Lea sighed. "It's not like I'm angry all the time, or anything," he said. "But I spent a decade of my life not being able to feel anything. If I feel something, I'm not going to let it go, because I know for a fact that, good or bad, everything is worth feeling. And some things, like this, are important to feel, because someone needs to and judging by the results, not enough people do."
"I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the answers about big concepts good and evil, justice and injustice. And definitely don't know the specifics of what the laws here are like and I'm not likely to learn; judging by previous experience in Diatu, all studying laws is likely to accomplish is putting me to sleep. But after everything I've seen and experienced, I do at least know a thing or two. I know that lumping everyone from would-be world conquerors to hired stooges and everything in between together in one group is a stupid idea. And I'm realizing more and more- with all due respect to Ben and Mal- that having 'who your parents were' or 'who you married' being the only qualifying factors for being named the ruler of a country is an even stupider one."
Lea leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on his thighs, looking down at his folded hands between his knees. "If the Isle was meant to be a prison, and just poorly managed, I could believe that Ben's parents had good intentions and just screwed up. I don't doubt that all that stuff you mentioned was a factor, like anger, inexperience, and public pressure. And maybe the whole thing was their idea, maybe someone else originally came up with it, but as King and Queen, the responsibility ultimately falls on them, and to a lesser extent, the rest of Auradon's nobility, who almost certainly had a say."
"But the Isle's not meant to be a prison. It's meant to be a trash dump. It's not a place to house prisoners, either for punishment or rehabilitation; it's a place where you to throw anyone or anything that you don't want, forget about them, and leave them to rot. It's the societal equivalent of sweeping the dirt under the rug and hoping no one notices. The rulers of Auradon didn't treat the people on the Isle as prisoners. I can't even say they treated them like non-sentient animals, because they didn't even keep animals in those conditions. They treated them like literal trash. Something disgusting and dirty, something undeserving of even the most basic decency, and most importantly, something less. Less than them. Less than people."
"I can forgive a lot of things, Aqua. I can offer understanding for a lot of things. But there's no excuse for treating people, even bad people, as less than people. There's no excuse for leaving children to rot for the crimes of their parents. There's no excuse for the Isle as they made it. None. Whatever the people they sent to the Isle deserved, whatever 'justice' would have been for them, it wasn't that. And the people that put them there knew it."
He straightened, turning his gaze back to Aqua directly. "But it's interesting that you bring up fear like that, because I was thinking the same thing. Except not about just them, but about all of Auradon. You saw how the place was when we first arrived; everything was just a little too clean, too neat, too perfect. To the point where it almost seemed fake, like we were walking through a theme park or a movie set rather than a real place where people were meant to live. And Mal told me that even at an outdoor festival, people were constantly cleaning up, scrubbing down tables and stuff. As if they were desperate to get rid of any kind of mess or anything not squeaky-clean and perfect right away."
"That just smacks of fear to me. A fear of not being seen as nice enough, clean enough, perfect enough. Not being 'good' enough. Like everyone was constantly trying to prove that they were 'good' enough for Auradon, and hiding or getting rid of anything that didn't fit that image. Which ties back in to how they viewed the people on the Isle as 'less than'. Because if they weren't constantly saying by their actions- 'Look, see? We're not like them. We're nice and clean and good. We're the total opposite of them.'- that someone might doubt that they belonged in Auradon, when there was only one other option. Or maybe if they didn't distinguish themselves enough, make themselves seem as opposite as possible, that they'd have to acknowledge that the people they'd looked down on and hated weren't all that different from them in some respects, and they couldn't have that. From what I can tell, Auradon ran partly on fear, even if it was candy-coated fear, and it seemed like that not long before things got turned upside down the cracks were starting to show in more ways than one."
"Anyway, all that said, no, I can't say I've heard that story before. But given that we're from different worlds in more ways than one, I'd almost be more surprised if I had. What's the story?"
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-02-17 09:37 pm (UTC)"I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the answers about big concepts good and evil, justice and injustice. And definitely don't know the specifics of what the laws here are like and I'm not likely to learn; judging by previous experience in Diatu, all studying laws is likely to accomplish is putting me to sleep. But after everything I've seen and experienced, I do at least know a thing or two. I know that lumping everyone from would-be world conquerors to hired stooges and everything in between together in one group is a stupid idea. And I'm realizing more and more- with all due respect to Ben and Mal- that having 'who your parents were' or 'who you married' being the only qualifying factors for being named the ruler of a country is an even stupider one."
Lea leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on his thighs, looking down at his folded hands between his knees. "If the Isle was meant to be a prison, and just poorly managed, I could believe that Ben's parents had good intentions and just screwed up. I don't doubt that all that stuff you mentioned was a factor, like anger, inexperience, and public pressure. And maybe the whole thing was their idea, maybe someone else originally came up with it, but as King and Queen, the responsibility ultimately falls on them, and to a lesser extent, the rest of Auradon's nobility, who almost certainly had a say."
"But the Isle's not meant to be a prison. It's meant to be a trash dump. It's not a place to house prisoners, either for punishment or rehabilitation; it's a place where you to throw anyone or anything that you don't want, forget about them, and leave them to rot. It's the societal equivalent of sweeping the dirt under the rug and hoping no one notices. The rulers of Auradon didn't treat the people on the Isle as prisoners. I can't even say they treated them like non-sentient animals, because they didn't even keep animals in those conditions. They treated them like literal trash. Something disgusting and dirty, something undeserving of even the most basic decency, and most importantly, something less. Less than them. Less than people."
"I can forgive a lot of things, Aqua. I can offer understanding for a lot of things. But there's no excuse for treating people, even bad people, as less than people. There's no excuse for leaving children to rot for the crimes of their parents. There's no excuse for the Isle as they made it. None. Whatever the people they sent to the Isle deserved, whatever 'justice' would have been for them, it wasn't that. And the people that put them there knew it."
He straightened, turning his gaze back to Aqua directly. "But it's interesting that you bring up fear like that, because I was thinking the same thing. Except not about just them, but about all of Auradon. You saw how the place was when we first arrived; everything was just a little too clean, too neat, too perfect. To the point where it almost seemed fake, like we were walking through a theme park or a movie set rather than a real place where people were meant to live. And Mal told me that even at an outdoor festival, people were constantly cleaning up, scrubbing down tables and stuff. As if they were desperate to get rid of any kind of mess or anything not squeaky-clean and perfect right away."
"That just smacks of fear to me. A fear of not being seen as nice enough, clean enough, perfect enough. Not being 'good' enough. Like everyone was constantly trying to prove that they were 'good' enough for Auradon, and hiding or getting rid of anything that didn't fit that image. Which ties back in to how they viewed the people on the Isle as 'less than'. Because if they weren't constantly saying by their actions- 'Look, see? We're not like them. We're nice and clean and good. We're the total opposite of them.'- that someone might doubt that they belonged in Auradon, when there was only one other option. Or maybe if they didn't distinguish themselves enough, make themselves seem as opposite as possible, that they'd have to acknowledge that the people they'd looked down on and hated weren't all that different from them in some respects, and they couldn't have that. From what I can tell, Auradon ran partly on fear, even if it was candy-coated fear, and it seemed like that not long before things got turned upside down the cracks were starting to show in more ways than one."
"Anyway, all that said, no, I can't say I've heard that story before. But given that we're from different worlds in more ways than one, I'd almost be more surprised if I had. What's the story?"