bakerstreet | Change my mind

Change my mind.

I used to think that too. The love part, anyway! I still think it about marriage. [ Nefer looks particularly curious, and not at all judgmental. ] I'd really like to change your mind because love feels amazing, and not just romantic love, either. Familial love, the love of a tenacious flower in concrete, the love for an engine you've just repaired that's running like a dream. I think everybody deserves to feel that way about something.

Interesting how nobody seems all that interested in convincing me about marriage. But anyway.

[He sucks at his teeth.]

The expected, obligate loves are the ones I believe in the least. Familial. Romantic. Duty bound. I know what innocent love feels like. The kind that children create and sometimes carry on until they grow up. There are ones I love enough to set my life down for, who I would do anything to see safe and happy. That’s never what anyone seems to mean when they say “love” and I would probably be misunderstood if I said it to them in so many words.

In the place and time where I came from, no suitor would accept a charioteer for a wife. The choice for me was very easy; I won't give up my dream for any man.

Maybe we're getting our ideas lost in translation! I don't know what you mean by 'innocent love', but I don't think you should have to love someone for blood alone. [ And even more confusingly, Nefer has chosen a 'family' based around people she's definitely not related to. ] But... it does lighten my heart to hear that you have people you care for, and that you aren't alone. It sounds as though you haven't been given much reason to love in the more traditional sense, so far.

For all the sins of my homeland, looking down on a woman for being an equestrian isn’t one of them, thankfully.

[He hates to imagine what something like that would do to poor Ingrid, who wants so badly to be a good daughter. But anyway.]

Heh, well you wound up a little more into my side, didn’t you? By innocent love I mean the pure, unconditional love like what children have. Love not tainted by ambition or jealousy or the desire to own someone, to take from them, to have what they have.

The only ones I may be able to say I love, truly, are of that kind. That were born in childhood and have stayed with me, even if it must look different now. Even if we can no longer say the word.

Is personal experience proof enough, young man, or do I need to go find data? The marriage is a sham also requires clarification, because the 'purpose' of a marriage varies based on culture.

The only culture I am familiar with is my own. Discussing anything else would require a lot of context. [Not that he is against it.]

I don’t know what personal anecdotes or data would convince me anyway. How can you turn a concept like love into data anyway? Wouldn’t that just be a collection of personal experiences? People can lie on surveys. And people lie about love often.

Well, where I was born, arranged marriages were the norm, to breed up the next generation of humanity's hidden protectors.

[The last three words were said with a massive bit of sarcasm.]

If you look at it from that goal, the marriages were successful at producing very dangerous people, and mostly loyal to the organization's goals. Of course, from my own personal experience, putting an ocean between myself and my intended fiancee was one of the benefits of becoming disgraced.

But the people -- the humans at least -- where I landed were a bit more interested in marrying someone you loved. And, well, going by my actions, my Alice and I were either in love, or we are both completely mad.

[Wait...]

Or some combination of the two.

[The ugly wince as Thomas starts off his explanation hopefully says a thousand words. Though there are parts and bits Sylvain doesn’t quite understand, the big picture follows.]

It is both versions I mean. Marrying for breeding, [he spits the word like a curse] for power, for politics. It is a cage. A web of social connections made from lies and it creates families from resentment and false duty. And anyone coming from a place or a culture like that… finding love, real selfless unconditional love, and acting on it in a way it deserves? Impossible.

[He’s uh. He’s been holding this all in for quite awhile it seems. Homeboy needs therapy so bad]

[Yeah, THomas has been there. Sometimes you just need to vent to someone who Gets It.]

Not impossible, just merely very difficult. In my case, it had helped that I had gotten away and saw what others made of functional relationships. And dysfunctional in new and exciting ways, of course -- there's nothing like love to break a heart.

I still was lucky I didn't completely ruin my chances on a number of occasions. It shouldn't have worked, and it took luck, effort and a high tolerance for mistakes. And I still don't know if I'd call it 'selfless'. Unconditional love might be the most selfish thing I've done.

That's exactly what I mean. Love does nothing but break hearts. I have never seen otherwise. But most importantly, I have never seen anyone make love work in a way that looked or felt like love.

[He's never felt love from anyone who said the word to his face, or was someone he was socialized to believe was meant to love him. He says it like a generalization, but it is deeply personal.]

Hmph, you may be onto something with that last part. Unconditional, but unspoken. Unrequited love that expects nothing back. It sounds selfless but it is actually deeply self-serving.

Well, what should love look or love feel like to you?

Care. Tenderness. The warmth that protects from the cold of winter. But also the passion that burns a path through danger. The sacrifice of a shield for what it protects. A desire to see the object of love well and safe and content, at any cost.

I'd say I have that with my Alice. My wife. The trouble is that can be difficult to sustain. Or set fire to everything around you. 'At any cost' doesn't leave room to love multiple people.

Unfortunately, I agree.

However, there are types of love that are true, such as the love of a mother for her child.

[Unfortunately, that is one of the ones he has the most trauma about!]

[His voice drips with sarcasm and barely controlled rage.]

Or for a child who isn’t even her own, at the detriment of her own. Yeah, all fairy tales and rainbows.

That is the opposite of what I said. A mother's love for her child, not for someone else's child.

I know what you said. And I know what I have seen. What reality is. Maybe that lovely platitude is true for some, but it is not remotely universal.

Would you exact revenge on her? Or do you still find yourself longing for her love?

I. I don’t know.

[an honest reply.]

If you don't know, then you want the latter. A sincere outpouring of maternal love for her child.

Pathetic.

[He isn't saying she's wrong, though.]

Perhaps.

[ When it came to any other form of love, Sister Imperator would agree. But the love between mother and son was something else in her world. ]

[A memo that Mistress Gautier clearly missed. At least in regards her own child. She somehow managed it with the elder step-son, though. At her own child's downfall.]

[At the core of him, though, is a small and lonely boy desperate for anyone who was supposed to love him to have done so. To have protected him, at the very least.]

My mind remains unchanged.

I can't say that I truly set out to change your mind when I partially agree.

Okay but the tax benefits that come with marriages are very real. You don't even have to love, Just marry for the reduced taxes.

Edited 2024-02-19 03:58 (UTC)

I am afraid that suggestion hits a bit different when I’m the guy folks pay taxes to.

[Sure thr Gautier estate also pays the crown tax to the royal family but they still collect from their citizens.]

Change my mind.

Bonus Baldur's Gate-specific one: All those people were already dead and I won't be made to feel guilt over something I did for love.

Change my mind

Love is fake and marriage is a sham

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Re: Love is fake and marriage is a sham

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My actions were justified.

Rules you didn't agree to follow shouldn't bind you!

I'm a very selfish woman and that's...completely fine, actually.