sev @sev@witches.town

When you bargain with someone firmly above you in hierarchy, you have no choice but to do so within the system. (And w/ someone below you, you are incented to remain in the system that favors you.)

Andrej is a child of privilege & knows how to play the game & never doubts he has something to offer in trade.

#Jurisdiction is about the value of humanity in a system that doesn't value all humans.

@starkatt perhaps we should pull a game together. I'm itching for it too.

Chonis' place on the spectrum of complicity is carefully communicated in the first hundred pages. There are worse tutors, who deny the bond-involuntaries humanity entirely. And Chonis genuinely hopes Joslire will have a better experience this term. But when it comes down to it, they are still Inventory as a whole and he is only performing the semblance of care, sometimes for his conscience, sometimes for a particular bond-involuntary to see. #Jurisdiction

In order to believe the system is as horrifying as he suspects it is, Andrej must have explicit confirmation -- he pushes the issue, *even as he finds that the penalty for exposing the system falls on someone at the bottom of the hierarchy*.

It's never the privileged who take the brunt of the blowback for our own learning process, is it? #Jurisdiction

If Noycannir is being set up to fail, it's not because anyone has anything against her -- it's just that her patron has his goals, and he doesn't care what the cost is to his tools.

With each reread I get more sympathy for her, but I still don't *like* her, not at all. She could be the plucky outsider besting the system, but instead she is realistically bitter, suspicious, and ill-equipped to cope with this role she's been thrust into. #Jurisdiction

I begin to suspect that a suppressed sense of proportion is one of the things required in order to flourish within a dystopia.

(See also: calls to resist normalization of encroaching fascism. If these things are not normal, they are appalling and must be resisted; a habit of resistance is not conducive to happiness under an authoritative regime. Now, it turns out, is a very appropriate time for these #Jurisdiction novels to be reprinted.)

Our hero, Koscuisko: "...an unpredictable Inquisitor with a sense of the ridiculous and an imperfectly submerged sense of proportion..."

#Jurisdiction

I am loving how on the one hand Mergau Noycannir's criticisms of Kocuisko's privilege are insightful, but on the other hand she cannot point those criticisms at the system that supports the hierarchy because she's fighting tooth and nail for respectability within that very system.

She's all about "I want the kind of latitude to be an asshole that you take for granted." And that's why I love her & hate her. #Jurisdiction

@lambdagrrl @patience also "appeasement," for many of the same reasons as "respectability."

Settling in for another reread of Susan R. Matthews' Jurisdiction series. Every time I'm captivated by another theme, another facet.

This readthrough I'm starting out more-aware that this setting is a galactic dystopia. These first few pages are the protagonist feeling his privileged place in that hierarchy crystallize around him like a trap.

Coming right on the heels of WisCon I'm feeling extra-appalled at the human bondage this system rests on.

You don't have to wait until TMITuesday; you can always AMA. I do better when I have something to respond to & I'm not much for holding secrets.

Still a little starstruck.

I did too many hard panels in a row and now I think I need a good cry? Or dinner? Maybe one, then the other.