Jules Jones's Blog, page 66

James Buchanan on the T in LGBTQ

Erotic romance writer James Buchanan has written a guest post at Reviews By Jesse Wave about being the T in LGBTQ. It is in large part a Trans 101, and it's notable for explicitly pointing out that trans is a spectrum, and that it includes people who are gender-fluid, and people who are dual-gendered. This matters to me -- I am quite thoroughly cisgendered, but some of my friends are not, and some of those friends do not fall neatly into the pigeonhole of "the mind is the opposite gender to the body". James also addresses the issue of transmen and women being required to conform to highly stereotypical concepts of "proper" masculine and feminine behaviour to "prove" that they're really trans and thus should be allowed to transition.[*] The post and some of the comments are well worth reading.

A word of warning: James's post was prompted by an episode a few weeks ago involving another writer, in which it became apparent that m/m romance fandom is less clueful about transgender than sf fandom is. (This is not to say that sf fandom is a utopia free of ignorance and prejudice, because it most certainly is not; it's just that as a sub-culture it's a relatively safe place to be out in comparison with the mainstream.) The comments thread at time of posting is fairly trigger-free, but there's no guarantee it will stay that way -- even with active moderation, mods have to sleep sometime.

[*I'm a ciswoman. I haven't worn a skirt in months, and I've never worn makeup outside a stage context other than at my wedding. *I* couldn't pass the test of so-called feminine behaviour that my transwoman friends and acquaintances are required to before they're allowed access to any medical support other than counselling.]

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pen porn -- now with added science!

Pen webshop Cult Pens has a blog, with a post every month or two about some aspect of pen geekery. I have the feed on my LJ/DW flists, just so that I don't have to remember to go and check it for new posts. The latest post is about the fun to be had with the Pilot FriXion erasable pen, and a little bit about the technology behind the pen. Definitely something the pen fetishists on my flist should have a look at. :-)

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One True Fandom

Catching up on some mailing list posts I missed when I was ill, and found this:



I think I should get out the boxsets this weekend, ready for the thirtieth anniversary of Gauda Prime Day in a couple of weeks. :-)

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snow

I thought it was cold last night... Patches of white in the garden this morning from the first snow of the winter. Only patches on the bare soil in the flowerbed, and most of it had melted, although next door's lawn still had a dusting of white.

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The latest theatre trip

kalypso_v and I went to the Royal Exchange on Friday night to see Beautiful Thing. It turned out to be useful to have not got around to it until the final week of the run, because the performance was followed by a 40 minute set of half a dozen short monologues and duologues examining how things have changed for young LGBT people since the play was first performed in 1993.

The play was excellent, and very well adapted to the small theatre-in-the-round space of the Royal Exchange. The theatre's design means that anyone in the stage level seating is no further than six meters from the edge of the stage, and can readily see the audience on the other side of the stage, which has the odd effect of making you more aware that it's a play while at the same time drawing you in to the action. This makes for an intensely emotional experience when it works, as it did on Friday. A script that runs from hilariously funny to frightening to tender and back again within a few lines, and an uplifting ending that leaves you feeling hopeful without being saccharine; played by a cast that was utterly convincing as the play's characters.

The half dozen new pieces were of variable quality, although all were worth watching. The two standouts for me were Bread Bin and Snood, both of which I'd love to see again. (And I wish charlieallery could have seen Bread Bin, she'd love it.)

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Fanlore continues to amuse/bemuse me

Someone has selected an illo to illustrate the Fanlore article on the acronym "BUARA". Looking at the history, it was added by someone who from other pages is enthusiastic about adding B7 material but does not appear to be all that familiar with B7 fandom and its terminology. The image was then removed as being not actually appropriate for the article. It was then added back on the grounds that someone had clarified that the R stands for all forms of "whumping", and not just what the R stands for in the acronym.

I don't actually agree with the latter assertion, but that's not what amuses/bemuses me. The illo in question does not illustrate any form of whumping at all. It is an illo for an entirely consensual D/s scenario. I should know, I wrote the story in question...

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twitspammers

I'm seriously considering unfollowing @litopia on Twitter, simply because of the number of spam-followers it seems to attract to my account. I'm regularly followed by people who have nothing in common with me but @litopia, but who do seem to have a book to pimp. Apparently people who follow @litopia *must* be interested in anyone who is an author with a book to sell.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong with my marketing. What I should be doing is following any author I can find on Twitter, regardless of their genre, in the hope that they and their followers will run out and buy my own books...

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wordage, lack of

I'm still going to need to be careful how much time I spend in front of the computer, but feeling much less queasy today. I suspect I won't get anything done that involves actually thinking in a creative way or for any length of time (i.e. writing new words), but at least I can get caught up on various other things that need the computer, many of which fall under the heading of Tidying My Room, and thus are good in themselves.

I have nevertheless been working on the current WIP. I got home from Watervole's earlier this week to find that my replacement copy of the Purkiss book had arrived -- titled Fairies and Fairy Stories: A History in the new edition from Tempus, but quite definitely the same text (so far) as Troublesome Things, the original 2000 edition from Penguin. I've been reading it on the bus this week, and have been reminded of why last time round I found the tone of it occasionally rather irritating to read, while continuing to read it anyway. It is, as the Sunday Times said, "both splendidly scholarly and breezily accessible". A bit too breezy for my taste in places, but it's also a work of literary scholarship, footnoted to death and back, that doesn't just pick out the twee and pretty bits of fairy lore. (Alas, the book was written in 2000 -- I'd love to see what she made of the Torchwood first season episode about fairies.) I'm not convinced about some of her conclusions, but she is refreshingly open to the possibility that she's got the wrong end of the stick on interpreting some of her source material. I haven't got yet to the section I'll be using to do some of the world-building in my book, but it's useful to read through the earlier section anyway.

The Amazon reviews for the hardback edition of Troublesome Things will give you an idea of why I wanted it badly enough to buy a replacement copy.

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migraine is back...

The downside of changing the meds for an entirely different medical issue is that the migraine is back, after a year without it. Started Tuesday, wasn't too bad until this afternoon, but I left work early (thank you, flexitime) and think that I should just step away from the backlit screen for the rest of the evening. Fortunately I have lots of audiobooks in the backlog.

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RIP Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011)

My flist today is full of the news of the death of Anne McCaffrey. It was a shock when I saw the first post this morning -- somehow I had not thought of her as being in her eighties, even though her Hugo came in 1968.

I haven't read any of her new work in over a decade. Somewhere in there it became too predictable, with too much retconning, and I also found myself less tolerant of those things which I didn't like in her work. But in my teens and twenties I couldn't get enough, and not just because I was younger in those days. The world-building, the characters, the sheer imagination of some of her stories, these fed my own imagination. Not just Pern, but other universes as well. Of them all, I think my favourite is still Killashandra Ree, crystal singer. Now there was a female character who wasn't just a bad conduct prize for the male hero.

Here is the review I posted last year of the short story in which Killashandra first appeared:

Anne McCaffrey - Prelude to a Crystal Song
This is the first segment of what later became the novel The Crystal Singer, although MacCaffrey re-wrote large chunks of the anthology series material, in particular giving it a different ending. I always loved this short story and the novel that grew from it, in part because the heroine really isn't always likeable - and the author knew it. But in spite of Killashandra having, as McCaffrey says, a generous portion of the conceit and ego needed for her chosen profession of opera singer, she also has courage, the self-understanding to recognise her self-pity for what it is, and the maturity to indulge herself just a little with self-pity after a crushing disappointment at the end of her time as a music student and then move on to practical consideration of what else she might do with her life. Fate hands her the opportunity to take her inborn talent and hard-won skill to another profession, one where the rewards - and the risks - are a worthy challenge.

Rest in peace, and thank you for the dragons, for the shellpeople, and most of all for the crystal singers.

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