So, I want to be clear that I'm not making a direct comp between these two characters, but I once saw an interview with George C. Scott where he talked about playing Ebeneezer Scrooge, and he made a comment which I always found very interesting. He said that the character trait which people always zero-in on for Scrooge is his cheapness and greed, but that he thought Scrooge's most important facet was how lonely he was. And I think I see a little bit of that in Fisco. He has almost everything he ever wanted in a material sense, but what he doesn't have most of the time is meaningful companionship. He's lonely too, in his own way.

I don't have a lot to say about this section, to be honest. That's not a negative, I just don't have much commentary here. I think this makes a nice balancing force to the previous section, although I will say that these two sections back to back make this a pretty long talking piece. That's not necessarily bad, of course, but you are spending a great deal of time building up to what we assume will be an action pay-off at the end. Having not read that segment yet, I'll hold off my judgment until I do.

One small note though, and it's probably not a huge deal, but it caught my attention. When Beryl tells Aloise that she's one of only two people who had ever been kind to her, my mind shot back to the old firewalker in To Walk Across Fire. I know Beryl is unlikely to be thinking about him here, but I think he counts as someone who was kind, even if he was being paid. Just something I noticed.

Well, that was some suitably climactic action, so I'd say the build was well warranted. I have to admit that the description here was surprisingly graphic, though I suspect you wanted that stark contrast, particularly following the much more pleasant scene with Beryl and Aloise beforehand. I think this is a fitting conclusion, though I remain interested in what Beryl will do with Astria, but she still seems protective of her, for some reason or another. Well, we'll find out.

Just one typo I spotted in this section:

"Sadness seemed to radiate out from the angel in a palpable form, Beryl though" The "though" should be "thought".

The epilogue was a nice little Fisco tag on the end of these, just to remind us all that Fisco's got far-reaching plans and schemes. For what it is, I like it.

That being said...Even though Aloise and Fisco play a major role here, this is essentially, in my mind, Beryl's story. While I like the symmetry of beginning with Fisco and ending with Fisco, I find myself thinking that Beryl needed the last word here, and not in the sense of her exchange with Diana at the end of part 4. This story WANTS her to confront Astria. Now, intellectually, I'm sure the reason for that is that this piece will serve as a jumping off point for your next Beryl story, which likely will feature that confrontation. However, that doesn't change the fact that for me, this piece would be stronger if they had it out here.

Still, this is a good piece and well-written, as usual with both of you. Also, it's a very long piece, so I understand that trying to squeeze in the confrontation, which is likely a pretty involved story, is just not plausible. So, for what this is, I like it. Ultimately, my only real criticism is that as a reader, I at least want an indication of what Beryl intends to do with regards to her sister.

Good work.

I will go further and say that it's a *very* long talking piece. I think the pacing is okay, but I'm too close to it right now to be a good judge. This has been gestating in my mind for so long at this point that it's very difficult for me to be objective about what is essential versus what isn't, which is one of the reasons I'm so interested in everyone's reactions. I'm sure I'll come back to this in a couple weeks, and it will be interesting to see how my own reactions have or haven't changed with a little distance.


Hah, I totally forgot about him. Good memory, sir. Maybe Beryl is as forgetful as I am.


It's definitely a departure, yeah. One of the (basically unintentional) quirks of the way Beryl's stories have gone to this point has been that, while a ton of her actions have been driven by her own fear of what she can do to people, essentially all of that violence has happened off-screen. I felt like we actually needed to see what happens when she walks right up to the edge, and the fact that she really does not seem able to modulate her level of violence once she passes a certain point. It gets ugly.

This was actually kind of rough for me to write, for exactly the reason that I don't like to think about her this way - I like to think about the better angels of her nature. I like her. I want her to appear likable. I am instinctively protective of her. And I agree with Aloise's assessment of her - just because she has killed and will kill does not reduce her to being a "killer." But I think it was necessary to get a look at what she is afraid of inside herself, and to see that maybe there's a real basis for it. I think it shows why Astria is scared of her sister, and why Beryl is scared of herself, and why her drive to find self-awareness and self-control has such a kind of urgency to it.

In essence, I'm hoping this is more or less the opposite of what Ruwin did with Fisco in A Cold Shoulder. That piece showcased a human side of Fisco that he works hard to hide. Here, we get to see a dangerous side of Beryl that she wants very much to hide.


It is a little tough that these threads all get left hanging here. They will get picked up again, but the lack of immediate closure is real.


Again, that's fair. There may be a way to at least tease what's coming, even if it's just a line or two to act as a signpost. I'll have to think about that and where it might fit.

@: "Hah, I totally forgot about him. Good memory, sir. Maybe Beryl is as forgetful as I am."
Well, he's not really relevant to the point Beryl's trying to make, although he IS pretty important to Beryl's development at this point in her personal narrative.

@: "I like her. I want her to appear likable. I am instinctively protective of her."
Yeah, while I was reading the action scene, I really picked up on this. The way you disassociate her from her actions, and the way you allow her actions to disappear from her memory, and so quickly, really showed me that you wanted her protected, even from her own actions. I would have a problem with that choice, in fact, were it not for the fact that you make it clear how remorseful she is, even without a clear memory of what she had done. It would be all too easy to use it as a cop out, which you don't, and I think that's good.

@: "@ Raven - Thanks so much for reading and for the great feedback, sir!"
Hey, I like reading good stuff! Hopefully my comments are at least somewhat helpful. That's what I shoot for, anyway!

[EDIT] Sorry about the funky quoting. It wasn't letting me do what I wanted to with the quote feature, so I just sort of winged it.

Yeah, I don't want to let her off the hook. The balance I've been trying to strike with her fugue-like experiences is that she remembers what she has done, just not much about how she has done it. She knows that she kills people, but she doesn't remember all of the details. And I think that's the other side of the coin here as she tries to become more self-aware - she may be more able to pull back from doing some of these things, to find a third gear between "disengage" and "kill everyone in the room," but she's also going to remember more and more about the things she does. And I think that will be hard for her in a way that she doesn't really anticipate.


They are extremely helpful, so mission accomplished.

Astria Trevanei woke with a shiver. Her toes were cold.

She blinked once, twice, three times. Tried to clear the sleep from her eyes. What time was it?

The room around her was dark. Nighttime. She rubbed her eyes with a cold hand. Why was it so cold?

The answer came to her a moment later, when she felt a faint breeze drift across her face. As her eyes adjusted to the gloomy half-light, she could see chiffon drapes rustling gently.

That was odd. She could have sworn she had closed the window before retiring. The nights had grown cold of late.

She freed her legs from tangled silk sheets and eased them over the side of the bed. The marble floor felt cold beneath her bare feet. Stifling a yawn, she trudged over to the window and pulled it shut, making sure this time that the latch was secured.

She stood in place for a moment. Her nose wrinkled. The night wind had carried a strange aroma in with it. She sniffed the air. It smelled faintly of... what was it? Something burnt.

She was still trying to place the odor when her heart skipped a beat.

"Hello, Astria," said a voice from behind her. "We need to talk."

The action scene at the end worked perfectly because basically the entire story leads up to it emotionally and leads up to you wanting it to not happen. It reminds me of FILM CRIT HULK's analysis of the Hulk character, actually, in that there's a similar tension here. It's impressive when Beryl DOES "hulk out" but you don't really WANT her to, and it's clear that while the action is extremely entertaining (and really, major kudos for the writing here) it's still more than a little horrifying. I think you hit all the right notes there--it's dark and brutal without being exploitative.

I'm glad that you felt like it worked. I've been very nervous about not wanting Beryl to just be a re-skinned Hulk - I want there to be an element of choice for her, even if it is a limited one. It's just a choice that I'm sad she makes, even though I understand why she does it. She's defending herself. She is trying to do the right thing, in so far as the information she has allows her to understand what the right thing is. She's justified in a basic sense of the word. But it's still a dark sort of thing to do.

And "exploitative" was another thing which I was very worried about. I wanted the story to be interesting to read, obviously, but I didn't want the violence at the end to be "cool," for lack of a better way to put it. So I'm glad you feel like it managed to walk the line.