Deniable Plausibility

Until a few years ago, I taught English abroad. If you've ever worked overseas, you'd know that you can't get a work visa without a HIV screening. It is possible to get one before leaving home, but there's generally no expectation of that from employers, and anyway in Australia it's fiddly, time-consuming and expensive (like everything else). 99.99% of the time you'll be tested after arrival in your host country, and it's better that way. Well, sometimes... Anyway, I’d been in Country X for some months. A few days after my HIV test at the local hospital, my boss called me into his office. He dropped a bombshell: the hospital had phoned to say I was HIV positive. HIV positive. Fuck! It was one of the most chilling experiences I've ever had, and I was utterly devastated. I didn't get much sleep. I spent days in my own personal hell, agonising over stuff like WHO? and WHEN? Eventually I decided that there was no way I could live with HIV. It might sound

Alternative title: reason 8,758,568 why I fucking hate religion. It's the dawn of the 90s and I'm a fresh face at uni. I meet an overseas student called Edmund. He's in one of my English tutorial groups and seems pretty friendly. When he invites me to a party on a Friday night at something called the Celtic Club in the city centre, I say yes. Yes! My first uni bash! I'm stoked because I've heard university parties really go off - I'm ready to get amongst it! Party! Friday night comes around. Woohoo! I get on the bus and go to the city. I find the Celtic Club. I'm ready to rock, baby! But wait... how come there's no bouncer at the door? That's weird. There's a decent crowd inside, so surely that's a good sign? Everyone's playing limbo, though, which seems a little bit strange. And there's not a drop of booze in sight. I'm a little bit wary. I mean, it's Australia... and we've got uni undergrads... at a dry Irish club... pla

NB I co-wrote this essay with a friend years ago. In mid-2020 I submitted it to a certain fantasy writers' website for publication. They rejected it because it wasn't politically correct. Fuck that  noise  shit. So here it is. Enjoy! Introduction We’ve been enamoured by the fantasy genre since we were adolescents. If fantasy didn’t exist, we probably wouldn't have been interested in reading. That doesn’t mean we love all works of fantasy, though, nor do we love everything about our favourites. Maybe it's because too many fantasy authors rely on tropes that have been sitting like thick tomes on a dusty shelf in some wizard’s lab (next to flasks of colourful liquids, bubbling and fuming) far longer than they probably should. We’re sick of hearing about: 5. Inns and taverns Apparently regarded by authors and readers alike as time honoured - even customary - stops for characters during tours of fantasy worlds, inns and taverns are places where skulduggery is guarant