Ok...what follows is what creeps into my head when I'm alone, delivering papers at 3am with Metamor City playing on my car stereo:

If it wasn't for Jared's unconscious ability to influence people, I'd be telling Rebecca to back the hell off from Daniel/Danni and leave him/her alone.  Why, you may ask?  Simple:

She has a husband, two co-wives, and is pregnant with Brian's child...and what's Daniel got?  Zero...zip...nada...zilch.  Were it not for Jared, Daniel would be working his job, trying to pay off what he owes the Corp, and constantly pining after something he can NEVER have again.  I don't know about you, but to me that doesn't sound like much of a life.

I think Danni's reaction to when Rebecca first confronted her about Jared was...well...justified.  I mean seriously...Becks has it all, and Daniel has nothing...who is she to say what's best for him/her?

I dunno...I just think that Rebecca and her whole little baby-making franchise there should just leave well enough alone.  Now, Daniel/Danni is basically alone again.  It's not like he/she could be with Rebecca again the way he used to, so AFAIC, he's back to square one in the happiness department.

Yeah, I know this comment maybe should have been posted in one of the other chapter threads, but after seeing how this whole thing played out, I thought it would be best to sum up my thoughts here.  Of course now, with Daniel's guilt overtaking him I imagine it's only a matter of time before he spills the beans about his involvement with Victor...and what he helped cause.

I wonder then if Rebecca will end up regretting ever rescuing him in the first place...

I agree entirely.  They're definitely not out of the woods yet.

Even WITH the soul-changing power, I think Rebecca was being a bit of a meddler.

Daniel's chances of achieving happiness don't look any greater than they did when he got started this whole mess.

Thanks for chiming in with your comments, guys! I can already tell we're going to have a good discussion of this in the next episode's feedback section. For now, I'll just say that Rebecca is starting to realize her own part in creating Daniel's predicament, and that she's not going to accept things just going back to the way they were before. And yes, that's going to lead to new and interesting problems. To say nothing of how Danni is going to feel about all of this...

Keep it on the bright side,

Chris

Indeed.  I'd have to say that Rebecca's character is my liest favorate.  She's one of those people who expect everyone to be happy and get along, then crys when they don't.  Ick.  Those people bother me.  While we don't know for certain what happened when she and Daniel split, I get the feeling she moved on, somewhat oblivious to just how much she hurt Daniel.  I'm sure we were supposed to feel sorry for Rebecca as she cried on the floor after being so thoroughly bitched at by Danni, but me, I cheered for Danni.  She might have been under Jarad's influence, but I think she was more under the influence of all those feelings that had built up for the past year.  Rebecca needed to know how Daniel felt, and sometimes it takes a bitch to put a bitch in her place!

When the Hive insisted that they split up, Rebecca viewed it as a sacrifice for the sake of the Collective, as did Daniel. The difference is that Rebecca came to be happy in her new circumstances but Daniel didn't. (Granted, Rebecca had far more REASON to be happy.)

One thing that I now realize I needed to show more of is the relationship between Daniel and the Sommers cell prior to the skyport mission. Rebecca and the others tried hard to keep Daniel in the social circle, and Brian and Sasha always welcomed him to the nest as a friend and compatriot -- but Daniel avoided with increasing frequency because the experience made him uncomfortable, especially after Rebecca became pregnant. It wasn't as if Daniel was being shut out of their lives completely; he withdrew because the relationship couldn't be what he wanted it to be, and his inability to give up on that relationship was an ongoing source of pain and friction.

As for Danni's rant at Rebecca, my personal feeling is that she vented some things that needed to be said, but that she did it in the cruelest and most hurtful way possible. Danni was deliberately trying to burn bridges here, but instead Rebecca saw it as further proof of how much Danni's personality had been altered. This may have been wishful thinking on 'Becca's part -- as you noted, Sara, those feelings had been building up for a LONG time, and they weren't wholly unjustified. Rebecca is the least logical and most emotion-driven character I've ever written; not to say that she's stupid -- she isn't -- but feelings are more important to her than rational analysis.

Of course, sometimes that's a good thing. A rational person might have let Danni stay brainwashed, trapping Daniel inside her until he was driven into psychosis by the experience. That wouldn't have ended happily for anybody, including Jared: as I told Tee, I wouldn't have ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide when Danni finally weakened enough for Daniel's personality to emerge, after months or years of imprisonment...

Hey, I never said Danni should have stayed with Jarad.  I'm all for them getting away from him.  But I stand by my assesment of Rebecca.  She bothers me.  Probably because she is, as you put it, emotionally driven and illogical.  You didn't do a bad job of telling the story between Danial and Rebecca.  I got most of what you pointed out from the story.  But knowing her side of the story doesn't stop me from not liking her character.

>she vented some things that needed to be said, but that she did it in the cruelest and most hurtful way possible.

Yeah, well, that's what happens when a girl gets in full on bitch mode.  No, I'm sure Daniel would never had said those things to her.  Sometimes being a bitch is the only way we girls can say things that need to be said...unfortunately, it's usually said in the meanest way possible.  Bitch mode is kinda hard to control sometimes...ok, most the time.  And it's not like Danni has a lot of experience in that area.  The bitch train was being driven both by Danni's new unconscious obsession with Jarad, and the fact that Becca was bad mouthing him, and by Daniel's built up emotions.  How else is Danni supposed to react??

Chris, you wrote that seen really well.  Don't blame us for cheering Danni on!!

well I have a Q would your soul stay change or would it change back

Like when you get burned. the burned skin grows back some what normal ?
 

The question of whether the soul-shaping is permanent is one that Danni's friends are going to have to answer pretty soon. You can look for that issue to be addressed sometime in the next few chapters.

> Hey, I never said Danni should have stayed with Jarad.  I'm all for
them getting
>  away from him.  But I stand by my assesment of Rebecca.
 She bothers me.
>  Probably because she is, as you put it, emotionally
driven and illogical.
>  You didn't do a bad job of telling the story
between Danial and Rebecca.
>  I got most of what you pointed out from
the story.  But knowing her side of the
> story doesn't stop me from not
liking her character.

Heh, fair enough! I personally enjoy writing Rebecca; she lets me give voice to the things that other characters wouldn't say, and I find her innocence endearing. But she would probably drive me crazy in real life, for much the same reasons that she would drive you crazy. :)

> Sometimes being a bitch is the only way we girls can say things that
need to
> be said...unfortunately, it's usually said in the meanest way
possible.  Bitch
> mode is kinda hard to control sometimes...ok, most the
time.  And it's not like
> Danni has a lot of experience in that area.

*grin* That's kinda what I suspected. Glad to see that my instincts paid off here. Sometimes I question my own credibility, as a man writing about female characters; one of my listeners took me to task this week for Eva's speech in Chapter 9, saying that it expressed an untrue and offensive stereotype. (She wasn't angry at me, but she felt that I had badly strayed from accuracy and needed to be informed.) So it's reassuring when I hear from my female listeners that I've done something right. :)

> Chris, you wrote that seen really well.  Don't blame us for cheering Danni on!!

Thank you! I knew I was portraying an ethically ambiguous situation, but I hadn't anticipated how much some of my listeners would identify with Danni in that scene. As a writer, I'm used to being sympathetic for whoever the viewpoint character is, and in that case it was Rebecca.  I'll take this as a good thing, though. :)