Akin (aka Curls) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
akin2squidrats) wrote2011-07-03 02:51 pm
akin2squidrats) wrote2011-07-03 02:51 pm
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Lookit me, actually putting my typed up notes on Akin's heart!
The moral of the story of this, kids, is don't take two neg-sig memories before Persona ganks you -- well, the mun encourages it, even if Akin is probably not happy about it. Then again, I always find the more dangerous and weird hearts the most fun, and Akin's ability to compartmentalize Bad Memories meant that folks stayed away from the really troubling parts, and no one picked any fights.
So, Akin learned some things from these memories. The first is a strong sense of alienation from being neither fully human nor Oankali. Oankali, and even other constructs tend to form strong bonds with their families and mates and for a reason he can't remember yet, Akin didn't. But he's not even welcome among all humans, since his second memory involves Phoenix being set on fire to kill him, even when he says he's helped things.
Also, he's not fully happy with either humans or Oankali right now, either. He's gained enough facts to know that the Oankali are doing something to humans that they don't want, and pretty much ignore humans when they say 'hey, quit it', but not enough to remember 'why'*. OTOH... well, he's got plenty of memories of humans being violent bastards to one another, and throw in plenty of Sabra game memories to confirm it.
Phoenix
Phoenix is symbolic of Akin's human side. Hell, I'd say that's canon -- its sort of an icon for the humans resisting the Oankali in Akin's head. And Gabe and Tate (the woman Kohaku talks to) are iconic of Akin's best thoughts about human resisters -- they don't trust the Oankali or understand them, but aren't mean and are trying to survive in a hostile world without help. Unfortunately, they can't reproduce, so the unfortunate habit of kidnapping children. So Tate is here represented between 'what we do to keep hope' and 'help kids'.
Shkaht and Amma, the two little girls Tate sends Kohaku after, are symbolic of how being kidnapped seriously messed up Akin's childhood and about what Akin thinks his childhood should have been. So, returning them to Phoenix or Lo would change Akin's views about things -- Lo would help him reflect on what he gained with more detachment, while Phoenix has this mad mix of resentment and fascination with humans. And to some degree shapes his attitudes about kids -- keeping the kids in Phoenix makes him a lot more prone to protect kids in what he sees as a more dangerous environment. The colors -- Delphinus and Pavo -- are mostly because of the teams Akin has seriously interacted with, they seem closer than Canis's changing partnerships.
It didn't come up, but technically neither kid was quite female -- Oankali and construct kids are neuter until metamorphosis, though construct kids born to human mothers usually have a strong tenancy towards a set sex. (Akin never questions that he'll end up male.) Most likely Amma would end up as female and Shkaht as male, though that wasn't guarenteed. Though in one of Akin's not-received-yet memories he reminds himself to think of these two are two little girls, because that's how the Phoenix people saw them, and reminding them that constructs don't have the same sexual development as humans would be Dangerous.
Lo
Lo is Akin's home village and is symbolic of a sort of equilibrium for him -- both human and Oankali, both happy and sad. The kids exist because they mark a major difference between Phoenix and Lo: Lo has a future, and Phoenix doesn't. The party is from one of his memories. Lilith here is in her role as Mom -- concerned parent and looking out for his safety.
Tii is more symbolic of Akin's broken bond trying to right itself. Now, in the memory Akin has of it, the bond is like a jagged edge. He gets this fixed in canon, but it still marks him as a bit of an outsider among Oankali, most of whom 'naturally' fall into family groups. In a sense, Tii is also symbolic of Akin's Oankali half, so is a bit mistrusting of humans and be more inclined to steer folks west. Also, Tii got Ursa colors because... well, that's Akin's partner team, and he's kind of worried that Beardog kind of do their own thing, unlike, say, Hydracula or Lyvus or Bunnycorn.
The Akin here is pretty much Angst, Uncertainty and Indecision, as suits this time in his life. Also, right now he's pretty annoyed at both halves of his self. Rory, Dawn and Anchor helped calm his own fears and start to reknit his halves together. It also reinforces his view that, as Jace keeps mentioning, that Canis is a safe space to mention how alien he is sometime. A lot of Akin's memories are about how humans are scary people who turn on anyone different than them, so have people warning him (or him warning himself) not to look threatening or alien to them.
Old Canis
Ari is symbolic of what Akin sees as his own human half. Kohaku made a good impression on him by helping the kids. Double points because she appears human but is willing to take the side of two scared construct kids over a human woman because it reinforces his views that People are Decent. (Ari sympathizes with Tate, mostly because both are parts of Akin's more benevolent feelings about humanity, but not enough to let her keep two scared kids.)
New Canis
The stream and bridge here is representing that Akin worries that Canis and Ursa aren't as close as they should be. Hence the bridge being broken, but not purposefully -- more from lack of repair. Helping to repair it would have encouraged Akin to try to seek out Ursa more. But he wasn't going to ask while Kohaku was doing something important.
Net Results
-- A calm sense of certainty that he's here in Sabra to help find/impliment a solution. He remembers telling people he had one in one memory, but that was also the memory where people tried to burn down a house he was in.
-- Still has mistrust over mentioning many things about his alien half. But this is mostly unchanged. Slightly worsened with the taking of his memories that clued him into what the Oankali were doing, but still gets the constant Canis message of 'we don't judge you'.
-- So Canis is kind of an exception to 'don't remind people you're an alien, and probably one of the Bad Guys'**.
-- He still doesn't trust people to not be mean, but he's more certain that there are good people and willing to give the benefit of the doubt (or at least assume they have reasons for what they do, like Tate does). Also, he's got reinforcement that humans can be good and bad, and probably everything in between.
-- A bit more mental armor for memories of his childhood. Which is good, as he hasn't gotten the Really Bad one on his kidnapping yet.
-- More of a certainty that any kid on a Sabra team will be taken care of, and he doesn't have to stage an intervention.
* He remembers that he wants to stop it, and he remembers that he does understand why it happens.
** The entire series is kind of a metaphor for colonialism, with Akin in the non-enviable position of being caught between two cultures. OTOH, since most SF readers tend to slot alien invasion stories into a certain mold***, the Oankali end up saving humans from their own damn nuclear war, but in a way that is frankly treating humanity as incapable of making rational decisions. Given that the Oankali assume all life is sacred, they refuse to let humans continue having kids just so they can self-destruct again, as it's unfair to those not yet born. Akin's eventual argument is that, as a human, he can believe that humanity needs self-determination more than safety, and as an Oankali he can accept the evidence that this is 90% likely to result in a second genocide/ecocide, one that the Oankali won't be able to prevent. Akin here right now doesn't know all the details, but between his memories and his message to himself, he knows he's here because of the resisters.
*** Which would have been interesting if any of the folks in Sabra who are from alien invasion stores were let into his heart. In the Chinese curse sense of the world.
The moral of the story of this, kids, is don't take two neg-sig memories before Persona ganks you -- well, the mun encourages it, even if Akin is probably not happy about it. Then again, I always find the more dangerous and weird hearts the most fun, and Akin's ability to compartmentalize Bad Memories meant that folks stayed away from the really troubling parts, and no one picked any fights.
So, Akin learned some things from these memories. The first is a strong sense of alienation from being neither fully human nor Oankali. Oankali, and even other constructs tend to form strong bonds with their families and mates and for a reason he can't remember yet, Akin didn't. But he's not even welcome among all humans, since his second memory involves Phoenix being set on fire to kill him, even when he says he's helped things.
Also, he's not fully happy with either humans or Oankali right now, either. He's gained enough facts to know that the Oankali are doing something to humans that they don't want, and pretty much ignore humans when they say 'hey, quit it', but not enough to remember 'why'*. OTOH... well, he's got plenty of memories of humans being violent bastards to one another, and throw in plenty of Sabra game memories to confirm it.
Phoenix
Phoenix is symbolic of Akin's human side. Hell, I'd say that's canon -- its sort of an icon for the humans resisting the Oankali in Akin's head. And Gabe and Tate (the woman Kohaku talks to) are iconic of Akin's best thoughts about human resisters -- they don't trust the Oankali or understand them, but aren't mean and are trying to survive in a hostile world without help. Unfortunately, they can't reproduce, so the unfortunate habit of kidnapping children. So Tate is here represented between 'what we do to keep hope' and 'help kids'.
Shkaht and Amma, the two little girls Tate sends Kohaku after, are symbolic of how being kidnapped seriously messed up Akin's childhood and about what Akin thinks his childhood should have been. So, returning them to Phoenix or Lo would change Akin's views about things -- Lo would help him reflect on what he gained with more detachment, while Phoenix has this mad mix of resentment and fascination with humans. And to some degree shapes his attitudes about kids -- keeping the kids in Phoenix makes him a lot more prone to protect kids in what he sees as a more dangerous environment. The colors -- Delphinus and Pavo -- are mostly because of the teams Akin has seriously interacted with, they seem closer than Canis's changing partnerships.
It didn't come up, but technically neither kid was quite female -- Oankali and construct kids are neuter until metamorphosis, though construct kids born to human mothers usually have a strong tenancy towards a set sex. (Akin never questions that he'll end up male.) Most likely Amma would end up as female and Shkaht as male, though that wasn't guarenteed. Though in one of Akin's not-received-yet memories he reminds himself to think of these two are two little girls, because that's how the Phoenix people saw them, and reminding them that constructs don't have the same sexual development as humans would be Dangerous.
Lo
Lo is Akin's home village and is symbolic of a sort of equilibrium for him -- both human and Oankali, both happy and sad. The kids exist because they mark a major difference between Phoenix and Lo: Lo has a future, and Phoenix doesn't. The party is from one of his memories. Lilith here is in her role as Mom -- concerned parent and looking out for his safety.
Tii is more symbolic of Akin's broken bond trying to right itself. Now, in the memory Akin has of it, the bond is like a jagged edge. He gets this fixed in canon, but it still marks him as a bit of an outsider among Oankali, most of whom 'naturally' fall into family groups. In a sense, Tii is also symbolic of Akin's Oankali half, so is a bit mistrusting of humans and be more inclined to steer folks west. Also, Tii got Ursa colors because... well, that's Akin's partner team, and he's kind of worried that Beardog kind of do their own thing, unlike, say, Hydracula or Lyvus or Bunnycorn.
The Akin here is pretty much Angst, Uncertainty and Indecision, as suits this time in his life. Also, right now he's pretty annoyed at both halves of his self. Rory, Dawn and Anchor helped calm his own fears and start to reknit his halves together. It also reinforces his view that, as Jace keeps mentioning, that Canis is a safe space to mention how alien he is sometime. A lot of Akin's memories are about how humans are scary people who turn on anyone different than them, so have people warning him (or him warning himself) not to look threatening or alien to them.
Old Canis
Ari is symbolic of what Akin sees as his own human half. Kohaku made a good impression on him by helping the kids. Double points because she appears human but is willing to take the side of two scared construct kids over a human woman because it reinforces his views that People are Decent. (Ari sympathizes with Tate, mostly because both are parts of Akin's more benevolent feelings about humanity, but not enough to let her keep two scared kids.)
New Canis
The stream and bridge here is representing that Akin worries that Canis and Ursa aren't as close as they should be. Hence the bridge being broken, but not purposefully -- more from lack of repair. Helping to repair it would have encouraged Akin to try to seek out Ursa more. But he wasn't going to ask while Kohaku was doing something important.
Net Results
-- A calm sense of certainty that he's here in Sabra to help find/impliment a solution. He remembers telling people he had one in one memory, but that was also the memory where people tried to burn down a house he was in.
-- Still has mistrust over mentioning many things about his alien half. But this is mostly unchanged. Slightly worsened with the taking of his memories that clued him into what the Oankali were doing, but still gets the constant Canis message of 'we don't judge you'.
-- So Canis is kind of an exception to 'don't remind people you're an alien, and probably one of the Bad Guys'**.
-- He still doesn't trust people to not be mean, but he's more certain that there are good people and willing to give the benefit of the doubt (or at least assume they have reasons for what they do, like Tate does). Also, he's got reinforcement that humans can be good and bad, and probably everything in between.
-- A bit more mental armor for memories of his childhood. Which is good, as he hasn't gotten the Really Bad one on his kidnapping yet.
-- More of a certainty that any kid on a Sabra team will be taken care of, and he doesn't have to stage an intervention.
* He remembers that he wants to stop it, and he remembers that he does understand why it happens.
** The entire series is kind of a metaphor for colonialism, with Akin in the non-enviable position of being caught between two cultures. OTOH, since most SF readers tend to slot alien invasion stories into a certain mold***, the Oankali end up saving humans from their own damn nuclear war, but in a way that is frankly treating humanity as incapable of making rational decisions. Given that the Oankali assume all life is sacred, they refuse to let humans continue having kids just so they can self-destruct again, as it's unfair to those not yet born. Akin's eventual argument is that, as a human, he can believe that humanity needs self-determination more than safety, and as an Oankali he can accept the evidence that this is 90% likely to result in a second genocide/ecocide, one that the Oankali won't be able to prevent. Akin here right now doesn't know all the details, but between his memories and his message to himself, he knows he's here because of the resisters.
*** Which would have been interesting if any of the folks in Sabra who are from alien invasion stores were let into his heart. In the Chinese curse sense of the world.