therookery | crystal.

Entry tags:

crystal.

FORM: Crystal!
SENDER: Gwenaëlle Baudin.
RECIPIENT: Anyone with a crystal.
WHAT: Summary of content.
WHEN: Currentish.
WHERE: She's in Halamshiral; wherever you all are.
NOTES: Optional side quest. Also I know the difference between Kirkwall and Halamshiral and didn't edit her misspeaking a day later. You don't know.

This is Gwenaëlle Baudin. I need to make a brief trip from Halamshiral to an estate in the Dales, and given what happened the last time I took that road—

( understandably tersely, for those who do know what it was that happened, )

—I would prefer to do it with several able warriors. I've some other contacts I can reach out to closer to hand if no one is available, but I'm not in a great rush to do it, so if anyone is bored of the unrest in Kirkwall and would like to make a bit of coin on the side while touring some different, exciting unrest in what I assume will be remembered as the last days of Orlais before it was overrun by Corypheus, do be in touch.

Do not bother responding if you can't bring yourself to refrain from embarrassing the Inquisition in the High Quarter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's never been the case. Rifters remaining willfully ignorant is quite common, though, you'll fit right in if you just firmly believe being foreign makes you special.

[ Irritated: ]

I got here about two weeks ago. Don't you get high and mighty about what I do or don't know.

I'd recommend not making baseless assumptions in the future if you want to avoid looking like an idiot. Most of the rest don't have your excuse, and it doesn't stop them.

Oh, please. So, all right, so sorry for having thoughts based on things I've been told and observed, how'd you get your shard.

If you don't want to be lumped in with the lot, distinguish yourself.

I'd rather that you have enough perception and keenness to be able to differentiate rifters from one another. Plus, you can't tell me that you don't occasionally get up your own arse.

I married a rifter. I don't bother differentiating the lazy and spoiled who take the free food, protection and shelter that no one else is entitled to without working for it and then complain it's so hard and unreasonable to expect some effort from the mouthy resource drains.

[ Primly: ]

Oh, yes, because someone like you has never taken free food, protection, or shelter without working each day of your life. So how did you get the rift shard?

The aggressive unwillingness of some rifters to give a damn about what their position means to Thedas is why you're in danger of phylacteries.

( flatly. )

And you're going to drag everyone else down with you. But no, tell me again what about this conversation makes you think I'd be comfortable discussing one of the worst experiences of my life with you, and why you're entitled to my reliving it for your amusement.

[ She doesn't sound remotely chagrined. ]

'Cause I want to understand it. Something's been done to me and to my body, and I don't know why. And I thought it was only us, but apparently it's not. So I want to understand. And also, you're being awfully cruel right now, aren't you.

No. I'm being honest, which is more than you'll get from most of these incompetent fuckwits. If you need your hand held, there are plenty who'll do it; just don't be surprised when the fire you didn't want to hear about catches your feet.

I want to hear about the fire. Honestly. Are you not hearing me asking repeatedly about the fire? Because I am asking about it.

What you're asking about is my personal and none of your fucking business experience that we will not be discussing today or ever, but if you want to talk about something relevant and productive, I'm more than happy to elaborate on the difference between my lord paying my upkeep and yours coming directly out of the budget for the war effort that is underfunded and understaffed at best, without any obligations to contribute.

Rifters think they're something separate, cluster together and the loudest voices are the least valuable among them. That's what they'll take advantage of - who cares what happens to some ungrateful layabouts? Who's going to fight for you to be protected when half of you spurn the protections you already enjoy? It isn't the Inquisition's fault that they are the only protection rifters have against this horseshit, or that a loudmouthed minority are jeopardizing even that, but you wouldn't know it to listen to these imbeciles.

Don't you think you're being a bit unfair? I don't think it's right for people not to participate, and not to fight, at least in some way. But the way it's set up - it's a problem more with the Inquisition than it is with the rifters, isn't it?

Of course it's unfair. You were ripped from your worlds and you've no more choice than anyone else; less. The anchor-shard binds me here whether I join or not, just the same. It's never been fair.

That doesn't matter. The Inquisition can't solve that problem for you, because nothing is fucking fair and no one gives a damn. If your only argument when it comes down to it is 'it isn't fair', you'll get what you're given. The civil war wasn't fair, either- your 'unfair' isn't uniquely more sympathetic than anyone else's. The Inquisition has done as much as it can, and there aren't better options. If you don't take advantage of what opportunities there are in that, no one can do anything more for you.

This is the situation that you're in. Whether it's fair or not is irrelevant. You should know what's being thought and said because what is happening matters.

Edited 2018-07-07 00:48 (UTC)

I do want to know what's being thought and said. I'm just pointing out that what you're saying isn't fair. We might not have control over the world around us, or the situations we're in, but we have got control over how we react to what's going on. Not that I need to tell you that, since it's essentially the heart of your own argument - stop complaining and get to acting. Right?

( gwen counts backwards from ten.

audibly. )

What I am saying is telling your thick-headed self what is being said and thought. I am telling you what the situation is that rifters are in and why. I'm not lecturing you because I think you give a fuck what I think. I am trying to explain to you what that is, because apparently you want to know, unless of course it doesn't sound very nice.

Obviously it sounds unfair! It is!

What's most unfair is that those rifters who actually do do anything sensible are dragged down by the idiots that don't. So it is very important that the few of you capable of critical thought, which you are violently disabusing me of hoping that you might be one, understand what they are facing and what needs to be done.

If you're done being precious about my tone.

You're telling me what's being said, but you're also telling me what you're saying. Calling them imbeciles and the like. They're doubtless terribly frightened, and disoriented, and unhappy.

[ If Kitty sounds compassionate, it's because she is. If she sounds impossibly, infuriatingly arrogant and condescending towards her fellow rifters, well, it's because she's that, too. ]

I just think empathy is awfully important, especially now. When it seems like Corypheus' greatest weapon is everyone's inability to just talk to one another. [ Anyway. And speaking of - ] And I am sorry that getting the rift-shard was so dreadful for you. It wasn't anything particularly terrible for me, so I had assumed that it wasn't any worse for you. My mistake.

There are rifters who've been here more than two years. At a certain point, we stop treating grown adults like little babies who hurt their poor little knees. When they act like idiots, I'm not going to pretend that they'll get any more leeway for it than anyone else; they won't. Letting them think otherwise is crueler, frankly, because I for one don't think they should learn better when they're shackled to a phylactery.

( this is compassionate, where our lady of opinions is concerned. she doesn't come in gentle. )

You wanted to hear what I think, you did. If you wanted it to sound different, ask someone else.

[ Kitty lets out a sigh, but there's no further agitating about her tone. ]

So what do you think the rifters should be doing? What would be the best way to act?

Mind those who came before you. Araceli Bonaventura has been here the longest and she's adapted better than any,

( including her own husband )

she remembers how it was for rifters at the beginning. She knows what you're dealing with better than anyone. She knows how to play the game and she cares about compassion; she knows how to be smart about it so you don't just die on the hill of your ideals but get something fucking done.

( sometimes they braid each other's hair and foment rebellion. )

You need to work. To learn, to listen, to remember that tolerance for 'what my world was like' affronts lessens every day longer you've been in this one. They want to see you're worth investing in. That you'll help more than hinder. You start at a disadvantage and have to consider that and the context of it. Clinging to what was different in your life before just gives ammunition to dismiss your opinions as ignorant of what's in front of you.

Edited 2018-07-07 03:10 (UTC)

[ Kitty makes a noise of frustration. Listen and work hard? She was hoping for something more concrete. Though... ]

But this world is...really broken. In a lot of ways. A lot of ways. And sometimes it takes someone on the outside to see what's wrong, while someone who's been in it all their life won't notice it. You know - you don't ask a fish about water. All that. You think that rifters should lose that awareness of difference? That understanding that there are other ways?

Be smart about it, so you don't just die on the hill of your ideals. If you don't adapt first, no one is going to listen to the latest in a long line of dismissable idiots who just don't understand their situation.

We're not unaware things are terrible. We're sort of in the middle of trying to do something about a lot of those things. If you can't earn respect contributing to what is being done usefully, you will never earn enough to be listened to and do anything else. You aren't new or novel. Rifters have been coming for years, now. The rifters who've effected change weren't the ones who strolled around shouting 'I'm the King of Imaginary Land And Here's How Much Better It Was At Home'.

The Provost leads an entire division of this outpost. He rose to that position despite being both a rifter and an elf. You think he forgot where he came from, or that he learned how to use it?

( spoiler, it's the second one. )

Mages hold positions of authority and were able to negotiate on their own behalf; whatever my opinions of the implementation ( AND THEY ARE MANY, AND UNIMPRESSED, ) it's not to be entirely dismissed that legal protections and rights for elves in Orlais have been drastically improved, at least on paper, in the last few years. You aren't one lone voice. If you act like it, you'll be treated like it, and you'll achieve nothing but a sore throat.

Edited 2018-07-07 23:16 (UTC)

[ In response to that statement about not being unaware of how things are terrible, Kitty shrugs and offers a philosophical: ]

If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish.

[ Then: ]

I do appreciate your advice. For what it's worth, I was never king of anything, nor anyone of any worth at all, so you really don't have to worry about me bragging about who I used to be. And I'm not someone who assumes that my world's rules apply in the absence of my world. But I'm also not going to temper my voice so that it sounds like everyone else's. At the end of the day, I've got to answer to my own conscience before I answer to my fear of surveillance, or even to my fear of death.

I'm not telling you to sound like everyone else. If you think that's what 'be smart' means, it's already useless advice to give you.

( after a moment— )

A stranger comes and leads the way with new ideas is a storybook. People resent and resist change, even when it benefits them, even when not changing means dying. The fact the Inquisition has this much fucking trouble getting anything done at all speaks to that truth; it shouldn't be so damned difficult to convince people to save their own lives, but here we fucking are.

( there's a reason gwenaëlle is so bitter about the competence of the inquisition and thedas in general. )

You don't stop speaking. But you have to learn how to say things people will hear. How to make speaking effective. How to work with other people to do that.

Edited 2018-07-08 00:48 (UTC)

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