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geshertzarmeod · 3 years

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In Other Lands Character Arcs

(Spoilers Abound)

I’m thinking about how the character arcs of all three main characters from In Other Lands center largely on moving away from what their families expected of them, even as each of them doesn’t necessarily think moving away from that is possible. And how it’s their relationships with each other that help them move in the directions they actually want to move in, and believe in their abilities to forge their own paths and lead fulfilling lives. Even if it’s not what their parents or home communities think a fulfilling life entails. This culminates in their refusal (along with Golden) at the end of the book, to let anyone else influence them when it comes to deciding where to be stationed. They’re ready to choose their own paths, together.

There’s something deeply appealing to me about this as a queer person, even as queerness (as defined by orientation or gender) is not actually a central factor in the shifting of each character’s relationship with their families. Actually, the character who comes closest to that is Serene, who is presumedly straight, but whose pushback against the rigid gendered expectations of her society so challenge her community that she and Golden are essentially banished at least for a time. This is only tangentially queer, I’d say, because she does this not for herself, as she seems to proudly fit & identify with elven womanhood, but recognizes the false limiting of manhood within her society and fights fiercely for Luke, Elliot, and eventually Golden, who I’d say is GNC for sure. For Luke, it’s not his being gay but his being monogamous and waiting longer than they expected (though he’s like, still 17!!! that’s still young!!!) to become sexually or romantically active that is off-putting to his family. For Elliot, his father is shocked not to see him with a man, but to see him happy (cue my tears).

I was just thinking this after reading Girl, Serpent, Thorn especially, but I really love when queer books parallel queer narratives of shame and struggle and difference and growing pains, with queer characters, but about issues unrelated to their being queer (especially when they’re about magical/fantasy elements). Then we get to relate to queer characters and see them process a lot of the feelings we have experienced, but also get to see them be loved and value and supported unconditionally in their queerness. Anyway, for an individual analysis:

Luke Sunborn

First, because I know a lot of people might not have read it, I’m going to quote Luke’s perspective from Wings In The Morning:

There were reasons Luke hadn’t kissed anybody. The Sunborns, as a family, loved life and loved love, and treated it as a game. It was fine for them: it worked for them.

Luke had always known that a riot of brightness and different loves and leaving someone laughing was beyond him. He wanted kindness and steadiness: he did not want someone who would leave. He wanted love that would last. (location 2527 in my kindle book, I can’t tell what page)

Luke, the Sunborn champion, expected to excel in battle, and love (read: have sex) freely and easily and non-monogamously, becoming an avid reader because of Elliot - something his father is shocked by and a little ashamed of. Learning Elvish because of both of them. Breaking border camp rules, threatening superior officers, to protect Elliot, and to support Serene, even as he continually complains about it and, on paper, would always argue that those choices are Not Okay and Very Bad. Luke, whose bashful shyness around his crushes, whose concern over his first kiss, whose choice of Elliot as a partner, is incomprehensible to his family, snapping, “I don’t want anyone else,” at the elves. He’s chosen Elliot, even as Elliot still doesn’t at all believe it at that point, and he’s happy with that decision. Elliot’s his choice, and only Elliot. Notorious Sunborn sexual voracity be damned.

Luke’s journey is also largely about him working through his external, and later internalized, biases against magical creatures. It’s pretty clearly an analog to xenophobia, and Luke expresses more disgust, disdain, or fear, the more different a culture is from the one he grew up in. This obviously becomes internalized against himself, when he realizes he is half-harpy. He literally represses his wings from coming out, he sees harpies as monsters and includes himself within this. It’s awful, and it’s sad, and it’s a mixture of Elliot’s meticulous research and adamant arguments that harpies are people, and that Luke isn’t a monster at all (and neither are harpies and other non-human creatures), and Serene’s calm acceptance of him, that helps him move through this.

This xenophobia, although clearly ingrained since childhood, don’t seem to be coming primarily from his family (certainly not from his mother) but from the culture of the borderguard in general. To me, it is implied that his father might at least casually buy into a lot of this, although he would never extend it to his son. It also is an interesting dynamic as related to the other two’s relationships with family, because Luke coming to love and accept himself, and to open his mind about non-human creatures, is actually him coming closer to his mother, rather than moving away. In my view, a part of why he bought in so clearly to this prejudice coming from the general bordercamp culture is because he was pushing away from his parents in the first place - he saw his parents being so wild and free in a way he knew he could never be that he pushed himself into the opposite side, into “reason” and restraint and conservatism. What he needed to learn was how to hold his more “traditional” wants and needs (although like, he’s kind of wrong about that. Elliott Schafer is not the traditional kind quiet love he’s imagining, and he didn’t want that anyway) while still celebrating all of the different approaches and cultures and loves out there, and that’s what he’s learning alongside Elliot and Serene. And he does this partially because Elliot’s love for him as a half-harpy is, according to his previous beliefs, just as wild and out there as his mother’s affair with his biological father, or all of Elliot’s flirting with various magical creatures. And as he accepts Elliot’s love, he accepts that too.

Serene-Heart-In-The-Chaos-of-Battle

From the first moment we meet Serene we know she ran away from home to join the border camp. She’s chosen to join the humans, to fight alongside men, to learn about the borderlands from a human perspective and use that to create an alliance and to create peace. She enters a world where she is looked down on, where she is sexualized and punished for trying to swim shirtless, and has to fight hard to take the classes she wants and have the opportunity to prove herself as she wishes. Instead of deciding her parents and community were right and going back to the elves, she digs her heels in and with Elliot and Luke’s help, fights back, fights to excel at the border camp and make things different and better, and prove her detractors wrong.

Not only that, but she learns to respect men in a way she was not raised to do, learns to treat men as equals and partners, always defending both Elliot and Luke when her community disrespects them. This prepares her for her relationship with Golden (although Elliot still helps her along a lot, especially with their written correspondence) and ends in her and Golden essentially eloping after Golden ran away to fight alongside her. It’s also important that she accepts Golden fighting alongside her. That was not at all a given, especially as even towards the middle of the book, she seems to be thinking of human men as capable of fighting and strength and other “womanly” qualities, but not necessarily believing the same of elven men. She’s chosen a nontraditional path and a GNC partner in Golden, and for the time being, her closest family is not her blood but her beautiful boyfriend, her swordsister, and her loved and loving best friend Elliot.

Elliot Schafer

Last but the opposite of least is Elliot. What Elliot learned from his family is that he will come to nothing, that he will be forgotten, and that he will not be loved. I am so angry on this child’s behalf, for the ways he was neglected not only by his parents but by everyone before Serene. The ways his father had no interest in him because all he wanted was Elliot’s mother back (and I love Elliot’s observation that even if his mother did come back, his father wouldn’t know what to do, and would not be happy). The way his teacher literally accepted a small bribe to just...... leave him at the entrance to the borderlands, and none of the students cared. The way his mother not only left when he was a child but knew who he was the second she saw or even heard about him at the bordercamp, and never bothered to tell him, or show any interest in him whatsoever.Elliot has been taught, over and over again, that he is unwanted and uncared for. That he has to go it alone, and fill his own needs.

Elliot learns to respect Commander Woodsinger and to know that while she doesn’t necessarily love him, she knows him, and appreciates who and what he is, and sees value and strength in it. She, unlike his previous teachers and school professionals, understands him, and likes him, and values him. She’s not warm, but she’s a positive presence in his life, and part of him learning to believe he has value just as he is, and not just because he spitefully decided it to go against what everyone else has told him, but because it’s actually true.

He didn’t want his parents and his peers and the adults who have let him down to be right about this, so he does dream of being loved back. But he shows himself fully prepared to be the one who loves more in relationships, especially with Serene. He’s ready, at first, to take all she’ll give him, and revel in each part of it, even if it doesn’t match up to his love for her. It’s not until the moment he turns down Serene’s final advance (when she’s clearly settling for him) that he realizes how much he wants to be chosen first. And he believes that’s possible, and worth waiting for (and that in the meantime, he will help Serene up and help her find what she truly wants too).

Elliot knows Serene loves him. She shows him he deserves love, and in his devotion to her, Elliot begins to excel and challenge himself and learn to see his brand of obnoxiousness as something that might not be everyone’s taste but isn’t inherently bad. He trusts Serene to love him, at least as a friend, but he doesn’t trust that Luke will, because Luke reminds him of all of the kids who hurt him in the past.

And that’s why the slowest arc of this whole book is probably Elliot realizing that Luke.... actually likes him. Actually wants to be around him, and enjoys his presence, and even like-likes him - loves him even. It just can’t compute for him. And so we get basically an unreliable narration for most of the book regarding Luke. Elliot’s “aha” moment about Luke rewrites years of his life, shifting his understanding of so much of their lives together. And it solidifies Elliot’s discovery that he can be loved exactly as he is, obnoxious and annoying and all. He’s found people who love him for it, and they’ve chosen him, and they’re going to stick around.

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starlingsrps · 4 years

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sarah dorsey.

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: sarah jean dorsey

REASONING: not especially

NICKNAME(S): spooky sarah. yes, she knows.

PREFERRED NAME(S): sarah is fine

BIRTH DATE: january 15, 1986

AGE: thirty four

ZODIAC: capricorn

GENDER: female

PRONOUNS: she/her

SEXUAL/ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: heterosexual/romantic

NATIONALITY: american

ETHNICITY: caucausian

CURRENT LOCATION: washington, d.c. - georgetown technically but it's just easier to say d.c.

LIVING CONDITIONS: tidy clutter. sarah knows where everything is at all times, even if it doesn't always look like it. she has not moved since she moved into this apartment to start her master's. it's been twelve years. she will die here.

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: eureka, ca

HOMETOWN: same

SOCIAL CLASS: middle

EDUCATION LEVEL: b.a. psychology, yale; masters in psychology from georgetown; quantico

FATHER: rick dorsey, 63, radio dj

MOTHER: ellen dorsey, 60, hair stylist

SIBLING(S): maggie, presumed dead; aaron, 27

BIRTH ORDER: oldest

CHILDREN: sweet jesus christ no.

PET: does her ficus count?

OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: her grandmother; various aunts/uncles/cousins

RELATIONSHIP WITH FAMILY: like, she's got people but she's awful at keeping in touch. time flies and suddenly it's been a month since she called her mother. maggie, her sister, was her closet familial relationship - they were only a year apart in age. she disappeared when sarah was a sophomore at yale and was declared legally dead a year later, a fact sarah still can't really accept because it can't be as simple as that she disappeared, it just can't be.

PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: like yeah but it's.....it's easier to say that it's been awhile.

CURRENT RELATIONSHIP: no.

CCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: fbi agent

CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB?: 95% of the time. 5% of the time, someone's fucking with her stuff or she wants to live alone in a cabin somewhere where no one will fuck with her stuff.

PAST JOB(S): i mean, she's been in different departments but if it wasn't academic or babysitting, she's not done a whole lot.

SPENDING HABITS: reasonable - she spends a bit more on clothes than she'd like but she's tiny and she's gotta tailor a lot of pants.

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: she's sturdy and can move because her job demands so but she's not pumping iron by any means.

SPEED: surprisingly fast - she sprinted in high school and college and can be hella quick.

INTELLIGENCE: yeah, little bit.

ACCURACY: dead on

AGILITY: p good

STAMINA: endless

TEAMWORK: good! she's not Fantastic at taking the lead and kind of has to be nudged into it when necessary. her voice shakes a little bit and it takes her a second but she is capable of leadership positions - she's just forgotten a tiny bit how to.

LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: fluently? english and spanish. not-so fluently would be arabic and mandarin. she also knows elvish but that's classified.

DRIVE?: legally, technically? sure and did happily until she moved to washington. one time on the beltway though and she refused to ever drive again.

JUMP-STAR A CAR?: nope

CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: nope

RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes

SWIM?: yes

PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: she grew up playing flute but fuck her if she knows where it is in the bottomless pit that is her apartment.

PLAY CHESS?: yes

BRAID HAIR?: yep

TIE A TIE?: yes

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: anna kendrick

EYE COLOR: blue

HAIR COLOR: brown

HAIR TYPE/STYLE: long, sort of wavy. she cuts it herself.

GLASSES/CONTACTS?: reading glasses

DOMINANT HAND: left

HEIGHT: 5'2

BUILD: petite. bird shoulders, just negative shoulders.

EXERCISE HABITS: three times a week, mostly just to make sure she can pass the physical portion of her job.

SKIN TONE: fair

TATTOOS: nah

PIERCINGS: ears

MARKS/SCARS: freckled in the summer, a crescent moon on her left knee from a massive bike wipeout when she was a kid. she saw BONE.

NOTABLE FEATURES: sharp chin, expressive face. she's not good at hiding her emotions at all.

USUAL EXPRESSION: the opposite of a poker face. catch peter looking stoic af and sarah like o.O

CLOTHING STYLE: suits and blazers and professional lady things for work. leggings and a giant shirt otherwise. comfort is key.

JEWELRY: a watch is about it.

ALLERGIES: almonds

DIET: reasonable, prone to eating many snacks instead of eating an actual meal.

PSYCHOLOGY

MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good

TEMPERAMENT: melancholic

MBTI: INFP

MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: like a sprinkle of ocd. she's not crazy, contrary to popular belief.

SOCIABILITY: introvert

EMOTIONAL STABILITY: she gets in her feelings real quick.

PHOBIA(S): drowning and horses

ADDICTION(S): nah

DRUG USE: ehhhh nah

ALCOHOL USE: sure

PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: not at all - she really doesn’t like that she has to carry a gun.

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: bubbly, a little higher than she'd like naturally. she lowers it a dab when speaking to people she needs to impress.

ACCENT: not really?

HOBBIES: research can be a hobby.

NERVOUS TICKS: oh boy. A Lot. she's always fussing with her fingernails and tugging at her cuffs. she wrinkles her nose a lot while thinking and needs to have a snack on her at all times.

DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: The Truth.

POSITIVE TRAITS: open minded, caring, creative, organized, generous,

NEGATIVE TRAITS: impractical, suspicious, stubborn, easily stressed, obsessive

SENSE OF HUMOR: sly - little sarcastic. she’ll drag a bitch for a country mile.

DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: when she probably shouldn't

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: going to the movies, google spirals

ANIMAL: foxes

BEVERAGE: coffee

BOOK: a people's history of the united states, anything that involves a lot of lists of things. mostly lord of the rings. it's her life's blood.

MOVIE: lord of the rings, extended editions only.

COLOR: green

FOOD: cereal

FLOWER: daisies

GEM: diamond

HOLIDAY: halloween

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: being driven

MUSICAL ARTIST: ehhh whatever and whoever is okay fine - music's kind of background noise and she'd rather a movie.

SONG: eh.

SCENERY: a well organized bulletin board

SCENT: books

SPORT: surprisingly into basketball - she likes numbers and data.

SPORTS TEAM: whoever the underdog is

TELEVISION SHOW: nope. movie.

WEATHER: winter just because

VACATION DESTINATION: that assumes she doesn't have to be forcibly removed from her office for any kind of time off.

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: finding her sister, proving the existence of aliens, being responsible enough to get a cat.

GREATEST FEAR: that her sister really isn't out there somewhere

MOST AT EASE WHEN: when she's being heard and understood; watching lord of the rings

LEAST AT EASE WHEN: she really doesn't like being called spooky sarah at all. she can be very self conscious at times.

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: her degrees - she's very proud of her academic career and now and then wishes she hadn't heard the song of justice and the bureau.

BIGGEST REGRET: the bureau, once in awhile.

TOP PRIORITIES: truth, justice, and cleaning her bathroom.

#c: sarah dorsey

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