who only by moving can balance

... because I have just made P read it, and then we stayed up til 1am talking about it, and I haven't talked about it here yet because Too Many Feelings, which I will now attempt to sketch.

(Spoilers within!)

Thing the first: I couldn't post about it sooner because I was too busy processing how absolutely gut-punched and betrayed I felt by the ending. Which. Um. Nancy gets her happily-ever-after, she gets to be the protagonist in her own life, she chooses what is best for her, I should be delighted -- and yet. Gut-punched sense of betrayal.

So that took some unpicking.

Thing the second (which I pointed out to P): her door opens when she becomes sure. And it's not that she is told that she gets to decide how her story ends, it's that she realises she can imagine a life in which she never goes Home and it breaks her heart, but though she doesn't want it she can imagine it, and that's -- that's why she's sure. She can imagine life without ever going Home. She knows what she is losing.

Thing the third: even people who love you, and want what's best for you, and think they are acting in your best interests, will fuck you up and fuck you over and quite possibly lie to you. Lundy lies to them -- she tells the teenagers that they will, in all likelihood, never get to go Home; that most worlds never come looking again; that they are stuck here and need to live with it. Even Eleanor West tells them that most of them will never get to go home. But I think every single character we're told about, the people in the world they went to told them the truth about opening the door for them again -- but the kids mostly didn't find them because even the people who believed them were focussing on making them fit this world instead of supporting them in achieving the things they actually wanted, and of course Kade couldn't go back without renouncing himself and he, too, made a choice about what to do and who to be. (I think Kade's arc annoys me much less than Wanda's in The Sandman, for reasons, but a. I don't remember quite what Kade's situation was well enough to definitely post about it and b. yes it's okay I know all about the person Wanda is based on and how happy she is with that story arc.)


... so. Yes. The shocked sense of betrayal: still very much something I am Getting Over. But I loved and love it, in complicated ways, and I'm still in the process of learning a lot from it, and I might actually -- two months on -- be getting to a place where I can manage a reread. Because: it is beautiful, and it is important, and I want to talk about it more.