#maroque

For those of you who are interested, I was thinking of putting up the UniSystem character sheets/profiles I used to plan out who my characters were and what they can and can't do. Sometimes I find it a lot easier to write for my characters when I have proper profiles for them that I can refer to. I also have a few character doodles I might try to scan/photograph for some of the main characters.

Any/all feedback is appreciated. If you see errors, point them out. If something doesn't make sense, point it out. If something contradicts something I wrote earlier on, point it out. Everything will be investigated, considered, and if necessary, corrected. Because this is the first draft of the story, everything pointed out will be noted and everything will be gone over once its completed. Everything you point out will be noted down physically in a small book which I will keep in my computer desk drawer. My second draft will be done using your notes to revise. From there, a full version of the second draft will be made available to a small cross-section of beta readers for further analysis. Afterward, a third and final draft will be shown to the beta readers again, and if it meets at least 50% approval then I will proceed with publication.

As the story progresses, and the world becomes more and more fleshed out and solid, please do feel free to draw fanarts, create your own characters, tell me your headcanons, share your ships with me, etc. Know there are openly gay, openly trans*, questioning, asexual, straight, demisexual, pansexual, genderqueer and aromantic characters that will be introduced, however briefly, at various points through the narrative as well as trans*/genderqueer main characters, and quite a bit of political focus in regards to that. My story involves a lot of PoC, GSRM (Gender, Sexual and Romantic Minorities) and various female characters. I am very much trying to make sure that everyone gets fair representation. 

In terms of representation and consultants, I'm pansexual and genderfluid, which means that I do have some idea of GSRM problems, but that by no means makes me an expert. If you want to offer your services as a consult for the GSRM issues I don't fully understand, please feel free to message me. I am white, so if you feel I'm not portraying a PoC properly (keeping in mind that skin color hasn't been a topic of debate for nearly 300 years, and racism only exists in tiny, isolated pockets in the world I've constructed) and you yourself are a PoC, please feel free to message me. Please keep in mind that as a writer, sometimes criticism causes a defense reaction, and if sometimes I come off as a little defensive, its not because I don't want your help, its just kind of an automatic reaction. I try to not reply with my first instinct, to wait and consider your words in full before I reply to them, but occasionally one of those defensive reactions slips through and I will apologize for being quick to jump into defense mode (I was bullied and talked over a lot when I was younger, I'm still working a few things out), just give me a bit of time to think about what you said. Or try explaining yourself using different words, different terms, to see if maybe I just misunderstood what you were trying to say. That can happen too. Even when I'm defensive, I'm respectful. I will never lower myself to name-calling because I know how childish that is and how much it can hurt if the right words are used. I will not weaponize my vocabulary against a person trying to help me. I reserve that total-opposite-of-a-privilege for only those trying to hold me back or knock me down. Keep in mind also that being an adviser means sometime I have to ask you uncomfortable questions in the name of advancing literature to a new standard of proper representation. 

Keep in mind that the society that I have constructed for this dual colony, while still idealistic, is far from perfect. Treatment of non-binary persons issues aside, there is always, always the high capacity for corruption in a capitalist-democratic system on such an enormous scale. Corrupt politicians using classist bullcrap to keep a massive population of people basically controlled and content, which is partially the reason the B.G.W. exists with the amount of government support and is such an important thing even above Arc Maintenance, Aero-Mechanics, Agricultural Jobs, and why the only people living more luxuriously than the families of B.G.W. workers are the families of the politicians themselves.

While the society is quite an improvement on the current North American situation, for my own convoluted reasons I created a world where laws protecting trans* persons sort of fell by the wayside in favor of laws specifically protecting binary persons of alternate sexual preferences, which while still being a big victory, isn't really much progress at all in the grand scheme of things. Given the quiet war between hetero-normative and non-hetero-normative cis* persons against trans* persons and legit GSRM allies that I see on the daily all over the internet and specifically on Tumblr, this world I've constructed is one possible outcome I see for our future. I'm writing from the perspectives of a trans* woman, a genderfluid person (not difficult for a genderfluid person), a binary half-white, half-Japanese woman learning about things in the non-binary world, in the real world, for the first time, and a straight white male politician campaigning for non-binary rights so he can openly express his love for the trans* woman mentioned previously.

In the case of the genderfluid character, I try to make sure I refer to xyr by the pronouns xe/xyr/xryself/xem, so if you notice that I've misgendered xyr, definitely point that out to me. I don't want my character misgendered, but sometimes I don't notice I've typed the wrong one. If I have misgendered xyr as a him or a her, copy the small section and bold it, I'll make note of it and make sure its corrected. I, myself, am unclear on the pronunciation of this pronoun, but I've been pronouncing the x as the s in vision. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't know where I was originally going with this post, but yeah. That.