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lucifers-ferris-wheel-blog · 7 years

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All Except The Sea (Ness-An 2.5)

The Rivalry BEGIIIIINNNNNSSSSS(@marysuewhyyyy @criticalcritques)!

Name (if multiple, most commonly used during said time): Birth to twelve, while living in hometown: Ness-An. Twelve to eighteen, while living in the Mission School: Mahala Of Wolves. Eighteen to twenty-seven, while on the Northbound Journey (it will all be explained, in a Backstory ™, which is basically just going to be a plot summary): Mahah-Leloo.

The definition of the first name she had is Wolf Of; because her mother was upset at people having given their children lengthy and over-specific names they didn’t live up to, or even did, so her mother decided to name Ness-An something open-ended. The issue is that in Ketempi culture many children, as aforementioned, have very long names, so most people who have not met her before assume it’s been cut into a nickname at an odd point. Many people ask for her “full name”, and she actually receives more inconvenience, or at least face-to-face rude comments, on her name than her eyes. Her second name was assigned so that she would assimilate better with the settlers and be more “civilized”. She actually didn’t mind it, and in fact, was quite neutral on the idea of newcomers for a time, but then things went downhill. Her third name is composed of Northwest trade jargon (which was/is an actual thing and is modernly called Chinuk Wawa), with Mahah meaning “to depart or leave” and Leloo meaning “wolf”, at least among several coastal groups, because yay hurrah dialects. So she, in a way, gets an “Of” after all. Wolf Of Leaving.

Time period of first book: 1845-1847

Duration of Ness-An’s life: 1835-1862 (27 years, t'was not a good time to reach old age)

Physical description: Ness-An has hair about to her waist, and it’s relatively straight dark brown, nearly black. Not dark enough to be considered an extremely valuable trait, like blueblack, nor light enough to be uncommon and special, like medium brown is. It’s rather unremarkable hair, and she has trouble remembering to brush it.. Ness-An is relatively short compared to a modern western woman, but is around average for a Ketempiken (Around 5″2). Her weight fluctuates heavily based on food availability, and it’s a bit lower before she hits puberty evidently, but if adequately fed she is rather squishy. She has a traditionally pretty oval face, and occasionally marks three charcoal lines beneath her chin, because it’s considered a luck symbol.

Her eyes are different colors, but one is greysih-brown and the other more completely greyish, and from distant range its hard to tell. However, when Ness-An was born, her greyer eye was paler and made the difference more pronounced (this has occurred with actual heterochromic people, where sometimes the lighter eye darkens slightly within anywhere from months to years of birth), and in a town where the number of inhabitants were around 700, everyone hears about this. It’s theorized about in a negative light as to why this occurs, but any asking, if asking is done at all, goes to her mother. By the time she’s old enough to have defined memories at around four, the few people who harped upon it have fallen silent, but no-one ever to go out of the way to interact with her.

Languages spoken: Ketempi, which is a language isolate, meaning it has no traceable roots or family (Isolates are fairly common, actually, especially among native groups, but i suppose its because there are often languages there that die before proper analyzation). I decided to make it a language isolate because i made it up and I’m excessively lazy. I've forged an entire fictional indigenous culture simply because I can control the history of it as long as I manage to explain why it isn't remembered to this day. If anyone happens across this who finds this offensive, most especially if said person has native heritage, please tell me. Slight topic drift back to original question: Ness also learns to speak English at the Mission School, because that’s what they’re teaching there, and Chinuk Wawa, because that way she can speak to the other children boarded there who aren’t of Ketempi heritage.

Here are the answers to some previous critiques that you may want to skip:

Why Ness identifies as an elf and not a Native American: She does fully claim to be Native American, but like many groups did, believes her personal tribe she descended from was a bit better than others, as this is often ingrained into origin stories for how people came to be. And yes, I understand I need a lot of research; I’m at 17 months of researching and counting. The thing is that ear pointing was practiced as a coming of age ritual, much like facial tattoos or lip piercing were for other groups, and also to better adhere to societal beauty standards. It helped make the Kentempi even more different, seeing as no other people were ever recorded to have practiced such. Immigrants from the East decided that they resembled elves, but they never actually themselves identified as that.

But yes, they were originally spoken of as having dark magic or negative powers, seeing as they had a native religion with a god that wasn’t Christian so of course they were seen as heathens and witches and satanistic people. Now most of us recall elves as more beneficial in their supernatural abilities. Also, when (spoiler warning to my nonexistent fans) they flee north once driven of their land, just as some tribes fled to Canada once they had their homelands removed from them, they are constantly referencing the Crystal Path (which sounds super hipstery but) from their origin story, a highly time-corrupted version of crossing over the sheet glaciers on the Bering Land Bridge from Asia to North America; and the North Star, which actually wasn’t in it’s fixed location when the Land Bridge was being crossed; which has a whole legend dedicated to why it stays still now, but anyway: they fled further north than any other group was recorded to have fled to, in relation to their starting point.

They also engaged in the whole “giving away things connotes wealth”, just as several other groups in the Northwest, especially coastal, did. The Chinook word for “to give”, patshatl, was turned into Potlatch, which is the modern name for these parties still hosted to this day where the host hands out free food and bountiful gifts to the guests; often over half of their possessions, at least in old days.These giving sprees varied by culture, with some being held primarily in summer because it facilitates travel and others mainly held them on winter, to add cheer to dreary times. Yet others had no seasonal tendency for when potlatches were most frequently hosted. They could take up to a decade to hoard for if they were especially opulent, but yes, it was a way of showing high social status that I wish most Americans still practiced today. The Ketempi people called the practice Hlák, and held it often once immigrants arrived, thinking that if they rewarded the newcomers with fine hospitality they would feel satisfied enough to leave. This was the opposite of what occurred, and the Europeans simply took the gifts and destroyed the ones bearing native symbols, but robbing the Ketempiken of furs and foods.

In the end, they gathered a reputation for being pointy eared, northern-living people who had some rumors of odd abilities and gave things away seemingly without incentive. While hiding out in the inland north, they ate primarily caribou, and the same while heading through parts of British Columbia. So there you have it. It was warped over time to the Santa-aiding, pale skinned toy-makers, who were first described so in 1856 by Louisa May Alcott, three years after the beginning of the northward movement. Seeing as both that she didn’t live in the area and probably would rather they weren’t of color, she most likely simply took them for an inspiration source. That’s the reason for all that.

Another critique was that you wish to hear more about the Mission School: Love, I’m writing nine books for a reason. I’m already too lengthy on my review, and it covers literally half of one book. The Mission School shows up in two and three, which i could send in as briefer summaries if desired by any of The Rivalry. Apologies, but to save my soul i couldn’t write a short story.

Context (Sort of a backstory, but mostly historical, can skip if a reader or delete if a part of The Rivalry): Europeans first made contact with the native peoples occupying the Willamette Valley in 1805, when the Lewis and Clark expedition came through. However, they came through to the slight north, thus not encountering the Ketempiken. More people, in small groups, started crossing the treacherous expanse of plains in 1812, but still far too few to constitute a trail. A few Ketempiken would engage in secondhand trade with the Europeans, meaning, say, that an Alsea would trade for glass beads from an immigrant, and then a Ketempi would trade with the Alsea, or such. Immigration numbers went up considerably around 1824, but were still relatively low. A few distantly nearby settlements were cemented. Still no-one came to Kiger Island, or the nearby land area, however, so being a tribe where townships kept to themselves, the Europeans proved no issue to them or the nearby bands of Kalapuya, although in pioneer towns being set up at the time to the northeast and southeast did have some mild clashing with the nearest original group.

In 1829, a case of smallpox was reported, which had come in from the immigrants and which the natives had no immunity (which often comes from exposure to livestock) from. By 1830, it was spreading uncontrollably all throughout the valley, including the neighboring Cascade Mountains and coastal areas. If in a more modern setting and with proper quarantine procedures, medication and cleanliness, one out of four people infected would die. The number rose far higher in that time and place, and it is estimated that a fair 70% of people in the area died of it, if you average them. It was most devastating, and didn’t subside until 1833. The Kalapuya, who are a real group and most likely numbered around 7,000 at the time, but under 1,000 post-illness. The Ketempi, who are the central focus, dropped from 8,000 to just above 5,000

Separate note on land use: the Kalapuya were more likely to gain the land around the rivers for frequent use, and the coastal hills and foothills, while the Ketempiken only took small sections of river and took more to the eastern half of the valley with a large amount of oak savanna, creeping up slightly close to the Cascades in seasonal gathering. Pretty much they share quite an amount on occasion, because the entire valley is places in sparse towns, and the whole area of valley only contained 15,000-16,000 people. The towns were, for both cultures, for wintertime, and then in warmer times both left to gather for gaining food, but they tried not to interact. During the time the story occurs, the total number of people in the valley has dropped from 15,000 to 7,000 at best. The Kalapuya were hit much harder by the smallpox epidemics.

The survival numbers of the Ketempi were higher seeing as they were so isolative from external contact in the first place, and rarely conjoined outside of towns. This is another factor which lead outside cultures to want to connect with them less: the fact they didn’t seem much to want to. For many groups indigenous to North America, traveling between towns to make or visit friends or business partners (as in people to trade, carve, hunt, or gather with, ect.) is considered a very good and wanted occurrence. The Ketempiken seemed to have seen it as rejection of the preexisting social connections in one’s birth town. Although people would often leave a town to marry, this was a permanent departure.

Trading was, to them, an awe-inducing act that commanded both great fear and admiration; a powerful position one was called upon to take (much like shamanism in many cultures) and was usually given as a main thing to do in life. One was not supposed to WANT to be a trader or a shaman, but one was not supposed to strongly dislike or fear these positions.

An agricultural note originally included at the asterisk* which probably belongs up here where it’s easier to skip: Seeing as it bears relevance, the people of that area and many chunks of California and the plains had an odd blurring of agriculture and non-agriculture, seeing as most groups had no proper crops, but would burn the large fields annually around autumn in a semi-controlled manner, which rid weeds, provided nutrients, and left only older trees to grow, help keeping the prairies and savannas healthy and allowing new seeds to take root. Considering most of their diets (generalization, but forgive me) would place high dependence on either bulbs/roots, which were beneath the earth and would sprout up again after the fire and reseed, or grasses (the seeds were eaten, sort of as rice), whose seeds blow around and root on every bare patch of ground they can find, such as a freshly burned area, this helped them take partial control of their environment.

Every year, the Ketempiken (and other groups, but I’m writing about the Ketempi) would burn an several areas, but they would let chunks of land go anywhere from two to ten years between burnings, depending on how things were growing. Besides the partial clearing of land, however, most groups did not do anything else to help assure food would be plentiful through agricultural means. There were groups who gathered grass seed and scattered it specifically, but most just waited to see what nature did. All the young grass shoots would lure in deer, elk, rabbits, and the like, helping up the odds of game concentrating near an inhabited area. Many western people have deemed this a half-assed approach to food collection, but personally I think it’s really clever. You can almost double your total yield in plants and noticeably heighten your odds at meat simply by sparking some dry leaves and not regulating the spread. How great is that? It also facilitates travel, because when many saplings get torched there are wide patches between trees, and you don’t need some set and worn path to go around gathering. Final note, flame helped harvest tarweed, a sunflower-like plant whose seeds provided oil, much as people who want to go on some random trendy cooking spree use sunflower oil.

Probably an actual backstory™ that talks about the character: This leave 1834 as the year where, while recuperating from losing nearly half their population, many people took pregnant, and thus Ness-An was brought into the world in 1835. Most of her friends she makes are of equal age or younger to her and the oldest children in their families. It takes her ages to question this, but there is a large gap without people between children who are (at the books start) of ten years and adults who are of around twenty, seeing as most children were more prone to infection. Many adults have little concavements on their face and hands and feet. In fact so many have these characteristics of recovery from smallpox that Ness assumes the pockmarring of your extremities is something that happens “when you grow up”, just like getting more permanent body fat or ceasing growing, which strikes me as rather sad but is probably sounding Edgy©.

She spends the majority of her childhood friendless, not because she is bullied or teased, but mainly because she is actually rather rude, and will often snap at or argue with other children and then chalk up their negative response to the fact they don’t like her eyes. Most of Ness-An’s younger life is spent tagging along with her family, especially her mother, but trying simultaneously to evade the day-to-day chores needed to sustain them. Eventually she is broken of this habit, around the age of seven, and takes to the expected tasks of digging camas and threshing grass for seed, or gathering acorns and washing them to remove tannin. At the series’ beginning Ness has two parents, both living, and three siblings, all younger (I hopefully explained why well enough): a brother who is two years younger, and a pair of sisters who are respectively five and six years younger. Funnily enough, both her sisters have longer and more flowery names. You get the impression that Ness-An’s mother gave up, and decided that something really extravagant would suffice over something short in an odd way. Her brother is named reasonably and his name is brief, but I suppose because of certain occurrences that are to happen combined with the fact the names are of my invention and thus may be harder to remember or tell apart than, say Steve from Bob, I am listing none of her original family’s titles.

I’m currently only referring to book one; I’m aiming for a total of nine, it looks like currently. Yes, in fact, I DO hate writing short stories, what on earth prompted THAT inquiry? The actual story begins during the Moon of Acorns and Fire, or approximately September* while the protagonist is ten and a half, and is still somewhat a conceited slacker. The town is celebrating with the annual Thricemoon, which is sort of a small festival held to celebrate the safe return of the traders who ventured away for the summer and the re-congregation of the town. Many left the island to make temporary, single-family camps out in good gathering areas, but have come back to reside with slightly more permanence in their winter homes: earthen domes with a smokehole and a door, much akin to those used by several tribes in southern California, like the Digueño, but more ovular in shape with a door on one of the longer sides.

Another reason for Thricemoon is the fact that it signals the end of the vision-seeking process for those who came of age that year. It is unknown even to the elders if Thricemoon is held when it is primarily because it marks an end to the time of vision quests, or whether vision quests are held when they are primarily because they mark the beginning of Thricemoon. Anyhoot, it’s during the harvest moon when there are three full moons in a row. Everybody’s happy, even though it so happens that no children came of age this year (hahahaha I was going to put “smallpox” in here but I accidentally wrote “smolpox” oh my god it’s like smallpox but it’s KaWAiiiiii), so that means there is plenty of food and joy and gift-givings, plus plenty of opportunities to set up your character to have their soul crushed.

So it’s Thricemoon and everything is holding up great. There is celebrating and joy, and then suddenly Ness realizes they seem awfully short on food (her family in specific) and appear to be partying awfully hard. She brings this up with her mother, and her mother admits that they are indeed not likely to make the winter, but that the younger children haven’t picked up on it yet. Then there’s this whole realizing-that-life-isn’t-perfect-even-though-it-seemed-so-as-a-child moment, and she has this whole screeching fit about how they’re going to starve. Her mother suggests to Ness that she should overwinter with another family, but seeing as Ness-An hasn’t really been that prolific in the friends department she must specifically seek out a family and basically fake investment in them to stay fed.

This causes Ness to basically switch into the mode of a child who thinks they’ve seen some serious shit and been through such soul-wrenching insufferable pain (such as dropping a blackberry in mud and still eating it), which is a trope I love and don’t see enough of. Dear authors, give me children who think getting green wrapping paper instead of pink warrants singing "wake me up inside”. (I can’t wake) WAKE ME UP… Alright, you get it, I’ll carry on but now that’s stuck in my head. She goes to the other family, and it turns out they’re lovable and she doesn’t need to fake her attachment to them.

Regardless, Ness actually has a great time, even though her harshness and occasional lack of filtering what she says gets her pretty close to rejected from them on several occasions. It turns out that her hardworkingness (hah she’s Ness and she’s hardworking) and creativity manage to provide useful help to the new family, however. Their oldest child, Ourealv'oi [Apostrophe is for glottal stop, not edge factor, but I’m thinking of just removing it so that it’s Ourealvoi. How about that?] Strikes it off decently with Ness-An, especially if you consider that they were an almost randomly chosen family. However, although Ourealv is less confrontational than Ness-An, she’s far more impatient in general, and once an argument is struck up she’ll be extremely harsh. Once one convinces Ourealv'oi to sit and work, though, she’s actually rather good at the more mundane aspects of choredom, such as flourgrinding and clothing repair. Oure seems to be more clear-headed than Ness and already has a vague idea for the future she wants, which is a lot of forethought for a nine year old. She’s become entranced by the idea of falconry, but is too young to actually be trusted with the responsibility, and of course she’ll need other means of sustenance. There is also a younger brother, named Teven, who is either six or seven, I’m still doing child development research. He gets angry about any violation of Normal, and collects rocks obsessively. He can apply sarcasm, though, so I’m still thinking non-autistic, even though I personally am an autistic who can use sarcasm. Then there’s Edolsi, who’s a four year old who hasn’t yet gotten over his stage of ramming stuff into his mouth and Kalo, a very young infant.

Ness is still rather impressed by her new family, seeing as they actually keep house and impose social etiquette onto their children and the like, things that weren’t there in her prior family. This naturally means she gets called out much more often on her errors, but they are accepting enough and have enough food and goods she keeps trying. She finds out along the way that the family were traders (o the horror) and not only people who changed towns in the summer, but people who lived on the road in a semicircular tent, and have only settled into Heron Speaks four years prior. This is a big deal, of course, but it’s especially big because this doesn’t bother Ness-An. She wants to hear about how things were in places besides her town, and actually begins pressuring them to restart their vagrant lifestyle. She asks about the sea, which she hasn’t heard of before, and imagines it as an enormous brown river with waves flowing parallel with the shore, and thinks that whales are enormous, bio-luminescent lampreys that sing by blowing air out of their mouths like a flute. She pictures baleen as algae that grows symbiotically, and such on. Ness has heard about the Crystal Path and always imagines it as incredibly distant: a full three days walk north. So yes, it’s been interesting writing for a character who has lived such a small life.

When Ness-An accidentally reveals how her home family is faring, Ourealv'oi’s family (more specifically, Ourealv’s parents, Adiir and Enolset) choose to adopt her. Yes, with most Native groups it was really casual, like borrowing a cup of flour. "I can’t adequately take care of this kid, do you want ‘em?” “Sure.” “K here you go”. Ness starts worrying that her new family is too decent, however, and she’ll keep being too rude and lazy to fit in properly. The problem is she whines so much about her fear of being an annoying nuisance that she this becomes an honest annoying nuisance. She basically just hangs around her new home chatting, griping, and having character development ™ for a week or five, and then they all as a family head out to the winter duck hunting camp. Ness-An’s previous family didn’t have any specific food they were annually sent specifically to retrieve, so this is an interesting experience. However, when after a few days she realizes that she is nowhere near to even Teven in hunting skill, seeing as she’s never been before, she gets exceptionally convinced it would be better if she went back to her birth family, which she assumes has starved nearly to death. Her new parents, when she at last brings this up, tell her that the community is very tight (😎hella tight bro) (I need to chill on the useless thingies in parentheses) and would not let a family be “a single hole in the basket which through all the water can run out”, and make sure everyone was properly housed, fed, and looked after, at least to the best of everyone’s collective ability. And yes, they had watertight baskets, look up Northwest Native American watertight basket. Neat.

Regarding the plot: Ness-An decides to try and look at things from afar, and realizes that it has some merit, the fact that her original family should be okay. Ness’ new parents also chew her up on being disrespectful by rejecting their hospitality. In the end, Ness-An decides to stay out the rest of the trip actually learning new skills instead of just griping about how she has no skills, and tries to make an actual effort at being kind continuously, now that a roof being over her head is no longer a variable. It’s a lot of fun, at least everything besides plucking the actual waterfowl and also: bird guts. But she makes some stronger bonds and tries to get bearings on the world, as well as learning more about drop-nets, archery, snares, and a bunch of legends that get told to pass the time while removing duck guts. When they at last get back, which is in a while but I’m condensing things, Ness, and Ourealvoi who came with out of curiosity but then decided to stay out of things, go to Ness-An’s former house. Surprise! Everyone is properly fed and cheery, and it turns out her family wasn’t short on food, and in fact, was better stocked than most years, causing the excessive celebration. When Ness first brought up that she suspected a food shortage to her mother, her mother ran with the idea in order to convince Ness to leave the house, because Ness had been unhelpful and bothersome, but greater yet the shamaness had apparently seen something regarding the Odd-Eyed Child, and the village healers were no small deal. Ness was indeed an unhelpful ass, though, in essence. Thus, her mother casually passed her off to another family whom she knew already had a low reputation for having been traders, believing no worse damage could be done to their status by having to rear a ride and “dangerous” child.

Ness is of course startled and becomes very upset. In the end, she returns to her second family. She feels rejected; and justly so because she was literally given up from her family without argument. She spends most of december trying to fit in and improve, but gives up a little as temperatures and food availability drop drastically for january. However, the lack of need to be outside, which is a byproduct of the lack of food to be gathered, means that there is plenty of time to sit on the round floor of the house and play around or carve or weave. In this way she becomes closer to them, and there are all sorts of small friendly and funny scenes I’m putting here. She’s evidently still mad with her birth family, but it’s turning out okayish. She starts taking better care of other people, but also stays believably immature, such as almost putting a rotting trout into Teven’s bedding after he drops a garter snake down Oure’s blouse. When the first turkey vulture (a first sign of spring, seeing as they move south in the summer and have a very distinct presence upon returning, with a six foot wingspan) is sighted in mid-march, the long and rather unnoteworthy winter comes to an end and people suddenly have things to gather again. While out in the fields with Adiir and the children (all of them, seeing as boys help mainly the mother until around age twelve) gathering young camas lily shoots, Ness begins once again bringing up travel, namely to the sea. Oure wants to go back as well, now that Ness-An has gone through the step of mentioning the topic, which isn’t recomended. Ourealvoi hasn’t been there since she was barely six years old, and doesn’t want to forget how it looked. Teven and the rest can’t remember anything besides Heron Speaks, though, but still add in agreement. Adiir and Enolset discuss this in depth, because although the excursion would retrieve valuable items such as salt, sea otter fur, and many other plants and meats, plus turban shells and other things that were valued somewhat like currency; it would immediately dock their slowly improving reputation. In the end, they decide to go to the sea. It takes two overnights walking westward, which to Ness that’s an a m a z i n g duration of time, basically three days walk, which is how far away she previously though esentially the edge of the world was. They spend a lot of time by the sea that i’m not going to go on about, but return after drifting up and down the coastline and trading some to the north. When they return in late August, something is very wrong with Heron Speaks. Downriver, there’s a house. A house made of wood. Everyone says it’s been there since early june, by which Ness and family were already gone. Nobody knows what to do, but everyone thinks Ness might have some answer, even though she’s just eleven, because of her being the Odd-Eyed Girl. There is much discussion, but nobody will let her go see the house. After people get more used to the fact there’s a house four miles away with a lone inhabitant, and that the mysterious immigrant seems to be staying, people start relaxing slightly and preparing once again for Thricemoon (i need to put a lot more description into the summer evidently, and i have in the book, but here I’m short on space and time). The celebration begins, and for the first time Ness is one of the people who has gone trading, and gets plenty of attention. When she awakes on the third morning of Thricemoon, however, the house is empty and the shore outside is crowded with canoes, from other Ketempi towns, even, which has never happened before. a full thousand people must be out there. She wades into the water, asking what on earth is wrong. There is now a second house, and a negotiation must be held. She hears from the people from other towns that far more settlers have been arriving in their areas, as well. But nobody understands that the Europeans are trying to actually build permanent homesteads, they just assume they’ve put up wood houses because they’re staying briefly, a year at most, because if you actually are going to live somewhere, you make an earth house. So everyone decides to go give gifts to the temporary guests, so that they feel welcome before they leave.This goes over much differently that planned.

Anyway, i must sleep, so there’s the first half of the first book. Tah-dah.

A/N: Like I said, delete literally anything you like, and feel free to ask for me to add information on something [feel free to google anything mentioned]. I have sixteen years of story left to tell for Ness, and once you know the universe already i can make things briefer, hopefully fitting two years to a post instead of just one. I’ve atted you, so go to town: delete half of it, point out seventy grammatical errors, harp on plot holes, basically do your worst. I hate myself already and nothing you say can change that. Go ahead and delete the whole thing; it undoubtedly deserves it, seeing as how much i yammer.

Also, @iloveshippingkitty @buying-the-space-farm @jovanafung @tjc2009-2018

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