I decided to delete the other two chapters of this story because, honestly, I hated them. I know I got a few people asking for at least one more chapter back when I posted this because the ending is really abrupt, but, really, the last two chapters didn't work AT ALL. Todd was just far too out of character. (And, unlike a lot of people I've come across --both in this fandom and on the internet in general--, I actually care about the characters in my fanfiction being in character. Seriously. What's the point of fanfiction if you get the characters wrong? If you're going to change their personality, you might as well give them a new name and call them an original character. Screwing them up and calling them the same person is just an insult to their original creator.)

This is a rant I've been LONGING to have, so please bear with me.

Essentially what happened in the last two chapters of this was more NeilxTodd, Neil being nervous about the NxT but curious and wanting to experiment, and Todd being pissed off about Neil's hesitancy. In this story, I based Todd's personality entirely on the character Steven Carter from Patrick Wilde's play "What's Wrong With Angry?" which asks the question "What's wrong with being angry about the way homosexuals are treated by society?" (Steven is a very angry character because he, as a gay teenager in '90s England – when there was an age of consent to be gay, does not feel he has been treated fairly by society.) I even gave Todd lines paraphrasing Steven's lines.

I wrote those chapters almost a year ago, right after I'd seen "What's Wrong With Angry?" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, TWICE. I was obsessed with that play. However, in the year since I wrote this, I've done some reassessment of Todd as a character, and I've decided he isn't actually gay, and so his whole frustration with homosexuality once again getting the short end of the stick didn't make any sense at all.

Seriously. We've been given no evidence that any of the Dead Poets are actually gay. Kissing another boy in the "spirit of passionate experimentation?" Sure. But actually being gay? Probably not. Don't get me wrong – I ship Neil x Todd with all my heart. If any pairing exists, it's Neil and Todd. I can actually back up that pairing – there's evidence for it. However, they don't have to be gay. I hate the idea of homosexual and heterosexual. You can't just be one. I know, I used to claim that I had a theory that Todd was actually gay. I've abandoned that theory. (If you don't believe me, look closely at Todd in the scenes in the cave with the Playboy magazine and that cut scene where he reads his poem the night of the play.) (If anyone wants to debate this, feel free to PM me! I'm interested in other peoples' viewpoints. Discussing Todd is endlessly exciting. He's such a cool character!)

PLEASE ANSWER THIS QUESTION!! I don't know if I'm unique in this respect, but when I write fanfiction, I treat it like actual literature, complete with allusions to other texts (like Thoreau and Tennyson – ESPECIALLY Tennyson. You can never have enough of him!) I also usually put a lot of symbolism in my writing (even if it's fanfiction.) I don't know. Does ANYONE else do that, or am I a nerd?