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there's a banal evil to edge.
while the plates in FFVII literally separate the Upper and Lower classes, advent children likes to act like this segregation has been removed. physically, at least.
there are no plates, but there is inequality that goes unaddressed, sometimes by the narrative itself. most stigma-bearers -- including children -- are homeless. living and dying in alleyways, where no one seems to notice or care. people go on about their days, snarling at the sick, telling them they need to "stay inside!", away from the sensitive eyes of decent midgar citizens. these individual instances of cruelty are fleeting in the face of the grander threat that is my siblings and i -- children of the Source of all illness, despair, and madness.
this is still my reality. living in a façade of progress, while people around me freeze and die of illness in the cold. people are routinely, violently pushed to the Edge of city limits, all the while new condos are build to attract people to the revitalized downtown. my building is populated exclusively by low income, psychiatrized people, who, if not here, would likely be homeless or dead as well, due to overcrowding in hospitals and state-run facilities. north and east: factory districts that cough smog and cut lifespans. south and east: my childhood home, the sector that is allowed to die, because it was poor land to the founders, anyways. "fine for negroes and migrants", their old map says.
local comics will call the landlord-mayor a "cartoon villain" at basement shows. some think it insensitive, because comparing Reality to fiction somehow lessens its impact. i can't help but agree with our modern jesters.
in discussions about sources and past or parallel lives, i sometimes find myself lost. i struggle to differentiate between "then(fiction)" and "now(reality, the New World)" for a variety of reasons. an executive who talks big, self aggrandizing game about defending the city against The Nightmare(the mad, the sick), all while continuing to funnel resources into planet-draining industry is just one of those reasons. this is where we live. this is our reality. there is nothing to return to -- we never left.
i said once, in an offhand comment, that fiction is often a place of extremes. stakes are drastically raised for narrative tension, people gain impossible abilities and wills to face the most fearsome opponents. so it makes sense why some fictionfolk might feel out-of-place in such a nuance space as Reality. but what of us who never left those extremes? who, due to class, race, disability, or other marginalization, are constantly victim to stakes beyond any individual overcoming? those still marked by stigmata? Nightmare Incarnate, m(M)addened youth in gangs and grudges -- those blamed for the downfall of a city?
well, i don't know about you, but these are my people. they always have been. my brothers and sisters and siblings. their children, their children's children. friends and acquaintances. those who ruin sacred buildings in fits of rage, who show authority the other side of the barrel, who bite and claw at the bonds forced onto them -- physical, generational, spiritual.
many smart people before me have waxed poetic about the strangeness that happens on the boundary of truth and fiction. i have to say, it's not particularly poetic from under the rotting pizza. it just Is.
while the plates in FFVII literally separate the Upper and Lower classes, advent children likes to act like this segregation has been removed. physically, at least.
there are no plates, but there is inequality that goes unaddressed, sometimes by the narrative itself. most stigma-bearers -- including children -- are homeless. living and dying in alleyways, where no one seems to notice or care. people go on about their days, snarling at the sick, telling them they need to "stay inside!", away from the sensitive eyes of decent midgar citizens. these individual instances of cruelty are fleeting in the face of the grander threat that is my siblings and i -- children of the Source of all illness, despair, and madness.
this is still my reality. living in a façade of progress, while people around me freeze and die of illness in the cold. people are routinely, violently pushed to the Edge of city limits, all the while new condos are build to attract people to the revitalized downtown. my building is populated exclusively by low income, psychiatrized people, who, if not here, would likely be homeless or dead as well, due to overcrowding in hospitals and state-run facilities. north and east: factory districts that cough smog and cut lifespans. south and east: my childhood home, the sector that is allowed to die, because it was poor land to the founders, anyways. "fine for negroes and migrants", their old map says.
local comics will call the landlord-mayor a "cartoon villain" at basement shows. some think it insensitive, because comparing Reality to fiction somehow lessens its impact. i can't help but agree with our modern jesters.
in discussions about sources and past or parallel lives, i sometimes find myself lost. i struggle to differentiate between "then(fiction)" and "now(reality, the New World)" for a variety of reasons. an executive who talks big, self aggrandizing game about defending the city against The Nightmare(the mad, the sick), all while continuing to funnel resources into planet-draining industry is just one of those reasons. this is where we live. this is our reality. there is nothing to return to -- we never left.
i said once, in an offhand comment, that fiction is often a place of extremes. stakes are drastically raised for narrative tension, people gain impossible abilities and wills to face the most fearsome opponents. so it makes sense why some fictionfolk might feel out-of-place in such a nuance space as Reality. but what of us who never left those extremes? who, due to class, race, disability, or other marginalization, are constantly victim to stakes beyond any individual overcoming? those still marked by stigmata? Nightmare Incarnate, m(M)addened youth in gangs and grudges -- those blamed for the downfall of a city?
well, i don't know about you, but these are my people. they always have been. my brothers and sisters and siblings. their children, their children's children. friends and acquaintances. those who ruin sacred buildings in fits of rage, who show authority the other side of the barrel, who bite and claw at the bonds forced onto them -- physical, generational, spiritual.
many smart people before me have waxed poetic about the strangeness that happens on the boundary of truth and fiction. i have to say, it's not particularly poetic from under the rotting pizza. it just Is.
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