@kitfrick just one foot shy of the distancing guidelines, Jklol

(In other news, really enjoying finally reading this)

So I am on page 231 now and I need you to know that for the first couple of chapters I actually assumed Ret was no longer living, then she appeared in the NOW and I put that to rest .... until just now when it occurred to me that NOW Ret could’ve been a vision &... SO MANY CHILLS

This now seems like the only possibility. I’ve been through Dave is no longer living and Cordelia is no longer living scenarios and rejected both.

In all scenarios, I am operating under the assumption/presumption that Matthias was a dealer.

Yes the more I think about this the more it reframes and sheds light on so many moments

But now I am suddenly stressed about this family putting COOKWARE in the dishwasher !

@kitfrick I enjoyed this honk so much that you have single handedly influenced me to revise an opinion I’ve held for a long time, ...

which is that I’ve always disliked character driven dramas where suspense is built by withholding from the reader/viewer critical information about the nature of characters’ conflicts that would’ve provided context for the emotional weight of the scenes. But you made it riveting

My operating interpretation of why it works is that the fog of confusion that the reader is sometimes trapped in actually echoes the fog of shame Ellory’s working her way out from.

And the coda about channeling the experience through art for me gave all of it more meaning than it would’ve had as solely a story about interpersonal grief/trauma/betrayal.