The Taken: After A Fall, chapter 1 ("You should have done this sooner.") [message #4676] |
Fri, 11 August 2006 06:26  |
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rachel.greenham Messages: 290 Registered: November 2002 Location: Bristol, UK |
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... is out, at my site as usual (url in sig).
Rachel
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Re: The Taken: After A Fall, chapter 1 ("You should have done this sooner.") [message #4679] |
Sat, 12 August 2006 03:51   |
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rachel.greenham Messages: 290 Registered: November 2002 Location: Bristol, UK |
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Eric wrote on Sat, 12 August 2006 05:21 | Guess we still don't know whether Valerie was using that third place setting...
Eric
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Can't believe that's still bugging you! Disappointed it seems to be the only thing that is. At this point I don't think it's a very important detail:
Yes, the third place setting was intended for Valerie, but no, she didn't use it following her last-minute decision to serve instead. Ambiguity about whether she used it wasn't actually intended (and I didn't even think it was ambiguous in Nathan1), and in retrospect I suppose it's possible she could both serve and eat, but is probably not in keeping with the mileu of that first meal. I'd imagined her not using it.
At this point I can't possibly be giving anything away by confirming that yes of course Nathan and Eleanor are sharing a single place setting, to say the least... which makes the precise use of the third place setting of little consequence to the narrative. (Or were some people really not paying attention?)
Rachel
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Re: The Taken: After A Fall, chapter 1 ("You should have done this sooner.") [message #4681] |
Sat, 12 August 2006 08:37   |
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rachel.greenham Messages: 290 Registered: November 2002 Location: Bristol, UK |
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Eric wrote on Sat, 12 August 2006 10:49 | Thanks for the note. So Nathan was right in trying to assess Jane's treating the person she introduced as her daughter as if she's part of the hired help.
I didn't say that was the only thing that I wasn't clear on, but I'm hardly in a position to sort out the ones relating to Nathan's past or present without further information.
(And I didn't feel that speculation was really worthy of discussion as to whether Nathan might have some sort of electronic device where his genitals should be, though Valerie should note that it's the only place that none of them has checked for contraband.)
Eric
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/me giggles at the remembered discussion with Ellen about that. 
Yes, Valerie's a lot more security conscious than Jane, and they have a little talk about that before lunch. Once, in there, because of that discussion, I had a couple of lines where Jane has to literally forbid Valerie from performing a cavity search - way too invasive even for Jane. I cut it because I thought it was excessive and gratuitous, but there's a little echo in Valerie's thought that I bet Jane won't let me search him properly, and in Jane, talking to Marie, saying "So, I'm prepared to take her counsel on this - short of taking such extreme measures as to defeat the purpose of having him here." Which in my view, something that invasive would certainly be.
Perhaps it's ironic that for all Nathan's fears about Jane, the only one of them to get so much as a finger in his underwear (while he's wearing it) so far is... Valerie, just checking where she used to hide stuff.
I must say, your mention of an electronic device where his genitals should be produces an odd image probably at home in a different genre. But there's only the one science-fiction concept at work in this story.
Rachel
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Re: The Taken: After A Fall, chapter 1 ("You should have done this sooner.") [message #4684] |
Sat, 12 August 2006 21:28  |
Eric Messages: 641 Registered: January 2003 Location: San Francisco |
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rachel.greenham wrote on Sat, 12 August 2006 05:37 | Perhaps it's ironic that for all Nathan's fears about Jane, the only one of them to get so much as a finger in his underwear (while he's wearing it) so far is... Valerie, just checking where she used to hide stuff.
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That's reassuring. I was a little concerned, given the last few paragraphs in the chapter, that it was going to turn out that there was some substance to Nathan's dream of being sexually approached by Jane.
Eric
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