#good ends

Harley Cokliss, J.G. Ballard, Crash/ The Atrocity Exhibition, 1971

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(Excerpts from Wendell Berry’s essays). “If we say we are lovers of America and peace and freedom, then this must be what lovers of America and peace and freedom do … Our public discourse has been reduced to the manipulation of uprooted symbols: good words - bad words, the names of Gods and Devils, emblems, slogans, flags. For some, the flag no longer stands for the country, it is the country; they plant their crops and bury their dead in it.” “Once we have peace, we say, or abundance, or justice or truth or comfort, everything will be allright… It is an old dream. It is a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends is no discipline at all. The end is preserved in the means: a desirable end may perish forever in the wrong means. Hope lives in the means, not the end…” … “That good ends are destroyed by bad means is one of the dominant themes of human wisdom… The I Ching says, "If evil is branded it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get tangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded. …. For the same reasons we should not combat our own faults directly.. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious. Finally, the best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good. Confucius said of riches that "if not obtained in the right way, they do not last.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil…” [And for that text Ken Kesey supplies the modern exegesis: “As soon as you resist evil, as soon as its gone, you fold, because its what you’re based on.”]

[From Alive On All Channels archive]

Good Ends by bafflinghaze

Hermione x Pansy Parkinson

Somehow, Hermione became the Shadow World Leader, and the means weren’t too bad. It was definitely Pansy’s influence: “Sufficiently good ends justify unsavoury means.” And Hermione had so many good ends to achieve.

More good ends for Secundus Sunday! You guys like universes where things are better than canon, right?

The Everglots are convinced a lot earlier to accept Christopher as a husband for Victoria, meaning Barkis never gets his shot and the Van Dorts leave early. This gets rid of a couple of thorns in the gang's side and a helper for the Queen, at least, and gives all the couples some time without being harassed by idiots.

Lewis manages to successfully kill the Queen. Wonderland Park is never destroyed, and he survives to see Victor and Alice be very happy together and to find his own happiness with another. Victor still goes Creative, but this time it's from the stress of his mother refusing to see the light as opposed to his friends being in mortal danger.

Well, I did the horrible endings last week, so let's make this week all about the NICER variations on the verse. They proceed as follows:

Alice realizes that Victor loves her not in Queensland, but in the Deluded Depths -- that is, she doesn't talk herself out of the possibility that the offer of piano lessons could be something more. I'm not sure how it would alter the rest of the story yet, but Victor gets a VERY pleasant surprise when she kisses him right before going to see Radcliffe. At the very least, there's a much more pleasant month between the Depths and the East for Alice and Victor.

Related to the above is a snippet of an idea I had where Victor actually does kiss Alice after their dance, and Alice realizes her feelings for Victor are more than platonic. Again, not sure how this would alter the story as a whole, but at least they'd know where they stood with each other during the whole mess.