• she/her

Principal investigator at an undeserving midwestern university. I am ill-tempered and well-endowed. Beware.


I have a Cohost for art and writing!
cohost.org/lab-reports
profile pic by Xīn Jīn Mèng!
cohost.org/xinjinmeng

PhormTheGenie
@PhormTheGenie

Teff was never created to be an out-and-out society threatening supervillain, running roughshod over reality without concern for consequence, smashing normative power structures incidentally as she exerts her influence, truly unleashed.

She was never created for that. And honestly, I doubt she could fit into that archetype or group.

But still I think about it a lot.


doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

Cynthia Broadmoore wasn't intended to embody a trans metaphor, but she fits so well in that role that I glimpse it in her again and again. That her personhood is always in question, that she was made rather than born, that she's seen as a sex object when there's so much more to her, that her survival strategy was either living invisibly in the gutter, or making herself useful to the powerful. In her found family, consisting of other monsters.

I think the reason she fits this role where my other non-binary characters do not is that she is so profoundly mortal compared to them. She's superintelligent and possessed of many frightening powers, but these aren't such that she can rise above the consequences of humanity's opinion of her. If they decide to crush her, they will. She isn't an Arial, who is so untouchable that it bores her to advertise her might.

Arial is infatuated with the notion of living as an ordinary person, even as her power steadily increases to a point where it will become impossible to maintain the illusion. Because she's so powerful, I've had to hold her back from acting as a world-changing force just for the sake of plausibility, of having stories that aren't boringly one-sided; and so the picture of her which emerges is of an individual of vast unearned power and privilege, who spends most of her time keeping herself amused in fairly mundane ways, and doesn't use her power to help people unless she finds it entertaining. The alternative, where she gets involved, is a story where she changes the world so profoundly and catastrophically that this becomes the story. I realized a while ago that present-day Arial isn't suitable as a protagonist; she's more of a force of nature in the background of others' stories. I can't lend her my conscience. And I don't think she'd want it!

Wednesday's setting is essentially a fantasy world, even though in terms of science and technology it's virtually identical to ours. I say this because Wednesday's gender, her sexuality, her anatomy, barely play a role in her story. Her being a chick with a dick is largely unremarked upon, it barely impedes her... there are always prejudiced jerks, but she can live her life. Maybe she lives in a world where the various liberation movements of the 1970s actually stuck; if it were our world, the disapprobation regarding her gender and sexuality would be constant and inescapable; it would shape her entire life. And she should be concerned with other matters: 'am I ruining Nicole the way I ruined Greta?' 'how could I possibly be this old?' 'how will I dispose of the body this time?' etc.


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in reply to @doctorwednesday's post:

I've always been thoroughly impressed at your writing, and all of the characters you mention here - As well as your expression through them. They all strike a deep chord within me. Most lately, Broadmoore's ability to find that family among monsters, is both fascinating and aspirational to me (if in the 'reluctantly behind glass' sense). But again, all of them, without exception, are resonant.

You've never ceased to make compelling and strong narratives carried by extremely well designed characters, brought to life through excellent writing.

Anyhow, I don't want to come off as too fan-thing-ish. I just wanted to express clearly that I appreciate and admire what you do.

Despite appearances, my ego is pretty starved, so it makes me happy when someone tells me that my work affected them. :) Especially when it's someone I like a lot and who's also a pretty talented writer herself. n.n

I wonder sometimes if found family is becoming a larger feature of our society than it was before the internet. I've met and gotten close to so many people who I never would have encountered if I were limited to interacting in RL.

I'm more than happy to tell you that your work has absolutely had an impact upon me, in that case ^.^ And thank you, quite sincerely. I'm not sure I deserve such kind words, but I very much appreciate it.

I do think the internet has helped us to expand our social contacts. A few years back it kind of struck me that I was defaulting into friendships made via work/lab, and that fundamentally this put me in a weird position - Because these people were the ones who would've stuffed me in a locker had I met them at an earlier chapter in my life. Being able to forge social connections with a wider range of people has been helpful - even if it has been a struggle for me, and limited to the virtual.

I'm not sure I would have had much of a social life if it weren't for the internet and computer networks. When I graduated high school, it seemed like I was on track to have something resembling a social life in the way all those so-called normal people did, but I never quite took to it. So when I started taking computer science courses and discovered there was a whole social scene around the university's VAX cluster, it just clicked. I could talk to people without all the awkwardness of real-life negotiation, get to know them, and then subject them to the weirdness of my physical self once they were prepared for it. It kind of became my whole social life. :)