PaulP

Two links on the Home page that I found useful are no longer there: the one to Completed Stories link and another to Classic Authors. Now to get to the latter takes only one more click/tap, but a bunch to get the former. It would be nice to get those direct links back on the home page.

If there's one thing we know about Dabeagle's characters it's that they can develop, adapt and grow over the course of the narrative.

Re: speculations. I'll just repeat what I wrote privately to Dabeagle after reading the whole thing via the “read ahead” service available on his own site. (Note: NO spoilers.) We're still getting to know people.

Stories whose first grammar error is in the title.

That's because it's dealing with plausible, complex characters in plausible situations that drive character development rather than just providing excuses for between-the-sheets action and gratuitous drama.

I love Parker's relationship with his folks.

This is the comment I made on Dabeagle's forum when the story completed there: You handled the underlying concept perfectly, I think, by concentrating on the how the protagonist handled the two big challenges: how to change the perceptions of people who knew the old Drake, and more importantly, how to re-live his own early life better and more rewardingly than he had the first time around. You didn't get bogged down in the mechanics of alternate reality or in going into how the protagonist's old family might have fit into it, or if they even existed. Frankly the former would have bored me and the latter would have been an unnecessary distraction from the real story. I'm glad you didn't ignore the novelty of such apparent maturity in such a young person but instead had characters directly address it by marveling at it as just that, a remarkable novelty. A whole sub-plot of suspicions of cosmic weirdness would have been another unnecessary distraction. Characterizations were spot-on and interesting and I didn't feel as if any character was anything like a cardboard stereotype. Henry Burgess, the house director, could have become one, but even he eventually, grudgingly, accorded Drake a degree of respect. The closest to being a gay teenage fiction stereotype was Jeremy, but fleshing him out would have been another distraction. The rest of the supporting cast - especially Giles - were a delight. The character I found most affecting in terms of raw empathy was James Murphy. His portrayal as a basically decent person whose lack of self-worth, bordering on self-loathing, subverts his every attempt to build relationships is heart-breaking. That in the end Drake isn't willing to give up on him I think is a real testament to “new” Drake's character.

Posted in error.

Jeff reads like a hard-boiled private eye in a Raymond Chandler mystery.

You've hit the nail squarely on the head! Both those scenes were extremely well done.

I read everything of his - I think after "The Lo(n)g Way" it was as the chapters of each one appeared here - and as I read ItFB while it was in progress I felt it was the best thing he'd ever written, and I still think so, a major advance in his craft. I think it's getting around time for a re-read; that'll make it the fourth time, I think. So many unforgettable moments it's hard to come up with a favorite, but is right up there.

These have been a particularly olfactory couple of chapters!

Ha ha, typical Type 5 reaction Seriously, generalized "tests" or "analyses" like this, whether they're ostensibly "scientific" or veer off into realms of mumbo-jumbo, like palm reading and astrology, usually have one thing in common: the results are sufficiently broad that it's easy to see at least something of ourselves no matter what they come up with. Still, I think the 4w5 I got was pretty accurate once I read and compared it to the other 8 types. But then, I think I'd probably have come up with that just from the descriptions, without taking the test itself. Maybe the greatest value of the test comes just from confronting the questions and forcing yourself to look at yourself as honestly as possible. I don't think we should try to force ourselves into fitting into any of these 9 (or any other) categories, or to allow them force us to fit into them.