Teres

I can let this slide, because when you've been both mentally and physically tormented for years, it can change the way you think. You can start to believe that everything that goes wrong is your fault, even if, logically, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with you.

SCSF: That is fair enough. I was somewhat bothered by the later insistence that Azhure actually did murder Hagen.

...Douglass just can't seem to make up her mind, can she? People who are unattractive are gross and disgusting and are made to be looked down on and sneered at, but if you're beautiful, you're a demon who likes to flaunt your beauty and use it to intimidate others.

I am reasonably sure she wrote this bit just to make Azhure look "better" for not being either.

Where are the keys; on the floor or something? Shouldn't you have them within easy reach in case you need them? How convenient that they're located aaaaall the way over there and require you to bend down to retrieve them, putting you in perfect skull-cracking position. Azhure really didn't think this through. What if Belial had said no? What if he said yes, but (like any fractionally intelligent person) didn't turn his back on her, thus allowing her to whack him over the head? This is all way too convenient.

Douglass mentions they are on a "stool", which is still quite too convenient. There is no reason he should not have them on him.

Maybe I'm just desensitized from reading things like A Song of Ice and Fire and the Stormlight Archive, both of which can get extremely violent, but locking someone up to starve and occasionally beating them seems kind of...vanilla to me. It's still a horrible way to die, make no mistake about that, but saying that's the worst thing Axis has ever seen makes me think that Douglass was too chicken to come up with anything more severe.

I might just have had the same thing with Newcomb, and I quite agree that it is not very much, especially since the villagers did not actively hurt them all that much. Still, given the amount and kind of violence Douglass will let loose later, I think she only put this in to make the villagers look eeevil.

It makes it absolutely ridiculous, is what it does. The chain of events that had to go precisely one way for this to work is...is... I don't even know what I'm saying anymore! I think this broke something in my brain!

Well, recover swiftly, then!