Oct 05, 2022
I personally don't like the formatting of this chapter all that much. I was already pretty okay at parsing who was speaking, and I feel like it takes away from the ethos of the story where Kai is kind at the center of her own universe. To give another character a share of that, even if intentionally, feels a bit weird to me.
Bastion/Kai dynamic for the last couple of chapters is pretty well thought out I think. I feel like their mutual distaste for one another is pretty palpable, and their banter is pretty fluid and natural. I'd say the moments between the two of them have been the highlights of my return to this story.
I like this new component with Social Control. I feel like the name could be better, but I'm not one for super creative titles, so I can't really offer much help on that one.
The mystery element and progression of the story is also still nice. It's pretty cool that basically I picked up the story from having not read it for what....like a year now? And I basically still remember most of the major events of the story, the fact that Aaron is gone, the divisive relationship between Kai/Paul. I think that's a sign that you have a lot of memorable components in spite of the fact that still a lot of the story is chasing questions about the unknown.
There are some patches here and there in this chapter though where I feel like the dialogue is a little bit overwrought for what is actually said. For instance, the section with "oh, you want to kill me because we're different," is kind of cute, but also I feel like the moral justifications for killing this guy end up being simultaneously a little shallow and also almost too weighty for the first interaction that the Kai and this person have had. When I read the dialogue between Paul and Kai, the characters are well established so their back and forth actually makes sense in my head as I read.
As a side but still topical note, it actually reminds me of why I don't like Aaron Sorkin's writing (Social Network, The Newsroom) all that much. The dialogue from Kai that I'm not super fond of is very reminiscent of it. It's very snappy and makes for entertaining television and soundbites, but otherwise is often a bit lacking in real substance and turns the characters more into mouthpieces for a scene that the writer envisions rather than a scene that plays out as the characters would play them out.
