Video - Filtered away from Beatty and O'Brien

[buywithme]

Comrades!

[Pause]

I mean, post-graduate Comrades... or... long term resident institutionalized Comrades, or really just anyone who thinks this makes sense to them. Do you ever feel like... I mean, did anyone else start out disliking it here and thinking that it was entirely wrong, then eventually came around to thinking that even though they weren't happy here, maybe what was happening and what the wardens were doing was something that needed to happen, and then eventually, if you started to think that it was entirely right, what was happening here, did thinking that you were doing the right thing by being here make you begin to like it?

[That probably didn't make sense, did it? Let's try again.]

I mean, what I meant to say was that... [Fffff, let's try for some context on why he's worrying here:]

Back home in the Factory I didn't really have friends. Or books, or alcohol, or hobbies, or free will. And I didn't technically get paid for my work, and everything I did was evil, but I was happy and I felt fulfilled because I believed that what I was doing was right. So, I guess what I'm saying, Comrades, is that it has come to my attention that I have a tendency to look for validation through my work and that I'm afraid I might have accidentally slipped into being blindly subservient to the Admiral because that is exactly the kind of thing that I could imagine myself doing.

I mean, it could be that I actually like it here and that I really do think that being a warden is a good thing, I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell the difference in these circumstances, Comrades.

[Private to O'Brien]

Comrade, did you know you can put alcohol in coffee?

Comments

[darknessb4me]

You can't change what you are.

If you need to fit into a system and take all your validation from upholding it because that's how you've been put together, then you do. The Barge doesn't teach wild dogs how not to be dogs, it just trains them.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

But Comrade, being a dog isn't a learned behavioral trait, but I think that taking my validation from fitting into a system might be.

[darknessb4me]

Just because it's something learned doesn't make it any less a part of what you are now. You've been-

[He laughs suddenly, and his voice goes cold.]

You have been created in the image of devotion. You can't choose if you will serve. Only who and what.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Well, when you say it like that, Comrade, you make it sound really creepy.

[Ngh, but annoyingly, Prefect kind of suspects you're right.]

How do you know this kind of thing?

[darknessb4me]

[Lightly] Experience.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

When you were a Prince, did you have a lot of people who were just instinctively devoted to you?

[darknessb4me]

Well, yes, generally that comes with the title.

[Clears throat.]

I rewired people to make my army. It didn't matter what they were before. They became mine.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

But then, once you were gone, wouldn't they just... I don't know, Comrade. Wouldn't they stop being yours and become their own again?

[darknessb4me]

Yes.

[yeah pretty much.]

Those are the Forsaken you might hear Sylvanas talking about. They regain their wills, but their minds are still altered. Cold. Bloodthirsty. Ferociously loyal to the first thing they can latch onto, with a jealous hatred for anything else.

I think there's an expression - "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."