Now mark me, how I will undo myself (джен)

When this series was originally posted, it was as a single story. In breaking it up, I stood to lose many good conversations that were had in the comments, and I decided that was an unacceptable loss.
Below you will find the original comments preserved in text form. These are not required reading for the story, so if you aren't someone who likes to read the whole comments section, please feel free to skip to the next work in the series.
And to those who commented the first time around: Thank you all. It's been a joy revisiting your words!