[fic] Funeral Oration, Gundam Wing
i used to like treize, i think. that was years ago.
Title: Funeral Oration
Fandom: Gundam Wing
exordium
All of Treize's speeches - they are hardly conversations - lead back to war. Questions of art become meditations on the beauty of conflict. Reminiscence serves only as comparison, whether with the political or military past. One moment he comments on the fragrance of this afternoon's pot of tea, and the next he is speaking of the soldiering life, arguing from experience and through reason and, of course, by appeals to emotion.
You have lived through the same past, and you know the old arguments, and if you have not always felt what he wishes you to feel, well -- Treize has high standards for everything, and even emotional responses have their Platonic ideals. Yet still you listen as he makes case studies out of battles you have both seen, and speaks of old comrades while reducing them to values in a death toll.
"But you understand," he says, and you agree. Of course you agree. You are his lieutenant; and besides, perhaps you do understand.
narration
Treize says that he remembers the exact number and all the names of those that have died. Perhaps he is not lying. Still, names are not that different from serial numbers, when there are no faces to go with them. Treize can lay it all out beautifully, of course: dissect the origins of political strife, unravel the threads of history. But a clinical dissection does not always capture the ugliness of death.
confirmation
He cites lessons from history, rather than the arguments of long-dead philosophers. If anything, you think, he is the one leaving quotes for posterity: distilling the essence of life and war (the same thing, at least to him) into a few short lines, brief enough to carve on gravestones.
refutation
Because you are not Zechs, you sometimes think that Treize believes too much in art. He speaks of 'the second act' as though he can already see the final curtain; trusts too much in symmetry. You understand the idea that war is beautiful, yes, but that does not always mean that you agree.
He says, perhaps, "War is the purest expression of the highest of human ideals." Or, "Each soldier's death has meaning, because war gives them such." And you have words to meet his, if you would only let yourself find them: words like futility, tragedy, farce, waste. Yet because you are not Zechs, you do not argue; because you are not Zechs, you know you will not win.
peroration
When Treize speaks it is always to an audience, whether imagined or real: millions of viewers across Earth and the colonies, or unborn generations who will read about him in the history books. And when he ends his speeches it is with the grace of a rapier's killing stroke, the final flourish of strings to close a sonata -- a subtle inclination of the head, a beckoning lift of the hand. You watch and you think: eloquence is both a power and an art. But you also know he has never needed words to convince you.
Title: Funeral Oration
Fandom: Gundam Wing
exordium
All of Treize's speeches - they are hardly conversations - lead back to war. Questions of art become meditations on the beauty of conflict. Reminiscence serves only as comparison, whether with the political or military past. One moment he comments on the fragrance of this afternoon's pot of tea, and the next he is speaking of the soldiering life, arguing from experience and through reason and, of course, by appeals to emotion.
You have lived through the same past, and you know the old arguments, and if you have not always felt what he wishes you to feel, well -- Treize has high standards for everything, and even emotional responses have their Platonic ideals. Yet still you listen as he makes case studies out of battles you have both seen, and speaks of old comrades while reducing them to values in a death toll.
"But you understand," he says, and you agree. Of course you agree. You are his lieutenant; and besides, perhaps you do understand.
narration
Treize says that he remembers the exact number and all the names of those that have died. Perhaps he is not lying. Still, names are not that different from serial numbers, when there are no faces to go with them. Treize can lay it all out beautifully, of course: dissect the origins of political strife, unravel the threads of history. But a clinical dissection does not always capture the ugliness of death.
confirmation
He cites lessons from history, rather than the arguments of long-dead philosophers. If anything, you think, he is the one leaving quotes for posterity: distilling the essence of life and war (the same thing, at least to him) into a few short lines, brief enough to carve on gravestones.
refutation
Because you are not Zechs, you sometimes think that Treize believes too much in art. He speaks of 'the second act' as though he can already see the final curtain; trusts too much in symmetry. You understand the idea that war is beautiful, yes, but that does not always mean that you agree.
He says, perhaps, "War is the purest expression of the highest of human ideals." Or, "Each soldier's death has meaning, because war gives them such." And you have words to meet his, if you would only let yourself find them: words like futility, tragedy, farce, waste. Yet because you are not Zechs, you do not argue; because you are not Zechs, you know you will not win.
peroration
When Treize speaks it is always to an audience, whether imagined or real: millions of viewers across Earth and the colonies, or unborn generations who will read about him in the history books. And when he ends his speeches it is with the grace of a rapier's killing stroke, the final flourish of strings to close a sonata -- a subtle inclination of the head, a beckoning lift of the hand. You watch and you think: eloquence is both a power and an art. But you also know he has never needed words to convince you.