heya. thanks for understanding. you seem to really have very strong feelings about glasses in general. i have glasses as well but i finally got the courage to try contacts so i primarily use those. i never had a problem with bullies bothering me about glasses because i'm generally pretty good at turning a bully's audience against them but many people suffered from this. glasses are pretty common throughout the world so it was an easy example to use to make the point that i really wanted to make here that i articulated above. while i've never heard of training your eyes, i probably would have had a hard time setting up a plot point like braden's eyesight and then introducing a lesser known alternative practice to cure it. odds are, people would have gotten caught up in whether they felt the approach would work or not rather than paying attention to the story plot. the "training" part probably would have taken time as well and given that the impetus for the doctor appointment was an actual tragedy, the quick fix of glasses just seems more appropriate here to keep the story moving. it's weird, though, it took me a bit to get used to braden's glasses but now that i've gone back to the revamp and started over before he got them, i actually think he looks weird without them. i'll also mention there was a huge following that actually loved the glasses and prefer him that way to the early part of the game. regardless, it's his arc and not our decision to make. i lost control of these characters a long time ago. thanks for reading and i hope you enjoy the rest of the story if you decide to keep reading
Aaryn, I appreciate the effort and time for reading, understanding and answering my texts. Well I indeed have strong feelings about glasses and you got the point really well. I still remember people being insulted over glasses. That is indeed a point to get fixed but for me it's rather the look at myself. I'm also getting turned off by the look of glasses. Anyway I figured Braden doesn't always wear the glasses and I agree with you that it's his arc and not our decision. I myself can make my different decisions tho and find that wonderful. I find you've put up a wonderful story which taught me some life lessons too, which I want to thank you for too and I love it anyway. I'll finish the story and that being said: Thank you, great work!
Hey Aaryn. I really enjoyed the story.
I'm going to write down the little things that authors mostly want to know what to possibly think of. We already talked about the glasses and I already understood your intentions completely - checked. Next thing, you could leave the choice to the reader or viewer like who is top and who is bottom. Next thing they didn't even do... no spoilers here. Guess that's meant to show it's more about relationships than the physical aspect. Are you planning on doing a continuation?
glad you liked the story. so in terms of top and bottom: i originally considered having the reader choose but the more i thought about it the more the actual way that the story played out was more appropriate. i felt like top/bottom was too cliche and it's honestly kinda outdated now with relationships being way more diverse than just having assigned positions. this story has consistently confronted stereotypes and that's one of the biggest that needed to be addressed. the other side is exactly what you said, people think that butt fucking is like the apex of these kinds of stories but how can that be the endgame when people literally just go hook-up for fun. it can't be both the ultimate and something you do without attachment. The difference is feelings so that's the direction that i went; actual intimacy.
oh, and no plans for a continuation right now. i may come back to it but i worked very hard to make the ending what it is. there's a lot of boxes checked with that ending including multiple points of view and all of those are possible and left up to the reader. if i continue the story, then i take that away from the reader and i'm not ready to do that yet.