#its about the grief to anger to shock to empathy to grief to tragedy to melancholic relief for me luv

[snydraws]

I really hope they dont change the way part 2 is structured completely for the show. I think some change is necessary for an episodic format but the moment of realization in the middle of the game that completely recontextualizes all of ellies actions is necessary to the plot methinks

[pollylynn]

Paraquel—An Early Season 4 Caskett One-Shot

Title: Paraquel WC: 1200

A/N: Early Season 4, Probably in the Heroes & Villains/Headcase timeframe. 

There is a story he has not told to anyone, he has not told her. There are two stories, both locked inside him. 

He has imagined a hundred times telling them in anger. He has spent a hundred long nights rehearsing exactly how he would throw the revelations in her face—a one-two punch, her captain, her own father, both convinced that he and he alone could convince her that her life is worth something. He has spent one hundred long nights imagining himself bitterly holding for laughs at the ludicrous idea that he is anything to her.

But he hasn’t told her in anger. He hasn’t told her in any of the shifting shadows of his emotional state since she thunked a copy of a different story entirely down on the table before him.  

The stories are still locked inside him, a discomfiting state for a man who lives to tell them—who lives to tell them to her, for her, about her, and these two are all of the above. It’s certainly for the best in this case, though. These stories are complicated. They shift and evolve. The content is fixed, and yet each is a work in progress in his mind and in his heart. 

He thinks, when the time comes, that he’ll tell her the second story—the one that happened second—first. It’s the one that hurts his heart more, but it’s also the one that she, without knowing, has shown him how to understand, how to learn the lesson of. 

He has been angry not just with her, but with Montgomery. He has been disgusted by the way this man who was supposed to be a friend and mentor to him—a second father to her—had used him. Roy Montgomery had taken full advantage of the heart he has always worn on his sleeve to try to save himself. 

He has, in his darkest moments, hated the man for that. And he has been grateful for the very same thing—the levers Montgomery had pulled to place him in that hangar, twenty-eight declined calls, notwithstanding. He has lamented the fact that he never got the chance to thank his friend for, in the end, trying above all things to save her, purity of motive be damned. 

And he has, in time, come to forgive. It is a pall lifted from his heart by the light of her example—by the choice she made in one of the most devastating moments of her life. Sir. I forgive you. I forgive you. 

He has been—he is and almost certainly will be for some time to come—so many things when it comes to Roy Montgomery. The might-have-beens and almost-victories hurt his heart, and still he longs to tell her the story. He longs to spend one hundred long nights, telling her in hushed tones that Roy Montgomery loved her, that he saw with clear eyes what the two of them were and would be to one another. 

With her father, it’s different. For all the tangled tragedy of Roy and his end, when it comes to her father, things are infinitely more complicated. That’s partly why the first story, he thinks, will come second. 

There’s anger here, too, or he’d long thought there would be. Jim Beckett left her. He abandoned his nineteen-year-old, half-orphaned daughter in favor of the bottle—and courtesy of his Meredith-related hair trigger, to say nothing of the more questionable moments of his own childhood that he and his mother haven’t so much dealt with as simply moved past—he has long braced himself for steely politeness toward her father, should their paths ever cross. 

But the reality turned out quite differently. 

Far from needing to manage his icy tone, he had found himself frozen abject terror the moment Jim Beckett briskly stated his name and intentions. A part of him is still so in shock that most days he expects to see some ghost iteration of himself standing in the doorway, gawping. 

It’s a funny story, or it could be. He could amuse her with all  he went through to shoo an all-too-curious Alexis upstairs, then trying to hide his sweaty palms and keep his voice level. And after a conversation that was too brief for him to find his footing at all, the bobbing and weaving he’d done as his mother pressed for details he would never have shared in a million years. He thinks on some of the hundred nights he tells it to her, it will be a funny story. 

But it’s so far beyond just that—the curious and amusing tale of the first time he met her dad. It’s a story that pulses with such sorrow that any anger he’d envisioned harboring was gone in an instant. In its place, he’d found nothing but empathy for the man’s unending grief for the loss of his wife.  And rising above that, respect for a father’s love so deep he’d knocked on the door of a stranger to ask for help keeping his daughter in the world, knowing full well that the gulf between them, narrower in recent years, remained wide enough to leave him no other recourse. 

He’s only had glimpses of that part of the story—the life she saved. He has only bits and pieces, and he wants to give them to her, piled high on his offering palms. He wants to hold his breath and find the rhythm of her side of things. 

It’s strange how short a time it has really been that he’s lived with these stories. The strands of the two narratives wind all through his heart and mind like hundred-year ivy. They bind together such important pieces of who it is he has decided to be. The time before them, when he kept his intentions—his desires—out of the corner of his eye, seems clouded and alien to him. 

When he thinks now of telling them, his mind conjures intimacy in all its varieties. It conjures a park bench and the sun warm on their faces, her hand creeping toward his as they sneak sidelong glances at one another. He sees a cafe table with a neglected latte in front of each of them, and wine she reaches for from the console table behind his couch where she sits with one bare foot tucked up beneath her. He dares, sometimes—his mind and heart dare—to imagine their breath mingling as they whisper to one another, pillow to pillow in silhouette. 

There is anger, still. There is confusion and injury and grace each of them needs to grant the other. But when he thinks now of telling the two stories locked inside him, he imagines telling them in hope. 

They are, these stories, a burden to bear and a treasure to guard. They are locked inside him for now, but sometimes—sometimes—there passes between them a smile, a glance, a quickening of heartbeats, and he thinks it won’t be long. Sometimes, the first of those hundred long nights doesn’t feel at all far off.   A/N: I was trying to get an idea that I’ve had sketched out for a while to work. I began this just trying to question myself about what I wanted to do there and how that idea would work as a story, and then Brain Poneh ran off, as usual, and there was this. Which doesn’t really work. 

[mrmrswales]

Tena Koutou katoa, mai Te Whare Ariki o te Kuini As-Salam Alaykum. Good morning. Today we gather in a place of worship, faith, and friendship. We gather here in Al Noor mosque, a home for community and for family. On the 15th of March, tragedy unfolded in this room. A terrorist attempted to sow division and hatred in a place that stands for togetherness and selflessness. He thought he could redefine what this space was. I am here to help you show the world that he failed. Now, when I woke up in London on the morning of 15th of March, I could not believe the news. An act of unspeakable hate had unfolded in New Zealand – a country of peace. And it had unfolded in Christchurch – a city that has endured so much more than its fair share of hardship. And when it was confirmed that 50 New Zealand Muslims had been killed – murdered while peacefully worshiping – again, I just could not believe the news. I have been visiting New Zealand since before I could walk. I have stood alongside New Zealanders in moments of joy and celebration. And I have stood alongside New Zealanders in this city in moments of real pain, after loved ones, homes, and livelihoods had been lost after the 2011 earthquake. And what I have known of New Zealanders from the earliest moments of my life, is that you are a people who look out to the world with optimism. You have a famous strength of character. You have a warm-hearted interest about cultures, religion, and people thousands of miles from your shores. You acknowledge, debate, and grapple with your own cultural history in a way that has no real parallel in any other nation. So again, I could not believe the news I was hearing on the 15th of March. A country that seemed to be bucking global trends of division and anger, looked like maybe it too would fall victim to those intent on promoting fear and distrust. I have no doubt that this is what the terrorist had hoped for. But New Zealanders had other plans. The people of Al Noor and Linwood mosques had other plans. In a moment of acute pain, you stood up and you stood together. And in reaction to tragedy, you achieved something remarkable. I have had reasons myself to reflect on grief and sudden pain and loss in my own life. And in my role, I have often seen up close the sorrow of others in moments of tragedy, as I have today. What I have realised is that of course grief can change your outlook. You don’t ever forget the shock, the sadness, and the pain. But I do not believe that grief changes who you are. Grief – if you let it – will reveal who you are. It can reveal depths that you did not know you had. The startling weight of grief can burst any bubble of complacency in how you live your life, and help you to live up to the values you espouse. This is exactly what happened here in Christchurch on the 15th of March. An act of violence was designed to change New Zealand. But instead, the grief of a nation revealed just how deep your wells of empathy, compassion, warmth, and love truly run. You started showing what New Zealand really was almost immediately. On the road outside these walls people pulled their cars over and started caring for the victims even when they did not know if it was safe to do so. Your neighbours opened their doors to those who were fleeing the violence. Your first responders apprehended the killer and immediately worked to save lives in the most challenging of circumstances. In the days that followed, thousands of bouquets of flowers filled public spaces in this city, brightening the darkest of moments. Your Prime Minister showed extraordinary leadership of compassion and resolve, providing an example to us all. Imam Gamal Fouda - you displayed wisdom and grace that is almost unthinkable given what you witnessed with your own eyes. Your words in the days after the attack moved the world. Your reminder that the victims needed to be remembered both as Muslims and as New Zealanders, showed that grief revealed you to be a man of great wisdom. You could not have been more right when you declared that this country is unbreakable. On the map New Zealand may look like an isolated land. But in the weeks that followed the 15th of March, the moral compass of the world was centred here in Christchurch. You showed the way we must respond to hate – with love. You showed that when a particular community is targeted with prejudice and violence, simple acts – like wearing a headscarf or broadcasting the call to prayer – can reassure those who have reason to be afraid. You showed that an attack designed to divide a society against Muslims only brought us all closer to our Muslim friends. The Muslim community showed the world the true face of Islam as a religion of peace and understanding. I was very moved by the stories of the great distances that your friends and families travelled to support you in your time of need, even when your previous connections had not always been frequent. They travelled here to support you because you were family and that is what families do. They drop everything when it is needed. People of all faiths and backgrounds can learn a great deal from how the Muslim families affected by the 15th of March attacks rallied around their loved ones. The example provided by New Zealand will prove to be of enduring value to all nations. What happened here was fuelled by a warped ideology that knows no boundaries. The world has rightly united to fight the extremism that has made sorrowful brethren out of cities like New York, Paris, London, and Manchester and that has taken so many lives in Sri Lanka in recent days. And so too we must unite to fight the violent brand of extremism that has led to fatal shootings in a church in Charleston, South Carolina and a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; a van attack on the streets of Finsbury Park in London; the murder of an MP in West Yorkshire; and now so many deaths in two mosques here in Christchurch. Extremism in all its forms must be defeated. The message from Christchurch and the message from Al Noor and Linwood mosques could not be more clear - the global ideology of hate will fail to divide us. And just as New Zealand has taken swift action to ban physical tools of violence, we must unite to reform the social technology that allowed hateful propaganda to inspire the murder of innocents. To the people of New Zealand and the people of Christchurch – to our Muslim community and all those who have rallied to your side – I stand with you in gratitude for what you have taught the world these past weeks. I stand with you in optimism about the future of this great city. I stand with you in grief for those we have lost, and with support for those who survived. And I stand with you in firm belief that the forces of love will always prevail over the forces of hate. — No reira, kia kaha, Arohanui Tena Koutou Tena Koutou Tena tatou katoa Shukran. Salam.

The Duke of Cambridge at Al Noor Mosque

[kolbehq]

FILE // BASIC INFORMATION

Name: Aurora “Rory” Lindon.

Age: 28 years old.

Gender: Female.

Pronouns: She/her.

Species: Human.

Home Planet: Lysander.

Job: Medical officer.

Criminal Record: Voluntary manslaughter, conspiracy to commit an act of terror, criminal negligence, obstruction of justice, perjury.

Sentence: Life.

Faceclaim: Eliza Taylor.

FILE // BACKGROUND

Aurora Lindon should’ve had a perfect, beautiful life.

Her parents, both scientists of different disciplines, were transferred to Lysander before her older sister had been born. Their mother, Alexis, was feisty and stubborn, attributes she claimed had been positively endearing to her husband Alton, who was always the more level headed of the two. Adorably in love and passionate about what they did, Alexis and Alton Lindon sought not just a better life, but the perfect life for their perfect family. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for two Antigone natives; their affluent backgrounds simply eased an otherwise grueling immigration process, and seven months later, the first of the Lindon clan was born exactly where her parents wanted her to be, in the heart of the most breathtaking nature preserve in the galaxy. Aurora would soon follow, less than a year after her sister was born, and their perfect nuclear family had been created, ready to plant roots and grow - but a family of scientists should have known that nothing in space can grow the way it should.

It began with their father. The truth of what happened to him would forever remain shrouded in mystery to the Lindon girls - one day he went to work at the Chemistry laboratory, and then he didn’t come back. Aurora was only eleven, and more than anything, she just remembered going through the motions of what grief was supposed to be based off what she saw around her - shock, sadness, anger, guilt, grief. Blonde girls cloaked in black gowns, no burial because there had been no body, no closure because there had been no story. Even as she got older, there were no whispers from her peers or her mentors about what had happened that fateful day, what caused her father and allegedly three others to pass away so suddenly. There had been no alert of disease, no explosions, no fires - just poof, and her father was gone, leaving only questions for his daughters to inherit. Her mother was the most quiet of them all, a stark change from the woman who had raised them, and although Aurora was more than content with letting the dead ends die, her sister was much less forgiving.

The oldest Lindon daughter had become a teenage conspiracy peddler, sneaking out at all times of the night to do god-knows-what, and breaking almost every law an underage native could, the punishments for her infractions always just short of youth detention. Breaking and entering, theft of petty goods, hacking government systems, the laundry list of criminal deeds her sister had racked up before the age of eighteen was nothing short of shocking. Aurora couldn’t put enough distance between the two of them; she once had been her sister’s shadow, wanting to be just like her and their mom, but Aurora had come to realize that their father’s death, especially the sheer lack of closure, had affected her sister in ways she could never understand.

Adulthood was supposed to be her new start - with an inherited love of biology from her mother paired with the sheer intelligence of the Lindon genes, Aurora got into medical school with hopes of helping those who couldn’t be helped by anyone else. She loved a good puzzle, and diagnostics became her strong suit, although she was required by the Lysander government to have more than one marketable skill in her field - so she chose infectious diseases and the study of all things micro, inspired to follow in her mother’s footsteps as she neared retirement, although Alexis’ focus had always been plant diseases and viruses. Aurora didn’t make much of an effort to keep in touch with her family after leaving home - her sister was a lost cause, as far as she was concerned, and her mother was merely the shell of a woman she knew. It was selfish of her, but Aurora couldn’t stand to see the people she once placed on the highest pedestals fall before her very eyes, and so she left, on her own path to make a better world for herself.

She should’ve known better.

She had been working on a top-secret contract for a new biowarfare agent, originally commissioned by leaders on Antigone for the ongoing war before the project was hijacked by her own government on Lysander, most likely as a deterrent against any new colonization developments. She didn’t agree with bioweapons, but orders were orders, and she knew better than to not comply at this point in her career. Aurora walked into the lab one day, only to find the usual top-security safety protocols in place had been breached without a single security personnel in sight. She remembered what happened next like it was a dream, even if it was the subject of her worst nightmares.

Aurora heard them first. The chorus of wet, soft wheezing noises - the sound of men dying as their lungs filled with fluid - punctuated by a half whispered, half hissed argument. Rounding the corner, her eyes fell on her mother and sister, alone in her lab, covered in the burgundy splatter of drying blood, bodies scattered around them. Her bioweapon out of its safety container, held in the air like the deadliest trophy as her sister whipped around and caught Aurora’s gaze over their mother’s shoulder for the split second before she pulled the trigger, and Aurora watched a hole burst out where Alexis Lindon’s heart had been. They were surrounded by military police only a moment later, but of course, it was too late.

The official story went as such - after the mysterious disappearance of their father, the Lindon sisters did everything they could to uncover the truth about what happened to him. While the eldest did this in any capacity she could, often illegal, the yougest opted for a more conventional route to infiltrate the enemy from within. At some point, the Lindon sisters had discovered that the Lysander government had found their father guilty of treason to sell secrets of the state to an independent militia group on Hermes, which had been accidentally reported by his wife, who thought she had discovered a mole leak. This was enough grounds to deport him back to Antigone, where he was executed for capital treason. The Lindon sisters recruited their mother to aid them in an act of penance to their father’s memory - to destroy Lysander’s most expensive medical laboratory, where the youngest Lindon was stationed, using the very same research her parents had worked on. She had inside knowledge of the lab, the security detail, the weapon, and all possible exits. With Aurora’s help, they broke in to steal the bioweapon to be unleashed on the lab itself, but something in the plan went amiss, leaving Alexis Lindon dead and her daughters without an escape route.

This wasn’t even close to the whole truth, but the truth didn’t matter once the government’s version of the story came out. Almost instantaneously, the Lindon family were the poster children for anti-immigration idealists of Lysander, already milking the tragedy in an effort to remove any further colonization of the planet to protect the nature reserve. Aurora had literally nothing in her favor, including an “accomplice” who was more than happy to implicate her - her sister had disabled all of the lab’s cameras, looked enough like her that passerbys had assumed she was her, and had even programmed an incriminating amount of evidence into Aurora’s personal devices. It had been her fail safe, lest something go wrong and she needed a scapegoat, it had to be enough information that Aurora would spend the rest of her life fighting it, allowing her sister all the time in the world to roam free. Without their mother to testify another side, it was literally Aurora’s word against hers, and Aurora’s word apparently didn’t count as much. It didn’t help that the story of their father broke right alongside theirs, terrorism apparently running in the family. Behind closed doors, the prosecution was happy to give Aurora the plea deal she sobbed for, given how much circumstantial evidence they were relying on and how little she fit the criminal profile of a long time conspirator, murderer, and terrorist, they knew she might be able to win empathy points with a jury if put on a public trial. She was given a choice, and she chose happily - to escape the life she had been subjected to by the hand of her kin on Lysander as well as put as much distance between herself and her sister as possible.

FILE // CURRENTLY

Aurora Lindon died that day on Lysander, and Rory rose from the ashes to board the ship. Unlike many of her co-inhabitants, Rory actually enjoys life on an exploration ship, despite the whole “space grave” inevitability. As part of her contract, she is allowed to serve as a medical officer to the greatest of her abilities except in the presence of a raw contagion - apparently, she’s considered a potential risk for bio-terrorism, who knew? She’s mostly utilized for diagnostics and petty tasks, her “violent” past making some of her superiors wary to give her more responsibility. Although Rory isn’t happy with how life panned out for her on Lysander despite her best efforts, she’s trying to accept the things she cannot change, and is enjoying the peace of mind that has come with escaping her home planet once and for all. She especially enjoys being able to help people who cannot help themselves, her original purpose for becoming a doctor before the expectations of adult life muddled her path, and certain other people simply destroyed her ability to have a path in general. Rory is haunted by the things she saw in the lab, and has recently come into a bout of insomnia after her dreams left her more haunted than rested. Most days, she keeps to herself aside from polite conversation with her co-workers and patients. Rory understands she has a pretty “impressive” rap sheet despite her innocence, and she allows it to precede her for now instead of establishing a new reputation. It’s taken her whole life, but she believes she has finally learned she can’t trust or rely on anyone but herself, and she needs to watch her own back at all times, making her a little paranoid aboard the ship.When she’s not required to work, she spends her free time reading and drawing, though she often doesn’t share what she’s working on. If it seems like she’s a little spaced out, it’s because she is - after what happened, Rory feels stuck, unable to stop replaying and analyzing every moment of her life since her father disappeared to see if she can find the tiniest detail that could help her appeal her conviction and maybe set her life back to normal.

[hell0-there-lady]

I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left.

I was a blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked five-year-old when I joined my family on the picket line for the first time. My mom made me leave my dolls in the minivan. I'd stand on a street corner in the heavy Kansas humidity, surrounded by a few dozen relatives, with my tiny fists clutching a sign that I couldn't read yet: "Gays are worthy of death." This was the beginning.

 Our protests soon became a daily occurrence and an international phenomenon, and as a member of Westboro Baptist Church, I became a fixture on picket lines across the country. The end of my antigay picketing career and life as I knew it, came 20 years later, triggered in part by strangers on Twitter who showed me the power of engaging the other.

In my home, life was framed as an epic spiritual battle between good and evil. The good was my church and its members, and the evil was everyone else. My church's antics were such that we were constantly at odds with the world, and that reinforced our otherness on a daily basis. "Make a difference between the unclean and the clean," the verse says, and so we did. From baseball games to military funerals, we trekked across the country with neon protest signs in hand to tell others exactly how "unclean" they were and exactly why they were headed for damnation. This was the focus of our whole lives. This was the only way for me to do good in a world that sits in Satan's lap. And like the rest of my 10 siblings, I believed what I was taught with all my heart, and I pursued Westboro's agenda with a special sort of zeal.

In 2009, that zeal brought me to Twitter. Initially, the people I encountered on the platform were just as hostile as I expected. They were the digital version of the screaming hordes I'd been seeing at protests since I was a kid. But in the midst of that digital brawl, a strange pattern developed. Someone would arrive at my profile with the usual rage and scorn, I would respond with a custom mix of Bible verses, pop culture references and smiley faces. They would be understandably confused and caught off guard, but then a conversation would ensue. And it was civil — full of genuine curiosity on both sides. How had the other come to such outrageous conclusions about the world?

Sometimes the conversation even bled into real life. People I'd sparred with on Twitter would come out to the picket line to see me when I protested in their city. A man named David was one such person. He ran a blog called "Jewlicious," and after several months of heated but friendly arguments online, he came out to see me at a picket in New Orleans. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from Jerusalem, where he lives, and I brought him kosher chocolate and held a "God hates Jews" sign.

There was no confusion about our positions, but the line between friend and foe was becoming blurred. We'd started to see each other as human beings, and it changed the way we spoke to one another.

It took time, but eventually these conversations planted seeds of doubt in me. My friends on Twitter took the time to understand Westboro's doctrines, and in doing so, they were able to find inconsistencies I'd missed my entire life. Why did we advocate the death penalty for gays when Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" How could we claim to love our neighbor while at the same time praying for God to destroy them? The truth is that the care shown to me by these strangers on the internet was itself a contradiction. It was growing evidence that people on the other side were not the demons I'd been led to believe.

These realizations were life-altering. Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise. I couldn't justify our actions — especially our cruel practice of protesting funerals and celebrating human tragedy. These shifts in my perspective contributed to a larger erosion of trust in my church, and eventually it made it impossible for me to stay.

In spite of overwhelming grief and terror, I left Westboro in 2012. In those days just after I left, the instinct to hide was almost paralyzing. I wanted to hide from the judgement of my family, who I knew would never speak to me again — people whose thoughts and opinions had meant everything to me. And I wanted to hide from the world I'd rejected for so long — people who had no reason at all to give me a second chance after a lifetime of antagonism. And yet, unbelievably, they did.

The world had access to my past because it was all over the internet — thousands of tweets and hundreds of interviews, everything from local TV news to "The Howard Stern Show" — but so many embraced me with open arms anyway. I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it. All I could do was try to build a new life and find a way somehow to repair some of the damage. People had every reason to doubt my sincerity, but most of them didn't. And — given my history, it was more than I could've hoped for — forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt. It still amazes me.

I spent my first year away from home adrift with my younger sister, who had chosen to leave with me. We walked into an abyss, but we were shocked to find the light and a way forward in the same communities we'd targeted for so long. David, my "Jewlicious" friend from Twitter, invited us to spend time among a Jewish community in Los Angeles. We slept on couches in the home of a Hasidic rabbi and his wife and their four kids — the same rabbi that I'd protested three years earlier with a sign that said, "Your rabbi is a whore." We spent long hours talking about theology and Judaism and life while we washed dishes in their kosher kitchen and chopped vegetables for dinner. They treated us like family. They held nothing against us, and again I was astonished.

That period was full of turmoil, but one part I've returned to often is a surprising realization I had during that time — that it was a relief and a privilege to let go of the harsh judgments that instinctively ran through my mind about nearly every person I saw. I realized that now I needed to learn. I needed to listen.

This has been at the front of my mind lately, because I can't help but see in our public discourse so many of the same destructive impulses that ruled my former church. We celebrate tolerance and diversity more than at any other time in memory, and still we grow more and more divided. We want good things — justice, equality, freedom, dignity, prosperity — but the path we've chosen looks so much like the one I walked away from four years ago. We've broken the world into us and them, only emerging from our bunkers long enough to lob rhetorical grenades at the other camp. We write off half the country as out-of-touch liberal elites or racist misogynist bullies. No nuance, no complexity, no humanity. Even when someone does call for empathy and understanding for the other side, the conversation nearly always devolves into a debate about who deserves more empathy. And just as I learned to do, we routinely refuse to acknowledge the flaws in our positions or the merits in our opponent's. Compromise is anathema. We even target people on our own side when they dare to question the party line. This path has brought us cruel, sniping, deepening polarization, and even outbreaks of violence. I remember this path. It will not take us where we want to go.

What gives me hope is that we can do something about this. The good news is that it's simple, and the bad news is that it's hard. We have to talk and listen to people we disagree with. It's hard because we often can't fathom how the other side came to their positions. It's hard because righteous indignation, that sense of certainty that ours is the right side, is so seductive. It's hard because it means extending empathy and compassion to people who show us hostility and contempt. The impulse to respond in kind is so tempting, but that isn't who we want to be. We can resist. And I will always be inspired to do so by those people I encountered on Twitter, apparent enemies who became my beloved friends. And in the case of one particularly understanding and generous guy, my husband. There was nothing special about the way I responded to him. What was special was their approach. I thought about it a lot over the past few years and I found four things they did differently that made real conversation possible. These four steps were small but powerful, and I do everything I can to employ them in difficult conversations today.

The first is don't assume bad intent. My friends on Twitter realized that even when my words were aggressive and offensive, I sincerely believed I was doing the right thing. Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do. We forget that they're a human being with a lifetime of experience that shaped their mind, and we get stuck on that first wave of anger, and the conversation has a very hard time ever moving beyond it. But when we assume good or neutral intent, we give our minds a much stronger framework for dialogue.

The second is ask questions. When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view. That's important because we can't present effective arguments if we don't understand where the other side is actually coming from and because it gives them an opportunity to point out flaws in our positions. But asking questions serves another purpose; it signals to someone that they're being heard. When my friends on Twitter stopped accusing and started asking questions, I almost automatically mirrored them. Their questions gave me room to speak, but they also gave me permission to ask them questions and to truly hear their responses. It fundamentally changed the dynamic of our conversation.

The third is stay calm. This takes practice and patience, but it's powerful. At Westboro, I learned not to care how my manner of speaking affected others. I thought my rightness justified my rudeness — harsh tones, raised voices, insults, interruptions — but that strategy is ultimately counterproductive. Dialing up the volume and the snark is natural in stressful situations, but it tends to bring the conversation to an unsatisfactory, explosive end. When my husband was still just an anonymous Twitter acquaintance, our discussions frequently became hard and pointed, but we always refused to escalate. Instead, he would change the subject. He would tell a joke or recommend a book or gently excuse himself from the conversation. We knew the discussion wasn't over, just paused for a time to bring us back to an even keel. People often lament that digital communication makes us less civil, but this is one advantage that online conversations have over in-person ones. We have a buffer of time and space between us and the people whose ideas we find so frustrating. We can use that buffer. Instead of lashing out, we can pause, breathe, change the subject or walk away, and then come back to it when we're ready.

And finally ... make the argument. This might seem obvious, but one side effect of having strong beliefs is that we sometimes assume that the value of our position is or should be obvious and self-evident, that we shouldn't have to defend our positions because they're so clearly right and good that if someone doesn't get it, it's their problem — that it's not my job to educate them. But if it were that simple, we would all see things the same way. As kind as my friends on Twitter were, if they hadn't actually made their arguments, it would've been so much harder for me to see the world in a different way. We are all a product of our upbringing, and our beliefs reflect our experiences. We can't expect others to spontaneously change their own minds. If we want change, we have to make the case for it.

My friends on Twitter didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles — only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain and violence. I know that some might not have the time or the energy or the patience for extensive engagement, but as difficult as it can be, reaching out to someone we disagree with is an option that is available to all of us. And I sincerely believe that we can do hard things, not just for them but for us and our future. Escalating disgust and intractable conflict are not what we want for ourselves, or our country or our next generation.

My mom said something to me a few weeks before I left Westboro, when I was desperately hoping there was a way I could stay with my family. People I have loved with every pulse of my heart since even before I was that chubby-cheeked five-year-old, standing on a picket line holding a sign I couldn't read. She said, "You're just a human being, my dear, sweet child." She was asking me to be humble — not to question but to trust God and my elders. But to me, she was missing the bigger picture — that we're all just human beings. That we should be guided by that most basic fact, and approach one another with generosity and compassion.

Each one of us contributes to the communities and the cultures and the societies that we make up. The end of this spiral of rage and blame begins with one person who refuses to indulge these destructive, seductive impulses. We just have to decide that it's going to start with us. Source (video)