GRADUAL INTERVIEW SPOILER WARNING!   ..........   Spoilers - Fatal Revenant Joey:  Feel free to shut me down if this is too much of a spoiler, but I've been thinking about the Insequent a LOT lately and (I think) I figured out something significant... I just posted this to KW. --------- In defense of the Insequent: We have heard many times that the arch of time is resilient... that changes to the past are only problematic if they can not be explained away; for example, Linden is explained as an Unfettered, which alters the history of the Unfettered a bit but barely budges the history of the land, thus preserving the Arch. And so the question that has been bugging me is... when did the Insequent appear? People seem to have an issue with the Insequent because (in their words) "SRD is introducing a new race in the middle of the last chronicles that has been secretly pulling the strings and influencing the history of the land since the beginning." OR HAVE THEY??? The first time we even HEAR of the Insequent is after the first evidence of time travel in the land. They don't appear before we as readers are exposed to the concept of caesures. Let me reiterate... we have issues with the Insequent because they appeared out of nowhere and seamlessly (silently!!) infiltrated the land's history... but that's exactly what is SUPPOSED to happen when the Arch of time is violated and then protected! The greater narrative is unchanged while small details are altered. There is a battle for the integrity of the Arch of time and the Insequent are the RESULT of that battle. In short, the Insequent are NOT a retcon and are NOT a source of failed narrative. SRD may only have imagined the Insequent recently, but I think he imagined them as a consequence of disruptions of the Arch as opposed to imagining a new race that then required him to shift the narrative to fit them. Hmm. I don’t know what a “retcon” is. And I object strenuously to the idea that the Insequent are a source/symptom of “failed narrative”. At the same time, I feel compelled to observe that your “explanation” fails the Occam’s Razor test. In other words, it’s more complicated than it needs to be. As I tried to suggest in “The One Tree” (apparently without success), the Earth is a *much* bigger place than my focus on the Land seems to imply. The Insequent have been “here” (in the world) all along: with the obvious exception of the Theomach, however, they’ve just been busy elsewhere--perhaps many thousands of miles away--doing other things. If you doubt me, look at the Mahdoubt’s robe more closely. We know from the text that she didn’t acquire all that gratitude in the Land; so--duh--she must have earned it elsewhere, in other times and places. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: if you don’t think I should have the freedom to come up with new ideas every once in a while--especially new ideas as good as the Insequent--you should probably stop reading right now. (03/23/2008)