Summary
Casual is a near-future dystopian novel that follows Valya, a pregnant woman in her late twenties living in Old Sofia, as she navigates anxiety, depression, trauma, and difficult choices about emerging neurotechnology.
The story takes place in a world recovering from devastating wars that have killed half of Earth’s population. Society is divided between crumbling surface cities like Old Sofia and pristine underground cities like New Sofia, built into mountains with advanced crystal architecture. A technology called “Casual” (or “Caz”) has become widespread—neural implants that help users manage emotions through immersive games, though they’re controversial and potentially addictive.
Valya has been prescribed Casual to manage her “dexiety” (depression and anxiety). The implant helps her play a calming game featuring a red fox in nature settings, which regulates her neurotransmitters and keeps her stable. However, she’s recently broken up with her boyfriend Skylar—a famous anti-technology blogger who secretly comes from the wealthy family that created Casual (his aunt is Emersyn, CEO of Emersyn Enterprises). Their relationship was intense and controlling, with Skylar helping manage her night terrors and anxiety in increasingly physical ways.
When Valya discovers she’s pregnant, Skylar has already left her, disgusted by her dependence on technology. She learns that new laws require primary caregivers to deactivate their Casual implants during their baby’s first year to prevent neglect. Her obstetrician Janice and therapist Orlov both pressure her to prepare for this change.
As Valya attempts to wean off Casual, she struggles terribly. Sleep becomes impossible, anxiety overwhelms her, and she begins experiencing hallucinations of a terrifying “White Man”—a figure wearing a cheap skull mask. Through fragmented memories, she begins to realize this represents repressed childhood sexual abuse from her father and other men in her impoverished Padalo neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Emersyn Enterprises offers Valya a place in a controversial trial: the Casual Infant Tandem Program. Instead of shutting off her implant, Valya would share her Casual experience with her newborn daughter through a new crystal-based implant that could grow and adapt with the child’s developing brain. In exchange, Valya would receive a luxurious apartment in New Sofia’s elite E-level and financial support.
Throughout her pregnancy, Valya develops a romantic relationship with Brianne, a woman from her maternity cohort who also cannot use Casual due to a rejected implant. She also processes her relationship with Skylar through increasingly popular vlogs, navigating criticism from friends like Olivia who worry she’s being exploited.
The novel explores Valya’s internal conflict as she weighs the risks and benefits of the infant trial. The implant could help her monitor her daughter’s safety and wellbeing, potentially protecting her from the abuse Valya herself suffered. However, medical professionals like Janice warn that it could fundamentally alter the child’s personality and development, essentially erasing who she would naturally become.
When Valya finally confronts Skylar about the pregnancy, she discovers he’s moved on with Lala, a young Chaser (someone addicted to augmented reality games), and he quickly signs away his parental rights. This frees Valya to make her own choice.
Ultimately, despite all warnings, Valya decides to enroll in the trial. She gives birth to her daughter Lisa with the help of Casual’s birthing program, which transforms labor pain into euphoric sensory experiences. Days later, the crystal implant is placed behind Lisa’s tiny ear, linking mother and daughter through their shared neural technology.
The novel ends ambiguously as Emersyn activates the tandem connection, telling Valya: “I’d like you to meet Lisa.” Valya’s Casual begins, presumably now shared with her newborn daughter, leaving readers to contemplate whether this represents hope or horror for humanity’s technological future.
Through Valya’s story, Casual examines themes of trauma, maternal anxiety, bodily autonomy, technological dependence, class inequality, and the impossible choices parents face—particularly mothers managing mental illness while trying to protect their children from harm. The novel questions what it means to be a “good mother” when all available options carry significant risks.
Academic Review: Casual by Koji A. Dae
Introduction
Koji A. Dae’s Casual (2025) represents a significant contribution to contemporary speculative fiction’s exploration of technology, mental health, and maternal agency. Published by Tenebrous Press as part of their commitment to “Weird” literary fiction, the novel interrogates the intersections between neurotechnology, socioeconomic inequality, and bodily autonomy through the lens of near-future dystopia. This review argues that Casual succeeds as both a psychologically nuanced character study and a prescient critique of techno-solutionism, though its ambitions occasionally exceed its structural execution. The novel’s willingness to engage with uncomfortable questions about consent, surveillance capitalism, and the medicalization of motherhood positions it as an important intervention in discussions about reproductive futurism and digital embodiment.
Plot Summary and Context
Set in a climate-ravaged, post-war Sofia divided between the crumbling “Old Sofia” and the crystal-constructed underground “New Sofia,” Casual follows Valya, a pregnant woman from the impoverished Padalo neighborhood who uses a neural implant called “Casual” (Caz) to manage her depression and anxiety. The novel charts Valya’s third trimester as she navigates the dissolution of her relationship with Skylar—an anti-technology blogger whose hypocrisy becomes increasingly apparent—while confronting pressure from Emersyn Enterprises to enroll her unborn daughter in an experimental “tandem” program that would implant similar technology in the infant’s brain.
The narrative unfolds through Valya’s fragmented first-person perspective across her final three months of pregnancy, structured in monthly sections. As Valya’s obstetrician insists she deactivate her implant to comply with new child welfare laws, the protagonist experiences the return of severe mental health symptoms, including hallucinations of a “White Man” that ultimately reveal repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Simultaneously, she develops a relationship with Brianne, another pregnant woman, and must reconcile her need for technological intervention with societal judgment about maternal fitness. The novel culminates in Valya’s decision to participate in the tandem trial, positioning her choice as both capitulation to corporate power and assertion of maternal autonomy.
Critical Analysis
Thematic Examination: Technology, Trauma, and Choice
Casual operates primarily as an investigation of how technological mediation shapes—and is shaped by—mental illness, poverty, and gendered violence. Dae constructs Casual technology as simultaneously liberatory and exploitative, refusing easy categorization. For Valya, the implant provides genuine relief: “My dexiety had created a groove in my consciousness, so my first reaction to these stressors is anxiety” (Chapter 29). The gaming interface functions as effective therapy, regulating her neurotransmitters while providing cognitive behavioral intervention disguised as entertainment. Yet this same technology serves as a mechanism of social control—her therapist Orlov monitors her usage remotely, corporations track her location, and the device’s removal precipitates psychological collapse precisely when she most needs stability.
The novel’s central tension emerges from its refusal to moralize about Valya’s ultimate choice. Unlike cautionary tales about technological overreach, Casual presents the tandem implant as the least bad option available to a woman systematically denied alternatives. As Emersyn notes, “You need me, and you’re right. I do. But I know you need me, too” (Chapter 32). This mutual dependency structures the novel’s critique of late capitalism: Valya’s “choice” exists only within parameters determined by her economic precarity, mental health crisis, and the absence of adequate social support.
The revelation of Valya’s childhood sexual abuse functions as more than plot twist—it demonstrates how trauma creates vulnerability to technological capture. Her inability to access these memories without the implant’s removal suggests that Casual doesn’t merely manage symptoms but actively restructures consciousness. The “White Man” hallucinations represent return of the repressed, but their emergence only when the technology fails indicates that digital mediation has replaced rather than resolved psychological processing. This raises profound questions about whether managed stability constitutes healing or merely outsourcing of emotional labor to corporate infrastructure.
Form and Narrative Structure
Dae employs a fragmented, present-tense narration that mirrors Valya’s cognitive state while creating interpretive challenges. The novel’s month-by-month structure provides temporal anchoring, yet within chapters, the prose frequently shifts between remembered dialogue, stream-of-consciousness reflection, and scene-based narrative without clear transitions. This technique effectively conveys Valya’s difficulty maintaining coherent self-narrative:
“I tell myself I’m wrong. I’m not giving him enough credit. I’ll go to him, knock on his door, and he’ll see my flourishing belly. The words of our last night together will melt away. We’ll get our moment. Our daughter will get her father. But some words can’t be taken back” (Chapter 8).
The conditional and subjunctive moods dominate Valya’s interior voice, suggesting her persistent occupation of hypothetical futures that never materialize. This creates productive dissonance between reader expectation and narrative fulfillment—we anticipate reconciliation with Skylar that never arrives, expect Brianne romance that fizzles, await technological catastrophe that doesn’t occur.
However, the novel’s commitment to Valya’s limited perspective occasionally constrains world-building effectiveness. The socio-political context remains sketchy: we learn of wars, climate disaster, and authoritarian global governance through scattered references rather than systematic exposition. While this focalization creates immediacy, it sometimes leaves readers uncertain about basic parameters of the fictional world. The relationship between Old and New Sofia, the nature of the “Chaser” subculture, and the mechanics of basic income distribution remain frustratingly vague.
Characterization and Psychological Realism
Valya emerges as a compellingly unreliable narrator whose self-perception shifts throughout the text. Initially, she presents herself as a victim of Skylar’s manipulation and society’s techno-phobia. As the narrative progresses, her own contradictions surface: she criticizes Chasers while depending on similar technology, condemns Skylar’s hypocrisy while maintaining relationship with him for material support, and positions herself as protective mother while making choices others perceive as endangerment.
The novel’s psychological realism shines in its depiction of Valya’s anxiety and depression. Rather than romanticizing mental illness, Dae renders its mundane exhaustion—the inability to focus, the paralysis before simple tasks, the spiraling catastrophic thoughts. The description of panic attacks demonstrates particular acuity:
“My chest heaves with concentration. Maybe it was Jake. Yeah, ‘Jake.’ He squints and tilts his head to the side. No. Jake isn’t right either. I’m an idiot. I’m backing up, stumbling against one of his racks… The metallic taste comes. I can’t stop to pick them up. I back out the door” (Chapter 15).
This representation avoids both triumphalist recovery narrative and tragedy, instead presenting mental illness as chronic condition requiring ongoing management—making the removal of effective treatment particularly cruel.
Supporting characters function primarily to illuminate different facets of Valya’s situation. Brianne represents the road-not-taken: a woman whose brain rejected implant technology, experiencing social isolation as consequence. Olivia serves as Valya’s conscience and anchor to pre-Skylar identity. Skylar himself remains somewhat opaque—we see him primarily through Valya’s idealizing then demonizing gaze, never quite accessing his interiority. His final revelation as living with Lala, a heavily-augmented Chaser, effectively undermines Valya’s certainty about his anti-technology stance while raising questions about his own relationship to control.
Emersyn, as representative of corporate power, risks caricature but largely avoids it through her genuine conviction. She believes in her technology’s benefits even as she exploits Valya’s vulnerability. This makes her more unsettling than a purely mercenary villain—she embodies the logic of innovation that justifies experimentation on marginalized bodies in the name of progress.
Stylistic Elements: Imagery and Symbolism
The novel’s central symbol—the red fox from Valya’s Casual game—operates on multiple registers. Initially appearing as mere game mechanic, the fox becomes psychological companion, then manifestation of Valya’s repressed vitality. Its persistent reappearance after the implant’s deactivation suggests both the device’s lasting neurological impact and Valya’s internalization of its logic. The fox represents what Valya cannot catch but perpetually chases: stability, safety, joy uncomplicated by trauma.
The crystal sculpture Emersyn sends—with its reaching, adaptive tendrils—functions as material metaphor for the tandem technology. Its beauty and responsiveness seduce even as its grasping quality unsettles. Significantly, Valya keeps this sculpture while discarding Skylar’s “authentic” village artifacts, suggesting technology’s superior adaptability to her actual needs versus romanticism of pre-industrial purity.
The pink kitten pillow embodies the novel’s most disturbing symbolism. Its transformation from childhood comfort object to trauma repository to ritual purification through burning traces Valya’s relationship to memory itself. The pillow’s destruction represents not healing but pragmatic compartmentalization—the past cannot be erased, only contained.
Dae’s prose style varies between stark simplicity and overwrought metaphor, sometimes within single paragraphs. At its best, this creates productive tension: “The real me screamed. Loud and strong. In the dream I was silent, drowning beneath the man. Paralyzed” (Chapter 12). At its weakest, it produces purple passages that undermine emotional impact: “My heart jumps even faster, making my world spin” (Chapter 18).
Contextual Situating
Technological Anxiety and Surveillance Capitalism
Casual participates in growing literary engagement with neurotechnology’s social implications, joining works like Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous (2017) and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater (2016) in exploring how brain-computer interfaces reshape subjectivity and social relations. Unlike cyberpunk’s often celebratory stance toward human enhancement, Casual adopts a more ambivalent position influenced by surveillance capitalism critique. Shoshana Zuboff’s formulation of “behavioral surplus” illuminates the novel’s depiction of Casual technology: the device ostensibly serves Valya’s therapeutic needs while extracting valuable data about neural patterns, emotional states, and behavioral predictions that enrich Emersyn Enterprises.
The novel’s post-climate-disaster setting participates in “cli-fi” tradition while foregrounding how environmental catastrophe exacerbates existing inequalities. The spatial division between underground New Sofia and surface Old Sofia literalizes class stratification, with the wealthy literally insulated from environmental consequence. This recalls Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-socialist futures while maintaining horror genre’s emphasis on bodily vulnerability.
Reproductive Politics and Maternal Agency
Casual engages contemporary debates about reproductive autonomy, fetal personhood, and the regulation of maternal bodies. Valya’s experience—pressured to modify her body chemistry for fetal benefit, judged for medication use, subjected to invasive examination—resonates with scholarship on obstetric violence and the construction of “good” versus “bad” mothers (Diaz-Tello, 2016). The novel dramatizes Sophie Lewis’s argument that “gestators are workers” whose reproductive labor is simultaneously valorized and exploited (Lewis, 2019).
The tandem trial literalizes anxieties about technological intervention in pregnancy, echoing real debates about prenatal genetic modification, maternal-fetal medicine, and the quantified pregnancy. Valya’s choice to participate might be read through Jennifer Nash’s work on Black maternal health, which emphasizes how marginalized women’s reproductive decisions are constrained by structural violence yet still constitute meaningful agency (Nash, 2020). Though Valya is not explicitly racialized, her class position and geography mark her as exploitable subject for medical experimentation.
The novel’s treatment of childhood sexual abuse within this reproductive context is particularly significant. Valya’s decision to give Lisa the implant stems partly from believing it will allow her to detect future abuse, transforming surveillance technology into protective mechanism. This inverts typical privacy concerns—for trauma survivors, transparency may be desirable. Yet this also raises troubling questions about whether technological monitoring can substitute for social structures that prevent abuse.
Genre Hybridity: Horror, Literary Fiction, and Cyberpunk
Casual occupies productive space between genres, satisfying neither purely cyberpunk nor literary realist expectations. Its inclusion in Tenebrous Press’s “New Weird” catalog signals participation in tradition that includes China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer—works that blend speculative elements with literary ambition while refusing genre conventions’ reassuring resolutions.
The horror elements manifest not through supernatural threats but through psychological dread and bodily violation. The “White Man” functions as both trauma symptom and genre expectation subversion—the monster is real, but not supernatural. The novel’s true horror lies in institutional abandonment: Valya cannot access adequate mental health care, faces homelessness as pregnant person, and must choose between equally compromising options. This aligns with what Avery Gordon calls “social haunting,” where ghosts represent “that which appears to be not there” but structures material reality (Gordon, 2008).
Evaluation: Strengths and Limitations
Strengths
The novel’s greatest achievement lies in its nuanced exploration of medicalization, neither romanticizing mental illness nor demonizing pharmaceutical/technological intervention. Dae resists the ableist narrative that medication prevents “authentic” experience—Valya is more herself, not less, when properly medicated. This challenges both anti-psychiatry polemics and uncritical acceptance of medical authority.
The prose demonstrates considerable skill in rendering altered states of consciousness. The descriptions of Casual gameplay effectively convey immersive technology’s appeal through synesthetic imagery: “The fragment of sight and sound hitches a ride across my synapses on neurotransmitters I’ve produced. Yet the way it plays on all my senses—how I can almost touch the crystalline snow and smell the wet winter air—it feels like I’m the one inside the game” (Chapter 31). This achieves what much technologically-focused fiction attempts but rarely accomplishes: making virtual experience feel genuinely compelling rather than merely described.
The novel’s handling of sexual abuse trauma demonstrates commendable restraint and psychological accuracy. Rather than exploiting trauma for emotional manipulation, Dae presents it as contextual factor shaping Valya’s vulnerability while refusing to make it explanatory totality. The relationship between trauma, memory suppression, and technological mediation raises sophisticated questions about whether healing requires remembering or whether managed forgetting might be legitimate coping.
Limitations
The novel’s structural issues become apparent in its middle section, where momentum flags. Chapters 15-20 repeat similar emotional beats—Valya struggles with implant removal, considers the trial, resists, reconsiders—without sufficient plot development. While this mirrors pregnancy’s tedious waiting, it tries reader patience. Tighter editing might have compressed the second trimester section without losing psychological insight.
The world-building inconsistencies occasionally break immersion. The novel establishes that Casual implants cost ordinary users “outrageous prices” yet suggests they’re common enough to affect public policy. The mechanics of basic income distribution remain unclear—does everyone receive it, or only the unemployed? How does New Sofia’s economy function if most residents have implants that allow them to work remotely? These questions need not be exhaustively answered, but the novel provides insufficient detail to extrapolate.
Secondary characters sometimes serve primarily as vehicles for Valya’s development rather than possessing full interiority. Brianne’s arc—from romantic possibility to platonic support—feels underdeveloped. Her decision to end the romantic relationship comes abruptly, motivated more by plot necessity (Valya needs a roommate but not a lover) than organic character development. Similarly, Orlov’s revelation as lead researcher on the trial feels like manufactured betrayal rather than earned complication.
The ending, while thematically appropriate in its ambiguity, may frustrate readers seeking clearer resolution. We learn nothing of the tandem’s actual effects on Lisa or long-term consequences for Valya. The final image—“Valya, I’d like you to meet Lisa” (Chapter 35)—suggests beginning rather than conclusion. While this reflects the novel’s argument that parenting is ongoing negotiation rather than solved problem, it leaves narrative threads dangling. What happens to Skylar’s village? Does Valya’s vlogging career develop? How does cohabitation with Brianne evolve? These omissions feel less like strategic ellipsis and more like incomplete drafting.
Originality and Literary Impact
Casual makes its most original contribution through refusal of typical speculative fiction’s techno-optimism or techno-pessimism. Rather than presenting technology as salvation or doom, Dae depicts it as unevenly distributed resource that simultaneously enables and constrains. This positions the novel within what Lisa Nakamura calls “race and new media studies,” which emphasizes how digital technologies reproduce existing inequalities rather than transcending them (Nakamura, 2007).
The novel’s treatment of motherhood and mental illness together challenges prevalent narrative templates. Popular culture frequently presents maternal mental illness through postpartum psychosis horror (as in The Babadook or A Tale of Two Sisters) or redemptive recovery narrative (as in much memoir). Casual refuses both patterns, instead presenting chronic mental illness as manageable condition that neither defines maternal identity nor conveniently resolves through childbirth.
As early example of AI-free committed fiction (as noted in the publication information), Casual participates in emerging literary response to generative AI. Though not thematically focused on AI, its publication context situates it within debates about human creativity, technological mediation, and artistic labor.
Conclusion
Casual succeeds as ambitious exploration of how technology, trauma, and reproductive politics intersect in near-future capitalism. Dae’s achievement lies not in providing answers but in dramatizing the impossibility of pure choices under conditions of structural constraint. Valya’s decision to participate in the tandem trial emerges neither as heroic resistance nor tragic capitulation but as pragmatic navigation of intolerable circumstances—and in this refusal of narrative tidiness, the novel achieves its greatest power.
The work’s literary significance extends beyond its immediate narrative concerns. By centering a working-class, mentally ill protagonist’s reproductive decision-making, Casual challenges whose stories speculative fiction privileges and whose futures we imagine. The novel’s insistence that Valya possesses agency even within severely constrained conditions offers valuable counterpoint to dystopian fiction’s tendency toward fatalism.
For scholars of contemporary speculative fiction, Casual merits attention as example of genre hybridity that maintains literary ambition while engaging genre conventions. For researchers focused on medical humanities, the novel provides rich material for examining representations of mental health treatment and reproductive medicine. For those interested in surveillance studies and digital culture, the text offers nuanced portrayal of how intimate technologies reshape subjectivity.
Future scholarship might productively examine Casual alongside other contemporary fiction exploring neurotechnology and mental health, including Ling Ma’s Severance (2018) or Raven Leilani’s Luster (2020), investigating how these works collectively reimagine relationships between bodies, technologies, and social structures. Additional research might situate the novel within Bulgarian and Eastern European science fiction traditions, examining how Dae’s American perspective shapes representation of Sofia.
The novel’s enduring relevance seems assured as questions about brain-computer interfaces move from speculative to imminent. As commercial neural implants like Neuralink approach viability, Casual’s explorations of consent, access, and the social implications of cognitive enhancement will only become more pressing. The text reminds us that technological questions are always political questions—and that the future being built will privilege some bodies and minds while exploiting others unless we intervene in its design.
In final assessment, Casual represents significant achievement in contemporary speculative fiction, even while its execution remains imperfect. Dae has crafted a psychologically sophisticated, thematically rich novel that grapples honestly with difficult questions about agency, technology, and maternal embodiment. Its flaws—structural looseness, occasional prose excess, underdeveloped world-building—do not ultimately undermine its considerable accomplishments. This is the work of a writer unafraid to tackle uncomfortable subjects without offering false comfort, and in our current moment, such unflinching examination of technological futurity’s human costs proves both necessary and valuable.
Works Cited
Dae, Koji A. Casual. Tenebrous Press, 2025.
Diaz-Tello, Farah. “Invisible Wounds: Obstetric Violence in the United States.” Reproductive Health Matters, vol. 24, no. 47, 2016, pp. 56-64.
Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. U of Minnesota P, 2008.
Lewis, Sophie. Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. Verso, 2019.
Nakamura, Lisa. “Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet.” Visual Cultures of the Internet, U of Minnesota P, 2007.
Nash, Jennifer C. Birthing Black Mothers. Duke UP, 2020.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
KOJI A. DAE is a queer, synesthetic American living long-term in Bulgaria with her husband, two kids, and a cat. She is enthralled by Eastern European mythology and, after ten years of soaking up the magic of the Balkan Mountains, she feels prepared to write about it. By day she works with a non-profit furthering Bulgarian education, and by night she reads, writes, and crochets. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld Magazine, Apex Magazine and others, and she has a poetry collection called Scars that Never Bled: An Exploration of Frankenstein Through Poetry.