Sublime

Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire.

We did not see the adversary for what he was, and we brought him into our home.

Lord Waxillium Ladrian.

The colony worlds were acting like their safety could exist separate from the well-being of all the other systems and ships. It couldn’t be so hard to see how accepting a little restriction and regulation benefited everyone. But inner-worlds culture didn’t measure it that way. For them, being better meant being better than the person next to you, n

“If there isn’t a quieter way, we can always go loud,” Dafyd said. “But once we’ve gone loud, we can’t go quiet.”

We’re still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be assholes.”

epistolary

That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn’t. That’s how you find out it’s too late.