I have control of my own style.

I'm not comfortable with categorizing my own work, but I don't mind if others talk about it in relation to genre as long as they don't try to hold it up to some genre standard.

Your first thought is often the best one. You know, the one that felt too weird or silly or stupid. Trust your imagination - it knows what it's doing.

I'm just being honest about the fact that a second language won't resonate with you like the first does.

Happily, fantastic fiction is slowly gaining in status.

I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.

Time is built entirely on consensus: humans decide that they have linear time, so they do.