A brief introduction of Cooperation-associated xBs and their Personal Holidays
The Reclaimed of Ohniaka III, while dedicated to the efficiency of “individuality through community,” are no strangers to personal hallmarks and communal holidays. xBs are a population built from many different species with many different occasions, this much is true; I have seen everything from Vulcan xBs convene in brutalist chambers invoking the name of Surak on the day of his birth, Klingon xBs temper themselves and the steel of their Bat’leths on the date of Kahless’s empirical conquest, and even the reflective celebrations of human xBs paying their respects to Zephram Cochrane on First Contact Day. But as long as Ohniaka III has served as the xB homeworld (a year consisting of ~378 Terran days), there have been more threads thrown into this societal loom, woven together to create unique holidays and observed occasions.
NAMESAKE | RECLAMATION DAY
Among more personal holidays include “Namesake,” an occasion almost all xBs celebrate for one simple, unifying purpose: reveling in their own chosen names in post-Hivemind clarity. Reclaimed value their chosen names very highly, and no matter how large, small, or frivolous the change may be from their Borg-assigned designation (or even re-assumption of their name pre-assimilation), it is still their name regardless, and that name that must be celebrated in equal jubilation to other sapient species’ “birthdays.” As an additional note: some xBs are able to access and/or recall their original birthdays, but since this is not as universal a privilege as Namesake dates are, they are celebrated with far less frequency (and personal triumph).
Another holiday for xBs to observe is their own “Reclamation Day;” a personal date marking either the xB’s first or a certain/significant Reclamation Procedure the xB wants to benchmark for a personal, particular reason. This could signify anything from the completion of a treatment to a certain organic body part, gender affirming surgeries, or receiving of a new, xB-made implant to improve the xB's quality of life.
REPRISALS
There are some holidays, however, that some xBs do not observe for multiple reasons: be it either personal trauma, the dates of occasion genuinely unknown to the individual, or the unique circumstances that may surround the xB’s life. The aforementioned, sometimes-exclusionary treatment of “birthdays” bear a similar weight to another personal holiday like “Reprisal;” dates on which the xB was severed or pulled from the Collective. Teetering between traumatic or joyous, depending on the xBs’ circumstance of severance (and subsequent quality of life in the immediate timeframe after Collective), a Day of Reprisal is less celebrated and more “observed,” for xBs are not unfamiliar with their societal, melancholy-laced days of remembrance.
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