Yor Week Day 5: Family ☕🍵
A quick drabble of Yor and a teen Anya! I just wanted a sweet little snapshot of their daily life post-canon/post-reveals
“Your birthday’s coming up.” Yor stirred her coffee. “Are you busy? Your father and I were thinking of taking you to the aquarium, he said there’s a special event going on the same day.”
“I’m not sure,” Anya leaned her chin in her hands. The pair sat at an outdoor table at the local cafe. “Becky wanted to go out. She and a few friends wanted to spend the day together.”
The aforementioned friend’s sense of fashion had started to rub off on her. Happy to lose her high school uniform on breaks like this, she was dressed in current trends and styles. She’d grown her hair long to style in her own way, refusing help from her friends. Yor never said anything, but she recognized the way the thick braids tucked just at her neck, with curling pink locks framing her face.
Anya’s features scrunched up, lost in thought for a moment. “So...”
She was slowly ridding herself of the habit, but Yor couldn’t help her thoughts from carrying her away in nervousness. Of course the girl’s friends would want to take her out. She thought the aquarium was a good idea – Yuri had loved going too, as a kid. But that was just it, Anya wasn’t a baby anymore. She had to stop thinking she knew how to care for a family just because she’d cared for her brother for a little while. Having a daughter was different.
“That sounds fun,” she forced a smile. Knowing it wasn't the most convincing of looks, she flooded her mind with the thought. She did believe it. It did sound fun. Things with friends were always great. Yor was so happy Anya had such wonderful friends in her life. Anya deserved to have fun with them. “Yes, you should do that!”
Sure enough, she saw Anya’s bright eyes studying her. Though her mind was spilling with positivity, the conflicted look on the girl’s face didn’t lessen.
“The thing is… we’ve been doing a lot as a family recently, and, well…”
Yor’s hands clutched around her mug. Hairline cracks appeared on the side. She willed herself to calm down, but her heart was breaking as much as the cup. It was no wonder her daughter would rather spend the day with others! She’d been too overbearing, too enthusiastic to do lame things. She’d been keeping Anya from being the free teenager she wanted to be.
She’d heard accounts of children growing up too fast, but it was even more painful than she’d expected. It seemed like only yesterday she was threatening parents of students who were insulting Anya’s tiny stature, and now she was grown and running off to make her own birthday plans.
“So it was you that scared Mrs. Greene our first year!”
“What?!” This time, the mug did shatter. Coffee and porcelain shards spread across the cafe table.
“I knew it!” She let out a giggle. “You had papa fooled, though.” Anya handed her a napkin, and helped to mop up the mess. “And mamaaaa…” She tugged on one of her pink curls, looking away.
Yor was surprised; that little gesture was a habit of her own. “What’s wrong?”
“I was going to say… I really want to hang out with you two.”
Her eyebrows raised.
“I just thought it would be silly to cancel on Becky, you know? Since we’ve already done so much together lately. But… the aquarium sounds fun. I really want to spend my birthday with you.”
Yor nodded, trying not to let her face betray her giddiness at the sentiment. “That sounds wonderful!”
The two continued making plans. Yor wanted her to be able to see her friends as well, and there was certainly room for everyone at the aquarium. Anya wanted to make sure the 'special event' wasn't an invention of her workaholic father. The three were used to working cases together, but it was her birthday, after all.
Suddenly, Anya’s eyes narrowed. Her lips twisted into something mischievous. “So… what are you guys getting for my present?”
“I told you, it’s a surprise,” she said as her daughter stared intently.
Her look of triumph immediately turned to horror. She swatted her hands at Yor. “Noooo! Stop that! I don’t need to hear about you and papa making out!”
“Maybe you shouldn't have been snooping.” Yor grinned shamelessly. “Come on, I get to keep one thing from you all year.”
“That’s still gross.” She made a theatrically disgusted face, which only made Yor’s smile soften. “Hey! It's not adorable when I do that.”
“You’re always adorable.”
Anya huffed.
“And also,” Yor grimaced.
“Mm?”
“That whole thing about Charles’ parents stays between us, alright? Your father can never know.”
The girl let out a laugh. “Aw, mama. I'm you're daughter – you know I can keep a secret.”
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I've been trying to put this into words for a while now and I think I might have something -- most of the time when people examine storytelling tropes, especially experts in a related field, especially historians and medical professionals, they are setting out to disprove the trope.
Even if they're not, once they find some evidence that the trope doesn't work in real life or isn't how it was done historically, they often expect that to be the end of the conversation. Historically, people did not go adventuring with two-handed greatswords strapped to their backs -- and therefore you should not have it happen in your fiction, and the conversation ends there. In real life, having a character get hit so hard on the head that they pass out for several hours would demand immediate medical intervention and likely cause permanent brain damage -- and therefore you should not have it happen in your fiction. End of discussion.
These people fail, I think, to understand the reason these tropes exist. It is not because people are just uneducated and think that's how things work. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say far more people are already aware of these things than these experts assume. The attraction of the trope doesn't come from the belief that it is accurate.
These tropes exist because it is widely agreed that they are cool, sexy, emotionally fulfilling, narratively convenient, or any number of other things that really have nothing to do with whether or not they are accurate to reality. I'm not quite sure what it is about most of these experts that makes them unable to understand that, or unwilling to play the game that the rest of us engage in, where we all quietly pretend that it does work because it's harmless and enjoyable.
Really the only people I've ever seen who understand that and try to work their own expertise on the subject into the tropes in a cohesive and satisfying way are Shadiversity on YouTube and blumineck on here. Both in the martial arts categories, which ties mostly into history -- I've yet to find a medical professional online who's willing to play the game.
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