BoM/TWS Message Forum

So, obviously, I've been loving this thread. I am popping in now, as I start grafting on yet another branch, just to let people know that I haven't been ignoring it.

I really can't comment, of course. Anything I say is likely to be construed one way or another. I will only remark that the branch I started posting today ("Forage and Storage" ), and the one that I will be adding in a few weeks' time, were both conceived and outlined more than a week ago.

Okay, I'll make one more remark, a small point, and only to addresses some possible continuity issues across the full interactive:

>> The status on Cassie's crush is always kind of weird to me. It's not really a secret since everyone who knows her knows about it (Cassie seems like the sort who'd be very bad at hiding how she feels about things). The confusion, for me, comes from whether or not Will is aware of it. It seems like in some branches he is and in some he's ignorant of it... often times with the same writer doing both.<<

I think the best way to understand Will is that he is oblivious to romantic attention at the conscious level, but much more aware of it at a subconscious level. So at a deep level he knows when a girl is interested in him, but at the conscious level he either remains blind, or argues himself out of what his subconscious is telling him.

In the specific case of Cassie, she is so overt that he can't really suppress his recognition of her feelings, at least not when she is really pushing herself at him, and then that awareness either breaks through completely--and it breaks through not with a shock of recognition, but as a blithe acknowledgement of what was always obvious—or he subconsciously acts as though he knows what she feels. But when she's not around, or he is distracted by something else, he is able to miss her cues.

Yeah, this is a bit of a kludge, but I do think something similar is going on with him and Sydney. Even when they are together, he resists the idea that she is in love with him—he tells himself that he can't believe it. But he only gets more deeply involved with her (at the beginning), and goes along with her, because his subconscious tells him that it's a real thing. I.e., it would be a mistake (IMO) to think that Will is only letting himself be led around by his willie with her. He is responding to what at a deep level he feels is a genuine affection in her for him, and if he drags his heels it's because he is always comparing himself to other guys, and so can't shake the insecure suspicion that her feelings can't be real.

Is any of this relevant to Clover Mystery? Shrug.