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[He's quiet while Ian reads, and at the question he gives a small shrug and shakes his head.]

No, nothing recent. There was the incident I alluded to on the network, and mentioned to you briefly before about Gaby telling Stephen to tell Nate to yell at me; I went into the safehouse before the Aerie, and offered to accompany one of the new arrivals on a walk, but Gaby pulled my access to the safehouse door.

[Which surely contributed to this whole thing, so it's only fair to give the information as context.]

I mean-- maybe this is me over-simplifying things, but I'm... not sure criticizing safehouse methodology is the same thing as slandering Morningstar. The two are only tangentially related.

( In that Morningstar helps with the IDs and owns the safehouse, but they're not directly responsible for the process -- and even if they are, criticizing one singular practice isn't calling the entire organization into scrutiny. )

But, like, even if you were outright insulting them, punishing the entirety of the displaced because of one person is...

( Don't say fucked up. )

A little extreme.

[It's reassuring, in as much as he can really feel that way at the moment, that Ian says that; Lance knows he's at least somewhat pro-Morningstar, even if he's not sure how much so. It really doesn't matter, because like Ian summarized, that really wasn't the point here.]

I very specifically didn't mention Morningstar, or Gaby, or Clarke or Stephen. The point wasn't to make new arrivals angry with someone, it was to show solidarity with how they feel about their situation.

[And it's so frustrating that people immediately jumped to assuming the opposite. Not only was he specifically not doing that, but it's kind of insulting to think that if he were he'd have made such an incredibly lackluster attempt at it.]

But even that--just like asking questions before--is apparently too much dissent to be acceptable, and not only is the location of that line now apparent, the consequences are too.

[And yeah, they're... Extreme.]

Jesus.

( Breathed out a little speechlessly, and accompanied by the absent passing of his hand over his mouth. He likes the organization for the good they do, not because he was ignorant to their flaws but because he felt like the good outweighed them.

It's a hard threat to reconcile, particularly given that this kind of censorship is exactly the kind of thing he'd take up activism against. )

That really... cuts the whole thing off at the knees. Kind of takes an open-forum discussion about alternatives off the table because it's not even worth the risk.

[Lance can see the conflict Ian's having to deal with, and he feels a flash of empathy for him; it isn't easy to have to deal with something that shakes your faith in an organization you'd wanted to believe in. It's knowing what that's like that made Lance so aware of the need to figure out what they were dealing with here, and he wishes it hadn't been this outcome.]

From me, anyway. Other people might have a little more leeway.

[She already hated him, after all. Someone with more goodwill directed toward them might get further and do so more safely, but that fact that it would have to be done so carefully in the first place is much of the problem itself.]

( He shakes his head slowly; other people... )

I don't know.

( It's an uncertain murmur, and he settles back finally — eyes still on the message, but he's not really seeing it anymore. )

You're not the only one that's gotten some... less than favorable feedback over it that I've seen. I don't... know if...

( No real need to finish the sentence, Lance knows what he's getting at.

Chancing it on a maybe and having the entirety of the Displaced cut off for that? Yeah, no, he sure as fuck won't be the one driving this project. )

Fuck, dude, I'm sorry. I know you're really passionate about this.

[He considers clarifying a little on that last point--he knows what Ian means, but was less something he was excited to work on and more something it just felt important to do--but that can wait, because as muted and distant as everything feels for Lance right now he's concerned about Ian's reaction. He seems a little shocked, which is understandable, but Lance wants to make sure it's the normal amount of shocked for something like this and not deeper.

So, first, he just asks directly because he can't really manage anything more subtle right now--]

Are you okay?

This is you time, man.

( Maybe the subtle amusement in his correction will help assuage that worry. )

I'm fine. I'm just... disappointed, I guess.

( Which, in his opinion, doesn't hold a candle to the kind of stressed out he knows he'd feel if he were on the receiving end of a message like that. )

[Okay, good, maybe not as shocked as Lance was worried about. He's still going to keep an eye out for any other reasons for concern, but at least there's that.

And he nods, at the last comment, because that's very understandable. Though he should probably add--]

She kind of hates me; and by that I mean very specifically me. Maybe this isn't really indicative of anything more than that.

[It's a very weak attempt, because Lance really doesn't believe it, but maybe. And if even if not--]

She also isn't Morningstar as a whole, so...

[He knows Ian feels favorably toward Morningstar, even if Lance doesn't really, and he's trying to be fair about this. And it is true, after all.]

Edited 2021-01-25 06:49 (UTC)

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