Lemur Rambles: Scale · 4:24pm Jan 7th, 2016
Ever have a favorite video game that you lurve solely for its atmosphere? A game that you have a major nostalgia boner for, and you wanna experience the mood of it, even though you're not necessarily willing to go back and play it all the way through? In other words... you like the feel of the game more than the delivery?
I have a favorite game like that. Here, I'll give you a tiny fucking hint:
Yeah. Listen to this soundtrack while reading the blargh, ya millenialfarts
In case you haven't noticed by now, I'm an old geezer. My coming of age happened sometime before Degeneration X waved their genitalia all over USA Network. As a result, much of my childhood was spent playing vidya games long before multimedia took the bold bandicoot step into the realm of 3D. Thus, when the Silver Age of CD-ROMs hit the Personal Computer scene, I found all of my underwear spontaneously turning yellow.
One of the games that mesmerized my brain bone was none other than this motherbucker right here:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I only managed to get to one island (the Stoneship Age). Yeah, you think I'm a stupid lemur now... I was borderline vegetable back at age ten.
But that didn't stop me from tapping and clicking around the still-screen awesomeness like some drooling adventurepheliac. It was the first video game experience that legitimately creeped me out. That's a bit hard to imagine, considering that the original version of Myst incorporated interactive screens that were roughly the size of a Catholic yordle's clitoris. Plus, nothing truly dramatic ever happened, per se.
The Horror! The HORROR!
But the game provided me a level of immersion never before experienced in PC multimedia. It made me feel isolation, suspense, paranoia, and... most of all... intrigue.
What's more, I was truly won over by the... well... mystique of Myst. Here's a game... a puzzle game that gives you absolutely no instruction. No foundation. No clear pointer or sign or guidemap. Instead, you have to go forth and explore in order to learn about the world and the seemingly purposeless puzzles that need solving. It's very different from most point-and-click adventure games that give you a clear inventory that employs a sort of process-of-elimination means of approaching a problem. The absence of clues is a clue in and of itself: a clear suggestion that you must search and find meaning in that which is otherwise meaningless. It took a while the first few hours of playing during my idiotic childhood, but once I finally fumbled through the books in the library on the Isle of Myst, and I discovered constellations that matched star maps that matched dates that matched the synapses in my brain...
Yeah. Pretty much that. Only with less pink.
It wouldn't be until many, many years later that I went back to Myst and successfully beat it. Bur ever since my first exposure, I had a great deal of lurve and respect for what the makers of that game set out to do. It took a lot of guts to slap something like that together and say "lulz this is a finished game." Sure, a lot of what made it a major-selling title was the breakthrough 3D rendering incorporated at the time. But it was really nifty that they used such technology to make something artistic, compelling, and creatively inspiring. What's more, they took advantage of the limitations at the time and forced you to think outside of the box (and take copious amounts of notes outside the box... grrrrrrr).
It had something of a... subconscious effect on my mind that would last through the ages (Haha... get it? "Ages?") Namely, when coming up with a story concept, I'd find myself falling back on tropes that revolved around an everyday protagonist being inexplicably dropped into a completely strange, unnatural, and cryptic environment. I also fell in lurve with the concept of abandoned monoliths, run-down machinery with supernatural purposes, and big dumb objects.
No... no! This is not about you! Get out of here!
Marsupials have undoubtedly seen this come up in a lot of my poni work. Be it the moments when the last pony is wandering the abandoned wastelands of the past, or when a snarky asshole is dropped into Tartarus with Lyra, or when Rainbow Dash is... is... uhhh... what the Hell? Anyways, I really really adore putting protagonists in stupidly mysterious situations, oftentimes in the belly of some giant infernal machine that's been shut down for years, and then they're having to puzzle or fight their way out. There's a reason I adore the movie Cube despite its cheesy acting. And Canadians. Hell, I even once built an entire plot around the concept of a giant derelict machine world.
Talk about a classic! Whew! Good thing I never wrote a sequel to that, huh?
Sometime in 2013, my obsession for this kind of shiet hit a fever pitch. It was after Background Pony was done, so I was more than happy to abandon feelsy philosophy for pulpy adventure. Ponky had gone the way of Italian dinosaurs, and so I filled the void by playing all sorts of music and videos and crud in the background while writing, surfing, ponying, princessing, etc. I found a bunch of videos on Youtube of people LPing the likes of Myst, Riven, Ico, Journey, and I devoured that shiet. I felt the need to write some sort of adventure story that would epitomize the sense of mystery, exploration, isolation, and discovery that had been festering in the back of my mind since larva stage.
In 2012, I started Austraeoh. And while a bunch of people had figured out it was me by mid 2013, I still felt like there was a lot of mystery surrounding Imploding Colon and his purple prosaic antics. I felt like trying to deliver something to SS&E's marsupial alumni that would deliver more or less a sample of what made Austraeoh so nifty.
Where 2013 was concerned, I figured the essence of Austraeoh was in its mystery... in its attitude of "show-not-tell." You must understand, this was about twenty-five thousand fight scenes and Shell monologues ago; the series had an entirely different flavor at the time. What was most striking about the story to early readers was how long it went without having any dialogue... much less even attempting to approach the exposition for Rainbow Dash and why she was on such an alternate universe adventure to begin with.
Naturally, Austraeoh had to evolve into something else. Part of it was accommodating for a more complex story, the other was meeting the demands of a larger cast. A lot of marsupials took exception to this; a lot of elephants occasionally fart. Whatever the case, I too missed the short-lived mystery and intrigue of the first installment in the series, and I sought to recreate it in a smaller, self-contained adventure.
But starring who? I couldn't re-use Rainbow Dash. I mean... sure, I'm a one-trick lemur, but there's no sense in telegraphing that to every Internetter with eyeballs. So who else could I use?
Oh! Why, hello there, bubsy
It's hard to find a pegasister or brony or horsefluid who didn't fall in lurve with "Read It and Weep." There's just something... really adoracute about that S2 episode. Not to mention pure fun. Maybe it's the untapped well of dashabetes... or the fact that the entire installment has copious amounts of blue fuzzy ponies doing cute and snuggly things in bed. Ew?
And, of course, everybody fell in lurve with this asshole. After all, the only thing better than Rainbow Dash is a repurposed asset Rainbow Dash. That, and I think everyone just had their collective Indiana Jones gland stroked.
Daring Do is also the first of many examples of MLP:FIM "ALTERNATE UNIVERSE TAG FODDER." The other examples being Mysterious Mare-Do Well, the Power Ponies, Equestria Girls, the S5 finale, etc. When Daring Do hit the stage, she took the feature bar by storm. Suddenly everyone wanted to explore this new tributary of equine hoof canon. Hell, even Ponky did it.
Daring Do is a veritable call-to-prayer of competing headcanons. As for me, it manifested in this story:
In The Rainbow Face Up, a story loosely inspired by The Night Face Up by Julio Cortazar, I suggest that Daring Do exists in a world where the roles of the universes are reversed. She is the fanatical pony reading about the life and times of Rainbow Dash and her friends. In the meantime, she loathes her "adventuresome" lifestyle, wishing instead that she could exist within the realm of the "Friendship is Magic" fantasy, seeing as it is the only conceivable thing that can stave off her depression and loneliness. Basically skirtswangst in a nutshell.
I always wanted to follow up on that fic, creating a trilogy or a series where Daring Do somehow breaks the laws of reality and hops over into the FiM universe which had--prior to that moment--existed only as a storybook storyyyyyyy. It'd be an exercise in Star Trek levels of existential dilemmafappery, with Daring Do entering her treasured fantasy, only to find herself questioning the permanence of it, herself, and everything around her.
Whelp, this concept more or less blended with my need to write an "Austraeoh diet" with Myst inspirations. This meant a great deal of pathos-delivered scenery pr0n in the making. Austraeoh fans and Noble Jurists had grown accustomed to that sort of shiet. Could the bulk of SS&E readers dig it as well?
This was around the time that I was starting to obsess with minimalist (or completely absent) dialogue. I toyed with it in the 2013 April Fool's Fic Rainbow Dash Does Something Ironic In the Present Tense, and then more or less perfected it with Couchtavia. Next up, I wanted to write the ultimate "show-don't-tell" story, with the ultimate challenge to have a complete absence of dialogue until the very, very end of the fic.
Also, if there's anything I lurve to write in fanfiction, it's goddayum action scenes. This is not necessarily a good thing. Even if action and fight scenes are more or less my bread and butter, they aren't... really appropriate for prosaic literature. After all, spending paragraphs upon paragraphs just to describe something that takes place in a matter of seconds isn't exactly conducive to a forward-flowing plot. A common problem with many of my fics--especially tryhards like EoP--is that I've struggled too hard to recreate stuff in another reader's eye. The reality, I suspect, is that most readers are like me... in that they're lazy as hell and just wanna Monty Python et to the meat of the story.
But when did that ever stop me? Hahahahaha...mmmkay.
I designed Scale as one might design a vidya game, even down to the sinfully marketable monosyllabic title. Almost every installment had Daring Do accomplishing a task or solving a puzzle like one would tackle a legit Myst game... even if the puzzle/task made no goddessdayum sense. And while I like to think that I accomplished this with great detail and attention, it... doesn't necessarily make for good reading material. After all, if your "adventure fic" reads like an owner's manual or... goddess forbid... a friggin' strategy guide, then something's horribly... horribly wrong.
People will play video games. People will watch other people play video games. People will even listen to other people play video games. But nobody in their right friggin' mind would want to read about another person playing a textual video game in slow motion, paragraph by paragraph, no matter how adoracute the pony protagonist may be.
That's not to say that Scale doesn't have great moments going for it. I think that I did manage to make some really epic moments of tension and suspense. The imaginative scope of it lives up to its title, or at least I'm inclined to believe. But--also indicative of the title--the fic kinda suffers from gratuitous length. 4k-6k words per chapter doesn't sound all that bad... until one takes into account that there is zero dialogue, zero characterization, and almost zero plot progression. The story sets out to be what it was meant to accomplish--and that's a series of adventurous!actiony scenarios glued together by scenery pr0n. And while the nature and... heheh... scale of these bits increase in epicness, who really wants to eat a roast beef sandwiched followed by a second, thicker roast beef sandwich... then followed by a third, fattier one?
And here we stumble into a very, very common trope in Skirtsian horsewords. More often than not, I tend to use word count and literary density to simulate length. This is especially common in EoP, The Things Tavi Says, and the Austraeoh books.
Take Yaerfaerda for example. The entire last fourth of the novel is Rainbow Dash trekking out on her lonesome across a vast, empty wasteland. This consumes the better part of 35 fucking chapters. Most writers--even Tolkienesque ones--would just be satisfied with throwing together a few paragraphs... maybe even a single chapter basically saying "she stumbled her way east; it sucked... the end." But no. I chose to follow through with the overall pacing of the fic. This meant that each individual sequence consumed a chapter... and I normally committed no more than two chapters per day. So not only was Rainbow Dash wandering the wasteland for an interminable amount of time, but the ever-loyal readers of Austraeoh had to feel the pain with her for the better part of a month. Feb 24 - March 26 of 2015, to be exact.
Now, that might work for the Noble Jurists out there who are used to that kind of shiet. But to put the SS&E marsupials through it?
When I uploaded Scale in July of 2013, I announced that I would be uploading two chapters a day every day over the course of a two-week period. This was intended--in many ways--to emulate the serialized nature of Austraeoh while capturing the pulpy spirit of Daring Do on the whole. Alas, little did I know that I would be running into the all-too-common Internet phenomenon of "nobody giving a shit."
And it's not like anyone can rightfully be blamed but me. The synopsis for the story sucks. In attempting to preserve its "mystic/cryptic" nature, I presented a bland, self-defeating plot summary. It would have been better if I just went with something similar to Austraeoh's "Rainbow Dash Flies East" bleakness, but--as I have discovered from certain mods--that doesn't exactly fly anymore in general fic uploads... the exceptions being tiny and few.
It also doesn't help that Daring Do fics--despite their potential--are pretty much a dime and dozen these days. It was the case in 2013 as well. If there was a hook... or some sort of character dynamic to the story, then perhaps it might have gone somewhere. Instead, readers who faithfully attempt reading the material find nothing but superfluous landscape descriptions in the opening paragraph... not to mention a blatant lack of dialogue whatsoever.
I put a lot of work into Scale. Next to Funeral of Derpy Hooves, it was probably the most difficult thing of 2013 to write. It just goes to show that all the work you put into something--all of the time and dedication--does not necessarily mean it will become popular. And even when commenting on it, I start to remember just where I lie on the (f'naaaaa) scale of all things Fimfic. Yes, I want to write stories that I personally enjoy and believe in... but I also want to make a splash as well. Most of my work comprises of paradoxically attempting to do both at once, and as a result the quality inevitably subsides... and this only gets more and more blatant with the passage of time. Such a sin is precisely what separates me from those on this site who are vastly superior in writing skill and literary dedication.
See? He even knows when it's time to take the Santa hat off. Now that's class
None of this, however, stops me from lurving Scale. It's pure adventure, through and through. What's more, it not only manifests my personal headcanon, but it does so with a purely happy ending. Sure, it might be one crazy-ass inexplicable deus ex machina of a happy ending, but it's happy nonetheless, and that's some delightful contrast from the shitty sadness of pre-2013 Skirts.
And while the exhausting length of the fic and the sheer trial of endurance it is to force oneself through the chapters may be a turn-off for most, I find it personally rewarding. I adore stories where the main character--mary sue or not--has to struggle and stress towards a rewarding objective. By the end of the story, a reader shouldn't have to care about how unrealistic Daring Do's accomplishment is. The intention is for them to feel happy for her, and even happier when she produces her only line of dialogue throughout the entire fic.
It's not just an adventure. It's an experience, and an exercising one. One that strengthens fortitude, tempered by patience and good faith. It's the kind of story that I hope is worth a second read, where one can re-experience the trials and tribulations, this time fully-knowing that the struggle is worth it, so that they might anticipate the moment of rapture at the end.
Also, one can't speak about this fanfic without taking note of its most stellar quality. And that's not the writing or the idea or the inspiration behind it. No, it's the goddayum fanart, of course. I mean look at this shit:
Courtesy of ParadoxBroken, it is by far the absolute best cover I've ever had drawn for anything. Yes, Spotlight's Lyra for "Background Pony" is insanely iconic, but the pic that was made for Scale completely blew me away. I'm tempted to believe that the only reason any marsupial in their right mind ever clicked on this thing was just to see the art up close. And I certainly hope they were not disappointed... for I certainly wasn't.
All in all, a story that I still wish got more views, much like "There Is Love Beyond What Lingers." While it may not be for everyone, it's proof that there's still a part of me somewhere that can make a story operate solely on actions, descriptions, and scenery pr0n. I've tickled with a sequel... kinda sorta... but it wouldn't be the same thing as Scale. It'd deal with Daring Do as she lives her new life with the ponies of Ponyville, all the while suffering panic attacks that she's not in fact real and could vanish at any second. Fluttershy elects to nurture her through the transition, and the two become close friends while Rainbow Dash comes to terms with her fantasized hero becoming a flesh-and-blood equine being. But, y'know, just because stuff exists in headcanon doesn't mean it has to make it onto paper. Even digipaper.
Besides... there's always fanart
-SS&E
P.S.: What next?
Written like a game, huh?
...No wonder I love it so much.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Ah, Myst. You know, I was never able to get to that one Age where you need to play the piano in the spaceship and adjust the five sliders just so to access the book. And I had a freaking strategy guide!
Actually, that guide came in two halves, one a step-by-step list, the other a narrative written from the protagonist's perspective as he stumbles through magic book worlds and puts up with Sirius and Achenar. Far too incredulous and snarky to be compared to Scale, but your comment about people not wanting to read about people playing games brought it to mind.
In any case, I really liked Scale, but I'm hardly the most discerning person on the site. I'm also a sucker for characters moving from one level of fictionality to another. And I still haven't touched the Austreoh series. Really should get on that at some point.
Myst rocked!
I am still slowly making my way through your written works.
While trying to work through the backlog on my read later list
That Myst soundtrack is good stuff.
Your feelings about Scale are actually similar to mine (and I just finished reading it only a week or two ago!). I think it's a wonderful fic with beautiful scenery and exciting action. But it was indeed an experience, and it took me a long time to get through it (several weeks, in fact). When I read a story, one of my main focuses is the dialogue, and this one having none was... difficult. I still very much enjoyed it though, and you're right; it does make it feel extremely rewarding at the end. Certain chapters engaged me, and certain ones were hard to focus on. But none of that stopped me from being riveted by the last several until I got to the end, when I switched off my Kindle and proclaimed, "Dammit, Skirts, you've done it again."
I would love to hear your thoughts on Herald, Bon^6, Austraeoh, .out.of.character., Refraction, When I Was Thirty, or any other of your fics. I'm super happy that you're doing these and both so far have been entertaining and enlightening reads.
This was really interesting. I loved Scale when it came out, but it's definitely not for everyone. It was tough getting through that story.
- Hello, Sedna
- There Is Love Beyond What Lingers
- The Last Tears in Tartarus
- .until the last pony is ferried.
-
Anno Domini-
Eternal- The Funeral of Derpy Hooves
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
gotta say tho, Austraeoh up to it's current installment, still has an element of mystery to it to me, therre's just so many unknown/unexplained parts of the machine world and the history of the world that intrigue me.
As for those Yaerfaerda chapters, those were, despite little plot progression, incredible and the fact that the Jurists at the time had to go through it one or two chapters at a time probably amplified the tension of the situation. Hell, I caught up about 25% of the way through Ynan, and going through those Yaerf chapters in a matter of an hour or two was still quite the experience.
Playing a video game for the mood? That use to be a daily thing for me playing fallout 3, can't even imagine how many hours I have in that game but I swear it's likely past 1000, I still play it all the time too.
I so love reading your rambles. There's just something in them, and generally in your writing, that makes me want moar every time. As for the next one? Maybe Something Like Feeling or Refraction
Funny, I was thinking of that game while reading the latest chapter of Utaan. But now I need to read a Daring Do fic besides Ponky's. The things you make me do, SS.
Never played Myst, wasnt until 2006 I even had a computer capable of playing is as dialup internet doesnt need that much processing for email, news, chat, torrents etc.
Having to learn how the game plays as you play it makes me really glad I never even tried. I dont pick up implicit, I have trouble recognising Explicit links and directions.
Working on the idea of a game engine for text RPG because getting computers to dream up gaphics is harder, you get various levels, quality of in game guide, unless you select God mode. If you claim to be That good, well, it generates its own grammatical structures, font symbology and descriptor layout. Im still having fun working on the four dimentional non tensed free space heiroglyph version.
Probably likely will never get any further but writing various bits down on paper. Programming languages keep changing instead of starting with Basic, and getting Simpler due to computer intelligence and processing capacity over the decades. Oh well, I still have the Harmonic Chaos functions and Pinkies Loony algorithms.
I think its Finnish that has 4th person? Or was it 0th person?
Yesterday I didnt meet a man,
He wasnt there again today,
He will likely not be there tomorrow,
How I wish he would go away.
You are absolutely correct. It's good to see you take an honest, measured, look at your fics, what worked and what didn't, and not constantly beat yourself up over it.
Well, not that it makes a difference or anything, but Scale was one of my favourites unde the SSAE persona. I enjoyed it immensly. Then again, I was broken in by the Austraeoh and AD series - they do wonders for your literary endurance. And your untrained lemurs? They'll get used to it.
Applejack is best pony.
Man, I know those feels. Not just the love of mysterious puzzles and landscapes injected (likely overdosed) with the remains of some unknown culture that felt the need to worship their sacred gods and magical artifacts via beautiful, deadly, and immensely vague brain buck mechanisms, but also the feeling of wanting to write what you love all the while attempting to appease a large enough audience for the work to be widely appreciated.
Probably why I've always loved your works, even the more obscure ones. I'll always be a fan.
Recently I haven't had a whole lot of time to read your epic tales, and that's the only reason I've been able to read naught but 50 chapters into Hardcore-Dash's eastward trek. So I satiate my thirst with a (nearly) daily dose of my favorite blue maned mare solving and breaking down her own inner labyrinths.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I have a life to get to, however I'll always enjoy a nice, cool dip into gigantic realms of mystery and intrigue.
Peace and happiness to ya, bro!
Thanks for the adventures.
Heh. Looks like it's my turn to be the guy saying 'hey what a cool coincidence - I just started reading that story!'
It's interesting doing dialog-sparse writing. The first five chapters of my story had one line of dialog, but I don't think any readers ever commented on it.
man, who cares how many views it has. scale is easily one of the best things you've written.
which you said too. so you're right!
It's 5am And I Can't Sleep
Y'know, I really like the thought of that sequel...
Sometimes I wish I could hit a like button on blogs, ya know? It's cool to dive deep into the mind of a writer.
If your childhood involved videogames, you're not an old coot.
I went back and reread scale fairly recently, and I was surprised at how it's still good when to whole mysterious air part is gone. Or I had just forgotten enough of the plot
I remember the Old Ways. I, too, sacrificed many an afternoon as a child slamming my face into the keyboard, trying to make sense of the significance of a book of matches locked in a safe.
I learned a bit late in life what a pilot light was.
I think more than anything else I loved the books in the library, the way they were written in (what looked like at the time) a graceful, flowing script, diagrams of buildings and machinery, both arcane and mundane... I loved the feeling I got just whiling away the hours, poring over Atrus' journals like I was studying for exams, listening to the dull roar of the surf outside.
Good times.
Also, I did truly enjoy Scale. I immediately saw what it was you were doing with the transitions between chapters, and I loved you for it.
Scale has been sitting in my read later list forever. I need to start reading.
Next? Until the last pony is ferried or When I Was Thirty, two of my personal favorites.
Are you sure you have never read 'BLAME!'? It sounds like it would be right up your alley.
It's moments like this that I'm really sad I jumped on the MLP bandwagon (and the SS&E bandwagon shortly after) so late in the game. I didn't even know Scale was a story that existed. I did, of course, add it to my read later just a minute ago, but I wish I could have been here to read it when it began. I feel the same way about Austraeoh. I'm glad I'm here for all the cool stuff now, but it would have been so neat to be a part of it in the moment.
I remember playing Myst on my family's '95 with my brother, working together to solve the puzzles, keeping track of our work on papers and notebooks and whatever we could find, trying to figure out the mysteries. Funny how things like the internet make such endeavors hard to recreate these days, where the solution is a few short clicks or spoken words away...
I really enjoyed Scale. I love it alot. It brought me not only to the days of EoP (what, with it's scenery pr0n, long drawn out fight scenes, overly descriptive details, and all that), but also of the enjoyment of a good mystery. The comment history shows just how much I looked forward to each new release, and how myself and others actively threw around plot theories at every chapter to try and figure out what was going on (I kept looking for tan "East" connection with Austraeoh). Maybe I'm a bit wyrd, but I loved the way you slowly revealed things, with an ever increasing scale (har har har) throughout the world. It's still one of my top five I've read here, and top two from you.
I do also remember how disappointed you were that it didn't get the reception you were hoping for, relative to many of your other shorts at the time. When I saw the title and image for this blog, I was glad to see you giving it another shot at the limelight, because at least in the opinion of someone who really has no authority on the subject of what is "good writing", I think it deserves it.
Thanks for all that you've written, and the worlds, ideas, and ages of their own that they've opened up and inspired. If the Art were real, I'd probably be both greatly intrigued and horrified at the worlds you'd come up with ;P
Until The Last Pony is Ferried, Last Tears in Tartarus, or Funeral of Derpy Hooves.
Dulcet. A favorite, but I'm biased as hell.
Out of character. God, that fic.
Or go for broke and tackle one of your epics. BP, EOP (lulz), Austraeoh, Appledashery.
Has it been that long? I do remember having enjoyed Scale back then, even if I had to pause mid chapter sometimes.
Never played Myst, but now I want to. I wonder what kind of stories you will write based off Age of Empires II.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/3/5/263307__safe_rarity_wahaha_priest_age+of+empires_rts_wololo.png
That reminds me, if you have access to Steam, theyve had some releases of the MYST titles
Refraction
Good god, I love Myst. I guess li'l ol' me had the benefit of my parents' save files (they were enraptured with it too) and a strategy guide (that actually had a runthrough of the game in story format!) to see it through to the end.
I think I actually managed to die in that game when it was just me and my wits to guide me. That is not an easy feat.
The underground maze was my favorite part, for its visuals when I was younger and because I finally understood what the hell was going on when I was older.
Now I'm trying Riven, and for the most part it eludes me.
Myst and Riven are amazing.
No wonder I liked Scale.
Myst also pretty much terrified me. But I loved it all the same.
Scale is one of my favourite fics from any fandom. I didn't think I liked it while I was actually reading it. But I couldn't stop reading it. And now, well over a year later, I still imagine pieces of scenery from it on a regular basis, and shiver. You made each of those settings solid.