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I'm trying to figure out the best explanation for why mass-casualty weapons don't work on or near Megiddo, where Connor, De Rosa, their human armies, angels, and demons face off at the end of book three. Originally, I thought no functioning electronics whatsoever (e.g., no tanks, armored vehicles, drones, etc.). However, that still leaves both sides with pistols, grenades, shoulder-launched missiles, as well as semi and fully automatic assault rifles/machine guns. Needless to say, that's still too lethal. So, in addition to no electronics, explosives don't work either, which includes bullets. That leaves horses, swords, knives, arrows, spears, and catapults (and probably a number of things I'm forgetting).

I can either justify it as the Father not wanting mass-casualty weapons used at Megiddo, where the Lord will soon appear, or the Father wanting to prevent further mass casualty events across Earth prior to the Lord's return. The latter is a difficult argument to make since the final months, weeks, and days before the 2nd Coming are filled with (super)natural disasters. I don't recall offhand, though, if any of the "elect" (those intended to be saved) are harmed during that period, but I believe so. Of course, that depends on which denominations one talks about since a Catholic interpretation of Revelation is somewhat confusing. I don't recall at the moment what some of the events in Revelation mean from a Catholic perspective.

I know Catholics do not generally believe in a final battle against the Lord's hosts, which is why I created a different battle, primarily De Rosa vs Connor, with angels and demons joining in to protect each side's human armies. A third possibility is simply that only Old Testament weapons work at Megiddo without trying to explain why that might be the case. For some reason, modern technology has stopped working there leading up to the Lord's return.

Since I prefer not to cherry pick too much among different denominations when it comes to what Christian perspective I'll most closely follow, I'll stick primarily with Catholicism, except for some major deviations like a final battle. At the end of book one, Connor sets up the idea that he (as Christ) will try to sway all Christians toward Catholicism since it's easier to manage one denomination than it is 45,000. There will be Protestant characters in the book, but I simply don't have enough years of life left to dig deeply into Protestantism, Islam, Jews, and the many non-Abrahamic religions. :-)  Connor will use the same approach with the other religions: try to convince them that he's God and that they should follow him. Since Jesus is not God in Islam, Connor will probably topple Islamic holy places until they come around to the belief that he actually is Allah. Anyone who doesn't want to believe at that point will simply be ignored until Connor and Satan have destroyed Christ.

I'll let others answer your questions about publishing.

Since you want to combine the poems as a book eventually, you could post it here as a book if you like. You can post individual poems under the Poems section but that becomes unwieldy for 100 poems (see below). For 10K words, I believe you'll need about 31 points to post all that as chapters, which on this site equates to posting about 4-5 chapters of a typical fiction book. Totally doable. If you post each poem as a chapter, you'll eventually end up with 100 or so chapters, which is the limit to how many chapters you can post per book. Anyone who has ever hit that limit simply starts a second book here and keeps going.

Fyi, the reason having 100 posted poems becomes rather unwieldy is that the site doesn't give any indication to reviewers who visit your portfolio (part of your profile) which of your poems they've already read. If they can't remember, they'll have to click on each poem to determine whether they did or not. Memorable poem titles would definitely help in that case. If they read them in the order you post them, then it's easy since they'd simply read the next poem in your portfolio.

If you choose to post your poems as a book, be sure you have the word Poems somewhere in the title so people can see at a glance that that's what it is. Normally, poetry fans look for poems under the Poems section of the home page, so you may need to inform fellow poetry writers that you're posting under books/chapters. Any connections you have to others will automatically let them know via email that you posted another chapter, assuming they haven't disabled email notifications.

However, you should know that the points math for poems differs from books. I believe poems pay you more points per word reviewed but also cost more to post under Poems. Since you'll probably be reading and reviewing poems, the difference in math between the two types of works means it should be fairly easy to accumulate points from reviewing poems and use them to post chapters.

Regardless of which section of the home page you post to, be sure not to include internet when choosing how widely you want to make the posted work visible. Professional publishers won't publish something that's already available for free on the net.

Clear as mud?
Hope that helps.

I think hetero prisoners having gay relationships is the rare exception, not the norm, otherwise it would come up all the time. There are a considerable number of Americans who still think homosexuality is a choice, and they would seize on every opportunity to make their case, just as they used to point to men who, following conversion therapy, declared themselves straight. Problem was, some of those shining examples blew up spectacularly, when they went back to being gay. I remember one of them, a very vocal convert, was caught inside a gay bar (or club), and he wasn't there preaching the joys of conversion. :-)  There's a reason why conversion therapy is increasingly banned for minors.

Given how shameful it was to be gay in centuries past, it doesn't surprise me that some married, perhaps had kids, and "dabbled" on the side. I have to wonder, though, how many of them were actually bisexual instead of homosexual. Either way, I'm betting some of their spouses weren't thrilled with the sex life. :)  Another common alternative was to move away from home.

I remember hearing (reading?) a quote from a gay activist who said that if straight people want to know what gay people think of straight sex, those straight people should try to picture themselves having gay sex. I may have Connor say something like that, although the scene with Connor's homosexual views in the book are already likely to be too long and need trimming. As usual, he's also trying to piss Satan off. :)

Connor expresses fairly liberal opinions on homosexuality which isn't surprising since he's bisexual. His willingness to push his lover, whom he's grooming as a young leader to gather other young people as converts, to adopt less conservative views is an attempt to cast a wide, inclusive net to appeal to not just gays, who are a small minority of the population, but to the many young people who strongly support gay rights because they consider the bigoted views of older generations incomprehensible.

Christ (Connor) is woke!

One of the details I'm still working through is Satan's reactions to all this. He's repeatedly having to explain away Connor's reckless behavior toward visiting dignitaries, including many Protestants, who come to the Vatican to see for themselves whether Connor is Christ. They make the mistake of asking Connor to show them a miracle once too often. As a result, he chooses a Protestant minister's two sons as volunteers for the demonstration. He offers the sons a drink, which Connor also consumes, containing a relatively minor, short-acting poison.

The sons become sick (Connor doesn't) at which point Connor explains that he poisoned them, but that he's willing to save one of them, whichever their father picks. Connor quotes from the Bible that you should not put the Lord to the test. Fortunately, one of the sons (his future lover) recognizes the words and is able to name the chapter and verse for each instance where words to that effect appear in the Bible. Connor "cures" both sons in response to that and invites his future lover to stay at the Vatican.

Satan has to sit there throughout all this, on the verge of a stroke. :P  I may have Connor comment to that effect: "Angelo, you don't look well. Are you having a stroke?"

This version of Connor is so much more fun to write than in book one.

I sketched out part of Connor's seduction of the gay teen. It's pretty tame (lame?). In fact, Connor tells the kid twice that them having sex is entirely his decision. Although, Connor does add an incentive once he's sure the kid is gay: "If it helps, I know where all 63 erogenous zones are on a young, writhing, naked male body. And you won't find those on Google." Naturally, that worked.

I'll probably take out one of the aforementioned assurances that it's the kid's decision. Although, I would never write a scene where Connor forces himself on someone, he doesn't need to be overly proper about it, either. After all, he is trying to seduce the kid, both for sex and as part of his indoctrination.

One of the advantages of introducing a genetic switch in Connor that gives Satan unnatural influence over him is that I can write Connor as a little s--t, but it's largely the result of that switch, which he learns halfway through book two. Connor has an intense need to please Satan, like a serious addiction, but he doesn't even know he's addicted. Of course, that doesn't mean he can't get pissed off at Satan.

Regarding teenagers masturbating, since they supposedly have no need for ejaculating before marriage, why would God give them the ability beforehand? It serves no useful purpose. Murdering someone = killing someone, although for unacceptable reasons. And killing someone is sometimes necessary (e.g., in defence of yourself or others).

I don't know about Protestantism, but Catholics believe the Old Testament points forward to the coming of Christ. Verses take on a whole new meaning when read from that perspective. Some scholars think there may be more than 300 prophecies about Jesus, but it goes beyond that. If you know what to look for, much more of the Old Testament is believed to be about the coming of Christ, even when the verses don't seem to be about that. It's been too long since I read that, so I don't remember any examples.

So, the fact that Catholic Bibles include more books than Protestant ones means some of those prophecies and verses that point forward to Christ are disagreed upon by the two major denominations. They can't both be right, can they? If either one of them is incorrect, then billions of Bibles are in error. Given the many denominations in Christianity, especially in Protestantism, and given that many of those denominations arose as a result of differences in the interpretation of the Bible, that supposedly inerrant book has led to billions of people being led astray. Granted, the Bible could still be inerrant, even though most or all denominations (save for one) are interpreting it incorrectly, but what's the point of declaring the Bible inerrant when billions of Bibles may be wrong, and there is no consensus as to which denomination actually has the correct Bible and no way to find out so as to reach a consensus.

Just to be clear, I'm putting forth Connor's arguments, not my own. I may even have him declare the Bible to be full of errors at some point. He'll definitely espouse beliefs that conflict with the Bible, but he won't push the envelope so far that most people would conclude he's not Christ. He's merely using his arguments as a means to an end: follow him, not some ancient book.

>>A few verses in the Bible?
>I found a website claiming 25 verses on the AC. And they are all bad.

Do any of them say he didn't love his mother? :-) Keep in mind, for the second draft, all this will occur on an alternate timeline, so I can mess with things without invalidating the Bible.

>I try to do that BUT I at the core of my Tribe story is something which will possibly piss off large swaths of Christendom.
Interesting. I don't really consider your story to have deviated much from Christian beliefs, although you would know better than I would. Certainly, all of the non-Christian gods in your first draft would have raised eyebrows, although they are mostly demons, so I think you'd get a pass on those, as long as you don't overpopulate the story.

Christians generally don't mind stories that drift a little from accepted beliefs if the changes make it a more uplifting pro-Christian story. For example, Jacob Marley (Scrooge's business partner) appeared as a ghost. Even if one said it was his soul that appeared, what would a soul be doing outside of heaven or hell? The Catholic interpretation treats Marley as someone in purgatory who can't get to heaven until he convinces Scrooge to change his ways. I don't think anyone would have a serious problem with his presence in the story, as written.

Same with "It's a Wonderful Life". An angel took the main character (I forget his name) to see an alternate vision of the future in which the character was present to watch but not interfere, much as Scrooge had to. How many Christians will object to the idea of angels with wings and the idea that an angel has to earn his wings? The idea of wings has been around since the 4th century but it's not in the Bible.

Not liking your own story would turn it into a real chore to write, and you would probably never finish. I had a very hard time finishing Connor v1 because I was burned out and sick of the story as far back as 2022. That's why I was considering making the three books into one, consisting of three novellas. But when I thought about it, book one alone clearly needs to be a separate, full novel. Based on my planning of books 2 and 3, I believe the same will be true for them as well. I was laughing last night as I reread my notes for books 2 and 3 on my cell phone. The notes just scrolled on endlessly. There are some duplicate notes, especially because I would write up notes for certain scenes more than once as I thought of better ways to write them.

To avoid further burnout, I intend to write key scenes of books two and three as short stories whenever I need a break from the 2nd draft of "Rise of Connor".

Because no good idea goes unpunished, having the superweapon fire beams powerful enough to tear fissures into the fabric of space doesn't work since the superweapon fires EM energy, and the biggest objects in our universe give off way more EM energy than a superweapon ever could, without causing tears in space. I'll add that idea to the "kill me now" pile.

However, if the superweapon fires alterphasic energy (i.e., energy out of phase with our universe), that could have as little or as much destructive power as I want, and since alterphasic energy comes from outside our universe, it has a strong tendency to return to its own universe, starting from right after the energy is fired until a second or two later, when it has all disappeared. That's enough time for enough of the fired energy to disappear that what remains is sufficient to severely damage St. James's destroyers but not obliterate them in one shot.

Although energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can be "borrowed" from elsewhere in the multiverse, at least temporarily. However, in order to be able to get energy from another universe, one has to simultaneously inject some of our universe's energy into it. The multiverse dictates how much energy of type X you have to pump into another universe in order to be able to extract energy of type Y from the other universe. As a result, the Hercules has to pump a ton of EM energy into another universe, so it can extract the type of energy from there that it intends to fire. Attempting to generate all that EM energy eventually overloads the Hercules's annihilator, crippling the ship.

I have most of the alterphasic solution written up, and it holds together. Hopefully, I won't think of anything that blows it out of the water.

Good night, Seattle, we love you!

For the scenes to work, Connor would need to be bisexual. He starts with a pair of twin, Goth girlfriends, with whom he regularly has threesomes, which worries Satan because Connor is supposed to be acting Christ-like. This is part of Connor acting outrageously to get even with Satan for creating Connor simply to settle the wager with God. He's also pissed off that Satan raped his mother for sport so Connor could be conceived, which is what ultimately seals Satan's fate.

After Satan send the twins away, Connor ups the ante by seducing a slightly older teenage male and bringing him into the Vatican as a lover.

> This opens up a world of discussions. It's that what you want?
Heck yes!!! Who wouldn't want their story to generate a lot of discussion?

There are two possible ways that a homosexual could come into existence. 1) God creates the soul and makes it gay. That in turn drives the resulting male to be gay. Or 2) God creates the soul, which has no orientation, but random DNA + nurture results in the male becoming gay. I'm ignoring a third possibility, which is that the soul has a "normal" orientation (say heterosexual for a male), but the individual's DNA+nurture somehow overrides the orientation intended by God when he creates the soul.

I extend that argument/question to gender. Do the souls created by God have a gender, or are souls genderless, meaning the gender is determined solely by ones more or less random mixing of DNA? If it's God who determines the gender when He creates the soul, that would mean somewhere in the process, He intervened to determine which sperm cell reaches the ovum. However, if the soul is genderless, then God need merely create the soul and rely on nature (more or less random mixing of DNA) to determine the gender.

>Three of the big religions (Jewish, Christian, Islam), do not support the thesis.
Which thesis?

They do get blown up, but I don't want them pulverized in one shot. The sister ships have roles to fill in the battle. I'm trying to keep the chapter mostly unchanged (since I like it as is), except for the details of the superweapon from hell. It's my own fault for trying to create something more interesting (e.g., firing through hyperspace, firing through time, firing something that shoots right through the shields as if they don't exist, etc.). The mattergy weapon was nothing more than a big version of supernovas using a ridiculous concept for the tech.

I'm going to try revising my latest version such that the energy in the fired shot is so great that it tears fissures into the fabric of space (to God knows where, it doesn't matter), and much of the energy is lost through those fissures, yet enough makes it to the target such that it's still a very powerful weapon, just not insanely so.

Once more unto the breach!
[censored!]

Some variant of mattergy is beginning to sound better all the time. Grrr.

Kill me now. If I convert electromagnetic energy to some other form (call it hokey energy) that can be fired "like" EM radiation (e.g. a beam out of a superweapon), am I not still stuck with the inverse square law? I had hoped that a hokey beam would diverge much more quickly than EM radiation, but now I wonder if that even makes sense given the laws of physics...

Thanks, njc.

"Erupts" is another one, referring to the annihilator. I suppose if the annihilator erupts, one could also say the ship erupted. By this I mean, erupts = implode/explode, although how the concept of an eruption is similar to implode/explode is beyond me.

litbang?
imexes? imxes? (the last one is good, better yet imXes)
imbang?