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Agents of Change and Stories About Everypeople
Obligatory Notice: The below is a Babble; it is not a scholarly treatise and ought not to be treated as such.
So, yesterday, Steve and I went out to breakfast -- accidentally, out to breakfast, the house power having knuckled under to the force of the wind on the overnight. And one of the things we talked about, over our coffee and other tasty things, was the vigilante hero in SF. Very often in genre, the motivator for the hero is A Death -- of a spouse, of a beloved sibling, a parent... Very often, it seems as if A Death is the only motivator. Looked at in the light of those folks who say (but do they really?) that they want stories about "Mrs. Brown" -- i.e., the "normal" (whatever that means) middle aged lady who lives downstairs, the problem of genre heroism becomes even trickier. What would motivate Mrs. Brown to cease her comfortable existence, leave her cozy apartment, her cats and her grandkids, and embrace heroism? Heroism is messy; it hurts; very often people -- at least, the person you were before -- fail to survive it. In fact, heroism is not ordinary, therefore a story about heroism is extraordinary.
Steve thought that maybe Getting Fed Up, or Witnessing an Injustice might impel someone into heroism. There's something there, though I wonder if such change-points would compel most genre readers. In the Liaden Universe(R), there is a character I think of as a hero because they refused the annihilation of worlds as their solution and took the longer, slower, non-violent course. Readers think this character is a wimp at best, and lost to honor at worst, because they're not doing anything. Kinda funny, that.
But, back to Mrs. Brown... 'way down the years, when I was a tall enough, if not exactly old enough, to read from the adult section of the public library, I fell into a series of books by an author whose name I no longer recall. Edited to Add: Mary Lasswell. The stories concerned three "normal" women -- Mrs. Feeney whose husband had died, leaving her the proprietor of a bar; Mrs. Rasmussen, also a widow, forced by penury to live with her slovenly daughter and abusive son-in-law; and Miss Tinkham, an unemployed piano teacher. All three ladies are long in the tooth and they form an alliance.
Mrs. Feeney sees Miss Tinkham going from door to door in the neighborhood, has pity on her and offers her the spare room in trade for playing piano at the bar. Mrs. Rasmussen, a long-time friend of Mrs. Feeney's gets fed up with her circumstances and also moves in with Mrs. Feeney. Mrs. Feeney recalls that she had always wanted to travel, so the three of them load up Mrs. Feeney's ancient station wagon and take off to have adventures. Wherever they land, they become Agents of Change, righting everyday wrongs, smoothing the path of Young Love, helping a Mexican woman in the country illegally to avoid the Border Patrol, gain a job and her green card...
Clearly, these were stories about Mrs. Brown and I enjoyed them thoroughly when I was thirteen, but they were written as comedies; nobody could take the antics of the three ladies seriously, after all. One wonders how they might play, written "seriously" -- or if they could even be written seriously; or if reader expectation insists that such stories must be comedy.
...and now, back to work
So, yesterday, Steve and I went out to breakfast -- accidentally, out to breakfast, the house power having knuckled under to the force of the wind on the overnight. And one of the things we talked about, over our coffee and other tasty things, was the vigilante hero in SF. Very often in genre, the motivator for the hero is A Death -- of a spouse, of a beloved sibling, a parent... Very often, it seems as if A Death is the only motivator. Looked at in the light of those folks who say (but do they really?) that they want stories about "Mrs. Brown" -- i.e., the "normal" (whatever that means) middle aged lady who lives downstairs, the problem of genre heroism becomes even trickier. What would motivate Mrs. Brown to cease her comfortable existence, leave her cozy apartment, her cats and her grandkids, and embrace heroism? Heroism is messy; it hurts; very often people -- at least, the person you were before -- fail to survive it. In fact, heroism is not ordinary, therefore a story about heroism is extraordinary.
Steve thought that maybe Getting Fed Up, or Witnessing an Injustice might impel someone into heroism. There's something there, though I wonder if such change-points would compel most genre readers. In the Liaden Universe(R), there is a character I think of as a hero because they refused the annihilation of worlds as their solution and took the longer, slower, non-violent course. Readers think this character is a wimp at best, and lost to honor at worst, because they're not doing anything. Kinda funny, that.
But, back to Mrs. Brown... 'way down the years, when I was a tall enough, if not exactly old enough, to read from the adult section of the public library, I fell into a series of books by an author whose name I no longer recall. Edited to Add: Mary Lasswell. The stories concerned three "normal" women -- Mrs. Feeney whose husband had died, leaving her the proprietor of a bar; Mrs. Rasmussen, also a widow, forced by penury to live with her slovenly daughter and abusive son-in-law; and Miss Tinkham, an unemployed piano teacher. All three ladies are long in the tooth and they form an alliance.
Mrs. Feeney sees Miss Tinkham going from door to door in the neighborhood, has pity on her and offers her the spare room in trade for playing piano at the bar. Mrs. Rasmussen, a long-time friend of Mrs. Feeney's gets fed up with her circumstances and also moves in with Mrs. Feeney. Mrs. Feeney recalls that she had always wanted to travel, so the three of them load up Mrs. Feeney's ancient station wagon and take off to have adventures. Wherever they land, they become Agents of Change, righting everyday wrongs, smoothing the path of Young Love, helping a Mexican woman in the country illegally to avoid the Border Patrol, gain a job and her green card...
Clearly, these were stories about Mrs. Brown and I enjoyed them thoroughly when I was thirteen, but they were written as comedies; nobody could take the antics of the three ladies seriously, after all. One wonders how they might play, written "seriously" -- or if they could even be written seriously; or if reader expectation insists that such stories must be comedy.
...and now, back to work
Thought experiment
Re: Thought experiment
Yes, I would, I expect:
The Jen Sar Kiladi of the stories-as-they-are, is a construct invention and role assumed by Daav yos'Phelium, former Captain of all Liad and Liaden space, responsible for the entirety of its populace, and a role he assumed following the murder of his wife, for purposes of enacting as bloodless a Balance as possible.
In that role, he allowed himself to be taken as an onagata on an indefinite basis by a rising Scholar of Delgado, and did nothing to prevent his mistress from bearing a child with him as a genetic material donor. He did advise his mistress that his lineage had idiosyncracies, but did not otherwise elucidate. He withheld information about his true antecedents, and seems to not have provided details about clan and affiliations if anything within Liaden space either of Daav yos'Phelium or the constructed Jen Sar Kiladil
Though he maintained a ship at a shipyard on Delgado, he kept that information close and no hint of it got to his mistress' daughter, who was completely unaware, at least consciously, that her father had ever been a pilot, much less that he had a spaceworthy Jump ship sitting ready for spaceflight as a yard on Delgado, which he visited regularly and checked the flightworthiness of. Theo knew about his fishing and his fast cars, but not about the ship.
Re: Thought experiment
Jen Sar Kiladi was a construct of Daav yos'Phelium. If there had been a real Jen Sar Kiladi, born Jen Sar Kiladi and not an invention of Daav yos'Phelium which Daav yos'Phelium used as instrument of his will to create change and effect as bloodless a Balancing as possible, what would Jen Sar Kiladi be like, in his own skin without it being occupied inside by the person born and raised and once living openly as Daav yos'Phelium, conceived, born, and raised to rule Liad?
Jen Sar Kiladi the construct collected his academic degrees at a Terran institution, learing to like and appreciate coffee while a student in the Terran instituation.
But what of Jen Sar Kiladi, who would he have been? What clan would he have been born to, where, at what level of Liaden social strata, would he be still in contact with his clan and a member in good standing, or would he have been booted out, or would he have been away without leave, or would he have been away with the approval of Delm and Head of Line, out studying and then instructing, with full clan approval and allowance?
Would Jen Sar Kiladi be a pilot, and were he a pilot, would he have hid it from his Terran mistress and his mistress' daughter? Would he have participated differently in the raising of the daughter?
Re: Thought experiment
Jen Sar Kiladi as lived by Daav yos'Phelium, is comfortable with his Liadeness--there is no sign of him displayed as having been booted off Liaden or out of Liaden space, no rancor or bitterness of the sort a Liaden sold into slavery or less severely under clan disapproval and sanction might have (compare Jen Sar Kiladi a construct of Daav yos'Phelium, with Ren Zel after Ren Zel's birth clan disowned him and declared dead, or the misfortunate Liaden whose mother and brother treated him vilely and sold him into slavery in Balance of Trade, or the Liaden woman on a decade of probation by her clan who took up with the bipolar Terran artist in one of the shorter Liaden stories).
Jen Sar Kiladi as played by Daav doesn't say anything that the reader has seen, about clan affiliation or why he's on Delgado (at least not explicitly). The surmises might be assumption that he's on Delgado because of the opportunity and perhaps prestige of beign a scholar there
But back to "what would someone born and raised Jen Sar Kiladi be like?"
I doubt that he would be on the outs with his clan--he might be detached in the sense of semi=-permanently locating/having relocated himself to Delgado, but he would have done so with the allowance of his Delm and Head of Line to have done so.
He probably would have told his daughter stories of him as a boy and young fellow and why he had come to Delgado and the differences between Delgado and Liad--again, there's no sign of trauma regarding Jen Sar Kiladi's being in Terran space on a Terran planet teaching at a Terran university. He might have had a relative or two show up, or gone off to visit family, and have correspondence with them.
He'd probably be unlikely to be a pilot, but if he were, he'd probably have told his mistress' daughter about it, particularly if he had pilot reflexes and suspected the daughter might have them, too. If he had possession of a ship, he wouldn't have kept it a secret from his mistress and mistress' daughter.
Jen Sar Kiladi the construct, however, has secrets, and is guarding them--hiding his true identity, concealing information that he is a pilot from the woman he is onagata to, and from the young woman he engendered half of whose geneset is from him.
Jen Sar Kiladi the construct has failed to provide the young woman with critical information about Liad and Liadens despite her going off offplanet on a ship where there are likely to be Liadens and with Korval pilot gene reflexes/neural network. When she returns to Delgado asks if he is a pilot and says she wants to be a pilot, he does admit to being a pilot--but doesn't admit to having a ship or provide any hint that he has a ship, has ever owned a ship, etc.
Re: Thought experiment
Back to if Jen Sar Kiladi were actually Jen Sar Kiladi...
Miri had an identification item from her lineage, even though her grandmother, was it, had left the clan to bear a child the Delm had demanded be aborted, and then had gotten stuck permanently never getting back to Erob's clan house. Miri's mother married Miri's father and was stuck on Surebleak and died there, on a planet with a flattened economy. Miri managed to get away by signing on with a mercenary outfit and soldiering. Miri was raised Terran, but she had no aspirations to deal with Liadens/be a pilot, either, when first met in Agent of Change. She had worse problems--recovering drug addict, and stiffed financially and on marginal funds.
Jen Sar Kiladi would have come from a background which effected him winding up at a Terran educational institution studying Cultural Genetics and then teaching it at a Terran university on a Terran planet. Was her perhaps inspired by Anne Davis, or someone who was an influence upon her?
I expect that a Jen Sar Kiladi born and raised Jen Sar Kiladi, would likely have wound up matriculating at a Terran institution out of interest and curiosity in/about things Terran, and explained some of his fascination to his mistress and his mistress' daughter about it and how and why he had come to be so far from Liad and Liaden space... and would have done some compare and contrasts between Liadens culture and Terran. Also, he would have explained the less savory things about Liaden culture and that perhaps he was happy to be away from it (think about Kara and her describing to Theo how she reacted to Liad, and how happy she was to be out of there and back to Eylot which though it had unstable politics, didn;t get homicidal over bowing ineptly).
In my own family history, my maternal grandfather left England at the age of 16, presumably at least in part to get away from his mother, and never saw his mother again. He was apparently in contact with his full sister and perhaps some of his older half-siblings, however. From all accounts his mother was an Aunt Kareen sort, labeled "a dragon lady."
Getting back, though...
In the event that Jen Sar had been declanned, he would have said so--the woman in the story who took up with the bipolar artist, explained the situation she was in to him I think. Ren Zel freely admitted to Shan what his situation was of being legally dead. Priscilla was hurting still over what had happened a decade prior being declared dead on her birth planet and having had to leave it but admitted what had happened to Lina and to Shan.
But again, getting back to Jen Sar Kiladi if Jen Sar Kiladi had been born Jen Sar Kiladi--I expect that he would have provided information about Liad and Liadens, both the complimentary and the uncomplimentary, to Theo as information she needed to know, before she went out off the planet of Delgado.
And if he didn't, he would have been shortchanging Theo and acting badly, and failing a major test as a parent--that is, failing to attempt as best he could, to properly apprise Theo of critical informatin, and what to do in what situation. Even such information as "stay away from Liaden and Liaden contracts" would have been more information that "Jen Sar Kilady" gaven Theo...