Davide

I didn't realize there are two different ways to follow a person with different results, that should be the source of my mistake. Thank you.

I've read the story so far, but I haven't had the time to comment on the last few chapters with the level of detail I like. I still want to go back and do that, but there's one aspect of this chapter I didn't want to wait to comment on. When Rhaelce learns Chihiro has powers, he is prejudiced against her out of fear of what she is. Malik also has powers and he has a decision to make. He can either come clear to Rhaelce and hope their friendship will make him reconsider that fear, but risk losing him because of that prejudice against people with powers. Or he can not say anything about himself, but that would mean abandoning Chihiro because of Rhaelce's prejudice, plus he'd know their friendship is based on a lie and it could end if he came clean about his own powers to Rhaelce. He decided to tell the truth and he lost Rhaelce's friendship, but at least he was honest about himself. Now read the previous paragraph again but, instead of it being about powers, imagine it was about Chihiro and Malik being LGBT+ (I'm not saying she is, that doesn't matter, it's a hypothetical to make a point) and Rhaelce being prejudiced against that. You can see that the decision Malik faced, and the reason he had to take this option, it works well as a metaphor for that.

Thank you for the news, it looks like you have a lot of great updates planned. I'm happy to see you included more notifications options in the things you're planning to do. I'd subscribe to more authors if I could tailor my notifications in the way I'm going to explain, which I also said on the survey. Let's say there's author I like, but they're writing a zombie story and I'm not interested in that genre. I don't want to get emails for the zombie story, but I'd like to know when they start a new story. That's why I said I'd like the ability to only get notifications for the first chapter of stories from authors I follow. Then I'd use that chapter to decide whether to follow the story, which would send me emails for every chapter.

I played around with this tool and it seems very useful, especially for new readers. It was a bit overwhelming to figure out what to read when I first got here.

Yeah, my comment wasn't a criticism of you not having any system in place for that. I just thought an attack like that was strange.

It's working now. Thank you. That's a weird thing to happen, though.

I'm in Portugal and I can't connect to GA without a VPN since last night, the site just doesn't load. This is happening on both desktop and mobile, since I think about 10 hours ago. I was only able to connect now by using a VPN that connected me to the Netherlands.

That was a good ending, with his mom having fully come around and things being good with Evan. I like not knowing what happened to Sam because, despite my instincts being wanting closure, him disappearing once he realises he can't get more money from his mon is the more realistic scenario.

This is where my mind went when I read the title:

We learned about the turmoil in Ray's past, the sexual abuse from his uncle. This was probably the cause of him being in the mental space that led to his actions, not that works as an excuse. He managed to open up about that in therapy, I'm happy for him, although it sucks how hard is it to get a convictions. And this should also prevent the issue from repeating itself. No turmoil on the other part of the story. Ben that Marty is interested having sex with Nathan obviously doesn't cause any because he's gay himself. But we get the funny role reversal of the son and his boyfriend giving his dad the gay sex talk. Meanwhile, with Marty lending his car to Justin and offering to pay for a hotel or motel room, I'm reminded that he still hasn't told Ben about the change in his financial situation.

Rhaelce wants to go to the mountains and I wonder why. This is interesting, considering Malik's conversation with Rhotik made it clear his host family he wouldn't be taken there. Maybe he's curious about what made Malik want to go there, maybe he's curious about what exists there that makes people so adamant that it's too dangerous, or maybe he thinks it's possible the species of the creature that killed Naivres lives in the mountains and he wants to go there to attack them. Him not knowing what mountains are like suggests they never go far from where they live. As Malik had started to get closer to his host family, I suspected he could start to question whether he really wanted to return home. But now he's on the run from them, with only Rhaelce on his side, so I would have expected his interest in returning to have at least somewhat increased. That fact that, despite that, he's unsure of what he wants says a lot about how bad things must have been for him back home. And maybe about his feelings for Rhaelce too, I don't know if as a friend or more. And there's also the additional complications of returning after months away.

There goes my theory, but the dynamical between Ali and Felix, with one being in the circle and the other not, will be interesting to see.

If you want to continue reading this story, you can do so on Awesome Dude. Someone explained the reason it's still getting it is authors have to submit a completed story all at once. I also hope he continues this story here and then the SFTF sequel, but, when people write stuff for free, we're not entitled to demand it. What I do think we're entitled to is an explanation, I think he should have told us something in the many times he visited GA since he left.

Justin's head is in the right place in not wanting favours and so is Martin's in not wanting to give them. That was the only slight turmoil and it got settled right away. Justin now knows Martin is in love with a guy, we'll see what he does with that information. As far we know, he didn't tell Ben so far. Everything with Eddie and Mitch went well, I get the impression they'll do a good job at figuring out how to adapt some pubs and a great job at managing the bar in one of them later one. I'm curious at what the waiter at the end wanted. I laughed at "They did actually use the Thai Kok".

I think the guy wearing headphones was actually Viv. We first get this description, which doesn't include a name: But we're told later this guy is Viv: But, from Lawrence's reaction to the headphones, I take it they're identical to Ali's. So maybe they're the same headphones and Ali hands them to Viv as part of his shift into Felix because keeping them may be too obvious.

The rector issuing veiled threats to Lawrence isn't a surprise, neither to us nor to him. But, considering he's only there for the duration of the investigation, he doesn't care about what they could do long term. I love his intentionally changed translation of "Omens exist to warn us" instead of "Monsters". The rector, like Herr Becker, pretends to hide his dislike of Lawrence, while still making sure it's left clear. On the other hand, some of the golden circle guys are much more direct. That means it has to be obvious to Bastien as well, which makes him ignoring it be interesting. Bastien has been strangely interested in Lawrence and now he was brushing his knee on Lawrence's tight and continued after he adjusted himself. This makes me wonder if his interest is in a crush kind of way, although that would be strange, considering how he barely knows Lawrence and his interest seems to have started when he knew even less. But Bastien's opening question to him is “How’s the outside world?”, maybe Lawrence being an outside to that kind of world is what Bastien is attracted to, a reverse of the reaction of a lot of people there. Felix being in the golden circle while his twin brother Ali isn't is interesting, there has to be a story there. But, on the risk of sounding crazy, are they really two different people? If anyone is eccentric enough to pretend to be his own twin, it's Ali. Lawrence says he didn't see Felix at lunch and he looked in the direction of the golden circle table while standing next to Ali, he'd have noticed if an identical guy was there. Plus, this chapter says Lawrence saw seven guys at the golden circle table at lunch and then describes seven golden circle guys at the library (I counted them), but this doesn't include Felix because he was hiding at the time. That makes it eight members with Felix and someone, probably him, wasn't at the golden circle table at lunch.

It's up to date now, but I know I'll forget to update my age range when the time comes, which is years away.

Small language note: I like the use of "The Malik" because it matches the sentence structure in my own language. Many Portuguese sentences use the equivalent of "the" before people's names.

The ceremony was moving, you portrayed grief very well. It was interesting to see what their customs are on a funeral, but also the ways each character grieves, especially Rhaelce. During the funeral, it felt like his grief was mostly internal, but he let it out the next morning through the fight with Malik. We were told in the previous chapter him and Myrra blame themselves for not protecting Naivres because they're fighters. That's why Rhaelce's grief and anger come out through fighting. That's also why he doesn't hold back, he's channeling emotions, not training Malik. Rothik says Naivres' death is Malik's fault and I wonder if he knows anything of what happened or if he's just blaming the stranger. We know Naivres went out to practice fighting because she saw Malik doing it with Rhaelce, which doesn't make it Malik's fault at all, but some people could think otherwise. But Rothik could also simply have thought that, since this stranger person showed up and shortly after a child on his host family died, him being there was somehow the cause. Nyrra always hated Malik, so I'm not surprised she believed Rothik, I half expected her to blame him regardless of that. Mythe is a lot more surprising, but having a specific person to blame can make it feel less bad for a grieving person in a kind of twisted way, rather than a feeling that no one could have done anything. Or it's possible that him being nice to Malik was only because of his religious beliefs, he decided they would take care of him because the priest said so, but now the priest is saying it's Malik's fault. Rhaelce must care a lot about Malik. I get that he thinks Rothik, Nyrra and Mythe are wrong about Malik and how serious the consequences of what they want to do could be. But, even in these circumstances, leaving his family behind to protect a guy he only met recently is a big cost that he took without hesitation.

If Ali is the most interesting character to me so far, as I said in the previous chapter, Bastien is the most intriguing one. Thank you for the replies. I will continue to comment, but probably not on Thursdays. Somehow, it's both my busiest day of the week and the day when the most stories I read get new chapters.

Ali is the most interesting character to me so far. And yes, even in a few chapters, I've seen enough to trust that the characters in this story have layers.

I'm just glad Lawrence already expects the faculty to do that and is ready to have to deal with it. I hadn't considered that it can work well for him, but you're right.

Oops, sorry for the mistake. I blame it on language. In Portuguese, our word for school doesn't get used for university. I know it does in English, but my native language instincts kicked in.

It depends on the app or site. I prefer dark mode if the light mode is too bright (think white instead of light grey) and light mode if the dark mode has too much contrast between the colours of the text and the background (think black instead of dark grey).

Natasha threat on the custody situation in the last chapter was meant to intimidate Ben into staying, her attempt with the school in this chapter was based on expecting them to not check her claim, and calling the police on Justin was to just plain scare him. But all of them were stopped by people not letting themselves be intimidated and having proper knowledge of the law, plus Justin was thankfully not home, so he didn't get the scare. I don't know what else Natasha will try, but she may see this isn't working and move to other methods not related to false claims about the law, and that's when I think she can become an actual threat. Ben's shock at the gay bar conversation was funny. And yes, that's the natural reaction from a teenager learning that a barman was hitting on his dad, especially since he still thinks Martin is straight. In that conversation, Rick asking Martin "Do you want to hook up with that hunky barman who fancied you?" could easily be interpreted as just a joke. But there's also Martin's sudden interest in having pubs aimed at gay people and, in the previous chapter, Justin saw Martin starting a video call with Nathan. I wonder if the combination of these things could start to make Justin connect the dots on Martin being LGBT.