Prompt #58: Silence, "The Language of Grief" by Lunatique

[ljlee]

Title: The Language of Grief
Author: Lunatique
Rating: K+Words: 484

Genre: Gen
Char: OC (Xing)
Note: Follows from Prompt #57 entr Defying Definition.
Summary: The silence catches up to him.

Comments

[amyraine]

I love how you show both sides.

"He staggered to the edge of the water and sank down, clutching at the pebbles that would no longer respond to his spirit, and allowed the voice of his loss to break the silence of the world."

This is a lovely and poetic line.

[ljlee]

I actually remember wondering if you'd be pissed at me because I'd had that discussion about bending removal with you and overlithe. Bending removal could have been about something real and moving (rape, mutilation, and genocide not being it *slaps forehead*), but the show's writers never even got into why it's so horrible despite making bending the sole focus of the season to the detriment of the story.

Thank you for the compliment! I was about to say my hours translating poetry must have paid off, but this was written like the day before I translated my first poem. Ah well, practice?

[amyraine]

It's complicated.

I don't believe bending removal is equal to losing a piece of your soul, and like you said it is not like murder, genocide, rape or mutilation...

...but there is a spiritual component and it is deep and personal to those who have it in the way that spiritual things are deep and personal. Martial arts aren't called "arts" in English for nothing, and artists have intense relationships with their art.

So I would expect that a bender would grieve the loss of their bending in the way that I would grieve if I couldn't write any more. I just believe what separates good benders from bad is the same thing that separates all powerful people into good and bad: the ability to recognize that there are more important things than having power, such as lives, and quality of life.

[ljlee]

I agree art is the best metaphor for bending, and it makes for much more productive conversations than loaded and inaccurate comparisons to various crimes. Bending could also have been a conversation about modernity, as you depicted in your own entry. As spirituality recedes and science advances, the relationship with nature becomes much less hands-on and more abstract. Also people become less defined by their birth and culture and start putting an emphasis on individual talents and aspirations.

In a way non-benders had that affinity for technology and individual freedom from the start, which is why I believe the future belongs to non-benders. Xing, calculating guy that he is, saw which way the ground was tilting and chose his path accordingly. That doesn't mean he won't suffer for it, since every decision carries consequences and all change brings loss as well as gain.