James Hiwatari

Thanks for the review! I'll try to answer them sooner... It's nice to have this happy Siggi back? Or are you just glad you got to see him again?

Heh, I'm glad you enjoyed Siggi's happy chapter. He's probably glad too, but we'll never get him to admit it. Siggi's happiness is a long-term goal. He doesn't believe it's possible, but we do have about 10 years worth of plot to go through, so maybe by then we'll see a properly happy Siggi. Who knows...

Aw. I can't decide if I'm happy or sad that I made you cry. It's good to know people can relate to Gunni's mum that way, but it still means I made people sad. Oh, well... It's Arnar. I won't take it personally. Dmitri's been around Siggi for far too long now. He's very used to Siggi's behavioural issues. And no, it's no excuse. It's just an explanation. Thanks for the review! And yay for me replying more than a month later!

On New Year’s Eve morning I was awakened by Tjúlli licking my forehead. It was such a strange feeling that, at first, my brain tried to interpret it by making me dream that someone was trying to sand a unicorn horn I had magically grown in my forehead. Before that, I had been dreaming that I was playing violin with Little Isaac on a train, so the change of scenario was weird even for dream standards. When I finally woke up, the first thing I saw was the cat’s disapproving stare. Tjúlli seemed to

Sid is just a little bit creepy, yeah. I'll give you that. Hannah is jut reacting to a world of male dominance and blatant sexism. She's 16 and she's pissed with the general state of affairs and the system as a whole, and poor Oscar just happened to be the closest available male she could discharge that anger on. Hannah can be a nice person too, you just need to go past her strict selection policy. We had a Borders here too, I used to give Portuguese lessons to a private student in there. It was a huge shop and was always reasonably crowded too. And they probably had the only somewhat proper LGBT section I've seen in bookshops... The big bookshop we have here now is Waterstones. They are quite big too, but it's been a while since I went there. I remember queuing in front of it at midnight for the release of the last 3 Harry Potter books. Now let's hope I get the next chapter in time! Thanks for the review!

Argh, look at how long it has taken me to reply to this! >.< Anyway, Sam is a cute kid and I like him a lot. I have great plans for the lad! (I feel weirdly Scottish saying this) I think you can call the gender clinic to ask for stuff, but only after they've got your records. I know a lot of stories about people who live in rural Scotland and have to spend hours travelling for a ten-minute appointment. They waste their whole day for that. And there are even cases of people who live in the islands that need to stay overnight and basically waste three days of their lives for the appointments. The one good side is that the travel is paid by the public health system. I waited for about 2 years to get all my stuff done, but that was because I didn't want surgeries that remove breasts or build penises (though it takes a while for the hormones to take effect. I've been on it for 3 years and it's still doing things). People who want more than that (like Oliver) will have to wait longer, yes. Though even if everything was taken care of straight away, there would still be things like waiting to recover from a surgery to do the next thing... surgeries sometimes require multiple stages, so you need heal a bit first before going to the next... I guess the only way to make it perfect would be if we had magic wands that could take care of everything! And yes, the support system makes a hell of a difference. Now that I think about it, I don't think I have a trans character that doesn't have at least a little bit of support. It's probably because it mirrors my experience, and because I think we need a lot of those kinds of positive experiences to counter the nearly 50% rate of attempt suicide in the trans community. Thanks for the review!

Oliver was reluctant to share his worries about the new binder with the rest of our friends. He did not want to talk about binders at all, because it reminded him of how inadequate his body was. I respected his wishes, and did not say anything either. At school, during the first morning break, he did not speak at all, even though the LGBTI Club had spent most of that time laughing and making fun of pop culture and their insistence that everyone and everything must be straight and cisgender. By

I wrote a story of mine (The Princess and the Wandered, for one of GA's Anthologies) with the explicit aim of never using "very". It lead mostly to substituting "very" for some other adverb, but it was still a fun exercise.

“All I’m saying is that if you want this to work you’ll have to stop making this into a competition.” Karen’s voice came from the music room. “Aw, but the competition is the fun part! Come on, let’s run through the scales again! I bet I can beat you in chromatics too! Name your starting note!” Dmitri’s voice sounded annoyingly louder. “Why do you feel the need to play scales at nine in the morning when half the house is trying to sleep?” The music room was messier than usual. My cellos and mus

Thursday, 2nd January 2014. Rumiko jumped out of bed early in the morning. Usually she was the kind of person who would rather hide under the duvet until the need to assault the fridge became too much to bear, so this odd behaviour caught her parents completely unprepared. Suzume and Takao were being lazy in bed themselves when a hurricane in the form of their daughter hit their bedroom in full force. “Mum, dad, I had breakfast and I told my friends I’m going to meet them at the park, so I’ll

After dinner, Mr Viñas encouraged the guests to stay for as long as they wanted. We moved on to the couches, served everyone a round of tea, and the conversation naturally stirred towards Oliver’s transition. “So what exactly do we have to do to get Oliver on hormones?” Ms Savage asked Luce. We had just been talking about the options of treatment offered to trans people in the public health system, and Luce mentioned that hormones were usually the first step towards physical changes. “Actually,

I was almost falling asleep again when Dmitri woke up and kissed the back of my head. I snuggled against his chest, letting him know I wasn’t sleeping, and he squished me with one arm. “Morning,” he mumbled through some messy strands of my hair, making me giggle. He still sounded more asleep than awake, and it was kind of cute. He dropped little kisses all over the back of my head until he reached the area between my neck and shoulders. Then, some emergency reflex kicked in and my giggles became

Manaus, Brazil

The other thing about using expensive words is that it makes the story inaccessible for people who don't have a good level of English (like people whose mother language is not English, or people with learning difficulties). And it's fine to say that it's an electronic age and lots of people have access to ebooks and ipads and internet and all that - but there is a whole world out there who doesn't have access to those things. Even if they manage to get in a computer to read stories online, we can't just assume they will know how to look up words of even if they will want to - maybe they have a very limited time in the internet (I'm thinking internet caffes, for example), or the connection is not good and it takes a long time to load pages... I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because most of you here seem to be native English speakers with easy means to access modern technology, don't assume everyone is like you. So, if "broad accessibility" is something you think worth going for, it might be worth using less of those expensive words and, just like Cia said, go for simpler descriptions that still create powerful pictures in people's heads. (That said, if that's not something you're interested in, feel free to dump a thesarus in your work. There are people who like to read that and value this kind of thing. So there, everyone can be happy in whatever style they work with)

Hey, thanks for the review! That kind of stressful feeling is going to stay with Oliver for a while now, I'm afraid. The thing about coming out is that you have to do it many times over to lots of different people, and in the case of trans people, many of those are doctors that literally hold the gate to your transition. Often it's a case that you not only have to come out to them, but convince them that you're really trans - and this is awful for many reasons, particularly considering that those doctors are never trans themselves, so they tend to just look at you through lenses of traditional gender roles which just don't apply to real life. Argh >.< Anyway, rant over. As for Oscar, just because he started to talk, it doesn't mean it's all over. In fact, it's just the beginning... *evil laughter*

Thanks for the review! I don't think Siggi can just 'not use people for sex' when Dmitri is around - at least most of the time. Siggi would play a lot more cello at home if he lived on his own. He's a horrible person right now and his problems shouldn't excuse his actions. Justify, yes, but he's still an arsehole. Let's hope he gets better. *cue the power of love and James getting beaten to death for such horrible cliche*

Thanks for the review, Stephen! I hope you had some nice holidays. I think we all missed Siggi to some degree. He has that mysterious power. And you'll get an answer for your question very soon - as in, Siggi's next chapter (which is not the one coming next week, but still reasonably soon).

Thanks, everyone! I already have a tumblr, but I'll see about twitter after the story gets a couple more chapters and the main characters actually appear... Other than that, hope you enjoy the story if ever get to read it.

On Sunday, every member of the Viñas household woke up early, but for many different reasons. Sam was looking forward to spending the whole day in front of his computer playing one game or another (I could never tell the difference, even if he explained all the plots to me many times over). Mr Viñas was going to be in charge of today’s dinner reunion, so he wanted to get to work as soon as possible. Ms Savage wanted to help her husband a little, but mostly she wanted to keep an eye on Sam and ma

Yay, thanks for the reviews! Sorry about the confusion - but the children from the first paragraphs are from different families - UraSHIMA are the ones with two children, and UraMESHI the ones with the second child missing. Don't worry, though, by the time they appear in the story it'll be easy to tell them apart. There is a reason they ended up with similar names, and I'll add that to the Trivia page on their website soon. Might not be the strongest ever reason, but it's personally an important one. The game has elements of that, yeah, because it's a battle between creatures, but in the next chapter we get some more explanations and fights, so you get to see more of it. As for Apapa, you'll see...

Tuesday, 31st December 2013. A man and his young child sat on a plane headed for Japan. The man acted politely towards the air stewards and fellow passengers, but his mind flourished with thoughts of how he could exterminate all those annoying bastards and still make it look like an unfortunate accident. It would not be the first time. His child was young, but well-behaved. Like the father, the child put on a perfect display of politeness and cuteness that made everyone in the immediate vi

MaruMonzters is a new game that is fast rising in popularity. The first edition of the MaruMonzterz World Tournament will run through all continents, and Rumiko's team is the favourite to win (if only because the're the Main Characters). As they advance in the tournament, however, they realise there is more to the game than meets the eye, and what was once a children's game becomes something much more sinister.

Thanks everyone! I will post the story here on GA now, thanks for your encouragement. I hope you enjoy it. I already have an account on FictionPress, and I'll be posting it there too. I'll check out the other places you mentioned. I suck at self-promotion, so I really have no idea what I should do to get the story and the website more noticed. Obviously, I personally think that the website is looking as good as it can get considering it's a one-person job, and I think the story is pretty good after 11 long years of writing and re-writing, but I always sound horrible pretentious when I try to tell people that. I probably sound like that now. Oh, well. Anyway, thanks everyone!

I am working on a new story that I want to start posting with some regularly from 2014 onwards. It's a story that I originally wrote as a fanfic in 2003-2009. I found a way to make it into a 100% original plot, and for the last year or so I have been working on fixing its plot holes and other issues. I have so far written 1.5 chapters of a total of 125 (the original version was more than 800,000 words long), but I plan to work regularly on it (as well as continuing Be Myself! and The Orchestra. I don't intend to stop them). The thing is, the story isn't focused on LGBT characters. Although I write assuming characters are bisexual until otherwise stated, the main characters are 12-14 years old. Sexuality as such doesn't play a big part in the thing, though there will be little bits of romance (same sex and opposite sex). So I guess this means I shouldn't post the story here. Here's the story summary: MaruMonzterz is the new cool game (completely made up by me and my Awesome Gamer Partner) that every child (and some grown-ups) wants to play (see the website for details and rules). The story focuses on a team of six children who travel through all the continents for the 2014 MaruMonzterz World Tournament. During their journey, the children meet lots of friends/rivals from the countries they visit, and discover that there is much more to the game then meets the eye. And then they go to an epic final battle against the Big Bad. Obviously. MaruMonzterz aims to have a very inclusive and diverse cast, and to discuss things like sexism, racism, queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and ableism while providing a cool dose of entertainment, action, comedy, drama, romance… all that stuff. Can anyone recommend sites where I can post this story? I don't want to keep it just to its website because it would be nice if I could get some feedback and maybe even publish it one day. When I wrote it as a fanfiction in Portuguese, it was considerably well-received. I've been living with the characters from that story for 10 years now, and so I really feel like it's about time I get to show them to the wider world (hence I'm writing the whole thing in English this time around). If anyone wants to know more about the story, their website address is http://marumonzterz.jamesiscreative.com/. Thanks James

I knew this was the Harpa’s main stage, but everything was dark and silent. Suddenly, the leader’s chair lit up. There was still no sound, even as I walked towards it. My footsteps were silent, my voice was nonexistent. My chair and my cello lit up too, and my body moved towards it. Still no sound. The silence was disturbing. The empty leader’s chair stared at me. There was nothing between us, only silent darkness. It stood alone. Still. Wrong. If only Arnar was there… “And so we meet again.” B