rav notes

ravelling_wrath/chapter_20.py

@@ -287,6 +287,8 @@
 
 Sometimes, kids could be such a headache. If Jae-nyu kept working when she was this tired, she was going to hurt herself again. But that was her pride, and it was better to let her get hurt than to ask her to give up her pride. Eventually, she would learn her limits, and until then, it was my job to support her as best I could. "I know you can be strong," I said. "Keep being strong, but remember to be careful –"
 
+[???? yali positive/resentful reaction to Jae-nyu thing]
+
 "Hiram, there you are! We could really use an extra body over here –"
 
 I looked up. Civeah and the others were straining to lift a pallet of portable generators out of a truck. They really did need help. Reluctantly, I started to stand. I patted Jae-nyu on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, but it looks like I'm needed. Jae, if you're okay to keep working, I'm appointing you as guardian of this broken glass. Don't touch it, but make sure nobody steps on it until someone can help you clean it up."
@@ -339,6 +341,8 @@
 
 <bigbreak>
 
+[???? at some point Yali actually *realizes* what's wrong with Brannet's logic, make the connection that the Blood Temple actually tries to fix society instead of punish individual wrongdoers; something like, the Stern/Waiting way is *cynicism* that wrongdoing can ever be stopped; but Yali doesn't FULLY realize it yet, more like "well now that I see it next to Brannet's bullshit, it's obviously better"]
+
 Once everyone was present – especially Tanmei Luef, the "victim" I had chosen – the hearing could start. I was there as her advocate. In Blood court, a victim was allowed to designate one or more people as their advocates – which didn't usually mean lawyers, and often meant friends or family. But since there were no qualifications for an advocate, it was a convenient excuse for me to be present.
 
 After the initial formalities, the hearing began with her reading out her accusation, which I had prepared with her in advance. It was a real sob story. She was one of the recent layoffs at Hatheraw & Green. Her home was full of mold after it had been damaged in floods during the previous month, and because she had lost her income, she had had to cancel a repair job she had scheduled. Then she had gotten seriously ill from the mold, ended up in the emergency room, and ultimately had to sell her home for a pittance to cover expenses. It was lucky I had found someone with such a clear connection between their loss of income and their physical body. Our argument was that thefts of expensive goods – such as the theft this case centered around – had directly led to the layoffs that caused Tanmei's miserable hardship.
@@ -523,6 +527,8 @@
 
 I had thought it wasn't how the world worked, but maybe… maybe it only wasn't how the world worked <em>now</em>. How the world worked <em>without the Blood Temple</em>.
 
+[???? the Blood Temple had been its OWN order. It had a whole cohesive/holistic way of running society; give reader an answer when someone talks about maintaining "order", WHAT order is it?]
+
 My teeth chattered. I felt dizzy and sick. Everything I had done… Every time I had checked and double-checked so I wouldn't miss what my mother had forgotten, every time I had forced myself to stay quiet when I wanted to scream, every time I had stayed awake late into the night planning out how to protect myself… It WOULD all have been meaningless. It SHOULD all have been meaningless. I should never have had to do any of it. I should have gotten to live in a world where I didn't have to work harder than everyone else just to live in safety. A world where I could be weak and helpless, where I could <em>afford</em> to be weak and helpless, because there would be someone there to protect me, to take care of me, no matter how many times I messed up.
 
 I wanted to scream. Without thinking, I forced myself to stay quiet. But then I remembered. I shoved past my barrier and screamed, my voice filling my throat with pain, my breath coming back in quick gasps. I screamed again and again, bracing myself against the chair, tears slopping unwanted into my lap. It was worse than anything from before. It was a pain so intense that nobody could face it and stay standing, a pain I had thought I'd grown numb to long ago, suddenly ripped open and made fresh again. There was nothing I could do. The pain was inside of me. I couldn't make it go away. I didn't even <em>want</em> it to go away. This pain meant something. I knew it in the core of my being. This pain was my connection to everything I had lost, to every part of me that I had locked away so that I could carry on.