Novella: "Rings"

[jalapeno_dude]

I can't tell if people want me to confirm or deny interpretations of events.

I would prefer that you not do so in this thread.

[Alicorn]

Yeah.

This story has a song I associate with it: Katie by Von Grey. (It's inexact and I'm not sure who's the singer and who's "Katie" but the tone is right.)

[DeAnno]

Regardless of quasi-spoilers, this was cool and I hope we see more in this universe at some point.

[Anya]

/me causally buys the song on iTunes.

I really like it! It also really goes with the story. Nice and creepy. I can pretty much swap "Katie" with "Celia".

[Regis]

I think this is worth coming out of lurking for, because it's rather bothering me.

I don't understand what was so "completely twisted horrifying" about the story. Usually, Alicorn's 'horror' is much less subtle. Yes, Shula was behaving very oddly, with the hair stroking and "sweeties" and whatnot. But I don't understand what this implies.

Could someone try to explain the horror?

IS IT...

---

...how David ended up?
...Shula's unscrupulousness and casual 'mental murder'?
...Maureen's kidnapping and memory wipes?
...the likely eventual failure of the current succession model?
...Celia's attempted murder of Shula?
...Meer's fate?
...that I missed a very important paragraph somewhere?

I would like to understand.

[Alicorn]

The working title of the story was "Bad Consent Lesbians".

[jalapeno_dude]

Regis, #2 and #3 (which I'd consider a subset of #2) in your spoiler were the big ones for me, as well as Celia's mental state at the end (e.g. the italicized sentences starting after Meer surrenders), especially (but not exclusively) if it was deliberately caused by Shula.

[Regis]

Thank you for the entertainment, Alicorn, including the music.

Thank you too, jalapeno_dude.

[DanielH]

I would like confirmation/denial of interpretations (in a separate thread, or spoilered, whichever other people prefer). I’d also like more details about the rules about what Shula could do on Earth (even if they were mostly unenforced), and to know what a “sleeper” is in the context of Shula wanting two of them (at first I thought it meant there were two replacements, but I never came up with a plausible alternate hypothesis when that was disproven).

I agree with jalapeno_dude’s entire post about why the story is horrifying, and would add several nonmagical parts of their relationship which basically boil down to Shula not really treating Celia as a person with agency and opinions and the realization that many humans can and do act approximately like Shula does relationship-wise (at least when that is nonmagically possible) without realizing the relationship is unhealthy. Technically I knew that last part independent of the story, and the story didn’t even mention it explicitly, but the story made me more aware of it.

[Alicorn]

The meaning of "sleeper" is not intended to be unclear at all so I'll just post that here - they're objects that put people to sleep. Shula wanted one for Maureen and one in case Celia woke up.

Feel free to ping me offsite or make a Spoilerland post.