The Virus Diaries: Day Zero
Here in Canberra we’ve had fire, toxic air, floods, and record-breaking hail (pictured). Now it’s pandemic time.
Trigger warning: discussion of severe depression
I’m immuno-compromised in a few different ways, the most obvious of which is that I’m diabetic. At the moment, that means my chance of dying if I get the covid-19 virus is around 7% (without allowing for fibromyalgia or any of my other health issues).
Things escalated quickly here in Australia over the last few days as thousands of events were cancelled and people continued to panic over toilet paper. Now’s as good a time as any to mention that I have a pretty severe anxiety disorder. Sometimes the experience of anxiety can actually be helpful at a time like this, because I’ve spent many years sorting rational from irrational thoughts (people with anxiety KNOW they’re stressing excessively over minor things, but our bodies continue to send panicked messages through physiological symptoms, which is super fun) and in many ways it’s like I’ve trained for this moment. In other ways, not so much.
My favourite thing about the covid-19 virus is that it doesn’t tend to hit kids very hard. So it hasn’t triggered a full-on Mama Bear reaction, or you know I’d be crash-tackling anyone who coughed in a public place and pouring bleach over them. [It’s worth noting here that I have been coughing in public plenty, due to one of my various non-infectious complaints. Please don’t crash-tackle me or pour bleach over me.]
Obviously, if someone hurts one of my kids, they die. That’s just science.
Anyway.
So Chris (my husband) told me last night that he had a sore throat and felt “heavy” in the chest. We slept in separate beds, having long since agreed that if anyone in our house was sick we’d separate me from the rest (which is now an official recommendation for anyone immunocompromised). He only just woke up (it’s 11am) so we haven’t taken his temperature yet today, but we have already checked him for fever (last night) so it’s a good thing I thought ahead and bought thermometer covers. He didn’t have a fever last night, so he’s almost certainly fine, but of course we’re being careful. I’m not the only immunocompromised person in the world.
I wouldn’t call myself a panic buyer, but I would definitely call myself a covid prepper. (You can judge me or admire me, as you like.) I expected to have more time to slowly build up supplies of long-life milk (and yes, toilet paper) but I do have quite a bit of food. If this is the moment when our family starts a period of self-isolation, we’re pretty well set up.
Last night I found out that some hospitals in Italy are not letting older patients have respirators, because there simply aren’t enough to go around and older patients are less likely to recover and more likely to need respirators for longer. That is absolutely horrifying, and for more than simple human decency. Like I said, I’m diabetic. That means every infection takes longer to heal. And I’m a ‘bad’ diabetic, too. I’m very very overweight, and my eating habits are enough to make any diabetes specialist swoon in horror. There are several surprisingly rational reasons for me to cheerfully continue eating like an Oompa Loompa.
First, chocolate and lollies are delicious.
Second, I’m not coping. With anything, really. I’m literally afraid of spending more than a few hours with my own children (due mainly to fibromyalgia and my average stress level being at around 90% so it’s hard for me to be nice about the 25th request for something the kids are perfectly capable of fetching on their own). I’m afraid to leave my house (heat makes me sick), to see people (I sweat and stink), to stand up (it hurts). I spend most of my waking hours in both pain and fear, mostly fear of more pain. Chocolate and lollies are an essential crutch that helps me do some of the things I really should do each day. I never do everything that I should (eat well, exercise, spend some actual time with my kids, give kids healthy food, deliver kids to school and home again, maybe say/do something nice for my husband, do something that earns money, shower, dress appropriately, brush teeth, brush hair, maintain a moderately clean house) but I do generally manage to shower and to take the kids to and from school, and to not yell or scream or swear directly at anyone, and to organise some kind of dinner for all four of us.
Third, junk food keeps the worse of my depression at bay. If I cut down on junk food, even a little, I get suicidal within 24 hours and homicidal within 48 hours. I lost a little weight before I got married to Chris, and I had to concentrate while driving to remind myself to NOT deliberately cause an accident—and that was when I was physically healthy, childless, not on any weight-increasing medications, and engaged to the love of my life.
Fourth, I’m intolerant of FODMAPS and Salyicylates. Which is to say, dairy, most fruit, most vegetables, any artificial sweeteners, and processed meat. I eat about one serve of fruit a week and one serve of vegetables a day (one or two a week if you don’t count potatoes). That mostly leaves carbs and meat.
So. I won’t be dieting unless I’m also in a padded room with a vitamin drip.
And I’m a little scared that if I get sick at the wrong time, or if ventilators are in short supply, that I will be judged unworthy of full treatment, and will be left to die. And my kids will find out that Mummy apparently cared more about chocolate than being alive to raise them.
That’s a pretty intense worst-case scenario.
(Chris has an extremely calm, naturally content personality. I think he’d cope okay emotionally if I dropped dead, although in practical terms he’s at his best with someone looking over his shoulder a lot because he’s a little TOO calm and content at times. Obviously, for all my faults, the kids are way better off with both of us.)
I’m feeling super panicky today, in case you can’t tell. A part of me just wants to start self-isolating the whole family immediately (partly just to dive into the not-so-nice experiences that are likely to happen sooner or later, instead of waiting in suspense).
Here’s another picture of our cat, Zipper.
Resource of the day: A meal that you can make with rice, frozen salmon, frozen peas, frozen corn, maple syrup, sesame seeds, and sesame oil (ie all stuff that can be stored for months before they’re cooked):
Ingredients:
cooked rice
salmon fillets
peas and corn
sesame oil
maple syrup
sesame seeds
1. Defrost salmon and marinate it in the maple syrup and sesame oil (about a tablespoon of each). Anytime between ten minutes and a day is fine. Line a tray with aluminium foil and chuck the salmon on it in a moderate/hot over for 5-15 minutes depending on how you like it.
2. Put leftover marinade in a fry pan with rice and vegetables, and mix/fry it until salmon is done.
3. Put rice on plates with salmon on top. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Eat.
Recommended donation of the day:
Buy a book by an Australian small press. I recommend Odyssey Books or Shooting Star Press. They will post it to you, so you don’t need to leave the house. A lot of small businesses and small authors are suffering as our fairs and festivals are cancelled.
You can buy stuff from me directly here. I still haven’t recovered financially from the events of last summer (and we were relatively unscathed).
Recommended personal action of the day:
Wash your hands for 20 seconds before leaving the house and after returning home. (If you’re doing that already, good!)
Today’s recommended item to hoard:
Easter eggs. Go ahead and hoard some Easter eggs, since the shops are likely to close at some point (possibly causing a shortage and/or sudden panic buying) and if you have kids stuck at home at Easter, you can easily hide eggs around the house and yard and that will definitely satisfy the little monsters.
[Editor: Shops aren’t going to close. Not even if we go on full nation-wide lockdown.]
Big House Idea Update
So I haven’t given up on the idea from the last blog entry.
I’ve learned many things since then, the most notable of which is that major refugee agencies recommend charging a normal amount of rent… which means this ‘big house’ idea is no longer pure charity, but a genuine investment.
I’ve also gained one large piece of the financial puzzle: I have a building designer who liked the idea and will design the house for free.
And on the down side, it’s looking very unlikely I’ll get a large insurance payout, as I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia rather than rheumatoid arthritis.
We have had a tenant in our house for 1 and a quarter years, as we continue to struggle financially. I’ve been doing pretty badly brain-wise for the last couple of years so we had the tenant move out and we got our master bedroom back (the only room big enough that there is enough space to walk around both sides of a queen bed). Louisette was pretty happy sharing the converted garage with Chris (his study) so we left her there, and the “spare” room is mine… sort of. Some of the kids’ toys are in there, one wall is all bookshelves, and there’s a bed. The bed is a miniature version of one part of the ‘big house’ idea—it means we can shelter at least one person if they need to evacuate due to fire/smoke. (Only people we already know who have personalities that can mesh well with ours for a few days in cramped quarters.)
I’ve also begun spreading the word that I’m offering free English lessons for Indonesian speakers, although there are no takers yet.
And I spent quite a quite a while designing house plans, deciding the house should look like a castle, with square towers on each corner (two of which would hold large disability-friendly lifts).
So it’s not the ‘big house’ idea any more, it’s the ‘Castle’ idea.
Things are progressing slowly because, well, I’m chronically ill. I hope to find a large organisation to fund and own the castle and/or a government grant.
So that’s where things are at the moment.
Here’s a cat pic, featuring the newly-painted (by us!) wall of ‘my’ room.
A Beautiful Dream
I wrote this blog entry on November 29th 2019. It was fairly obvious I was having a manic episode, so I didn’t post it right away. I still don’t fully know if I’m going to pursue this, but although the idea has evolved considerably (more on that in another entry) it is still very much with me. So, without further ado…
————————————————————————–
Not that long ago, I wrote about the injustice of the developed versus the less developed world, and my ongoing struggle to find a solution to my own white guilt (ideally one that is actually just and fair on a global/moral level, rather than just making me feel better… but also one that made me feel better because why not?)
I may or may not write an article about the other side of that—how I’m marginalised as a woman, as a disabled person, etc. But I won’t write about that today.
Today, I want to talk about my new shiny dream of the future.
This has started because of the above thought trains, combined with the fact that I have a very hefty trauma insurance plan that it seems must surely, somehow, net me some big money sooner or later (just as soon as one of my many chronic illnesses ticks the right set of boxes).
One of the contradictions of my life is that I live in a really nice house, with air conditioning and everything. So I’m rich. But heat above about 20 degrees literally makes me sick. So I “should” have air conditioning… right? But so many people don’t… I’ve personally met many people without plumbing, or a roof, or walls. . .
So here’s my shiny new thought-bauble: If I do get a massive insurance payout (and, to be honest, the maximum amount I could possibly get wouldn’t come close to being enough for this but might be enough for some of it), I would like to buy the house immediately next to ours, knock it down, and rebuilt it as not just one dream house but two, one on top of the other, designed in such a way that the two houses can be divided in a multitude of ways
eg the bottom house is for one family and the top house is for another family;
the bottom house is for two single people living completely independently (ie with their own kitchens, bathrooms, and living rooms) and the top house is for me and Chris to retire in while also caring for an elderly relative or two;
Half the bottom house is for a married couple, and the other half is studies for the family living upstairs;
Louisette and Tim house-share the top house, and Chris and I live in the bottom house, but the garage (currently both Chris’s study and Louisette’s bedroom) is converted back into a garage;
…and so on.
So it’s a fabulous, big, health-helping house for me AND an investment property at the same time.
But this is the part that is really awesome: Having effectively three houses, we could use the other two (or part/most of the other two) to house Indonesian refugees for 6-12 months each. During that time they could pay a proportion of their income (zero when it’s zero) and I could help them with English, with schooling, with getting a visa, getting a driving license, etc etc.
I used to speak fluent Indonesian and both Chris and I have teacher-ish brains so we’re well suited to help people transition into Australian society. Which is extremely helpful, useful work—especially as climate change will be making more and more refugees in the near future.
If I (or any of our parents) got sicker and we needed rental income or more space, we’d have it. Hopefully we could coordinate things so two Indonesian families were part of our mini-community at the same time (I’m a benevolent dictator, but I imagine it would be a blessed relief for anyone living here to have someone else they could talk to in Indonesian).
So if this dream came true, I’d have more space in my house (and perhaps a secret passageway or two) and I’d also be fulfilling the long-dead dream of being someone who helped low-income Indonesian people (by lifting them up to my financial level, rather than lowering myself to their poverty level as per 12 year-old me’s life plans).
I’m not publishing this article, but I’m writing it at 2am on Friday 29 November 2019. Chris and I just had a little chat about “If we were billionaires, we could….” including the above, and he was quite positive about my ideas (“Sure, if we’re billionaires”). And about having a book-lined TV room/basement. Which was enough to send me into manic mode. And here I am.
I mentioned I was manic, yes?
Right now I honestly believe with all my heart that I’ve found my true and ultimate purpose in life (this, plus writing, plus napping, plus being a loving mother and wife and friend).
When I wrote the above, I knew that Climate Change was bad, and coming soon. I didn’t know I’d be buying P2 masks that my sister brought from Queensland because there were none to be had in all of Canberra. I also didn’t know that I’d be seeing golfball-sized hail smashing windows and cars in my suburb in the same suburb.
Best interactive fiction of the decade
My 10 Interactive Fiction Games of the Decade:
-Howling Dogs
-Counterfeit Monkey
-Cragne Manor
-80 Days
-Superluminal Vagrant Twin
-Choice of Robots
-Hadean Lands
-Kerkerkruip
-Birdland
-Depression Quest
(For influence, innovation, and skill)
This is a cut and pasted tweet from mathbrush/Brian Rushton, who is the most generous reviewer in a field where there are a lot of incredibly generous reviewers.
Alrighty Then
A few days ago, I decided to give up on NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month, in which writers attempt to write the first 50,000 words of a novel during November each year), which was the right thing to do (the book was under-ripe and I was meant to be editing other books anyway). I love NaNoWriMo in part because I’m slightly manic depressive—enough that I can survive the inevitable depression, and live with the decisions I make when manic.
Anyway, so having left the mania train of NaNoWriMo I’ve spent my days watching TV and eating chocolate. But every so often, more or less accidentally, I did something useful around the house. Which is, you know, good and stuff.
Today, in a wild burst of enthusiasm, I set up what we call our “big pool”. We specifically bought it so I could hop in with the kids, which I did. Then I continued to supervise from a hammock. It was awesome.
Flushed with enthusiasm, I decided to attempt the impossible: feeding Louisette a Green Vegetable. To be fair, she has said to me more than once in the last week that she wants to eat more green vegetables “because I hardly eat any vegetables”.
THIS WAS THE MOMENT TO STRIKE.
Zucchini is my safest green vegetable (in terms of food intolerance), and has hardly any taste. I fried slices of zucchini in butter, garlic, and powdered fennel. Fennel, because I had Louisette sniff several herbs and choose her favourite. I had her smell it again as it was cooking (yum), and choose a cheese to go with it. Then I cut tiny squares of said cheese. When the zucchini was cooked perfectly, I turned the fry pan off and placed cheese on each slice, so it would melt juuust enough to be extra delicious.
And it was. Each slice of butter-saturated zucchini was a mouthful of glory. Louisette picked up a piece before declaring it inedible.
TJ didn’t get as far as physically touching any of it.
I also made risotto with roasted sweet potato, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, and bacon. TJ had some of the rice, and I managed to convince him to eat some bacon. Chris and I enjoyed the risotto.
So, all in all, I’m reminded why I don’t generally make an effort.
But I did have a win this week. I bought fish fingers for the first time, and both kids loved them.
Yay.
In other news, John Scalzi mentioned “domestic felicity” in his blog a day or two ago, and I realised that should absolutely be the name of my blog. Oh well.
A thousand ingredients, and not a bite to eat
There are four people in my family: Chris, my partner, who is more or less normal food-wise; myself, intolerant of FODMAPS and salicylates (ie most fruit, vegetables, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, processed meats, and nuts); Louisette, age 7, who is intolerant of honey and sulphites, and TJ, who is more or less normal except for being 5 years old.
Standing up to make a peanut butter sandwich is enough to give me a sore back, so dinner is a real challenge. I wouldn’t say I’m succeeding, as such. Unless the bar we’re setting here is “no fatalities, no starvation”.
For example, this is what we’re eating for dinner tonight:
Chris: Literally frozen and reheated airplane food (I get some truly weird meals from a charitable food pantry at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Melba; I feed it to him so he gets a bit of variety). As usual, he doesn’t get served any vegetables because it’s too hard (he usually has a carrot at work, and sometimes adds baby spinach to his sandwich). Sad but true. On very rare occasions, I will find something at St Paul’s that the kids will eat. Usually even if they like it once, they don’t ever eat it again.
Me: Lamb chop roasted with potatoes (and usually sweet potatoes and sometimes carrot, but not today). This is my “safe” meal and I usually eat it about 3 times a week (my doctor said to cut down on starches and red meat, and I just laughed. Then I started taking fish oil tablets). Potatoes, sweet potato, and carrots are all in my top 5 best veggies (potatoes are the only fully safe vegetable for me, which is actually not that awful; potatoes are awesome). The only hazard is the brown flavouring in the gravy. Sometimes I make my own gravy, but not today. Chris will also eat lamb chops, but the kids won’t. (I could have made lamb chops for him today, but I’m on day 3 of the same thing so I thought something else might be good.)
Louisette: Sausages in bread with tomato sauce (a la BBQ sausages). She loves it, and had two full sausages and two slices of bread. Even with no vegetables (does tomato sauce count?) that’s a win: no whining, and a solid meal. Since she’s on Ritalin, she often eats very little and is in danger of losing weight. We worked hard over many months to get her to just sit at the table every night, and even harder to get her to take more than two bites of pretty much anything. And sausages are nice and easy to make. Chris also likes them; Tim has gotten over them; I’m strongly intolerant of sausages.
TJ: “Spicy noodles” ie ramen ie mi goreng ie 2-minute noodles (the kind with several sauces including chili). With grated cheese and ham added. He didn’t eat all that much today (his first time eating beef rendang flavour, which is hotter than the norm and he said it was too spicy but he “don’t feel like a sandwich” so I guess that’s it for him today. Also very easy to make in a single portion (we have a great bowl-and-lid set that has an inner bowl that’s also a strainer, which is perfect for mi goreng), which can be a lifesaver.
Other meals that we eat:
All of us:
-Eggs… sometimes. Poached, boiled, or eagle eyes. Daddy is usually the chef when it comes to eggs.
-Butter chicken with gnocchi and Greek yogurt. (Somewhat… international, I know.) This is delicious AND I’ve gotten to the point where I can sneak some zucchini (the only green veggie I tolerate well) into the sauce AND TJ will sometimes let me add frozen corn and/or peas to the sauce. Louisette doesn’t eat the butter chicken… but I set aside some of the chicken and add Ayam’s Lemon Chicken sauce, and she loves it. The butter chicken with sauce (but, interestingly, NOT the lemon chicken with sauce) freezes and reheats beautifully, so that can serve TJ or Chris or me again (with a bit of fresh-cooked gnocchi and some yogurt). We’ve been having this 2-3 times a week, so I’m starting to get a bit sick of it (plus spicy probably isn’t great for a sensitive stomach like mine). And I can’t stand chicken breast or tenderloins (unsurprisingly, I’m quite neurotic about food) so I always get boneless thighs and then have to cut them up. Handling raw meat is a lot of work, and gross. Still, for the moment, I can still stomach butter chicken—and it works really well for the whole family. The below photo is a classic scene, with the main pan having butter chicken, the pan on the right having lemon chicken, the bowl on the left cooling down TJ’s gnocchi (removed from boiling water with a slotted spoon so the water and heat isn’t wasted) and the pan at the back right waiting for the second lot of gnocchi to go in.
-Rice paper rolls. These are unusually healthy for me, including snow peas/cucumber (snow peas for me, cucumber for TJ; Chris is flexible as usual) and carrot. Louisette won’t touch them, but I use a Woolies roast chicken and I give her lemon chicken… ie some of the chicken pieces with the same Ayam lemon chicken sauce. And that works with relatively little effort. But rice paper rolls are a LOT of work and, again, handling the chicken sometimes grosses me out. Even though it’s cooked.
-Mini pizzas. I use English muffins so it’s easy to vary who gets what. The kids both accept basil pesto (tomato paste is anathema even though tomato sauce is ambrosia) and have pineapple and ham. I’m intolerant of pineapple and ham and aware that they’re basically just a sandwich, so I usually make mini pizzas for the kids when Chris and I are eating something completely different. Plus making two instead of 3-4 pizzas means less time spent standing up without a break.
Louisette only: Frozen nuggets and fish (1 meal, with both—but she’s over frozen chips) with tomato sauce, mayo, and lemon juice.
TJ only: Corn on the cob and ham. (Also he apparently eats a wonderful variety and quantity at day care. It will be a real shame to lose that when he starts Kindy in 2020.)
Chris and I only:
Beef stroganoff (although I think it’s awful as leftovers, so I rarely make it—plus I’m highly intolerant of mushrooms, but refuse to leave them out because they’re delicious and sort of a vegetable).
Lasagna/bolognaise (you and I both know they’re the same thing). Great for adding zucchini and carrot (my top veggies), and great for leftovers. Also our thermomix does a good white sauce without needing a human standing and stirring—it stirs and heats at the same time.
Maple marinated salmon with semi-fried rice (I add the leftover marinade to the rice and fry it for a bit). I can deal with frozen corn and peas in this context (mentally, at least). And yes, I know corn is technically a grain. Shut up.
I feel super gourmet sprinkling sesame seeds on top, too.
So that’s where we’re at with meals at the moment. It’s… not great.
I’m about to attempt to get Louisette onto honey carrots (probably made with either golden syrup or maple syrup). Wish me luck.
Oh, there is one bit of good news. Louisette loves to have apple and hommus. She also likes lemon butter and Vegemite.
Parenting is weird, is what I’m saying.
Surprise!
It’s been a long, long time since I added any new content here, but since I mainly use blogging to talk to myself (just ask my 2.1 followers) I decided the blog needed to be separated from my vaguely professional-looking online store and (coming soon) Escape Room booking sessions, so the whole blog has been shifted over to this dusty old scene where only the devoted can find it. I’ll most likely play around with themes and stuff, so bear with me (my precious 2.1 followers). In a week or two, we’ll be back to our regular schedule at the new location aka here.
Meanwhile, here’s my son and I.
Who do you call good?
The title is a quote from the Bible, when someone calls Jesus “Good Teacher” (or something like that) and Jesus says, “No one is good but God alone.”
Which from him has a multitude of layers. But it’s also interesting, given how much Westerners like to think of ourselves as “a good person”.
I think I may have found one of the conclusions this blog entry will draw: that no one is “good” but God.
However. That doesn’t mean we may as well stop trying.
[Sidebar: The way Christianity fundamentally works is that Jesus died in order to save us unconditionally ie as soon as we accept him we got our ticket to Heaven, no matter if we just ate a delicious orphan lunch five minutes ago. BUT if you believe Jesus is who he says he is, and saved us, and loves us… then there is a side effect on your behaviour. A goodening effect, but it comes from gratitude and love rather than fear of damnation or being caught.]
This blog entry is about white guilt.
I am what I call “Omo white” based on those overdramatic ads of a white SO WHITE that it shines like the sun. That’s me.
The more history I learn, the more I realise that my life is as good as it is because my ancestors did horrible things. So although I’ve never personally attempted genocide, I benefit tremendously from the racist work of others. (And I’m sure I’m plenty racist myself, too. But today I’m concerned with systemic rather than individual racism eg the fact that my name and skin is white enough that I’m more likely to be hired than an equally qualified person with darker skin, or an accent, or a non-European name.)
Guilt is designed to tell us when we have done something wrong. White guilt is trickier, because it’s (mostly) not ME, the individual, who did the bad thing. But it IS me who benefits. So we get several possible reactions:
-Denial. “I didn’t do anything wrong” (or sometimes, “I earned everything I have from my own merit; history/racism has nothing to do with it.”)
-Repression. “I can’t fix this. Better not to think about it.”
-Anger. “How dare you make me feel bad when I didn’t do anything wrong!”
-Despair. “The world is evil; I’m evil. Everything sucks and can’t be fixed.”
-Assuage guilt. This is where I sit, acknowledging that I benefit from awful things done in the past (and present), and others suffer—and that this is not fair, and concluding that I need to do… something.
Some options for action are:
*Loudly acknowledging the facts, especially where people are angry or in denial. (Much social media liking/meme-ing etc ensues.)
*Give to charities, particularly those that are concerned with global problems.
*Join protests.
*Vote for the left, which tends to be less selfish.
*Devote one’s life to aid work.
*Become a vigilante killer (not recommended).
So much of the Western World is obscene or fantastical to poor people in third world nations (or even homeless or otherwise poor people in the West). Here is my daughter and I on a Ferris Wheel. It cost over $30 for a ride that took a few minutes.
$30 is sufficiently alarming that we didn’t go on the Ferris Wheel last year, or the year before. But oh, the look of wonder on my son’s face as our gondola began to rise!
But… thirty dollars. For many people around the world, that is a month’s wages.
Should I sell all I have and give my money to the poor? Knowing what a difference my relatively small amount of cash would make in another country (a country that is poor because my ancestors and my politicians treat the people there as subhuman)?
Is it evil for me to buy gifts for my children, as others go hungry?
In Season Three of “The Good Place” TV show, the main characters discover that, as the world gets more complicated, it’s virtually impossible to do anything truly good. Five hundred years ago, you could gather wildflowers to give to your mother. Aw, how nice—and it doesn’t hurt anyone.
But today, in a city, you can’t gather wildflowers because all the flowers are in someone’s yard, or public property (for everyone to enjoy, so you shouldn’t take them away). So, gathering flowers is stealing. (Sidebar: you can gather certain weed flowers, which my children do for me regularly.) So you can buy flowers… which means either driving to a flower shop (using petrol, which is bad for the environment and has a bunch of other issues) or using your phone (manufactured in a third-world sweatshop?) and having the flower shop drive (using petrol).
So even with the purest heart, it’s impossible to exist in the West without being connected to pollution/Climate Change (which of course is already hitting the poor hardest), sweatshop labour, and so on.
I’ve also been reading a very interesting fantasy series in which magic is literally stealing from the poor. If a person is healed by magic, someone else gets sick. If a beautiful building is made with magic, a building elsewhere falls down. And OF COURSE it’s the pretty pretty Elvish types who use magic to make beautiful clothes, and cities, and art—while the ugly orcish types live in filth and dirt because they are the source of all that magic. And beauty. And art. Eg if an orc has a beautiful singing voice, they sell it to the elves for a few bowls of gruel. They do it willingly, because the system is so crushing that if they don’t sell all they have, they will starve.
Ouch.
See, the thing about sweatshops is that people line up to work in them, because there is no alternative. Or the alternative is to starve. So they work long hours for not-quite-enough. Then they are too tired and hungry to do good work or to work safely, or to find better work.
Welcome to the cycle of poverty.
One of the characters is a teenage white female human. She has grown up loved and secure, so when she discovers how magic works she is devastated and immediately challenges it. When she is standing facing the leader of the Elves, she chooses not to kill him, but to lay down her own life and trust that others will give up all they have, like her, because it’s the right thing to do.
Another character is her boyfriend, a black man. He knows about daily systematic injustice, so when he discovers how magic works he believes the only way to stop it is to utterly destroy the elves. Because even if he kills the evil leader of the elves, the next elf leader will still be in a position of power over the orcs. So even if the next elf leader is “good” they can withdraw their favour at any time. That, of course, is why the White Saviour trope is so insidious. Because it keeps the “other” on the bottom, and the powerful White/Elf type people on the top. (I really hope he’s wrong, because I don’t want the Western World destroyed. And I don’t want it to be subservient to other parts of the world, either. I don’t want to be the “other” that has to rely on the goodness of the more powerful class.)
A third character points out that they are acting as if magic is finite. What they need to do is not to destroy all that has been built, but to use magic in such a way that it doesn’t destroy the orcs, but benefits them.
That has a real-world echo. There IS enough food in the world, already. And we could definitely create more resources ethically.
And isn’t that a nice “out” for people like me? Because I’m not a scientist, or a politician, so what can *I* do?
I’m going to leave it there, for now. Mostly because I’ve written quite a bit. Not because I’ve actually found an answer. But maybe the idea that “helpful must mean I suffer” is innately harmful, causing more guilt and fear rather than usefulness. So that’s something, at least.
IF Comp: Roads Not Taken
I only did one play-through of this story, which took 40 minutes. “Slice of life” is a good description because it feels autobiographical*—both because of the detailed storytelling (good storytelling) and because it has the rambling uncertainty of real life. A lot of hyperlinks add detail, and the writing is good enough that they’re worth clicking on. Other times there is an obvious hub where one can investigate several options and then return to make a branching choice.
I’ve been avoiding realistic stories because… well, ugh. Who wants to read about real life when they’re already living it? (Real life and I are frenemies at best.)
But this is clearly a very well-written story with a vast amount of options. I suspect there are certain choices that lead to a more positive outcome than I got (so people who like the genre will definitely play multiple times), but mine wasn’t terrible or unsatisfying.
So although this didn’t give me the escapism I look for in a story, it is fundamentally perfect (a few spelling errors, but not enough to detract from the overall tale). So it gets 4 stars. In my system, that means a story that is fundamentally perfect.
*I don’t believe it’s actually autobiographical (more than any other story); it’s just so well written it feels real.
Edit: I actually gave it a 9, because the scores are out of 10.
IF Comp: Dull Grey
Okay, so the title is very off-putting. Gonna play it anyway.
I’m enjoying the simple but layered visuals, even if they don’t technically count towards my score (it’s all about the words). But it shows the writer has spent time on making an involving and professional story. Mostly, in my mind, because it means they’ve ironed out a higher number of bugs.
This took me ten minutes to play through once. I could tell it was translated into English because some of the phrasing was just unusual (not quite wrong but not quite right) and some mistakes had gotten through too. Quite a few… but it still felt like a well-written story that just needed one or two more drafts from native English speakers.
It is, as the name suggests, a somewhat depressing story. Which is fine. I made the same choice over and over, and that got me a fairly common ending. I gather than changing one’s mind can change the ending, but I don’t like the story enough to play a second time (only because of personal taste, not because the story is bad).
As I said, the writing is genuinely good throughout. I’m going to give it 4 stars despite the errors, because I respect the effort of translation done well. Some of the errors add to the atmosphere, actually.
Felicity Banks 