#I officially have two sci-fi shelves now haha

[foxgloveinspace]

snowflake and cashmere is my new favorite winter sent from b&bw. oh my gosh it's so good.

[openamenta]

some of my favorite fiction with speculative caste systems

I like sci-fi, what can I say?

Brown by Ali Lamenelmi. Her first and only novel, but it’s very polished. People start being born with brown hair sometimes, in every caste. They don’t pass it on to their children, usually; one in ten thousand babies is born brown-haired, and the rate is the same no matter what color hair their parents have. The whole thing is extensively studied, but without much success. They notice that brown-haired people are unusually likely to fit into their birth castes very badly, so they start testing them when they’re a year old to assign a caste. The main character is a brown-haired green studying the phenomenon and most of the character drama in the book is about how, since she was raised by a purple family who didn’t know any greens before they had her, she grew up mostly learning to be purple. She had green classmates but purple friends after school and now she has green coworkers but doesn’t feel like she can connect with them on a personal level. But she’s also, at the same time, getting more and more distant from her family and old friends. It’s really intriguing and goes deep into the benefits that castes would have culturally even if they were made up and arbitrary… which it kind of lightly implies they might be.

Invisible Light, which bright-like-the-sun reviews well here, so I won’t go into too much detail. I do want to add how detailed the worldbuilding is so far. It doesn’t just go into how things are usually supposed to work. It actually goes into what happens to edge cases or if something unexpected happens. What if you have an injury or illness or anything else that makes you less fit for your very, very narrow, individual not-really-caste? It’s not just a matter of finding a different grey job, say, if you’re injured too badly to be a gymnast anymore, and one of the secondary characters deals with that in a very interesting way that I thought was a thoughtful look at how things like that work in the real world. Warning: it’s still a WiP! Maybe wait till summer to read all of it at once.

Blue as a Cloudless Sky, by Tefam Kita, who is a pretty prolific author. I think this book (which is, alas, a standalone) is even better than the Blackout series, which got into kind of a rut with the second and third books. An alternate history, one of the only two non-sci-fi works on this list, where grey aristocracies were able to hold their own and eventually overwhelm several of the more peaceful and trade-oriented blue-led countries. There are three alternating viewpoints: Asani, a yellow secretary for a grey government official; Ina, a young blue refugee whose family is one of a couple of blue families trying to survive all alone in the desert; and Emitil, a purple housekeeper working for the king of one of the houldout blue-led states, who gets approached by an agent of Asani’s country wanting him to spy for them. It’s very intricate but if I had to sum up what it’s about in one word, that word would be “tradeoffs”. It has a more lyrical, poetic tone than Tefam Kita’s other works and it’s more poignant. It goes deep into the characters and how their situations change them, yellows who learn to cover for greys’ weakness in domestic economic policy and have to decide how much to let their own jobs slide to pursue that, blues who grapple with doing manual labor while being worthy of respect and come through changed, canny purples who don’t understand economics but do understand enough to see which countries are better off and make world-changing decisions as well as they can. I really recommend it!

Blackout, also by Tefam Kita, which everyone has heard enough about, I think. I know it’s amazingly overhyped and no one will shut up about it, but it really is great!

Innate, by an anonymous fanfic person on ourpersonalarchive.net (and used to also be on fanfiction.com), which… makes the list partly because it makes me uncomfortable and partly in spite of how uncomfortable I am with it. Part of me wants to call it a cheap gimmick and I kind of object just on principle to spoilers that need content warnings that would also be spoilers. The premise is… I don’t know what to say. I have all the obvious problems with it. But it made me think a lot about castes and… stuff… and in the end I really respect what the writer wanted to do (not exactly agree, but I respect it) and I’m glad I read it. Okay, so, if you need a trigger warning for, let’s just say anything at all, consider this your trigger warning for even just the description. And if you want a spoiler warning, here it is, don’t keep reading, just go look up the fic. So it starts out with this blue walking somewhere unspecified and thinking a lot and watching things. And it turns out the castes have different hair. The soldiers have purple hair, the people who farm and stock store shelves have grey, judges and most government officials have orange… but then it’s revealed that the castes are actually sort of the same. Judges don’t just have orange hair, they are orange because oranges have good people skills and care enough about everyone to be fair to them all. Greys do farm work and heavy lifting because you need to be strong and because it’s sometimes dangerous work and you need to be brave to work around hazardous materials or heavy machinery that could kill you. And meanwhile the narrative cuts in and out of this blue’s life and you start realizing that yeah he’s definitely not doing what our blues do or living like our blues live. He’s a blue so the fic pushes the idea that he’s someone who thinks big-picture about what all of society needs, who understands that sometimes something that looks like a good idea to the masses isn’t, he thinks about how if blues were oranges (if it were like the real world) then he wouldn’t have their problem with feeling bad about other people thinking they’re corrupt or something because as bad as it would feel he would know he was doing something right and important. And then we get to find out about the other… recasteings, purples are in the army and are cops, greys farm and stuff, oranges rule, yellows do science, greens are mostly accountants and programmers… except, our sad blue protagonist isn’t orange. In fact, castes teach their own children in this world! See, there are six castes in their world. No, I mean really, there are actually six and nobody else. Yyyyyyyyyeah. That reveal is about ten thousand words in (the fic is about 80k) and then there’s actual plot about sad blue trying to be an activist. I don’t know how I feel about it, it’s obviously a cheap gimmick but it’s really serious about everything, really philosophical and the writer was clearly going for “think hard about everything we take for granted, if it’s not uncomfortable you’re not digging deep enough” and not “haha what if the blue protagonist was secretly red all along isn’t that gross lol” but it’s kind of inevitable that it turns into the second one a little bit just because how could it possibly ever not.

[helmes-deep]

If you could write a twenty-year flash forward for each of the Heck family members, what would it be? Write out each character's situation (including jobs, marriage, and number of kids) individually.

Hey, anon!! 👀 (Is this the same person who sent me The Middle asks from yesterday?? Is it okay if I call you “Heck-anon??” haha :3)

Kk so the kids are like already 20 now, so if we flash-forward 20 years wouldn’t Sue be like… 40??? haha and Frankie and Mike would probably be dead… >..> But I get what you mean~ lololol. I’m just gonna put down what I think will happen to everyone in the future:

Frankie and Mike: Kk so I’m going to put these two together since they’re inseparable :33 After all of their kids got married and moved out, Frankie and Mike are now both retired (although Mike still came to work everyday at the quarry until about a year ago). They miss each of their kids immensely, but when the holidays or family get-togethers roll around – or when they’re asked to babysit any of the grandchildren – they remember why they kicked everyone out in the first place :33 They, especially Frankie, love it when either Axl or Sue calls them up to visit the big city where both of the two older kids are living now. As in-laws, they also both spend wayyyyyyyyyy too much time at the Donahues now, mooching off of Nancy’s extremely delicious food. Frankie puts up a fight about where the kids should spend Christmas or Thanksgiving (either at hers or the Donahues’) every year, but always ends up not cooking anything and “allowing” Nancy to do it. Maybe they always stay/eat at the Hecks’ though?? haha. I’d also like to see maybe a storyline where the Donahues end up spending a lot of time at the Hecks’ and end up becoming a little bit like them lol.

Axl Heck: I think Axl is still trying to search for his calling. I think he’ll go through a bunch of phases working with different types of people of various occupational backgrounds and go through a ton of different business ventures before he more permanently settles down into the business world. And it won’t be business-business exactly: Axl goes into marketing. Because while he’s not very good at coming up with ideas or executing them (we’ve kind of seen that with his many lame ideas throughout the show lol), Axl has a knack for talking someone’s ear off and convincing them that something is good for them. So I think he’ll end up doing that (maybe working with Kenny??) for a good part of his life. After that he and Lexie, with all of their money, might put it to good use and start help funding projects for upcoming entrepreneurs that they think are good and profitable and/or donate to a lot of charities. Somewhere along the way Axl might come up with one good idea that ends up being a stable side-hustle. He and Lexie are married and have three kids: one boy, one girl, and another son (just like Frankie and Mike lol :’33). He can’t stand his eldest, is super-protective of his daughter, and tries harder to not forget about his third lol (during family get-togethers, he’s proud to tell Brick and brags to Mike that at least he remembers his third kid’s birthday and wasn’t watching football when he was born lol). After he and Lexie got married, they moved to the city with Sean and Sue, live fairly close to each other (or maybe right next door??), and go on double dates. Honestly though, I would also love to see a storyline where, maybe after searching for his calling and going through a bunch of odd jobs/business ventures, Axl ends up doing something that nobody would expect – like a teacher or school counselor lol.

Sue Heck Donahue: Sue’s now married to Sean Donahue and loves being called Mrs. Sue Sue Donahue~~!! After Sean finished med school, proposed to Sue, and they got married (in a beautiful outdoor wedding), the two of them moved out into the city, where Sean is an accomplished and very respected doctor at one of the main/biggest hospitals there. After graduating with a degree in hotel management, Sue has worked her way up to the manager position of a four-and-a-half-star hotel after having done some odd management stints at a few other businesses (smaller hotels, resorts, golf clubs, one of Axl’s horrendous business ventures). She later found a strong passion for DIY, however, and ends up starting her own small DIY/crafts-making/homegoods on something like Etsy. Her always too cute, carefully made, affordable, and sometimes sparkly-themed products are really popular with mothers and girls ages 8-16 lol. Her tagline would probably be something like “Always made with care ❤” haha. She finds that this new line of work fits perfectly into her schedule as a full-time mom. She and Sean have three kids: a boy, two girls (twins), and maybe another boy a bit later. She is always finding ways to be a wonderful next door neighbor (maybe to Lexie and Axl?? xD) by bringing them freshly homemade goods. She and Sean always come home for the holidays, no matter what. In their spare time, they go on dates to the latest musicals leoool~

Brick Heck: I don’t think Brick will have any kids. Maybe sometime way, wayyy, later in life, but I don’t see him having any anytime soon (but all his nieces and nephews love hearing him tell and read them stories, as well as all the children at the library lol). Instead, he lives with his two dogs Bettie and Peete (these could totally be different names, I just randomly made some up lol), and his wife Cynthia (idk if this person will be the same as Cindy – guess we’ll just have to see when the show ends!!). He’s an author now – published, and distinguished. He’s known for his critically acclaimed sci-fi/fantasy book series (people say it’s the century’s next Planet Nowhere), but lately he’s really been into translating and calligraphy/typography and reads and researches on those two subjects all the time. He’s also the president of some officially-instated font association. He goes on book tours across America, going on book signings and readings of his popular book series (really the only social events he enjoys), is really involved with Cynthia in advocating for children’s literacy (and therefore visits libraries, too), and still loves going to the library to peruse the shelves for a good new read, even though libraries are practically obsolete by now. He’s also been to Europe (either for a book tour or not). In his spare time, he likes to take long walks with Cynthia and their two dogs. He lives the closest to Frankie and Mike, never having moved far from them. Sometimes Frankie and Mike join them (and feel really left out of their intellectual literary conversations lol).

Honestly my musings could most definitely change as the series progresses, but these are kind of my half-baked thoughts on how I wan’t/don’t want the series to end :33 Hope you enjoyed reading it!!