Cane23

Today marks Christmas Eve according to the old Julian calendar, which is still followed by our Orthodox Church. It's a day of fasting, so fish is traditionally served at the table. In the afternoon, we take a branch from an oak tree and burn it on a stake in the churchyard. As the sparks fly, people share blessings like, 'More sparks, more sheep,' 'More sparks, more coins,' or 'More sparks, more happiness.' Tomorrow, on Christmas Day, the table must feature pork and a special bread with a coin baked inside. The person who finds the coin is believed to be blessed with good luck in the coming year. Instead of saying "Merry Christmas," we greet each other with, 'Christ is born.' Wishing everyone a joyful holiday (as celebrated by the Julian calendar). 😘🎄

Only @Laura S. Fox can make a sex scene hot, tender, witty, and heartfelt all at once. Bravo!

Classic Brad-the-fisherman again - provoking, fishing for reactions, because direct honesty would require him to face something he’s not ready to acknowledge.

Actually, the most personal chapters for me were the ones in which I saw myself most clearly in Lyn. This one, though...yes, it probably touched something else - the guilt of having neglected an issue for a long time. The reason I think it might be dyslexia, even if @Laura S. Fox never explicitly names it by the end of the story, is that dyslexia can manifest in very different ways. For example, when my daughter reads, everything goes smoothly until she encounters an unfamiliar or slightly more complex word. That becomes the trigger - the entire sentence suddenly collapses for her, and she can no longer grasp its meaning at all. Another moment still stays with me from her lower grades. She was studying for a science test, we were helping her, and we were absolutely certain she was prepared. We were shocked later to see that she had handed in a blank test. The problem? The test sheet had empty spaces for answers - no lines. She was confused about where to write, and that confusion completely blocked her from answering.

This is such a thoughtful take - thank you for it. I really like how you stay away from labels while still digging into the structure of Brad’s behavior. Seeing his charm, validation-seeking, and risk-taking as adaptive rather than careless adds a lot of emotional truth to him. Brad can look shallow on the surface, and for a long time many of us read him that way, but he isn’t. He’s avoiding something, and other people become the way he stays afloat.

Nope...straight to the point (ok...maybe not so "straight"), no hesitation... I suppose arm was hurting more than ass... 😂 Be gentler with these guys please!

Another amazing chapter! I absolutely love the ride you’re taking us on - hilarious banter, undeniable chemistry that everyone can see except them, and finally some genuinely good, semi-professional advice. Klebber and Dennis have both been hurt before by people who tried to use them - Klebber for his beauty, Dennis for his wealth - so it makes sense that building mutual trust will take time. But that Ariana song… 😂🤣😂 Oh, Marrisa... What a source of information kids can be - there’s no intelligence to compare! 😁

This chapter is so tragic in its core... “You’ll never be alone,” he promised, even if Brad could no longer hear him. Brad is afraid of abandonment - Lyn responds by becoming indispensable, instead of demanding clarity. So, when the “fateful last night” happens, the betrayal isn’t just whatever action took place - it is the collapse of a psychological guarantee Brad believed in but never heard spoken. From Brad’s internal logic - you were my person, you always stayed...you said I wouldn’t be alone. Except Lyn said it to himself, not to Brad and that gap is catastrophic. No matter how much Brad may have hurt Lyn through obliviousness, prioritizing others, emotional negligence...the final act of abandonment belongs to Lyn. Not because Lyn is cruel, but because he disappears without naming why, chooses silence over confrontation, removes himself entirely rather than risk rejection... From Brad’s perspective, this is not “consequences” - it is vanishing, and for someone with abandonment anxiety, vanishing is the deepest wound. Lyn made himself essential to Brad’s emotional survival but never told Brad what that bond meant or what it required...so, when Lyn finally withdrew, Brad experienced it as abandonment rather than consequence. After this chapter, we see Brad in different light - what changes most is not what Brad does, but what he lacks... internal containment, emotional language, reflective distance. So, he leans outward - on people, jokes, bodies, proximity. Before, his failures felt like choices; now, they feel like limitations. These are not excuses, but limits matter. I dare to say, this chapter invites diagnostic readings of Brad without ever turning him into a case file. Attachment-related anxiety - Brad's intolerance of solitude, constant need for stimulation (“I can’t ever stand still”), difficulty self-soothing, escalation with age (“it’s getting harder, not easier”), dismissal of professional help (“No one can help”). Brad shows repeated behaviors consistent with ADHD traits - impulsive speech (“We should jerk off together sometime”), difficulty tracking conversations, word-finding struggles, sensation-seeking (dangerous swing, alcohol, escalation), difficulty tolerating boredom or quiet. Crucially, Brad externalizes his thoughts immediately - there is little internal editing. Finally, seems to me Brad might be dyslexic - visible frustration with complex words, embarrassment masked by humor, reliance on performance (charm, physicality, confidence) over articulation. His struggling with studies, often explained as laziness... (my daughter has dyslexia so, this sounds very familiar).

Well, well, well... look what I stumbled upon while binge-reading another one of @Krista's stories Standing In Shadows - Fiction - Gay Authors! (ch. 33) The secret of who’s going to bottom first is cleverly hidden in the details -did @Krista do her homework on Nifty or what? 😁

Aww, your comment is better than the chapter itself! ❤️

“No, no, you’re bullshitting me. Brad wouldn’t use words like ‘beautiful’ and ‘fragile’ when he was talking about me.” Except he did... Brad guffawed like a school kid. “You’re so lying right now. You’re like that pea princess. Delicate and stuff.”

I think Jax realized that Joel’s crazy, so he’s not gonna mess with a ‘lunatic’ anymore. Not sure that’s the reputation Joel wants, but at least it’ll give him a break for a while. Lol, maybe they can even work out together in the school gym… 😁

Yeah, that doesn’t sound very convincing… Maybe Trace actually knows the truth. 🤪

Happy New Year, everyone. This is a very extensive analysis - I have to admit I lost concentration somewhere halfway through. Nevertheless, I’m aware of its importance for site management and authors, and for us readers as well. One small remark - South America (the continent) and the American South (the southern states of the USA) seem to be mixed up. I wouldn’t say I’m especially perceptive - it just happened that I was reading two stories put under same tag - @LittleBuddhaTW's story set in Medellín, Colombia, and @CasualWanderer82's story set in Mississippi, USA.

Yes, the previous chapter was published last year… which means, dear author, you haven’t published anything since last year.

Happy New Year, dear friends! I’m just watching, as is tradition with my family, the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert on TV from the Musikverein. The conductor is Canadian - Yannick Nézet-Séguin, an openly gay conductor leading this historic event. Thinking that not so long ago women were not even allowed to be members of this orchestra, it’s a reminder that not everything in this world is moving backwards.

@LeeSA and our Australian friends are a bit ahead of us - already in 2026! 😄 Wishing you all a Happy New Year 🎆

What strikes me is that Luke confronts Lyn about whether to tell or stay silent, yet Luke himself avoids the bare minimum of honesty. He never tells Brad that he initiated contact with Lyn or that he deliberately pulled him into this situation. If silence is supposedly the ethical choice, why is that responsibility placed entirely on Lyn, and not on the person who started the chain of events in the first place?

At this point, whether Bella knows or how much she knows is no longer what matters most. This is no longer a question of ignorance vs. knowledge; it becomes a question of chosen blindness vs. imposed truth. Up to this point, Lyn’s moral framework is relatively stable - Bella is being deceived, deception causes harm...so, telling the truth means prevention, even if painful. That’s a rescue narrative; it allows Lyn to act without ambiguity. But... Bella shatters this - “Don’t make me explain what ‘all’ means.” “I’m marrying him so I can make sure he can never tell.” This is not ignorance; it is strategic non-knowledge. Bella is not asking to be informed - she is asking to remain un-informed on purpose. At that moment, telling is no longer “saving” her...it becomes overriding her agency. Her hope is not that the truth is harmless - her hope is that silence can be functional. That makes the marriage not a lie, but a contract... I won’t ask...you won’t tell...we’ll call this stability. But the crucial mirror is - Lyn seeing himself in Bella! He recognizes wish to make things “work” at any cost, readiness to absorb discomfort so others don’t and desire to believe 'this time it will hold'. Once Bella chooses not to know, truth loses its automatic moral priority. Now the ethical question becomes - do we have the right to force truth on someone who is choosing illusion? - Is chosen blindness less valid than imposed knowledge? - Does harm avoided justify autonomy violated? This is the sentence that changes everything “Don’t ruin this for me.” Even unspoken, it’s unmistakable. At that moment, Lyn is no longer standing between truth and lie, he is standing between a person’s chosen illusion and his own belief that illusion will fail. So, once Bella chooses not to know Lyn can no longer frame himself as a savior. Truth loses its innocence, and the story asks a much harder question - is it more ethical to respect someone’s chosen illusion, or to destroy it because you know it will fail? And the most brutal part - Lyn knows exactly how seductive that illusion is because he lived inside it for years. That’s why this chapter doesn’t end with action - it ends with weight.

Of course, he’d enjoy it - but would he ever admit it? 😁

Hmm, interesting - the alpha’s ultimate sacrifice for his mates 😁

I agree with this. While Trace and Celia are clearly kind and accepting, I don’t see them as especially liberal or as “Flower Children”–type parents. I see them more as devoted Christian parents who deeply cherish the core value of their faith - love and acceptance. That said, I don’t believe they would allow Joel and Davin to live as a “married” couple under their roof. The same standard would apply to any of their children, as you mentioned. It’s not about limiting freedom, it’s about decency, boundaries, and mutual respect. That said, I’m sure the teenagers, like teenagers all over the world, would try everything they could to bend or break the rules anyway. 😉

I share the feeling about Adam… ever since that scene at the cemetery and Maddy's words, 'Good riddance. I hope you stay dead,' something tells me something was off with Adam.

This is so on point. I'd add that it is fear - fear is the glue holding the status quo together in Misaligned. It’s a mutual, learned fear that has hardened into structure - fear of loss (if I speak, I lose what little I have), fear of collapse (if the truth is named, the whole triangle falls apart) and fear of self-recognition (if I say this out loud, I must become someone else). Over the years, that effort turns into codependency. What makes it especially compelling in Misaligned is that this codependency does have genuinely beautiful moments - loyalty, familiarity, shared history, even tenderness. That’s why it lasts and why it feels noble to the characters themselves. But the cost is enormous - the relationship doesn’t collapse because it’s dramatic or toxic in an obvious way; it stagnates because no one is allowed to want fully. All three of them are emotionally and honestly unfulfilled. For any of them to feel satisfied, something in their dynamic would have to change, and that kind of change is exactly what they’re afraid of.

Oh, I read that one - great story. I still remember the impression it left on me. I even mentioned it in my review - An Englishman in New York becoming a Yankee on King Arthur’s Court. 🙂