Feb 10, 2025
To:Pope Evaristus
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
Re: In media res - Yes, it was partly due to length constraints.. but I’d be lying if I used that as an excuse. Truth is, I just couldn’t make anything leading up to the command room interesting. I feel like anything I came up with was just done a million times before in other stories so it’s like… meh, let’s just skip to the good part. However you imagine we got there is probably a lot more interesting. To me, I think the most difficult part of writing in (insert current year here) is the fact that you’re dealing with audience expectations and audience sophistication. Like, if you’re writing a murder mystery, you also have to contend with the fact that not only has the butler already done it in previous works, but also it’s that works have built on top of that. So now we’ve seen that the butler has done it, but also the butlers clone. And the butlers clone’s twin sister. And the butler’s clone from a different multiverse where, I dunno… humans evolved with telepathic powers. Or whatever. So you can’t just write a plain old “butler did it” story anymore.
Ivy and Violet being interchangeable is definitely one of the weakest points of the story in my own opinion. I wish I could say it was because of length or time constraints but to be perfectly honest it comes down to my own weakness that I couldn’t really couldn’t come up with anything interesting to do.. so they’re kind of just relegated to color commentary and comedy.
Yeah the style is a big thing that I wrestled with internally. Not sure how evident this was but I toned it down massively after some of the initial backlash … the dialogue wasn’t a decision I made lightly or an a whim, or just to be different for the sake of being weird. And it’s not a style I would write in by default for anything else I write; it’s definitely something I feel is just reeeeally specific to the type of story Days is. Very barebones, hardly any narration or introspection save for one or two emotional instances. I am happy to hear that it worked for you. I totally accept and understand how it wouldn’t work for a lot of people. (At the same time, I can’t deny that my hope is for people to try and stick with it… because I feel like the dialogue tags for one, really do fade into the background after you get used to it.. but that kind of thing is out of my control. The reader is totally in the right if the style is a dealbreaker for them.)
Re: Room 3 - the room housed the other luck modules kept in stasis, like a big vat of Rei clones. It was mentioned in section 20.6, but it was glossed over pretty quickly and that chapter was just one big expo dump so it was easily missable.
BTW - I know you made a comment about And I Feel Fine being a sort of “final entry” in your contest trilogy. I don’t think anyone expected another contest so soon, but if you DO happen to participate in this one I would be definitely looking forward to reading it.
