Ugh, yeah. Obvsly, I think having a beta is a personal choice. I don't use them for shorter fic bc I write pretty clean. For longer fic, I like having 'em for continuity checks because god I make the dumbest mistakes sometimes. (What the hell happened to the dog? He brought the dog and now it's watching them fuck??) But I don't write seriously long epics like you do!

4 or 5 months seems like a long time to do a beta tho? Maybe you can break the piece up among different betas so to shorten the period of time it takes? I dunno.

Happy holidays btw!