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If I could think of a better intro than ‘welcome back,’ I would totally be using it by now.  But alas…

Welcome back!  You’ve probably seen my author’s note that there won’t be a new chapter next week because I’ll be out of town.  I’m trying to jam on this commentary to get it done before leaving, then I can relax about writing for a week and only stress about everything else.  I’ll be dealing with some stuff after my grandpa passed away, and it will be emotional and sad and probably a little confrontational too!  All great things…like a wonderful family reunion, I suppose.

But that’ll be over soon, and I’m already looking forward to coming home and getting back to work on some stories!

I kind of wish I hadn’t made this Bumbleby story so long…I think it will be worth it in the end, of course.  I always think the long stories are worth it.  But when you’ve put so many hours into something and know that you’re not even halfway done, it can be kind of discouraging.

Who wants to slog through all of the hard work when they could move on to something new?  But then…the work I’ve already put into it would be for naught.  And that is worse than the mountain of words left to be written.  So, I chug along.

Eleven chapters done!  Twenty or so to go?  The back half of this story is still a little flexible, so it could be 20-25 chapters remaining.  I’ve been making decent progress and at a decent pace but, you know, life gets in the way.  At this point, I don’t know if I’ll finish by the end of the year.  I’m not going to push myself to try to do that, either.  We have plenty of Queens of Remnant left, plus a lovely White Rose story sitting in the wings!

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself and start thinking about what I want to write next yet.  I’ve actually trained my brain pretty good in that regard, I think.  I tend to shut out the pesky new ideas until I’m about 5 chapters away from finishing a story.  I have quite a few old ideas that might be worth reconsidering too…

Ok, enough about me though.  Let’s get into this so I can start packing!

This week is a Bumbleby commentary, and you’ve just gotta love the Bees.  (I suppose that you don’t have to, but I know I do!)  These two chapters have a little bit of everything.  Emotional discussions, emotional angst, some drama, and even a minor injury!

I suppose being stabbed isn’t exactly minor, but Blake takes it like a champ.

Before that happens though…Blake has a bit of a freak out about sleeping with Yang.  That’s the best way to describe it, right?  Then Yang, in response to Blake’s freak out, has a freak out of her own.

Blake puts it best - “I think we might both be really bad at this.”

So my original plan for this event was that Blake would be the one hiding in some remote corner of the palace and Yang would have to find her.  And Blake was the one who sought out some privacy because Yang was going to seem very much like she wasn’t interested in a relationship.  I actually left the beginning of that conversation in the office the same - and Blake’s reaction to it - but then I decided that it didn’t fit Yang’s personality.

Yeah, Yang is kind of insecure and overly concerned about people using her for her position (or feeling like they can’t tell her ‘no’ because of her position), but she’s also an open and kind person.  There’s no way she could shut Blake out like that for longer than a few seconds, and definitely not long enough for Blake to be the one running for the hills.

So I pivoted!  You can see the point where I did:

“I’m sorry,” Yang said, her eyes begging for forgiveness.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.  I just - after you ran out this morning, I thought...can you just tell me what’s wrong?”

‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ applies to both the author and character in this instance.

Yang doesn’t handle rejection very well though, so she runs off to take a breather.  One thing I really wanted her to do, however, was issue some sort of edict before doing so.  Why?  Because that would annoy Blake!  Who used to boss her around, issuing orders and telling her how to think or feel?  That tall guy who’s six feet under now.  We don’t like him.

Blake doesn’t like being told what to do.  She already escaped an abusive relationship!  (Not that they were together together, but they still had a relationship like two coworkers do.)

This is Yang’s first and last attempt to speak for Blake.  It goes poorly.  But she already knew it was a mistake.  Thankfully, she owns up to it and apologizes (unlike a certain tall guy who we don’t like and is six feet under).  And, as we now know, everything’s hunky dory in no time!

The Phage, besides injecting some angst into the story, provided the secondary benefit of giving Blake and Yang every reason to throw preconceived notions of a relationship timeline out the window.  Because Yang has so little time left, they can (and the author can) rush through as much of a relationship as possible!  Were it not for that, Blake would be difficult to rush into certain situations because her experience with Adam probably left her extremely wary of fully trusting another person.

She can still be wary!  But she can also throw a little bit of caution to the wind if she wants to enjoy Yang’s time for as long as possible.  Besides, it’s not as if their relationship is a secret.

It was definitely a rumor in Blake’s chapter, then confirmed to be true in Yang’s chapter.  I mean, Blake asking the kitchen for enough food to feed two people for a day isn’t exactly something you do if you’re expecting to leave the room.

I low-key love how tickled the kitchen staff were to fulfill that request though, especially when one of the servers is like ‘you’ll obviously need a lot of water.  Gotta stay hydrated!’  And, in general, I enjoyed contrasting the workers in Vale to the ones in Atlas.  It reflects on the leaders of those institutions, further cementing just how awful Jacques was.

Speaking of him…Winter confirms that she knew about his masterful plan to rid Atlas of the Phage when Blake asks about that fabled cure.

When I look at this moment in the story, I’m still somewhat baffled by how well it came together.  Just think about all the pieces that had to fall into place so that we could have this conversation with Winter and already know that asking about the cure is futile.  We also know, even though Winter doesn’t go into detail, exactly how awful Atlas’ ‘cure’ is.  In order for this to happen, we needed this conversation to happen after Weiss and Ruby’s most recent chapters, so I had to make sure that Winter was already in Vale and settled enough to talk to Blake, but also that Blake had a chance to ask.

Rationally, I know that this was the result of staring at my outline, moving pieces around until things fit together how I wanted.  But it’s pretty cool how it worked out!

Despite the good things happening in these chapters - i.e. Blake and Yang becoming an official couple and sorting out their fears and hesitations - there are a few little bad things sprinkled about.  Kind of like how I ruined the White Rose kiss with all that chapel nonsense, I kind of ruined Bumbleby’s get-together chapter too.  Equal opportunity happiness-dasher!  That’s me.

I guess the first bad news is actually for Weiss.  Now that we have Winter around, we can get some juicy details about Atlas, right?

Well, Blake doesn’t care about that as much as Ruby might.  Ruby would be pressing for specifics.  Blake just accepts that the Council is full of bad people who will probably take advantage of Weiss’ inexperience.  We already knew that though, Winter!  Give us names!!  Give us examples!  Tell us what we should be looking out for so that we can yell at Weiss to be careful when the time comes!

Alas…

Bad Thing #2 was the whole ‘the cure doesn’t exist’ thing.  That’s not great news for Yang.

Bad Thing #3 is Blake getting stabbed.  Right in front of Yang, no less!

Honestly, what is going on in Vale right now?

You might’ve noticed, but Atlas uses ‘Your Highness’ for their royal family while Vale uses ‘Your Majesty’ (I think??  But for some reason I can't remember right now.).  I wrote the entire first draft using these terms willy nilly.  Sometimes, Weiss was called Your Highness, sometimes she was called Your Majesty.  Then I realized…this was a way I could differentiate between cultures!  And a subtle clue that the assassin was actually from Atlas!

So I had to go through and fix every instance where someone from Atlas used the wrong honorific and vice versa.  But it was worth it.  Not necessarily because anyone noticed, but because it’s at least consistent, and consistency makes me happy.

This will sound bad, but I kind of wanted Blake to get hurt so that she could prove to Cecelia that she’s a badass too.  And also so that Cecelia could be catty about it like, “It’s just a stab wound, god.  What a sissy.”

Blake’s probably thinking, “B****, I will pull this knife out and stab you with it.”

A secondary (or tertiary?) purpose of the poor Atlesian assassin was to show Cecelia’s ruthless side.  She killed that guy good.  Yang actually would be pretty safe with Cecelia as a bodyguard, I think.

I’ll just point out that Cecelia said that she wouldn't let anyone within a hundred yards of Yang, but Blake sets only a twenty foot radius of ‘death to anyone who might harm Yang.’  This had very little significance when I wrote it, but now I see it as a clear demarcation between ‘protective’ and ‘possessive.’  Protective is ‘you can still have a conversation with someone but at a safe distance.’  Possessive is ‘I’m removing everyone from your vicinity.’

So Yang would be safe with Cecelia…but definitely not happy.

Not that Yang’s super chipper overall - except about Blake, of course.  I think I mentioned in one of the earliest commentaries about how I loved taking Yang, who I usually view as the strongest character, and making her the weakest.  We haven’t even gotten to see her use her spark!  It’s just always there, kind of burning her alive.

She briefly admits to us how much it bothers her to be weak when she was always ‘the strongest.’  Talk about a blow to the ego…and then Blake takes a knife for her?  It’s bizzaro-world for her, and she doesn’t like it.

Her and Weiss are in similar situations with not using their sparks, but for very different reasons.  It forces both of them to rely on their inner character to be compelling and strong leaders, which I think makes them more interesting.  They both share the underlying sense of shame at not being able to use their sparks though.  It’s a big part of who they are (or who they’re supposed to be, in Weiss’ case).

Fortunately, Yang at least had some experience and leadership skills to fall back on.  Weiss kind of started from scratch.

But we get to check in with Weiss next time and see how she’s doing now that she’s learned just how horrible her father was.  Wonder what’s going to happen then…

We’ll find out in just a couple of weeks!


Until next time,

Miko

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