After the general life meltdown on Wednesday, Friday proved to be much more productive.

Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 70,243
New words today: 1,639
Carrots: many

80k is looking awfully close for so much to be wrapped up in time. At least I’ve finally got the main protagonist in the right place to communicate essential info to the other members of the protagonist team, the final clue has appeared, and I think now all that has to be done is the characters working out what the hell to do with it all. Remember — no concrete antagonist. The antagonist is Life and That’s Just The Way Things Happened. So no satisfying confrontation, just lots of arguing, and characters choosing future paths, and people Learning Valuable Things.

It’s going to be very hard to pull off successfully. Part of me still wants to designate someone or a selection of someones to blame and have a terrific war in return for major parts of a world annihilated and a toxin introduced into the fabric of the universe. Clean living and positive thinking seem kind of weak as general answers, but that’s essentially what the solution looks like from here. Oh, and the promise of a better tomorrow thanks to the protagonist team working to reverse some of the damage physically and spiritually, but again, it’s just not as satisfying as an all-out war.

I know, I know. This has never been that kind of story. It’s been about perception, and the definition of beauty and purity, and what amounts to racism or xenophobia, with a smattering of class prejudice and Luddism (or possibly Neo-Luddism, actually, now that I think about it). Changing an entire culture’s outlook isn’t a small thing in the least, especially when tricky tension-fraught diplomacy is the force used instead of violence. This kind of ending requires more finesse, and my inner critic is trying to avoid it by telling me I can’t handle it, that’s all.