Maidens of the Fall, Arc 4, Autolysis, Chapter 2
Chapter bursts through the glass of the laboratory tank, dripping amniotic fluids and slick with greenish slime, uncurling cruel claws and licking sharpened teeth, ready for a messy red feast.
https://hungryshedgerow.net/maidens-of-the-fall-autolysis-4-2/
Password is: quickening
An epub version of the chapter is also attached!
Arc 4 thus gets more deeply underway! Things continue to get ever more complicated for ... well, for everybody involved in this, shall we say? Meanwhile, I can't really say much this week, not without spoilers! I shall have to let the characters say it all for me, which is usually the best course of action, of course.
Behind the scenes, I still think this arc is on track for about 7-9 chapters. We're really getting stuck into the details and the forward motion here, though Octavia herself might be struggling rather a lot even with the simple act of remaining conscious. I'm sure the other magical girls will have something to say about that.
I hope you all enjoy this one, dear readers! Once more we leave the sphere of the waking world, winging off to the benighted reaches of the dream-lashed moon.
Comments (12)
Grimmy really is the best
She is so much fun to write! And she just keeps coming through for Octavia, over and over.
I've really enjoyed the way this abjection with Octavia has been handled. It's annoyingly rare to come across good writing about this state that isn't either in a lurid confessional register or sustaining a clinically detached narration. I've thought about it a lot, though mostly from the angle of poetics, but the two core difficulties, I think, are the very particular situating -- social conditions and biography -- and then the balance between the genuine disadvantages inhered and the narrative need that they be sublimated into a compelling perspective.
Thank you very much indeed, that's a really major compliment; this is such a core aspect of the story, a foundational yet unspoken theme, which I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to handle and what parts/angles of it I want to explore the most. Abjection, alienation, separation, all this stuff which I can't really put into simple words, but I do feel like I can explore when given the length of an entire narrative.
oh to be a little zoog on someone's lap getting petted when you're feeling down
I know, right?! Octavia has an excellent point, the zoogs are very lucky, they get to snuggle in Grimgrave's lap.
Damn, these last two chapters were just so raw. Felt it in my soul. Regardless of who you are, this was some real human condition type stuff.
Thank you so much! That's a really kind compliment, I'm really delighted that I've managed to write something so raw and real.
Octavia's true enemy is not the Dreamlands or the fascist state or her own body, it's internalized homophobia.
The homophobic policeman inside her head is her first and greatest foe! Though here it seems more directed at herself than Grimgrave, which is ... a small improvement? Probably not. Still, she can't run from that fight anymore!
I wish I was that Zoog.
Truly the best of all situations available.