Chapter 9 commencing! (Plus sappy hippie stuff) · 9:02pm Sep 11th, 2015
I guess it's kind of fitting that I've begun reading chapter 9 in the ninth month of the year. I offer my deepest apologies to anyone if you're from the regions whose accents I'm pilfering for Ether Echoes' fic and offended by my failure to accurately replicate them. The fault is mine for not listening hard enough when you guys speak.
Really, though, listening is one of the most important things people can do for each other. It's part of the magic of friendship 
It's part of why I found myself breaking up as I read Leit Motif's part in Chapter 8, and why it's going to be so important to me to watch these characters grow personally. Here's a secret between you and me (oops!): I'm reading this blind. It's a bumpy ride, but it is worth every pothole flub.
Warning: 9/11 stuff follows, in case you don't want to read about it.
I believe that love is the most beautiful thing in the Universe. I guess that's cheesy, but it's one of the few thoughts that fills me to tears with pure emotion, and we can never have too much of it. More than ever, the magic of friendship is not just a dream, it's a reality that we need to take shape.
One of the things I find the most difficult to fathom, no matter how many books I read or films or series I watch on the subject, is the capability of humans for cruelty. I know a lot of the reasons given for why: our survival instincts are geared towards the continuation of a group as much as to ourselves, and that has given rise to a dual sense of self that at the best of times can lead to incredible kindness and love for other living things, and at its worst can enable someone to remove themselves from a situation and replace it with the notion that they are a cog in a human machine, and therefore less responsible for their actions than when they act on their own. Our very sense of morality is arguably geared towards the unity of a specific group, because in an environment where exile effectively means death, the group needs unifying factors to protect itself from that environment and potentially dangerous unknowns. This is why the ritual aspects of religions, and the rules, can be equally unifying and polarising within a single culture, and also why it is possible for a theoretically all-loving, all-forgiving worldview to be tainted by human beings who limit their understanding of it to superficial love and forgiveness for those who share their beliefs and follow the same rules and rituals.
Today it is 14 years since my parents sat down with me in the kitchen, and explained to their seven-year-old daughter that people had hijacked passenger airplanes and crashed them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre. "That was hateful of them," I said then, and I asked why. I couldn't understand why someone would do such a thing, and I still don't now. We are capable of better than the hatred and violence that has been perpetuated in such abundance over the last century. Though once I would have ignored today out of a vindictive sense of anti-nationalism, I feel that this is more than a merely national sentiment, and it should be. It's time for this to be a day of love and peace, and honouring the people lost - both in the attacks and in the war that followed - with kindness, rather than by fuelling violence and cruelty with cultural vendettas.
It's time to stop using our pain to make others suffer.
That's a beautiful sentiment, Farrowe. I'm always glad to hear how people were affected by what I wrote, especially something as emotionally trying as Leit and Daphne's reunion.
It took a lot of writing to get that part right, but I knew that it was the core, even the heart of the fic.
The type of love that you see displayed is Storge, the natural affection that I feel is the most honest and sincere and dare I say beautiful form, found between parents and children, siblings, and those dear friends we hold close together. Romantic love without storge is a bit like a cake without flavor - you soon lose interest. It's funny how many people ship them, too, and really they are just beautifully good friends, soulmates in a deep and even literal sense. That it isn't tainted with romantic pretensions is a big part of that for me.
I'm glad you appreciate my thoughts. Part of it is fueled by the reflection I've done in the past few days on how people seek to fill up their inner void with things that feel good, instead of with what would make them happy in a meaningful way. Even considering the apparent superficial differences between Eastern and Western philosophies and religions, it's impossible to deny that at their core they recognised both this void and the illusions and self-destructive habits that in the midst of soothing it for a moment actually make it wider. There are plenty of people, especially at my age, who recognise it in themselves but don't know how, or feel powerless, to fill it with something substantial, like love and trust, and resort to cynicism and pleasure-seeking, and are afraid to open their hearts to someone even when the opportunity comes. I'm worried about what that will do to us and what it will do to the future.
It's been a while since I heard about the four loves, in fact! Storge and philia are the ones I can identify with the most, and they fuel my closest relationships. I wouldn't substitute eros for them in a million years. Recognising it in fictional characters, or recognising definite dislike or hatred, is what makes it hard for me to be able to ship in most cases things that aren't canon or else plausible without HD Shipping Goggles™.