Ally > Recent Status Updates

Meg-John Barker: transmasc non-binary, white, UK, editor's writing partner, multiple degrees, therapist, disabilities named: autism, fatigue, plurality, hard of hearing, post-traumatic stress.

"Plural, trans, and disabled" - no personal reflection or vulnerability - in a scholarly mode. Defines plural, trans, and disabled in such a way that everyone is all three.

Introduction: transmasc, white, Minnesota, therapist, mid-50s.

Real weird for someone in their mid-50s with multiple degrees and a zillion books to bang on at length about their precarity (opening with: how their extremely faint Italian accent makes their life worthless in the eyes of medical professionals) and "how we survive (if we're lucky) just long enough to offer one another love and community."

"Being a tribad is unlawful. It's congress outside of marriage. You could be brought before a moot, and be charged with immoral behavior, and be jailed."

[one of many ways Anglish society diverges from English/US: lesbianism has only ever been criminalized briefly in the New Haven colony, with no record of anyone being tried under that law.]

Pigeons are
swans if you squint. You know,

the cherry blossoms bloomed again
this year, despite all the damage

to my liver. And autumn is coming,
even though I’ve said things

I do not mean.

[“the revolution will not be televised” is Gil Scott-Heron, not The Last Poets]

"I know why those librarians read the old stories to you," Rex says. "Because if it's told well enough, for as long as the story lasts, you get to slip the trap."

For many of the things you love, it’s too late. But not for all.

That we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem. And that to be a part of the problem is to be human.

You said write something "fun" we did over summer to get our "grammar muscles flexing again" so OK Mrs Tweedy this summer scientists announced that in the last 40 years humans have killed 60% of the wild mammals and fishes and birds on earth. Is that fun? Also in the past 30 years we melted 95% of the oldest thickest ice in the Arctic. When we have melted all the ice in Greenland, JUST THE ICE IN GREENLAND

"That's what the gods do," he says. "They spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come."

[this third section ran a little slow -- 76p of all plot, not a ton of character development, and the plot is mostly fuzzy hints and gathering threat. could have gotten here faster.]

"I think you're kind of doing the thing that guys do, when they want to tell their feelings to a woman to get them to interpret their emotions for them, because they seem like a safe person."

[this book!]

Five hundred and ninety-two. The pattern of wood grain on the surface of the desk is churning now, or appears to be, and the marble floor tiles are swirling too, and something roils in her gut.

"It takes everyone together, everyone together."

Five hundred and ninety-two years.

"We'll never..."

On the fourth night, hands shaking, Zeno carries _The Mermen of Atlantis_ down the creaking stairs, past the mulberry curtains and lace runners and the kettle of potpourri pumping out its nauseating perfume, slides open the fireplace screen, and shoves the book in.

[jeez, this is like the third time I've cried so far this book?]

[The internet is up but they need to use a PRIVATE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM THAT SOMEONE HAS LAID CABLES FOR FROM DOHA TO TOKYO what the heck how does this world work?]

Are... we going to deal with this lady STABBING THIS GUY WITH A KNIFE, or is the romance just going to continue like nothing happened!?

[the grandmother being insulted by the suggestion she doesn't take care of her cats is the only kind-of-hint of specificity in any of these characters so far]

It was my mother.

[first sign of a maybe inciting incident at the 40% mark. hate it. no specificity to anything so far. who are any of these characters?]

"I'll join your little group. Queen Phosphorous or whatever."

[uhhhhhh howwwwwww does anyone else know their codename?]

[oh wait, I'm dumb - of course it's not notable when protag shares her backstory with deuterag, deuterag is already targeting her.]

[ok, I'm struggling with some plot holes I think - how does Neville Longbottom know about the poison? How does protag tell deutarag her origin story without deuterag figuring out she's the reason his hand got chopped off?

I *am* loving the emerging transfem solidarity-with-sapphic-subtext between the SW girl & the tech girl.]

"I thought you were supposed to be bi or something? How do you not get this?"

"Sorry, I'm like 'paint-stained overalls and messy ponytails' bi. Not 'bustles and tiny top hats' bi."

[which I guess makes me bi-bisexual?]

"Otherwise known as a butterfly knife. [...] I give code names to all the mercenary groups under my command. Yours is engraved on the side."

[...] Queen Sulfur. The endangered butterfly species [...] The one that could grow huge if it survived to adulthood.

[aw jeez after the great "most caterpillars die" lines we are actually gonna do the trans butterfly metaphor?]

"Branches don't just come with training. They come from personal epiphanies. And true epiphany is action. To grow your codex, you must grow as a person. [...] Magic isn't power. Magic isn't control," he said. "Magic is the art of changing yourself."

"On that day," said Adam, "I had just two shillings and a pencil."

[yep, definitely evil Harry]

"In a few years - it won't matter what body I put myself into - my pith will decay, and I'll be wetting the bed and forgetting my own name. Before long, you'll all be twiddling your thumbs at my funeral."

[I LOVE AUTHOR-IS-AWARE-OF-HIS-EVILNESS DUMBLEDORE]

This would have been my life without my ousting. Hosting events with Samuel. Drawing eyeballs like moths to a flame, devouring their attention. Shaping the arc of history like a knife carving meat.

[PLEASE GOD WHERE ARE YOU EDITOR -- this prose would be totally workable if somebody, anybody was giving line-level feedback, providing any pushback on the busted similes]

And then we run a hot bath and sit in it together: what Jackson calls a Jurassic sauna, with a Sade album on.

["Sade" pronounced rhyming with "aid" -- come on Joel Froomkin, whitest gay alive.]

...we talk also about a companion sculpture. It will be a fish tank filled with bright pink liquid, and inside it we're going to hang a neon sign that says "do you have to let it linger?" in curly cursive, and we're calling that one "Cranberry Squirt!" Usually by the time we get to revealing the name, we're laughing so hard that we're tearing up, but that doesn't mean we're not deadly serious.

[HELLO PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND]