The Wordsmith's Forge

>> At some point, tolerance either frays or evolves into something else, if the situation comes up often enough. One can tolerate and/or ignore a minor irritation, not a major disruption of one’s life. <<

That's true. Because they're actively working on this, I think they'll succeed in expanding enough space to get by in.

I will also point out, a few people have the skill to endure immense hardship. Probably not these two -- either they'll grow together, or tear each other apart -- but it has been done.

>>Still think this, but I couldn’t articulate it now and I’m pleased that past-me managed to do so.<<

Those paths do have potential.

>> I feel very strongly that it is not her moral obligation as a *person* to be a better victim and do less damage to someone grabbing her.

Still relevant. I wonder how she’d handle discussing this topic with someone who was a *victim* of an actual attempted assault, and bounced it off with new superpowers, did damage, and felt bad afterwards.<<

That would be a very painful but very useful conversation. I am having a hard time thinking of how to set it up, though. Once again, it'd be easy if Calliope was going to any of the groups or classes, but she's not, and that's one area where nobody's pushing her -- probably because it doesn't relate directly to the bond and is therefore supposed to be optional. She does have a gender coach and some trans friends, but I don't know if she does to any support groups for that. Thoughts?

>>She thought about that. Never come
near me again was a lost cause.
Don't touch me fared little better.

This quote encapsulates what bothers me about this sub-series.<<

Okay ...

>> Exploring the dynamics of an involuntary bond is actually really good and really important, in my mind. Reveling the awkwardness and the way it drags up other issues helps too. <<

Fair enough.

>> But there’s a narrow, nuanced gray area between exploring something, and seeming to endorse it, and sometimes this series seems to lean into the latter. <<

I'm not in favor of purposely forcing a bond. But like a pregnancy, such things are better prevented than trying to fix after the fact -- because even if it can be done, there's a certain irreducible toll of risk and hardship entailed. Once it happens, people have to deal with it. There are better ways and worse ways, and the better ones don't happen often just because the situation sucks.

Once two people get stuck together metaphysically, they can either accept it or reject it, and it's not rare for them to split on that. If feasible, I think separation is often the best idea, but it's not always available or safe.

I also think it would be prudent for people to stop and consider each other as possible partners. Is the other one decent? Are they at all compatible? Calliope didn't put any thought into her knee-jerk rejection. (That's her option.) Vagary did some, but I suspect his desire for belonging made it a very minimal, "Not a nutjob? Okay fine." If you don't think about how it might have gone had you met some other way, you might make a bad choice in rejecting or accepting the wrong person.

Trying to find a solution that is at least amicable is preferable to fighting, so long as both parties are willing. But fighting, risking a dangerous severance, and killing in self-defense are all preferable to accepting abuse.

One of the positive things I see in this series is feeling out the boundaries of their personal ethics, what they will tolerate from each other or permit for themselves. As clumsy and pained as their relations are, they do both agree that they neither want to abuse the other nor be abused. That point of ethical common ground is what got them into therapy and has kept this from being a complete disaster.

>> I want Calliope to *win*, but *what* I want her to win is a functional relationship, not a fight.<<

Agreed, but the former is much harder to win than the latter.

>> Regarding allowing the characters to dive into the pain and mess of discussing the rape viewpoint on their bond and subsequent actions: I think you may NEED to go there eventually to resolve some of what has been brought up. <<

That's entirely possible. I just want to be careful about, hm, not misleading readers about the direction.

>> Sometimes the infection has to be scrubbed out for things to heal up right. <<

I think that applies to their whole bond. Parts of it are doing well, but the imbalance prevents it from being really healthy. Looking at the way Calliope limps on it, I am starting to think it's acting like any foreign body: getting infected. 0_o

>> But I don’t the characters are, or the series is, quite at the point for that to fit right yet.<<

Not quite.

>> Calliope and Vagary need another load-bearing support. I think counseling and superheroing together could be two pieces of what they ened, and then one or two more things that work could stabilize them enough to go there.<<

That's possible. I'm open to ideas.

>> As much as I love your work exploring and celebrating healthy touch as a coping skill, I DON’T think that’s what will be it for them.<<

It's something they'll need to develop eventually, because if they keep flinching like they have been, sooner or later someone's going to get hurt. But they may not be ready for it, or comfortable with it.

>> In fact … trying dancing and having it blow up could be a turning point for them if Calliope *doesn’t* dump on Vagary for it, and Vagary doesn’t automatically blame himself for 110% of everything, <<

Or if they can at least work their way through what went wrong and why. *chuckle* It occurs to me that one obstacle to dancing is that Calliope may never have learned the female/following role and probably does know the male/leading role. Awwwwkward.

Who do you think is more likely to notice it's not working and call it quits?

>> and they *both* say no to their therapist *in agreement.* For which he would probably buy them ice cream or similar. <<

I like this idea.

>> And THIS suddenly made Vagary make a lot more sense and seem more sympathetic to me. <<

Yeah. People just don't wind up in his kind of shape without reason, and most of those reasons are ugly. Plus, Kraken prefers to recruit from vulnerable youth. Vagary came out of a situation where he clearly did not get his needs met, wound up with very iffy boundaries, did not develop a typical range of social skills, and it left him with a deep craving for connection that he has attempted to meet in not-that-great ways. Like joining a supervillain organization. Okay, Kraken is the top of the heap, but they are still supervillains. It's not an ideal life path.

I suspect we've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Vagary's damage.

>> *wince* And THIS makes sense too. Owch. <<

Either of them talking to someone who had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy could get a real "Aha!" insight into the other's perspective.

It's especially apt considering the bond has a mind of its own -- not a separate person like a baby, exactly, but kind of like how a penis can get very different ideas than the brain or the heart, and how the animal-instinct parts of the brain can hijack the rational part. In some ways the bond is like a dog that jumps on people, demands attention, winds the leash around them, and knocks over the picnic table. This situation is not helped by Vagary letting it eat off the table and Calliope trying to kick it every time it comes near.

>> I’m familiar with a low-key version of that dynamic, and it SUCKS, even when both people are actively working on and working around it. Irrational guilt caused by depression makes it easy to get sucked into that kind of spiraling miscommunication.<<

Yeah. I've run into something similar myself, although it's more a matter of me being naturally assertive and my partner being more easygoing. Not a disaster, but it has taken a lot of work from both of us to learn how to work as a team. Ironically, one of the things he does for me is provide some of the brakes I don't have.

>> So does anxiously pushing and pushing to try to find a limit or resolution. <<

Ah! I think you've just pinpointed one of the things that Vagary needs. He wants someone to set boundaries for him, because it's so hard for him to find his own. Vagary pushes, not just because he craves closeness (which he does) but because he needs Calliope to draw lines (which she does). If he could be more clear about this, and she could be a little less rough, that would help a lot. But I don't think Vagary realizes he's doing it, even though he's been pretty explicit about asking for it.

>> This, I think, is the central concern of this sub-series . Not superpowers, or superpowered adventures, or trans issues, or queer issues, or interpersonal violence, or even the inadvertent bond itself, but the labor and craft of making meaning out of an accidental intimacy with endless ripple effects in one’s life.<<

Sooth.

>> In case it's not clear, I really love this sub-series even when parts of it make me wince.<<

Yay! :D

>> Some of my favorite works ever are those that take a problematic topic, deal with it unflinchingly (including showing the good pieces of something bad without undercutting the bad parts) and show characters transcending their situation by ultimately making meaningful use of the things that could have been life-wrecking.<<

Agreed.

>> I think this may end up there for me, but at the moment there's a lot of dynamic tension that could go many different ways. <<

Part of that is how subsequent prompts interact with the earliest ones. Some readers have different ideas how the relationship should go, which I think adds verisimilitude to a situation where two complicated people are tripping all over each other.

By all means, prompt for what you want to see. Let me know if you'd like to hear the spoilers for future ideas I have. There's a fair bit that has been set up by previous stuff, not all played out yet.