#sessine

Yeah, I phrased that poorly. Beadman had the assassination components in place and had almost no doubt that his Ulestry suggestion would be shot down, but on the bizarre chance that it hadn’t been he could have kept the fatal events from playing out and prevented her death. Inviting her to stay for dinner and sending word to Nary to call off his men and tell the lizards to cool it woulda done that.

You’re right: killing off a character can be a total hack move. Sometimes it means nothing more than the writer doesn’t want to have to think of a way to move the character satisfyingly from the narrative. There’s a real art to short term secondary characters, the kind that flow into the protagonist’s path and then exit again after having served their purpose. Me, I just gauge how I personally feel about that character and their exit. Do I feel satisfied that they did what they needed to do and may now leave the story? ‘Cause if I feel satisfied probably the reader will too.

Sometimes character death is what is best for the character’s arc, like with Elan. He was a dead man walking and it was only fear that kept him from accepting it, that made him do things he was never happy with in order to stay alive. Hanging out with Toma and Elka made him find his courage - courage to fight with and for them, and courage to accept his death. Elan didn’t die the sickly, suffering straw death he was so terrified of. He died quick and awesome, offering himself to someone he respected. Total victory. And pretty satisfying, I thought.

I saw a lot of fear that I’d kill one or both of the Ripa’s at the end of last chapter which would have been sooooo laaaaaame. Rather than needing to die, they needed encouragement to live, which they were able to give each other, allowing them to float their fiery way from the story.

I do this with movies, which I can have on while I work or work out. I love bad movies.

I can’t think of any guilty pleasure novels though, outside of some bad erotica stories that I’m going to plead the Fifth on.

I suppose one comic kind of comes to mind- Thor:Vikings. It’s a very goofy one-shot about a bunch of zombie vikings invading NYC and then Thor and Doctor Strange have to take care of them. Drawn by Glenn Fabry, one of my favourite artists. Even this book isn’t BAD though, since the art is so fantastic.

I’m sorry to hear you had to deal with that. I have two younger brothers myself and I’d rail and carry on against the world if anything ever happened to them.

Rahm and Iori take a bit from my great uncle and aunt. They lost a son years ago and both became alcoholics. She died of liver cirrhosis about a decade ago - nasty way to die, you bloat up and lose your mind, don’t do this to yourself - but she was one of the coolest people in my otherwise shitty extended family. Personality-wise though, Iori takes much more from my great grandma. Even her ugly wooden necklace is almost exactly like one I remember my great grandma wearing.

My great uncle lost his mind two years ago the day after Easter, tried to burn his foreclosed house down, took a few shots at the cops when they showed up, then was shot himself. He’s in prison now. I send him stamps (they’re like currency in prison), buy him commissary treats twice a year, and write him letters. The bullets messed his hands up so he’s all crippled and doesn’t write well but he’s doing much better these days and has interesting prison stories. He’s always been a Right Wing conspiracy theorist type so our shared interests are limited but sometimes I just type whatever the hell I want into the letter. Nothing like a captive audience!

But yeah.

This is going to sound a little weird probably, but I’ve also gained insights from watching those hoarding “reality shows.” Almost all of those hoarders start out doing what they do because of a loss. They turn inwards, and build up a fantasy world around themselves, blocking out reality with distractions and objects of comfort and familiarity. This is a huuuuge theme in Unsounded; less so with physical hoarding and physical rearrangement of the world - though Iori does have her fake ghostly grandbabies and Rahm camps out in that underground workshop - but with psychological hoarding, blocking, and boarding up. Everyone’s fashioned these Best Worlds, and they don’t have a lot of interest in stepping outside of them. There are very few honest actors in Unsounded, and the villains are often people who want to wrench our protagonists out of their Best Worlds. Interpret that how you will.

It’s everywhere though. Sette, Duane, Toma, Quigley, the Ripas; every one a thin trembling skin over an internal sea of boiling misery and uncertainty and ugly memories. They’re each a microcosm of the dyspeptic khert and its complaining ghosts. No one wants to dive into this crap or acknowledge it, but most of us sure like crossing our fingers and hoping it will remain in existence forever.

Sette’s fairly illiterate but I do think she recognises a few letters, has a vague notion of how writing and reading works, and could potentially learn if she really sat down and had someone very patient work with her. She’s got the attention span of a gnat when it comes to such pursuits though so as smart as she is, it probably would be a challenge. Maths are easier; there’s something very practical and intellectually tactile about numbers and sums. They appeal to her in a way that reading really never has.

But Duane’s only going to tolerate her illiteracy for so long before he holds her down and shoves the alphabet into her ear like those glowing parasites from The Beastmaster that create the Death Guards.