Jason

No one understands my poor Jason. He's different. His brain follows different paths from other peoples'. They all hate and despise him for leaving King Michael. They think he was a terrible husband and father. Yes, he was wrong to leave Michael and go to Conrex. If he had gone to any other place, people still would have thought him weak, but not a traitor. And yes, he was a rather terrible husband and father. But everything's relative. How good you are at something in the eyes of the world isn't a fair judgment. For example, most of my friends aren't good at volleyball. I am, but that's because I trained for years. Because I have different experiences and a different personality, you would expect different things of me.

Jason's background and personality have some serious flaws, especially in a medieval setting. He has no social scripts. He can't deal with people, he doesn't know how. And because his entire early life was spent in training, he never had much opportunity or motive to develop scripts, to learn how to deal with people. He learned the rules of combat perfectly, and worked himself with a single-minded focus to become the best. He is the most formidable fighter. He knows perfectly the rules and techniques for fighting. That is all he spent his life learning.

And then he was forced to marry at fifteen. That is too young, far too young for almost all boys, especially Jason. Instead of helping him to relate to and understand girls, it crippled his social abilities even further. Because he was married, he no longer was forced to go to certain social gatherings. And his wife was completely the wrong girl for him. She was an inner princess--she needed to be adored and pampered. Adored and pampered and flattered and praised. Jason doesn't do that. He can't. He's no poet, and he's not glib of tongue. He is painfully blunt. He sees the world as he sees it and will never say otherwise. He needs a girl who doesn't need to be coddled, one who can handle the plain truth. Jason's personality stereotype he most closely matches is the strong, quiet, curt farmer of the midwest. Thrives in a hard life, but luxury doesn't make sense to him. He needs to be working.

And now Jason is 28. His wife has been dead for some years, and his daughter (whose personality is a clone of her mother's) is nearing the teenage years. She has no affection for her father, and feels abandoned by him. Well, because he did rather abandon her. Not leaving her flat, but he sent her to his sister and brother in law. He felt that he couldn't take care of her, but they could. And they can. But now his life is a bloody mess and he doesn't know what he's doing. He's finally come to talk to King Michael again. He apologized, so very humbly, and the King remains huffy and self-righteously indignant. And soon as the apology was over, the King told Jason he should get married again.

As though King Michael hasn't had enough say in Jason's marital status.

Jason is champing at the bit, confused, frustrated, and angry. He's a good man, and he knows it, yet the world has painted him the villain--or worse, the incompetent idiot. He doesn't fit into the world he's in, and he's hated, despised, and looked down on because of it. Poor boy.

Liberation

"It's a beautiful day to wake up with nothing to say..." ~Ferras

The world is changing again today. Everyday changes things, but today marks a new period, a new place. Though really it's an old place. I have always loved my family very much and been a homebody. But will being home feel different, now that I've lived on my own for a year? Or will it, like a dear friend you haven't seen for awhile, pick up in the middle of the sentence you left off when you parted? Will it be like slipping into an old skin, or trying to put on clothes that you've grown out of?

Based on christmas break and the weekends I've spent at home, I don't think it will chafe or irritate at all to be back under my parents' roof. But I've a friend circle, habits, rituals I follow here: it almost feels like living a double life.

I'm happy to be going home, and I'm not sad to be leaving here. But there is a vague sort of wistful regret that makes me wish I'd been a better person while I was here. At the end of something you look back to see how far you've come, but sometimes you also see how much further you could have gone.

There's always next year, right?

"What a wonderful thing to throw your illusions away...it's liberation day" ~Ferras