MFU crack van rec #30

[elmey]

My second crack_van, rec this go around went up tonight, it's
kleenexwoman's The Pomegranate Affair.

It's another of the wonderful, unusual stories that she manages to produce in this fandom.

Comments

[saki101]

...tendency to look for the positive...Yes, there is always that

[elmey]

I'm really fascinated by your approach to the beginning of the story, you give it a grounding in the real world, instead of letting the whole thing slide immediately into metaphor the way I did.

The file cabinet with the catalog of Napoleon's sins is certainly suggestive. It made me think of purgatory, and Illya is a guide of sorts, especially when he grabs Napoleon later and says "I won't let go". Though he does let go in the end, he has to, he's the one that can't leave the underworld. Of course we don't know exactly where Napoleon is at the end, or where he will go. We just know that he couldn't hold on to Illya.

It's all so suggestive and so amorphous, but you know something happened and it wasn't good.

[azdak]

I love this, especially the ideas about the backstory. It's very much what I was thinking - that one possible way of interpreting the story is that there's a Thrush drug at the root of it - but much better worked out. I really like the idea that the aim of the serum was to contact the dead. It's fantastically spooky. Maybe I should post the fragment of Acheron Serum as my contribution to this analysis.

Hang on a mo.

Have done. Here.

[kleenexwoman]

i really, really like your close reading of my story. i want to hug everything you have written here.

[saki101]

So many layers to peel back and consider, and such a pleasure to do so.