abraxaslogs | january catch-all

[ Another light huff. ]

That analogy isn't all that far off... [ There's something sinister about them the night of the ball, knowing the murderous plans of the men who carried them. And how fearful the women looked when they whispered about Jath'ibaye. He had entered the Bell Dance with no chains on him, though, and he swore he heard some of those same girls sigh in relief.

John had looked beautiful and frightening that night - but he shrugs those thoughts away. ]

I think some would prefer if they didn't have to speak to their women at all. Love matches are rare. [ He feels some measure of sympathy for the younger gaunvur'im, but he knows the women of the nobility can be as vicious in their schemes as their men. They are not people he would have been willing to work for on his own, except for Alidas and the fact that he had no where else. ]

My world had arranged marriages too. Always has. But the whole idea was that you're supposed to... grow to love the other person, I guess? Or at least get along with 'em well enough. It seems weird to me to decide to marry a woman at all if you don't want one around.

[ Julie obviously comes from a culture that's predominately biased toward love matches, but it's not like she's never heard of arranged marriages and betrothals. But to her understanding, it's never been geared toward couples detesting each other. Even if it's all political or monetary, shouldn't a marriage be some form of partnership? Wouldn't a man want to like the mother of his children, at least to a point?

Then again, she knows plenty of poor people who have gotten married and probably shouldn't have. But they don't hate each other like she thinks would be necessary to treat someone the way Kyle describes. ]

Do your people not have like, IVF or surrogates yet?

I think a large dowry is supposed to smooth out any ah, personal incompatibility.

[ There's something wry in his tone. He doesn't really feel this way himself.

The expectations for the wives of the gaun'im in Basawar are very different compared to even the common folk of the country - even in the decades after the fall of the Payshmura. They are meant to produce healthy heirs and not cause any issues for their spouses.

It's only getting slowly better for women in general, but he imagines that change is even slower for the gaunvur'im. It's not something he really thinks about, though, outside of his assignments that put him in their orbit.

In his mind, cobbled from bits of broken memory and sifting through what he was told by the priests and what he realizes might not have been true: he imagines his parents must have loved each other. ]

IVF? [ He looks confused, trying to parse the meaning from surrogate. There are things he can recall easily, and others that never came up in conversations (or television). ]

Don't dowries go to the woman's family? [ She squints. ] Some bastard gives my dad some money and thinks he's allowed to treat me like shit for it, he's got another think comin'. Like I wouldn't straight up Lorena Bobbitt a dude and smile while I do.

[ She glances to the side, eyebrows raised archly as she takes another sip. No, only a very stupid man would try to mistreat Julie. She might be easy prey for manipulative demons, but she has no qualms destroying a regular old human man on the spot. ]

Yeah, In-vitro fertilization. Like, test tube babies? Babies without the fun part, basically. But real useful for rich gay dudes who only marry women to pump out some kids. They pay a lady to carry the baby and give birth, then they get their kid and they never have to really deal with havin' women they don't want around.

[ The payment usually goes the other way around, oddly enough. And he can only give her an odd look at Lorena Bobbitt, though the intent behind her analogy is easy enough for him to understand, which gets a sly upturn of his lips again. ]

I think I'm happier not knowing what that means... [ He laughs, then shakes his head at the next part thoughtfully. ]

We don't have that. Probably for the best, all things considered. [ Under the Payshmura he doesn't know that it would've necessarily made things better for women - though it's an interesting image: two rich gaun'im openly flaunting a child that came from an unmarried woman's womb. ]

And what about the children? Don't they ever wonder about their mother?

[ They are still a part of her, even if she is divorced from the whole process. ]

[ She shrugs. Julie has actually never met anyone born of IVF, let alone someone with gay parents. She's from rural Kansas -- IVF is expensive and gay folks don't live happily in places like Pratt, unfortunately. So she can't rightly say how they might feel about it. ]

I mean, I don't know. I'm sure it depends on what they learn growin' up. It's like, every family is different. Some people probably tell their kids where they came from, they might know the biological mom. Some kids might not care, if they have two really good dads. I know some people who never met their dads, and usually it's the idea that somethin' is... missin'. That gets 'em. That there's somethin' they don't know and lost out on. But lots of 'em never wanted to find their dads at all. [ She sighs. ] Not sure if that's more about bein' satisfied with their lives or just knowin' that deadbeat dads who ran off don't turn into better people just 'cause time's gone by.

[ She grew up with both parents. They probably would have been better off not married, and they were both pretty neglectful due to both poverty and alcoholism, but they both tried, she thinks. It felt like they loved her, even if they didn't pay much attention except to fight when she ran wild, and they both made efforts with her, at least when she was young. But circumstances were what they were, and Julie eventually sort of wound up raising herself. ]

[ It takes a wise person to understand and accept that some people never change. ]

I'd want to know. [ He says this decisively after a brief pause. ]

Not only because I'd want to know where I came from - but I think it'd also make me wonder if I had siblings out there, somewhere. [ It'd make him sad, he thinks. What if he and Rousma had been separated at an age where they were too young to remember each other? He shakes his head again, and a grin slowly spreads across his lips. ]

It also seemed like a very important topic on the talks shows in the morning.

[ A wise person, sure, or someone who's been burned enough times to understand that when people tell you who they are, you should believe them. She's never known anyone who felt better off for meeting their father when said father had willingly walked away in the first place.

She arches her eyebrows. ] Oh, it's real important to the mom that she proves who the father is. Can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get child support payments from a man without proof it's his kid. But people who go on Maury and Springer and whatever else, their kids are almost always babies. Maybe toddlers. When you fast-forward fifteen years, will those kids still want to meet their dad? Knowin' that he fought so hard to not be their dad? I don't know that I'd feel inclined to push for a relationship.

[ With a sigh, she tilts her head to one side. ] I suppose there's some value in like, knowin' about diseases or whatever, that they may have passed on. But I don't know about siblings. I never had any, at least not unless my daddy was real good at hidin' 'em. I had lots of cousins, but no brothers or sisters. In this case, though... I mean, what would you do if you do go hunt down your birth mothers, and you find out that you do have siblings, but they've spent their whole lives poor and miserable, while you've been livin' it up in the lap of luxury? Wouldn't you feel shitty for somethin' that ain't your fault and you can't change?

[ There's nothing that ruins relationships faster than jealousy, and when there's no relationship there to start with, well. Julie can't say how she would feel if she were suddenly to find that she had a sibling who grew up with the life she'd always wanted. She thinks she'd be angry. Resentful. ]

[ He thinks about that for a second, then shakes his head again, unable to agree with her argument in the end. ]

You can't change the past - but if I were so rich, I would offer what support I could to them.

[ That much he could change, instead of wallowing in his own guilt. And then if they still wanted nothing to do with him, well - the door would remain open. He sighs. This is all hypothetical and he can only half remember how they even got from point A to point B here in this conversation. But then there's a pause, and he lowers his voice slightly, his brow pinched. ]

I had a sister. We were separated when she was still very young. But... my life would have been very different if I never had her in it at all. Much harder.

[ That is why he seems so sure of his position.

And also, he realizes, because he hadn't known about her at all for a time. He'd forgotten her completely in those two years.

Thinking about it now makes him grimace again. ]

Edited 2023-02-12 05:41 (UTC)

[ She can think of dozens of reasons it would never go that smoothly in real life. The truth of the matter is that trauma isn't undone by simple kindness, especially childhood trauma. And losing your entire youth to poverty isn't fixed by having money as an adult. Resentment and pain fester underneath the bandage of surface fixes, and missing time is the only thing money can't buy. Bonds made at young ages are different from those made as adults. Dysfunction is the natural state of things.

But she doesn't say any of that. It wouldn't do any good, and anyway, she doubts that either Kyle or herself will suddenly be discovering hidden siblings any time soon.

She tilts her head a bit, considering. ] I think I'm glad I never had any brothers or sisters. My life woulda been a lot harder if there was someone else I had to take care of. I'm from a tiny town and I had a lotta family, but I still kinda raised myself up. My parents worked a lot. I don't think anyone else shoulda gone through it with me.

[ And a sibling would have been just another person to lose to Captain Trips. Few, if any, of the immune were related to each other; from what everyone could tell, immunity wasn't a guaranteed genetic trait. People lost their children, their parents, their grandparents. Entire family trees felled to a single branch in just weeks. And Julie doesn't know whether any babies had been born after the superflu. There were pregnant survivors, but who knew what would happen when the babies took their first breaths? It was probably a 99% chance of death just like everyone else born before. ]

january catch-all

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