MirroredInsanity

All of us were terrified to go to Ki'ikarnath, but we also felt we had to, for the Light's Reach—and we were also resentful that the Light's Reach carried a bunch of Tu'ul missionaries who had gone down on an Anomalous Interdict world because of their own stupidity, and would probably thank their stupid Light if we managed to save them, not a Galactic Aid crew facing down fears that made our eyes bleed. Or a number of other reactions. I know that by the time we landed, I was using isopropyl wipes repeatedly so that the smell wouldn't trigger the rest of the landing party. Talak was in the corner shedding fit to become bald. If you've ever run one of those missions, you know how it is.

Mei wasn't, of course. I'm used to her not reacting. Talak was muttering about species who don't care when other people die, and I told them what they could do with their bigotry, but then I had to worry about crew members who weren't saying it.

We moved to where the wreckage of the Light's Reach was, scanned it with drones. No-one there. Not even in the terror compartment, which is definitely where most of the missionaries would have stayed.

"No sign of damage on the doors," Mei told me quietly, reviewing the drone shots. "It looks like the terror compartment was opened from the inside."

Having frightening anomalies pointed out in very calm tones doesn't always make them better. "Why would they do that?"

"Either there was something to fear inside, something they needed outside, or something made them feel overconfident. How do Tu'ul react to confinement, generally?"

"They're claustrophilic. They like closed spaces. It reminds them of nesting burrows."

"Hmm. Weird."

I knew I wasn't going to get more than hmm weird out of Mei at this point, because she was still processing information, twisting it round and round in that unique human brain. If we were an adventure story, hmm weird would have been her catch-phrase. On the other hand, if we were an adventure story, we would all be guaranteed to make it out alive, just to keep everything friendly for families and people about to lay eggs.

We were just setting the drones for a much wider sweep when someone came running out of the woods, and unfortunately ran right onto Talak—that's Tirifon Talak, you see. A pack hunter. They may shed from tension, but when under attack, they Protect The Pack—whatever they have to do, they protect the pack.

Of course, I'm a freeze reflex sapient, and even though I've been trained to get past it, the remains of what Talak had done froze me for a moment. Our medic was screaming at them. "We came here to save them and you killed them," you know, the sort of thing that comes out when things are getting that bad. It was hard, it was agonizing, to get my jaw unfrozen and tell Medic (Vossi don't give out personal names) to back off.

"Yeah, no, this is weird," Mei said, pressing her hand to her ear, where her personal scan-drone was giving her data. "This is very weird. Talak might have done exactly the right thing. I don't know."

Talak, who was hunching their shoulders from Medic's assault—now Medic's murderous glare—startled, and twisted around to give them a look. "What's weird?"

"First, there's a wound down his back, and I don't think Talak made it. They just ripped into them from the front, low abdomen, where most creatures keep their stomachs. It's just bad luck that Tu'ul have their lungs there, or Medic might have been able to keep him stable long enough to go in the cryo-lab." All of us knew the cryo-lab was a long shot, but you have to try, obviously. "Secondly—Tu'ul run about five points above my body temperature, which is higher even than Talak's, and this one is as close to the ambient temperature as Commander Sikasa." She nodded at me. "Third—Talak, your nose is better than mine, do you smell something weird?"

Talak looked confused. "Why would you acknowledge my input when…"

"When you were rude before? Because I'm sensible. And this is life or death. Do you smell anything?"

Talak was slow to answer, but then they said, reluctantly, "Nendlu. I don't know the Interlang word for it. It's in most violet blood. But—"

But the Tu'ul body was obviously, luridly, graphically green-blooded. Right. And Talak had cloudy gray-translucent blood, not that they'd gotten hurt in the fight. (Tirifon are fast. And temperamental.)

"I say we put the drones to use scanning this area," Mei said, "before we expand and try to find the survivors. At the very least, this one might have been extremely sick before they attacked."

I flared my facial fins in assent. "A good idea. Medic—"

Something bit me in the back. Something that was concealed almost completely by my carry-bag, and also by the fact that nobody was standing behind me.

And then I said, quite involuntarily, "Medic, take charge of the corpse. We need to give this person a decent funeral by their custom. Talak, send the drones out to patrol. High pattern and fast."

Mei looked at me.

Pray that you never get looked at quite that way by a human. They don't mean it—I don't think they mean it—but it gets you right down to the bone. Most species don't stare like that at anything they don't mean to eat, and that's not even counting the uncanny feeling you get from those white corners of their eyes.

Not that I could worry about that now, because there was something on my back. Something on my back, and I was no longer in charge of what I said, or what I did. Some kind of parasite. Some kind of controller.

I tried to scream. Couldn't.

Tried to freeze, because I was far past the point of panic. Couldn't. You don't know how wrong it feels, to move normally when your mind is screaming in fear.

Most of it is a blur. A copper green blur, just like my blood. I know I walked back to the shuttle. I know that I ordered several people out to do in-person patrols of the near area.

I know Mei said, "Countermand that," and I looked at her, and—

In a bizarre way, it was almost a relief to see her holding her weapon, barrel pointed rock-steady at me. At the same time, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to I didn't want to I didn't want to—

Various of the crew were yelling. Mei moved around the other side of me. "Take the pack off. And turn around."

"I will not!" My voice, my vocal cords, but not me. "I am your commanding officer, I order you—"

"Let me rephrase. Take the pack off before I break all four of the arms and remove it myself."

The thing controlling me opened its mouth and hissed, glaring through the green haze, but it was bluff and everyone knew it. It let the pack fall to the floor.

More shouting and screaming. I heard someone say multilegs, I heard someone else say worm.

"You are going to release my commander's body," Mei said, "or else I am going to rip you out, tentacle by tentacle, and then rip you apart, segment by segment. You have access to some of Sikasa's mind. Did I ever tell her what humans do to bugs?" The last word was unfamiliar. A human language.

I saw, out of the corner of one eye, Medic making his way through the crew, snapping at people who got in his way. I also saw Mei moving around to look me straight in the face. She showed her teeth.

Humans don't do that around other people. Not usually. Apparently it's sometimes a friend signal in some of their cultures. It wasn't this time, and I could tell. "We squash them," she hissed. "We poison them. We engineer them to rip their own kind apart. I knew how to pull off a tick before I learned written language, and if you think I'm going to balk at a bigger tick—"

She stopped herself. Went calm, somehow. It didn't matter. I knew what I had seen. What I don't think very few sapients report back about. A human about to lose their temper.

It wasn't like an adventure story, where someone untrained would have to get the thing off me and there might be a declaration of romantic love. Medic got me in the neck with a syringe and cut each of the tendrils out, and Medic wasn't about to declare romantic love to anyone, since his species doesn't have that. I woke up with Talak hanging over me, endured Medic's check, and then sat up. "Where's Mei?"

"In the convenience," Talak said, and then wrinkled its snout in alarm. "You don't think—"

They helped me up and we staggered to the convenience. My stomach swooped and dropped as I thought of violating taboo, but on the other hand—I used my override code and opened the door.

That day I learned: humans can purge the entire contents of their stomach. It is graphic, ugly, and very painful looking.

Mei grabbed a wipe and got the last of the sickening fluid off her lips as we came in. Talak made a horrified noise at the smell, which even I could detect. Acid. "What's wrong? Is this a disease?" I blurted.

"Nope." Mei leaned back against the garbage disposal and stretched her lips slightly, a gesture usually meant to be reassuring. "Delayed emotional reaction. Don't worry about it."

I blinked. Then blinked again. "I've never heard of—delayed emotion, how—"

"Not everyone's as brave as you, 'Kasa." I was going to protest that I wasn't, that my species was a bunch of insectivores for heaven's sake, but she went on. "Some of us can't afford to feel all the emotions in the moment, or we'd fall apart. So we lock in and squash it down and that has consequences." She stood up, not as smoothly as usual. I noticed that her skin, which is always a pale tan, was paler than usual. "Don't spread it around too much? It's a bit embarrassing and I think it might be useful to the crew, thinking I always have it together."

The rest of that mission is on file. How we got ourselves out alive, how we rescued two of the Tu'ul, how we nearly got killed by several more Tu'ul, which was also how we found out that the parasites pilot dead bodies as well as live ones. As far as we can tell, they simply ride a live body until it dies, and then keep doing it until it falls apart. Ki'ikarnath is now under a Known Biological Menace Interdict.

I kept Mei's secret. But I think this information might help you understand what's going on this time. Humans don't lack emotion. They defer it. They can take a boiling rage or a burning fear and crush it into a tiny, compressed space at the back of their mind until the emergency is over. But it exists. It has to be faced sooner or later.

And, Captain—if it isn't faced, your human friend could break. You can't let that happen.

When Luo Binghe spots Shen Qingqiu in Jin Lang city he’s absolutely shocked to discover a mere 2 or 3 (how much was it) years left on Shizun’s counter. What had happened in the time he was gone? Did without a cure get worse? Was it something else?

Worried to pieces he hurries over to his master. Except once said master lays eyes upon him—while outwardly calm—his counter starts to glitch showing only minutes left, then seconds, then months, zero, seconds again and so on.

Out of the tags with you🫵

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

Today is not like any other day. Today is a time of reflection and a time of reckoning.

🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡

FIVE YEARS OF QUINNDEPENDENCE

DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN

AS FANNIE LOU HAMER SAID, “NOBODY’S FREE UNTIL EVERYBODY’S FREE”

PEACE AND LOVE TO YOU ALL

No parts of it extended beyond the lines, and the paper ticket was clearly displayed, impaled on a horn.

It is NOT escaping the third mom allegations 🚫

Citation needed (yawning too much to find sources) but if this post got you to yawn, then we are clearly kin, and we are working together to create a sleepy spell over

MY WRETCHED CHILD

I am not "differently abled".

I do not have a "superpower".

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.