@ Moonbeam -- A suuuuuuuuper-belated thanks for reading! I don't know how I failed to respond to your very thoughtful post at the time you made it, but I feel rotten for not having done so. I really appreciate that you took the time to offer comments.
Beryl and Aloise have both been characters I've been watching closely, but I'll admit to being a little surprised by Beryl's romantic feelings. Honestly, I'm still unsure as to whether or not I like it (but I don't dislike it). I had always pegged their relationship to being more like the type shared by close sisters, and given Beryl's relationship with her own sister, that made sense to me. Sexual attraction just kind of makes that feel kind of... Muddied?
Honestly, I think the situation inside Beryl's head is muddy (at least in this point in time), so I get why you feel that way.
While love and attraction often go together, they obviously aren't the same thing. And I think that, when it comes to the way Beryl feels about Aloise, love is infinitely more important than attraction.
Now, I'm not trying to say that the attraction doesn't exist, because Beryl tells me that it does. I think that, if she can get past her fears about the way she feels, Beryl wants to be with Aloise in every sense of that phrase.
But the singular, overwhelming reason that Beryl wants to be with Aloise is that she loves Aloise with all her heart. Aloise makes Beryl feel good, and happy, and complete. That's the sort of person Aloise is, and Beryl loves her for it. Beryl clearly hopes that Aloise loves her, too. And I think she hopes that Aloise is attracted to her, too. And, like you said, I think that muddies the waters inside her head a bit, because it complicates matters.
But, more than anything else, Beryl just wants to be with Aloise. She wants to have Aloise in her life, and she wants to make Aloise feel happy and loved in the same way that she feels happy and loved. That's what matters to her much, much more than anything else.
@ Luna -- Thanks for reading, Luna! And many thanks for the thoughtful comments.
I'm just going to do my best to respond in order. There's probably a better way to arrange my thoughts, but my brain is a little too tired at the moment to do that kind of sorting, and I do want to respond before I go to bed.
I only have to wonder, why the hyphen for "green-glass"?
Typo, that's why.
I also think this line:
Quote:
Beryl had to pause for a moment to take the whole scene in. It looked as though a small tornado had blown through the room. A fun tornado, apparently. But a tornado nonetheless.
Could have appeared much earlier in the passage. You say that she had to pause to take it all in only after you've made the both Beryl and the reader pause to take it all in.
This one I'll have to take another look at. The reason I ordered it the way I did was because I wanted to start with the individual details of the scene, then provide an overall assessment of the effect, rather than starting with the broader effect, and drawing the details after that. But I'll try rearranging it and I'll see which way I like better.
I have to finally ask the question: have you ever actually said which side is Beryl's bad side? I've been imagining it as her left for the longest time, but I can't recall if you've ever made it explicit, and most of the time I notice you specifically don't address it with lines like this.
It embarrasses me to say this, but I can't remember.
The worst thing is, I think someone already asked this, and I couldn't remember then, either. And I think I checked, and that I might have come up with an answer, but that I've since forgotten that, too.
...
Okay, I literally just checked "Small Magic," and her left side is the blind side.
Mystery solved!
Anyway, before I go into the rest of your comments, I want to respond to this part first:
It is brilliantly written, from an intellectual perspective. Perhaps, if I hadn't been so affected, the dual revelations in the letter — of Beryl's mother becoming/being High Sorceress on The Duchess's will and being ironically cut down by her own daughter instead of another agent of The Duchess, and of Astria's single-minded quest to become High Sorceress despite having known that — would have likely cut me much deeper than it did. I know realize just how affecting for Beryl it was to meet her mother in Between Two Worlds, after having read that letter. You are a master at your craft, and I'm sorry that my own baggage prevents me from enjoying it as fully as I could.
Luna, you absolutely don't have to apologize. Your reaction to the piece is a totally valid reaction to the piece. The story made you feel the way it made you feel -- I wouldn't ever ask or expect you, or anyone else, to feel any differently. I don't want people to have to set aside their "baggage" to try to engage with my stories on some objective level. I want people to engage with my stories from their own perspectives, with everything that entails. As we say in my trade, that's not a bug, that's a feature.
To be specific, I think that Ruwin was spot-on about Alessa's response to Beryl's situation. It made me uncomfortable, in the same way it made Beryl uncomfortable, that Alessa saw how much Beryl was in need, how much she was bearing herself, and chose not for some future favor, not for some difficult task, but specifically something she knew would make Beryl uncomfortable. I imagine that Alessa was trying to get Beryl to "loosen up" as it were, and chose what is on the outside a rather benign request (considering we could be talking about risking life and limb here); but it just speaks poorly of Alessa's character that she would do that. It's pushing a very specific boundary that, had Beryl not been in the situation where she needed the help so badly, would not have been yielded. And I think that's wrong. Not quite blackmail/extortion levels of evil, but an insidiously harmful act nonetheless.
Now, personally I don't see it as quite the violation that has been brought up (forgive me if I can't say whom brought it up; several similar topics were brought up and I've had a few days to forget who said what), because Alessa doesn't push beyond the kiss that she sees as, well, a gift I suppose. Although I was taken aback that Alessa didn't see beforehand that it was Beryl's first kiss, I suppose I can understand her wanting to give Beryl a "good first kiss;" and since it didn't go any further than that, I can grudgingly accept that. But honestly, what made me most uncomfortable about that second kiss was wondering just how far Alessa was going to go in this. Weird alarms that I'm not used to hearing were going off in my head when tongues got involved, and I've read my share of sexual fanfiction, and this was not the usual "who's reading over my shoulder?" kind of alarms.
My view on Death of the Author is a pretty civilian "well of course you can't make an objective review, because everyone brings a unique set of views and experiences with them". I say this because, in this case, I am going for the tackling of your work from the subjective, because of the very emotional and not-intellectual response I've had to it. Essentially, that almost dirty feeling that the kissing scene gave me is enough to taint my view of the work as a whole.
I think I've done a rotten job trying to articulate my thoughts about this prior to now. So I'm going to try one more time, and I hope maybe I'll manage to express myself a little better.
I that Alessa is absolutely being a provocatrix when she first asks Beryl for the kiss. I think that Alessa likes to test other people's boundaries, for a variety of reasons, and that's what she's doing here. She's putting Beryl in a situation which has the potential to make Beryl uncomfortable, and she wants to see how Beryl will react. But I also think there is a line in Alessa's head between making people uncomfortable -- which is okay -- and forcing people to do things which they don't want to do -- which isn't okay. I think that, in Alessa's mind, this is clearly the former, and not the latter.
So I think Alessa absolutely is trying to put Beryl on the spot, and I can see why that makes people uneasy. That's a totally valid reaction. It certainly makes Beryl uneasy. It makes me a little uneasy, too. As has been pointed out, there is a power imbalance between the two in this scene. Beryl needs something from Alessa, which puts her at a disadvantage. And Alessa is just much more savvy than Beryl is, which also puts Beryl at a disadvantage. But I think Alessa doesn't understand the extent of that power imbalance when she asks for the kiss. And, once it becomes clear to her, I think her behavior changes.
I think that Beryl kisses Alessa the first time for two reasons: she wants Alessa's help, and she wants to be kissed. I think that Beryl is attracted to Alessa, but there is also that kind of
quid pro quo quality to the exchange -- Beryl would not have kissed Alessa had Alessa not asked her to do so. I think that the second kiss is different. I think that one is based entirely on the desire for physical intimacy. I think that the transactional element is no longer a factor at that point. And I don't think Alessa would have kissed Beryl again had that not been the case.
(Now, as Raven and Ruwin pointed out, I think that Beryl, in hindsight, will regret that her first kiss wasn't with Aloise. And that makes me sad. But sometimes we do things which we later regret, and I'm afraid that this is one of those cases.
)
And Alessa does proposition Beryl. But, when Beryl says no, Alessa accepts that no. She later makes the offer again, and again Beryl says no, and again Alessa accepts that.
Like you said, I think that Alessa thinks that she can help Beryl, by helping Beryl to become more comfortable with her sexuality. I think that Alessa believes that's important. I think her motives, in that regard, really are good, even if the way she goes about pursuing them might not be the way I would always prefer. I think her heart is in the right place. And Alessa wants to help Beryl to be able to say to Aloise what Beryl wants to say to Aloise, too.
Guh. I'm not sure if I'm making any more sense than I was before. I'll have to re-read all this tomorrow and see if I've made a hash out of things...
Now, I ask myself "could you change the scene in a small way to fix that impression?" and I think "OL could probably do that. He's a champ like that.", but then I ask "could you provide some hints for what could be changed?" and I come away with a big, fat, zero.
I've been asking myself the same question.
Having had some time to reflect, I think that the big contours of the story are probably correct -- I don't know they are, but I think they are. I think that Beryl reacts honestly to the situation she finds herself in. I think those reactions might not be the ones she would choose in hindsight, but I think they are true in the moment. And I feel the same way about Alessa. I think she might do things differently, were she given the chance to play the scene over. But I think she's being true to herself in the moment.
But something was really, really bugging me, and I think I may have put a finger on what it was. Namely, as I've been re-reading the piece, one line stuck out at me. It comes after Beryl kisses Alessa for the second time, and after Alessa has suggested that they go to bed:
Quote:
She could feel her head and her body pulling her in two opposing directions, and it was a strange new sensation.
As trivial as it may seem, I think that line is a big, big mistake.
It's lazy, sloppy writing. It's me trotting out the old brain-versus-libido stereotype. And it gets Beryl totally wrong.
Because this isn't a case of Beryl's body wanting to hit the accelerator while her brain wants to hit the brakes. And the problem isn't that it's a new sensation for her.
It isn't Beryl's brain that says "stop." It's her heart! Her heart says: "You're in love! You're in love with Aloise, and that's the person you want to share this with."
And her problem isn't a new one, it's an old one: Can Beryl listen to what her heart is trying to tell her?
She can. And she does.
I think that the correct version of that line is something like: "She could feel that her body wanted one thing, but she knew that her heart wanted something else."
In my head, at least, that's a tiny change in the text that makes a big change in the way I feel about the story.
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