Ravelling Wrath, chapter 14: Discussion

If you haven't read Ravelling Wrath, chapter 14 yet, you might want to do that before reading further.

Let no one say I am completely without mercy: I did not put the moment when Rinn almost dies at a chapter boundary.

Some behind-the-scenes about Yali's backstory

You might assume – given that I've previously written about childhood food insecurity affecting adult body weight – that I intended the same thing here with Yali.

But you'd be wrong! I always imagined Yali as fat, long before I developed this backstory. Moreover, Yali is intended to be positive representation of a fat person, and having zir fatness be a reflection of zir trauma would undercut that. It's always been my intent that Yali would still be fat even if ze never had the childhood food insecurity. I would have made that clear in the main text, but that's essentially impossible, because there's no way the characters could observe a “what would have happened” in-universe. Unless I made up some new Waiting God power for that. And that didn't really fit into my plot, so I didn't.

So, let me fix that here. It is CANON!!! that Yali would still be fat even if ze never had the childhood food insecurity. There, I said it: these authors notes have the authority to pronounce things canon. At least when I'm making a special exception for something that would be impossible in the text.

Arinyo Seti

I wanted to foreshadow the introduction of Arinyo Seti a bit more than I did. But I couldn't exactly mention zir name without it being a little too conspicuous. Oh well. At least I gave plenty of hints that Yali had history with the Waiting Temple in general.

In some sense, it's unfair that I didn't tell the audience the name, when the narrator, Rinn, obviously knew it. But leaving out the name actually puts you closer to the same perspective as Rinn, who has seen the name Seti a zillion times and had no way of making the connection.

Hospital beds

I briefly wondered if Yali would have imprinted a hospital bed when Yali was born.

However, Arinyo Seti had a planned home birth, assisted by a midwife, as has been the Waiting tradition for centuries. That's also canon, although it's not canon with three exclamation points, so you can ignore it if you want to.

Even if Yali had imprinted a hospital bed just after birth, I don't know if ze'd be able to manifest it. In order to access an imprint, you might have to either consciously or subconsciously think back to the situation where you got it. And it might be hard to think back to when you were a newborn.