Bruno75010

You missed Anne Rice's death by just a few days. Might want to insert a wink to her at some point.

Will Justin be President in 4 years?

Could this coronavirus outbreak be due to some scheming of... I don't know... the Elders? (Or darker forces)

If the vampires replace the humans, what will they eat?

You are right... In my mind, it was the explanation of his tolerance, but I am being a bit narrow-minded myself

Hmm - Difris's hesitations and solutions to his ban to go outside remind me ofJewish casuistry around Shabbat (I am Jewish, for those who wonder.) I am waiting for Mike coming out to his grandson.

Whatever happened between the author and Gayauthors, I think it is very bad taste to put such a warning at the beginning of any story. If this were to discourage prospective readers, it could not be better formulated.

I googled Openseter and found this: http://gardmillom.kulturgardar.no/events/gardmillom-open-seter-2012-07-28/ 😁

John Lennon's assassination was not the only one linked to The Catcher in the Rye. According to WIkipedia: Several shootings have been associated with Salinger's novel, including Robert John Bardo's murder of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Additionally, after fatally shooting John Lennon, Mark David Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book that he had purchased that same day, inside of which he had written: "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement". So your observation has to be taken seriously. Salinger's story contains a lot of violence, if not necessarily physical. It is about a teenager who is at the same time angry, frustrated and full of idealistic pulsions, torn between these contradictions. The parallel with your story is striking, and I think this is a great insight. You should also take into account those of your readers who have not been through something similar to your own experience which inspired Gone from daylight (according to what you wrote). They may be the majority, and in any case I am one of them. The roller-coaster effect may be less on them, and on the contrary repetitive violent scenes may have an effect of saturation and repulsion. I for one am constantly torn between the desire to stop reading (because of that, but not only) and go on (because it is so good). This is a kind of spiritual journey (for a vampire!) and one can see the spiral going upwards, but oh-so-slowly...

You are welcome. I found a reference to the film (in French): http://www.comitedufilmethnographique.com/din-nabos-son-le-fils-de-ton-voisin/

This quote is only indirectly connected, but I found it interesting. Sorry that it is lengthy. It is (my) English translation of a 2001 intervention of Françoise Sironi, a psychotherapist specialised in torture issues and an Amnesty member. It came back to my mind because of the word "reconstruction". « There are, indeed, torturers trainings. The film "Le fils de ton voisin" thus describes the various phases in the school of torture training in the time of the Greek Colonels. They did not pick up just anybody, but recruits finishing their service, who were finding themselves unemployed or came from withdrawn areas of Greece. They were offered a usually not free training, and they were told: "You are going to belong to a corps apart, you may not talk about it". (...) There is a real analogy with initiation techniques used in traditional societies to let someone pass from one world to another, notably at adolescence. This is what is called traumatic techniques, because they truly mark the human mind. Four phases are described in the film. The first and preliminary phase is "Revalorisation of the initial identity" with techniques of braveness based on strength. They were also told: "You may not have contacts with your family, with your girl-friend". This phase lasts about three weeks. Then, the second phase, which lasts from three weeks to a month, "Identity deconstruction". It is brutal. The same instructors force absurd gestures to be made, like brushing the ground with a toothbrush or digging a hole and filling it back afterwards. Fright is organised, they show up in the middle of the night, insult people. Suddenly, they [transl.: the instructors] create trauma and nonsense. They [transl.: the trainees] wonder: "What happens? Why these same instructors, who were participating, who bore burdens as heavy as [we] trainees?" The same people have become insulting, they are unrecognisable. All is disorganised, there are no rules anymore, and of course, in this phase, they are told again and again "Look, if you want to go, you are free". No one was leaving, the group and cohesion effect had already worked. When you are at this point, you are already compromised. The third phase is "Reconstruction of the new identity". All is based again on braveness, strength, pride, with important messages, political messages. The enemy is being constructed, the other one is the enemy from within that has to be eradicated. In this phase, they play on the valorisation of this identity. The training ends with giving the uniform. They are told: "Now, you may go into life and do whatever you want, because you are above the law". The recruits are really conscious to belong to a world apart. They go out, drink, burn red lights, put in action the fact that they belong to a world apart. The first thing they do after being back to the barracks is to torture someone. As they say: "Here we go, we hit now". This is why I was talking about a traumatic transmission of the traumatic techniques that are used. »

"I know you think about it. I know it haunts you, night after night. How long did that abuse go on? Why did you allow it? Did you want it? Did you ask for it? Did you tolerate your father's savage beatings in order to hold your family together...only to fail miserably in the end?" The worst thing to do as a psychotherapist is to tell your patient what you want him or her to discover on themselves. If the Jeweler was part of a psych order, he would be kicked out immediately. Probably because what he does is not psychotherapy...

This looks like the summum of manipulation! He is telling Justin to find his true self, to become the master of his own life and his actions, and at the same time he tells him that everything is already controlled by the scriptures. I am writing "looks like" instead of "is" to still give the Jeweler the benefit of the doubt... Also: "Love requires vulnerability. And vulnerabilities can be corrupted, leveraged, and manipulated. You'd do well to remember that. A being of your, almost infinite, power cannot become a puppet for something other than himself." This seems the deepest reason why this Jeweler appears happy with Taryn's future death. Maybe, to escape it, Justin will have to find how to renounce being the Mimic.

From Erick's readings, there seems to be some amount of fanaticism in the Jeweler. So he may want to control Justin for his aims, in spite of his talk of "searching for ourselves".

It seems the Jeweler want to do a Job on Justin... pun intended!

I am not a young one, so I know who Dagwood is!

At least he is fighting in a team spirit now. Some improvement.

Ouch. It seems that these catastrophic visions are created by Justin's negative half: his taunting in the previous chapter strongly suggests it. Another thing: Justin does not seem to notice that the circles don't necessarily repeat themselves: for example, at the laundry, he didn't draw the same picture on the second "round", in Ch. 9. Unless I missed something.

After all... within the Mahabharata there is the Bhagavad Gita...

I can't help thinking of the Mahabharata, but I realize that it is misguided...

I didn't find the dialogue between Trevor and Justin (or Trevor's address to Justin) believable at all. Coming from anybody else, except Michael, it would have been OK. For example Rain or Max. But can Trevor really jump from constant mischievousness to well-meaning? Or even, to hidden well-meaning? He says "What good is it to have us offer you help if you won't take it?" So he includes himself implicitly in 'us', as if he had been only pretending to be hostile to Justin all along. Also, "It's been almost a year out here in darkness". If I count by the feedings, a little more than 3 months.

This circle idea is very interesting! Let's see how it develops.

"The two energies were hungrily feeding off of each other in unison, increasing to levels that neither one of us could contain! " This contradicts the first law of thermodynamics. (See also the second law.)

In "For your own good", Alice Miller explains how we sometimes reproduce on others [our children] the violence which we have been victims of as children. And also, how some people look all their life for their ideal father, or ideal mother, in their successive partners, only to unconsciously find pertners who fit the patterns of their real father (or mother), if they were abusive. But I don't think the last point appears in this story.

I liked: "Michael's desire to be needed and Trevor's need to be desired"