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bumblingbabooshka · 1 year

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Thinking about Vulcans prizing “calm” over “happiness”.

Like how humans look back on their childhood and remember how happy it was - joyful days spent running around in the sun, getting into a bit of trouble, laughing with peers and family - that’s how they know it was a good one. Meanwhile Vulcans might look back on their childhood and remember how peaceful it was. Quiet days spent studying, the warm glow of candlelit lessons in caves, getting along smoothly with ones peers - that’s how they know it was a good one. Humans typically chose their friends and romantic partners based on if this person makes them feel happy above all. The question of “Do you like being with them?” is interpreted to mean “Does being with them make you feel happy?” But since Vulcans don’t experience (or strive for) happiness there would have to be some other parameter. So I was thinking about like, what is a good relationship to a Vulcan? There’s obviously a big emphasis on ‘togetherness’ in Vulcan unions. The Pon Farr ritual Tuvok does with his [hologram] wife involves them committing to becoming “Two bodies one mind” and it’s stated that they give and receive from each other all that they are. There’s also of course the iconic “Never and always touching and touched”. This is all (as was said during T’Pol & Koss’ wedding) “The Vulcan heart, the Vulcan soul, this is our way.” Vulcans are also (ENT) expected to live together for at least a year after being married - I imagine so that they can bond with and get to know one another. In SNW T’Pring wants for Spock to honor the commitments he makes to her so in that case T’Pring values Spock keeping his word to her and placing her above other things. I see a bit of Tuvok in that, where he prizes his commitment to T’Pel over anything else to the point where he’d nearly rather die than break it: (Even though he eventually agrees to having sex with a hologram it MUST be of his wife and he lets Tom/The Audience know that he will NOT be making a habit of it. There’s no ironclad logical reason for him to react this way as a hologram is not a person but his commitment to T’Pel seems to take precedence and I believe that’s his reasoning. His bond with T’Pel is logical, sustaining and important to him and he’s loath to break it over some bodily need. some desire that will pass even if it kills him.) <- By this way of thinking, betraying T’Pel would be the emotional choice while remaining loyal to her is remaining loyal to his logical self. A strong emphasis on loyalty to one’s mate seems to be a common Vulcan trait. In the beginning this seems to be rooted in tradition but later on its probably assumed that the couple will be loyal to one another out of some sort of actual connection between two people as opposed to pure obligation. In ENT T’Pol says that a certain degree of “affection” is eventually expected to happen within a marriage (though the way she says it makes me think this doesn’t always occur and isn’t necessarily The Goal) and her mother says that she and her husband developed a “deep connection” to one another. All this makes me think that a connection and a sense of ‘togetherness’ or ‘compatibility’ would also be prized over more emotional things like a passion for one another. It’s a partnership above all and that would be prized over a romantic union. It makes me think of Vulcans’ roots in violence and war. Maybe this commitment to a steady togetherness, two people who don’t know each other being able to work together so seamlessly they nearly become one, is a way to show they’ve moved beyond that despite the pon farr remaining. Vulcans are a naturally very emotional species. Someone who incites that would probably not be seen as someone you should spend your time with. Someone who makes your heart pound, sets you ablaze, fills you with passion - that sounds like a bad Vulcan time v_v Tuvok says as much when he talks about how he was struck with “shon-ha’lock”. Humans wouldn’t see anything wrong with having a crush on someone (and indeed in that episode Tom only comes to the conclusion that it’s a shame Tuvok couldn’t act on these emotions) but it’s obvious that even a teenaged crush when uncontrolled can become a very big problem to a Vulcan. In one of the Star Trek Novels Tuvok even stops being friends with and talking to a girl because she tearfully admits she has feelings for him and he sees that her feelings for him cause her pain. Instead of thinking “Oh, she really likes me, good! We’re close friends so maybe we can make this work.” or even “I don’t like her romantically but since we’re close friends we can work through it.” Tuvok thinks “Oh, she really likes me. That must be causing her to become very emotional and I can see she’s clearly upset. I’ll remove myself from her life so my presence doesn’t incite those emotions anymore.” And while him flat out just cutting himself out of her life might seem weird and kind of cruel and a frankly hilarious reaction to someone confessing their love to you - I also think it’s something he thought of as a kindness. If his presence harms her (stirs up emotions in her) then he will remove himself to keep from harming her. Along that vein, calmness or the absence of strong emotions would be a good relationship and one worth staying in. Not that there can’t be any emotions (Tuvok and T’Les obviously care[d] deeply for their respective spouses) but that they must be controllable and able to be cast aside in the face of logic. I also think that “knowing” the other person would be considered very important (after marriage of course). If you’re to operate as a partnership, a team, and especially if you’re both telepaths you should be able to know your spouse pretty damn well. I see T’Pring attempt to do this in SNW where she is constantly fighting to get to know Spock which Spock self-consciously discourages since he’s been told/shown that his human side is unappealing to Vulcans. But yeah man idk...just picturing a Vulcan and a human talking for hours...walking along the beach...sleeping side by side...getting to know one another...and at the end of it all one says “You make me feel happy” and the other says “Your presence calms me” and it means, essentially, the same thing.

#star trek #vulcans #Flipside to humans seeing Vulcan relationships as frighteningly cold and formal: where's the choice? the autonomy? the love!#Vulcans seeing Human relationships as exhaustingly turbulent meandering and estranged: where's the union? the commitment? the connection!#In the star trek universe my only contribution is that I write a book titled 'Vulcan-Human Relationships: Peace & Love'#and it's never important to any story it's just a background gag #Vulcan: Is that your husband? / Human: HUSBAND?? Haha we've only been dating like a year or two. / Vulcan: I can't with this. I have to go.#I don't ever know what to call these things #ummmmmmmmmmm I hope I'm making any sense #alien affections and value systems my beloved....#people who earnestly 100% do NOT desire human concepts of 'love' or 'happiness' - INTERESTING!!!!!#I like Tuvok a lot when i think about this bc he has a Vulcan spouse whom he cherishes while every other main Vulcan has either:#A human love interest and/or A vulcan spouse they don't want to marry #WHICH IS WHY I WISH. THEY HAD EXPLORED TUVOK'S RELATIONSHIP W ITH HIS WIFE. EVEN A ///LITTLE//// BIT.#-chewing at the walls- BUT ITS FINE. IT'S FINE THAT THEY DIDN'T AT ALL. /lie

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v-arbellanaris · 1 year

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Once Again, I Am Dissatisfied With DAI. which! yknow. in other news. water is wet. but like. a lot of the arguments -- both in-world (e.g. from vivienne, wynne, etc,) and from the fans -- for keeping the circles as a system, even with reform, seems to revolve around the idea that mages need some kind of magic school to learn how to control their magic. i don’t disagree that mages need to learn how to control their magic, but i disagree that they need a place for it, or some kind of magic school, for it, and i definitely vehemently disagree that the circle is that kind of place, in the past or the future.

there are canonically other ways, other than the circle -- ways that aren’t formal education systems -- for mages to be educated, with as little risk to themselves, spirits or others, as possible. ways that don’t involve chantry oversight, templar guards, or segregation from the rest of society while they “train”. and, in truth, the circles weren’t created to protect mages or to educate them in the first place -- it’s an incidental feature, not an intentional feature.

like... let’s dig into the history of the circle for a second. because the circle hasn’t been around since the beginning of time, and surely, whatever the mages were doing before to learn to control their magic was working, seeing as how there’s nothing to indicate mages or anyone else was dying en masse from an inability to control their magic. the southern thedosian circle system was "adopted" from the tevinter circle system, with a critical difference -- where the tevinter circle system was a formal schooling system, the southern thedosian circle system was not.

drakon used mages against the darkspawn in the second blight (which started ~1:5 divine). by that point, the first inquisition was already a functioning organisation -- the inquisition itself predates the chantry (the inq starting around -100 ancient and the orlesian chantry established by drakon in -3 ancient), and hunted down dangerous mages and demons (the original inquisition is EXPLICITLY mentioned to be andrastian hardliners who also hunted “cultists and heretics” but this makes no sense as the inquisition predates the chantry. i can only imagine then that this was twisted/added later on, after the nevarran accord, as the seekers’ role became to hunt down cultists and heretics, to act as though that had always been their job/purpose). under inquisitor ameridan, and during the blight, in 1:20 divine (the second blight ends in 1:95 divine, seventy-five years later) the inquisition signs the nevarran accord and become the seekers and the templars, the latter of which exists to hunt down mages to drag them to the circle, which is also established at this time, in an agreement between the inquisition and the andrastian chantry/orlesian empire. the templars are explicitly created to capture mages unwilling to submit to the circle and bring them in. that’s why templars are also referred to in-game as “magehunters”.

i want to note that there’s no indication here that the circles were set up for the protection of mages from the public -- mages had been living in society openly before this. mages themselves (as far as we can tell; maybe bioware will retcon this later and say mages in the first inquisition pushed for this... ) did not push for the creation of the circle; it was created under drakon’s chantry, in conjunction with the inquisition, which contained mages but at this point, the inquisition’s (mostly as a result of ameridan) main priority had shifted from dealing with magic -- it was supporting orlais against the blight. (which further establishes the very roots of the templars and the seekers as the chantry’s army by the time of dai.)

the inquisition’s whole purpose was to hunt down dangerous mages. they then transitioned into... essentially, what they are now. magehunters. but why hunt mages in the first place? orsino asks at the end of da2 why the chantry doesn't just drown mages at birth -- why lock them up in the circle? from a colder standpoint, why aren't mages just made tranquil the moment they're taken into the circle? it's certainly more profitable for the chantry, who can use the tranquil for enchantments, and it would entirely eliminate the so-called danger that mages pose to themselves and others simply by existing. presumably, it might even serve as a “punishment” for the magisters sidereal who were mages that unleashed the blight on the world (according to the chantry). why put them into a "magical boarding school" (again! it’s not a school, it’s a prison. the circles are a prison) in the first place if the very existence of mages is such a danger?

& i think the answer to that question lies in the relationship between the leaders of a nation and the chantry/the templars. the way it seems to work is that chantry law supercedes sovereign law (evidence: loghain's use of apostates against the wardens is labelled a crime by representatives of the chantry during the landsmeet; later in da2 alistair claims he can’t free the ferelden circle as the chantry opposed it) BUT the grey warden treaties supercede even chantry law (duncan is able to conscript amell/surana/tabris (the alienage, of course, is a chantry invention), the warden is able to conscript anders). when you play the mage origin in dao, you're immediately alerted to the fact that greagoir is agitated by duncan's presence, because duncan is recruiting mages for the grey wardens and he has no right to deny duncan that recruitment. this is explicitly exacerbated by the fact that cailan has been demanding mages for the battlefront for the king's army (confirmed by duncan & irving (in the circle tower) and alistair (in ostagar) separately) -- that's why wynne, uldred, and the group of circle mages were present at ostagar.

according to chantry law, which supercedes any ruling cailan could pass, mages belong in and to the circle. so how come cailan legally has the right to demand mages for the battlefront? why can’t greagoir -- the knight-commander of the tower -- simply say no? unless... you know. that was the real purpose of the circle’s creation. not for education. not for the protection of mages. but so that, as emperor, drakon would always have easy access to mages to supplement his army. he “utilised” mages during the blight (again! there’s no explanation of what the hell that means. did mages sign up willingly to fight for drakon? did he force them to work for orlais whenever/wherever he found one??) and splitting the inquisition (ameridan implies the inquisition were actively supporting orlais/drakon during the second blight) between hunting down mages and fighting the darkspawn seems like a waste of resources. but maybe that’s why the division between seekers and templars exist in the first place -- seekers were sent to the battlefront whilst templars, lesser in number maybe at the time, ran the circles as a source of mages. (over time, maybe, the numbers balance between seekers and templars reverse -- templars are easier to control, once the chantry monopolises the lyrium trade, compared to the seekers?) now that would be justification for shoving all these mages into a circle together, rather than just eradicating them on sight.

(it might even explain why meredith/elthina rejected alrik's tranquil solution in da2 on paper; they still needed the mages to fight against the qunari at the time, if they were ever to attack kirkwall. you can kind of see it during the battle in hightown -- meredith sent the mages ahead of her to deal with the qunari. mages are weapons to them. the circle exists to support the military endeavours of the chantry or of the leader of the nation.)

it would also explain why there’s some instances where sovereign law does seem to supercede the chantry law. on the one hand, templars are under the chantry’s control and nations could be convinced to allow the (orlesian) chantry to train templars in their lands to bring mages to the circle and combat dangerous magic (and of course the orlesian chantry monopolises lyrium trade with orzammar so presumably other countries can’t get their hands on it for themselves which yknow! what do people like to say about how the chantry is neutral or helping people again? monopolising the anti-magic serum so no one else can have it sure is very helpful and altruistic...). but why allow the circles to exist, under the power of a foreign-based system (the seat of power for the chantry, who controls the templars, is in orlais after all)? it could so easily be used against you... unless you were convinced that you could also utilise these mages during war.

so, considering this as the central reason for the establishment of the circle, does it mean the circle can't become a school? irl, as far as i know, formal schools started off as a way to educate the military, later to educate the workforce, and schools in colonised nations often served as a vehicle for cultural and religious assimilation. i don't think the circles, as they are, are exempt from this. we already know that the circles approach magic from an andrastian perspective -- it's most clearly highlighted in conversations between anders and merrill in da2, and vivienne and solas in dai. but we see it in how much keili is taught to hate herself in the magi origin in dao, the way magic is taught to be some unforgivable curse and sin. we know (some of) the circles teach mages battle magic (within reason; i always wonder if being set on fire or hit with lightning or whatever else is more than just a game mechanic and reflective of some kind of underpowering of spells so that mages can’t turn against their oppressors easily) probably specifically for the reason i outlined above -- you see mages being taught how to fight in the circle in dao during the magi origin alongside all of the lessons about how they must only ever use their magic to serve. already inherently, circle education functions to supplement the military and to serve as a vehicle for cultural & religious assimilation.

so... even if you were to "reform" the circle -- by removing templars, or removing it as an institution from chantry purview... or whatever vague "reforms" are actually implemented in dai...is the circle, itself, even as a "magical boarding school" necessary? is the circle actually necessary for mages to learn how to control their magic? and tbh the answer is no <3

like you see it time and time again, that you don’t need to go to magic school to learn how to use your magic. you meet so many talented mages who don't succumb to demonic possession or struggle with controlling their magic who didn't receive any education in the circle -- merrill, morrigan, zathrian, lanaya, aneirin, velanna, the hawkes (pc mage hawke, bethany).

later, you learn of the dairsmuid circle, where mages continued the same teachings that have been passed down to them for generations, with no sign that the city has been overrun by abominations or was threatened by uncontrollable magic. you learn of the avvar who willingly become “abominations” and unbecome them, with no loss of life on either side, or threat to the rest of their people.

the reason behind the establishment of the circle has nothing to do with education. any education that results from the circle is incidental to the main purpose -- which is to supply armies with magical power.

#i think there's a... trend sometimes to assign value to a formal education over other forms of education #but education itself is incredibly related to privilege STILL #tevinter essentially having a ruling mage class and the circles there being an elite education system like real-life universities...#it's not a coincidence lol #idk! i just really don't think a formal education system for magic should exist in the first place #it's not necessary???#mages in thedas do absolutely fine without needing some paper qualification saying they're now a qualified mage #my da meta #vee.txt #anti chantry #vee rewrites da

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