#resurrection problems

[jaynetodd]

batfam meeting minutes: the one where jayne tries to explain herself

sits backward on chair in the middle of the batcave, spinning slightly and munching on a bag of chips that definitely came from Alfred's "emergency snack" cabinet

Damian: Todd, explain your presence immediately. You're getting crumbs everywhere.

Dick: I think what Damian means is, we're all a little curious about your... situation.

Bruce: brooding silence

Me, with my mouth full: My what now?

Tim, not looking up from his laptop: Your existence. How you're... you know... Jayne instead of Jason. The whole revival thing.

Jason, leaning against a wall with arms crossed: Yeah, I'd like to know that too, considering I'm standing right here. This some kind of multiverse bullshit?

dramatically throws hands up, sending chips flying everywhere

Oh THAT! Yeah, I have absolutely no idea. One minute I was, you know, SUPER dead. Like, crowbar-to-the-face, explosion, the whole shebang. Next thing I know I'm waking up in a Lazarus Pit, except I've got... gestures vaguely at entire body all THIS going on.

And then some League of Assassins guy goes "Welcome back to the land of the living, Jayne Todd" and I was like "Sure, whatever" because arguing seemed like a lot of work when my brain was still basically green pit soup.

So now I'm Jayne! Ta-da!

jazz hands

Bruce: deeper brooding silence

Barbara, wheeling in with coffee: So you just... accepted it?

Alfred, appearing with a tray of sandwiches: I believe what Master Bruce is failing to articulate is concern about having two versions of the same person in one timeline.

Duke, grabbing a sandwich: I'm still new here, but even I know this isn't the weirdest thing to happen to this family.

I mean, I was busy having a Lazarus Pit rage episode and planning my dramatic revenge return to Gotham. The gender thing seemed like a minor detail at the time. Plus, turns out having a completely different body is actually super convenient when you're trying to hide from your former mentor who thinks you're still six feet under.

Steph, appearing suddenly: That's the most on-brand thing I've ever heard.

Cass: nods approvingly

Harper, fiddling with some tech: So we've got two Todds now? Double the attitude, double the fun.

Kate, checking her weapons: As long as you both remember who the superior redhead in this family is.

Jason: There can't be two of me. This doesn't make any sense.

shrugs and steals Tim's coffee

Look, I don't ask questions about my weird resurrection situation, and in return, the universe doesn't send me back to being dead. Seems like a fair trade. Now who wants to help me test out the new grappling hooks I "borrowed" from the GCPD evidence locker?

Jason: makes eye contact with me ...I'll bring the ammo.

[metamatronic]

I really like the "Champions get Resurrected" idea! I hope to see more of it in the future!

how to piss of the Bird™ (any % speedrun)

(this was my practice pass on how to draw Rito, so forgive the inconsistencies, loll)

[armor-eater]

‘Dungeon Meshi isn’t focused on romance and you may be missing what it’s trying to say if you only focus on that aspect’ and ‘trying to shut down conversations about farcille completely is kinda lesbophonic when that energy isn’t directed towards any f/m or m/m ships’ are both true statements btw.

If you find yourself annoyed that shippers are focusing on farcille but don’t care about other shippers then maybe keep that to yourself. There is a conversion to be had about how fandoms hyper focus on ships but trying to say any f/f ship is responsible for that is kinda insane to me.

[mxtxfanatic]

I will say that y’all gotta lay off my girl Jiang Yanli 😭 She may have done a few small questionable things in life *cough*the wedding dress*cough* but saving Wei Wuxian was not one of them. She only died because she intentionally gave her life to save Wei Wuxian. She used up the last of her strength to shove him, a fully grown man, out the path of a sword trying to backstab him. She saw it coming when nobody else did and chose to save him. It was her choice. Don’t take that away from her by calling her impulsive or acting like “if only she had time to think,” she would have chosen differently. If one Jiang was gonna give themself to Wei Wuxian wholeheartedly, it was gonna be the one who publicly claimed him as her brother. Cause that’s what real family does.

[calypsolemon]

its actually really funny the character arc me and garmadon have gone on together... from thinking he kinda sucks to thinking he was a really good father to thinking he kinda sucks again but in a more nuanced way. #progress

[shorthaltsjester]

not the tragic fate underlying c1 where only vex or vax could end up happy but not both being undercut and made less tragic and less fateful because the goddess of death and fate has been given the new character trait vindictive

[vaguely-concerned]

I feel that during the first coffee date walk through the market, rye has a fraction of a millisecond's kneejerk trauma freakout of '...wait. wait. am I really catching feelings for a rich boy again. with how that went down last time. am I truly that stupid' (once derogatorily referred to quite openly at a party as 'young master anaxas' pet mortalitasi' to which the young master anaxas only grinned and shrugged and STILL you don't break up with his smug controlling ass for good for six more months because you have a desperate bottomless yearning pit where your self respect should go, twice shy lol). and then he actually looks at lucanis standing next to him getting harding spearmint to help with bad dreams and generally being so quietly thoughtful and sweet through the prosaic yet necessary medium of grocery shopping it makes me feel a little unwell to truly contemplate. and rye is like '*the softest fondest eyes anyone has ever turned on anything* ...you know what. I suspect we don't have to worry about that repeating, I think we're probably safe. I am comfortable being this level of stupid. (slowly dawning marital intent even at this stage)'.

(part of the reason rye buys NONE of illario's bullshit at all right from the beginning is that he's basically vaccinated against this exact type of dude after that relationship lol. charming suave guy who in the beginning pays you a lot of lavish attention and takes pains to make you feel special every time you're in a room with him -- but shallowly and mostly, it slowly dawns on you, when there's something he wants from you (and he's often doing it at the expense of someone else, raising you up to put someone else down and you won't believe this... it can turn into a seesaw at a whim. yay). and beneath that there's just a seething pit of resentment and inferiority complexes and bitterness left to fester until he can make it everyone else's problem and that IS going to start to bubble up between the cracks with you too if you stick around for long enough. no thank you been there done that wasted my youth and potential on it and all I got was this lousy shiny set of new emotional intimacy issues haunting me for life! trust me illario I HAVE, as it were, chosen the wrong dellamorte before, which is exactly how I know I didn't this time. go get him lucanis I've got your coffee

hilarious mental image: rye and illario sitting quietly together while everyone else is busy milling about during a cursed dellamorte family dinner (the vibes are so bad. you know the vibes are bad. sitting as still as you can and hoping for calm skies is your best bet without lucanis or teia favourite child privileges to work with) and rye out of the blue gazing thoughtfully into nothing over the edge of his glass with half-lidded eyes to go 'you know. you remind me a lot of my ex. not in a good way' and illario with absolutely no shame and hilariously also something that's the closest he ever gets to real sympathy going 'yeah, I get that a lot'. best talk those two ever had, unironically. their bond leveled up to its final form that day. *soulsborne boss defeated text* MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING REACHED)

[cocogum]

Y'all I'm currently scanning the season 4 artbook and I just completely forgot how many capes this freaking book has 😭😭😭

[annabthesolitarywriter]

The urge to turn my LOI re-write into a Halbarad Lives AU! just because I picked Mads Mikkelsen as his faceclaim and I love him so much.

But nah, it would mess up my plans even more. Or maybe not?

The golden trio of the North. Yep. Fine gentlemen, all of them. It is too bad because I had thought of Aragorn and Elegil would attend Halbarad's funeral (a decent funeral service) in chapter two or three of the rewrite. But I cannot waste Mads Mikkelsen like that.

Reason says let him stay dead, my heart and eyes say let him live. Halbarad surviving would definitely affect the lives of Eledhwen and Elarien (his two OC daughters in my AU) as well as that of his OC wife. Elarien would not hate Aragorn anymore and they probably would have no reason to move to Minas Tirith and Elarien would not get to meet Enna and her Maiarin husband later on. Her adorable Maiarin daughter probably would not exist anymore either.

Ughhh...

I love Mads too much. Maybe I should change Halbarad's faceclaim to someone I like less, so that I am not as tempted to use him actively. But Mads and Viggo are both Danish boys and they look alike, have the same vibe and Mads is just perfect. Unless I only use him in some past One-shots. Or dreams.

I'll sleep on it and decide over the next few days.

[ananke-xiii]

Epilogue: the Grim Reaper and the Sol Invictus.

My series about resurrection is over but I felt like I needed to “end” it by tying up the loose threads of my “Billie won theory”. I wanted to post this epilogue on the day of the Winter Solstice because I started this resurrection madness around the time of the Autumn Equinox so I thought it’d be cute <3.

As I’ve repeated many, many times, in this retrofitting fantasy of mine Billie and Chuck’s actual conflict is over the power of resurrection. There are rules in this universe that must be followed (and even bent if necessary) because the natural order must be preserved. For the majority of her time on screen Billie is strictly associated with rules as she seeks to contain damage for the sake of Order. She very much believes in Order but, for at least 4 seasons, she doesn’t want to take over it. On the contrary, Billie wants to re-establish the power of Death in the narrative. Thus, resurrections must be contained, controlled or even stopped. This is the “a place for everything and everything in its place” credo. Figuratively speaking, she wants stories to stop changing and start ending as they’re supposed to.

Chuck also knows about universal rules and he wants (or so he thinks) “his story” to end but he wants it to end the way that he had planned. He tampers with the rules of Time as he pleases but he doesn’t have complete control over them. He can control Time/the story up to a certain point. In the end, he rebels against the laws of the natural order but he’s also aware of his limitations and knows where he has to comply with them. He’s not omniscient nor omnipotent, he “just” has a very considerable amount of knowledge and power. Ultimately, however, he can write as many drafts and books as he wants but he can’t write the Death Books. Since his story never ends the way he wants, Chuck uses resurrections (or, rather, most of the time people doing the resurrections for him) as a tool that allows him to start anew. In a way, he keeps retelling “his” story and never allows it to end because he wants it to end the way that he wants.

Interestingly, the “resurrection as power struggle”- angle shows a side of Chuck-as-character that I hadn’t noticed before and that actually gives him more depth: Chuck is a rule breaker. Don’t worry, he’s no Robin Hood in this fantasy of mine because he’s a sly, slimy, treacherous disruptor of Order but it’s important to notice that he’s not the Order. But neither is Billie. In Billie’s mind Chuck is “just” another disruptor of the natural order who needs to be eliminated while she “just” happens to be the one who needs to clean up after his mess. On a very practical level She was right but… was she right?

I think that in her role as Death she had the right to re-claim her centrality. Literal death obviously kept happening on the show so that wasn’t the actual problem. In this resurrection fantasy of mine, the problem is that Death has lost its symbolical meaning. Resurrections, at a certain point, must end or, as Cas said, they might start feeling like punishments rather than chances. What’s gone, what’s past, what’s not there anymore must eventually be freed and let go. Otherwise resurrections risk to become ways to stay disconnected from reality. This doesn’t mean that the past will be forgotten, just that it needs to be unlocked and transformed. It comes a time when retellings must stop and people must face Death in its symbolic power, that is “the Great Transformation”. The highlight here is more on the word “Reaper” than on the word “Grim”: reaping is a very Life-related activity, wheat must be reaped so people can eat. It’s an image of abundance, reward and… success. It’s about continuing free from the chain of the past and about being ready to write something new.

On the other hand, in her role as Billie she got it all wrong. I can’t really pinpoint where the change happened but her character changed somewhere in S15. From a smart, scheming, enigmatic character she becomes this reactionary villain who wants to take over God for the sake of power. She’s convinced that Dean is her ultimate enemy (he’s very much not), consequently this makes her act blindly and a bit stupidly, imo. She had been using Dean since she brought him back in S13, the two even agree on a lot of stuff, she knew he was an important pawn. However, at the very last minute, Billie says that Dean is “human disorder incarnate” showing that, much like Chuck, she didn’t understand Dean at all.

Or, perhaps, this change in her attitude was the result of Chuck’s goading? To be honest I don’t know, I don’t quite understand her character’s change from rules-oriented to Order-oriented and I haven’t been able to find ways to retrofit this into my fantasy, lol. Taking over Chuck in order to become the new God doesn’t really make sense compared to the way she had been previously written. Maybe some important plot-point is eluding me right now, it could be, but I’m pretty sure that even Old Death knew that one day God would be reaped. Even as a reaper Billie knew about this and in S11 she says that she was close to reaping God. To me this pretty much establishes Death as something, if not necessarily bigger than God, definitely closer to how the natural order operates. Of which God is just a part of, like everybody else.

Honestly, to me, it totally makes sense that she wants to stop resurrections and wants to eliminate Chuck but it doesn’t exactly make sense that she wants both to become the “New God” and to go back to how things were. How things were when? From the Shadow’s and Sam’s words it seems to be an imprecise point in time before S4, but why would Billie-as-character want to restore that specific time is unclear to me. It seems very arbitrary. Perhaps what really changed the narrative was Dean’s resurrection in S4 (of which, incidentally, Castiel is key). Before (and after) that resurrection was possible but it came with a high cost since it was mainly done via demon deals. Dean’s resurrection, on the other hand, defies the rules of the natural order and establishes angels and Chuck as despotic and unruly towards its laws. Angels believe in prophecies that are never fully written, in Apocalypses that are constantly disconfirmed, in a God who’s sold them a lie: they want Time/the story to end as He promised them but Time/the story itself seems to have other plans. Clearly.

Again, according to the Shadow’s words, after becoming the New God, Billie would’ve killed anybody who got resurrected. Why? As a character she was written around the idea that she could interfere but she wouldn’t actively do it: just like Chuck, Billie was used to bend the rules by proxy in order to course-correct stuff. Things going off-script or “wrong” is not news to her. What’s important is minimizing damage and avoid huge escalations. As I said, it was her right and her actual job to do so.

I’m sure I’m missing something here but from what I remember Billie sort of turned into a “crazy villain” for no real reason. The funny thing is that the show itself reveals this contradiction when Sam and Dean thought that she was the one making people disappear while she wasn’t. And OF COURSE she wasn’t because if it was just about killing the resurrected people or the people from the AU she could’ve done it… any time? Before? Whenever she fancied? But she didn’t because that was not the real problem. Like, that was a concern of hers for sure, but it was clearly never her first goal. I feel like the show contradicted itself here but okay, let’s just label this as a “me problem”/ “I don’t remember stuff issue” and let’s move on.

Whatever the case may be, that happened and I’ve written a bit about my “Billie won theory” because, eventually, we see exactly what she wanted, i.e. a return to the “good old days”, back to when God wasn’t in the picture and where angels got back to where they belonged. The world stays the same, the world of hunting stays the same, Sam and Dean stay the same and then they die. There’s no mention of the other characters, there’s just Sam, Dean, the Impala and John’s journal. There’s no transformation. As a matter of fact, death is so literal in this back-to-factory-settings world that even former-god Chuck’s ending is very mundane: he’ll grow old, get sick and die. He’ll be forgotten and no one will care about him. Like everybody else. The highlight here is more on the word “Grim” because this is very sad, austere and sterile.

So Billie won as a character but lost as a symbol. The reversal happened to her “enemy” (who wasn’t actually Chuck but Castiel): Chuck lost as a character but won as a symbol.

As Chuck, the character and the writer, he lost because he didn’t get the ending he wanted: the first born doesn’t kill the second born, the father doesn’t kill the son. He doesn’t even get to experience “death by Dean” (which, I fear, he would’ve morbidly enjoyed) because Dean believes much more in Cas than in the hatred he has towards Chuck. It’s total defeat. Much ado about nothing. The story ended but it didn’t end like he wanted. As “Absent Father” he also lost because… well, turns out he wasn’t exactly absent, rather invisible. As a matter of fact, Chuck is found to be a rather invasive and intrusive Father/writer.

 As God… well, as God He wins as “Sol Invictus”, “Invincible Sun”. His power still circulates in the universe via his nephew, aka His tradition continues. Jack might have restructured it but His structure of power (aka the Patriarchy), Heaven vs Hell, is still preserved. If you obey and follow the rules you’ll go to Heaven, if you disobey and do what you want you’ll end up in Hell. Supreme Invisible Invincible God stays invisible and invincible because we see Jack dissolve into nothing after having claimed that he’ll be in everything and everyone. It should sound poetic, instead it gives very creepy, panopticon vibes. There’s no more prison in Heaven but people on earth who have questions will have to suck it up ‘cause Jack ain’t staying around to give answers, folks.

I’m making this comparison because Winter Solstice was/is the celebration of the Sun that never dies, the invincible sun. It’s an old myth that doesn’t want to die while it should, I think,  because… everything ends… in order to continue. The idea of an invincible power that will win every enemy, of a constant growth that will know no arrest, of lands that will never know the setting of the sun because the empire will be limitless… In other words this myth, I think, is actually about the fear of endings which, in turn, signals a bigger, comprehensible, human fear, that of literal death. But this fear, I think, causes so much harm and makes people live miserably and predicates on such an exploitative system (the patriarchy that, in my personal view, is rooted in the terror of literal death): there must be souls that go to Hell to be tortured and in pain forever in order for other people to experience fake-peace in Heaven. There must be souls that are very “good boys” and follow the rules in order for other people to “fuel” the pits of Hell. And there must be “in-between Things” like monsters, demons and angels who go somewhere else after death, away from human souls because they’re the Other that must never be met. Even in the after-life. If you think about it, Jack’s Heaven is just like Earth without monsters and demons and where angels benevolently watch over souls. It’s a naïve dream.

It’s therefore fitting that Chuck-as-character’s ending will be a human one, that is a certain one. Chuck will literally die like every other human being. He couldn’t fathom “his” story’s ending but he knows for sure how his own actual story will end. Chuck-as-God, however, is alive and kicking and it’ll continue to live inside everyone (brrrr). Billie-as-Death dies too and, with Her, the possibility of Death as Transformation, as change, as novelty. As a way to start dealing with literal death with awareness and compassion. Billie-as-character, however, lives on because things bleakly do get back as they were before. Death is, therefore, literal and final but God is symbolic and re-booted.

In this retrofitting imagination of mine, this is why Dean’s refusal to be brought back is so undeniably sad and feels... wrong? The way I see it, he “accepts” literal death (which, to be honest, was unfortunately never the real problem for him but I digress) but “rejects” the possibility of change. What the story is telling me is that Dean must accept his ending in order for Sam’s story to continue and… like… to me this is a big no and it’s unfair to both characters. The “key” for Sam to access “Normal life” is… Dean’s death? What? This is such an old-school type of ending for a show that was so meta and played so much with its material. It's storytelling nostalgia.

Dean’s literal death and refusal to be resurrected allows Sam to enter the Earth-version of Heaven, the blurry, nostalgic world of the undefeated Sun, aka the Patriarchy (well, its normalized, accepted version anyway since the hunting world wasn't that much different but it was, at least, a critique of that other, imagined world). In the end, then, The Grim Reaper stays grim and the Sun stays undefeated. Both the retelling and the story end.

This is where my resurrection series and my “Billie won theory” end. I wish I could give you a better ending but the power of my imagination fails to turn this show’s ending into something else than what I personally took from it. What I can share with you is what I would’ve liked.

So: the way I see it, everything ends but everything transforms and continues, too. This is why, I think, I would like more stories where Death is symbolic rather than literal and where Power (God) is deconstructed in favor of complete change and total newness rather than a return to how things were/are supposed to be. Perhaps there’s something to learn from Apocalypses: we need to imagine endings but since these are just imagined endings we can potentially end… and start anew… anytime we want.

Cyclicality, as I currently see it, is not a life sentence but a way to explore endless possibilities.

Resurrection, to go back to my main theme here, is a powerful tool of love and disobedience, a wonderful way of travelling through Time/the story and dimensions but, one day, we must be courageous enough to do the final act of Love which is… to integrate the past, let go of it and then… continue. Because we’re finally free from our past conditioning, we can see ourselves for who we really are. Our old, constructed, conditioned self finally dies and a new one is born from its ashes. To continue the journey. To co-write our story. To be co-authors of our life.

To use a myth about a failed resurrection as reference, there will be a time when Orpheus' Love, that's already made him capable of walking between dimensions, will be so strong and he'll have such faith in It that he won't care about gods' rules and about his own internal fears, too. A Love so strong that he'll be certain that Eurydice is with him as he continues his journey moving beyond Death and back into Life. He won't look back but he will nevertheless disobey because he will choose not to look back out of Love, not fear.

Or, perhaps, there'll be a time when Orpheus will look back at Eurydice because he Loves. And because he Loves he'll disobey the rule: he will look back in order to look at his past one last time to say his goodbyes. And then continue.

Or maybe there will be a time when it's Eurydice who stops and asks Orpheus to disobey and turn.  She'll tell him that she doesn't want to follow, that she doesn't love him and that he has to let her go if he really loves her. And so Orpheus turns to look at her one last time. And they say their goodbyes.

There are so many possibilities! Stories, myths are repetion and creation that shape our identities! The key is that we can change them, we can imagine new stories to help us make sense of ourselves, to shed light on our hidden, dark corner or even just to look at these corners, contemplate their obscurity and let ourselves be fascinated by complexities and differences. They're here exactly for that!

In other words, I don’t want stories to return but to transform. “Re” is a prefix that indicates reiteration while “trans” means going beyond. These are two different kinds of movements and I prefer the latter. As I’ve said, Resurrections must end too before they become Restorations, nostalgic attempts to bring back the past as we would have liked it to be. I also don’t want stories that “return” to their origins by virtue of sterile narrative techniques rather than via said power of transformation. Briefly put: let me see characters deal with trauma, come to terms with it and finally heal from it in a way that doesn’t mean literal death nor a return to a “golden time” that never was that much golden (otherwise there wouldn’t be any trauma to begin with). Maybe other people don’t agree with me but this is the kind of story I’d like to see more of. The way I see it, in Supernatural (together with other shows that are about destiny/free will) the transformation was taken literally and the ending meant death. The same structure of Power that made the characters suffer stayed the same as things went back to how they were to an imagined “before”.  Paraphrasing my girl Billie/Death, the show said “they died and then they got their happy ending in Heaven” but… “I say… you keep… living”. And changing. And continuing. And going beyond.

Happy Winter to one hemisphere and… Happy Summer to the other!

[thousand-sunnies]

every day the collection of fics i want to write grows bigger

[xxplastic-cubexx]

they brought what to what-

yk i had a feeling they were gonna ship his ass off to space.... fair nuff....

[lordmushroomkat]

Was just thinking about shadowpeach and I remembered a line from a song that fits them so well in the way that it absolutely cuts to the bone.

So anyway here's the lyrics to Elsa's Song by The Amazing Devil so you can think about it with me.

I can hear the cannons calling as though across a dream

And I can smell the smoke of hell in every stitch and seam

And like flowers, the bodies tumble around this muddied lot

I cannot hear them scream, "Forget me not",

Your voice, it carries over the hubbub and the hum

And it paints the sky and circles high like the beating of a drum

You will scream, "I won't forget you, " but I'll cover my cold ears

It cannot be a lie if no one hears

'Cause although you say good day to me, I know I don't belong

And although you hold my hand and say, "I love you, " you are wrong

Because love does not exist here, in this garden, there's no feeling

And you say the words so often that I barely know the meaning

And when all the flowers are rotten and all the cannons shot

I'll scream, but you won't hear, "Forget me not"

And in years to come, you'll wander to the place up on our hill

And then you'll cry to our painted sky, "I loved him then, I love him still!"

And you'll strew some sage and lilies and roses where I rot

Of all the flowers you picked, I knew you would forget

Forget-me-nots

Just. The war with heaven, the loss, the separation, the death, the mourning, the coming back to life but still feeling dead, the distance, the love that was real but hadn't mattered when it needed to, the grief.

I'm gonna cry, I swear to the gods. If someone doesn't make an animatic for this I'm gonna be so upset. It's perfect!! (I guess I could try??? Ugh I have too many projects already, I don't need this!)

[evilkitten3]

it would have been really funny if if madara was a woman. not for like ship reasons or feminism or whatnot; just bc it would be thematically appropriate for obito's reveal if it turned out he was late coming back from the dead bc he was helping out granny (with world domination)

[mel-loly]

-Happy Easter..💛

[utilitycaster]

I think another element of Orym's involvement in this whole plot that is getting misconstrued or otherwise used inappropriately is Liam's statement that Orym can't be objective about this.

It's true that he can't be objective about the person who murdered his husband! I think very few people would be! But that doesn't change the fact that it is in fact completely and yeah, objectively true that the Vanguard murdered his husband because they wanted to get to Keyleth to test if Vax would show up, and so Keyleth's guards obviously tried to prevent an attack on Keyleth, and not only were they killed for defending her, they were killed in a way that specifically prevented resurrection, to no known benefit.

Orym's lack of objectivity doesn't mean he's in the wrong or that he should have to make himself to see the other side of "maybe the people who killed innocent guards as part of their moon experiments have a point." It just means that, for example, even if Abbadina is very pleasantly and calmly saying "oh I don't have any stakes in the moon thing nor do I know this guy who talked over the ley line broadcasting system, I just think he's right about the gods," he's going to leave the house and sleep outside instead of calmly listening. He's not going to be able to make that more general and detached argument about power and murder that Laudna and Ashton can make (also informed by their past experiences, but a little more removed). This is, for him, extremely personal; but he is still correct.

I think a comparable if obviously much less morally/theologically fraught example would be that Laudna, understandably, gets upset when Ashton talks to her about his own experiences with loneliness. It's a great scene, because both characters have experienced pretty profoundly lonely times in their lives.

Would it be appropriate for someone to say "well, Laudna obviously can't be objective here; she's relying too much on her own past experiences to inform her judgment, so we should ignore her"? I think it's pretty obvious that's an absolutely fucking stupid thing to say; but that's what people are saying when they're bringing up Orym's emotional response. People are still allowed to have pretty strong subjective feelings about things that objectively happened.