12
« on: August 13, 2016, 05:44:33 am »
The story's narrative direction almost got derailed with the preceding overly dramatic events seemingly written just to make Bernadette suffer for personal growth in implausible situations, but it makes a bit of a recovery with these last few pages even though it's still riding the edge there as it maintains its grip on the consistency of the law of the arena. Frankly the expectation that Bernadette should somehow learn street smarts within the span of all these events is a bit much, because there isn't much breathing room in the pacing for her to attain character development in a satisfying way. Between all the major events, nothing has really happened to give her enough opportunity to absorb any useful information that wouldn't also end up pushing her too far in the other direction (or giving conflicting advice) and having it turn out worse than before. The two characters have been able to develop their relationship, but that's about it here, besides getting that chekhov's offhand sword in the process. The longform story format where scenes were slower paced had more of an impact than trying to push the story along without any apparent reason as to why it's necessary.