Influence of Gender Equality Norms on Childhood Aspirations, Late 19th Cen

You’re sitting at a low table in the apartment you share with your mother and baby sister, stretched out across the table with your face stuck in a book.¹ There’s a whole stack next to you,² bookmarked with haphazard scraps of paper.

“Whennnnnnn are they going to hold more of the women’s examinations?³ If I can’t be the first woman zhuangyuan I can at least be the second.”⁴

Your mother swats you with her broom. “Patience. You’re barely twelve; you can’t take them for years, even if you do read your bible every day. And right now, your mother needs help putting out the laundry to dry.”

A long sigh—but she’s right, you’ve been putting off your chores. You stand, placing a careful bookmark in your place. “When I’m an official I’ll make sure you and ██████⁵ have all the help you could want. I’ll make sure everyone has what they need.”

She ruffles your hair, fondly, and herds you toward the clothesline. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, dear.”

[1] The preferred Chinese translation of the Holy Bible; the exams in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were in large part based off of knowledge of it.

[2] She had managed to get her hands on a rare copy of a dictionary, for the more difficult words, along with other textbooks brought by missionaries.

[3] The first set of Chinese women's examinations for government officials' positions had been held a few years earlier. There would never be a second set.

[4] A zhuangyuan was the title given to those who placed first in the exams, and they often received special postings. That a woman could do so under Taiping Heavenly Kingdom policies seemed, to her, only natural and right, since she knew herself to be cleverer than many boys her age by far.

[5] Her young sister, at that time about half her age.

Relationship Dynamics Under Supernatural Compulsion, Late 19th Cen

The last of your wounds are just healing as you stumble in the door,¹ but you’re still reeling—just, glad, so glad to be home.²

███████ is waiting for you—no surprise, since you’re late—and you collapse against him, letting him fold you into his arms.³

“Michèle,”⁴ he says, softly, gently, “what happened?”

You’re… shaking, and curl in against him. “Had to fight, but—it’s all fine, I promise. It’s all right. I swear. I took care of it.”⁵

You can’t quite look at his face for fear of disapproval, but he tilts your chin up with a hand, firmly, and smiles. “You don’t have to look away,” he says. “Look at you—you’ve come so far, here. You've earned my trust. My clever, talented, lovely girl.”⁶

Your heart leaps—it’s not a reprimand at all, even though you’re in disarray and your clothes are bloodied, and all those kind words from his mouth… you stand on your tiptoes, leaning up to throw your arms around his neck and kiss him hungrily, not being able to get enough off his regard.⁷

And you think to yourself, as he presses you back against the wall, fingers already going to the buttons of your shirt, hands cool against your skin—

You think:

I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him—⁸

[1] It was at least, in that moment, a small favor that she had very much come out better in that fight; in the last few years, she had become very effective with the use of a knife in combat.

[2] This was not the home she grew up in; at this point, "home" was Paris, France, in a much nicer apartment than she could have imagined as a girl—clean, painted in light colors, airy, always with fresh-cut flowers. It should have been a place she liked.

[3] In that moment, she felt a sting of resentment—that she had gone through all of that for him. But she knew without him, she would be alone in the world.

[4] This was not her name. This had never been her name, and would never be her name. Still, she learned to respond to it.

[5] "Took care of it" was a clean and tidy way to say that she had committed a murder on his behalf. He never liked to get into the specifics, which she resented as well; if she were to tear her soul apart for him, she thought he should at least want to hear the details.

[6] To hear that kind of thing was always what she wanted, and never what he led with.

[7] It would be an overstatement to say that she liked him; however, during that time she thought she loved him, and as any sitcom of the modern era can demonstrate for you, love and resentment can easily exist side by side for years and years and years. She wanted to prove to him that she was worthy of his regard, of being seen as a peer—she wanted to devour him.

[8] At that point, she had killed him in her thoughts and her dreams hundreds of times over. It would be hundreds more before she eventually did.

Case Studies in Vampiric Hunting Methods, Mid 20th Cen.

You sit at your desk in your study, in front of a pile of news clippings—sorting through them to figure out what the hell Father Joshua is up to,¹ now that you’ve dug up the intelligence that he requested special permission to operate in the venerable Alder Aragona’s² domain in one of Los Angeles’s more modest Latino neighborhoods.

Hopefully, he’s backed into a corner; you’ve been knocking over his sandcastles right and left. His contacts in the local diocese you conspired to have moved to far-off mission trips very suddenly; you’ve been chipping away at his more worldly connections, blackening his name and the names of his retainers—and also, well, you did gut, behead, and burn his incredibly pedigreed childe,³ sourced from the nastiest of old money stock with all the pretending at piousness that comes along with the blessing of privilege.

It’s a big city. Why here? Why this neighborhood, with its modest single Catholic parish? You’ve been scanning through for sudden changes, surprising deaths—

…wait. This Ruíz fellow—that name rings a bell. You saw it… where?

You sort back through all the papers, pulling out the one about the young man’s sudden and grisly death, wherein his family bemoaned that they couldn’t believe that he’d been mixed up in trouble, that he’d been a good boy, they were sure, and that they’d be careful of their daughter—

…the daughter, a teenager—

And there: her face in a small-circulation local paper, holding a prize for academics, with a note that it’s quite an achievement for a girl, plus a bemused reporter’s note about her declaration of her ambitions.⁴ You compare dates to a few other happenings shortly thereafter, and the name keeps popping up…

Goddammit. It fits his modus operandi exactly, the way you know he does this, the way you’ve heard him brag about it: “One must break them down before you rebuild them as tools in Longinus’s service—arrows in the quiver, as it were,” and then his stupid shitty dry corpse-like laugh.⁵ “Strip away their sins: their pride, their own ambitions, their sinful, individualistic dreams, such that they can be redeemed, and then you have a proper base from which to start.”⁶

Of course, you killed his childe that he worked hard on, and now he’s crafting a replacement.⁷ No, you’re not going to be able to be patient at all. This girl—Paula—you’re too late to save her brother, but you might be right on time to save her.

[1] At that time, he was not the Bishop of the Lancea Sanctum, but still one of the ranking elders among them; respected and considered a political up-and-comer among them.

[2] Aragona was one of the elders of the Invictus, considered the legacy of the feudal lords of vampire society. Yi found it to be true that the corrupt establishment of religion and the corrupt upper class were arm in arm in vampire circles as well as in human ones.

[3] Yi considered being a little more tasteful about the whole affair. However, the purpose of his death was to send a message to his sire of what was to come, and furthermore, to set him off-balance in the hopes that he might make more errors. Furthermore, he had been on all too many occasions a smug little chauvinist, and she considered it repayment for her having to tolerate his presence at Court.

[4] The reason why Yi had recalled and saved the articles was because the young woman reminded her very much of herself, at that age. Clever, ambitious, and in a place and time that was not entirely prepared to deal with that. She had resolved to support programs in that area, but hadn't realized that there would be other interest.

[5] Father Joshua had been embraced well into his elderly years, and by accounts had lived an unremarkable and pettily selfish life as a human priest before being dragged into vampiric society in his twilight years.

[6] In her opinion, some of the very worst of Lancea Sanctum theology. Yi would reluctantly admit that some corners of the theology were not bad, but the kind that demanded conformity—particularly to a certain patriarchal Western ideal—was the sort of thing that really got her hackles up and made her regret integrating into vampire society at all.

[7] To vampires of sufficient age, sufficiently distanced from their humanity, even other vampires could be considered tools or objects to own and replace at will.

Transitions of Vampire Society in the Modern Era, Early 21st Cen

You’re tapping your finger idly against your knee as you sit in the passenger seat of the slightly dated sedan,¹ occasionally glancing over at the redheaded, bespectacled man in the driver’s seat²—a colleague—and then glancing back at your watch, and then the radio, which is on the oldies station.³

“Just a few more minutes and we’ll live in a very different world,” you say.⁴ “I can’t believe it’s finally almost here.”

The impeccably dressed, young-looking blonde⁵ in the backseat pipes up: “This was a really great idea, too, Avery,” she says, nodding to the driver. “After all, it’s like—definitely going to be weird for everyone, for a while, so having friendly faces out there should help. I know Liz really appreciates it.”

“Of course—after all, we want to send a clear message to mortals we’re not a threat to be feared and resisted, and the media’s a great way to do that. I’ve got everything set up. I'm just worried about the blackouts, since there's no word from Denver.“⁶

The other girl in the backseat, with her vivid blue-dyed hair,⁷ leans forward. "Are we sure Daniel Jericho isn't pulling something? He was really, like, trying hard to recruit me to some effort to stop th—"

The radio screams and the ground shakes, and the car skids across the pavement, tires screeching as your colleague slams the brakes, glasses almost sliding off of his nose. He looks up: “What—“

A building ahead of you—the office you were heading to, you realize with dismay—is ablaze, the roof half-caved in from… something slamming into it, you realize, as you immediately reach to let yourself out of the car. But even though so far it’s been a quiet night, it’s far from quiet now—

You turn slowly, and see the city behind you, the skyline of Los Angeles visible in the distance, and the sky blazing red as—there, something streaking down from above to land in a fiery crash.⁸ And then another, and another, and you’re already crossing yourself, because, hey, your world might as well be ending again, that might as well just be fucking happening—

“Holy shit,” says the woman in the backseat, climbing out behind you to look, and you shake yourself out of the reverie you didn’t realize you’d quite entered.

You turn to your colleague. “Avery, if there’s any survivors—or for that matter, if we can find out whatever the hell that was—“

He’s already nodding, and taking off his blazer, and you roll up your sleeves.

In the end, at least the majority of the office staff had gone home, with it being late night, with only the couple vetted journalists for your interviews remaining—and one, at least, you’re able to pull from the wreckage to relative safety. And in the top floor, Avery finds the twisted, burning-hot remains of a de-orbited satellite right under the hole in the roof.

You’re all leery of traveling out in the open, after all this, and once you get back to the two women in the parking lot, who seem to be more leery of fire and have clustered close to the building to avoid more falling debris, you tentatively land on the plan of at least making part of the journey back to downtown proper through the sewers, with what salvaged evidence you can carry. You summon your accursed strength,⁹ pull up the nearest sewer plate, and climb down before gesturing for the others to jump down so you can catch them.

Christ. It’s going to be a long night. You can only hope that Iris, across the city, is safe.¹⁰

[1] Yi suspected the car was probably newer than she thought, and that things simply became mid-century upon exposure to the car's driver.

[2] Avery Anderson was good-natured and generally on the harmless side of conspiracy theorists; he was among the colleagues she was quite fond of. To date, she is unsure if the past tense is appropriate or not for him.

[3] "Total Eclipse of the Heart," of all things.

[4] Vampires around the world had organized with the intent to reveal themselves to the public that night. They referred to this as "dropping the Masquerade," the "Masquerade" being the vampire parlance for hiding the existence of the supernatural.

[5] She was someone familiar, but not someone to whom Yi was particularly close; perhaps they had a mutual friend, at best. They were of the same vampire "clan," but Yi had never been one to socialize much with those of the same lineage due to the fact that she found most of them insufferable and they found her a little too arcane and stuffy.

[6] The reveal of vampires' existence had been intended to go timezone-by-timezone, with each area having a central "model" city for the announcement. Los Angeles had been prepared as the Pacific coast's representative.

[7] Samantha Moon was, at that time, a member of the Carthian Movement, a vampire political organization with aims toward modernizing vampire social and political structures, taking inspiration from human societies. Yi would later learn that she was Avery's sister by supernatural blood, explaining their early rapport; Moon would also later join the Ordo Dracul, the research organization Yi was part of.

[8] She would later find out that this was happening all across the world, in the cities selected to be the flagbearers for the effort to drop the Masquerade.

[9] It did not escape Hope's sense of irony that most of BAD END=DEAD END's powerset is within the scope of the powers granted to her by her vampiric curse. Strength had always been the one she was gladdest to have—the only one that didn't by its intrinsic nature infringe on the freedoms of others.

[10] Iris Virga had arrived in Los Angeles at Yi's request, not long prior to that night. Yi had been optimistic about dropping the Masquerade, but had expected she'd need help steering things in the right philosophical direction with Los Angeles being one of the flagship cities. This turned out to be true, but not in the anticipated way.