Something I love about writing with Spiral is both of us have characters with a strong and storied history. The way that Fernando and Elisabeth approach one another here is directly related to the people they have loved and lost; Fernando echoes his lost love, Elysia, in the ways he tries to manipulate Elisabeth here, while Elisabeth silently fears that Fernando's words might have the same power over her that her abusive husband did. It affects the way they attempt to understand and misunderstand one another, and I didn't expect several of the dynamics that unfolded as a result.
I think for many characters, the type of relationship that Elisabeth and Fernando have would seem casual. Which is absolutely Elisabeth's intention at the start, but the truth is this is the closest she has gotten to willingly opening up her heart to another person in a decade. And when she feels too intimately close to another person, she withdraws. The events of the Dawn of the Darkest Day just confirm for her that withdrawing was the correct choice.
There's some hypocrisy in this, given she herself has hidden her own alignment and her own crimes as a murderess and poisoner, but the fact that Fernando has held a woman under his control with Tapu Fini is something so painfully close to Elisabeth's own personal trauma that it feels the greater sin, in her eyes. To her, it's proof that she's doomed to repeat the same mistakes in her life, over and over.
I didn't want this to be an easy conversation for Elisa, because her emotions are not clear for her in this moment. Although her loyalties are clear: to
Cillian Quinn, to
Lulu Flint, to Rocket, and to herself. For all her relentless self-examination, she is a lonely character deeply rooted in self-denial and lacking in her own self-awareness. The fact she chooses to face Fernando at all instead of just choosing to ignore him is proof that she felt
something, despite telling herself the encounter meant nothing happened between them at all. Because that's the truth she needs to tell herself to move forward.
She's not here to let him down; she's here to give herself the closure she needs to walk away. She needs to know she
can walk away.
For this reason, she doesn't lie to him -- because she needs to believe this reason, too, to help her let go of him. She tells him she is incapable of giving him anything real, and it is true. She tells him she chooses to be the one to disappoint him, but what she doesn't say is he was the one who shattered her expectations first.
So when Fernando states that she is afraid, the accuracy of that perception stuns her into silence. When he misreads her as someone too vain to handle his disfigurement, it wounds her pride, because they'd seen one another's physical faults firsthand. When he accuses her of projection, she can plainly see the truth of it, but dares not acknowledge it. When he asks what happened to her, she shuts down and hardens, for fear of what he might do with the knowledge. But when he says he believes she is of value to him, she
can't believe him. The sincerity of his feelings is something she refuses to accept, whether it
is true or not, because it is safer to doubt them. So she is cold where he is warm, and where he is expressive, she is detached and clinical.
The words that Fernando uses in his last ditch effort to attack her worked on
him a long time ago, because of how tightly he had been bound to Elysia. Elisabeth is a character, however, who always yearns for escape. She doesn't like to face uncomfortable truths or attachments. So when she perceives she is given an uncomplicated exit, she takes it and runs. She is cruel in how detachedly she replies, though she may not realize it. She believes firmly, in this moment, that she's nothing and no one to him. Because to believe otherwise is too dangerous for her.
All of this agitation results in her ultimate removal and accidental abandonment of the poisoner's ring that she has worn in every single thread Spiral and I have done to date. It was the main talking point of their first thread,
SILPH X FIORELLI, in the Palentine's Day Event. I chose to do Chekhov's Ring 1) Because I like the play on the 'little black card' with the 'little gold ring' and, 2) Because the implications of an object like this can vary from being a jumping point of suspicion, to something as simple as the power of holding something that you know someone else values and wants. It stops this from being the clean break that Elisa wanted.
Where Elisabeth is dealing with shame, self-loathing, and overall resentment of herself for being in her current predicament, Fernando's experience here is a far different one. From his perspective, one of the few outlets of solace in his life had come to him in his most vulnerable moment and abruptly decided to abandon him. He can't know the things that Elisabeth has learned about him; he can't know her alignment and her loyalties; all he knows is that she is leaving him, she is offering him no kindness in doing so, and her reasons are sharp and bitterly cynical in nature. In the span of a single week, his losses continue to grow. It's a different layer to Fernando than we normally get to see, and the lack of knowledge he has regarding Elisabeth reflects in the nature of their back-and-forth. He can't read her fully, but in the end, he's partially right:
This wasn't about him. Not entirely.
Honestly I think every single thread Spiral and I have done up until this point got some shout-outs in this thread, and that was very cool to me. Writing posts came very naturally with the dynamic we created, and while I was genuinely surprised by how several things unfolded as we wrote, I always felt I knew how Elisa would respond to them. To be continued... For now, we face the meteor!
PS: Fun #FlowerFacts: Snapdragons are flowers that symbolize willpower, but also deception. Fern's willpower is something that comes up again and again, which is why it was a natural choice, but this choice of flower also felt like a sly way of Elisabeth communicating the ways they were deceiving one another.
WELCOME TO COMMUNAL CURRY. Every couple of months staff will create a curry mega thread for members to partake in the creation of a delicious, rewarding meal.[break][break]
