BronxWench

Oh, I am so enjoying this story, so never fear! I'm completely yours until the end.

The general punishment for being forsworn would be to have a small cut made in the belly, and a bit of intestine pulled through. The intestine is nailed to an oak tree, and the forsworn bastard is passed from hand to hand by a ring of Druids until his guts are wrapped around the tree like wool on a spindle. Ideally, the forsworn bastard doesn't die of shock during the procedure, and the cut is too small for him to bleed out, so he gets to stand there and hug the oak until he dies of exposure, or falls asleep and tears something vital out (along with the rest of his intestines) on the way to the ground. But given that Caiolfionn serves Arwn's Gift, I think it would be a very nice bit of closing the circle to have him sacrifice the Druid. And all that pretty blood is a lovely contrast to his whiteness. And yes, your characters are that compelling, m'dear.

Hm. That's a very tough call, to be honest. He's acted in his own best interests all along, regardless of the harm it's done to his people. Obviously, he's destroyed Valentina by tearing her beloved Aneurin from her, but it goes deeper. The Swynwr is not entirely the savior he's been painted to be, is he? He'll fight his own people as fast as he will the dy'ne, so Islwyn did the elves no favors there. Islwyn also did what no Druid should be allowed to do and live - he's forsworn. He broke his oath to Valentina, and he knew damned well who and what she was. Lying to Arwn's Gift is just a huge breach, right there. Now, with all that on his shoulders, how does Islwyn redeem himself? The only chance he has is if he betrays the Swynwr when it's least expected. He needs to undermine the Swynwr so definitively that it's unmistakable where his loyalty lies, and so it can be assumed he was acting against the Swynwr all along, as some sort of cocksucking catamite double agent. Either that, or he can break the Swynwr's hold on Aneurin with his own life's blood. Let him sacrifice himself, or better yet, let the Unicorn sacrifice him.

Heh, not like I have room to talk, since the daft one's a good six years younger than I am, but I'm being an incurable romantic and stumping for Tino.

This will be released to Amazon, and a couple of other outlets like All Romance, I believe. I don't know if Amazon will get it on the 16th, but I believe so.

There's feeling needed and there's just silly, and yes, my daft one can cross the line. I tend to let him have at it when it comes to electrical work, since he's got a very substantial background in that. I am the painter, since he's dreadful at painting, and we both tend to be decent at the rest of the chores. It's just cars. He's so stubborn about cars. I actually find it amusing most of the time, as long as we have the money to fix his little hiccups.

That's a very interesting point. When you're dealing with a fandom that began as books and has since become movies, there's going to be serious differences between the two. So, in a sense, the movies are AU themselves, and the original novels must be considered canon, I'd think.

For very good reason, I should point out. It's far too easy to crash a database like ours with too much access to the code, as was demonstrated a while back, before my time here. Given that we host over 9Gb of story data, that's a LOT to lose.

From Tosmail: Story Profile Upon looking at this, chapters 6, 9, and 10 appear to be cut off after the author used a ">_>" emoticon, since they end at ">_"

Spaces count, too. Frustrating, isn't it?

It's the field limitation. Right now, the summary and tags share a field, and that field has a 240 character limit. So, if you have a lot of tags, you won't be able to add much to the summary. There are two work-arounds. One is to post all your tags at the top of the first chapter. We don't count that as an author's note, and it gives readers a chance to know if they want to continue reading. The other is to tag each chapter for content. Both these work-arounds leave you the full 240 characters for your summary. Eventually, when we get there in the code rewrite, the tags will be in a separate field, and we might even be able to expand the size of the summary field. Hang in there!

Good question! I'm going to go with it being the easiest format, since it is a default setup on most word processing software. When I open a new Word document, or LibreOffice document, I can choose my style from the options in the ribbon menu, but both "Normal" and "No Spacing" are block paragraph formats. When I submit a manuscript to a publisher, they ask for block paragraphs, single spaced, no indents, Times New Roman 12 point typeface with a single line between paragraphs. When I get a final galley to read, each paragraph is indented and the line between paragraphs is gone, so a published manuscript, ebook or print, is going to have the indented format. I've seen authors indent paragraphs here, though. It can be done, either by the way you copy and paste to the text box (Copy from Word tends to preserve formatting best) or by manually editing in the Rich Text Editor, which can get tedious if it's a long chapter.

It's a shame - they were great stories! I can understand why she'd remove them, but it's a loss for those of us who enjoyed reading them.

If it's Azela, she removed all her stories, and there's nothing in her profile about putting them anywhere else.

Doesn't it? I'm so excited to be a part of the anthology, with some authors I greatly admire!

I just wanted to share this, in a bout of shameless self promotion:

I live in a neighborhood that is culturally and racially diverse, in a city that's the same, and I simply don't think about it. Being respectful is part of who I am. An example for me is the D&D games that went on around my dining table when Elderspawn was still in high school. There was such a cast of characters: a Muslim boy, a Hindu boy, a Russian agnostic, a Cuban-Irish boy, my Irish-Swedish kid, and an Italian kid with an allergy to Parmesan cheese, poor bugger. I'd make snacks for them, and it just never occurred to me until one kid mentioned it that I served things that were all halal, beef-free, and allergy safe. I called it being a halfway competent mom, personally. You just take everyone into consideration, and it works. So, when I write, I just do the same thing. I don't care about skin color, or faith, or gender. It's all about people, and putting them in a setting that challenges them, and seeing how they deal with it.

Now that's a discussion worth having, but you're right. It's not germane here. We'll have to take that one up at some point. And yes, please! Go appropriate, because I need my fix!

The Last Pure Human by TwistedHilarity

I still fail to see how JK Rowling's use of the notion of Skinwalkers is a form of whitewashing. I do, however, see it as both a patronizing exercise in people knowing better than the Navajo tribal elders, much like that group at the museum knew better than the kimono-clad Japanese-American women, and as an exercise in reverse racism. The only thing being whitewashed here is the motivation of the protesters, and I am quite certain there isn't enough calcimine in existence to lighten the stain of cyberbullying. There is no difference between what these people are doing, and a gaggle of preteen girls making another child's life a misery. Both are equally repugnant. This discussion has gone far afield of Clover's original inquiry, but to try and bring this around to the topic again, as writers, we cannot and should not allow the Internet and its flash crowds of delusional trolls dictate what we write. Culture is in the public domain, and it is not so sacred a cow that we cannot use it. If you believe otherwise, then yes, you are supporting censorship, and that is a slippery slope I cannot countenance.

I'm going to sit next to Chrissy on the "sick of the Internet" bench. Your definition of "whitewashing" is lacking outside the Urban Dictionary. It is this utterly inexplicable habit of redefining words that makes any rational discussion impossible, you know. It's disingenuous for you to say to me that I don't understand what you meant, or that I missed your point, because of course I will misunderstand, if you insist on redefining words. (I've growled at my child for the very same offense, I confess. I'm not interested in Internet slang and usage. My love affair is with the English language, with all its quirks and foibles, with its contrary rules and seductive cadences, with the way one can paint in measured syllables and capture the universe in the turn of a phrase.)

Criticism is valid. Excoriating someone on social media for daring to use a fairly well known and visible piece of cultural belief is bullying. It's not all that complicated. The right for these critics to voice their opinion must be earned by their presenting their criticism in a reasonable manner, and tweets are not it. Crowd-sourcing outrage is not it. Present some serious and credible reasons, but don't stamp feet and add hashtags as emphasis. The hypocrisy is most evident in the way these social initiatives pick and choose who they'll support. I'm pretty sure it's more offensive for the Navajo Nation to be thought of as needing to be defended by a social media campaign against JK Rowling than anything JK Rowling has written. It's quite condescending, isn't it, this assumption that the tribal elders can't step up and speak for themselves? And I would posit that it IS our responsibility to do the research before we jump onto the bandwagon, lest we find ourselves supporting someone, or something which turns out to be not what we thought it was.

JK Rowling isn't trying to own the concept of Skinwalkers, any more than Tony Hillerman was trying to own it in his novels. She didn't try to own any of the Eurocentric concepts she used in the first seven novels, either. So, let me be blunt. Is it only wrong because it's a Navajo belief? Because I haven't seen any Navajo tribal leader weigh in on this nonsense, and their word would carry a lot more weight with me than the Twitter feed of passionate youth who think everything is supposed to be "fair." Oh, and to clarify one point, I don't make a fuss because I'm pagan, and we understand that there is no one truth. I don't need to defend the witches. They're pretty good at it on their own. They're rational adults and can decide for themselves if they're offended. I on the other hand would be very happy if I could be spared the condescension of being told that I don't understand reverse racism when I see it.

It's impossible to write without tripping over that spectre of cultural appropriation, however. So yes, in a very real sense, the message is that we all need to only write that which we've lived. In which case, we've rung the death knell for literature, not that I think these strident, self-important, self appointed arbiters of "What Is Fair" actually care. As a parent, I am pleased that I've managed to raise a college student who can think on their own, without resorting to the protective coloration of an Internet cabal of bullies. And I use that word deliberately, because their language and actions are those of a group of bullies. They are no more interested in dialogue than they are in giving up one speck of their own privilege, privilege that affords them the ability to offer their sanctimonious judgments without regard to the harm they do.