reiinai

star trek tos movies why did you let them do thisss....................

i actually read her book when i was about twelve years old, in the most shocking and probably only example of me ever being ahead of a trend, and even at twelve i really loved everything she said. at that point in time i lived in fear of my mother's threats that she would come and throw everything away while i was school, and my small and very adhd mind simply could not grasp the concept of "have less stuff". have less of WHICH stuff? how? i'd never actually been taught how to clean my room besides being told "pick up stuff" and "be organized", and as she points out multiple times, cleaning is not an intuitive thing. it's a learned behavior and skill.

anyways. her entire philosophy centers on surrounding yourself with things that you love, and only things that you love (or things that you absolutely need). she explicitly says over and over again that it is not about throwing things away, it is not about minimalism, it is not about "what is the smallest amount possible that you can survive on". she literally has a whole section where she talks about how hard it can be to throw things away when you've lived in poverty all your life and you don't have absolute confidence that you can replace something that you really needed if it gets thrown out, even though you're not likely to ever really need it--you've just been conditioned to think that because that's literally how you survive, when you're poor. she talks about how that mindset can serve and how it can damage. she talks about how minimalism is sort of a rich people thing, cause they can afford to throw everything away.

That we are the caretakers of the objects we keep and have an obligation to not only care for them, but also to *use them for their purpose.*

If you don't wear that jacket, no matter how cute it is, it is a disservice to let it rot away in your closet. Let it go on to be worn by someone else. It's not that you didn't love it enough- it's that you love it enough to let it serve its purpose, even if it's not with you.

I love that Alex is doubling down on the “people who grew up in fucked up situations don’t automatically know those situations aren’t fucked up when they leave them,” it’s such a fun way to take Occtis in a direction that is a little unexpected and narratively very jarring in a very enjoyable way. Like, the “neglected noble child” trope loves to have the character not understand that they deserve love or kindness, but it’s worth acknowledging that (at least in Occtis’s scenario) it might also result in him not fully understanding that People Cages Are Bad.

This is what struck me about the argument Thaisha and Occtis had. It’s not just her taking out her worries on him, it’s in reaction to his actual behaviour. He doesn’t register the cage as abnormal. He said something like “We had an important job” in relation to Tannasar, which means he’s viewing the Tachonis’ status and role as valid and still identifying them as “we”. He’s indicated that he hasn’t ruled out bringing Sylandri back. And then there’s other stuff like him trying (and succeeding) to intimidate the druids over Vaelus, and developing necromantic spells that are both very Tachonis and very antithetical to druid stuff.

Thaisha has realized out that she put her identity and role as a druid, which has been central to her for many years, on the line when she called Occtis not to go down the path to death. She could lose the core purpose of her life because she chose her love for him. And he is now repeatedly doing and saying things that highlight that his values and beliefs are very different from hers and that he’s open to doing things she would be dead-set against. He’s not on his family’s side but he gets where they’re coming from and there’s a lot of things he hasn’t deconstructed. And when on top of this the group is dealing with a very serious threat from the Tachonis, all that is going to influence how she reacts to him!