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Somehow I'm not vibing with the prompts, but I still have other ideas for these folks. More of the Sedoretu worldbuilding idea, this time about one of those shows where people argue with each other a lot, like Crossfire.
(Kris is NB but legally is Shirya's wife. The debate on the show is about another consequence of the same law, which said that people don't have to be legally or biologically a particular gender to register as "wife" or "husband." )
---
"We never should've allowed this to happen in the first place," the old man on the TV was saying again and again. "This is painful. This is unnatural."
She hated that word, unnatural. So much of what humans said and did was unnatural. Sedoretu marriages themselves were unnatural, if they went by the definition of natural as occurring in nature; no one knew of any other animals who followed the social structure that humans did. Animals didn't care who was Morning and who was Evening, who had the same mother and who didn't; siblings would happily mate with each other and think nothing of it. All that people who used that argument for things like this did for themselves was show just how ignorant they really were about nature.
It was yet another debate show, the kind that usually had three old men yelling at each other, usually agreeing with each other but disagreeing about how they agreed with each other. She hated those shows so much, especially the kind that talked about what marriage was and wasn't, and should and shouldn't be.
Kris wanted to watch that particular episode, though, so she'd made a bowl of popcorn - the kind that she'd cooked over the stove and added the flavor to herself, because if she was going to watch a show she hated she was at least going to enjoy the popcorn. And she could see why, once she saw that the "guest" on their show wasn't just another crusty old man, but a woman with upswept black hair and the most piercing green eyes she'd ever seen. She was older than Shirya herself but not nearly as old as the rest of the men there.
"Carol's a friend of mine over the internet, we post in a lot of the same activist circles, even helped arrange a nationwide walk-out a while back," Kris had explain, between popping a few kernels into their mouth. They already had a piece of popcorn in their beard. "These shows are usually echo-chamber garbage but she managed to raise enough cash to convince someone to let her in, and she's going to give them hell..."
"Why is it so wrong?" the woman was saying, loudly but not angrily; difficult to ignore but not so angry that they could discount what she was saying. Clearly, she was good at this. "These are children in a legal Sedoretu, children between Morning and Evening, even by your standards they're perfectly normal circumstances -"
"No. No, they are not." The most animated old man slapped his hand down on the counter. "Did you read the article? They had to provide their own template for the birth certificate -"
Someone else was trying to get the spotlight, and the camera made a half-hearted blink in their direction before going back to the loudest people in the room.
"- their own template because the hospital didn't have one that would've been accurate for the child! No one would've had one -"
"They should have," Carol said, still calmly. "With the new laws in place for the past two years and all the challenges losing, people should've been ready for this."
"It's not right!" That seemed to be the extent of the old man's argument. "Children are born in Morning and Evening marriages! The fact that they had to bring in a template for a birth certificate for a child born between Day wives, didn't that tip anyone off? I just -"
"When did that happen? Is this recent?" Shirya asked her wife, curious. She didn't remember reading anything like this in the paper, but then, she didn't read it every day like Marcus did.
"Two months ago." Kris yawned and stretched, the lace blouse tightening against their chest. "A hundred or so miles north of here. They were technically single at first - one of the ladies was transgender and the other was cisgender, and they were already pregnant. Their original plan was to register an Evening partnership and look for a compatible Morning couple after they had the baby, but then they met a registered Night couple and fell in love and decided to switch things up a bit."
She nodded; no, she hadn't read anything about this, online or in the newspaper. If she was really curious about it, she thought, Kris probably had it scrapbooked; they still had a bunch of subscriptions to printed stuff for that very purpose. They'd always said they wanted to leave something behind to show how much of a difference that they and the others like them had made.
"I do not know how she does it," she heard Kris murmur and turned, watched Carol sit tall and stone-faced, waiting for the screaming old man to tire himself out. "She stays so cool under pressure, man, it's amazing. I would've punched that bastard by now."
"Me too," she muttered under her breath. She could definitely see the light in Kris's eyes, how they were looking at her, nearly enchanted; she knew what they looked like when they had a crush.
The man had finally stopped screaming, and Carol was speaking again, her back still straight. "Why should people have to settle for marrying someone they don't love, for having children with someone they don't care about? Won't that make things worse for the children? Because that's what proposals like this are doing, they're harming children, moving them out of loving marriages between people who all care about them and putting them into a cold, uncaring system. Children never deserve to be punished for the circumstances of their birth. Ever."
Shirya thought of her cousin and his wife and his own children, kicked out of more than one school because their parents didn't match the administrators' ideas of what an appropriate marriage should be. She found herself nodding along.
The key turned in the door behind them, and she turned back just in time to see Marcus come in, briefcase in hand. "Hey, I'm back. Remind me never to trust anyone who says that they might have a permanent position ready for me in a few months, it's always bullshit -" He looked up and blinked, then suddenly grinned. "Oh, Carol again?"
"Shut up, Marcus," Kris replied cheerfully, not turning back.
"I'm just saying, if you like her that much you ought to say so. Is her e-mail address still -"
"Shut up, Marcus!"
Shirya couldn't help but laugh at their usual teasing, just a little. It made things feel just a bit more normal.
(Kris is NB but legally is Shirya's wife. The debate on the show is about another consequence of the same law, which said that people don't have to be legally or biologically a particular gender to register as "wife" or "husband." )
---
"We never should've allowed this to happen in the first place," the old man on the TV was saying again and again. "This is painful. This is unnatural."
She hated that word, unnatural. So much of what humans said and did was unnatural. Sedoretu marriages themselves were unnatural, if they went by the definition of natural as occurring in nature; no one knew of any other animals who followed the social structure that humans did. Animals didn't care who was Morning and who was Evening, who had the same mother and who didn't; siblings would happily mate with each other and think nothing of it. All that people who used that argument for things like this did for themselves was show just how ignorant they really were about nature.
It was yet another debate show, the kind that usually had three old men yelling at each other, usually agreeing with each other but disagreeing about how they agreed with each other. She hated those shows so much, especially the kind that talked about what marriage was and wasn't, and should and shouldn't be.
Kris wanted to watch that particular episode, though, so she'd made a bowl of popcorn - the kind that she'd cooked over the stove and added the flavor to herself, because if she was going to watch a show she hated she was at least going to enjoy the popcorn. And she could see why, once she saw that the "guest" on their show wasn't just another crusty old man, but a woman with upswept black hair and the most piercing green eyes she'd ever seen. She was older than Shirya herself but not nearly as old as the rest of the men there.
"Carol's a friend of mine over the internet, we post in a lot of the same activist circles, even helped arrange a nationwide walk-out a while back," Kris had explain, between popping a few kernels into their mouth. They already had a piece of popcorn in their beard. "These shows are usually echo-chamber garbage but she managed to raise enough cash to convince someone to let her in, and she's going to give them hell..."
"Why is it so wrong?" the woman was saying, loudly but not angrily; difficult to ignore but not so angry that they could discount what she was saying. Clearly, she was good at this. "These are children in a legal Sedoretu, children between Morning and Evening, even by your standards they're perfectly normal circumstances -"
"No. No, they are not." The most animated old man slapped his hand down on the counter. "Did you read the article? They had to provide their own template for the birth certificate -"
Someone else was trying to get the spotlight, and the camera made a half-hearted blink in their direction before going back to the loudest people in the room.
"- their own template because the hospital didn't have one that would've been accurate for the child! No one would've had one -"
"They should have," Carol said, still calmly. "With the new laws in place for the past two years and all the challenges losing, people should've been ready for this."
"It's not right!" That seemed to be the extent of the old man's argument. "Children are born in Morning and Evening marriages! The fact that they had to bring in a template for a birth certificate for a child born between Day wives, didn't that tip anyone off? I just -"
"When did that happen? Is this recent?" Shirya asked her wife, curious. She didn't remember reading anything like this in the paper, but then, she didn't read it every day like Marcus did.
"Two months ago." Kris yawned and stretched, the lace blouse tightening against their chest. "A hundred or so miles north of here. They were technically single at first - one of the ladies was transgender and the other was cisgender, and they were already pregnant. Their original plan was to register an Evening partnership and look for a compatible Morning couple after they had the baby, but then they met a registered Night couple and fell in love and decided to switch things up a bit."
She nodded; no, she hadn't read anything about this, online or in the newspaper. If she was really curious about it, she thought, Kris probably had it scrapbooked; they still had a bunch of subscriptions to printed stuff for that very purpose. They'd always said they wanted to leave something behind to show how much of a difference that they and the others like them had made.
"I do not know how she does it," she heard Kris murmur and turned, watched Carol sit tall and stone-faced, waiting for the screaming old man to tire himself out. "She stays so cool under pressure, man, it's amazing. I would've punched that bastard by now."
"Me too," she muttered under her breath. She could definitely see the light in Kris's eyes, how they were looking at her, nearly enchanted; she knew what they looked like when they had a crush.
The man had finally stopped screaming, and Carol was speaking again, her back still straight. "Why should people have to settle for marrying someone they don't love, for having children with someone they don't care about? Won't that make things worse for the children? Because that's what proposals like this are doing, they're harming children, moving them out of loving marriages between people who all care about them and putting them into a cold, uncaring system. Children never deserve to be punished for the circumstances of their birth. Ever."
Shirya thought of her cousin and his wife and his own children, kicked out of more than one school because their parents didn't match the administrators' ideas of what an appropriate marriage should be. She found herself nodding along.
The key turned in the door behind them, and she turned back just in time to see Marcus come in, briefcase in hand. "Hey, I'm back. Remind me never to trust anyone who says that they might have a permanent position ready for me in a few months, it's always bullshit -" He looked up and blinked, then suddenly grinned. "Oh, Carol again?"
"Shut up, Marcus," Kris replied cheerfully, not turning back.
"I'm just saying, if you like her that much you ought to say so. Is her e-mail address still -"
"Shut up, Marcus!"
Shirya couldn't help but laugh at their usual teasing, just a little. It made things feel just a bit more normal.
