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#gender

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#PennedPossibilities 732 — Is your WIP a singular novel, a series of books, serial fiction, comics, or fanfiction? (Or something else entirely? Explain.)

Of that list, I've written everything except comics. I've no talent as an illustrator and don't know someone I could approach. I've set fanfiction aside for now, but I wrote extensively there to perfect my style (and because I needed immediate feedback).

Let's see what I'm up to:

  • Reluctant Moon is a long spicy romantic SF novel, likely to weigh in at about 150k words.
  • Reluctant Courier (for the Mob) is a novelette that I am just starting to write, over and over again. First chapters sometimes require multiple rewrites if you are looking for a certain set of feelings.
  • Reluctant Accomplice and Reluctant Fighter will be short novels in the region of 40k, but I'm not actively adding to them at the moment. Both are about 50% complete, but deal with the same character (the Devil-girl) at different times in her life. It will be a series of related books, aptly named the Reluctance Series. You may notice a common theme in the titles? Reluctant Courier is a side story to the Devil-girl stories featuring a breakout supporting character named Bolt. The moonshot that is chronicled in Reluctant Moon is mentioned 200 years later in Reluctant Accomplice.
  • Mars Needed Women is the closest thing to hard SF I am capable of writing. It is a short novel of 33k that is currently in the hands of beta readers.
  • Inklings is a spicy magical fantasy story about a shy girl raised by wolves who is ackwardly discovering she likes people one cringe-worthy incident at a time. It is a singular standalone short novel, but I've written a number of very short stories with totally different characters in what I call the Wands Universe—and posted them on Mastodon. (See my pinned samples post.) I think of it as on hiatus at the moment, but I know the entire story and could get the urge to complete it at any time.
  • Through Blood and Tears is a 13-15k novella written years ago but never published, which on recent inspection I realized needed to be rewritten in 1st person. I have added it as another Scrivener project. It is actually a side story for a fantasy trilogy, but I think I can publish the lesbian vampiric coming of age story standalone.

Yet, I am not writing continuously. Maybe I should dream up another project to add?

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion

This is the first time a part of the United States has banned gender-affirming care for people 21 and under. Expect this age to keep getting pushed upwards. This is part of an ongoing genocide.

Puerto Rico bans hormone therapy and gender surgery for #trans people under 21
nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politi

NBC News · Puerto Rico bans hormone therapy and gender surgery for trans people under 21By The Associated Press

"Justice Julie Blackhawk, the first Indigenous woman appointed to the Federal Court, said “The officer failed to consider recent evidence of the conditions that may have supported a reasonable fear of persecution.”

theglobeandmail.com/politics/a

The Globe and Mail · Judge halts deportation of non-binary American in landmark ruling after Trump’s gender edictsBy Marie Woolf

#WordWeavers 2025.07.18 — The home of your MC is on fire. They can retrieve one item. What is it and why?

The devil-girl would say, "Let it burn. I carry the only important things with me at all times, which are my ancient thaumaturgy primer and notebook. If you need help putting out the fire, I'll help."

Thorn Rose's family lives in a day angel-cultured home tree that resembles a grove of ancient ficus benjamina whose massive trunks have grown together into a city block-size mass, divided into a dozen "townhouses." As daemons living in a day angel neighborhood, the only place her family could rent belonged to a day angel who rebelled against the daemon-majority government a century ago. Though the former abode of a cultural hero, day angels won't live there in fear of becoming noticed by the government. If the tree went up in flames, the neighborhood would pitch in to put it out. Thorn Rose would frantically want to retrieve everything, but even her pictures of Streak with Rainy Days, or the model she calls Big Streak, could be replaced since she has access to the source of both. She wears the jewelry given her by Streak at all times (horn tips and a gold nose ring). Really, all she'd miss would be her notebooks, but she knows they aren't worth much if the knowledge isn't already in her head (which it probably is). Nevertheless, she'd make herself frantic, needing Streak to calm her down.

Day Angel Streak would think of saving his bed frame, built from the stake bed of the first cart he ever got to fly through the sky. It was a piece of crap given him by his uncle who wanted him to fail to fly it to convince him to stop making a nuisance of himself at the family warehouse—only Streak has an innate talent for levitating things behind him, even heavy and unwieldy lorries; he learned to "pull" that day, even as parts of the cart fell from the sky as he landed it. The boy made his bed frame from the wreckage, and even Thorn Rose likes it for what it meant to him.

Day Angel Bolt (where she's the MC) would go nuts trying to get her camera kit from her aerie. It's the only thing she values at the start of her story, and considering how dismal her life has become, perhaps more than life itself. I envision this would not end well.

Wintereyes (the wolf-raised woman forced to attend university) doesn't understand possessions at all. If Mother Wolf wasn't trapped in the fire, or anyone she could help save, she'd only be sad for the people or beasts who lost their shelter or livelihoods and try to comfort them in her quirky shy way.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSInklingsStory #RSReluctanceStory

Seems like #MAGA folks actually do have some self-preservation instinct 😂

The project of a village for US citizens who decided to move to Russia for the sake of ‘traditional values’ has stopped developing due to lack of demand and support from the authorities, ‘Vot tak’ found out. The construction of a settlement for Americans fleeing from ‘liberal gender orders’ began in 2024 in the Istrinsky district of the Moscow region. The project was initiated by Tim Kirby, a 43-year-old blogger from the United States who has been living in Russia since 2006. Thirty hectares were allocated for the village. The number of people wishing to move was estimated at several thousand. However, since then, only two houses for two emigrating families have appeared on the plot. The dwellings were built according to standard designs at the expense of the immigrants themselves. At their expense and Kerby’s investment, gas, water and other communications were brought to the plots. The cost of buying a cottage with land was 15 million roubles ($165,000).

Source: https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2025/07/17/vpodmoskove-provalilsya-proekt-derevni-dlya-amerikanskih-pereselentsev-vpoiskah-traditsionnih-tsennostei-a169045 (in Russian)

Русская служба The Moscow Times · В Подмосковье провалился проект деревни для американских переселенцев в поисках «традиционных ценностей»By Русская служба The Moscow Times
#gender#LGBT#woke

NEW VIDEO ESSAY: most discussions of Transvestigation presume that *the rest of us* see gender & trans people “normally” or “correctly.” & frankly, that's not true at all! a deep-dive into the unconscious process of gender perception & what happens when we begin to dismantle it.
please watch & like & subscribe & share widely!
youtube.com/watch?v=kC6lsvUKEQ0
#trans #transgender #queer #LGBTQ #lgbtqia #feminism #gender #sexuality

#WordWeavers 2025.07.16 — SC POV: What do you do to calm down when you’re angry?

[Bolt closes her eyes in obvious emotional pain. As tears gather in her eyelashes, the day angel wraps her upper body in her wings to hide as she talks:] My friend calls it anger management; 'parently I keep on inflicting "life lessons" on myself. As a dumb, stupid, ignorant fledgling, I didn't calm down; I acted out. Rarely listened, got myself into fun trouble that was still trouble all the same, flew with hunky guys who were no good, and generally made my family regret I'd been born. Haven't tried to contact 'em since I threw that brick through the Hauler Guild's window 'fer rejected me, and rolled that pretty van down a hill. Ya could say I got to the point of calming down by breaking things and people's trust in me.

Running from the law has the effect of ya losing the privilege to be protected by that same law. I… [coughs] Okay, bad things happened and I lost control of my life, including the bein' able to fight being controlled. Not a child no more. How did I calm down?

Turned it inward.

My friend calls it "apathy." A-pathy: means "not feelin'." Got to the point where I ceased remembering my life, worked through criminal things I had no choice but to do, and, well, felt so very little I'd've been happy ta have suddenly died. I lived to 27 years surprisingly fast feelin' surprisingly numb, most days (surprisingly) blacked out from memory.

Friends changed that. They pointed out the good things I also did, and helped me find new dreams beyond my restrictions. Now, surprisingly often, I find that I cry. [She has lowered her blue feathered wings as she's talked, and you see tears streaming down her cheeks.]

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

"Data manipulation within the US Federal Government."
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/

"A US Department of Veterans Affairs dataset compiling veteran health-care use in 2021 was quietly amended on March 5, 2025. A column titled #gender was renamed #sex, and the words were also switched in the dataset title and description…Before March 5, the dataset had not been modified since it was published in 2022. As of May 1, the dataset change log, in which modifications should be tracked, is empty. The switch from gender to sex also occurred in other public health datasets, including US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (#CDC) datasets tracking global adult tobacco consumption, stroke mortality data from 2015 to 2017, and a survey of nutrition, physical activity, and obesity…The agencies involved have not issued any statements confirming or explaining these changes."

PS: If these agencies think the label change ("gender" → "sex") is significant, then they are deliberately misrepresenting the data. If they think the terms are synonymous, then why are they bothering?