totally avid reader

And here I was thinking Mark was being masterfully & subtle by telegraphing ahead re the character development we could expect from Barbie's former male counterpart (though from 2004, they are only friends according to Mattel) I thought that I had broken Mark's code...with Ken Dolan being KenDoll. No surprises, what you see is what you get, narcarcism & literally nothing beyong the Calif looks,the emptiness & yet that predator greed. Now he is just Ken Dolan..but with still no real reason given to explain his lack of any real empathy for Travis..eg the usual broken home, abusive parent, even MKUltra etc Still none of us here needs a Russian novel but as a russian writer once wrote , " two intelligent people can't fall in love, true love needs one idiot"....with Travis cast as the poor exploitable fool here ...to me, this is all sort of starting to rhyme with back when Brad had to rescue Robbie from himself when he was being exploited for having a very sensitive prostate.(Just visualising that scene at Robbie's Princeton grad party where Brad with Jack's reluctant help, destroys Neil's legal threats against him is to me, is one of the highlights of the whole CAP series but then thats just how I am )

Extreme violence, imo would be preferable & easier to recover from than that bleak Artic wasteland that Will is living in at the moment . So he isn't going to join La Légion étrangère, that classic literary solution , muchless seclude himself in a solitary Buddhist hermitage in the forests of Oregon .. The fact that from the beginning Will knew who Kendoll was, & was unable to deflect that outcome, would just be adding to the pain.... PS Am wondering what insight Will gained from that 'medicated' night with Jeff . Does this explain his somewhat surprising response (i.e inaction/restrain) to the sky totally falling in on his dream...all will hopefully be explained by our guide in the next instalment.

I just prefer to just sit back & enjoy the instalment of the pageant that our Prospero has created. In real life, I would share yr indignation re both rampages of woe & destruction that Will has been guilty of...however none of us are walking in his shoes. Still imo, major kudos are due to Mark in that we are all so invested in this hopefully, weekly dopamine hit where the "actors (are) all spirits, and... are such stuff...as dreams are made on.."

Am sort of proud that our boy Will appears to be growing up & to have learnt just a little more restraint A sort of rite of passage that he appears to have passed with flying colours, at least given that Kendoll is still in the land of the living..for the moment🧐 Others with a different opinion would simply point to the absence of any power tools, much less any pool chemicals.... close at hand anyway

To paraphase one of Mark A 's colleagues, who is simply pointing out that its really all about one's perspective ( & enlightened self interest)...just like those aristos that Mark will insisted on writing about. Back then there was the hidden hand of the Guild , nowadays its the City of London , the Federal Reserve & Central Banks everywhere else " it( is) the best of times, it (is) the worst of times, it (is) the season of light, it (is) the season of darkness ...,it (is) the spring of hope, it (is) the winter of despair .." Amazing to consider what the US has survived up to now, so here's hoping it's good for another 250 yrs

One of the more obvious rules of this site that I've tried to follow up to now, is not to overstimulate Private Tim🤣🤣 with too much feedback, especially re the subject of Will and it seems Mac is trying to join that club, ( BTW loved his comment about not being forced into straightness😂🤣), but now that a door has been opened, my nerdish self can't resist adding my 2cents worth to the mix, with an obscure reference which might give some biological context to that whole rich tangled human experience. http://viewzone.com/homosexual.html Still at the end of the day, no matter how or when it ends, both Will & Austin are just being really human by chasing someone to love with Travis seemingly trapped by his good looks ,while lacking the nous of sidestepping people like Kendoll with their obsessing and projecting their own dark stuff on him. Am looking forward to having this darkerside of Kendoll being explored in more detail. Its a tribute to our esteemed author that all of his extensive life experience & field work in putting together this incredible writing along with the Granger series, over the past decade or so has apparently left him unchanged. The list of different characters ( how on earth did he manage to come up with Stef🤣 or Tonto for example)the many plot twists etc. So all those creative writing courses that American colleges are famous for, have really paid forthemselves here. Apparently Stephen King when asked how he could possibly write what he wrote, his reply was something to the effect that he really didn't have a choice in the matter...so whatever your motivation is Mark,

All I am wanting here is for the storyline to stay focused on Travesty, rather than Tragedy ...( unless that focus happens to be on a really deserving object like Wade's mum &/or sister, just as happened with JD's half brother, as most of us here still miss Robbie, or Will's mum & Hank for whom I was getting rather fond of). So hopefully we aren't reading Shakespeare here...in the natural course of things, young love while endearing & totally entrancing at the time, does burn out, however something much better usually does come along... BTW What subjects is Will taking at Harvard? And will Will be able to indulge in the consolations of Philosophy when Travesty hits the fan?

It is all of the above...I never did the obvious translation, so my bad. I was just going with the vibe of sadness and but also of gratitude for all those past memories..... even if here, they are just creations of that talented MrArbour ...& just like a lot of others apparently in similar situations where the loss is actually in the real world https://freemanbrothers.co.uk/2025/08/time-to-say-goodbye-is-uks-most-popular-funeral-song/

Am feeling humbled by the fine precision of yr language usage...it's like you were a graduate of some Latin Academy from teenage years past. Also upto now I had accepted the exit of various characters from Mark Abour's Simulation stage as just part of the natural order of things, a sort of "Con te partirò", so now we apparently have yet another bone to pick with our now admittedly amoral author.

There is the claimed truism that when one writes fiction, one reveals all about one's self ...so cunning is probably a good fit , but amoral ? George is definitely a tomcat [an aristocat?] of the first order, but life was short with no guarantees back then.....George's (& thus Mark's?) only obvious fault here seems that for the very first time in his career, George has put pen to paper in an indiscreet & potentially 'incriminating" fashion even though it was being expressed in other than his native language...thus the lack of his to be expected native English phlegm.

So Travis knows " what is coming"....? Mark Arbour has once again left us dangling waiting for that next 🙏🙏Saturday matinee episode. Am still having trouble mentally visualising this KenDoll chap...does he look like he's just come from having had a little plastic work done or is he straight out from one of the versions of "The Clash of the Titans"......because he is about to go up against Will and presumably that plastic sod has no idea about Will. The smart money will of course be on Will marking out his territory in his normal, blitzkrieg fashion 🥳😂 leaving no ambiguity or room for doubt. (Am hoping Ken has a therapist on speed dial.)

PrivateTim, am loving yr passion and investment in this latest Mark Arbour "Telenovela" installment, where just like on TV, the one of yr favorite but triggering characters, is fluent in Spanish. The jumping hippo 🦛 and elephant 🐘simile is one of your best so far....& now advocating raising the voting age to 30 should win you an even wider, appreciative fan base. (Wonder how Shoots would react?) Incidently you might find the notion of a Saturn return, at least as explained by astrologers (and maybe even Jung, I think), helpful in understanding how young fools,espec when in love/lust, somehow often manage to reset their lives back to a clean zero, sort of consistently when they hit their very late twenties (aka Saturn return). Personally I am all in favour of second chances, no matter what matter how cringeworthy anyone's past has been.

Wow, there are some serious Will haters here who act like he is a whereas try to remember he is only twenty years or so. Will is fairly unusual imo in that he can forgive and move on once a sincere apology is given , I am not sure that many of us here could do that at that age so yeah I would say he does have a reasonably mature mind. Its easy to forget what emotional messes a lot of us were at that age as we lurched from some emotional crisis to the next one intensified by peak hormones and horniness. Just remember how young Romeo & Juliet both approached life. And unlike our favourite RN peer, George Granger, Will doesn't get to get an explosive release by blowing things up

Well, this series is termed "Travesty" for a reason. Travis, like most golden boys, just doesn't have Will's emotional maturity, much less his capacity to see the big picture, so imo, this isn't going to end well for Will. So when the final curtain comes down on this travesty, Will is probably going to end up feeling nostalgically of Zach. 😍😍 I shudder at how far down,Mr Arbour is going to let Travis crash because as we all know, Mr Arbour loves drama 😭😳 & is cynical of young love, whether it's this scenario or its where Carlo ( & Will) walk in on Paolo with , say Stef.😁🤣 🐷🤣🦄

Anticipation, no matter how drawn out the interval between some of installments maybe, is really part of the charm of this series, as you freely give of your time to cordinate your characters in a framework dictated by history, while still somehow living your real life...so sincere thanks