8FOLD: Mancers # 6, "Big Scary Brain"

[Drew Perron]

On 8/15/2018 8:56 AM, Tom Russell wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 9:07:59 PM UTC-4, Scott Eiler wrote:
>> On 2018-08-13 07:09, Tom Russell wrote:
>>
>>> "I am a brilliant genius engineer," mutters Sarah upon waking. She
>>> twists her body so that it rests on her left side, enabling her right
>>> arm to swing out in search of the pen and paper on her night table.
>>> She misses the first time, knocking her alarm clock off the table. It
>>> doesn't land with a hard clunk on the hard wood floor, but rather on
>>> that pile of papers and books that she really should pick up one of
>>> these days.
>>
>> It's a good waking moment, but it's a weird thing to say to oneself in
>> *any* circumstance.  Even though you're a game designer and you're proud
>> of it, I'll be surprised if you say it to yourself when you awake.  And
>> modern-day politics have pretty well established, if you *say* you're a
>> genius, you're probably not.
> 
> Well, it was supposed to stick out a little, especially at the beginning,
> but I hoped that the context throughout the story - that she's choosing
> to define herself this way, that she doesn't want to let herself be
> defined by this occultish stuff that she's clearly terrified of, that she's
> fighting a sort of inner-battle against it - would make it "click" (that
> and the fact that she's saying it having woken up with an idea, while she's
> working on the idea).

And for the record, this worked well for me. :>

Drew "augh so many months" Perron