#gender — Public Fediverse posts

#WordWeavers 2026.10.13 — What is something your MC would risk their life to protect but would struggle to explain why?

Risk her life? Pretty much not happening. Bolt works as a courier for the mob, but those are different risk vectors. She's is a catalyst character, never a hero, at least in this story. She tries to take a cheap shot at a pugnacious coworker who beat up her friend, fails to land the blow, and gets pummeled. She wasn't being a hero; it was revenge. Frankly, she struggles to explain her impulse to fight in this one instance. Her M.O. is to flee the moment violence erupts, and she forgot that in her anger and despair.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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The amicus brief I wrote on intersex people and circumcision has resurrected interest in my blog.

https://ttpphd.com/2026/10/06/amicus-brief-on-intersex-genital-autonomy-and-circumcision/

#Intersex #Circumcision #Ethics #Gender #Law

#PennedPossibilities 1154: MC POV: Name a time you laughed the hardest. With who, and why?

[Bolt is a day angel. She has wings and they have feathers. –RS]

Laughing is not something I get to do often. Perhaps when I was always roughhousing with my string of ponies? All stallions, of course! Back when I captained the Track and Flight team, back when I was 17? I don't remember if I laughed as much as other things.

Recently, it was probably with Molt. A university student nearly a dodecade younger than me. Seriously, this guy was a nerdy nerd's nerd, quiet and stuttery shy, so completely unlike any guy I'd ever gone for, who I'd met because he never picked up his molts when using our shared bath space in the building. He'd turned out nice, talkative about his subjects, and while I didn't understand half the jargon-filled stuff he talked about, I enjoyed his voice and enthusiasm. Best, what he studied at university intimately had a lot to do with me! We could relate. We talked a lot, and I'd giggle as he showed me stuff in books, pointed out bizarre pictures, got flustered and determined explaining, measured me and inadvertently tickled, which I loved but didn't let on because I could get a blush now and again. We laughed and I spent lots of time in his aerie apartment, whenever we could, sometimes with me making excuses to visit, sometimes playing dumb so he'd repeat things I "didn't understand" until one thing led to another and laughter led to better fun.

It's no wonder I wanted to kill my coworker who chased my young nerd student away.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.10.12 — What do you specialise in, prose-wise?

Prose and poetry are the two types of writing, separated by meter and form. As a prosaist (vs. a poet), I am keenly aware of prose forms. The most eye-opening event for me in my educational career as a C- student came in my first year at university, during which a teacher who hated dry scientific writing, who was teaching writing to students on a science track, taught us, naïve nerds that we were, that informative writing could be both precise and wonderfully entertaining. Unlike in chemistry, she taught, there isn't a formula to use to write with. Instead, writing was simply a writer conversing with a reader—and if that conversation could sound like telling a story aloud† , even better!

I specialize in rhythmic prose that keeps the reader interested. I tell stories. Always. You can read my stories aloud because even if the sentences are long, and discuss many things, you will need never return to the beginning of a sentence to understand what is said later. I don't care if a sentence is a block long, or—

A single.

Word.

Proper word choice matters. Eloquence as well. Poetry in prose form? That's my ideal.

=-=--=-=
† "Um" and "You know" is not allowed! Nope. Full stop.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.12 — Which relationship in your story changed the most from what you originally planned?

Some context: The WIP is prior novel instead experienced from the POV of an important supporting character. It must stick to plot. The lives of the prior MC and the current MC intersect occasionally, with totally different viewpoints on what's happening, including separate interactions with all three antagonists. I haven't yet written the planned ending (a climactic penultimate scene from the other storyline) and am pretty sure I can write it without giving that other novel's mystery away. This has been fun, both in fact and in the sarcastic sense. Definitely, it's been a challenge. The MCs are totally different. What interests them differs, as does their recollection of what happened and in what order—the eye-witness conundrum.

To answer the question: The three male supporting characters (also LIs), Steamed Milk and Sugar (Shugh), Arrow Flies True (Blue), and Flies Hard into the Dusk (Molt aka Hardboy Slim) as well as Shugh's female secondary characters, Night on Fire and Light Insight, don't exist in the original storyline at all. Each appeared as a whim or by plot necessity, and got fleshed out. A lot. They let Bolt tell her story as she pulls herself up from tragedy by making friends she supports and will support her. In a sense, Bolt's relationship with all of them have changed as none were originally planned. Of all of the new characters, I've placed Blue in the position of filling a major role in a sequel by making him related to an important series character whose origin I hadn't yet defined.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#Writephant 2026.1012 — A4. Do your characters or stories get nostalgic? If not, what would your characters wax poetic about from their past or someone else's history?

Half my storytelling technique, in part because I write in 1st person, is the narrator recounting their past history, sometimes waxing poetic. Indeed, the MC even teases out threads of history from secondary characters, providing clues to their agendas and desires, fleshing out the central mystery. Backstory done my way is not always nostalgia. When Bolt recounts her string of self-inflicted prideful and naïve errors that ended with her blackmailed into working for the mob, it is anything but. When she discusses her life in high school as a varsity-lettered jock and captain of an otherwise all male flight and track team—she's a day angel, a human with wings—you wonder how much hyperbole and exaggeration there is when she talks about enjoying her string of ponies (all stallions). That… is nostalgia.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#Writephant 2026.1012 — A3. What are you nostalgic for as an adult?

I was the good kid. I believed what I was taught. I expected when I'd grow up to live in a world where people followed the rules without gaming them, where they did their part and their neighbors did their part to make for a happy community, where people got elected to represent the people who elected them, and people chose good when the choice was between doing good or not doing good and having money. That might be called naïveté, but I look back at what I thought true with nostalgia.

Nostalgia, described as "longing for the past", allegedly was used to describe a form of mental illness. One example was how Civil War soldier veterans were diagnosed after returning home. Later, doctors settled on describing trauma and PTSD rather than a longing for the past.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#Writephant 2026.1012 — A2. Are there historical periods that you aren't fond of? Why or why not?

Since the question doesn't specify fiction, I will say I am not fond of mid through end of 1800s U.S. history. I see a lot of humanity's worst tendencies taking hold, with money buying power and poverty being used as an excuse to be bought. I admired and studied Theodore Roosevelt, however. I am fascinated in general by U.S. presidents (except one-who-shall not-be-mentioned), even Buchanan. I celebrate President's Day by reading about one of them.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#Writephant 2026.1012 — A1. As a kid, were there any historical periods you liked reading about in fiction? How about as an adult?

RS was a science nerd, then got tricked into reading SF. I never made an attempt to seek out historical SF, though I've read some more recently.

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https://www.europesays.com/africa/469081/ 2 months after Spain’s worst border crisis, migrants at a Ceuta tent camp weigh their choices #asylum #gender #GeneralNews #Homicide #HumanitarianCrises #Immigration #Islam #LGBTQ+ #Morocco #politics #SpainCeutaMoroccoEuMigration #teens #WorldNews

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.10.12 — <Do you ever talk to people in song lyrics?

May be misinterpreting. Maybe willfully so. But…

I once had a character break out into song and dance, singing plot-specific lyrics. The character later analyzed the incident using a Latinate word that translates to dancing and singing mania (which apparently is real). Embarrassing. She worried if anyone saw. She hadn't looked. Not saying if it actually happened, but she'd been under a lot of stress that day and pissed-off a tutor she'd really wanted to hire. Did it? Who knows? Not saying. But I wrote that scene.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers 2026.10.11 — <Is there a word whose meaning is benign that still grates on you for some reason?

faith

For me, word choice matters. I do my best to pick the appropriate word, the nuanced word, the eloquent word, occasionally the word that does double-duty with elegant double-meanings, sometimes for humor, sometimes for purposes of innuendo or misdirection. The right word is a powerful tool.

This word, faith, in all it's various forms and derivatives and compounds—a faith, faithful, having faith, faith-based, and so on—in our hypocritical world has accumulated so many divergent sometimes non-dictionary nuances and so many opposing meanings that almost anything written containing it—if you don't precisely know the author's context and depending on your own (e.g. an atheist vs. a catholic) context—becomes simultaneously difficult to parse and easy to misinterpret, even to intentionally misinterpret, or maliciously misinterpret, if the reader so desires.

The word annoys me. Totally. I suggest you avoid it.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.10.11 — What's a turn of phrase you've 'inherited' from someone else?

And there you go!

It's an affirmation you give to put a point on an anecdote or to agree with a conclusion to a story somebody just related. We call the phrase a Wendelism. Another is just a crass word but it's just perfect and situational, and it's likely not original to our friend. She's unique, regardless.

Preggers.

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#PennedPossibilities 1153: Do you ever incorporate elements of horror into your work?

No. Story situations may be tense, become terrifying at times, and occasionally turn bloody, but my objective isn't to provide the reader a gratuitous sense of terror. I'll instead lean into gritty thrillers, when plot demands.

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Storytelling Sparks Female Sexuality: Women Need a Story
#blog #communication #connection #cuckold #gender #love #modernmarriage #evolvingyourman

Storytelling Sparks Female Sex...

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/33523/ Women, Peace and Security has an influence problem #gender #GlobalSecurity #NATO #peacekeeping #women #WPS

#WordWeavers 2026.10.11 — Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.

I write 1st person narrative, which makes it almost impossible for me to find a setting that narrates for itself. This passage tells a story and is what I got in the time I was willing to spend. Incidentally, the woman is as black as night. The time is predawn and dark. The POV has wings and can fly.

Her stomach gurgled and she colored, fairly difficult considering her complexion. I sniffed, nose upward. Ah, grilled vegetables, fish. I looked as we walked. Day angels often populated the upper stories of city buildings and we had a tradition of pop-up restaurants. I imagined red tents. Hidden orbiting sprites lit the roof with drifting golden, ruddy, and emeraline light, illuminating curdling flavored grey smoke that drifted north up to the sharp-edged building shadow. The smoke itself flickered with shadows cast by dozens of fluttering and milling patrons carrying plates and bowls, gesturing with wing or arm—a shadow play, a hungry drama cast toward the sky, an advertisement crying eat here. Actually, the food court extended to three adjacent buildings! We might be in an aerie neighborhood. My mouth watered. That meant choices.

"I'm hungry," I said, grabbing her and flying her up.

As always, posting compelled neurotic me to make revisions, which is a good thing, which I've copied back to the manuscript. Hashtags games have real world uses!

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2 months after Spain’s worst border crisis, migrants at a Ceuta tent camp weigh their choices

http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. CEUTA, Spain (AP) — Many…
#Spain #ES #Europe #Europa #EU #Asylum #gender #Generalnews #Homicide #HumanitarianCrises #Immigration #Islam #lgbtq #politics #spainceutamoroccoeumigration #Teens #WorldNews
https://www.europesays.com/spain/98996/