Mirror, mirror
Sep. 23rd, 2011 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baddecisiondzurSo, since half (or more!) of Lyvus has no clue what I just did with Tazendra and Mirror, allow me to explain!
Short version. Tazendra's brand of humanity has genetically-set castes. Mirror just took her from one of the pretty damn noble ones down to peasant. Moreover, there's fair evidence that caste influences personality -- and Honor remembers enough of Tazendra's life to care either way.
So, you'll notice some slight changes in her facial features -- a slightly more rounded jaw, eye shape and ears. Most obvious is that normally Honor has a widow's peak, and she doesn't any more. There's also the cultural and personality aspects...
And this is long. Once upon a time, normal humans came to the planet Dragaera. Sometime later, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens called the Jenoine also showed up. Well, probably in this order. Among other things, the Jenoine created the Dragaerans, genetically-modified humans with height, long life and other things. They also spliced in various native animals to create the Dragaeran Houses. Tazendra’s House is the Dzur, which means a tiny portion of her genes are actually from a large cat. Aerich’s is the Lyorn, which is a dog with a unicorn-like horn. And so on.
Here, have an official picture of the Seventeen Houses, helpfully noting what each House is known for.
I call it a caste system because it is. Teckla are peasants, and a few of the other Houses tend to be tradesmen rather than noble. And being born from parents of two different Houses? Well, you pretty much get looked down upon by everyone, even considering House Jhereg is pretty much 'house of people who got kicked out of their houses but can scrounge up the cash to buy in... and their descendents' so would totally take you in. Of course, House Jhereg also contains the Empire's organized crime...
Canon seems to present that the reputations of the various Houses -- Dzur are brave, Lyorn are conservatives, Hawks are curious, etc. -- are as genetic as the various physical traits. While one’s upbringing might shape things a bit, it seems like the tendencies are there. And, well, that’s what I took for Honor’s Blank personality: even without memories she’s an adrenaline junkie with a lack of fear and a tendency to solve her problems with violence.
So, she's got two things going on. The first is that while Honor of Corvus's House (or even her species) doesn't matter, it sure does matter to Tazendra, Baroness of Daavya. Pretty much her entire previous life, pre-waking up in Lyvus has been thrown into the toilet*. She's also not sure what Aerich will think. Or will be unsure when she gets over the 'crap, what do I do now?' moment. She'll probably be avoiding her memories for the mere fact that pretty much anything on her registry, even her happy memories, will be painful as long as she thinks she's stuck like this. Especially her happy memories.
The second? Well, I suspect Dzurlords aren't good at being courageous because being fearless gets in the way. They don't feel fear all that often, and when they do, it pretty quickly gets changed to anger. Basically, it's like the smart kid who never learned how to study because she never needed to. Then college (or grad school) hits like a ton of Jackson's Electrodynamics, and suddenly that doesn't cut it, and you got to quickly pick up how to study when most people have been learning bit by bit for years. Or, drop out and end up flipping burgers or something.
Honor's a bit ahead here, since SLT both removed a lot of her skillset for killing things and gave her things to be afraid of. But she's still used to having her 'fight, flight or freeze' switch defaulting to 'fight', so hasn't learned how to work past the urge to run away or freeze up when she's actually a 'normal person'**, rather than a badass warrior noble. And the cultural conditioning that 'Teckla aren't brave' means that her failures -- and she's going to fail at first -- will be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than a normal part of relearning how to react to danger.
--
* Even ignoring the fact she's dead (but doesn't know that), Sethra Lavode would no more toss one of her people -- her highly trained, highly competent people -- out on her butt than let the Jenoine back in. Hell, she'd probably ask Pel or the Sorceress in Green or someone to see if acting lessons can sink in, because having a wizard/badass swordswoman who passes for J. Random Peasant can't help but be useful.
But fears aren't always rational.
** Certainly there are brave Teckla. Hell, I think Tazendra's personal servant, Mica, is as brave as she is, since he follows her around while she's looking for trouble, armed only with a barstool and without centuries of training in magic and swordsmanship. Granted, he's more likely to go into self-defense mode than her, but... armed only with a barstool, against people who actually know how to fight.
Honor remembers some of this. It won't stop her from assuming.
Short version. Tazendra's brand of humanity has genetically-set castes. Mirror just took her from one of the pretty damn noble ones down to peasant. Moreover, there's fair evidence that caste influences personality -- and Honor remembers enough of Tazendra's life to care either way.
So, you'll notice some slight changes in her facial features -- a slightly more rounded jaw, eye shape and ears. Most obvious is that normally Honor has a widow's peak, and she doesn't any more. There's also the cultural and personality aspects...
And this is long. Once upon a time, normal humans came to the planet Dragaera. Sometime later, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens called the Jenoine also showed up. Well, probably in this order. Among other things, the Jenoine created the Dragaerans, genetically-modified humans with height, long life and other things. They also spliced in various native animals to create the Dragaeran Houses. Tazendra’s House is the Dzur, which means a tiny portion of her genes are actually from a large cat. Aerich’s is the Lyorn, which is a dog with a unicorn-like horn. And so on.
Here, have an official picture of the Seventeen Houses, helpfully noting what each House is known for.
I call it a caste system because it is. Teckla are peasants, and a few of the other Houses tend to be tradesmen rather than noble. And being born from parents of two different Houses? Well, you pretty much get looked down upon by everyone, even considering House Jhereg is pretty much 'house of people who got kicked out of their houses but can scrounge up the cash to buy in... and their descendents' so would totally take you in. Of course, House Jhereg also contains the Empire's organized crime...
Canon seems to present that the reputations of the various Houses -- Dzur are brave, Lyorn are conservatives, Hawks are curious, etc. -- are as genetic as the various physical traits. While one’s upbringing might shape things a bit, it seems like the tendencies are there. And, well, that’s what I took for Honor’s Blank personality: even without memories she’s an adrenaline junkie with a lack of fear and a tendency to solve her problems with violence.
So, she's got two things going on. The first is that while Honor of Corvus's House (or even her species) doesn't matter, it sure does matter to Tazendra, Baroness of Daavya. Pretty much her entire previous life, pre-waking up in Lyvus has been thrown into the toilet*. She's also not sure what Aerich will think. Or will be unsure when she gets over the 'crap, what do I do now?' moment. She'll probably be avoiding her memories for the mere fact that pretty much anything on her registry, even her happy memories, will be painful as long as she thinks she's stuck like this. Especially her happy memories.
The second? Well, I suspect Dzurlords aren't good at being courageous because being fearless gets in the way. They don't feel fear all that often, and when they do, it pretty quickly gets changed to anger. Basically, it's like the smart kid who never learned how to study because she never needed to. Then college (or grad school) hits like a ton of Jackson's Electrodynamics, and suddenly that doesn't cut it, and you got to quickly pick up how to study when most people have been learning bit by bit for years. Or, drop out and end up flipping burgers or something.
Honor's a bit ahead here, since SLT both removed a lot of her skillset for killing things and gave her things to be afraid of. But she's still used to having her 'fight, flight or freeze' switch defaulting to 'fight', so hasn't learned how to work past the urge to run away or freeze up when she's actually a 'normal person'**, rather than a badass warrior noble. And the cultural conditioning that 'Teckla aren't brave' means that her failures -- and she's going to fail at first -- will be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than a normal part of relearning how to react to danger.
--
* Even ignoring the fact she's dead (but doesn't know that), Sethra Lavode would no more toss one of her people -- her highly trained, highly competent people -- out on her butt than let the Jenoine back in. Hell, she'd probably ask Pel or the Sorceress in Green or someone to see if acting lessons can sink in, because having a wizard/badass swordswoman who passes for J. Random Peasant can't help but be useful.
But fears aren't always rational.
** Certainly there are brave Teckla. Hell, I think Tazendra's personal servant, Mica, is as brave as she is, since he follows her around while she's looking for trouble, armed only with a barstool and without centuries of training in magic and swordsmanship. Granted, he's more likely to go into self-defense mode than her, but... armed only with a barstool, against people who actually know how to fight.
Honor remembers some of this. It won't stop her from assuming.
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Date: 2011-09-24 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 08:33 am (UTC)In fact, the only really odd case I can think of is Kragar, and he was raised as a Dragon, just got himself kicked out somehow -- and even Vlad notes that some (non-kicked out) Dragonlords are quite happy to be rank-and-file soldiers.
Well, and maybe Sethra, but Sethra is a special case of everything and can't be used for much.