Story-Time Sunday: The Clash In the Courtyard

The Acalica stood still. It had stopped inside what had been a high-school just a week ago and now stood in the heart of the courtyard where students once ate lunch. In this same courtyard students had once talked about fantasy novels and video-games. A decade ago they eagerly chatted about a boy wizard, and a small Hobbit who journeyed across Middle-Earth. Now some of those very same people had survived encounters with monsters out of the darkest corners of mythology. In the exact courtyard where the Acalica stood, preparing itself for its final stand by absorbing power from the environment, a young group of non-humans worked with local witches to put an end to an imperialistic pack of werewolves in the days before myth stepped out of books and into Times Square. On November 8th 2010 the same group of non-humans in the same small corner of the courtyard openly discussed how to best deal with a wyvern one of them managed to trap in the local forest.

 

While it waited for the non-human who had detected it and began to silently and relentlessly hunted it down, it began to concentrate. It was angry, tired, and knew that the creature who was stalking it wouldn’t rest until one of them was dead. The Acalica wanted to end this drawn-out battle. And so it gathered energy from the sky above it. Storing it internally, while converting some of it into electrical energy.

 

On June 15th 2016, at about 9 in the afternoon, the strongest of the group of non-humans who had once been active in the courtyard created a “clone” of himself which was an illusion. At about 9:01 that same non-human, tutored in magic by legendary figures like the Witch of the Woods, sent his pseudo-clone out to the courtyard. The Acalica, in rage and in determination used all of his energy on internally stabilizing a single bolt of deadly lightning. When it felt ready it hurled the bolt of lightning at what it believed was its opponent. The Acalica was happy to have the bolt outside of its body, because stabilizing and containing the sheer electrical energy of a bolt of lightning is extraordinarily difficult, even for an Acalica. The bolt hit, passed through the illusion, and the illusion began to walk towards the Acalica. Which was terrifying. The Acalica (still ignorant to the fact that it had been deceived) had seen low-level gods at the very least have to take a knee if they were directly hit by Acalica lightning. The Acalica might have been pleased to know (under different circumstances, anyway) that had the real non-human been hit by the lightning, he would have been forced to stop moving for a second and absorb the lightning directly. For now, the Acalica was terrified and had begun running away under realizing that its opponent was the real deal. It didn’t get very far.

 

The spirit managed to get a few yards away before the real non-human lunged at it, his form an awkward fusion of “human” and “dragon”. The non-human was impossibly fast, lunging at least the length of half the courtyard in less than a nanosecond, evidently capable of moving at a speed comparable to the speed of sound. It was in fact faster than the speed of sound, which the Acalica discovered, as the sound caught up to it and in a local sonic boom destroyed the hearing of the Acalica. The dragon then rose his hand up and transformed it. It would have been beautiful to watch, if overseen by anyone who wasn’t about to die at the hands/claws of a silent dragon. The armor the dragon wore in his human form seemed to expand too quickly and shattered as the “hand” expanded and seemingly spontaneously grow a set of thick scales the color of lava. Each fingernail extended and gained a wicked looking point at the end. The transformation was quick too, happening in an instant, and an instant later the claw was brought down, slicing the throat, and face, of the Acalica. The Acalica only felt pain for an instant.
“Acalica. Down.” The dragon would say as he got up and walked away, speaking to a communicator built into his shirt collar. “I need a new gauntlet. Left hand.” He added, after a few seconds of individually moving each of his “fingers” on his left claw. “Heading home. I’ll have a full mission report for you tomorrow.” He said and then stopped speaking.

 

A/N: An Acalica is a Bolivian spirit. They typically appear as old men. They were thought to have powers and magic related to weather manipulation. In the universe I am creating these beings are especially hated, as they are thought to be responsible for the horrific natural disasters that occurred in rural parts of the world and claimed millions of lives, and kept emergency response crews from reaching people in need of supplies and rescue. In one specific incident in the mountains of Washington state, one is thought to be responsible for a series of landslides and forest fires which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and is known to be responsible for the death of an entire response team and news crew, thanks to a landslide it caused which killed all 15 people involved. The one that was just killed was not the same one responsible for that attack. It was a younger one who had immigrated to the United States due to the Bolivian government rapidly gaining the means to destroy spirits with both technology and the assistance of other local creatures. It had been informed that North Carolina had plenty of places it could appear and destroy. The creature that told it this didn’t let it know that Northern Oak, the place it had chosen was defended by 15 exceptional non-humans and was already well on its way to becoming a sanctuary for peaceful non-humans.

This is a small scale battle. It took about an hour to write. One of these days I am going to write and upload a large-scale battle, featuring multiple characters. I hope you’ll let me know what you think of that story, and of this one!

Abortion in Honduras

Why should abortion be legal? Because when it isn’t, the consequences can be dire. Honduras can confirm this.

 

In Honduras abortion has been totally illegal for years. Has that caused abortion to stop? The answer is predictable. No. According to a Honduran newspaper, La Prensa, as many as 80,000 abortions happen yearly. And that is because in Honduras an abortion-inducing pill can cost as little as 11 dollars or as much as 32 (in Lempiras, the cost is between 250-750). But these abortion inducing pills are dangerous, causing sterility, and occasionally even death due to misinformation about dosage sizes.

 

Some technical information: the pills that many Hondurans are using seem to be Cytotec pills, a medication given to people seeking to treat gastritis. These pills can only legally be obtained with a prescription but many pharmacies in Honduras do not ask for them, and according to the report on La Prensa it is even possible to obtain the pills via Facebook groups. Some clinics in the nation even request that a girl or teen get ahold of a Cytotec pill and consume it before they assist her, and they will just handle the remains of the fetus, as a method meant to minimize the legal risk they face, given Honduras’s attitudes (legally) to abortions.

 

It has been time to legalize abortion in Honduras for years (or at the bare minimum emergency contraception, so-called “plan B” pills which are also outlawed). This only further demonstrates that outlawing abortion is dangerous and does little to prevent abortions. If abortion is deemed unconstitutional/illegal and or criminalized further this will do nothing to prevent abortions. The report is proof that outlawing abortions only prevents SAFE abortions. Abortion, when done in safe conditions and when done properly is still a controversial procedure. But it being a controversial procedure overseen by professional doctors and men and women who have a track record of genuinely caring for their patients is infinitely better than women taking potentially dangerous and misused medicated to induce an abortion by themselves, quite possibly out of fear for their own lives (due to the possibly of being kicked out for being pregnant).

 

It is time that the Supreme Court of Honduras pays attention, and does the right thing. If governmental officials in Honduras care for the quality of the lives of young women nationwide they ought to move to decriminalize both abortion and emergency contraception. And then continue by working with educators, gynecologists, and activists to create a national curriculum of sex education which begins in a student’s first year, and continues until they graduate. As well as work to create ads and campaigns which increase awareness of sex education.

 

If Honduras actually wants to stop “back-alley” and or in-home abortions, they need to begin right now. Literally today. And one of the most important steps in this process is to decriminalize abortion. And then they need to work to create strict punishments for pharmacies and private individuals who sell drugs requiring prescriptions, without prescriptions. Or get rid of this system altogether. But this is a terrible situation demanding strict regulation.
If you want to read the report, check it out here and if you want to read a translation of it, click here.  

Would You Read?

Getting a little meta here. Let me know if you’d read a book set in this universe. Working on something like this. Been curious as to how people would react to it. Let me know!

The world was vastly different on May 4th than it had been on April 25th. In the space of about 10 days the world had been radically changed. Mankind was no longer alone. Not that they had ever been alone in the first place. The fighting started on April 25th and was mostly over May 3rd at about 11 PM. Fighting between mankind and “monsters” and between “monsters” and “monsters” was worldwide. In the United States the worst battles occurred in North Carolina, and in Washington D.C., but other terrible affected cities and states included Seattle, Salt Lake City, Vermont, and Ohio. But worldwide the damage was far worse. Vietnam was mostly uninhabited, aside from places where monsters and spirits now called home. A massive chunk of the U.K. was under water. Japan found Tokyo and Kyoto mostly wiped out. North Korea had been decimated and Seoul was still in the middle of a battle, with the ROK facing large numbers of inhumans coming from Incheon.

 

In some parts of the world, men and monsters forged alliances at an astonishing speed. This was most notably the case with Latin America, where politicians who were hybrids (often with inhuman mothers and humans for fathers) and the children of hybrids had already been in power. But most of the world saw entire republics be wiped out by titanic monsters, creatures like the deadly leviathan, or the massive chaos reptile “Apep”. Greece saw the Python, Honduras had to face off against the forces of Xibalba, but managed to survive thanks to the appearance of the Hero Twins like in myths of old. Ghosts appeared in Guatemala and in Australia. Canada faced the heroes of Inuit mythology. In some cases surprising declarations were made. In Japan the Yokai appeared and defended mankind. In the Middle East it was the forces of ancient gods who protected ordinary men and women. But when it was finally globally recognized that it was May 4th the worst of the fighting had settled down.
A week later, in a diner in Virginia, a “person” who looks human takes a seat.

What if Christians are wrong?

I am one of the administrators for the Secular Latino Alliance. I am also a writer on their Medium account. And I publish and comment on the Facebook page. So as expected I also read the other stories that end up on our Medium account. I wanted to share one today and get people to think about it.

The article doesn’t imply that believers are mentally ill. The title is almost clickbaity. Which makes me laugh, if I’m being honest. Also, the author of the article isn’t me, but another writer on the shared Medium account for the Secular Latino Alliance.

Also religion is not a mental illness. But it can be dangerous. It can and has been a contributing factor to repressive regimes, it can be used to demonize the mentally ill, to oppress those who don’t follow the same religion as those in authority, and can be used to even justify

What if believers are wrong? I mean obviously the majority of us on here (I’m including readers, so not just those who make articles) believe they are on some level, but I think that this is worth taking a second and actually thinking and talking about. What if all of the theistic religions in the world are incorrect?

Christians constantly want us to be afraid and to be scared that we are the ones who are wrong, but the reality is that they are about as likely to be wrong as we are. Sure we’re just a tiny bit more likely, because we don’t believe in their deity, but there are thousands of gods they don’t believe in. So what if they are wrong?

If they are wrong, would they feel remorse over the lives lost to Christian regimes? Would they apologize to the LGTBQIA community for consistently working to undermine their access to basic human rights and dignity? Would they apologize to atheists for threatening us with hell? Would they apologize for the centuries of the suppression of science, even when their own followers contributed to science historically?

I don’t think they would as a whole, despite the thousands that probably would on a personal level. But what do you think? Let me know!

Fallacy Friday Lives On (F.F. #6)

I want to get back into posting regular F.F.’s, so here’s to that. But today is once again a Fallacy Friday. In order to start things off again, I just want to start slow. We’ll only discuss one fallacy for today. I hope you don’t mind. As usual, the original source for this fallacy is right here. Let’s get started!

The appeal to rigor. This is an unusual one. It’s not a common one at all to discuss, despite the fact that examples can be found in plenty of places. If you want to think of a way to visualize this argument, think of that time that Trump roared on about killing the families of Islamic extremists. Now that’s an extreme example, but does that make this easier to understand? It’s a weird type of argument which appeals to people’s anger at certain “evil-doers” and appeals to basic/baser instincts in the audience. Some examples of it in Abrahamic religions could be when people enjoy the fact that according to Christianity “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Now to most many of these things sound like they shouldn’t be punishable by super death, but there are some who relish this. That could also be considered an appeal to rigor. This sort of mercilessness isn’t reasonable. Especially not forever.

How is this a fallacy? It implies that problems can ONLY or even be best solved by unrelenting force, or harshness of some kind. There’s no reason to believe this can be the case, or is the case, by default. But it is also, especially when applied to people, an over-extension of force. It’s not right to use unrelenting force or to act like you’ll do that, to people who have done nothing wrong. This is not a reasonable response to a rough situation, even if it feels like it is at the moment when the statements which are appeals to rigor are stated. There’s no reason to believe that unrelenting force and mercilessness will solve interpersonal conflict. And if we act like allowing that unrelenting force is a reasonable response, then we don’t do anything to prevent future situations of the same kind, even if we know that we can merely respond the same way again. It also assumes that mercilessness will solve whatever problem it is being used to try and solve in the first place. Oh and it oftentimes insults those who aren’t being “merciless”, such as in the Trump example, Trump claiming that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Any thoughts on this fallacy? I think it’s a real shame that it’s not being talked about as much as it ought to be. Especially politically. Doing things like demanding 100% deportation for any undocumented immigrant can be considered an example of this, given that at least some of the undocumented immigrants, in the United States and in other nations are children, teenagers, and young adults who were brought here when they were infants or very young children, and “sending them back” wouldn’t be good for them, and even possibly not good for us either. This is a fallacy that ought to be discussed more. I’d love to know what you think of this fallacy.

Let’s chat! If you like what I’ve got to say about certain topics, let’s chat on my page.

Updates: I’m back!

Oh hey there. I am just stopping by, to let you all know that starting next week I’ll be getting back to Mythology Monday’s, and to Fallacy Friday’s, so back to “business as usual”.

Over the past few weeks I’ve slowed down the number of posts that I’ve made, primarily because of my technical limitations. I had a very slow ASUS computer, which I didn’t particularly enjoy making posts on. I know have an HP Stream Notebook, which thus far is making writing a breeze. So I’ll be returning to my posts about Latin American mythology, fallacious arguments, and silly arguments. In the wake of the Reason Rally, which either just ended, or is going on right now, the atheistic community nationwide will be re-energized. I am hoping that we’ll come together in new and epic ways in the wake of this epic rally, and we’ll find new ways to make our nation (and the rest of the world) more secular. If you are at the Rally, let me know how it is/was!

I am truly hyped to be posting regularly yet again. Let’s come together in the wake of the Rally, and create a more inclusive and positive community!