Draft of Tomorrow

The center of this story isn't the superspy trying to do his job, or the assassin trying to do hers. It's the little girl who said "FAMILY" and pulled the building-blocks of one close around her with all her tiny strength, and everyone else in this story keeps being moved and changed and redirected by the force of Anya's attachments to her family.

people have tried to create a peaceful, oppression-free society before, but it turns out that’s really hard.

The reasons it’s really hard are almost entirely practical and many of them are the boring and logistical sort of practical.

(there are definitely things some people sometimes ARE trying to hide from you, and that was even more true in the pre-Internet days when it was easier. I’m not saying it never happens. but it’s not always the reason)

if your teacher is trying to cover all of…I don’t know, Modern European History™, they might not have time- between wars and economic crises that impacted the fate of nations -to get into Virginia Woolf’s gay love letters. that doesn’t mean they’re ~hiding her as part of a homophobic conspiracy~. it just means they have a lot to cram into like six months to give teenagers some vague understanding of the events that shaped our society

I see a lot of people on here like “why didn’t I learn about [historical figure who is important in the history of an oppressed group but didn’t have a huge impact on the Big Picture of the world] in school?” and other people responding “you know why…” and like

The way it paralleled the gifts and celebrations Seri set up before she almost left NK... because she wanted him to be happy?

And when he knew she struggled with depression and took sleeping pills to deal with insomnia, so he recorded himself playing the song he wrote for his brother that actually saved her life in Switzerland because it was the best he could do to stay by her side and protect her?

And remember when he spelled out I LOVE YOU YOU SERI with books the way she did? And then he wrote out hundreds of texts ahead of time and sent them on a time delay so that Yoon Seri would get messages for a whole year telling her to eat and go on a walk with him and take care of herself... and then, he scheduled someone to deliver her a potted plant, so they would bloom before the last text... and he made her say 10 nice words to the plant every day just like she made him do to the tomato plant?

And then in the last text, just as the small white flowers were in bloom, he told her he would be trying to find her in Switzerland where the Eidlewiess grows. And then another year at least passes, but he DOES. He finds her the way he always does. And she crash lands (descends) in just the right spot... like she always does.

BECAUSE I REMEMBER IT. AND IM NEVER GETTING OVER IT.

REAL LIFE WILL NEVER BE THAT PERFECT.

Me: This is so obvious and clever it practically writes itself!

*later*