silwritersguild | Member Posts

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Maglor, Elrond, Maedhros, various others
Warnings: References to torture and trauma
Summary: Maglor keeps a promise, and comes to Valinor, only to find the ghosts he thought he'd left behind are alive and waiting for him.
Note: This fic is a sequel to Clear Pebbles of the Rain, which is itself a sequel to Unhappy Into Woe.

Prologue / Previous Chapter

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Current Music: Luck - American Authors

krait

Firefox, my web browser of choice, just updated and dumped a bunch of new "AI features" that are enabled by default.

If you, like me, hate this nonsense, I found this very helpful guide to removing it. It took about one minute, and seems to be working - I no longer see the 'AI link preview' popup window when I hover over a link, for instance.

Please feel free to pass this on!

openidwouldwork

shirebound

Happy Birthday,

leianora! I hope you're doing well, my friend.

rocky41_7

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus.

The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch.

In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work. Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

The new players added to the game—Baru's fellow agents of the Throne, various elements of Falcresti and Oriati society, and Farrier, now on paper a peer of Baru—never overpower the story, and it was really interesting to see Baru from more outside perspectives. She is certainly someone who generates strong feelings in others, and Dickinson doesn't shy away from the vitriol that many other characters hold for Baru—and understandably so! Baru played a magnificent gambit at the end of The Traitor--but it's marked her to everyone as a person who is incredibly dangerous and cannot be trusted, even when she seems entirely genuine. No one who knows the story of Tain Hu is willing to trust Baru as far as they can throw her, and that impacts her ability to maneuver. Force is her only way of getting through to many people now--fortunately, she still knows how to wield it.

The characters of The Monster are in most cases, even more morally gray or outright amoral than those in The Traitor, as Baru has now entered the big leagues, so to speak. No one gets to where Baru is without having been willing to spill a considerable amount of blood, literal or metaphorical, and most of her peers are just as bound by guilt and the threat of remorse as Baru.

As in The Traitor, the schemes of others are at play here too, and Dickinson does a particularly good job of showing how players of this great game think they've put together the situation, but they've done it wrong—yet you can fully track their logic and understand how they came to the wrong conclusion. There are simply so many factors at play here that it's very easy for someone to become focused on a specious truth, and many of them are acting on these false conclusions, which muddies the waters even more.

Baru is a mess in The Monster though, leave no doubt. Tain Hu's death has marked her forever, but Dickinson avoids becoming maudlin, with every page rife with Baru's laments for her lost lover. Hu is often in her thoughts, and acts as a kind of guiding light, but Baru is still consumed with her own plots and plans (and drinking ever more heavily). Another ghost of Baru's past is haunting her as well—Aminata returns in The Monster, and Baru's grief for her lost(?) friendship with Aminata plagues her almost as much as the memory of Tain Hu. I really enjoyed the weight their friendship is given, and that it is not eclipsed by Baru's romance.

I also enjoyed that Baru pursues other sexual encounters. It might've been easy to have her simply closed off to such things in light of what happened with Tain Hu, but it makes sense that someone at Baru's age, with her limited sexual and romantic history, is simply not ready to forgo sex, even in the throes of her grief. And given the intensity of the rest of her life, it also makes sense that she occasionally seeks respite in these things, in spite of her lingering fear over her own sexuality.

The tone of The Monster has shifted slightly. Baru is much more open about her attraction to women, both to others and in her own internal narration. In fact, the book is franker about sex as a whole. It also gives more POVs than The Traitor, including a historical glimpse at the Oriati Mbo, but I never felt that these things distracted from Baru's story. On the contrary, the perspectives here serve to give a rich and three-dimensional look at the world Dickinson has created and help us understand the field on which Baru is operating. The new characters are interesting as well—I really enjoyed watching the foibles of Tau-indi in the Mbo, even outside of how these events set the stage for present relations between Falcrest and the Mbo.

Baru is also questioning herself more than in The Traitor. As the costs of her crusade against Falcrest mount, she is more and more often asking herself if it's really worth it, if she even has the right. (Does she even know Taranoke anymore? she wonders in some of her more reflective moments. Would they even thank her for what she's trying to do?)

I enjoyed the extra bits of worldbuilding we got here too, particularly how Dickinson plays with gendered expectations within the Empire--for instance, it's explicitly stated what was hinted in The Traitor that only men traditionally wear make-up, and the scene where Aminata compliments her male companion on his make-up for the evening was a little delight in seeing a moment where men were expected to make themselves nice for the appreciation of women. Sure you can call it just a reversal of some of our own gendered norms--in this same scene, Aminata thinks to herself that it would be "unfeminine" of her not to pay for the meal of herself and her companion--but I still find it interesting how it subtly shifts the dynamics to something other than what they would be in our own world (and perhaps culturally appropriate, given, for instance, how much of Falcrest's navy elite is made up of women).

Dickinson is dealing with a great many more and larger moving pieces in The Monsters, but he manages them deftly, and I was racing through the final chapters of the book, eager to see where we'd be left before The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, book 3, which I will be picking up ASAP this Saturday. I need to know how Baru's story ends...I have no doubt the wait for the fourth book will test my patience!

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rocky41_7

I don't actually remember where I saw Catriona Ward's Sundial recommended, but it was somewhere and convincing enough to get it on my TBR. I finished the audiobook this week so it's time to reflect.

Sundial is a domestic psychological thriller which focuses on the relationship between the protagonist Rob and her eldest daughter Callie. Or at least, that's what the novel summary claims. A good 50% or more of the book is actually about Rob's youth and her relationship with her childhood family, primarily her twin sister, Jack. I didn't get that at first, which led to me being slightly frustrated by the length of the "flashback" sections until I realized that they were at least half the true focus of the story.

Ward excels in capturing the petty toxicity of a domestic environment gone sour. Especially deftly handled are the ways in which a partner can wound in such seemingly mundane ways. Many of the exchanges between Rob and her husband, Irving, come off as completely innocuous to an outsider, but to the two people in the relationship, who have the context for these seemingly nothing interactions, the full cruelty of them is on display. This adds completely believably to the tension between Rob and Callie, who has long favored her father, and who sees her mother's responses as hysterical overreactions, because she doesn't have the context that Rob does. Ward also very neatly portrays a truly vicious marriage, where both parties have given up pretending they want to be together, at least to each other, and where the entire relationship has become an unending game of oneupsmanship, trying to get one over on your spouse.

Adding to this suffocating atmosphere is Callie, a very strange 12-year-old who is starting to exhibit some very troubling behavior, particularly in her interactions with her 9-year-old sister, Annie. Rob has always struggled to connect with Callie—in contrast with Irving, who happily spoils her to force Rob to be the bad guy enforcing boundaries—but when Callie is thought to have attempted to poison Annie with Irving's diabetes medication, Rob decides it's time she and Callie have a real heart-to-heart.

So she takes Callie on a mother/daughter trip to Rob's childhood home, Sundial, an isolated family property out in the Mojave desert.

This book is at times difficult to read, because tension suffuses every page. At some point, I was waiting with baited breath for the next terrible thing someone was going to say or do. Not everyone in the book is bad, but they are all struggling, and they all do ugly and selfish and hurtful things.

The miscommunication and missed connections between Rob and Callie also felt woundingly believable, not the sort of outlandish refusals to talk that appear in less well-crafted dramas. Rob is understandably troubled by much of Callie's behavior, but she's also intolerant of any behavior that seems outside the norm, so even Callie's more harmless habits get her in trouble. Callie, at that tender preteen age, views much of her mother's scolding as an attack on her as a person, and reasonably misconstrues her mother's emotional upset as proof that she is unstable, and possibly a threat to Callie (concerns heartily reinforced by her father).

In order to give Callie clarity and context, Rob has decided to reveal the truth of her family history, which kicks off the lengthy "story-within-a-story" section about Rob's childhood and youth. Even when I grasped that this was meant to be the majority of the story, I still felt these sections dragged at times. There were more detail that necessary to explain things, and I was at times impatient to get back to Callie and Rob in the present. Still, as Rob's tale unfurls, it casts increasingly horrifying light on everyone in the family—Rob, Callie, Irving, and Rob's parents (now deceased).

The book goes some pretty twisted places, which I'll warn for because having skimmed reviews, some people definitely were not prepared for the darkness of the story. As for me, I enjoyed it, and Rob's backstory absolutely recontextualizes much of her early-book behavior towards Callie and Irving. There was cruelty in Rob's past, but there were also situations in which there just seemed to be no winning, and people doing their best but causing harm in the end anyway.

My only real complaint is about the ending. The ambiguousness of it I can forgive, because I think in the long run, it doesn't really matter whether route A or route B was the "real" ending—the pieces set on the board won't significantly change one way or the other. As Callie points out, her and Rob's lives are now both governed by the truth Callie revealed before they left Sundial. For me, it was the final twist that left a bad taste in my mouth, in part because it felt like just one twist too many, coming in what I expected to be the denouement, and because it sucks almost all of the triumph out of the final confrontation.

On the whole though, I thought Ward did a great job with the slow reveals and although I think the flashback sections could have been trimmed a bit more, it was never so bad that I was tired of the book. None of the characters here are very likeable, but boy they are trying to get through life without causing too much harm. Also, the audiobook narrator does such a good job of making Irving sound absolutely loathsome—his lines just drip with patronizing contempt. I wanted to shake him every time he spoke.

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fardell24

“Daria Morgendorffer, please report to the principal’s office,” Ms. Li announced straight after Homeroom.

Daria sighed. She knew that was going to happen.

“How are you feeling?” Ms. Li asked when Daria had sat down.

“My best friend has been kidnapped! How do you think I’m feeling?”

“Mrs. Manson is ready to talk if you…”

“No!” Daria said. She didn’t want to deal with that quack of a school counsellor.

“Are you sure, Ms. Morgendorffer?”

“Of course I’m sure, Ms. Li. The best way for me to keep from thinking about what might be happening to Jane is for me to be in class doing schoolwork.”

“I see that you have made up your mind on that.”

“Yes,’ Daria said as she took the hall pass off the principal’s desk.

At the same time, as she went to her first class, Andrea looked for one of the students she knew had at least one sibling at Lawndale State.

She soon sighed one of them. “Tania!” she called out.

Tania Ashworth turned upon hearing her name. “Yes, Andrea?”

“Your brother is at Lawndale State, right?”

“He is,” Tania answered. “What is this about?”

“Ninja Talon and SpiderGirl asked me to help search for Jane.”

“And how would my brother be able to help with that?”

“He could give me access to one of the computer labs,” Andrea answered.

“I see, you want to access camera footage,” Tania surmised.

“Yes, I still have dial up at home.”

“I’ll if I can contact him at lunch.”

“Then that is what I’ll tell Ninja Talon later,” Andrea said as she left.

“Wait…” Tania said as Andrea disappeared into the distance. ‘Does she know who Ninja Talon is?’

She thought about it more. ‘Quite likely, but I’ll keep it to myself. Besides, I need to focus on the play tonight.’

Agent Leung returned to the Lawndale Field Office, where he typed up his notes and started writing on the whiteboard in the office. He started with the timeline. “Quentin Beck. Arrived in Lawndale on Saturday, 17th February, whereupon he goes to the Historia and is immediately hired by Quinn Morgendorffer as the theater’s special effects person.” There wasn’t anything suspicious there.

“Anything on the four business partners?” One of his fellow agents asked.

“Daria and Quinn Morgendorffer, sisters who have recently lost their father,” Leung said as he put up recent photos of the two, reflecting their changes in appearance. “Their mother, Helen, is associate in Vitale, et al.”

That brought about a silence. Jim Vitale’s reputation was well known in the field office.

“Daria is Jane’s close friend,” Leung added. “Thus she has no motive.”

“And the other two?” the other agent asked.

“Joseph Green and Robert Allen, cousins who are also nephews of the Historia’s former owner. All four are students at Lawndale High.”

“Could Angela Li be a suspect?”

“Unlikely. There is no impact on the school from the Historia opening. The Morgendorffers grades appear to be unaffected by their involvement in the theater. Quinn won the spelling bee, the day before the theater opened,” Leung said.

“And the cousin’s grades?”

“Steady,” Leung said as he turned back to the timeline. “Sunday, February 18th. The first rehearsal for Tempest. And later, Kalina Ondrovick says it’s amateurish on radio and Daria calls in to argue with her. That’s the first time the play is mentioned on the radio. That’s the main connection. That the play was mentioned on the radio.”

He continued through the timeline up to Jane’s abduction.

“But one thing is eluding me,” Leung said when he was finished. “And Peterson too. Motive. What reason does Quentin Beck have to disrupt the play.”

“Jealousy?”

“Quinn said that he was condescending of her age.”

“Which is?” the other asked.

“She turns 16 next week,” Leung said, and wrote her birthdate in late February of 1985 beneath her photo.

“And Daria?”

“Seventeen and half,” Leung added, writing her birthdate in late July of 1983 beneath her picture. “The cousins are 16, born in late 1984.”

They continued their brainstorming.

Between classes, Quinn caught up with Anna and Ben. “We have to do the mentoring at the Historia, rather than the Library,” she said.

“Any reason?” Ben asked.

“I’ll also be re-interviewing the previous applicants for the special effects position.”

“Because of what happened to Jane?” Anna asked.

“That’s part of it,” Quinn answered.

“Because Quentin Beck is responsible,” Anna surmised.

Quinn nodded.

“We’ll be there,” Anna said. “But what about Gerald? He won’t like it.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “He’ll be difficult to convince.”

At lunch, Tania went to one of the school’s payphones straight out of class. “I hope his in his room,” Tania murmured as she put in a couple of quarters. She then dialled the number.

“Yes?”

“Scott! It’s Tania.”

“Why are you calling me in the middle of the day? I have a class in twenty minutes.”

“Sorry about that. I have a favour to ask of you.”

“I’m already seeing the play.”

“That’s good but that’s not what this is about.”

“What is this about then?”

Tania then began explaining what Andrea had asked her about.

“You want me to allow this Andrea to use my account to try to find this Jane? Because of SpiderGirl and Ninja Talon?”

“Yes,” Tania said.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Scott said.

“Let me know before the play starts tonight.”

“I shall, bye.”

In the library, Andrea found Brittany hiding somewhere near the back. ‘She looks 100% the cheerleader she has been the past few years,’ she thought. ‘Apart from that time in the Zon when she had her hair dyed dark.’ She shook her head. That wasn’t what she wanted to think about. She saw that she was reading a book on the history of Lawndale. “Brit?” she asked.

Brittany looked up. “Hey, Andy,” she said with a slight smile.

She almost ignored the nickname. Brittany was the only one who could get away with calling her that. ‘Still is, it seems,’ Andrea thought. “I found Tania Ashworth. She said she would talk to her brother.”

“Tania. She’s in the play too,” Brittany acknowledged.

“I had heard about that.”

“I’ll let Spidey know, later.”

“Good, I’ll be off,” Andrea said.

“You don’t have to.”

“We’re still too different.”

“I’m in the play because I want to change,” Brittany said in a vulnerable tone.

“So, you’re a cheerleader and an actor, as well as a vigilante, not the imaginative girl you were.”

“I guess so,” Brittany said with a twirl of a pigtail. “But small steps?”

“Yes,” Andrea said with a slight smile as Brittany went back to reading her book.

Daria and Sandi entered the cafeteria at the same time. “How are you after last night?” Daria asked.

“I just needed to rest,” Sandi answered. “I’m fine now. Mother says that when she had overextended herself that way, it took overnight for her.”

“Does she usually search for people like that?” Daria asked.

“Not often. But she was active in Boston before I was born.”

“Meaning…”

“Exactly,” Sandi confirmed.

‘That’s something. I think Boston does have hero vigilantes occasionally. It happens more often in New York.’

They came to the usual table to find only Harry and Tania waiting.

“So, any clue as to where Jane is?” Tania asked, hoping that she get some clue to tell Andrea and Scott later.

“No clue, but probably near the lake,” Daria answered. “Also, the FBI are now involved in the investigation.”

“Not surprising,” Sandi commented between bites.

“But the play is going ahead?” Harry asked.

“Of course,” Daria answered. “The show must go on. It’s what Jane would want, and tonight is sold out.”

“That’s good,” Tania said.

“Are you ready?” Daria asked.

“I am,” Tania said. “Last night was a bit scary, but I’m ready.”

“You’re in the play?” Harry asked. “You haven’t said.”

“Yes, I’m playing Ceres, one of the muses.” Tania answered.

“But what if something happens again?” Harry asked.

“Not only would Peterson be there, but the FBI agent as well,” Daria said. “Besides the theater has been checked over many times.”

“So, it won’t happen?” Harry asked.

“No,” Sandi answered.

Quinn joined Stacy, Tori and Tiffany for lunch. “What’s up, Tori?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Tori said. “But now the paper has mentioned the play.”

“They did have to report that something happened last night,” Quinn pointed out.

“That’s true, but what if Mom is targeted, even if it’s not her byline? Like, I know that being a reporter can be dangerous, even a local one. But with everything going on in Lawndale…” Tori said before shedding a tear.

“I’m sure she’ll be safe,” Quinn said.

“Safer than the critics and Jane?” Tori asked.

“Yes,” Quinn said. She looked at Stacy, who was fretting as she usually did. She took her hand. “It’s going to be fine.”

“But, Jane? What if Mom’s in danger because she works there?”

“She hasn’t mentioned the play on radio,” Quinn said. “And I’m sure Jane will be found soon.”

“But she has been mentioning it in the café,” Stacy said.

“By SpiderGirl?” Tiffany asked.

Stacy looked at Tiffany. “Maybe. Or maybe Ninja Talon or this Dafoanairi.”

“Probably the fourth vigilante,” Quinn said. “Besides, I’m sure the vigilantes have been in the Historia as their secret identities.”

“Weren’t most of them there last night?” Tori asked.

“They were, but it seems that things happened too fast,” Quinn said. “But they will probably be prepared for tonight.”

“I hope so,” Stacy said.

Kevin looked around after he had got his lunch. Most of the students were as usual. He had heard about what had happened the previous night and hoped that Jane would be found soon. He looked around again and didn’t see who he wanted to see. He knew that something was going to change soon, but Brit had been a constant since they had started going out.

Mack saw Kevin sit across from him. “Hey, Mack Daddy, do you know where Brit is?”

“I don’t, and how many times I have I said not to call me that?”

“She’s probably preparing for the play,” Robert said.

“Oh yeah, that’s tonight,” Kevin responded.

“But I have seen her today. She is at school,” Mack said.

“But where in the school?” Kevin asked.

“You know where she will be,” Robert said.

“But Mom and I won’t see the play until tomorrow,” Kevin said.

Quinn caught up with Gerald after leaving the cafeteria. “Gerald!”

“Quinn?” Gerald asked as he approached the cafeteria himself.

“We need to do the mentoring at the Historia today,” Quinn said, and then explained as she did to Anna and Ben.

“I don’t think trying to mentor and do job interviews at the same time is a good idea,” Gerald said.

“I know, but I didn’t want to cancel, and besides the play is starting tonight.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“There will be police, and the FBI there, and maybe one or two of the vigilantes,” Quinn said. “Besides, Jane wouldn’t want the play to not go ahead on her account.”

“I suppose. I’ll be there.”

“Great. It’ll be in the bookshop.”

Quinn caught up with Brittany between classes. “What did Andrea say?” she asked after they ducked into a bathroom and made sure that the stalls were unoccupied.

“That she will be able to do it with Tania’s brother,” Brittany answered.

“That is, Tania Ashworth?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. But does she know when?” Quinn asked.

“Tania hadn’t got back to her yet.”

“She’ll probably get back to her this afternoon.”

“I’ll try to find out before school finishes,” Brittany said.

“You’ll know where I’ll be.”

Brittany nodded and headed out.

As school finished, Andrea caught up with Tania. “I told Ninja Talon that you would call your brother,” she said.

“I did,” Tania responded. “He said that he would get back to me before the play starts tonight.”

“Got it. I guess I’ll be waiting at the Historia, then.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Daria came to the Lexus to find not only Quinn, but also, Anna, Ben and Gerald waiting. “Just as well there aren’t more people,” she said.

“True,” Quinn said with a giggle.

“Let’s just get there,” Gerald said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be driving safely,” Daria said as she opened the driver side door.

“You should have seen her on the way to Freemont,” Quinn said.

Daria sighed. “I never imagined that a crime I’ll be trying to solve would be Jane’s abduction.”

“Same,” Quinn said.

“Any clues?” Anna asked as she got in after Ben.

“Other than the stormwater system, none,” Daria answered as she turned on the engine.

“What did Ms. Li want to talk about earlier?” Quinn asked.

“Offering Mrs. Manson’s services,” Daria answered.

“And you turned her down, of course,” Quinn said.

“Yes. I don’t want a repeat of self-esteem class,” Daria said.

“Of course.”

Brittany and Andrea caught up in the parking lot after the Morgendorffers’ Lexus had driven away. “So, what did Tania say?” Brittany asked.

“She’ll get back to me before the play starts,” Andrea answered.

“I guess I have to wait at the Historia too.”

“Or you can come and go.”

“That’s true, but I’d be patrolling close to it,” Brittany said.

Daria and the others entered the Historia from the rear and saw Peterson in the lobby when they got there.

“How was school?” she asked.

“It went well,” Quinn said.

“But Jane’s absence was noted,” Daria aid.

“I have heard from Leung. The local field office has started a search of the Creek between the Jefferson Bridge and where it flows into the lake,” Peterson said.

“That’s great, isn’t it?” Anna asked.

“It is, Ms.”

“Coultard.”

“Coultard,” Peterson repeated. “It is, as you put it, great. It means that something is being done.”

“Thanks for the information, Ms. Peterson,” Quinn said. “But we need to start our session now. I have a busy afternoon ahead of me.”

“Of course.”

Officer Peterson waited until Quinn and the others had entered the bookstore. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to make your own search of the area, but if you do be sure to keep out of the agents’ hair.”

Daria sighed. “I wouldn’t, although the temptation is there. It would take me too long. Dafoanairi is remaining downtown this afternoon. Besides, I need to prepare for tonight. You know that I’m the director, as well as the playwright.”

“Of course.”

“Now, write about your experience with Shakespeare’s works, or adaptations of it,” Quinn said. “The first of the previous applicants should be here in five minutes.”

“Including The Tempest?” Anna asked.

“Of course,” Quinn said with a giggle. “But the play doesn’t count.”

At the same time, Brittany, Andrea and Tania arrived at the Historia separately. Brittany went over to Daria. “How are you holding up?” she asked.

“Well enough. Peterson told me that the FBI is searching downstream of the Jefferson Bridge.”

“I see,” Brittany said. “I’m sure that she will be found soon. If not tonight, then, tomorrow.”

“We can only hope,” Daria said with a slight smile.

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Aurora in 1025.

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Happy Birthday,

debris4spike! I hope it's a lovely day.

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fardell24

It was disappointing that there wasn’t anything she could use against Ms. Li in what Quinn had told her, Daria considered as she entered her room. But she was sure that there was something else she could use. ‘Just not right now.’ She had to settle into Lawndale first.

“Daria?” Helen asked. “You talked to Quinn?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Nothing I can use against the principal, just the modelling agency,” Daria explained.

“I expected that,” Helen said.

“It’s going to take a while,” Daria said. “Probably longer than with the previous schools.”

Helen wondered what those other schools were like.

The next day, Daria met Scarlett and Andrea before school.

“So, what did you find out?” Scarlett asked.

Daria then told them of what her sister and niece had said.

“Nothing new then,” Scarlett said when Daria had finished.

“That’s right,” Andrea said.

“And so, we’ll need to find out other stuff,” Daria said.

“I agree,” Andrea said.

“Same,” Scarlett added.

The day was as usual, although rumors about what had happened to Val spread. Daria did her best to ignore them. However, Quinn and her friends came up to her as school let out.

“Quinn?” Daria asked.

“I should let you know, um, Daria,” Stacy said.

“Let Quinn say!” Sandi interjected.

“Sorry!” Stacy said.

“What?” Daria asked with a glare at Sandi.

“Rumors about what happened to Val,” Quinn answered.

“I see, although I should say that it was Andrea and Ms. Li who were actually there,” Daria said.

“I know that,” Quinn said.

“So, what are these rumors?” Daria asked.

“That you had sabotaged Andrea’s chances,” Sandi said.

“And how would I have done that?” Daria asked.

Sandi shrugged and looked at her pedicured nails.

“Well?” Daria asked.

“Like, I’m not sure how, but that’s what I heard,” Sandi answered.

“Or are you spreading them yourself?” Daria asked.

“Dar-i-a!” Quinn exclaimed.

Sandi was aghast. “Of course not!”

Daria could see that she was telling the truth. “Then it was someone else who started it.”

“I have some idea,” Sandi said.

“Which is?”

“Tori Jericho, or someone she’s friends with,” Sandi answered.

“Tori is well known for repeating anything she hears,” Stacy said.

“Then let’s find her,” Daria suggested.

“OK,” Quinn said.

“But we have to be quick. She leaves rather quickly when school lets out,” Sandi said.

“Got it.”

They quickly walked out of the school to the front entrance.

They looked around, but they didn’t see Tori. “So, she’s blonde, right?” Daria asked.

“Yes,” Quinn answered.

“To her shoulders, usually worn loose,” Stacy added.

“Got it,” Daria said. “But I have noticed that there are many blondes at the school.”

“Like, we’ll see her,” Sandi said.

“Got it.”

fardell24

1st June 2025: https://fardell24b.tumblr.com/post/785134065337647104/church-notes-1st-june-2025

8th June 2025: https://fardell24b.tumblr.com/post/785764042495197184/church-notes-8th-june-2025

15th June 2025: https://fardell34.blogspot.com/2025/06/church-notes-15th-june-2025.html

22nd June 2025: https://fardell34.blogspot.com/2025/06/church-notes-22nd-june-2025.html

fardell24

Matthew 3:13 -17
Jesus's baptism
Look at it in context.

Bringing the message of who God is.

The start of Jesus's Ministry.

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rocky41_7

I've fallen into the trap of being so busy playing Baldur's Gate 3 that I haven't had the time to say anything about Baldur's Gate 3 (a problem I've experienced before - which is why I've never yet reviewed My Life as a Teenage Exocolonist). There's also the fact that anyone on the farthest verge of the gaming sphere is aware of this game and has probably already read a least one review of it. Still, I'll throw my thoughts out, for whatever they're worth.

2025 has been a strange gaming year for me. Far and away my most anticipated game was Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game I've waited almost a decade for with baited breath. Baldur's Gate 3 was barely even on my radar—I played a few meager hours of one of Larian's earlier RPGs, Divinity Original Sin 2, which cemented my hatred of turn-based combat and dislike of isometric games. (Which is not a knock on DOS2—it was a very well-done game! Just not for me.) I was not willing to shell out BG3's price for the significant chance that its gameplay would be too frustrating for me to get into the story. Fortunately, my sister handled that issue by gifting it to me for Christmas—a free experiment.

In January, as usual, I plunged into my holiday cache of new games, starting with DATV—for more on my disappointment with that, see this review. When I'd quickly burned out on DATV, I turned to BG3, the unknown factor. Admittedly, this game is not optimized for console. Even after its eighth patch, it frequently crashes, particularly in battles with a high number of participants. Its menus and maps are difficult to read at a distance, such as from couch to TV. Its controls can be obtuse as the game tries to cram the huge number of functions onto a controller's limited button scheme.

However, in spite of these flaws, I've been reflecting the last few weeks on how BG3 has nevertheless been so much more fun than DATV, the game I was predisposed to like. What was it, I wondered, that made BG3 more fun? (And sorry--there will be more DA comparisons below.)

First, the thing that's most important to me in my RPGs - the vast roleplaying potential. Some games are "roleplaying" games in that you build up a character's skills and customize their fighting style. Others are "roleplaying" games in that you craft a character's personality and control their decisions in ways that (hopefully!) shape the narrative. Some are both - BG3 is both. The battle tactics of gaming has never interested me much, so I will leave that discussion to many reviewers more equipped to have it than I. What I can say is that BG3 gives you incredible potential to create your character--their backstory, their personality, their choices.

I've played three games of BG3, start to finish, and my three player characters (hereinafter referred to as "Tav," the default name for the PC) could not have been more different. And not just in my head, in the way I imagined them when I created and played them, but in the ways they were able to move through the world of BG3 and the choices they made.

BG3 eschews the clean and convenient dialogue wheel in favor of a long list of unvoiced dialogue options reminiscent of Dragon Age Origins (or DOS2, which uses the same style). This gave Larian the freedom to give the player far more response options than are available to a fully-voiced protagonist. Tav can be kind, curious, guarded, funny, caustic, and/or downright cruel. The long, branching conversations available with even minor NPCs gives the player ample opportunity to discover and display what kind of person Tav is to them.

Growing out of this same attitude are the many choices Tav can make throughout the game. I complained in my DATV review that it felt like the PC never made any real choices—they were all surface-level decisions that never once put the player in a real bind or had any notable consequences for the world. BG3 excels perhaps more than anywhere else in allowing the player to shape the world. The decision tree shaping the final two choices of the game itself spans at least half a dozen different outcomes (some with more significant differences than others—in my first playthrough, Tav became a mind flayer by the end!)

This freedom is perhaps most on display in the way your companion quests can play out. In some cases, I was reminded of Dragon Age II, where you at times had the choice to indulge your companion's worst instincts, the ones they really wanted to exercise, or to push them forcefully in a healthier direction. For instance, Shadowheart dreams of becoming a Dark Justiciar, a militant devotee of the goddess of darkness, Shar, almost universally reviled by the rest of Faerun for her petty cruelty. As this path demands more and more sacrifice from Shadowheart, you can either encourage her and bolster her resolve to follow her goddess' will—or you can ask her if Shar is really worth it, and push her to buck these divine demands. The outcomes for Shadowheart put her in a very different place, with even more, smaller differences in just how you pursue either route. Given, this is still a game trying to appeal to its audience, so few of your companions will openly regret the path you nudged them towards, although the hints may be there if things haven't turned out like they imagined.

I can also say at this point, having played through the character origin "The Dark Urge," that this was a fantastic addition to the game. While I enjoy making my own little guy as much as anyone, "Durge" is a great option to shake things up and it really made me see various facets of the game in a new way, given this unique context. Durge is not going to be to everyone's taste—it demands even more violence than you usually get from BG3—but I was fascinated watching this story play out (with plenty of room left for my own decisions, including ultimately rejecting my ordained destiny).

The last thing I'll mention is how the freedom of storytelling and choice in BG3 mean that you aren't forced onto a particular moral path. Your companions alone present you with a dizzying variety of moral codes, from Wyll who has devoted his life to defending the common people, to Minthara raised on the brutal drow code of conduct which prizes personal gain above all.

You can play Tav as dark or as light or as in-between as you want. You can lie to avoid fights, you can lie to start fights, you can make jokes about the harm you've caused, you can devote Tav to overthrowing oppressive powers, you can go out of your way to help people, you can remain laser-focused on your goal of curing yourself with no time to spare for other people's problems.

Your companions will react to these things—for instance, cheesing aside, Wyll and Minthara are mutually-exclusive companions, because the route you must take to recruit Minthara is so objectionable to Wyll that he'll simply leave the party. In general, they do not seek to spare the player's feelings—your companions can be angry, disappointed, betrayed, and more with Tav, as much as they can feel supported and loved. And it makes sense--it makes sense that Lae'zel is angry when she feels you're wasting time from finding the githyanki creche, where she believes there is a surefire cure to your problem. It makes sense that Shadowheart lashes out defensively if you question her devotion to Shar (even when she herself may be questioning it!) It makes sense that Gale is disgusted by the person he's become alongside Tav if you choose to raid the Emerald Grove rather than protect its residents. The characters as Larian has established them would have these reactions, and it wouldn't be reasonable if they continued to cheerlead Tav in the face of blatant violations of their moral codes and worldviews.

All of these things combine to make for a beautifully rich, layered game world which is just a joy to explore, one which I'm eager to return to yet again. Turn-based combat and isometric views are still not my favorite way to experience a game—but on the whole the story has been such a fun experience that I'm willing to brave a more complicated, more time-consuming fighting method. I may even seek out another copy of DOS2 to give that one another try, now that I have more understanding of the knack of Larian games. I may even go after the first two Baldur's Gate games!

BG3 is in no way a "hidden gem," but it was a surprise for me how much I've enjoyed it. A sleeper hit in my personal experience, perhaps. Anyway, I can't say more—I have another Tav to design.

Crossposted to

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