Hype Person™

which in turn activated my sleeper autist, and we ended up talking about fiber arts, where i learned that this woman is part of the local lacemaker's guild and uses her woodworking experience to carve lace bobbins on the lathe. she then gave me the email address of the woman who runs it, because their group has no social media and only meets when the lead lady says 'everyone come to my house.'

while all of this was going on, another woman walks up. her partner was shopping for wood repair stuff and she heard us talking about fiber- she's a spinner who does historical reenactments nearby. period accurate, processes the wool herself. of course i ask her if they need volunteers and she gives me her contact info

“Dolphin Show”

Steve as “The Dolphin”

Murray (a) agreed and allowed Azune to ask Demodus for help, (b) accepted Demodus’s decision, and (c) went with them to the presentation.

She did it! 🎉

The turmoil is a significant part of developing her character, and people have rightfully pointed out that Murray was making a lot of statements based on unexamined biases, but the result is that she still decided against those instincts. No one forced her to. She made that choice.

Murray wants this to be simpler. She wants to be able to move this resistance forward without involving people like Demodus. She wants there to be a set of people who have to pay the costs and take risks while everyone else gets to be safe. She’s even fine with being part of that set! And she isn’t the only one who wants specific people to be safe! Hal wanted that too, it’s not even unique.

The issue is that’s what Thjazi did, and it failed. You cannot create a class of tainted people who bear the burden of change while the innocent people get to be protected. The Firefly of it all!

And Murray knows that. Marisha said as much that Murray knows that Azune is right. But Murray is wrestling within herself about how to achieve these goals without it spilling onto people who didn’t ask for this. She doesn’t want to be the one to do that. It feels horrible. She even deflected to Azune in the conversation, and it was clearly at a time where the stress overwhelmed her. She’s normally so confident and sure of herself, and we saw what strips that away from her: the fear that she’s sending someone who she believes should be protected to his death.

It makes total sense why she snaps at Azune so many times, and it makes sense why Azune doesn’t snap back. He isn’t sure if it’s what he’s afraid of (she hates me because of where I’m undercover), or if she’s stressed the fuck out (and it’s exploding out of her in moments of vulnerability), or or something else, or a mix. But they’re struggling through it together, and they get to the same place: they ask Demodus for help, he agrees, and the three go together and risk their lives.

The story is that she did it! It felt awful every step of the way, but she did it!

The point of it isn’t that Murray did something wrong: it’s that she was in a position where every preference was pointing her in one direction, she knew that following it would weaken their position and put Azune at greater risk, and in the end made the decision that meant their efforts were most likely to succeed. This could have just as easily gone the other direction: a Nat 1 is precisely as likely as a Nat 20, and Murray doesn’t know there’s dice being rolled, but she implicitly understands the nature of chance. She had portents to use, but they were not necessarily going to help in this instance. Sometimes the universe isn’t in your favor, and for all her power and intelligence, she can’t always force it.

So of course she was afraid. And she did what she told Azune to do: suck it up and do the job.

It's possible that Murray's never seen Azune break down before, but it's also possible that she's done the panic attack care before and knows that giving him something else to think about or look forward to works to help him calm down. And she picked something kind of silly because it's the sort of joke they make with each other.

I also think it's also possible that Azune knew that Murray would give him the soldier up pep talk and that's what he needed right then. I mean, he absolutely needed her to agree to talk to Demodus. He absolutely needs Demodus and he knows Murray isn't happy about that. But he also knows that Murray does tough love. And maybe he felt like he needed a dose of that, too.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it felt like to me.

*I think he's less afraid he's going to die and more afraid he's going to fail. Although he's probably a little less willing to die for the cause today than he was yesterday, given the events of the previous night.