Has the Grass Been Greener on the Other Side At All?
So that's a revised draft.
One of the things I noticed in going back to Vicious for the Nth time in a decade is that I've since learned not to waste words specifying exactly where a character is looking, or every twitch of their lips, or precisely how they're holding their sword... You get the idea. Anyway, there was a lot of that cluttering up my previous draft, and now there isn't, so hurrah for that.
One thing I will note here and probably return to later re: the whole incoherent grimdark discussion is that I (almost universally) do not write about nice people. One of the most memorable secondary characters in Vicious, for example, is a ten-year-old who wants Malefor to kill someone for her. Which isn't to say that I try to write one-note downer stories about mean people doing mean things - the world, and art, have and need more range and contrast than that. (Also, in context, the homicidal ten-year-old is hilarious.)
I feel like I had a point to make here, but I lost it. Ah, well. I try to make my characters interesting, anyway. And I have more thoughts on contrast which may get written down at some point. You never know.
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