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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 18h

To me it looks more like some kind of text recognition or image to text thing gone wrong, based on the specific letters that are wrong (c's to e's, letters missing descenders like goodbve, etc). Countiest might be countless? Maybe someone wrote it out first and they scanned it in? No idea.

Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 1d

I assumed this was amusing hyperbole until I started seeing oblique references in other posts :(

Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 1d

Happy Sunday, have some doggerel I wrote about baby hands.

Contact Nap

Undersea things a
nemone fingers,
fists like fronds

that curl uncurl in
imaginary swirl of
tides beyond.

Half in doze they
tenderly close in
abstract quest

while untrimmed nails leave
jellyfish trails a
cross my chest.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 20d

My beloved infant son, if you don't want to get sprayed in the face with milk, then stop yelling at my breasts. They are currently voice-activated, as you are well aware!

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

I wonder if this story was published because the anthology, Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future, didn't get enough submissions to be picky over them. To that, all I can really say is that fifty six is a perfectly respectable number.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

I dunno, let's just put that in the same box as the fact that Adila doesn't know what fear is but understands the concept of private property enough to explain to the reader that it doesn't exist in her world.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

An Earth-based, Arabic name whose meaning should be totally irrelevant to the crimeless-except-for-that-one-murder SP, which Adila's parents nonetheless decided to name her.

1

Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

In lieu of an ending they rehash the beginning. Yet again Adila is 16 when she died, yet again she repeats that vengeance is not justice.

But do you know what is justice?

THE MEANING OF THE NAME ADILA.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Really, the flashy drowning bit is the least important and interesting part of the whole system. The point is what happens *after*, and the author has no answer.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Either the perp would find themselves on the hook for more and more harm done every time they try to atone, or the system itself is causing harm to innocent members of the community.

So the author simply chooses not to perceive this, and makes all the SP characters emotionless human facsimiles.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

But this is a huge sacrifice for the victim's friends/lovers to make, which is, again, a direct result from a traumatic thing done to them. Even if they agree to it, it will cause them harm. But this harm doesn't seem to count.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

I feel like they would almost have to be, or else EV isn't taking Adila's place in the community and learning what they've robbed the community of (assuming that's the reason), and also because the whole thing's set up to avoid ostracising the perp from society, right?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

What about Noliwe? No one asked them. Maybe it was just a one-sided unspoken crush and neither EV nor Noliwe will ever know about it, but what if Adila was in a romantic relationship? Would that person be compelled to accept EV's substitution?

1

Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

What about Adila's equally nameless friends? I guess they just have to accept EV into their friend group?l now? Do they have to try to recreate the interpersonal dynamics they had with Adila? Is the futility of this part of the punishment-I-mean-rehabilitation?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Even if The Parents are OK with taking on EV as a (temporary?) daughter, are Adila's nameless siblings, who are only mentioned once by EV, have no lines and don't even seem present at EV's empathy ceremony despite being immediate family members of the deceased, though.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Anyway, Earth visitor is saved by Adila's perfect peace-holder (can't call them peacekeepers!) parents, and now has to stay on Small Place's planet for an indefinite length of time (totally not incarceration!) and... cosplay as Adila in the community?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Okay, but not everyone is me and I've thankfully never lost a family member to murder, so how would I know how they feel? Indeed, what if someone finds they *enjoy* having this power and wishes to recreate the feeling? Everything that doesn't happen is more interesting than the story as written.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

You wouldn't know how horrible it must be from the bland rendering of the scene, but I've read Richard Adams's The Plague Dogs, whose opening scene also involves a deliberate drowning being witnessed by dispassionate observers, and I can't unknow it. Can the family opt out of it?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Actually, how is the empathy ceremony itself not considered torture both of the murderer and the bereaved people who are now forced to have power over the murderer's life and death, while watching them drown? You lose a family member to murder and your consolation is getting to watch someone die.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Or what if they save the murderer and then "agree upon" some inhumane payback, lifelong slavery or horrible degradation or whatever? Would someone step in? Or is everything the victim's family asks automatically considered reasonable by virtue of them being the wronged party?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

We don't know if the family members of the First Murder Victim saved the murderer, but I guess we can assume they did, because otherwise there'd be no rules on paying the life debt for as long as "agreed upon". Is it allowed to *not* save them? Does that mark the end of the murder flowchart?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Trivial worldbuilding tangent: Is it a ritual if it's only been done once? Is it not just "a thing they did one time"? Does the thing they did one time now have to fit every murder that occurs in perpetuity? What if the victim has no immediate family members?

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Despite not knowing what fear is and not being able to imagine rape, Adila's murder isn't even the first one in their community. We naturally learn nothing about the first one, neither perp, victim or motive, except that The Ancestors of "decades ago" invented this whole ritual around it.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

Then I remembered that on the first page Adila describes herself as "one of those girls", so at least the assumption came from something. Incidentally, what she means by "one of those girls" is "impatient", a trait she only ever displays here in order to have a dramatic first paragraph.

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Danni Jorgenson-Murray @ukenagashi.bsky.social · 21d

I actually went through the thread before posting and removed gendered pronouns for Adila, not sure why I assumed she was female when no indication was given (and thinking that it could actually have been a bit interesting for Earth visitor to have murdered a teen boy??) but I left in a "she".

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