XxX

UPDATE (05/22/2024)

Nothing earth-shaking. Updated my progress on the HP story. Also added a new story to my Super Favorites list (New Blood by artemisgirl).

XxX

UPDATE (02/26/2024)

Added a story to my Super Favorites List below.

XxX

UPDATE (08/03/2023)

I was going to place this in rant below about The Church vs. The Gay, but figured it ought to go here instead. Should have mentioned this earlier, but I can no longer call myself a Christian; I've felt this way for some time, at least a couple of years. There are just too many contradictions in the Bible (and too many horrible things happening), too many things wrong with the Church, and too many excuses from the Fundies that simply don't hold water. I don't feel it to be intellectually honest to hold the Angry Desert God in any kind of esteem when I know better. Is there an afterlife? Possibly. But if it involves the god of accepted Christian canon, I frankly don't want to have anything to do with it. If you need to be threatened with eternal torment to be a good person, you're not a good person. And you lack empathy. As a noted author once said [paraphrased] the only true sin is in causing harm to another person needlessly. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.)

XxX

Update (05/16/2023)

Just doing a little housekeeping. Added a link to Robert Teague's profile. Corrected the number of Highly Recommended Tales.

My Essential Tremors have gotten worse. Had an MRI on my brain last week (to see if there is one, I guess). Got a follow-up with the neurologist a week from Thursday. I would like to be able to work until I'm 67.5 (that bumps up the SS payment a good bit) but that's another four years off, and might not happen. I've already lost the ability to write legibly some of the time. I used to do calligraphy. I was pretty good. But no more. Tempus fugit.

My mother got COVID again. She did not fully recover from it this time (she didn't FULLY recover the first time). She is forgetting things she's known for six or seven decades, and can't get the words she wants to move from her brain to her mouth. She can't tend her flowers anymore (she's the walking embodiment of STUBBORN, and refused to believe she couldn't work the way she did 40 years ago) and that's put her in a funk. She's fallen at home twice, and couldn't get back up without help (she wears a Life Alert now). My sister's home is set up already for her to move in if she wants ... but she won't. My brother and sister and I are doing what we can, but this is looking like that last hill on the road. Pretty sure she won't be voting in the next election.

XxX

Update (02/23/2023)

I added a story to my Highly Recommended Tales list (Watch). It is in places one of the funniest stories out there.

XxX

Update (07/12/2022)

I added a story to my Highly Recommended Tales list (Triwizard Tales).

Not a whole lot else going on. Oh, my elder son got engaged. We're going to be traveling out to Colorado some time soon to visit them and meet the girl irl. Facetime is nice, but ...

Up to ~336,000 words on the HP story. The characters have laughed at my outline.

XxX

Update (02/21/2022)

Let me just concur with those who say getting old is not for sissies. It's like you wake up one day and something new hurts and after a while you realize it's just going to hurt. Like, your various body parts are haranguing each other with, "Oh, you think that's bad? Watch this!" Gets old, it does.

My sister & BIL both got COVID, but aside from feeling like Absolute Pure Roadkill for a week and a half, they're okay. They recovered. Mom is doing at least as well as can be expected for someone who's 84, and aside from a slight case of "COVID Brain" where she knows the word but can't transport it to her tongue, she's fit. My wife and I have both had our boosters (Pfizer). We wear masks when we go out. We social-distance. And we haven't caught anything in a year. It's kinda nice. I think I'll keep it up.

Also, updated the word count on my HP story. The characters have taken over the keyboard again.

Happy President's Day!

XxX

Update (09/27/2021)

I added a story to my Highly Recommended Tales list.

Also, though my Mom had a terrible time with COVID for the better part of two months, and almost died, she has recovered and is nearly back to her fighting weight.

XxX

Update (04/04/2021)

For anyone reading, my 83-year-old mother was hospitalized today with COVID-19. She's not doing great.

All thoughts, prayers, positive energy, candles, or whatever else you can think of for her spiritual support will be greatly appreciated.

XxX

Update (09/17/2020)

Well. Since my last post here, the World has been FedExed to Hell on a greased ramp. Floods. Fires. Tornadoes. The freaking PLAGUE. Murder hornets. Record-demolishing heat. So many hurricanes, we're running out of names. And all watched over by a clown-town "Administration" that seems less interested in protecting the citizens than they are in deconstructing our Republic so they can install their very own Dear Leader-for-Life. And that's just in the USA. Brazil is on fire, too, and their COVID numbers are worse than ours (also, their Idiot-in-Chief is worse than ours, believe it or not). Major chunks of the Antarctic ice shelf are falling off. There are humanitarian crises on every continent.

Yippee.

We need to reboot and debug 2020. It's got a virus.

Howsomever, I've been able to keep working on the HP story. I have hopes that I can begin posting by the end of the year. We'll see.

Also, I found where "Threnody" had been hiding, and put the link down at the bottom of my "Super-Favorites" list.

Stay safe. Be well.

XxX

Update (02/25/2020)

Just a quick bounce to let you know I've added hot links to my Super-Favorites List below

XxX

Update (02/16/2020)

I wanted to let those know for whom it may be important that FFn lost one of its better angels on the ninth of last month. Sue Ratkowski (grrlgeek72) succumbed to cancer two and a half weeks after being diagnosed. She was instrumental in getting me started in the Frozen fandom, and I will miss her deeply, her thoughtfulness, her sharp wit, her courage. Though we never met in person, I considered her a close friend. Rest well, Sue.

Also, on a much less emotional note, I learned that one of my favorite Authors changed her handle from JEGlass to Nerd-is-Frozen, and noted the fact in my Super-Favorite Stories list.

Still working on the HP story when time permits.

XxX

Update (12/25/2019)

I have finished Cross Purposes. Finally.

Today, I pulled out the HP story I'd been working on very sporadically. I guess taking time away from a story is good from an editing standpoint, because I realized I had a major plot element out of sequence.

XxX

XxX

Today is 22 June 2019. After a decade-long illness (kidney cancer and subsequent failure) and eight months in Hospice, my father departed this life on the first of the month. I had a week of bereavement leave, and spent it in support of my Mom, who is handling widowhood a lot better than I thought she would.

It so happened I was visiting their place when he died. Honestly, I think he wanted to wait until we were all together so he could see us one last time before he let go. He hadn't eaten anything (I learned) in four days, and started having trouble breathing. I was holding his left hand and my sister his right when he drew his final breath, with Mom and my brother at the foot of the bed.

I'm still processing this. Watching the light die from my father's eyes is a thing for which I simultaneously feel privilege and unease; feeling his pulse slow and stop is something I've written about, but never before experienced. I'm terribly, terribly glad I was there at the time, but how I FEEL about it changes over and over and over. I don't believe a day has passed since when I haven't thought at least once, "I wonder what Dad would say about that."

He was 87. He had a good run. He still had his sight and hearing and mental acuity. But he'd been in moderate-to-severe pain for the last six decades because of a back injury, and was really, really tired of it. He was spiritually prepared, and looked to death as a release and a freedom. If anyone can be said to have had a good death, he did. For that matter, on my previous visit two weeks earlier, he was still flirting with Mom. They were married for 62 years as of mid-May, and were just as silly-in-love as they were in their twenties.

I've spent nearly every other weekend since the beginning of last October taking the five-hour-one-way trip to their place. There's been plenty of time to get used to the idea of him dying. I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible in the days he had left (which turned out to be QUITE a few, thankfully) and offer any help I could around the place. I'm fairly handy, so Mom put me to use regularly. But, as you may imagine, that put a huge crimp in my "free" time, and cut down drastically on my opportunities for writing. I've picked at "Cross Purposes" and the HP story I have planned next, but never really had the hours to string together to do any serious word-smithing. Hopefully that will change now.

RIP to O.C. Jolley (11/24/31 - 6/1/2019)

You will be dearly missed.

XxX

XxX

Hello, All ...

It's been brought to my attention -- a few times -- that when I took down "Gone Wylde", I didn't leave any sort of link for those (very, very rare readers) who were interested in the tale. The thing is, those who are interested seem to be extremely interested, and weren't happy with me.

I'd finally come to the decision to remove it from FFn because ...
1] It was based on someone else's independent story about a character from an obscure anthropomorphic webcomic, and
2] I realized it wasn't really fan-fiction in the same sense of most other stories on the site, and
3] it got little in the way of notice, not being connected with a recognized fandom, and
4] it was skewing my statistics due to its size and lack of traffic.

So here's the deal: I have the entire story in PDF format. I will be happy to email a copy to anyone who wants one, with the caveat that you must not reproduce it in any fashion without my written consent. I've done that five times thus far, with no complaints. If you fancy a copy for yourself, just say the word. Be warned, though, of a few facts:

-- It is STUPID long, some 700,000 words.
-- It is a furry tale. (Yes, I realize there is a lot of baggage associated with the furry community, but none of that applies to GW. It's a story about a vixen who gets one last shot at ... well ... a lot of things. Success. Joy in her career. Love. I've been told it would make a great manga series from that respect.)
-- I promised Wendy a happy ending when she first agreed to work with me on this project, and I meant it. That may not be obvious at a few places in the story, but it's true.
-- I play fast and loose with the fourth wall, in that I have semi-regular meetings with the characters, who occasionally will refer to the script in-story.
-- This was the first real writing project I ever undertook, so the early chapters are not as polished as those that came later. If you can stick to it through the fifth chapter, you'll probably be hooked.

So if you have an issue with any of those points, don't bother trying to read it. I'm not publishing it anywhere else at present, but (at my brother's urging) I'm looking into re-writing it as a human-based original work. That might or might not ever happen.

Carry on.

XxX

XxX

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
-Muriel Rukeyser, poet and activist (15 Dec 1913-1980)

XxX

"It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me?
I gave my life to become the person I am right now.
Was it worth what I paid?"
-Richard Bach

XxX

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
-Dr. Seuss.

XxX

“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it,
I don't feel I should be doing something else.”
-Gloria Steinem

XxX

XxX

Hello, all -

NEW STUFF:

2017 June 25: GLEEEE! Someone new has decided to jump into the Benny's Breakfast House pool and splash around a bit. Check out gaybaconprincess's new series here!

XxX

2017 April 28: Good grief. It's been five months since I updated this. Slack, Con, really slack. Well ... I've just today posted a Kim Possible drabble. No relation to my other KiGo AT ALL. Also, I'm working on the next sequel to "Meltdown", which is coming along approximately to my satisfaction. Additionally, my daughter is officially engaged, with the wedding set for about a year from now. ... What else ... Okay, "Gone Wylde" is being completely re-written and will eventually, should I live so long, get published as a trilogy. Some of you already knew that. ... Aaaaaand ... I guess that's all. Happy reading!

XxX

2016 September 30: Got another "Frozen" story in the can. "The Guardian" is Kristoff-centric, exploring the ramifications of what it means to have been adopted by trolls.

XxX

2016 August 22: I just found out, to my sorrow, that on 30 June one of our preeminent fan-fiction writers, Robert Teague, succumbed to brain cancer. His interests covered several widely variant fandoms, and he wrote beautifully in all of them.

This is his FFn site: Robert Teague

I'm going to go back and read his stories again.

He had collaborated with Ælfstangard on a few stories, and it was he who alerted me to Robert's passing.

I just thought everyone should know.

XxX

XxX

Served Cold --
Fandom: FROZEN
Genre: Family/Horror/Tragedy.

My Muse gave me this ... thing ... but I didn't want to write it ... but she made me anyway. It is now finished, for what it's worth. This story, the darkest thing I've ever written, is Weaseltown's long-delayed response to having trade cut off, and Elsa's response to their actions. Things go south. Badly. This has NOTHING to do with any of my other "Frozen" stories. Nothing at ALL. Thank God. I'm not (NOT!) going to post it on FFn because it violates the Guidelines so egregiously, but I have posted it on AO3 and deviantArt. Anyone who wants a private copy should PM me. And God help you.

XxX

HOT LINKS

There are two links that used to be here. I erased them when I cleaned up the Profile, but I've been reminded that I referenced them in "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem".

This one is for a story from 100SilverWings which serves as Chapter 4: Second Fiddle in the Scheme of Life

This one is for a story from ej8012 which serves as Chapter 9: Wicked Kyd and Silent Jericho

So now it's fixed.

NEW: gaybaconprincess has joined the fray! Check out her story, Diversity, that picks up after the end of NSNSNP.

XxX

XxX

For those who don't have the time to sift through the more than 800 stories in my Favorites list, I am offering this MUCH shorter version of Highly Recommended Tales. It will change periodically, more or less whenever I feel like it. But know that these are stories that have moved me or have changed me, that truly excel in some way. I will list only one story per author, although in some cases they represent a series. They are arranged in approximately descending order of length. These stories run the gamut from joy to damnation, from wistfulness to hilarity, but TEND toward drama.

New Blood by artemisgirl 1,391k

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong 661k

For the First Time in Never by Nerd-is-Frozen (formerly JEGlass) 316k

Escape by SingularOddities 314k

Magic Makes Fools by CrunchDeNumbers 265k

Watch by Rorschach's Blot 259k

Face On the Milk Carton by dyslexic penquin 209k

Tangled Up in Green by Poetheather1 184k

Winter of Discontent by Morgaine2005 173k

The Green Girl by Colubrina 150k

Breaker by Shire.Conspire 146k

Songs of Ice and Snow by thefireplanet 139k

Re-Educating Miss Roth by Japhith 136k

Most Wanted by Sobriety 120k

Alone, Together by Failte200 114k

The Unlikely Heroes of Arendelle by Lindstrom 91k (link broken, author no longer appears in search, will try to find)

Marrow by Rack 90k

What You Don't Know by Airplane 88k

Coincidence and Misunderstandings by Silently Watches 71k

just this heart with much too much to share by ProfessorSpork 56k

The Saving People Thing by Souen11

Once Upon A Time in Arendelle by stillslightlynerdy 50k

The Spare by grrlgeek72 46k (May you rest in peace, Sue.)

Ending the Curse by bholley 42k

Clandestine by SepticMind 41k

Talking in Her Sleep by Determamfidd 39k

Triwizard Tales by Clell65619 38k

Women's Work by Cke1st 34k

Madness Does Not Always Howl by Khaleda 29k

Embracing the Second by ptahaegyptus2 24k

Cold by temporaryinsanity91 16k

The Tale of a Fateful Trip by yorickjones 16k

War of Angels by The Aberrant One (series removed because a Voice Actor got pissy ... this one's dead, Jim)

Dead Letters by Krahae 8k

Pen Pals by Moczo 8k

Words I Never Heard by robert3A-SN 5k

Bow Chicka Wow Wow by Zombie Dino 4k

One Man's Junk by Star of Airdrie 3k

A Bird's Song by counterpunch 1.5k

Proper Conduct by Anysia 1.3k

Well ... that's 38 36 37 38 of them, which is more than I'd intended, but there are just so many good ones in my Favorites list. It's tough to choose. Also, I have intentionally left out the genre because that MIGHT lead you into a new one. Represented are "Frozen", "Gilligan's Island", "Harry Potter", "How to Train Your Dragon", "The Incredibles", "Kim Possible", "Tangled", and "Teen Titans". (One which had been on the list, "Threnody" by July Storms, is no more. It is now on AO3 at https : // archiveofourown . org/ works/ 1491394)

XxX

XxX

My Position on Reviews:

Now, pray do not take this wrong, but here on FFnet we authors post our work for all to see. We do it for free. We expect no remuneration. In fact, the only coin we desire is feedback, and we DO desire that. If we make a mistake, we expect to be told.

If our writing stinks, we would HOPE that someone would be kind enough to point out ways in which it could be improved. ("Hey, those punctuation keys are NOT included on the computer keyboard by accident. Try them out. You won't regret it!")

If the writing is good, so much the better. Say so! Even one line is better than nothing. ("Enjoy your work." or "Good story! What happens next?" or "I just don't get this. You should go learn to knit.") Silence is the hallmark of apathy, and apathy has no place in this community. Speak up! You have a voice! Use it!

This was not intended as a rant or a begging session. The presence or absence of reviews is not going to color my approach to the story one iota. I am writing because I have to. My Muse stands behind me with a riding crop and applies it liberally if I so much as slow down, Real Life intrusion notwithstanding.

But, please, My Friends! Listen!

You are depriving yourselves of a hand in the creative process every time you pass up the chance to review! Seriously! If you want to get better as a writer ... hey, write reviews! You could do worse. And you may even strike up a new friendship. I always respond to the reviews I get, and have frequently had other authors respond to mine ... and believe me, I am NOT SHY about leaving reviews on the stories I read! You can meet the coolest people that way.

Try it!

XxX

XxX

STORIES IN PROGRESS

Harry Potter and the Confluence of Magic. Yeah, yeah, I got bitten by the HP bug. Sue me. But I promise you one thing: this story will be FINISHED before I post one syllable. I've learned my lesson. This is my first foray into the HP fandom. I haven't seen anything like this before (and I've read several hundred HP stories through, and browsed several thousand) so we'll see where it goes. I'm currently 361,000 words into it. Maintaining continuity over that stretch is a pain.

XxX

XxX

STORIES ON HIATUS

Nine-One-One. Teen Titans story. This one is the sequel to "Ricochet". I'm going to try getting the whole thing written before beginning posting. Two and a half chapters done at present.

Slices of Saturday. Since this is a mostly-unrelated-vignettes piece in the mold of "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem", it could really end just about anywhere. But there are a few more scenes I'd like to add, so I might get to work on it in what laughably passes as my spare time.

XxX

UPCOMING PROJECTS

Working Title: Temptation (Kim Possible)

A new Kim Possible story. Shego gets recruited by a very well-funded mercenary group. Then they turn their attention to Kim ...

Working Title: Subterfuge (Frozen)

The sequel to "My Glove". The King of the Southern Isles wasn't happy about Hans's death ... until he thought of a way to turn it to his advantage. The apple did not fall far from the tree.

Working Title: Partings (Frozen)

A sequel to "Cross Purposes". Elsa is not immortal. Morana was certain of that, much to the Queen's relief. That doesn't help much, though, when everyone she cares for precedes her in death. This one is already heavily outlined.

Working Title: Coincidence (Frozen)

Family/Drama. This is completely separate from all my other Elsa-based stories. It's near-fully outlined, so this one might actually get written. The story is told almost entirely in the form of flashbacks. Elsa, now 35, happily married, and with her sixth child on the way, attends a trade conference in Brussels where she runs into Hans. They have a tense, but necessary conversation.

Working Title: Undertow (Teen Titans)

Cyborg-centric. This story will explore the biomechanical interface and how it affects Vic's mental stability and his view of himself. Also involves an original character.

Working Title: Lost (Teen Titans)

Jinx-centric. How does the city girl fare in the wilderness? May be primarily humor.

Working Title: Heterodyne (Teen Titans)

This will be the sequel to "Bespoke". The first of what is looking to be a few.

Working Title: Specialization is for Insects (Teen Titans)

This will be the sequel to "Enemy of My Enemy", if it ever gets off the ground.

XxX

XxX

Information concerning important stuff about "Transition":

Here is some back-story. What happened to Jinx in Chapter 9 of Transition is similar to what happened to a friend of mine I knew in college. She was older - early teens - and some of the other details were different, but a cult was involved, and she was raped, and her family didn't stop it when they could have. Instead of going to live on the streets, she was placed into a foster home and eventually adopted by that family, and although she was still in therapy when I knew her some seven or eight years later, she was dealing with it positively. Nevertheless, she had a sarcastic, biting, caustic wit that could cut to the bone if she felt like it. I tried to adapt that to Jinx's character, but I'm not sure how successful I've been.

Eh, Jinx's situation is, to understate the case somewhat, a bit different.

Yeah.

And now we come to the question of why this is being done at all. For that you need a little of my back-story. (For reference, this was written in September 2010.)

For most of my life I was a practicing Fundamentalist Christian of one stripe or another, predominately Southern Baptist or Presbyterian Church in America. Tack on whatever emotional/mental baggage you want to; most of it will probably be correct to one degree or another. I was satisfied in my own opinions (which I'd been spoon-fed practically from birth) and comfortable in my own insular little circle (which closely resembled a medieval keep). Like most people of that ilk, whenever I was confronted with evidence that ran counter to my beliefs, I would either ignore it or twist it around until it did fit - sort of - or maintain that the evidence was flawed and therefore invalid. Though I find that mindset maddening now, it was emotionally a very secure place to be, at the time.

I had a good friend in college who came out as gay just after graduation. He met someone, fell in love, and they became partners (no gay marriage at the time). After a couple of years, he was going to be passing through my town and called to ask if they could drop by. I was less than reasonable. He was very hurt. And we did not communicate for the next eleven years.

One October (as people are known to do from time to time for reasons of vanity) I was crawling the web, having googled myself to see where my stories came in on the list, and came across a reference that gave me pause. I followed the link, and found myself on my old friend's home page. He looked happy, he and his partner. He was living in Savannah. He studied genealogy, and had a website for it.

I believed at the time - and still do - that things happen for a reason. I had been getting more exposure to certain concepts that I'd simply dismissed out of hand for a long time, but that were starting to make a disturbing amount of sense. What if "being gay" really wasn't just a choice? What if genetics did have something to do with it? What was my obligation to my friend, now that I knew how to contact him? Should I call him? Leave a message on his forum? Send him an email? Or should I even call him at all? What, after all, would I say to him? Does a mummified apology mean anything, really? I waffled. Everyone fears rejection, and I had lots of reasons that he might reject my overture. But I thought about it A LOT over the next few days.

The Following Thursday I was trying to find a rake to gather leaves from the lawn and couldn't locate one. So I went to Big Lots to buy one. They didn't have one either ... but I ran into my old friend. Right there in Big Lots, in a town 500 miles from his home. I recognized him, but he didn't recognize me (I'd gotten even uglier over the years, and wasn't wearing my iconic beard at the time). I decided that this was not a coincidence, went back to him and said, "Hello ..."

And it worked out a lot better than I was afraid it would. He was very gracious. Turns out he was in town visiting a friend ... who lived just down the block from me! I invited him to the house, and he came over that evening. We talked, he and my wife and I, for hours. I learned a lot.

That was a decade ago. (Yes, I know I'm dating myself, but I don't care. I'm a geezer. Deal.)

Fast-forward to 2006. My daughter, who was a Junior in high school, had a friend whom I will call Steve. They were very close. Steve's mother was (is) a dyed-in-the-wool, spittle-flecked, raving Fundamentalist. His stepfather thought all religion was bullshit and was (is) one of the most egregious assholes it has ever been my misfortune to meet. Steve had fought against his natural inclinations most of his life. He had started feeling attractions to other boys by age nine. He tried to "pray away the gay". He tried reparative therapy (on the sly). But none of it worked; he couldn't be "fixed" because he wasn't broken in the first place. He couldn't deny who he was, and when he was seventeen he finally stopped trying. He told his mother, and asked her not to tell the stepfather, but she did anyway because she is one of these 'shadow-personalities' who can't think for herself and does whatever her Ogre of a husband tells her to do. Well, The Ogre immediately made life hell on earth for Steve. After a week of constant bashing, Steve was given thirty minutes to "clean his shit out and scram for good". He was seventeen, still a minor, and still in high school, but that didn't matter to the The Ogre. So Steve, not knowing what else to do, called my daughter in a panic. She called me. I got my truck, drove over to Steve's house, helped him gather up his stuff, and brought him back here.

He's been with us now for most of the last five years. He's almost ready to graduate from the local college with a degree in Psychology. After he moved in and I got to know him, and learned a little more about the whole "being gay" thing, we (mainly my wife) started doing some serious research on the topic. We (mostly she) read as much as we could find of the latest studies. What we discovered is that:

A] Homosexuality is found in nature ... all over the place. There is nothing 'unnatural' about it. In one species of monkey, apparently all the females are lesbian. The males have to force them to mate, and the females mate constantly with each other. About 90% of some species of giraffes are gay, with the males preferring to mount other males exclusively. And it is possible, by manipulating certain conditions prior to birth, to predetermine the sexual orientation of rams.

B] There is no "choice" involved. Sexual orientation is present at birth in the majority - the great majority - of humans. Genetics have somewhat to do with it, but the primary factors appear to be related to the hormonal make up of the amniotic fluid. Gays and lesbians (actually, anyone not at the exclusively-heterosexual end of the spectrum) make up around 10% of the population, at all times and in all cultures. It just happens. Deal with it.

C] There is no Great Evil Gay Agenda. Their "agenda", if you want to call it that, is a deep desire to be left the hell alone so they can get on with their lives. Secondarily, their agenda is to be treated with the same respect that non-gay humans are treated with. Most state laws don't.

D] Apparently there is a connection between being gay and possessing some sort of artistic talent. I'd say they're just naturally fabulous. ;-D

So. This presented me with a dilemma. If the science was accurate, and I believe it is, then there is a very large, very important piece of dogma that I'd been taught by my church which was just incorrect on its face. Some further study on my part led me to understand that Jesus never condemned anyone for being gay. In fact, one of the telling incidents in the Gospels concerned His healing of a sick servant who was, by any contemporary measure you'd want to use, the gay lover of the centurion who came to ask for the healing. And Jesus praised the centurion for his faith.

The logical progression here? If the church was wrong about homosexuals, what else was it wrong about? You see my concern?

The outcome of all this, after about a year's worth of study and meditation and agonizing over things, is that my wife left the church and became a sort-of-kind-of-in-some-respects Wiccan. Pagan, certainly. She got a big ol' "mad" going at the church and told them to kiss off. I haven't done that, and have no intention of doing it in the future. That being said, I can't in good conscience worship with a congregation that firmly believes what I know to be false. While I don't attend church at the present time, I would if I could find one that was welcoming and affirming to gays. I really think that my wife tossed out the baby with the bathwater, but that's her choice. We are all free moral agents, and we all make our peace with the Almighty in our own ways. So, I'm a Christian, but not a "Christianist" (as one of my wife's gay blog-buddies describes them). You know the type. So do I, having been one before. So does Steve. He went to his youth pastor shortly after he came out, and explained the situation to him, and was basically told to go away and not come back.

The religion of love and forgiveness, right? Yeah, right.

So Steve is a pagan now, too. Yeah, I've got a Wiccan altar in my home, and a small coven that meets in the back yard to hold their rites. Steve now channels a number of the well-known spirits on a regular basis. I've talked to Apollo and Circe and several others. Some of my former friends from the church are afraid I'll burn in hell for this (and my Holy-Roller, Church of God next-door neighbor is dead sure of it) but somehow I don't think so. (UPDATE APRIL 2016: That coven thing sort of fell apart, so no more rituals or altars or anything. My wife has lots of questions with darn few answers, and she's okay with that.)

As my daughter says, "Do you think God will condemn me for loving, or condemn you for hating?" OH! That's another thing. My daughter's pansexual (at least that's the tag she's most comfortable with). And non-binary. She doesn't really fit well into any of the standard categories. Sometimes she feels like a guy in a girl's body, and sometimes she feels very girly. Her mother and I have no problem with that. She's "good people" as they say around here, and a joy to any group she happens to join. We love her, and whether she ends up with a guy or a girl (or a very open-minded couple) it won't matter. (Update as of April 2018: She and her boyfriend, a trans-guy, wedded this month! Happy life to them both.)

So. My daughter turned me on to Harry Potter fanfics, which led to Hermione-Draco fics, which led to Hermione-Fleur fics, and then I discovered fanfics based on The Incredibles, and ended up writing a novel of my own (Inviolate, which may be found below) that serves as a sequel to the movie. Then my daughter informed me that all these girl-on-girl relationships were called yuri and were very popular (and I could see why). Then I looked into yuri pairings involving the Teen Titans ... and here we are. My Muse is a frantic little thing, and has supplied me with enough material to keep my free time at a vanishingly small minimum for the foreseeable future. I've been writing for almost fifteen years now, and the overburden of ideas is deeper today than it has ever been before. What I lack is the time to explore all the things I want to write about. It is a sadness.

But I'm making time for Jinx and Raven. They deserve it.

I just felt this needed to be said.

- Concolor44