Summer, child,
Come on with me to Orcus
Leave your mother
And her worries behind.
Your dearest wish
Will lead to adventure
So come, little Summer,
It’s leaving time.
When you’re in Orcus
Birds going to speak like people
Women will shape-change
And frogs grow on trees.
But what’s that behind you?
It’s the Queen-in-Chains’ servant.
The Houndbreaker’s hunting;
Time to fly.
This is a thread to discuss, speculate about, and squee over Ursula Vernon’s new web serial Summer in Orcus, without worrying about spoiling it for people who aren’t caught up.
Note that the introductory lyrics are entirely drawn from the blurb and the first episode; I don’t know any more about what’s going to happen than anyone else. Except Ursula, I suspect.
(Also, it’s free on the web, but your attention is of course drawn to the Patreon and Paypal links on the front page.)
Normally when we use the phrase think of the children, it’s dismissive. And rightly so. The abstract possibility of children’s presence, a low-resolution notion of children’s safety, has been used as a club or a gag far too often. And the worst of it is, the people who say it are not thinking of the children, or they’d stop crying wolf and save that argument for when it really mattered. (When this is can be determined by listening to the children: a related skill, and indeed a basic prerequisite.)
I’ve read many stories about family breakdown in the news, heard them in conversation, seen them in my wider circle of friendship and acquaintance. These stories usually center on the adults whose relationships are in trouble, but I often find myself thinking of the children, wondering how they’re faring, wondering what hurt they’re suffering. Wishing someone could teach them how to navigate the situations they find themselves in far too young. So many of them will cope, but at a cost—one they’ll be paying interest on for years.
One thing that’s gone past my Twitter stream this last week is a British family court judgment written to be accessible to the people it affects: a mother who “often finds things hard to understand”, plus two children aged 10 and 12. Content warning for gaslighting. (But not, mercifully, for any neglect or physical or sexual abuse.)
I like this judge. He seems to be trying to give his intended audience the tools to deal with their situation, both explicitly and by example. So he says things like:
He also talks about everyone in the story as people, with comprehensible motivations and reasons for their actions. The policewoman who was upset when Mr A put a video of her visit up on YouTube. Mr B, who has served time for violence and drugs offenses, but still tries to be a good father. The headteachers who have dealt with the family. The officials who exaggerated and skipped steps while reacting to the family’s trip to Turkey. Even Mr A, for good and ill.
And he talks about the children in the same way, with the same language. He writes with an awareness of what makes up their lives: school, home, parents and stepparents, grandparents, vacations; he treats these things as seriously as he does terrorism, religious extremism, crime, imprisonment. In doing this, he shows the children that they matter as much as adults do. That they have, as Jo Walton would say, equal significance.
This is what thinking of the children looks like. Thinking of them as people in need of concepts and tools for dealing with the situation they’re in and the people around them. Thinking about how to minimize the damage they’ll suffer from these chaotic circumstances. Thinking about how to support the good relationships in their lives and reduce the impact of this bad one.
Yes, please, let’s think of the children.
This is part of the sequence of Dysfunctional Families discussions. We have a few special rules, specific to the needs and nature of the conversations we have here.
Previous posts (note that comments are closed on them to keep the conversation in one place):