Hello and welcome to an incredibly special episode of The Plotstains Perspective! Why is it so special? It’s a double feature! That’s right! You get two this time! And if you think it’s because I forgot to write one for chapter 2.07 when it was released, you’d be absolutely correct. So let’s just ignore that detail and pretend like I’m doing something special. Agreed? Great!
As always, I recommend that you read the chapters I’m going to be talking about before you read the previous chapters, I’d recommend you go do that. Here’s chapter 2.07 and here’s chapter 2.08.
Today, I mostly want to talk about killing an old lady. Sylvie is an interesting character. As I discussed in my previous Plotstains Perspective, she proves a threat to learning anything about the Wolf Hunters. This means that Sylvie needs to be removed from the picture in order for Lena to do her work. And this is where the problem lies.
You see, this time around, as opposed to a detailed outline which dictated the path Arc 1 took, we decided to make a bullet note of all the major plot points we want to have happen for Arc 2. When Lena faced off against Sylvie, we hadn’t anticipated that she’d be such a major roadblock and killing her seemed like the only way around this problem. As author and editor, Blackbird and I had to come to a difficult choice. Do we kill her or not? Well, we decided, yeah, she has to go, obviously, if we want any chance of plot progressing. So we wrote out a scene where Lena, Dani, and the Alpha discuss just that.
Then we published the chapter.
Oh wait, this is a fantasy world. Magic exists. Right! We don’t need to kill her. All we need to do is make sure we can block the magic somehow. That’s what we get for being pantsers. The answer is right in front of us, but we don’t know it until we publish the chapter where the characters are too stupid to come to the conclusion, either.
Now that isn’t to say we just pull these fixes to our problems from out of our asses. A lot of complex thought goes into any decision we make such as this. The character we’re introduced to in chapter 2.08 always existed and the only difference is that now we have a good reason to use her in more than just the purpose we intend her for later down the line (whether that purpose was large or small is not something I’ll disclose. Maybe she was originally just supposed to say a single line later in the series or maybe she saves the world from aliens. You won’t know until later, folks. Sorry).
And further, for as little as I know about the plot, I know some of the more exciting details that are going to happen, and I can’t wait until I can talk about some of those with you here. Until then, we can continue talking about killing old ladies, I guess.
Sylvie is an interesting character to me. Interesting because we’ve seen her interact with both the Wolf Hunters and the Wolfpack and she doesn’t seem to treat them any differently. The closest we get to seeing a different side of her is when Lena’s enlightenment is blocked. It does make me wonder some things about the lady. Presumably, if she’s like Lena in any way, she’s been able to look into the minds of some of the characters. Considering the characters she’s interacted with thus far, she might be the most knowledgeable character in the entire series. All the characters who have interacted with her have their secrets. Hell, I’d love to know more about Jo and her past, but like hell if she’ll ever be open enough to tell anyone about it. Girl’s as quiet as a mouse.
I want to know what this lady knows. I want to know why she treats all of these killers with so much respect if she does know anything about them. I want to see if she has a bigger part to play in this story. Maybe killing her is the right choice, considering how dangerous she might be to any one of our beloved characters. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
Happy reading,
Written In Shadows 