wrt the abortion discourse going down rn, I really want to talk about what abortion advocates go through. I'm only going to speak to the political side, as that's what my experience has been, but I do want to hear from healthcare workers and social service workers as well. I'd also like to note I'm from the US, so what I say here is going to be specific to that- would also love to hear from those in other countries.
I have knocked doors, circulated petitions, done phone banking for abortion rights. not on a volunteer basis (tho it feels that way sometimes w grassroots nonprofit pay), but as my actual job. I've done this for two years, since before the Dobbs decision. I have talked to literally thousands of people about abortion, in multiple US states, from every background imaginable- I've canvassed along hennepin in minneapolis, I've done bougie areas in virginia beach, I've walked dirt roads.
my main takeaway: most people support legal abortion. yes, even many pro-lifers do not want it banned, at least not fully. if we're going to even pretend to be a democracy, abortion should be legal. I have met countless lifelong republican voters who have left the party purely over this issue. of the republicans I talk to who plan to keep voting republican, most of them are unhappy about Dobbs, but view it as less important than other issues. the vast majority of voters I've talked to, republican, democrat, or third party, are unhappy. the fact it's being banned (or, like when I was in Georgia, has been banned) shows that these politicians do not actually care about what their constituents want. this is obvious to anyone who follows US politics.
another thing I'd like to mention- the heavy discussions we have. I'm not going to call it "trauma dumping," because my job is to collect data and reports from voters specifically on the issue of abortion. I do want to hear these stories, and it is my job to record them. on a more human level, I think it helps a lot for women to have an uninvolved third party to listen without judgment. so we talk to them, me and my staff and the voters. they say horrific things. the old women are hard- they talk about finding women's corpses in alleyways, they talk about trying to kill themselves back in the 60s since abortion was illegal. one that stuck with me was a former nurse who told me she had to watch a woman bleed to death because a doctor wouldn't consent to help her with her miscarriage, lest he be accused of performing abortion. I am very glad we're here, and recording these stories because they're important, but the mental toll is a lot. substance abuse is really common in jobs like mine, in part because we hear horrific things day in and day out.
I worked the day Roe was overturned. I broke the news to so many people the following weeks. I remember being sweaty, wearing tattered shorts, and telling some woman outside her mansion about it. she fell to the ground. the class divide between us dissolved and it was just grief. I tried not to cry, to be strong, so she could express herself. we were two women, not rich or poor, but just two women in shock. that's another one that changed my brain forever.
aside from the grief, the anger, being the one to archive the emotions and stories of these women, we had people who were aggressive. they weren't even all anti-abortion- some just didn't like that we were talking to people. I was nineteen the first time someone pulled a gun at me at work, but that was before I started working abortion rights specifically. by the time I started abortion advocacy work, I was aware of how to de-escalate- it happens a weird amount. knives are more threatening tbh. people who answered the door with guns just answer the door like that. I get it- I keep weapons by my door as well, it can be alarming for a stranger to come by. knife people usually knew what we were about, and grabbed it specifically because of what we were doing. I'd been in the industry long enough to know, but training people new to it was hard. imagine telling someone who isn't old enough to legally drink yet that this new job will have people pulling weapons on you, just for talking. we had high turnover. I wonder why.
many of us travel for work. as I've mentioned, I've done abortion rights stuff in a few different states. I actually lived out of a tent for weeks last time I went to work. I didn't see my family, my cats, or my friends the whole time. it sucked a lot of the time. I actually got trench foot from my tent leaking while a hurricane passed. I would never trade it for the world, however- I love my job, and overall I have fun at work. we try to keep morale high, since it beats down on you a little.
the thing that got me was the rich people who just. didn't want to vote because it was too much work. in poor areas, I hook people up with rides to the polls, free childcare, anything I can to get them to vote because they do want to in most cases- it's an issue of access. and then the wealthy ones, even when they agreed with the cause, it was like pulling teeth out of their lazy mouths. it felt insulting, after hearing these stories, people being shocked they could get rides and childcare just to vote.
my team averaged almost ten miles a day of walking, with backpacks full of literature and water and supplies. it's a great workout, but exhausting. most don't get paid sick leave, healthcare benefits, or enough money to live out of poverty, not til they hit higher management at least.
this all being said, I'd like anti-abortion people to know that yes, we have heard your arguments. we wouldn't be doing this if we hadn't seriously thought about it- it's not like I picked it up like a janitorial job, no. we give up our families and our lives, our safety and our health, to do this. any argument you could make against abortion, we have heard from one of the thousands of people we talk to.
so like, I do want to engage in these debates but I don't think anti-abortion people really realize that I have thought very, very deeply about my work and what I do. and I think I can't engage with them until and unless they respect that and understand what abortion advocacy workers have gone through. and if someone walks up to you with a clipboard, or knocks on your door, to talk about it, just be kind.
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i absolutely love kristen x saria and could give a whole analysis about it because its such a beautiful relationship that was doomed to fall. kristen was already planning to die, and alone, since the start. they both cared deeply for each other, but it couldn't work.
i know a lot of people probably wish kristen would come back at some point, but im placing my hot take care: i dont think she should. like id say "if she did she would/should", but no, i dont think she should ever come back at all at any point. she dedicated her life to it, and she joined the stars. she's gone now. and saria needs to move on, to stop clinging to the past and grieve something that was already lost. she was left with a huge scar, but this scar needs to heal. if kristen came back, it would only make the damages on saria worse and will never let her heal.
i love silence x saria even more because it's the union of the future and the past. silence will help her to move on, to heal. she will show her a beautiful world. the broken rock and the plants growing on it making it beautiful etc. and at the same time, saria would be able to give silence the kind of support and comfort she deeply needs at the moment from her overwhelming duty. i wouldn't want to say it's THE relationship ever, but god fucking damnit its close to it. its beautiful. look at them mutually helping each other out. hits fist on desk
IF i didn't just woke up i'd write so so much more and give so much analysis and symbolism and all that stuff but im sleepy. ALSO i need to draw kristen and saria content one day but im so bad at drawing kristen and im clogged artwise i have so much to work on help
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tonight i was thinking about orv’s theme about how yjh as a character, and to a larger extent people, will in some ways always be unknowable. (orv spoilers following, read at your own risk)
i feel like i’ve seen a few posts on here that somewhat take this theme to an extreme, leaning *hard* into that “kdj doesn’t actually know yjh like at all” which while on the right track, i feel completely misses the point. Orv goes out of its way to showcase that kdj actually understands yjh to a scary degree, even once they’re out of the early scenarios and the gap between kdj’s knowledge and yjh’s personhood grows larger, there are still things about yjh that *only* kdj can fundamentally understand. And I don’t think that the novel does anything to discredit that understanding, only says that there is much more to yjh. In the same manner, even if you’ve known someone for years, spent all your time with them, there can and will always be new things for you to learn about them. The danger that orv speaks of is trusting in that assumption, that your understanding will be enough and you don’t have to keep an eye out for more developments. That the person you know will forever stay the same. And this isn’t a kdj problem either, fundamentally a lot of the big disagreements that happen between kdj and yjh in the latter half of the novel are born from both of them misconstruing what the other is thinking, trusting that their understanding of the other is deep enough to base their judgements off of. (Post first murim destruction, divorce arc, yjh thinking kdj scattered his soul on purpose, etc.)
As always with orv’s themes, we can view it in a meta sense as well. Kdj’s understanding of yjh as a character is so complete that it’s nearly flawless- until the story begins to deviate and a yjh grows outside the parameters that kdj’s judgements are based on. Even before then, there was always more to yjh- but as readers, we can only understand a character as much as we see them. What you come away with from a story is your complete understanding, there is no growth outside of those boundaries because then it wouldn’t be an understanding of *that* character, you would be putting your own ideas and such into it. But talk to another person, and suddenly the same character you understand so clearly becomes someone else. Talk to the author, and they say something completely different. And can one truly claim to understand a character when the story will never talk about them in every conceivable way? What does it take to truly understand such a thing? Learning that 1863rd round hsy wrote ways of survival with such limited resources and knowledge on who yjh even is, and yet despite it all, still manages to write a story that captures so much of his essence. As orv readers, we know it isn’t everything- it could never encapsulate all of yjh, but the idea that even when one knows nearly nothing, you can still put on a facade of understanding.
We can get into a chicken or the egg argument with this, as 1863!hsy dictates how yjh acts with her writing, and that yjh in the 1863rd round is the one she comes to know before ever starting this story, but when it comes to this theme of the unknowable in the people around us, I don’t think this sort of debate is worth much. We know that yjh exists outside the story written, and how much of him is determined by hsy’s writing is negligible because no matter what, he always grows beyond it. Whether as 1864 or secretive plotter, it all comes back to that same point of there is always more to see within a person.
I don’t know quite where I want to go with this, only that I wanted an outlet for some of these thoughts inside my head, but one of the best things about this theme for me is how it answers itself. When the people around you become unrecognizable, what should you do? And orv says to reach out. To try. To understand. Kdj loses access to omniscient reader several times but always, always gains it back in orv (as far as i remember), because at the end of the day, he is not someone who stays trapped in his idea of who he knows yjh to be. Yjh too, even at the end of orv, is trying to learn more and more about kdj. Only when you are willing to hear out the other person, to learn about them every day, does this unknowable aspect become something less daunting.
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just so obsessed with the idea of revali silently loving link and pining so much for him, but holding back because he's already created this facade that he despises link, because zelda and mipha already loved him first, because why would link ever choose him? so revali keeps it all inside and tries to display his bitterness at unreciprocated love as jealousy and arrogance at the imbalance of their roles, and tries desperately to fall out of love with link.
but it's as though the little hylian won't let him.
link, who practically insists on staying by revali during battle, who stares at revali with that wide blue-eyed gaze, who naps peacefully with his head in revali's lap when they're alone. and revali should be ecstatic at how close they are, but it hurts more than anything. this isn't fair to him, to be so tantalizingly close to link but to never be able to have him more than this. it's so suffocating, revali doesn't think he can stand to do this any longer, or else it might kill him.
but he continues to let link do whatever he pleases; silently tagging along after revali to the archery range, sitting beside him at mealtimes and letting him sneak more bites from revali's plate as though revali doesn't see him, even going as far as to let link sleep with him in his hammock after what revali assumed to have been a very bad nightmare. no one says a single word when revali and link arrive late to breakfast, with link clinging sleepily to revali's wing and revali looking strangely peaceful.
try as he might (he's not trying at all), revali can't say no to link (and neither does he want to), so he supposes he might as well endure this suffering a little longer.
"why do you let me do all this?" link whispers to him once, in the dead of the night, wrapped around revali in his hammock. and revali is silent for a moment, trying to come up with some sort of answer that could defend his actions. but he can't.
"i don't know," he says simply. he can't tell link the truth.
"does it bother you?"
"do you think you'd still be in my bed practically choking me to death with how tightly you're wrapped around me if it did?" revali winces at how biting his words are, but link just hums and snuggles deeper into revali's neck. he doesn't stop link.
"if it bothered you, you'd tell me, right?" the little hylian murmurs.
revali thinks about it for a moment. and he decides, no, i wouldn't. if you wished to be warm, i'd let you use my body as fuel for a campfire.
"go to sleep," he says aloud instead, softly, gently. he couldn't tell link that either, and he probably never would be able to. he wouldn't ever have the chance. "we have battles to prepare for in the morning."
revali wraps his wings snug around the blond, and link practically purrs in content, dozing off immediately into the warmth. like this, the rito almost smiles. if burning himself alive was the only way to have link, even for just a moment that couldn't always be guaranteed, then revali would just have to make sure he stayed alight; to be the bonfire keeping link warm throughout the night.
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