There's a certain quirk of culture and censorship that I've often found strange: the media's bipolar relationship with sex, especially when it's so comfortable with portrayals of violence.

To a degree, I can understand why it's considered safer to expose children to violence than sex. It's harder for a couple of five-year-olds to get their hands on bazookas and go on a rampage than it is for them to sneak out of sight and start experimenting with each others' bodies, so it's understandable that parents would be more concerned about children imitating sex scenes than scenes of violence.

But at the same time, I can't help but think that our culture's split-personality stance on sex is probably more damaging than any gun-heavy summer blockbuster.

Granted, I'm very firmly in the "not before marriage" camp. For one thing, I'm a Christian. For another, logistics. No premarital pregnancies, STDs, pretend-to-love-you-to-get-sex guys, or it-was-supposed-to-be-just-fun-but-now-I'm-emotionally-attached scenarios for me. There's a lot of BS that you get to skip by waiting.

But that doesn't stop me from being bothered by the attitudes our culture displays toward sex. Handled responsibly, sex isn't dirty, unnatural, or evil. And yet, it's stigmatized, and instead of being taught to enjoy and appreciate it in a responsible manner, children are taught that it's simultaneously desperately needed and shameful.

People who seek out and enjoy sex are often labeled "bad girls" or "bad boys". Sex techniques are described as 'naughty'. And yet, people who don't have enough sex are often portrayed as losers, maladjusted, or undesirable.

In an action movie, a woman's level of overt sexiness is often proportionate to how dangerous she is. Enjoy, because that skin is there for your benefit, but also judge her for it; look but don't love.

Laugh at the guy who can't get women to have sex with him, and admire the one who can. After all, if you're a virgin, you're not really a man yet... right?

Don't advertise if you're not selling. What do you mean you're wearing skimpy clothing because the weather's hot, or you're not wearing a bra because bras are uncomfortable, and you're not trying to advertise anything? Don't you know that all nudity, near-nudity or semblance of nudity is automatically sexual and perverted?

And how DARE that author write an explicit sex scene? Time to stop reading them, because they described a penis entering a vagina; they should have stuck with writing descriptions of swords entering vital organs.

So many mixed messages, so many double standards, and so many totally twisted biases.

Which one bothers you the most?

And what do you think would be a healthier attitude for our culture to take toward sex and storytelling?

I look forward to reading your comments.

Writing is a strange thing. Sometimes, the best-laid plans are the ones that derail you the most.

In the process of writing Catgirl Roommate, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon. When I'm following the outlines I'd created for each scene during the conception process, it feels like there's something missing.

I write slowly. I don't laugh. I'm usually not enjoying myself - which isn't a very good place to write from, especially when you're writing comedy.

But then, sometimes, a scene just starts to write itself. Events begin happening to or through the characters of their own accord. Nyla does something I didn't expect her to, or her put-upon human roommate has a snarky reaction that's too funny not to write down.

When that happens, my writing just starts to flow. It becomes fun and easy again. And what ends up on my screen looks so much better than when I'm following the script.

Do you tend to encounter that? In your line of work, do things go better when you're following a carefully laid-out plan, or do you like to just wing it?

I look forward to reading your comments.

Blessing a fellow fan with something she loves is an awesome feeling.

A few months ago, my younger sister got hooked on Attack on Titan. I haven't seen it yet myself, but she adores it, and the song The Reluctant Heroes frequently graced my family's kitchen while she did her chores.

As a person who knows what it's like to love a story, you can just imagine my glee when I realized that one of her favorite songs would make a great Farscape music video. It's like finding a special edition of someone's favorite book on sale, but with a more personal touch.

The video turned out to be an ambitious project. If you're a subscriber on my YouTube channel, you'll know that it took me over a month to complete it, and if you've heard The Reluctant Heroes from other sources before you watched my video, you'll probably notice that I extended it so that there would be enough room to tell the amazing story that is Farscape.

44 extra seconds of music. 310 items in the final Movie Maker file (which is to say, WAY more clips than the software was ever intended to process in just over 5 minutes). A month in the making, and my first venture in featuring almost the entire cast in just one video.

And my little sister loved it.

For an artist, there are few feelings better than watching another person gaping and grinning with happiness while enjoying your art. Especially if that art was made as a gift for them.

Sadly, I won't get to see you smile if you watch the video, but all the same, I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please take a moment to let me know. I worked long and hard on this MV, and I shamelessly wish to bask in the happiness that it brings to my fellow fans.

You know what really bugs me in movies with large-scale battle scenes?

Protagonists who SHOULD know better than to launch a full frontal charge, and yet, they do it anyway.

I mean seriously, was there any way either of the above images was NOT going to get a lot of people killed, while doing WAY less damage than they could have done with a better strategy?

Just last night, I rewatched James Cameron's Avatar. In most ways, the execution of that movie was brilliant - they really breathed new life into an old story.

But when an army of pa'li riders charged a line of guys with machine guns, I wanted to facepalm. Way to make yourselves easy targets, people.

And in Return of the King, when they reacted to an attack of Oliphaunts by saying "Reform the lines"?!

No. No, no, no. Any decent RPG player knows that when your enemy is using area-of-effect attacks, like a swinging set of spiked tusks, you do NOT bunch your people together so that more of them can get hit at once. You scatter so that each of your enemy's attacks does less damage.

Maybe it isn't fair to ask filmmakers who probably have no military background to make sensible military decisions. But you'd think if you're going to sink millions of dollars into a movie, you'd get some better guidance for your characters' strategies than "zerg rush into a death trap".

(Yes, I know, J.R.R. Tolkien served in the army. But with the way the battlefield was arranged in the movie, I think the sheer numbers of airborne and dead Rohirrim during the Oliphaunt battle speaks for itself.)

Maybe I'm out to lunch. Maybe the frontal charge was a good idea in some way I haven't thought of.

But personally, I can't help but think that it would have been smarter for the Rohirrim to continue fighting among the Orcs, covering each others' backs while shooting at the Oliphaunt riders, and at least force the enemy to dish out some friendly fire instead of giving them a convenient target of nothing but tightly-packed horsemen. Or at LEAST scatter a bit, so that each swing of the trunks took out fewer riders.

And I think the Na'vi could have done more damage, and suffered fewer casualties, if they used stealth attacks on the mecha instead of a highly visible, vulnerable frontal assault.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Or do supposedly battle-savvy leaders need to quit leading their fictional armies into suicidal zerg rushes?

It seems to me that the term "Mary Sue" gets thrown around a lot, often where it doesn't belong.

It plagues authors with doubt, especially when they're inserting an OC into a fanfiction or writing a female protagonist.

And it can dampen a fan's enjoyment of a story, when they find themselves questioning whether they're looking at a good and competent character or a Mary Sue.

Since I'm human and not-Mary-Sue enough that I've been slowed down by a cold today, I'm going to let another author cover this topic for me. In this article, she'll explore the criteria that define a Mary Sue, and also reveal a double standard that has appeared in modern fiction.