D and B

So three gay college men in a high rise dorm get on the elevator to head for the ground floor. One is a brunet, one a redhead, and one a blond. The brunet looks down to the floor of the elevator and sees a small puddle of pearlescent white fluid. "Hey," he says, "that looks like somebody came in the elevator!" The redhead looks, bends over, smells of it, and says, "Smells like cum, too." The blond also bends over, touches his index finger to the goop, then touches it to his tongue. He pauses in thought for a second, then says, "Not anybody from our floor!"

Spelling out a joke nearly always spoils it, but... A. dkstories's Do Over stories, hosted on this site, are founded on the concept that it is possible to send one's persona back in time, to occupy one's younger body with memories and experience of what for it is the future. The device used for this resembles a specialized MRI machine. B. The stories are the best executed "Marty Stu" fiction ever; protagonist of the firrst three stories (and a leading character in the fourth) is "Davey Jones", whose unrevised life (and the unchanged elements of the revised ones) are precisely modeled on Dan's own. C. The major antagonist in most of the stories is the fictional son of the real Eduard Shevarnadze, who is likewise out to revise history -- in the old Soviet Union's favor.

Analog SF magazine used to (perhaps still does) have an occasional feature called "Probability Zero" -- vignette-length stories with highly improbable setups done for humor value, the humor being dep[endent on either a shaggy-dog sort of pun or spinning an in-joke founded in a famous SF story. With that in mind, here's an advance look at: Gay Authors > New Posts > October 24, 2008 In Politics > The Soapbox, Rakuten08 writes: "The 2 1/2 month old war between Russia and Georgia, allegedly over South Ossetia, took a new turn when forces led by ousted Georgian premier Eduard Shevardnadze staged a coup against the embattled Georgian government. Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately extended diplomatic recognition to the insurgent Shevardnadze regime." In Hosted Authors > dkstories's Stories, Trebs writes: "I regret to inform readers that Dreams of a Father will be on an indefinite hiatus. Dan has gone to the hospital for an MRI. He said to tell everyone that if all goes well, he'll be bringing them a new Do Over episode."

Let's not forget that Now tie that to Then throw in

I've been waiting for one of the "regulars" to start a thread about Altimexis's latest story in the Naptown Tales sequence, and am really surprised that no one has. Altimexis has a reputation for not shying away from the tough subjects, the ones people don't like to face. And this story carries on that mode of choosing to ace them head on -- two of them, in fact, in one story. While there are a few minor flaws from the absolute ideal narrative, they fit perfectly with the conceit of putting the story in the words of a bright, slightly sheltered 14-year-old, Kurt DeWitt, who's been "supporting cast" in a couple of previous Naptown Tales. It's a powerful story, competently executed. Highly recommended.

We know from an early chapter of LtMP that the Carlisle brothers had in fact adopted a new surname -- Helen mentions this in passing in discussing with Brandon the idea of changing his. I am going to assume that JT is in fact Jerry's former business partner and Jon, Eric, and Chase's father -- although CJ has been known to be clever at misdirection in the past on occasion! Where might the stag party be set that is en route to the Canary Islands from wherever they are? Further, on the old principle that "you never bring a rifle on stage unless someone is going to fire it" I suspect that the world's largest natural cliff hanger (pun intended!) will play an important part in this story before it's done.

I'd just like to echo my complete agreement with what Graeme has to say here (except to point out that Harold IS the Dad; I forgot what you named the son). This took on the challenge of combining doing a retrospective with saying something new at the same time, and fulfilled that challenge smoothly, seemingly (but I'll bet in effort not really) easily. The vehicle for Naptown Tales -- a series of independent short stories, sharing thevame setting and focusing each on different members of the same cast of characters -- is an old and useful technique that is far less common than it should be. (It's slightly ironic tht the moist famous prior use, by Edgar Masters, is also set in Indiana.) Though Altimexus has so far taken the story forward by episodes through nearly a full year, there is nothing that prevents him form doing "infill" -- going back and addressing what a new member of the cast did in, say, March. Or if he sets the next story in, say, Labor Day (first weekend in September, for non-US readers) nothing would prevent him from afterwards doing a story from the summer.. Yet he has established known and loved characters with which to work; he doesn't have to spend words building us who David and Jeremy are each story. For this, the anniversary holiday for American freedom and nearly the annivrsary for the events of "Broad Ripple Blues", the choice of a story framed as a retrospective was a wise one. And I think it worked in giving established relationshiops spun in other stories a chance to explicitly say something new, with delivering the message appropriate to what the characters are depicted as doing. Generally, you two bit off a lot, and you delivered on your promise. Kudos! HOWever, this collaboration provides me the opportunity to ask something: Do you ever plan on making available to your readership the results of the Infamous Gym Incident, or at least David's winning entry?

By the way, as you read this please do let me know if the story capsules and links are of interest or not.

More Clan Short Universe storycapsules: Memories Down Under: Abused Aussie boy Skylan is taken in by the Thomas family, and what follows on that brings them into contact with Clan Short and big changes in their lives. (Author: Boi From Aus. Status: Work in Progress) Ark: 60,000 years ago, the idealistic and pacifistic Founders built the monumental Artificial Intelligence archive known as the Ark at the South Pole, to record every human action. It has remained hidden through three cycles of declining ideals, until such time as humans can strive for high ideals and live in peace. But something makes the Ark's caretaker take notice of what's being attempted, and he decides to intervene. (Author: Akeentia. Status: Book One complete.) Sentenced to Life: Danny Page, a man of the late 19th Century, rues the day he allowed the mad scientist to scan his memories and personality and download them into the body of an android who appears to be 13 years old. He is revived 70 years after attempting suicide by Marc, the first "true" android not the product of a human brain scan, and very nearly the last surviving of his kind. They become close and when called on by Clan Short to attempt emergency repairs/revival of another android, they discover that far from losing everyone they had ever been close to, they gain more family than they can believe. (Author: Jeff P aka Jeffsfort. Status: Work in Progress,) Silver Dragon: Welsh boy Jason Evans, son of a Starfleet captain, gets an unexpected present on Christmas Eve, 2003: Next-door neighbor boy Nathan is rescued from being beaten by his father, and becomes his foster brother. When they visit the father's starship, the Hood, events are set in motion that affect several races: Earth humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, and more. (Author: Iluvantir. Status: Work in Progress) A New Door Opens: What started out as the worst day of his life for 14-year-old Rory Teeter, immobilized and all but incommunicado by a degenerative nerve disease, turns into the start of a wonderful new life for him. (Author: Multimapper. Status: Work in Progress) Be Careful What You Ask For...: 20-something bachelor Kurt Farnsworth and his three nephews are fans of the fictional Clan Short stories, and wish they could be a part of something like the Clan. When an unexpected school vacation makes possible a trip to Florida for the four of them, well, as the story title says, be careful what you ask for! (Author: D&B. Status: Work in Progress) And more to come....

It's 2004 -- but not quite the same 2004. Sure boys play baseball, go swimming, hang out together. And their parents hear the President, or the Prime Minister if they'rre in Canada, Australia, or the U.K.,speaking on the news. And the level of technology available to the average citizen is pretty close to that of the real world. Religious fundamentalists are pushing to influence or become the power brokers. But it's a world in which Star Trek's Starfleet and the United Federation of Plnets were not a series of TV shows during the late 20th Century and the present -- thery're a factual and present reality. Federation law, based loosely on Vulcan traditional law and implementing Vulcan propriety as the equivalent of common or civil law and equally authoritative, sup ersedes local, state or province, and national law when they come into conflict. Microsoft offers "Space Sim", a simulator that lets you have, on your home computer, a highly realistic experience of being on the bridge crew of a Federation starship like the Enterprise-- which is quite real, complete with Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and McCoy. But this is not just a Star Trek fanfic. The events that unfold in the lives of a number of boys transform not only them and those they come in contact with, but are bidding fair to change the Multiverse. Memories, Part I: The Gathering: In a boys' home in Des Moines, Iowa, 14-year-old Cory struggles to recover the memories he lost traumatically -- the only thing he can remember of his past is his best friend Sean, who with his widowed mother Teri seems to be reaching out to help him. As he recovers his past, things fall into place that reshape the future. (Author: ACFan. Status: Complete. This is the core story of the CSU, on which everything else draws.) A New Day Dawns: Best friends David "DJ" McAllister and Tanner Michaels, both increasingly disenchanted with their abusive home life, reveal their deepest secret to each other, and end up pursued in a cross-country chase with a startling and happy outcome. (Author: Gunrunner. Status: Complete) One Door Closes : After his father dies of AIDS, 11-year-old Kenny Waite is sent to Chicago to live with the mother and twin brother Kevin he has nevr known. Life throws some nasty surprises at the boys, and then some even more surprisng good results. (Author: Multimapper. Status: Complete) Out of the Past: Sgt. Mike Reynolds, Campbell County (Montana) Sheriff's Dept., is a man with a complex past and a present that revolves around his 11-year-old adopted son Sammy, who loves him just as deeply. But both father and son (and the young widowered sheriff and his three sons, their closest friends) have secrets that end up changing their lives, and those of many others as well. (Author: DarkStar. Status: Work in Progress) Jigsaw: In a small town in Maine, Jed Templeton comes home from school with his little brother C.J. to find his parents brutally murdered. Fleeing the scene, they're stopped and helped by two teenagers, whose lives are transformed as a result. (Authors: D&B. Status: Work in Progress. The first eight chapters were a complete standalone story; what follows them is more or less a sequel.) More story capsules in following posts:

You know, I'm really enjoying this story. Instead of being focused on "gay teen angst" or "gay teen deals with bad family reaction", it's exploring a gay couple building a relationship, being support of each other's individual goals and aspirations, learning to make a life together and be a force for good around them. You get elements of negative reaction to coming out, sure, but it's not the main focus of the story. And that is really a good thing. This one is going places most stories don't, and in general doing a pretty darn good job of doing it. Petty criticism: Steven seems to have had a bit of a problem "getting here from there" -- the transition paragraphs moving between significant events separated in space or time. It looks like he's getting better at writing them already; if he wants help on that, I'd suggest contacting some of the more experienced writers on how they do it. (Not me -- it's one of my bugaboos too -- people like Dan, CJ, Graeme, Comsie.) But frankly, I really like the story and the style. I believe in Bash and Scotty -- they're real people, with their own hearts and quirks, their own problems and the ways they find to work through them, that I could imagine having dinner with. And that's the mark of a great writer. Nice job, Steven!

It was indeed an excellent chapter, with a great deal of plot development. Two comments: 1. 2. I propose a new law, resembling Murphy's:

What intrigues me is the assumption on the part of some readers that Julie did the nasty with Jacob. She wakes up in a strange bed from a drunken party, and Jacob offers her a ride. Apparently, Julie's closest female friend in SF is Valerie. And, of course, we already have had Joe playing Cody's boyfriend, back in Klamath Falls, to scam Raul (that's Raul not Saul) -- and Cody's interior thought that it's a dream that might sometime come true. Essentially we had: Cody: Sacramento > Klamath Falls > San Francisco Jacob: Sacramento > alternative high school > Oak Valley What will happen when Jacob and Cody come face to face? Something, uh, surreal, I'm sure. We already know where Jacob's head is on this; he had to answer that question already. But where's Cody's head? Has he really gotten over Jacob? I look forward to some interesting developments here. In the future: Saul's business is threatened by Offshore Baking's introduction of tequila bagels. Cody learns that he does best when he doesn't try to think things through but instead acts on, uh, instinct. And exactly what role is Benji going to play in all this?

Brilliant job, CJ!! I encountered this story at the "perfect time" -- just after Chapter 46 was posted, so I could read most of it straight through and then wait on tenterhooks for the two concluding episodes. I loved how you combined so many plot elements into one story -- Brandon's initial disbelief in his good fortune, the Brandon/Chase "courtship dance," making Eric and Helen integral parts of the story rather than supporting cast, Jerry's comeuppance as a result of his own character faults.... And precisely the right ending -- in character and the perfect denouement to the story! Wonderful!

Are you sure he's not a tight end?

Okay, one sport they didn't get into is soccer, check? So explain this. When you're done looking at that, Google up "Tumbulgum Rangers SC" -- it's an Australian soccer club. Brandon Walker received a football scholarship to Notre Dame. David R. Jones Jr., on the other hand, is an active ham radio operator in a small town outside Roanoke VA. Oh, and scariest sentence on the Internet, from a profile of the former Georgian President: "Eduard Shevardnadze has a daughter, a son and several grandchildren."

This is intended to be a thread where we can discuss what we took away from the experience of reading the Do Over series (aside from having met most of Dan's family, of course). For me, the two serious lessons were the Butterfly Effect, something I'd already understood intellectually but it took the stories to make it visceral as well, and the Law of Unintended Consequences. And those were lessons I very much needed to learn from it. On a lighter note, let me propose "Rule's Rule": Never set out on a time-travel trip in the middle of a nuclear war; it always gives you a bad headache!

Well, I think it was Spider Robinson who commented on how unlikely it was from a 1980s perspective that the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet satellite states gained inedpendence, Russia threw off communism, South Africa freed itself of apartheid.... Sounds like something out of a good SF story, right? You do the math. (Dan's not good at math, remember?)