I am so grateful for your observations, for all your many thoughtful comments-- oh, you know how thrilled I am to see you clawing your way through the story, but in this comment, in particular, you're helping clarify and answer whether some of my tricks were working: particularly Elma's implicit commentary in this chapter and others.
I've been losing some of that subtlety in recent chapters and need to reach for it again. I was afraid no one was getting the subtexts, since a few of my reviewers are making comments showing they didn't even catch things I'd made quite explicit. This story is very complicated... I forget it's okay not to spell things out, and let some of it be hidden like easter eggs that can only be discovered by a close reading or a "replay of the game."
Also, I'm feeling less guilty about Elma turning into a bit of a Mary Sue, because you reminded me why she's there: to serve as the voice of the everyday Yevonite, as Wakka was in FFX, having to adjust as her beliefs get torn down, clinging to just one overarching truth in her life which she never voices directly to keep her going.
That was not a plotline I had envisioned at all; the character just snuck into the story, the way Faramir barged in when Tolkien was writing LOTR. But I think she was needed. Now if I can just keep all these other plots from eating the Auron/Lulu story that I began with!
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-07-03 06:38 pm (UTC)I've been losing some of that subtlety in recent chapters and need to reach for it again. I was afraid no one was getting the subtexts, since a few of my reviewers are making comments showing they didn't even catch things I'd made quite explicit. This story is very complicated... I forget it's okay not to spell things out, and let some of it be hidden like easter eggs that can only be discovered by a close reading or a "replay of the game."
Also, I'm feeling less guilty about Elma turning into a bit of a Mary Sue, because you reminded me why she's there: to serve as the voice of the everyday Yevonite, as Wakka was in FFX, having to adjust as her beliefs get torn down, clinging to just one overarching truth in her life which she never voices directly to keep her going.
That was not a plotline I had envisioned at all; the character just snuck into the story, the way Faramir barged in when Tolkien was writing LOTR. But I think she was needed. Now if I can just keep all these other plots from eating the Auron/Lulu story that I began with!