The way crest has dealt with suspira has made me warm to his character a lot, i mean, i never disliked him, but i never really connected with him as a major character till now. Especially because of his absense in chapter 0. Oh well, no matter how he grows may and bern will always be the main characters to me.
And in my head i viewed may's speech and her backstory as seperate, simply told to allow, us, the reader, to learn about maytag as her friends did, while not actually being true to her speech as her speech would be filled with a lot more annecdotes and jokes, while the story was cleaned up for reader's sake.
Also, kudos brion, it's hard to write a character like maytags and have it feel realistic, or, at the other end of the spectrum, have the reader feel like her back-story dosen't fit with her character. You have managed to avoid oth those problems, so well done! Loving it