Love:

Love is the truest of blessings in Creation, and I know how fortunate I am to have it. There was a time where, even knowing that, I thought love would be beyond me. It was a godsend for others, something I simply didn’t have the time or ability to personally enjoy (especially these last few years). Which was damn foolish of me; I daresay I don’t know how I’d live without it now.

Only once it’s filled you do you know how empty you are without it. Anger and despair take their toll, draining one from the inside. And then, you feel a lover’s touch, and you’re filled from your chest to your fingertips. It rejuvenates, brightens your vision, and warms you from the inside. It’s like walking from a dark cellar into the bright sunlight.

And I’ve you to thank for that love now. My own, personal sunshine, that holds my heart to chase the cold away, that shines through clouds that threaten my sky. I’ve allowed myself that simple pleasure to bask in it, to simply enjoy it for idle hours that seem well spent in your company. And in it, I feel close to God, as if I was seeing Creation as it was truly meant to be. No words truly describe it, simply this feeling that peace is upon me, to protect and to cherish.

That all could have this close at hand, a love to prove the purpose of living. In a universe full of difficult questions, love is the one true answer, self-evidently righteous in the face of uncertainty. Through conflict I found only doubt, both of my purpose and the consequence of my very being. I’ve nothing to ask of your love. Beyond the presence of the Almighty eye upon us, love is the one thing I know to be sure and true.

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Which was to be demonstrated.

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I don’t mean to intrude here but, I have a sincere question for Pilot Ramijozana (or anyone else who cares to answer–I welcome multiple perspectives); how can someone love someone who wishes to destroy you and everything you hold dear? Your family, culture, spirituality, indeed your entire people–all either subsumed or outright destroyed in favor of their own.

Please don’t take offense to this question. It is an earnest attempt to understand.

Personally, I know I could never do it. As Else stated love, although surely a most powerful element, must be tempered with reason and an eye towards self-preservation.

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Well, you see, while the brain is the largest erogenous zone, and normally has command authority, it can be, and often is, overruled by other organs, particularly sensory ones. The nose, for example, can detect someone whose immune system contains interesting antibodies, that would make offspring with them stronger and more resistant to illness. Similarly, the eye can detect symmetry and lustrous hair, which are signs of good health in a potential mate. The ear can also detect certain tones.
And has been previously mentioned, if their naughty bits rub the other persons naughty bits in exactly the right way, thats another way the brain gets countermanded.
So when a sweet tongued, symmetrical, lushly haired and smelly person with just the right naughty bits comes along, the brain simply gets overruled.

Brain doesn’t have to like it though.

To love is to be given a piece of your soul you didn’t know to be missing; never knowing old age, only the happiness time can bring counted not in days, but moments.

For those who have experienced it, the impotence of reason in the face of love requires no explanation. For one who has not, no explanation possible.

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There’s a lot to unpack here but this isn’t the place for me to do it. I’ll only add that I am fighting the war too—just on a different front. And I mean that genuinely. There’s a whole thing happening behind the scenes.

Love requires the opposite—it needs the freedom to choose and exist outside of conditions. Without that, it’s something else entirely.

So don’t worry. I’m still myself. Enhanced, if anything.

It’s not an intrusion and I’m not offended—it’s a fair question, actually.

I can agree with Saronu as a general response, especially regarding reason, but I’ll add more from the political side (and try to do so without dipping into more pettiness).

The people I love are the ones who have shown me—not just told me—that they recognize and accept the harms that they and their Empire have done to us. Are they abolitionists? Not really. Do they want to destroy us? No. Do they want to Reclaim us? Definitely, but not through conquest. Their form of Reclaiming involves sharing their God through words (Scriptural and otherwise) and good works. That’s a kind of Reclaiming that doesn’t force us to submit. It’s a personal choice for each Matari.

There would be some measure of cultural erasure if their Reclaiming were to work, and that’s one of the things that bothers me the most. But we must also acknowledge that many of our freed sisters and brothers are holding onto the religion even while setting up new lives among us. And it’s not loving our kin to kill them or beat them up over it. Love is understanding.

So the Amarr god is in the Republic already. If we must tolerate him, let it be on our terms, and let it be with compassion towards our Faithful kin.

…All that was to say that the fact that they want to Reclaim us does not always mean that they want to destroy us or that we have to be destroyed. That’s one of the many lines I draw in associating with, or falling in love with, any Amarr.

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And I you, my dearest.

For so very long, I didn’t think I would find the love that I remembered my parents sharing between them, sweeping out to raise up our family and the rest of our clan. The sort that healed without words and never required a sacrifice, only compromise.

When I went out into the world, I only found people who wanted to take but not give. People who had agendas, who had plans that excluded me, who pushed me away until they needed me.

Then you showed me that the love I sought was possible. You were patient, understanding, caring, thoughtful. And you still are. You’ve given me countless reasons to love you, and every time I think there’s nothing else you could do that would make me fall even harder for you, you prove yet again that true love has no limits.

I want everyone in the cluster, from the highest to especially the lowest, to experience this love, this peace, this joy and comfort in oneself and in another. I wish it for everyone, because there is nothing more incredible than being wrapped in it, immune to all harms, just satisfied and complete.

And it will happen one day. That day, the cluster will know true, lasting peace, and our work will be completed. But until then, I have you, and you have me. Always.

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As good as you two believe your feelings are for one another, I’m not sure these kinds of letters to each other is really something you should be putting out for public audience?

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I’m halfway sure that is the point, actually. These words are for the baffled world, so that it might at least try to see what the couple in question considers painfully obvious - and to defy it if it still doesn’t.

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Glands.

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So-- my answer will be maybe just a little different from Melisma’s. So I’ll share it here.

For me … love is something a little distinct from politics and so on.

Friendships and even romantic relationships can form across political lines, in spite or even because of political disagreement, and often do. In a time of actual war, these things would be really troublesome, and maybe at that time some painful choices might have to be made. In times of peace, though, they’re a benefit: a bond of affection that can open paths between groups and peoples that might not otherwise exist.

Naturally, hardliners on either side will often see those connections as suspect or even treasonous-- that’s not unusual at probably any point in history. But for the persons involved (who might possibly even be political hardliners themselves) …

Through love, people see each other with different eyes. What seemed like an unbridgable and threatening abyss of difference starts to seem more like a journey-- maybe even one worth spending a lifetime traveling, even if the two are kind of always seeing different stuff along the way. And if some things appear impossible to accept at the start … perhaps by the end, they won’t be there, or maybe our own perspectives will have changed.

To love someone is also in some way to set shells of identity aside. It’s not that it really fixes anything or makes it all go away, but I guess in a way you could think of it as a workaround to questions of identity. Some of the greatest love stories in any culture are also tales of betrayal. It might even be that anyone who claims they could never love an “X” is inevitably lying, including to themselves: that the correct circumstance just hasn’t come up, and fate may have a cruel and delightful prank in store just waiting to be played.

It’s as treacherous, and as beautiful, as that.

It’s also a completely rational reason for entities wanting to avoid that kind of entanglement to have “no fraternizing” policies. The less you chat with the enemy, the less likely you are to run into one who, actually, you find you rather more than just “like.”

(We have these stories even in places like the State, where arranged marriages are the rule, though love’s portrayed more as a disorganizing, disordering, chaotic force-- but a beautiful one even so.)

(Possibly even the better tragedies are the ones where love does NOT conquer, and the lovers ultimately go dutifully marching off to battle against one another to variable, but usually very sad, outcomes. One lover commits suicide rather than make the other fight/kill them; the other promptly follows their love to the grave, etc.)

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My mother once said to me that to love is to inflict pain on oneself with the hope that someone else will agree to help it heal.

I’m sure it is wonderful when you are loved and love in return but I’ve not met a person that was willing to do that. Therefore, I have decided to stop punching myself in the face.

I wish all of you well and every happiness in your own private lives, though.

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Floseswin called. They want some of what you’re smoking.

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Don’t give up hope, Ange! You will find that person, or that person will find you. It just takes time and patience. And sometimes, not expecting it.

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… you know, I was including Melisma’s case in my analysis just enough that your remark isn’t quite totally off-point? Mostly I was speaking for myself. But also in general.

And to that point: even once some shooting starts, there’s still some ground to cover before we necessarily get to the later scenarios I discussed.

We’re definitely living in troubled times, but who knows? Maybe some day someone will be writing a tragic romantic epic about you, Else.

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The Fiercest storms often start with the gentlest of winds.

I wouldn’t even describe this wind as all that gentle, Mr. Aloga.

But … but, well, but lots of stuff really. Relations between the Republic and Empire are pretty tense and probably getting more-so. On the other hand, you might have noticed we’re all under attack?

It’s possible we could end up doing the stupid and fighting a serious (not cold/limited like we have been) war between the empires AND against the Triglavian Collective all at the same time. I’m kind of hoping we’re not going to do that, because at that point if I were Zorya Triglav I’d be tempted to just declare us all “poshlost” and get on with efficiently extirpating us from the cluster.

Maybe we can keep it to just one potentially civilization-ending conflict at a time?

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It is a privilege of the oppressors to be able to choose to ignore a conflict to end it.

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Is this that thing where I say “oh, but you could choose to stand down and ignore it too” and then you say “we cannot stand down while our people are in the hands of evil” and then I say “well, but that’s a choice you’re making” and then you say “you plainly don’t understand at all and by the way you’re a puppet of the Amarr and also morally corrupt” or something?

If so, maybe we could do our dance steps over in the off-topic thread?

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That’s a brilliant idea.

Or make a War thread. This one’s for Love.

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