MJ85

999 reviews eh? Let's make it 1000. Sooo...this was shaping up to be a pretty fun story as it started to unfold. And then...Cody, and college, struck. And it didn't take very long for this story to get incredibly heavy and stay that way, all the way until the end. No offense, Mark, but this was such a nonstop wringer...I found that I couldn't wait to get it over with. I think I'm going to have to retract my earlier statement about how you were able to break out of your pattern, though. I don't have anything against a main character with a sordid past involving sex...I'd be pretty callous if I did. But...geez, man, every story has had a central character with a sordid past! It almost makes me wonder if that's an unwritten rule of this entire series, that there has to be such a guy in there. I don't want to say that I'm getting tired of seeing it always happen...but it's getting very disheartening to keep seeing it happen. :-/ Having said that...I think you deserve a lot of credit for the powerful chapter 51. As for Appalachia, though (I think you know who I'm talking about here)...the sooner he meets a nasty fate, the better.

Happy birthday!

Geez...there's a lot of negative energy in this one. This feels like it was darker than Man in Motion, but not, of course, as much as 1968. About three-fourths of this story just seemed so dark and heavy, up until around chapter 18. Let's see...Greg is a full-fledged workaholic, screwing around on Stefan, and his work finally kills him in the end, JP has not one but two unsuccessful flings, Bruno's been screwing Marcel (how did I not see that coming?), then after Marcel gets busted over it he nearly kills himself with heroin, oh, and Bitty "recovers" and tries to steal the kids away, only to not recover after all and die to her drugs in the end... But even when the story starts to lighten up, it's still heavy with JP's two huge revelations. After all that, though, that ending was so worth it. Still...are you sure you weren't going through a down period when you wrote this, Mark?

Not to nitpick, but in this chapter, Casey asks about playing Playstation, when it's only July. That wasn't launched in the States until two months later, on September 9. Yeah, the family's loaded to the point where importing one would be easy, but it wasn't mentioned, nor has Japan been mentioned anywhere in the series even up to this point. I know that's not technically a chapter review...but I wasn't sure where else to mention it. I'll probably have a story review for you sometime tonight.

You. Are. Evil! Sir. That is all. Guess this is where the suspense starts kicking in, eh? P.S. An automated vacuum? Really??

YAY!!!! :D I am so happy to see that Randy and Ryan worked things out, and that Ryan sent Sean packing. I'm not quite sure Sean will give it up yet, but at least now he's going to be fighting a losing battle. Do I want to know how on earth you made up a video game like that, though?

This story has no reviews? I can probably fix that. This story felt like two sides of a coin. There's a definite split right down the middle, with the first seven chapters on one side, and the later seven on the other. I have to say, I didn't really like Marcel all that much in the first half. He really seemed like an emotionally manipulative jerk, to be quite honest, all but forcing JP into a summer relationship, then guilt-tripping him when he had to remind Marcel that they'd agreed to end it. You'd think he was Stefan's biological son instead of his adopted son at that point. Then...chapter eight came, and it's like, suddenly it all makes sense. It seems like he was how he was because he just couldn't deal with Lou hurting him so much. I will say that Marcel was much nicer in the second half. Not nice enough to make me completely forget the first half, but enough that it changed my viewpoint on the story. I do see signs of you having fallen into a pattern once again though...you just can't help but write about very very emotionally damaged guys, can you?

Before I start...you talked about how Brad and Robbie have a tumultuous relationship and point out Robbie's twisted sexual history. As this story started to play out, especially around chapter 7 when Stefan mentions fisting...I can't help but notice that you've written quite a few guys in this series (not just in the Brad-narrated stories, but before that as well) to have pasts that included sexual crimes done to them. I'll admit to not being too thrilled when JP was diagnosed as HIV+, and to hoping in the back of my mind that it was a false positive...I didn't expect to see it coming, but I can have wishful thinking, can't I? But yeah...reading this seemed like watching a royal extended beating taking place. One bad event after another, all the HIV scares, all the HIV deaths (it seemed like there were as many characters killed off as there would be in a season of 24 ), and having Robbie locked up and raped in French prison. You really rattled my inner sense of justice with that one. (I guessed it was Cambronne behind the whole thing right away once the lawyers suggested a powerful guy pushing it, though. ) I'd probably rank this as the second heaviest so far, second only to 1968 of course. I have a suspicion that it's not going to get much darker from here on out, though...

I was born on October 4 of '85 (so yes, I share a birthday with Brad )...and you go and end this chapter with drama. Thanks a lot!

Gee...as this story started out, it really seemed like it was set up to have the same script, just with a different cast. I mean, with a narrator who plays around with a lot of guys and who wants to have a relationship anyway, and yada yada yada... At least, that's how it seemed...until Robbie came along. By turning the tables on Brad, openly admitting that he can't trust him because he still plays around, he's actually been able to stand up to him like no other lover did against a previous narrator. And nothing from there resembled the previous three stories (well, nothing except the rampant homophobia of the times). So...this story was actually pretty refreshing in that sense. It was very irritating near the end, though, when, all of a sudden, Robbie was off fucking around, leading to both of them fucking around. And...we never did get any kind of answer as to why Robbie applied to a school so far away from Brad (at least, so far away before Brad applied to Yale). It's really a crying shame that Billy turned out to be a complete monster, but you know what...for outing Brad and Robbie at school, and getting Robbie kicked off the team...I'm not sad to see that he got killed. Not in the slightest. And yet...I can't help but think that everything really stemmed back to when Billy was caught with Doug. Not once did anybody ever reassure him that it wasn't a big deal, not at all. I can't help but think that that is really when he started to resent everybody else.

Guess what? It's another review. (No, I'm not one of those people who stopped reading after 1968. ) I said already that I think that JP's own ways contributed to Jeff's losing control, so I do think that JP deserves to feel some guilt over it. (Keyword: contributed, not caused; Jeff didn't have to go all reckless...but he chose to.) Stefan...deep down, I wonder how much he's able to actually feel inside. He's very good at putting on any kind of feelings, and just the right ones for people to see, but having gone through one guy after another with no remorse, then dumping them like yesterday's trash once even the slightest hint of any difficult issue comes up...I do think that at least a few of his past lovers went out of control later on, in big part due to his rejecting them. Do I think his relationship with Greg will truly last? I have my doubts... It's funny, though, that in the last two stories, I thought the narrator would end up getting killed, and now in this one you actually tease going through with it!

Thanks comicfan...or should I call you Wayne? I'm still learning people's names...

He does look like a future dad in the making with that sweater...

Well, he already knew that Tyler was gay, so he had a reasonable expectation that when he streamed him having sex, that he'd be streaming him having gay sex. Since he already knew Tyler was gay, he didn't have to say so at any time later on (though he did Tweet about finding out Tyler was gay). Will that be enough to convict based on the motive, in addition to invading Tyler's privacy? I guess we'll see...but as you alluded to, that's why there's the trial.

That still puts the act in a separate area, because it begs the question, "why should catching him having (gay) sex - as opposed to just having sex - make any difference?" If you had said the evidence was about catching Tyler having sex, without a distinction as to straight/gay sex, I'd say "prove it" in response, and if you can, you'd have me convinced. But, I don't think Ravi should get a pass if it was the "gay" part of it that motivated him.

Gee, you like to leave readers hanging, don't you? Not What You Think, eh? Let's see...there's camping in the mountains, there's jetting off to an even more remote place, there's a fortified shelter, there's a stockpile of weapons...and there's laughter at the end. After reading this, I don't really know what to think! Although, somehow I'm betting that that's a good thing. Once again, there's no set, only-one way direction. This approach is serving you quite well.

Sorry, but this doesn't seem like just a prank to me. OK, since you asked .... you crazy, man! But really, Ravi didn't have to do what he did, but he did. And either way, he's going to pay a price for it - and deservedly so. There's plenty of pranks that don't involve breaking the law. ---------- I think this could be a great example of why I sometimes don't like the "hate crime" label. "Bias crime" makes much more sense. Maybe I'm getting hung up on semantics here, but I am thinking that "hate crime" might be too severe a label for what happened here, whereas "bias intimidation"...does seem more appropriate. The latter seems more appropriate for crimes that are, by themselves, less severe in nature, whereas "hate crime" seems almost tailor-made for crimes at the Matthew Shepard level of severity. (Personally, I think "hate crime" is an ill-fitting name - I agree with the rationale behind charging crimes this way, but the government could have come up with a name that doesn't also seem very fitting for crimes not motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. But, that's another discussion entirely.) Nonetheless, let me pose this question. If Tyler was straight, and was hooking up with a girl, but his personality was otherwise exactly the same...do you think Ravi would have chosen to stream what Tyler was doing anyway? Take Tyler's later suicide, and for that matter anything else that happened after the night Ravi streamed what Tyler was doing, completely off the table for a moment, and let's go back to the exact weekend in September. Do you still think Ravi would have streamed Tyler's intimate encounter if it were heterosexual rather than homosexual in nature?

Heh, I had to re-read the first chapter too. I'm getting a sense of some events to come, just not of how this story will get to them. I feel like we could be taken on a dramatic rollercoaster ride in later chapters, or we could find ourselves easing our way forward as we learn more about Brandon and Tyler. I think there's definitely room to go either way from here. Let's see how this will play out...

Well...even before I started reading, I could tell that this would be an incredibly dark story. But...would you hold it against me if I, once again, thought that it would end with JP getting killed? All things considered...I have to think that with Jeff, JP may have rescued him from his awful family in Chronicles, but the permanent damage was already done, and everything - all of his patterns of behavior, his seeking out drugs in the anti-war movement, his inability to stay in anything stable, basically his going completely psychotic - he wouldn't have been so susceptible to any of it had it not been for that first die cast. But quite frankly, JP's own lack of stability contributed to the epic disaster that was Jeff Hayes.

I have to say...this has been quite the rollercoaster ride to read. And to think it's only the beginning! Jeff...doesn't seem like much of a boyfriend. I don't think he knows how to keep his end of a relationship together. I wonder if it would've been worth it for JP to take him back in the end. Then again...considering how JP just ups and takes him back every single time anyway, they might as well have just gone off and been committed together. Yeah I know that sounds ridiculous in 1963, but they're basically each other's ball-and-chain, whether they like it or not. I will also say though that, given the dramatic pitfalls JP did have to deal with...I was honestly expecting this to end with him getting killed somehow!

I know that when I was writing my first story (coming soon ), I tried my best to make sure the characters weren't coming off as walking thesauruses. That's not to say they were totally dumb, but rather that their language was, well, typical of people their age. I'll admit to sometimes flexing my own vocabulary a bit when I speak or post, because I know different words and what they mean. I also know it's not exactly guaranteed that someone I write about will be the same way (unless I make them so). So...having to use some restraint on my choice of words was sometimes a bit challenging, especially since I used a first-person POV. But, I'm not sure I could've made it work the way I wanted to with third-person.

I dunno...I'll agree that he didn't quite have "hate criminal" motivation, I think he would've done things differently if he did. But...I can't shake the feeling that he was at least partly motivated by using the fact that Tyler was gay, and having intimate same-sex encounters, against him. I'm just not quite convinced that his only motive was to invade his privacy, prank-style. Why go to the length of having a "viewing party" if he's just pranking him?

I'm far from a legal expert, but it seems like the one charge that really should stick no matter what is the invasion of privacy. Whether he gets labelled as only a prankster or as homophobic, it seems pretty obvious that privacy WAS violated here. Get that one to stick and the witness tampering and hindering prosecution might too. Would it matter if he wasn't labelled homophobic? ...if only because it seems like whether or not he was, what he did definitely was. I reckon our resident legal expert ought to weigh in (that means you, Andy ).

(Responding to Cia) I'll agree, and that I think is the fatal flaw in the poll question. (No offense to TetRefine... ) I do think it's very difficult to have a really great story with out well-thought out characters and plot interwoven together. BUT, the question asks which we prefer, and so I also based my answer off of, "what if I can't have both?" Given that scenario, I'd prefer it if the characters are able to decide to act within their nature, or decide that they'll go against their nature, like say if the firefighter you describe above acts to help in spite of his fear or sharks. The alternative is if all they do is react given whatever the situation is. If that's the case, then all the characters really are are puppets, which they very well could be - but how does that work very well unless character description tells us so?

I prefer characters to plot. It's funny that you mention crime dramas...the big reason I prefers characters is that at the very least, their histories, the things they are feeling - they can serve to "create" a plot if one does not otherwise exist, or if essentially all it is is the characters going through life day to day. A strong plot can have the side effect of "bending" characters to fit within its structure, to act in ways and say things that are just not fitting of who they are...and that bugs the hell out of me. I say it's funny you mention crime dramas because Law & Order: SVU has been VERY guilty of this at times.