shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

[They hide their face some more... nnnnnooooooo embarrassing]

You're terribleeee...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[They... try to kiss back after a moment to recover from the shock but it's incredibly clumsy and ver inexperienced and okay this is a sweet summer child of a snake.]

 

*Takes hand and shakes it* Koios.

Ohhh that's cute~

 

Billy! Havin' fun with Lindi?

 

WHAT?? I SWEAR TO GOD--

[karkat narrows his eyes. you fucker.]

[and then karkat chokes a little bit trying to simultaneously laugh and make an offended noise]

DAVE, I AM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU BAREHANDED AND PUT YOUR CORPSE IN COMPROMISING POSITIONS FOR YOUR INSTAGRAM FEED. OH, BUT I'LL REVIVE! YOU SAY

NOT BEFORE I'VE COLLECTED ALL THE BLACKMAIL MATERIAL I'LL EVER NEED

ANYWAY. HE ACTUALLY *IS* A GOD, HE'S GOT THE STUPID CAPE TO PROVE IT, BUT OTHER THAN THAT EVERY SINGLE WORD OUT OF HIS MOUTH WAS NOTHING BUT CRUEL, CRUEL LIES. I'M A TROLL, NOT A GODDAMN SCUTTLEBUGGY CRUISING THROUGH THE STREETS OF THIS MISERABLE PLANET

 

No you~

 

A troll? But aren't they creatures from human mythology that live underneath bridges?

 

-Kiss the snek more. They can learn by experience!-

 

[drags hands down his face]
MUST YOU BE SO DISGUSTINGLY ANTHROPOCENTRIC?

MY SPECIES PREDATES HUMANITY, THE UNFORTUNATE NAMING COINCIDENCES ARE NOTHING MORE THAN THAT.

HERE'S YOUR CRASH COURSE, IF YOU MAKE ME EXPLAIN ANYTHING ELSE I WILL MAKE A CLIFF TO FLING MYSELF OFF OF: TROLLS HAVE GREY SKIN AND YELLOW-ORANGE HORNS. OUR BLOOD COMES IN ABOUT ELEVEN GENERAL COLORS. SOME OF US HAVE PSYCHIC ABILITIES. I DON'T, BUT I'M ALSO NOT AN AVERAGE MEMBER OF THE SPECIES IN ANY RESPECT. IF YOU ASK ME ABOUT *THAT* ESPECIALLY I WILL COMMIT RITUAL SUICIDE BY REPEATEDLY STABBING MYSELF IN MY AURICULAR SPONGECLOTS UNTIL I EXCAVATE A PATH TO MY THINKPAN. IT WILL BE EXCEEDINGLY TRAUMATIC FOR ALL PARTIES INVOLVED, I ASSURE YOU

 

Thank you. I will inquire no more.

 

From Homestuck. The bane of every English lit student of the twenty-second century.

 

"Yes, of course assholes are still people," says Ford. "It's a problem of scale. Some very powerful beings regard mortal sapients the way mortal sapients regard nonsapient swarming insects that carry diseases. At that point, whether they're actually people or something else is a debate for ethicists, but it's not safe to assume that they think and feel the kinds of things other people you know might think or feel."

He groans. "Look, most personhood issues revolve around people depersonalising their enemies, or members of less powerful groups, in order to justify treating them like something they dug out from under a nail. I'm entirely against that sort of thing. But there is another class of personhood issues that centres on how you deal with beings so powerful and malicious that they think they're better than people, and that people don't matter. And my life is an object example of the kind of shit that can happen to you when you look at a bunch of carvings and cave paintings and decide that the primitive folks just didn't understand that the alien being they were dealing with was just a different kind of person who just wanted to help and didn't know how and could meet them on the field of reason to the mutual advantage of all."

Ford glances down at his shoes. "If you're a powerful being from another dimension who is willing to live with people less powerful than you and treat them as equals, and care about them, and let them care about you, and a person is something you want to be, then...that's fine. That's great. But don't tell me that beings who demand worship or abject obedience, or beings that wipe people out with no more concern than a fully adult person who knows the ants in that anthill can think and still stomps it, who insist that they are above people...shouldn't be feared. Or banished. Or even, G-d help us, bound until we can send them back where they really belong."

 

[They make a quiet helpless noise. This is nice??? But very unsual. Was this why Billy was so fond of smooching the Master????]

 

I'M GONNA BE HONEST, THAT IS THE FIRST TIME I HAVEN'T HAD TO DEAL WITH FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS DESPITE MAKING IT *ABSOLUTELY* CLEAR I DIDN'T WANT THEM.

...THANKS

 

i see what youre putting down but im not sure im picking it up ya dig
just gonna look at it where it is on the floor and acknowledge it

personhood debates arent really like
my forte
and i also really dont wanna get down and dirty in the mudpit of debate but
if someone says theyre above people then i guess the crux of it is that theyre wrong and need to be dealt with like the ways you mentioned
but theyre still people i think

 

I suppose the question then becomes, do we treat them like a misbehaving god or do we treat them like a misbehaving ruler? And if we treat them like misbehaving gods, how do we deal with the consequences of our decisions? There's a lot of ways to deperson an entity or a people as a whole.

Sometimes binding them fixes the problem. But sometimes... sometimes it makes it so, so much worse.

 

"I don't think you're wrong, necessarily," says Ford, breathing out slowly. All of the commentary about the 'idiot summoner' had got under his skin so far it was all he could do to stay silent until he was ready to speak to the issue, because if he hadn't, he might have lost control of himself. Somehow Dave had managed to calm him down by being so ... terribly nonchalant about all of it.

"But that's where this becomes a linguistic problem. If you use the word person to mean 'sapient being' and you have an ethical problem with describing a sapient being as a non-person, you've got an entirely valid ethical position. There is no question that depersonalising sapient beings is dangerous for the sapients depersonalised, and for the moral character--'soul' if you will--of the people who allow themselves to see other people as nonpersons."

He swallows.

"But the problem comes when you want to define the rights of personhood. The planet I live on has open immigration for a reason, but we wouldn't lay out the welcome mat for Cthulhu, because I've met him--at one of Bill's parties where I was part of the entertainment--and he's not the kind of guy you want for a neighbour. Binding people is generally not a morally acceptable thing to do. But there are sapient entities that have to be bound, at least until you can actually banish them, because if you can't banish them and they're allowed to run loose on their own recognisance they might decide to draw a smiley face through the heartland of a major continent for shits and giggles."

Ford nods. "That's the problem, isn't it? I'm not generally in favour of depersonalising anyone. And binding is an absolutely terrible method of solving things in the long-term. It can really only safely be a stopgap until you can manage to banish a 'god' or a 'demon' or whatever you want to call the thing."

 

I wonder if there are gods you can't truly banish? No one's ever met the Maker but we know he's turned his gaze from us by all Chantry teachings. If the Maker exists (and that is a very strong if) was defiling his city and turning his gaze from us just the poetic language telling us that we killed him somehow?

I'm not sure there's any really good answer to that, or that it's necessarily the same question you're asking. But I do wonder how the people who come after us will think of our actions towards the gods. Fen'harel got a bad reputation, after all. And all he did was steal the immortality of the People when he sealed away our gods from their wretched excesses. Some Dalish blame the shems, but I think it was the Veil that killed us.

 

Ford shrugs. "Most gods aren't worthy of worship. I believe in the Ain Sof, the ineffable, the bang behind the big bang, and I believe They wish their experiments well, but I also believe that They made sapients in their image and discovered that we only looked like Them on the surface, They couldn't solve our problems, so we've had to fix things ourselves, including the Things they broke--because asking Them to fix it just makes everything worse when They try. But while I'm grateful that I exist, and I try to live my life in a way that makes things more sacred and true and not less so--worshipping anything is beyond me. Nothing that powerful can understand my problems, and even when They can understand my problems, They see everyone else's problems too, and They know what happens when They don't let people work things out for themselves."

 

i mean yeah dude i getcha
fuck man im the last person to be moralizing over what is and isnt ok when youre up against the wall like
we didnt put fish hitler or wrestlemania demon in prison we super killed them
and im not PROUD of it and the part i played in killing people who were ostensibly less of a threat than fish hitler
again im not exactly the brightest crayola in the box when it comes to ethical debates but
its like self defense i think? you do what you gotta do to stop someone from killing and eating the eyeballs of you and yours
doesnt mean its a good thing to do because fuck if some talk therapy is all it woulda took so i didnt have to fucking
[he makes a slicing motion with his hands]
i would have done that in a hot second
but sometimes there arent any good choices so you have to pick what you think is the least bad one and hope you picked right

 

Spoiler: switchboard that's depressing, what happened to not getting Feelings all over the aliens?

Or you could take the easiest road, spend the next 1.8 million years regretting your life choices, and die an ignominious, meaningless death alone for good reason.