Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

On The Election

I was up until almost four last night with terror. I stopped watching the polls at two-thirty, and I have yet to make myself watch our “illustrious president-elect’s” acceptance speech. I feel as if I’ve been diagnosed with something terminal–my heart is pounding and my head is spinning and my hands are shaking so hard I’m having trouble writing.

Let me tell you some things that you may not be aware of.

I am a person who gets into shouting matches when I see hijabi girls mocked or shouted at in the street.

I am a person who believes that Black Lives Matter.

I am a person who once shut down an entire classroom to fight with someone grandstanding about how “homosexuals are going to hell,” and I am a person who almost cried when the one trans kid in my school came up afterward and hugged me and said that no one had ever protected him before.

I am a person who was raised Jewish and aches for the anti-Semitism I see on the street and directed toward my friends.

I am a person with no ties to most of my family’s history except that we were Romani and we fled to this country under a false name for the capital crime of striking a soldier.

I am a person who has survived six sexual assaults and remembers every single day that the statistics for being raped go up after each assault.

I am a woman who, until this morning, was reasonably confident that–while it might be hard and people might try to stop me–I would be able to get a safe, legal abortion if I ever needed it, I am a woman who believed that no one would use my gender as a reason to stop me from having a voice.

I am fucking QUEER. I cried when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, I kiss girls and boys and everything in between because people are beautiful and I don’t see why I shouldn’t revel in that, and until this morning I believed that I could marry anyone I wanted.

Let me be perfectly clear. If you voted third party because “your conscience demanded it” and you “just couldn’t vote for Hillary,” you have condemned us to this. Your devotion to your ideals is laudable. Your complete disregard for the actual lives that will be lost is not. You bear responsibility. Congratulations on voting your conscience. I’m sure it’s a great comfort to you this morning.

If you voted to “Make America Great Again,” you have voted for a racist, misogynist, xenophobic monster. You have told everyone who ticks even one of these boxes that you do not care about them, that their safety, their well-being, their inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness, does not matter to you. You have told the world what America is really made of, what our ideals really are. I am appalled that I share a country with you. You have gone down in history for this. Imagine what future generations will say about you.

TL;DR: I’m here, I’m queer, and I genuinely do not think I’ve ever been so angry and terrified in my life. If you voted for Donald Trump, I cordially invite you to unfollow me immediately and never speak to me again.

After all. I’m a dyke bitch who supports people of color and immigrants and believes that locker room talk is a real threat. If you voted for Donald Trump, you probably don’t want to talk to me either.

On the other hand, if you’re like me, do not go fucking gentle.  Stand up and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, defend your right to be a human being.  I have your back.

PSA

All right kiddies, this is an announcement that my fucking hard drive crashed yesterday and my computer is officially KIA. The rest of Deorum will be posted when I have a new computer, which could take like two weeks, so…yep. Also I am very annoyed, I’m probably going to crawl out of my skin without my writing to work on.

I’m Taking A Poll

words-writ-in-starlight:

All right, so, those of you who’ve been around long enough may or may not recall that my practice when I hit a round number of followers is to post some original writing (see: Methods of Inheritance and Sabbatical).  And I’m coming up on 400, so I’ll be doing that again!  But!  I have…a lot of original fiction.  A lot of original fiction.  So I’m going to offer a list of options, and you lot can tell me which one you’d like to see!  To vote, you can reply to this post or reblog it, or send me a message, although I’d prefer the ask box over a private message just because it’ll be easier to collate the answers that way.  For the novels, obviously, you’d be getting an excerpt, probably 2-5 pages.  Any short stories, though, you’d get all of.

Polaris: the revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel (as yet incomplete).  Like.  There’s more detail, obviously.  But that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with there.  There are a bunch of LGBT characters and a few superpowers and a revolution, thus: revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel.  Tag is here if you want more detail.

Falls the Shadow: my best beloved novel about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, led by Sam, the Horseman of Death and Antichrist.  This one’s complete, but it is H E F T Y at 250K words.  I’m editing it down.  Tag is here, but no one asks me about it, so there’s not much there.  First of a trilogy.

Battalion: the novel where angels happened and fucked everything up, and humans have been fucking them over in response for about 70 years (incomplete).  Yep.  That’s here, and there is exactly one post.

Stories From the Second War: a triad of short stories technically set in the FtS universe, about Heaven’s war against the Nephilim.  Um…they’re dark.  The Nephilim are monstrous.  But I think they might be some of my favorite writing I’ve done.  They are Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant) and To Fight Aloud, Is Very Brave (Uniforms of Snow), both from the perspective of the leader of the Nephilim, and The Stillness in the Air (Between Heaves of Storm), from the perspective of her hunting partner.  I’d put all three on here as a set, because I think they work best that way.

Deorum (Of Gods): a short story I wrote for that writing class I hated.  Jack, the main character, lives in a city populated partly by mortals and partly by the gods of the world’s pantheons–Idunn owns a coffee shop, Apollo teaches art at an elementary school, Ninkasi runs a bar, and dark things live in the woods.  Jack attracts more gods than he’s strictly comfortable with, and they all seem to know him remarkably well….  I don’t know if it’s my best work in terms of quality, but I definitely think it’s up there as the most fun.  This is about forty pages, so I’d have to post it piecemeal.  

So…yeah.  Anyone have a preference?

So I’m watching Hellboy.

And I just???  Have a lot of feelings about Professor Bruttenholm as a father???  Like, Hellboy is difficult as shit, that’s evident, but even so, at the end of the day, the Professor still claims Hellboy–who is clearly a demon–as his son and has faith in him to…not end the world, I guess, and Hellboy loves him so much.   I am always so upset about this movie.

So who else does that thing where you’re too tired to get stuff done and you know you should sleep, but you’re so desperate to avoid tomorrow that you stay up way past when you should?

Just for the Record…

It makes me feel really warm and fuzzy when people like or reblog my original writing!  I just wanted to tell my followers who’ve been going through my writing tag lately that I appreciate the fuck out of all of you guys.

Greetings, Earthlings

So apparently I got 30 followers today.

And hit 300 followers total.

And got a bunch of compliments and fic requests and y’all are too good to me.

Newcomers!  Welcome to the blog!  Please collect a top hat and join the party.  My inbox is always open for fic prompts or talking, I occasionally write stuff and there’s a tag for that.  I do feel obliged to inform you that if you’re here exclusively for Les Mis stuff, I am ADHD with a diverse set of interests and it shows.  But nonetheless, welcome!

Also!  Since we hit a hundred’s landmark, I usually post something special, so I’m gonna put up some original work, yes?

It’s been a long goddamn week but I spent my whole day writing fanfic and I can see a fireworks show FROM MY BED IN MY DORM ROOM.  They’re close enough that I can see the whole thing and just far enough away that I’m not going deaf.  Like, I’m comfy, I’m warm, I have my computer and my writing and my Tumblr, and I have fireworks, this is an okay day.

So I got into a debate(?) on Facebook with someone who was talking about Star Trek and they were griping a little about the lack of religion in it (to be fair this person is a minister) (also I’d like to point out that religion does actually happen in Star Trek, it’s just not the object of a lot of fixation), and I’d like to reiterate the reasons I love Star Fleet.

• They are space nerds.  Nerds in space.  They just want to understand the science and be in awe of the universe, let them live.
• They are aggressive about equal opportunities.  The Original Series was fucking groundbreaking guys, Uhura is the forever queen of my space nerd heart.
• They want to make friends.  With everyone.  If you’re not actively trying to murder them, humans want to be friends with you.  Hell, they might still want to be friends with you after you actively try to murder them (Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and the Borg on SEVERAL occasions).
• They protect those who can’t protect themselves, help those without food or shelter, welcome strangers and aliens to their homes, reach out with everything they have in them.
• This is the crux of it, guys.
• Star Fleet is an armada, yes.  They’re a military when they need to be, yes, because space is a dangerous place and not everyone wants to be your friend back and you are part of a crew, you are part of a Federation, you are part of a vast and system-spanning family that you have to protect.  And sometimes that means violence, because you have people to protect.
• But that’s not what Star Fleet is for.
• Star Fleet is for connecting.  For finding new planets with new civilizations and reaching out and saying “We’re not alone because you’re here, and that means you’re not alone either, come be not-alone with us.”  For looking ever outward.  For boldly going, not alone.

So let’s boldly go, motherfuckers, we have a galaxy to explore.

Okay but for real.

If Trump wins the presidency and is suddenly in command of, like, fucking nuclear launch codes and shit, that means that the world’s greatest need is TRULY at hand, right?

So what are the odds we’re going to see King Arthur and the court of Camelot return sometime in the next year?