How utterly, incredibly selfish you are, Ramijozana.
Your “supposed” kin? You cut ties because you don’t get to always do what you want, and that without critique?
You think the problems of war and loyalty versus love are about how you feel if you have to shoot Constantin?
Grow up. It’s not all about you.
You can love someone who is bad for you or for others. And someone who is bad for you or for others can still love you.
People are difficult.
… which is leaving because of irreconcilable conditions. I didn’t say you should leave without trying to help each other grow past them. You just can’t always do that.
The notion of love as only the selfish infatuation some of you speak of, that must be set aside for the sake of duty, is one I cannot help but reject.
Love is forgiveness without price, tenderness that penetrates to the essence of being and gives beauty to the mundane; to set aside love is to set aside the spark that gives flame to virtue.
Melisma, I am not going to knock your newfound happiness, but given the near immortality of capsuleers the question is not whether you or the Archbishop would kill each other for duty. Talking about shooting sounds dramatic but, for us, really isn’t. There are other forms of more consequential damage to a capsuleer than clone death, and they don’t need to involve perma-death. Suppose for instance that your dilemma were that, by protecting your kin, you would contribute to your beloved Archbishop being classed as a heretic by the Theology Council. I’m not asking you for an answer to the hypothetical. Just pointing out what seems an actual dilemma. Putting a bullet in a clone would be theatrics in comparison.
Perhaps I can somewhat calm this conversation? Much of it seems to revolve around the extant threat of my existence.
Much will be written about races and classes, duty and expectations. I’ve my share of expectations upon me, of course, not necessarily well understood by everyone in this thread but they exist. Melisma has her own, whether a product of her race, her upbringing, her position, or her status. I understand that those expectations may not necessarily align every day with those I must meet.
However, before she is that race, that upbringing, that position, that status, she has to be something more important. She is Melisma Ramijozana, and that name must stand on it’s own. For all the strength of the Communion we shall face our judgment alone before God upon what our names come to mean, and I’d not presuppose her values before she’s had her chance to define them.
I suppose what I’m saying is that the prevailing discussion is perfectly applicable for they who see our peoples as numbers and results, who either meet or fail our own charges. But I believe in the power of mankind to rise above their expectations, to transcend the mundane molds they are cast of that they may flower and grow. Melisma has done what she could to support the Matari cause when it’s been needed, and she has supported the Amarrian cause where she could. They have not been mutually exclusive. And through it all, from the moment she spoke of her love of me, she’s never given me cause to doubt her word to be true.
I understand that I’ll be my big Amarrian chin my whole life in the many places I go. There is little I can do to change that beyond to still stand for my own name, to try to do the things that seem most upstanding. Some will forever see the association with me as a betrayal, much as many have seen my associations as questionable from time to time. I understand and cannot judge those whose circumstances differed so broadly from mine that we will not agree on this point.
But the salient point of all this is that it is the duty of Melisma and I to reject each other, based not on the quality of our names but the inheritance of our politics. And I do not agree. Melisma, for whatever service she has provided her people, has far and away provided great service to the people of our Empire and in no way where I would expect she would betray her own. I doubt highly it is in my nature to ask such a thing of her, knowing how I was raised in service to my family, my Faith, and my Empire. And she’s asked nothing of me that she knows I cannot do. Most importantly, she’s believed in ideas, in peace and in prosperity and in righteousness.
And that is a great part of my love of Melisma Ramijozana. In a universe which told her I was a million different things she’s an obligation to hate, she loved me as a man, because she let me stand as one. And for that, no matter what shall come, I shall be eternally grateful.
You have a beautiful way with words, Archbishop. Melisma is clearly a lucky person.
Much of it has more to do with people speaking in general terms, and Mel taking those to be talking about you two.
Unless someone’s specifcally referenced you two, the way Valerie did? We’re generally not.
Well, considering the context of this discussion now literally references not only shooting me, but having me declared a heretic, you can safely assume that if I’m not a point of reference in this discussion, I’m not talking to you.
As far as I can tell I’m hardly the one who came up with the idea of Melisma shooting you, Archbishop. And she indulged it before I did. As I told her, it’s not my intention to disparage your feelings either. I was just trying to illustrate the fake dramatism of the talk about lovers shooting each other out of duty or otherwise. I apologise if I have offended you. This discussion is well past the point of diminishing returns.
Oh, not at all! I don’t tend to respond to foolish questions, and I thought it was indicative of the tenor of the conversation, both yours and Melisma’s. It is at least an attempt to be specific of the otherwise nebulous concept of duty Melisma is implied to be neglecting. So I thought I’d be specific in my response. I’ve spent more than a decade as a missionary, I’m a hard man to anger with honesty.
That you say this of a Sundsele clanswoman proves to me beyond any doubt that your love for her is a compromising factor and moreover that you do not care if it is or not, what she is or is not.
You are, at best, also blinded by love, and, if not that, then a manipulative Amarrian preacher pushing your religion on people under the guise of romance and friendship and individualism. Either you understand nothing of her culture and don’t care to, or you choose to ignore it and impose your own. Neither speaks well of you as a lover.
Melisma spoke about shooting you. No one else did.
Love: it’s who you know. Nothing more, nothing less. Duty or honor are both dissimilar and irrelevant to it. If you cloud yourself with it from those two… Everything that happens as a result is of it is your own burden to bare. They take priority to it as you are nothing to love without them.
As you wish, Elsebeth.
I’ve read through this thread and given out some likes as I’ve thought about my own feelings on the subject. My feelings are complicated, just like love itself can be, but I’m going to express them here with nothing in my musings particularly directed at anyone specifically.
Love is an extremely powerful, extremely confusing emotion. It makes one both more vulnerable, yet stronger. It makes doing some things harder, and others easier. It can give a person everything they didn’t realize they needed until they got it, but it can also take other things away. It’s not something that should be given lightly, but it’s not something you really choose to give either. In my experience, it just happens. It can happen quickly or over time. You might not even realize, at first, when it does.
Like anything so serious and so powerful, love can and will change many if not most people who experience it, I think. The more different the person you fall in love with is to yourself, the more you’re probably going to change. Either that, or the love probably won’t last, I think. I do however think, that ultimately lovers uplift one another and become stronger together than either party was alone. I know that I personally, can’t really hold together under a whole lot of stress without others to rely on for support, and lovers are usually the best source of support for one another because they know each other so well (I know that when I love somebody, I want to know all there is to know about them).
If it’s not reciprocated, it could hypothetically be used to intentionally manipulate and doing so is evil beyond evil. But even if it is reciprocated, a love may or may not be healthy. A healthy relationship is one of the finest blessings you can hope for. A healthy relationship can help you learn and grow, get over insecurities, and learn about yourself as much as you learn about the other person. An unhealthy one could potentially do the opposite of all that.
Love is both beautiful and terrifying.
But make no mistake, it is beautiful even when it’s terrifying. Love is beautiful.
I apologize for how… sentimental (?) my post was, but those were the thoughts I had on the subject.
I cannot see that I have voiced any wishes.
Lovers can provide that.
But you know who has known you longest, who will always have been on your side, who shares the most of their life with you? Your cohort, the sisters and brothers of your kin who where born with you and grew up with you and still are with you and will be with you. Even your parents had a life before you, and you will have a life after them. But your cohorts will share their entire lives with you, and it’s them you go to when love fails.
Parents can also be close. The wingmate at your side or the brother/sister in arms does not have to be a lover for you to instinctively trust them with your life. Your clan’s unmarked youth should be something you gladly throw any lover under the bus for.
Kinship and loyalty are more than just affection and romantic love. Not as intoxicating maybe, but stronger.
I already explained it was all about the glands, but did anyone listen ? No.
So here we are, arguing about the meaning of words, like there aren’t enough threads full of that already.
I curse you all with uncomfortably enlarged glands.
I could never trust someone who did that to actually be acting in the interests of our youth. To break faith so, betray a commitment made… Treachery is like anything else: it gets easier, after you’ve done it once already. Justifications can be found, excuses fabricated.
Stjörnauga learn from an early age to be careful about who we choose to make commitments to—because once made, they are sacred. And yes, that can get us into trouble. Like any social network with more than two people in it, commitments come into conflict, and there often is no ‘good’ answer.
It’s why my decision, ten years ago, to take employment outside the Clan, continues to cause strife and resentment between myself and Anna. Not because I am failing to meet my commitments to Stjörnauga—I’m not—but because it risks it, because it complicated things. I am where I am now because of commitments I made that day. And until I am released from my commitments… here I’ll stay.
Yes, I’ve had periods of weakness, of homesickness. There have been times when I’ve considered setting my affairs in order and returning to Huggar station. I am, after all, only human. And yes, along the way to re-affirming my decision to stay, I wound up taking on other commitments which may keep me here longer, even, than those to the alliance and the coalition. Maybe doing that was a mistake. But having made those commitments, were I to just… walk away from them, were I to abandon them, even to protect the Clan…
I would not be welcome in my mother’s kitchen. I would not be welcome at any of our gatherings. I would have betrayed what it is to be Stjörnauga. And I would never be forgiven. Only forgotten.
I think, honestly, that you read too much to my words.
My point was not that you should break commitments.
It was that you should not make, or even want to make, commitments that would require you to pick a mere lover over your own kin. Any honourable lover would not expect you to - they’d jump under that bus if it came to it.
Just being lovers is not commitment like being allied or enlisted or kin is.
Just my luck to find the eye of the storm while catching up here. So, while this still seems like a good idea…
Plenty that’s been said here I can only echo, so I’ll spare the repetition. To the heart of the topic, the folklore tugs at some threads in my own past. I won’t name anyone or anything, but it resonates. Of only really following the leader out of fear or for survival. Not genuine want.
Suffice to say, being invited in from the cold to partake of a meal by the fire and to be treated like more than a useful resource, both literally and metaphorically, does something profound to a person. Regardless of where. Regardless of blood.
Whether that’s love or not, I’m no expertologist to say. Plenty have spoken their piece on that, already. It’s not quite what I knew the word to represent to me ever before that experience, and I didn’t think of it that way before reading this. It was definitely something unique, regardless.
Anyway, enough of this ■■■■. This brandy isn’t going to finish itself!