How did this story originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

This was one of those stories where I came up with the title, or rather the names of the two main characters, first. “The Virgin Bitch of the Resistance” comes from a line in Pierre Assouline’s essay, “Beneath the Scarf of Jean Moulin” (translated by Ruth Larson). I misread “the Virgin Birth of the Resistance” as ”the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance” and immediately began wondering who that could be. Udo’s name comes from the main character of Roberto Bolaño’s novel, “The Third Reich.” These inspirations were also the starting point of these characters’ personalities—someone who would do absolutely anything in the name of Resistance versus someone obsessed with gamifying war to the point of withdrawing from real life (and the human impact of the real war their game is based on). The opposition and magnetism of these two characters, their struggles, and their world rose around that.

Did you get stuck at any point while writing this? How did you get past that?

I got “stuck” many times while writing this. The earliest draft I have of this story is from March 2021! I tried pitting Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance against each other in many different settings, including a University in present-day Boston and in a VR fighting game tournament. Each time the story would peter out and I wouldn’t be able to finish it. When this happened, I would set the story aside and come back to it later, figuring out what the “core” was and rewriting around that. Pretty much the only constants throughout the drafts were the names of the main characters and a few sections of dialogue (“the most beautiful name in the world” and the firing squad conversation).

You’ve talked in the past about being inspired by anime—did any of those inspirations fuel this story?

The mechas in this story were extremely inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime which has also driven a lot of my past writing. The mechas in Evangelion (spoiler) must be implanted with a core containing the soul of the pilot’s mother in order to function properly. Maternal love and protection are recurring themes throughout the anime. I wondered how such a mecha system could be industrialized on a national scale and what kind of nation might seek to industrialize such a thing. I wanted to explore how the act of giving birth can also be used as a means of oppression when forced upon people.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

My debut short story collection, Learning to Hate Yourself as a Self-Defense Mechanism is coming out from Interstellar Flight Press on May 6th, 2024. I also have a complete list of my stories on my website (andreakriz.wordpress.com/fiction). If any readers are looking for particular recommendations, I’d love for them to check out my previous Lightspeed story, “Do the Right Thing and Ride the Bomb the Roundabout Way to Hell” (December 2023 issue).