khasidi

This is a thank you for a great story ; but also a little bit of a flame. It's about grammar . Two important things… First, the past tense of may is might. You consistently use may where it should be might. Since you are writing mostly in the past tense, you should mostly be using might. For instance, "He thought it may be a problem," is incorrect. The sentence should read, "He thought it might be a problem." Thought is past tense, so may/might must be past tense, too. Second, "lay" is what a chicken does with an egg. "Lie" is what you do on a bed. In other words, you don't "lay" on a bed. The past tense of "lay" is "laid." The past tense of "lie" is "lay" ("Yesterday he lay in bed all day." not "…laid in bed all day.") By the way, you are not the only author who makes these two errors. It seems to be part of certain American dialects and a lot of people mix these words up when they speak. On the plus side, you don't make the much worse mistake of mixing up me and I.

How come in 75% of the gay stories, the plot revolves around rape? I mean, there are a gazillion possibilities for plots. Rape as a mere plot device is so lame. Here we have a pretty interesting story going on that revolves around problems faced by two somewhat damaged people trying to work out a relationship; but that matter is now totally overshadowed by this attempted rape. Rape is a serious matter; but in this case it is being used, almost mechanically, to make the story racier. And it seems to me that it is a way to avoid dealing with the real problems that were set up in the beginning of the story.

I like that Mick is starting to be able to defend himself. Up to now everybody has been taking care of him. That's good, but it does leave him a bit of a baby; now maybe he can start to grow up and take care of the ones he loves, too. It seems like he might be ready to take on a bigger, less Mick-centered cause.

For someone who can extend his damn chi enough to figure out that there is a guy on a cliff stalking him and that this guy is modified, our hero seems just a little slow on the uptake! I mean the boy even screams in the shower! I had a friendship with someone like that, big, with muscles, radiating a kind of heat, and all that stuff. I remember sitting on the beach all fucking night long the last night before the summer was over, on the warm beach on Cape Cod with him, talking, singing songs, reciting poetry, suffering though long, long silences, our bodies vibrating with tension so bad our teeth were chattering; and I never got up the nerve to kiss him. And he never got up the nerve to kiss me. And I've wondered all the rest of my life what would have happened… This hero needs to wake the fuck up. I'm just sayin'…

OK, yeah, I am sort of curious about the mysterious stranger, but what I really want to know about is Opie. I get that he's a dragon, but why is he doing this? What about that temper of his? He's a bit weird looking, I guess, but that's OK. I realize we are supposed to be attracted to the young and the cute; but me, I'd date Opie in a New York minute.

"As a disabled man, George had always known people were holding back around him for his sake. He may be partly paralyzed, but he wasn't stupid, or blind." Past tense of may is might. "…he might be partially paralyzed,…"

WTF? Was this real or a kind of bizarre story? It was kind of interesting, whatever it was.

For someone who believes in the importance of logic, I think you should work harder to avoid straw man fallacies. Your diatribes against both the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and the Obama administration are based to a large extent on events and situations that you have made up in your stories. This wouldn't matter if the stories were entirely fictional, but it overlaps the non-fictional world of religion, society, and politics — which means you are making unsupported attacks on real things. And, by the way, the plural of "Nemesis" is "Nemeses" but the singular possessive (in English) is "Nemesis's" (and the plural possessive would, I think, be "Nemeses'"). It's in the first chapter of Strunk and White's, The Elements of Style: singular possessives that end in an "s" still take an apostrophe-s, as in "Thomas's" or "James's." It is only plural possessives, like "Smiths," that take just the apostrophe, as in, "I am going over the the Smiths' house for dinner."

If you do a sequel, remember that men are actually capable of lactating. Little Elizabeth might like to be breast fed.

But Harry did kill Oliver Wood on purpose. The self defence thing was a lie. And, in fact, all through this story, Harry has been lying more and more — also smirking incessently. I think this is the last chapter I am going to read. Ron was basically a good kid and DK has just mucked that all up with no good rationale. I am feeling kind of disgusted.

"Right makes might, Tyler thought, remembering Wart, and Merlin, and Arthur. Right makes might." It might be well to remember that, in T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Arthur was fighting against the idea that Might makes right. But Arthur's story, though it begins in such a lighthearted way, is, in the end a tragedy. Arthur fails to establish a lasting reign of righteousness. Right does not prove mightier, and, after Guenevere and Lancelot prove unable to sustain Arthur's noble goals, betray him, and retire to their respective monasteries, he is in the end defeated by Mordred's forces in the final battle.

Forty-one years old and this Noah doesn't seem to have any life that doesn't revolve around fucking Derek. No wonder the guy was looking for something new. Noah doesn't need to get laid, he needs to get a life, play the cello, volunteer at the local homeless shelter, fingernail art, but something! Something that isn't just getting into a relationship so he can have an identity. Eli is kind of appealing, but I doubt Noah is enough his own man to avoid screwing it up.

There's a word for people like Travis. I think it's "sociopath" (not to be confused with psychopath). Really interesting introduction. I'll be fascinated to see how it develops. By the way — and I know this will sound pendantic, but I'm neurotic and it actually drives me kind of crazy, so I'll mention it — the possessive form of (singular) names that end in "s", such as Travis (or James, Thomas, and even Jesus for that matter) is apostrophe-s; so it should be, "Travis's" not "Travis'." Somehow, a lot of people think that the rule for plural nouns — where you use only the apostrophe (as in, "the Jacksons' car") — has confused people about this. But check any style manual (Like The Elements of Style by E.B. White or The Chicago Manual of Style) and you will find that this doesn't apply to singular names that end in "s". And think about it, in speech we wouldn't say "Travis' car," wed say "Travis's car"; why should it be different in writing? Okay, sorry about the digression. You won't hear from the grammar police again unless you start writing "lay" instead of "lie." Cheers Jake

Let's see, orphan kid gets shifted around from home to home. Clearly there are going to be issues of attachment. Typical of such children is that they are really really well behaved at first, sometimes for quite a while; but after some time they will start to test the situation to see if these new parents can be trusted. Whoops, Bette flunks adoptive parenting 101. Clearly her love comes with conditions—exactly the situation Micah would be testing. Through her actions Bette is saying, if you play the violin (payment), I'll love you and take care of you (reward), if not, I'll throw you to the wolves. This is a story, so there will probably be a happy ending; and, of course, the author has set that up with David Stirling, when he comes back into the story later. I am not so impressed with Megan as others seem to be. She seems to work from the premise that Micah's inability to toe the line set by Bette and society is Micah's fault—more love with conditions. Frankly, of all the women who are oppressing Micah, I like the girlfriend best, drugs and all. Lastly, I'll add that I am kind of furious with Bette, she has stolen Micah's music, which started as a loving communion with his father, Poppa M, and then an expression of grief at Poppa M's death and the loss of his home, and she has redirected his motivation into a professional ambitions whose goal seems to be competition, fame, prestige, and perhaps money, but certainly not love of music. I am a musician myself, and what seems to be missing from Micah's musical development is not the need for more practice—lot's of really good musicians don't actually practice all that much—but the delight one finds, not in the ego strokes of being a soloist, but in joining one's creativity with that of other musicians. In real life, I would expect a huge part of Micah and Bette's relationship would revolve around playing together, after all, we are told that Bette is a pianist of some ability and that all the children in her family have been taught, as well. Couple that with the fact that almost all of the violin repetoire requires either an orchestra, a keyboard player, or other string players and you can see that there is a strange lack of understanding in this story of what it means to be a musician. It is really only keyboard players and maybe guitarists who can develop their art as a sophisticated form of masturbation.

In response to the "Oh snap!" question, I figured out that hundreds (maybe thousands) of years of years would go by while Shay was in the machine the minute I read, "suspended animation," in the first chapter. It was just a question of how long it would take Shay to figure it out. Also, it was pretty clear, after Mira appeared, that the sharplings were post-viral humans. My big question is, how long do the sharplings live? Is it possible that Shay's parents are still living as sharpllings? Also, what was the emmination of warmth that got rid of the virus in Mira?