Again, another stream of notes taken as I was reading, so basically treat each paragraph as its own topic.

Thanks again for reading, and for the comments, Luna! I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the story!



I'm glad you enjoyed this part -- I'm very fond of Ursalyn and Petyr as well. Ursalyn has a sort of endearing gruffness to her, but you can tell that directness comes from a place of kindness. And Petyr -- as Aloise points out -- means well. He's just a little too preoccupied inside his own head at times, and it takes a little nudge from Ursalyn to bring him back to reality.

And, yeah, Bearfolk! I mean, we have basically every other kind of -folk in Magic, so why not Bearfolk, too? There's something about the image of Ursalyn, in her cornflower blue apron and spectacles, just towering over Aloise and Beryl, which makes me smile. I think the moment I like best is when she shakes Beryl's hand, and Aloise just sort of has to marvel at how big Ursalyn's paw is compared to Beryl.



Well, thank you very kindly. I tried to give Ursalyn and Petyr a bit of a distinctive way of speaking, compared to Aloise and Beryl. But I wasn't trying to lay it on thick, or anything. So I'm glad that came through.

And, yeah, there's a reason I don't ever try to write dialect, or accents, or anything like that. Namely, it's really, really hard to do well, and there are really only two possible outcomes -- it either works (uncommon), or it just sounds *awful* (very, very common). So I have a pretty strict "don't go there" attitude to that sort of thing. I hope my characters have distinctive sounds, and I hope that's reflected in the patterns and cadence of their speech, and the words they choose. Hopefully that's enough to convey their voices.

For example, I like the way Petyr says it gets "powerful cold" up on the mountain. There's something about the way he uses that expression which just fits with the way I see and hear him inside my imagination. He's very clear to me in that moment.



I can see where you're coming from. The impetus for this passage was just a thought which occurred to me when I was writing this scene -- namely, that I bet a lot of planeswalkers wouldn't think twice about littering. Even leaving aside the I-wipe-out-whole-worlds-just-for-fun contingent, it just strikes me that, if you've become used to hopping from one world to another, tossing a biscuit wrapper on the ground probably doesn't seem like a big deal. I mean, it's not your world, right?

But, to Aloise, I think that would be a big deal. That's not the sort of thing she'd do. So I just called attention to it, as a sort of little character moment. (I think Ruwin's comment about this passage was something along the lines of: "It's not something I've ever thought about before, but of course Aloise doesn't litter.")

Actually, I have a very funny mental image of Fisco dropping a cigar butt on the ground, and Aloise picking it up, and following him across a dozen planes, and handing it back to him, with a very stern look on her face. Only to get an eyeroll in response, of course.

But, to your point, I agree that the interjection sticks out a little bit. I just sort of like it, so I left it in.



Thanks for the sharp eyes! I'll clean that up.



I'm not conscious of this being a reference to anything else. But unintentional references have certainly slipped into my stories before, when I wasn't looking, so I can't categorically rule it out.



Yeah, I think this is a pretty big moment for Beryl. As much as she loves Aloise, and as much as she wants to be honest with her about what she's feeling, and how it's affecting her, she hasn't quite been able to let herself open up all the way. I think she's afraid that, as soon as she admits how bad she's feeling, Aloise will ask why -- that's the natural follow-up question, of course -- and, once Aloise asks, Beryl won't be able to not tell her the truth. And, in spite of everything she knows about Aloise, Beryl is still terrified of how Aloise might react. She's deadly serious when she worries that Aloise might tell her to leave. And she's equally serious when she says that, if you want me to leave, I'll leave, and you'll never have to see me again.

But, of course, that's not what Aloise wants. That's not how Aloise reacts. Aloise responds with kindness, and compassion, and understanding. She lifts the burden off Beryl's soul. And that's a moment which I know Beryl will remember and treasure for as long as she lives.



I'm glad you mentioned it, and I totally understand what you're getting at. There are essentially two stories happening in parallel here. One is the story of Aloise and Beryl's expedition to discover the secret of "The Wanderer's Heart," and the other is the story of Aloise and Beryl. My hope is that, in more ways than not, those two stories overlap and complement each other. But, to some extent, they also move at their own pace, and with their own patterns, and -- unavoidably, I fear -- the focus occasionally shifts to one at the expense of the other. So I can see why that could feel a little muddled at times.

My hope is that, in most cases, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But it wouldn't shock me at all to discover that there are moments in the story -- or ways of reading and experiencing the story, for that matter -- during which the character arc crowds out the adventure arc, or vice-versa.

I totally agree that it's in-character for Aloise to not litter, but I just wanted to point out that the line itself kind of sticks out. That's why I was wondering about what other people thought about it (though as of yet I'm avoiding reading any other comments until I finish the story itself), because maybe it's just that the line itself is a little wonky and could be reconstructed to flow better? I wish I had a better way of saying what's wrong with it, but honestly I'm not sure I have that capacity.

----

With the reference thing, I was thinking you or Ruwin were sneaking in a reference to "A Bet on Kindness", since I had already noticed references to "Small Magic" and "Complications". But that's why I added the caveat that maybe, I'm just being paranoid, because the context really isn't there the same way it was with the other two references. Just wanted to make myself clear in case I wasn't in my earlier post.

Hrm... you know what? I think it's because the line is positioned as an interjection inside another complete sentence. I do that a lot -- anyone who reads my stories will know that I am overly fond of the em dash, and it's use in this context.

But this might just be a case where simpler is better, and the ideas flow more smoothly if we separate them out. Try this on for size:


I think that helps a little bit. Now we're considering each though in turn, rather than having the bit about littering feel like it's shoehorned in between the things Aloise is doing.



Ah, I follow. No, it's not an intentional callback, in so far as I'm consciously aware. I mean, it's entirely possible that it echoes a line I've used before -- I find myself drawn to the same themes and phrases, so it wouldn't surprise me. But, no, it's not an intentional reference.

I've been sitting on these notes for like a month now but you posting 3:15 to Dayko reminded me that I should post these:

Well, thanks again for reading, Luna, and for sharing your thoughts! This story was a long one, so I really appreciate that you took the time. I hope that you enjoyed the conclusion!



I think your critique here is fair. Like you said, the whole "discover the secrets of a hidden temple filled with puzzles and traps" motif is what it is -- we're not breaking any new ground here. And, like you said, this portion of the story wears its influences on its sleeve, and it doesn't bother to try to hide them. That certainly carries with it the danger of feeling clichéd or unoriginal, and, while my hope is that people won't have that reaction, I will totally understand if they do.

To give a tiny peek behind the curtain, I tried really, really hard to think of an adventure that Aloise and Beryl could have inside the temple that didn't adhere so neatly to these sorts of genre conventions, and I just couldn't think of anything that I liked. I was really, really struggling to come up with something which felt fresh, and original, and innovative, and I was just grinding my gears down to powder in the process.

So, when Ruwin asked the question, "What's wrong with Indiana Jones-y," that sort of took me by surprise, because I had been taking it for granted that I didn't want to just copy those genre conventions. But, once the question was actually put that way, I realized I didn't have a reason, beyond a simple "it's been done." And I decided that, instead of trying to avoid these genre conventions, I could try to embrace them, instead, and try to use that to good effect. And I wound up liking how that played out because the rest of the adventure plot came straight from these sorts of genre conventions already. The mysterious map, the cryptic old story, the journey through the wilderness, the enchanted world, the kindly villagers, the mystical mountain -- I was already living in that sort of storybook land, and I was living there on purpose, because I wanted to have this sort of comfortable, familiar undertone to the action plot which the Aloise/Beryl relationship plot could both play with and against in different places. So, viewed from that perspective, it didn't feel like a cheat to stick so closely to the established script inside the temple -- it felt consistent with the rest of the piece. So the hope was that the fun comes from seeing the characters interact with this well-worn sort of story arc -- "Oh, look, puzzles! Let's solve them!"

But, again, I think your critique is totally fair, and I'm not surprised that you felt the way you did.



Honestly, the capital-H Hell was just a learned habit on my part. I'm sure that religion on Aliavelli does include some form of afterlife, but you're probably correct that it's not a simple Heaven/Hell duality. I like your replacement line about the darkened Eternities, and I'm going to shamelessly steal it.

So... thanks!



Zing!



That's really wonderful to hear.



Well, I'm really glad that you liked this part. It was the good Mr. Ruwin who, back when I was trying to figure out what could possibly be inside the temple, and what could possible explain the endless winter, pointed out that a dragon was a possible answer to both questions. (After that, when he would make notes on my drafts, whenever Aloise and Beryl were speculating about what they might find at the top of the mountain, Ruwin would always write in the margin: "Dragon." Which always made me laugh.) And I liked that answer because I've never actually gotten to write about a dragon before now, and I was excited to finally have a good reason to do so.

I was also inordinately fond of the idea of a dragon priest who is actually just what that sounds like, and not some silly human who just worships dragons.

Anyway, Ruwin really helped to supply a lot of the backstory for the dragon, and it turned out to gel really nicely with the story that we were working on. So I'm really happy with how everything came together, here, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

The Wanderer is a "he," I believe, but I tried not to use too much gendered language, just because I wanted to keep the emphasis on his dragon-ness rather than anything else.



Yeah, this was mainly just supposed to be The Wanderer's explanation for why he and his companions fell-out over time, but I did like that you could sort of read it as white's critique of blue, and blue's critique of white, respectively.



Yeah, we've pretty much always seen Beryl from inside her own POV. Before this story, "Reclamation" was the one real exception, because that was entirely from Astria's POV. We've stepped briefly into Astria's stiletto heels a few other times, and Aloise, Fisco, and Alessa have also had some POV sections, but never full stories. Mostly, we're seeing through Beryl's eye.

Which was one of the challenges I enjoyed about working on this story. It's entirely from Aloise's POV, until we get to the epilogue, which is The Wanderer's POV. Beryl is a participant the whole way through, but now we're on the outside looking in, and that was a different experience, I hope.