meadowlark | @clarke.griffin & @lance.sweets

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@clarke.griffin & @lance.sweets

@clarke.griffin
Hi everyone. This is @clarke.griffin and @lance.sweets. We wanted to give everyone an update, as well as give a rundown on some things moving forward.

First off, I know some of you just made it back from the Aerie, while others have been back for a while. For anyone who hasn't heard yet, the Aerie was a separate world where everyone was brought to it and given a new life, new memories, and new relationships. It wasn't an easy place to live, and some of us have only gotten a headstart in coping with what we went through. Still, not everyone's figured out the particulars, and a lot of us just got our loved ones back.

Perhaps most importantly, while we as a group tend to have weird things happen to us, this is the first time that the entire collective world has had a shared experience like this. Many of us came from situations where we were more prepared for this than most of the population of this world. Even if you're new, I'm willing to bet that this is the case.

Being in the Aerie changed us. I believe Lance can put this better than I can, but it's important to remember that you're far from alone in any of this. I'll let him delve deeper into this now.

@lance.sweets
‘Complicated’ is not even close to a strong enough word for the situation we’ve all found ourselves in, and there’s not really any sort of established framework for how exactly to deal with it. We’re all going to be figuring this out as we go along, but there are some key points to keep in mind.

The first is to remember that, for any similarities or differences there might've been, the people we were in the Aerie are not exactly the same as we were here before, or are now. Some patience and understanding with each other will go a long way in navigating what's happened. Additionally, the way in which each of us--including the native citizens--deals with this will be different, and so it will help if everyone can remember that and have no expectations for what others might do or how they may feel, or in what timeframe those occur. There’s no right or wrong way to come to terms with everything that happened, and that includes reconciling two entirely separate lives; some may treat who they were in the Aerie as another individual entirely, some may try to blend the two, and some may prefer the person they were in the Aerie.

But as Clarke said, none of us are alone in this, and that’s something that shouldn’t just be sentiment. As difficult as it can be, reach out to others if you need help; likewise, check in on each other whenever possible. It's very easy, in the midst of something of this scale, for individuals to get lost in the chaos if there isn’t a concerted effort to make sure that doesn’t happen. On that note, we also have people here who had arrived only days before the Aerie began and so had no time to establish any sort of support network, as well as new arrivals who can’t be forgotten about in all of this.

For those of you who have just arrived, hopefully you've found the network; although you'll be anonymous until your IDs are registered, you can still participate in discussions and read through older conversations, as well as access the new arrivals guide and the information compendium, the latter of which I believe is updated but I may have missed something. It'll give you something to do as a distraction from the current situation, at least. Additionally, if you have questions or need something brought to you, someone may be able to help with that.

[Lance probably more with the former than the latter, since he's not entirely sure if he can even get into the safehouse right now and doesn't care to test it.]

@clarke.griffin
If you're looking at the arrival guide and noticing that we need some updates, they'd be welcome right now. I usually handle it, but I'm not of a mind to be able to do so at this moment. [Which will be apparent soon for a particular reason—but also, she was doing a lot in coming back from the Aerie. Clarke always has her hands full, but she also knows she has to make good on her "I delegate I don't do everything" word. See, Gene—she can commit to her nonsense.]

Finally, our group has a bar named Red Wings. Both @stephen.strange and I run the establishment, though it's going to fall mostly to me for the time being. If you would like a place to help you get started here, or even get familiarized with the world, Red Wings is a good place to get started. We offer jobs to all Displaced, and we're only staffed by Displaced, making it so that it's a place where you can settle in on your terms. [Unsurprisingly, she isn't mentioning any code of conduct or her firing someone rather publicly. No need to draw attention to it.] And if that doesn't appeal, we do give free meals (and sometimes drinks) to our own on a regular basis.

Right now, just as we've done before, Red Wings has been converted into a community center to provide outreach and resources to our community. If you come and help out, you'll still be considered an employee and paid wages for helping out.

As a note, I'll be in charge of operations for the time being. If you helped Stephen with any of his responsibilities, let me know. I could use some help. [The point being to take the onus off of Stephen. This is how they manage things.]

We believe that covers everything. We know this is a lot to digest, so please feel free to ask any questions. Lance and I are here to help.

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It's many of us. Many of us believe that this helps, and acting like we're "in power" when we're targets of the government and struggling to get by, and having that notion fed into isn't a good idea.

Not after what happened. Not after some of our people were forced to play roles by literal gods.

It's this way for a reason.

You listed yourself and another as who to go to for changes to be made.

[Hence the, albeit aggressively worded, question. What does "many of us" mean?]

I fail to see why we should be held captive. I did not carve my way to freedom from my master to be enslaved yet again. This is unacceptable.

The property is in our names, though it was originally not meant to be in mine. The original man disappeared some time ago, and I stepped in to take his place alongside Stephen. Most upkeep of the current safehouse is done by multiple people, and it's a system we devised and accepted a while back.

You're not enslaved. Have you never heard of a safehouse? You're given food and alcohol, clothing, and a promise of freedom in just a few days. Or do I need to prove to you that I was kept there over a year ago?

The reason you can't move freely is because you run the risk of exposure and capture, and right now, we're on high alert. Many of us are concerned that we may need to flee for our lives from this city. Any and all of our plans for escape start and end with these safehouses, granting us temporary reprieve before we try to go somewhere else. Many of us are afraid.

I'm not ignoring what you came from before. Like I told Lance, I spent a year in solitary confinement. It's not a good experience. But trust me when I say that this is not the same, and we can't run the risk of you being captured, hurt, or even used by someone here making false promises to you in order to get to the rest of us.

I know very well what a safehouse is. This is not that. This is a prison, I don't care how long you intend to keep us here.

Our ability to choose has been taken from us. How do you not see the problem with this? There is never a good reason for such a thing, and believe me, many have tried and in the past successfully convinced me that there was. I'll give you a guess as to what kinds of people they were.

[Slavers. They were slavers. There's a theme here.]

I'm sorry for the year you spent in solitary confinement. That was every day for me, whenever my masters saw fit. And when it wasn't, I was shoved into a room with a dozen others and forced to live like that until there was need of me. Trust me when I say this "safehouse" feels very familiar in that regard.

It needs to change. People who were taken from their homes should not be treated like prisoners, nor should there be anyone defending it. There are plenty of ways to be careful without resorting to such heinous methods. And that is to say nothing of the drugs pumped through us that make us act against our will.

As I've outlined, there are greater risks out there than a handful of days in a safehouse. These bunkers used to keep refugees trying to flee from their previous lives. We saw a bunch of them when we first came in, and we forced them out because of our unique circumstances. The reason why Red Wings has a safehouse is to offer a temporary safehouse should anything happen to the rest of the ones around the city. That was in the agreement that Markus and Stephen made with Morningstar when they had the deeds signed over.

It's not a jail. You can't open a locked door because the implants here don't allow any unregistered implant open a locked door. That goes for everywhere, including shops.

But I won't force you to trust me or the situation here. I'm not interested in that. Just the truth of how things came to be, as well as how this is a temporary shelter compared to the bigger problems outside.

I was led here. I was led to a place that I cannot get out of. Myself, along with many others, a couple I have noticed who are young people.

Where is the sense in this? Is it okay to hold people against their will because it is easier?

I don't care how this came to be. I care about what is happening now. And I want it changed. Surely you can see that something needs to be changed.

You're brought to this world against your will, like we all were, and whoever brought you to the safehouse should have told you that you'd be out soon. I understand why you wouldn't trust that. But it will happen.

Whether it happens or not does not change the fact that we are still being held against our will. Whether someone informs me of this or not does not change the fact that we are being held prisoner.

You didn't answer my question. Do you believe this place needs no change? Are you going to do anything about it? Or are you content to let things continue to be because you've had your turn already.

I'm open to change, but I'm already running a business employing many Displaced to help them integrate into the world. I come from a dire situation myself. Not like yours—different. Not good. And compared to this world, pretty objectively bad telling from the reactions it gets when I share it. And that confinement plus that world means that my perspective is skewed as a result.

If Lance or anyone else is willing to come up with a plan that also contends with the various risks of letting you roam free without a registered ID that depends on more than luck, I'd be willing to hear it. We all would. But so far, as much as Lance keeps bringing this up, he hasn't produced a plan. He says it's just about a right. But in giving into that right, we're also putting you in danger. I don't think we can proceed without facing that risk head on.

"But". I've heard that one before.

You cannot decide for a person when it is worth taking their rights to "keep them safe". Let us make that decision. That, or stop pretending that it is for our benefit.

[Not that he thinks there's some secret agenda but — okay maybe that's exactly what he thinks.]

But I can see there is little point in going on about this. Expect to hear from me soon.

[Or not. Depends on how he goes about this.]

I don't see the problem. Lance does. So, work with him to cover all of the concerns I raised with him. I'll be happy to clarify any issues that have arose in the past and why those bullet points need to be sufficiently addressed.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic. I don't have an answer, and as I said, I'm currently solving a different problem regularly.

[And if this was Bellamy or Lexa making the demand, she'd drop everything to help them. But since it's not sincerely her people, she won't give it as much credence. It's bias, to be sure, but she also doesn't have enough hours in the day when it isn't her personal crusade.

She genuinely would love for Lance and this anonymous figure to determine a solution that keeps people safe. She knows her methods have been ... even harsher than this in the past. (Once, she chained up her best friend while he screamed so he wouldn't try to bust out of a bunker.) So, as she told him, her perspective is skewed.

She just thinks that also lends her some limitations in being able to help.]

I already plan to.

[He's not touching the rest of that because Shinobu is giving him that tone, which is oddly comforting in a weird and frustrating way. ~~It's because she's right he just chooses not to say it~~.]

Thank you. Good luck.

[ casually looking over at him across the kitchen while she takes her (shitty) tea and watching him furiously tapping at his screen with one (1) finger: ]

Fenris, you're scowling again.

[He is so irate, which is nothing new, but there's definitely something special about it this time. He does pause long enough to glance up at Shinobu though, scowl not faltering.]

This is madness. The fact that we are here, and the fact that there are those who do nothing but stand by — [His arm lowers and his fist comes down on the table harshly.] Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. But it's no less infuriating.

[Sorry Shinobu did you sign up to hear a rant? Because you're hearing a rant.]

[ she has only known him for a few days at most, but he has already become familiar to her in some ways. he reminds her so much of sanemi, a whirlwind of anger that could not be contained, from his scowl all the way down to the way his fist collides with the table. shinobu doesn't flinch, doesn't react other than to take another sip of her tea before setting it down carefully. ]

I don't believe anyone here is simply standing by, and I don't believe your anger isn't warranted.

[ she hears you buddy and she feels it. she's been keeping an air-tight lid on her anger since the moment of their arrival, but getting into discourse over it on the network with a bunch of strangers isn't something she's keen to do at this point in time. ]

These methods have been normalized over a period of time and have been justified as the status quo. I agree that a change needs to be made and while I'm not keen on having another set of new arrivals go through this same situation as we did, perhaps this energy could be directed towards creating an alternative instead. One that we can bring up with those who have the capability of maintaining these changes that we plan to execute.

[ because changes will be made, one way or another. she refuses to have her will stripped from her again. ]

Edited 2021-01-21 00:36 (UTC)

[It's amazing how listening to him and not dismissing his concerns doesn't inspire the same frustration, not that it goes away, but it dissipates some. Some.]

You say that, and yet I can see with my own eyes otherwise! [But he gets it, he does. He gets it far too well, and perhaps that's why it was so easy for him to fly off the handle. Not that it's usually a difficult feat.] Trust me, I intend to do everything in my power to put a stop to this.

[ his concerns are valid and she shares the same sentiment; keeping them locked up in here is counter productive when they could be out there learning about this new environment and helping people. here, they are nothing better than sitting ducks. ]

We may have been fortunate in being able to reach an understanding between us, Fenris, but you understand that not everyone here is so lucky. They're all from different backgrounds and cultures—these methods may have been effective in the past and they've carried it here because they've yet to come up with anything else.

[ it's why she's been firm in staying out of it, observing rather than involving herself. not that she doesn't want to—far from it—but she knows at this point in time, she does not have enough information to offer a lasting solution. clarke raises valid points, and until they address these issues, they'll remain at a stalemate.

she picks up her cup again to finish off the rest of her tea, and her next smile is much sharper, a cold firmness seeping into her tone. ]

And I will be there with you every step of the way.

That's always the excuse—

[He only cuts himself off because, while he doesn't know her very well, Shinobu (along with Kisame) were two that he met and immediately...clicked with, for lack of a better word. Granted, for all he knows, one day he may find himself on the other end of a blade from either of them, but in a place with such few certainties and so much confusion, allies are...helpful. It would be foolish to alienate her.

And perhaps he sees her point. It's like watching Orsino and Knight Commander Meredith going at it in front of the Chantry, never reaching an agreement, escalating tension until...well.

His scowl has downgraded to a frown, at least, his arms now crossed as he watches her smile, like a ceremonial dagger — striking, elegant, but still sharp nonetheless.]

It's not as if I don't understand.

[ gently, ]

I know.

[ she says this with a good amount of certainty, because she knows that beneath all of that anger, there is still a kindness in him. it's why he's so irate, isn't it? the pain he's experienced for years and years, having to fight his way out on his own; the idea of going through that again is unthinkable, and so is the idea of anyone else being subjected to the same fate. is that not what he had fought so hard for? is that not what he had dedicated himself to?

once upon a time, she had let that anger run free. now, she still feels it churning mud-thick through her veins, dark and bitter. ]

I know you do. And, with time, I know we will find an alternative.

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@clarke.griffin & @lance.sweets

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