Don’t get me wrong I loved season 1 despite the flaws but somehow this feels like a course correction in some ways.

I’ve not had an experience writing over the years on other projects where things feel so organic, where it feels like all my influences paid off and tied in, where my own realizations are so fluid. I don’t know if I will after. It’s an incredible feeling

All the cards together. Some positioned carefully to pull off the move that makes the effect. Sat back and grinned when I finished.
It feels like for nine years I was setting up a card trick without realizing it and now I’m getting the payoffs. Wild how you lay your own groundwork without noticing

There’s a lot of stories I respect that have scenes about domino effects and illustrate accordingly. Butterfly affect with butterfly imagery, etc
I grabbed some smoke in my fingertips tonight and held it. I got the page written where the trick ties in
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Since then, 9 years on, been wresting with the whole card trick motif.
This new perspective on framing the characters’ stories against the worldbuilding shifted that. The “trick” I realized can’t be about any one character but about their journeys. can’t pick a card without a deck -

I realized in the year after that that framework and description of the steps of the trick unconsciously too heavily matched the pledge turn prestige framework of The Prestige film. And it was too heavy-handed. Took away from the story. Quickly scrapped.