Cynus

Thank you again to everyone. I'll make sure to show my appreciation further once I get my likes back.

Earl Grey tea. Preferably in London Fog form if it's "comfort" I'm after. How do you take your coffee? Assuming you drink it.

Chris is the protector. He loves his fellow man a great deal, and is willing to go the extra mile for any of them. He forgot that for a time, when he promised to follow the mission rules, and it created a conflict in him. At certain points through the story, he advocated dogma over that love he has for other human beings, and that's what caused him to mess up with Gary and help push him into his downward spiral. But you're definitely right, in that Jason would have regretted it. When Chris decided to take the letter from Jason, he was protecting all three of them. It's his way.

I'm going to risk repeating myself here, but I'm going to do it anyway. The next chapter is going to answer a lot of questions, and I think it wraps the story up quite nicely. As emotional as this chapter was, the next chapter has its own surprises. Gary's family is modeled off of a Mormon family I read about in the news several years ago, in which one of the children came out and the family chose their child over the church, but remained in the church to fight the church's misguided approach to homosexuality. I've always wanted to use them as characters, and this felt the right place to do that.

Oh, Chris definitely would have taken him in. It wouldn't have even been a question. His parents would have embraced the poor soul in a second and Gary would never have to worry about being homeless. But thankfully, Gary's family is far more accepting and warm than many Mormon families are. I think if you liked this chapter, you're going to love the next one, and it's going to answer a lot of what was left unsaid here. I wasn't extremely proud of this story until I wrote the last two chapters, and now I can actually say I'm incredibly pleased with how it turned out. I hope you enjoy the conclusion as much as I did. Thank you for the review.

I have to defend my boys a little bit here, but not angrily. I respect your point of view on the matter, of course, I just feel there's another way to look at it. My attempt was to create an impression that Gary and Luke came to the decision together. If I did accomplish that (I very well may not have) then another look at the end of Chapter 10 may yield a new perspective. I was hoping to show Luke and Gary as unified in what they were about to face, and so they both agreed to confess. Neither of them said that Chris knew. If they had, President Billings wouldn't have come to ask Chris IF he knew, just WHAT he knew. Luke and Gary tried to protect the other two from facing the consequences, and then Chris decided to confess on his own. In the end, they all made decisions which affected the others. Luke and Gary made the decision to confess. Chris made the decision to protect them. Jason made the decision to turn them in, but then couldn't because Chris stole the letter. Regardless of who actually succeeded in that exchange, someone would have been making a decision which affected everyone else. I hope none of that came across as antagonistic, I was just trying to explain my character's motives a little better. Thanks for the review, as always.

Thank you everyone, for celebrating my continued existence and for your contribution to that existence. I wouldn't be able to do it without you.

Riding the rabbits.

They've certainly all come a long way, and now they're facing a major turning point. The next chapter will test them all, and they'll be forced to make some major decisions. Of course, with Chris to watch out for everyone, how could things possibly go wrong? Thank you for the review.

They've certainly all come a long way, and now they're facing a major turning point. The next chapter will test them all, and they'll be forced to make some major decisions. Of course, with Chris to watch out for everyone, how could things possibly go wrong? Thank you for the review.

When you do decide to go through with it, I'm sure everyone will be very supportive, like they are now.

Right on, MGK. More power to you.

“Are you ready for this?” Luke looked up at Jason’s question, wondering at his companion’s tone of voice. Jason seemed oddly nervous, but there was something else in his voice that Luke couldn’t identify, but it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The Church service had ended several minutes ago, and the four missionaries were on their way to meet with the branch presidency for their MTC exit interviews. Luke put Jason’s mental state out of his mind; he had plenty of his own proble

A very merry day of existence to you, Lilansui.

A very merry day of existence to you, Dark.

I could definitely feel the emotion, and see the scenarios play out in my mind. You may have some issues with traditional poetic structure, but you have the point of poetry down, which in my opinion is to express one's emotion. Well done.

Welcome, Jack.

A very merry day of existence to you, Amon.

Thank you to Emperor Roland over at CastleRoland.net for sharing this. This video made my day if not my year. http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=13536127

I've been in that same funk since I finished writing The Navigator in March. Nothing I've written since has even come close to how that story felt for me, except maybe the Halloween short story I'm working on right now. The stats have proven it for me, too. No one else likes my new stuff as much as my old stuff, either. It makes one wonder if he's lost his mind, but he's certainly lost his muse. I kept writing anyway, even though it wasn't good enough. And I released it anyway, even though it wasn't good enough. I've been told that my recent stuff is predictable and pretentious, and quite honestly I have a hard time disagreeing with those assessments.

Such is the life of a shapeshifter I suppose. One could always become a girl for awhile as well. The possibilities are endless with these two.

Disclaimer: This will be depressing. Read at your own peril. How do I define success? This seems to be the question of the decade for me. I don't know if I've been successful in my life. My instinct is to say I haven't been, but maybe I am? If success is having financial security, then I definitely have not been successful yet. If success is reaching a position of power, then no again. A position of influence perhaps? Yes, I have some small amount of influence on the world, so in that I am slightly successful, not enough to outweigh the other factors however. Or is it happiness? If success is happiness then I am certainly not successful at all. I don't know that I've ever been happy, at least not in recent memory. I think most people define success as happiness, and it's likely they're right. Being successful then is out of my reach. Even with the people in my life who make living bearable it isn't enough to make me actually happy. I have good friends who care a great deal about me, and they too shake their heads in silence when they see me slip into bouts of depression, helplessly wondering how they can help me. I thought loving someone would make me be happy, and it doesn't. Even with the people I loved the most in the world, and even when they loved me back, there was overwhelming sadness and bitterness for me. There was frustration, angst, worry . . . plenty of ego . . . but happiness? Perhaps it was what I caught brief glimpses of in the distance, I don't know, but whenever I arrived at that distant point it was gone long before I'd arrived. I thought spirituality would make me happy, and it doesn't. At best, it helps make life livable, because at least I have perspective to understand that life is similar for everyone, in the respect that all of us have ups and downs, problems and fortunes. At least it helps give me the capacity to understand that life is more comfortable when we treat others and other living things with respect, and live with integrity. But comfort is not happiness, and therefore it is not success. I thought pursuing my passions would make me happy, and it doesn't. It gives me something to do, sure, but it does little more than fill my time, and oh how I need to keep myself busy! If I don't I will be lost in the endless melancholy, the boredom of one trapped in a life they can't stand with no end in sight. If I don't keep myself busy I'll surely die. But all of my passions, writing included. do not fulfill me, they simply keep me from drowning. Staying afloat is not happiness, therefore it is not success. And so the question is, what am I doing wrong? Am I trapped in ego? Locked behind my narcissistic tendencies? Am I so busy peering into the mirror of my own soul that I have already gone too far? Have I reached a point of no return in my self-absorption? Or am I just not good enough? That's the depression talking, isn't it? Or is it legitimate? Am I truly deluding myself into thinking I can actually make this work? Recent developments in my life seem to suggest so... even those closest to me are beginning to withdraw their support. So what the fuck am I doing? Recently, it seems as if I've felt that popularity would make me happy, and it sure as fuck doesn't. It can't even distract me anymore, and it becomes an addiction, with the worst kind of withdrawals. I didn't really believe popularity would bring me happiness, but the lack of it once I've tasted it? I never imagined that would be so disheartening, so crushing to everything I've tried to do. And I don't even know why. I don't know why is does that, I don't know why I care, and I don't know why it's happening in the first place. I don't know why I go on social media, here at GA, any of the other places I post, fishing for likes and reviews as if they will somehow make me feel better about all the crushing despair around me. I don't know why I keep trying to draw attention to myself, as if for some reason the world paying attention to me would be enough to illuminate my problems and show me the way out of this mess. It won't. It doesn't and it won't. Nothing fucking works, and thinking popularity would was grasping at straws. There's certainly no happiness to be found anywhere in it. And so I'm quitting that way of life. No more attention seeking. No more asking for likes, or reviews, or emails, or trying to show everyone that I can be witty, funny, and just as cool as they can be. I am leaving it behind me because it does nothing but force me into the addiction cycle. For those of you worried about me (As I know some of you reading this will be) don't worry, I'm not going to hurt myself. If I've survived this long, I'll continue to survive until something other than me decides it's time for me to stop surviving. What I won't be doing is living, because apparently that's impossible for me. Survival is not happiness. Survival is not success.

Jason's decision will be coming up in a couple of days, and then we'll see how correct you are about his intentions. I don't think any of them have ever been particularly malicious. Misguided, sure, but . . . I have a soft spot for people like Jason, because he's really just passionate about what he believes in, but he's trying to be a good person at the same time. He's simply misguided as to what that entails. Thank you for the review.

Jason's decision will be coming up in a couple of days, and then we'll see how correct you are about his intentions. I don't think any of them have ever been particularly malicious. Misguided, sure, but . . . I have a soft spot for people like Jason, because he's really just passionate about what he believes in, but he's trying to be a good person at the same time. He's simply misguided as to what that entails. Thank you for the review.

This story is largely about personal growth. In writing, I attempted to give each of the boys a large personal flaw. It's more apparent in some than it is in others, but they all have one. Each of them is working on overcoming those flaws as well, and a lot of factors contribute to their success in that regard. The interaction between them all is a large contribution to that success, especially since each of those flaws have corresponding strengths in at least one of the others. That bond of brotherhood they have is more than just a plot device, it's almost the entire point of the story. Thank you for the review as always.