#minor typo 🙃🙃🙃

[featherlouise]

This is nearly a year old but I still really like the concept :D

I think I was in the middle of figuring out Ghost's redesign at the time???

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

[dashawfrostart]

These Three Weeks in "Time & Again" #25: More Cover Arts, More Thoughts, More Everything - But NO MORE Legacy Editions! ☝

It's been a while since I posted the last update on how things were going with "Time & Again". A lot has happened. First and foremost, prep for GPop Culture Fair. Damn, I'm looking good I'm excited. Truly. I've never done anything like that before, and I'm beyond happy to be presented a wonderful opportunity to let everyone know about my crazy kiddos 😱. I want to make them famous!!! Because prep to GPop has been one of the biggest chunks of my artistic activities lately, there's not much to report on the matter, because, well, it's self-explanatory. The booth setup, decorations, designs, etc. I might post some photos later on if possible.

Now, friendly folks, here's the biggest news for today:

The Clean Cut Editions of "Time & Again" are finally available on GlobalComix and Itch.io to read and buy! 🥳🥳🥳🥂🍻🦆

(why is there a cute duck? I dunno. Because Frosty is a bird nerd, that's why 🙃 I have 4 birding apps on my phone; how many do you have? 😁)

Just a quick reminder: Clean Cut Editions of "Time & Again" are updated, slightly expanded editions of the graphic narrative that has been proofread anew, as well. Each chapter now comes with a special section of commentary, which is optional to read, for those of you who want to go down the "completionist" route and 100% all of these tiny little easter eggs and mysterious interconnections within the chapters 😁. It also contains some insight on the chapters' development. Here's the old announcement post for the Clean Cut Edition, if anyone's interested to refresh the memory.

Also as a quick reminder: legacy editions are no longer accessible. They're gone. Forever. And that makes me incredibly happy 😁 Because the Clean Cut Editions are definitely superior.

Might be necessary only to the most dedicated fans, but to clarify what kind of metamorphoses the chapters have undergone for the Clean Cut release, here's a little improvised list:

As already mentioned above, "Notes, Commentary & Hints" for every chapter as a part of bonus materials;

Chapter 4 has been expanded and now includes 2 extra pages of purest shapeshifting idiocy craziness (more about how I worked on that addition is in this post);

Chapter 4 now has a completely different epigraph that better matches the idea of the chapter and sets the tone for the story that awaits ahead (yup, I most certainly do not miss the old ridiculous one);

Some bonus materials have been rearranged or partially swapped to ensure the reader's enjoyment (especially in Chapter 4);

Extra SFXs have been added for the better impression and consistency;

The placement (and sometimes design) of certain speech bubbles across all first 4 chapters has been corrected to improve the looks; the text arrangement within the speech bubbles has been corrected accordingly, as well;

All the dialogues have been proofread, and the shameful typos are now removed (hopefully all of them);

Minor tweaks to art (unfilled pixels filled, missing detail added/modified, artist's epic fails corrected 🤦‍♀️, etc.);

... And some other, super minor stuff that was important to me to correct even though the readers might not even notice.

As you might've guessed, YES: that was a lot of work for me this year. And it was 100% worth it. I am happy.

The next important announcement for today is that I have completed the cover art for Chapter 6.2.

I cannot show it just yet, because it contains major spoilers to the story - so you'll have to wait a bit 😁

Now, onto a somewhat sad part. With all my life endeavours, and the fair preps, not to mention THAT TIME OF THE YEAR approaching (you know, the time that most retail workers as well as the buyers themselves seriously dread, lol!), it is becoming quite clear to me that it's very unlikely I will be able to finish my work on Chapter 6 this year. I probably will be lucky to finish up the lineart alone by the end of December... But as I said before, I don't exactly have them deadlines. And timed levels are my worst nightmares. Screw timed levels. So I'll simply do whatever I can 😁

My next objective in "Time & Again" Chapter 6 development is to draw all the panels and to arrange all the text boxes and speech bubbles properly on every page.

So, basically, the main body of work on the chapter starts from now on. And that is going to be... an adventure. Yup. Because Chapter 6 will be different. Oh so different. I truly hope it's gonna be the most creative chapter of all in the series.

And before I wrap it up for today, I want to expand on some techy stuff that I touched in the previous post. I mentioned that creating a timelapse video through Krita Recorder produces an odd flicker in random moments which makes the video highly unenjoyable. When I checked out the folder containing the snapshots, I've noticed that there are some files that are solid white with no art on them. Just empty white spaces. Manually deleting the weird white snapshots forces Krita to fail the conversion of the video; it doesn't automatically skip missing frames, it simply gives an error and, well, gives up on life. While I found no clue on the genesis of the empty white frames - seems that it's just a glitch in Krita for now - I have indeed found a resolution! 🥳 Unfortunately, it's not super straightforward and, to make it even worse, it requires some extra work on the artist's part (and the artist is already busy enough, but whatever will you do?.. everybody knows that the artist's life is very hard, lol). But it works!!! And let me tell you how! I came across this post on the forum that described the exact same issue I had. The comments below have a link to a GitHub repository that contains a handy tool called Rebecca's Krita Tools. What one must do is to simply follow the instructions to install the plugin (BTW, I've never installed plugins directly from GitHub before! That's super handy!). After that, you head directly to the location of your recording snapshots, and you have to manually go through all the snapshots to remove the white empty files. After that is done, run the script called Reorder Image Sequence in Krita, select the folder that contains the snapshots - and MAGIC HAPPENS! The frames are all renamed, and you can create a timelapse now! Without flicker and epilepsy warnings!

... So I manually went through all the 11300 frames of the recording I made when working on Chapter 6.1. cover, and then I did the same for the next one.

My workspace for the manual clean up looked approximately this way:

Cool, eh?! EH???!!! I will repeat again: there were 11300 frames that I had to manually look through, with my very own set of eyes. I will brainstorm a way to automate this process somehow in the future. That's why, I think, we need help of AI - for the situations like that that require little to no real creative involvement, for techy stuff that might be difficult to do programmatically and/or manually. To help the artists deal with annoyances faster, so that they could create more art in the meantime!!!

And I was finally able to create a good video. And I will be able to optimize it to be posted on YouTube in the future. Sweet!

I should write a feature/ bug fix request on Krita forum concerning the issue. I hope that Recorder glitch gets a fix in one of the new versions of Krita. But for now, we have a perfect - although a bit time consuming - solution 😁 But that will do for now.

Time to wave good bye. See you next time! 👋 And that will be after GPop 🎨🤪🤩

P.S. Before THAT TIME OF THE YEAR, Halloween is approaching fast. We're already prepared. Das ist gut. Alas, this time I will not produce light not produce a new Halloween artwork. I've noticed I already have plenty. I have ideas swirling in my head, but I don't think I have enough time to fiddle with that on top of everything that's been happening lately.

But I've been playing some little horror games to stay in the mood - and to discover my new sparks (well, in some cases to improve my Spanish, too, because ¿¡por qué no?!). Amongst all, Harvest Festival 64 and Feet In The Snow especially stand out. Those were very different from one another, very captivating short adventures, very well worth experiencing. I highly recommend.

P.P.S. Oddly for me... not many references to music and video games in this post. Hmm. Something is surely off... I blame Lothar. It's always Lothar's fault after all. [that urgently requires a comedy one shot]

P.P.P.S. Added a couple more references to enforce the stylish continuity of my blog posts. Yaaaay! 🥳

[ipsogender]

Book review: Love, No Matter What by Komal Ahuja

While looking for book options for @intersexbookclub, I found this book on a list of intersex books and couldn't find any reviews of it from actually intersex people, nor any content warnings for the book. So, for anybody looking for such information, here's my review of the book:

Content warnings for the book

Rape by a spouse

Rape by a teacher

Domestic violence

Transphobia

How I felt about it overall

The book is neither awful nor great. I'd say 2.5 stars. It has some nice queer found family in it, and some lovely trans-intersex solidarity that was heartwarming. It centres on a perisex parent of an intersex child and the centring of perisex experience was disappointing for me (I am intersex).

Book Summary

Neira gives birth to Devi, who is born with ambiguous genitals. Her husband wants nothing to do with the baby. Luckily some hijras stop by to bless the newborn, and seeing an intersex baby, offer to take the baby in. Chandani, the Guru of the local hijra community comes to an agreement with Neira. Devi will live with the Guru and be raised with the hijras where she'll be accepted, and Devi will come over in the afternoons. And so Devi grows up.

When it comes time for Devi to enrol in school, Neira's best friend Naveen steps up to be the father on the paperwork since the birth father continues to want nothing to do with Devi. He winds up gettting fully involved as a co-parent.

Spoilers follow.

Devi grows up, has a mixed estrogen/androgen puberty, and experiences a bunch of hardships due to being intersex and the stigma of being associated with the hijras. This includes a sexual assault, struggling to get access to education, issues of filling in forms, and the psychological toll of being her birth family's dirty little secret. But through the support of her queer found family she pulls through, gets her education, starts a company, marries a transmasc, and becomes financially independent.

The good

Queer family! 🌈 Devi's birth dad was awful, but it was heartening to see Chandani and Naveen step up so Devi grew up with two mothers and one dad. The queer co-parenting that emerged was lovely.

Trans people showing up for intersex people! The trans hijras like Chandani do a vital job in ensuring Devi gets bodily autonomy and a chance to grow up in an environment that is accepting 🏳️‍⚧️

Devi is explicitly described as healthy - (i.e. being intersex doesn't mean she is unhealthy)

Surgery isn't forced onto Devi! At the beginning of the book the doctors are recommending surgery and thanks to Chandani adopting Devi this doesn't happen. As an adult Devi chooses to have surgery for her own sake, and Neira is like "but why?"

The scene where Devi is upset at the science textbook not including intersex people! She first gets upset because the science textbook has nobody like her in it, then when Chandani explains her anatomy, Devi decides that the world of straight people sucks because "There is not even a mention of us in the text book." 🙃

Non-Western queerness! The hijras escorting Devi to school during times when there has been increases in anti-trans violence felt all too familiar, sadly. That and the pain of filling in forms when your sex/gender isn't one of the usual two.

This book knows the police are the problem and cannot be trusted

The bad

The editing. There are a bunch of typos, plot elements pop up randomly or out of order, there are minor details that are inconsistent, and the voice/style of narration is also inconsistent. The pacing is also all over the place.

Plot inconsistencies. The reasons given for why Devi can't attend school like the other kids are inconsistent throughout the book - at first it's because they're worried she'll have an unusual puberty, but later it's because of gender markers on her government ID. Devi faces issues because of the sex on her birth certificate. But they forged Devi's birth certificate to put Naveen down as the father but didn't alter it to change the gender/sex on the form. Why didn't they just try to pass Devi off as female?

Just so much sexual violence. When Devi is sexually assaulted by a tutor, she is consoled that "it happens to normal girls and boys too" which just WHAT A RESPONSE. At least the tutor gets beaten up by Chandani and another hijra. But when Neira's husband rapes her it is passed off as "oh you know how men are, they have no control". 🤮 The scene is incredibly upsetting and to have it passed off as acceptable was infuriating.

Neira's husband. I get that his role in the book is to be a cowardly bigot. But he neither gets commeupance nor comes around to accepting Devi. Over the course of the book Neira learns to take him less seriously but never goes as far as to leave him. He totally gets away with raping his wife. 😶

Plausibility in the end. Devi starts a company with the other hijras and it just goes too well. It launches without any snags, no bad reviews, no supply chain issues, no lost shipments, no cash flow issues, and so on. I've never started a business but this read like total fantasy. The company goes so well they get a government award and everything about the award ceremony and again it all goes too well to be believable. It veers into inspiration porn territory.

At one point Devi asks Chandani why the hijra are oppressed and gets a response that blames other's bigotry but also that "We [the Hijra] don't raise our voice against injustice." Victim blaming much?

The disappointing

There's still a bunch of conflation of sex and gender.

The book is pretty vague on what Devi's intersex variation is. It's clear Neira has access to doctors, and they order blood work and imaging, so you'd expect there to be a diagnosis. Devi is described as having "both organs", a penis and "a female reproductive organ". Why the vague euphemisms about female anatomy specifically? I don't acutally know if this means vulva/labia, vagina, ovaries, and/or uterus. The reason this bothers me is a lot of perisex authors don't differentiate between intersex variations and wind up creating physiologically implausible intersex variations. Devi is described as having a puberty that involves developing breasts, a muscular build, and some facial hair that she removes. PAIS maybe? Could also be 5-ARD or 17 beta? But it's never really clear and I worry that muddies the messaging.

Neira's parents-in-law are bigoted and excused with "they are far too set in their prejudices to … change". They won't be changing with that kind of attitude!

The choice of protagonist. This is not a book about an intersex person, this is a book about a parent of an intersex child. I recognize there is need for media for parents, especially to get them to stop forcing harmful treatments on their children. I find it upsetting that parents can't listen to actually intersex people directly, that even in a story about intersex it centres perisex experience.

Neira is lionized for having anything to do with Devi. There are a bunch of bits on how amazing she is for doing this bare minimum and how amazing parents are. And biological parents are still favoured - Chandani doesn't get anywhere near as much credit for raising Devi as Neira does, despite being the one who gave her a home and taught her about trans and intersex issues in a way that was accepting.

The Indian

The book is written in Indian English. Some language will feel inappropriate to North Americans like using transgender as a noun. Some language made me do double-takes. Did you know "tuition" can refer to classes/studies? I didn't - I'd only ever seen the term used to refer to school fees. Turns out that's very North American of me. TIL. I appreciate that author didn't try to internationalize the English.

There are a bunch of Hindi phrases that show up in dialogue. It's mostly comprehensible from context, but there were some bits where I couldn't follow what was going on.

I am a white Canadian. I am in no way able to judge the realism of this book in the Indian context. I don't know if it is a realistic or accurate depiction of hijras (the author is not hijra). I'm not sure if "hijra" is even the right term to use. In the book, they present themselves as a third gender, and I don't know if this is what they want. The book also middle-class-ifies the hijras by the ond of the book and again, not sure if this is what they want. There's a lot I don't know and am just going to have to trust/hope the author got this right.

I was stunned that the doctor didn't tell Naina that the baby was intersex, instead only telling the birth father and leaving it to him to tell Naina. Not sure if this is normal but just uuuuugh callbacks to how mere decades ago doctors wouldn't tell women basic things and instead leave it to husbands/fathers to decide 🧐

The gender roles in this book are real something. Wives exist to serve their husbands meals. Daughters exist to be given away to another family via marriage. Devi chose well in deciding to stay in the Hijra community. 👀

Overall rating: 2.5 / 5

[gerrydelano]

hiii fellow Very Long Fic writer ron! assuming you may be familiar with the (arguable) dilemma of writing styles changing / getting more advanced over time, might i ask- the instinct to go back and edit Every Chapter so that they better match up with current skill. in your opinion, does it usually pan out to be worth it?

i've seen your occasional posts abt how you'll go back and edit your published works, which is v encouraging re: mistakes not being set in stone, yet writer brain operates in extremes i think 🙃

hello, very long fic writer (assumed) anon! i am Very familiar with that dilemma yep hkbjndf drives me Nuts!

TL;DR right off the bat: let yourself go back and make minor edits for sure, but don't get lost in the weeds trying to rewrite the whole thing directly from inside what's already done. in my experience, being able to track your own growth is far more rewarding.

usually, when i go back and edit a chapter after posting it's just to fix typos/clarify something when i'm hit with the OTHER dilemma of "my beta reader has known all of my plans forever and so things go over both our heads sometimes when we KNOW the answer and aren't seeing how it might not come across to a reader with no inside knowledge." which! also sucks! but it's fine, and i always want to go back and make sure it's understandable without giving away any mystery that'll be revealed later on.

when it comes to THIS kind of editing though, i don't really bother? when i go back to things to make changes, it's usually because i've changed a big internal element of the story/a character that will have new bearing on where it goes, not to like. change my writing style wholly. to do that, i'd be going line by line with the idea that i can improve a sentence at a time and i'd run into sentences i LOVED and then get into a war with myself about whether they're "good enough" and honestly end up with a result that is not as natural as it was when i just let myself write it the first time, even IF my newer stuff independent from this might feel like it's more "advanced."

ren said they'll add a sentence or rephrase something here or there, but wouldn't go back and change the entirety of something. if they wrote RTD today it'd be so different, but they're not going to undo what's already been done! especially when it's a metric for growth now, too, which i hugely agree with on the whole.

i definitely did some of this when i edited breathing like i never did, though. that was my first TMA fic and my georgie HC actively changed, which changed big elements of the whole story! and when i edited the earlier chapters of TSP, i came out a thousand times happier with the result, because i was adding things that carried more weight and tied into larger themes that i didn't have in mind when i started writing it. TSP was supposed to be a four chapter bittersweet tragedy! LIKE. no way, man. editing that was extremely rewarding, but again, it wasn't just my writing style that i was fixing.

but mistakes in writing do NOT have to be set in stone! if you're not happy with something, you can go back and rework it until you feel better about it, and recirculate it to say so, if that's what you really want to. i personally wouldn't go too far with full rewrites, like i said, but everyone's different! start with fixing little things that might've been bugging you for a while, and leave it. if there's still more you aren't satisfied with, you are free to look through it more and find the problem. at the end of the day, though, something you wrote in the past doesn't have to be up to date with your current skill level to still have been enjoyable to write, AND for someone to read!!!!

it's not just natural to look back at our old stuff and go "oh, g-d, who was i 🙈" and agonize a little over it, it's GOOD. it means you HAVE improved! and it's up to you whether you leave that little time capsule of past skill as it is, or change it to reflect who you are now.

but no one who loves your work will be looking at the older chapters going "this really sucked, wow, lol." if they notice a quality shift at all from beginning to end, they're a LOT more likely to be really impressed! my friends and i talk SO often about how great it is to watch each other's art and writing styles evolve over time. being ABLE to compare them contributes to that awe! it's one of the most beautiful things in the world to me, i honestly LOVE looking back at even other people's old art because i love to see where we all started and who we've become right next to each other. it's okay to leave that stuff up. you deserve to feel that joy looking at your own stuff, too!

my only advice is that if you change something you've published, you should still keep the old version somewhere!!!! it IS good to have tabs on who we used to be to track all this progress and growth. hell, sometimes? i've even found that some of my old stuff is BETTER, and i want to know how i managed to lose a particular skill along the way, and how i can get it back into my current stuff.

but if it's encouragement you're looking for, then here it is! follow your gut, keep your copies, and make (or don't make) whatever changes you feel are necessary to showcase what you're most proud of. at the end of the day, seek joy. good luck!

[intersexwiki]

Content under the cut has been copied for archival.

Devi grows up, has a mixed estrogen/androgen puberty, and experiences a bunch of hardships due to being intersex and the stigma of being associated with the hijras. This includes a sexual assault, struggling to get access to education, issues of filling in forms, and the psychological toll of being her birth family's dirty little secret. But through the support of her queer found family she pulls through, gets her education, starts a company, marries a transmasc, and becomes financially independent.

The good

Queer family! 🌈 Devi's birth dad was awful, but it was heartening to see Chandani and Naveen step up so Devi grew up with two mothers and one dad. The queer co-parenting that emerged was lovely.

Trans people showing up for intersex people! The trans hijras like Chandani do a vital job in ensuring Devi gets bodily autonomy and a chance to grow up in an environment that is accepting 🏳️‍⚧️

Devi is explicitly described as healthy - (i.e. being intersex doesn't mean she is unhealthy)

Surgery isn't forced onto Devi! At the beginning of the book the doctors are recommending surgery and thanks to Chandani adopting Devi this doesn't happen. As an adult Devi chooses to have surgery for her own sake, and Neira is like "but why?"

The scene where Devi is upset at the science textbook not including intersex people! She first gets upset because the science textbook has nobody like her in it, then when Chandani explains her anatomy, Devi decides that the world of straight people sucks because "There is not even a mention of us in the text book." 🙃

Non-Western queerness! The hijras escorting Devi to school during times when there has been increases in anti-trans violence felt all too familiar, sadly. That and the pain of filling in forms when your sex/gender isn't one of the usual two.

This book knows the police are the problem and cannot be trusted

The bad

The editing. There are a bunch of typos, plot elements pop up randomly or out of order, there are minor details that are inconsistent, and the voice/style of narration is also inconsistent. The pacing is also all over the place.

Plot inconsistencies. The reasons given for why Devi can't attend school like the other kids are inconsistent throughout the book - at first it's because they're worried she'll have an unusual puberty, but later it's because of gender markers on her government ID. Devi faces issues because of the sex on her birth certificate. But they forged Devi's birth certificate to put Naveen down as the father but didn't alter it to change the gender/sex on the form. Why didn't they just try to pass Devi off as female?

Just so much sexual violence. When Devi is sexually assaulted by a tutor, she is consoled that "it happens to normal girls and boys too" which just WHAT A RESPONSE. At least the tutor gets beaten up by Chandani and another hijra. But when Neira's husband rapes her it is passed off as "oh you know how men are, they have no control". 🤮 The scene is incredibly upsetting and to have it passed off as acceptable was infuriating.

Neira's husband. I get that his role in the book is to be a cowardly bigot. But he neither gets commeupance nor comes around to accepting Devi. Over the course of the book Neira learns to take him less seriously but never goes as far as to leave him. He totally gets away with raping his wife. 😶

Plausibility in the end. Devi starts a company with the other hijras and it just goes too well. It launches without any snags, no bad reviews, no supply chain issues, no lost shipments, no cash flow issues, and so on. I've never started a business but this read like total fantasy. The company goes so well they get a government award and everything about the award ceremony and again it all goes too well to be believable. It veers into inspiration porn territory.

At one point Devi asks Chandani why the hijra are oppressed and gets a response that blames other's bigotry but also that "We [the Hijra] don't raise our voice against injustice." Victim blaming much?

The disappointing

There's still a bunch of conflation of sex and gender.

The book is pretty vague on what Devi's intersex variation is. It's clear Neira has access to doctors, and they order blood work and imaging, so you'd expect there to be a diagnosis. Devi is described as having "both organs", a penis and "a female reproductive organ". Why the vague euphemisms about female anatomy specifically? I don't acutally know if this means vulva/labia, vagina, ovaries, and/or uterus. The reason this bothers me is a lot of perisex authors don't differentiate between intersex variations and wind up creating physiologically implausible intersex variations. Devi is described as having a puberty that involves developing breasts, a muscular build, and some facial hair that she removes. PAIS maybe? Could also be 5-ARD or 17 beta? But it's never really clear and I worry that muddies the messaging.

Neira's parents-in-law are bigoted and excused with "they are far too set in their prejudices to … change". They won't be changing with that kind of attitude!

The choice of protagonist. This is not a book about an intersex person, this is a book about a parent of an intersex child. I recognize there is need for media for parents, especially to get them to stop forcing harmful treatments on their children. I find it upsetting that parents can't listen to actually intersex people directly, that even in a story about intersex it centres perisex experience.

Neira is lionized for having anything to do with Devi. There are a bunch of bits on how amazing she is for doing this bare minimum and how amazing parents are. And biological parents are still favoured - Chandani doesn't get anywhere near as much credit for raising Devi as Neira does, despite being the one who gave her a home and taught her about trans and intersex issues in a way that was accepting.

The Indian

The book is written in Indian English. Some language will feel inappropriate to North Americans like using transgender as a noun. Some language made me do double-takes. Did you know "tuition" can refer to classes/studies? I didn't - I'd only ever seen the term used to refer to school fees. Turns out that's very North American of me. TIL. I appreciate that author didn't try to internationalize the English.

There are a bunch of Hindi phrases that show up in dialogue. It's mostly comprehensible from context, but there were some bits where I couldn't follow what was going on.

I am a white Canadian. I am in no way able to judge the realism of this book in the Indian context. I don't know if it is a realistic or accurate depiction of hijras (the author is not hijra). I'm not sure if "hijra" is even the right term to use. In the book, they present themselves as a third gender, and I don't know if this is what they want. The book also middle-class-ifies the hijras by the ond of the book and again, not sure if this is what they want. There's a lot I don't know and am just going to have to trust/hope the author got this right.

I was stunned that the doctor didn't tell Naina that the baby was intersex, instead only telling the birth father and leaving it to him to tell Naina. Not sure if this is normal but just uuuuugh callbacks to how mere decades ago doctors wouldn't tell women basic things and instead leave it to husbands/fathers to decide 🧐

The gender roles in this book are real something. Wives exist to serve their husbands meals. Daughters exist to be given away to another family via marriage. Devi chose well in deciding to stay in the Hijra community. 👀

Overall rating: 2.5 / 5

Book review: Love, No Matter What by Komal Ahuja

While looking for book options for @intersexbookclub, I found this book on a list of intersex books and couldn't find any reviews of it from actually intersex people, nor any content warnings for the book. So, for anybody looking for such information, here's my review of the book:

Content warnings for the book

Rape by a spouse

Rape by a teacher

Domestic violence

Transphobia

How I felt about it overall

The book is neither awful nor great. I'd say 2.5 stars. It has some nice queer found family in it, and some lovely trans-intersex solidarity that was heartwarming. It centres on a perisex parent of an intersex child and the centring of perisex experience was disappointing for me (I am intersex).

Book Summary

Neira gives birth to Devi, who is born with ambiguous genitals. Her husband wants nothing to do with the baby. Luckily some hijras stop by to bless the newborn, and seeing an intersex baby, offer to take the baby in. Chandani, the Guru of the local hijra community comes to an agreement with Neira. Devi will live with the Guru and be raised with the hijras where she'll be accepted, and Devi will come over in the afternoons. And so Devi grows up.

When it comes time for Devi to enrol in school, Neira's best friend Naveen steps up to be the father on the paperwork since the birth father continues to want nothing to do with Devi. He winds up gettting fully involved as a co-parent.

Spoilers follow.

Devi grows up, has a mixed estrogen/androgen puberty, and experiences a bunch of hardships due to being intersex and the stigma of being associated with the hijras. This includes a sexual assault, struggling to get access to education, issues of filling in forms, and the psychological toll of being her birth family's dirty little secret. But through the support of her queer found family she pulls through, gets her education, starts a company, marries a transmasc, and becomes financially independent.

The good

Queer family! 🌈 Devi's birth dad was awful, but it was heartening to see Chandani and Naveen step up so Devi grew up with two mothers and one dad. The queer co-parenting that emerged was lovely.

Trans people showing up for intersex people! The trans hijras like Chandani do a vital job in ensuring Devi gets bodily autonomy and a chance to grow up in an environment that is accepting 🏳️‍⚧️

Devi is explicitly described as healthy - (i.e. being intersex doesn't mean she is unhealthy)

Surgery isn't forced onto Devi! At the beginning of the book the doctors are recommending surgery and thanks to Chandani adopting Devi this doesn't happen. As an adult Devi chooses to have surgery for her own sake, and Neira is like "but why?"

The scene where Devi is upset at the science textbook not including intersex people! She first gets upset because the science textbook has nobody like her in it, then when Chandani explains her anatomy, Devi decides that the world of straight people sucks because "There is not even a mention of us in the text book." 🙃

Non-Western queerness! The hijras escorting Devi to school during times when there has been increases in anti-trans violence felt all too familiar, sadly. That and the pain of filling in forms when your sex/gender isn't one of the usual two.

This book knows the police are the problem and cannot be trusted

The bad

The editing. There are a bunch of typos, plot elements pop up randomly or out of order, there are minor details that are inconsistent, and the voice/style of narration is also inconsistent. The pacing is also all over the place.

Plot inconsistencies. The reasons given for why Devi can't attend school like the other kids are inconsistent throughout the book - at first it's because they're worried she'll have an unusual puberty, but later it's because of gender markers on her government ID. Devi faces issues because of the sex on her birth certificate. But they forged Devi's birth certificate to put Naveen down as the father but didn't alter it to change the gender/sex on the form. Why didn't they just try to pass Devi off as female?

Just so much sexual violence. When Devi is sexually assaulted by a tutor, she is consoled that "it happens to normal girls and boys too" which just WHAT A RESPONSE. At least the tutor gets beaten up by Chandani and another hijra. But when Neira's husband rapes her it is passed off as "oh you know how men are, they have no control". 🤮 The scene is incredibly upsetting and to have it passed off as acceptable was infuriating.

Neira's husband. I get that his role in the book is to be a cowardly bigot. But he neither gets commeupance nor comes around to accepting Devi. Over the course of the book Neira learns to take him less seriously but never goes as far as to leave him. He totally gets away with raping his wife. 😶

Plausibility in the end. Devi starts a company with the other hijras and it just goes too well. It launches without any snags, no bad reviews, no supply chain issues, no lost shipments, no cash flow issues, and so on. I've never started a business but this read like total fantasy. The company goes so well they get a government award and everything about the award ceremony and again it all goes too well to be believable. It veers into inspiration porn territory.

At one point Devi asks Chandani why the hijra are oppressed and gets a response that blames other's bigotry but also that "We [the Hijra] don't raise our voice against injustice." Victim blaming much?

The disappointing

There's still a bunch of conflation of sex and gender.

The book is pretty vague on what Devi's intersex variation is. It's clear Neira has access to doctors, and they order blood work and imaging, so you'd expect there to be a diagnosis. Devi is described as having "both organs", a penis and "a female reproductive organ". Why the vague euphemisms about female anatomy specifically? I don't acutally know if this means vulva/labia, vagina, ovaries, and/or uterus. The reason this bothers me is a lot of perisex authors don't differentiate between intersex variations and wind up creating physiologically implausible intersex variations. Devi is described as having a puberty that involves developing breasts, a muscular build, and some facial hair that she removes. PAIS maybe? Could also be 5-ARD or 17 beta? But it's never really clear and I worry that muddies the messaging.

Neira's parents-in-law are bigoted and excused with "they are far too set in their prejudices to … change". They won't be changing with that kind of attitude!

The choice of protagonist. This is not a book about an intersex person, this is a book about a parent of an intersex child. I recognize there is need for media for parents, especially to get them to stop forcing harmful treatments on their children. I find it upsetting that parents can't listen to actually intersex people directly, that even in a story about intersex it centres perisex experience.

Neira is lionized for having anything to do with Devi. There are a bunch of bits on how amazing she is for doing this bare minimum and how amazing parents are. And biological parents are still favoured - Chandani doesn't get anywhere near as much credit for raising Devi as Neira does, despite being the one who gave her a home and taught her about trans and intersex issues in a way that was accepting.

The Indian

The book is written in Indian English. Some language will feel inappropriate to North Americans like using transgender as a noun. Some language made me do double-takes. Did you know "tuition" can refer to classes/studies? I didn't - I'd only ever seen the term used to refer to school fees. Turns out that's very North American of me. TIL. I appreciate that author didn't try to internationalize the English.

There are a bunch of Hindi phrases that show up in dialogue. It's mostly comprehensible from context, but there were some bits where I couldn't follow what was going on.

I am a white Canadian. I am in no way able to judge the realism of this book in the Indian context. I don't know if it is a realistic or accurate depiction of hijras (the author is not hijra). I'm not sure if "hijra" is even the right term to use. In the book, they present themselves as a third gender, and I don't know if this is what they want. The book also middle-class-ifies the hijras by the ond of the book and again, not sure if this is what they want. There's a lot I don't know and am just going to have to trust/hope the author got this right.

I was stunned that the doctor didn't tell Naina that the baby was intersex, instead only telling the birth father and leaving it to him to tell Naina. Not sure if this is normal but just uuuuugh callbacks to how mere decades ago doctors wouldn't tell women basic things and instead leave it to husbands/fathers to decide 🧐

The gender roles in this book are real something. Wives exist to serve their husbands meals. Daughters exist to be given away to another family via marriage. Devi chose well in deciding to stay in the Hijra community. 👀

Overall rating: 2.5 / 5