No really, I’m working…

[bodlon]

Between taking the rats out for an adventure and building them a mezzanine, deciding that Zebulon’s bowl needed a date with the plant lamp, and being nearly mauled by an ex-colleague’s incredibly friendly (off-duty) seeing eye dog, yesterday was animal day for sure.

It’s also been a deeply weird couple of weeks in the land of writing. My plan for January has come entirely apart on account of a couple of really interesting opportunities, neither of which are really appropriate to discuss unless something happens with them. Suffice to say, though, my flash prompt plan has been scrapped and my entire routine has come apart on account of research. I don’t feel half crazy.

And really, I should be writing right now. Instead, though, I’m blogging and reading about Moscow’s stray dogs.

Oh, and thinking about a song from “The Mikado” (lyrics here) that a friend linked me to early this morning, and how he’s right that it should absolutely be used for nefarious purposes at some point.

And now, some other things, somewhat random, which include links:

- Credit where credit is due: Bloomsbury has announced that Magic Under Glass is getting a new US jacket, and issued a short apology. Jaclyn Dolamore has posted in brief about the situation here and here on LiveJournal.

- A story that I’m working on has had me thinking about death on a practical level. In particular I’m interested in how a future deceased can mediate his or her post-mortem interactions with living individuals who are in a position to judge someone and make inferences based on that person’s corpse. It seems to me that marginalized groups continue to have less power in death, and that gender variance is a particularly tricky area. I keep coming back to issues with physical sex v. gender, bodies in transition (and bodies which never received treatment because there wasn’t enough money), transphobia and cultural adherence to gender binaries that may play out among coroners and other staff, laws which require the dead to be buried under legal instead of common or preferred names, public records which “out” the dead and/or mis-record them, and so on. It’s got me shopping urns. My inner goth can’t decide if he loves the idea of me keeping one on a shelf in my office, or if he’s disappointed and angry that I live in a world where coffins and gorgeous monuments feel too uncertain, and that I haven’t got just as much right to be as fabulous as everybody else.

- A friend just wrote a post about intersectionality and her experience as a queer woman in fandom that I think contributes immensely to a lot of conversations and needs to be read.

Right. I should really get back to working on this story. Right after I shower. And do laundry. And, uh, clean something. Oh, and I’ve got D&D tonight…

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com