Some Desperate Glory redux

[cahn]

As usual I have a more conventional reveal post up, but mostly I am DYING to talk about Some Desperate Glory backstory in general and Corporal Lin in particular, especially with cenozoicsynapsid and hamsterwoman but everyone else too please!!

(My other post about it was here (massive spoilers) and of course feel free to comment there too... there is clearly a straight line from there to the fics to this post.)


-Canon review made me so in love with how much Tesh has thought about what was going on in the background. It's actually much deeper than it first seemed to me. At one point I made a timeline and she really has laid it all out neatly with dates and all almost like she knew someone writing fic might need it There's also a lot of non-direct character work where she just has the characters react without comment, like Avi reacting to Kyr giving everyone on Gaea the choice, or Avi reacting to Lin's body on the bridge.

-Also, when I made the timeline I realized that... Sergeant Sif is probably at most in her late 30s in canon, right? Given that she's actively having kids for the cause? Destruction of Earth was ~22 years before canon. That means that when she came to Gaea... she was a teenager at best. Argh!

-Speaking of things that were in the background: we know that a) Corporal Lin is head of Systems in Gaea, which seems to imply she's had some experience with doing Systems work; b) Lin was Hagenen Wing, but then talks about having got a field promotion from Elora Marston; c) Admiral Marston says in her distress message that the Victrix' head of Systems was "suborned."
I totally didn't see this when I was first reading, but now I think we're meant to come to the conclusion that Yingli Lin was that head of Systems for Marston's ship for at least a little while (presumably after her Hagenen Wing stint) before the mutiny, which would track with how she got that field promotion... which adds a whole other layer of "oof" to the whole thing!

-Something that didn't make it into the fic is that Ursa says that the co-conspirator leader of the mutiny with Jole (whom Jole later kills) was also Kyr's genetic father, and also Kyr thinks at one point about how she and Ursa are full siblings. So... assuming neither of them is mistaken (which could very well be the case), what's going on there?? This just occurred to me, but is this related to how Admiral Marston says her second-in-command was suborned?? Was her 2IC Ursa's/Kyr's father and Jole's co-conspirator?? (Though wouldn't that be, like, fraternization and against the rules?) Is this why Ursa knows about all this?? There is a whole story here that I SUPER want to know!!

-Both hamsterwoman and ase pointed out to me that it would be perfectly normal to feel incredibly angry after your entire world has just been destroyed, and also it occurred to me that B5, for instance, has a space mutiny against the existing government, and the whole idea of (original) Star Wars is rebellion against a government that has taken over partially by force, and so... there are lots of reasons why, in the beginning, it seems very plausible that the people involved in a mutiny against surrender to the conquering overlords thought of themselves as the heroes and it's just too bad for them that, unlike B5 or SW, they happened to be in a story where the narrative didn't support everything they did er, until subsequent events proved that their mutiny and the people who came to power were horrible.

-But of course once things started getting bad, Lin should have known better, and part of her does, but I do think that she isn't necessarily the most self-reflective in certain kinds of ways. Canonically, for example, Harriman seems more upset about the way Gaea is than she does.

-The problem I kept ramming my head against is that Lin is clearly meant to be, and written as, the archetype of a super badass character, which is at odds with what she actually did and continued to do right up until Kyr called her on it. Now, she's also written as physically disabled in a culture that has evolved to extol and exalt physical prowess, and a woman in a culture that has grown to be extremely sexist, so that's definitely a huge part of it. And of course even badass characters can be subject to abusive situations, and subject to sunk cost fallacy and the fear of failure, especially when they've burnt a lot of bridges and killed a lot of people on their way to it. (And ase also pointed out to me that she's probably got in the back of head that if she did leave, it's not like the rest of human space will be real happy about her being a mutineer.) And given that she's staying, she has to work around all the ways in which Gaea is warped -- that is, fic!Avi is not wrong that her thinking gets more and more warped.

-I was talking to ase about Avi & Lin and she pointed out that Lin probably felt grudgingly fond of Avi. I feel like there's room for a wide range of interpretations, from "cares deeply for him but won't ever let him know" to "is annoyed with him in a different way than she is with most (incompetent) people" (I mean... he can be deeply awful, and I imagine that Lin got a lot of that) and I would love to know everyone else's headcanons. (Regardless, I think Lin chooses to have no kids of her own in any universe and is relieved she doesn't have them.) (In my headcanon, Harriman sometimes wistfully thinks about having kids and would have been a great dad, but he'd also rather have Lin than kids, and he also knows that Gaea would be a crap place to have kids.)

-Either way, it occurred to me that Lin may have had the choice to tell Command that Avi was of no use and that he could be exiled from Gaea, but she didn't; instead everyone knows he knows too much. Honestly, this is a might-have-been crafted specifically for the fic rather than my actual headcanon (as I wanted to tie Lin's actions in to Avi making a personal connection) ; Avi didn't seem to think she had anything to do with it in canon. But I also think that, if she is indeed Command's source for the information that Avi knows too much, her primary motivation here, which she may not even have admitted to herself (and she's definitely not going to admit it to Avi because she can see how terrible it sounds and she's too proud to), is that she's not sure she can keep up with Systems by herself with Avi gone (because everyone else is pretty much useless).

-I also think there's a wide range of possibilities for how Avi feels about Lin, and it depends a lot on how much he knows about her and how much he thinks about how much he knows about her. (Does he know that she was one of the architects of Gaea? He has access to all this contraband info, he must have known, right? But possibly never thought deeply about?) I think it's inevitable that he's imprinted on her a bit, as she's probably the only adult (possibly only person) in his life who actually is competent in a way he respects (even if he underestimates her), and who has any respect for him. He's careless with her too, but I think it's in the same way that teenagers often are with adults they like (or even love). I do think he cares for her, possibly a lot, but can't or won't admit that even to himself (which I guess practically speaking looks the same to the two of them?).

-I now want ALLLLL the Avi & Lin (and Harriman) headcanons and speculation. Did she ever manage to teach him opsec?? He obviously does respect her intelligence, and she respects his, even if they both have caveats; what was their time in Systems like, they must have worked together to avert various catastrophes? has she been trying to teach him opsec this whole time and he's just been really bad at it? (I loved hamsterwoman's prompt of her trying to teach him opsec through code docs/comments, and I wish someone had written that :D ) What does Avi think about her sacrificing herself for them? (This is something I entirely sidestepped in the fic, but which he is going to have to come to terms with -- or refuse to -- at some point!) Is she able to help him/Kyr/Mags/whoever once they're out of Gaea, given that she's one of the people who probably actually knows something about what society outside of a brainwashing enclave is like? I also now want ALLLLLL the Avi & Lin fic :D

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Canon review made me so in love with how much Tesh has thought about what was going on in the background. It's actually much deeper than it first seemed to me.

Aww, that's really good to hear! Even reading the fics, I could tell there were background canon things you were picking up/expanding on that I didn't remember from my read. I don't usually reread books, but I was thinking that this one would be a good candidate, because there's SO MUCH stuff that Kyr is totally missing that I missed right along with her early in the book -- Mags' mental state, Cleo and other Sparrows character stuff, the scope of what Avi is planning, Lin and Harriman's conspiracy probably.

Sergeant Sif is probably at most in her late 30s in canon, right? Given that she's actively having kids for the cause? Destruction of Earth was ~22 years before canon. That means that when she came to Gaea... she was a teenager at best. Argh!

Oh, ick D: I guess, since they don't seem to care about the health of the mother (to put it mildly), and if their post-science-wing-kaboom OB technology is at least a match for current levels, she could be as old as in her early 40s? But still, she had to have been very young... And I suppose an older teenager coming to Gaea makes more sense than a kid ending up there (she came alone, right?)

c) Admiral Marston says in her distress message that the Victrix' head of Systems was "suborned." I totally didn't see this when I was first reading, but now I think we're meant to come to the conclusion that Yingli Lin was that head of Systems for Marston's ship

I also completely missed that implication until your Lin fic! I do think having it explicitly mentioned in the distress call means the head of Systems is important (as well as helping explain how a mutiny could take over a ship), and if you have two characters who were around for the mutiny who are Systems people, Occam's Razor/narrative efficiency would suggest they're the same person. So I agree, it's got to be Lin! And I like the progression you posited in your fic -- commando sidelined by a serious injury taking on a "desk job" makes a lot of sense.

Ursa says that the co-conspirator leader of the mutiny with Jole (whom Jole later kills) was also Kyr's genetic father, and also Kyr thinks at one point about how she and Ursa are full siblings. So... assuming neither of them is mistaken (which could very well be the case), what's going on there?? This just occurred to me, but is this related to how Admiral Marston says her second-in-command was suborned?? Was her 2IC Ursa's/Kyr's father and Jole's co-conspirator?? (Though wouldn't that be, like, fraternization and against the rules?) Is this why Ursa knows about all this?? There is a whole story here that I SUPER want to know!!

Oh huh! I missed all of that / missed tying it all together... I feel like the fraternization stuff with her 2IC would proooobably not fly even during war-time, but... is there any way for someone who is physically there to assist with the conspiracy to not be under Elora's command if she's the admiral? So maybe it's fraternization in any case...

and also it occurred to me that B5, for instance, has a space mutiny against the existing government

Yes! (pleased nod in the direction of the "last best hope" line in your Lin fic, btw) Like, "not roll over and put yourself at the mercy of the group of aliens that chose to destroy earth" is not an unreasonable position! Marston's position is also not unreasonable -- I really liked the line you gave her about that being what unconditional surrender means -- but of the two sides, at that point, I find the conspirators easier to understand, of the two. Especially, like, given a species-wide trauma response to their home planet being destroyed...

Lin should have known better, and part of her does, but I do think that she isn't necessarily the most self-reflective in certain kinds of ways. Canonically, for example, Harriman seems more upset about the way Gaea is than she does.

I think you're right about the self-reflection, and also, she strikes me as the kind of character who would take a lot of risk and work very hard to fix a problem that she can fix (whether it's a military tactical objective or a systems thing) but not focus on squishier or no-win-scenario problems. Like, a kind of triage -- as I think you also posited in your Lin fic -- and with no shortage of problems to work on where she could actually make a difference, and then not having to look at the problems she is less equipped to solve, either because of her skills/abilities or because she thinks they don't have solutions.

Now, she's also written as physically disabled in a culture that has evolved to extol and exalt physical prowess,

This was something I had apparently forgotten about in between reading the book and reading your fics, and now I'm wondering why... I think she does probably act in a way that tries to minimize people paying attention to her disability...

and she pointed out that Lin probably felt grudgingly fond of Avi. I feel like there's room for a wide range of interpretations, from "cares deeply for him but won't ever let him know" to "is annoyed with him in a different way than she is with most (incompetent) people"

I'm on the "fond but frustrated" side for sure. I think Lin would asl be very aware that a kid like Avi -- brilliant but not physically fit, dismissed by Gaea for not matching its masculine ideal -- would have very different opportunities in other circumstances. Clearly, not all of Avi being Like That is his Gaea upbringing, but Lin doesn't know that, so I think she would try to cut him some slack? But would definitely not find it easy, because he IS terrible. So, like, a "difficult teenage son" vibe, is what I'm thinking? (Not that she thinks of him as her kid, but a similar kind of mingled sense of responsibility and "I didn't sign up for THIS".)

is that she's not sure she can keep up with Systems by herself with Avi gone (because everyone else is pretty much useless).

I hadn't thought of it like that before, but I could see it! (Also, now that you mention it, I find it kind of funny that Avi is just like, "well, obviously everyone realizes I'm indispensible and know too much, DUH" without stopping to wonder how they would know.)

(Does he know that she was one of the architects of Gaea? He has access to all this contraband info, he must have known, right? But possibly never thought deeply about?)

Yeah, "knows but doesn't think about it" makes sense to me for this. I don't see Avi being all that interested in the roots of Gaea, the way Cleo seems to be, once she gets some info -- I think because he'd like to think he's above it? not OF it? ("present company excepted" and all) So I could see him reading everything, but choosing to focus his contraband snooping on things that can help him get off Gaea or escapism, and that would be neither.

He's careless with her too, but I think it's in the same way that teenagers often are with adults they like (or even love)

Yeah, that's what it feels like to me, too. I definitely think he cares.

has she been trying to teach him opsec this whole time and he's just been really bad at it?

I would not be at all surprised, lol. I feel like Avi's attitude is "I don't need to worry about opsec because nobody else is smart enough to figure out what I'm doing" -- which is, like, on brand. It wouldn't surprise me if Lin was trying to teach him lessons about that, and he would adjust incrementally but without ever accepting just how good she really is. (Which, I wonder how much of Avi underestimating her is just Avi hubris vs the internalized warped Gaea view of Lin, as an older disabled woman, being lesser -- just as others dismiss him for being short, nearsighted, and queer. I think it's probably both, and I'd love to see the inside of Avi's brain when he realizes that.)

What does Avi think about her sacrificing herself for them?

I really wonder about this! My sense is that Avi doesn't "get" self-sacrifice -- like, he seems continously blindsided by people making that choice (like when Kyr does). But, like, he expects Kyr and Mags to be irrational, I think, and Lin -- whom he thinks he knows, knows the way she thinks -- doing something like that, I could see him being almost angry about it? Like, I was expecting YOU of all people to make sense!

I also now want ALLLLLL the Avi & Lin fic :D

Saaame! :D

[cahn]

Even reading the fics, I could tell there were background canon things you were picking up/expanding on that I didn't remember from my read.

There is so much that I didn't pick up on a first read! (Basically everything in the post, lol.) And a lot of it is actually in those early chapters, where Kyr has little asides which function on a first read as Gaea setting color, but on a later read it's like, ohhhh, actually there's a whole backstory there too...

Lin and Harriman's conspiracy probably

This is one thing I didn't actually see in the book until it happened. Not to say it wasn't there (at this point I'd believe a lot of Tesh), but a reread didn't make it jump out at me -- I think Lin herself was supposed to be the narrative surprise here. (Honestly, on first read I barely remembered who she was when she and Harriman have her scene with Kyr).

And I suppose an older teenager coming to Gaea makes more sense than a kid ending up there (she came alone, right?)

Oh, ugh, yeah, you're right, I totally forgot that! Poor Sif :(

I feel like the fraternization stuff with her 2IC would proooobably not fly even during war-time, but

I also definitely had to piece this together on second read/third dive! In the Magna Terra section, I think Elora is single (there's no mention of a dad as far as I remember) -- oh, and on doing a search it seems that Jole said that their dad was in Hagenen Wing. So maybe not the 2IC after all, and if it was somehow, maybe their relationship predates him being the 2IC.

and also, she strikes me as the kind of character who would take a lot of risk and work very hard to fix a problem that she can fix (whether it's a military tactical objective or a systems thing) but not focus on squishier or no-win-scenario problems. Like, a kind of triage -- as I think you also posited in your Lin fic -- and with no shortage of problems to work on where she could actually make a difference, and then not having to look at the problems she is less equipped to solve, either because of her skills/abilities or because she thinks they don't have solutions.

Yes THIS! (I knew you would have really cool ways to articulate this stuff!) And actually my beta also pointed out that one of the things that makes it hard to escape from a cult/abuse is if you're always so busy you don't really have time to think about the higher-level problems, and she's always busy...

I think she does probably act in a way that tries to minimize people paying attention to her disability...

Yes, this was also an endgame reveal -- it's not until her last scene that it's revealed that she can't walk well due to her war wounds, and then Kyr suddenly realizes she's never seen Lin standing up. But she also doesn't ever call attention to it while she's sitting down, so if Kyr hadn't noticed that, there wouldn't have been any narrative clues to it...

(Not that she thinks of him as her kid, but a similar kind of mingled sense of responsibility and "I didn't sign up for THIS".)

HAHAHAHA not like I've ever felt like that yes I get exactly what you mean :) (Okay, my kids are not difficult, all things considered, but... yeah.)

(Also, now that you mention it, I find it kind of funny that Avi is just like, "well, obviously everyone realizes I'm indispensible and know too much, DUH" without stopping to wonder how they would know.)

LOL! Yeah, that's sure Avi :D

It wouldn't surprise me if Lin was trying to teach him lessons about that, and he would adjust incrementally but without ever accepting just how good she really is. (Which, I wonder how much of Avi underestimating her is just Avi hubris vs the internalized warped Gaea view of Lin, as an older disabled woman, being lesser -- just as others dismiss him for being short, nearsighted, and queer. I think it's probably both, and I'd love to see the inside of Avi's brain when he realizes that.)

YES. All of this!!

But, like, he expects Kyr and Mags to be irrational, I think, and Lin -- whom he thinks he knows, knows the way she thinks -- doing something like that, I could see him being almost angry about it? Like, I was expecting YOU of all people to make sense!

Oh gosh, I want this LIKE BURNING. <3

[hamsterwoman]

where Kyr has little asides which function on a first read as Gaea setting color, but on a later read it's like, ohhhh, actually there's a whole backstory there too...

That's really neat! Now i really want to reread it, because I admire that kind of stuff on the craft level.

Poor Sif :(

Yeah... Sif clearly also has some fascinating backstory, but the whole Nursery thing is so upsetting to think about that I don't think I want to ponder it for myself or read fic about it, because I don't want to immerse myself in it even though I want to know what happened (if that makes any sense).

oh, and on doing a search it seems that Jole said that their dad was in Hagenen Wing.

I couldn't tell if I vaguely remembered something like that or was just making it up. Good to know it is in the text somewhere (though, of course, I don't trust Jole to be truthful)

my beta also pointed out that one of the things that makes it hard to escape from a cult/abuse is if you're always so busy you don't really have time to think about the higher-level problems, and she's always busy...

Ohhh, that is a GREAT point! Yeah, she's definitely busy, and early on I'm sure there was a constant state of crisis even more than in Kyr's time. So that makes a lot of sense.

Yes, this was also an endgame reveal -- it's not until her last scene that it's revealed that she can't walk well due to her war wounds, and then Kyr suddenly realizes she's never seen Lin standing up.

AH, right! That's really neat.

Also, I reread my comment and realized that in talking about Lin's feelings on Avi, I never actually got to the point I was trying to make, oops, just kind of veered off in a different direction. What I meant to say from this part:

I think Lin would also be very aware that a kid like Avi -- brilliant but not physically fit, dismissed by Gaea for not matching its masculine ideal -- would have very different opportunities in other circumstances

-- was that I think Lin has to be conscious on some level that Avi, who is brilliant but neither physically nor emotionally fit to be a guerilla soldier -- would probably be doing better pretty much ANYWHERE else but on Gaea, both in terms of his happiness and in terms of net good to society -- and I wonder if, as one of the architects of Gaea, she feels responsible for the, you know, lost potential there -- not on a conscious level, probably, but if she feels slightly guilty about it. I mean, EVERYONE'S lives on Gaea are shitty, but I think it would be particularly hard to overlook the mismatch with Avi, you know?

[cahn]

Good to know it is in the text somewhere (though, of course, I don't trust Jole to be truthful)

Yeah, one of those bits of "this is how you are related" is right smack in with "and your mom was a junior officer on the Victrix" so... yeah, Jole saying it doesn't mean that it's true!

-- was that I think Lin has to be conscious on some level that Avi, who is brilliant but neither physically nor emotionally fit to be a guerilla soldier -- would probably be doing better pretty much ANYWHERE else but on Gaea, both in terms of his happiness and in terms of net good to society -- and I wonder if, as one of the architects of Gaea, she feels responsible for the, you know, lost potential there -- not on a conscious level, probably, but if she feels slightly guilty about it. I mean, EVERYONE'S lives on Gaea are shitty, but I think it would be particularly hard to overlook the mismatch with Avi, you know?

Oh, yeah -- that makes a whole lot of sense, that even if she doesn't really realize that consciously, she may feel some guilt subconsciously because of exactly what you say -- that it would be particularly hard to overlook the mismatch in his case.

I wonder if Lin and not!Avi are connected in any way in Magna Terra. Lin's not onscreen at all, and not!Avi doesn't really say anything about himself. It's possible they worked together, and also possible they never met.

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I wonder if Lin and not!Avi are connected in any way in Magna Terra. Lin's not onscreen at all, and not!Avi doesn't really say anything about himself. It's possible they worked together, and also possible they never met.

Yeah... if I were writing this, I'd be torn between "Lin is still a physically able soldier with a technical specialization, not a primary tech" and "she's head of Systems, just like always".

One thing I don't know is... Avi overlooks a lot of what Lin is and does. But how much does she actually know about him besides that he's very good with computers? I completely forget if the text says she knows he's gay, for example.

[cahn]

The only line we get about Lin in Magna Terra is where she's referred to as Harriman's rumored "terrifying ex-commando wife." I had no idea I had a headcanon about this until you said that, but I guess I do: my headcanon is that she's doing that high-level military thing where (like Admiral Jole) she becomes some kind of power in the military part of the government. (perhaps in something like their version of the CIA?) But I also imagine her as something quasi-behind the scenes, Systems-like, to explain why they don't refer to her by her title, as they would if she were whatever the equivalent of CIA Director is. So, yeah, something reminiscent of the head of Systems, only overseeing a lot more people and with a lot more power. ...this wouldn't be inconsistent with Lin being basically the head of the technical work of Providence, and not!Avi working under her. Though I don't think it would have to be that way; she could be doing something else that wasn't Providence. (Which I would prefer, lol.)

(I guess I do still think of MT!Lin as (more) physically able, either way -- I get the impression that Gaea didn't really have a lot of medical care that it could have had, and that would presumably have helped her if she had the same war wounds she had in the other universe.)

I don't think the text says directly if Lin knows Avi is gay (though it seems like pretty common knowledge). I actually don't think she says anything explicitly about Avi except that he's not as good as he thinks he is :) She does tell Kyr at one point to look for him at the arcade, so it seems that she knows at least a little about him and what he does other than Systems. But there's still a wide range of possibilities there, for sure. In the same conversation, Lin also knows Victoria is into Suntracker, and there are hints that she knows about Kyr's assignment, so it could just be a matter of having these kids rotated to her section for years on end, she's bound to have picked something up (even if Kyr doesn't remember her name, lol).

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I don't think the text says directly if Lin knows Avi is gay (though it seems like pretty common knowledge).
You wonder... the flip side of a very homophobic society is that since gay culture is underground/doesn't exist, people who aren't involved find it easy to not notice.

She does tell Kyr at one point to look for him at the arcade, so it seems that she knows at least a little about him and what he does other than Systems.
Yeah, that's interesting. Makes you wonder if she is or was an arcade gamer herself? Wonder what secret game scenarios she has on the mainframe...

[cahn]

Heh, but even Kyr knows Avi is "the queer one," where she clearly doesn't know anyone else is, including herself! (I guess she knows about those two Sparrows.) But I take your broader point. I think Avi, unlike everyone else, disdains being underground about it (or else just can't shut up), so he's an exception that everyone knows.

Gosh, I just love your idea of Lin having secret game scenarios stored on the mainframe, that would be awesome.

[likeadeuce]

Ohhhh, I read those stories and saw the reveals but didn't realize you were RaspberryHunter!!

Anyway, I'm going to read these posts in more depth when I can brain but I wanted to say again you did a phenomenal job.

[cahn]

:D <3 Thank you!! And come back and taaaaalk to me, I clearly have a lot of feelings :D

[likeadeuce]

I honestly don't remember the book that well but the Yuletide stories reminded me how much I liked it and I own a copy so I'm probably due for a reread.

[cahn]

It's so good! :) (And, I mean, you don't actually have to come back and talk to me :) I get very intense about stuff I like sometimes, is all :) )

[likeadeuce]

Oh that's cool! I just mean I probably don't have that much to say because I don't remember the book all that well.

[skygiants]

I love all these Lin thoughts & am extremely excited to read the fic as I work my way through Yuletide! One of my favorite things in the book is all the hints we get about the older generation and the people they used to be, and everything they've lost as they allowed themselves to be compressed into Gaea's little acceptable molds.

[cahn]

Yessss I absolutely am so intrigued by that older generation!

and the people they used to be, and everything they've lost as they allowed themselves to be compressed into Gaea's little acceptable molds.

<3 That's such a good way of putting it.

[cenozoicsynapsid]

It completely didn't come together for me that you had written for both me and hamsterwoman until reveals... yes, even though I recognized they were both Owen references. (It helped you that one of the other two, "no prayers or bells", is also an Owen quote--- Requiem for Doomed Youth, iirc.) I was pretty sure you'd written hamsterwoman's story because of the "training data" thing, not as sure you'd written mine. In fact, I wasn't sure hamsterwoman hadn't written it!

Anyway, yeah, you've noticed things about the timeline that I absolutely did not pick up on, and they make so much sense. As you say, it fits together for Lin to have been head of systems on the Victrix, and I think I just hadn't remembered that Kyr said she and Ursa were full siblings. If you'd asked me last week, I would have said that couldn't be possible... shows you what I know!

her primary motivation here, which she may not even have admitted to herself (and she's definitely not going to admit it to Avi because she can see how terrible it sounds and she's too proud to), is that she's not sure she can keep up with Systems by herself with Avi gone
I think she also does probably feel that Avi has a duty to do and is trying to shirk it for personal reasons--- something she herself did not do, despite her own circumstances being very tough. Avi is legitimately rebelling against a tyrannical government, but he's also rebelling in a whiny teenage way which is really obnoxious... and I think it's easy for Lin to conflate the two and think he needs to learn to act like an adult. Which is true.

it occurred to me that B5, for instance, has a space mutiny against the existing government, and the whole idea of (original) Star Wars is rebellion against a government that has taken over partially by force, and so...
It's also not like the majo are so great. "Everything is run by our superpowerful AI, which you absolutely don't get to contribute to" is actually not the form of government our liberal ideals would want for us. Ursa is doing so... much... better than Kyr and Mags that you don't think of it in the moment, but she's basically living under an In Space version of the Pax Britannica. You can imagine some alien with a solar topee and a handlebar mustache saying "Well, we stopped you chaps killing everyone, didn't we? Humans... brave, hard-working fellows, don't you know, but they're like children. Utterly incapable of self-government."

You can basically see this in the Star Wars prequels (which I hated, like all right-thinking people... but like some of the later seasons of Buffy, there is a good story hidden under all the terrible stuff). The Old Republic is the Good Government that our heroes want to re-found, except that it was hidebound, corrupt and increasingly dependent on its military. The prequels do actually make it clear why Imperial fascism was so compelling an alternative. And because of that, it's hard to take the New Republic very seriously--- it's corrupt, disorganized, and its functional core is centered around its military. The "seriously, can't they do anything original" eyeroll everyone did about the First Order was correct, but the pendulum swinging from weak liberal state to fascist autocracy and back is pretty typical of a lot of places, sadly.

sunk cost fallacy and the fear of failure... fic!Avi is not wrong that her thinking gets more and more warped
Yeah, I thought your explanation of this was right on target. She sees herself, in the end, as the safety valve, as protecting people from the system rather than propping it up: "When they were baby mutinies, Jole got less angry, and he was less likely to kill people." In the end, Jole has gotten to her, not in that she thinks she's powerless to rebel against him, but in that she doesn't realize that if she just walked away, he wouldn't be able to run Gaea without her. She doesn't quite get that Systems has to work, and she's the only person who can make Systems work, and this actually gives her a huge amount of power she isn't using.

My sense is that Avi doesn't "get" self-sacrifice -- like, he seems continously blindsided by people making that choice (like when Kyr does)... Lin -- whom he thinks he knows, knows the way she thinks -- doing something like that, I could see him being almost angry about it?
Oooh, good thought!

I really wish I could have written something for you this year, especially after getting such a lovely gift. But I don't know any of your requests! (Still not an opera buff... I actually have tickets to Eugene Onegin this spring, so who knows. But not at the moment anyway.) My recip was the other person who nominated The People, so I thought about reading those, but I didn't actually manage to track down a copy (none of the libraries around here has it) and then I got sucked into writing 10k of archaeological casefic. You know how it goes, I imagine.

[cahn]

(It helped you that one of the other two, "no prayers or bells", is also an Owen quote--- Requiem for Doomed Youth, iirc.)

Oh, yeah, right! I haven't reread that poem as obsessively don't like that poem quite as much as the other two, so it sort of had that feeling of "hm, I know that, where do I know it from" for me. (I should obviously have thought about other Owen poems, of course!) I think it's cool though that there were three titles from different poems!

In fact, I wasn't sure hamsterwoman hadn't written it!

Ha, that would certainly have been a possibility! (I actually wondered if she had written "no prayers or bells," except that it had more Avi/Mags in it than I think she would have liked to write.) hamsterwoman, of course, had the advantage that she knew she hadn't written your fic!

Anyway, yeah, you've noticed things about the timeline that I absolutely did not pick up on, and they make so much sense. As you say, it fits together for Lin to have been head of systems on the Victrix, and I think I just hadn't remembered that Kyr said she and Ursa were full siblings. If you'd asked me last week, I would have said that couldn't be possible... shows you what I know!

I didn't notice any of these things on first read! Kyr mentions being full siblings pretty early on, too, before we really understand what we're getting into; there's a lot of backstory that gets sort of shoved into a "worldbuilding" mode so it's not clear that it's doing double duty as backstory until a second read, or at least wasn't clear to me.

I think she also does probably feel that Avi has a duty to do and is trying to shirk it for personal reasons--- something she herself did not do, despite her own circumstances being very tough. Avi is legitimately rebelling against a tyrannical government, but he's also rebelling in a whiny teenage way which is really obnoxious... and I think it's easy for Lin to conflate the two and think he needs to learn to act like an adult. Which is true.

ahahaha, this is why I wanted to talk to you about all this, because I knew you'd have interesting and super neat things to say! Heh, I agree it would be easy for Lin to conflate the two.

she's basically living under an In Space version of the Pax Britannica. You can imagine some alien with a solar topee and a handlebar mustache saying "Well, we stopped you chaps killing everyone, didn't we? Humans... brave, hard-working fellows, don't you know, but they're like children. Utterly incapable of self-government."

And this! Yeah, that's a really incisive observation. And I mean... there's not really a way of getting around that they actually killed the entire planet of Earth and most humans, and places like Chrysothemis are just... little colonies subject to the Alien Overlords.

ou can basically see this in the Star Wars prequels (which I hated, like all right-thinking people... but like some of the later seasons of Buffy, there is a good story hidden under all the terrible stuff). The Old Republic is the Good Government that our heroes want to re-found, except that it was hidebound, corrupt and increasingly dependent on its military. The prequels do actually make it clear why Imperial fascism was so compelling an alternative.

Ah, that's a good point and an interesting analogy! (I didn't hate the prequels -- except for Attack of the Clones, which is super boring -- though I can't say I liked them much either -- but as you say, I thought it did have a good story, underneath the many parts that didn't work.)

and this actually gives her a huge amount of power she isn't using.

Yes -- and I'd also add that (in my headcanon) she thinks about Systems working as whether she, personally, is causing Gaea to succeed or fail (and she's not willing to let it fail), and that has also sort of blinded herself to it being a source of power or leverage for her.

But I don't know any of your requests!

Oh my goodness, I don't expect you to write for me every year! (It's not like I've written for you more than a couple of times, either! And Yuletide shouldn't be at all a tit-for-tat! :) ) I felt bad myself because we'd talked about, and I'd thought about, nominating/requesting some more classic SF or medieval Welsh/Old English lit which I know you would be interested in, but in the end for some reason I just felt like I wanted operafic this year, which I know is not really your thing.

Though I'd be interested to know what you think of Eugene Onegin. Opera is... umm... you have to love it for the music and big emotions and not because it makes any coherent sense at all :)

and then I got sucked into writing 10k of archaeological casefic. You know how it goes, I imagine.

LOL! Yes. (I also see I have some new canons to check out as well... though it looks like I might be able to read that one without canon knowledge.)