So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to talk for a few minutes about what I’m trying to do with the main novel in my series, and why it terrifies me.
Most fantasy with a Big Bad and a Chosen One tends to get a lot of its conflict by the fact that the CO refuses the call to destiny. It’s a formula that works, so it gets used a lot. And I still remember the exact moment when I decided MY Chosen One wasn’t going to pull that shit – it was when I was reading The Dragon Reborn, and Rand literally ran away instead of sucking it up and doing his job. And then he spent basically the rest of the series being all “Woe is me! I am cursed!” and similar.
This chapter really highlights how dysfunctional Carolyn’s family is, and how fucked up FLDS doctrine is – and keep in mind, this is before Warren Jeffs took over and it got extreme.
Imagine getting the opportunity to vacation in Hawaii. Awesome! Only… you have to go with the husband you hate. Not as awesome. And he’s taking two of his other wives… so not awesome. And your husband doesn’t even bother to tell you and your sister wives that you’re going: he just kind of lets you find out on your own… even less awesome. And you’re pregnant and have horrible morning sickness. Now we’re pretty fucking far from awesome.
Merril usually isn’t interested in his wives other than Barbara, but in the FLDS, you have to at least keep up an appearance of treating all wives equally, and his tendency to only take Barbara on long trips is getting noticed. Because a woman can only get messages from God through her husband, it can damage his standing in the community if he appears to be failing at the task of keeping his family under control. Merril has tried to keep the illusion of equality going by keeping most of his younger wives pregnant. But that only gets him so far. So he figures he’ll knock down three long trips in one and haul three of his wives to Hawaii. Continue reading ““An Unmitigated Disaster” – Escape Chapter 15: Hawaii”→
****UPDATE: I got word that some of you are having trouble getting the Donate button to work. If it asks for an email addy, use dhunterauthor @ yahoo. Remove the spaces and add .com. Easy-peasy! If there’s a different payment service you’d like me to set up with, let me know and I’ll look into it. Thank you again, my darlings!****
You all simply rock!
Thanks to your generosity, Misha and I have all major bills covered for this month. We’re still needing to cover the rent, so if you can afford to contribute to our efforts, please donate today.
If you can’t afford to help out, no worries – we’ve all been there! But you can still help us by sharing my posts, and pointing people towards my other income streams: Continue reading “The ETEV Pledge Drive Continues!”→
Put on your wetsuits and grab your scuba gear, my darlings, cuz the creationists are about to shower us with ocean babble that just doesn’t hold water. Yep. We’ve reached ACE’s idea of oceanography. It’s sooo bad.
It starts with Ace not knowing why Earth is called The Blue Planet. The former bookseller in me can’t help but heave an exasperated sigh and say, “Cuz it’s this big and it’s blue.” (Industry in-joke, my darlings.)
You’ll be astonished to hear that the ACE writers are not, in fact, moon landing denialists, as Mr. Virtueson is happy to tell us that astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, looked at Earth, and saw lotsa blue. Because water. And that brings to mind some Bible verses, which he renders thusly:
“Psalm 104:1-6 states, ‘…O LORD my God, thou art very great… who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters…. Who laid the foundations of the earth…. Thou coveredest it with the deep as with a garment…”
When creationists use lots of ellipses, I tend to wonder what they’re hiding. In this case, it’s quite a bit of redundant crap that shows these verses should be taken metaphorically. It’s poetry, not a science lesson. But of course these dogma-dazzled drips can’t understand that.
Ace’s profound insight is that the Bible calls oceans the “deep” a lot, and wow, how deep are they? His dad tells us the Mariana Trench is super-dooper deep. Which, y’know, is great trivia and stuff, but does nothing to tell us about ocean depth in general. It’s helpfully illustrated with a drawing that is not at all to scale: Continue reading “Adventures in ACE XVIII: Creationist Nonsense of the Deep”→
Thanks to very generous donors, Misha and I are fed for the month and one of our major bills is paid – just in the nick of time! Thank you so much! You’re all amazing and we love you to bits.
We’ve still got to make rent and insurance, and we’re trying to cover expenses for next month as well. I’ll be running the fundraiser all week. If you can help out, we’d appreciate it so much! Even small amounts help.
All the priests of the LORD have now been consecrated, and God’s business (of burning up sacrificial animals on an industrial scale) can now begin. Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu are pretty keen, and so they get right to work. Problem is, they’re new on the job, and maybe they dozed off a bit while Moses was relaying God’s interminable instructions, because they fuck up and put the wrong incense in the censer. Oops! (Lev. 10:1)
It’s the kind of mistake any new employees could make. And it’s not like there was any training program or anything, just a really long, boring lecture with a lot of persnickety detail (and the occasional death threat). God should know how fallible human memory is – he’s the one who supposedly designed it, after all. If the servants of a kinder, more sensible deity with good anger management skills had screwed up, there would’ve been a deep cosmic sigh, and then a gentle booming voice saying, “Nope. No. Guys. You put the second best incense in. No, I know, it smells really nice, and honestly, A+ for effort, but you were supposed to use only the best. You know, my exclusive blend? Let’s put that stuff out and try again. And, y’know, maybe you should store them in different parts of the tabernacle so this doesn’t happen again, okay? Great.” And the unholy smoke would have cleared, and the holy fire burned, and everything would have gone perfectly smoothly after that.
But we’re talking about the LORD here, so you know he completely loses his shit.
He doesn’t give Aaron’s sons a chance to realize their mistake. He doesn’t give them a chance to correct it. He smells that “strange fire,” and he flies into an instant rage, and he burns those two boys to death right then and there. (Lev. 10:2)
God burns the boys all up for using the wrong incense. Image courtesy Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Moses, the snide little shit, tells Aaron, who just watched God burn two of his sons to a crisp, “Oh, hey, that’s what the LORD meant when he said ‘I’ll be sanctified by the folks who come near me, and I’ll be glorified by all the people.’” Yep. Cuz it sure is glorious to strike two poor noobs dead for bungling the incense one time. (Lev. 10:3)
And Aaron, the poor bereaved bastard, can’t say a word.
Moses has a couple of Aaron’s cousins carry the charred remains of his sons out of the camp. They haul them out by their miraculously unburnt tunics, like a couple of sacks of potatoes. Then he has the gall to tell Aaron and his two surviving sons that they’re not allowed to grieve. (Lev. 10:4-6)
Seriously. Imagine watching your children or your brothers die an agonizing, gruesome death, and then being told you are not to mourn them under any circumstances, because if you do, then your god’s going to kill you and then fuck up everybody else. Imagine being ordered to stay in the tabernacle – the exact place your loved ones were just brutally murdered, where you can still smell the smoke and see the char from God burning them alive – because if you step foot outside it, your loving God will strike you stone dead. I mean, there’s being a sadist, and then there’s being an unforgivable, appalling, torturing, sadistic asshole. I think we can all see which is the LORD. (Lev. 10:6-7)
The LORD has plenty of coarse, pure salt to rub in their wounds. He won’t even let them get drunk to help cope with the trauma. And if their grief gets to be too much, and having to bow down and worship and serve the murderer of their kinfolkbecomes a weight too heavy to be borne, and they sneak a sip of the ol’ 100 proof before entering the tabernacle? Well, then, God will kill them dead, too. So they’re ordered to stay stone sober, and teach this homicidal tyrant’s rules to everybody, forever. (Lev. 10:8-11)
Moses takes over lecturing for the LORD, telling them how they can and can’t eat the various offerings and sacrifices they’re to make, and then he goes looking for the goat of the sin offering. Only, it’s already been burnt. He loses his shit, and yells at Aaron’s surviving sons: “I can’t believe you fucked this up! You were supposed to eat it in here! That was for you to atone for everybody with! You didn’t even bring the blood in here! I mean, seriously, you fools, you should have eaten it in the holy place like I told you to.” (Lev. 10:12-18)
And poor Aaron blames himself. “If I’d done it right, and eaten the sin offering today, would the LORD have been happy with it?” And Moses, the snide little shit, is really pleased with himself for gaslighting Aaron into taking the blame for God’s murderous temper tantrum. (Lev. 10:19-20)
Victim-blaming asshole.
So you see, children, it’s very important to do everything exactly the way God wants you to, even if it’s the first time you’ve tried doing it. Because if you fuck up even the smallest detail, God is either gonna smite you personally, or he’ll burn your own flesh and blood to death right before your eyes – and then forbid you to mourn them.
That’s his idea of glory.
Are you really sure this abominable deity deserves our devotion?
There are songs that can put us back together when we feel shattered. Songs that inspire us to pick up and keep going, songs that give us hope. This one lately has become one of my go-tos. It’s beautiful in its own right. It’s even more beautiful when I need to hear a reminder that I’m actually not as damaged as I think I am.
It’s that time again, my darlings! I’ve no more pennies to pinch, and essential bills to pay. I keep my expenses down as far as I can, and I am looking for outside work to help stretch the pitiful few dollars I earn through writing, but I won’t make it without your help. If you enjoy my writing and have some cash to spare, please donate to keep me and Misha fed and housed. Even small amounts help!
If you can’t afford to help out, no worries – we’ve all been there! But you can still help us by sharing my posts, and pointing people towards my other income streams:
Alas, I have closed my Etsy shop due to their distressing habit of coming up with unanticipated fees, but if you want some fine Holy Schist with Guaranteed Garnets, shoot me a message at dhunterauthor at gmail and we’ll work something out.
Thank you again for all your help and support, my darlings. I couldn’t keep the words flowing without you!
I’ve finally pulled my categorized photos off the external hard drive, yay! Now we have lotsa material to work with. We’ll start with a metazoan, as we haven’t done one of those in half of forever.
One of the things I found most charming about Pacific Northwest beaches was the jellyfish washing up. There are little round clear ones that sparkle in the sun like a beach full of diamonds. And then there are these much larger, rarer red ones.
