You met Oliver before back in interlude 8b
Oh, right, Trickster and Noelle mentioned him as an possible person for Noelle to talk to. The name did sound a little familiar.
Tag: Chapter i11f
We the sneeple disavow all actions by Coil because seriously, screw that guy. I bet he watches dubs.
Coil watches dubs and subs simultaneously, in different timelines, getting audio in both languages and subs that don’t necessarily match the dub’s translation.
If he doesn’t get it by the end of the chapter, can you let Krix know that those branches Dinah sees are just from this universe and not any others?
Yeah, that became gradually clear after a bit.
I always like to discuss the concept of sympathizing in writing. I’ve seen people who love it, I’ve seen even people who are scared of it, because they find it dangerous. Like it is somehow dangerous to humanize broken, damaged people. It is exactly what will help us reflect, as a race, I feel. Washing away social constructs requires you to understand them and, yes, even sometimes sympathize with terrible people. Its why I loathe tumblr’s constant hate parades against people sometimes.
Lets use a recent unnamed case for example. Lets say an artist is showing off his defensiveness towards pedophilia or being homophobic. You DO NOT solve this with indifference, but neither with pointing at their flaws or shoving hate and death threats, calling them names. You talk, you understand and you make them understand too. You take away the US vs. THEM mentality instead of fueling it.
Hell, its why pedophilia is such a problem anyways! Because we dont TALK about it, we shove it under a rug, we dont educate our children and we MEDICATE, arresting people who DO IT, instead of PREVENTING it, treating it like it is, a mental/psychological health issues, taking it out by the root. These people, all kinds, are outcasts and they know it. We bring them in instead of pushing them out, because we are oh-so-faulty on seeing the transition between person with problems to person causing problems. Taylor, and Worm, is itself a PERFECT character study for this.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this.
This sort of thing is part of why I like shows like Steven Universe and MLP:FiM. They both make most of their villains sympathetic but misguided, broken people whose better sides can be brought out, and whose flaws can be mitigated, with a little help from people who care for them. It is a good thing to write your villains as people, in general, which was one thing I praised Interlude 11e for.
Yet, as you mention, it’s something I’ve heard of Steven Universe getting criticized for doing with the “big bads” of the show, even though it’d be straight up out of character for the show to not do it.
(Steven Universe is far better than MLP at executing this. The prevalence of the “evil switch” in major villains is one of MLP:FiM’s biggest flaws as far as I’m concerned, but the core idea is present and prominent.)
I do think it’s important to stay aware when you sympathize with these people, though. I can sympathize with Hookwolf, or Purity, or Coil, but I should keep in mind what sort of people they are while I do so.
Also, I personally think pedophiles are closer to the “person causing problems” end of the gradient, at least if they act on it in some way. Which does not require it going as far as actually having sex with a child. However, “bringing them in instead of pushing them out” might in some cases be a better solution. A lot of things should be treated on a case by case basis, and this might be one of them.
End of Interlude 11f
Sundancer is a Good, and Coil’s a dick.
So! In this chapter, we watched as Dinah saved everyone, at great personal difficulty.
I think it’s worth thinking of this chapter as split in two: There’s talking tactics, and there’s the horror portion.
There was a lot of discussion of tactics in this one, which… kinda drew long, but was a pretty decent demonstration of Dinah’s power and an alright way to introduce us to Crawler’s power. It grew especially interesting once the final solution of having Dinah look into the future more thoroughly and find out what they were going to do came up, which was an aspect of her power I did not see coming. Uh, no pun intended.
I think I like the horror section better – trapped in the dark with a potentially dangerous person sniffing at you from inside, and a definitely dangerous monster banging at the door from the outside. It does feel like it didn’t quite pay off, though, somehow – Trickster calmed Noelle down with relative ease and a gentleness that didn’t match the horror tone surrounding it, and Crawler was quite effectively stopped by the vault door. (The latter isn’t quite as much of a problem as it could’ve been, because it’s previously been solidly established that it’s a really strong door intended to keep berserk!Noelle in check.)
Overall, it was a fairly decent setup and used the uncertainty surrounding Crawler and Noelle’s appearances effectively, but ultimately the ending felt kind of anticlimactic. It was certainly not bad, though.
And then there’s Dinah. It was nice to see Dinah’s perspective on her situation, and I’m very glad that she does not like Coil. She has learned to not cross him, and does have a heavy addiction to the drugs that will be especially hard to break due to her power, but she does not like him. His abuse hasn’t gotten to the point where she starts telling herself he’s good to her, that what he’s doing is okay, that she doesn’t want to go home.
Sundancer (civilian name Marissa, which is nice) was also very good in this chapter, being protective of Dinah, but admitting to Dinah – to Dinah, talking directly to her – that her hands were tied by her bonds to the Travelers. I would love to see Taylor and Sundancer discussing Dinah, though it’s very unlikely to happen.
Speaking of Taylor, I have a feeling she’s a big part of why the chance of Dinah’s release is ticking up.
So yeah! Not one of the solidest recent chapters, but I enjoyed it.
Next up is either Bonesaw, the newbie or Hatchet Face. Probably Bonesaw, I’m thinking. See you then!
I forgot to mention that Night is practically an embodiment of the horror writing rule I was discussing. I feel even more so than before that Night would fit well as Crawler’s nominee.
With her armed escort, she headed to her room. She collapsed gratefully on her bed.
She knew she’d regret it, but she used her power. She had to know. It would be one more use, to hold her over, and she would stop using her power for the next few days, at least. Weeks, if Coil let her.
Know what, exactly? Whether Crawler will come back?
Or maybe, whether she’ll be saved, now that Sundancer brought up that possibility?
She clutched her covers and bit her pillow as her head erupted with pain. More than half of the groundwork she’d so carefully laid in place over the past hour fell apart as she pulled the scenes into two groups. Minutes passed before she had her number.
31.6%.
If it’s the latter, which I think it might be, that’s not that bad a chance.
More than four percent higher than it had been yesterday.
Okay, definitely not about Crawler, and this is something she checks repeatedly. I think I was right.
Thirty-one point six percent chance she’d get to go home someday.
Bingo.
Emerging from the gloom, she squinted in the face of the flourescent lights. Claw marks gouged the outside of the solid steel of the vault door, each at least half a foot deep.
This is another way you can do it – have the monster leave marks to be seen after it’s moved on.
Marks that give a vague indication of what abilities it has, without giving the full picture.
The catwalk had been torn down at one side of the complex, and innumerable boxes of weapons and supplies had been crushed or scattered across the floor.
Gotta check whether they’re hiding in the boxes, y’know.
Besides, crushing boxes is good for venting frustration when your target hides behind a vault door.
“Candy?” she asked. “My head hurts.”
“You can have your candy, pet. Go to your room, I’ll call Pitter in and send him to you.”
And this is basically Coil saying it’s over.
Is he right? I don’t know, but the soldiers did scour the building for Crawler and come back, so he’s either well hidden (and he doesn’t seem the subtle type) or gone.
She’d have to wait until a period of calm before she made any real headway. The passage of time would help as well. Then it wouldn’t be so painful to use her ability.
I thought it was going to get worse?
She got caught up in the painstaking operation, and it was some time before she realized the banging had stopped. Still, the gathered people in the room waited. Just in case Crawler was bluffing them, waiting until they opened the door.
That is probably a good call. Especially since he seemed well aware that they were almost certainly in there. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have banged on this door anywhere near as long.
Long minutes passed before Coil gave the order.
Dinah was blind. Her power too fragile and painful to use, so she couldn’t see the future that awaited them outside the door. Her heart pounded in her throat as the door was opened. The first squads moved out, fanning through the complex to find if Crawler was lurking in some corner of the underground base.
…I think we might not actually get to see Crawler in this chapter.
The mood of this last portion has been very horror-game-esque, and while I’m not big on watching or playing horror stuff, I do know that one of the best ways to maintain scariness for a monster is to not show it until you absolutely have to. Instead, convey its presence with other senses, like sounds, things that don’t allow the audience to become certain of the monster’s form. The uncertainty as to what the monster is like is key.
That’s part of what’s going on with Noelle too, I think, besides her form being saved for a future reveal. For the reader, there’s a degree of uncertainty as to what is happening to her (much like there is for the characters, but the venn diagram between what the characters know and what the readers know is not quite a circle), and it makes it all the more worrying.
They returned and gave the all-clear.
For now. Maybe.
Noelle didn’t reply. The silence lingered, punctuated by the heavy blows on the metal door, echoing through the concrete chamber.
“Come on, Noelle. Let’s go back, before you or someone else here does something they’ll regret,” Trickster urged.
Yeah…
The banging continued.
“Come with me, Krouse? We can talk alone?”
Oh yeah, that was Trickster’s civilian name! I forgot about that.
“That sounds good,” Trickster said.
Dinah felt the tension in the room ease. The pain in her skull didn’t get any better. She set about the tedious task of trying to reorganize the images in her head.
Noelle and Trickster talking hopefully helps keep her calm and distracted from the hunger. As long as it doesn’t lead to her eating Trickster, that’s a good thing.
Meanwhile, Dinah’s still trying to use her power even after everything she’s just been through.
Building a house of cards in an unpredictable wind. Every time the numbers changed, what she’d started to sort out fell apart.
And considering they seem to change as every moment passes, that house of cards is doomed.
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