Out of Character (OOC) Thread

[revanne]

"A bit of drama",  he says!!

Because what is happening to poor Washburn has been soooo boring up until now.

[DerynifanK]

A game is not fun if one always loses .

[revanne]

Very clever Bynw. I sense many possibilities. The question is,  where do Feyd''s loyalties lie? He will serve any paymaster to earn a living but who does he truly serve?

Lots of questions but no answers as yet but once the first shock of waking up to the latest offering has worn off I see the first glimmerings of hope.

[revanne]

A game is not fun if one always loses .

Being English and generally watching my team lose spectacularly at games that we taught the rest of the world believe me it is possible still to have fun while losing!

Washburn is losing in the short-term and will continue to do so as Bynw stretches our imaginations - which presumably is what this is about - but in the long-term I think we have been given the seeds of hope.

[DerynifanK]

Wish you would  share these seeds of hope since I seem to be missing them. Trying to stretch my imagination  to find them but it doesn't  seem to be cooperating. It might be partly because I don''t really understand the dice rolls so I'M not sure if Feyd's rolls made things even worse for poor Wash. Tried reading the explanation of the dice rolls but still not clear about them.

[revanne]

As I see it  Feyd blurs Wash's loyalty to his brother and his king so that Valerian will not see Wash as so much of a threat, when he probes him, nor see the need to break him. Presumably Valerian will see the Wash that many others see which leads them to have a poor opinion of him.

However Feyd has also set a trigger so that this blurring can be reversed at which point Valerian might have more on his hands than he bargained for.

[Jerusha]

My thoughts exactly, revanne!

[revanne]

I've reread it again and I'm sure that Feyd does not destroy Wash's memories but blur them. In my mind it is as though they are in a locked cupboard, utterly inaccessible and their presence unknown, even to Wash himself, but not destroyed. When the trigger is activated then the memories are restored. Remember Feyd has no loyalty to Valerian, he is simply being paid for a job. Neither does he have any animosity towards Wash.

[Bynw]

Destroying his memories and making him an empty shell is the most diabolical thing possible to do to him. Can it ever be fixed even if he physically  survives? "Memories seared to ash not to be recalled". I'm  not sure  Wash has not been effectively lost.

Feyd did not destroy Wash's memories or his loyalty. Only blurred and hid it. So hopefully the Grand Duke will not see them when or if he reads Wash. Most likely he will just use take over the controls that have been put in place by Feyd. There is a trigger that will cause the memories and loyalty to return to normal.

Wash is not an empty shell. Without the strong loyalty to King and his family, he will not be seen as a liability by the Grand Duke. And his chances of living are greatly increased.

[Jerusha]

I will hang on to that thought as a thin thread of hope. So many of our other threads have broken or tangled.

[DerynifanK]

Me too Jerusha.

[Laurna]

Sorry, if my and Washburn's point of view got a bit over dramatic at 3:00am in the morning. I shouldn't have used the memories replayed like a bonfire and burnt to ash. but I could not come up with a medieval equivalent of Feyd reviewing Washburn's memories like a 1920's motion picture film and then pulling that film off the real and storing away in a dark cavern. At that point all I could see was the film melting against the too hot light bulb. Thus, the memories from Washburn's point of view, disappeared to ash. What I was desperately trying to do was save Wash's memories of his father. Those memories Feyd did not mention that he touched upon.  and I have hope that he will not think them relevant.
You do not know how hard it is to struggle with these restrictions as a writer trying to be true to her character.

[DerynifanK]

I can imagine that it is very difficult and as the talented writer that you are I'm  sure that it requires much effort. I just wish I could write as well as you do.

[Evie]

Laurna, I think from Wash's point of view, possessing the incomplete information that he does (due to the blurring) and not realizing what he doesn't know (not to mention the information we as players don't yet know), the "burned to ash" metaphor works well, because that's his perception, which is not necessarily the same thing as actual reality.  But we as readers who have been privy to Feyd's thoughts in this whole thing realize (or at least should pick up on if reading carefully) that those old loyalties are not actually gone at all, just temporarily obscured so they won't put Wash in greater danger than he is in already.  That trigger to release those memories later is very much a ray of hope; that coupled with Feyd's mention of having some greater goal in sight that has nothing to do with his (very temporary) contract with Valerian makes me very curious to learn what Feyd's end game plan is.  Could it be that he might be able to be used against Valerian at some point further down the road, since it's evident that he has no personal loyalty to Valerian and no animosity towards Wash (if anything, there is a beneficence, however limited, to his actions towards Wash--if he felt totally apathetic towards Wash's fate, why even bother trying to protect him from Valerian?), but just sees this current job as a step along the way to his future goals?  Not that I am saying I think Feyd could become some future friend or ally, but sometimes the enemy (or willing paid opponent) of my enemy is my...OK, definitely not friend, but at least potentially useful diversion or weapon who could someday be used against someone we know definitely means to do us harm?   

Derynifank, it might help to take a few steps back and look at the longer range possibilities (and I'll admit, it might take a heaping helping of creativity to see those possibilities) to find some rays of optimism.  Right now, like the characters themselves, it is hard for us to see the whole forest because of all those darn trees in the way.  LOL!  Remember that we are still very much in the "messy middle" of this story (and trust me, as someone who has written novel-length fiction, there were countless times when I got stuck in the messy middle of a story in progress and wanted to throw my hands up in despair, not seeing how I could ever possibly resolve the plotlines and create a satisfying ending from the tangled mess I'd woven...and I was the sole author of it!    )  Sure, things look grim for our characters at the moment, but there are plenty of times in canon where things looked darker still for those characters.  The entire post-Camber era trilogy comes to mind!  Geez Louise, that death count and the ramifications for Gwynedd that continued for centuries afterwards!  The stakes in this story are not yet anywhere near that extreme, and if anything, Feyd's surprising act of compassion towards Wash gives me greater hope, not less, that there is still hope for our characters to achieve total victory over their enemies.

[Evie]

"I am afraid," the tall duke claimed. The soft white tones of his papa's hair illuminated the silver of his eyes. "The difference between you and me is that I won't cry when I'm afraid. I hold my fear in here." His papa pointed to his chest. "I use my fear to make certain that I have considered every possibility. Fear keeps me from becoming complacent..."

"Comp play ent...?"

"Aye, son, that is a big word. Complacent... it means to become self-satisfied, to be prideful, to think you are better than everyone else. If you think that, then someone will try to prove you wrong. You must be the best that you can be, promise me that, but don't ever be prideful. And don't ever become complacent, son. Always know that there is more to learn, no matter how good you are, and that there are bad people out there who will try to beat you down.  Use fear to keep your edge sharp, to stay alert." Alaric's finger touched the child's nose. "Now, the thing with fear is that there is a balance, too much fear will stop you, it will blind you. How can you stay alert If you eyes are full of tears?" The warrior's eye's softened with empathy for his frightened son. Washburn remembered his papa 's fingers then moving over both cheeks to wipe his tears away.

"There is a time for crying, and yes men do cry, but we do not cry when we are afraid. We cry when we mourn something lost that is dear to us. Until such time, keep your chin up." A finger lifted the boy's chin, and then his papa kissed his cheek. "That's my boy. You are a Morgan, Morgan's face their fears. We don't let fear blind us. When I come home, I will help you be the very best that you can be."

Woman, you utterly broke me with this scene!  I was reading this first thing this morning with tears in my eyes from the sheer beauty of it.  It is not only an intensely moving moment between Alaric and Wash, it also speaks very closely to some real world stuff I am going through in my personal life right now and some tough decisions I am facing (major stressful life events that have kept me from having creative energy to devote to this story for the moment, so thank you to my fellow players who have been willing to take my ball and run with it, so to speak, to keep Aliset in play), so thank you for that reminder of where my focus should be, even though I know you wrote this scene only for the purpose of giving Washburn hope, not thinking of how its applicability might spill over into real life as well. I love you ladies.  (And yes, Bynw too!  )