As with all things, my initial thoughts turn to Archer, specifically the scene in "Drift Problem" when the ISIS crew is trying to shoot their way out from a car chase with the Yakuza, and Cyril says: "The way I see it, we're the bad guys here!"

I think it's totally fair to say that the things which happen in the story are instigated by Alessa. She sets the chain of events in motion by committing the crime in the first place, and she chooses to escalate the subsequent confrontation rather than avoid it, which it is within her power to do. Finally, when she fights, she does not "fight fair," whatever that might mean in this context.

Similarly, the guards don't appear to have any compunction about trying to kill her, and they also choose to stay and escalate matters rather than retreat.

I'd say that all parties involved are to blame, and that no one comes out of the exchange looking like a paragon of morality. There's enough blame to go around for everybody to have some.

Now, for me, I find that can sympathize with bad characters, or characters who do bad things, but that it usually requires both of the following things: (1) I need to feel like they have some level of introspection about the bad things that they have done/are doing, and (2) I need to feel like they genuinely want to behave better.

At least in this story, I think Alessa is in a gray area on both counts. She has some level of introspection about the ethicality or lack thereof about what she's doing. For example, she's relieved that the civilians clear out of the area where the fight is about to happen, because she would feel bad about hurting them, whereas she does not feel bad about hurting the guards, and she escalates her level of violence in response to what the guards do. But the sense I have of her is that she would still pick this fight even if other people were potentially in the line of fire - I don't think that would be enough to get her to 'walk away. She's not without ethics, but it's not totally clear yet what her ethical calculus looks like - we've only had a small glimpse.

As to the second question, does she aspire to be a "better" person (putting aside the question of what that means, or what she would think it means), that's where I find her interesting. As the story's title implies, a lot of her choices are made in the moment, and a lot of her behavior has an impulsive quality to it. Her ability to see the future allows her to live like this, in a manner which would be extremely self-destructive for most normal people, while mitigating its consequences.

But I think it's unclear at this point how much this kind of life represents a conscious lifestyle preference, versus how much it represents a kind of coping mechanism - almost a form of self-medication, so to speak. My personal read on Alessa - and I certainly don't claim to speak for Barinellos here - is that, while she would describe it as the former, and probably believes as much, it's more of the latter on a subconscious level than she realizes. And what I look forward to seeing is whether her perspective on that might start to change.

For one thing, having the ability to see the potential consequences for yourself of the actions you might choose to take is a powerful advantage that can be used for personal gain. The flipside of that coin is that having the ability (limited, admittedly) to see the consequences which your actions might have on others could be a powerful, even traumatic moderating influence on your behavior. She has a gift which could liberate you, or paralyze you, and I think she is still learning how to strike a balance between the two.

So, I sympathize with her, but I think that's because I see her as simultaneously very self-aware and very self-unaware, just in different regards. I think she has a lot of internal defenses built up, but that, while she sees them as proactive choices she has made, they're rooted more in pain avoidance than in pleasure seeking. I think things could happen which would start to chip down those walls, and that if they start to come down, she could undergo some very interesting changes. Right now, she's a large part id and a smaller part superego. What she needs is more ego in the middle. One of the things which excites me about her is to see whether events can or will nudge her in that direction.

Again, though, to be clear, this represents my own read on the character. Even though Barinellos has been giving me some of the inside scoop, I don't claim to know the mind of the Old One, since to do so would surely be a ticket to madness.

EDIT: Put more succinctly, I almost see her as a kind of addict, who doesn't yet realize that she has a problem. I generally find addicts sympathetic, because I cannot help but think "there but for the grace of God go any of us," but my sympathy is eventually contingent on their gaining self-awareness and acting upon it.

Having just read through the story and the discussion in one fell swoop, I'm with Raven in not finding her sympathetic, but I don't... care that I don't find her sympathetic, if that makes sense?

I really liked this story on the whole, but I liked it because it gave me a character that was consistently-painted enough that her actions made sense from moment to moment, which in turn allowed you to explore her spellcasting ability and how she perceives the world. I found myself mentally comparing it to my Innistrad story, actually, and not just for the time magic--it felt like the character was kind of a vehicle for the exploration of the mechanics, and that was fine from my perspective. So, by the end I didn't particularly care whether she lived or died, I was mostly just interested in seeing the collision of various magics progress.

It reminds me of the pieces you've done exploring particular duel scenarios, honestly, more than your longer narrative pieces like Legacies.

With that in mind, I do think that I'd like to see more development of the character and more... well... plot in the next story you do, since this really felt to me like almost a testing bed for your ability to convey her character in broad strokes and convey her magical ability similarly. And it definitely succeeded in those things! But if I can offer advice I'd say make the next thing more, well, plotful.