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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/29FQxrU:
magickedteacup reblogged your post and added:
OH NO that line about your brother in law made me think of Kes
There’s a resemblance, probably. I hadn’t thought it through much, but brother-in-law is a big gangly Midwesterner who works very conscientiously to always be kind and sweet and mannerly, goes out of his way to help people if he sees that he can be helpful, makes time to talk to everyone, and is also an incredibly intelligent, sharp-minded, ruthless person. He has achieved extremely difficult things by dint of ceaseless networking and exchange of favors– most recently, getting a state agency to approve a thing after months of delay (and his thing was legit, but people routinely wait a year or more for this thing even with all their papers and so on in order because you know, the State) by befriending and doing a favor simply because he could for a neighbor who turned out to be highly-placed at a related agency and so she sweetly mentioned to this guy’s boss what a shame it was that the approval hadn’t come through etcetera. All aboveboard, and Z being the person he is, he would have done whatever favor it was for that neighbor regardless of whether she could help him– but she could, and she did.
Which, now I consider it, is Kes all over, though I don’t think I’ve had a chance to convey that so much in the story– he’s mostly been a pushover to everybody in-text, but he’s only where he is in the first place because he’s not, usually. He won’t really fight anybody, but trying to get him to do a thing he doesn’t think is right is just not going to work out no matter what kind of pressure you think you’ve got on him. (Because, in the end, you don’t. He’s a whole lot smarter than he looks and he knows exactly where you’re thinking you’re going to put pressure on him, and he’s not going to get stuck there. He’s survived a whole lot more than he looks like he has, and there’s probably no kind of shit you could try to pull that he hasn’t already been through at least a dozen times.)
Z also is a big goofy sweetheart who loves his baby, though, and is pretty aboveboard about his shortcomings and working around them. I could do worse than stealing some of his sunshine-over-steel as a character note.
Also the concrete mental image of chicken processing day, where he’s covered in chicken blood and shit, and sets the knife down and comes over to smile at his baby and say “Daddy can’t hold you right now, he’s covered in blood.”
magickedteacup reblogged your post and added:
OH NO that line about your brother in law made me think of Kes
There’s a resemblance, probably. I hadn’t thought it through much, but brother-in-law is a big gangly Midwesterner who works very conscientiously to always be kind and sweet and mannerly, goes out of his way to help people if he sees that he can be helpful, makes time to talk to everyone, and is also an incredibly intelligent, sharp-minded, ruthless person. He has achieved extremely difficult things by dint of ceaseless networking and exchange of favors– most recently, getting a state agency to approve a thing after months of delay (and his thing was legit, but people routinely wait a year or more for this thing even with all their papers and so on in order because you know, the State) by befriending and doing a favor simply because he could for a neighbor who turned out to be highly-placed at a related agency and so she sweetly mentioned to this guy’s boss what a shame it was that the approval hadn’t come through etcetera. All aboveboard, and Z being the person he is, he would have done whatever favor it was for that neighbor regardless of whether she could help him– but she could, and she did.
Which, now I consider it, is Kes all over, though I don’t think I’ve had a chance to convey that so much in the story– he’s mostly been a pushover to everybody in-text, but he’s only where he is in the first place because he’s not, usually. He won’t really fight anybody, but trying to get him to do a thing he doesn’t think is right is just not going to work out no matter what kind of pressure you think you’ve got on him. (Because, in the end, you don’t. He’s a whole lot smarter than he looks and he knows exactly where you’re thinking you’re going to put pressure on him, and he’s not going to get stuck there. He’s survived a whole lot more than he looks like he has, and there’s probably no kind of shit you could try to pull that he hasn’t already been through at least a dozen times.)
Z also is a big goofy sweetheart who loves his baby, though, and is pretty aboveboard about his shortcomings and working around them. I could do worse than stealing some of his sunshine-over-steel as a character note.
Also the concrete mental image of chicken processing day, where he’s covered in chicken blood and shit, and sets the knife down and comes over to smile at his baby and say “Daddy can’t hold you right now, he’s covered in blood.”
