Repentance - teaser, a fragment of Boom

[aldersprig]

This comes after Unrepentant, and is just a teaser, as I need to write more on it before it's a proper story.

But I included a dollie of Cynara!

---

"And your crew? How are they, now?"

"Gone, I suppose. Eriko passed into humanity..."

It sat in Cynara's mind as the days creaked on. Dysmas was in her city. That was bad enough; he was here, walking around, free to do to anyone what he'd done to her...

...to try, at least. Boom Town looked badly at that sort of thing.

And that made her want to chew on nails and spit out bullets, as her father had been fond of saying, once upon a time. But his presence, his physical existence still on the same plane of being as her... that woke up other memories.

Comments

[inventrix]

*bounces excitedly*

[aldersprig]

*griiins* It's gonna take me a few days to finish, but I got it starrrrted.

[inventrix]

That's okay~ Do you know what you want in exchange yet?

[aldersprig]

Everything! (nooo but still chewing on it)

[inventrix]

Hee xD No rush but whenever you decide, let me know.

[thnidu]

Hmmm..... like what?

•Boom Town looked badly at that sort of thing.
> "looked badly on", or ...upon, would be better.

[aldersprig]

;-D that's why it's a teaser.

[kuro_neko00]

So Boom's got a town now. Not a place I'd want to live in. Primarily because unless Cynara is being a massive hypocrite, slavery has to be legal in this town. I'd never want to live any place where my freedom was in jeopardy just walking down the street. Even if citizens were protected from being enslaved, I couldn't live in a place that condoned it for anyone.

[aldersprig]

Hrrm, that's a good question, and I'm gonna flag the people who play Cya's moral compass and see what they think.
It's probably legal, though, with safeguards, because Cya likes her Keepings.

[inventrix]

Depending on how much influence Leo had, I'd say Keeping in the city would approach something more like institutional marriage. Official contract between two consenting adults, etc.

I am pretty sure that ambushing someone would be illegal/likely to get your ass kicked, at the very least.

He wouldn't push for Keeping to be illegal because, well. *waves a hand at Leo and Zita* Also he has rather cy'Luca views of the thing.

[wyste]

Let's see, citing the base version of their legal code that they came up with in high school - http://www.addergoole.com/wiki/index.php?title=Superhero_Code&redirect=no

Keeping is only valid under certain circumstances, has to be checked & approved by the town leaders before you can do it in their town, and it comes with escape clauses that trigger if the top or bottom start being abusive.

Keepers are under no obligation to explain any of this to their Kept, so it can seem like they just have a (relatively) decent keeping with no safeguards. The Keeper is under geas in that case, not the Kept.

[kuro_neko00]

The thing is, we've seen Cya break rule number eight on at least three occasions, and it's strongly implied she's done it much more frequently then that. Also, the 'And you have to let them go, if they want to' part is BS, because they don't tell anyone that, and if someone has just forcibly enslaved you it's not going to occur to you to ask them to let you go.

[wyste]

The details of the geas Boom put themselves under is not something we've pinned down, though the existence of said geas is definite. It's how they identify who's in the Crew and who is just peripheral. The link is, as mentioned, just their first draft from high school.

As for you moving to Boom's town: they wouldn't like you. You wouldn't like it.

Do you have a point, or are you just being argumentative?

[wyste]

I am trying to think of an occasion of Cya keeping by force and coming up blank. Her general mode is 'rescue' for a value of rescue that is questionable.

[kissofjudas]

But that's working from a non-fae perspective. In fae culture, Keeping isn't slavery. Perhaps the students treat it that way occasionally, but that's not really in keeping with the essence behind Keeping and Belonging in general. In many ways, it's much closer to indentured servitude--you are given food, shelter, and wages in exchange for service. The Kept is protected and cared for, taught in the ways of the Law, in exchange for obedience, meant to be used for (in my understanding) teaching and safety reasons.

Cya is under no obligation whatsoever to condone or allow slavery in the town around the Ranch. And in fact, given her experience with poor Keepings, the way she herself views Keeping, and what her crew has been through, I can imagine she'd be vehemently against the cause.

The slave trade is something entirely separate from Belonging, and if you really want a town where you can't walk down the street and be safe, I'm sure there is one in the Adder-verse. But Cya's isn't one, I don't think.

[inventrix]

...I am now amused that both Lyn and I apparently auto-replaced Kuro saying "slavery" with "Keeping" without apparently (in my case at least) noticing it. xD

[kuro_neko00]

Probably cause you're used to me equating them as one and the same in my rants.

[kuro_neko00]

Belonging, as it was probably originally intended, is supposed to be something both sides agree to willingly, with trust, respect and honor on both sides. But it rarely turns out that way, both in Addergoole and apparently outside of it (otherwise the school wouldn't be teaching the Laws in such a painful manner).

If you force someone to Belong to you against their will, then that's slavery, no matter what you call it. Saying that the fey are allowed to do it and the human residents are not, just because of some stupid magical laws that no one agreed to is racist.

[(Anonymous)]

(otherwise the school wouldn't be teaching the Laws in such a painful manner)

The school *isn't* teaching the Laws in this fashion. High school students are using their new-found superpowers for ill, and the teachers are all a few hundred years old and don't always understand what it means to be a teenager anymore. There are several canon (or could be canon) examples of times when the school/administration has intervened when a Keeping was going poorly, and/or when one or both of the people involved were being hurt by the circumstance. I'm sure Lyn could extrapolate on those. There is also a rather large canon example of how the school ensures that students who treat the Belonging as slavery remember that it is not, unless utilized that way--just ask Shadrach and Meshach.

If you force someone to Belong to you against their will, then that's slavery, no matter what you call it.

Yes. And under circumstances where that happens--mental Workings, extreme duress/torture, etc--that would be considered slavery, even by fae Laws. Under those Laws, I'd expect any right-thinking fae to contest the Keeping, and set the Law to right.

Saying that the fey are allowed to do it and the human residents are not, just because of some stupid magical laws that no one agreed to is racist.

This simply indicates that you're not grasping the core concept of my original post. *Keeping is not inherently slavery.* It can be treated as such, and can be twisted into such, and that is not to be accepted. Slavery/forced Keepings should be illegal. However, indentured servitude/willing Keepings, I can imagine, should not--by edict of the town, if desired.

Also, before making sweeping statements about the school and the world at large, please remember that what Lyn writes is only a portion of what actually exists in her universe. If all she ever wrote about were fae in happy uneventful Keepings, we wouldn't have much of a plot. As with most crime, the unfortunates are not the norm.

[kuro_neko00]

I've been re-reading my posts here and I seem to come across as hating Cya. I want to make it clear that's not the case. I don't approve of some of her actions, but for the setting she is one of the better characters and realistically is probably the best Addergoole is going to produce on a regular basis. If all the Addergoole characters were like Cya the place would be alot better then it is now. She Keeps people against their will, which is wrong, but she doesn't Keep them forever, and treats them well while she does. I acknowledge that most if not all of her Kept are in a better place mentally or emotionally after she releases them then before she Kept them. If she just got them to agree willingly I think Cya would be near the top of my list of favorite characters.

[aldersprig]

Thank you for clarifying... she's one of my favorite characters, too, in part because I know the most about her.

[kuro_neko00]

On less impassioned consideration, I have to admit that Wysteria was right and I was wrong. Since Cya does not to our knowledge force her Kept to do anything other then behave themselves, it's not slavery, simply kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.

The reason I was was so adamant regarding this was the mental aspects of Keeping. A Kept's free will is manipulated, simply be the nature of the Keeping bond. Most prisoners, provided they follow the rules, are usually left to think and feel as they please, including hating their captor. Slaves on the other hand are much more often mentally broken in that regard, for various reasons. In this a Kept is much closer to the slave then to the prisoner, since they don't have the liberty to hate their captor or resent their captivity. Even if the Keeper doesn't actively use the Keeping bond to manipulate the Kept (and we have seen Cya use the positive reinforcement aspects of the Keeping bond to encourage what she sees as proper behavior) the very nature of the bond itself precludes the Kept from having free control of their own thoughts and feelings. There is ample evidence of this in year nine: Ceinwen, Kelper, and even Gar, arguably the strongest willed (or perhaps most stubborn) of the ninth cohort, started out hating their Keepers and resenting their Keeping but by the end of the year didn't any more. I know it could be argued in Kelper's and possibly Gar's cases that their feelings changed naturally but, in my opinion, this cannot possibly be the case with Ceinwen. I hope this clears up my position alittle.

[wyste]

Kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, and emotionally manipulative mind control sounds like an accurate summation of the negative aspects of Cya's relationships with her Kept. ^_^

Agreeing about something is rather novel~

[aldersprig]

Seconded on all points ;-)

[kuro_neko00]

If I recall our extended email conversation correctly, we agreed on most of the big picture points. It's only recently when we've been focusing on specific characters and events that the disagreements started. I think that's mostly due partly from an overabundance of passion and empathy on my part (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and partly the fact that my code of morals and ethics is much more intolerant and inflexible then yours seems to be (which probably is a bad thing [for me, in case I wasn't clear]).