Sorry if It feels like I'm harping on this, but: how so? I get how having it work could have been problematic, but what's wrong with having it not work?
In addition to the complaints people have raised about how it worked in this particular segment, I also worry that trying to keep the ambiguity alive will mean not really having Viserys react to what happened or having anything change or develop as a result, since we'd be able to tell what happened from a realistic reaction. At that point, it starts to undercut the importance of the whole scenario: if nothing changes, and the reader has no evidence that anyone even cares about the outcome, then at the end of the day the whole thing might as well not have happened at all. That feels like a real waste of something that was entirely on track to have a ton of impact, bring up uncomfortable questions, and lead to someone having some real character development one way or the other.
Because I like leaving the door open to that hope.
More generally, though, a lot of this feedback appears to focus on what I never really saw as the primary purpose for these sections. Viserys, knowingly or not, didn't actually have a broad and full understanding of what Black Magic did to a person. The White Council wouldn't listen to him until it could be shown that he did, but more than that, he needed it from a character development point of view within the world he's found himself inside. We very rarely find ourselves constrained by the laws of reality around us, and often when we do there's a way to brute force it. In this case...well, I think how I talked to
@Sqweaktoy about this in PMs was probably best. This was a Coventry moment for Viserys, where the needs of state and long term planning require him to put the good of the many above that of the few. And it's not as if he's never done that before, let's be extremely clear about that.
He doesn't like doing so, a lot of the time. But that doesn't mean he doesn't go right ahead and do it anyway, if it's felt to be the best way forward for him and the plans that he's laid. He's not immune to the mental and emotional cost of that, though we rarely see it as has been mentioned before. In this set of Warlock scenarios, Viserys has learnt what Black Magic does to people. He's been able to see how it can twist and pull at even the most reasonable people, with the best of intentions. He's seen the depths to which those who practice it can so easily fall to, and he's seen how easy it is for those lines to be crossed. He doesn't like that, but when fighting conceptual grade forces, there are limits to what he can actually do given his lack of access to much of his wider resource net. And he's also now seen what Laws
cost. How their improper application, in terms of how the White Council does things isn't working, will doom the Council just as surely as a war might.
Given the example of Kathy, of the New York doctor, of the Warlock nest and the other examples like the last two that I never showed, he's got a much deeper grounding on what he's actually dealing with and how to approach the matter with the White Council. Knowing something is one thing. Experiencing it is another. The narrative consequence of the Warlock sections isn't really about if Ress magic works or not - if Kathy returns to life is entirely irrelevant in that calculus. The consequence is that Viserys has now faced the set of facts surrounding the magic of this realm, and found that he can't change them. This is why the White Council remains important, because it's their enforcement vs prevention stance that he wants to change to help fix things.
DP noted that it's more about Viserys realising the need to at least do all he can to help Kathy, as Naomi put it, than the actual result. That was the ground that much of this was staked out on. Coming to terms with consequences and limits is never fun, especially not for someone like Viserys where he's become used to being able to shatter them - given time, maybe, but still.
When it comes to addressing the White Council, these learning experiences will colour his plans to do so, and in that you'll hopefully see the change I was aiming for. If I do my job right, the first part of that will hit in the next section, where he's prepping for that meeting. That I didn't make that clear is my fault, and one that's exacerbated by your not being able to see what's coming
next whilst I can't really explain it without dispensing spoilers. However, whilst Kathy was important, the events taking place
around her hold a much greater significance in this section of the narrative than the person herself. Her fate is still tragic, but from that tragedy...well, there should come more than just a little good.
tl;dr you're looking for change in the wrong place.
