Annotated 32-11
I think it was about here that readers started guessing we had plans to Joss Whedon this relationship, by which I mean “make it sweet, funny, and brief because one of them will die far too soon,” not “make it nominally feminist enough to be a shield for our own toxic behavior.” Man, linguistic creep is hard to deal with sometimes, and by “linguistic creep” I mean “the mostly slow, sometimes rapid change of words or phrases’ definitions,” not “Joss Whedon, that linguistics-obsessed creep!”
Oh, well, you can’t fool all of the readers all of the time. I was a bit bothered that they were on to us with this one, but not bothered enough to change course. These two deserved what kindness we could give them now, and we were pretty committed to both their stories’ endings at this point.
Would’ve been awkward if they’d come in any earlier, though. Good thing Syr’Nj is a quick dresser.
In the corner is the quiet debut of Sephora, the stoic, somewhat ethnocentric sky elf medic commissioned by Kensou. She won’t have a huge role, but we will see her in a succeeding chapter.
This was cute enough that I almost forgot what was going to happen to Rachel…
*Sadface*
Changing the course of the narrative because your readers care enough to pay attention to where the narrative has been going is a toxic disease. Glad you missed out on getting it
Thank you! It’s so weird to me to lay out enough clues that your readers catch on to what you’re doing, and then change it because they figured it out.
While I agree that it would be silly to change your course because readers had found out where you were headed, I also struggle to find anything on this page that says “one of these people… is going to DIE!”
Although tropes, memes, and story conventions can be a useful way to shorthand intent they also can be just as easily subverted. They don’t strike me as meaningful buildup of narrative destination; they can, just as often, be as lazy – if not more so – than they are useful.
Having relationships become comfortable hasn’t been set up as a death sentence for Rachel, E-merl, or Guilded Age as a whole, so I didn’t see this as anything other than innocent cuteness. Fr’Nj/Scipio is the only real relationship I can think of to this point, and it also was sudden. Though without the series of false-starts.
Technically, everyone is going to die.
I was never a big Whedon fan so this didn’t strike me as a death flag. Applaud you for staying the course regardless.
I assumed at this point that that E-Merl was finally going to grow some confidence. If I had written the story, that’s probably where I’d go. But then it gets to E-Merl’s head, he kind of overdoses on self-confidence because too much of it has never before been an issue for him. He starts offending those around him (which affects the main plot in a way the peacekeepers would have rather avoided), and eventually even dear Rachel’s patience approaches its limits … but dangit, they deserve a happy end, so they’d eventually get one.
Upon reading it now, I just want to hug those two. They’re so close to it, yet they don’t have the means to get there.