thebrinkoftime

Great! Now I can finally open Pandora's Box and start reading!

You can't believe it has come to this! How could one kiss bring so much disaster? Kisses are supposed to awaken royalty, not prove deadly! But if you don't do something, you'll be dead before the week is out. There's no time to dawdle – forget the week, by the time today is over you plan on nipping this in the bud. If only nipping a bud was a simple matter of gardening shears and not the imposing task before you. But, imposing or not, you have to do it. For Kaede, for justice, for the the future

It's like the gates of hell have been opened when poor Yuki and Kaede's kiss in the broken bathroom is interrupted by the Seven Sisters of Doom. This means war.

When I first read the thread title, I thought it would be about George Clooney getting a chance to go into outer space and all I could think about is how the aliens are going to be so unimpressed with our tendency to diefy entertainers. Like they meet this graying old man and he somehow communicates with them that his job is to pretend to be other people and on his planet this job tends to make more money than any other kind and the aliens are just kind of incredibly confused and starting to feel real pity for the species they have encountered. Then I noticed it was a science fiction trailer (you see that hh5, fiction, not reality! ) starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. It's an excellent trailer. Somehow reminds me of some of the science fiction movies from yesteryear, where instead of the special effects being the story, they compliment the effect the story has on you. Then I saw that the director was Alfonso Cuaron and I thought, "I needs me some Gravity in my life." Then I remembered how I read a thread about the reaction to this trailer in another forum where half the replies were, "Not sure I want to hear Sandra Bullock screaming and moaning for the duration of a movie," and I thought we've got a long way to go to become a more impressive species for the aliens to respect.

I love my aunt so much. Ever since she picked me up one afternoon from school to go to our cabin at the lake for the summer with family, and told the kids who were picking on me that she'd beat them up if she saw them being mean to me again, I've had a kind of innocent little boy crush on her. So when the news came that my uncle had died, my father and I were the very first two people from our family to be by her side. After the funeral, my dad had to leave to go back to work, but I stayed with my aunt for two weeks because I had summer vacation off from school. Every day she would ask me if I wanted to go out to dinner or have her cook it. I never really understood why she did. It seemed to me like it would be easier on her to go out to dinner, but for some reason, I always had a feeling I should ask her to cook. She would shrug and start getting dinner ready. One evening, while we were eating she started to talking to me about her relationship with her late husband. She said, "He never once told me he loved me. I would say it to him all the time. I felt like that's what you were supposed to do, be honest and reassure the other person that your feelings hadn't changed, you know? Even when he proposed to me, he didn't say it. He just told me that he wanted me to cook for him every night and the ring was a down payment on a life employment as his personal cook. I was so flattered and laughed so hard at his humor that I couldn't say no. It was a very different time then. The world was so different. We didn't live together until we got married, but every night without fail he would appear at my door and say, 'Is dinner ready?' This was a time when it was set in stone that you went out for drinks with your work colleagues after the day was over and did not come until late. He would always refuse and come to me. One evening he was late to dinner, and there was nobody to answer the phone at work. So I got on the train and went to his job. When I walked into the office, I was relieved to see he was just getting ready to go. I raised my voice to ask him to return with me, when I heard another female voice. I was very afraid then because he was so handsome and so popular with all the ladies. I wondered if I had just promised my life to a man who would never be completely faithful to me. She was trying to convince him to go drinking with her. I could hear what she was saying. 'Your fiance won't mind if you come home a little late.' I became very scared because there was a long pause. Then I heard him say, 'Thank you for your invitation, but I'm afraid the truth of the matter is that I'd rather eat with her.' I felt so relieved and I went to the front of the building to wait for him. He was very happy to see me waiting there for him. He turned and said, 'I hope dinner hasn't gotten cold.' I assured him we could always warm it up with the new microwave he had bought me. It was the first time I'd ever had a microwave in a house. All the time we were married, even on our anniversaries and vacations together, he never told me he loved me. But he would always be home for dinner and always compliment my cooking. When we were on vacation, and I asked if the food was good, the answer was always, always the same, 'Not as good as your food, but it will do.' I loved to cook for him. I suppose it isn't very progressive and not what modern ladies are supposed to do, I suppose I should have been strong and firm and insist he be more upront with me, but somehow it never mattered and I loved him anyway." So of course I made sure to be on time for dinner every night I stayed with her and I think she appreciated it, because when it was time for me to go, I asked her to send me pictures of her wonderful cooking every night so I wouldn't be lonely even when I had to eat cup ramen or just a yogurt for dinner. She agreed to do so. To this day, every evening I get an e-mail with a picture of what she cooked that night and I always make sure to reply, saying, "It was delicious."

I have to agree on Facebook, Twitter and tumblr. Places really only have Facebook pages because Facebook is huge -- but other social networks are a lot healthier and better designed than Facebook*(see the end of this post for an epic Facebook rant). I think it really only should be used to keep people abreast of announcements, maybe targeted toward lurkers or readers who don't register here. Like leshwar said, Facebook is not nearly as anonymous as most of the rest of the internet is and the anonymity of GA may not be required, but it is appreciated. Also Facebook is a political cesspool and it doesn't take long for Facebook interaction to get people of the wrong sorts to start interacting with the GA community through its Facebook page, even if they wouldn't be able to register here. I quit Facebook 3 years ago, but if I still was registered there (and I probably am in some sick, venomous, money-grubbing way), I too would never like this site. Even though I doubt it would affect my social life much, I like keeping myself anonymous on the internet, putting a wall between my real life and my internet life. That's just the way I prefer it. But imagine if I was an educational degree graduate and looking for jobs -- employers pull up my Facebook page and find out I liked a site that contains sometimes graphic sexual imagery between teenagers -- I'd have to luck out on the open-mindedness of said employers for that to go well. Twitter and tumblr on the other hand, are great. It's easy to participate in both while remaining anonymous. They're both a lot more fun to interact with than Facebook and more importantly it seems like the emphasis on both sites (at least when they are used properly) is to have a bit of silly nonsense fun. Twitter was originally supposed to be the public repositiory of those little thoughts you have every day and keep to yourself -- but since those thoughts can be bizarre, charming, introspective, thoughtful and funny, they make for great social fodder. It's not just teenagers, not at all. Even from the very beginning, I knew many 20-,30- and 40-somethings who use the site. My mom even uses it! More than announcing new material on the site, twitter works best when you do things like live tweet -- post your thoughts on twitter while you consume a piece of media, such as a GA story or a TV show, game or movie. Those thoughts, when they're off the cuff and fun promote a silly environment. I mean it wouldn't be named Twitter if its original purpose wasn't silly in nature. When tweets get retweeted they have the potential to really reach a wider audience than GA does right now because they organically start infiltrating the followers and twitter feeds of people who don't have GA on their radar, but perhaps would be interested in the site if they knew it existed. However twitter is frustrating and no fun at all when it gets used as a platform to editorialize complex and controversial views or argue endlessly. It's also not so fun when co-opted by huge corporations in order to force feed the hashtags into marketing for them, see exhibit A, Blurred Lines. tumblr is genius because it's like twitter with images and the functionality to contain a richer kind of conversation, but neither of those things are necessary. I know that we have a gallery here at GA, and I'm sure a lot of users enjoy it. Personally I would browse the gallery more and get involved with it more heavily if it were more integrated like tumblr, but that's just me. tumblr (yes I like not capitalizing it at the beginning of sentences, it makes me feel like a grammar rebel) contains a lot of AU, or alternate universe fiction, where users mash up gifs, images and fiction to imagine their favorite people in situations that differ from reality. A lot of the fiction on GA would resonate well with all sorts of fans of AU on tumblr and getting their attention would be a great idea. However, tumblr is not so genius when fanbases get into tumblr wars on it -- it quickly becomes corrosive and annoying. If you've ever seen one start and followed its development, one is all you need to see to know that you don't want to see another one and become scared of how it is hard not to get sucked into them, so I imagine any interaction with tumblr would need to have GA's strict moderation on the prowl to keep it from being. Instagram, however, can go screw itself. One option I don't see is reddit. I don't participate in the site myself and I know there is already a button to report to reddit on this site, but since the entire original idea of reddit is to promote things that are worthy of reading, personally I think promoting GA into relevant subreddits is worth more time than putting any effort into Facebook. Dunno, just kind of struck me as odd, considering what kind of site this is. And now my Facebook rant. Before I start, let me assure you I think no less of anyone for being registered or using Facebook, because at the end of the day it's just a tool. The following is simply an observation of Facebook as a social platform, a look at the whole thing when you take a step back, not an attack on you as a person or potential Facebook user. Okay? Cool. Now then, at least among my social circle, Facebook is on the way out. The reason why is because Facebook feels more like an obligation you have to join to keep in contact with people who are too lazy to put any real effort into maintaining a relationship with you and lack the courage to make a decision to become a better friend or simply say goodbye. So they add you as a "Facebook friend, " which is basically purgatory for friendships. Any real relationship would of course go beyond Facebook and I can't imagine any real relationship being helped by many of the corrosive trends Facebook tends to help encourage. Raise your hand if you've ever felt insulted when either a) someone decides to share something on Facebook you specifically asked them not to, or they decide to share something and you find out about through Facebook when any real friend would have told you something like that in person first? Moreover, this site and many others like it have already taken the good ideas of Facebook's social networking innovations and incorporated them into the site itself. You can already follow and like people on GA, add them as friends and keep track of what they are doing in numerous ways. This is healthier on GA than it is on Facebook, because there a set reason why people get interested in and come to GA in the first place and it stems from the narrow focus on gay literature. GA has become and is more than that now, but it all orbits around that nucleus. When I get to know people on GA, these features help, because I came here specifically to interact with other people who like gay literature. It's like going to a bar or meeting people who like to play or watch a sport you enjoy, or joining a book club. On Facebook, there is no nucleus to orbit around other than endless, endless amounts of internet idiocy. It's a country club where all you do is sit in upholstered chairs, drink lemonade and gossip about people while you feel good about yourself for being "upwardly socially mobile." (This would be the theoretical "you," not "you" as in the person reading this.) Anything worthwhile happening on the internet happens outside of Facebook. Facebook has served its purpose by helping sites integrate more social features into their structure, but actual Facebook's interface is awful, vanilla and boring compared to the vibrancy, spectacle and personality of a site like GA. It's been said that many users are becoming inactive on Facebook and I can see why. Compared to sites which have an active interest in fostering unique conversation and interaction, all Facebook ever accomplishes is diluting those interactions into something more shallow, ludicrous and worthless. It's a chore to maintain. I already have to maintain a social status and appearance in real life that has to survive the scrutiny of people I'd rather not interact with for the sake of being "socially acceptable," why would I want to work even harder to do that again on the internet? No thank you. Facebook is a scummy site invented by a scummy person in order to make money off of people's relentless social desires, but offering no really unique or valuable angle on such interactions. It sells people the seedy and self-serving idea that your identity is made up of all the things you like and choose to spend your time on, and helps perpetuate the idea that that's all your identity is.

At the Emory University Department of Dubious Studies, the team had gathered in the conference room on that cobalt gray morning to discuss the next study they should all throw themselves into with reckless abandon. The conversation between the faculty members at the table had grown lively just about the time the morning coffee had infiltrated their kidneys and made them start squirming in their seats. All were oblivious to the the Director of the Department of Dubious Studies, a Dr. Dick Sphere, who was staring outside at the titanium gray clouds like a teenager angsting after his first crush while listening to Adele's Rolling in the Deep. "Your suggestion to work with the local police departments on taking testosterone samples of rape offenders at the time of the crime, and monitor the levels until they become rape victims in the prison, is a fascinating one, Mary, but I see a lot of problems with the logistics," offered Dave helpfully. "Personally I'm partial to Daniel's suggestion that we look into the anatomy of the jellyfish and reinvestigate why it stings -- I find the idea that the jellyfish may be more intelligent than we at first anticipated and are mounting an organized hive mind attack to reclaim the beaches by indulging in reverse beastiality with humans one well worth putting milliions of dollars of the state's money to the test," Joanette said, with a Prozac smile on her face. Timothy timidly and timorously tipped into the tumble. "Um, perhaps we ought to continue those studies of the physiological difference of apes and their relationship to humans; it seems well underway with several of our colleagues, we can join in and perhaps make another meaningful link between primates and humans that will help us understand our child-rearing physiology better?" David patted Timothy on the head and told him to fill the copy machine with more paper, and by the time he returned everyone had got their morning exercise -- they had prodigiously strained their eyes with several exhaustingly draining rolls to the left and right for Timothy's absurd proposal. The whole team felt good about their early morning workout. It was when Daniel and Ms. Snoopes were going head to head over a proposal to look into whether parents who chewed on pencils as a child had a propensity to give birth to children with Down's Syndrome that Apu, the Indian intern from Iceland, put his foot down, turned to the middle-aged existentialist and gray-cloud-researcher and said, "So Dr. Sphere, which proposal do you think we should do?" For Dr. Dick Sphere's part, he had been lost in the words of his wife earlier this morning. Her words haunted him like a ghost mosquito out for ghostly blood. It happened at the moment when little Johnny had told little Betty at the breakfast table this morning that if she didn't stop splashing his face with cereal milk he was going to shove his Skylander toys up her ass and Dr. Dick Sphere had chuckled, turned to his wife and said, "Boys will be boys." Dr. Dick Sphere had never seen a conniption before, but he had spent years studying hurricane patterns in southern Florida and he was sure the two natural phenomena were about to converge inside his wife, when suddenly her face took an air of superior calm and she countered with, "You don't have the balls to raise our children." So when he was confronted by the hopeful faces of his faculty to put a stop on a debate on whether they could get funds to study whether consumption of Payday candy bars led to sexual prowess, it was with great pride and conviction that Dr. Dick Sphere announced what their next study would be.

I know there isn't anything wrong with it, which is why I always like scientists who are well aware of that compared to scientists who are not. (I will not name names here and start a huge cat fight, I will not name names here and start a huge cat fight, I will not name names here and start a huge cat fight, I've done enough brinking for one day.) Oops, I should have clarified that the reason I used that analogy is that the doctors were all people who worked as universities at researchers, doing field work to help research new approaches and cures for the diseases in their highly specialized fields, which is why they were invited to the show and partially why I was so shocked by their attitude! They should know better than everyone else how different each patient can be! George Burns lived till how long smoking all those cigars?

Maybe, since the word "flaming" seems to be used for gay guys who act like the stereotypical notion of a gay guy propagated in humorous movies and such, we could develop a word from that to describe the behavior of gay guys who are the opposite of that? Since one is flaming, the other could be "frosty" or "chilly," or I dunno, "sub-zero" or something. That way you could eventually get to the point where burning metaphors are used to describe gay guys who are flamboyant, emotional and energetic, and freezing metaphors are used to describe gay guys who are more down-to-earth, calm and stoic -- it would evolve into a description of personalities, rather than perpetuating traditional ideas of gender. I imagine, eventually, the whole "gay or straight-acting" dichotomy would disappear and you'd get a richer language. I've found it frustrating that one of the traits of a gay character can be described as either "totally not your stereotypical gay" or "your stereotypical gay." That doesn't seem right to me. I've seen that description at Nifty and on stories at this site and others and I'm sure the author doesn't mean anything bad by it, but I feel like if we want to describe the character traits of somebody like Danny or Ethan from Teen Wolf, we shouldn't have to go out of our way to specific what they don't look or sound like.

I really liked the running metaphors in this story. The main character gets cramps and can't keep the pace his friend is setting because he didn't drink enough water, which I interpret to mean he hasn't yet swallowed down his feelings for his friend and accepted him. Jeremy is kind and friendly throughout, smoothing away his pain, but our protagonist is too wrapped up in his own feelings to notice. When he gets up and trips over his shoes, it's almost like Jeremy's charming personality and face is the one playing practical jokes on him. When he pulls Jeremy down to his level, for a second, it's almost as if he has accepted the strange place he's found himself in and is pulling Jeremy into the same world. Jeremy's eyes seem to say he's okay with it, at least. Ah, but teenagers! It's extremely rare if they have any kind of serious emotional intelligence, so the two best friend's morning jog doesn't end that well and the narrative is spiced and dipped in the confusion of the main character. I really liked the way the main character's was related through the first person narration. Usually when we read the first person narration of a young boy, for the narrative's sake we endow him with writing skills he probably doesn't have yet, but somehow you struck a nice balance between readability and the character's awkward teenage voice. I enjoyed your story quite a bit, but I felt it was quite sloppy in parts. For instance, even though we get to hear the main character's thoughts throughout, there's only one bit where it is related via quotations and italics and then immediately it goes back to normal prose even though the character is presumably still thinking. It isn't consistent throughout. Little things like that, if you improve them, can make a good story sparkle even brighter. I would have criticized the really cliched situation of a morning run between two teenage boys, but you took a lot of original elements (the ice cream shop near the smelly lake, the practical jokes and cramping) and made it your own, so kudos for that. Nonetheless, it's a fine piece and I hope you continue to write more stories in the future.

Celethiel, I know I posted a rather long post, but nearly all of your objections concern something I already said in my post. I think there might have been a misunderstanding. I said that epic poetry, such as The Iliad, is rare today, because we do not have poets who memorize incredibly long poems by using poetic devices so they can tell stories about gods and heroes they believe existed. That's pretty much gone extinct because people write it down these days and call it fiction from the start. I did not say all poetry, which would be absurd, because there are numerous types of poetry flourishing all over the world today, like how I pointed out the small, small amount of tanka writers who still produce content despite the form largely being considered over, or how rap music is considered a form of modern poetry under some interpretations. As for private poetry, I did say that many critics acknowledge that after a form has declined, enthusiasts produce new examples of it, but it is often considered niche, in my original post. There's nothing wrong with niche, but my intent was to show that the form artistic works take alters throughout the ages and is reflected by the society of the time. Hence, my epic poetry analogy. It was all the rage in ancient Greece; it isn't now, but arguments can be made that it evolved into something different. This is called an urban legend. And that's why I made references to how urban legends can resemble folklore, but aren't entirely the same thing. The difference between an urban legend and the old world of orally handing down folklore is that urban legends spread through other, non-oral forms of media much quicker and are disseminated and disected for their truth in a way the suspicious residents of yesterday didn't often do. So whether they are the same thing changed into a new form tends to be a hot debate among academic circles. You get arguments either way. I hate quoting myself, but look, I said the same thing in a different way: "People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not." Science fiction is actually often argued to have started when Lucian wrote about a trip to the moon in ancient Rome, or with the stories of homunculus, which seemed to have been taken from a Greek source and readopted early in the Dark Ages, or with the increasing practice of alchemy in the early Middle Ages, at least in the Western world. A lot of literary historians peg it somewhere in the time period where Christians started experimenting in the natural world to better understand God and the stories that popped up from such experiments. So while it looks like we entirely agree with each other, when you say that you don't know what I am saying, are you expressing that you don't know what you are saying is true too? Help me out here, I'm kind of confused!

I'm aware of that. I did have middle school science classes too, you know. What I'm saying is that we have some data on Jupiter which is based on instruments that are based on our knowledge of the physical universe at this time. This isn't like an object of matter on Earth which we can observe rather indefinitely based on the laws we so far know that work on our own planet and seem to work on other planets. But all we really have is just a drop in the bucket of knowledge when there is a vast wide system of celestial bodies out there we have no clue about. I'm saying that our tiny, tiny advancements on the knowledge of gas giants is not enough to go off to definitely say they can't form volcanoes because our laws tell us so. We can speculate that that is the case, but until we've become much more knowledgeable about space in our own system and far abroad, I'd say it's best not to make an assumption like that, because there's likely all sorts of strange things we have no clue about it and it's been the case that we've had to rewrite our common knowledge base many times in the past. Logically, it does not follow that because we know about one gas giant that we know about all of them.

How do you know? I know you're really knowledgeable about gas giants, because you know, your mom*, but how much do we really truly know about the nature of gas giants? How much data do we have on different planets that are gas giants? Just because it strains the common sense borne from the facts we have and is not likely from the information we have at this point, doesn't mean you can just rule it out. At that point, it's not even a science problem, it's a logical one. *It's just a harmless joke to lighten the mood, chill, no offense meant, I don't even know your mom and I'm sure she's very nice when she farts. Because everybody farts, but only some people are gas giants.

No offense, zombie, but I did cover that in the original post, that adding known would have fixed it and that it's the journalists' fault for making the scientists look bad -- I'm pretty sure their research paper or report or whatever wasn't titled, "ZOMG! Underwater Volcano in the Pacific is Bigger Than Kanye West's Ego!" And this is why I don't trust scientists (not the writers who report the science, that's a different ballgame as said above) who don't use words like "reasonably certain" or "we suspect." Your point about Pluto seals the deal. We're always updating our knowledge about science and things we thought we're absolutely true 20 years ago turn not to be true today (one of my favorites is that somebody whose brain or heart has stopped for more than a minute cannot come back to life, which seems to be gradually eroding as new findings suggest a more complex mechanism at work). That's why I don't believe for a second we really have a real good idea what a place like Jupiter is really like. Nope. I'm guessing people 100 years from now will laugh at the certainties we thought were true about the solar system today in the same way we laugh today at how phrenology actually had a surprising number of adherents 100 years ago. It's less the nitty gritty of the specific details and the hubris of certain scientists (not necessarily these scientists) who stand by their data and make unreasonable conclusions without a healthy degree of skepticism. That always bothers me. Accepting the limits of your current knowledge is really important. One anecdote comes to mind. I was watching this television show earlier this year that had some popular celebrities go for really thorough full body health checkouts. The works, brainscans, cholestrol readings, cancer checks, everything. It was found that one in particular not only had a tumor the size of an orange in his brain, emphysema from smoking, his liver was basically entirely non-functional, and his pancreas and kidneys were seriously damaged; he had a stomach so ulcerous that it was about to rupture any moment. All the doctors (and all top-notch, respected doctors as well) told him they don't know how he's still alive and he should have been dead years ago, and literally any second he could die. Everyone got concerned and said he should go to the hospital immediately. The entertainer seemed quite reluctant, like he didn't want to and it was revealed months later, that indeed, he didn't and is continuing the lifestyle that led up to his body's ill health, but he keeps chugging along. Now I don't exactly agree with this celebrity's choice -- I think he should definitely get it checked up and fixed, if possible, at once, but all the doctors couldn't believe he was still conscious and energetic. I think he just got annoyed by their attitudes -- that they were so sure he was going to die and he didn't. Even later on, a second checkup with different doctors came to the same conclusion and he eventually started watching his diet and lifestyle, but he is still refusing surgery. I think a large part of this celebrity's attitude can be traced back to the hubris of scientists who are so certain their results contain the truth and nothing but. A much better to have taken would have been to say, "Look, you can ignore this, but you're playing with fire. I know many patients who didn't survive with only one of the health problems you have. The probabilities do not look good" instead of my "My Magic Data 8-Ball tells me you're going to die soon." It tends to make people who are less inclined to investigate or think about it unreasonably suspicious of good science. And that's a shame.

Cool info about a volcano, nice, alright. And it's in the superior ocean too, nice. But it better keep the -- keep away from us! *rant mode on* But my editor sense goes off at that headline and first sentence. How on Earth can scientists claim it's one of the largest volcanoes in the solar system when there's so much undiscovered territory on other planets? Penetrated all those gas clouds on Venus? Explored the entire surface of Jupiter? Seen what's to see on every single moon of Saturn? You dickhead scientists took a cherished Disney character away from the solar system because you couldn't get it right the first time, so we don't need dickhead journalists polluting the truth of words and mischaracterizing the scientists with hyperbole like that. I get the same rage feels when I hear somebody make a list of the greatest videogames of all time, even though video games have only been around or relatively advanced to go on a greatest list for about 30 years. Sorry, this just really bothers me. It's like everyone's letting the monkeys out of the zoo to play, recently. Especially when it all gets fixed by adding the simple "known" before solar system. But nooooo, that doesn't sound impressive now. They know, you know and I know that the nuance of that paltry explanation of Mars' big fiery land zit won't be digested by most readers. But hyperbole gets the clicks, so whatever. *rant mode off* BTW, whenever I meet foreigners who want to live in Japan, they always ask me if I think Fuji will erupt soon. I always smile evilly and say, "Oh yes."

*ahem* Miley Cyrus: A Poem O! Miley Cyrus, why are you so, so ratchet? Destroy that skank Eraserhead persona with a hatchet! You think you look sexy when you twerk But you just look like Gollum after a long, hard jerk Whether it's the creature from Pan's Labyrinth Or Hanna Montana, your forms are just an act The only real problem is That they're both pretty much crap Isn't it a nice image for women's agency That you're a robot programmed by the industry? Learn from Madonna, if you want to express yourself Or Alicia Keys, whose sexuality is like that of a classy black elf You can't redeem yourself with these uninspired milquetoast ballads That hold all the amusement and nutrition of rabbit poo salads Then again, I guess you've done daddy's legacy proud He too was obnoxius, untalented and loud You're a mix, a past pop music failure Voltron A combination of everything in music that's wrong I'm rubber and you're glue All the tacky girls bounce off of me and form into you Yet one thing will always remain true In spring and summer, the daffodil, in early fall, the iris But mediocrity and conformity is forever, Miley Cyrus

To a point. There isn't much new epic poetry written today, is there? At least in the modern first world there isn't a whole lot of new oral traditions and stories being created that survive to the point where they become folklore, is there? However, instead of epic poetry, you do have concept albums where the music (especially rap music) is supposed to sell a story from the start to finish, which is similar in that it's primarily spoken word narration bound by things like rhythm or rhyme. And now that we have an urban environment, we have urban legends, which isn't exactly orally-passed down folklore, but resembles it. Many academics often refer to a cycle in art forms containing eras where it is a burgeoning, new medium exploring the new rules and becoming grounded, matures to a golden age, but then withers due to stagnation and lack of innovation. I think of it as a cycle between eternal aesthetics and tradition, and innovation brought on by advancements in the living world. So we repeat the traditions of the past indefinitely, but always do so in ever newer and newer forms brought about by science and technology. People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not. Occassionally, we get new traditions too! We did not have science fiction until people had enough working knowledge of science to create it. We did not have the novel (well mostly) until the actual physical requirements of its proliferation in paper and printing existed. Novels themselves went through stages and trends that had their own cycles of innovation, maturation and stagnation. So did science fiction. How long the cycle of an actual medium's life lasts has a lot to do with how it adapts. Stage plays are still alive and relevant in many, many forms because they did not stay set in stone from Shakespeare's day, even though they certainly are not the most widely accepted mainstream genre of writing or storytelling today. On other hand, in Japan, people still write new tanka even though it is largely considered a pretty much dead poetic form. (Speaking of Japan, did you know there's a debate than amongst literature, Japanese science fiction doesn't exist and should be called speculative fiction or thought experiment because the bulk of it is so removed from the traditional science fiction model? Whether that's true or not, it is a sign that the creativity juice in mediums can be reignited when it is adopted or transmitted to other cultures. Also, recently visual novels, the pure love genre, light novels and the story as textbook or personal enlightenment non-fiction have become enthusiastically supported new genres or mediums in Japan and this all happened within the last decade or so. I'm sure you can find relevant examples in your culture too.) Mark my words, as the world progresses, a 100 years from now there will be literary genres and methods of conveying them that none of us dreamt of while the people of those days might look wistfully. So is there a creativity limit? Well, that's difficult to answer. Human minds can only stretch so far, but the human future seems like it could be limitless.

I feel like there were some serious parallels going on this chapter. Charlie's injury that sparked his social withdrawal was when somebody pushed him and broke his arm. Now, many years later, Scott's broken arm may be the price he pays to help Charlie come out into the light, so to speak and this time it's the person who pushed him who is hurt and Charlie is safe. Tony was being pushy and pushed Charlie right out of his social life. Scott was being self-sacrificial and may help Charlie start to sacrifice a bit of himself for others. You can see the effect almost immediately. Up until this point of the story it seems like Charlie has just been reacting to all the things that happen to him, both past and present. With Scott, he suddenly and quickly changes into an active character. He's trying to make sure Scott is okay, helping out the police and making the decision to take the day off work instead of being late. I feel like Charlie's early misadventures have given him the strength to be calm and make good decisions in the face of sudden and quick adversity. Perhaps Charlie will end up inadvertently helping Scott and this will be the spark that helps him become a little more confident? I can't wait to see what kind of character Scott is!

To rip off a Mean Girls quote, you can't help it if you've got a heavy flow and a wide-set vag--imagination. Seriously, as others have said, the way the story just flows like it's a river that's been doing it all its life is awesome and impressive. I'm really glad you chose Charlie to have a non-abusive childhood with (what seems to be) a healthy and supportive family. I'm not saying you couldn't have chosen the reason for Charlie's social reticence to be that, just that I get a little tired of that being the case so often. Sometimes there are just more complex reasons that a person withdraws into themselves. Speaking of withdraw, that was another excellent part. "Hearing how upset people were at him caused Charlie to move further and further away from the crowds, and deeper into himself." If I were a stereotypical fat Italian chef I would compliment this sentence as perfection in charmingly-accented Italian and then rub my belly and shake my head at how good it is. It's that damn flow! It's just stunning how the sentence shifts from Charlie's internal struggles to the real world without any whiplash from the abrupt movement. I enjoyed the peak back at Charlie's early life and the explanations of how he started to become the adult Charlie we see, but I feel like you didn't always need to clarify in the narrative at all times -- simply telling us what happened without commenting on it would have allowed us to intuit ourselves and made it a tad stronger. But that's just a small irk born from my own preferences. I liked how Charlie's birth itself was an accident, but nobody treated him like an unworthy being because of it. I think a lot of stories have trained us to see that the line, "You were an accident" as this awful, ultra-damaging truth bomb from a character that causes irreparable harm to the other. A lot of pregnancies aren't planned, and are indeed, happy accidents, as long the parents make sure the kid knows that it was also a welcome one they love very much, there's not too much harm done. I think Charlie knows this deep down, and doesn't really accept his true nature. He thinks if he revealed it, people wouldn't like him, so he has to hide it, but that's not the case. Hopefully the person in the dark coat won't turn out to be an interstellar cockroach bent on destroying the galaxy with Charlie's student's projects and can help him out with that.

Oh my gosh! It's a grown up Charlie Brown and Lucy! Okay, okay, not seriously, but I feel like you've adapted the idea of Charlie Brown into your own Charlie and gave Tina Lucy-like tendencies. I don't think that's a bad thing at all, because I think you snatched onto two archetypes that go well with each other, like peanut butter and chocolate. Tina is endearing to me because she takes an active interest in improving the main character's life even if her methods might frequently be misguided and Charlie is endearing because our hearts always go out to the character who gets the pubic-hair-covered side of the lollipop, because that just sucks. Other people have complimented the ridiculously masterful flow of this first chapter and I must agree. The effortless way the present folded into the past and that returned back again to the present was stunning. Also vivid details like Tina's heels and the changing color of her punch on her white shirt caught my eye and made me give a thumbs up to my laptop screen. That and somebody finally using the word "gregarious" correctly in a sentence made me spontaneously clap. I really like how you've taken the plot conceit of a Charlie in inertia who reacts to the mistakes and accidents like throws to him and really ran with it. I feel like even Tina's ultimatum is an accident -- that she didn't mean to be so mean about it, she's just had so much patience (and I wonder if the two-day ultimatum has anything to do with somebody else she has her eye on). In addition, I like the happy accident of Charlie deciding he liked to teach 1st grade purely by the random selection that put him there. Because you are a great plot writer, I imagine many more inventive accidents are waiting for me in the next few chapters. I was rather shocked that even though this was posted so long ago, there are still grammar and spelling errors, but I imagine you got better at as you went along? I dunno. If it were me, I'd have an obsession about squating them; the editor is always calling out. I also prefer a prose style with more narrative spark -- more memorable turns of phrases than the rather dry style I've seen so far -- then the one you've chosen here, but the more internally observant style you've selected fits well with where your story is going. I'm glad this popped up in CSR Book Selection to prompt me to read it. There are so many good stories on GA, it's not always easy to find them all! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

I'm not sure whose responsibility it would fall on to conduct the interviews, or if every author each month would agree to one, but that's the poll response I chose. I feel like even with the author forums and comments in the stories themselves, that's one thing that I would like to see even more of -- more information from the authors about various aspects of their work. Certainly there's a lot of that goes on the forum, but I feel like the bulk of what I've read is centered around preparing new works and talking about newly posted works. Yet I think there's a lot to get out of an author who is thinking back to a work they might have done some time ago, a kind of hindsight that develops the longer one is away from something they worked on before that would be an interesting motivation for writers to keep chugging at it. Also, I'm not sure if it's at all possible, but having a fan of the work who has clearly shown it by say posting reviews or posting about it on the forums interview the author would be even more fun. Anyways, time to start reading Accidents Happen!

Jessica Biel? I'm...speechless. Yeah, if you asked me where I stand in the fan fiction gauntlet, I wouldn't describe myself as an enthusiastic reader or writer of it, and especially not shipping fan fiction. I share the same live and let live approach. I occassionally run into fan fiction and consume it, and sometimes I find some amazing stuff (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is unbelievably sly and creative), but I wouldn't say I actively search it out. Of course, the fan fiction I am exposed to is largely in the form of comics, music and video games, so it takes a very different form than pure written fiction. I know that at least in the games and comic market in my country creating fan works can help you step up to creating your own original work as a pro. But to me, it's all the same. Many people have expressed their well-thought-out feelings on the difficulty of creating good fan fiction vs. creating good original fiction in this thread and I appreciate the time they took to write it. That said, as much as I sympathize with each opinion, difficulty is not a Platonic ideal, or a mathematical concept that is the same for everyone. Difficulty is entirely subjective. One person might find it is indeed easier to do some things when writing than another writer does. Someone might write forge a more original prose style, while another writer will thrive on creating varied characters. That's why, for me, for the writer who is serious about devoting their life to the craft, fan fiction should be a fun exercise and is a great starting place, but would be disappointing to be the final destination. If you will excuse some long-winded provocation, then let me tell you why. One thing I find to be true is that things that are difficult to write tend to turn out better. And that's where the line between fan fiction and well, fiction, blurs. No matter how I ultimately very much agree that it can be extremely tricky to write something that approaches the sublime when you've willingly locked yourself into the bookshelf of someone else's fiction, it's also true that no matter how many mental gymnastics you wrestle with while doing this, there is a comfort to writing about what you already familiar with and (presumably) love. Whereas in pure fiction, this comfort is a strange mistress who will abandon you when you least expect it. A lot of writers have said that the characters they create grew to a life of their own and it's an idea I can get behind. A simple character that sprang from nowhere else but from my mind will suddenly seem to have agency while I am writing -- their words will come to me. At least that's the way it feels sometimes. But -- and this is especially true if you tackle a longform piece of work -- just like real people, those characters are sometimes unpredictable. They do things you never anticipated. They run into walls when you tell them to walk down the corridor. They scream when you ask them to whisper. Suddenly they aren't yours anymore, they're like somebody you've met and can rely upon, but cannot entirely control because they have an ego of their own. This doesn't make any sense, because, well, you created them. They should do what you tell them to do. No truly good writer ever accepts this excuse though. They know that they aren't being true to their characters if they don't submit to the truth the characters want them to. It can be very difficult to find that truth and convey it in such a manner that other people will be able to see it as well. There is so much falsity in writing. It can be a real pain to clean up your act and make sure it doesn't seep into your own. I only ever dabbled in fan fiction when I was younger, so I can't claim to know too much of the creative process. I imagine there is something different when you are greeting characters who have already been born through this process and survived the test -- the reason you want to write about them is because you accepted that the writer, to at least some extent, reached the truth of the character. By the very nature of the act, this cannot be the same as creating your own character, in the same way as getting married to somebody or becoming their friend cannot be the same relationship as literally participating in their birth. When you have no boundaries, no safeguards and no limits, it can be hard to find which way is up, which is why I think a lot of people associate fan fiction with amateur writing. If you do go through the process of creating something entirely from the ether of your own mind, no matter which unconscious associations or 1000-year old story concepts your brain pulled out to help make it up, it's still something entirely unique to your brain. Nobody else has approved of it yet until you get the courage and conviction to write it on the page. Like I said, I'm sympathetic to fan fiction writers and have been impressed by their ingenuity in many of the same ways I would be of pure fiction, and if somebody's career in writing is on the level of writing fan fiction their entire life, I have no problem with that at all. But I don't find it at all strange or arrogant that the world at large would rather reward people who go through the infinite trouble of dreaming upward and outward out of no will but a desire to create everything on their own and live by the good and bad, the lies and the truth that dredges up. It's a responsibility that no matter how creative you are, no matter how skilled and wonderful your prose prowess might be, for many people, separates the pros from the amateurs. It's much the same, though not entirely, as painters who can replicate great paintings -- they provide a valuable service and there is no cause or reason to discourage or look down on their work as lesser. It just serves a different purpose. However, nearly everyone can see that there is a natural curiosity to see what the painter does when they aren't replicating. When there's so much dreck out there, I don't ever want to claim that no fan fiction could ever be better than all that gunk, because it seems short-sighted to me. Nonetheless, in even the worst and most awful pure fiction, which makes me want to pull my hair out on nearly every sentence, I have to respect the journey the person had to make to do it all by themselves, the courage to see it through and the hard work to make it readable for the general public. I give the same kudos to a fan fiction writer who does it, but naturally, all other things being the same, I will have more innate respect for the person who had to do it all from scratch.

If, when people say the word "shipping," your monocle pops out and you find yourself saying, "A ship is a vehicle used to cross bodies of water, and it is not, nor should it be a verb!" I recommend you give a look at the short 9-minute video above. It's by Jill Bearup who does a series called Stuff You Like, where she basically talks about (spoiler alert!) things she likes and what's it like to be a fan. She's funny, smart, respectful and extremely articulate. She brought up something here that I had never anticipated before. And don't worry, if the screencap makes it look like she will eat you, fold your remains and add you to her pink post-it note collection, it's just a bad screencap, it can't hurt you. I can't accurately summarize what she goes into in the video, because I feel like it would just be reporting word-by-word what she already expresses so beautifully and concisely, and I am not a modern blog writer who fishes for hits. Before I saw this video I always thought shipping was a silly harmless hobby that people indulged in, but Bearup makes an excellent point for how it might go much deeper than that and ultimately might be an extremely healthy form of expression, especially for women and gays -- and she does so without ignoring the dark side of shipping. Jill's great. I think I'm going to go write some Jill/Cia slash now!

I often wonder about this too. Memories seem carefully paved and slotted together like stones on a pathway, but even after years and years, when weeds, roots and dirt have infiltrated the pathway to the point where it looks like it might house wild rabbits and snakes, if you can find the stones and follow them, it still leads somewhere, doesn't it? But where?

Legally, I think the only recourse you could possibly have is if his outing of you damaged your character in a quantifiable enough way where you could show proof of the damages, or if it led to your dismissal at the job. Truthfully, though, none of us as yet have an idea of how this outing happened. I think it possible that I'm thinking the same thing everyone else is, if he outed through a careless slip of the tongue, that's one thing, but if he did it with intention to hurt you, that's another. Also, if I hadn't been exposed to tons of gay literature, I would have had no idea about the concept of "outing," or that somebody doing it might be considered disrespectful or something that might make them feel violated. Seriously, right now in my head, I'm replaying the conversation I had with a friend many years ago. "But if I know, aren't you already out because I know?" "No!" "I don't get it. Out is supposed to be when people know you're gay. I know you're gay. Therefore you are out." "No, I'm out to you. There's a difference to being out to one or several people, or a group, but not publically out." "Oooooooh! I see." You may think that conversation sounds stupid, but seriously if I didn't read it or get taught it by a gay person, how would I know otherwise that that's how it works? Personal experience? Not very likely is it? I just interpreted "out" to mean that he had admitted it and was not afraid to hide it anymore, but we were still going to keep it from his parents and lay low around homophobic bullies, because duh. To me, the closest thing I had to compare it to was virginity. You keep that a secret from parents or "forget to mention it" amongst 70-year-old church ladies, but it doesn't change the status of your virginity. Come at it from the perspective of a straight person -- all other context aside, if you know the person is gay, it's pretty much the same as somebody admitting they fancy someone of the opposite sex you know. Letting that secret out depends on all sorts of social knowledge about the other person -- whether others in their social circle would approve, or whether they already know, or whether one person is already in a relationship, and so on and so forth. So for a lot of straight people, I think we just assume if you've not said anything about it, and are letting us know without much of a big deal, that you are out and open about it. Whether that's true or not is beside the point. Just like you can't expect the citizens of Finland to know about the social taboos of Peru, a lot of straight people are not going to see a big deal about outing gay people who are able to joke casually about their sexuality. On the other hand, if I saw you in an interaction where somebody said, "So, pick up any hot guys lately?" and it resulted in your eyes bulging and throwing worried looks around, I would get the point, sure. But it still might be confusing if I didn't know why you were okay with me knowing it. I'm not sure if I'm being very clear, but do you get what I'm trying to say? So my conclusion? When I read the words "feels pretty damn violated," I thought, "Really?" So there's a chance your boss has no idea. Let your boss know about how you feel about outing and calmly inform him of the reasons why you didn't appreciate it, but don't expect him to know the consequences as if he can instantly relate to things you may go through. It may require explanation. I think the bigger problem in the work place would be mixed signals if this continues for too long.