Thorn Wilde

Thank you! Maybe I'll revisit them one day. I have a couple of ideas.

Probably not until December, what with NaNoWriMo and the Winter Anthology coming up. But when those are done, yes, I intend to get back to L&G. I'm glad you enjoyed this story. Jacob and Marcus may be a lot of things, but they aren't hypocrites. I think Marcus was secretly very proud of his daughter's creative language.

It's 2:55 am and I'm working on my Halloween story, but I'm starting to get sleepy. Will probably go to bed soon. Good night!

See, to me, when a person has died they're no longer there. That corpse, that's not that person. That person is gone. I think that necrophilia in the way you're defining it here is not so much necrophilia as a very unhealthy expression of abandonment issues and inability to accept death. It's like the mother who continues to try and care for her dead baby. It's dreadfully sad, but in the end it's an expression of something being emotionally really wrong within that person. As for the study you're citing, Wikipedia has the following addition:

I don't think it was ever anyone's intention to discuss this particular issue in any great detail. It just got dragged out a bit. I'm reasonably sure we've seen the end of it now.

I doubt that's necessary. I think we're done here. I've certainly said my piece.

Sorry, I thought we were discussing literature and writing. I had no idea that making observations on culture was the same as discussing politics. As for going off-topic, this is The Lounge, there is some leeway, at least there has been in every other topic I've posted in. If anyone has made this discussion political, Zombie, it's you, and frankly I think you owe the lady an apology. Since you're not a moderator, it is not your responsibility to police anyone.

Yes, that's the Buffy spin-off. It was Andy Hallett, who played Lorne. He got cardiomyopathy as result of a dental infection. It weakened his heart and he died from congestive heart failure some five years later. Very sad. Lorne was one of my favourites. It's 9:23 in the evening, and I just got home from watching Shappi Khorsandi's stand-up show. Watching HIGNFY and eating ice cream.

I don't think continuing to love someone after they've died is the same as necrophilia. In fact, necrophilia is defined as sexual attraction to corpses. Love doesn't come into it.

I'm one of your favourites?? That makes me feel so special, thank you! And yeah, before I went to the dentist I was totally angsting out because there was this actor on Angel who actually died from a toothache that went untreated and I woke up with a bad taste in my mouth and was fully convinced for several minutes that I was going to die. Dentist told me it was all perfectly normal, though. So, back on topic: It's 1:47 pm and I'm sitting around procrastinating on GA because I feel like crap today. Considering pot noodle for dinner, because lazy.

This was very well written. Interesting take on the topic, compelling characters, good language. I found myself wishing it was longer.

Sorry, I feel like I'm actually gonna have to call you out a bit here... First of all, Brink was the one who brought up women writers in the first place, and you were the one who commented on Persinette's mention of it, and now you're placing the responsibility of all this on her? Last I checked, everyone was welcome on GA, and if a person thinks their point is relevant to the discussion, that person is permitted to make that point. Persinette's post was not offensive, as far as I'm concerned it was perfectly relevant to the topic, and she did not break any site rules. As such, I don't see why you should feel the need to, I suppose appropriately to the topic, censor her. As a bit of trivia, I can add that the Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 110 people, 13 of whom were women.

Folklore, IMO, is a 'fantastic setting', as mentioned above. And when I say necrophilia, I mean actual sex with actual corpses. Which, first of all, the health implications are... ew. A friend of mine at school told me a story, and I don't know if it's true, but she claimed to have known the girl it happened to. This girl was on holiday somewhere, and met a guy in a nightclub. They ended up making out, but she declined going home with him. When she got back home, she started getting these sores around her mouth, and she thought the guy had given her herpes or something. She went to see a doctor, and it turned out the sores were actually caused by maggots. Shortly thereafter, police contacted the girl and she found out that the guy she had snogged was a necrophiliac mass murderer who liked to invite girls to his house, kill them and then shag their dead bodies until they fell apart. Like I said, this story might not be true (in fact, it probably isn't, this girl is a rather brilliant actress and very good at making things sound true that just aren't), but think about it. A decaying corpse means maggots, bacteria and all kinds of shit. It will make you sick. And I don't mean it'll make you feel sick, I mean it'll do bad things to your body. It's excellent as a horror plot point precisely because it is so extraordinarily taboo. But I have never, ever read or even heard of a story in which necrophilia (in the starkest sexual sense of the word, not including corpses or undead that can move, walk and/or talk) is romanticised, nor have I read a story in which a sympathetic character is a necrophiliac.

Pansexual basically just means that you're attracted to people, and that that attraction is not limited by any sex or lack there-of. I can find people attractive who are male, female, transmale, transfemale, genderqueer, genderneutral, genderfluid or intersex. Personally, I happen to find androgyny very attractive.

I think necrophilia in fantastic settings is one thing (I mean, that can easily include vampires if you think about it), but I don't think I know of a single person who won't be severely freaked out by the idea of someone actually fucking a corpse. Nothing mystical or magical, no zombies, no walking dead, no Corpse Bride, just a dead person, whether freshly dead or already rotting.

I went to the dentist yesterday. It's a wisdom tooth growing the wrong way, and I've got an infection, so my jaw is all swollen and I have a hard time opening my mouth properly. My dentist put me on antibiotics and painkillers for a few days to take care of the infection, and so I'll be able to open my mouth properly and she won't have to force my jaw open when she takes it out, and I'm going back on Monday and having the thing pulled. It's already getting better because of the antibiotics.

I came out as bi to classmates at a party when I was 15 or so. I was drunk at the time and somehow thought this was a good idea. The following Monday, I was confronted by a couple of the people who had been there, who asked me, 'So, what you said about being bisexual... That was just a joke, right?' I remember just kind of sitting there for a couple of seconds, not sure what to say, and then I was like, 'Yeah, yeah. I was just kidding.' That was all the backlash I got in school, but then I did go back in the closet two days after I'd come out. It bears mentioning that I went to Catholic school, but the kids who confronted me weren't Catholic (neither am I; it was a good school, and I needed somewhere to transfer to when I was being bullied--my city had weird rules on school transfers back then and private school was the quickest and safest option). The feeling of lying again when you've finally stopped lying, though... Does all kinds of bad shit to a person. It can be weird sometimes, identifying as bi (I'm really in the camp that prefers to refer to themselves as 'pansexual' because we don't believe in a gender binary, but I'll keep it simple). There are all kinds of strange attitudes, both from straight people and gay people. One common one is that we're 'greedy'. That we just want to be able to shag everyone. That we're promiscuous or whatever. Which is funny to me, because I have always been the monogamous type. There are religious straight people who show disdain because they feel like we have a choice. Since we're into both, we should just be able to choose to be with the opposite sex, right? In other words, we're sinning on purpose, which makes us worse than gay people who just can't help themselves. In the opposite camp, there are gay people who either protest that we're really straight and just trying to be interesting (if we're primarily or currently dating people of the opposite sex) or that we're really gay and just playing it safe (if we're primarily or currently dating people of the same sex). For the most part, a lot of gay people seem to ignore the B in LGBT. Of course, a lot of gay people ignore the T in LGBT as well. In more intimate relationships, if you date people who are straight or gay, you often end up with a lot of insecurity. A guy will always be wondering if you wouldn't rather be with a girl, and a girl will always be wondering if you wouldn't rather be with a guy. Which makes for a lot of drama. The result of that is that a lot of people who identify as bi(or pan)sexual end up with other people who identify as the same. It just makes it all a lot easier. And it means that you can both ogle the same celebrities on TV without anybody getting jealous.

It's 8 in the evening, and I have just had pizza and watched a fun episode of Have I Got News For You online, and now I shall play The Sims for a while. Just took some painkillers for my toothache, too.

I think this is pretty cynical. I put my characters through a lot of shit, but I don't do it because I think that will attract readers or get sympathy or whatever. I do it because that's where I think my story needs to go. I do it because that's what I want to write. And the sad fact is that sexual, physical and emotional abuse are far more ordinary problems than anyone would care to think about. And anyway, unhealthy relationships are a lot more interesting and fun to write about than healthy ones.

I think Lisa has reviewed nearly all my (non-fanfic) stories and I'm always really happy to find a review from her. They're almost always long, and always contain something positive and uplifting, and often there's some little anecdote regarding how she can relate to what's going on in my story, etc., and that always feels really great. Gives me a real boost! Reviewers like Lisa make me want to keep writing and make me believe in myself.

I think most of the points I would have wanted to make have already been addressed, but I would like to add that, of course I think it's wonderful when people read my stories and enjoy them. But if I were to tell a story in another way than the way I really wanted to tell it, all the praise in the world couldn't make up for the feeling of having compromised my integrity and my art for the sake of being liked. Don't get me wrong, I edit and rewrite and poke at everything I write a gazillion times before it's ever even seen by a beta or editor, but when I tell a story it's because I think it needs to be told, and when I make a creative choice (such as including a metric fucktonne of swearing) I do so deliberately, and when I split an infinitive, I mean for it to bloody well stay split. And I will never shy away from pushing at boundaries because that, in my opinion, is what art is for.

That's what short stories are like, generally speaking. I like it, because it strips the story down and sends you straight into the action. Minimalist. No extras. That's my style. Choppy is kind of the point here, anyway. The idea was that all the scenes had to start on the bus or at the bus stop.

Thank you, Ron.

Actually, I did note that you mentioned that dolphins have been known to try and rape humans. I am entirely aware of that fact, as well as the fact that they rape each other, both for reproduction and dominance. Many animals do. Does that mean that it's all right for us to rape them? I never stated that body language is not a language. People have consensual sex in spite of spoken language barriers all the time. There are many ways to communicate. But you don't share body language with a dolphin either. You haven't even got most of the same body parts, how could your body language even begin to be similar? Your facial expressions, your movements and the sounds you make are all so very different. So without a doctorate in marine biology with focus on dolphin communication, I don't really see how you could even begin to fairly interpret a dolphin's language, verbal or otherwise, well enough for it to be able to give consent in any way at all.

You do not speak the same language as a dolphin. You cannot actually understand what a dolphin says. A dolphin is unable to give consent, legal or otherwise.