Davide

I guess I should comment on the actual chapter, or at least the last paragraph. If I remember correctly, Madison left the country right after her parents died, meaning before Uncle Phill made Joshua and Daniel do those despicable things. Not being there to see what was happening, maybe Uncle Phill fed her lies about her brothers and she believed him. Joshua and Daniel didn't have any way to communicate with her to give their side of the story, so all she had was what a guy whose experienced at pretending to be an upstanding citizen said. If I'm right, I'm angry at her for jumping to conclusions without asking to hear Joshua's side of the story, but this is my guess as to what led to her acting like this. And this gives me hope they, with the help of Jordan and Cameron, can manage to eventually convince her she's very wrong, although that would probably be a slow process and require some kind of proof that would be painful for them to relive.

I started reading this story recently and this is the first chapter after I caught up. I like that, while it has characters dealing with difficult stuff, it manages to keep a hopeful tone most of the time. Of course, multiple years of Joshua and Daniel's loves were just awful, but the present say of the story has plenty of positive moments, while dealing with the negative repercussions of that past. I don't think I could stomach reading about them being on the run from that life if it wasn't balanced by the good side that other characters provide them with.

I love this. Seeing the quiet version of Jonah that doesn't have to be about memes all the time. Seeing Tommy be attracted to a guy and think about how he hadn't even considered that before. Seeing them express their insecurities to each other and bond over them because there's some similarities. The distance will be a challenge, but I hope they can make their relationship work. And I hope Tommy tries and manages to get a scholarship for Harrison West. Both because it would be good for him to have his boyfriend nearby and because I'd like to see him in the story more often. In unrelated news, we learned Danny is leaving. Losing a character is always sad, but I guess you need to make space for new ones and he was among the ones being given less importance out of the main group. And we got some information about the future new character Kai, I like that the three brothers are all very different from each other.

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I don't think Dean would actually be violent against Kris, otherwise I would absolutely be in favour of Kris cutting him off. I think the first one was an idle threats coming from him previously being in denial to himself of being gay or bi. He's snapping out of that, but he's not ready to be public, and I think this one came from a fear of being outed. But I wouldn't fault anyone who, in Kris' position, considered what Dean said to be a deal breaker.

Just don’t,” his voice dropped “don’t go telling people. You do, and you’ll see your dad. Understand?” Kris flinched. He wasn’t sure if Dean meant it or if it was just armor, the kind of cruelty that came from fear. I forgot to comment on this bit. It's fucked up and I'd have been angry at Dean if I were Khris. But Kris is right about why Dean said it, it's the second option. And that's why wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

So instead, Kris said softly, “Well… maybe this time you can stay longer. See what it’s like.” And then he did. I guess Dean is..learning to stay. The stuff between Kris and Dean was sweet. Dean made good progress in being able to admit how he feels, to both himself and Kris, after his denial of being anything but straight in the previous chapter. But Leah is going to figure it out soon and it may not go well for Dean, especially as he wants to remain in the closet. And I wonder how Ethan, with him being Kris' boss, will feel about him pushing back and whether he will do something.

I still don't normally comment on stories posted years ago, but I feel like I need to after my comment on the previous chapter. Now we know why James' mother acted the way she did and it's understandable, parents are also human. And she saw that what she did was wrong and not only removed the rest of the punishment, but also came clean with him about the trigger and apologised. I respect her for this, not every parent would be willing to flat out admit to their own kind that they were wrong about something related to parenting them.

I don't normally comment on stories I read that were posted years before but, after what some of the comments on this chapter say, I want to stress how much I agree with @Summerabbacat here. The punishment from James' mother is blown way of our proportion in comparison to his single transgression from an otherwise well behaved teenager. Any words and thoughts from him that may sound like entitlement come from his justified anger at the size of the punishment, which is a mild reaction compared to how some other teenagers would act after this.

I also don't know how reliable it is, but checked it out and saw very recent tv series. Plus it includes a lot of more common triggers than just the dog one.

Dean is dealing with hating one part of himself as a result from the homophobia his father drilled into him. And, from what we learned of his past experience, he has been repressing that side of him for a long time. That's difficult stuff to handle but, thankfully, part of him is starting to realise he doesn't have to believe in everything he father did. He's still wresting internally with himself and I expect Marcus will give a push to help the good side win. That being said, Dean is being a dick to Leah. I get that he needs times to figure himself out, but he should do that without leading her on. He's using the relationship with her to try to convince himself he's straight, but what he's doing will eventually hurt Leah and that's why he's in the wrong on that. He could come up with an excuse to break up with her if he's not ready to admit the truth to himself, but he needs to do something.

Hunter befriended three characters, all different from each other. It will be interesting to see how those friendships evolve, and possibly into more than that. I'm starting to suspect the real reason @LittleBuddhaTW wrote this story was to have a vehicle to complain about Colombian food, while gushing about it's beauty, lol.

(I wish I could delete comments)

(I wish I could delete comments)

It finally happened. I had been wondering what it would take to make Dean no longer be in denial. In the end, there was a confluence of factors that contributed, including the bonding over opposite, but both sad, father stories. This sucks for Leah, but Kris is who Dean really likes, now that he admits it to himself. But the information she has can mistakenly make it look like he was leading her on from the start to hide he's gay, which would make her feel even worse.

For a moment, near the start of the chapter, I thought I was going to read a straight sex scene. Crisis averted!

Dean is almost there, he knows he's lying to himself. But, despite that, he still clings to the lie. He needs some external factor to give him a push, since it seems he's no capable of breaking through the denial alone. Maybe meeting Kris again will do it, but it could also mess him up more.

What does HRT mean in this context? Because it sure as hell doesn't mean "hormone replacement therapy". I agree with everyone asking for a scene of Elenor getting chewed on. The guys who kidnapped Josh talked to a woman called Officer Park who told them to stop what they were doing, and we saw a Naomi Park, which is presumably the same person. That means there's some kind of communication issue, it could orders that not everyone is aware off, someone impersonating CIA to give orders that fit their agenda, orders wrongly given because of the confusion with the Cerberus situation, or who knows what else.

I was getting worried you'd abandon this story but, with two chapters posted in consecutive, it's nice to see we're back. I'd have understood, although unhappily, if Elenore was simply sceptical. But she went further than that, she isn't unsure, her mind is made up that Josh is a fraud in her eyes. And that enabled him to get kidnapped by the bad guys. "And yesterday afternoon—when you thought no one was watching—you stood up from the couch without bracing yourself. Perfectly smoothly.” I think Elenore probably saw the other Josh take over, but there's no way Josh can explain why he only needs the cane most of the time. Maybe Josh being kidnapped will give us some answers, although answers probably come with more questions.

There's one piece of information that appears on a Medellín story blurb in a @LittleBuddhaTW blog post that's not part of the blurb here in the story itself. I avoided the topic this time but, until it's revealed in the story, I'll resort to spoiler tags later if I want to talk about things where knowing the spoiler can influence my opinion.

That example makes me think of my own country, except for the sex-crazed part. About 80% of the population of Portugal is Catholic (according to a census) but same-sex marriage has been legal here since 2010. And not via a court decision, like in the US, it was approved in the parliament.

Interesting premise, but it's hard to judge until we see more. This episode mostly did the necessary work of setting the stage by telling us about Hunter, Medellín and the school. He's a very different character from Nick from SftF ("I “dated” too many boys, slept with most on the first night, ghosted more than I’ll admit, always chasing the next hit I swore would fix me. It never did."), but similar in some ways in that there's a dead parent and an aspect of mental health ("Deep down, I was running from guilt, anxiety, depression; from the emptiness of wanting something real and wrecking it anyway."). I'm surprised that the word tinto refers to a type of coffee in Colombia, considering the same word refers to red wine in Spain (also in Portugal, my country, but that's not relevant as we don't speak the same language). I like to learn about differences between different versions of a language or similar languages.

A story prologue providing a historical and political background, that's definitely very different from Swing for the Fences. I like it when authors write different things, I'm interested in seeing where this will go. And you definitely have the background knowledge to write about Medellín from personal experience with the city.

That's great news about Tommy, I really like that character. I hope it means he manages to somehow go to Harrison West. It would be funny if he got a scholarship for this year and didn't tell Nick to surprise him when they run into each other there. As for Noah, I'm curious to see him get explored more. He knows he acted wrong, but his attempt at correcting himself was still pretty bad. So he has much to improve, if he's willing to. And of course I'm happy we're getting more Miss Charice. But that's still months away and, in the meantime, I'm interested to see your writing of what's surely a very different story, Medellín.

“'You don’t give yourself enough credit, you know that?' [...] 'Yeah, and that’s the problem,' Ethan said. 'You’re always doing. Never just… being.'” Ethan really has Kris figured out, he should follow that advice. That was already clearly a date, even before Kris found out it's a gay bar. I think he didn't want to believe it because he's so used to good things not happening to him that he doesn't want to hope. That's the same reason he doesn't let himself get excited that the interview went well, life taught him to be cautious until he's certain. "It was easier to be someone you’re not than admit to someone you are. He’d learned that a long time ago from his father, from this town, from every bruise that reminded him that softness was weakness. There were no rewards for honesty, no medals for truth. Only judgment, only pain." Dean's father really did a number on him. He's be afraid to show anything that could lead to a negative reaction, because of his frame of reference is how his father used to react. But he needs to break away from those thoughts for his own good.