sololoquy | (no subject)

If they smell half as bad as luggabeasts do, I don't blame you. At least it's not as hot here.

I have smelled worse than these creatures.

[This small talk thing though? Really weird.]

You should focus on extracting Nama.

I'm quite focused, thanks. Waiting for another guard rotation on the wall.

[ this text brought to you by: sitting in a tree. ]

Stealth is tedious.

As tedious as playing escort to royalty.

Should have come with me. Just think, you could be sitting in a tree instead of on a horse.

I would not be sitting in the tree.
I would have moved already.
Besides, it was not an option.
I do not yet trust the other members of our team enough to have left trhe dowry in their possession.

[ Right. Because he would have murdered the rebels already and just stormed the castle. She just rolls her eyes at that and goes on to take particular notice of "yet" before ultimately settling on responding to the last bit because it's somehow

the least incendiary. ]

Right. The pearls.

[ She'd seen the post. "Creep" is apparently a Force-transmitted disease. Anyway, this is still going to be inflammatory, but it's snarky instead of a can of worms, so: ]

I didn't know you were such a romantic.

It is a political marriage.
It has nothing to do with romance.

[Not that a desert scavenger from Jakku would know anything about that.]

[ not wrong ]

Difference being?

A political marriage is symbolic, and does not require any attraction between either party.

Sounds lonely to me, tying yourself to someone you don't even like.

[ He may not be a romantic but at least one person here believed in fairy tales of jedi and Luke Skywalker so. ]

Oh?
You would make a poor Jedi if you were unable to put duty above yourself.

[Just saying.]

[ Wow, that's a can of worms after all. It digs at whether or not it's counter to her 'duty' to the Resistance to pursue this interest she has in him, which digs into whether she has a duty to the Resistance at all when there's no way of knowing they'll build something better than the First Order when the New Republic gave rise to the First Order in the first place. It's a rabbit hole.

An unproductive rabbit hole. She pushes it aside to deal with the issue in front of her. She's not good at horizon. And the issue in front of her is Kylo taking potshots at her Jedi aspirations. So what comes out first is biting. ]

I didn't realize you had room to talk about what makes a poor Jedi.

[ But he probably doesn't care about that like she does. So she moves past 'lash out from hurt' and into actually engaging his point. Go figure. ]

You're asking them to be symbols instead of people, to deny themselves love. What's the point of a peace that doesn't allow people to live full lives?

[ Another can of worms. Isn't that what she had asked of Luke? To come back and be a symbol? Wasn't it what she wanted from Ben? Was that fair? But those were things that would help them get love. It seems less ... cold, somehow. But it's certainly a muddy pool of hypocrisy. ]

No? I thought I might be an authority on the subject, all things considered.

[He's not about to play games with that. He'd once had dreams of being a Jedi too -- short lived, and more focused on finding control than being a hero to anyone. But a young boy's dreams nonetheless.]

That is a utopian fantasy. Someone will always have a responsibility to lead. Leading comes with burdens, and requires respect from the people.

[And respect was measured differently by all kinds of people. For some, living a full life included sacrificing their personal desires and putting the needs of others before themselves. But thinking about that makes him think of his mother.

So he deletes that message before he sends it.]

[ His words resonate because of course they do; she had savaged Luke for running off and denying his responsibility to correct his mistakes. But confronting his problems seems a lot less to ask someone than imitating human connection and embracing self-denial.

(She might have asked what 'utopian' was, but as it turns out, Rey can do context clues, and 'fantasy' hits hard at her idealist heart regardless — just like with Luke, she's left feeling like a scolded child who was too romantic.) ]

Responsibility to lead, yes, but what are they leading people towards? Some burdens seem too much to ask of anyone.

Maybe they'll choose to. Maybe they think like you do, like the Jedi. But I wouldn't ask anything of someone that I wouldn't want for myself. And political marriage, that asks them to be less than human.

Royals live different lives than the common people for a reason.

[But there is no explaining that to Rey. He barely understands it himself -- all he had learned as a boy was mostly obsolete, given that Alderaan no longer existed. And he had not learned very much to begin with.

And then there's also the fact that Rey is apparently a romantic. That probably shouldn't surprise him, but it also wasn't information he found himself particularly eager to have.]

That is your prerogative, of course.

[ Now she just feels like a filthy peasant who doesn't Get It. But she also doesn't want to get it, so there's some dissonance there. She's not sure he's right about the Jedi, either, but again she only has myths and legends of the compassion of the Jedi to go off of and who knows if that's the reality of any of their teachings, now that she looks at Luke.

What a shit show. Nothing even fucking matters. And if none of it matters, then how does she decide what she wants to be in the scope of it all?

She has the observational skills required to see that he no doubt thinks she's just a silly ignorant child who gets to have her wrong opinions if she wants them. It's her prerogative as a common person to have wrong opinions. For a bit, she wrestles with whether or not (and why) that bothers her. ]

You think I'm being naive. I'm not.
I lived alone long enough to know the value of caring about people.

You are thinking of the needs and desires of individuals, rather than the whole. So yes. You are being naive.

[Society didn't work like that. Even if he no longer believed in the Supreme Leader as he once did, the First Order did not rise without the principals that it was built on.

A central power, rather than thousands of voices shouting over each other.]

If you want what is best for the largest amount of people, then you will conform when it is requested of you.
Just as the Empresses will.

Who gets to say what's best for them? You?

[ She clearly doesn't think he has a good grasp of what's best for anybody. That word 'conform' slides under her skin like something oily, like it's demanding she sacrifice what she values and fall in line. She'd put her neck out for anybody, but compromising on that level ... Would she? Depends how good and for how many, probably. And if it were really her choice. ]

I suppose that depends on whether or not the rest of Ophelia agrees with me, doesn’t it?

[The short answer is yes, but he cherry picks his reply knowing that Rey would not react well to honesty in this case.]

I don't deny it would achieve the peace we seek. I just think it's a shame for it to come at the cost of their happiness. And I think it's a shame that you think that sacrifice doesn't matter.

Whether or not it matters does not change the necessity of it.

[But like, she for real isn’t expecting him to have sympathy for them, is she? Surely not.]

There are harder choices to make. Empress Nama could refuse the marriage, and obliterate the Sea Clan as her people desire. Arranged marriage is a kind solution.

Is that what you would do?

[ She's surprised he's not throwing his weight behind that option tbh. Pleasantly surprised, else she would point it out more aggressively than 'WWKD.' ]

Yes.

Then why bother with the pearls and a proposal you'd want her to refuse?

[ She already knows the answer to that too, though, she thinks. Because although ALASTAIR had always favored an aggressive response, and Guild Ophelia is mostly ex-ALASTAIR, there is a difference between aggressive and excessive. He'd never be able to convince them.

But that's almost like its own win, right? That he didn't bother trying? ?? ]

Edited 2018-02-21 03:59 (UTC)