The new interlude was pretty intense, and I wasnāt sure if I followed along with the sequence of events perfectly, especially in the second half. Iām mainly wondering what exactly happened, and also how things could have changed so drastically between them? Iām not sure how much time had passed in between then and their last meeting, but it seems like the way they do things has turned to be more of an exclusively violent thing rather than violence with emotional processing alongside it.
iām not going to spell out what exactly happened, especially in the latter half. i suggest slowly rereading this fic with an eye towards physicality and symbolism, keeping in mind Danaās classpect and how weāve seen her use it in the past. consider, as well, the introductory noteās use of the phrase āaggressively canonicalā and what that might imply. this isnāt a huge ask imo considering āstomachā is a measly 3,994 words long, compared to the nearly 40,000 words contained in just one of chapter 8ās many fingers. there are more answers present within the text than you might expect, but youāve got to put the pieces together yourself. failing that, thereās always the godfeels fan server...
but now to the meat of your question, which i very much do want to talk about at excruciating length (after the break).
this interlude is a lot of things. one of them is an experiment.
other writers besides me have contributed to godfeels before (Taz with Dirk dialogue in ch8 acts 2 and 3, Julia with the Dana v Silverbark fight in act 4), but interlude 3 is the first entry in the series that was primarily written by someone else. not only that, but itās also the first real glimpse we get into the narrative universe that is likely to become a major focus of our attention in the near future. as much as i talk big about throwing my ego in the trash for collaborations, i have to admit that this was a bit scary for me! and not just in the sense that godfeels is my baby or whatever. you donāt need to look very long to find examples of indie projects like this utterly destroyed when their overly-precious creators decide to throw their collaborators under the bus for the sake of their sacred vision (money).
i donāt want to be that guy. iāve been personally fucked over by different versions of that guy multiple times in just the last few years, and it terrifies me that i was blindsided every time. iām terrified that iāll take every precaution and still wind up becoming that guy somehow. i hate creative dictators. i hate that our primary cultural definition of collaboration still paradoxically hinges on one or two people being the head of the dragon. i donāt want to be the head of anything, i just want to make cool shit with my friends.
HOWEVER. the fact remains that iāve written nearly 400,000 words of this fucking thing largely on my lonesome. thereās a lot that only i am privy to, and not just in plot terms. so the big test for us was, how do i as ~the director~ ensure that the text is true to canon, in character, and just generally up to my arbitrary standards of aesthetic consistency, without compromising the primary authorās work? this was a big learning experience and involved several long conversations about... well, basically everything i just said.
thing is, everyone in the work server has their own little section of godfeels they tend to gravitate towards, and Julia's been laser focused on Dana and Lenore pretty much since the day i invited her on board. i can't remember the exact chain of events that got us here, but iirc Julia started writing this interlude on her own, i liked it enough to suggest we should work together to make it canon, and she agreed. she finished the first draft maybe a month and a half ago, and from there we talked very openly about how we wanted to collaborate, what we were willing to budge on, what we werenāt, that sort of thing. where we eventually landed was that she reserved the right to reject any of my suggestions on the prose while giving me a lot of latitude to influence dialogue. i added/modified a few lines in the first half, but for the most part itās all Julia. my big contribution was the final sequence, which Julia improved in several key ways.
i wonāt linger on this process talk for much longer, but i think the most fun part of writing this for me was seeing which of my suggestions Julia rejected. i would comment on a single line of narration with a paragraph of thoughts, and sheād reject them... but also find ways to incorporate bits and pieces of my thoughts elsewhere in the text? this was what ultimately eased my mind about this process, because it didnāt matter so much to me whether or not she fixed any given line as long as we both knew that the ambiguity was a choice she was making.
ANYWAY, it made sense for this specific interlude (which features two 29 year old characters weāve only just met) to have a completely different authorial voice from prior interludes. it even comes down to the title: āpenny in a bed of flowersā and āeyes like violet fireā have this poetic energy to them thatās utterly absent in interlude 3ās āstomach.ā the dreamy naivety of the young twenty-something giving way to the base bodily functions of actual genuine adults whoāve lived, er, shall we say colorful lives.
(one similarity between all the interludes is that they are fundamentally fanfiction. it just so happens that interlude 3 is fanfic for a canon that doesnāt exist yet :)
the first two interludes were soft, warm, primarily positive sexual experiences. i wanted them to typify some of the beauty of transfeminine sexuality, as a refuge from the pressing danger and trauma of 2.3. interlude 3, by contrast, looks at two transfems whoāve been in an on-again off-again relationship for over a decade. on top of that, this is their first private reunion after Lenore sold Dana and the other upsilons up the river three years ago. thereās a lot going on between them, most of which goes unspoken. weāre eavesdroppers here, thereās no way theyāre gonna take the time to contextualize what theyāre doing when itās just the two of them.
which gets us to what iāve been building up to all along. i want to single out this specific bit from your question, anon:
āit seems like the way they do things has turned to be more of an exclusively violent thing rather than violence with emotional processing alongside it.ā
iāll start by observing that weāve never seen Dana and Lenore alone together until this fic, and i donāt think iāve ever met a couple that behaves the same in public as they do in private.
itās true that their relationship involves a lot of physical violence, but is it exclusively violent? does it really seem like thereās no emotional processing going on in this scene? from where iām sitting, this scene is nothing BUT emotional processing. the difference is that thereās no resolution. and why would there be? itās not like Lenore called Dana a bitch on twitter dot com (although she definitely has done that). whatever the nature of her betrayal, it led to Edie and Alphi disappearing, and Dana being banished to starve and go mad all alone on a meteor for THREE YEARS. thereās no cathartic conversation thatās gonna paper over that, especially not on the first night theyāre together again. you could draw a parallel here to Dareās many epiphanies not actually curing their depression if you liked. one might even call it āa theme.ā
before i say more, Julia has some things to add:
I am a fan of metanarrative fuckeryāfor example, I love how Terezi's narration in the latest chapters refuses to turn inwardly, and that refusal collapses as her stress mounts. That being said, I unfortunately just have the one narrative method: I like unreliable PoVs that deny the audience information the character in question wouldn't be thinking about. Dana won't stop doing things to think about the decade-long depths of the relationship Lenore betrayed. This is her life, these are her actions. You, as reader, can but take them as they come.
If I wanted to give myself more credit than's due, I would claim that this also reflects the nature of Dana (and co.) as an internal narrative. She's older, she's more resentful, she's just come out of a situation she spent 3 years coldly simmering about, and it went worse than she expected in some ways (she didn't get to ether Silverbark), but shockingly better in others (she got the Comet and Lenore back). Crucially, Dana is trained for violence, so she's not given to these Egbertian windbag breakdowns that give away the entirety of her thoughts as a response to sudden violenceāshe just stances up, and acts. She's been doing it for a long time, she's good at it and she likes it enough to be a weakness.
jumping off from that, the thing to understand is that Dana is a fighter. not just someone who likes to fight but a trained, highly skilled grappler who Silverbark at one point thought of as āher finest mentee.ā just from the text of this interlude alone, itās safe to assume that Dana and Lenore have fought each other many times in the past. thereās even this snippet of a memory in the last section where Dana seems to willingly, covertly lose to Lenore for sex reasons:
(idk why i censored the words āfucksā and āorgasmā in this screenshot)
Lenore is less technically skilled than Dana, but she makes up for it by being extremely strong and durable (those troll muscles, baby). if i were to make a Lenore kin onion, Jessica Jones would be pretty close to the center. so they have this back and forth where Dana can just fucking unload on Lenore without causing any real lasting damage. and it shouldnāt go unstated that fighting and sex are basically the same activity!
Lenore says of their relationship that āwe like it this way.ā they both trained together in the EWL, and despite their differences and the bumpy lives theyāve led they still always wind up back together somehow. i would not call this a healthy dynamic per se, but these are fucked up women who grew up in what seems to have been a deeply ideological paramilitary organization.Ā āhealthyā is a luxury for women like these. and whatever you might think of it from the outside, they clearly enjoy it- or, at least, there was a time when they enjoyed it.
this encounter feels to me like muscle memory. the children have been put to bed, medical emergencies are taken care of, now is the time to drink and catch up. what they want, the two of them, is to have what they had, i think. they both know they have to address the shadow hanging over them at some point, but not tonight. tonight is for them. and like, yeah, of course theyād think that was possible. Danaās been an unwilling bachelor for ages now, and Lenore? i canāt imagine sheās had much free time with her job running support for a high-ranking ewl member. maybe a few one-night stands here and there? but nothing satisfying in the long-term. throughout chapter 8, before their reunion, weāve seen both Lenore and Dana independently wishing the other were there, despite everything between them. theyāre lonely and they want to fuck each other, because they are each otherās best fuck. the entire ritual is so rehearsed, so known, so comfortable start to finish.
but of course, that shadow is just too loomy not to infect that ritual. you think theyād say shit like āiām fineā and āiām not madā if they really meant it? theyāre spells to ward off the inevitable and possibly relationship-shattering tension between them. these two already seemed to have something of a kismesissitude going, though i hesitate to simplify their thing (or any pairās āthingā in godfeels, for that matter) in such basic terms, because they genuinely love each other. we can debate what kind of love it is, but if nothing else itās pretty clear that that love has endured a LOT. they value that endurance, i think.
Dana and Lenore have been through too much together to escape their mutual orbit. Lenore thought she could, and Dana wished she could, but here they are again, back at it same as always. is it healthy? is it too violent? is it bad? i honestly donāt know. what i like about them is that they can be mad at each other, hate each other even, but still know deep down that no one else gets it the way they do. theyāre rivals to lovers to enemies and back again because theyāre too stubborn to really, truly let go. theyād never want to. thatās what makes it hurt all the more, one of many reasons they canāt just paper over this betrayal with a cathartic bout of a hatesex, that Dana knows she canāt let Lenore out of her life again. she knew it the instant she saw her step out of the Comet. so itās this contradiction that canāt be resolved, not when both parties are so proud, and it manifests in this passionate anger, this desire to love and devour, to punish and protect, until they tucker themselves out and wind up just feeling empty inside, because again, the core contradiction hasnāt been resolved. it's beautiful and terrible all at once and buddy if that ain't godfeels from toe to tip















