Chapter 87: Maneuvering Room

The legendary Zhong general Sun Tzu defined strategy, bing-fa, as a set of rules to help make decisions about possible situations and decisions that a person might encounter on the battlefield and off. Personally, I prefer to define the concept somewhat more broadly: A strategy is the set of approaches one takes towards a goal that one has selected.

On a gameboard, the goal is to defeat the opposing player. At war, the goal can vary, from conquest to defense to punitive measures or other such possibilities. But the strategy is how one goes about implementing those goals. On a gameboard or at war, the strategy might be aggressive or defensive, offensive or reactive, straightforward or subtle. At play, my strategy might be to capture as many pieces of my opponent's as possible, or to outmaneuver them so that I can capture the enemy's key pieces without a protracted struggle. At war, the possibilities are even more numerous; I might have the goal of conquest, in which case, occupying and seizing control of the enemy's territory is my strategy—or, alternatively, I might strike at the head directly, aiming at the enemy leader with the intent of capture in order to force a surrender and settlement. In either case, the goal is served and possibly fulfilled.

But the goal is the why and what, and the strategy is the greater how and the when and where, and it is important to never lose sight of that distinction. You do not have a battle just because you wish to have a battle; no, battles are done in service of a greater strategy, and while stirring tales of heroism might seem like incentive to some, oftentimes it is better to not fight at all, or only fight on one's own terms. Many of the ruminations on dragon combat in these pages are seen by many as glorifying such battles, and I will certainly agree that there is glory and honor in fighting when necessary. And that is key. When Necessary. But if it is not necessary, then it is just a waste—and there is no honor in that. To win without fighting should be the strategy any commander worthy of being followed should aim for, and to preserve their forces for another day.

The Wing And The Ax, Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I, undated draft, Waterford University Archives

...and that's all that this site gets. After last week's AN, I got lectured for how dare I take a stance. I got told that I shouldn't bring in my personal politics, as if I'm just some fiction-producing machine performing for people's pleasure without a life of my own, a life which is impacted by the world in which we live. I was told that I don't have either the right or the ability to stop fascist supporters from enjoying my work, that their right to enjoy life without consequences for their choices overrode my right to not experience harassment and personal danger. I got death threats.

But they don't have that right to enjoy freedom from the consequences of their choices. And as a consequence, I am choosing to exercise my right and my ability to enforce my boundaries. As of now, I will be stopping updating on FFnet. I am auto-archiving email alerts from this site so that I do not see further harassment (or, sadly, any messages of support), and will be doing my final logout as soon as this is posted. I will be focusing solely on Archive Of Our Own as my place to update... where access is now restricted to logged-in accounts only, and the AO3 staff has been alerted to the harassment which now fills the comment section for this fic on this site and will almost certainly follow me, judging by the entitled statements made by the people driving me off of this site.

To those of you who are not Trump supporters, even if you are conservative, even if you voted for him and have since come to realize the depth of your mistake, the rest of this message is not intended for you. I apologize for the inconvenience that this change imposes on you. Even to those who are Trump supporters but are willing to accept my boundaries on this, I appreciate that much integrity on your part. The rest of this message is not for any of you and you can skip to the end of it. This is for those people who both wish to have their cake and eat it too, who wish to support a monster and face no consequences for that choice.

My stance on Trump supporters boils down to this. You can say "bless you" and "I wish for your health" and other such platitudes... but at the end of the day, Trump supporters are fascists, and I am a Jew who is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and one who gets routine death threats from Trump supporters by virtue of being born a Jew, and for being "economically unproductive," a "lazy parasite," and other such fascist rhetoric.

Sure, you might not be "Let's Run Those Camps!" Nazis... but that doesn't keep you from being "I don't care about the harm my leader inflicts so long as I get my tax cut!" Nazis from my perspective. Or, to be even more blunt, speaking as the prospective corpse, it makes no difference to me if you killed me because you hated me, or if you turned a blind eye to my death because you got to save a dollar on your taxes. I'm just as dead either way. And that is not a hypothetical, by the way; if I had still been living in the US during the publication of this story, I would have died in agony in November 2018 from a health condition that I would not have been able to afford to have treated. The bill for the surgery at the hospital in my old city would have been six times my previous annual income, and my previous ACA coverage was butchered by Trump in the year before my medical emergency. Quite simply there would have been no way that I would have gotten the emergency surgery I needed to stay alive if I had still lived in the US at the time, as it qualified as a "pre-existing condition." I would have been denied coverage until it was too late, and died.

Please let that sink in. By US standards, I was not worth the investment in keeping alive, just like the people who are now being written off as acceptable deaths if the US economy can be "reopened", which reminds me rather strongly of the active killing of the sick and disabled in the Third Reich from 1939 to 1945, called Aktion T4. From my perspective, the only difference is that here the victims are being denied supplies and left to die, rather than actively gassed, but they're just as dead either way. So as much as I get statements of "bless you" and others which seem to support me personally... you still support my destruction structurally.

Your decisions, political and otherwise, do not happen in a vacuum. They have consequences, ones which impact other people personally. You voted to let me die a year and a half ago, and I haven't forgotten that. Or forgiven it.

So, yeah. I'm sure a lot of you who have said, "I don't care about your opinion, I'm going to keep reading regardless of your wishes!" consider yourselves to be very fine people.

You're not.

Maybe you're misinformed. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're indoctrinated. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're just in so deep and you haven't realized how far from shore you've gone. Maybe you're not.

Either way, you support and enable a fascist who has already killed friends of mine and would have killed me if not for a stroke of incredible good fortune on my part. And so you are not friends of mine.

I will not debate you. I will not argue with you. I know better than to try. You've had ample opportunity to choose otherwise, and you have failed every single one of those opportunities. You have made your choices, and this is a consequence of the choices you have made: Me recoiling in horror at the monstrosity that you willingly support and wanting nothing to do with you as a result. Just as a certain Austrian would have just been a so-so painter and retired soldier without the followers who elevated him on their shoulders, Trump would be nothing more than a failed TV star and multiple-bankruptcy shitty businessman without his supporters. And it is on that level that I judge you.

You made your bed. And shat in it. Now lie in it.

So for the rest of my readers, who are here in good faith and don't have it in them to support a rapist, a con artist, a thief, a liar, a cheat, a fraud, an egomaniac more concerned with his "ratings" than the deaths of the people he swore an oath to protect... you might even be conservative but you have the courage and integrity to keep from supporting a man who boasts about assaulting women, attacks people for telling the truth, and treats life-saving medical supplies like patronage tokens, doling them out to the states who suck up to him and taking them from the ones who don't... I am dearly sorry for the inconvenience, but for my sanity and my health and my safety, I need to put up boundaries if I am to continue to share this story. Because the other alternative is simply stopping and walking away. And believe me, I considered it. And that option is still on the table. But for now, I still have a story to tell.

Just not here.

You know where to find me.