kalinara:

hopeful-trekkie:

James T. Kirk:

-Graduated in the top 4% of his year
-was bullied by jocks
-Is a history nerd
-was so much of a teacher’s pet that he cheated on an exam and was commended for it
-Was referred to as “a stack of books with legs”

Jean-Luc Picard:

-Spent all his free time drinking in pubs and playing billiards
-broke more hearts than he can remember
-started a bar fight that ended up in him being stabbed in the heart
-likes to explore dangerous ruins of ancient civilizations for fun
-wouldn’t even have become a starship captain if he wasn’t this much of a hothead

And yet people still manage to get it backwards???

I think it’s a problem of First Officer, really.

Jim Kirk seems like a wild man because he’s standing next to calm, logical Spock.*  

Meanwhile, Picard seems stately and dignified because he’s standing next to Will “Any alien physiology is bangable if you just put some thought into it” Riker*.  

* Of course THEN, we get to the next layer, which is that Spock is the dude who told the Vulcan Science Academy to fuck itself, while Riker plays the trombone.

The Federation is a confusing place.

(via ekjohnston)

Writing the Wise Ass on the Shoulder

themollyjay:

(from my Patreon)

One of my favorite tropes, which probably harkens back to how much of an impact I Will Fear No Evil had on me, is the voice in the back of the head. In at least three of the books on my list, including Mail Order Bride, this takes the form of an AI that also happens to inhabit the main character/one of the main character’s bodies.

There’s a lot of reasons this particular trope appeals to me. For one thing, it gives the protagonist a constant companion. Someone who both cares about their wellbeing and can be completely honest with them. For another, the possibilities for banter are wonderful. When you have a character that can keep up a running commentary in someone’s head without anyone else hearing, the things the character can get away with saying are absolutely hilarious, so the character is great for comic relief. But perhaps the most important thing is, the voice in the head can be honest with the main character in a way no other character could.

There is something incredibly fun about writing two characters who literally can not walk away from each other, but it does also have its difficulties. You can’t ever completely isolate the main character, because they always have the friend in their hear, whispering encouragement, giving them a reality check, letting them know that whatever happens, they aren’t alone.

That last bit is important. If you include this kind of character, then the protagonist is never alone, and God, that’s a powerful idea, and one I really enjoy exploring.

Progress Report 7/19/21

themollyjay:

83,519 words on The Master of Puppets.  22 Chapters.  I ended Chapter 22 right as the bad guys are coming over the hill to attack the good guys (metaphorically.  It’s just outside Dallas, so there aren’t any actual hills).

This book continues to kick my ass, but I’m so close to the end.

Don’t mind the maniacal laughter…

themollyjay:

I sent a new chapter of The Master of Puppets to the alpha readers tonight, and one of them responded with “That’s like the opposite of resolving shit before heading into a fight!”, which is true, but I don’t understand why they are surprised.  One of the few absolute certainties with my writing is that if two characters sit down to ‘resolve shit’ one of them will throw gasoline on a dynamite fire before the conversation is finished.

all-the-lovely-newsies:

Reblog this if you think it’s okay to support multiple different ships for the same character in a fandom.

(via evonnagale)

Can white people write POC as main characters?

writingwithcolor:

writingwithcolor:

@horse-faced-activist-gay said:

Recently a writing group I “audit” had a discussion about white authors writing poc, and the unanimous takeaway was “of course do it, just never as the pov/main character(s).” The argument was that no matter how careful or well researched, the pov will always come off like a white character in “digital blackface.” That there needed to be a good reason to write from that perspective, ie if the character’s race changed it should change the story? My pov character is Black; I’m white. I’ve been following this blog a long time and implementing the advice, but is the essence of me trying to write from her perspective misguided? I’ve now seen more than one author echo these sentiments. Is this just an excuse for white authors to avoid writing poc in lead roles, or an attempt not to overstep readers/authors of color? I’m very confused; any help would be greatly appreciated.

YES. 

White people absolutely can write PoC as main characters if not the protagonists of their stories! 

I didn’t create this blog for people to make PoC side characters 24/7! Not at all. Please write People of Color as main characters, no matter who you are.

- Colette

More reading: WWC General Topics Compilation

W a o.

Such toxic virtue signaling! If I’m being charitable, at best this is cowardice. At worst, this is the kind of BS discourse that is used to attack writers of color when they attempt anything besides personal memoirs. I recommend finding a new writing group. 

- Marika

Very concerned about the state of this writing group. 

~ Mod Rina

P.S. You’re right, OP, it is definitely an excuse.

Many of the responses to this post have indicated it’s fine for white people to write PoC MCs so long as you aren’t publishing them, because publishing is set up to favour white voices and you’ll be taking slots away from an author of a non-white background if you write diversity.

When it comes to the English-speaking Western market, the issue with this is twofold:

1- Most WWC readers will not be traditionally published writers; the odds of anyone becoming one are very low

2- It places a little too much blame on individuals for systemic problems in an industry

The Statistics of Becoming a Published Author

Quite a large number of people attempt to become published authors. Very few of them make it, and even fewer make their whole living off of it. So when we are giving advice, we rarely assume that these people will become professional writers, or at least, will become professional writers as their sole job description.

Also, the indie publishing market is where quite a few marginalized writers end up going, either from not being able to gain traction in traditional publishing or from simply preferring the creative control. In the indie market, there are no slots for you to take, as anyone can enter the market. 

(White privilege is still in effect in the indie market, in terms of who gets talked about the most and whose social media efforts pay off the highest, but there is a slightly more equitable potential from a lack of gatekeepers limiting the flow of stories)

As a result, lecturing people who have a very low chance of making it in traditional publishing about how terrible they are if they try to publish because they’re doing it wrong has very little point, and ends up serving as virtue signalling.

Diversity in creators is a deeply important thing, yes, and supporting diverse creators will help move the needle. But:

Systemic Change Needs Systemic Solutions

So you have successfully convinced a whole bunch of white writers that they cannot have diverse MCs, because if they do, they are stealing slots.

Have you convinced any editors or agents? No. And it’s the agents and editors who will allow new writers to come in. As evident by two literary agencies imploding in the wake of 2020’s BLM protests, and one industry organization near-imploding at the start of 2020 from racism, these structures are very racist and will not be convinced easily.

Talking to writers, especially aspiring writers, is talking to the group with the least amount of power in the situation. Traditionally published authors, both established and trying-to-break-in, are at the mercy of their agents, editors, and marketing team. They are also at the mercy of the governing bodies of their organizations, which may very well not have their best interests at heart.

Publishing is very white, yes. Publishing talks a big talk over being progressive without actually being progressive, yes. You can’t fix those issues without addressing the poverty wages that favour those with independent wealth and/or are secondary incomes for their household, the lack of remote work opportunities (the pandemic ground traditional publishing to a halt, because most publishers didn’t even allow electronic signatures until the pandemic), the fact major publishing houses only exist in expensive cities like NYC, and the lack of part-time opportunities.

How, pray tell, can even a large group of writers fix that, when they are not the ones who are doing budgets for publishing companies? 

Writers are not a unionized profession. There are some organizations that have some metrics of checking the industry, but there is a definitive lack of any single writers group that can create a collective strike until diversity demands are met. If a writer, or even a group of writers, strikes—they’re simply replaced. There is far, far too much supply of people who would cross the picket line to fill up those slots for writer actions to have much impact.

The Power of an Established Author

This might be controversial, but an established author adding diversity to their work can indeed help authors from more diverse backgrounds write fun stories for themselves.

Publishing is at the mercy of “the market.” They make all of their actions in the name of “the market.” And since publishing margins are so thin, and they pay most of the costs up-front, they will base everything off what has already sold.

Their sample sizing is small and their studies are flawed, but this is what they’re working with.

If an established author does something like, say, write a fairly prominent character who is of x marginalization, and that representation is done well, and that representation sells and leads to people snapping up that book—you have now added data to “the market” that says that this type of character is profitable, and therefore allowed to exist.

Asian stories began expanding in film after Avatar: The Last Airbender and Crazy Rich Asians, because network and studio executives saw these stories could be wildly popular. Yes, AtLA had problems and got ten buckets of things wrong from the start. Yes, CRA was xenophobic from an intra-Asian perspective. However, both were groundbreaking for their times. The same could be said for Buffy, both for being groundbreaking at the time and not standing up to newer representation in the same genre.

Will it guarantee a trickle down? No. But it does help show the white team that these stories are profitable. And you get enough clamouring for those kinds of stories and enough sales for these kinds of stories, and you begin to see creator profiles diversify.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to act as a bridge between white people and creators of color, by writing a story that has a not-white MC in a voice that’s still tinted by whiteness, but is hopefully not completely white and allows for the less white voices to come in. That is what it means to use your white privilege for good.

Consumer vs Writer

The ones who have some power to move the needle are consumers. Consumers can buy not-white authors and prove the market can support multiple of them. Consumers can seek out the indie market to show large publishers that people want to buy certain kinds of stories (this is how LGBTQ+ romances began to break into mainstream).

Note that this is still not systemic change that would allow the publishing industry to diversify, but it is something that would allow some change in what authors receive offers of traditional publishing.

WWC’s advice is primarily to writers. We drop in many notes to read diversity, especially if you want to write with it, because it is important to support real Creators of Color instead of exclusively supporting the characters in media themselves, but we are speaking to writers.

Consuming Diversity

Consuming diverse media will help you write diverse media, doubly so if you are writing something that might be touchy with the group in question.

This has both the benefit of supporting the creators of color and encouraging the market to diversify, but it also gives you very important data around what is safe to be discussed in media. Only good things can come from diversifying your media selection, both in the books themselves, and seeking out reviewers of color to share in the joys of those books while also exposing yourself to new perspectives.

You, as an outsider, cannot determine the boundaries of what is hurtful and what is not. Only insiders can do that. If you can’t find writers from the background you wish to use writing about a certain thing— don’t do it as an outsider. And if you can barely find any authors from that background at all, that’s a sign you need to vote with your dollar first, try getting it published second.

You will need to sample a large, varying group of authors to get a general sense where the boundaries are— and you’ll never make everyone happy. But at least if you have absorbed a lot of stories, you’ll know you’re within some people’s boundaries of what’s allowed to be discussed and not.

On Identity Stories

Probably the most controversial of the lot.

Depending on which group you talk to, you’ll either get an “absolutely not” or a “well, we have enough material out there, so… run it by us first but go ahead and try?” You can and will get these differing opinions within the same group.

Cultural competency is a skill learned over time, particularly when leveraged by experience. If you are starting from “I’m from a mostly white town that has maybe one token PoC family I was never close with”, chances are you’re better off starting with diverse side characters and consuming a whole lot of stories from non-white people before attempting to write a character of colour as a main character.

But if you’re from a really diverse town, you were perhaps the token white family around, and you’ve experienced tons and tons of cultural sharing from just making friends? You will be in a much stronger position to write something that really tackles deep issues.

If we examine the backgrounds of many white authors who are considered to be more successful by BIPOC communities when writing non-white characters, even for stories centered on identity, we see these patterns of cultural competency. These are individuals who have lived or worked in settings where they themselves are the minority, who have studied the regions and cultures they feature in their stories, who have spent time in fields that put them in touch with a wide variety of human experiences: diplomacy, teaching, library sciences, healthcare and social work. 

In short, they are people who, independent of their writing career, have done active work in connecting to people different from them. This does not mean that being a schoolteacher automatically makes a white person better at writing with diversity. However a white person who chose to become a teacher in order to address inequality in education is more likely to utilize the skills they might employ to better understand the perspectives of their non-white students to create realistic non-white characters. 

In conclusion

Discourse activists often treat structural issues as if they are made up of isolated problems, each with a single solution. However, most workable solutions must be multi-pronged. Imagine the probable profile of a paid, white author. Compared to their BIPOC counterpart, this person is more likely to:

• Be published in a traditional publishing setting
  
• Have wide visibility with consumers
• Enjoy the economic and political freedom to write as they please

Much of this is because Western publishing environments afford them these privileges. However, while one can reasonably ask people to be aware of their privilege, it is less reasonable to expect them to restrict their own opportunities and act against their own interests (Would you?).  Operating with zero-sum logic is rarely as effective as encouraging people to pursue mutual benefit.

More sensible recommendations for the public as a whole, including writers, may include: 

• Encouraging white writers to promote their POC colleagues
• Rewarding established authors who provide networking/ mentorship opportunities to aspiring POC writers
• Demanding greater transparency from publishers on editorial staff demographics, promotional and marketing budgets and salaries for authors
• Pursuing expansion of consumer tastes
• Incentivizing educational institutions to nurture POC writers
• Supporting the number of POC involved in the criticism, evaluation and analysis of compelling media (including independent reviewers such as booktubers of color)
• Increasing public consumption of written media through book fairs, libraries, independent bookstores while reducing reliance on monopolies (Hi Amazon) for distribution.

It is easy to point out problems in society. It is a much more difficult and involved commitment to be a part of the solution.

- WWC

P.S: Individual moderator perspectives will be coming at a later date, likely in a separate post 

Miscommunication vs. Lack of Communication

themollyjay:

(from my Patreon page)

One of the tropes I absolutely despise is when the conflict in a story could be resolved if the characters sit down and talked to each other for five minutes. I bring this up because last night I got Mail Order Bride back from the editor, and one of her comments was “I am delighted to say that all of the conflict comes from young people trying to find their own way forward, and not from the usual lack of communication.”

To say I was delighted by this comment was an understatement, but ironically, I got the comment as the exact moment I was working on a chapter in The Master of Puppets that focuses on a rather major miscommunication, and it got me thinking about the difference between a Lack of Communication and Miscommunication.

The chapter in The Master of Puppets arises from a cultural misunderstanding. The Master of Puppets, and in fact the entire War of Souls series is about the relationship between a human woman and an alien woman. At the end of the previous character, the human makes a small gesture of gratitude for something the alien had done. However, in the alien culture, because of differences in anatomy, holds a much greater significance, and the resulting misunderstanding becomes the central focus of the following chapter.

This does raise the question of why, if I hate lack of communication so much, why I am building part of a plot (even a relatively small part) around a miscommunication. The answer is, there’s a difference between lack of communication, and miscommunication. A miscommunication happens when people are genuinely trying to talk to each other, but for whatever reason, what one person is saying isn’t what the other person is hearing. A lack of communication happens when people just don’t talk to each other.

Both miscommunication and a lack of communication happen in real life, and both can destroy a relationship and cause all sorts of trouble, but why is one more tolerable in fiction than another. Why is miscommunication cause for anything from hilarity to tragedy, while a lack of communication will just end up annoying your reader and turning them off to your story?

The answer is agency. In order for readers to really get invested in characters, those characters need to have agency. Bad things can happen to a character, a character can make a mistake, a character can make a horrible decision, and readers will still get invested in them. But the one sure way for a character to lose the interest and sympathy of the reader is for a character to do nothing. No one wants to read about a character who sits there and passively lets plot happen to them.

Which brings us about to lack of communication vs. miscommunication. Miscommunication is a mistake. The characters are trying. The characters are active. The characters have agency. Miscommunication is something that happens while the characters are doing something. Lack of Communication is passivity. The characters aren’t trying. The characters aren’t active. The characters don’t have agency. Lack of Communication is the characters sitting there, passively letting plot happen to them.

Again, lack of communication does happen in real life, but fiction isn’t real life, and passive characters will drive your readers insane. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have ended up screaming at a character to do something. To do anything. I also can’t begin to count the number of stories I just did not finish because the characters couldn’t be bothered to do something about the plot happening to them. The last thing you, as an author want, is for your readers to experience that kind of frustration with your characters. Unless your name is Mary Shelly and your book is titled Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, in which case, more power to you.

One final caveat to this. While miscommunication can be a useful plot device, and it won’t drive the readers to distraction the way a lack of communication will, there comes a point at which miscommunication becomes a lack of communication. In order to about that, it’s important to remember that a miscommunication must be resolved. Not necessarily at the first opportunity, but the longer it lingers, the more it risks transforming into a lack of communication, at which point, you lose your readers.

In my case, the chapter I was writing centers around the discovery of the miscommunication, and while the miscommunication itself does not linger, the impact of the miscommunication, however brief, will last for the rest of the series because the miscommunication shifted a character’s perspective. It forced them to look at something in a different context, and once that happens, they can’t go back to their old way of thinking.

Which, I think, is the best way to use miscommunication as a plot device. Have it stick around just long enough to have the desired impact on the plot, then have it cleared up. And, if you can, get a few laughs out of it, because really, the moment when your normally calm and levelheaded character stops and screams “I did WHAT?” is always going to be fun.

Big News

themollyjay:

So, I got Mail Order Bride back from the editor last night, and I had planned to wait a few days to look at it, but I got impatient (come on, you knew that was going to happen) and went through the edits.

It turns out, there wasn’t a lot that needed changing, so I when ahead and made the recommended changes, dropped the updated draft into the submission packet I already had ready to go, and as of 1:00 AM this morning, Mail Order Bride is out on submission.

I am both excited and terrified.

ilsa-fireswan:

cycas:

rederiswrites:

Okay guys, for writing/general reference, a bit about what a ‘blacksmith’ is and isn’t:

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON, usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

Look, when metalworkers and individual shops and masters were the height of industry, this shit got REALLY specific.  There were people who spent their whole lives making pins.  Just pins.  Foundries specialized and made only bells, only cannon, only cauldrons, etc.  This is scratching the surface, I just wanted to make the point that ‘blacksmith’ is not the same thing as ‘magical muscly person who knows how to do everything related to metal’.

This sort of thing really illustrates the huge difference between writing fantasy and writing historical fiction, I think.   In real European medieval history, a smith might live, perhaps to the age of 50* - if he’s very lucky 60 or so.  And he (sometimes she, but mostly he) has to be earning money throughout his life,  so probably doesn’t have time to develop a whole set of skillsets, so if you write him being able to do loads of different things and having the right tools for all of them, it looks odd.  And if you write a woman, you probably do feel you need to give a bit of explanation about why she’s doing the job, since it’s a pretty sexist society on the whole, so she’s a little unusual. 

In fantasy, though, it’s all different. 

Tolkien’s dwarves have an average lifespan of 250, so they have much longer to pick up skills (and live in an environment where probably it’s much easier and encouraged for them to do so: they live in cities that are concentrated on providing made items and skills to other species: they aren’t a generalist society, very unlike any human institution I can think of.)  They also ‘make mighty spells’ so very unlike real medieval blacksmiths, they are probably working metal with enchantment as well as tongs. 

We don’t know about their gender role situation, but I don’t think there’s anything in canon to say that the women aren’t making things (and even if there was, there are loads of dwarf cities that last for thousands of years, so no doubt there’s variation between them). 

Tolkien’s Elves of course live forever and also have more-or-less perfect memory, so there’s no reason for an Elven smith not to have all these skills and others, particularly if they are nobility (I don’t think in real-world history you get many noble smiths) and have other people helping to make sure they eat and have clothes and so on.  And it seems less of an issue being female, too: Galadriel and Arwen are notable makers of magical items.  

*I’m assuming that if he’s a smith, he survived the terrifying childhood mortality rates, and we only have to think of adult lifespans. 

I love to talk about historic blacksmithing!  My husband and I run a blacksmithing shop (specialized in blade making) and we’ve done a LOT of educational demonstrations where we forge while lecturing on history, culture, techniques, etc.  (So feel free to ask me things!  I get all excited about it!)

Let’s talk first about the name!  Historically Smith would mean metal worker and the color would tell you what type of metal. Black is the designation for iron (because of the color it takes after being heated and cooled several times.)  Today Smith more generally means maker, but is still most commonly applied to metal workers.

And, as the OP said, if you need a tinker (tinsmith, also works pewter), silversmith (whitesmith), goldsmith (white- or yellow- smith), or coppersmith (red-, brown-, or green- smith), that’s a different discipline.  Not that a blacksmith has no idea how to work those metals, but his knowledge will likely be limited to how it applies to his general discipline.  For example, weapons and armor made for nobility might have precious metals used to decorate them.  (Aside: The techniques for iron vs copper are complete opposites and one of my favorite modern blacksmithing proverbs is about brass, an alloy made with copper and zinc.  It runs, “Brass, brass, what a pain in the… brain.” )

One of my choice historical bits is talking about medieval blacksmithing in England. This is something we actually have records of because of the guild structure. There were so many blacksmiths in urbanized areas that your permit to open a shop would permit you to make only a specific set of items. Pin drawers, chain makers, armorers, swordsmiths, farm tools, nails, wainwright (hoops for wagon wheels or barrels), farriers (horse shoeing)… all of those might be different shops.  And that isn’t even a complete list!  (Naturally there was a lot of overlap on high-demand items.) 

But even better, Yorkshire records that show us that women were regularly involved in the trade!  It was still male-dominated BUT several of the disciplines (nails, pins, chains) were almost exclusively women!  Women owned blacksmith shops, took apprentices, worked the forge - all of the things that mark them as “real” blacksmiths.  One of my favorite anecdotes is from William Hutton’s History of Birmingham; he encountered a nailer’s shop in which he noted “one or more females, stripped of their upper garments, and not overcharged with the lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of the sex.”

Come yell at me about blacksmithing!  I want to learn what you know and I’d love to answer any of your questions!  I have a lot of prepared lecture snippets on a variety of smithing details:

• Technological setbacks due to loss of historic metallurgical discoveries.
• Why “damascus” swords are supposed to be the best.
  
• Cultural and historical reasons for large, slow, strokes with a heavy hammer (like you see in video games) vs. small, quick strokes with a smaller hammer (like you see on YouTube).
• Blacksmithing terms in modern English.  (”Keep your temper” being the most common.)
• How settling America changed the Western picture to males-only generalized blacksmithing
  
• Economic comparisons of the cost to hire a blacksmith
• Apprentice vs. Journeyman vs. Master
  
• More about female blacksmiths
• What to wear in the forge (modern or historical reenactment)
• How-to on a variety of subjects
• Blacksmithing in movies
  
• Why Forged in Fire doesn’t give you an accurate picture of blacksmithing or the skills of the contestants
  
• Metallurgy (the science of metals)
• Eastern vs. Western blacksmithing (Surprise!  Japan and Europe are wildly different!)
• What kitchen knives do you need?  And how do you keep them sharp?
• Did I mention I love to talk about it and get real excited?
  

(via violetren)

Back from the editor

themollyjay:

Mail Order Bride is back from the developmental editor.  It will be a couple of days before I can go through the edits, but I am really, really excited about this!

themollyjay:

Plot sucks.  Can I just write books that are 60K words of my characters being useless dumbasses followed by 40K words of tooth rotting fluff and high octane smut?

On Representation In Writing

themollyjay:

When I was fourteen years old, a book saved my life. That may sound dramatic, but I’ll be honest, it was a dramatic story. You see, I’ve suffered from depression since I was six years old, and I never felt comfortable in my own skin. Like a lot of transgender kids, I loved things that didn’t match up to the gender I was assigned at birth. I liked He-Man, but I loved She-Ra. I liked Superman, but I loved Supergirl. When it came to GI Joe, I had a ton of figures, but I only ever really played with Scarlet, Lady Jay and Covergirl. I had a BMX Dirt Bike with faux snakeskin pads on it that looked really cool, but I preferred to rid my neighbors pink and purple bike. I thought look was cool, but my Leia action figures always stole his lightsaber.

I hid those things because I knew they were ‘wrong’. I got dragged to church three times a week, and it was a Southern Speaking In Tongues Pentecostal Church. The kind that policed gender presentation and sexuality with militant fervor. So, I grew up not really understanding what it meant to be gay, or transgender (transexual was the term at the time), or lesbian, or queer. I only knew they were bad and meant you were going to hell. My only real exposure to those concepts outside of the fire and brimstone sermons were as the but of jokes on TV, or as a point of horror in movies like ‘Dressed To Kill’ (I’d say look it up, but honestly, don’t, because it’s horrible).

I was seven or eight years old when the AIDS crisis really hit big, and I got an education on what it meant to be gay or lesbian, and I started to understand that maybe, possibly, those weren’t horrible things to be. I never said that, because hell was still a big and scary thing, but I kind of wondered if I might be gay. Being assigned male at birth, and loving all sorts of ‘girl stuff’, that’s where my mind went, because I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I just understood that I was miserable and I felt trapped in my own skin.

When I was fourteen, I went to Dallas for the summer to dog sit for my aunt for a couple of weeks. Not really a big deal, but at the time, I was a voracious reader, and I burned through the stack of books I had brought with me in about three days. My aunt had mentioned to me that there was a small bookstore a few blocks away, so one day in the middle of July, in Dallas Texas, in hundred plus degree heat, I walked I think six or seven blocks to get to the bookstore.

It was a terrible bookstore. At least, to my mind. I stayed there for a couple of hours, wandering around, waiting for the sun to go down a bit and for it to cool off before I went home, but the store didn’t even have a science fiction section. Just romance, mystery, and a bunch of self-help crap, and a whole ton of stuff about how aliens were among us and Elvis was still alive and other crap.

Somewhere around my sixth circuit of the store, when I was seriously starting to eye the bodice rippers out of sheer desperation, I found something that didn’t belong there. Tucked in between the bodice rippers and the murder mysteries was a name that was familiar, and a title that wasn’t. I found a copy of a book by Robert A. Heinlein called I Will Fear No Evil.

For those of you who have never heard of the book, it’s about a Billionaire named Johann Sebastian Bach Smith whose brain is healthy, but whose body is falling apart. He pays for an experimental procedure, a brain transplant, and wakes up in the body of a women, Eunice Branca, who is young, beautiful, and happens to have been Johann’s secretary.

I Will Fear No Evil is widely regarded as one of Heinlein’s worst works. People call it sexist, and fetishistic and all sorts of other things. I don’t care. It was the first time in my life that I saw a sex change presented as something other than the butt of a joke. It was the first time in my life where I saw a story about someone who started out as male and ended up as female and was happy for the change, who lived a happier life after the change, who loved and was loved in return after the charge.

I’m not sure how many times I read that novel in the week and a half or so I had left in Texas, but at least four times. I got a little obsessed with the idea, and by the time I went home, I understood myself in a way I never had before. I wanted to be a woman. I wanted it more than anything else in the world.

It didn’t change my life overnight. It didn’t make me not depressed. It didn’t make everything okay, suddenly. But it did help me understand myself. It did show me that people like me didn’t have to live miserable, unloved lives. It did show me that being the way I am wasn’t a one-way ticket to hell. It made things better, seeing myself reflected in a story like that.

Knowing myself, understanding myself, it helped stop a downward spiral that would have ended in a very bad place. It gave me something to hang on to for a long time. It took a long time after I found that novel for me to come out and transition, but finding that book, a twenty-year-old science fiction novel in a bookstore that didn’t even have a science fiction section, still feels like the closest thing I’ve ever seen to divine intervention. It was the light that started me on my journey to becoming myself.

That’s something I think about a lot I sit down and start writing. If that book hadn’t shown me a reflection of myself, I would have spiraled down into self-destruction. That book saved my life. Representation saved my life. And that’s something I want to give back in my own stories.

Not finished, but starting the next one anyway

themollyjay:

I needed a bit of a break from The Master of Puppets.  It’s a good book, and I’ll be really proud of it when I’m done, but damn if it isn’t kicking my ass right now.  So, to kind of chill out a bit and get my mind away from the struggle, I spent a good chunk of last night doing character notes and the elevator pitch for the next novel I’ll be working on, titled Transistor.

I’m not quite ready to put the elevator pitch up yet, because plot drift is kind of my curse, but I can give out a little bit of information.  Transistor will be set in the same universe as my first Superhero Romance Novel Scatter, but will follow different characters.  While Scatter is a Superhero novel, it does focus a good bit on Dragons, with what I like to think of as a fun take on Dragon lore in the modern world.  In the same way that Scatter deals with Dragons, Transistor will deal with Angels, Demons, and Nephilim.

The story goeth thusly.

Naomi Woodward is a young trans woman who gets offered the chance to receive an experimental form gender confirmation surgery for free as part of a clinical trial.  The surgery appears to be a resounding success, and after a bit of adjusting to her new body, Naomi works up the confidence to ask out Anika, the beautiful nurse who lives in the apartment across the hall, and who she’s been crushing on for a couple of years.

Things go sidewise when they are attacked during their date.  Naomi discovers that the surgery had side effects, and that Anika wasn’t kidding when she said her family history was complicated.

It turns out that Anika is a Nephilim, the daughter of an angel and a human, and that a rogue angel is out to kill her in order to enforce an ancient law mandating death for any such children.  Armed with superpowers she doesn’t understand or know how to use, with a voice in her head claiming it wants to help, Naomi has to protect Anika as they race across the country in search of help.

I’m excited about this one folks.

reptilian-heretic:

a collection

(via thepurplelightsabernerd)

metalheadsforblacklivesmatter:

thedropoutthejunkieandmrcomatose:

just-tree-thoughts:

blindbeta:

mellomaia:

skwerlly-squirrel:

shoelace-and-friends:

bowling-with-skulls:

salted-delights:

catchymemes:

Credit: @pet_foolery

I think I already reblogged this but im gonna do it again because this is a good reminder on how toxic gatekeeping it.

I’m reblogging this for the amount of thought that was put into figuring out the necessary configuration for a mertaur wheelchair.

MMMMM, the LAYERS to this. 

She’s technically a monster too. She might not look it at first glance and seems mostly human, but it isn’t deniable even despite her looks compared to the other monsters. 

But she realizes that she is still not like the rest of the monsters either and may not have entirely the same experiences as them, which is why she feels that she might not belong to or deserve to go to the support group. By sometimes passing as human, she feels she isn’t worthy of the space. 

The sad reality though is even though she’s mostly human in appearance, that tail she has undeniably would still cause her some struggle. Humans are still gonna look at that tail and think she’s a freak. There are probably still accommodations she needs because of the tail that she may still struggle to have access to. Even if it is just the tail, that tail is still enough to other her from humans and cause her problems and discrimination. 

She should get to belong in that support group even if she gets told she’s not monster “enough”. She still shares some of the same struggles as them that are caused by being a monster, and needs support. 

This is an excellent demonstration of the flaws in the concept of passing privilege. Bravo to the artist. 

NOW I will reblog this.

Image description: A comic in seven panels

Panel 1: A wolf man wearing a pale blue polo shirt and dark blue pants faces the viewer. He is saying, “Uh… I’m sorry ma’am, but this is a support group for monsters only.” With his right hand, he gestures to a group of monsters sitting around a table in the background. The monsters are a giant bat, a gorilla, and a dragon. They are facing away from the viewer.

Panel 2: A white woman with blonde hair wearing a pink striped shirt and dark capri pants says with a smile, “Well, actually, I AM a monster.” The wolf man replies, looking skeptically, “… How?”

Panel 3: The woman responds, while looking at the viewer, “Well, you see, my mother was a mermaid and my father was a minotaur.” Above her head, there is a thought cloud depicting a mermaid in a tank holding hands and looking lovingly at a Minotaur who is standing outside of the tank.

Panel 4: The wolf man, still looking dismissive, says, “Riiight. And let me guess: You got the human half from both of them.” The woman responds, “Exactly!” The wolf man says, “Gotcha. Hardy har har.”

Panel 5: The wolf man points and makes a snarling face at the woman, saying, “Ya know, it’s insensitive mockery like this that makes us need these groups in the first place.” The woman holds up her hands defensively, leaning away and looking surprised. She says, “Huh?”

Panel 6: The woman says, “Listen sir, I’m just here to drop off my brother and I’ll be on my way.” She still has a worried expression and gestures to her brother behind her. Her brother has a Minotaur upper half and a fish lower half. He is riding a mobility device. He says, “This guy buggin’ you sis?” while raising an eyebrow.” The wolf man looks astonished.

Panel 7: The woman is shown walking off-panel to the left. She says over her shoulder, “I’ll be back to pick you up at seven.” Since her back is to the viewer, we can now see that she has a tail. Her brother says, “Sounds good, thanks.” The wolf man continues to look astonished.”

End ID

Thanks for the image description!

This comic really sums up how I feel as a white passing mixed person

this comic is how I feel as a white passing mixed person, how I feel as an invisibly disabled person, and how I feel as a queer people with complicated/contradictory labels

Damn it. I’m supposed to be watching a TV show and now I’m crying.

This is how I feel as a dynamically disabled person.

I’ve never had the words to describe this like the comic described this.

-fae

(Source: catchymemes, via evonnagale)