Template Change

Changing the template because Dynamic Views appears to be just... Broken.

Because I couldn't get the blog to load for most of the day, last week's postmortem will go up tomorrow.

Any suggestions for another template from fellow Blogspot people?

Questions Re: Authors & Reviewers

I found this story while searching for something entirely different, and I thought it would be interesting to pose some questions about it.

The short version of the story:

• "Vine" reviewer (blog author) reads book, posts 4-star review on Amazon.
• Author starts pushing for #1 New York Times Bestseller slot on Facebook; is unhappy that it stays steady at #2.
• Someone gives the book a 1-star review on Amazon. It's not abusive, mind you. It's just harsh.
• Author's husband tears into the 1-star reviewer; legions of fans jump on board. Death threats ensue.
• Author references the fracas in an amused fashion
• Blog author changes review to 1-star, explains that it's because they can't support the author's behavior:

•  Both the blog author and the original 1-star reviewer receive threats and anonymous phone calls.
• Author steps in, sorta-kinda. One of her comments:

amy--we did reach out to her with an official apology. if she is really getting death threats, which is appalling, she should probably remove her post--or at least stop talking about it. alternatively, she should call the police ASAP. There is nothing i can do to help her from atlanta. why are you still talking about it? i think you are making it worse for this poor woman by drawing attention to it on my page. if you care about her and want it to die down, please stop posting about it on my page. that is what i mean by "protect all involved". i'm sorry you don't seem to follow this logic. but maybe you want the drama to continue? if so, THAT is really, really bad.

...And that about summarizes it. Full details in the link in the post above, naturally.

So my questions to you, dear blog readers, are:

Should the book's author have acted differently? How?

and

Should the blog author have changed their review? (edit: I meant, from a 4-star to 1-star, which they did; was that a good thing or a bad thing?)

and

If you were either of these people, what might have you done differently? What might you have wished you'd done differently?

Homestuck Race Debate

Warning: This post is mostly for my own benefit. Most people who I personally know read this blog either don't read Homestuck or haven't caught up. And many of them actively dislike Homestuck, if only for the crazy fandom that circulates around it. And this is an 'aggregator-style' post about a kerfluffle in the Homestuck fandom. So you've been warned.

On that note, this post contains spoilers.

 If you're continuing anyway, a brief notes of context.

First, go here: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/ Look at the front page, which is also the first page of the (several-thousand-page and running) comic called Homestuck.

Actually, what the heck, I'll paste it for the lazy.

What race is that kid?

Well, you might assume he's white, and he's certainly drawn as if he has straight hair, but Homestuck characters are canonically aracial. Naturally, this leads to most people assuming they're white. And a vocal minority of fans who hate that assumption (myself amongst them, though I'm not really clear on whether I count as part of the HS fandom because until now I haven't participated at all). The author is well aware of this debate. (That context is important.)

Making characters aracial is potentially problematic, but I am going to skim over that for the moment in interest of brevity, and also because I don't think my thoughts have wrapped around that completely anyway.

Homestuck has often had a "Trickster Mode" as a joke in the Flash entries where you can control the characters involved.

Here's a screenshot:

That's the same character as the one depicted in the opening page. Note presence of skin color (and alternate hair color, and alternate colors everywhere.)


Now, partially as a nod to fans, partly as a plot device, the author, Andrew Hussies, has made Trickster Mode an Official Plot Device in Homestuck. The character who enters Trickster mode has a similar skin color to the one in the picture above (IE, they're apparently white, and not white in the literal sense).

This twitter conversation ensues: https://twitter.com/andrewhussie/status/288847003738308609

Following that, the next few updates had the Trickster mode character commenting to another character (who's horrified at her change): "I feel so... CAUCASIAN!" on this page (bright flashing colors warning, by the way). With a bunch of skin color tones in a row at the bottom (and the choice of pantone 7507c - the character's current skin tone - blinking).

Spiderlass on Tumblr summed up pretty well many peoples' problems with this in this post: (I won't quote, just go read the whole thing if you've gotten this far.)

If you go to the Homestuck page I linked, you'll see that the word now reads "PEACHY!" And the skin color tones are replaced by a series of fruit. Because the author got horrified at the reaction and tossed out the joke.

His explanation: "I thought the joke was funny, but..."

But actually what motivates me more to revise it is noticing more than a few unsavory individuals using it as justification to harass POCs or anyone who, reasonably, wanted to voice their concerns. On reflection I’d rather not have my decisions serve as fodder for the arguments of such people.

Full post here.

And he followed up after people got ANGRY!!! that he stooped to self-censorship!!!:

This is why the claim “social justice is in essence a form of censorship” is so ironic here. Because the forces of social justice aren’t actually making me change anything. In this case, it’s actually the people who OPPOSE those concerns in the ugliest manner who motivated me to “censor” myself.

Most people here would agree that some SJ enthusiasts can get pretty carried away. But if you feel convinced social justice is a crushing form of censorship, you might want to rethink that idea. Because apparently “one of the only people who could say and do whatever they damn well pleased” for the first time ever decided to redact a joke, not because of SJ bloggers, but because of the behavior of their most strident critics. And if you truly dislike censorship, and do not wish to see more self-censorship in the future, then you would be doing your part to behave in a way that doesn’t make creators feel embarrassed to be defended by you.

Full post here.

2013 Goals: Week 1 Postmortem

Novel: 5,836/3500 words.

I built up a bit of a barrier just before the New Year on this draft, intentionally, and it's paid off. I'm still ahead of schedule, even though I spent a few days ruminating on necessary changes to another chapter. I'll try to keep writing ahead of schedule to allow myself those occasional 'thinking days'.

SCP Foundation: 0/0 articles. (+0 to make up.)

This isn't due yet! In the next two postmortem posts, I won't mention it unless there's a reason to.

Working Out: 2/4 times. (+0 to make up.)

I didn't think this one would be my first stiffed resolution, but there it is. My sleep cycle got in the way of this one, and my own desire to procrastinate. Sigh.

I now have two micro-sessions to make up by the end of the month. On that note, I've signed up for some workout classes, so hopefully after this month this resolution gets easier to keep.

Though I'm thinking of modifying it to make it so that I have to be physically active for one minute per hour. To combat the ill effects of sittin' around.

Blogging: 3/3 posts. (+0 to make up.)

Success! Even if I posted the last one at the last second. Having Jess to reply to really helped with that. Thanks, Jess. Let's keep doin' that.

Total Resolutions Kept: 3/4

Let's see if I can do better this coming week.

New Blog Subtitle Time

Your thoughts! Give them to me.

I like "Then Again", but I'm a bit tired of "Fairies, Sex, and Spacemen." Any suggestions for a new title?

I'm tempted to steal "Middle of May" from an old journal... but I'm not certain.

I am also happy to change "Then Again" if necessary, or just get rid of the subtitle altogether.

I may change this again in the near future, so don't be afraid to suggest silly things, so long as they're not too silly to be usable.

January 7th 2013, Early Morning

Hey Jess.

This is the post I am replying to. (We should probably keep linking back to each other or this will make even less sense.) Update: Now cross-posted here!

I am writing this at about 4 AM. But it's not as bad as it sounds: I woke up at 4 PM yesterday (after an all-nighter that lasted til 9 AM. I intended to stay up all day to reset my sleep cycle, but it did not work). I slept at 9 AM and woke up at a little bit past 2 AM. I will probably nap soon before I have to get up at 8 AM. My sleep cycle is pretty hilarious.

Yes, blogging. I am technically not yet behind on my blogs for this year because I set myself a rule that I can make a whole bunch of posts at the end of the week. This year, the end of the "week" is Monday, meaning I have a whole entire day to meet my quota of ... three ... or was it four... posts. Meaning, counting this one, that I have... two... or is it one... post/s left for this week.

(I really should have made my working out resolutions and blogging resolutions have the same number.)

I am starting my week on Tuesday and ending it on Monday because New Year's Day was Monday.

I think I may be behind on working out already. But don't tell anyone.

Anyway, I could not help but notice that you did not explain what we were doing. Because I am the helpful friend, I will proceed to explain for our audience of two or three people.

You, Jess, are being my blogging buddy to help me, Jake, in one of my New Year's resolutions. We got the idea of chatting at each other from vlog brothers. Though we are not, in fact, brother and sister, we have often been mistaken for brother and sister, so it is close enough I guess.

Somehow I originally typed "brother in sister" in the above sentence, which I am happy to say was not a Freudian slip, because it would be terrible to somehow grow awkward sexual tension out of nowhere after knowing each other for approximately thirteen years. Or maybe hilarious. I don't know. Luckily, today is not the day we find out.

Is thirteen years right? I am not certain. I'm pretty sure we met late-1999 - early-2000. Do you remember? I know we bonded over media out before that point, such as The Phantom Menace...

Still sexy.

...and Gargoyles...

Still awesome. Also still sexy.

Also, we have planned since we were teenagers to co-write some stuff in the future, although, as you know, only I am currently writing, and when we are rich and famous, these blogs will stand forever in infamy. Alternatively, we will laugh at our hubris while we are on our death beds. In this version of the future, we are dying at the same time, which is actually kind of terrible.

You mentioned: "Regular updating? Um, I’ll try really hard. I hope that works for you cause that’s as good as you’re gonna get XD"

That's perfectly excellent for starters. Maybe we can challenge each other to keep to a schedule later! For now, let's take baby steps and rely on our compulsive need to chatter at each other, and our willingness to keep reminding the other person to reply when it's not our turn.

Deadjournal.

Oh my god. I had almost completely forgotten about my deadjournal. Oh man. I had this blog from 2002-2005. How old was I, then? I can't math. Let's figure this out:

• 2013: I will (but have not yet) turn 28
• 2012: 27
• 2011: 26
• 2010: 25
• 2009: 24
• 2008: 23
• 2007: 22
• 2006: 21
• 2005: 20
• 2004: 19
• 2003: 18
• 2002: 17

So I had this blog from age 17 to age 20. Sometime after or during that, I got a livejournal, and then migrated here. I have been blogging for over ten years.

Seventeen through twenty. Hot damn. Those were my "teen angst" years, coming on a little late and spilling into my twenties because I was overall pretty happy through most of high school. Don't get me wrong, some of it is horrifying in retrospect, but ignorance was bliss at the time. You remember.

Just look at my very first post:

Yay...my first entry ever here...or in a journal ever. ^_^ Actually, I was debating getting one for a while now, but it took Jessi registering to provide the impetus for me to do the same.

That's right, Jess. I have been using you to motivate my blogging for my entire blogging career.

Also, check out that badass anime emoticon. Hah. That's a theme throughout: tons and tons of anime emoticons. But I'll follow up on that in another post.

And Jess, that's my first challenge for you...

Blogging Challenge Number One!

Find your old deadjournal. You don't even have to link it if you don't have to - I know you sometimes come down with a bad case of Shy On The Internet. But go through the posts - all the posts. Skim wherever you like. Comment on the posts overall in some way as thoughts come to you.

If you accept this challenge, I will do the same. I might do it anyway. Who knows. I'm just so damn unpredictable. You can't pin me down!

Animorphs.

Animorphs is a fantastic thing to talk about. Unfortunately, I have already written quite the wall of text on other things. Fortunately, there will be many more opportunities to talk about Animorphs in the future, especially since I'm planning to reread them at some point. I will just say right now that I am very very happy that they are re-releasing this series, and especially that they're doing it in e-reader format.

I cannot remember my favorite Animorphs character. I loved Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias... Ax and Marco came second, but I loved them too, really.  But yes, Jake was the hottest in the TV show. However, I barely watched that. Ah well!

Ebooks.

Well, that depends, doesn't it? I have to imagine that people will be able to power our current devices or retrieve data somehow, if we keep the level of technology we have now or higher. If we don't keep that level of technology... well, we're going to lose a whole damn lot of work. But, you know, most civilizations have left much, much less behind than they would have liked. So it's okay, I guess, from the long view.

I don't know if the paper saving is staggering yet, but I would wager it at least eventually will be. And that's almost as good.

This make me think of a question for you: How do you think the world will end?

Something happy, something sad.

I'll do this one next post! I already know what I'm gonna write, but I'm out of time for now.

And another thing:

I have been also been watching vlogbrothers as you suggested. That's where I got the challenge idea from. You're right. The first few videos are really awkward. As these blog posts surely are too. But they are pretty much all great. And inspiring! Even though I still hate the introductory music.

I would like to suggest something else...

Suggestion Time

One of the things we've done constantly throughout the time we've known each other is drag each other into consuming media.

This blogging back-and-forth comes from that. I got you into Crash Course. You segued from that into Vlog brothers (which I had ignored) and now you've got me into that, too.

So... let's keep doing that, but through our blog. Maybe we can work this into challenges later, but - baby steps! For now, let's do meters.

I'll start with Vlog Brothers. I suggest you start with Homestuck: Note which page you're currently on. Update when you post, even if it remains the same between posts. I will do the same, noting which Vlog Brothers video I'm currently on.

We can add more meters as we blog more.

Do you accept this suggestion?

Bonus question! Should I make a tumblr and cross-post things there? 

I close my post with this adorable cat picture.

Aw yiss.

-----------------------------------

Suggestions Summary:

• Deadjournal Challenge.
• Meter Suggestion.

P.S.: I noticed you used a "hey jake" tag on your tumblr. That is a good idea and I am stealing it.

New Year's Resolutions 2013

I've never made resolutions for the new year before. Gonna try that out this year.

My first inclination is to take on way too much, and make a ton of ambitious resolutions that will inevitably fail. My second inclination is hopefully more reasonable. I'll stick to the "writing" category, since that's probably the most reasonable.

Resolution #1: Novel.

I partly mean "finish my novel" and I partly mean "rewrite my novel" here, because most of it has already been written at some point in the last year and a half. But almost all of it needs to be rewritten, and half of what I've already written needs to be discarded. Such is rewriting. Especially when you're me, and using this novel to learn how to write (something which, I am told, is not necessarily recommended).

I'm dividing this one up by months. Fantasy word counts tend to range between 80,000 words to 120,000 words if you want to play it safe as a first-time author. I want to be generous with these goals, so I'll say 120,000. I'll divide that by 8 months, leaving 4 months to rewrite, to get 15K words per month. Divided by 30, that's 500 words per day. I could write more, but again, I'm trying to be generous with myself here.

* January: 15,000 words
* Feburary: 30,000 words
* March: 45,000 words
* April: 60,000 words
* May: 75,000 words
* June: 90,000 words
* July: 105,000 words
* August: 120,000 words
* September: Revise first 30,000 words
* October: Revise first 60,000 words
* November: Revise first 90,000 words
* December. Revise all 120,000 words

If I have to do another rewrite later, that's fine. Some form of rewriting is to be expected. The goal is to have a complete, polished draft.

Resolution #2: Twelve new pieces for the SCP Foundation.

(For those of you who aren't familiar with the SCP Foundation, the short version is that it's a collaborative writing website, based primarily around short stories in the horror fiction category. There's a large number of pieces that fall into the humor and general speculative fiction genres, too. I write and staff for this site. If you visit this month, January 2012, you'll find that the featured Tale on the front page is one of mine: "Recovered Data File".)

This one's pretty straightforward: one piece a month. Technically, I could write more: these aren't long pieces. But I'll also be working on staff projects for the site and writing my novel. And these resolutions are supposed to be generous. So a piece a month is more realistic.

Resolution #3: Work out.

(I'm vaguely embarrassed to type this one out.)

I'll say that the way to fulfill this is to work out for a total of no less than 15 minutes per day for 4 days a week. Any skipped days must be made up within a month. Can't cheat and do 45 minutes one day and count that for three days. That's a pretty low bar to reach, yes. But generous, remember?

Resolution #4: Blog.

This is actually going to be the hardest one, because for some reason blogging is the first thing I forget to do. That's why I'm setting the bar even lower: one blog post per day, three days a week. If I get to the end of the month and I'm way behind, I can write several per day to make up for lost time. Skipped posts still have to be made up within a month, though.

-------

And those are my four resolutions for the coming year. Let's see if I can manage to not break them. Hopefully the systemic way they're set up will help.

The SCP Foundation Christmas

For you fellow Foundation fans. And also for myself. Trying out a new-ish kind of blogging with this: aggregating posts on topics I like.

 Qwantz posts this comic riffing on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer just in time for the holidays. Note: Comic is funny even if you don't know what the SCP Foundation is.

The Official SCP Foundation Xmas thread is here. Mostly full of people being nice to each other (including me), but you never know, it might not last.

No one's yet posted any winter holiday related tales or SCPs this actual winter holiday, so I've dug up a few that are related:

SCP-2412-J, the Laplander. A joke article. Bit of a cheesy joke, but it's a classic article. (From 2008, the year the site was created. That makes everything better.)

Christmas is a collection of holiday-themed creepypasta from a year ago. No understanding of the SCP Foundation is required to read.

Silberescher's On the Seventh Day of Christmas, a story about SCP-1802, "Skip". A word of warning: "Skip" is a riff on the core concept of the site itself, so you may not want to make it the first article you read. Or, hey, maybe that's a plus.

Sophia Light's Joy to the World is another meta-themed story, though the point of this one is in itself a joke. Definitely a fun read if you know what the SCPs mentioned are, or are willing to look them up. (One tidbit: SCP-504 are tomatoes that fling themselves at you if you make a bad joke. Somewhat central to the story.)

And, finally, Smapti's How Dr. Clef Saved Christmas is another story full of in-jokes. Goddammit, I didn't realize when I first started gathering these links about how self-referential we all are. Maybe I ought to have considered that in advance! Much too late now, though.

On that note, if you don't know what the SCP Foundation is, and you're interested, and you like creepy/horror-themed stuff with the occasional bout of hilarity or over-the-top action, start with the list of the most popular pages on the site and dive in. 

Happy miscellaneous winter holidays.

Christ, I've had this blog for a little over five years. And yet I've still only posted in fits and starts. This blog is turning into one giant pool of guilt hanging around my neck like... Wow, that was a pretty fuckin' mixed metaphor right there. Maybe I should stop with that while I'm ahead.

Stuff happens, and life goes on.

REVIEW-O-TRON 5000: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Updated)

[See new version here: http://jakejesson.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/review-o-tron-5000-gardens-of-the-moon-by-steven-erikson/  - okay, it's really just the old version but with commentary.]

Everything I Have Ever Written Is Terrible

Such are the thoughts that streak through your head when you managed to write half a book in a month and then hit a brick wall of a poorly-conceived-yet-integral plot thread and have to spend three motherfucking weeks trying to work it out it. Which resurrects your personal favorite bugaboo of "what if everything else in this book is just as terrible as this part was?" Oh hello there, Obsessive-Compulsive Editing Syndrome! I thought I'd locked you up in the dark corners of my subconscious two months ago.

 And then you spend the week after that struggling with insomnia and trying to get your lost momentum back, and decide to write a blog post to break the writer's block and you can't even think of a topic goddammit. Although I guess that part isn't true anymore, at least!

I'm twenty-six, and I am probably going to die before this book is done. No, bad Jake! I'll finish it by the end of next month.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

NaNoWriMo

So, the reason I haven't posted much recently: I've been writing up a storm. Not that I've ever posted here regularly, mind you. That's just the current reason for my lack of posts.

I'm unreliably employed at the moment, y'see, and so I took the opportunity to try NaNoWriMo. I didn't mention it here because I didn't want to jinx it.

And I succeeded. 50,000 words in 1 month. Plus several hundred beforehand, too. Meaning I'm now at the halfway point of the novel I've been working on for years.

One more month. One more month of powering through another 50,000 words, and I should be done with the entire novel.

...And then, I'll start in on the editing. Or I'll let it sit for a while, maybe work on another project. I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it. For now: I'm halfway done with this damn thing! Woo!

T-Shirts.

I was pretty surprised when I saw this T-shirt. I probably shouldn't have been. But I've been following this book series since 2004 and even THEN I was a latecomer, and I can't get used to it being this majorly popular TV show... Not that I don't love it, just sayin'.

"Damn It Feels Good to be a Lannister T-shirt" (If you don't get the reference, what are you doing here? Go watch and/or read "Game of Thrones" already.)

Fringe

I've recently started watching this show. I expected it to mildly entertaining. It turned out to be much better than mildly entertaining.

For one, the character of Walter Bishop, played by John Noble (known best for playing Denethor in Lord of the Rings), is one of the best characters I've seen on television or film, thanks to a deft combination of excellent writing, direction, and acting.

For another, the show's mytharc actually reveals shit on a regular basis. Stuff happens on this show, and I'm not even all the way through season 1 yet. (Reviews seem to indicate that things only get better.)

So of course I end up reading this article last night. If you are too lazy to click that, the summary is: Fringe is in danger of cancellation. Again. Apparently it's been in danger of cancellation each season due to low ratings, despite superb writing. Maybe it's a false alarm, but still - I'm getting a little tired of excellent shows being cancelled early because they don't get an immediate audience. Especially shows that obviously play better on DVD than they do on television. (See: Angel, Firefly, Rome, Deadwood, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and the list goes on. Counterpoint: The Wire, and... uh, The Wire.)

Hopefully Fringe doesn't get the bite that so many others have had. It's gotten as far as season four at least...

New Blog Title #4

...because it occurred to me that "Fairies, Sex and Spacemen" was a bit NSFW if it's up their in big bold letters.

So now it's the subtitle. Yeah, that'll do it.

And now I've titled the blog "Then Again", which is perfectly appropriate considering how often I rethink everything. Including the blog title. Which I may well change again, if I decide I don't like it. WHO CAN SAY.

The SCP Foundation

Since about March, I have found myself involved in an online community again. It's a little website called the SCP Foundation". It's a primarily horror website, inspired by creepypasta and evolved into something new and different and entertaining. Maybe you've heard of it. If you haven't, maybe you should check it out. Go ahead. I'll wait.



While I'm at it, I'll mention my most popular contribution to the site so far: SCP-1000: Bigfoot. (I'm so proud.)

Jane C. Hines

Here, on the blog of Jim C. Hines, you can find a truly excellent post about the difference being a man or woman makes, even when it shouldn't: Jane C. Hines

The sad thing is, I know a whole ton of people (mostly men) who would claim that this disparity simply does not exist, with many words and plenty of rancor.

Another Update

I'm not sure if I should be proud that I really do post in this blog regularly, or ashamed that no matter what I've tried, so far I've failed to post regularly. Seeing how old John Scalzi's blog is, and the fact that he's post almost every day, has reminded me that I need to post more often.

I'm between jobs at the moment, so I should really work out a system now, rather than waiting until I get full-time employment again. Sure, only a few people are reading this blog now, but once I get this current novel published, I might even go up to a few dozen, and what happens then? I'll be totally fucked, that's what will happen. (Or maybe nothing. You never know).

Maybe I should try posting every day (that I have Net access). Even if it's only one line. Why not, I suppose? It'll be good practice. I guess. Maybe. Maybe it'll just be a distraction from all the other shit that I need to be doing.


Now, let's see how long I can keep that up.

Another Reason to Like George R. R. Martin

George R. R. Martin is having a good year. First, Game of Thrones is now airing as a(n apparently fantastic - I haven't been able to see it yet) HBO show. Second, he finally finished Dance With Dragons after six long years.

Now a clueless reviewer labels GoT as male fantasy, and Martin takes issue with this.

A choice quote:

if I am writing "boy fiction," who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings?

In the light of certain sf/f authors identifying their stories as male-oriented - like George Lucas - it's great to see a major male fantasy author standing up for female fans and saying, fuck you, this isn't just for boys. Martin was already my favorite epic fantasy author - this only raises my esteem of him.

Read the whole thing here: "Boy Fiction?"

Gender Gym

I've realized that so long as I'm working on a novel, I will never keep this bloody blog updated unless I write about what I'm writing about while I'm writing it. (That sentence got a little convoluted.)

I write for two consecutive hours every day; I also work full time. And then I have a happy, complicated love life that needs time devoted to it. I don't really have extra time to think up blog posts. But if I write about what I'm doing in my novel, well, then it sorta counts as brainstorming, doesn't it?

(First off, in these posts I'm going to call my novel Aether. That's not necessarily going to be the final title, but I need to pick something for now.)

What have I done recently?

I just changed my magic system. Again. This time, it's because several people whose opinions I trust have pointed out that my magic system is getting fairly unique. So I shouldn't just call everything 'magic'. Still, I think the word 'magic' is pretty descriptive, and if I call it the One Power or the Force or Mindcraft or something I'm going to feel a little pretentious, which isn't exactly what I want from this book. I'm still thinking about what changes to make.

I also gender-flipped a character several times. This is a character who I've gender-flipped before, but she keeps returning to her original female gender. Currently I think I've settled on making her a biological male who identifies as female. I think that's where she might stay. Though already I'm thinking about the possibilities of her as a biological female who identifies as male. Or someone who changes his/her gender every few years (magical character, so I can do that).

Usually I go the other direction on this gender flipping. When I first had the idea for this novel (farther back than I care to admit), most of the characters were male. Of course they were. Most sci-fi/fantasy works are populated almost entirely by straight white men. Because of this, I feel very conscious about the number of female, queer, and minority characters in what I write. There's little reason why a fantasy novel shouldn't pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors. So many of my characters started off as straight white males, and ended up queer, nonwhite, and/or female.

So why am I debating changing her gender to male? Well: I actually have too few male characters in charge of the Secret Magical Community. (She's one of them.) The male characters are mostly in the "Assimilationist" faction of the community, which means they're embracing American Christian attitudes, for better or for worse. That includes anti-queer attitudes, negative sexual beliefs, belief in a male-female Stay In The Kitchen hierarchy, plus other generally unpleasant but common things. While this doesn't make them the Bad Guys, it certainly doesn't put them on the side of our protagonists.

This is a problem, because with this setup, it can look like I (as the author) am trying to say:

A) Female leaders are incompetent, and female-led communities are doomed to failure, because in the story - well, let's just say a lot of Bad Things happen. Worse, the POV character that interacts with the community the most is male, which could make him seem like a Necessary Male Hero (here to save these womenfolk from themselves!).

B) Males are generally bad, sexist/homophobic people. More of a stretch, since I have male POV characters as well as female, and also I am male; however, 'male' is usually associated with 'straight', and the male POV characters as well as myself are pansexual.

C) Both. Females are incompetent leaders, and males are bad people. This may not initially make sense, but how many traditional conservative women have you heard say "all men are pigs"?

So the solution is easy: Make at least a couple of the community leaders male. Most of the community leader characters, however, need to be female for either some story reason or because I'm attached to the idea. The character in question has no reason to be either gender, though.

So why not make her male and be done with it? Possibly because she started out female, and I keep thinking of her like that. But more importantly, changing her to male doesn't actually make her any cooler (I have to admit that changing lots of my males to females did make their character concept cooler). In fact, I worry that she loses some 'cool' factor as a male. This isn't particularly logical, of course - it's solely based on personal preference. 'Cool' is a hard thing to quantify, so I may be thinking about this for a little while longer.