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Sojourn
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Arnulf Ogunkoya
Clan Ogunkoya
Electus Matari
#521 - 2016-06-02 21:45:15 UTC
Nicoletta Mithra wrote:
First, it's not "your deity". God isn't a tribal idol that belongs to any group, especially not the Amarr: Quite the opposite is true, everything belongs to God.
Second, the point I'm making is that SFRIM has probably a higher than average number of mebers that look deeply and ask hard questions compared to other capsuleer corporations.
Third, and that might have to do with the prior point made, if you'd pay any attention you'd know that SFRIM doesn't intend nor try to change anyone by force of arms.


Well. I can see why you'd have that point of view but from my perspective your deity is at best a powerful and ambitious spirit. I fear we'll just have to agree to diagree on that point. And I'm glad your organisation has intelligent people in it. I'm also glad that you are attempting force of argument rather than force of arms. My thanks. Please feel free to continue with that approach.

Quote:
Luckily, with Aria Jenneth we have someone who's an attentive and perceptive observer of others, instead of someone who just sees what they want to see. It's a rare thing: Humans tend to prefer to have their biases confirmed and oftentimes go to great lengths to convince themselves that it's as they already 'knew'.

So, perhaps, you needed a much longer time than us here at SFRIM to figure out that it can be helpful to have someone who provides a new and fresh perspective. After all, we welcomed Aria Jenneth quite some time ago already. So, perhaps, probably, I'd say, you're coming with old news to me, here. And I bet: If you'd be ready to look for one day with the eyes of Aria Jenneth, you'd come to realize that a good bunch of the 'darkness' you percieve when 'looking' at the Amarr is the result of you closing your eyes to a reality that's much more complex. Maybe it'd even suffice if you actually listened to her, take her perspective into consideration (as I guess to ask you to take an Amarrian's perspective into honest consideration would be to ask a bit too much of you).

You frame all this as Aria 'joining the Amarr'. She didn't, really. She joined SFRIM. If you can't even differentiate between the 'the Amarr' and SFRIM, well... you really need some perspective, then.


You evidently don't know me or my background very well so I can see why you might think all that. I do have reasons for my problems with your faith & culture other than simple ingrained prejudice. If you want details feel free to take this to a message exchange.

Regards, Arnulf Ogunkoya.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#522 - 2016-07-14 16:54:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Aria Jenneth
So ... I guess I'm continuing this, sort of.

Being with the Society, and the Directrix, makes doing a public journal like this a little tricky. There are things I know, and things I've seen, that I won't be able to talk about. Discretion is kind of a work in progress for me. Fortunately the Directrix is pretty easy-going when it comes to such things, or I don't think I'd be able to continue this at all. But I do have to be a little careful, so ...

I guess, to be clear: what I say here, until further notice, is going to be the stuff I'm allowed to reprint, here.



Entry Forty-Three: After the Funeral

Reprinted with permission (and some awareness of the awkwardness of reprinting this specific entry) from SFRIM internal forums; original publication 118.6.26.


It's true, I guess: memorials are for the living.

It seems a little awful, to ... "move on" ... from over five thousand deaths, especially with any speed (say, less than ten years), but I can't stay sad forever. Or, more than "sad", feel like I could die myself a few dozen times over and it still wouldn't be enough, as the case might be.

Just writing my account of the little disasters of the last few weeks wasn't enough to put a break in my sense of the thing. That ... I guess ... had to wait for yesterday, and the grass, and the graves, and that absurdly clear sky. And the names, read off one by one. And the tolling of the bell.

... for over eight hours without pause.

It's still a little much. I can't really wrap my head around the number, even having listened to their names, one by one. But at least, now, at last, that feeling can belong to yesterday.

I don't think I want to talk about this anymore. And, for the first time, I don't really feel like I have to.

So-- I guess I'll be staying for a while, starting up a new project here. I guess this is probably the first entry, what I'm writing now.

I'm not sure what I'll call it. ... I suppose I'll work that out later.

For any of you who might not already be acquainted with me, I'm Aria Jenneth. I'm Directrix Daphiti's shadow.

That's not a job title or anything. Formally, I'm a "sworn retainer," which is a kind of servant, but more the kind you sic on your enemies than the sort you have set out the silverware.

(I could do that, and would if asked, but....)

My oath requires me to die for the Directrix, if need be, but mostly what I do, other than being her aide and generally helpful person, is the other thing-- making other people die for her.

I'm a combat pilot, a decent one, at least when I've stayed in practice. It's what I know, even though I can't remember how I learned, anymore. I'm good at it. Possibly a little too aggressive for my own good, and probably a better follower than a leader, but ... I'm quick, I'm decisive (not always wisely), and I can kill innocent people without hesitation. I know this because I've done it. (Even if I can't remember probably the worst of it.) It's my place, my part to play.

Only, being a weapon of mass destruction, it turns out, is work that will kill your soul. I'm not really okay with watching my spirit just sort of slowly wither and die for reasons I don't really even understand. I'm a killer, but ... I'm not really content with just letting go and becoming something poisonous, even if I kind of am already.

So I replace my own judgment, as much as I can, with that of someone I trust more than myself. Usually, unless I ask, I have trouble doing that with exactness, but sometimes, just sometimes, it means I get to be the silhouette of a much better and healthier person. Even if I can't share her memories, her belief in her Empire or her God, I can at least echo what she might choose to do or be.

If I describe myself as the Directrix's shadow, it's because I reflect maybe the darkest aspect of a good person. I'm a weapon, a tool she can set to hunt and kill. But, sometimes, I might get to reflect a little of her grace, also.

(The fact that all this results in me following her around a lot might also have something to do with it, though.)

(If it's not obvious, I admire the Directrix a lot.)

This makes it sound like I'm some kind of familiar spirit or something, and sometimes maybe I really do think of myself that way-- as a sort of voidsprite, bound to my mistress's will. I think those are dangerous moments, though.

I'm human. And fragile. And kind of small. And definitely, definitely mortal. So is the Directrix. We all are.

That's something I don't think it's ever safe for us to forget.

Um. Also-- I'm kind of a scribbler. I like finding out new things, and writing about them. The Empire doesn't really present any shortage of stuff for me to write about.

That's also kind of why I'm writing here, instead of continuing my Sojourn project on the IGS, though-- I want to be able to write what I think, and the Directrix seems to feel that it's pretty safe to say even stuff that's likely to upset people, if it stays internal.

Outside ... not so much. And I don't really want to cause us trouble.

(This was easier to do when I had no loyalties, as opposed to, well, intense personal ones. Getting tangled up in the world definitely complicates things. I can't really say that I regret it, though. ... I seem to make a kind of murderous vagabond, and one of the people who was dying, on that road, was me.)

So, yeah. Most of my scribblings and random thoughts are going to be ending up here, instead. I apologize if I end up offending anyone.

Also ... thanks for letting someone like me stay among you, for however long it might happen to be. There's a lot of world worth wandering through, but it seems really important to have a home to return to.

For me, that's here.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#523 - 2016-07-14 17:03:41 UTC
Entry Forty-Four: On Faith

Reprinted with permission from SFRIM internal forums; original publication 118.6.28.


Something I haven't talked a lot about, even if it's kind of centrally important to both me and the people around me, is faith.

The Empire's kind of my home, now, but that doesn't mean I believe in God. Some people tend to assume otherwise, but it's still true. I can (and do) admire the Empire's faith without really buying into it at all.

God, as an idea-- as a sort of face behind the universe-- is pretty strange to me. Even the Maker, the Caldari creator god, is pretty strange. It's strange because it seems pretty obvious to me that the universe has no "purpose" other than to be itself, and that's something it can't help being.

It's not there for us any more than it's there for slaver hounds or squirrels. Or trees or rocks. It just is.

I'm not an atheist as such. Just-- my sense of divinity doesn't act like a person at all: doesn't have likes or dislikes; doesn't have wants; doesn't choose people. It just is.

(Kind of like the universe, not coincidentally.)

As far as social blocks go, this one's a little hard for me to get around, and it's the cause of a lot of kind of careful engineering. It means I'm an outsider, permanently, or ... well, until I really do start to see things differently, if that's ever really going to happen.

That's a bit of a problem.

Someone asked me recently why I wanted to be a shadow. The real answer is that I hardly ever make important choices for only one reason, and, well, this is part of it: because I want to be able to stay, maybe even if I one day retire and become a baseliner, and still get to be close to the people I care about without having to pretend to believe things that I don't.

People will question a guest who never joins the household and never leaves. A servant is less of an issue. The ... pact ... between me and the Directrix lets me stay here, indefinitely, and still stay true to my beliefs.

People might complain. (I can hear Senior Captain Fierach now: "Still an unrepentant heathen. Unbelievable.") But ... they won't try to do much about a heathen Caldari hireling other than maybe try to talk me around. I'm okay with people trying to do that.

This works out for the Directrix, too: practical considerations aside, if she wants to Reclaim and bring me into the Amarrian faith, she's got years, even decades, to do it. She doesn't have to be quick about it, which is good, because I don't think "quick" would work very well.

(I'm not sure anything will, but, then, I would naturally be the skeptic here. If I thought I was going to convert, I would have done it already.)

And this way, nobody needs to snap a collar on my neck to keep me around as a long-term project. If that means accepting a kind of lowly place in the society, I don't mind that so much.

It's possible to see this arrangement as disempowering, even dehumanizing, but, really, I think it's just the opposite.  It lets me remain a part of a community I regard as my home, among people I care about, without having to lie about who I am or what I believe. It lets me work with, and for, someone I trust implicitly.

It lets me be an Achur among the Amarr, without being forever a stranger.
Aria Jenneth
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#524 - 2016-07-14 17:07:44 UTC
Entry Forty-Five: By What Right?

Reprinted by permission from SFRIM internal forums; original publication 118.6.29.


I think a lot of what hit me so hard about the post-Nauplius refugee crisis is just this: that it threw into sharp relief the contradiction between the person I try to be and my role in the world.

I'm a killer. My victims pile up pretty high, although I've never looked in any of their faces. Mass death, death by hundreds or thousands, doesn't leave a lot of room for claims of justice or righteousness. If we're agents of concepts like those at all, our aim's really fuzzy. We hit the guilty, and anybody who happens to be standing in the same area. Probably even a few of the "guilty's" victims.

(Anybody think cells in a battleship's brig come equipped with escape pods? Anybody?)

A while ago, someone told me she didn't feel I had the right to ask her to try to talk another pilot out of combat duty. The claim stuck with me partly because it felt like an attack on the elemental level. If, by being a combat pilot, a killer, and by not standing against a decision to become involved in fighting, I lost the right to worry about someone else following the same path....

Mass death, the way we engage in it, is indiscriminate by nature. If I accept my role in causing it, what right do I have to choose people who ought not die? What right do I have to try to protect anyone or anything? By what right do I even keep breathing, myself?

And I guess my answer is: by no right. The universe doesn't work that way. It doesn't make things easy for us, doesn't let us be consistent and honest and decent.

I can't make any argument that I have a right to do these things. I'll do them anyway, because I don't want to be someone who consistently harms people.

I don't claim the right ... but I don't think I need it, either.

Sometimes, I'm at peace with that. Sometimes, not so much.