(Catching up on comments, after Yuletide completely derailed me. *g*)

It really does take a while to get sucked in; one of my favorite memories is me and therienne starting to pimp marycrawford in (while she sat there going, "Why? WHY are you showing me this? This is awful! Oh god, not more...") and then you finishing the job up when she went to stay with you, so she went home totally hooked. \o/

And man, yeah, on the backstory. There is just so much going on under the surface, which is nuts when you look at how crowded the surface is!

ETA: (whoops, sorry for the reposted comment -- I was replying to dorinda and somehow instead wound up reposting this one!)