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discedo_logs2008-06-19 11:03 pm
teaandlightning.livejournal.com) wrote in discedo_logs2008-06-19 11:03 pm
THE MEETING THREAD
Who: Iroh and EVERYONE AND ANYONE ELSE.
Where: The Police Station!
When: Sometime in the afternoon, probably backlogged before this.
Rating: PG fortl:dr EPIC.
Summary: Iroh says some stuff, and then some things happen.
the log:
[ooc:Kay guys, here’s how it works. Iroh has several points to cover, so I will make a post for each with the subject in the title. Discussions regarding said subject will be made in the form of replies to the subject post. Anyone else who wants to discuss a particular subject should post a new thread with their own character in a similar fashion. Let’s kick this pig!
. . . sorry, I just always wanted to say that.]
All things considered, Iroh was fortunate to have had the time to prepare that he did. Many of the speeches he had made in his youth as a Fire Nation general had been scripted, and given with great pomp and circumstance to crowds of loyal citizens, safe and happy in their own homeland. They had been easy. They had been flawless. They had been safe to make.
Yet far more of his speeches had been delivered with no preparation, far from his homeland, to soldiers whose conviction was being tested, not for the first time, by cold, or hunger, or homesickness, or the prospect of defeat, delivered even as he shivered in the polar winds of the North and his desire for the fair, warm land of his birth was so powerful that it gnawed at his heart and clawed at the embers of his own devotion to his father’s Nation, and his grandfather’s cause. These had been the important speeches, the fly-by-night calls to arms that could make or break a troop’s confidence, the ones that shook him to his core and stuck with him even as the words faded from memory, and he wondered how in the hell he had managed to encourage the men that followed him to walk further, fight harder, when even his eyes were clouded with hunger and he had not heard from the southern reinforcements in weeks.
He had given many of these speeches. Some of them had been more successful than others.
Now that he had grown the vision to see beyond that war – beyond his grandfather’s cause, his grandfather’s madness – he was given even more reason to wonder at the things he had said to spur his men on to fight in a war that was meant to do nothing more than promote a single tyrant’s legacy.
It was easier to promote a cause – even a wrong one – when your people loved and admired you, and Iroh had to admit, though there was not a lot he missed about being the Fire Nation’s heir apparent, the devotion of his beloved subjects was something that he had never resented having.
As he looked at the assembled people of Discedo, he reflected that speaking to them was, in fact, easier than it would have been to speak to his subjects now. It was not difficult to him to have become a traitor to a cause he had grown to resent for being the focus of so much of his life, but even so, speaking to people who despised him for becoming a traitor to his own legacy would have been more difficult than speaking to people who were, as people were inclined to be, suspicious of someone who had proposed order in a time of chaos in a fashion they had not been brought up to idealize.
He breathed in deeply before beginning, clearing his lungs of stale air and feeling the embers of the fire that burned within him at all times flaring to life with his intake of fresh oxygen.
He lifted his communication device for the attendees of the meeting to see and pressed the talk button.
“With your permission, I will turn my communication device on so that those who cannot be present at this time will still be able to hear our conversation,” he announced.
These were his people now, and as different as they all were, he cared about them. He cared for them as he still cared for the people of his Nation, and the people of the other nations of his world. They were different, each and every one of them, each and every world, and yet their differences only served to remind him more poignantly that no matter how far he was from home, the people of the universe were never so different from the people of the country he had once believed in with all his heart that he could not bring himself not to love them as much as he loved the citizens of the Fire Nation.
These were his people, and he loved them.
And he would protect them in the ways he knew how, whether they agreed with it or not.
Where: The Police Station!
When: Sometime in the afternoon, probably backlogged before this.
Rating: PG for
Summary: Iroh says some stuff, and then some things happen.
the log:
[ooc:Kay guys, here’s how it works. Iroh has several points to cover, so I will make a post for each with the subject in the title. Discussions regarding said subject will be made in the form of replies to the subject post. Anyone else who wants to discuss a particular subject should post a new thread with their own character in a similar fashion. Let’s kick this pig!
. . . sorry, I just always wanted to say that.]
All things considered, Iroh was fortunate to have had the time to prepare that he did. Many of the speeches he had made in his youth as a Fire Nation general had been scripted, and given with great pomp and circumstance to crowds of loyal citizens, safe and happy in their own homeland. They had been easy. They had been flawless. They had been safe to make.
Yet far more of his speeches had been delivered with no preparation, far from his homeland, to soldiers whose conviction was being tested, not for the first time, by cold, or hunger, or homesickness, or the prospect of defeat, delivered even as he shivered in the polar winds of the North and his desire for the fair, warm land of his birth was so powerful that it gnawed at his heart and clawed at the embers of his own devotion to his father’s Nation, and his grandfather’s cause. These had been the important speeches, the fly-by-night calls to arms that could make or break a troop’s confidence, the ones that shook him to his core and stuck with him even as the words faded from memory, and he wondered how in the hell he had managed to encourage the men that followed him to walk further, fight harder, when even his eyes were clouded with hunger and he had not heard from the southern reinforcements in weeks.
He had given many of these speeches. Some of them had been more successful than others.
Now that he had grown the vision to see beyond that war – beyond his grandfather’s cause, his grandfather’s madness – he was given even more reason to wonder at the things he had said to spur his men on to fight in a war that was meant to do nothing more than promote a single tyrant’s legacy.
It was easier to promote a cause – even a wrong one – when your people loved and admired you, and Iroh had to admit, though there was not a lot he missed about being the Fire Nation’s heir apparent, the devotion of his beloved subjects was something that he had never resented having.
As he looked at the assembled people of Discedo, he reflected that speaking to them was, in fact, easier than it would have been to speak to his subjects now. It was not difficult to him to have become a traitor to a cause he had grown to resent for being the focus of so much of his life, but even so, speaking to people who despised him for becoming a traitor to his own legacy would have been more difficult than speaking to people who were, as people were inclined to be, suspicious of someone who had proposed order in a time of chaos in a fashion they had not been brought up to idealize.
He breathed in deeply before beginning, clearing his lungs of stale air and feeling the embers of the fire that burned within him at all times flaring to life with his intake of fresh oxygen.
He lifted his communication device for the attendees of the meeting to see and pressed the talk button.
“With your permission, I will turn my communication device on so that those who cannot be present at this time will still be able to hear our conversation,” he announced.
These were his people now, and as different as they all were, he cared about them. He cared for them as he still cared for the people of his Nation, and the people of the other nations of his world. They were different, each and every one of them, each and every world, and yet their differences only served to remind him more poignantly that no matter how far he was from home, the people of the universe were never so different from the people of the country he had once believed in with all his heart that he could not bring himself not to love them as much as he loved the citizens of the Fire Nation.
These were his people, and he loved them.
And he would protect them in the ways he knew how, whether they agreed with it or not.