Ah man…seems that turn-coat Amy has well…become a turn-coat again causing all manner of coat based angst…despite not wearing a coat.
No Back Office next monday I’m afraid due to some buffer issues. Please check in on Monday 25th of May for the next one 😀 (Sorry for the delay)
Okay, this explains Laura’s confidence… wait, no, it doesn’t. She may be safe from attack but things most certainly aren’t going the way she wanted them, if she indeed wanted Karen to come somewhat willingly.
On this particular re-read, it does explain Laura’s confidence in the previous pages, because by now I’ve learned enough about Laura that she didn’t really need Karen to come to her crazy organization willingly. She just needed Karen to come to her aid, she needed at least one sign that Karen cares about her, and she actually succeeded in getting that. The rest is less important, the rest she believes she can just “fix” with her mind control medallions.
As has now been said many times in many different ways: Laura is delusional (and socially inept), but she is not stupid in the sense that she fails on logic. Her schemes and strategies would be safe and sound if only she understood people.
But you can’t understand people using only the logical part of the brain, dear Laura, you need to engage that scary part of your brain that you don’t understand and have no control over. I know this is ridiculously hard, and time-consuming… (many years – too many) – I have tried it. The good news is that you don’t need to let the scary part of the brain take over, you only need to engage it a little: let it have its say, listen to it, but don’t act if you don’t feel safe doing so. Eventually you will start to understand people a bit more. Never fully, which is a pity but comes with the territory. But with time, with experience, just listening to the uncontrolled emotional part of the brain and taking its point of view into account does work. It works well enough to understand at least some people in most situations and most people in some situations. And you’re certainly intelligent enough to get by with that.