With this part starts a series of chapters quite strictly related to one another, I will try not to make you wait too much before posting the next one...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I was happy to hear that Venus is pregnant! Another baby and I doubt that Steve will just disappear unlike someone… Cassy doesn't seem to feel any jealousy, which is great, but I feel for her because she should have had a loving partner around for her pregnancy too. Poor Sirio is missing out on his father as well.
Nacho sighting!
But the cliffhanger is killing me and the fact that their relationship is so negative too… It seems very complicated indeed.
Yup, it's definitively babies time for the Millers. Venus and Cassy clearly had very different (not to say opposite) experiences in this respect as well.
As for Toq instead... Well, everyone else seems to have quite good reasons for being mad at him at the moment. In the next chapter he would need to bring on some very convincing justification not to turn into the less relatable character of the whole legacy...
As for the cliffhanger instead... I'm starting to translate the next chapter now btw, so the next chapter should be out before the weekend.
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
Okay, Toq. We're waiting to hear how you explain yourself.
I love this chapter. Halley and Sirio are simply adorable. I laughed at Halley's "Nope!" response to bedtime. She seems like a handful.
Venus is being protective of her sister because she loves her, but I think Steve is right. Cassy and Toq need to sort this out themselves.
Toq seems surprisingly patient with little Sirio. Possibly it's just not logical to get angry at a toddler, since they don't know any better yet.
I'm loving the deep focus on personal drama that you've gone with in this whole generation. I feel the most connection to and investment in this set of characters. Really excellent storytelling.
This generation has a quite different tone from the earlier ones, that's for sure. The original version was written in a period in which I had more time than usual to focus on the story development, and this was the result. The following generations have a few similar sections as well (with other plotlines, of course).
And Toq definitively has to be the focus of the next chapter (if not of the next few ones...). I'm finishing to translate the next chapter right now, it should be out soon.
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I'm afraid the chapter ended on a cliffhanger again. But the next chapter is ready to be dropped at any moment already, in a few days I will probably share it too.
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
One of the things that has impressed me with your story right from the first generation is how much thought you've put into your world-building. You really dive into how the sixamians are different from the humans, and what all consequences the mixing of human and sixamian genetics and culture has been. Intended, unintended, good, and bad. You don't shy away from complexity, and I love that. The twist of bringing in the "ancient" sixamians has been really fascinating.
It's good to see that Toq is willing (and more able now) to explain, and that Cassy (even after what she's been through) is still willing to listen. I still like those two together. Very interested to see what else Toq has to say.
I see that we're working our way towards Toq's POV and his explanation. It's clear that he still struggles with verbalizing his thoughts, so his not explaining anything years ago could be understandable. He may not have been able to and he may have been influenced by others. I look forward to finding out. At any rate, he is around now and since their baby came as a surprise, they did not have much time to discuss parenting beforehand... but I can understand if Venus/Steve remain cold towards Toq because he did abandon his child for a few years regardless of his intentions/excuse.
I can't wait to post the Toq's POV chapter either! This chapter set the tone already, but that chapter really starts a turning point for this generation.
Thanks again, I admit that worldbuilding is always something I work a lot on!
My original idea was to give an explanation to the weird (but still very humanoid) features of aliens in TS4 and introduce them in a story, and bit by bit (generation after generation) I'm adding more and more details to try to complete the puzzle. And at this point it starts to be very complex, that's true!
The next chapter will mostly cover what Cassy saw in Toq's mind at the end of this last chapter, unfiltered from Cassy's interpretation as the POV will directly be Toq's. That's definitively a good chance to get a lot of answers about the ancient sixamians, what Toq did and his intentions, isn't it?
The situation will probably be even more clear in a few chapter, but the situation is definitively very grey at the moment. Venus and Steve (but also Cassy and Sirio) have a lot of good reasons to be suspicious towards Toq, but he doesn't seem to be a completely evil character to avoid at all costs either. Deciding what to do won't be easy at all, in particular for our heir...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
Venus giving Toq a piece of her mind was brilliant. Also Halley's little 'No!' she's gonna be a handful : P It was good that Toq told Cassy almost everything, I look forward to his POV. Still, as messy as Toq's situation is, he's going to have to find it in himself to be a proper father to his child one way or another. Will be interesting to see how Toq comes to cope with everything...
Well, convincing Venus that he's not a threat could be the most challenging thing for Toq now, even more so than explaining his past and motivations to Cassy and Sirio. There would be a lot more things to say about this, but many will be answered in the next chapter, so...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
After so much talking about it, I couldn't wait any longer before dropping the chapter from Toq's POV (link)
I decided to classify it as an extra chapter, as it is not usual for this legacy to have a POV different from the heirs and their siblings. Still, this is a quite big chapter spanning over a quite large period of Toq's life.
Now the question is... Is this chapter finally giving some answers, or will it only give more questions?
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I figured Toq's people would be disapproving of his relationship with Cassy. Not something they would understand at all. I can relate to his struggle trying to figure out how to fit the new experiences and ways of thinking into his concept of himself.
Very curious to see how Cassy responds to all this.
This is a good chapter. It's nice to see things from Toq's POV.
I'm currently disappointed in Toq. I sense that there's more to it, but so far abandoning Cassy for years because you're feeling overwhelmed doesn't seem like a good excuse. Antaan tells him several times that everything is up to him and there's no right or wrong, so it's not as though he's forced to abandon Cassy. Arizhel doesn't make much sense and it's hard to understand her reaction to Toq's behavior. She thinks the locals are backwards because of their emotions, so why is she giving into anger when anger is an emotion? It's bizarre that she doesn't at least rationally critique her own behavior and that Toq doesn't call her out telepathically. At this point, it seems like Toq and Cassy aren't a good match and that he just made thoughtless mistakes and ran away when things got hard. Poor Cassy and Sirio.
Thanks a lot for the comment, as usual
This time it was particularly interesting to read your comments, it could be the first time I have received such opposite reactions to the same chapter. It actually makes a lot of sense too, this is definitively a complex section in the story...
Your comment is probably just what Venus would say right now, almost word by word!
I can't say much more about Toq in here because anything I could write would be a huge spoiler. I just want to underline that this chapter was covering the first few months Toq spent on Earth, and that there are almost other 4 years to cover before returning to when Cassy meets him again (this part will be covered in a second chapter similar to the last one, which will be posted at some point). This part could be taking many different directions, but there's still a bit to cover about him, that's for sure.
As for Arizhel instead, just like the rest of the ancient sixamians, she was trying to cope with the weird life in the midst of human society. In her case she was basically in denial about being able to experience emotions herself and, ironically, that's making her very aggressive and angry. She was not fully coherent with herself at the time, but she was actually not meant to be in this phase in the story.
Antaan wisdom is quite of an outliner among the ancient sixamians in their first months on Earth, he could be the most mysterious among them all actually...
As for Cassy and Sirio reaction now instead... Well, the answer it's complex, it will actually take a few chapters to reach that point.
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
Oooh I been looking forward to this one. Tagging @GlacierSnow here too since I draw a few fun comparisons between Ion and Toq (comparing how they differ, if that makes any sense...)
I think I'm with Haneul and still look down poorly upon him from walking away from her and the child. Still, it seems that lost and without a purpose doesn't just go with Toq, but now with everyone. So he ought to be a father now- there's great purpose in that, right?
I really like his sort of isolated-ness though. It's a fun look at it from a slightly darker perspective compared to GlacierSnow's story, where we have the fun and very curious alien Ion that I get very used to when I read it, whereas Toq is more lost than curious. Ion desires to learn much more about the place and its culture outside of the survival basics, but I feel like Toq is too used to his life 'before' to have any general 'emotional' want to learn about this new culture outside of what it takes to physically and socially survive... at least it seems that way outside of Cassy anyway. I really love seeing how different authors deal with similar situations and how they differ < 3
I had a feeling he'd get a load of anger from others of his kind for his 'mingling' with the 'other'. Hey Arizhel, don't blame Sixamians for the stuff humans did to ruin the planet! Also Arizhel should follow the same rules she sets out for everyone else, she has this attitude that others shouldn't show emotion but then she can blow up at Toq and that's fine?
'It hurt, but all the contradictions in my mind were hurting me even more at that time.' BOI! SHE'S THE PREGNANT ONE! Maybe put Cassy first just this once?
@SnowBnuuy Interesting comparison you make between Ion and Toq.
I think it's interesting that HermioneSims and I have taken very different directions with the culture of Sixam.
In this story, the Sixamians (the originals, at least) do not feel emotions, and use logic to make decisions. In my Sixamnian (in my story it's spelled with an "n" after the "m") culture, emotions are extremely important. My Sixamnians are natural tele-empaths who feel each other's emotions. Care and concern for the emotions of others is very important to them as a cultural value. I don't think I've mentioned it much in the story yet, just hinted at it in Ion's way of thinking, but more detail on all that will be coming eventually. Ion struggles with human communication because he's trying to do it without prying into their minds to see how they're feeling, since he doesn't know how they will react to telepathy yet, and without being able to feel their emotions as he would with his own people he finds verbal communication flat and hard to follow. He's not used to using other cues like body language or tone of voice for emotional context.
Toq, on the other hand, seems to struggle because the whole concept of emotions is new to him. He doesn't (or at least originally didn't, not sure where his development is going yet) know how to identify emotions in himself or others or what to do with them. I honestly can see how that would be incredibly disorienting. I just imagine how I would react if I ended up on some alien planet where the people I was trying to interact with had a society and communication system that relied heavily on some sense or ability that I biologically did not have. Even just not being able to fully speak the language of people around me cause me to break-down a few times, when I was in Japan and Spain, so having to deal with a situation like what Toq was going through seems huge to me.
Whether Toq was irresponsible and selfish when he walked away depends a lot on how Sixamians in this culture are raised. Ion would also have trouble knowing what to do in this situation, because of a worldbuilding detail I have not revealed in my story yet. Not all species (even of animals here on Earth) raise their own offspring themselves. Some either have offspring that don't need to be cared for (for example, many fish), or some have group structures that care for all the offspring together, rather than the parents doing it (for example, ants and bees). We haven't learned anything clear, that I remember, about how the original Sixamians in this story care for their young. For all I know, Toq's response was totally normal for the world he's accustomed to. So I'm choosing to withhold judgment on that until I get the rest of the story.
i am finally catching up on everything and i have to say i love your storyline so much
Owlenmoon is the house which most values creativity and wisdom. They're intellectual and introspective, and can find poetry in situations that may appear irrelevant to others. They're also good at making things more complicated than what they're supposed to be.
I think @GlacierSnow's take is interesting too and I want to explain my meanness.
In this case, I think I may just be judgmental, so I judge first while waiting for a real excuse. Personal experience may also make me less sympathetic because I generally feel fine in places where I'm not a native speaker and often prefer them because of how they force my brain to work. This seems to be the opposite of @GlacierSnow’s experience. I like the idea of maintaining 2-3 home bases in vastly different cultures/countries, but I can see how stressful that may be for others.
Toq has been gone for years without any communication. Even if his culture is different, I figure that he was observant enough to understand what Cassy wanted from him and to have an idea about how family structures work where he is now (he read her thoughts on this). Because he did not care for his child, Venus and Steve had to take on Toq's responsibility and help a struggling Cassy for years. Toq should know there's no system like whatever he may have had where he comes from, so he can't expect to act in the same way and he could always ask if he were confused. I also guess that I’m judgy because I see walking away from your child during their formative years as a huge deal/crime and I don’t really care about his own customs , especially given Antaan’s statements and that the only person of his culture we’ve seen be strongly annoyed so far is highly illogical. I withheld judgment for a while and I’m waiting to hear that he had an accident/was imprisoned somewhere... so that I can be less disappointed in Toq.
The discussion about the last chapter is getting more and more interesting, thanks all! And also thanks to @WinterKhirin , I'm happy to read you're liking the story up to now!
Many of the comments today were very elaborate, and they surely deserve a well-thought answer.
First of all, I would like to clarify a few points about Toq's which I had in mind when writing about him, but which didn't make it to any chapter.
Toq had never interacted with a pregnant person in his whole life, the little he knows on the topic comes from notions he read from some archive about human biology when on Sixam. He wasn't born from a pregnancy, either, just like his peers. Reading this between lines, it also means that on Sixam the model of a nuclear family was not at all the norm, and that it saw it for the first time when moving on the Earth. More details on their attitude towards children will come in one of the next few chapters.
Now, so that I'm the kind of person who always focuses on the most pointless details, I wonder... Do they have a belly button or not?
The second point instead it's about his telepathy: it is indeed a bit stronger than the one of modern sixamians', but it's not so strong to know everything in others' minds effortlessly. He can mostly sense the most shallow thoughts in others, which often are quite confusing and quickly pass from one thought to the other all the time. To really navigate other people's minds he has to focus putting the fingers to his temples just like modern sixamians do, and at that point he's actually quite skilled in navigating through the past memories of that person. Since when he moved to Earth he was never shown using telepathy seriously, though.
Then, I would also like to make a comment about Arizhel:
From the comments, I have a strong impression that she's being interpreted as much angrier than she was meant to be, as if she was having anger management issues or something, which made me wonder. I think that this could partially be because of the in-game poses she is shown in the few screenshots of her which made it into the final story, she is almost always pointing the finger in those photos looking particularly aggressive.
However, I also suspect that this could be partially due to some small cultural differences: you know I'm Italian, and in here we are quite used to people being quite vocal when being upset about something, frustrated or just wanting to put some emphasis on what they are saying.
In either case this is not so fundamental, I will have just to remember to tone her down a bit in the next chapters to avoid further misunderstandings...
@SnowBnuuy and @GlacierSnow , the comparison with Ion in Glaciersnow's story was surely an interesting parallelism (or anti-parallelism) to make, we really made a completely different characterization of Sixamians/Sixamnians even though we started from quite similar premises.
In both cases the prevalence of telepathy in Sixam society seemed to have been one of the bases of the setting building, but we went for quite opposite routes on this. And this is indeed a very interesting point to compare.
To me, it makes quite a lot of sense, actually. In fact I suspect that, in a society like ours, being able to read every single thought in other people's minds could quickly be a source of conflict and dislike among people, as thoughts can be much more crude and uncontrolled than what is instead expressed through the filter of words. To avoid intrinsic conflict-causing factors in the world-building, I thus tend to think that telepathy could work better in the case of a hypothetic population made of very good, empathetic and comprehensive people (where constantly sharing emotions would have a big social role), or in the completely opposite scenario where people are only able of completely rational thoughts (and where and emotion system was never evolved as it would have been more of a hindrance than useful for them). From what I understood Glaciersnow went for something quite similar to the first scenario, while I went in the completely opposite direction with the original inhabitants of Sixam in my Legacy (the so-called original sixamians, or the Elder's council).
As for the ancient sixamians (i.e. Toq & co) instead... Well, they grew up learning to follow the set of morals and social habits of the original sixamians, but their biology makes them inclined to experience emotions the way human beings do. Which, of course, could only result in drama.
Passing on the answers on the individual comments instead:
I'm not sure at all that, at the moment he walked away, Toq understood at all what parenthood really meant. It remains to be seen if he learned it in the following years, or if he could be willing to learn about it now... This is definitively material for the next few chapters.
As for Arizhel, she was actually venting out a bit about the way earthlings in general were ruining their planet, and she just lumps the inhabitants of New Sixam with the rest of the population on the planet in terms of responsibility. She's blaming everyone else for not trying to act to revert those changes, and she seems to care quite a bit about the topic, apparently.
As for her expressions of anger instead, she wasn't fully aware that what she experienced could be labelled as anger in human language yet. Just like Toq, it took some time also for her to point out this kind of concepts, and in the meanwhile she had a few (unintended) emotional episodes as well. Or, as I supposed a few comments ago, she could also be just in denial.
As for him leaving Cassy instead, he just was completely clueless at the time (which, I recknow, it's not very encouraging in general...) Managing to understand all the nuances of the emotional trauma he caused in Cassy and Sirio when leaving was completely beyond him at the time, he only managed to glimpse of what Cassy felt the very moment he left and barely managed to interpret them at the time (again, this is not really going into his favour). Seeing how he elaborated on this situation later on will definitively be an important point to cover...
I actually tend to address far alien hypothetical populations as when I read about exotic and weird animal species, I tend not to give either their habits nor moral for granted at all. Unless it's for plot related reasons I just don't see a reason why making them too similar with humans, and actually one of the first things I did with this legacy was to justify why sixamians looked so undoubly anthropomorphic.
So I agree that the ancient Sixamians could have a lot of different reasons to behave the way they do. Yet, I definitively see why the other characters around them (Cassy, I'm looking at you) could not accept them and want to push them away.
I also have to admit that I'm the kind of person who struggles quite a bit to adapt (and communicate) when abroad, and I even lived abroad for a while...
Most of your comment would require me to write down details which will be covered later on about what Toq did during all the following years, so it remains to be seen what he did in the following...
Uhm, this comment could actually be almost as long as one of my usual chapters, maybe I've exaggerated a bit...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.18 posted on the 23th of April 2024*
I was quite unsure about which order of the chapters to use now, but after some thinking I decided that it was probably better to start again right where the last chapter closed, with the second part of the Toq's report of his story.
There is a lot to process here, but I really like how you developed both Toq's thought process and the ancient Sixamian culture. A lot of it was kind of what I expected, especially because I think you and I have some similar ideas for our story lore about how these aliens live. Ion's Sixamnian culture is also an extremely collective one. I suspected that the concept of individual family units would be unfamiliar to Toq due to children being cared for in a completely different manner on Sixam. It's very similar to what I had in mind for my story as well.
At this point, all that matters to me is what Cassy wants. If she wants to give the guy another chance, that's fine with me. If she wants to kick him to the curb, that also fine. It's her decision.
I love the detail and complexity you give your themes, worlds, and characters. Stories where moral issues are not 100% clear are the ones I love the most.
Comments
With this part starts a series of chapters quite strictly related to one another, I will try not to make you wait too much before posting the next one...
Nacho sighting!
But the cliffhanger is killing me and the fact that their relationship is so negative too…
As for Toq instead... Well, everyone else seems to have quite good reasons for being mad at him at the moment. In the next chapter he would need to bring on some very convincing justification not to turn into the less relatable character of the whole legacy...
As for the cliffhanger instead... I'm starting to translate the next chapter now btw, so the next chapter should be out before the weekend.
Okay, Toq. We're waiting to hear how you explain yourself.
I love this chapter. Halley and Sirio are simply adorable. I laughed at Halley's "Nope!" response to bedtime. She seems like a handful.
Venus is being protective of her sister because she loves her, but I think Steve is right. Cassy and Toq need to sort this out themselves.
Toq seems surprisingly patient with little Sirio. Possibly it's just not logical to get angry at a toddler, since they don't know any better yet.
I'm loving the deep focus on personal drama that you've gone with in this whole generation. I feel the most connection to and investment in this set of characters. Really excellent storytelling.
And Toq definitively has to be the focus of the next chapter (if not of the next few ones...). I'm finishing to translate the next chapter right now, it should be out soon.
One of the things that has impressed me with your story right from the first generation is how much thought you've put into your world-building. You really dive into how the sixamians are different from the humans, and what all consequences the mixing of human and sixamian genetics and culture has been. Intended, unintended, good, and bad. You don't shy away from complexity, and I love that. The twist of bringing in the "ancient" sixamians has been really fascinating.
It's good to see that Toq is willing (and more able now) to explain, and that Cassy (even after what she's been through) is still willing to listen. I still like those two together. Very interested to see what else Toq has to say.
@mightysprite
@GlacierSnow
My original idea was to give an explanation to the weird (but still very humanoid) features of aliens in TS4 and introduce them in a story, and bit by bit (generation after generation) I'm adding more and more details to try to complete the puzzle. And at this point it starts to be very complex, that's true!
The next chapter will mostly cover what Cassy saw in Toq's mind at the end of this last chapter, unfiltered from Cassy's interpretation as the POV will directly be Toq's. That's definitively a good chance to get a lot of answers about the ancient sixamians, what Toq did and his intentions, isn't it?
@hanuel
Now the question is... Is this chapter finally giving some answers, or will it only give more questions?
I figured Toq's people would be disapproving of his relationship with Cassy. Not something they would understand at all. I can relate to his struggle trying to figure out how to fit the new experiences and ways of thinking into his concept of himself.
Very curious to see how Cassy responds to all this.
This time it was particularly interesting to read your comments, it could be the first time I have received such opposite reactions to the same chapter. It actually makes a lot of sense too, this is definitively a complex section in the story...
@GlacierSnow
Cassy could react in a lot of different ways now, seeing what direction she goes for will definitively be a big point in the next chapter...
@hanuel
I can't say much more about Toq in here because anything I could write would be a huge spoiler. I just want to underline that this chapter was covering the first few months Toq spent on Earth, and that there are almost other 4 years to cover before returning to when Cassy meets him again (this part will be covered in a second chapter similar to the last one, which will be posted at some point). This part could be taking many different directions, but there's still a bit to cover about him, that's for sure.
As for Arizhel instead, just like the rest of the ancient sixamians, she was trying to cope with the weird life in the midst of human society. In her case she was basically in denial about being able to experience emotions herself and, ironically, that's making her very aggressive and angry. She was not fully coherent with herself at the time, but she was actually not meant to be in this phase in the story.
Antaan wisdom is quite of an outliner among the ancient sixamians in their first months on Earth, he could be the most mysterious among them all actually...
As for Cassy and Sirio reaction now instead... Well, the answer it's complex, it will actually take a few chapters to reach that point.
I really like his sort of isolated-ness though. It's a fun look at it from a slightly darker perspective compared to GlacierSnow's story, where we have the fun and very curious alien Ion that I get very used to when I read it, whereas Toq is more lost than curious. Ion desires to learn much more about the place and its culture outside of the survival basics, but I feel like Toq is too used to his life 'before' to have any general 'emotional' want to learn about this new culture outside of what it takes to physically and socially survive... at least it seems that way outside of Cassy anyway. I really love seeing how different authors deal with similar situations and how they differ < 3
I had a feeling he'd get a load of anger from others of his kind for his 'mingling' with the 'other'. Hey Arizhel, don't blame Sixamians for the stuff humans did to ruin the planet! Also Arizhel should follow the same rules she sets out for everyone else, she has this attitude that others shouldn't show emotion but then she can blow up at Toq and that's fine?
'It hurt, but all the contradictions in my mind were hurting me even more at that time.' BOI! SHE'S THE PREGNANT ONE! Maybe put Cassy first just this once?
I think it's interesting that HermioneSims and I have taken very different directions with the culture of Sixam.
In this story, the Sixamians (the originals, at least) do not feel emotions, and use logic to make decisions. In my Sixamnian (in my story it's spelled with an "n" after the "m") culture, emotions are extremely important. My Sixamnians are natural tele-empaths who feel each other's emotions. Care and concern for the emotions of others is very important to them as a cultural value. I don't think I've mentioned it much in the story yet, just hinted at it in Ion's way of thinking, but more detail on all that will be coming eventually. Ion struggles with human communication because he's trying to do it without prying into their minds to see how they're feeling, since he doesn't know how they will react to telepathy yet, and without being able to feel their emotions as he would with his own people he finds verbal communication flat and hard to follow. He's not used to using other cues like body language or tone of voice for emotional context.
Toq, on the other hand, seems to struggle because the whole concept of emotions is new to him. He doesn't (or at least originally didn't, not sure where his development is going yet) know how to identify emotions in himself or others or what to do with them. I honestly can see how that would be incredibly disorienting. I just imagine how I would react if I ended up on some alien planet where the people I was trying to interact with had a society and communication system that relied heavily on some sense or ability that I biologically did not have. Even just not being able to fully speak the language of people around me cause me to break-down a few times, when I was in Japan and Spain, so having to deal with a situation like what Toq was going through seems huge to me.
Whether Toq was irresponsible and selfish when he walked away depends a lot on how Sixamians in this culture are raised. Ion would also have trouble knowing what to do in this situation, because of a worldbuilding detail I have not revealed in my story yet. Not all species (even of animals here on Earth) raise their own offspring themselves. Some either have offspring that don't need to be cared for (for example, many fish), or some have group structures that care for all the offspring together, rather than the parents doing it (for example, ants and bees). We haven't learned anything clear, that I remember, about how the original Sixamians in this story care for their young. For all I know, Toq's response was totally normal for the world he's accustomed to. So I'm choosing to withhold judgment on that until I get the rest of the story.
Edit - Just fixed a typo. Carry on.
Toq has been gone for years without any communication. Even if his culture is different, I figure that he was observant enough to understand what Cassy wanted from him and to have an idea about how family structures work where he is now (he read her thoughts on this). Because he did not care for his child, Venus and Steve had to take on Toq's responsibility and help a struggling Cassy for years. Toq should know there's no system like whatever he may have had where he comes from, so he can't expect to act in the same way and he could always ask if he were confused. I also guess that I’m judgy because I see walking away from your child during their formative years as a huge deal/crime and I don’t really care about his own customs
Many of the comments today were very elaborate, and they surely deserve a well-thought answer.
First of all, I would like to clarify a few points about Toq's which I had in mind when writing about him, but which didn't make it to any chapter.
Now, so that I'm the kind of person who always focuses on the most pointless details, I wonder... Do they have a belly button or not?
The second point instead it's about his telepathy: it is indeed a bit stronger than the one of modern sixamians', but it's not so strong to know everything in others' minds effortlessly. He can mostly sense the most shallow thoughts in others, which often are quite confusing and quickly pass from one thought to the other all the time. To really navigate other people's minds he has to focus putting the fingers to his temples just like modern sixamians do, and at that point he's actually quite skilled in navigating through the past memories of that person. Since when he moved to Earth he was never shown using telepathy seriously, though.
Then, I would also like to make a comment about Arizhel:
However, I also suspect that this could be partially due to some small cultural differences: you know I'm Italian, and in here we are quite used to people being quite vocal when being upset about something, frustrated or just wanting to put some emphasis on what they are saying.
In either case this is not so fundamental, I will have just to remember to tone her down a bit in the next chapters to avoid further misunderstandings...
@SnowBnuuy and @GlacierSnow , the comparison with Ion in Glaciersnow's story was surely an interesting parallelism (or anti-parallelism) to make, we really made a completely different characterization of Sixamians/Sixamnians even though we started from quite similar premises.
To me, it makes quite a lot of sense, actually. In fact I suspect that, in a society like ours, being able to read every single thought in other people's minds could quickly be a source of conflict and dislike among people, as thoughts can be much more crude and uncontrolled than what is instead expressed through the filter of words. To avoid intrinsic conflict-causing factors in the world-building, I thus tend to think that telepathy could work better in the case of a hypothetic population made of very good, empathetic and comprehensive people (where constantly sharing emotions would have a big social role), or in the completely opposite scenario where people are only able of completely rational thoughts (and where and emotion system was never evolved as it would have been more of a hindrance than useful for them). From what I understood Glaciersnow went for something quite similar to the first scenario, while I went in the completely opposite direction with the original inhabitants of Sixam in my Legacy (the so-called original sixamians, or the Elder's council).
As for the ancient sixamians (i.e. Toq & co) instead... Well, they grew up learning to follow the set of morals and social habits of the original sixamians, but their biology makes them inclined to experience emotions the way human beings do. Which, of course, could only result in drama.
Passing on the answers on the individual comments instead:
@SnowBnuuy
As for Arizhel, she was actually venting out a bit about the way earthlings in general were ruining their planet, and she just lumps the inhabitants of New Sixam with the rest of the population on the planet in terms of responsibility. She's blaming everyone else for not trying to act to revert those changes, and she seems to care quite a bit about the topic, apparently.
As for her expressions of anger instead, she wasn't fully aware that what she experienced could be labelled as anger in human language yet. Just like Toq, it took some time also for her to point out this kind of concepts, and in the meanwhile she had a few (unintended) emotional episodes as well. Or, as I supposed a few comments ago, she could also be just in denial.
As for him leaving Cassy instead, he just was completely clueless at the time (which, I recknow, it's not very encouraging in general...) Managing to understand all the nuances of the emotional trauma he caused in Cassy and Sirio when leaving was completely beyond him at the time, he only managed to glimpse of what Cassy felt the very moment he left and barely managed to interpret them at the time (again, this is not really going into his favour). Seeing how he elaborated on this situation later on will definitively be an important point to cover...
@GlacierSnow
So I agree that the ancient Sixamians could have a lot of different reasons to behave the way they do. Yet, I definitively see why the other characters around them (Cassy, I'm looking at you) could not accept them and want to push them away.
I also have to admit that I'm the kind of person who struggles quite a bit to adapt (and communicate) when abroad, and I even lived abroad for a while...
@hanuel
Uhm, this comment could actually be almost as long as one of my usual chapters, maybe I've exaggerated a bit...
You can find the link here, good reading!
There is a lot to process here, but I really like how you developed both Toq's thought process and the ancient Sixamian culture. A lot of it was kind of what I expected, especially because I think you and I have some similar ideas for our story lore about how these aliens live. Ion's Sixamnian culture is also an extremely collective one. I suspected that the concept of individual family units would be unfamiliar to Toq due to children being cared for in a completely different manner on Sixam. It's very similar to what I had in mind for my story as well.
At this point, all that matters to me is what Cassy wants. If she wants to give the guy another chance, that's fine with me. If she wants to kick him to the curb, that also fine. It's her decision.
I love the detail and complexity you give your themes, worlds, and characters. Stories where moral issues are not 100% clear are the ones I love the most.