It works very well as a coda. It's interesting to see Kaari manage her near-immortality compared to the others at the inn, she seems unperturbed by it.

She's been around for a while, enough to run into this problem before, yes. Though I suspect she hasn't entirely thought about what that means for Deandra yet

"Mostly a character piece, not much in the way of action"

I've seen D&D sessions where there was zero action, few dice rolls, and everyone left talking about what happened at the table.

In another way? It's not about what such a thing is, it's about how well it's crafted. This was enjoyable.

True.

*laughs* I remember reading a description from one of Dave van Domelan's Champions games that led to some of his writing. The supervillain had created a bomb that sterlized everybody on the planet. One game pretty much boiled down to the team debating what to do, because they'd discovered that the weapon was going to wear off in a year or so anyway. Do they tell everybody this, or do they pretend that they 'solved' the problem and take credit for this, telling everybody it will just take time to send the cure around the planet?

He said that afterward one of his players said 'please don't give us purely role-play sessions like that again, I'm not sure we'll survive it'.

Now this was lovely - well set, perfect edit, and compelling characters...

V.

Thanks!

Honestly, I'm a bit of a compulsive self-editor, constantly tweaking things as I write. Part of why I've never managed to pull off NaNoWriMo: I can't seem to just write straight through. But at least even my first releases are pretty clean.

off paw, I would say we have much in common in how we write... for me, the editing is as much a part of the writing process as anything...

V.

A story doesn't need action to be compelling, interesting characters, setting and dialogue will do that nicely, all of which this has. Certainly worth a read!

And, honestly, if the characters aren't interesting, action won't necessarily save it.

There's a reason why the 'Eight Deadly Words' in book reviews are 'I don't care what happens to these people.'

I mentioned that to someone else about the recent generation of British sci-fi books, the stories, settings, scenes, plot and concepts are often fantastic, but the characters are such hateful cynical self-centred jerks why on earth would I care about them? In fact watching them get a plasma-beam to the face would be viscerally satisfying. If that is the readers reaction you Mister or Miss Author have a problem. Actually I felt the same way about the Man of Steel movie, Superman is the quintessential around upbeat and good-natured all-American boy, not some dark and brooding psychological mess.

As one of the locals put it on the con suite of a local convention, "When Zac Snyder is operating in his wheelhouse, he can produce some amazing cinema. See Sucker Punch. Superman... is not in Snyder's wheelhouse."

I remember reading a couple of British anthologies years back of superhero stories, 'Temps' and 'Euro Temps'. (Basic conceit is that in England people with superpowers are essentially given jobs by an British labour board/government agency, rather than operating as independent vigilantes) It was amazingly cynical and yet darkly humorous in a way that was so late 20th-century British. Many of the characters you did feel for, even if you mostly felt sorry for them. Like the guy whos power is a sort of mental invisibility, people forget he's there.. including his job contact who kept having to remind himself that his current appointment was actually still in the room, and needed to be paid for the last three jobs.

But, yeah, 'Eight Deadly Words' has a TVTropes page. The term's about 30 years old at this point.

I have to admit I've never seen Sucker Punch .

That does sound interesting, yes the British kind of have a lock on cynicism, it must be that dark and dreary industrial landscape. ;) Usually its at least a little tongue-in-cheek though.

I'm carefully avoiding going to TVTropes to check, you intend to look at one page and an hour or so later!

There was a reason why I deliberately didn't embed a link to the page when I mentioned TVTropes.

A wise decision ;)

Well, yes, if you have great magical power, why not use it to make your life easier?

... When I started writing these stories, I hadn't started watching the second season of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid yet, and it had been over a year since I'd seen the first season...