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Hi everyone! For you hardy souls following the Kern saga, I know the story gets pretty involved, and there are a fair number of characters, both major and minor. What with the story being posted over the course of half a year, I imagine it’s easy to forget who’s who and how they are related. So I thought at this point it might help to post my notes on Carmen’s family tree as of the summer of 2024, when the story takes place. So, here you go. Abuela and her descendants are shown in bold typeface. Kern - Morales Family Tree Ameyalli Santiago (“Abuela”) *Angel Mateo – Guadalupe (“Lupe”) Miguel (age 9) – Francisco (“Paco”) Francisco, Jr. (“PJ”) (age 5) – Gabriella (“Gaby”) – Emelina (“ ’Lina”) Wyatt (age 11) – Inés (“Innie”) * Fernando Luis – Kelsey (“Kels” (rhymes with “else”)) * Javier Domingo (“Javi”) – Alejandro (“AJ”) Carolina (age 8) – Jesus – Miguel (“Miggie”) – Joanne (“Jo”) Jesus Bryson (“JB”) (age 2) * Juan Rodrigo – Carmen Catalina (f/k/a Carlos Angel) – Joaquim Augustin (“Ximo”) – Domingo Fernando (a/k/a “Dominick”; also “Dom”) |
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Fecundity!
That's some family!
An imagined picture
I imagine a big family gathering, and some naive guest calling across the big room:
"Mr. Morales, can I speak with you?"...
:) :)
Wait, so pious Aunt Maria has
Wait, so pious Aunt Maria has grandchildren born out of wedlock? And she lets her son visit her?
Aunt Maria
Oh, yes indeed! AND thinks he's mature, or sort of. Go figure.
— Emma
Catholics have painted shot gun butts white in the summer
My wife's family is Catholic. They all put on the air of moral propriety. None more than her "Aunt" Patty's whose daughter give birth just six months after getting married and somehow that didn't even cause a ripple in the interactions of the family.
Then my wife's sister took a lover while her young husband was in the army. She finally divorced him and remarried and the family accepted her new husband just fine, This, in contrast to Grandma, who divorced my wife's grandfather and stayed single for the rest of her life. You know the Catholic church doesn't recognize divorce.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Cultural differences
I am not familiar with the Mexican culture, but I am very familiar with the culture from Paraguay. Since both were conquered and colonized around the same time by the Spanish empire in the very early 1500s, there could very well be some cultural similarities. Keep in mind that the vast majority of the conquistadores were criminals who opted out of incarceration or even outright execution, and they were accompanied by fanatical clergy of the counter-reformation and the inquisition.
I remember reading about the report of a priest in Asunción (founded in 1537) to his superior in Spain from around 1545. There he reports that a good christian man has to have at leas twelve women, in contrast to Mahoma who allows his followers to only have a maximum of four women. This practice of having multiple women to satisfy the sexual appetites of the men was further reinforced in Paraguay after the war against the triple alliance (1864-1870) were the population imbalance resulted in something like four to nine (depending on the source) women for each surviving man. The folk tale goes that women would move the men in wheelbarrows from house to house just to insure that they would be able to perform as studs and impregnate as many women as possible as often as possible.
On the other hand, it is a sad fact that even today there are many mothers who will encourage their sons to become sexually active as soon as they enter puberty, in order to gain experience and to increase their sexual stamina. It is not unheard of that some mothers will even take their teenage sons to a prostitute for sexual initiation. But at the same time those self-same mother will jealously guard their daughters to guard their virginity until the day of their wedding. (In my opinion there is a lot of hypocrisy on display here.)
Even among the university educated males there still is this attitude that the worth of a man is measured by the amount of children he has sired. In a training seminar sponsored by the Supreme Court, I met a lawyer who declared himself a devout christian tell me that he was proud to still me single (as in unmarried and not in any kind of relationship) and the he was also proud to have sired eight children with seven different women. Needless to say that I was appalled and disgusted by his behavior and his lack of responsibility.
Despite, or maybe because of, the strong and pervasive influence of the Catholic church in Paraguay, the general cultural attitude is to shun and reject unwed women who become pregnant and have children as sinners and the scum of society, but then hold men in higher regard as upstanding citizens the more women they manage to inseminate.
Nope
Not even going to TRY and do that with my linked cast!
Agreed!
The Dramatis Personae for Light is ridiculously long as is...and there's no way I'm listing all the marriages and children for an immortal sorcerer! Let alone trying to figure out the proper 'birthdate' for the angels. "Hmm...this one was shortly after the Source realized it existed, how is that even quantifiable?? This one was before Creation manifested, so -2 Thingamajit Time Units? And this one...uhh...yeah, no, I give up!!"
Impressive world building details, Emma!! <3
Well . . . I’m not including everybody
No characters who aren’t in the Morales clan get listed. That did allow me to keep it simple!
— Emma
Phonetics
I could do with a phonetic pronunciation guide for "Ximo". My Spanglish is terrible. Looking up Spanish names containing the letter X shows three possible was to pronounce. X can simply be X; it can have a hard H sound or it can have Z sound.
I've been reading it with an X sound but some how I don't think that's right. Because it's a nickname for Joaquim the hard H; but what do I know?
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Complicated
I’d have added it, but the answer is surprisingly complicated and doesn’t fit neatly on the form, unlike “Rhymes with ‘else.’” It’s derived from Catalan rather the Castilian Spanish, and is a common nickname for “Joaquin,” which makes about as much sense as “Paco” being a nickname for “Francisco.” Pronunciation appears to have regional variations that fall somewhere on a spectrum between “TZEE-moe” and SHEE-moe.” For purposes of this story think of the Xi combo as being similar to the pronunciation of the Chinese President’s first name, but softer. Maybe “ZSHEE-moe.”
— Emma