[ text ] un: aragaki; like 4 am

[petsthedog]

[It comes on the network like an intrusive thought -- because it is. Because Shinjiro can't sleep, even with all the talk of distracting activities like movies and pumpkin carving and costume parties. (Where do you even get costumes on a spaceship, anyway?)

Because he can't stop thinking about what Olexa said in that building, at the end. Would you die trying to get that stone back? Cheri's motivations were selfish, but then, aren't theirs too? So-Yeon's hadn't been, and while she'd surrendered the orb, what if she hadn't? What about the next mission?]

do you think the orb is worth killing people for

Comments

[petsthedog]

not agreein ain't enough to keep anyone breathin
just because you ain't pullin the trigger don't mean your hands are clean
bullshit for anyone to act like it does

[...in case Andy was wondering just how deep those death issues go, ah. He's certainly not doing great.]

[oiorpata]

You don't have to feel guilty for other people's actions.

[ oooh yeah there's that trauma again. ]

[petsthedog]

i do if i'm just lookin the other way cause i'm gonna benefit from em

[oiorpata]

That's your prerogative. It doesn't have to be everyone's.

Are you trying to figure out how people deal with it?

[petsthedog]

seems like the coward way out to me
plus it blows up in your face eventually

[. . .]

i guess, yeah

[oiorpata]

And I'm sure you have way more experience in it blowing up in your face than I do. Are you calling me a coward?

Asking it up front might be a better strategy there.

[petsthedog]

no
you ain't pretendin your hands'll be clean at the end of this
the coward move is actin like it dont count if you don't do the murder part yourself

[oiorpata]

Sounds like you've got a lot more going on for yourself than the ethics of killing for a magic orb.

Other people aren't responsible for my actions and they aren't to blame for them either. Taking guilt from someone else to feed your own shouldn't be the standard here. What we do might effect others or the whole group, but you're not a bad person because you couldn't stop some of us for killing those Lionetta. Is that what's going on here?

[petsthedog]

i ain't exactly a good person, either

[Andy is right tbh there is so much trauma lurking here and Shinji isn't even aware of a lot of it. Case in point: how uncomfortable he gets when anyone so much as implies he isn't trash.]

and sure, maybe not in general most of the time

[Though he doesn't quite let himself off the hook about Strega, either. He knew who they were when he got involved in deals with them, but he didn't care at the time. All that mattered was getting what he needed from them.]

but it's different when we all got this goal
lookin the other way to let someone else do it the easy way aint any better than doin it yourself

[oiorpata]

People aren't wholly good or bad. It's not as black and white as you want it to be.

Pulling the proverbial trigger yourself is not the same as letting someone else do it, kid. Doesn't matter if there are orbs on the line or not.

[petsthedog]

i didnt say they were the same
i said lookin the other way because you're gettin somethin outta the murder ain't better
sure, you didn't kill anyone
but they're dead all the same, and their life didn't matter as much as whatever you wanted
ain't sayin that to judge, people do what they gotta
like i said, i ain't got room to talk about bein good
but you gotta own that

[oiorpata]

You're implying it's just as bad to kill someone as it is to let someone do it for you. There's a difference to me, and you're not going to convince me otherwise.

I don't have to own anything except what I do. And I already do.

I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Do you want someone to excuse your actions or lack thereof? Do you want to be criticized? People have been asking about the moral compass of killing for ages and the answer always changes.

cw: reference to past suicidal behavior

[petsthedog]

[That would be because Shinjiro isn't sure what he's looking for, either. Back in Japan, when his intention was merely to take himself out of the picture, things were a lot more simple. It didn't matter so much to look the other way from suffering, because he'd decided existing with an unstable Persona did more harm than good, and so there wasn't a point in getting involved trying to stop people like Strega. Plenty of murderers would continue exist regardless of who tried to stop them, after all. It was just a shitty fact of life.]

sure
what's that one western saying? agree to disagree or some shit like that
just wanted to know what people were thinking about it

[And also the other thing Andy said before about how people cope with it. How they justify it to themselves, perhaps. He doesn't want to justify it. In the end, the answers he's gotten have frustrated and confused him perhaps more than he was before he asked. But some part of him needed to know.

As far as he sees it, there are only two positions that make sense to him on this. "It's us or them", or Alenko's position--stopping people, by force if necessary, should he think they're going too far. Consensus in either direction would've made it easier to know what to do next. Instead, all he's gotten has felt like a lot of half-baked hypocrisy.]

[oiorpata]

I don't think too many people as a whole are capable of agree to disagree.

[ humans have gone to war over virtually anything in the book. she's more surprised when agree to disagree works than when it doesn't. ]

Whatever you're looking for, I hope you get something out of this for yourself.