I can forgive the science, it seems important for The Rectangles. But surely history could compromise and have a year of it every two years.

In person classes also probably help you be less of a hermit, too.

You can meet other people who find Cascadia incredibly confusing and alienating and then commiserate about how weird it is that I have a husband.

Smile and nod sympathetically like I know what they're talking about when they reminisce about the bad old days in Gilead where they had to ritually dance naked around a tree to other themselves of physical desire...

Honestly the democracy is weirder.

No nudity! Only worrying about going out with your hair wet because it might make men think about you in the shower.

If it helps you can think about democracy as having a very small scheduled rebellion every so often where everyone says who they'd fight for if they were going to fight, and then you skip the part where people are pointing swords at each other's throats.

Smile and nod sympathetically about the lengths you have to go to make sure no one ever realises you are naked sometimes???

With marriage I can just assume that you are using marriage for something different. I'm not sure how you can have a functional government with *regularly scheduled rebellions*

I am sure Social Studies Will Inform Me

Right! Because if they realize you're naked they might masturbate and then God will be very offended and torture both of you for eternity.

Only girls have to worry about that tho because according to Gileadites girls don't masturbate.

By marriage we actually do mean something different, the current sociological consensus is that sometime in the nineteenth century marriage shifted from a primarily economic relationship to produce children and make a household together to a relationship that's primarily intended for companionship and love. Whole bunch of reasons for this, mostly that everyone works jobs outside the home now, but also birth control and the fertility crisis.

Well, you have a couple stable groups called "parties" that hand power back and forth so everyone knows broadly what kind of policies are going to be enacted, and usually the parliament has to get some votes from minority parties in order to be allowed to do anything.

???? Gilead.

I was assuming something like "if you don't care about children, the sex of your partner doesn't matter." And if you have a fertility crisis and you *can't*--

Those sound much more reasonable than the parties I'm used to

They do know what the clit is but they just think that women usually don't want to operate it independently. 

I think it's mostly economics, honestly? Even if I don't want kids I'd need a wife to make my clothes, if I couldn't buy my clothes from the store. You can always adopt or hire a surrogate or make an arrangement with some friendly lesbians.

What parties are you used to?

The children are important? And the tying two families together-- though if both families didn't care about continuing then two men or women getting married wouldn't be a problem, I guess.

There was the "Qin Luan should be able to do whatever he wants" party-- I'm not sure I can briefly and coherently describe Qin Luan. He was the second most powerful man in the country and the most powerful eunuch by far and that still wasn't enough. There was the "let's put a pretender on the throne" party-- and he murdered someone purely to feed rumours about his existance. And then there was the "let's not do any of that!" party. You may guess which one I was part of.

Oh shit your parties suck.

The two big ones here are the Libertarians and the Socialists. Broadly speaking the Libertarians want the government to do less and the Socialists want it to do more.

Families are just less important in the future, I think. Not just Cascadia, everywhere. Gilead is really into families but even with them it's all about parents and kids, you might see your uncle three times a year.

Those seem like much more sensible parties who could share power without there being any assassinations.

We have in fact not had any assassinations.

Well that's good to know!

By coincidence in-person class semester starts at the end of September and they can fit him in.

Both of his classes begin by going around and stating your name and your pronouns. (They are visibly surprised when Jing Yi says his pronouns are he/him.) The people in them look sad and quiet. Some of the people look Cascadian, but some are wearing a sort of gendered dress code: long hair, makeup, and dresses for the girls; short hair, bare faces, and pants for the guys. 

The teachers say that the classes are going to be very hard, because they're trying to cram in everything they were supposed to learn in twelve years into one year. There will be a lot of reading and videos to watch between classes; the classes themselves are for discussion and quizzes. There will be quizzes every week.  

The history class begins with a discussion of historiography-- how do we know the things we know, primary and secondary sources, skepticism about other people's point of view. They're assigned reading about hunter-gatherers. (It turns out, flipping through the syllabus, that there is entirely too much history.) The science class begins with a discussion about how empiricism works, featuring the passionate opinion of the teacher that science is not something you believe on faith, it's something you believe because of the evidence, any belief can be falsified, if you believe that humans were created by God just as they are right now that's just another hypothesis that can stand or fall on the merits, and any scientist worth their salt will take your proposals as seriously as any other as long as you can justify it. The syllabus of the science class suggests a weird emphasis on disproving the claim that the world was created in six days six thousand years ago and all evidence to the contrary was caused by a worldwide flood.  

Lev belatedly introduces Jing Yi to the concept of a library and also the fact that he can get free tickets to half the plays and music performances in Portland by presenting his food stamp card. He invites Jing Yi over to his house, which is extremely clean except for Lev's office where you have to tread through six inches of papers and books to get anywhere. They can order in food and hang out. The historians say that this Chinese restaurant is the closest in Portland to Great Tang food. (It's not very close.) 

He has time travelled at a vaguely convenient time. Small mercies?

The fact people seemed to expect him to not be a man is... odd, but everything about Cascadia is a little odd. (And he doesn't really mind.)

He believes in his ability to cram 12 years of stuff into one year. Not that he's looking forward to it-- but it's not like he has anything better to do? And it will hopefully be some of a distraction from 'everyone I loved has died several centuries ago.' He makes careful friendly overtures towards some of his classmates, the ones who seem sad and quiet in a way that is more 'I have no friends' and less 'I would rather be literally anywhere else.'

Why are we starting from hunter-gatherers. Why is this relevant. Where is Greece and why do they care about it at all.

He was kind of looking forward to there being more on, like, microwaves in the science section. And less about the age of the Earth. (There has been more than six thousand years of history before Great Tang, and he is from more than a thousand years ago!) He has no clue why there is is so much emphasis, other than a sinking suspicion that it is Gilead. Somehow. What is Gilead doing. Could they stop it, please.

Of course Lev has an office that is more book than floor. Also it's adorable.

Probably in six months time he is going to reach terminal levels of missing food that tastes like home, but at the moment, the attempt is enough. ...also sugar improves a lot of things. Sugarcane is great, 10/10 more foods should contain it.

Jing Yi has dramatically draped himself over the couch at this point. "Are any of the Portland plays... good? ...then again even if they're terrible, I'd be getting what I paid for. "

"You could try Shakespeare and be the first person in three centuries to be surprised by the end of Hamlet."

"I will be providing a Service to Culture by knowing nothing about it."

"I'd suggest Romeo and Juliet but they kind of give the end away in the prologue. --I could show you a Cascadian movie."

"You very much could! Also it means we don't have to stand up."

"That's true."

He kind of wants to cuddle Jing Yi while they watch a movie but who knows about casual physical affection norms in Great Tang? Not him.

"Rose's favorite is Spring Awakening, it's adapted from a nineteenth-century play."

"Well with that review I have to try it."

You know who doesn't know Cascadian physical affection norms? Other than 'at Folsom, people whip each other FOR FUN?'

It is the early twentieth century!

Melchior and Moritz are learning texts in a school the structure of which very familiar to Jing Yi except that the text they're studying is something called the Aeneid and it's in Latin. Melchior thinks that school is terrible and teaching people to be conformists who believe everything they're told instead of questioning authority and tradition. Moritz doesn't know what sex is. Melchior decides to explain sex with a thorough explanatory pamphlet with helpful diagrams. 

Meanwhile, a girl named Wendla doesn't know how babies are created and her mother won't tell her. A boy named Ernst quietly pines after a boy named Hanschen, who agrees with Melchior about everything but is much better than Melchior at not yelling at his teachers about it and instead cynically exploiting the system. Otto exists. There are Vague Yet Ominous Hints And Foreshadowing that there's going to be a war which kills everyone. 

Then Hanschen jerks off while talking to himself about how he wants to choke a girl named Desdemona to death. You can't see anything below the waist but it's very obvious what's going on, especially once he starts making an orgasm face. This is shortly afterward followed by a scene where Moritz reads the explanatory pamphlet and jerks off. His orgasm face is much more conflicted. 

Wendla and Melchior fall in love. Wendla discovers that her friend's father beats her with a switch, so she gets Melchior to whip her with a switch to find out what it's like. Folsom Things happen, and then Melchior is horrified and runs away. 

Moritz passes his exams, but the schoolmaster fails him anyway because you can't have everyone pass. He considers committing suicide. There are further Vague Yet Ominous Hints that a war is going to happen.  

Wendla and Melchior have sex. There are definitely some breasts and butts involved in this scene, and lots of very realistic moaning. Wendla is hesitant and nervous, because she doesn't know what it is, but Melchior convinces her that anything that feels this good must be something it's good to do. 

Meanwhile, Hanschen has decided to seduce Ernst. Ernst is sweet and frightened that he's committing a sin, but Hanschen reassures/manipulates him that their love will conquer all. There are some Pretty Obvious Parallels here to the Wendla/Melchior scene. Otto continues to exist. 

After spending like twenty minutes dithering about it, Moritz commits suicide. There are even less subtle hints that a war is going to happen. The Flower Of Our Youth Is Dying Due To The Cruelty Of Our Institutions..................

The schoolmaster finds Melchior's thorough explanatory pamphlet with helpful diagrams and concludes that the knowledge of sex is what made Moritz kill himself. He sends Melchior to a reformatory. Wendla discovers where babies come from! Unfortunately, she discovers this because she is now pregnant. Every male member of the cast who is alive and is not in the reformatory is drafted in World War I. Otto pays off his continued existence by dying tragically in a trench battle. Ernst dies in Hanschen's arms and he cries as he discovers for the first time that he has a real human non-cynical emotion.  

Someone smuggles Melchior a letter in the reformatory and he discovers Wendla is pregnant. He escapes the reformatory to track her down and marry her and raise their child together. He discovers she has died of a botched abortion, and that Otto and Ernst are also dead. He decides to kill himself. But he is visited by the ghosts of Wendla and Moritz, who encourage him to carry on. He decides that he should carry their memories with him forever and let them inspire him to challenge unjust authority which leads youths to fight in wars, commit suicide, be abused by their parents, and make bad sexual decisions out of ignorance. The music thinks this is very inspirational of him. 

Ah yes, the explicit explanatory pamphlet. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? ...in movies, at least.

Oh no. Not telling someone where babies come from is just. Not a great plan. This is Foreshadowing and Will End Poorly.

Wow that is more explicit than he expected. ...then again his entire view of how explicit movies are was based on non-Cascadian super hero movies (which he has a sneaking suspicion are made for children, actually.) Not one, but two masturbation scenes! Followed by sexy caning! (There is maybe some stifled giggling, not because the scene is actually funny, but because Look! A Cascadian thing he sort of has the context for!)

Wait why is not everyone passing a surprise. The pass rate is explicitly tied to the number of civil servants needed, just try again next year-- right. Different schooling system. He Definitely picked up that context.

His reaction to the Wendla/Melchior scene is very similar to how someone who knows they are watching a horror movie would react to a character going to investigate the attic making spooky noises. He is aware this is quite possibly not the reaction the film makers intended. They're Cascadian.

Okay so yes that is a sin but please chill for a second Ernst, this is way less of a big deal than you are making it. Wait is this set in Gilead? Maybe? It would make more sense if it was set in Gilead.

TAKE THE EXAMS AGAIN MORITZ (Also there is nothing in his eye, he's fine, movies are just emotionally manipulative, okay?)

How... how is killing yourself of sex knowledge even plausible. What.

Okay, so on the one hand: called it. On the other hand: OH NO, WENDLA, OH NO. Also, what the fuck, Melchior? If you could make a pamphlet about, presumably you could predict the consequences, yes? Sure, he can't solve the problem now, but he could have prevented it in the first place! Easily! Don't fuck someone you can't afford to get pregnant!

Is this the Cascadia-Gilead war? Probably not? Maybe yes? He has no idea?

OH NO WENDLA OH NO. (There is nothing in his eye about Wendla's fate or her later ghostly visit.)

So, he is still judging Melchior because he is the least ignorant of the cast, but the music is very effective and the Cascadia's sure know how to make the melody swell Dramatically and Inspirationally.

After the movie is done, Lev explains that it is set in early twentieth century Germany, that you could only take the exams once, and that the war in question is World War I which is infamous for occurring for literally no reason and involving a horrifying amount of death because it was the first war in which they had modern military technology. 

"I feel like I should maybe be more horrified about the war, than Melchior's deal or the school system, but--" (he says, not fully internalizing that people totally Died of Exam Failure in Great Tang.)