Liu Xi is always prone to survivor's guilt. That's why next issue she goes to take on the Hooded Hood about this.

But on a wider level, since Liu Xi and Vinnie are due to spklit up at some point between the period this story is set and more contemporary tales that have appeared on the board, I thought this incident might help add to the grist for that particular mill.

As I recall, Liu Xi's life has been somewhat redolent with males willing to manipulate her "for her own good". These have included the people who brought her up, her grandfather The Void Scholar, Xander the Improbable, the Hooded Hood, Lord Slithis, and to some degree even her romance interests the Doomherald and Vinnie. Some of these have even had good intentions nfor her.

However, in pretty much all those cases that manipulation has led to Liu Xi getting hurt and usually for people she cares about getting hurt. Men undercutting Liu Xi's agency and leaving her crying must be something of a sort spot by now.

The problem with Vinnie is that since they started dating he has been dumped with the role of acting sorcerer supreme (himself manipulated into it by the absent Xander). That job virtually requires its holder to be devious, manipulative, ruthless, and seperated from other people. In fact it requires Vinnie to stop being the kind of well-meaning goof he was when Liu Xi first encountered him and become exactly the sort of person who Liu Xi has always had trouble with.

Spoken about or not, that's the kind of development that's got to wrankle inside Liu Xi and help inform an eventual seperation.




Fsctoring into this emotional wreckage are some other folks, for sure. Head of the list has got to be Beth Shellett herself. When the next Untold Tales opens it'll be the day after all this happened, maybe nine or ten hours will have passed, and beth will have left the Mansion quietly to try and deal with this on her own. That's not a good idea, as the chapter will illustrate.

G-Eyed's own emotional journey isn't over either, of course. It occurred to me in writing the story, but didn't really get space in the story to make the point, that almost all of Bry's closest friends are no longer available to him for support. His cousin Derek (Exile) and Valeria of Carfax are far off in the Mythlands. spiffy is running badripoor. Nats is, I think, in Hell. Dancer is apparently in the Sea Monkey cty. Lisa is a cosmic being. Finny and Trickshot are literally off in happy endings. Of Bry's oldest friends, only Hatman, CSFB! and Vizh are really still around, as all of them are busy doing Lair things the day afte ra global emergency.

Really, the best person for G-Eyed to talk to would be Beth. So of course they don't do that.