The Wordsmith's Forge

I've been reading about Star Trek: Into Darkness, intrigued by the trailers but displeased by some of the buzz. I posted about the racebending, which led to an interesting discussion in the comments that inspired the story below. Special thanks to Rogan for part of the description.

This story fills the "au: historical" square on my card for the trope_bingo fest.

Format: Fiction
Title: "Nothing But Whitebread Left"
Fandom: Star Trek
Summary: Khan has a plan to take over the world.
Required Warnings: No standard warnings apply.

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Here's an awesome article about sex and disability.  I'm impressed to see a bunch of average people taking most of their clothes off -- people who aren't spectacularly thin or beautiful, who look like real everyday people.  World always needs more of this.

The article also reminded me of Brenda in P.I.E. because, while I haven't written about her having sex yet, I have always written her as a sexy woman.  She knows how to dress hot when she wants to, and she has no trouble attracting male attention, even if 2/3 of them are dumbasses.  And she's picked the nice guy, so yay.

I was fascinated by this example of prosthetic artwork.  If someone wants to approach a missing limb as an opportunity to sport some eye-catching personal sculpture, more power to 'em.  Though I will say, most of those still resemble human appendages rather closely.  I don't see anyone wearing, say, a horse leg or a tentacle -- and I know people who would do that.

 ... says a lot about who we are.  Here's a post about punching up vs. punching down.  If you're criticizing people with more power and influence than you, that's punching up.  If you pick on people with less, that's punching down.

If you read my blog, you'll noticed that I tend to condemn the actions of megacorps, governments, and occasionally the whole human species.

I only look  small on the outside.  

Female superheroes redrawn with costumes that cover their whole bodies.  SO MUCH WIN.  I love Wonder Woman.  

MOAR PLZ.  If you spot crowdfunded or otherwise independent art with fully clad heras, I'm interested in links.

This 9-year-old girl's brothers told her she couldn't make a role-playing game.  She's proving them wrong.  And this is how we deal with boys telling girls they can't do technology.  Notice that the project is already several times over goal.  So there.

chanter_greenie has released "Taking the Long Path," the second orange!verse story from Schrodinger's Heroes.  The team rigs up equipment to catch a broadcast from another dimension, which turns out to be a morally disturbing one.  Despite that, the lead-in is pretty funny on accout of Chris' reaction to some of the vocabulary that gets thrown around.

 chordatesrock has written a very thoughtful summary of autistic people as a group.  Gosh, I wish that had existed back when I started writing An Army of One: The Autistic Secession in Space.  It's more useful than most of what I found on my own.

Today is the blog project Autistic People Are. Folks are blogging about autism because, if you type "Autistic people are" into Google, it suggests things like "annoying" and "dangerous." Well that's not helpful. So here are my thoughts on the matter...

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chordatesrock asked me about the developmental arc of identity literature. Think of things like black lit, queer lit, women's lit, etc. More recently we've seen asexual people, people with disabilities, and other groups agitating for more awareness and better representation. You can see how some of those traits are obvious but often culturally overlooked (like being female; women have been erased from much of history) while others are far less visible (sexual orientation may be hidden, or actually not recognized at all). There are variations, but a common progression of identity literature goes something like this...

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