Deviation Actions
Dear Princess Celestia,
When someone believes they have power over you, they will threaten you. When they do this, what they have really done is identified and exploited a weakness. There are many ways to vanquish a threat.
Sometimes it's by addressing the one who issued the threat, and threatening them back, which generally only works in the long term if there is a perfect balance of power - Which is all but impossible. For instance the Cold War, with mutually assured destruction making the cost of fulfilling a threat too great for either party. This bankrupted the second most powerful nation in our world at the time.
Today, I learned the other method: addressing the weakness. Someone threatened to take something away from me in order to establish their dominance. I realized that even if I could stop them, anyone else could come along and do the exact same thing. It was no longer logical to hold a position I could not defend. I refused to let someone hold it over my head… so, metaphorically, I burnt it to the ground instead.
That's what they wanted, isn't it? Maybe I made things easier for them, saved everyone involved a large quantity of drama in what could have been a bitter and divisive battle that I was destined to lose. And to be frank… I realized I didn't need what gave them power over me. I'm no one's slave. That's not a defensive remark, though; it's an acknowledgement of WHY I am not submissive. I don't stand for threats.
But there is some careful deciding involved. One must question, will others hurt more, or less for what I decided? Certainly my aggressor was in a position to dominate others, but… at my time of crisis, not one of them stood up for me. That doesn't mean they don't care, nor does it mean they “deserve" to suffer.To me, it means they were not suffering at all. They were not going to be threatened. They were all safe. I wasn't David vs Goliath. I was a disadvantaged outlier who realized he had nothing to lose,
And then proceeded to lose nothing.
Signed,
Cyclone Dusk