Well, I wish I'd gotten here a little closer to Half-Price Chocolate Eve instead of a month and a half late.
Ah well, life is as life does.
First, the pacing difference between the two stories (or at least between
Two of a Kind and the beginning of
Full House) is intense. I'm not going to complain though, because just when I ran out of breath in
Full House, you dropped into the KeithxNatani scene and slowed down for me to catch myself. Actually, while the beginning was the biggest and most definite pacing variance, you actually did a really good job of alternating fast and slow throughout the work. Which helped a lot with the otherwise staggering length (you weren't kidding about "book"). There's a little of everything in there, so, to address my fellow readers, if you're just not into the scene at present, keep reading, you're sure to find one that suits your fancy.
Thank you, my friend, for the shout-out, both here and in the foreword.
I'll make sure to conceptualize you and Schrodinger as opposing shoulder consciences, throttling each other over which story I should be working on when I have time to write. =P
So on to my story-specific comments; I reserve the right to add to these in the future.
Two of a Kind:
I will forever be pleased and amused by "That's actually an interesting legal question," being Alaric's response to the question of if he is alive. That captures our dear Master General so very well. As you mention both in this story and in
Full House, the legal repercussions for a living dead Basitin (at least one who is the variety of living dead that Alaric qualifies for and not the sort I joked about when saying TwoKinds would become Left2Die) are significant and strange. And probably very specific. I can imagine the sorts of legal oddities; much like how in my home state of Nebraska, we draw a distinction between laws specifying "18 and over" and "over the age of 18" even though most states don't; which puts 18-year-old people in a curious legal position. I'm sure the Basitin laws have some which interpret to "living" and some which cover "all" and possibly even yet others which cover the acts attributable to the dead. (Particularly since they culturally have the whole "died in surgery after a battle counts as dying in the battle for honor purposes" thing going on.)
I still get a chuckle out of "Post-Master General." (For those following along at home, I got to see an early draft of the work that included that line. And when I say "draft" I mean "those first couple pages before anything really happens.") It's a delightful turn of phrase. And I always laugh at "How prepared would you say you feel right now." Thank you. Like most of us, I do enjoy reading about myself. Or things I made up, anyway.
"The thought...did enter Alaric's mind but never got very far." I like the picture that paints. See, that's how you can tell that you wrote this and I did not: I'd have fallen in love with that language and burned a paragraph describing the thought wandering, lost, into Alaric's mind, and then fleeing quickly like someone who just realized they'd accidentally gotten off the bus in Innsmouth.
A more critical note: "Keith smiled at him, and he would have followed him anywhere." Who is the subject and who is the object of the subordinate clause here? If I don't miss the point, you start with Keith as subject and Alaric as object in the first clause and then swap to Alaric as the subject and Keith as the object in the second clause, but trust me, it's not obvious. Over all,
Knot Too Late as a whole has fewer confusing passages than
Entertaining Possibilities, but they still crop up occasionally.
Full House reserves most of them for the KeithxAlaricxZen scene.
Speaking of
Full House:
I guess people do carve granite, but I was under the impression that it was too hard of a stone to really get great detail out of. "Hardness" jokes notwithstanding, of course. I still would have changed "granite" for "marble" and "marble" for "limestone."
I wasn't too sure about your handling of Alaric at the beginning, but your explanation of his behavior later was solid and going back it makes sense.
That is certainly Alaric appropriate: he's the sort of character that one really should only be able to figure out in retrospect. On the whole, the characterizations became stronger as the story progressed; starting out somewhat weaker at the beginning than they were in
Two of Kind but arguably ending stronger.
The thing that struck me the most is that this is all inside jokes! I mean, not just between you and me -- they're inside to the forum in general; but most of them are so deep that I don't think there's all that many active users who are still on the inside.
The reference to Sable's "Keith is a girl" argument? Delicious! Even the Natani and Maddie scene? So many people have told me not to do that in
DfO! And then you go and do it; I suppose because you think that way I don't have to.
(And of course, the inclusion of Seff's gift from the King...) I'm not mentioning everything I caught here, and I'm sure I missed more than a few (partially because I know you have a fresher remembrance of the forum's past, and partially because I believe your memory and wit are sharper than mine). Suffice to say, I got some really good laughs out of the story, and generally in between the, ah, sexy-times at appropriate moments. I wish I could call them all out explicitly like I did above, but unfortunately, I was reading the story on my kindle on an airplane and didn't have a good way to take specific notes.
I won't argue that any of the scenes are unnecessary: they are all important to the completion of the whole. That said,
Full House is so long... I didn't read a lot of the scenes as closely as I should have because, well, for one thing I was reading in more-or-less public and for more than fifteen minute intervals (so to speak
), and partially because you've got a little something for everybody and as a result there's so much there. And that includes a lot of cuddling and emotional intimacy for yourself.
I wouldn't change it; I'm not really complaining, but it's worth it for readers to remember: set aside plenty of time if you want to read it in more than little chunks. Though it does have some good breakpoints in it, so it's not hard to pick it up and put it back down when necessary.
On the whole some good work, amenon, and a pleasure to read. Thank you!