I do not remember school ever being THAT bad.

(Note: Again, this is an article that was written a while back, during the Internet exclusion. Its subject is the rape of several teenaged boys at Maine West High School and its implications for society as a whole. Please pass it over if this kind of subject might upset you.)

Vorya Yarow’s letter to the so-called Autism Advisory Task Force

Vorya Yarow has written a letter to what is called the Autism Advisory Task Force. I do not know if this task force was the same bunch of delusional morons who brought us such great beats as the Combatting Autism Act or Helping Children With Autism (in Australia), but I will give them the benefit of the doubt this time and say they are not.

The process of character construction, a reflection

When I create a character for use in my own work, merely starting the process begins a lot of asking of questions. Probably the first and foremost question when writing any story is “how important is this character going to be to the story?”. In the cases of characters like Linula and Ruby Amelda, the answer is exceedingly obvious. They are the entire basis for the story, and in one case, the story is going to be seen almost entirely through her eyes. The first of the stories in which Linula and Ruby appear is in part a meditation on the fact that the things that make us different (one is from an abusive, self-righteous asshole family, the other a loving successful commercialist family) are just as important, if not more so, than the things that make us the same. So constructing these two characters is a painstaking process in which many questions have to be asked and answered.