Bleary Eyed Concentration

[Guest Dabeagle]

Good morning. Another rambling post, but I'll leave EleCivil out of this one. Almost.

So, I just blew through all of Ryan Miller's serial stories and, since replies to the email registers here seem to bounce, and since it's fun to share, I'm gonna put it here. Now, I should preface all this by saying it's now 2:43 am at the writing of this particular post, and that I only critique / criticize stories I enjoyed. So I'll begin with that.

I enjoyed each one, and I have to admit, I never saw the curveball or six that occurred in the sequel. The subject of teenage prostitution is gut wrenching and heartbreaking and it was an unusual story element to use. The attempted retribution was also something that caught me off guard because it was harsher than I'd have thought. The tertiary characters were drawn well, complete and distinct. Funny how no one told Aaron about Kyle's fascination with his ass. It seems to me Aaron would have used a thing like that, or Brian in later chapters. Chris was drawn well, and even his video game addiction was realistic because it was straight laced and intense, like he was. Peter reminds me of one of Elecivils characters from Laika, the older brother, in his self confidence.

But, I did have some quibbles. I noted in the first series there was alot of crying. Alot. Like these guys should have dehydrated alot. I also noted the growth of the characters in the sequel, I'd be hard pressed to find a chapter with a tear. Spelling ( I know, I'm a spelling Nazi) was off in several instances, technical stuff. My only huge gripe though, besides some story inconsistencies, is what the heck happened to William?

I mean, ouch? The whole story was about saving him, getting this resolution and...where did Houdini go? The part about that that gets me most is William was a centerpiece, a main storyline for the second story. He was an endearing, damaged character who, I anyway, wanted to see redeemed in some fashion. It would have been tragic if he'd died on the scene, but the missing part left me kind of hollow. After Kyle's brother gets shot, Kyle gets kidnapped, Kyle gets shot...and never gets to say word one. When Kyle showed up at the club William must have had some thoughts about why that might have happened?

And two minor things: Aaron and Brian never made good on the being seen naked thing. Who is paying the power, etc, while Kyle's brother is halfway round the world? And to toss in Elecivil...I'm going to guess the fellow with teh pink sock and the brown sock was a reference to him, as well as something about Ohioans and some sexual deviancy.....lol

I do want to re-iterate, I enjoyed these stories and look forward to the next chapter. I also found William interesting enough, very interesting in fact, to point out...maybe he shouldn't be quite so done with yet.

Ok, off to bed.

~Dabeagle