CZM Book Club: Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy, by Charlie Jane Anders, Part Two

Summary

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It Could Happen Here — CZM Book Club: "Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy," by Charlie Jane Anders, Part Two

Host: Margaret Killjoy
Podcast: Cool Zone Media Book Club (It Could Happen Here)
Episode Date: January 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is the second part of Margaret Killjoy’s reading and reflective discussion of "Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy," a short story by Charlie Jane Anders. The story, set in a flooded, post-climate-apocalypse San Francisco, follows a tight-knit, queer collective as they grapple with personal conflict, survival, shifting loyalties, and the emotional residue of community life on the edge. Margaret shares both the story's continuation and a personal, candid response to its themes of loss, change, nostalgia, and perseverance after collapse.

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Key Discussion Points & Story Breakdown

1. A Community in Crisis and Change

(02:51–06:00)

• The episode resumes with the aftermath of the community’s desperate barter with armed farmers for food, leaving some members behind as collateral labor.
• The narrator reflects: “I kept remembering myself walking away from those farmers… I had thought that being here on this island meant that the only past that mattered was the grand, mysterious, rebellious history… until suddenly I had no mental energy for anything but replaying those two memories, uglier each time around.”
• Internal group tension intensifies as loyalties fracture, particularly between the narrator and Miranda, leading to an emotional confrontation and Miranda’s retreat from the relationship.

2. Social Splits and Aftermath

(06:00–11:00)

• Gossip and factions arise: people tell the narrator “I’m on your side,” as others rally around Miranda.
• “After that, everybody was on my side. The honeymoon was over, but the marriage was just starting.” (09:22)
• The narrator turns to old friends via social media, bridging the gap between old and new life, and ponders leaving the island.

3. Moments of Respite and Bonding

(13:33–15:30)

• Reconciliation comes quietly through shared rituals—sitting on the shore, “hold[ing] hands,” and feeling “like the heart of our community was restored.”
• The narrator finds solitary peace exploring the ruins of San Francisco: “I sat there in the middle of the city, a few miles from anyone, and felt totally peaceful.” (15:00)
• A rare evening of collective joy, music, and intimacy follows: “half of us some level of naked, and everybody looked radiant and free…I had this feeling like maybe the honeymoon is over, but the marriage is just beginning.” (15:50)

4. Return to Reality: What Was Lost

(15:50–18:30)

• Attempting to retrieve those left behind with the farmers, the group finds only absence: “Our friends had run away, the farmer said…left the work half done. We never found out what actually happened to Wao and the others.”
• A moment of silent, communal grief; “I watched Yokanda’s face pass through shock, anger, misery, and resignation…”

5. Personal Evolution and Letting Go

(21:25–25:00)

• The narrator reflects on their changing identity and relationships: “I realized I’d already decided to leave San Francisco a while ago without ever consciously making the decision.”
• Nostalgic for city life, old haunts, and love lost, but also wary: “I couldn’t forgive the people who sided with Miranda against me, and I was even less able to forgive the people who sided with me against Miranda.”
• Sense of alienation from both past and present: “I felt like I was just turning wheels to keep a giant machine going…”

6. Reunion and Lasting Ideals

(~25:30–28:15)

• Years later, the narrator and Miranda reunite on a floating platform above the parched American interior, now transformed by technology and collapse.
• Miranda, now changed and outwardly successful, says: “It’s funny, right? …all that time we were going on about the ocean and how it was our lover and our history and all that jazz. But look at that desert down there. It’s all beautiful too.” (26:30)
• They toast “to wrong headedness,” representing loyalty to the ideals and mistakes of their youth.

7. Themes and Author’s Intention

(28:15–30:45)

• Margaret shares Anders’ commentary: The story was meant to be “a hopeful story about young people living their lives and building something new in the wake of catastrophic climate change.”
• Margaret’s tone turns reflective, feeling the piece is more nostalgic than hopeful, especially given the losses endured and the somber return to “real life” after subcultural collectivism.
• Notable quote: “It sits in my head, this way of expressing what it feels like to have been part of a culture and moves on. But also, my God, the part about whale is so dark.” (30:06)

8. Closing Reflections

(30:45–31:38)

• Margaret’s final message emphasizes solidarity and survival:
  • “Take care of each other, love each other, meet your neighbors—whether or not you like your neighbors, meet your neighbors. We have to keep each other safe. Fuck ICE and I’ll talk to you next week.” (31:20)

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Memorable Quotes

• “Decay is part of the process. Decay keeps the ocean warm.” (13:45)
• “I had this beautiful moment that night, standing by a big bonfire with the rest of the crew, half of us some level of naked, and everybody looked radiant and free.” (15:50)
• “The honeymoon was over, but the marriage was just starting.” (09:22 and repeated)
• “Sometimes I stared into the waves for hours, trying to hear the sound waves trapped in them. But then I started to feel like maybe the ocean had told me everything it was ever going to.” (21:55)
• “After a while, I just raised my glass and we toasted to wrong headedness. Miranda laughed that same old wild laugh as our glasses touched.” (28:00)

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Notable Timestamps

• 02:51 – Story resumes; aftereffects of food barter
• 09:22 – “The honeymoon was over, but the marriage was just starting.”
• 13:33 – Communal ritual, sense of healing
• 15:00 – Solitary peace on the ruined water
• 15:50 – Joyous bonfire scene
• 18:30 – Discovering the loss of friends left with farmers
• 21:25–25:00 – Reflections on identity, alienation, and the decision to leave
• 26:30 – Reunion with Miranda, toasting ideals
• 28:15 – Author’s commentary and Margaret’s personal reactions
• 31:20 – Margaret’s closing message on solidarity

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Tone and Style

Margaret’s narration remains thoughtful, introspective, and openly emotional throughout—mixing summary, direct story excerpts, and raw personal reflection. The language is conversational, often confessional, sprinkled with dry humor and grounded queer/punk sensibilities.

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For Further Reflection

• The complicated loyalty of collective living: How do survival and morality clash under collapse?
• Nostalgia as a double-edged sword—an anchor and a weight, especially in transient subcultures.
• The challenge of building “hopeful stories” in worlds shaped by ecological disaster and trauma, and how hope may take the form of persistence rather than triumph.

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Summary prepared for listeners who want the heart and themes of the episode without listening.

Transcript

[Margaret Killjoy]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Book Club Book Club Book Club Book Club hello and welcome to Coalzone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy and this is part two of a two part story, which means that if you didn't listen to part one, you won't have heard half the story and it's up to you how you feel about that. What I would feel is really negative about that, personally. Maybe you feel differently. The story that you're going to hear part two of While I am slightly loopy and recording this at 12:30 in the morning after running around being yelled at by cops in Minneapolis, the story is called Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy by Charlie Jane Anderson Ah, today was the general strike, but I didn't work until after midnight, so it doesn't count, right? I didn't break any general strikes. That's how clever I am. I actually worked all day because I work as a journalist, but whatever. Anyway, we won't tell anyone I did work by reporting on the general strike, but whatever. I know you're excited about the story. I'm actually very excited about the story because Change was the ocean and we lived by her mercy by Charlie Jane Anderson and this story was originally published in Drowned Worlds, a 2016 short story collection edited by Jonathan Stahen. We didn't have enough food for the winter after that, so a bunch of us had to make the trip up north to Marin by boat and on foot to barter with some gun crazy farmers in the hills, and they wanted free labor in exchange for food. So we left Whale and a few others behind to work in their fields, trudging back down the hill, pulling the first batch of produce in a cart. I kept looking over my shoulder to see our friends staring after us as we left them, surrounded by old dudes with rifles. I couldn't look at the community the same way after that. Yokanda fell into a depression that made here unable to speak or look anyone in the eye for days at a time, and we were all staring at the walls of our poorly repaired dormitory buildings, which looked as though a strong wind could bring them down. I kept remembering myself walking away from those farmers the way I told WIO it would be fine. We'd be back before anyone knew anything. This would be a funny story later. I tried to imagine myself doing something different. Putting my foot down, maybe, or saying, fuck this, we don't leave our own behind. It didn't seem like something I would ever do, though. I had always been someone who went along with what everyone else wanted. But my one big act of rebellion was coming here to Bernal island, and I wouldn't have ever come if Julia hadn't already been coming. Miranda saw me coming and walked the other way. That happened a couple of times. She and I were supposed to have a fancy evening together. I was going to give her a bath even if it used up half my water allowance, but she cancelled. We were on a tiny island, but I kept only seeing her off in the distance and a group of others. But whenever I got closer, she was gone. At last I saw her walking on the big hill, and I followed her up there until we were almost at eye level with the Transamerica pyramid coming up out the flat water. She turned and grabbed at the collar of my shirt and part of my collarbone. You gotta let me have my day, she hissed. You can't be in my face all the time, giving me that look. You need to get out of my face. You blame me, I said, for Wao and the others, for what happened. I blame you for being a clingy, wet blanket. Just leave me alone for a while. Jeez. And here, dear listener, I want to apologize for the fact that I'm not really doing voices for I, your narrator, am exhausted, just really, really tired, so I hope you'll bear with me. Back to the story. And then I kept walking behind her, and she turned and either made a gesture that connected with my chest or else intentionally shoved me. I fell on my butt. I nearly tumbled head over heels down the rocky slope into the water, but then I got a handhold on a dead root. Oh fuck. Are you okay? Miranda reached down to help me up, but I shook her off. I trudged down the hill alone. I kept replaying that moment in my head when I wasn't, replaying the moment when I walked away with a ton of food and left Wao and the others at gunpoint. I had thought that being here on this island meant that the only past that matter was the grand, mysterious, rebellious history that was down there under the water in the wreckage of San Francisco, all the wild music submerged between its walls. I had thought my own personal past no longer mattered at all, until suddenly I had no mental energy for anything but replaying those Two memories, uglier each time around. And then someone came up to me at lunch as I sat and ate some of the proceeds from Wayo's indenture. Chris or Jamie, I forget which, and he whispered, I'm on your side. A few other people said the same thing later that day. They had my back. Miranda was a bitch. She had assaulted me. I saw other people hanging around Miranda and staring at me, talking in her ear, telling her that I was a problem and they were with her. I felt like crying, except that I couldn't find enough moisture inside me. I didn't know what to say to the people who were on my side. I was too scared to speak. I wished Yokanda would wake up and tell everybody to quit it, to just get back to work and play and stop fomenting. The next day I went to the dining area, sitting at the other end of the long table for Miranda and her group of supporters. Miranda stood up so fast she knocked her own food on the floor and she shouted at Yasni, just leave me the fuck alone. I don't want you on my side or anybody else. There are no sides. This is none of your business. You people, you goddamn people. What are you people even about? She got up and left, kicking the wall on her way out. After that, everybody was on my side. 6 the honeymoon was over, but the marriage was just starting. I rediscovered social media. I'd let my friendships with people back in Fairbanks and elsewhere run to seed during all this. Weird, but now I reconnected with people I hadn't talked to in a year or so. Everybody kept saying that Olympia had gotten really cool since I left. There was a vibrant music scene and people were publishing zoot books and having storytelling slams and stuff, and meanwhile the government and Fairbanks had decided to cool it on trying to make the coast fall into line. Though there was talk about some kind of loose Articles of Confederation at some point. Meanwhile, we'd even made serious inroads against the warlords of Nevada. I started looking around the dormitory buildings and kitchens and communal play spaces of Bernal and at our Ocean reclamation machines as if I was trying to commit them to memory. One minute I was looking at all of it as if this could be the last time I would see any of it. But the next minute I was just making peace with it so I could stay forever. I could just imagine how this moment could be the beginning of a new, more mature relationship with the wrong headed crew where I wouldn't have any more illusions. But that would make my commitment Even stronger.

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[Tara Davis Woodhull]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

I sat with Yokanda and a few others on that same stretch of shore where we'd all stood naked and launched candles and we held hands. After a while Nokonda smiled and I felt like sea was coming back to us, so it was like the heart of our community was restored. Decay is part of the process. Decay keeps the ocean warm. Today Yokanda had wild hair with some bright colors in it, a single strand of beard. I nodded. Instead of the guilt or fear or selfish anxiety that I've been so aware of having inside me, I felt a weird feeling of acceptance. We were strong, we would get through this. We were wrong headed. I went out in a dinghy and sailed around the Big island, went up towards the ruins of Telegraph. I sailed right past the Newsome spire, watching its carbon fiber cladding flake away like shiny confetti. The water looked so opaque it was like sailing on milk. I sat there in the middle of the city, a few miles from anyone, and felt totally peaceful. I had a kick of guilt at being so selfish, going off on my own when the others could probably use another pair of hands. But then I decided it was okay. I needed this time to myself. It would make me a better member of the community. When I got back to Bernal, I felt calmer than I had in ages, and I was able to look at all the others, even Mage, who still gave me the murder eye from time to time, with patience and love. They were all my people. I was lucky to be among them. I had this beautiful moment that night, standing by a big bonfire with the rest of the crew, half of us some level of naked, and everybody looked radiant and free. I started to hum to myself and it turned into a song, one of the old songs that Zell had supposedly brought back from digital extinction. It had this chorus about the wild kids and the war dance and a bridge that doubled back on itself, and I had this feeling like maybe the honeymoon is over, but the marriage is just beginning. Then I found myself next to Miranda, who kicked at some embers with her boot. I'm glad things calmed down, I whispered. I didn't mean for anyone to get so crazy. We were all just on edge and it was a bad time, huh? Miranda said. I noticed you never told your peeps to cool it, even after I told the people defending me to shut their faces. Oh, I said. But I actually and then I didn't know what to say. I felt the feeling of helplessness, trapped in the grip of the past coming back again. I mean, I tried. I'm really sorry. Whatever, Miranda said. I'm leaving soon. Probably going back to Anheim Diego. I heard they made some progress with the nanomechs after all. Oh. I looked into the fire until my retinas were all blotchy. I'll miss you. Whatever. Miranda slipped away. I tried to mourn her going, but then I realized I was just relieved I wasn't going to be able to deal with her hanging around like a bruise when I was trying to move forward. With Myranda gone, I could maybe get back to feeling happy here. Yokanda came along when we went back into Meren to get the rest of the food from those farmers and collect Wao and the two others we had left there. We climbed the steep path from the water and Yokanda kept needing to rest. Close to the water. Everything was the kind of salty and moist that I'd gotten used to, but after a few miles everything got dry and dusty. By the time we got to the farm we were thirsty and we'd used up all our water and the farmers saw us coming and got their rifles out. Our friends had run away, the farmer said. Wao and the others a few weeks earlier, and they didn't know where. They just ran off, left the work half done. So too bad we weren't going to get all the food we had been promised. Nothing personal, the lead farmer said. He had sunburnt cheeks even though he wore a big straw hat. I watched Yokanda's face pass through shock, anger, misery, and resignation without a single word coming out. The farmers had their guns slung over their shoulders, enough of a threat without even needing to aim. We took the cart half full of food instead of all the way full back down the hill to our boat. We never found out what actually happened to WH and the others.

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[Tara Davis Woodhull]

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[Hunter Woodhull]

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[Tara Davis Woodhull]

As athletes, our lives are about having.

[Hunter Woodhull]

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[Hunter Woodhull]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

7 that's such an inappropriate line of inquiry. I don't even know how to deal. I spent a few weeks pretending I was in it for the long haul on Bernal island after we got back from Marin. This was my home. I had formed an identity here that meant the world to me and these people were my family. Of course I was staying, and one day I realized I was just trying to make up my mind whether to go back to Olympia or all the way back to Fairbanks. In Fairbanks, they knew how to make thick cut toast with eggs smeared across it. You could go out dancing in half a dozen different speakeasies that stayed open until dawn. I missed being in a real city. Kind of. I realized I'd already decided to leave San Francisco a while ago without ever consciously making the decision. Everyone I had ever had a crush on I had hooked up with already. Some of them I still hooked up with sometimes, but it was nostalgia, sex rather than anything else. I was actually happier sleeping alone. I didn't want anybody else's knees cramping my thighs in the middle of the night. I couldn't forgive the people who sided with Miranda against me, and I was even less able to forgive the people who sided with me against Miranda. I didn't like to dwell on stuff, but there were a lot of people I had obscure, unspoken grudges against all around me. And then occasionally I would stand in a spot where I'd watched Wao sit and build a tiny raft out of sticks, and I would feel the anger rise up all over again at myself. Mostly I wondered about what Miranda was doing now, and whether we would ever be able to face each other again. I'd been so happy to see her go, but now I couldn't stop thinking about her. The only time I even wondered about my decision was when I looked at the ocean and the traces of the dead city underneath it, the amazing heritage that we were carrying on here. Sometimes I stared into the waves for hours, trying to hear the sound waves trapped in them. But then I started to feel like maybe the ocean had told me everything it was ever going to. The ocean always sang the same notes. It always passed over the same streets and came back with the same sad laughter. And staring down at the ocean only reminded me of how we thought we could help to heal her with our enzyme treatments a little at a time. I couldn't see why I had ever believed in that fairy tale. The ocean was going to heal on her own sooner or later, but in the meantime we were just giving her meaningless therapy that made us feel better more than it actually helped. I got up every day and did my chores. I helped to repair the walls and tend the gardens and stuff, but I felt like I was just turning wheels to keep a giant machine going so that I would be able to keep turning the wheels tomorrow. I looked down at my own body, at the loose kelp and hemp garments I'd started wearing since I'd moved here. I looked at my hands and forearms, which were thicker, calloused, and more veiny with all the hard work I'd been doing here, but also the thousands of rhinestones in my fingernails glittered in the sunlight, and I felt like I moved differently than I used to. Even with every shitty thing that had happened, I'd learned something here and wherever I went. From now on, I would always be wrong headed. I left without saying anything to anybody, the same way everyone else had. A few years later I had drinks with Miranda on that new floating platform that hovered over the wasteland of North America. Somehow we floated half a mile above the desert and the mountaintop. Don't ask me how, but it was carbon neutral and all that good stuff. From up here, the hundreds of miles of parched earth looked like piles of gold. It's funny, right? Miranda seemed to have guessed what I was thinking all that time we were going on about the ocean and how it was our lover and our history and all that jazz. But look at that desert down there. It's all beautiful too. It's another wounded environment, sure, but it's also a lovely fragment of the past. People sweated and died for that land, and maybe one day it'll come back, you know. Miranda was, I guess, in her early 30s, and she looked amazing. She'd gotten the snaggle taken out of her teeth and her hair was a perfect wave. She wore a crisp suit that seemed powerful and relaxed. She'd become an important person in the world of nanomechs. I stopped staring at Myranda and looked over the railing down at the dunes. We'd made some pretty major progress at rooting out the Warlords, but still nobody wanted to live there in the vast majority of the continent. The desert was beautiful from up here, but maybe not so much up close. I heard Yokanda killed herself, miranda said. A while ago. Not because of anything in particular that had happened. Just the depression. It caught up with here. She shook her head. God, C was such an amazing leader. But hey, the wrong headed community is twice the size it was when you and I lived there and they expanded onto the Big Island. I even heard they got a seat at the table of the Confederation talks. Sucks that Yokanda won't see what C Bill to get that recognition, I was still dressed like a wrong headed person even after a few years. I had the loose flowy garments, the smudgy paint on my face that helped obscure my gender rather than serving as a guide to it. The straight line thin eyebrows and sparkly earrings and nails. I hadn't lived on Bernal in years, but it was still a huge part of who I was. Miranda looked like this whole other person, and I didn't know whether to feel ashamed that I had moved on or contemptuous of her for selling out or some combination. I didn't know anybody who dressed the way Miranda was dressed because I was still in Olympia where we were being radical artists. I wanted to say something, an apology or something sentimental about the amazing time we had shared or I don't even know what. I didn't actually know what I wanted to say and I had no words to put it into. So after a while I just raised my glass and we toasted to wrong headedness. Miranda laughed that same old wild laugh as our glasses touched. Then we went back down to staring at the wasteland, trying to imagine how many generations it would take before something green came out of it. The thanks at the end of this from the author that are in the original text is thanks to Burrito justice for the map and and Terry Johnson for the biotech insight and what Charlie Jane Anders wrote about the story what the author wrote about the story for her short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. Quote After I wrote My Breath is a Rudder, a story about people building a seawall to protect San Francisco from rising sea levels. I always meant to go back and write another queer first person story that takes place after San Francisco is claimed by the ocean. Enter Jonathan Strahan, who asked me to contribute to a post climate change anthology called Drowned Worlds. I had a lot of fun imagining the San Francisco archipelago using a map that Brian Stokel and Burrito justice had created of the city following 200ft of sea level rise. Still, I had a lot of trouble finding my way into this story because I was feeling burned out on depressing post apocalyptic tales. Then my partner Annalee Nuance asked me why exactly this story had to be depressing or post apocalyptic. Why not write about people who were rebuilding and bouncing back? This insight gave me the breakthrough I needed and this became a hopeful story about young people living their lives and building something new in the wake of catastrophic climate change. That's the end of the piece from Charlie and it's really funny to me because especially the second half of the story isn't really very helpful to me. Instead for me it's this very nostalgic piece. Especially thinking about this being still dressing wrong headed and hanging out with someone who's basically a yuppie now, right? Or are they? Or they're presenting that they're wearing a suit and they seem to have their shit together, right? But it's interesting because I'm reading what they're claiming to have accomplished, like oh, we've pushed back the warlords and but no one actually wants to live in the desert. And then I'm like, well, the warlords were living in the desert. I don't know, but it's so interesting to me. Maybe it's interesting to me because I'm sitting here wearing my punk clothes. I don't know if I have too much to say about the story that I haven't already said, but it sits in my head, this way of expressing what it feels like to have been part of a culture and moves on. But also, my God, the part about whale is so dark. It's so dark. But I think about how getting through those youthful years of more full subculture where I'm like, oh, this is my family, I'll be in it forever. And I'm like, man, a lot of those people are dead and here I am and here you are and well, I don't know. Take care of each other, love each other, Meet your neighbors. Whether or not you like your neighbors, meet your neighbors. We have to keep each other safe. Fuck Ice and I'll talk to you next week. It Could Happen Here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources from Where It Could Happen here. Updated [e-mail] sources thanks for listening.

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