Mm, yeah, some of that I definitely did not pick up on--the movements of the Missing Pieces mostly and who orchestrated what things.

I continue to be intrigued by the Liar though and his own ongoing schemes.

I think the term for this is 30 Xanatos Pileup, no? ...Oh wait I just checked and now it's called Gambit Pileup because TV Tropes is basically complete and unmitigated watered down horse **** now. God I hate what they've done to that place. Remember when it was actually interesting, snarky, occasionally baffling, and anarchic? The days before everything had to be all polished and super accessible and they ripped all discussion of porn and erotica off the site, I mean. Ugh.

Sorry. That was all totally irrelevant.

Anyway, yeah, some of the other stuff... it seems like I've been an unattentive reader, essentially. I should probably go back and read all the Jakkard stories oh wait I'm going to have to anyway for the anthology nevermind I'll wait till then I guess. But yeah, it'll probably make more sense emotionally on re-read, I suspect.

but no less vindicated for it.

In other news, I have at least 2 other Jakkard stories that I'd like to do, but I don't feel up to at the moment.

So, I haven't kept up with the Jackie's full story, but I decided to read this anyway, because I have resigned myself to the idea that I will never be able to keep up with everything you guys keep writing. I simply do not have enough time. So I just decided to read this even without knowing the full background, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the scene were Fisco tells Jackie why he became Ol' Smokey, and it is really touching that you didn't want him to say that. It is a mark of expert storytelling when the characters do things the author didn't want them to do.

I'm really glad you enjoyed it, Aaarrrgh!

(I hope you won't mind that I've nicknamed you "3x3" in my head -- it's how I remember to put 3 A's and 3 R's in Aaarrrgh!)

I'm glad you're glad, OrcishLibrarian!

(And I don't mind at all. I appreciate you making an effort to actually getting it right!)

So, I finished reading this about two days ago, and have had a mixture of forgetfullness/busy-ness keeping me from posting my response.

I want to say what I've already told Raven: if I had to describe this in a single word, that word would be "brilliant". You brought a physical reaction out of me, which you will shortly see in my spoilered comments. I include below, in the spoilered section reviews, only my running notes which I wrote during my reading; as such, it is rather incomplete and, in fact, lacking an overview of part 5. I intend to come back soon (after I'm sure I've read everyone else's comments) to give my impressions on the piece as a whole, because I don't feel that what I already have written down does this piece justice.

@ Luna - I'm so glad that you enjoyed the story, Luna! This one gets me a little misty, too, so I totally understand where you're coming from. I think the way Ruwin put together Part 3 is just masterful in that regard. It just hits these really heavy emotional chords, but in a way that feels very natural as opposed to constructed. There are plenty of other parts which also get me right in the feels, but that one is pretty spectacular.

On your comment about Lucy having a reason to lie to Jackie, I think you're probably right.

I think that, inside Jackie's head, she thinks that Lucy wouldn't bother lying because Lucy would know that she's going to die either way, and that the only question is how much Jackie is going to hurt her in the process. Lucy can die cleanly if Jackie thinks she's telling the truth, or she can die badly if Jackie thinks she's lying. I don't think Jackie is thinking that Lucy might expect to survive the encounter, and I think that she assumes Lucy would prefer a clean death to attempting to provoke her.

Of course, Jackie turns out to be wrong on both counts. I think that you could see that before she could.

Hey, Luna, thanks for reading!

I have a few more things to type up today, and then I have to work on packing up the backroom in anticipation for my store's closing on Wednesday. I was wondering if anyone would like to put this up to vote for me so I can focus on those other things? I'd really appreciate it.

Man, I thought I'd caught all those typos. Go figure. -__-

I'll address your comments in the order that you made them!

@Part1: I felt the timestamp was important for some stuff that's going to happen later, and it helps me reconcile a bit with the massive reality-altering story that is WOTW. The kinks will be easier to smooth out once we see all the pieces, so we'll tackle intense timeline stuff later.

@Part2: Ahaha, yeah, Fisco's sense of humor has always been really dry and subtle, and most of it comes out in insults, sarcasm, or not at all. Some of his funniest stuff, in my opinion, is written by Raven. Still, this particular line is sort of Fisco just having a laugh with himself - no one else would really find it funny!

@Part3: This was really the center of the piece (the centerpiece, if you will. [booooooooo]). I mean, it's about Jackie and her struggle with her nature and instincts, obviously. About reconciling who she is and she wants to become. About NOT becoming the jaded, cynical person that Fisco is - because for all the smoking Fisco does it's not like there is a lot of fire left in him - and so, I had to draw parallels. I mean, Jackie and Fisco both KNOW the dangers of having people who are close to you. You get them used against you.

We already saw what Fisco was driven to when Cosette was killed.

I'm convinced Jackie DeCoeur would have caused more damage. Because - Unlike Fisco - she has nowhere else to go, no other life to live, and no resonant depression to drag her down off the high of her anger.

Chills, man. Chills. Glad we avoided it.

Part4: Well, thank you! Juggling this many characters is difficult. Luckily, it's a diverse cast!

Hmm... You may be right about the title. I'll look into it.

Will do!

Small thought dump, since I still haven't read all the comments yet:

As I moved toward the end of this story, I was filled with ideas to make it into something. By which I mean, I thought of trying a dramatic reading of this story, and I thought of creating (or spearheading the creation of) a Jackie Anthology. The latter would paint a great picture of Jakkard itself, since it would absolutely have to start with Down to the Valley and Two Bullets and a Pocketful of Hate, but it would undoubtedly center around Jackie. I might not be a whiz with art choices like Keeper is, but I think I could quickly get enough resources together to at least make an ebook out of it.

The point being, this story, besides bringing about that earlier physical/emotional reaction out of me, brings Jackie's story around so completely, so greatly, that it fills me with ideas.

Something I know I didn't comment on is that, pretty much as soon as Trotter got those tickets, I knew how this was going to end. That's not to say it wasn't fulfilling, but there wasn't the kind of tension that part four was supposed to have instilled from Jackie's shenanigans. At that point, it was less about the destination and more about the path taken to get there; and you two carve a brilliant path in glittering crystal.

You're too kind, Luna.

To your point, I think you're correct. I don't think there's that much uncertainly about what is going to happen by that point in the epilogue. I think that basically everyone will have intuited that Jackie faked her own death, and that she's waiting for Trotter. My hope was just that, while we're inside Trotter's head, he doesn't know what we know, and his personal emotional arc as he goes from completely shattered to daring to hope to actually seeing Jackie again is credible. Again, as I've said elsewhere, I just *can't* be objective about that particular section, because I get way too emotionally wrapped-up in it. But I hope that it more or less works.

For myself, anyway, I tend to lose it at three specific points. I tend to lose it when Trotter looks at her picture in the newspaper. I tend to lose it when Trotter is on the train and thinks: "More than once, the thought crossed his mind that this might be an elaborate trap, that he might be walking into danger, or even going to his death. But, in the end, he decided that didn’t really matter much. If it was a trap, then she was dead. If not, then it meant there was hope. Either way, he reckoned, he would be seeing her soon." And I tend to lose it when Trotter sees Jackie and falls out of the cart trying to get to her.

God, I'm a hopeless softie...

To your other comment, I think we have enough material at this point to do a really wonderful Jakkard anthology, if we want to. Between Ruwin's stories, and Raven's poems and stories, and Tevish's story, and Barinellos's story, and all Keeper and Lunar's art, and other stuff which I'm sure I'm forgetting (Ack! Sorry!), it would be an awfully good collection.

Yeah, a full collection wouldn't be too hard to pull together now. If we opened it to ALL the Jakkard material we'd both have enough to fill out a real big anthology, and we could send out a call for new stories as well from non-M:EMbers. It'd be more involved than just collecting all the Jackie stories but I would loooove to have an anthology based on one of our planes.

Totally. I mean, just based on what's in the Archive now, we have:

Two Bullets and a Pocketful of Hate
All In
Centaur Wine and Noggle Ale
Down to the Valley
Ol' Smokey Comes
Three Duels at Dawn
The Rail-Runners
Love and Theft
Red Eyes
Louder Than Words
Red Jackie
Stare Down the Basilisk
Foxtrot
Wild Card
A Moral Compass
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
An Angel Blinked
Blood on the Tracks

PLUS all the art.

I mean, that's a really super collection already. And there's always room for more.

For the record, I still have at least one more Jakkard story in me right now, but other things have taken priority, in part because I'd have to scratch up some characters.