Here’s a sunset in my undisclosed location.
Things are going well. I’m a little ahead of schedule, temporarily.
I got a question in email that I thought people might want to weigh in on, because I think there are multiple possible interpretations. But it does have Empress spoilers, so I am hiding it
So what do y’all think?
johnaegard
May 25, 2006 at 1:19 pmI don’t know the answer to the question, but I had an Empress moment last night when I was watching an old episode of Lost and there was a big institutional-sized tub of ranch dressing that was treated very poorly, and I thought, “oh, Katrina would not approve of that.”
estarial
May 25, 2006 at 1:23 pmI assumed it was because Nic had come up with a whole story explaining everything (and Battle later mentions that Nic always has to know the reason for things).
moriath
May 25, 2006 at 1:52 pmThat was my interpretation as well. I’ll see if I can come up with something more indepth this weekend.
intothebassment
May 25, 2006 at 6:42 pmHmmmmm….
That actually always did confuse me a little bit. I was kind of hoping that as the author, you could answer the question :-) My guess was that Battle felt like Nic had sort of invaded her private personal life, that she wasn’t quite ready to share that part of her life with Nic yet, so she pushed her away.
But now I’m really curious….
anonymous
May 25, 2006 at 7:30 pmI thought that Nic having to have an explanation for everything, and in this case making up one, is defiantly part of why I think Battle was upset. But I think it was a lot more than that. For the first time Battle let herself trust someone with the secret of her brother, and instead of being content with the information Battle gave her, and patiently waiting for battle to tell her more about it, Nic just made up her own version. In a way stripping Battle of it and turning it into a nice neat little story. Also, I imagine it would make anyone mad to have someone think they could possibly understand an entire situation that has so significantly effected your life and who you are, from one little bit of information. Nic also added an insult by just making the puppet, story or no story. By making the puppet she tried to butt in and fix things for Battle. Nic can’t do anything about Battle’s family, nor did Battle want her to. I think all Battle wanted was someone to listen, someone to know her secret. She never wanted, nor anticipated any action from Nic, I assume it was quite the shock, which would only add to her anger. –Susan
jennysmells
May 25, 2006 at 9:53 pmI agree with this one…after reading all the other comments. I mean, Battle knew her own life and Nic just busted in on it, kind of like paparazzi.
Sorry about the weakness of my logic; I have been defending my arguments all day with examples a 14-year-old boy would understand (read: I hung out with my friend’s little brother all day).
intendent
May 26, 2006 at 1:33 amI, too, agree with this comment. It was what I was going to say, only better expressed.
iliketea
May 26, 2006 at 10:31 amThat was pretty much my interpretation of it… that she’s upset that someone’s trying to intrude on this personal thing, that Nic has turned it into a story and filled in gaps for herself and that wasn’t what Battle wanted or needed.
But, hey, you’re the writer, you tell us. ;)
gair
May 27, 2006 at 5:03 amOh, hey! This pretty much gets to the heart of why I loved Empress so much (in fact my girlfriend gave it to me because of that moment). So – when Nic gives Battle the puppet, she’s saying, in effect, that any emotion Battle entrusts to Nic becomes their common property, for Nic to ponder and redefine and re-inscribe together with Battle, the way you do in long, late-night conversations with friends (like what the three friends do for each other in Jaclyn Moriarty’s Finding Cassie Crazy, if you’ve read that). But that’s not how Battle does her emotions,* and particularly it’s not how she thinks about Nick and her family, so it feels – well, doesn’t Battle say it’s like being ‘vivisected’? This stuff that’s part of how she goes on living, that’s connected to ongoing, organic processes, that’s still in the process of being incorporated into her sense of herself, is being torn away from its living context, abstracted and anatomized by someone else. What I really loved about that moment was that usually, the only plot that gets written about ‘talking about emotions’ is that sort of repression/revelation/healing one: in almost any other book or film or whatever, what Nic did would have been The Thing That The Emotionally Repressed Battle needed, and Battle would have immediately been able to Talk About It, and then everything would have been all right. But for those of us who don’t actually do our emotions like that, that’s quite a troubling/difficult storyline, and it was wonderful for me to see Battle’s point of view represented for once.
*You can see that as a butch/femme thing – I do, but I know a lot of people aren’t fans of butch/femme, so apologies if you’re one of them.