In Review: A Fool's Goddess - Chapter Seventeen

Shit sure has been crazy lately, hasn’t it?

Honestly, I wish I could have so little to say as to fill another review with nothing but squeals over video games and books I’ve enjoyed recently. But, unfortunately, things aren’t nearly so piquant. Granted, we’re not in the apocalypse either (though you’d think so from the way some people have reacted), but seeing as I live in California and the whole state is in lockdown, I feel I can say that the coronavirus has fucked things up pretty decently.

There’s nothing uniquely dire that has happened to me in response to COVID-19. I wasn’t exactly an extrovert before, though working from home this past week makes me ache for some different scenery. The most frustrating thing is how I wanted to use Granblue Versus as a means to go out to fighting game gatherings and meet new people, but I guess that won’t be happening anytime soon.

I guess I did end up cancelling my hotel reservation for Anime Expo if you want to count that as being affected. Even though the organizers haven’t cancelled the event, I’m sure it’s going to at least have the date pushed back so I didn’t see the point in keeping my reservation. I still might not go at that later date, as my employer has cut my hours and subsequently my income, but here’s hoping I can still attend my annual vacation choice.

La vie est drôle, eh?

Anyway, I hope you’ve been taking care of yourself, washing your hands and all that. I’ve been having a shit time sleeping lately, mostly due to stressing out over how to make a request for cover art for my next novel. Stupid as fuck, I know, but let that stand as an example of how socially inept I can be. I managed to do the damn thing, though, so I guess that means I’m not beyond saving.

The other problem is just that I haven’t been writing for about a week now. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’m pretty sure pushing myself to write daily has broken my brain. Not spending a night writing feels wrong now, and I seem to start having nightmares if I go two or three days without typing for at least an hour. No idea if that’s merely a coincidence or not, but it certainly pushes me to keep at it.

…Fuck, but you’re not here to listen to this kind of garbage, are you?

I wish I had some something substantial to say on the chapter, but… I mean, c’mon, it’s barely more than a page long… It’s a description of Lior’s dream, then a sharp conclusion—nothing else.

But…let me try and salvage this “review”…

Like a few other chapters, this one used to be tacked onto another. It was originally the opener for Chapter Eighteen, but I felt like sectioning it its own chapter made the conclusion as abrupt as I wanted it to be. Many people have felt the sensation of being woken up in the middle of a vivid dream and I sought to emulate that.

Originally, there weren’t any lines for Tornara here. Lior just looked upon her, she smiled, and that was that. That felt a little too distant and emotionless so I decided to let her address our fool sweetly before he was denied his response. I also considered going for a full conversation here, but in contrast, that felt too fulfilling.

Doing so would be giving Lior exactly what he wanted and that risked damaging his motivation for the rest of novel. If a worshiper knows for certain that their god is available for communication, doesn’t that diminish their relationship? Gods are such wondrous creatures because they necessitate faith and reply in obtuse, inexact ways. If you could just kneel and pray to get God on the line, you wouldn’t have faith—you’d have understanding.

Simply put, you don’t need to have faith in things that can reliably happen. Belief is not a science, if anything, it is how humans perceive events when science cannot explain them. They say God will die when we finish untangling this universe’s knots, but so long as mystery exists, so does the divine.

Unless you’re a cheeky jackass like me who believes in the presence of God through science. A teacher of mine once described God as “the first push”—the initial reaction that started the Big Bang—and I always found that idea to be alluring. I suppose I just find our world to be too perfect and chaotic for it all to just be reactions upon reactions, but I won’t deny that preserving the concept of God within more scientific beliefs is pretty limp-dicked of me.

But hey, I do me, you do you. I’m not trying to push my beliefs so let’s leave it at that.

Let’s see… Yup, there’s not much more I can say about this chapter without possibly writing myself into a corner in a potential sequel/paralogue/whatever. Like I figured, this chapter is just too short to really have much to dissect. So, rather than burn your eyes with more of my coronavirus-related grousing or religious views, let’s end it here.

At least it didn’t actually become Granblue and Review—r-right?

But don’t worry—I’m pretty sure I’ll have plenty to say next time. I can remember some dumb shit in Eighteen I’d love to talk about, and seeing as it includes Lior’s response to this chapter, there’ll be more to discuss.

And with that, I’m donezo. Stay safe, and let’s hope this all blows over sooner rather than later.

This has been Varnicrast, over and out.