End of the First Arc: Calamity stops playing nice.

Soleil... is a blank slate. THAT is unstated and buried manipulative reason for genuinely what makes her special in the eyes of mana. That she gets angry and frustrated with mana is something that Calamity is intending to channel towards a very specific direction. (More on that in the Calamity character arc section)

Both of Soleil's first quests were going to have Malady come out and humble her. That's all in the text. But I wanted to make it perfectly clear that there's no way that we can operate without remaining somewhat in the good graces of the entities corrupted by mana like Calamity and Malady. They are abusers with effectively unlimited resources and more information at their disposal. I would never depict them as healthy members in a relationship. (Although Soleil would eventually get to fight a doppelganger who would come to stand for the sole redeemable and sympathetic parts of Calamity. A problematic but useful member of the polycule/harem.)

There were always going to be two quests. The party would do both. Whichever was done first would just become more dire.

Helping Caesar would lead to saving a corrupted Dragon that could be used to cleanse the valley's corruption before Malady killed it. Caesar would retire after redeeming himself by saving not any of his knights... but the Dragon's last egg before Malady could get it. All to illustrate that there are soft endings in this world for characters beyond dying.

Aliza is a late stage addition to the polycule/harem no matter whether she was recruited first or not. She's a character from a much more mean-spirited version of this story where Calamity and Malady pull out all the stops to get what they want. No matter who dies or is broken in the process. Soleil would either need to give her time to mourn (Saving her first) or heal from briefly being turned into Malady's puppet if we saved her second. I avoided using a perception skill on her because she's level 80, an incredibly complex character, and has yet to really accept the name she carries in her soul as Malice. (More on that later!)

Either way, Soleil would eventually need to conclude the arc to voice her every grievance with Calamity. This would involve walking to the edge of the tiny slice of the world that humans can safely live in without being exposed to rampant corruption twisting the world into effectively a permanently irradiated wild magic zone. Seeing it is more powerful than me describing it. Every little tame soft wrongness/level drain Soleil gets exposed to suddenly has teeth once you leave the safety of the human lands.

Calamity would also, just this once, take the kid gloves off. She would fight like a level 1,000+ mabinogi character or boss would fight like. Throwing the entire skill book at the party to both illustrate how powerful that everyone in the party could become. This was meant to push Soleil into accepting that she HAS to become complicit in using the awful powers that Calamity and Malady give her. It's gross, but I never wanted Soleil to become a hero. More an Anti-Villain who fights back against Calamity, Malady, and the much worse entities like them with a sort of malicious compliance.

Soleil is the narrative's favorite in a setting and system where that is a bad thing. But everyone else save her mothers are limited to having an illusion of agency: Just enough that a powerful and cruel system permits humanity to serve a purpose in extinguishing any corrupted entities that need to be forcefully disposed of when subjected to the purified mana that their skills use.

Soleil comes away from this arc positioned to wield Calamity and Malady's power in a way that she can twist it to her own ends and renegotiate the circumstances under which promises she is bound to uphold play out.

Character Plots. At least for the ones you've met.

The core polycule/harem members are, in order of entering into a relationship with Soleil: Maeve, Kismet, Aliza, and Irellia.

I am going to do Soleil last. All of them were intended to be the main characters, but Soleil's plot is a response helping everyone else get through theirs.

MAEVE - DARK KNIGHT

The polycule's butch lesbian, intended to kinda be the voice of reason in the group that cuts through whatever problem is bothering Soleil. She starts out as Soleil's shield... but Kismet was always going to be better at that role. Coming from a broken home, Maeve signed up to join the military and it worked for a while. But the system of magic itself is working against humanity. So she was in a losing fight until she redefines what she is fighting for in falling for Soleil. Upon seeing what Soleil needs more than anything else, Maeve instead becomes Soleil's sword. She grows to express her own righteous fury leveled at a lot of injustices in this world. (And is why Soleil is picking up an entirely different weapon. Why would Soleil need a sword when she has Maeve and Irellia? Better she pick up the chains and unpack the insight that skills of bondage + explorations of boundaries offer.)

Arc 2 was going to be set in Haven, where the Everqueen attempts to reclaim Maeve as one of her White Knights. This is the first moment where the party fights to repurpose and turn the gears of power in this world into something different. For one single fight, Maeve turns into a Dark Knight. She uses it to cut the other White Knights free of their obligations to the Everqueen, at the cost of provoking the Everqueen into killing her.

MAEVIS - BREAKER OF PROMISES.

Maeve... is the SINGLE REASON this story is named the Weight of Broken Promises. Her death is where Soleil drops all the pretense and embraces being a selfish monster. None of this matters if she doesn't have the people she loves. We get into the nature of why some Stats/Skills work better for Humans and Demons, but the crux of the [Resurrect] skill is that it's the problematic act of only saving a part of someone's soul. "A very human understanding of the word preservation." Same body, same starting point, but loses most of the memories and starts over from Level 1. A pre-Soleil being in her life state. But a lot of her early life's abuses remain intact.

In short, Maeve is written to be a Cisgendered Girl who is about to go through a very Transgender experience. Her victory against the Everqueen is celebrated by everyone but her. Everyone sees her as a hero, but she doesn't know who Maeve even is anymore. Soleil goes out of her way to protect her and be what Maeve was to Soleil in the early days of their relationship. But even Maeve finds that smothering.

Eventually... Maeve is going to run away. Mirroring something Soleil did earlier in the planned Arc 2 once Maeve became the more driving force for good in the fight against the Everqueen. Maeve will sleep with someone who reminds her of Soleil, and vent that she cannot be this person everyone sees. Only for the girl she sleeps with to relay that Soleil said much the same thing. Soleil herself goes through so much despair, trauma, and personality degradation throughout this story by that point that Soleil sees herself as a shell of her former self that she needed to allow herself to let her old self go. And that's the moment where Maeve allows herself to open up to Soleil again.

Both of them die in different ways. But both of them get to live. I refuse to bury these characters, even if I'm really willing to let them hurt each other.

The planned cover for Arc 2 would be Maeve attending her own funeral. I knew this before I finished writing chapter 1. I didn't really want to commission covers until I got into Arc 2.

KISMET - SHAMELESS OPTIMIZER OF SELF HARM (CLOSETED TRANS GIRL)

Oh my beloved. I'm not done with Kismet. I'm actually making her one of the main protagonists in my next story. The trans parts of her story ended up being such a minor thing in grand scheme of things, as almost all the setup you've received is actually meant to be twisted and turned against her for Arc 3. The trans part of her story remains in my heart and it needs to be told.. but at another time.

Alongside Veilura, Kismet is the main trans representation in this story. I was saving Soleil's magic lessons for when Kismet permanently joined the party. Kismet was supposed to pick up on the memories of Veilura's magic and realize that there is an entirely different woman standing in front of her now. This gives Kismet courage to come out to Soleil as a trans girl. (And is why I'm using she/her pronouns for her now.)

As for her role. Kismet shapes mana into barriers. Instead of a tank, this party gets someone whose sole job is to keep everyone protected and healed up, so that Soleil can leverage her raw destructive potential. The planned chapter for the start of Soleil and Kismet's relationship was meant to be a sweet little thing titled: "And they were both Healers." (And they were both Bottoms)

Once Malady is dead and the threat to the valley has been dealt with via a dragon the party saves from being a corrupted puppet of Malady's, Mender's Crossing holds a Harvest festival. There Kismet shares her many anxieties and experiences with Lillian, the guild girl and her best friend before meeting Soleil and only person Kismet is openly a girl to. Maeve and Soleil accept her readily and openly, there's a whole dance with the three of them because Kismet did not attend with a partner. So she gets to enjoy having 2 of them. The good feelings REALLY come out in Kismet centered chapters, because she's been burdened with a lot of my own experiences.

Kismet is also why this story is so long and plodding, dithering on the little details. Her best friend, Lillian, is very detail oriented. She's the most equipped to handle Malady's suite of skills and the mantle is forced upon her. Arc 3 sends Aster and Wisteria as some of the only survivors fleeing to get help from the North where the party remains after Arc 2. Kismet becomes worried about a cherished friend in Lillian. This is meant to lead to a long homecoming of fighting through the blighted and zombified remains of the locations this story spent the most amount of time growing in detail.

All to end with Malady/Lillian standing in the middle of where the party had their dance, for a macabre encounter where the zombified remains of many minor NPCs are here reenacting the harvest festival. This is probably the moment where Kismet gets to go all out and embody Veilura more than herself. Getting lost in memories is a really big thing in this world. But if you can manage it properly, you can manage a lot of system/magic abuse that readers might expect of a LitRPG protagonist.

I love Kismet. Hers would probably be the most intense and cathartic scenes of people just sitting in a room... being vulnerable. This story would probably fall apart without Kismet? More than anyone else she is responsible for threading the needle in really getting the cast of lovers on the same page.

ALIZA / MALICE - BECOME A DEMON. KILL YOUR ABUSERS.

The one I'm most upset I didn't get to show you. Aliza's first PoV chapter centers around her auditory perception skill. She can hear mana's whispers, passively picking up on hints to what other skills/memories others are tapping into. She is the only one that can hear Malady when confined to the orb. Aster's addition tot he party is that she is the responsible one that puts in the effort to check in on the many people who temporarily join the party, because a lot of them are left broken by the experience. Aliza is the one to make sure everyone is taken care of afterwards. It's the least she can do to make up for the party members of her that died because she wasn't willing to join Malady.

Aliza is a feral wolf girl who is intended to turn into more and more of a demon as the story goes on. Aliza is a throwaway name. Anyone who views Aliza with a perception skill actually sees that her name is Malice. She just hasn't embraced it yet. Once she kills Malady and gets revenge, she accepts an altering of her soul stats and embraces being called Malice.

She is meant to be a brawler that trades aggro with Maeve because this combat system works best when two melee characters are fighting side by side. Malice is more someone who picks up on the subtext of the story, as she interacts with plants and animals better than people.

A lot of subtext and abuses are intentionally unexplained until characters like Kismet and Aliza join the party to offer their nuanced perspectives of the world that a very naive Soleil lacks.

IRELLIA - LIVING WITH MULTIPLE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD

Irellia is what happens when you try to do absolutely everything a hero in this world would try to do. So much so that she didn't need an Awakening to have other voices come alive in her head.

Irellia is a plural system of distinct individuals sharing a life and body. She's a self insert in a way that is meant to be insightful: to help Soleil and the audience get a grip on how to deal with the setting and story's nastier elements. Dysphoria and plurality can be a nasty combination, one I've inflicted on so much of this cast without giving them the resources to handle it. Irellia worked a lot of that out early.

Arc 1 would end and we would get a PoV switch to Irellia, to pull back the camera and show just how large the problems facing an entire organization of humanity working together must face.

Irellia is there to be a big damn hero in a world where the world itself is operating a system of abuse. No amount of violence enacted by a single person will ever be enough, no matter how hard she fights. She's doing absolutely everything possible to solve things in a way that only Soleil is equipped enough to resolve. It just takes adding Irellia to the roster in order to make some of it happen.

Doors open with Irellia joining the party. Suddenly the Soleil is capable of commanding squads/regiments, an entire army at the finale of Arc 2 when it is time to kill a self-proclaimed demigod. I always wanted to have this story scale up to the point where Soleil is managing Raid Groups. Leading an army is something that Malady to train Soleil to do in the confrontation where Aliza kills her. Whether Soleil wanted to learn the lesson or not, Irellia and the many Knight Captains help counsel Soleil on how to accept those lessons and keep people alive.

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Irellia... shares a head with someone named Ire. Ire calls her other half Ellie. They're two distinctly different characters who love and adore Soleil. Being mundane a mundane plurality equips Irellia better than anyone else in the world to handle the split of personality that becoming a demon demands. Only with all of that am I comfortable talking about Soleil.

SOLEIL - NOTHING GOOD WILL COME OF THIS. BUT SOMEONE HAS TO TRY.

Always intended to be an Anti-Villain. I probably could have handled the [Mana Destruction] scene better to really signal that Soleil was NEVER going to be a hero. This is a world that grinds heroes into dust. (Almost the entire polycule is meant to illustrate this) She instead is charged with being pulled into an abusive and corruptive system of power that erodes her sense of self in order to save as many people as she can.

The willingness to become a monster is important. It's a conscious trade off she makes time and time again. A very low key idea of self harm that most don't even register. The kind that grinding away at something that will slowly kill you for some perceived end. We still have to live within abusive systems. It is Soleil's occasional rash abrasiveness and lashing out that is meant to make this clear.

The self harm Soleil engages in was meant to be something that only Kismet has the nuanced understanding to recognize and support Soleil in dealing with. I genuinely feel bad that I never found the time to write: And they were both Healers. I might still need to if only for my own catharsis. If I do, I'll probably make it a stand alone little thing.

Soleil's [Awakening of Fire] is meant to give her a head mate, making her a plurality of individuals sharing a body and soul. In my notes, this is Soleil's fury made manifest. Fury is the equivalent to a 120 level boost for a bout 2 minutes. While this sounds like a Deus Ex Machina in how it is originally deployed, my version is ACTUALLY A NERF compared to what a base Paladin Transformation gives you in Mabinogi. If you know what you're doing, you can absolutely learn this by level 20-30. I just had to make there be some in-universe consequences to this.

If Soleil didn't gain enough levels to make room for Fury's many skills, the character would become more Fury than Soleil. That was the threat. Wisteria was meant to deliver on it. To be Malady's last spiteful little victory preventing Soleil from gaining the levels she needed. I wanted to take Mabinogi's IDEA of Demigod skills and make them instead something that rewards Soleil's own decisions. Soleil spent so much of this story learning combat skills. So Fury was generated as someone who combined combat skills to be more efficient.

Since we never got to it, here's the Awakening skills for how Fury custom tailored herself to serve Soleil.

[Awakening of Fire] provides an ever growing list of passive buffs, and serves as a limiter to the rest of the [Awakened] skills.

[Mana Reflection] allows Soleil to passively shrug off a Magical attack at regular intervals as if she guarded against it. (This is basically a Boss passive in Mabinogi that anyone could honestly subvert at any level.) The physical equivalent was called Advanced Heavy Stander if I remember correctly.

[Calamitous Wings] will stop draining levels after it is assigned an [Awakened] Soul Level. Gains its own Vitality Pool, as this was a skill forged by Calamity and Soleil out of desperation to survive.

[Calamitous Impact] is a melee finisher that combines Pierce/Crush/Smash ranks with her Charge ranks. Meant to be something of an overkill ability to allow Soleil to hit above her weight class. Soleil... really does not want to kill anyone and hates this skill.

[Calamitous Fury] is Soleil’s self-destructive tendencies made manifest, allowing her to permanently burn an [Awakened] Soul Level to mitigate the effects of a Mana Detonation.

FURY - FINDING THE COURAGE TO LOVE THE WHOLE OF YOURSELF

Mabinogi also has a few key moments where you have to fight a Doppleganger and entities that use Life Drain. I intended to use that moment to promote Fury into a distinct character who exists both as a part of and outside of Soleil as a valid romance character for anyone who really likes Calamity. As she's all of the redeemable parts without the really bad stuff that make Calamity an abusive villain.

There's also a lot of narrative value in fighting yourself. To see a creature meant to mimic you buckle under the strain of trying to turn what what you've endured against you was meant to be one hell of an emotional beat. This is probably the most meaningful moment where Soleil can put down the weapons and offer compassion to something forged by mana that actually deserves to be hugged instead of destroyed.

ASTER & WISTERIA - THE RETIRED

I’ve already mentioned how Caesar is meant to be the first character to be shown being pushed to their breaking point and just… retiring. Aster and Wisteria are there to show how much someone can contribute to the character while living a happy domestic life. They become part of the logistics and support structure of the human world, engaging in the life skills while reminding Soleil and her group to take breaks when they need it.

Wisteria herself was about to be posed as a useful mirror for Soleil. She’s spent a lot of time being Malady’s puppet and hurt Aster in countless ways she is only slowly coming to recognize and make amends for. Wisteria intends to turn that onto Soleil and Maeve, who could very easily end up like them. But I did not want to pose it as an entirely bad thing. There are softer endings for Soleil and Maeve if they ever want to give up the fight.

Malady and Calamity DO respect play things no longer being fun to engage with.

FIA & METIS - THE BROKEN

The first really minor guest party members to exist outside of Soleil’s understanding. They exist outside the binary of Human and Demon, meant to help break down that a lot of things in this setting are not as harsh or final as they seem.

Wisteria does break a lot of rules and teach Soleil [Animal Transformation] which lets her permanently sacrifice levels for passive buffs in alterations to her physical form. The permanency of sacrificing these levels serves a lot of benefit. This is something that you have expressed as a part of your soul that you are no longer giving mana a say in manipulating.

Mana will do all sorts of awful things, but it won’t take away willful alterations to your own soul. It’s a small consolation, but it’s the kind of thing that means the world to me.

Fia and Metis are also rogues, intended to chip away at rules and encourage Soleil to find ways to renegotiate her place in the world. They spent a lot of their early lives lying, cheating, and stealing just to survive on their own terms.

Their last major role in the story once Kismet and Aliza/Malice replaced them in the core party would be to be the members you recognize in the parties sent alongside Soleil’s party in finding the missing knights and other parties that Malady let slip about not having killed. There’s a whole council meeting where Aliza picks up on that Malady is getting impatient with the humans and grilling Soleil on all the wrong details. Traumatizing her for new reason (in Malady’s eyes)

Their parties would go on to get decimated by Calamity at the end of Arc 1. Fia and Metis would remain too broken and traumatized to go on, but they would get picked up by Kismet’s eventual Alchemy teacher: Hayle. Who would turn the two catfolk into her living weapons + maids.

Admittedly not a pleasant end, but Hayle is proposed as a problematic ally who offers care beyond Soleil’s means and a cure to Kismet’s many trans issues.

VEILURA, BRIGID, & NADIR

I'm so sorry if they're who who stuck with this story hoping to see more of.

We, the trio of people I share a head with and the name Artoria Fray, sat down together to each create our own characters. From there we got to chat about how we're raise a child to engage with a story world of making a life and finding love in somewhere as bad as the world state of Dark Souls 3.

Irene produced a Fox girl who fights with ice magic and mirrors. Veilura is the trans girl. I don't have too much to say about her specifically that doesn't get covered by the Nadir section. But each one of Veilura's tails is significant. All of Soleil's moms were very different people at different stages of their lives. I left it to the trans mom to really help guide Soleil through the experience of realizing her moms have been broken and remade themselves dozens of times. And that there really was no preparing Soleil for it, only to give her the tools to better engage in a heavily traumatic world and interact with traumatized people. A kid understanding safe words goes a long way toward helping her engage with characters like Kismet and Aliza who will often need to abruptly stop talking about their problems.

Vicky surprised us all by producing a more traditional capital D Demon instead of her traditional Vampires. (Suppose she wanted to not engage with any of the baggage vampires suggest.) Brigid finding comfort in utterly hospitable environments like Lava was one of my favorite parts about the changes we made to Mabinogi's skill system. Taking the passive skills and turning them into things that grants immunities to fire and lava.

Willow went all into creating something weird. Nadir is an evolution of The Chorus from the previous story we tried to write, Ruinous Hearts. Nadir... has been seven people in xer past. All of them died in xer arms and were absorbed into xer being. We never tired out neo pronouns before, but Willow is the most nonbinary of the three of us. Willow wanted to write someone that could very easily have been a villain in any other story. Nadir being a shifting shadow that can grow to fill a space or shrink to fit through difficult to follow spaces was going to make xem so fun to write when Soleil reached the point of fighting alongside her mothers.

CALAMITY - WILL ALWAYS ACCEPT YOU BACK INTO HER ARMS. SHE WILL NEVER STOP HURTING YOU.

MALADY - THE POISON YOU MUST ACCEPT.

Soleil is... well, let's be honest: A disaster. Calamity just wants to change it from a disaster lesbian to more of a force of nature kind of natural disaster.

There are moments when it seems like there is a good person there beneath the surface. Maybe there was once? I'm not sure how genuine they are. But I do know that there every time Calamity has been on screen, something that needed to be said... seemed in character for Calamity to cut. Her manipulations stripped text from the narrative and denied Soleil some really important information that only she could provide.

I read her as very abusive. She breaks the rules that mana lays out and regularly extinguishes life from the world for being inconvenient. (Kinda like how Malady had a kick the dog moment in killing Hope and one of the Aliza's hounds.)

Unlike any other character in this story, Calamity will always just get worse. Malady isn't going to get her own section? But there were meant to be a lot of moments where even Malady thinks Calamity needs to be killed. And accepting Malady's help is a very key moment for Soleil in the narrative. They need her broken in the same way they are or Soleil no longer gets to participate in the narrative as its protagonist. She'll be broken and discarded like all the rest.

Malady was meant to explain corruption to an extent. But I wasn't sure how willing most people would be in believing everything she says. It's not a level drain or loss. Negative levels exist alongside your positive ones. They just feel WRONG to even perceive or comprehend as being a part of you. Soleil burning away her awakened levels would allow Fury to pick up some of Calamity and Malady's skills that only work with corrupted mana. Or Necromancy skills that can fill the space of entities that have lost their souls and perished. There is a life that Soleil would be able to carve for herself outside of human lands. But her mother was correct in that being mana's child would make for a very lonely existence.

None of the corrupted demons are pleasant to engage with. They are all, as a rule, acting at our expense. We're a useful garden of purified mana and fresh insights.

Calamity is really really hard to write as someone introduced so early and meant to be alive as the primary antagonist 200 chapters later. She gives absolutely terrible power that lets Soleil burn away her problems. But Calamity is often the indirect cause for those problems by being the primary reason humanity has a very stunted ability to expand and grow. She is just keeping humanity alive and abused.

The video game inspiration: Mabinogi

Also a little exploration on why the system is the way it is.

I always thought of this story as trying to play out Mabinogi: Fantasy Life in a very Dark Souls 3 kind of world. You don't REALLY get that kind of perspective of how fucked up the world looks until you see the Edge of the World that Malady/Calamity tasked Soleil with doing. It was meant to be a... there really is no life outside this tiny slice of land we're living in now, is there?

Ever since playing Tears of the Kingdom, I began to conceive of the outside world as The Depths. Humans straying outside their bubble is meant to be punished. From mana's perspective, they don't deserve the world anymore.

It's worth taking a look through the Mabinogi Skill pages on the wiki. I breathed a lot of life into using that as a structural blueprint. I did actually do everything I could to make things easier to follow, in flattening out the stat progression.

The different soul stats was something that I really struggled with. I wanted a system where you could express yourself, while not rewarding the kind of min-maxing someone might do in Dungeons and Dragons or the Souls games. After you hit level 100/20 depending on the game, everything beyond that is just extra. The world exists in a way that supports that level of power being wielded by a LOT of people and still not being able to fix things.

It's why I was so comfortable moving at such a slow pace. I'm good enough at Mabinogi that I'm comfortable knowing what I can achieve at a low level, and it's experience a LOT of the game willing to tailor itself to low level people. I... love that as a kindness and made it something Mana was willing to do.

What was the wound in the world about anyway?

I intended to make my problems as a trans and plural system of writers... literally everyone's problem. I started with a world filled with wild magic radiation and just... kept writing until everything was touched by a overwhelming sense of wrongness that nothing could ever be put right again.

This is a world that DOES. NOT. WANT. TO. HEAL.

It won't even listen to you until you're as broken as it is. Enough to see you as a reflection of itself. Veilura came the closest. But she turned away from the world's problems because she kept having to deal with abusers.

So. The world took her kid.

And that was just beginning of the most awful framing of a story I could imagine. But I tried to make it gentle and filled with love, patience, and constant attempts at working towards an understanding. Something cruel, callous, and mean-spirited without any catharsis just doesn't work for me. It's the fastest way for me to put down a story.

But an abused villain who engages in the same abuses in an attempt to create others who would understand what they're going through? That's something I can work with. Writing a manipulative villain is hard though.

I wanted to give myself permission to just write. To keep going, climbing over ever larger piles of corpses and swimming through deeper depths of trauma until we arrived at the point where Calamity would invite Soleil to kill the world or embrace in the entirety of its remains. I really enjoy just... existing in the uncomfortable spaces before reaching an understanding. To have Calamity shout a thousand empty words and threats that no longer move Soleil.

By this point, Soleil could accept that mana was not some binary scale of corrupted/uncorrupted, pure or impure. Life/unlife itself would have countless examples of existing in a weird spectrum. She'd be able to pick out the many sources of Calamity's instability and begin to unravel them. So that there will be no more conscious Calamities inheriting a mantle like Malady and the Everqueen do.

And then she too would walk away, but only after hearing and experiencing having carried the weight of the world on her shoulders enough to identify the worst cycles of abuse and self harm going on. From there... Soleil doesn't feel qualified to help the world heal. She's a monster too who has forced people to change.

Despite everything, she has people who love and support her unconditionally. She's even come to love her many different fractured selves and reflections by this point in the narrative.