Leaderboard

There’s going to be a lot of damage to repair, but I think Biden is the guy to do it, especially if the Senate remains in Republican control. He’ll be better at reaching across the aisle than Trump ever was.

My initial reaction is relief. Pure, utter relief. I’m not sure how long it will take to rebuild the trust we once had globally, or to even heal the breaches in our own country, but we have made a beginning.

Democracy in action is quite the sight. Don’t often get turnouts like that!

Generally positive! Healing! Fingers crossed it all works out.

I had wanted to respond to this a while back, but for some reason just didn’t. Let me remedy that now. I realize this might have been a purely hypothetical thing, but if you ever did want to have Duncan meet a friendly angel, I’d suggest the Archangel Jophiel, actually. Similar to Luzurial (down to wielding a flaming sword), but with the benefit of not having been made up by JayDee or me, and of having an actual Hebrew name! Jophiel’s name, יוֹפִיאֵל, translates as “divine beauty”, and as such the angel is commonly depicted as female. She’s listed by Pseudo-Dionysius as one of the seven archangels (along with Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Camael and Zadkiel), but I suspect she would have counseled against attempted deicide because Jophiel is the archangel of wisdom, understanding and judgment. She hasn’t shown up yet, but in the WitS universe, Jophiel is one of the seven vessels (the seven archangels), and her appearance is based on this stunning piece of art by Lorenz Basuki. I don’t know that it’s a specific archangel, but the first time I saw it, someone was using it for Jophiel, and the image stuck. Uh...I realize that sounded like I was pitching the character. Sorry if it sounded like I was pushing. Duncan’s got other things to do for the moment! He’s gotta talk to a spider. On the subject of Duncan himself, you mention that an angel, or archangel anyway, could see the damage done to him. Can others? Is it visible to his husband, for instance?

As a foreigner I think it will be nice to get read about something different in the news papers….the last week has really been an orgy of reporting of not yet final results from the US election. From another perspective I think it is great that US will finally try to become a new player in carbon free energy. The lasts years has IMHO given China far too much room to continue to gain geopolitical power from their clean energy investments. Europe and US need to get their act together and make sure that China does not control all the essential technology that will used for the next hundred years.

The level of rage when you’re writing in the zone and some fricking idiot on their phone smashes into a transformer and takes out the power of three blocks is just Now the powers out and the groove is gone.

Alright, going to be replying to a few things tonight, so let’s start here! While it does take place on Christmas, I wasn’t sure if I should put Meaningful Gifts into the anthology, since I know everyone kind of reads everyone’s stuff, and I didn’t want to force anyone to read a sibling incest story if they didn’t want to. You’ve been at this a while, so I interpreted your entry here as an indicator that either people here aren’t that bothered by that sort of thing, or that I shouldn’t worry so much about what I enter into the party. Either way, thank you! Not quoting the other line, but I have to say that the phrase “wild gorilla sex” is hilarious. I understand, and hope I didn’t come across as overly critical. I know how it feels to have something fall through or just not be ready in time (it’s why Fury of the Storm will be next Halloween for me!). And vampire! Not sure if I’ll ever get around to that, but it would be cool to do it eventually. For those who don’t know, Alfred Hitchcock once explained the nature of suspense like this: if you have a scene of two people talking in a room, and then a bomb goes off, that’s surprising, but not suspenseful. If you show the audience the bomb under the table, and then have the scene of two people talking, all while the clock ticks toward the eventual explosion, now you have suspense. The same basic idea applies, I think, to the twist here. If the audience doesn’t figure it out, then you have a surprise at the end. If they do figure it out, then you get a rather suspenseful sequence, and in this case you know the metaphorical bomb will go off, but you don’t know precisely when.

R.I.P Alex Trebek!