Open Thread: Partially Colored Egg


My rendition of an octopus in the negative space.  Taken in late march of 2016.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are they:
   ● Ant-Man and The Wasp
   ● Solo (A Star Wars Story)

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Open Thread: Tractor and Millstone


Just a Ford tractor, sitting around with a random millstone by it.

Taken in late May 2017, back when the place where it was taken was still my family's farm.

For the record, I have no idea why that millstone is there.  I don't mean there specifically, I can sort of figure that out, I have no idea why it exists.

Based on what I know, it was there specifically because it was in the process of being moved.  Millstones are heavy; when time and conditions allow, breaking up a millstone move over multiple days isn't a bad idea.  After a partial move it must have been left there until it was time to move it the next bit.

The thing is, it was being moved from place-which-is-not-a-mill.  I have no idea why place-which-is-not-a-mill should have had a millstone to move.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are they:
   ● Ant-Man and The Wasp
   ● Solo (A Star Wars Story)

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Open Thread: Rhododendron


Picture taken on the side of a road in Portland, Maine in June.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are they:
   ● Ant-Man and The Wasp
   ● Solo (A Star Wars Story)

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Open Thread: Branches, Bird, and Snow


This is from early February 2017.  The bird was in a tree in a driveway (I think) in a town north of Boston, Mass.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are they:
   ● Ant-Man and The Wasp
   ● Solo (A Star Wars Story)

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Transcending Flesh: Gender and Stereotypes

Note: This was previously published on my Patreon.

a pink and blue sky with a radio tower

This essay is one in a series which focuses on writing gender in science fiction and fantasy settings that provide body modification options beyond our current level of technology. Note that you can download this collection of essays from my website here.

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Transcending Flesh:
Gender and Body Diversity in Futuristic and Fantastical Settings


Essay #4: Gender and Stereotypes

Let's talk about Alice the Author.

Alice has built an exciting fictional world where magitech can give anyone the body they want and where trans people don't face stigma for being transgender. Anyone who wants to inform the world that they're a girl can just do so and be a girl without facing contradiction or bigotry or gender policing. Excellent! Now Alice is going to populate that world with some trans girl characters who live and move and exist.

...oh no, Alice draped all of them in pink and frills and lace and froth and pearls. What happened?

There is a thing some cis people do where they assume that trans people base our gender on a list of things we like and enjoy, then check that list against gender stereotypes. As though trans boys wrote a list one day that said "cars, leather, hair grease, and Elvis" and went "I guess I'm a boy now!" while the trans girls' lists all said "pink, poodle skirts, lace, and lollipops" and then realized "oh, wow, I'm a girl, better go transition!"

While each of us is unique, that's generally not how trans people find our gender. The thinking here by cis authors like Alice seems to be that since there are so many barriers between one's assigned gender at birth and coming out as trans, then the people who come out as trans are the ones who are the girliest of girls or the boyishest of boys: the "extreme ends" of the gender spectrum who can't closet themselves and so they come out to drape their bodies in pink and blue respectively.

There are problems with that portrayal of trans people.

First, a world-building problem: Alice has established that trans people aren't stigmatized in her fictional setting. That should make it easy for people to come out as trans, or to question their gender, without needing to be a stereotypical representation of a gender in order to justify themselves. Who is demanding trans people adhere to stereotypes in order to "prove" their gender is valid to a judgmental and hostile society? If someone is sending the message that a trans girl who isn't "girly" is invalid, that's social stigma.

Second, a realism problem: In our world which does have stigma, we still have lots of visible trans people who aren't stereotypically girly-girl or boyish-boy. Even in a world with more stigma than in Alice's fictional world, many people still come out and rock their unique, valid, individual personal aesthetic. Where do those real people exist in Alice's world? Why can't we see them?

Third, a bigotry problem: Many bigoted cis people view trans people as embracing and entrenching gender stereotypes, rather than simply navigating them alongside their cis siblings. If the only trans people in Alice's novel are "extreme" examples of gender presentation, does that mean Alice buys into that bigoted idea that trans people are just "acting" their gender? The reader won't know Alice's meaning; all they have to understand Alice's view of trans people is what she writes on the page.

Alice's novel envisions a world with BodyMod magitech where everyone on earth suddenly rushed to one of two "sides" of gender and gender presentation. All her butch women and boyish girls ran to go outfit themselves with a penis so they could be manly men, while all her soft boys and feminine men rushed to install a fancy new vagina so they could be girly women. But that doesn't make any sense! People don't do that now, so why should the ability to easily and painlessly sprout a penis or dig a vagina change that?

There are femme trans women in our world, yes! There are also androgynous trans women and butch trans women. There are trans women who shave their hair off, wear motorcycle leathers, and ride around the world on a sexy bike shooting werewolves with a sawed-off shotgun and kissing ladies on the mouth. Every possible aesthetic of trans woman exists, just as every possible aesthetic of cis woman exists! There is no reason to assume that trans women as a group are more stereotypically "girly" than cis women.

Similarly, there are trans men who love plaid and rock amazing lumberjack beards. There are trans men who look like James Bond and are dressed to kill and know how to toss back a cocktail with just the right amount of smirk. There are trans men who wear gorgeous makeup and skirts and heels. There are trans men who wear pajamas all day and write novels on their couch with Mister Whiskers the cat. Our trans journeys are almost never "well, I like boy clothes and boy hair, so I guess I'm a boy". Exploring our gender presentation can be an important part of our journey, but the styles we each individually end up favoring aren't all aligned to a gender stereotype. Trans characters should have the same variety as cis characters.

Moreover, in Alice's world there shouldn't be just two options. It defies human nature to imagine that, in a world with BodyMod magitech capabilities, everyone would meekly align to one of two gender stereotypes. Alice has written a world in which everyone either signs up for breasts, a uterus, a bag of pink clothes, and a "girl job" or they checked the box for a flat chest, a scrotum, an entire box of blue socket wrenches, and a "boy job". The reader will almost certainly not recognize themselves in this world. Why are there "girl jobs" at all in a world where people can be any gender or body configuration they could ever want? What are "boy jobs" and what would that mean in a world without barriers to transition?

Body modification isn't going to jam our existing beautiful chaos into one of two types: girly-girl and manly-man. It is worth considering what gender looks like in this new fictional world--how many genders are recognized by society? what does it mean to be one gender or another? what sorts of gender stereotypes, if any, exist?--but there will be the same wonderful chaos of people mixing and matching their aesthetics, their interests, their hobbies, and their careers as there is now in our world.

If exploration and variety are disallowed in Alice's world, the setting is a dystopia and both the author and the narrative need to realize that. "You can be any gender you wish, as long as you conform to the rigid gender expectations therein" is a very bad place in which to live! Characters should be unhappy under those strictures, if we are to recognize them as human.

In short: Include trans people in your world with the same variety as cis people. Not all trans girls will be hyper-girly. Not all trans boys will be super-manly. Not all nonbinary people will be perfectly androgynous. Trans people don't fit into perfect neat stereotype boxes any more than cis people do!

Writings: The Lost Last Princess of Ravelin (Part 1)

Previously posted on my Patreon.


It started with an Amazon Prime movie.

Mythica was a fantasy movie with a disabled girl wizard as a protagonist. It wasn't good--the effects were cheesy, the characters were stock, and the writing wasn't always stellar--but it was the closest thing to representation I've ever seen in a fantasy setting. I became obsessed with the damn movie, and its sequels. (#2 is good. #3 is adequate. #4 and #5 made me want to burn my television in the fireplace.)

I began drabbling with my best friend in the whole world, wanting a disabled wizard of my own. Maybe an enby who didn't know yet she was an enby. Polyamorous without shame. ("Well, maybe some initial shame she could work through," I thought, writing myself deeper onto the page.) Maybe an orphan who deals with my own feelings of abandonment after being disowned and homeless at various points in my life. Maybe exactly like me in way too many ways for anyone else to enjoy.

Fun drabbles happened and she met a nice man who was an earl and a bard. He asked about her disability and she lied happily, feeling in a jokey mood. And then it struck me: what if he wrote a song about her but got the details wrong? What if he thrust her onto the public stage in a way she had to straddle, exploiting the attention in order to make enough money to survive but quietly ambivalent about being pushed into a celebrity role?

Maybe, too, I'd done a lot of thinking about Twitter and how high follower counts come with harassment but are necessary if we want to sell our words to a large enough audience to survive. Anyway. This is the story that came out of all those feelings. It's a three-part story that I'd like to someday expand into a full book, but we'll see.

Thank you.


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PART 1: THE GIRL

October Newsletter (2018)

October has been a month for us all, I think. How is everyone doing? Hanging in there, staying alive? I'm trying too. I know we're all trying. Let's talk about some things I created this month that you might have missed or might want to read again.

Free stuff everyone can enjoy:

My Twitter account @DivorceKittens with stories and pictures is here.

My Magician's Nephew Deconstruction: Latest post here. Index to older posts here.

My Wrinkle in Time Deconstruction: Latest post here. Index to older posts here.

My YouTube series on Laura Bow 1, The Colonel's Bequest is here.

My YouTube series on Not Tonight (a Brexit game) is here.

Patreon stuff for subscribers:

$2+ The Lost Last Princess of Ravelin. Some (not all) of Part 3 is going up today. I wanted to finish the story but the month just was not cooperating. Soon, though!

$5+ Transcending Flesh, another essay for discussion and questions!

Lastly and again, thank you. I'm still in such deep mourning for my spouse and it's difficult because I thought I would be "over" this by now. But I am coming to realize this grief will take more time than I imagined. Thank you for sticking with me through this. I am more grateful than words can convey. ♥