fandomhigh | Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You

Entry tags:

powers and identity

Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You - Friday, Period One

Once again, Jono and Rinoa's class were going to find themselves meeting in a classroom. And once again, they'd find their teachers standing at the front of the room, looking… about as ready as anybody could possibly look, while teaching this particular pack of students.

//Hello again,// Jono said, nodding once it looked as though everyone had taken their seats. //And welcome back. Good to see we didn't scare you off last week, because this week, we're going to talk about more of the same… you. Last week, we discussed a bit about who you are. This week, we're going to stretch things a little, to talk about who it is you might become.//

There weren't any clairvoyants in the room, were there? Not that it mattered, but that could be an interesting insight to have at one's disposal for this lesson.

“For some people, you’ve got this whole life mapped out until one day, bam, it all changes,” Rinoa said. “And then you’re left wondering whether you can still be what you want, while now having to be what you are. Other people have always been different, and so their dreams and hopes are built around that framework. I can’t play basketball, because I’m too short. I can’t be a general, because the Galbadian army only has men in it. I can’t be a doctor, because I keep failing anatomy.”

It wasn’t just people with powers who had that problem, and it wasn’t just powers that might keep students away from some of their dreams. Reality was messy.

//And me, I can't get people to stop bloody well calling me 'General,' and I would really rather they never do so again,// Jono added, wryly. //Spent half my life thinking I was going to be frontman for my own grunge band, that's sort of fallen through for, er, obvious reasons. But I wouldn't mind perhaps getting up to something over at the Boards - the theatre I used to run - again. Even if I can't sing, it's… a compromise. Sometimes, even if you can't have exactly what you want, at least there's that much.//

“I thought I’d be a librarian,” Rinoa said, shrugging her shoulders. “And now I’m the Sorceress, which makes me into an international diplomat whether I want to be or not. But I’m working on restoring the Great Library in Dollet, and I could pick up an extra shift working in a bookstore here if I wanted to.” Or if she had the free time, which, lately, she hadn’t.

“The point is that maybe you can’t have everything you want, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some of it. Maybe you can start a basketball league for short people. Maybe you can work somewhere else in the medical field that has less strict grade requirements, but still lets you heal people. Maybe you can start your own army. Just because there are limitations doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It just means you need to get creative.”

//This week, we're opening the discussion floor to you lot again. We want to talk about your futures… where you see yourself after high school. Where you would like to see yourself after high school. Maybe your life has been set out for you from this point onward already. Maybe you had a game plan, but like myself and Rinoa, that didn't quite work out the way you would've liked, thanks to your powers, or thanks to some other factor in your life. Open discussion time, for those who care to share… What you want to do, what the probable reality is… and then we can talk possible compromises, or workarounds. Or just clap you on the shoulder and say well-done if things are working out as you'd like. And if you have any suggestions for your classmates for alternatives if what they want isn't shaping up to be what they're going to get, please, share. Maybe we can give some people something to strive for, today.//

[OOC: Open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"When I grow up I want to be not locked in a tower," Anders said acridly, stretching his legs out. These questions brought out the side of him that was furious at his entire world. "Beyond that? I like healing and not being bothered by the Templars. If I could just set up a clinic in some village somewhere I'd be perfectly happy. Maybe move to Denerim for a while if I want to be really adventurous."

He sounded less bitter as he continued. "But is anyone else from a place where jobs really aren't a choice? My father was a tradesman. If I wasn't a mage, I could have joined the Chantry or the army, or I could have been apprenticed to him or one of his friends. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around this notion anyone could do anything."

//I'm from a place where, generally, jobs are a choice,// Jono noted, //but circumstances being what they are, once I blew myself halfway to kingdom come, my options back in my world were pared down significantly. I could become a sideshow freak, go into hiding in the sewers under the city, or essentially become sucked into life as a soldier for a team of superheroes who, frankly, were rather shite at practical decision making. I took the soldier option. At least it let me keep my dignity. Fandom gave me other options, of course. Many people in this room might find that it does the same for them, as well.//

Sometimes he sort of wished he'd gone the Morlock route, though. Eesh.

//That's why we're having this discussion today. Circumstances, whether we're born into them or we happen upon them somewhere along the way, often mean we can't get exactly what we want. It's the Templars and the tower that are getting in the way of your desire to settle somewhere and heal people?//

Anders nodded firmly. "Yes. I'd be considered an apostate if I tried and someone would run me in sooner or later. I could go to some other world and do it, but then I'd be giving up on everything from home."

Like elves and dwarves and the meat of August ram and Chantry candles and -- he was going to get homesick if he kept thinking down this path.

//It's often not an easy choice, picking from all of the options available,// Jono noted, nodding. //Sometimes one choice involves making a good many sacrifices. It can be... a difficult balancing act. I don't suppose travel is an option? Keeping back-up plans available to you in case something were to backfire terribly on you?//

"Not really," Anders said thoughtfully. "Home's hard to reach. If I go back, I'm likely to have to stay. Or I might just never be able to go home at all."

Which would solve his problem, but not in the way he wanted it solved.

//Would it be out of bounds for me to suggest that perhaps you work on a contingency plan if the latter ends up being the case? In the ideal situation, you could absolutely have it all, but planning for ideals, especially looking at your situation realistically, is just going to end in disappointment. But... making back-up plans never hurt anybody.//

It sort of skewed toward hopeful, if you squinted. Which was about the best that Jonothon generally ever got, honestly.

"No, it's in bounds," Anders said, frowning because he wasn't sure he had the expression quite right. "Funny you say that. Elsa" -- he nodded at the girl -- "said I could come home with her if I have to, and I might."

Jono glanced Elsa's way - nodded at her as she gave a sheepish little smile and a fingerwiggle of a wave - and then looked back toward Anders with something of a smile.

//You know, I'm not terribly surprised,// he admitted. //Many of my own circle of friends from back when I was a student here all wound up going to worlds that weren't the ones they started off with. Karla's got two Fandomites living in Glacia on a permanent basis, and I don't spend a small amount of time there, myself. A few other friends are living with their high school sweethearts. It's not unheard of. But it's good to know that, should your own world turn out to not be on the table after all, you've got options.//

"I'm not sure my sweetheart's world is a much better option than mine, but that's a different conversation," Anders shared. "I guess my concern is, don't people miss the worlds they're from? My world's very ... particular. I don't know if I could spend my entire life feeling like a foreigner."

//There isn't a day that goes by that I don't ache for London,// Jono admitted, shrugging his shoulders. //But it's an ache that dulls with time, and it's probably a feeling that differs from person to person. The lucky few have the ability to make a home out of where they've settled down. Fandom is a near thing for me, these days, though it'll obviously never be the same.//

"There's always the possibility of not going back to your own world," Rinoa said, lifting her shoulders. "That's the nice thing about going to school in a multidimensional -- whatever the term is."

She bit her lip and sighed. "I'm sorry that we didn't think of selecting jobs as something privileged," she added. "You're right, Jono and I are both from worlds where people get to make those decisions. Does no one get to choose their occupation, then?"

Or was that a right held by a privileged few?

"I didn't mean to sound quite so dire about it. It's not like I'm a dwarf and have to do exactly what my father did, and his father before him," Anders clarified. "I could be a silversmith or a tailor, or anything like that, if someone would take me on as an apprentice. Or I could open a shop if I could get the money together"

Of course, none of that truly applied to mages, but he was setting that aside for the moment.

"But I'm not a noble, and my parents weren't rich, so there are a lot of things that would just never come up," he added. "On the other hand, people like me are better off than the ones whose parents dump them on the Chantry at birth. They get no choice at all."

"Is the Chantry where you were held?" Rinoa asked. "Why did parents leave their children there? Were they manifesting powers, or were the parents simply unable to care for their young?"

Starving people made desperate choices, possibly ones intended so that their loved ones would not also starve. She was trying not to sound horrified at the idea of parents abandoning their babies; this was a reality, in his world, not something for her to clutch her pearls about.

"Is opening a clinic a possibility for you, then?" she asked. "Or will people try to keep you in a tower?"

Anders blinked at her. That was ... a whole bunch of questions. Not that he minded talking about himself, but it took a moment for him to get his thoughts in order.

He started with the simplest.

"Opening a clinic would make me an apostate, which means you never get invited to the good parties and could be dragged to the Circle at any time," he said first. "And no. Chantry is just the church. People give children to it for a lot of reasons -- usually because they're poor, but sometimes as a family tradition, or because they're nobles and want to cut down on fights over inheritances. Chantry brothers and sisters can't be rich. The Circle is where mages go, usually when we're 10 or so. Sometimes parents hand their children over, usually the neighbors notice and call the Templars in to drag you off. It's part of the Chantry but they aren't identical."

Edited 2015-01-16 20:37 (UTC)

"I sort of do," Celia offered, looking over to Anders. "Not the same way, but the idea that anyone can do anything is really quite new, here. If you go back a century or two, the options are much slimmer -- particularly for the poor, and especially for women. I don't think the idea of...job opportunity equality really emerged until recently. At least, it's not like that in my own time. I could hope for theater work, or to be a seamstress or maybe work in a factory, with my social standing back home if I didn't have magic on my side. As it is, I'll likely wind up in a theater anyway."

Anders sighed in relief that someone understood what he meant. "That's what I was getting at," he said. "Social status. We may not have had the same choices, but neither of us grew up thinking we could do anything."

Almost as an afterthought, he frowned. "Wait, why are things especially limited for women in your world?"

"Oh, Anders, don't you know anything?" Celia asked sarcastically, giving him a doe-eyed look. "We ladies should all be at home tending our babies and cooking for our men. Part of my poor social standing stems from the fact that I come from a class of women who might actually work outside of the home. We're quite looked down-upon."

Anders had picked up that women were treated differently from men in this world in some ways that didn't happen much at home, but he'd never given it much thought. (Mostly because he didn't have to.) But if Celia was going to spell it out for him:

"That's incredibly stupid," he informed her. "I promise I'm not trying to be funny -- it's just not the way people think at home. Kathy tried to explain feminism to me once and I sort of" -- he mimed smiling and nodding -- "but nobody's said women weren't supposed to work. Is that why all the priests seem to be men?"

"I think it must be?" Celia said thoughtfully. "Or maybe they have to be men because Christ was a man? Either way, it's definitely related. But yes, there's loads of things women can't do in my time. I mean, we can't vote in this country. From what I've read, that won't happen until about forty years in the future, for me."

"Probably. Ours are women because Andraste was a woman," Anders noted, with a tiny smile at the convergence. "We don't vote much at all -- we've got a king -- but when we do, women can, and the law's supposed to treat men and women the same all around. So this is all interesting to me. Terrible for girls, but interesting."

"It's gotten better, in this time," Celia said with a small smile. "And even my time is a little more progressive than Ichabod's or Cosette's. But the really radical changes seem to have happened in the last hundred years, which is honestly sort of embarrassing to me -- for once, your world sounds really nice, if they treat everyone equally."

"We have to get at least a few things right," Anders said philosophically. "It's terrible in so many ways, but we seem to be better than average about women and not caring who people sleep with. So that's something."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You - Friday, Period One

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!

Re: Discuss!