“Katalepsis” 1.3
Chapter three is a good deal shorter than the first two. My covid headaches came back in force today, but I'm having another period of clearheadedness right this second so I should try and take advantage of it while I can. Maybe I'll be able to get in another review from the main queue this week after all, that would be nice. So. Chapter three of Lesbian Scene Girls vs. Eldritch Abominations!
Correlation 1.3
Hope she was able to sit down before it hit in force. People often get very badly hurt by falling down in bathrooms.
Oh, good, she was able to get to her bedroom before losing it completely. Or else, while "Slipped" she sort of sleepwalked back to the spot where she first encountered the Eye. Either way, no concussion is good.
She spent "hours" exploring the alien jungle. Was she actually out that long in realtime, I wonder? Curled up under her bed for most of the day? Maybe, maybe not.
The second anecdote sounds like there might be a connection between the places she sees while Slipping and her body's physical surroundings. Mazelike windowless structure kind of echoes a school building. Then again, I can't think of any such sensory or thematic connection between "shower" and "decaying forest," so it might just have been coincidental similarity.
Damn. Sounds like she was more lucky than anything else during the shower incident, then.
The correlation between "denying the Eye" and the intensity of the Slip might just be Heather reading into things, or it could be true. Either the Eye deliberately pulling harder due to her resistance, or else her brain just letting its guard down after having it too easy for three days.
Future Heather showing her hand a little, describing this as the "Outside" that Raine and Evelyn mentioned at a time when she herself didn't believe it yet.~
Did she actually fall on the library floor and skin her hands? How much correlation is there in physical sensation between what's going on in each world, I wonder.
I mean, a lot of rock is lava frozen in mid-flow.
The natives of these places tend to be unfriendly, then.
Or else Heather just hates the alienation of their constant stunned reactions. She has expressed a general fear of exposure throughout the story thus far.
Flickering back and forth is apparently new for Heather. Now what could be causing that? Residual aftereffects of the glyph? A consequence of her having been shielded from the Eye for this long?
Pictured below: the mechanic that governs this.
Well damn! Not all of the information she's gotten from the Eye is beyond human comprehension after all!
Now, IF the Eye is an active agent with an agenda rather than just a passive/reactive Akashic Record type dealy, this could mean that the Slipping is its way of testing Heather. It taught her the spells she needs to get back to her Earth body, and then it repeatedly puts her in situations where she has to use them. A harsh teacher, but maybe it has a good reason for resorting to such methods.
Or, less optimistically, it needs to get her to use magic to properly season her for eating.
This is all just one possible theory, of course. I'm not placing any bets on it yet.
Either it worked and Heather brought herself back to (unconsciousness on) Earth, or Raine showed up and pulled her back at the last second before the Eye could trick her into feeding herself to it. In the former case, the hand she felt could be metaphorical, or it could be Raine (or someone else) coincidentally grabbing onto hers as she saves herself.
She brought Heather here of all places?
Maybe there's some eldritch tome or whatever that she needed to use to help her recover. Otherwise, it seems like bringing her pretty much anywhere else would have been a better idea, given how Evelyn reacted last time.
Then again, I kinda get the impression that Raine is in denial about how bad Evelyn is, so that incident might not have stuck with her any more than the (very probable) previous ones.
Ah. Yes, that also helps.
I'm still not sure how genuine vs. how manipulative Raine is. At this point though, I'm leaning much more strongly in the "genuine" direction. She might get a lot of false positives when looking for persons of interest, but she does legitimately care about those persons.
Though, granted, it remains to be seen what ended up happening with all the previous ones. However, Evelyn was *very likely* making it sound worse than it was at least with most of them.
Hmm. Keeping Heather in, or keeping someone else out?
Oh. I had assumed the library was in the same building. If it's across campus though then yeah, that raises some questions.
...did Heather sleepwalk her way back here on her own, while fighting herself free of the stone world? That would definitely answer my previous question about why Raine would bring her here; she didn't.
Oh.
Well then.
I'm *pretty sure* I remember Heather throwing the keys down on the table before storming out of here last time, so unless I'm mistaken she couldn't have walked here. So, either Evelyn did something, or Heather actually teleported herself in here using the Eye's instructions.
Now, why she ended up here specifically rather than her apartment or her parents' house is a question that needs answering.
I seriously can't tell if Raine is sincerely asking this, or if she's just playing the ditz to try to cheer Heather up and/or put her off her guard. Both of those options would be consistent with Raine's character so far.
...oh, wait. I missed that the hand was disfigured. I went back and checked, and yeah, it was specifically missing a couple of fingers.
That pretty much means Evelyn. I'd have known that from the beginning if I hadn't missed that, heh.
So. Evelyn might not be physically on campus, but she's able to...do a thing...to teleport? Plane shift? Herself here in a roundabout way. Or else she just lied to Raine about where she was going.
Well, that means Evelyn has to take Heather seriously now. And hopefully there will be one hell of an apology coming with that. For starters, she could give Heather some freebie magic lessons; it seems like Evelyn's dimensional travel abilities are just a more advanced/practiced version of Heather's, so she should be able to teach it to her.
Does this mean that Evelyn has also looked into the Eye? If she has and Raine hasn't, that might explain why only one of them can into magic.
Ah. Decoys/camouflage. Either to make their supernatural enemies think that there's nothing to worry about, or just as a precaution against mundane burglars and kleptomaniacal university janitors. Clever.
It doesn't mean that, no.
However, it does imply it.~
Pffffft. Okay. Heather's had a rough life of the sort that would bias a person to feel this way, but she's also showing her naivete just a tad.
Even if no one cares about the students as individuals, universities care VERY DEEPLY about appearances. Someone shambling around campus covered in blood in broad daylight is bad PR that makes people less likely to want to come here, and - even worse - gives the president of the next university over something he can be smug at them about at the next academic convention. Death would be preferable to such a fate.
So, no, they absolutely would not ignore that.
Unlike me, Raine is ever the optimist.
What the fuck Heather, that would be an instant kill and also transphobic!
Goddamned Evelyn. Now Raine has to convince Heather to believe she isn't crazy all over again, and this time she's much more on guard. You could have at least left a note in your own handwriting or something after leaving her in the office.
Raine only being in Sharrowford because of Evelyn could mean several things. A life debt? A one-and-only chance to learn real magic? Granted, Raine just said she doesn't have any practical magical ability of her own, but that could be in progress.
But, Heather has some more personal issues to clear up before going into any mystical ones.
Well put, Heather.
...
"It was my fault they acted the way they did."
Okay, I know Evelyn just saved Heather, but that doesn't make a red flag not a red flag. This is, like, CLASSIC abuse victim/enabler rationalization. Sadly, Raine's determination to see the best in people seems to be her greatest flaw.
Then again, we know that Raine good at manipulation. Maybe this is at least partly affected. I still think she's more likely genuine than not, but still.
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
Also, while the apparent injuries that Evelyn has suffered (a big chunk of her hand is missing, as I recall) don't preclude a life of unexamined privilege and entitlement, they at least mean that it's been tempered by some really rough experiences.
But, I can hardly expect Heather to be that charitable toward her after that meeting.
Hahaha okay Raine is definitely bullshitting with that last part. She can't possibly think she's a *subtle* lesbian.
Like I said.
I honestly cannot tell if that's a great idea or an absolutely terrible one. Or whether or not Raine is joking about it, for that matter.
"Cults" have a different connotation for them, eh? Well, there's been some not-so-subtle indication that there are human actors they need to beware of. Perhaps whoever sent those "servitors" to spy on them is a cult leader and/or worshipped entity.
It still seems like this is less "leap before looking" and more refusal to acknowledge negative qualities in people she likes (or at least in her domineering ex-girlfriend specifically). If Evelyn hadn't been acting the way she was acting, I very much doubt Heather would have minded Raine's disclosure. She came to the medieval philosophy department to talk about that very subject, after all.
YES FUCKING FINALLY SHE ADMITS IT
I still want to know what happened to the others that ended Raine's friendships with them. Assuming it wasn't just Evelyn scaring them all away.
Parroting things she's been told.
However, as Raine pointed out in the first chapter, schizophrenics categorically do NOT have the ability to assess their own hallucinations rationally. That's distinct from being reasoned into believing something.
My feelings about this story's commentary on medicalization remain mixed. But that aside, this is a pretty heartwarming scene.
And...while I don't have a basis for comparison with Raine's previous attempted beneficiaries, it's hard not to infer that the physical attraction with Heather is extremely mutual. Even if Heather doesn't dress or present as well as Raine.
Okay. Maybe this is just more of Raine being in denial, but...the narrative she's implying here is a believable one, and it does improve my attitude toward Evelyn a little. If Ev is just extremely traumatized, and having new people dropped on her unexpectedly is a trigger, then her conduct - while regrettable - becomes easier to forgive.
And it would also validate Raine's insistence that it was all her own fault. I can see how it might have happened; Raine got swept up in the excitement of finding the sort of person Evelyn was looking for, and because of it forgot about the more basic Evelyn protocols. Especially if it had been a long time since the latter were relevant.
We'll see how close my interpretation is to reality, eventually. For now though, it's starting to seem like Raine's real problem is being TOO emotionally healthy, to the point where the frailties of others are just too counterintuitive for her to really grock.
Evelyn having her own equivalent of Slipping? Experiencing some aftereffects from saving Heather?
Heather is missing the obvious, but since she doesn't actually believe in all this stuff just yet I guess it's understandable.
Uh oh.
Oh. Pffft.
This is probably a British/American cultural difference. I wouldn't have ever thought of this as a red flag.
Heather has an American soul.
Okay seriously Heather calm down, it's not even a firearm.
And there ends the chapter.
These three chapters haven't given me enough to do any deep analysis, but so far it's good. It strikes a difficult balance between hitting the urban fantasy conventions that we've all seen too many times to take seriously, and engaging with themes of trauma, paranoia, and mental illness in a mature enough way that you HAVE to take it seriously. The fantastical elements of the story seem to be going in a more conventionally "magical" direction than I initially thought, but - while I personally tend to prefer more naturalistic scifi and fantasy - it's still different enough from the mold that I'm intrigued and want to learn more.
Also, I kinda have a crush on Raine. Not for the same reasons that Heather does, but nevertheless.
@skaianDestiny has implied that they plan to commission more of this story later. If so, great. If not, I'll just have to keep reading this serial on my own.