Goat Notes

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 910 words. Council scene finished, and the hampered ride along the jaw of Hareborough to come out again where my little combined force is not expected. Tidy that up tonight, and I'm at the great rallying-speech at last!

Things I discovered but did not write during the Council scene: the good and bad things it means that the Knifewitch is adept at small curses; what Bonecold Refugee has come to understand those things mean for her too; and why she daren't ever speak a curse at all. From Refugee that would come as one unstoppable spate of filthy ice, and there would be nothing left of her afterwards that ought to exist in the world. She will do a lot for sorrow and hate and her sleety sense of justice, but she won't do that.

I thought at least the tactical aspect would come up, but none of it did. Elsewhere, then, or implicit.

The more I get to know Flashy Elder Brother and Bonecold Refugee, the gladder I am I listened to my Muse and made room for them in the tale.  They're quietly carrying a part of the tune that none of the other characters can.  I wonder where they will end up at last, and what the songs will say of them.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 1,650 words, and a wild ride which I didn't know where it was going until the very last moment.  Lord Evil temporarily discomfited; an important secondary character nearly gets her soul eaten by accident; and Flashy Elder Brother and his father most spectacularly earn a good few chapter's worth of their passage.  I do love a scene of deep unexpected horror in which the final resolution has me bursting out loud with laughter and relief!  I hope that effect will generalize to future readers...

This messes the hell about with the rest of the Garcastle scenes, though.  I'll have to tie off the business with the Duke's Relatively Okay Genius tomorrow when I've cooled down enough to think sensibly, and see how things look from there.

I also emitted a poem in a white fury triggered by semi-random recollection of the myth of Cassandra and Apollo.  I will not rehearse it here because, although I think it one of my better efforts, it is really very horrible.  But at least Cass got to be the unequivocal hero of the piece for once, and may just have landed a blow as cruel and telling as the prophetic curse the Sun-God laid on her.  Ever since my dream of St Lucy's Eve, I've been feeling even less fond of that particular gilded orc than I was previously.

Dionysus, now...

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 1,000 words.  In trying to set two of my characters by their ears, a random spark of curse brings them instead into timely accord.  Not even dooms are hopeless.

Not a huge wordload for a weekend, but not too shabby either.

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.