User blog comment:Promestein/Starcross - Birthday/@comment-28644276-20190302051104

On the Intro:

Best for me to begin with would be to mention how there's this massive constrast with the SOLSTICE we follow here to the SOL I'm used to seeing. Mainly because this would be, fundamentally, Alice. Not the leader of Invictus, the one who laid waste to the world, no.

This is that part of her that is, somewhere around there, buried within (or maybe "hidden behind"?) all those walls of independence she fortifies herself with. Perhaps this is why other characters who are either far above or know her well enough have no hesitation to say that she's running away.

Either way, I'll return to my impressions of this near the end. Such recurring nightmares almost feel like a silent scream from her own voice, suffocated behind all that - being drowned within yourself is certainly one of the worst feelings there are out there.

From the start, when she mentions eight years, it feels to me like the more events that gather, the more each new day can hurt more than all the previous one's combined. Sort of like carrying a weight that gets heavier by each passing moment. This would already be bad enough of an experience for a person who long lived, but worse still to be lived this early in one's life - in the first case at least they would have had the chance to know how it feels like before having to simply observe... Sort of rejected by the world. And in a way, by everything.

Alice never had the chance to even know these feelings, which adds to the confusion and the well of emotions that she clearly has no means to deal with. Nobody to share them with. And most certainly nowhere to direct the destructive side to them, instead of keeping such to herself. Of course, keep those things inside... And they will eat away other parts of you to make space so they can multiply further instead.