Choice cuts IV: “Vigil” through “Acedia” · 5:43am Feb 27th, 2021
Scampy: Sunset intentionally only says things she thinks Holly would want to hear, positive things about her daughter, things that would make her smile. But then Holly specifically asks her about the things she knows Sunset is leaving out. Oooooh, what if she asks if Sunset knows why Wally did this. And what did Sunset just learn?
Dave: Ooh, I like that. Suddenly Sunset has to deal with the question she already is wrestling with, and that sets up the next scene.
Scampy: Exactly.
Scampy: So regarding the last scene, with Wally waking up: something I DESPISE seeing in fiction portrayals of comas is when the patient just frickin pops up outta bed and starts speaking normally. Waking up from a coma takes a long-ass time. Her eyes open, but that's it. She might be vaguely drifting into consciousness, but she's not responsive—I think that might be the next chapter.
Dave: I’ve been contemplating how to approach it. Would there be any sign from the sensors? Any kind of visible or audible change?
Scampy: Not really. They don’t have her hooked up to brain-scanning equipment. Her heartrate may increase as she becomes more lucid, especially when she realizes what happened, if she starts to panic. But that won't be immediate, that'll be many hours after she initially opens her eyes.
Dave: My thought was to have Sunset, drifting in a brown study, maybe almost in tears, gradually notice something is different, but she can’t put her finger on just what. A difference in the room tone, something. So she gets up and tiptoes over to the gurney and looks down just in time to see an eyelid twitch.
Scampy: Barely half-lidded gaze staring back at her, seeing her.
Dave: Something has to draw her from her chair so she can get close enough, and the right angle, to see Wallflower’s face clearly. And I don’t want to use the tired old trope of Sunset just happening to be standing right there when it happens.
Scampy: Definitely agree. Maybe the heartrate monitor is slowly picking up. It's possible that Wally woke up a while ago and Sunset just hasn't noticed.
Dave: Ooh, that’s possible. Leave it ambiguous whether Wallflower is just waking up, or has been awake a few seconds/minutes. All that matters is that Sunset sees her eyes are open, if barely.
Scampy: Sounds good.
Dave: I’m going to try to write Rose, over the rest of the story, subtly but increasingly tired and fractured. This case is the straw breaking the camel’s back. Still competent, still doing her best, but wearing out.
Scampy: That really does glide nicely into Virga, huh?
Dave: Yeah, it does, in a way I hadn’t considered when writing Virga.
Scampy: It's interesting that it's not the cases with tough, abrasive teens or unruly troublemakers like the sirens that signals the burnout, it's the one girl who's anything but.
Dave: Yes. And I think it builds on that one line of hers to Sonata in Amphorae. It’s the fact she cares so deeply, tries so hard. She’s been able to keep her prior clients at arm’s length emotionally—but Wallflower got under her skin in a way the others didn’t. And it just breaks her down. Suddenly she’s faced with the fact she’s been doing this for too many years.
Scampy: Yep.
Dave: I was thinking of the framing device being [Rose] in conference with Wallflower’s physician(s) and/or anyone else who’d be involved in the process; that would make it mostly a talking-heads chapter, but a less fraught one than, say, “Arrangements”.
Scampy: I like that idea.
Dave: Single conference, or series of conferences?
Scampy: Maybe two? One would probably be easier though, and fit with the Sunset chapter being the next day.
Dave: Fair. Gathering all the concerned parties in one conference room, maybe?
Scampy: I don't think they'd invite Sunset. Maybe Holly? She has to be addressed somehow. I think the physician would want Holly there. They don't know about memory stones or whatever.
Dave: Oh, sure. I was prepared to involve Sunset or not, as the chapter demanded.
Scampy: Sunset's probably just staying in the room with Wallflower, won't leave her side.
Dave: Well, Holly is the next of kin, and Daddy Dearest would A) not be invited and B) refuse even if he were. That would be Rose’s professional judgment, and Holly would concur, probably with a mute nod.
Scampy: Big agree.
Dave: Yeah, Sunset staying in Wallflower’s room makes all sorts of sense from every viewpoint, including a familiar face always being there. Everyone realizes one of the worst things they could do would be to withdraw everything familiar and aggravate any anxiety over abandonment.
Scampy: The irony being that Sunset spending all her time in a cramped little hospital room just for Wallflower's sake is making Wally feel even worse.
Dave: So we can justify punting Dad out the airlock, which simplifies the storytelling.
Scampy: Yeah, he's out of the way by now.
Dave: Yeah, Sunset also is trying so hard, and may have a vague sense Wallflower may not feel entirely positive about it, given her mind-delving, but she just can’t bring herself to leave and feels it’s not the right thing to do anyway. So she’s conflicted.
Scampy: I think she's doing the right thing by staying. Wally might not realize it right now, but having someone there when she wakes up—even someone she doesn't want to see—will do her some good in the long run.
Dave: I do too. I think pretty much everyone but Wallflower probably feels that way.
Scampy: Being alone in a hospital room is . . . not fun.
Dave: So we have Rose, Holly, and the physician. Would anyone else be there? Maybe a representative of the inpatient clinic as liaison?
Scampy: Yeah, probably, given that Wally was already registered to go there.
Dave: Makes sense. That’s four. I don’t see anyone else holding a stake, and everyone involved would want to minimize the potential for disruption by minimizing the number of participants. How about you?
Scampy: Nah, that's all who need to be there. Any more would just make it chaotic.
Dave: Okie. Who would the rep be for the inpatient clinic?
Scampy: Someone who was assigned to her treatment team, probably her PC [personal counselor]. Most impatient places have personal counselors that divvy up the clients between them and take point on their treatment. Basically a therapist who helps coordinate the rest of her care.
Dave: So the inpatient clinic’s equivalent of Rose. The case worker.
Scampy: Kinda, but also fully trained as a therapist.
Dave: Someone Rose has worked with before, maybe?
Scampy: Possibly, that's up to you.
Dave: If it’s just four people, they might be able to meet in the physician’s office rather than a conference room, then. I don’t know anything about on-site physician offices other than what I saw on Emergency!
Scampy: Usually there’ll be a room set aside for it. Quite literally an empty room with a round table and some chairs. I wouldn’t expect the physician to have an on-site office in the ICU.
Dave: Fair. So just a very small conference room, then.
Scampy: Granted the conference room wouldn’t be in the ICU either, but yeah, down the hall or something. Cramped, stuffy little room with no windows, but away from the noise and bustle of the ER.
Dave: More or less what I visualized. Plain and a bit tired, kind of like the people meeting in it. Though I could imagine people having put up cheap posters in an effort to lend the room a little color and cheer. But, by now, decades ago. All the magenta has faded out of the four-color printing.
Scampy: Maybe there's only three chairs and Rose had to awkwardly carry one in from the hall. Think that's enough to get started?
Dave: I’m not sure; I’ll have to digest that and see. For now, at least. I’ll have to think about the two new characters [attending physician and personal counselor].
Scampy: I suck at making characters from scratch so I'll leave that to you, lulz.
Dave: I kinda want to make the inpatient liaison nonbinary.
Scampy: Do it, yall.
Dave: Suggest a little history there, like maybe this is someone who was on the patient end once upon a time, and has come back after discovering a calling. Nothing explicit in the narrative, maybe just a hint.
Scampy: Another thing worth doing is making it clear to Sunset, and the reader, where Wallflower is physically. They've been waiting for her to be able to respond before they can determine how bad her paralysis might be. Maybe after that tense exchange Sunset brings it up and asks something like "Well how do your legs feel?"
Scampy: "They don't." Wally's been awake and aware long enough to realize she's lost feeling in her lower body, and while it's this awful realization for Sunset, what scares her the most is that Wallflower just really doesn't seem to care.
Dave: And that’s Wallflower’s whole character voice through this chapter. Absolutely minimal, absolutely unhelpful responses. The simplest possible declarative sentences.
Scampy: Yep. Unchanging blank expression, maybe a hint of disdain when she first reacts to the news about Sunset helping her at the clinic.
Dave: I’ll have to have Sunset watching her face at that moment. That shouldn’t be too hard, since that moment is when she would be most anxiously trying to wring a reaction out of Wallflower. She gets one, all right. It just is the wrong one.
Scampy: Oooh yeah, I really like that phrasing.
Dave: I imagine Sunset doing a lot of nervous-energy pacing.
Scampy: Definitely.
Dave: So half the time she can’t even see Wallflower.
Scampy: If we really wanted to be total bastards about it—
Dave: Don’t we always?
Scampy: —maybe the chapter ends with Wally answering that she can't feel her legs at all, and Sunset's so distraught that she's in tears. Something this horrible happened to her friend and it's Sunset's fault—and what scares her the most is that Wally doesn't seem to care at all. Sunset's spent the whole chapter trying to be hopeful for Wally, this unspoken tug of war between Wallflower's apathy and Sunset's encouragement. By the end, Sunset hasn't lost, but she feels like she's losing. Her emotions are all over the place, whereas Wallflower's just seem nonexistent.
Dave: Sunset’s gone through such a roller coaster. It’s like she’s feeling for both of them. Maybe she even thinks that and wonders if the empathy magic is playing a part.
Scampy: Very very possible.
Scampy: when Sunset used her magic on Wally, she was met with this: She was doing the right thing. Sunset would understand. Sunset would be okay. Sunset might even be grateful. Knowing Sunset, this might be another source of anger for her. How could Wallflower possibly think that? How could she think Sunset was so . . . so heartless? Of course, Wally's rationalizing in reverse, something Even Keel would know, but not Sunset. She's just a kid, she's never had therapy training. It breaks her heart that Wallflower thought Sunset would be grateful if she died.
Dave: Her own, if less severe, contradiction of thought. How could Wallflower think that? Because she still is hanging on to that ghost of Sunset past. But Sunset isn’t making that connection.
Scampy: Maybe she is, and that's part of why it hurts so badly. How could Wallflower possibly think that? . . . Oh. That's why. And as much as Sunset wants to be direct and confront those feelings, she's afraid if she does that Wallflower will never ever trust her again, and will actively fight any help Sunset tries to give. Cuz confronting those feelings means revealing that she broke her promise.
Dave: Yeah, that works too. Maybe the middle of the chapter is her introspection, trying to work through the tangle?
Scampy: Also, yeah, I think that works, cuz there's a lot of internal stuff going on here.
Dave: Hm. I don’t have a chapter title this time around.
Scampy: Hmmm. What was that word you used earlier? Lassitude?
Dave: That’s the one.
Scampy: Maybe not exactly that, but something with a similar meaning? Or just that, idc. You're way better at chapter names than I am.
Dave: Heh! “Apathy”, maybe?
Scampy: I do like that.
Dave: Though that might give away too much. “Lassitude” also conveys a physical element, which I think definitely is present and contributing to Wallflower’s bad state of mind.
Scampy: Acedia?
Dave: Ooh, I like that. That’s right up there with “Lacunae”.
Scampy: Same meaning, but just fancy enough that it probably won't give anything away to most readers. And the ones who do get it are like "ooo, now I feel all smart”.
Scampy: I think Sunset's default response to feeling a lot of emotions all at once is to get angry. Like, that's just how her brain operates. Get overwhelmed > get mad.
Dave: I mean, that’s pretty clear in “Forgotten Friendship”, I think. She’s one of those people who get mad when they don’t know how to cope with something. She’s irritated, but nothing more, about waiting in line for the video game [Better Together S1E02 “A Fine Line”], because it’s something she knows how to cope with. “FF” is a very different situation.
Scampy: Big agree.
Ahem. I can neither confirm nor deny that.
Also, never got around to reading the previous notes before this set, but I do love considering the weirdness that comes with rainbow skin tones when considering physiological responses. Some people complain about the amazing technicolor population, but it's so much for fun to play it straight and see what that entails.
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Agreed about playing Technicolor skin tones straight!
Interesting reading your guys' planning and research on the scene with Wallflower waking up from her coma. I like how you ended up doing that in the story. It felt a lot more realistic, and the subtle awareness/shock of it made for good tension by itself.
I'm guessing Rose is gonna retire in Virga? Or at least go for a career change? In any case, this is a good way to transition into one of those possibilities. I actually find her burning out from this case, rather than one with typical juvenile deliquents (I don't know the details of Amphorae, but there's enough references in Three-Act and in these blogs to hint that was the case), to be both empathically understandable and a great narrative decision. I think there's a kind of unique helplessness in the Rose/Wallflower dynamic that wouldn't have been present with the Sirens, or with other trouble-making teens.
Whereas the Sirens are lashing out at the world, Wallflower is lashing out at herself. You can scare people into stopping the former by threatening consequences ("scared straight" seminars, talking to drug addicts, imprisonment, etc.) but there's little to no threat you can hold above someone's head that can improve the latter situation. In fact, doing so just makes it worse; Wallflower's attempt was in direct response to the looming horror (in her mind) of being taken away from the one person who cared about her and locked in some sterile treatment center with strangers and no freedom. Helping someone in Wallflower's position is a more delicate tightrope than scaring unruly teens into shaping up. As far as Wally "getting under Rose's skin," given the additional trauma of Rose witnessing the attempt and the aftermath, I can't blame her in the slightest for stepping away from her career after that.
Wholeheartedly agree with both of these. Sometimes the toughest kinds of love are, and are borne of, kindness. Both in the sense of how difficult (yet worth doing) this is for Sunset, and in the sense that Wallflower might not feel deserving of it, might even be resentful of it. As valid and understandable as her feelings are, that doesn't make them true in this instance. Her not feeling deserving of Sunset's presence doesn't make her undeserving of Sunset's presence.
The time you two take to hash out all the details of things like setting, atmosphere, even characters, shows in how tight and focused the narrative is. I like how Even Keel was developed through the back-and-forth about the conference. They're a great addition to the cast.
And that's exactly what made that reveal such a shot to the heart. :(
That latter sentence is a great way to put it. You conveyed this really well.
Sunset's reaction to Wallflower's apathy, leading up to the climax of Act II, was one of the most moving parts of the story so far to me. It's great to see the planning behind that masterful work.
I am not one of those smart readers.
But I learned a new word, yay!
As Dave pointed out, canon seems to agree. Not only in Forgotten Friendship, but in a few other shorts/specials I've seen. Sunset has a temper, and that fuse can only stay unlit for so long. That's part of why her finally breaking down and confessing to Wallflower is both believable for her character and deeply impactful to see as a reader.
Can't wait to see what your entry (or entries) for "Erosion" and "Katharsis" will contain.
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Realism is very much what I am all about as a writer; I was more than willing to go along with Scampy’s insistence on it for the scene in question.
Be warned—other-story spoilers ahead! During Virga Rose is taken off the permanent disability list, her commission is reactivated, and she’s assigned to Cook as his military attaché; the whole rigamarole is backdated to just before the three of them (including Sunset) jump through the portal. Otherwise Rose would be a private citizen and illegal alien gallivanting around Equestria, and Cook, whose job in part is to prevent such things, would be subject to serious disciplinary action. As mentioned briefly in The Campus, afterward Princess Celestia requests Rose’s cross-attachment to the EUP Guard to serve as bodyguard, minder, and counselor during Tempest Shadow’s struggle to reintegrate into civilian pony society. When that tour ends a year later, Rose is given the option to remain in uniform, which she accepts with alacrity.
You are absolutely right Rose’s unique helplessness, and how it is reinforced by the events of the story, no doubt contribute to how hard Wallflower’s case is grinding on her. Yes, most of the cases previously handled by Rose were the more usual run of teen delinquents, and she tended to catch the most difficult ones.
Most of the rest is pretty self-explanatory, and there’s not much I can add that hasn’t been said already. Other than that, Sunset’s temper absolutely is canon, and according to Katrina Hadley they worked hard to keep it.