Posts Tagged ‘Trans Visibility’

teddy bear reading a book, against a light blue background

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Cast of Wonders 638: A Spell of Grief

Cast of Wonders 638: A Spell of Grief is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:59 — 23.3MB)

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A Spell of Grief

by Rae A Shell

The library was closing in ten minutes.

Lucas stared at the picture books, paralyzed by both indecision and nostalgia. Hurry up! he screamed at himself. If he was late, if he screwed up the ceremony again….

Sure, Lucas would be hardest on himself. Aunt Meg was more likely to comfort him than scold him, but the two of them had agreed, were adamant, that this year, this year he would succeed. (Continue Reading…)

a girl diving underwater, reaching out for an object

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Cast of Wonders 634: Pearl Diving

Cast of Wonders 634: Pearl Diving is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:53 — 25.9MB)

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Pearl Diving

by J L Akagi

Makoto Matoba is enduring her third ever “scaly day” when her mother drives her down to the shore. She hasn’t yet adjusted to the itchy-scratchy rash covering her legs. Nor the tight agitation crawling over her entire body. Even worse, the Los Angeles pollution is thick today which irritates her developing gills.

Mako doesn’t get periods—she’s not that kind of girl—but she imagines this is what cis girls feel like when they do. Cramping and urged to retreat into themselves like hermit crabs.

When Mako and her mother arrive at Toes Beach, the sunset shines through the thin haze stretched over the California sky. Mako lowers her feet from the dashboard to sit up a bit at the sight of the pink sky meeting the flat, gray line of the ocean.

They clamber out of the car, and Mako eyes the water, scowling. “Mom, don’t make me pearl dive today. I can’t, I just can’t.” (Continue Reading…)

abstract leaf fractal in shades of blue, pink and purple

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Cast of Wonders 528: Notes from a trans-inclusive gender apocalypse

Cast of Wonders 528: Notes from a trans-inclusive gender apocalypse is a Cast of Wonders original.

Use of the f-word, gender dysphoria, mild elements of body-horror

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:00 — 59.2MB)

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Notes from a Trans-Inclusive Gender Apocalypse

by Ember Randall

May 10

Firestorm (12:05 PM): You know, given all the possibilities for an apocalypse, this wasn’t the one I expected us to see. At least not first.

Kazumi (12:31 PM): Did you see the good news, though? The Bureau for Magical Mismanagement think they’ve isolated the cause! Some sort of ritual gone wrong, something targeting men–and they think they’ve even identified which story the group was using for a basis for it! They’re calling for any female practitioners who are willing and able to come to Spiregate to join a ritual to undo it.

Firestorm (12:35 PM): Only female mages, huh? (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 482: In Real Time (Staff Picks 2021)

Original published as Cast of Wonders Episode 465 on September 12, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:12 — 30.8MB)

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In Real Time

by Avra Margariti

The kites frozen across the sky dapple the lawn like stained glass. Human statues dot the park, caught mid-motion: picnicking, dog-walking, sun-bathing. They might have been unnerving, once. Now, the utter stillness and silence soothes me like nothing else. In Frozen Time, scents are amplified tenfold. Grass, flowers, sugar. I drop a few coins into a vendor’s tip jar, then fill a clear bag with candy worms, chewing as I stroll down the small hill.

When a shape weaves between the stationary people, I think it’s only an optical illusion. A vase, two faces, now a vase again.

I blink, and the silhouette has drawn closer. It belongs to a kid not much younger than me in appearance, although there’s really no way to tell with people like us, who know how to manipulate time. The kid nods at me, casual like we’re meeting in the street and not in a frozen world, then steals a fistful of my candy.

“Who are you?” I ask once my tongue unglues itself from my palate. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 473: IF Trans THEN Mogrify

Cast of Wonders 473: IF Trans THEN Mogrify is a Cast of Wonders original.

Transphobia

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:27 — 19.2MB)

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IF trans THEN mogrify

by Hailey Piper

Rosalyn almost has the ladies’ room to herself when an intrusive hand jams the stall’s doorway, nails painted a dull red. The diner’s restroom has three stalls, the other two being empty, and Rosalyn hasn’t heard this stranger try either neighboring door.

“Privacy, please,” she says.

But the insistent hand shoves the stall open anyway. A scowling, middle-aged woman in blue jeans and a pale yellow coat fills the doorway, someone Rosalyn doesn’t know, and yet the look on this stranger’s face and the words out of her mouth have reared their ugliness more than once before.

“Excuse me, but I think you meant to go across the hall,” the woman says. She points at the ladies’ room door. “You know, the other restroom?” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 465: In Real Time

Cast of Wonders 465: In Real Time is a Cast of Wonders original.

Drug use (marijuana)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:34 — 29.3MB)

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In Real Time

by Avra Margariti

The kites frozen across the sky dapple the lawn like stained glass. Human statues dot the park, caught mid-motion: picnicking, dog-walking, sun-bathing. They might have been unnerving, once. Now, the utter stillness and silence soothes me like nothing else. In Frozen Time, scents are amplified tenfold. Grass, flowers, sugar. I drop a few coins into a vendor’s tip jar, then fill a clear bag with candy worms, chewing as I stroll down the small hill.

When a shape weaves between the stationary people, I think it’s only an optical illusion. A vase, two faces, now a vase again.

I blink, and the silhouette has drawn closer. It belongs to a kid not much younger than me in appearance, although there’s really no way to tell with people like us, who know how to manipulate time. The kid nods at me, casual like we’re meeting in the street and not in a frozen world, then steals a fistful of my candy.

“Who are you?” I ask once my tongue unglues itself from my palate. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance

Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 22.1MB)

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Rosie’s Ghosts

by Srikripa Krishna Prasad

They sway in front of the bay window, sunlight tinting their translucent bodies gold. Rosie watches from under her eyelashes, her book lying uselessly on her lap despite her attempt to focus. Don’t look, she thinks, shame burning her throat, but they are magnetic as they dance together, the short woman’s head fitting perfectly into the crook of her partner’s neck. Their laughter rings in the air; Rosie knows it intimately. She hears it often when they reminisce about their time in this house, when they touch each other, when they waltz impromptu around the room. The creature in her chest cries out for this joy, this bright love that has transcended even death, despite how much she tries to suppress it.

The short woman leans up, and the tall woman leans down, and their lips meet, their arms bracketing each other tenderly, like they hold something precious. (Continue Reading…)

shoes

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Cast of Wonders 432: 12 Tanzen Lane

Cast of Wonders 432: 12 Tanzen Lane is a Cast of Wonders original.

References to suicide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:35 — 18.4MB)

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12 Tanzen Lane

by H. E. Casson

Tanzen House was Victorian. At the time, I didn’t know what Victorian meant.

Then Duo said, like it was a thing people just knew, “It means this house was built while Queen Victoria was alive.”

Yeah, I guess that made sense.

Our house was Victorian and my room was the smallest. Duo called it the shoe box, so I cut out pictures of shoes and decorated my door. Nikes, Adidas, Manolos – they were all shoes I couldn’t afford. I wore dollar store shoes and hand-me-downs. He thought that was funny. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 408: Growing Resistance

First published in Translunar Travelers Lounge in August 2019

Profanity, Plague

This story comes with a pretty significant content warning.  It’s an incredibly hopeful story, but the setting and themes surround healthcare in a post-pandemic world. This may be just the story you need right now, or it might be the exact opposite. Please listen or read with that in mind.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:28 — 31.0MB)

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Growing Resistance

by Juliet Kemp

The late-afternoon sun hovers above the wall as I kneel on the earth, weeding tomatoes. Beyond the wall, yellow-orange light reflects off the clean sharp lines of the apartment blocks. Boxes for safe people, people who are provided for. People who matter. People who I knew, once upon a time. People who could afford the vaccine before the gates closed. The plague’s gone now, but the wall’s still here.

On this side, the wall’s shadow stretches out as the sun sinks, spreading over the crumbling low-rise council blocks that don’t get repaired any more. In between them there are patches of shanty-town on top of the spaces where the army razed houses to the ground.

My garden is on one of those bare patches, next to Mathias’s and my house, which was once in the middle of a row of terraces and is now on the end. Mathias insisted we put a fence up. I planted brambles up against it so it looks less like the barrier it is. It’s not like we don’t share what we grow here, and I understand why Mathias did it. Still feels like a tiny echo of the wall.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 391: Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army (Staff Picks 2019)

Previously appeared in Cast of Wonders, Artemis Rising 5, March 31, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:50 — 27.8MB)

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Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army

by Setsu Uzume

I am loathe to admit that the ambush was masterful. Not only had the bounty hunters slain my contacts, but they had done so in the right order — dispatching the Ritualist before she had any corpses to animate. Had I come on horseback, they would have had me, too.

In addition to my dead allies and their hobbled wagon, I counted four hunters lumbering through the dark. Big lads, experienced and well-equipped, but given the style of their breastplates they had come from the west — tracking the cultists and not me. It made them slow and ill-prepared to face me in my glory. I whirled, my shadow splitting off to pierce kidneys and slice the backs of their knees while I led them a merry dance through dead leaves and bracken. One of them even turned, his blade slashing a wide arc, but shadows have no heads to remove. Him, I killed the quickest.

(Continue Reading…)

Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 384: Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (August 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:45 — 13.1MB)

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Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

by Nibedita Sen

Asha—Ash to friends—wedges the maintenance door open wide enough to slip into the darkened interior of the abandoned ride. Inside smells like rust and stale water and plastic fused with metal.

“Sphexa,” he says. “Light.”

The small robot bobbing behind him clicks, casting a circle of illumination on the concrete floor. He made Sphexa in shop class at school, patching together an old Echo, a frame salvaged from a drone, a rolling toy robot, and a few other things, because if you’re going to be that stereotype of the Indian kid good at engineering, you might as well lean all the way in.

“Reminder,” Sphexa says as they make their way down the narrow walkway lining the tunnel. “Event upcoming in two hours: Pick Mei up for prom.”

“I’m working on it, Sphexa.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 355: Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army (Artemis Rising 5)

Cast of Wonders 355: Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army (Artemis Rising 5) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:38 — 30.4MB)

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Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army

by Setsu Uzume

I am loathe to admit that the ambush was masterful. Not only had the bounty hunters slain my contacts, but they had done so in the right order — dispatching the Ritualist before she had any corpses to animate. Had I come on horseback, they would have had me, too.

In addition to my dead allies and their hobbled wagon, I counted four hunters lumbering through the dark. Big lads, experienced and well-equipped, but given the style of their breastplates they had come from the west — tracking the cultists and not me. It made them slow and ill-prepared to face me in my glory. I whirled, my shadow splitting off to pierce kidneys and slice the backs of their knees while I led them a merry dance through dead leaves and bracken. One of them even turned, his blade slashing a wide arc, but shadows have no heads to remove. Him, I killed the quickest.

(Continue Reading…)