#orpheonflow

Are the Aunanneri assholes? Well… from our perspective? Yeah. As a culture, they value cold logic and pragmatism over emotion (or, in Aristotalian terms, logos over ethos/pathos) — which has an unfortunate tendency to evolve into cold-blooded brutality over common decency and the common viewpoint that showing any emotion is a sign of weakness. In addition, they have a highly classist, borderline-social-Darwinistic society with some seriously supremacist viewpoints. So yeah, life in the Aunnan does kind of suck. 

(Especially if you’re disabled. Then you’re probably dead.)

But to say they’re assholes is… really an oversimplification, I think. Every culture has something another might not agree with, but to them it’s simply the way things have been for gods-know-how-long, and things simply don’t change that easily. 

As for Amy; well, there was certainly an earlier version where she was a chipper wee thing full of boundless energy and enthusiasm for the world.

That was before I started seriously thinking about the effects a society like hers would have on a child. Especially someone who — for whatever reason — operates on a slightly different wavelength to everyone else.

I don’t think I would call Amy nice. Because really; she isn’t. She’s grouchy, withdrawn, anti-social, self-centred… not exactly pleasant, really.

But at the same time, she’s not a bad person. Let’s face it; girl’s got emotional issues out the wazoo, and it shows. She definitely has the capacity to be kind and open to others — it’s just that she needs to get through years of in-built barriers first.

And to be honest… either way, she’s stuck. To people in our world, she comes off as cold and dour. To people of the Aunnan, she came off as a rude, undisciplined little brat. 

Kind of a shitty situation all around, really.

Anyway. There’s your answer — or at least, a really long-winded attempt at one.