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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 3333263" data-attributes="member: 13098">A little expositionAh, I have children to bed and can now post a bit more.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I took a chance with this story in making Hugh a character that does not find redemption.  Call it a bit of cynicism and bitterness in general that bled over into the story, but also call it an attempt to try something different to see if I could gain a leg up on my worthy opponent.  It is all the above wrapped up into one.  So in one regard I am very pleased with the observations that Hugh had the opportunity to redeem himself, and still didn't.  It was hard not to go that route, not to turn him into some being with a moral fiber.  Did it work?  Well, maybe not well enough to win the round, but those are the breaks when you are competing.  Would I try that strategy again with a different story?  I don't know, maybe I would.  But I would give it more consideration if I wanted to pursue that element once again.  Orchid Blossom - There is some keen commentary on providing more insight into Gemma.  I avoided it because Hugh simply didn't care.  He thought he would be using her and it never entered his mind that she might be using him.  I had already alluded to where Gemma might end up with Lucinda's comments about witches, and Gemma's interest in the supernatural.  I was afraid I had made the story too predictable already so I didn't want to push too much of her perspective into the narrative.  But it does make the ending feel a bit rushed toward a conclusion.  I appreciate that you were able to develop a bit of a feel for Lucinda's family.  I was trying to bring a lot without devoting too much time to it.  I want people to ponder whether Milos fell into the same trap when he was younger and just made a better effort to accept it.  I want people to ponder how much Lucinda and Na-na know of their own history.  I should have found a way to provide the same feel for Gemma without revealing too much of what was to come. I am skipping over some of the commentary - I appreciate it greatly but I don't need to comment on all of it.  Otherwise this might sound like some odd rebuttal, which it isn't.  No, I appreciate the commentary and you all bring to mind a possibility of how I could have possibly strengthened the story in a manner I had offhandedly dismissed.  Piratecat - I thoroughly enjoyed the references throughout.  Both the foreshadowing and the bits of fact that I recognized.  I thought it was very nicely done.  The biggest issue I had was that the character didn't quite ring true for me.  I believe Sialia summarized the reasons quite well.  If anything was shared between our stories I think it might be this:  We were both writing about characters that we could look at and externally understand, but maybe we can't entirely integrate the character's mindset with our own?  So maybe we ended up with cariactures rather than characters.  People are complex and I don't think I quite captured that complexity as well as I could have.  But it was great to write off against you.</blockquote>

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