BigBen

Leopard Spots is the continuation of Leopardskin Cover, which really must be read first. The first novel focused on the team and the club, which is rebuilding after a difficult year, dealing with money problems, and coping with the revelation that one of their teammates is gay. This story broadens the focus, and we begin to see the effects that the example of an openly gay athlete can have on the culture at large, quite apart from and in addition to the team's general impact on the surrounding community. In the first volume, it is the club treasurer who articulates the idea that the Leopards are not just a team, they are a family. In this volume, everyone, club staff, players, and even supporters, grows into the implications of this insight. This second volume continues the exploration of the differences between blood family and chosen family, as the players take responsibility for a young man who fears for his life if his parents were to learn he is gay. The extended Leopards family learns how to work as a team, even as the players learn how to become a family. We also continue to learn about the workings of the VFL, and what it takes to move up from there into the AFL. Since the Leopards are a non-affiliated team, aspirants have to work hard to attract the attention of AFL scouts, and we learn something of how that process looks from the professional teams' side, as well as from the aspiring players' side. Fans of the first volume will see how their favorite characters continue to grow and develop to meet the challenges thrown their way. So many themes enter into the story that one might expect the narrative to lose focus, but as he did in the first volume, the author continues to deftly weave the threads into a coherent whole. But now the team enters the regular season, and the pressure to make it to the finals begins in earnest. The Leopards have begun to pull together, but can they lift one another up enough to make it to the championship? If you thought the first volume was exciting, well . . . !

That scene with Jim and Ty in the car park always gets to me every time I read it; and the later scene between Ty and Peter, as well. That line about Jim as Ty's chosen father is very poignant. I also love Anne Flintlock. She isn't in the forefront, but she's a wise presence who gives crucial nudges in the right direction. The other characters are blessed to have her around. I'm usually too engrossed in the story to leave comments on my way through, but I wanted to be sure this time to leave my thanks for a highly pleasurable read.

A gripping story, deftly told, with memorable, well-drawn characters. We meet the players and staff of a semi-professional Aussie rules football club. (The Lilydale Leopards are a team in the Victorian Football League, just one step below the Australian Football League.) The players are ready to play their hearts out, but can they pull together as a team? What are their chances of making the playoffs? The players and the coaches are all under pressure to perform, and the administration is struggling to keep the club financially viable. To further add to the tension, a newly-hired gay employee meets and recognizes one of the players at a local gay club. They hit it off, but the player is deeply in the closet, fearing for the consequences to his career and his dream of being drafted into the major league. The outlook for romance seems grim. The author deftly weaves the story, combining scenes from the players' personal lives, the coaches' concerns, the administrators' efforts behind the scenes, and the game-by-game play that is going to either make or break the Leopards. Several players yearn to be drafted by the AFL, but do they have what it takes to compete in the major league? The author deserves high praise for making the details of the AFL's draft rules and of club administration just as fascinating as the lives of the various characters. The attraction between the two gay protagonists gives the author an opportunity to discuss the precarious situation of elite gay athletes, and the gay player's identity is deftly withheld until just the right moment in the plot. With all the various details about the lives of the various players, the story could have devolved into a soap opera, but instead we are given a realistic novel that holds our interest until the final paragraph. This story and its sequels are well worth reading and re-reading.

I'm not familiar with any of the author's other stories, but this one is certainly suitable for GA. Unlike many of Nifty's adult-youth stories, this one does not portray a sexual relationship between the protagonists, being instead an extended meditation on the nature and responsibilities of fatherhood and the differences between blood family and chosen family. I did read one other story by Scribe1971, come to think of it, which I believe is called "My Dad Comes Home Today." The narrator's father was a Canadian soldier who fell in Afghanistan. A very moving short story.

I believe you are thinking of Substitute Dad, by Scribe1971 (I believe that's the right name). It's available on Nifty and at least one other site. It might also be here on GA, I don't remember.

Though apparently there was a quite valid concern back then, about whether people could even survive traveling at the excessive speed of thirty miles an hour. No one actually knew, until it was tried.

Very reminiscent of David Brin's novel, Earth, which is well worth the read.

For me, it was The Enchanted Egg. Although the Babar books came a close second.

Alexander Malofeev, a young man to keep your eye on, playing the Third Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff, one of my favorite pieces. He doesn't doesn't grab me quite as much as Argerich or Janis, but he's young. Give him time.

Refers to an incident where Jesus heals two possessed men outside the town of Gadara by casting their demons (at the demons' request) into a herd of swine, which the demons then cause to rush over a cliff and drown. Not surprisingly, when the swineherds tell the story to the townsfolk, Jesus is asked to leave the area. I've always wondered how the Gadarenes felt about being known only for something their pigs did. In some manuscripts the name of the town is given as Gerasa or Gergasa.

In honor of the day:

Shifts in the point of view of third-person narration aren't particularly jarring, if handled well. Emma Darwin has some valuable tips on how to execute such shifts so that the readers won't even notice. However, when I encounter a shift from first-person narration to third-person in the middle of a story, I always wonder how the main character is supposed to have known what happened outside his sight and hearing. That question usually jars me out of the flow and immediacy of the first-person story-telling, especially when the third-person material appears to be a scene that the author felt a need to work out, but intended to omit from the finished work. Yesterday, I was flummoxed by a story I was reading on Nifty, in which the "I" telling the story became a different character from one paragraph to the next. This was in mid-chapter, and the switch came without warning. In fact, I had to read the new paragraph three or four times before it began to make sense, but sad to say, by that point I had lost interest in finishing the story. I once encountered a story (also on Nifty, I believe) where, I kid you not, in the middle of a chapter and with no warning, "I" shifted to a different character three times in the space of two paragraphs, and one of those shifts actually occurred in the middle of a sentence. As you may guess, that story had plenty of other problems that eventually rendered it unreadable. A shame, too, because the premise was intriguing and the plot, imaginative. It would have been a good read, if the writing hadn't been quite so unpolished. I hope the writer got himself sorted out in his later work, because he showed promise.

I'm so glad to see more chapters! Both to see Ronnie and Taran come more into their own, and also to see that Warren is capable of loving his son, regardless. And now, with the discovery of the shadowghast, the plot thickens. Or, given the connection with the Black Death, should that be "the plot sickens . . ." ?? 🤣😂😋

Glad to hear the problem has been resolved, whatever caused it, and however it got fixed!

I'm sorry, but I'm old enough that the notion of people going around with sheets with holes in them brings up some pretty horrific memories.

I'm so glad to see more chapters! Yay! Taran and Ronnie are definitely favorite characters. Can't wait to see how things work out for them.

Sometimes problems like this result from outdated firmware in the router. A call to your ISP's service department should resolve the issue. But be prepared to wait some time for the firmware update to finish. I once had this problem at home, and later at my mother's house. The idea of updating the router never occurred to me, either time.

Two of my favorite phenomena: Joyce Didonato and a countertenor:

It's not surprising that authors don't like to receive anything less than five stars, but it seems bad form to tell a reader not to leave a review with less than that. Since, when someone clicks on the Story menu the first umpteen stories to show up are all in progress and therefore have no reviews, it seems a bit silly to focus on reviews, when we users are being trained not to look for them. And in any case, my tastes are so idiosyncratic that it's simply easier to start reading a likely-looking story and form my own opinion, rather than rely on anyone else's. By the way, does anyone know why the system prompts readers to leave a review before they start reading, rather than after? I've always wondered.

A colony of rats is called a mischief, and any one who has kept pet rats can tell you why.

Since a quick Internet search reveals shirts tucked in and shirts untucked in equal numbers, and even a couple of half-tucked shirts, I think you guys are just yanking chains. 😄

Fashion suicide? I've been tucking or not tucking, according to the whim of the moment, for years now, and have never gotten flak either way. Of course, I'm old enough that peer pressure is much less of a concern than it used to be, so I might have been getting flak and not noticed. Of course, tucking your shirt into your underpants is absolute fashion suicide, but at least freeballing prevents that kind of faux pas.

While women are often squeamish about the thought of people not wearing underpants, guys often find it a lot more comfortable. I vary the style (or existence) of underwear according to circumstances. Even in a lightweight summer wool suit, a T-shirt and underpants are essential to keeping cool—not to mention saving on the drycleaning bills. And in the winter where I live, extra layers are often a good idea. In summer, I'd go nude all the time, if I could get away with it. When I do wear underpants (I normally have no need for a T-shirt, since I'm usually wearing one as outerwear), I vary these days between boxers and boxer briefs. I generally use the fly, because it's more efficient than having to dig inside my trousers to find the top of the underpants. Some guys pull down their trousers and underpants at the urinal, but that's too complicated for me. I also find that if one wishes the benefits of freeballing without staining one's trousers, a pair of very loose boxers is a tolerable compromise. I used to wear tight bikini-style briefs, until I contracted a massive, systemic case of poison ivy; for years after that, I had to wear loose boxers, and eventually I came to prefer them, for the most part.

A good writer is a good writer. But a lot of the writers on Internet fiction sites are still learning to write, and there are pitfalls inexperienced writers fall into. Some of them appear to be rooted in the differing sexual psychologies of the two sexes, though many more are not. None of these pitfalls is insuperable to a writer with imagination and a strong desire to communicate with as many readers as possible. I do think, however, that there are two issues relevant here. The first is that the two sexes experience sexual contact from very different perspectives, and it takes some skill as a writer to be able to work out how the dynamics change when it's two men or two women getting together. For one thing, the power differential is very different in a same-sex relationship. Is it important to reflect that in m/m or f/f romance? The second issue is that the goals of heterosexual sex are very different from the goals of sex for same-sex couples. One important implication is that, in real life, gay men and gay women, not having penis-in-vagina sex as an option, give a lot more value to sexual practices that the heterosexual world dismisses as "not real sex." Yet m/m romance seems to endorse the heteronormative view and require the characters to have penis-in-anus sex—because it is the closest that two men can come to penis-in-vagina sex—which is, in turn, the sine qua non of m/f romance. (Which gives one to wonder how writers of f/f romance cope, given that penis-in-anus and penis-in-vagina are both off the table in their case.) And so the question inevitably becomes, how would readers react, if someone were to post a story in which the culmination of the two guys' love was their fabulous oral sex, and they had no interest whatsoever in trying anal?