Saga - OT Night, Day and the Hues in-between (5 ABY | OCs | Poetry Inspiration Challenge response #2)

So glad to see this! Ever since you got “Sadie and Maud” in the challenge, I’ve been super curious to see what you would do with it—and you definitely take it in a very interesting direction here! (And with a gender switch thrown in! )

Several very cool new additions to your ocedarium here. (Tarlo of course I recognize from “A Blaster Wound?,” though he’s still relatively new all the same, I guess. ) Aleris (who I know has the RL basis mentioned in your preliminary notes) grew on me over the course of the story. She looked at first like she was going to be one of those overidealistic, “I can change the world just by being me!1!” people who think they can change other people just by being themselves. But then she really was able to effectively reach out to Vashar—not by way of charisma or sparkly charm, but by genuine friendliness and caring, by really and truly searching for the things in him “worth saving from the fire” ( ), and—perhaps most importantly—by seeing him as more than “Junior” plus his last name.

That of course is where the “Sadie and Maud” connection comes in. Vashar is kind of a sullen, angsty version of Sadie, though he contrasts with her too. While Sadie goes on “pick[ing] life / With a fine-toothed comb” no matter what Maud and her parents say, Vashar is stuck in the shadow of his successful older brother, so much so that he himself has become used to thinking of himself as “Junior, the brother of that oh-so-perfect...” But Aleris’s friendly overtures pave the way for him to “the livingest” he’s beenin a long time. (Heck, the fact that he’s the one who suggests going out for ice-on-a-stick shows us he’s got it in him already!)

In contrast, Tarlo is clearly “Maud, who went to college,” the one who winds up with a feeling of emptiness and incompleteness despite (even because of) all his professional accomplishments—that plus a feeling that that brother of his, who everyone thinks is such a no-account, may have gotten things more right than anyone gives him credit for. We learn that Vashar has a noble heart underneath that awkward exterior, and that Tarlo, despite his own success, has not forgotten that fact. <3

I’d be curious to know more about how the title came to mind, though I’ll take a bit of a guess. In a way Tarlo and Vashar are as different as night and day, and they’re seen by others as being as incompatible as night and day. But the story ends with Tarlo longing to reconcile with his brother, to “meet him halfway” (a familiar EP theme ), and perhaps the place where that can happen can be described as a vibrant, luminous twilight zone between night and day. It certainly would be very cool to see this story continue, should you choose to do so; I’m enjoying these new OCs and look forward to seeing more of the roles they’ll play in your amazing universe!