The Heart's Landscape, ch. 5

[tocryabout]

Chapter 5, "The Darkest Midnight", is completed. Featuring! Walter Langkowski, the return of the long-suffering Professor, Christmas goose, burst capillaries, and Clare of Assisi.

Words not recognised by OpenOffice's spellcheck:
chav
personalism
dendrobranchiate
tardery
mémère
Adeste Fideles

[Read from the beginning]

Comments

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Paul is dead serious about mushrooms. And I have a lot of sympathy for that. They can make or break a dish.

I admit I've never had a mushroom emergency, but I'm not dealing with mutant digestive systems and people with food allergies.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Guess what I'm reading on the plane to New York today?!

YAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I'm going to try to get writing done on Days of Becoming while I'm down there. Chapter 3 is off to a good start.

Re: mainly mindless SQUEEEEE

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

This is some other tie-in character I don't know, right?

Yup, Langkowski is canon. (You know you're a weird ficcer when you have to point out the canon characters...)

((facepalm)) Oh Joel you adorable little self-flagellating ascetic you. He's a Puritan!

It's not that Puritanical! Fishcakes and mushy peas on Christmas Eve are a Maritimer thing, we do it at our house. (Not that Joel doesn't have a touch of the ascetic in him, though.)

Re: scarily long mindless comment PART TWO

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

((facepalm)) You gave your NAME, Joel! Of course you would.

Well, they do already know his name. He might have had the same reaction if he were calling for a pizza. Phones are scary.

Also, does the tenth station of the cross Mean something here?

The tenth station is "Christ is stripped of his garments." The rhetoric in the Catholic nonviolence movement about the "seamless garment" comes from this incident. (See Cardinal Bernardin's writings.)

So yes, it's a little in-joke that Joel is such a "Commonweal Catholic" that he habitually sits by the tenth station.

Re: scary long comment that should have just been an email, THREE

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I really like how this is set up as a real dilemma, too -- they don't know enough about this Dept, it's too new, the people seem nice but are they trustworthy, and is it good to enter into the wossname and try to participate or to hold yourselves apart?

Good good. I didn't want people to be going "Stop overreacting, you paranoid freaks!" or "Stop being retarded and flee to Cuba!" This is a very American story (sinister government) told in Canada (where we think of the government as comforting and incompetent), so it's hard to get the balance right. If you read Alpha Flight vol 2, you see the authors struggling with the same problem, I think.

((facepalm)) Poor J. It's like he thinks he's so fucked-up, the world is his psych ward, and every incident is some kind of test he's set up to fail.

That's perfect, yes. Paul has "recovered" from the experience of St Rita's much better than Joel, probably because he got rubber stamped as "okay" while Joel got shunted out to Xavier as an impossible case. Having that label for so long can fuck you up in and of itself.

d00d! y'all get that up in the true north strong and free?

We get GI Joe! I strenuously ignored it as a child, but growing up in the 80s it just wasn't possible to shut it out completely.

John Paul wasn't European? But I know what you mean.

Well yeah, but he was a Pole first and a European second. He didn't have the sort of cosmopolitan urbanity that this pope does. Gollum, definitely, although I find myself hating Papa Ratzi less and less as time goes by. He's our stepdad who likes ermine robes and fluffy cats and chocolate, and all that's fine, but he's NOT THE OLD DAD. He's actually not been any more conservative than JPII so far (the Instruction on gay priests is the sort of thing JPII would have done, honestly), which is pissing off the radical right-wingers. And I like popes who piss off the radical right-wingers. But he's not the old dad!

Re: scary long comment that should have just been an email, THREE

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Yes! Prada. I'd been telling people Versace, but you're right, it's Prada. Oh, B-16. Why must you be so ugly when you got so much STYLE?

When the meds work, they WORK. When therapy works, two years later you notice that yeah, okay, you did start doing what the therapist said and it did start working at some point. I grudgingly admit that the CBT did have some benefits for me, but not in the kick-into-overdrive way like the Zoloft and Effexor, where I actually find it hard to understand WHAT I WAS THINKING when I was depressed. (It's a little creepy, honestly.)

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how happy this update made me.

Prawn is...interesting, even when he's being a dick. I'm curious about both his past - how did he wind up homeless in Canada in the first place? - and what exactly his powers are. Paul's reaction to the news that they're trying to recruit him seems to indicate that he can do more than transmit radio waves.

Speaking of Paul and Joel, their interactions just keep getting better and better. I love the way Paul's slightly manic joy and fierce honesty react with Joel's idealism and avoidance. Also -

"Good. Step into the kitchen as I tell you about my mushroom needs."

Oh, Paul. You're slightly batshit, but I love you anyway.

Joel's gift to Prawn left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I wanted to smack him. Is it really that vital to keep him out of Department H? On the other hand, the government's policy has been getting worse towards mutants, and I can understand a little paranoia at the thought of what they might do with mutant operatives. The comparisons to the X-men were interesting. And Charles! His conversation with Joel was sweet, with just the right amount of compassion and questioning. I do think, though, that there's more going on than Xavier believes.

Can't wait to see where you take the Department storyline. Joel's going to have to stay in the Aphanes a lot to be able to spy on them, and I can't shake the feeling that that's going to be bad for his health.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

The amazing origin of King Prawn! There are a couple of hints in ch. 3 about Prawn's powers. If you know what radio waves are, you can probably guess. But I'll be getting to that bit in due time.

A theology student in discernment with a family fortune is a recipe for financial disaster anyway. Joel pays off Prawn for more or less the same reason that he refuses to work for Dept H in the first place. (If you've read Morley Callaghan's Such Is My Beloved, it's the same principle.)

And yes, Paul is slightly batshit. I have way too much fun with him and Prawn.

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

The amazing origin of King Prawn!

Coming soon to an internet near you!

Hmm. Radio waves. I'm guessing it has something to do with electormagnetism, since they're on the same scale of wavelength as light and magnetism. That's about as much as I can guess, though.

So he's trying to save Prawn and Aurora from military service? I can see that being a good thing, if someone was only joining the army or Secret Service or whatever for want of cash.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

He's trying to persuade them not to join an organisation that uses violence, yes. This is stated pretty explicitly in the chapter, but perhaps it's worth mentioning that Joel fully believes in the nonviolence of Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan; he's not just using it as an excuse to throw at Department H. He thinks it's worth thousands of dollars to keep a friend from doing violence, so he pays up. There was never any other option for a character like that.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Yay! to_cry_about fixes Alpha Flight!! The denouement will be a Gomery-style inquiry that will bring down the government when it is discovered that the minister responsible is getting Jean-Paul to fly him down twice a week for Celine Dion concerts in Vegas.

Another great chapter. Joel's conviction is staggering. And the love and support that Joel and Paul have for each other is really beautiful.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Hee, Gomery. Now I can't use that plot twist, thanks a lot!

I like that what Joel did is getting a reaction from people. Real idealism tends to make people feel uncomfortable and annoyed, so I think that the movies have backed off on it too much. (The Ultimate-verse comics, at least in the beginning, made the actual ideals in question a bit unpalatable, a bit challenging.)

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Real idealism is rare and almost horrifying when held up in stark contrast to this vale of compromise we live in.

It is a testament to your character that I utterly believed him and felt his act was noble and true. As this relates to your list of things you believe about writing, your love for Joel is entirely evident.