Peter Darling

## **Chronology**

***Peter Darling*** is a 2017 young adult fantasy novel written by Austin Chant. It was first published on February 9, 2017, by Less Than Three Press. It is a queer transgender retelling of Peter Pan, the character originally conceived by Scottish novelist J. M. Barrie in the 1900s.

The book follows Peter, who is trans and returns to Neverland, finding the world to be completely different. It was the winner of the 2017 Rainbow Awards for Best Cover, Best Debut Transgender Book, and Best Transgender Sci-fi/Fantasy. It was also a Runner-Up for the 2017 Rainbow Award for Best Transgender Book and Longlisted for the Otherwise Award (2018).

## Synopsis

The Lost Boys say that Peter Pan went back to England because of Wendy Darling, but Wendy is just an old life he left behind. Neverland is his real home. So when Peter returns to it after ten years in the real world, he's surprised to find a Neverland that no longer seems to need him.

The only person who truly missed Peter is Captain James Hook, who is delighted to have his old rival back. But when a new war ignites between the Lost Boys and Hook's pirates, the ensuing bloodshed becomes all too real – and Peter's rivalry with Hook starts to blur into something far more complicated, sensual, and deadly.

## Dedication

*This book is for every villain who ever inspired a queer awakening, and for every queer child who ever saw a piece of themself in the enemy.*

*It's also for Simone, who is definitely a villain of some kind.*

## Background

Desiring an "enemies-to-lovers" plot, Chant was "really intrigued by the idea of an antagonistic-but-loving relationship between Hook and a grown-up Pan." He continued:

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> So I settled on trans Pan, and I wanted him to have come from a real place rather than being a mythical creature; I'm most interested in trans characters who feel like they live in the same world I do. I've always really liked Wendy Darling: the storyteller, the one who longs for family and responsibility but also falls in love with adventure and danger. Traditionally, Wendy balances Pan in an interesting but deeply gender-essentialist way. Having Peter be an amalgamation of them both, rather than having Wendy be Pan's external conscience and foil, gave Peter a lot to wrestle with and intrigued me more than writing them as separate people.
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> Since Wendy is a storyteller, it made sense to me for Pan to be a character who Peter invented, who allowed him to take on a different name and identity. Pan is Peter's fantasy self—a free, badass, cocky little bastard who only has happy thoughts. What made Peter interesting to me was the tension between his two worlds: the violent, toxic catharsis of Neverland versus the extreme repression of living as someone perceived as a woman and as a trans person in the early 1900s. His real personality is somewhere in between, but it's complicated by the baggage from both sides.
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> At the time I started writing, I was frustrated with what I saw as a lack of empathy for trans folks newly coming into their identities, especially those who were struggling and not expressing themselves perfectly. I wanted to write a trans character who was in an incredibly difficult stage of coming out—letting go of abusive relationships—and was, as a result, kind of a human disaster. A big part of grounding his pain was making him someone who valued his family as much as the character of Wendy Darling traditionally does, but who was torn between that and his loyalty to himself. I wanted him to lash out and fuck up as Pan would, rather than being a martyr. We all deserve happy endings, and we ought to be allowed to struggle and make mistakes, especially when we're dealing with intense pain and distress. Ultimately, it was really, really fun (and sometimes exhausting) to write a trans character with that much complexity and rage.
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In a 2017 blog post, he noted of his resonation with *Peter Pan*, where he loved the 2003 film growing up. He added of the trans/queer metaphor:

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> I once attended a panel about the unique ways that trans people experience age discrimination. The panel host, who was nonbinary, recounted being treated as if they were younger and less experienced than their coworkers of the same age; their androgyny was seen as "immaturity". This is a problem I've frequently noticed affecting trans men as well, particularly those who don't pass and/or haven't undergone medical transition: we're seen as "boys" much more readily than "men", regardless of our actual ages. As a result, I think many of us internalize a sense of being forever cut off from adult masculinity. The androgyny of youth makes "boy" an easier, safer space to inhabit — but we also get stuck there, often whether we like it or not.
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> Not shockingly, I know a lot of trans men who, as boys who can never seem to grow up, relate to Peter Pan on at least a superficial level. However, I think the metaphor goes deeper than that. Firstly, Peter isn't just forever young in the sense that he doesn't age, but in the sense that he's defiant of adulthood and all it entails. He rejects grown-up interference in his life; he rules over a world in which freedom, self-fulfillment, and imagination are paramount and builds a community with other abandoned children. It makes sense to me that this would appeal to a marginalized community who are threatened and excluded by mainstream society, told that they do not and will never belong.
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> Secondly, the trade-off of Peter's eternal youth is that he is locked out of society and all the joys associated with it. In the epilogue of Peter and Wendy, Wendy gets married, builds a family of her own, and passes down a legacy to her daughter. Meanwhile, Peter's only legacy is himself; his Lost Boys leave Neverland and become a part of Wendy's life instead of his. (In the book, even Tinker Bell dies a few years after the story ends.) In this sense, I think Peter Pan reflects more than a queer/trans empowerment fantasy — his story digs into a set of very queer/trans anxieties about abandonment, infantilization, and exclusion.
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On June 1, 2021, a new edition was published along with a new cover.

He revealed of a possible sequel: "I don't currently have anything with a set publication date, but my next book will be the sequel to *Peter Darling*, and it's currently in a second draft-y state of being."

## Plot

Peter has left Neverland to try and live his life in London, England. When his family doesn't accept or understand him, forcing him to exist as Wendy Darling, he returns back to Neverland with the help of his fairy companion, Tinker Bell. However, he finds that the world has changed in the past ten years, where the Lost Boys have a new leader named Ernest and are not interested in fighting pirates anymore. Peter desperately wants everything to be like it used to, along with continuing his long-rivalry with Captain James Hook.

Eventually Peter finds himself attracted to Hook, and it is revealed that Neverland was created out of the figment of their imaginations as a place to escape—Peter wanting to be accepted as male, and Hook wanting his lover back. At the very end, they return to Earth to live in Hook's cottage in the forest.

## References

1. ↑ Adler, Dahlia (March 1, 2017). "Better Know an Author: Austin Chant". *LGBTQ Reads*.
2. ↑ Chant, S. A. (December 6, 2017). "You Can't Catch Me and Make Me a Man: Peter Pans As a Trans Metaphor". *Austin Chant*.
3. ↑ Chant, S. A. (May 27, 2021). "Peter Darling Is Getting a New Edition - and a New Cover!". *Austin Chant*.