Loved this essay and love your tiny feminist act at the end. I agree - it has a feeling of being slightly whimsical or tongue-in-cheek, but also powerful.

This deserves more stars for cleverness. Bravo.

when it turned out he didn't even actually have grades in his gradebook and had made them up based on how he felt we did.

Jumping on the bandwagon to say I worked with a couple of female computer science engineers, one of whom was a former cheerleader and another of whom was a salsa dancer. They were both regarded as among the smartest people in our company and everyone thought it was awesome that they had these extracurricular interests…

This. And it's not even patients needing expensive treatments. It's patients needing treatments that are far, far cheaper for the exact same item/service in other countries, because those governments watch the check and put a big OH HELL NO stamp on overpriced healthcare. Here, the "free market" says the hospital can…

I'd just repeatedly pretend that they were asking serious questions.

Why do these not have 5,000 more stars? I looooooooooove them.

I hated WoT from the first book, and made it to maybe book 3 before I decided that nothing was going to change and the series wasn't for me.

That's an interesting point about love triangles. Taken from another perspective, ASoIaF is nothing but love triangles (and quadrangles), but GRRM sells them in the execution because it's never just puppy love between three equally attractive teenagers; there's always some fucked-up power dynamic that ruins it for…

The Name of the Wind. (Spoilers ahead.) First time I read it, I thought the writing was trying too hard, I hated the protagonist's reaction to every female character he encountered (pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, delicate and damaged so must not touch, pretty), and the lovers speaking in…

Scrolled endlessly through the comments looking for other people who thought that paragraph was fucked up. Thank you.

Amen. "Sarcastic sense of humor" and "somewhat cynical world view" can both fuck right the fuck off. I'd rather date an actual golden retriever than listen to you explain how you're too honest to be kind and too smart to be happy.

I think Jezzies know that there's no real solution to the problem of men beings creeps online. That's why new websites claiming to have the solution are treated with such derision - not because they should be solving the problem another way, but because bad male behavior online can't be solved with an app.

Jesus, those people. Yep. Obviously the founding fathers looked into the future with their crystal ball, saw the invention of the automobile and the internet, and consciously decided not to include either in the Constitution. They also got it completely right on the first try and absolutely no one should ever try to…

I know someone who likes to go into the woods with his buddies and shoot a tree until it falls over. Automatics are apparently better suited to this type of endeavor. Aside from that, the only practical use I can think of is a stockpile for the zombie apocalypse.

Sadly, I think you're way overestimating their concern for women.

You're welcome! You can do it, you really can. Best of luck!

Glad to hear it! Like I said, so far it hasn't backfired on me - and several guys have written back just to say, "Thanks for letting me know," so I think it's appreciated more often than not.

Any time! Setting realistic goals is the only thing that keeps me from going insane while writing, but that's because I'm a perfectionist and I expect to finish a flawless first draft in less than a year. Then I start writing, and after two months I've only got 20 halfway decent pages, and I think I've failed. I…

1) NaNoWriMo. Every November. Free community support. 50,000 words of a first draft in a single month. Plenty of time to plan/think about it.