Interpersonal Relationships Time!

[stormglass]

One of the things I've been thinking about for Xiulan are the details of her interpersonal relationships and how they impact who she is as a person.  This is particularly important because she is not a gender-flipped Masato Storm; she's a different person.  Her reactions to things and to people are not the same on many points as his.  And as a matter fact, there are points where we don't even know what his actual opinion of something was anyway.

• Valerie:A half-sister, captured by the Dees.  Her brain was plumbed into the systems on Helga's world without being "ego-scrubbed", so she remained aware of being trapped and used.  I don't believe there's any indication that Mouse knew or didn't know about Varlerie's fate, one way or the other. I also think the implication in the text is that her capture was a fair bit ago.

For Xiulan, I've decided Valerie left the Fortress of Iron when the former was a very small child.  She remembers her with a distant and dreamlike fondness, less concrete memory than sensations.  Xiulan knows Hawksblood is involved in her sister's death, but I've decided she doesn't know about the cyborg plumbing because there is no way she wouldn't have had a different reaction to a lot of things during the Shadowline War era if she'd known the Dees had done THAT and then her father kept that promise to Michael Dee in spite of it.  The thought of him being on the Fortress of Iron and it being tolerated, if she'd known that?  Nooooo. 

But.  This later adds to her already very conflicted feelings about her father, when in the course of Sangaree-related research years onward, she found out more about what went on on Helga's world, what happened to Valerie. 

(Brought to you by how much bullshit I find that promise Gneaus made about Michael.  And numerous other things.)

• Pollyanna: I'm still thinking this one through.  Pollyanna's another woman who let her life be devoured by a desire for vengeance.  I'm not fond (understatement) of how her character was handled in Shadowline. 

Her path to executing her vengeance is different than Xiulan's goes.  And I think having seen how things went for Pollyanna is actually part of reason Xiulan goes about things how she does. I'm still trying to suss it out fully, but in adding up a bunch of the factors she would have grown up around, both Federation cultural norms and the Family Drama (and much attendant GAH about relationships), I've come to the conclusion Xiulan has some...considerations? something? going on about how she approaches intimate relationships.  It influences her work too:  she'll slit your throat to get what she wants, or make you wish she had.  She won't sleep with you.  And I think that's influence from Pollyanna's situation. But at the same time, she doesn't see it as Pollyanna's 'fault' or anything; she sees her as someone who did what she could, did what people pushed her into when she was vulnerable.  The people to blame are people like Michael Dee, Blake, etc. 

• Her mother:  Uhhh, I cannot recall a thing being said about Mouse's mother.  At one point he refers to Frieda as Mother, which confuses Gneaus??  So I took it to imply that Frieda was the surrogate mother figure he grew up knowing, but then why would calling her that be weird to his father?

I'll be thinking on this some more for Xiulan. I can think of a Federation-cultural reason for why her real mother wasn't around, but I want more meat to the situation than that.

That's enough for now, more to come later.  Thomas, Marya, and Beckhart are all good candidates for this sort of musing.  And of course, Gneaus Storm himself.

Comments

[hoardingpearls]

How interesting! You've mentioned some things about Pollyanna before that seem...very eighties... And that confirms the guess.

I will be fascinated to see Xiulan in action, whether that's the game or the writing here. She's quite the tough customer, but it's things like this that make her feel more real.

[stormglass]

Thanks! I'm always happy to see people are reading things here as I try to sort this character out in my head.

Yeah, the situation with Pollyanna is Not Good. It's the sort of arc that's far too common, in fantasy as well. You may recall my reaction to Tigana and some of that was about a character arc with a similar trajectory.

Pollyanna at least gets two things she wants at the end of the book and hopefully, some peace came with at least one of those.