I hope Dean is okay. ; ;

hey guys, sorry i've been AWOL for a while. Second year of lawschool is...er..."hectic".

Madboi: hmm, interesting, but actually I didn't plan on Damion being homophobic...per se. Yes he still has some unresolved issues with the boys but his personality type makes him more of a cold manipulator than the angry type you're suggesting.

Also, although Damion is a young Guardian, he has been in that kind of "anything goes as long as it's love" environment for quite some time. And some of that time was with the Fallen, who make the Guardians look conservative. Increased exposure desensitizes.

The first scene of the next chapter gives a hint of what the main "private" conflict is going to be, and Damion will play a part in it but not precisely as an antagonist. And also, yes the boys will eventually be exposed to homophobia...but not among the Guardians.

I'm about halfway through the next chapter guys, hopefully finish it during this nice Thanksgiving break. And then I'm hoping to write some more chapters during Christmas break.

Actually, I rather thought Damion would be a cold manipulating *******. He has been a Fallen Guardian long enough to verbally admit when he has been beaten, but that just makes him all the more desirous of the next attempt. Even mortal, I'm sure he is still thinking like he was, in long term amounts of time, which is a crux for him now.
(((((I don't think Elizabeth will be strong against him. In the very least, she'll extend his life thru so much sex. Considering the rate of growth she exhibited when the situation was switched, a rate of about 1 year biological to every 15 years chronological if i remember correctly, Damion's "natural" lifespan will still be greatly extended.))))

I'm quite curious about how the boys will be able to interact with the gov't group.

Edited by author 12-03-2007 03:17 PM
Hmm, yes Damien is still quite manipulative. As is Rom. And any of the Immortals, really, especially the older ones. The long-term outlook is, I think, just another way of saying "maturity".

You should remember that the 1/15 aging is due to the influx of Caretakers from having sex with an immortal. But...remember it's the exchange of body fluids that transmits the Caretakers...primarily through semen. There's some in saliva but not near as concentrated. Soo...I'm not sure Damion is going to have quite the level of benefit from Elizabeth as she had been getting from him...the important fluids are traveling in the wrong direction, lol. Soo...it's in Damion's interests to find a male immortal to be a "donor", etc. The obvious candidate is Rom...who of course is now Damion's rival for the affections of Elizabeth, and is sort of waiting for Damion to die of old age...tricky situation...

I'm almost done with the next chapter guys. Didn't quite finish it - I could post it now as a slightly short chapter because it is at a potential stopping point. But I try to have the chapters at least a certain size. Bad news is, I am now officially in exam season, so you might have to wait till Christmas to get an update.

I get from your description of the Caretakers that the designers were very sexist - something of your design.
Is that to say there are little to no Caretakers in vaginal fluid? If your answer is no and there is the same amount as semen, but just not as accessible through vaginal intercourse (due to the wrong direction of fluid-flow), then the best answer to Damion's predicament is to perform oral-vaginal sex on Elizabeth. If your answer is yes and there is not the same amount . . . I *hope* Rom is not dumb enough to engage in any threesomes with Damion and Elizabeth.

Good luck with your exams! I await the next chapter with bated breath.

OK, madboi -- I'm gonna go out on a limb here, since I can't remotely claim to be a biologist.
  My understanding is that vaginal fluid does not contain reproductive cells. Therefore, any presence of Caretakers would be at a far lower level, roughly similar to that in saliva. I would expect that pre-seminal fluid has, broadly speaking, the same characreristics as vaginal fluid (golly, isn't sex literally juicy?). So I don't THINK Dean was being sexist, per se. And I also don't expect that Damion can get the "full effect" from Elizabeth... but maybe that's gonna get resolved later.

I don't see why the presence of reproductive cells should matter. The Caretakers aren't about reproduction. For someone who is expected to have sex as often as the Guardians, it should be obvious that even sex is not primarily about reproduction. The immortals would be getting hundreds of children each year, had that been the case. The sex is more about bonding between two individuals, and that's where the Caretakers make sense. The argument for Caretakers holds just as much if the immortal is female, so they should also have a roughly equivalent mechanism for giving Caretakers to a mortal. Oral-vaginal sex does seem reasonable. One might even imagine some other organ to insert Caretakers, something along the lines of Damion's tentacles.

Besides, Damion's AI survived. It should still remember how to construct Caretaker-inserting tentacles. Surely it would transmit this information to Elisabeth, if there indeed is no equivalent way for a woman to give her partner a reasonable amount of Caretakers.

Uh-oh. I seem to've opened a notable can of worms on this one.... and I'm gonna stick my neck out a little further, just to add to it <g>.
  My undewrstanding of the presence of Caretakers in both Immortals and Chosen is that they exist MAINLY (but by no means exclusively) in the bloodstream, and in certain organs -- notably the brain, but also the reproductive organs. Since sex ofr reproduction requires that [male] semen enter a feamle body, semen has to contain a sufficient concentration of Caretakers that, over repeated, ah, events, enough Caretakers can be delivered to set up a self-sustaining system in the recipient.
  The issue here SEEMS to be whether this is only a male game. And to me, based on biuology, the answeer is YES. Potentially, males get to spread their genetic material across a great many femalss. A given female may have children from many males, but among humans (and I wasn't being human-specific earlier in this paragraph) single life-partners (or spouses) is the usual pattern -- largely because of social considerations.
  As for Elizabeth and Damion, I THINK it is possible for Elizabeth to make Damion a Chosen... if she wants to, and if both of them stay with it long enough (probably a given -- Elizabeth really loves him -- no aqccounting for taste <g>). It just won't happen quickly. And Amion's gonna have to get good at, and develop a real 'taste' (sorry) for cunnilingus.
  I suppose they could just exhcnage blood... but getting into vampirism is either kinky, or a whole 'nother genre.

Oh, one more bit (brief, I promise).
  The Caretaker-inserting' tentacles were/are not only used for injecting Caretakers. They are vicious and deadly weapons, and I'd wager a fair amount that Damion's AI has been edited or redacted to prevent him from doing some things, at least for now. Consdiering his history, I strongly dpoubt anybody would risk him having full access to the knowledge of how to construct and use those tentacles. It's damn freaking dangerous.

Dave, I take responsibilty for this can of worms. I just don't see how Damion is going to switch sides (morality, not sexuality) that easily. He's been humbled, sure, but nothing i have read about his character makes me think he would let that stop him. I mean, his lover is a Chosen. He still has an unending source of Caretakers.

YES! Somebody got my question! IS this a male only game (with reference to the Caretakers)??? The simple answer is: it seems so. However, the only person who can truly answer that is Dean. *sad face*

I ask because it seems to me that, if the technology were encoded for both genders, then there would be instructions to deal with the "deffiency" in producing Caretakers that a female Guardian would face. However, I would pose this idea: wouldn't it be easier to encode the Caretakers to be present in the pre-semeninal fluid? This is the fluid that is similar to both genders and is produced regardless of who's doing what to whom. Then you simply have to wonder about how the vaginal-based Caretakers would enter the mortal.

**NOTE**
For this explanation, I will have to relate the Caretaker nanobots to the HIV virus (or any other STI-causing bug). During standard vaginal intercourse, with HIV organisms present in the female and not in the male, there is a chance HE (be a generalized male) can contract from HER (being a generalized female). As we understand the flow of fluids, SHE would stand a higher risk of contracting from HIM - and the converse is true as well, but not in the same percentage. SHE can give the virus to HIM, providing he is not wearing a condom, by means of the absorbant tissues found in the phallic member. The same tissues that allow for engorgment also allow for absorbtion of some "travelers".

Given the above situation, where it is Caretakers (not HIV), wouldn't the nanobots aim for the penis? This would increase the amount he recieves and still follows in the line of thinking set by Dean about the Caretakers, being that a sexual partner of a Guardian is "blessed" for having taken part in the intercourse.

That's not to say that enough sex would cause caretaker self-suffiency . . . the idea being that they are no longer in the body they are meant to take care of - they provide some health benefits to the sexual partner, and then die.

Dean!!!! I think the natives are getting restless . . . but please do well on your tests first!!!

Hey Madnoi and everybody,
  I think Madboi and I are pretty much on the same page here. Without getting into detailed biology about how HIV gets transmitted, there clearly IS an analogy between Caretakers and the virus. I EXPECT the caretaqkers are bigger, though. And it DOES llok like Caretaker delivery is a male sport... until (and unless) Dean give us more information.
  And Dean -- before you answer ANY of this stuff, I want to wish you very good fortune and the best of luck on your exams. We'll be patient (pretty much <g>) until you're out from under exam season.

WOW! Seems the natives HAVE been restless, lol. Thanks for the well wishing, I am now done with exams...and free to tackle this little problem.

Okay...yes, the Caretakers ARE pretty much a "male game", as you guys put it. Let me explain why.

I think one phrase that stuck out at me was a description of the Caretakers as being a sort of blessing in return for having intercourse with a Guardian.

But intercourse, or for that matter relationships, are NOT the point of the Caretakers. That's what the Guardian-Chosen selection is for. The Caretakers are specifically for the purposes of BREEDING (with mortals). Remember, the Esseren modify their host at the atomic level...making them genetically perfect, and the idea is that the (male) Guardians will often have sex with mortal females, for the purpose of (over many generations) improving the overall genetic makeup of the general population. The Caretakers are part of a eugenics project stretching across millenia.

The caretakers are concentrated in the semen to 1) protect the fetus and ensure optimal, or better-than-normal prenatal development so they grow strong and attractive and therefore are likely to have sex themselves when they grow up, and 2) increasing the lifespan of the recipient-female, both to help her raise the child and also as a sort of recompense for carrying a child for 9 months, outside of the support of the traditional relationship, since Guardians have only their Chosen as long-term companions.

Obviously, there's no reason for an equivalent system for female Guardian's to benefit their male sexual partners, because a female would carry any such child herself while the mortal male would go on his merry way afterwards.

Having sex with the same mortal female for centuries, as Damion did with Elizabeth, was NOT what the intended use, and is a very unorthodox, if rather romantic, relationship for an immortal.

I'll also point out that Elizabeth can't make Damion her Chosen. She IS a Chosen (by Rom). Each GUARDIAN can make a Chosen. Damion himself was also a Chosen, which is why he couldn't make Elizabeth his Chosen.




Anyways...hope that helps clear the air a bit. I did manage to write an additional chapter, which I posted today, it should show up sometime around midnight probably. They're coming out a LOT slower than they did before second-year-lawschool started, which is why, as I explain at the bottom of Chapter 5, I am looking for a co-author.

Woo ^^ Discussions went on. ^^

It kind of disappoints me about the whole females not having the whole Caretakers thing, but some of these ideas are interesting. Blood play/vampirism? Tentacles? <3 Both have... Interesting possibilities...

And what about Immortal lesbians? (if they exist) Does that mean that if they sleep with the womens, they don't extend their lives? (Blood still possible?)

Within the new chapter, I kind of disagree with something Julian said.

"I also think it's not healthy. For you, or for either of us. This weird heterosexual mindset you
have going on, in the middle of a gay relationship."

Personally, the idea of topping someone turns me off; it does absolutely nothing for me. Yes, I agree that gender roles are kind of unhealthy, but sometimes people can't help but be who they are. I've got versatile friends, bottom friends, (and only one top friend, pfft, so rare!) so does that mean that being not versatile is unhealthy? T_T

Edited by author 01-05-2008 07:53 PM
Hmm...I don't think that's really what Julian was talking about. In Jeremey's case, it's not the fact he won't bottom, but the fact that he's afraid of it...and has sort of homophobic "feelings" about it, to the extent that he feels guilty for topping Julian at all, that is unhealthy.

It goes back to the whole struggle Jeremey went through admitting his sexual attraction to Julian. Remember, aside from Julian, Jeremey is basically straight, and that caused him a lot of confusion, which manifested in things like the weird dreams Julian referred to.

So...I guess the point is, "not being versatile" isn't unhealthy...but not being versatile for the reason of being stuck in a hetero mindset, etc., is.

i have read the dark chapters to start and liked them but have now started from the beginning things make more sense now and i feel really concerned for Jerremy in chapter 15 I know from reading the dark chapters he still hasnt really got to grips even then but im still reading this story so i hope he can get to grips with the fact that nobody is truly really fully str8 or fully gay cant remember the name of the scale from 1-100 str8 @ 1 gay @ 100 will re look it up but still feel a lot of concern but undrstanding also but from the other side of the fence im gay but do think about females dont think i could ever have sex with 1 but occasionally i have thought about it