Achaean News
Maybe so. Nevertheless.
Written by: Truax Diaboli, Shield Veteran
Date: Tuesday, January 6th, 2026
Addressed to: Citric Mother Eoka e'Jahlorien, Keeper of the Crown
I have never claimed a life unmarked by error, nor pretended that my past language has always met the standard I now articulate. It did not.
On more than one occasion, years ago, I used language that I would not choose today. Where that language caused harm, I addressed it directly and privately with those involved. I did not excuse it. I did not defend it. I took responsibility for it.
A critique of method is not invalidated by the existence of past failure. Growth is not hypocrisy, and accountability is not a lifetime sentence. To argue otherwise is to insist that no one may speak against harm unless they have never caused it, a standard that serves only silence and stasis.
Nor is there equivalence between moments of intemperate speech and the sustained, strategic use of personal denigration as a rhetorical tool. Intent matters. Pattern matters. Scale matters. There is a meaningful difference between a remark made, regretted, and owned, and a method repeatedly deployed to diminish others in lieu of engaging their arguments.
The suggestion that acknowledgement of past mistakes forfeits the right to name present ones, or that apology must be followed by permanent disqualification from discourse, is unacceptable. That logic does not produce better speech. It produces social erasure.
This is not a call to forget. It is a refusal to allow memory to be weaponised as a means of silencing critique or foreclosing engagement. No one here is requesting absolution, particularly from parties whose only apparent stake is the renewal of denigration and social ostracism.
Growth exists. Accountability can occur without annihilation. Arguments still deserve to be met on their merits, not on the basis of who is making them.
Let us not hold referendums on anyones existence, nor contests of who may speak. The only discussion worth having is how we conduct ourselves, and what we choose to reward when we mistake spectacle for substance.
Some of us have been here long enough to recognise the difference. Understanding moves with us. It changes not only who we are, but how we approach others, as it should.
TD
Penned by my hand on the 6th of Valnuary, in the year 994 AF.
Maybe so. Nevertheless.
Written by: Truax Diaboli, Shield Veteran
Date: Tuesday, January 6th, 2026
Addressed to: Citric Mother Eoka e'Jahlorien, Keeper of the Crown
I have never claimed a life unmarked by error, nor pretended that my past language has always met the standard I now articulate. It did not.
On more than one occasion, years ago, I used language that I would not choose today. Where that language caused harm, I addressed it directly and privately with those involved. I did not excuse it. I did not defend it. I took responsibility for it.
A critique of method is not invalidated by the existence of past failure. Growth is not hypocrisy, and accountability is not a lifetime sentence. To argue otherwise is to insist that no one may speak against harm unless they have never caused it, a standard that serves only silence and stasis.
Nor is there equivalence between moments of intemperate speech and the sustained, strategic use of personal denigration as a rhetorical tool. Intent matters. Pattern matters. Scale matters. There is a meaningful difference between a remark made, regretted, and owned, and a method repeatedly deployed to diminish others in lieu of engaging their arguments.
The suggestion that acknowledgement of past mistakes forfeits the right to name present ones, or that apology must be followed by permanent disqualification from discourse, is unacceptable. That logic does not produce better speech. It produces social erasure.
This is not a call to forget. It is a refusal to allow memory to be weaponised as a means of silencing critique or foreclosing engagement. No one here is requesting absolution, particularly from parties whose only apparent stake is the renewal of denigration and social ostracism.
Growth exists. Accountability can occur without annihilation. Arguments still deserve to be met on their merits, not on the basis of who is making them.
Let us not hold referendums on anyones existence, nor contests of who may speak. The only discussion worth having is how we conduct ourselves, and what we choose to reward when we mistake spectacle for substance.
Some of us have been here long enough to recognise the difference. Understanding moves with us. It changes not only who we are, but how we approach others, as it should.
TD
Penned by my hand on the 6th of Valnuary, in the year 994 AF.