In Review: A Fool's Goddess - Chapter Five

Good morning, good evening, and hello! It’s time for number five of In Review!

I’ve been playing tons of AI: The Somnium Files, and boy does it make me eager to do more writing of my own. I’ve been hammering away at my next novel for about two months now, so that game turned out to be the perfect bit of inspiration I needed to make sure I’d hit the finish line at full speed. Of course, I’m still happy to do another chapter review, so on that note, let’s get the ball rolling.

I mentioned last time that Chapter Five holds a special place in my heart, and it’s solely because it focuses entirely on my favorite character: the lovably laconic Master Malka. Her name is “queen” in Hebrew, though I think she’s far from royal. I meant to use Malka as a filler name for her until I found a better one, but after considering that ‘MaMa’ pun that Chen shares, I decided to stick with it.

Malka’s personality is an amalgamation of several things. I wanted her to feel like a distant role model or perhaps an idol, generally just someone of great skill and renown that feels unreachable to a neophyte. Her distance is more characteristic than literal, however, so I imparted her a curt way of speaking, allowing her to feel cold without turning her confidence into timidity. She’s immodest, blunt, and quite aware of her own talent, but also easily annoyed and maybe a bit lazy.

She’s also quite strange, shown mostly in her utter disregard for social norms. She doesn’t care how she’s presented or what’s polite, so she likely comes off as rude, but I like to think of it more as her testing the people she meets. Malka doesn’t want to waste any time, so she’ll put people in uncomfortable situations just to see if they’re worth dealing with.

Personally, I feel that her most defining trait is her ability to mentor. She’s quick to recognize the oddities in Lior and is able to provide advice on how he may improve his sculpting. As a quick aside, allow me to apologize if any sculpting advice or terminology I used was incorrect. I was going off lessons I had in my own schooling, as well as online tutorials, but I would not be surprised if I was completely wrong. I am truly sorry to any sculptors who had to endure my crappy use of their medium in my story.

Back on Malka’s leadership, she obviously needed to be a good teacher to fulfill the role of Master. For that, I pulled somewhat on my memories of favorite teachers, but mostly on the years I spent with a certain lady. I won’t give her name here, both out of respect for her privacy and as proof that I’m not ready for her to see what I’ve done with my life, so I’ll refer to her as “Boss”.

A-and I just want to go on record to say that I always called her that! It’s not any influence from AI (the game contains a character of the same name), though that game has brought back my memories of her, conveniently right around when this chapter was posted too.

But yeah, let’s talk about Boss.

Time for another personal story from Varnicrast? You bet your sweet bippy it is. But this one actually relates to a character, so it might be worth reading…

I spent three years working as a security guard, being my first real job out of college (yeah, good fucking use of my degree, huh). I spent a year and half of that working grave shift and hating life. Eventually, the site manager got fired for reasons they never told me, and they soon hired a woman to fill the role.

That woman was Boss.

She immediately got to work whipping our little team into shape. I remember her arranging training seminars, compiling information into handbooks, and generally just improving our operations. Our team did both local patrols and a sort of global event monitoring system for the company we were leased out to, but she had no problem leading both sides efficiently.

I was the lowest guy on the team, being the grave foot patrolman, but I soon heard that one of the day shift global operators was quitting. So, seeing a glimmer of hope to escape that crap job, I snuck away from my shift supervisor one morning and approached Boss directly. I asked her if I could have a shot at the day shift position, even though I lacked the relevant experience.

To my infinite joy, she gave me an interview and subsequently the job.

I was quite eager to prove I was worth the risk. I put my nose to the grindstone and did everything I could to meet her expectations. I threw in extra effort where I could, picked up overtime shifts to make sure the position was always filled, and basically just wanted to show my gratitude to Boss.

In my opinion, she had saved me. Anyone who’s worked grave shift will know how absolutely brutal that sort of thing can be on your mind and body, so being given the ability to sleep at night again was divine.

But I guess what surprised me was that she noticed the effort I was putting in. To be perfectly honest, I had no intentions of maintaining that work ethic, and I was probably going to relax once I was cemented in the day shift team. But Boss took note of my actions and commended me for them.

I didn’t really know how to react to that. That was the first time someone had praised me for achieving… well, anything really. I won’t bore you with the details, but the circumstances of my youth left me rather starved for that kind of attention. I’m not trying to go all ‘boohoo, I had a sad childhood, pity me’ or shit like that, but I want you to understand that I was genuinely surprised to get an attaboy out of something besides a video game.

And that sort of feedback just made me work harder.

Maybe Boss knew that. Maybe she figured out that I was so wretched that a simple compliment would buy my loyalty. I’d like to think she was just a good person who knew how to lead people. Regardless, that was all it took to get me more motivated than ever.

Boss started giving me specialized projects that I gladly tackled. All the while, she continued to provide guidance on how I could improve myself. She and I would talk more personally at times, with subjects such as the life of her mentally-handicapped daughter or my dreams of one day writing a novel. She grew from being just my manager to a dear friend and confidant.

I wonder what you’d think to see me now, Boss. I still haven’t finished that novel I told you I’d write, but I did get a different one out. I hope your daughter’s doing alright as well.

Suffice it to say that I kept working hard until my last day working for her. Eventually, our employing company decided to reduce their security budget, resulting in a loss of two-thirds of the staff. My position was cut, and though I was offered a new part-time one (back on grave shift), I declined and decided to move on.

My last conversation with Boss was quite bittersweet. She was terribly busy with determining how to make things work with much less personnel, but she still took a moment to speak with me. She wrote me a personal letter of recommendation for any future job applications, and I apologized for being unwilling to stick with the new job. She, of course, waved that off and we talked about my novel one last time. I talked about my big plans for it, and I distinctly remember her words right before we parted.

“You’re gonna soar.”

Well, it took a few more years for me to get truly inspired, but maybe you were right all along, Boss. At the very least, I’m doing everything I can to make that dream come true. Hopefully I’ll be able to see you with my head held high one day.

So, with all that in mind, perhaps you, dear reader, can understand why Master Malka is so close to my heart. I had always wanted to write a mentor-type, and while Malka’s personality is practically the opposite of Boss’, she is still sort of my tribute to her. I wanted to give Lior that same joy of having someone who respects you and is worthy of being called your superior, a sort of guru who would help set him on the right path.

What’s that? If Malka was supposed to honor Boss, then why is she so risqué and weird?

…Okay, you got me. I’m actually just a pervert.

In all seriousness, I just wanted a sexy character at least somewhere in the story. I wanted Lior’s second master to be completely different from Idan, and I felt having her be a voluptuous woman was a good way to make that instantly apparent. Having her be this sort of incredible beauty who had a difficult personality and zero concern over her appearance was very fun and made her introduction all the more memorable.

I can’t deny that she also appeals specifically to my tastes. She’s stolid, decisive, well-endowed, and artistically motivated. I’m a tit man who has a thing for strong personalities, so it’s probably fair to say I was feeding some primate-level desires with her character. Deplorable maybe, but again, I don’t see the point in creating things your heart’s not in.

You ought to utilize every part of yourself in your creative endeavors. Remaining socially acceptable and avoiding the judgment of others can only take you so far, at least in my opinion. Sometimes it’s best to let your fetishes design your work as you may come upon a fresh idea that you can infuse into a character.

Or you just sate your lust, I don’t fucking know…

You know, I wonder if I actually had a crush on Boss. Granted, she had a solid thirty years on me and wasn’t really my type physically (please don’t kill me if you read this, Boss), but I think someone once said the mind is a funhouse mirror. Wouldn’t surprise me if my subconscious had tied Boss to Malka as a subdued form of romantic desire.

Okay, now as to Malka’s style for sculpture, that came to me on a whim. I tried to think of an explanation for her strange sleep habits and a way for her to sympathize with Lior’s oddness, so I felt giving her an equally intangible inspiration would solve both those problems. The sculptures mentioned in this chapter are mostly inspired by the art you’d see in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, though the third one is a reference to a short story of mine. Essentially, her nightmares were born from my own.

Finally, I wanted to close out Lior’s first meeting with Malka on a high note. There’s a good bit of humor in it, and I especially enjoyed Malka’s bit of teasing. It once again shows the contrast between Malka and Idan and signifies the transition in Lior’s life.

There’s also that bit that reveals Malka is a lesbian, and I had a family member ask me why I wrote her like that. I’ll give the same answer here that I gave them: that’s just how she is. Nothing in particular made me go ‘yeah, Malka’s all about that puss, bro’. It does provide a good excuse as to why she and Gili are close, though I could have also just said they were old friends. Just like a real person, there’s no ‘cause’ or ‘reason’ behind her sexuality; it’s just another part of Master Malka, the character who sits so close to my heart.

And then our chapter closes out, with Lior finally getting his first drink. Life is looking good for him, at least until he returns to the studio and gets his first lesson from Malka. Thus, the curtain falls on what could be called Act One of A Fool’s Goddess.

God, this has been one of the most enjoyable In Reviews to write. I can only hope it’s equally fun to read.

Alrighty then, let’s break it off here. The story’s about to go through a time skip, so please be ready for that next week. It’s got more Malka, though I don’t think the next In Review will be quite the wall of text this one turned out to be. Still, I’ll continue to do my best to find some stuff to talk about.

And remember, drinking two parts water for every one part alcohol is a solid way to avoid a hangover. Sure, you might find yourself pissing every fifteen minutes, but at least you won’t have to endure your master’s chiseling!

Have a good week, my friend. Ciao.