working on it

I find it important to note that this isn’t necessarily a “decline” in his morals or ethics, necessarily, as much of his early-on views and standpoints are rather naive. For instance (if I recall correctly), he for a long time looks down upon anyone, even eighths (octavi) who really have no choice but to submit to the Hierarchy and go to the Aurora Columnae. This eventually changes as he realizes how predatory the system of the hierarchy is; although on the other hand, he also comes to see the other side, which is the complacency of the masses and their complicity in the crimes of the Hierarchy through their unwillingness to even try to eke out change.

Perhaps the most important line to him that gets crossed is that he had sworn never to cede will and thus to never willingly submit to the Aurora Columnae. This line is, to him, this difference between him and the evil of the Republic, the sullying stain that mars each member of the Hierarchy, lowest to highest. But this, too, is a naive and even privileged position to take for him. Now you may ask how he could possibly have any privilege whatsoever, and I would tell you- quite easily! He may have lost everything—his family, his home, even his name—but he still had the privilege of growing up somewhere outside the Hierarchy, and the chance to be educated about it and about will and ceding and was raised without the deeply ingrained social pressures to undergo the ceremony at the appropriate age. Even when in hiding, he is able to live on the outskirts of society, never truly escaping it but neither is he fully subjected to its pressures and norms. He has no responsibility to anyone but himself anymore, not really. His refusal to cede is the ultimate act of defiance to him, yet it doesn’t actually accomplish anything in the end, besides giving him the moral high ground. He hates the Hierarchy and Caten but in the beginning has no desire to try and effect actual change.

This, of course, all changes eventually. He is forced to reckon with the fact that he does still bear a responsibility to more than just himself, and that it isn’t possible to be both a perfect moral paragon and a good leader. He wants so badly to just win Domitor and get his posting to Jatierre and never have to cede or truly be a part of the Hierarchy for the rest of his life, and probably die that way. But in a way, he eventually must realize that that dream is just complacency and complicitness under a different name, choosing his own personal and moral comfort over an attempt to truly do good for the world at large- whether or not they deserve it. What makes him really start to understand this is his friends he makes in the Academy- Callidus, Aequa, Eidhin, Emissa. He tries so hard to not care about them, to view them as the enemy, but he can’t- he comes to love them so truly and deeply that it forces him to change his perspective.

Vis learns that, in order to save and protect his loved ones, he has to make sacrifices that before were unthinkable- he can’t just fuck off to Jatierre and never cede, he has to wield will in order to be a strong enough leader. He is constantly surrounded by the extremes of each side—the Hierarchy and the Anguis—and so it understandably takes him some time to understand what lessons he must take from them both and what he must reject.

These growths are reflected by his memories of his father’s lessons about Kingship and responsibility, which remind him that a good leader can’t always be perfect and must sometimes—often, even—make difficult and painful choices. If taking a life is what is necessary for the good of the people who rely on him, then sometimes that is what must be done.

Even at the end of Book 2 he’s still struggling with where to put those lines, and how to prevent others from taking advantage of them and of him. He must do what he must do, but at what point does he stop doing things out of necessity of being that leader and start doing things because someone else is manipulating him? He may have started to learn and really take in these lessons about responsibility and leadership and authority, but in many ways is still naive, which leads to e.g. Baine manipulating him.

I am very excited to see how these trends continue in the third book!!

pros: yay! i finally look like a guy! people think im a man!

inspired by @casgirl’s tags on this post:

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.

OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.

In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.

Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.

- so mon mothma (based on the ep3 deleted scenes) knew Padme pretty well. and consequently TOTALLY clocked that she was pregnant. she knew. a bunch of senators knew. they never said anything because they respected her privacy.

- however padme was good at keeping her Secret Affairs under wraps so mon mothma had no idea who the father was. she never guessed it might be anakin bcos everyone knows Jedi don’t do stuff like that.

- padme dies suddenly & mysteriously. shortly thereafter bail organa and his wife announce that they’ve adopted a baby girl. 

- at the time mon mothma does not think much of this BUT later as leia gets older she begins to resemble padme more and more in both looks & personality and mon mothma is like. hmmm.

- so she draws the natural conclusion.

- padme was having an affair with bail organa! and when she died in childbirth bail quietly ‘adopted’ the baby to avoid the scandal.

- mon mothma elects not to say anything about this because it’s not really her business and also the past is the past and padme has been. dead for several years at this point and she doesn’t feel like opening that wound back up.

- instead she just, takes leia under her wing.

- anyway! later when a kid w the last name Skywalker who says his dad was a jedi shows up to join the rebellion she’s like. hm.

- she didn’t know anakin well but at the very least she knew OF him and they like, probably met

- so she figures anakin must have fathered a child while he was travelling the galaxy during the clone wars. she never really liked anakin so she’s just like ‘hm guess he was a deadbeat dad. can’t say I’m surprised.’

- she is not aware however that Anakin became Darth Vader so she doesn’t really feel the need to say anything to luke about this. as far as she’s aware luke already knows the truth about his parentage. at most she might be like ‘hey I knew your dad a bit, he was a good jedi & a war hero’.

- so as far as mon mothma is concerned, anakin skywalker’s son and padme amidala’s daughter are both fighting for the rebellion. the fact that they’re the same age is just kind of a coincidence. tatooine uses a different calendar from most planets so she never notices that they literally have the same birthday.

- anyway later Leia is like ‘so guess what! luke is my long-lost brother. isn’t that wild?’

- and mon mothma is like

………………….’PADME WAS BANGING ANAKIN SKYWALKER????’

Leia: he was Darth Vader.

Mon Mothma: ……….

Mon Mothma: MOTHERFUCKER-