Alan

MPD is caused by abuse. David seems to be the dominant personality when the parents hand it out. The Oliver personality may not know anything about it. If that's the case, then David on the phone to Frank is a major threat to the parents in a way that oliver would not be.

I'm a bit take-no-prisoners on this stuff. My mum has developed her own tactic for dealing with this. She repeatedly forgets that I'm gay. She's old enough to be almost able to get away with it. Weirdly she then starts talking about when she worked in film and how she can recognise a homosexual at 60 paces. Or she runs out her new civil rights record and fiercely criticises our PM for banning gay marriage when it's, and I quote, 'an unfortunate accident of birth'. You're entitled to be pissed off. More to the point, you're entitled to turn up with a fairly thunderous book or page of your own refuting her sentiments and insist she reads it.

I think Oliver is the 'real' personality. When he 'sees' David it may be that David's taken over and he's watching what the David personality does. Everyone outside Oliver's family seems to see only Oliver, for instance Oliver is blamed for mistreating the neighbour's animals. There's no mention of David (except for Oliver's blackouts) in Oliver's one day at school. If there was a real twin, or more precisely a still living real twin, you'd expect people to at least mention the possibility of David, not Oliver being involved.

David really strikes me as the protective persona who turns up when something bad is about to happen to Oliver. David thinks of Oliver as the wanted son and himself as the unwanted. A lot of the bad somethings seem to involve Oliver's parents. I don't exclude that there was once a real David who died in some way we don't yet know, possibly involving the Woman of the Cats on the other side of the lake. Oliver has a really strong reaction to her old house. I may have to take bets on the first poster to argue the Woman of the Cats is actually Alice the Incomprehensible.

If you get too nervous you should cross the equator and kiss an Australian.

Wow. Two chapters and I'm back to spending my life wondering when Dom will post the next. The writing flows beautifully and Dom should abandon any concerns about writing in third person, he does it very. Very well. I almost missed the MPD the first time I read chapter 1. It makes this story many times darker than anything Dom's written before. MPD's main cause is abuse/neglect and that has to raise questions about Oliver's parents, especially when the David personality is apparently the only one who ever gets punished. It's a really subtle piece of writing that Oliver's parents appear so different to Oliver and Frank. Rewow.

When the New South Wales state parliament was debating subsidies for the Sydney Gay Games an idiot MP from a rural district demanded to know what sports would be played and claimed leapfrog was the only possibility.

please don't die. We'll only embarrass you by taking out our ouija boards and muttering things like: 'Is there a chapter present?'.

I don't know that stay or go is the major conflict. I think it's just an aspect of Rory's habit of not thinking through what he does and merely reacting to events around him. Besides, we don't know how bad Eddie is. If he dies, then nothing's been resolved and Rory has to choose between Alice the Incomprehensible and Jase as his guardians. Alan PS Since no-one's properly bashed Alice, while it was a great speech, she could have made the same speech at any time since she arrived in Arizona. There was no need to put 5 people through misery by waiting until Rory was on the plane.

I'm not compelely sure how you can argue that Aaron does or does not belong to a category that doesn't exist.

Aaron exemplifies the problem in basing morality exclusively on intent. He ends up making decisions as if no-one else existed or mattered. Almost no-one ever accepts that their acts are evil. Let's suppose you're sitting beside a hijacker on a plane. You strike up conversation and attempt to persuade them not to kill you. They assure you their intent is good. They may even assure you they regret your (and their imminent) death. The cause, they argue, is greater than the welfare of any individual. What argument, intent being the sole valid test for the moral quality of any act, will you use to persuade them not to blow up your plane? Or, moved by the sincerity and depth of their intent, will you assist them with their misguided project, since the impact their actions have on yourself and the other passengers are irrelevant to the moral quality of those actions?

It depends on how you read it. What's the referent of 'nothing'? The relationship or 'anything that might affect sic the relationship'? More seriously, Luke's done the heavy lifting with Rory. Seth wandered along at a convenient time.

Perhaps Alice is here for the big talk. Eddie hasn't said anything much about Rory dating Aaron and sneaking around to do it. Luke seemed to think the sky would fall in if Eddie and Jase found out. Maybe Eddie's called in back-up. Just letting it go doesn't strike me as an option many parents would follow.

Evil is not a disease you catch, except from morgul blades. Evil is the moral quality of the things you do. Aaron's actions are evil because his actions so often harm other people. That does not make him beyond redemption, but it also does not excuse him for the nature of his actions.

'in the end'. LRITES and SRITES would be Lories and Sories. The corect name for LGAITES would be Lunatics.

Nah, we're jusy busy stringing piano wire across the streets frequented by SRITE bicycle vandals. Around throat level.

It's always best waiting to condemn desperation in others until you are no longer skipping around gayly, giving an irritating laugh, getting on your bike and riding through the LRITE neighbourhood, knocking over trash cans.

Brilliant chapter. About the only thing that can make this eternal triangle worse is if we learn (as I muttered in the predictions thread) that Rory can't go back to Nevada. Rory is still a mess. Being with Seth has not stopped him being a mess. Despite my firm adherence to the inevitability of an LRITE outcome, I think Rory would still be a mess if he was with Luke, although Luke seems to understand him a tad better than Seth does. The way Dom writes Rory's indecision is just extraordinary and pretty much rebuts SRITE triumphalism.

I wonder if Alice the Incomprehensible has actually met someone and decided it'd be inconvenient if Rory came back to Nevada. Last time she spoke with Rory she actually apologised, and was evasive, things she's never done before. It's common for temporary foster parents to get over-attached and try to sabotage a new placement. Perhaps when Rory left she was still trying to keep him but her new relationship has changed her mind. I admit this is an unlikely scenario because it requires someone to actually like the meddlesome old bag. For the record I do not find Luke, Eddie, Jase, Dave, Rick, Aaron or Chey likely as the new objects of Alice's affection.

The assault happens late Friday/early Saturday. (Chapter 18) Luke's party is the next day, although that's ample time for a major boom in belief that the Luke/Seth relationship is written in the stars. Rory plays Monopoly with Seth on the Sunday and gets reamed out (with complete justice) by Eddie for diappearing without warning for four and a half hours. (Chapter 22) By lunchtime Monday Luke is saying that Seth likes him and what's Rory going to do about it?

I'm not sure that's really all that true. Rory gets sexually assaulted by Aaron. 48 hours later he's making out with Seth without knowing anything about Seth's personality. 48 hours later he's obsessing about Seth while still knowing nothing about Seth's personality. He's telling himself he's deep in a relationship while planning to hurry back to the tender mercies of Alice the Incomprehensible in a matter of weeks. It would be a tad challenging to find a more classic case of a rebound relationship. I guess Seth and Rory could be the first rebound relationship in the history of the universe to actually work out. There is, after all, a first time for everything. Fortunately for Seth's rep I'm not the kind of person who would call Luke a convicted car thief or Seth an experienced guy taking advantage of someone with recent sexual trauma and no experience of relationships.

It's interesting, in purely forensic terms, that the central plank of the SRITE argument is an allegation of fact that outdoes even Aaron's egregious and lugubrious assaults on truth.

I have the feeling we can say with a just a tad more confidence than usual that Rory is not 'unobtainable' because he is straight.

You think you're suffering? I can still eat pudding. It's the other capacity that's been destroyed for life.