Very cool, Allyson.

Whoooooeeeee! I'm in serious company, there.

Throw a virtual smooch Tim-wards for me, will you? I don't know the man at all, but I know a wonderful quote when I see it.

Fury's and Brendan's are excellent, but Tim's just nails it.

edit: actually, make that a virtual salute, tip of the hat thing. I am woefully unsmoochy by nature.

Recognizing myself

The sad fact was, when I was in high school, girls' brains weren't supposed to be able to handle math and science. When I coasted through the classes, I assumed it was because the subject wasn't that involved. I thought the praise from my geometry teacher was politeness. I didn't even make the connection when I was the only girl in the special invitation-only applied mathematics course my senior year. All I saw were the Bs and Cs--shameful things--in algebra; the As in geometry and applied trig only proved those subjects were somehow not so hard.

In college, people had been known to change majors to avoid the required statistics course. People prayed merely to pass; As were nearly mythical.

I kept waiting for it to get hard. I squeaked through with an A. In the midst of planning my gloat to my boyfriend about how I got an A too, I heard the professor say, "You're good at this."

The mental walls splintered. I was smart. More, I was smarter than a lot of the people around me. It wasn't that applied mathematics was easier than other things, the truth was I would have been smart enough to do the science courses I'd thought of taking over the years.

But graduation was less than a month away. Time to enter the world and make a living, not to turn around and try to recreate myself. Still, I had a clearer mirror to hold up for myself now. It was liberating, to whisper to myself, "I'm smart."

Way cool blurbs, Allyson!

Allyson, squeee!!! That's a strong foursome lineup there.

Raq, yours is backflung, and I'm all needy now, "Please mu'm, I'd like some more!"

Thanks, Beverly, and thank you for your comments and edits.

Interesting how things morph. When I started writing that story, it was about the creation-via-espionage of WMDs in Iraq, making the facts align to create the enemy you want. Then that intersected with a reverse Garden of Eden story, what happens when someone loses the ability to distinguish good and evil. The first story was WAY more allegorical, and I'm a little sorry to have lost that, but this one works better.

Thanks to all the readers here for y'all's help!

Great blurbs, Allyson! I liked Tim's a lot (because it sounded like him), but I liked Nicholas Brendan's the most. Despite the fact he's done cons and interacted in the fan world, it's a whole 'nother thing to be part of the audience than on the stage and that came through well.

Connie, I loved your drabble. I think I was in my mid-20s when one of my older brothers (a certified genius) astounded me when he told me I was always better at math than him. I never felt smart until then.

editted for clarity

He came to set her free. He knew he was the one to save her – cut through the thorns, kiss her awake, and settle down to their happily ever after. His destiny.

I knew better. I saw the thorns shoot up. They won’t fall until long after I’m gone. But my advice didn’t suit; the truth was not pretty enough to be believed. I am not a princess. He barely saw me.

I could hear him for days, crying out - first for help and then for death. He had pressed on farther for any could follow.

She still sleeps.

From Salon:

Judging women writers by their looks

It was Annalee Newitz's dream to get "Slashdotted" -- that is, until she read the reader letters. Newitz is a tech writer, whose work was recently linked to on the "news for nerds" website Slashdot. Hoping to have ignited a thoughtful dialogue about technology and social justice, she was shocked to click on the comments section and instead find a thread debating whether she was too fat, Newitz writes in today's AlterNet. "At that point, I vowed to stop reading Slashdot," she says. "Why should I give a shit about those morons?"

But over time, Newitz missed her Slashdot fix and retuned to the "blog of record for techies." Then the site spotlighted her work again, prompting a reader to describe her as a "gorgeous nerd" ("rather than a journalist or writer or columnist or even just plain 'nerd'", she writes) and a new discussion started on whether she was indeed a hottie. But this time, Newitz chose to fight back.

She read the letters a bit more carefully and noticed that readers were actually debating among themselves about whether it was cool to comment on her looks. "For every sexist dick, there was at least one feminist dick talking back to him," she writes. She realized she was witnessing a slow cultural evolution. "I don't want to run away. I want women to get excited by all the cool articles on Slashdot and not get driven away by a community that values them for their bodies instead of their thoughts," she writes.

[link]

Awesome blurbs, Allyson!

Huh. Allyson, I think in that situation? I might not even bother posting a picture. If the readers' attention to the content is the end goal, why distract from that in any direction at all?

But I do like her conclusions from paying attention to what was going on in the comments.