Dabeagle

Sports is one industry that relies on making that personal connection, geographical as well, to tie people to it. I learned that lesson when I moved to NY from California and sports suddenly became important because it was important to people I was in school with. There were Met and Yankee fans as well as the occasional Red Sox fan. There were a few Dolphins fans due to grandparents that had retired there. For me as a transplant part of my identity became the Chargers and Padres. My other two teams, of the four 'major' sports in the US are The Blues and the Warriors. The Chargers made their lone appearance in the super bowl in 1994. The Padres went twice and lost both times in the World Series. The Blues have never won the Stanley Cup. Until recently, with Golden State, I had backed some horrible teams for many, many years. The Padres haven't been winners/relevant for 20 years. The Davis family exemplifies that no matter the backing or fervor of the fans, they follow the path to bigger bucks. It's why the Chargers abandoned their home of nearly 60 years - and why I abandoned them. I have always felt that the name should be left behind, as the NFL did with the Browns - another fan base royally screwed. To me the Raiders will always be the Oakland Raiders. They don't belong in NV anymore than Cardinals belong in AZ, the Colts in Indianapolis or the fact that the Ravens exist at all. Fan bases should be left with their team name and the franchise should start again.

Last I'd seen it was up over 50 million with a budget of 17. It's just opening overseas so it may have some legs. I bought the book afterward and enjoyed it as well. There are notable differences between them and I'm a fan of both.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/luisdelvalle/love-is-love-simon?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=buzzfeed&ref=buzzfeed&utm_term=.oa2EaDERN#.lm7WxAWK1

Thanks for the blog, Carlos. I always enjoy answering questions as it makes me feel like readers are engaged with my characters and my writing, so it was a pleasure to give my thoughts.

I took my family to see this and it was a really cool movie, my kids all enjoyed it and my husband and I both had wet eyes a couple of times. It's totally worth seeing and it's a mainstream movie that needs our bucks to show those are worth making. Check it out! Here's a few tweets about it from Buzzfeed - hilarious.

I enjoy fantasy as long as it's well written, that's mostly the bottom line. There are versions of fantasy I don't find interesting, like 'furry' interactions and that sort of thing. Outside of that, I'll read most anything.

As a reader I can be finicky and yet, if moved for some dumb reason, quite forgiving. If the first chapter runs to sex, I'll usually bow out. If the opening scene is a sex scene I just move on. Aside from that I fall into some of the more run of the mill reasons that have been listed before - noticeable poor grammar or spelling will pull me from a story like a book being dropped flat on the floor. It always stands out like a sore thumb if I re-read one of my own stories and find a misspelling. Above that, can I get into the story despite its flaws? In some cases, yes. In some cases I will hang in there, waiting for it to get better. Other times, it's a no. Why? Several reasons and perhaps none of them useful to others. For instance, though we aren't to judge a book by its cover, I'll rarely open a story titled 'Name and Name' where the character names are inserted in place of 'name'. I already know the story will revolve around two characters and, more likely than not they will get together. If I spot an interesting title with an unusual name I'll open it, but stories only have so long to pull me in. A novel was recently recommended to me by a friend. 'Relic' by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I tried, I sure did. I didn't like the characters, found them to be unengaging. However if I open a Harry Dresden book by Jim Butcher or his Codex Alera series, I find myself drawn in. I think the characters have to be interesting or fun to keep me, even if the story is silly.

I've read all of the series and Seregil and Alec are a great duo to read about. The world is rich with it's own mythology, backstory, intrigues and breathes with the best of mythical universes. Completely worth your time to read if you like fantasy with believable gay characters, not just thrust in there to take over the story.

I was extremely disappointed with the whole Pandaren concept. I quit early into that, but I've enjoyed Legion and the systems they introduced.

Did the conversation cross into that territory? I'm sorry if so, I'm not aware of words that would violate a policy.

I didn't think it was harsh. Honestly I thought maybe a little defensive, since someone you likely don't know was responding directly to your ideas, maybe? Sometimes these sorts of things are subjective in terms of what your reader gets from a comment or a story. Don't get me started about texts. I agree free speech can be ugly, but that's from simple opposing viewpoints. I do think there is a line. Companies sometimes place that line, like Twitter, and when you cross it they cut you off. Some folks scream censorship and free speech but, like it or not agree or not, Twitter makes the rules there. It's why most of us don't visit the Daily Stormer, because we don't like the very real hate language used. Should they be allowed to do what they do? That's a debate, though I'd come down on the side of no. I do think, like with most things, there is a limit to the effectiveness of any one way to handle something. For instance, voting with one's wallet can be effective if many are motivated, but insignificant in small doses. Tolerance is a two way street, but where do we define where that street ends and we are just in the mud? Racial slurs? Homophobic rants? Condemning or approving one region over another? To me that's the real question. Thanks for he mental exercise.

Don't misunderstand - as a writer, you can write what you want and I wouldn't tell you differently. However, I'm fond of a phrase which goes 'take what you want, but pay for it'. Many people who choose to use language or follow the tenets of philosophies that would try to normalize this sort of speech have been losing their jobs for years. As a teen I was obsessed with baseball (long suffered Padres fan) and I'll never forget the day the news broke about Al Campanis of the Dodgers organization. It was the first time I'd been confronted with someone claiming an entire race lacked certain skills or qualifications to advance in an industry. Baseball is a sport, entertainment. I don't think players would get away with such things either. That's being a little obtuse of me, though, so I'll apologize for stretching that point. Archie Bunker used to be a favorite and considered quite entertaining as he talked down about anyone that wasn't white. Sure we can watch something like that, but how can we casually call something like white supremacy mere entertainment? A more recent bit of slang was to refer to anything that was undesirable as 'gay'. I'd argue that attaching that word to that idea is bad for all of us. We don't say 'that's so black/Jewish/insert group of your choice. Free speech only covers you from the government; it's still illegal to yell fire in a theater full of people. I do think hate speech exists, but I'll concede that this isn't the place and I thank you for pointing that out. But to your point, no you shouldn't change how you write, construct characters or the stories you tell. People who are entertained by them will read them and talk about them. However it will not insulate any writer from others who disagree with the views presented in that work. They may simply not read an authors work or they may discuss it negatively, as that freedom of speech goes both ways.

I'd have to disagree. Political Correctness as defined by Merriam Webster is : conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated. If we have, for instance, a racist character who is allowed to spread that ideology, then it normalizes that 'entertainment'. It's the same play book the gay community used by clamoring for more onscreen portrayals of LGBT characters; so that we would become demystified to the rest of society. A racist joke, accepted as entertainment (feel free to substitute misogynistic, homophobic, your choice really) allows it to be repeated and normalized as something to laugh at or otherwise dismiss because it's just entertainment. I'm not trying to say these should never be employed. Entertainment doesn't have to hurt or be abusive to anyone in order to entertain. Using those as springboards to bringing us closer rather than increasing divides can and, IMHO, should be a worthy goal.

This is a neat question. I think it depends on what your goals are. If your target audience is teens, then the discussion of safe sex should come up even if the characters ultimately don't use it or if them doing so isn't explicitly stated. The tough part about that is that our target audience doens't always cooperate and read what we intend them to. There will always be a portion of a society that will get it's information -sexual or otherwise - from sourced like TV or the internet, stories like these included. There are various reasons for that, of course, such as lack of resources, perhaps they are isolated within society for one reason or another. That dos not, however, confer a responsibility that any particular fiction writer must educate or warn them appropriately. Life happens. People do have unprotected sex. In some instances it is unwise - some would say healthier to always have protected sex, even with a monogamous partner. People do unwise things every day and there are no shortage of people willing to fight one way or another over how unwise or if it was, in fact, unwise at all. So, if you were writing for teens or young adults, I think it would be wise to include at least the discussion, however in passing (and sometimes even have a natural consequence occur) but there is no responsibility attached to that. Even if you laid things our very well in the most compelling story ever, people are still going to have unprotected sex and a plethora of other things.

For anyone that just wants to chat or pug, my gamertag is JakeTull#1733

Those familiar with me may already know I'm along time player of WoW. I left during the Pandaria expansion because I wasn't a fan of it and we'd gotten our first child, who was - and is - a handful. But I'm back to playing and we have a guild, Luck in the Shadows, which is on the Proudmoore server which is a west coast server (I'm east coast). So for anyone looking to play or re-up and get with a new guild, hit us up.

I can remember, when I was much younger, having a crush on Joey, played by Rodney Eastman in NIghtmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

That was a nice way to end things. Thanks so much for the story, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anyone play? I have a bunch of toons and plan on playing the newly released content, but it'd be nice to have folks to play with.

I ran across this and thought it was both cool and sexy. A photographer ran into another photographer/model and thought he looked so much like Harry Potter that she kept calling him Harry. Then she ended up doing a photo shoot with him and it was really cute. Check it out. https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/stop-what-youre-doing-and-look-at-this-hot-harry?utm_term=.xpgQAY1Jw#.ioeVLGWxD Makes one wonder when Parliament of Dreams will get finished, doesn't it? HAHA, gotcha Myr!

Very romantic. I do so hope Kye's father suffered a lot before dying.

An evil chapter, more so because one has to wait for a resolution.

I hope you had a wonderful day!

Torches and pitchforks indeed. I could see it coming, like a train in a tunnel and wanted to simply reach out and slap Kye into realizing the danger. With a cautious as he can be, I was alittle surprised but the mixture of his father's emotional cruelty was enough to blind him.

I played the XBOX One version and enjoyed it, but lacked people to play with. Haven't touched it in months.