Health teacher indoctrinates students, child harassed

Basically, a teacher in a health class incorporated outright lies into some abstinence only shit, said some homophobic/transphobic shit, repeatedly brought up the Bible while also admitting to being aware of the First Amendment, and said that kids who aren’t raised Christian don’t have values.

A student recorded this, and her father (who happens to be a YouTuber with a quarter-million subscribers) contacted the FFRF, and then they were both bullied, harassed, and threatened by half the damn town. To the point where they had to leave town out of fear for their safety.

I am furious.

Massive violations of separation of church and state in public schools is not the kind of blast from the past I wanted this year.

Alternative Math, and Satire Failing

And the ridiculous thing is, the comment section on YouTube is full of clueless regressives and transphobes thinking the blatant stand-ins for the Bush and Trump administrations (the actual phrase “alternative facts” originates with Kellyanne Conway), creationists, and Fox News are supposed to represent “liberals”.

Kannazuki no Miko: Overview

Honestly, I don’t even know if I should call Kannazuki no Miko a “modern classic”, “cult classic”, or just plain “classic”, and difficulties in describing it briefly go well past that. Two things I can say for certain are that there are still people who consider it greatest yuri anime, and that both its defenders and detractors often have very strong feelings about it.

Note: I have a lot to say and intend to spread it out over multiple posts. This one won’t have anything about the most controversial aspects of the series, or the biggest spoilers.

Someone could say that, based on the early episodes, calling it yuri as I did above is itself a spoiler, but to this I say the opening makes it pretty clear who the official couple is.

(uploaded by Kaichi44)

Song Challenge Day 24: Anger

“A song that makes you angry”

There are songs that are about things that make me angry, but there isn’t one that’s standing out. Instead, let’s go with a particular cover that made me angry: Cee Lo Green’s version of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

First, here is the song as it should be:

(uploaded by Rasty Adem)

Authors Answer 32 – Controversy

And a couple of other things, now that I think about it.

I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

Controversy. Adding just a little can make a story quite provocative. Some people will demand the books be removed from the library, others will love it. There are so many controversial subjects that could offend someone. But who will write about controversial subjects? Some authors would rather avoid that.

Question 32: Do you write about any controversial topics?

S. R. Carrillo

I like to think the topics I write about aren’t very controversial, but honestly they prolly are (hm, let’s see – sex, violence, queer stuff, antiheroes, drug abuse, twisted families, incest, etc.). Like, my friggin debut novel is about a gay angel and the lost little demon who always wants to eat him. Can’t say I have any regrets, though – the weirder, the wronger, the more I fall in love with the story. Mwahah.

Tracey Lynn Tobin

Honestly? I try to avoid controversial stuff, unless I feel very…

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S is for Serpent

Snakes are a mixed bag in terms of symbolism. In a lot of cultures, they’ve been view positively, symbolizing life, immortality, or resurrection, and also associated with wisdom or hidden knowledge.

The Morning Star

 BD Hesse has asked her readers “Write a story about someone who loses their religion.”

Here’s mine.

This story uses characters from my upcoming novel (series?) Project Quintessence. It takes place near the end of part one, but doesn’t spoil anything unrelated to a certain character’s change of belief.

 

Bizarrely incomplete spellchecker dictionary

I just ran a spellcheck on Project Quintessence part 1, and even not counting the few lines of non-English dialogue and the character names, there were ten times as many real words it didn’t recognize as there were spelling errors.

Here’s a partial list. For things like religions and sexual identities, saying that labels people call themselves by aren’t words is both an example of and could contribute to “invisible minority” issues. (Unless it was done on purpose; in that case it would be directly insulting. But I’m assuming no real word was thought of and then still intentionally left out.)

Words I think it’s especially unbelievable that it didn’t recognize are in bold, and words that WordPress doesn’t recognize either are in italics.

Authors Answer 3 – Character Beliefs

The third Authors Answer is up; and this time the question is about writing characters with different beliefs.

I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

I have to let you know that this is the 666th post on this blog.  And what a wonderful coincidence that there is something that matches this week’s question very well.  Common in fantasy fiction, we often have an all powerful antagonist, and sometimes they are demons.

Question 3: How difficult do you find it to write characters who have vastly different beliefs than you?

Amy Morris-Jones

Okay, so in full disclosure, I’m not sure I’ve really written a character yet who has a vastly different belief system than I do. I’ve written characters with different genders, ages, educations, and socioeconomic classes, but those characters still bear my own Midwest sensibilities.

The closest I can come to answering this question is with regard to a short story project that I’m currently researching. Several years ago, an event happened in my small town in which people’s values were challenged by a…

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Remember, Remember

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

If you’re American like me, you probably know that from V for Vendetta rather than from any actual celebration, so please also remember that, unlike what V for Vendetta arguably implied and Anonymous definitely seems to think, Guy Fawkes was NOT fighting against tyranny (and definitely not an anarchist); he just wanted to kill the (Protestant) king and replace him with a Catholic head of state, which would have been very unlikely to lead to greater freedom for the English people at that time.

Guy Fawkes Day is, of course, supposed to celebrate Fawkes’s failure, not his attempt.