It’s funny how certain authors tend to have common elements across very different works of fiction. For instance, one of my favorite authors in FOUR different novels created situations where human beings encountered non-humans and were exposed, non-consensually, to something that bonded them to the non-humans in a permanent, life-altering way, for some kind of mating-related purpose. She did it four different ways but it was all kind of eerie when I realized how often she liked to write characters getting trapped and transformed in these situations. (And I’m not saying it was a bad thing. I just wondered if the author knew it was a thing she was doing.) The example used here is not actually someone I know, incidentally. Authors, what weird little things do a bunch of your stories share?
It’s something that I always wonder about when someone talks about symbolism in art and media. Like, was it a conscious decision by the creator? Or just something that was stuck in their head leaking out onto the page.