W_L

Thanks for reading

I was just browing Youtube for something to pass my time on Saturday and came upon a list of Cold War era movies about nuclear annihilation. Like many folks, who were born near the end of the Cold War, I've seen movies like Dr. Strangelove and Day After with the detached thought of, "they're just actors" and "Everyone is being stupid in this movie". Well, I noticed a movie I never heard about on the list and it caught my attention, since it was co-produced by PBS (an odd choice for an old nuclear apocalypse film). The movie was made in 1983 and is called "Testament". No, it's not a religious meditation on nuclear warfare, but an average person's view of the nuclear apocalypse. The nukes have already been launched and the cities are already gone, the ones left in small towns and suburbs are isolated, lost, their supplies running low, and radiation poisoning is coming in. It's very haunting and brutally honest portrait from a human angle without any semblance of hope. It's bleak and unapologetic about the future. Children dying, people going insane from radiation poisoning, and suicide is common without any humor that you might see from modern apocalypse films. If you want to watch, I'll leave a link below, but be forewarned get some kleenex tissues ready. Here's the youtube full version of the movie, it has ads.

Thanks, I'm really happy that you enjoy this chapter. It is the culmination of various things that happened earlier, tentatively setting up the rest of the story. Yes, Reese is open-minded and careful. He knows who he likes and what the needs are. Nice GIF Yeah, Reese is good for Dexter. Addiction is not something you can fix by turning off a switch, it's a long-term struggle and has many unexpected results. It's a good first step to admit you have a problem and Reese has been gradually acting as a stabilizing factor in Dexter's life. I know it's a trope in romance, but some folks do need this stability to handle issues like substance abuse.

Sunday’s light found Dexter first. The hangover hit hard, but his attention landed on the man beneath him—Reese, asleep on the dining room floor of Le Coq. They were both naked. Memory came back in flashes: kisses, the heat of skin, the blur of too much wine. Reese’s arm lay around Dexter’s hips; Dexter felt an exhaustion and sensitivity that suggested how fully the night had been used. He eased free, gathered the wreckage of their clothes, and winced. Reese’s shirt and socks were torn to r

Technically my story is a Xianxia, but I am alone in either genre

This is one of those situations where "was it consensual or not?" will have to play out. Basically, they were both doing foreplay for weeks under the excuse of training sessions and healing afterward, so it's not that they don't find each other attractive personally. Reese has been under a lot of stress, like Dexter, so the relief clouded him. Dexter had tried cutting back, but he's developed a habit that in reality is very hard to quit completely with alcohol and painkillers. They're not teenagers and both understood what they wanted, but held back. Sex just happens sometimes, imperfect as the setting may be. Like I said, I wanted to touch on some realism in this romance, an imperfect first time is normal.

In the following months, Reese lived on a knife’s edge of sleep. Most nights he got home around midnight, tumbled into bed by 12:30, and rolled out again at seven. From eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, he worked phones for a CRM software sales firm, a new second job he found as the tips declined within the month. As Sara indicated, the business was in decline, so he needed another source of income. Leaving from the sales office, he went straight to Le Coq. He showered in the locke

Thanks VBlew Cloves and Carnes are line cooks, which is one reason why Dexter is so stressed out. He doesn't have a sous-chef to help. A lot of restaurants have similar tip splits, different staff do get angry if they feel slighted. Thank Chris, I hoped giving folks a glimpse at the restaurant's dynamic would be interesting. Reese has just a spark of romantic interest for Dexter, their situation isn't good for romance though.

In chapter 4 of Essence of Life, I wrote in detail about table etiquette. It's actually something I had to learn in business school, which was an insane class back in the fall of 2005. People think of the early and mid-2000s as the second gilded-age sometimes. I sort of agree in retrospect. My freshman class were ushered to our university's executive dining room, then taught a series of lessons on where spoons, forks, knives, and plates are at a "proper" dinner. It's an unnecessary thing to do by modern standards, but back then when mortgage-backed securities and rising valuations made money from nowhere, it was considered necessary for us to learn this stuff to not stand out in the world of the "new rich". Not billionaires like Gates, Bezos, Musk, or Trump, but high-value Americans with assets over a million dollars who wanted this kind of lifestyle. Dining Clubs are essentially an extension of this world of the "faux" rich. I wanted to give you guys a taste of the group that Finance majors were trained to serve and emulate. I switched my major from Economics-Finance to pure Accounting in late 2006 before the housing bubble burst, but I still remember these weird classes on etiquette.

Several days blurred by as Reese learned how to be the kind of waiter Dexter demanded. He’d braced for bottomless wine and endless tastings; instead, Dexter kept the lessons measured. He walked Reese through a revised, twenty-item menu with suggested pairings and four alternate preparations for dietary restrictions. “In a modern dining room, you cook for the guest you have,” he said. “Not the one you wish you had.” Reese thought memorizing dishes would be the hard part. It wasn’t. He needed

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chris It's a big question for Colin and this writer of his fanfiction story Thanks, I haven't found any Colin Creevey/Harry Potter stories that felt right. To me, I did a "what-if" Colin's fixation on Harry was a shy queer kid using photos as an excuse to show his interest, it makes his character more interesting for stories than just the porn I've seen. Knowing he died in the Battle of Hogwarts, while his little brother survived, it adds some gravity to the unrequited romance. Yeah, I do agree that Colin has been through a lot. Additionally, there were a lot of dead people by the end of final novel. I wanted to eulogize the fallen in this short story, because even in victory, there will be people lost. Colin wasn't especially close to Harry unlike Fred or Lupin, but he's grateful for even a moment of grief from the person he loved. JK Rowling doesn't touch on this aspect of ghosts as much, but watching the world slide by and seeing the people you knew or loved move on without you is hard to bear. ----- The hardest part if I am going to continue this fanfiction for Colin's sake is to figure out how to give the kid what he desired realistically, while plotting a decent story around Colin's second chance. I don't feel like just flipping Harry's straight/gay switch or revisiting Hogwarts early years again, too easy and done by others better than myself.

Glad you like sober Dexter, people tend to forget that alcohol abusers aren't always drunk and emotionally tempestuous like TV shows make them out to be.

Thanks

Yeah, it took me a few years to write this one despite the short length due to the subject matter and the intrinsic details. Glad it interests you

This is what happens when you get a gay author, who can't find his guilty pleasure fix in fanfiction.