Opening with a half-remembered dream was my attempt at getting readers prepared for the magic that comes later, plus the dangers of the antagonists. Jackie still doesn't know she has the capacity to perform magic, here. Mild spoiler that, yes, but it's in the title, too. She brushes it off as dehydration, one of the causes of a hangover.
I'm still working on describing surroundings beyond, "It's a 10x10 room with a chest in the middle." I wanted to give Jackie and Trish's apartment a lived-in look by two young women who really need to find time to clean. I'm sure they do have time, and they can clean their apartment up when needed, but they've let it go with the semester's crunch time.
With Steve having been the first potential romantic interest introduced in body, it's time for Lance127 to make his proper appearance. What's a romance without romantic rivalries? But that only works if there's two men around. Otherwise, Jackie can romance Steve while sexting Lance127 and there's not much conflict that can be drawn out of that in a narrative.
The in-game invasion was a test by the game admins to see who figured out how to get the effective spells. The goal the admins have is to see who has the curiosity and who can make the approrpiate gestures to find the hidden menus. It's not quite a sword in a stone, but the admins aren't looking for just one new mage, they're looking for many.
While Jackie is the main character, she has her own supporting cast. No one lives in a vacuum. There's always family, friends, co-workers, classmates, the friendly barista who knows your order better than you do, the surly passenger on the bus, and so on. Introducing Jackie's family here was more to make sure that Jackie seemed more rounded. She loves her mother, but she wants to be on her own now that she's an adult.
Time has not been kind to the story. Amalgamation was pushed through without thought of how it would save money by the Government of Ontario under Mike Harris, who was trying to push off any provincial service he could to munipalities. While the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa- Carleton had major problems, such as direct accountability to the voters, the merge was done without considering the full effects. We're still paying for it now. The other problem is that Mexicali Rosa's no longer exists. I'm not sure what happened, but the individual restaurants became independants, then also disappeared. The one at the Dow's Lake Pavilion changes names every few years. I probably should have just made up a name.
The weather weirdness also didn't survive the twelve years since the story was written. Thanks to climate change, extreme weather changes in Ottawa are regular. We've been having record highs, record lows, and record temperature changes. For at least two winters now, Ottawa has seen highs of -30 for a (frozen) solid week or two, followed by a sudden increase to around freezing for a few days before again dropping back down to -30. A few years ago, Ottawa had a much greener Christmas than it did a summer, thanks to a drought followed by an unusually warm winter. So, the bizarre weather Jackie's seeing isn't really an indication of something odd happening around her.
Fortunately, the faceless eyes in the mirror are timeless.
Tomorrow, the new challenger appears, in /Digital Magic/ Chapter 4.
Also Friday, over at Psycho Drive-In, fixing The Crawling Hand.
Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, fixing Sonic the Hedgehog.
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