#callis

The release for Chapter 10 is going really well so far. Huzzah! And I'm busy working hard on the When Stars Collide finale.

And also.......on Thornewood in my spare time. So here is another character reveal! 🥳

Another cranky redhead? Listen. Sometimes it just goes that way. Meet Callis.

More character faces will come...eventually! OwO

The summerlike feeling lasting until the end of April, we foraged in the co-op for reduced wraps and leaky raspberries before a Sunday walk. On Neptune Bridge, we paused to observe tall dandelions and frondy ferns swaying above the canal and consider options. Despite feeling weird due to sleep issues, I complied with Phil’s desire to climb Horsehold Road. Slowly slogging up, a passing French…

her vision of freedom and power.

Yes and no.

Yes -> on a broad, systemic scale.

No -> in regards to individual lives.

Most obviously(?), Gavaldon inhabitants were living in the horror genre, if not a dystopia because it could be every parent's worst nightmare for their child to be abducted into the night and for the annual event to both cause anticipatory anxiety and not be something preventable in itself—revealing your supposed incapability as a parent in protecting your child from everything the world could bring.

Next, the system Rafal installed that Rhian later perpetuated for at least 200 years could indicate that the Woods are dystopian to all Nevers, but I think the dystopian quality applies only to those selected as students, specifically, those chosen to live out tales after graduation.

(The School Masters' conditional reality being dystopian and their receiving a tale or two is the exception, not a rule. So, fairy-tale violence and deaths only tend to apply to students/graduates, as far as we've seen.)

I think "regular" Woods inhabitants (both commoners and those in power) live fairly regular/safe lives. They could be swept up into greater conflicts, but as we saw in TCY, fairy tales written by the Storian aren't always immediately relevant to them. Overall, I think their existences are barely dystopian in nature—aside from the vaguely medieval time period which is bound to have some poor outcomes on everyone.

The seemingly perceptible wealth gap between Evers and Nevers could be considered dystopian, but some of the wealth distribution is varied enough that I don't think the Nevers are an oppressed "class," monetarily. (After all, we have seen and heard of Never royalty.)

In one of Soman's short stories, an Ever family/corporation buys up some Never land to use for profit, and one Never child retaliates, but we don't know if non-traditional conflicts like this occur frequently. Plus, Soman thought this plot deserved a tale, so it probably had to have been out-of-the-ordinary or the most interesting conflict within the Storian's reach to write about in that moment.

We also don't know if Nevers' relative "poverty" is part of their "culture" or just... witchier/scarier aesthetic sensibilities. In fact, if Hester or some of her other classmates really are good examples of typical Nevers, then we could probably assume living in poor conditions are what they're used to, or that doing so deliberately is a status symbol of how much they can endure, of how "hardcore" and committed to Evil they are. So... once again, no concrete/verifiable evidence for a dystopia, whether intentional or not.

On the other side, with the exception of Mogrifs or failed students, Evers don't usually appear to experience any dystopian side effects via their alignment. The curse favors their victories, so unless an Ever just doesn't conform like Agatha initially did, the system is at least humane towards them. (That's not to say it isn't a flawed system though.)

Overall, I'd say my individual-oriented conclusion is that Nevers can be/were (often??? Remember: the student population is just a sliver of the entire Woods and we see it from a limited viewpoint) subject to dystopian lives, but that even the losing streak did not impact all Evil souls equally or to the same extent. Some may not have been impacted at all, except indirectly via others' losses and in terms of collective morale for their side, even if they could have been materially well-off. In fact, we could speculate that some Nevers, who managed to keep out of tales, ended up with average or prosperous lives.

(Callis is barely an example, but is probably the one named example I can think of. And her "Ever After" wasn't conventional or entirely happy in Gavaldon, nor was her True Love in Agatha conventional by any means.)

We also might not know what constitutes a "decent life" to a Never if they often operate in backwards ways (e.g., "guilty until proven innocent"). So, their happy "ends" (I mean lives/existences, not really ends/deaths/Never After specifically), could look reasonably dystopian to us/conventional society.

And—the students are a specific, small, and unreliable sample because they're meant to be the purest Evil and may hail from the most extreme/exceptional of circumstances—meaning we don't know for sure if the average Woods Never has family values or didn't suffer abuse at the hands of a parent as seemed usual—or whether any of the trauma can be separated from what we decide to call them.

If we were able to see the "average" soul, even if it had a clear Good or Evil inclination, or even the rejected/impure applicants to the Schools, then we might get a better picture of the whole of the Woods from that one, hypothetical subject over anyone at the Schools, who should be regarded as outliers.

Now on the scale of the Woods, generationally, and not the people/sides, I would say any system that relies on conflict/unrest/dissatisfaction to sustain itself is at least a little dystopian, no matter how you look at it. It's a system that assumes peacetime isn't the norm. The Storian's "cycle," tale after tale, has to keep repeating itself to keep the world alive, to keep the sun from melting, else the Woods wouldn't be habitable.

Thus, this practice is clearly dystopian to me—unlike my otherwise variable and unanswered question of: how universally impactful was the 200-year curse towards any less notable or non-School graduate Nevers out there?