I’m a fantasy and science fiction writer, so, of course I study worldbuilding. As opposed to the worldbuilding itself, I rather like to examine the implementation of it. My favorite style tends to be “I’ll tell you what you need to know for the next little bit, then move on.” I don’t particularly for long… Continue reading The Summer of Capes and Worldbuilding
Pride month means all my queer comic and comic adjacent subReddits are talking canon sexuality among Marvel characters, particularly the Marvel Rivals cast. And I do have to express a level of chagrin that people are boxing it into “gay, straight, bi” because like…asexual? Split theory of attraction? Whatever.One of the big points of discussion,… Continue reading The Bi-Vestigation of Eddie Brock
There’s this really annoying (to me) piece of advice that gets flung around in writing circles about the use of dialog tags. The short is just to not use them at all. Just use “said.” On the surface it’s that same sort of blanket advice that doesn’t actually work and isn’t reflective of real life… Continue reading Acting and Set Design Theory for Books
In the real world, when it comes to language about queer identities, we often find ourselves in a bit scuffle with pre-conceived linguistic notions. What’s the actual difference between pan and bi? What are the different ways non-binary identities (genderfluid, genderqueer, agender) interact with each other? What about the micro-labels that pepper the asexual spectrum?… Continue reading Creating a Queernorm Fantasy Setting: The Language Around Attraction
I made a decision very very early in honing my writing as a craft. I was never going to center a story around what someone of a certain gender could or couldn’t do.You’re not going to read a story from me about a young girl who has to pretend to be a boy to join… Continue reading Creating a Queernorm Fantasy Setting: Exploring True Gender Equity
In an effort to create a queernorm fantasy setting, one of the things I found myself doing was experimenting with ways to dislodge reproduction from gender and sexuality. Why? Because, collectively, we struggle with the idea of “non-reproductive” coupling. This manifests in different measures with childless couples and same-sex couples. While the former has their… Continue reading Creating a Queernorm Fantasy Setting: Disabling the Link Between Reproduction and Sexuality
Something that came to me, in a study of biology, was how much more interesting a fantasy setting would be if some of the sapient peoples in the world I was creating didn’t adhere to the typical reproductive binary. From this thought process came how I ended up writing hermaphroditic goblins and a whole planet… Continue reading Creating a Queernorm Fantasy Setting: Genetic Restructuring
And it's really a very fascinating thing, isn't it? That even in settings that present us with a sort of infinite biological possibility, we still hinge on human-centric interactions in regards to gender and sexuality, particularly ones with heteronormative bents.
On Twitter and in casual conversation I have described my gender as the following: crab-person, one of the creatures from “Behemoth's World” by 70's sci-fi painter Richard Clifton-Day, a bird demon with a funny hat, the Pokemon Gengar, and “a lady, I guess, but...you know...not on purpose.” The non-binary experience is, by its nature, weird… Continue reading My Gender is Crab: How Fantasy and Sci-fi Helped Shaped My Non-Binary Identity
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