Trying to figure out a Kismet thing

[sholio]

Rather than writing Fandom Stocking fills, I've ended up writing snippets of Kismet, most of which I can't post anywhere because they're spoilery for future events. As one does.

However, one thing I was trying to figure out launched me into a timeline quandary, so I figured I'd talk it out in an LJ post and see if that helps.

At the start of Sun-Cutter, one of my protagonists, Fulki, is recovering from a severe career and personal trauma that happened a few years ago when the original Sun-Cutter project blew up in her face (somewhat literally). A close friend of hers almost died, and she ended up blacklisted in her field. She and her family might have moved to another planet (I'm still kicking around where they were living at the time, but they were probably living somewhere different than where they're living now). Anyway, her life blew up badly and she had to deal with a lot of sudden, negative media attention.

The thing I'm struggling with is that Fulki's kids, who have been seen in canon so I don't have a whole lot of wiggle room on their ages, would have been born right around the time that all of this happened. Her kids are probably in the general vicinity of 4 and 6, or 5 and 7 (they appear on this page). And I was thinking that the original Sun-Cutter disaster was about 5 years ago.

What I'm having a little trouble with, is figuring out why Fulki and Jae-Ha (her wife) would have had kids with all of this going on. It's rather inflexibly canonical that the kids were planned (they pretty much had to have been, since Fulki and Jae-Ha are both female and the kids are biologically theirs). I can move around the dates of the Sun-Cutter disaster somewhat, but I really don't want it to have been less than about 4 years ago, or more than 5-6, and I'm coming up to a part of the comic when I'm going to need to nail it down for certain. Either way, with the kids being the ages they are and with an obvious 2- or 3-year age spread between them, at least one of them would've been born right around this time and probably just a bit afterwards.

"They'd already had the second child started when the whole Sun-Cutter disaster happened" is probably the answer I'm leaning toward most heavily right now, but even then, Fulki would've been a total workaholic on the Sun-Cutter project for the previous year or two, so the timing STILL seems sub-optimal. Complicating matters is the fact that neither Fulki nor Jae-Ha are the kind of person who are likely to jump into something without thinking it over a lot beforehand. They're both thoughtful and methodical, and I guess I can't quite get my head into the why of what would make them plan a family while Fulki's career is taking off (and then imploding) and Jae-Ha is basically moving around to stay close to where Fulki works.

ETA: I very much appreciate the input -- I think I have their character trajectory mapped out now, so thank you! The ideas were very helpful; sometimes you need an outside perspective to see the obvious. :) (Not that you can't still comment if you have ideas; if I don't use it for these people, it may shed some light on other characters' stories elsewhere in the universe.)

Comments

[mific]

Hmmm. Limited resources on the world where they were living?
Like some local health policy about having to plan children by a certain age for the gestating parent, or that there were limited med-tech facilities for the necessary fertilization/implantation process and they'd had to be on a waiting list for a few years already to get the permission to have a child then, so if they decided to postpone it because of the suncutter project they'd go back to the start of the queue and have to wait another several years?

[sholio]

This wouldn't have been too much of an issue for them, but I think with a few tweaks it could be brought into play as a factor. I like the idea that there were some external factors pushing them in that direction, and this is something I hadn't considered. (They're on a world where access to this kind of tech is relatively easy and cheap, at least for a married couple in the middle class -- but scheduling factors can be brought into play quite easily.)

Other things that have come up in other comments are age (which wouldn't be a reproductive issue for them, but would definitely have implications for energy, etc, in terms of not wanting to wait much longer -- Fulki's in her late 40s, and Jae-Ha's not that much younger) and the fact that life is always going to hell in one way or another, so if you wait 'til everything is ideal, you can be waiting forever. :D All in all, I think I have a trajectory that makes sense; I really appreciate the input!

[melannen]

What was Jae-Ha doing, other than following her wife around? Maybe she put her career advancement on hold (both for following Fulki's career and until the kids were bigger) so they didn't want to space the kids out tro much?

[sholio]

Yeah, it makes sense that kid-spacing would definitely have been one of the factors -- she's an elementary school teacher, so for her, right now, it's less of a thing, but there's also a sense of "I'm going to support you in doing your thing, but now that your career is taking off, I also need some support and consideration in return".

I really appreciate all the input -- there are a ton of factors I hadn't quite been examining fully, and while I think I have a character trajectory mapped out for them now, this is all most helpful! Sometimes it's easy to get stuck on the inside of your head, and you need an outside perspective to see what you're missing. :)

[recessional]

What is the exact physical process of bioengineering a foetus? How long does it take? What kind of demand/waitlist is there for the procedure?

As my impulse would be having that process be one that has to be scheduled, that takes a certain amount of time (months to a year) and which delaying would sink either a lot of money or time irretrievably (you jump to the back of the queue, there's no refunds, etc). So they had made the commitment and plan to having the kids a good chunk previous due to an expectation AT THAT POINT that they'd be in the right position to have pregnancy and child at that point, and then life happened, but they decided that they'd stick that part out. I just don't know if that works with your worldbuilding.

The other one, which I don't know if it fits your CHARACTERS, is the emotional decision of "my entire life went to shit, a baby will give me purpose". (Which is one of those decisions that may work or may be asking for a disaster, depending on the personalities involved, but is a decision people make: a pregnancy and infant would give Fulki something totally non-Sun Cutter and non-work and non-colleague to focus on and to care about, something that is important and worthwhile and emotionally fulfilling, etc.) (Culturally we're very into OMG DO NOT UNLESS ALL PERF in terms of that kind of thing, but I have known more than one person who, in turning focus on a small child, pulled themselves together around it because it was something that MATTERED.)

[sholio]

Aha, I like the waitlist/scheduling idea (the answer is that it varies hugely from place to place, and they're on a fairly high-tech planet which makes it less of an issue than if they were living in, say, one of the places where only the biggest cities have those facilities and there's always a huge waiting list, but there would still be logistical issues along those lines). It's not the only factor, but it's one that definitely could quite logically have played into their decision.

Culturally we're very into OMG DO NOT UNLESS ALL PERF

*nods* Yeah, and I think the comments both on the LJ side and over here have helped me rethink that somewhat, especially since one thing I hadn't really thought about is how I'm being tripped up by my own perspective -- I'm looking back on this from a few years hence, but for them, in the middle of that busy time and then the eventual falling apart ... they had no idea things were going to get better and calmer later. Maybe it's always going to be like this (and to some extent that's true -- I mean, life is always throwing curve balls at you; you can wait and wait for a perfect tomorrow that never comes, or just do the thing NOW).

Not to mention that neither of them is getting any younger -- it's much less of an issue for them in their time and place than in ours (reproductively speaking), but Fulki's in her late 40s as of present-day canon, and another factor playing into their decision, I think, is the growing need to go ahead and have kids while they both still have the energy and mental/emotional flexibility to handle that kind of upheaval in their lives.