Taking all the fun out of cryptids
Like most people (I assume) I enjoy a bit of escapism in my reading. One might argue that most any literature is escapism of some sort or another. Even gruelling non-fiction is still not-our-life for a few hours.
So I like Ursula K Le Guin and Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood where it's pretty close to home, even if it's set on another planet. I also like HG Wells, Jules Verne. I like Buffy and X-Files and what if there's this world just underneath ours with monsters! How cool is that?
It's also what I enjoy writing, because I like to write fun and silly things. Looking for the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot. The Ancient Greek gods are aliens and they had mobile phones.
Thing is, a lot of this stuff feels like it's getting trickier. It's fun and silly for me, for most people. There's a significant fringe of people for whom it is not silly and fun, however. This bothers me.
To me, the X-Files idea there's a shadowy cabal running the world from smoky back rooms... That's a fictional speculation and it's interesting and fun. It's not real. Nessie isn't real but I enjoy reading and writing about people discovering her, or Bigfoot, or conspiracies. It feels more and more fraught, though.
See also: the hellmouth of a gardening wellness-to-fascism pipeline.