Captain Curst

[caper_est]

440 words of the new chapter this morning.  Not the beginning I planned, but one that raises new possibilities.  One of the people who think Luke just did them a favour knew the Big Bad rather well when it was less big and not particularly bad, and this person has raised an interesting possibility about what my too-backgrounded Curse is really up to here.

On the one hand, I like it emotionally, because it renders Luke a bit less of a shit for what he did yesterday, without actually getting him off the hook.  (In some ways, considering who is telling him, it actually adds to the scene's cringe factor.)  I like it plotwise, because it gives me an 'in' to the problem of making the Curse a sufficiently pervasive and viscerally-felt influence over the Dales, and thereby building up organically to the final arc in which our heroes must somehow confront the Big Bad face-to-face.

On the other hand, I really don't want to dilute the fundamental moral shittiness of the ground Luke must march across, nor the Slight Flaws in his and Kate's characters. 

There's something I still haven't managed to put my finger on, in my comments discussion with seawasp about 'Kirking it' , and the different points/levels at which we like to do that.  I'll get back to that in a separate post, since I think there's an interesting point to be made here about two distinct approaches to storytelling, and the respective ways true tales can come of them.