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blueheronteanookMajor Warnings: Otherisation, dehumanisaion.
Summary: Taking a good look at how Practitioner culture sees Others, and the difference between them, as Easton comes to terms with the existence of Shay Graubard. Spoilers up to Gone and Done It 17.x
We have ourselves yet another awful Practitioner scion and, much like Reid did back then, Easton highlights certain aspects of Practitioner culture. This time, specifically in its relationship to Others. When I talked about this last time (over a year ago, Christ), I called it Practitioner Supremacy, and I think recent interludes have clarified exactly how Practitioner society sees Others, and how it treats them moving forward.
But first, let’s look at what we’re actually talking about.
What are Others?
‘Other’, as we’ve come to understand in Pale, is an umbrella term for a wide variety of magical beings, defined more by what they’re not than what they are. And what they’re not is ‘human’.
They are, in a word, the Other:
The term Othering describes the reductive action of labelling and defining a person as a subaltern native, as someone who belongs to the socially subordinate category of the Other. The practice of Othering excludes persons who do not fit the norm of the social group,
[…]
the practice of othering persons means to exclude and displace them from the social group to the margins of society, where mainstream social norms do not apply to them, for being the Other.
The Other never exists on its own. It can only become the Other if it exists in contrast to something else, a society that excludes them and that, as a prerequisite, has the power to exclude them. The Other is marginalised by definition, and if it had the power to push itself back into the mainstream, it would no longer be the Other.
The mainstream, of course, is the Practitioner society we got to take another peek at this past chapter. It is a very hierarchical society, at least the part of it we’ve seen, currently structured almost entirely in relation to its main rising star: Abraham Musser. There is a lot of jockeying for position, because being at the bottom end of the totem pole is not a ton of fun.
But importantly, being at the bottom of the Practitioner totem pole is still better than being Other:
In old traditions, in the post-Solomon reformations, God was arranged above king, who was arranged above lord, above man, who ruled over animal, who were declared above Other.
“Familiars and bound Others outside, please!” Graubard called out. “It’s too crowded and we could use guards. Keep an eye out for changes in the moon.”
“Who has unsecured summons on the property?” Ursanne asked, raising her voice, her head turning toward the kitchen. “The house is crowded as it is.”
[…]
She pushed Countdown Cassandra out of the way, and told the kitchen, “Someone manage this Other, get it out of the way. I don’t like that countdown.”
“It’s fine. Really,” Yadira said. “Uhh, your familiar, I didn’t catch her name?”
“Snowdrop,” Avery said. “Not a familiar, exactly. Boon companion.”
Snowdrop, hands in her pockets, bit her lower lip.
“If you want, Snowdrop, there’s a table of Others around the corner,” Yadira said.
To be an Other means you are something to be studied, to be classified in categories imposed upon you:
Lauren picked things up again, “He’s not locked to one place. He can appear and disappear. My education was limited. One-note, but the nonsensical part of it, he’s silly, dream-like. Lost? Or Anima something?”
“You might be thinking of Anima Hysteria or something like that. But Mimeisthai would be my guess,” Reid rasped. “Imitated thing. Like a fancy, or an urban legend. Humans draw a lot of stupid things, come up with random ideas. Emergent rituals- do you know emergent rituals?”
According to these classifications, which you had no say in, you will then be judged, pulled apart, fought, even. Society acts upon you, because you are not treated as an agent. You can be repressed, bound, killed, enslaved, without sparking any sort of introspection, because, in the eyes of society, you are not a person.
“Yes!” the girl exclaimed. “Different genders, different age classes. These two boys are going to the same building for the mask violation. But different floors. A-M last name for that mister, N-Z last name for that one. I do think you have to enter from different sides of the building to get there.”
Only the mainstream, the Practitioners, they’re people.
The Practitioner Perspective
Practitioners are humans. They are, in fact, the representatives of humanity in the world of magic, and the world of magic is a dangerous place, filled with beings that can be assumed to be hostile to humanity, that won’t hesitate to kill them. Practitioners are not just the light in the darkness, they are the fire beating back the darkness, lighting torches to create a beautiful tapestry of light, of warmth, of civilisation, as humanity spreads across the world.
“The world could be a brighter, stable, more pleasant place-”
“Just so you know, Nina does have a choice,” Zed said. “And she chose to be bound.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. She didn’t flinch or anything. “That’s good.”
“But while we’re on the subject, you do know that those goblins and that gunman are probably massively dangerous Others who either hurt people or are going to hurt people somewhere down the road, if practitioners like us don’t intervene, right?”
“I’ve seen things, out there. Evil, wrong, destructive. When the next big evil comes, we’ll need to be ready. Lawrence Bristow’s methodology gets the world ready,” Ted told her. “I looked around, I got a lay of the land, tried to figure out what there was out there that could help me, or help with the next big evil. If we don’t address this now, then we won’t be ready.”
Others are, at best, obstacles and, at worst, existential threats. Either way, they need to be studied, dismantled, opposed and removed, one way or another. They may be intelligent, but this only makes them more dangerous, because their interests are opposed to ours. There is us, and there is them. The important part is that we are human, and they are not. We’re people, and they’re Others.
“They’re holding back,” Eloise said. She brought Schartzmugel back and let him reside in her skin while he healed. “They’re trying to batter, capture, slow us down. If that mob had been armed with knives, we wouldn’t have made it.”
“You wouldn’t have made it,” Milo said. “I can handle being cut.”
“Okay,” Eloise said. “I think the point stands.”
“Plus it’s wrong?” Liz said. “They’re still mostly human.”
And by being Others, by being threats we have to fight, we have to destroy before they destroy us. They’re an existential threats, and anything is justified against existential threats. Nothing we do to Others is wrong, it can’t be wrong, because not doing anything we can is consigning ourselves to that same fate. We might have our own different interests that bring us to oppose one another from time to time, but fundamentally, we stand united against the darkness.
After all, it’s us or them, and it sure as fuck ain’t gonna be us!
The assumption underlying this perspective, of course, is that there are two distinct categories.
And like most of those assumptions, it is wrong.
Binaries and Boundaries
To give the Practitioner worldview some credit, the line between human and Other isn’t completely solid. It’s quite permeable, as people can become Other (and, in fact, many Others are created this way), and there’s even some room for people to rejoin the human side, to come back to the mainstream:
“You don’t have to explain,” she said, voice soft. “Mr. Moss. I don’t believe you’re properly Other. Or if you were, you aren’t anymore. The fact you can make a demesne claim is telling enough.”
“I keep my foot in both worlds.”
“You- it’s plain to me that your foot is far more in the world of man than the world of Other. Maybe it was different before, maybe it’s been gradually changing, as that Other in you gets weaker and weaker. But you’re a practitioner now.”
(Note that Elizabeth seems to be the nice one. She’s the one to point out the ‘mostly human’ thing, too.)
So the line is permeable, but it is still there, and the side of the line you fall on is a vital part of Practitioner culture, because one side of the line deserves empathy, and the other does not. One side of that line deserves to be part of society, and the other does not.
“To drive my point home, I think if you use words like aphorism that’s pretty much sealing the deal on you being a practitioner, Mr. Moss.”
Matthew becomes a Practitioner again, and Reid becomes Other. They change which side of the line they fall on (involuntarily, in both cases; you don’t get to decide what side of the line you’re on), and this changes how they’re treated, but the line’s still there. There’s still one side worthy of respect and empathy, and one side that isn’t, really.
Right?
Half Doll, Half Woman
In comes Shay Graubard like one giant wedge to pry this worldview apart. Dropping on it as Miss dropped on Kennet, and created three where once there were two.
We see this interlude through the eyes of Easton Songetay, a very standard Practitioner from a very standard family. We are, for a couple of thousand words, steeped in the typical Practitioner worldview, and its utter dismissal of Others as people. It’s repulsive, of course, but it’s important that we understand what this worldview is, because it lets us understand what an utter shock to it Shay Graubard is.
At first, Easton assumes she’s some kind of infiltrator (not unreasonable, we’ve seen body-snatchers and the like, and I sure thought she was Maricica for a bit):
He extended fingers toward her. Then he whispered, “Are you a threat?”
But Easton doesn’t get that easy a way out. This is very much Shay Graubard, member of the Graubard family, and she has all the hallmarks of a Practitioner:
“Yet you can practice?”
“The organs are still there. The brain. Floating aimlessly within a soup of blood and other fluids. I am still Shay Graubard,
But she is also an Other, with all that that implies:
but as a doll, I am obliged to follow the orders of the family that jointly crafted me.”
And this breaks Easton’s brain. He’s a misogynistic shitstain, sure (of course he is, he’s 14, raised in this environment), but he still saw Shay as a person, as someone to empathise with, as someone on his side, as one of Us. Yet now she’s also one of Them? Someone to be dismissed for not being a person? Someone to be considered a threat until they can be enslaved to one of the actual people (wait, she actually already is?)?
It's dissonant, it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit even for someone like Easton, because this kid had just stumbled upon his first contradiction in his worldview, the first lie his society has told him.
Because it was never about humanity at all.
What Are Others?
When the Graubards were first introduced, when Talia explained how the Graubards did things, it became clear that their relation to the concept of the Other was unusual. They were monsters, of course, but so many Pracititoner families in this story. No, what made them stand out was that, apparently, replacing their children with dolls was standard practice for them.
“My mom made Effy on the day I was born,” Talia said. She didn’t look so bothered to be in front of the class. Avery only liked to be in front of people when playing sports. “She said if I wasn’t satisfactory as a daughter, Effy would drag out my guts, put them inside herself, take my blood and skin to seal up the doll joints, and replace me.”
People speculated, at the time, that Mrs. Graubard herself might be a Doll. What an interesting state of affairs that would be, no? One of the most respected names in Practitioner society, an Other?
Except she wouldn’t be.
The line between human and Other isn’t real. Others are a social construct. The Other is defined as being outside the mainstream. If you somehow make it into the mainstream without being human, that doesn’t make you Other, it just makes you one of Us. Oh, sure, you have to pass for human, consistently, now and forever, but you don’t have to be human.
And it’s a lie the other way around, too. Being human doesn’t necessarily save you from being Other.
“Plus it’s wrong?” Liz said. “They’re still mostly human.”
Liz is the only one who thinks this. That these guys being mostly human still makes them deserving of moral consideration. Everyone else (including Eloise) has dismissed the residents of Vice Kennet as Other, undeserving of moral consideration, and therefore fair game.
(Milo goes even further, and defines non-Practitioners as Other enough for him to murder as he wills.)
Others, then, are defined by being undeserving of empathy and moral consideration, on a societal level, and this is the rotten core of Practitioner society.
And it’s by expanding who is worthy of sympathy, empathy, moral consideration, by blurring that line between Practitioner and Other, if not removing it outright, by expanding who fucking counts as a person, that this society can be saved, that it can move forward.
And that, Lords and Ladies, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and Others, is what this final conflict is about. The seeds of empathy have been sown, and some of them are blooming in unlikely places, creating an entirely different tapestry among the fires of the former.
Let’s see what it looks like when we’re done.
