Day 57

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

25 Jan 2016

So, almost made it to a full 2 week/10 day streak…

Derailed by a message from a UK-based recruiter about a job in London. On the one hand, it sounds like it’d be a breeze, and the money was… not horrible, though not impressive.

On the other had, it was support-level administrative, which kinda hurts my pride to even consider. One of the great questions of life; is it better to serve and have no responsibility, or pretend to have some power and suffer for the pretence?

On another note, I really need to get a handle on how I should talk about different groups within the story; using ‘shadow’ as an adjective for a people group is getting increasingly redundant and meaningless.

I think I’ll have to take a hard look at the pacing of the intrigue in rewrites to identify when hints vs. reveals should be; it’s pretty haphazard at the moment, and even I’m getting confused about what I and the others should know at what point. I think a central misdirection should be the identity or agency of the death - blaming it on dreams confuses the root cause, which is (I think) trapped human souls. Why are they trapped? Who thought that would be a good idea? Are they the big bad?

In many ways, I keep letting everyone be victimized; Maria feels trapped by a bargain with the dead, in multiple senses of the phrase. Ravel is trapped by Maria and his own programming. Cole is trapped by fear, by having been and choosing to be separated from aspects of her own self. Silver mourns the loss of Cole and his own lack of ability to be whole and complete saviour of her, not with her. Morris2 is trapped by her poor past decisions, both for freedom and for safety. The Inspector (whose name I have the worst time trying to remember…) is constrained by his position, and although he doesn’t know it yet, by his family who can be held hostage for his behaviour.

Serov is the only one who isn’t particularly trapped; he chooses destruction for its own sake, because of who he has chosen to be and what he chooses to want, and in that sense is the most evil of the entire cast. He cannot blame circumstances, at least, no more circumstance than constrains everyone else. He simply desires betrayal and destruction, and in pursuing his authentic self, inflicts misery on others.

But a reason for one’s actions does not that action justify.

Wednesday

Start time: 12:30 pm

Location: couch/living room

Drinking: Lonetree Dry Ginger Cider

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