[ That's— disturbing to know. The very first thing Stephen ever did to Dean was hand him a personal invitation to a recurring nightmare.
No - not quite true. First was the playlist. But even that was full of traps. ]
If you're still willing to trust me, I don't know why you bother being afraid of anything. Let alone a bunch of barkeeps, scientists and teachers trying to fuck the bourgeoisie.
I guess that's the perk of being available on Blu-ray and DVD.
[ It isn't funny. It's a joke. There's no point in starting another fight. ]
Nah, screw the blu ray, it was the camp. You threw yourself in it over and over just like the rest of us. Says a lot about a person.
And I'm not afraid of anything, just so we're clear Except the green alien from the Flintstones, that little bastard was creepy
[ Don't worry about it. Dean's anger is kind of a flash in the pan. It comes out in one sharp, overly aggressive burst and then sweeps out into fatigue. He's usually too tired for a second fight, at least for a while. ]
[ Stephen can stomach certain pedestals. Not this one. Even less so off the back of recent conversations. ]
I orchestrated that effort, Dean. I targeted people I perceived I could count on to sacrifice themselves repeatedly for the greater good in desperate pursuit of an outcome I never reached. I refused to attempt to call anyone off despite the evidence suggesting it was doing nobody any good and a lot of people a great deal of harm. I manipulated and took advantage of your willingness to protect, your need for purpose and your comfort in walking into battle first for what I believed was right and then for what I couldn't stand to admit was wrong.
I threw myself and all of the rest of you in over and over, and I did it more often than not with your enthusiastic consent. It does say a lot about me.
You screwed up It was the wrong call, and it was stupid, I'm not pretending it wasn't I don't mean to kick the hornet's nest back up again, but trust me, there's not a chance in hell you could make me do anything I don't wanna do. Not like that. Brain powers excluded.
I've done the same exact thing as we were doing a hundred times already before I ever even got here. That's not exaggerating. I'm talking literally died, and it was usually dumb, and I learned absolutely not a goddamn thing from it, so.
Flog yourself all you want, I'm pretty sure that's, like, a required personality trait for people who do the stuff we do.
[ There are a few things in there that pull him up short. I've done the exact same thing... a hundred times already. I'm pretty sure that's a required personality trait.
Can't argue with that. ]
Alright.
[ And if that's going to be the case, if Dean's going to hold him in esteem irrespective of the kind of orchestrated mistake that literally torments people, then he can be frank with him. ]
You're not going anywhere. But if there comes a time that your opinions on Morningstar go beyond our circle and do significant harm to the people who work for them, that will change.
You need to stay conscious that we are well positioned to do great quantities of harm with very little effort - to the world, to Morningstar and to ourselves. More often than not without ever intending to. Try not to help it along.
Sure, fair deal And if your Morningstar pulls a SHIELD and screws us over, I get to say I told you so
Look Just for the record and I'm not exaggerating when I say this Heaven screwed us over back home I'm talking flapping wings archangel Michael father son and the holy ghost heaven pretty sure we know how great of a track record they have upstairs, so if they can go darkside literally any group can doesn't exactly help that they're named after the freaking devil
I'm just saying it's not personal, and I'm not trying to be a dick to your crew but if you're gonna go full-on zealot, you're doing yourself a favor keeping some skeptics around too
[ Oh. There's always context, isn't there? He should've anticipated. Stephen sits with this for some time, allowing it to absorb and inform. Granting it the gravity it deserves.
Finally, once he's finished constructing his thoughts: ]
Morningstar isn't the hill I'll die on. I'm watching them just as closely as I'm sure you will be - leaders aren't their people and power has the possibility to corrupt anyone on any level. As I said, healthy skepticism makes sense.
But I've seen first hand the consequences doubt and suspicion have had in their lives. I've been here through every tragedy they've encountered since our arrival. Their biggest semi-legitmate PR nightmare in that time was caused by a few Displaced Morningstar agents going rogue, myself included. A year and no foul play that I've seen.
In that same amount of time we the Displaced have been or been adjacent to the instigation of several large scale disasters. Aside from those, we've involuntarily made both huge and small changes in this world as the result of a shared dream and manifested an entirely new world separate to it in what I can only assume is a similar way. We're a terrifying force, we don't know how to control it, and we're still given the benefit of the doubt.
Let their work be their work. When the attack came, we fought for New Amsterdam. The rest of the world had to fight for themselves and didn't fare half as well, but without Morningstar it would've been far worse.
I understand why you're going to struggle to trust, and I don't expect you to. But it also isn't a fair or accurate to let your experiences of an entirely different dimension of entities void any good that Morningstar do. They're not angels or devils. Their founder aside, they're human beings. Fallible and capable by their very nature of extraordinary greed and cruelty, but also more likely to give a shit about life and work to protect and enhance it than supernatural beings with no place in it.
Frankly, they're right to keep a wary eye on us, too. Goes both ways. God knows there are some crazy sons of bitches with blue glowing chests here I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw. That's a whole nother bag of cats, though.
Not to go chasing waterfalls, but Donald Trump is president. I'm not so sure humans giving a shit about life is much of a given.
They've done good things. I'm not gonna take that away from them. They 100% deserve credit for whatever it is you've seen 'em do first hand. Sounds like they've earned the trust of the people who were there to see it, and no amount of talk is gonna change that. Loyalty like that doesn't shake easy.
What I just can't wrap my head around the idea that they're gonna buckle under a little bit of skepticism, like they've got some notion we're supposed to walk out of the future-womb trusting them by default. They're adults. They're big boys and girls. They gotta be able to keep their shit together when people act like people. If someone texts me calling me an arrogant asshole that might be a lizard person who shoots blanks, I'm gonna delete the text and get on with my life.
Granted I'm not gonna be attending their birthday party or giving them any high fives.
Sacking up and letting crap like this roll off is part of the gig, man. Always has been, always will be. Your buddies are gonna walk out stronger if they learn how to handle it without pushing people further away.
[ Again, it takes a while. Less because he needs time to consider now, but because he finally has an angle from which he can fully illustrate what it is he was trying to say, and it's important that he say it as clearly and as calmly as he can.
First things first, ]
Unless you've been talking to other Morningstar agents on the side, the "them" you're talking about are specifically myself and Gaby. We're the only ones who spoke up in blunt challenge. Half the problem here is painting over individuals to remark upon a whole. It isn't useful.
[ People do it to the Displaced all the time, and it serves them about as well as it's serving himself, Gaby and Morningstar now. Dean's created a forest out of two trees. Barely enough to cast the shadows they'd need for lurking in. ]
And as much as I described it as an insult, as much as it very much was one, that isn't the real problem. The lack of trust is upsetting, but Gaby's sat through much worse. As far as I'm concerned she didn't get involved because it's upsetting to have the views of off-worlders of varying backgrounds and previous experiences hold more weight than hers as a native here (note your own: you're predisposed to doubt in this specific situation due to your experience with Heaven, have very limited personal interaction with Morningstar and haven't spent long in this world but you still felt compelled to share the opinion you've generated based on experiences from a world away and a concept from YA fiction, and all of this conjecture somehow qualified yours to be a more objective offering than hers, who Dr. Sweets never considered approaching directly and passed over in favor of a network of his peers despite the extensive amounts of information she could provide). She got involved because it's dangerous. Because it's very rapidly becoming the case that our word will have more value than theirs in the public sphere too, and the majority of us have no idea what's going on.
It's that lack of information that leads us to doubt, and that doubt which leads us to mistrust, and that mistrust which leads us to not seek out the information from its source. So we'll never kill the doubt. And we'll continue to have opinions built on preconceived notions and scraps of information from the internet and conversations with other people who think Morningstar are just that little bit shady, and if anyone tries to tell us otherwise based on long term experience and a positive opinion it's weakness of character, suspiciously passionate to the point of zealotry, a sign of something to hide.
We're celebrities now. Or we will be, soon enough. Especially those of us who work at Red Wings - people know who it belongs to, people know what we've done for them, and right now in this city they hold us in esteem.
Morningstar's reputation is always hanging on a knife edge. When it tips the wrong way the powers that be have free dispensation to abduct and murder them and their families without consequences. If that happens worldwide, their outreach collapses, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world suffer the immediate consequences.
If the UNA reform and take back their power, Morningstar's at the top of the hit list for standing up when they did nothing and for all past transgressions. Public sentiment is the only thing that will keep them safe. And if whispers get out that any of us, the city's shining saviors, consider Morningstar to be disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst, that's a loaded gun in the UN's holster. If they fire it here, they have grounds to fire it elsewhere.
We're not angry because you hurt our feelings or because we're fanatical. We're angry because the doubt of any one of the Displaced might destroy an organization and everyone in it, and over and again it's their job to be patient with us as we treat them like the story's twist waiting to happen. Our doubt has the capacity to kill. That's not hyperbole anymore. It's the possibility for seeds of doubt planted outside of our sphere that makes it impossible to brush off the kinds of things you and others were saying in response to that post. The unconsidered sentiment of the post itself. She was pissed off, yes, and she had every reason to be, she's been dealing with our bullshit since the very first day. But more than that, she's terrified.
I spoke out because I'm tired of watching our as yet baseless fears regarding this organization overshadow and invalidate her very real and very strongly founded fear for her life, the lives of her friends and colleagues, and the longevity of the work they have been trying to do to liberate and support this world since long before we arrived here. I'm tired of her voice being the only one from this world that's able to stand for thousands - beyond that, for the billions of people who cannot reach us and do not know how much power we have in steering the direction of their lives - only for her concerns to be treated with contempt on the basis that she's a member of an organization that may or may not be corrupt.
We get to make choices for this world. We didn't ask for that power, we shouldn't have it, but we do. She's the only person who gets an insight into our collective conversations, our mindsets and our decision-making. She's our bridge. If she checks us, we have to listen.
Edited (there may be 300 more edits who knows) 2020-08-29 00:38 (UTC)
Glowing chested super powers in a dystopian future doesn't strike you as a YA fiction concept? Check yourself, because that's my goddamn life. My loss, my pain, my reality. Maybe take a second before you take a steaming crap all over it like it doesn't matter.
We're gonna go around in circles until we're blue in the face. I'm gonna have something to say back to everything you have, and you're gonna come right back at me. It's a circle jerk of hurt feelings and pointlessness.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
No - not quite true. First was the playlist. But even that was full of traps. ]
If you're still willing to trust me, I don't know why you bother being afraid of anything. Let alone a bunch of barkeeps, scientists and teachers trying to fuck the bourgeoisie.
I guess that's the perk of being available on Blu-ray and DVD.
[ It isn't funny. It's a joke. There's no point in starting another fight. ]
It's nothing you're going to lose your job over.
no subject
You threw yourself in it over and over just like the rest of us. Says a lot about a person.
And I'm not afraid of anything, just so we're clear
Except the green alien from the Flintstones, that little bastard was creepy
[ Don't worry about it. Dean's anger is kind of a flash in the pan. It comes out in one sharp, overly aggressive burst and then sweeps out into fatigue. He's usually too tired for a second fight, at least for a while. ]
no subject
I orchestrated that effort, Dean. I targeted people I perceived I could count on to sacrifice themselves repeatedly for the greater good in desperate pursuit of an outcome I never reached. I refused to attempt to call anyone off despite the evidence suggesting it was doing nobody any good and a lot of people a great deal of harm. I manipulated and took advantage of your willingness to protect, your need for purpose and your comfort in walking into battle first for what I believed was right and then for what I couldn't stand to admit was wrong.
I threw myself and all of the rest of you in over and over, and I did it more often than not with your enthusiastic consent. It does say a lot about me.
no subject
It was the wrong call, and it was stupid, I'm not pretending it wasn't
I don't mean to kick the hornet's nest back up again, but trust me, there's not a chance in hell you could make me do anything I don't wanna do. Not like that. Brain powers excluded.
I've done the same exact thing as we were doing a hundred times already before I ever even got here.
That's not exaggerating. I'm talking literally died, and it was usually dumb, and I learned absolutely not a goddamn thing from it, so.
Flog yourself all you want, I'm pretty sure that's, like, a required personality trait for people who do the stuff we do.
But don't do it over me.
no subject
Can't argue with that. ]
Alright.
[ And if that's going to be the case, if Dean's going to hold him in esteem irrespective of the kind of orchestrated mistake that literally torments people, then he can be frank with him. ]
You're not going anywhere. But if there comes a time that your opinions on Morningstar go beyond our circle and do significant harm to the people who work for them, that will change.
You need to stay conscious that we are well positioned to do great quantities of harm with very little effort - to the world, to Morningstar and to ourselves. More often than not without ever intending to. Try not to help it along.
no subject
And if your Morningstar pulls a SHIELD and screws us over, I get to say I told you so
Look
Just for the record
and I'm not exaggerating when I say this
Heaven screwed us over back home
I'm talking flapping wings archangel Michael father son and the holy ghost heaven
pretty sure we know how great of a track record they have upstairs, so if they can go darkside literally any group can
doesn't exactly help that they're named after the freaking devil
I'm just saying it's not personal, and I'm not trying to be a dick to your crew
but if you're gonna go full-on zealot, you're doing yourself a favor keeping some skeptics around too
no subject
Finally, once he's finished constructing his thoughts: ]
Morningstar isn't the hill I'll die on. I'm watching them just as closely as I'm sure you will be - leaders aren't their people and power has the possibility to corrupt anyone on any level. As I said, healthy skepticism makes sense.
But I've seen first hand the consequences doubt and suspicion have had in their lives. I've been here through every tragedy they've encountered since our arrival. Their biggest semi-legitmate PR nightmare in that time was caused by a few Displaced Morningstar agents going rogue, myself included. A year and no foul play that I've seen.
In that same amount of time we the Displaced have been or been adjacent to the instigation of several large scale disasters. Aside from those, we've involuntarily made both huge and small changes in this world as the result of a shared dream and manifested an entirely new world separate to it in what I can only assume is a similar way. We're a terrifying force, we don't know how to control it, and we're still given the benefit of the doubt.
Let their work be their work. When the attack came, we fought for New Amsterdam. The rest of the world had to fight for themselves and didn't fare half as well, but without Morningstar it would've been far worse.
I understand why you're going to struggle to trust, and I don't expect you to. But it also isn't a fair or accurate to let your experiences of an entirely different dimension of entities void any good that Morningstar do. They're not angels or devils. Their founder aside, they're human beings. Fallible and capable by their very nature of extraordinary greed and cruelty, but also more likely to give a shit about life and work to protect and enhance it than supernatural beings with no place in it.
Just keep them human, okay? Please.
no subject
Not to go chasing waterfalls, but Donald Trump is president. I'm not so sure humans giving a shit about life is much of a given.
They've done good things. I'm not gonna take that away from them. They 100% deserve credit for whatever it is you've seen 'em do first hand. Sounds like they've earned the trust of the people who were there to see it, and no amount of talk is gonna change that. Loyalty like that doesn't shake easy.
What I just can't wrap my head around the idea that they're gonna buckle under a little bit of skepticism, like they've got some notion we're supposed to walk out of the future-womb trusting them by default. They're adults. They're big boys and girls. They gotta be able to keep their shit together when people act like people. If someone texts me calling me an arrogant asshole that might be a lizard person who shoots blanks, I'm gonna delete the text and get on with my life.
Granted I'm not gonna be attending their birthday party or giving them any high fives.
Sacking up and letting crap like this roll off is part of the gig, man. Always has been, always will be. Your buddies are gonna walk out stronger if they learn how to handle it without pushing people further away.
no subject
First things first, ]
Unless you've been talking to other Morningstar agents on the side, the "them" you're talking about are specifically myself and Gaby. We're the only ones who spoke up in blunt challenge. Half the problem here is painting over individuals to remark upon a whole. It isn't useful.
[ People do it to the Displaced all the time, and it serves them about as well as it's serving himself, Gaby and Morningstar now. Dean's created a forest out of two trees. Barely enough to cast the shadows they'd need for lurking in. ]
And as much as I described it as an insult, as much as it very much was one, that isn't the real problem. The lack of trust is upsetting, but Gaby's sat through much worse. As far as I'm concerned she didn't get involved because it's upsetting to have the views of off-worlders of varying backgrounds and previous experiences hold more weight than hers as a native here (note your own: you're predisposed to doubt in this specific situation due to your experience with Heaven, have very limited personal interaction with Morningstar and haven't spent long in this world but you still felt compelled to share the opinion you've generated based on experiences from a world away and a concept from YA fiction, and all of this conjecture somehow qualified yours to be a more objective offering than hers, who Dr. Sweets never considered approaching directly and passed over in favor of a network of his peers despite the extensive amounts of information she could provide). She got involved because it's dangerous. Because it's very rapidly becoming the case that our word will have more value than theirs in the public sphere too, and the majority of us have no idea what's going on.
It's that lack of information that leads us to doubt, and that doubt which leads us to mistrust, and that mistrust which leads us to not seek out the information from its source. So we'll never kill the doubt. And we'll continue to have opinions built on preconceived notions and scraps of information from the internet and conversations with other people who think Morningstar are just that little bit shady, and if anyone tries to tell us otherwise based on long term experience and a positive opinion it's weakness of character, suspiciously passionate to the point of zealotry, a sign of something to hide.
We're celebrities now. Or we will be, soon enough. Especially those of us who work at Red Wings - people know who it belongs to, people know what we've done for them, and right now in this city they hold us in esteem.
Morningstar's reputation is always hanging on a knife edge. When it tips the wrong way the powers that be have free dispensation to abduct and murder them and their families without consequences. If that happens worldwide, their outreach collapses, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world suffer the immediate consequences.
If the UNA reform and take back their power, Morningstar's at the top of the hit list for standing up when they did nothing and for all past transgressions. Public sentiment is the only thing that will keep them safe. And if whispers get out that any of us, the city's shining saviors, consider Morningstar to be disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst, that's a loaded gun in the UN's holster. If they fire it here, they have grounds to fire it elsewhere.
We're not angry because you hurt our feelings or because we're fanatical. We're angry because the doubt of any one of the Displaced might destroy an organization and everyone in it, and over and again it's their job to be patient with us as we treat them like the story's twist waiting to happen. Our doubt has the capacity to kill. That's not hyperbole anymore. It's the possibility for seeds of doubt planted outside of our sphere that makes it impossible to brush off the kinds of things you and others were saying in response to that post. The unconsidered sentiment of the post itself. She was pissed off, yes, and she had every reason to be, she's been dealing with our bullshit since the very first day. But more than that, she's terrified.
I spoke out because I'm tired of watching our as yet baseless fears regarding this organization overshadow and invalidate her very real and very strongly founded fear for her life, the lives of her friends and colleagues, and the longevity of the work they have been trying to do to liberate and support this world since long before we arrived here. I'm tired of her voice being the only one from this world that's able to stand for thousands - beyond that, for the billions of people who cannot reach us and do not know how much power we have in steering the direction of their lives - only for her concerns to be treated with contempt on the basis that she's a member of an organization that may or may not be corrupt.
We get to make choices for this world. We didn't ask for that power, we shouldn't have it, but we do. She's the only person who gets an insight into our collective conversations, our mindsets and our decision-making. She's our bridge. If she checks us, we have to listen.
no subject
We're gonna go around in circles until we're blue in the face. I'm gonna have something to say back to everything you have, and you're gonna come right back at me. It's a circle jerk of hurt feelings and pointlessness.
We should have left that dead horse alone.
no subject