stormward vs korona [d13 debate]

There was a lot about Accolade Stormward that reminded her of her protoge, Jewel. Both were natives of the world outside of Thirteen, arriving in their little compound for refuge and safety. Though Jewel had never faced a day of want before arriving due to her upbringing in the Capitol and Stormward had come from the poorest of the poor itself, they both possessed the same fiery youth, both the righteous desire to change not just their own situation, but the world around them in the process.

It was enough to make an old woman proud. Though of course she wasn't old - why, she hadn't even broken fifty yet!

They held the debate as customs permitted, but was it really a debate when so much of their policies overlapped? When it came down to the declaration of differences between them, the scale was so minute, so few in number, that there were more differences between the type of people that they were than there were in their beliefs.

So, in unorthodox fashion (though really, since when had Victoria Kronoa ever been anything remotely orthodox?), she didn't rebut her opponent's story, she added to it.

"As my lovely opponent stated, we live in a world where this little isolationist purgatory that we've spent the last eighty some odd years living in is second in quality only to the Capitol itself." It was a cornerstone of her platform ever since she'd first entered politics twenty six years ago, that the people of Thirteen deserved so much better than this hellhole that their grandparents had consigned them to. Back then, it hadn't reached much traction, as old veterans of the Dark Days still held the memories of their deal with the Capitol close to their philosophies.

Nowadays, most of them were dead. And enough of their descendants were eager to right the wrongs of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents that such ideas were mainstream now instead of revolutionary.

"But if you ask me, living in a world where our kids are not chosen seemingly at random to be marched off to a spectacle of a slaughter year after goddamned year is a pretty low bar to hold ourselves to, am I right?" She paused, allowing viewers to take in the words for a moment. "And living down here, slowly wasting away in a compound that no one should have to be born and live and die in without ever seeing the outside world is a fate beneath what any person deserves. We deserve better, Thirteen - but more importantly, the people that we left behind to save our own asses deserve better, as well. And we, the people of Thirteen, are the only ones in any position to do something about it."

Passion fills her voice, a genuine desire to do what's right permeates her every cell. "To sit on the sidelines while people such as Miss Stormward suffer under the rule of a cruel tyrant is no better than participating in such evil ourselves. And not only can we do something about it, but we should do something about it as well."