Merry Christmas!

       I think I've managed to write SOMETHING every day except Christmas Eve (which was a travel day), though I don't feel like I've gotten very far. We're nearly to the actual coming out to Jimena part.
I finished a book I'd been working on that I bought way back in November: Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld. Honestly, I don't have the energy to review it properly, and I don't feel guilty about that because it's not queer fiction, and it has no trans characters whatsoever. However, what it does have is a queer main character and a plot that does not revolve around her queerness. It raises the tension, as it would by virtue of our society, without *being* the tension. And my favorite part about that? The inside flap mentions nothing about the love interest being a woman--it merely says "falling in love--with another writer." And it is that fact that is most important to the plot. Imogen being a writer provides far more tension than Imogen being a woman. Thus Westerfeld, and whoever writes his jacket copy if it's not also Westerfeld, puts another brick in the process of normative-ization. TW for pyromania, possible cultural appropriation (they actually talk about the lines of cultural appropriation!) death, terrorism, serial killers, murder, ghosts, degradation plot (character goes from innocent to murderous).
        It's written as two books in one--Darcy writes the words, as the cover says, and Lizzie lives them. Between that and listening to my mother talk about the new book by David Mitchell, who wrote Cloud Atlas, I had an idea for a story that follows four characters, each of whom is directly impacted by the same fifth character in very different ways. They each paint a different picture of him based on their own experience--one falls in love, one is terrified, etc.
       I've been playing along with ideas from this website: mogai-archive.tumblr.com. It lists tons of words for genders, orientations, and pronouns. I have a vague 'verse in my head about a people who are not sexually dimorphous (there's only one basic body type, and the variation is in the little details) and use all of the words for gender and all of the pronouns. I also want to write about characters with flower genders. I've been attempting to find a word that describes my gender, and I think I'm going to just combine two and say I'm subgirlfluid. Subgirl is 3/4 agender and 1/4 girl. Subboy is the same but 1/4 boy instead of girl. Subfluid holds the agender part constant and the 1/4 part goes between girl and boy. I don't *quite* like subfluid because I want to emphasize the girl side of the fluidity--the boy side only occasionally crops up and doesn't feel as much a part of me.
      Exciting news, or perhaps not so much, for my readers: I got for Christmas two of the research books I'd not been able to get ahold of. One is Passing Lines, which is about sexuality and immigration, and the other is another fiction book, Freakboy.
      I also got some of Jonathan Friesen's books for Christmas. He was my old writing teacher. If his style has evolved any closer to mine, which it looks like it has based on the fact his latest romance is with a boy with DID, perhaps I should look into his publisher? Never pass up a chance to name-drop network.

Characterization of Henriette

How did I forget Henriette? No, seriously. How did? Henriette is easily one of my favorite characters. I have misplaced my list of questions to ask, so I shall do my best.
Henriette is 5'6", skinny, with messy dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and freckled, pale skin. She's kind of a hippie, barefoot whenever possible, earth lover, peace lover, but also wears body glitter for reasons she's never explained. She likes ripped jeans, which got that way through use, natural fabrics, shirts without designs, no jewelry. She's got a tattoo of the Deathly Hallows symbol on her shoulder blade. She's into robotics and computer science, and loves fantasy, especially Harry Potter. She's an introvert, but an open kind of person, which leaves her completely exhausted at the end of the day--luckily for her, no one is demanding her nights from her. She's a fairly friendly person, but she does get confused when things head flirty/innuendo, and tries to avoid such conversations. She enjoys helping people. She speaks fluent Spanish, like Leandra. When she's comfortable with the situation, she's a great conversationalist, really good at the give and take, but when she's not, she just sort of shuts down. Nothing in particular seems to be really important to her, it's more that she balances having a lot of mostly important things. She listens to New Age stuff but also pop. Henriette is asexual and possibly aromantic, and cis. Relationships make her go mostly 'huh what?' She is a Hufflepuff.
I kind of want to write a second novel about Henriette. At the moment, she's slightly Mary Sueish, though--she needs some flaws.
Sheer obliviousness?

Winter break!

So winter break is a thing. I has goals.

1. Practice guitar for an hour every day
2. Work on the novel some every day
    a. If I'm stuck, use Writing the Breakout Novel for inspiration
3. Read the newest issue of Poets & Writers
4. Boring internship stuff
5. Practice my ASL
6. Boring shopping stuff

I'm nearly done with Whitney's story!
In other news, I recently acquired a Tumblr: phoenixtawnyflower.tumblr.com. I post slightly more detailed stuff over here (I didn't transfer the conference stuff) and rather more reblog stuff over there. Anyway, if you have a Tumblr, you should totally follow me (innocent expression). I carefully manage my queue, so stuff you've already seen here will turn up there mostly in order, but mixed in with reblogs and other stuff.

Tell me a Whitney

Hello, everyone! Happy NaNoWriMo! And Thanksgiving, that little thing...
They actually have NaNo at my school. I've never tried it, but I did wish I could, homework-related-guilt-free, go to one of the several-hour writing sessions here.
Life continues very rough. Story continues very stubborn. I have now got to the point where I need to tell Whitney's coming out story, and despite everyone's insistence that I don't actually need the story, just the leadup and the fallout, I still feel the need to actually write the thing. I don't know if I want to switch POV or maintain a dialogue setting, but I dont think it matters. I'll write whatever comes out when I write it.
Unfortunately, this isn't a very well traversed blog, and y'all who do read are almost always silent. Otherwise I'd ask for ideas on what you think Whitney's backstory should include (siblings? With what reactions? Quirks? Interesting teachers?) in hopes something will strike a chord and I'll start writing it. Downsides to not being even reasonably well known.
It's also possible I'm counting on the phenomenon which goes, if you complain about something to enough people, the thing will go away. BRB. Going to try to write the thing again.

Coming Out Day

So I barely noticed National Coming Out Day: Like every year, it passed pretty much without any actual coming out.
And then like three people on my news feed were all, "Hey, I forgot it was National Coming Out Day yesterday. Newsflash: I'm_________." Some I already knew, some were not a surprise, but I'm having feelings about it because I've never done it.
At some point, I built it into my lexicon for dealing with new people. I don't hide it. It comes up in conversation. It does this a lot of ways.
"My girlfriend--"
"Why did you_____?" "Well, I'm a lesbian, so---"
"Wait, are you--?" "Gay? Yes."
So everyone at college knows. My parents know. My close friends know. My grandparents on one side at least know.
But not most of my extended family, and not most of the people I knew through middle and high school--who make up the majority of my facebook friends. At least, I don't think they know. People have surprised me before.
"Congratulations on coming out!" "Thank you. How did you know?" "You know, the Internet."
Part of me feels like I should. Visibility is important. Visibility is a thing I advocate. And I feel like I'm talking the talk but not walking the walk to stay closeted.
And it's no longer a thing that would likely get me outright disowned or a large amount of nasty messages sent my way. I expect a couple "It's a sin, repent" messages, one or two, maybe, and my relatives talking around it for the next forever, but I can live with that.
So why am I still not doing it? Why am I still scared?
Partly, why should I tear down my shields and allow in the messages and the judgment when it's not negatively affecting my life not to be out to some people? The people that needed to know, the people it was hurting me to stay in the closet for, they know. Why should I expose myself that much more? Is it that likely that there's someone on my news feed that doesn't already have sufficient gay role models?
Sigh. I knew it wasn't my duty to come out as long as it would hurt me. Not sure what the right answer is now.
Atalanta says stop using 'should' statements. I'm not sure I know how to police myself without 'should' statements.
Hello, everyone. I'm a Kinsey 5, that's predominantly homosexual/romantic and only incidentally heterosexual/romantic. I'm sexually and romantically attracted to women almost exclusively, to their minds and their souls, not to their bodies. I usually identify as female but once in a blue moon experience brief dysphoria. I touch on the asexual spectrum extremely lightly, so that I almost always have to have heard someone talk, enough to get an idea of their personality, to be attracted to them, but mostly identify as allosexual (not asexual). My gender expression tends toward fellagirly with a large helping of genderfuck, which means I sit like a guy, grow my hair long and dye it, don't wear makeup or shave my legs, appreciate jeans and skirts, love suits, vests, and ties, and occasionally do makeup/police my body language/bind/dress/wear a wig specifically to make people question my pronouns.

Back to school!

I realize I've been off the grid for almost a month. It's been kind of a hard month, and school started in the middle of it, so I've been scrambling to try and get everything under control. Sorry 'bout that.
I also got a touch of writer's block with one scene that I couldn't figure out how to write. But the idea came to me at dinner on Wednesday, and I held onto it until tonight, when I unexpectedly finished my quizzes an hour early and decided to reward myself with writing. As usual, the scene blew itself much larger than I expected, but it was fun. I'm a little worried that I'm doing too much tell instead of show, but I'm trying to leave that stuff till after I've got the whole thing written. It's probably going to go unbearably slowly from here on out, but hopefully it will be a steady slow instead of a is-this-ever-going-anywhere slow.

In other news, school is having a craft fair in December and I've booked a table to sell my wee bracelets. So I'm trying to work out what I want to make. I have a current stock of:
2 rainbow diagonal stripe bracelets
1 completed, 1 half made trans diagonal stripe bracelets
1 half made genderqueer bracelet
A long string of ace bracelet I can cut into individual bracelets
Yeah. Per-thetic. But I keep giving them away.
So I reckon I'm almost good with ace--I'll make another Viking Weaving of them and then cut them into bracelet sized strings. I'm going to steer clear of earrings (though I might do zipper pulls) and of multiple patterns--I'll do diagonal for the wider flags (rainbow and trans) and diamond for the narrow ones (GQ and pan). But wait! I can pull off diagonal of the narrow ones if I double the colors and work with six strings instead of three. Hm. And it's easier. Is the diamond cool looking enough to go the extra effort? I need more of everything. Diamond's way too much effort for rainbow or trans, so I'm probably good there. Thoughts?
Also, have a link the Trevor Project poked at me just today. Adorable humans for my inner hopeless romantic, who also happen to be a-spectrum.

Character sketches of Radical Three

Chrys is short for Chrysacolla, which suits hir much better than Emily. Chrys has black hair with a green streak in it that matches hir eyes. Ze’s shortish, and likes to wear leather, sequins, makeup, and bright colors. Ze’s in Shakespeare Performance Troupe, and is in fact assistant directing the latest performance of Othello. This conflicts with the startup of GenderQuest, the club ze and Whitney are co-presidents of, which is dedicated to making a safe space for transgender and gender non-conforming people. Parties, friendliness, and mingling are second nature to hir, but ze’s learned to be a little reserved around people who might be transphobic, and is likely to be defensive around said people, due to the very small amount of people who acknowledge hir identity. Ze’s a scientist, and a chemistry major. Ze identifies as genderfluid, Ravenclaw, and pansexual.

Whitney was born Whitney, and when he came out as male, he decided to keep it, since it’s actually a unisex name and the touch of femininity suits his personality. It really fazed his family and friends when he came out, and in fact it took him a while to figure out what was going on himself, since he presents as so feminine. He has all the stereotypes: hand gestures, stances, catchphrases. Although he’s happier now he knows he’s just a very femme gay man, he’s gifted at seeing both sides to every story, and gets how easy it was for everyone to mix up his gender and gender presentation, so he’s generally pretty laid-back about the whole topic, and tends to be the one people with questions go to. He’s a very patient and understanding person, too, which helps..He loves drag culture and dreams of being able to go out to clubs in drag without feeling dysphoric. He’s very careful about keeping his hair bleached and styled, and wears feather boas constantly. He’d love to go into the fashion or modelling industry, and generally settles for photography. His parents want him to get a good degree, so he’s debating doing art, which would irritate them, or business, which would please them and eventually be quite useful in the industry, but which he also expects will be very dull. There’s speculation on what color his hair is under the bleach. The current best guess is ginger. He and Chrys run GenderQuest together. Ravenclaw on the edge of Hufflepuff.

Ella is short for Eloise. She comes off as a bit of a ditz and also about twelve years old, which is a combination of her style choices (overalls? Really?), blonde pigtails, and bouncy demeanor. She has a tendency to ramble to the point of monologue, but it’s born out of high energy and extreme extroversion rather than disrespect, and when she asks you a question, she’ll give you her full attention while you answer. And I mean her full attention. It can be a little heady. She adores the Backstreet Boys. Despite the airhead first impression, though, she’s a person you want in your corner, a kind soul who’s loyal to the end and an environmentalist, a Hufflepuff in all the best ways. She’s the token cisgender straight person, but she plays it well, and pretty much everyone has a soft spot for her. She’s Leandra’s bio lab partner and a frequenter of Doublestar Sci-fi/Fantasy club. 

Sorry y'all for the slowdown in posting! It's been a difficult couple weeks. 

Luna

By Julie Anne Peters

Regan can't get out from under the shadow of her older brother. At school, her teachers expect her to be as brilliant as Liam is. And everything else in her life is impacted by the fact that Liam is transgender, and Regan is his only support system. Regan loves her brother, and so she lets him use her room at night to dress up, put on makeup, and become his real self: Luna, a confident drama queen obsessed with her looks. But the pressure of the closet is getting to Liam, and Regan becomes his bodyguard and moral support as he begins to let Luna out in public. Regan really does love her brother. But the pressure of lying aroun
d the secret of Luna to everyone is messing up her relationships with her parents, her friends, and the cute new guy at school, and something has to change.

I didn't like Regan's way of thinking of Luna and Liam as two separate people with separate pronouns, but it kind of makes sense in character. Otherwise, the plot was enthralling and unpredictable, and Regan's stress over juggling all the lies is treated as valid but not less important than Liam/Luna's struggle with dysphoria. It's an angle not usually seen, but important not just for trans stories, but all forms of queerness and also mental illness. When you lean on one person for your whole support system, and they can't talk to anyone else about it, it takes a toll on them. It's safer and healthier for both of you if you can develop a wider support network, so you don't have to worry about slipping through the grasp of any one person, and they feel like they have the ability to say "Not today."

Overall rating: 4/5.

Project upshot: It's an important angle to keep in mind for the story. How is Jimena taking all this?

Vivaldi in the Dark (and sequels)

by Matthew J. Metzger

This one has absolutely nothing to do with trans* topics, but includes gay, bisexual, asexual, and experimenting characters, and these books are wonderful, and Matt deserves some free publicity, so you're getting a review anyway.

Vivaldi in the Dark, The Devil's Trill Sonata, and Rhapsody on a Theme are a trilogy exploring Jayden and Darren throughout the course of their relationship. So as to avoid spoilers, I'll only summarize the first one. When Jayden discovers a wild-haired, blunt boy practicing Vivaldi, he doesn't expect the prodigy to become his defender against schoolyard bullies. He doesn't expect to fall head-over-heels with Darren and his violin playing. But what he absolutely never imagined is that Darren struggles with severe depression that will impact Jayden's whole life if they pursue a relationship. Trigger warnings over the course of the trilogy include depression, panic attacks, self-harm, suicide, violence by mugging, car accidents, and poor reactions to medication.

They're beautifully contrasting characters. Darren is brusk, lacking a brain-to-mouth filter and rarely willing to talk about feelings. His father pressures him daily to become ever better at the violin, never listening to Darren, who doesn't want to go into music. Jayden is naive by comparison, despite being out at school as gay. His parents love him completely and constantly have his back as he struggles to understand Darren. Jayden falls in love with Darren for his violin playing, but it grows into something much stronger and much more powerful. Jayden's optimism combined with Darren's bluntness keeps a reader hooked and waiting to find out if love will conquer all...if it even can.
 Matt's books, especially Rhapsody on a Theme, have a tendency to start in odd places, and definitely eschew the traditional plotline of coming to a climax that the characters got themselves into and then ending. In multiple places, events happen that are completely random and out of the characters' control. The effect this has, though, is to keep us constantly guessing and unsure what the consequences will be. Especially in RoaT, he removes the surety of 'well, we're twenty pages from the end, this is definitely the climax' and that removes the surety that things will turn out a certain way. Matt tackles challenges like convincingly emotionally aging characters, writing from two points of view in two different places, and realistically describing the struggle with mental illness like a pro. The writing gets ever better throughout the trilogy. I have only two complaints with the whole series.  Jayden thinks Darren's violin playing worsens his depression, and I never noticed a connection...could have been me being oblivious, though. And Darren comes to completely rely on Jayden, saying, essentially, that he can't live without him, and nobody comments on how a relationship can't be healthy if one partner feels they can't leave the relationship--whether they want to or not, it's still trapping them. I'm willing to forgive it this, because it is a romance, as long as I can register with y'all that you should never feel like you cannot survive losing any given person, and that if you do, you're not in a healthy or stable place with yourself or with the other person.

Overall rating:
Vivaldi in the Dark: 4/5
The Devil's Trill Sonata: 5/5
Rhapsody on a Theme: 5/5

Project upshot: Absolutely nothing, but you should read them anyway and buy copies for all your friends.

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man

by Chaz Bono

Bono takes us through his tomboy childhood, his adolescence and young adulthood of being an activist and identifying as a lesbian, and his discovery that he is transgender and eventual pursuit of transition. Trigger warnings for life with and death from cancer, drug addiction.

It was a very honest, forthright look at the life of a human being under various types of great pressure. Chaz talks about his life dating women much older and younger than him, his abuse of prescription drugs, his struggle with staying clean, and the very real damage not transitioning did to him. It acts as a reminder not to let fear control our lives, especially when it concerns something important to us, and the consequences thereof. Transition is a story I imagine many trans people could relate to, and pretty much any queer person who had a severe chance of losing the most important people in their lives over coming out. It was very long, though!

Overall rating: 3/5

Nadie characterization

Nadie is reserved. Se’s tall, on the short side of average for a guy. Se’s got skin like porcelain baked a little too long—smooth, and sort of permanently lightly tanned. Se has almond-shaped brown eyes and dark brown/black hair in a ponytail. Se likes obviously girly shirts, though it’s got a good bit to do with genderfuckery as well as personal preference. During the winter, when the difference is less obvious, se goes gender-neutral. Se doesn’t really have friends, which sucks, and leaves sem with depression and a handful of self-hatred. Se’s strong, though, and most of the time manages to keep up ser grades. Se’s not out to ser parents. Se keeps a kitten in ser room, secretly. Se liked archery, but has quit due to it making ser arms bigger and causing a certain amount of dysphoria. Se’s fond of Jane Austen novels and other classics—English major! Se’s also a movie buff. Se’s a really good poet, but se doesn’t advertise it much. Se’s normally pretty calm, but the idea of coming out to ser parents meets absolute refusal and some anger. Se’s adopted—se thinks somewhere in ser lineage se is Native American. Ser adoptive parents called sem Ned, which is too dysphoric, so when se found the name Nadie in a book of Native American names, se kept it. Se has a good relationship with ser family otherwise. Se’s less into hiding ser emotions, but not really exuberant either. Happiness meets with a smile—a real smile, usually, but a small one. Anger, sharp words and a raised voice. Se’s not a huge music person, or a foodie. Se identifies as agender and pansexual.