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Working on getting these to Publishable Standard.
Taking down for now.
Thanks to all my readers. News should be coming soon, although we know how life goes.
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This story is 27 words long.
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On the surface
On the surface, the station practically seems to run itself. That seems unlikely though.
Allison has a remarkable talent for meeting people and getting them to open up to her. It seems so foreign to me. Then I read this line and felt a little pain in the ol’ ventricals: “She felt realer than she’d ever been.” I thought, Yeah, that’s probably the source of her talent..no wonder it feels foreign.
— Emma
Not a trans story? Huh!!
I was beginning to have doubts my link to the trans element of the tale was getting a little stretched. Beginning to....
And hrrrmmm, I wonder what would allow a trans woman to feel real? And what would prevent them from embracing their realness before the point they accepted themselves? Equally, what would most of a lifetime do to someone having prevented them from feeling real, and what would their life be like after they did accept themselves? And, not to be too blunt, what allowed them to accept themselves?
I guess Allison is just a Mary Sue, really. The perfect little girl. The hero in waiting for the entire station. The Queen of the solar system lying dormant but ready to take her throne. All very convenient for an author (me) to discover her, isn't it? ;-)
Your self-reflection…
…made me laugh out loud, especially the Mary Sue paragraph.
Even though set in a completely artificial environment, a space station, your stories have a wonderful, gentle, pastoral quality. Reading this tale makes me feel again my own wonder and excitement over the possibilities that opened as I found my own self.
The pastoral quality of the story...
I do wonder in what sense you use the word "pastoral?"
Of course the word is the word in itself, and can mean nothing other than itself. :-P
How is a space station pastoral?
Apparently I missed your reply almost a year ago; sorry for that.
The story is pastoral because the protagonist is humble; because the interactions are gentle and kind; because while weird, especially in its gender divisions, the culture is in a 'golden age', where basic needs are fulfilled for all of society (as best I recall from a year out).
It's also pastoral in the implication that the society's leaders are ambiguous, not so much ‘leading’, instead cultivating. In earliest definitions pastoral literature ‘required' a shepherd, but sometimes the shepherd is metaphorical, whether herding cats or culture.