Let me tell you something, man.

People say that obsession is extreme dedication, that it’s love and devotion on a huge scale. No no no no no. Obsession is a fucking snake. I’ve seen it.

And you’ll see it, too. Next time you think about that new video game you bought, or that new album you started listening to, or that smoking hot chick who sits across from you in Ethics. The next time you think about any of those things, just look carefully around you, and you’ll see it. You’ll see it coiling around, surrounding you like a never-ending storm. And you wait for the tail to come and for that giant goddamn snake to just end. But it doesn’t. It just keeps going and going, until it’s completely surrounded you on all sides, until all you can see are it’s fucking scales and all you can feel is dark and cold, like being buried in snow.

James Tiptree, Jr.’s writing style can be summed up in the following phrase: to the point. Tiptree does not waste her time with airy words and flowing descriptions, preferring to cut to the meat of the matter. Few words are wasted on figurative language; it’s merely used as a device to set up the rest of the story. Rather than spend a lot of time focusing on the descriptive language, Tiptree chooses her words carefully to depict visceral, “human” actions and emotions that really cut deep into the human experience and forces me to question the flowery writing conceptions I’ve been drilled into appreciating since a young age.