsti MacKenzie, and my nieces interpret me, because astrology felt more honest than anything I could make up.
I didn’t just give her a sign. I gave her a full astrological chart. Something that would force paradox and authenticity from the start. Something that would signal who she was without dragging readers through exposition.
Virgo sun. Scorpio moon. Gemini rising.
The Virgo sun provided the inventory of every mistake in the room, but the Scorpio moon was the one that wanted to bury them like bodies. Then the Gemini rising would walk in and crack a joke to distract everyone from the silence. It wasn’t a personality anymore. It was an argument.
And suddenly, she felt like someone I actually knew.
The chart let me push her in directions I wouldn’t have thought to otherwise. Not cleaner. More conflicting.
That’s what made her feel real.
Most characters feel fake because they’re too consistent. Real people aren’t.
Which is more than I expected from something I tried because my nieces told me to.
Being a cool aunt has its benefits.
What’s New:
We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes from Thirty West is almost sold out of its first run.
It’s about a man who lives alone, a cat that lets itself in, and how quickly relief turns into something else.
More copies are coming, but if you want in early, now’s the time to grab one…
Inventive way to approach characterization. There's an oversized trade paperback called The Secret Language of Birthdays that details a 1-2 page synopsis of people born on each day, along with other famous people born on that day. It can be uncanny in its accuracy. My first real heartbreak was a Virgo. Sept. 13th. I read that she was pragmatic, saw things in black and white. I'm a Scorpio and it said we made a difficult match.