Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
Let's go through that again, but more slowly:
[ ] Back down and attempt a charming apology on Anja's behalf to get her out of trouble
drunk
[ ] Attempt to explain to them both what kind of long range patrol mission you have just survived
not likely to impress, and also drunk: what if Amani starts going on about something she shouldn't?
[ ] Call the Lord Secretary racist
good job, now we have an active enemy instead of someone who passively dislikes us
So... yeah, three out of four options seem pretty bad ones, especially for a drunk woman. Let's get backup from people who will have our back.
Let's go through that again, but more slowly:
[ ] Back down and attempt a charming apology on Anja's behalf to get her out of trouble
drunk
[ ] Attempt to explain to them both what kind of long range patrol mission you have just survived
not likely to impress, and also drunk: what if Amani starts going on about something she shouldn't?
[ ] Call the Lord Secretary racist
good job, now we have an active enemy instead of someone who passively dislikes us
So... yeah, three out of four options seem pretty bad ones, especially for a drunk woman. Let's get backup from people who will have our back.
Night_stalker said "don't be like this guy" and linked the restaurant smoking story. That's drawing a comparison.
I realize Night_stalker wants to focus on the part where it turns out the person the guy is talking to is an admiral, to draw out the lesson that you should "keep your head down". I'm not confused about that.
The problem is that's not the point of the restaurant story. It's like using the story of the boy who cried wolf to argue that wolves are dangerous (true in this case, but incidental). On top of it all, the restaurant story is just a terrible analogy for Anja/North's situation.
Argue that we shouldn't talk back if you like, but there are better examples.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
If anything, given that our mom is a duchess and via J6 we can speak with the Imperial Princess, we're the admiral in this analogy.
I think North's mother is a Dame? Song is the only Duchess that's been name-dropped so far, I think.
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cB557
voOOP
You can take more than one lesson from a story, dude.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The winning vote for background was "daughter of a penniless knight". Dame North has a non-hereditary knighthood for bravery. That's not nothing, and it's quite possible he might know of your mother, but it's several orders of magnitude below Duchess unfortunately.
- Location
- Canada
I was going to go on a tirade about bullying and choose the option about calling him out as racist, but your basic use of sanity pretty much defused me.
All three of those options are drunken disasters in the making.
Which leaves relying on other people to have your back. That's pretty much a good life lesson, right there. Sometimes the optimistic answer really is the best one.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
Wait... oh.
Mazlo.
We're going to be bailed out by Mazlo. Aren't we?
AREN'T WE
aagh
Dude, there's no way comparing being the target of discrimination to being a jerk in a restaurant is not going to sound wrong.
Yeah, both include a confrontation with someone in a position of higher power. But come on, there's got to be better examples.
If that actually leads to getting bailed out by Mazlo I would totally vote for that.
In all seriousness, I think both that and trying to talk it out could work. Anja seems to think North is holding her liquor fairly well, there's no guarantee our shipmates are in any better shape, and the main point that North needs to make (that people have died, including Ito and Song) is not that complex.
Someone called it a sob story, and perhaps it is, but with the Lord Secretary being an ass this is hardly the time to hold back. If he has any shame in his body (and even if he's a complete snob he should at least respect for Song's death), he'll back off. If not, at least everyone else will see what an ass he is too.
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ThatGuyWithIdeas
Treize died for our sins
- Location
- Romania
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean I kind of want to be part of the "fuck this shit" crew and just go with the last option, but as viscerally satisfying as it would be, it's probably not a good idea.
Like, we're kinda getting thrust into a diplomatic situation far above our pay grade while we're totally hammered with the only person to help or act as a check on us is our emotionally compromised friend who is even more hammered. Let's... back off and see if a more sober person among us can actually defuse the situation.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
Like, we're kinda getting thrust into a diplomatic situation far above our pay grade while we're totally hammered with the only person to help or act as a check on us is our emotionally compromised friend who is even more hammered. Let's... back off and see if a more sober person among us can actually defuse the situation.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
- Location
- usa
[x] Call the Lord Secretary racist
cB557
voOOP
It can totally not sound wrong if you're not dead set on hearing it that way. It's a fictional ethnicity, do we really need to be that degree of careful about it?
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
I want North to catch attention of all other bar patrons and explain that this fine gentleman wants to enjoy his dinner in silence and considers them a disgrace to the Navy, so he orders them all to shut up.
If Anja can't enjoy herself, noone should.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
If Anja can't enjoy herself, noone should.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
Considering we're on a forum with rules that apply equally to treatment of both real and fictional groups of people... yes?
Obviously fiction is given more leeway, and I'm not going to feel as strongly about fictional classism/racism, but SV is the last place you'd want to argue that is okay because they're only fictional people. Especially since what's happening to Anja is something people in real life could easily relate to, not some crazy hypothetical.
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cB557
voOOP
Have those rules ever been employed for something of this degree? I've only seen it employed for fucked up stuff like talking about how you'd want to commit hate crimes about a fictional race or do a genocide or somesuch. Fucked up stuff that even if it's not about a real race still makes for a deeply unpleasant conversation topic and arguably shows the person as having attitudes not wanted on the forum. Never for "if you misinterpreted what they said it might sound kinda bad." Like, I don't think that would get infracted even if it was involving a real race. For a real race you could argue that even if it wasn't infraction worthy, it still might be polite to try and put it differently because a person of that race misinterpreting it could be made quite uncomfortable, but with a fictional race... that just seems like too many degrees of separation to be a hill worth dying on.
I mean, if I thought it was worthy of infraction I would have simply reported it, not tried to explain what's wrong with the comparison. But arguing that it doesn't rise to the level of hate speech is hardly clearing a high bar.
This is a quest, a role-playing game. We're supposed to take these fictional characters at least somewhat seriously. I do feel indignant on Anja's behalf, and I think facing this sort of petty discrimination is something people can relate to.
I've explained why I think the story of an officer being an asshole in a restaurant doesn't map to the situation Anja is in, and why "keep your head down" is a poor takeaway. Are there any good arguments in favor of the comparison, not just that it isn't so offensive as to be rule-breaking? I agree this isn't a hill worth dying on, which is why I'm puzzled you're defending a bad analogy that wasn't even originally yours.
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obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
- Location
- Earth
[X] She had a brother. He came with the exodus, lost everything, no family, no nothing. Her family took him in. He was just a boy. He died fighting the false Emperor on our last assignment. We are grieving, sir.
- Location
- Canada
If that actually leads to getting bailed out by Mazlo I would totally vote for that.
In all seriousness, I think both that and trying to talk it out could work. Anja seems to think North is holding her liquor fairly well, there's no guarantee our shipmates are in any better shape, and the main point that North needs to make (that people have died, including Ito and Song) is not that complex.
Someone called it a sob story, and perhaps it is, but with the Lord Secretary being an ass this is hardly the time to hold back. If he has any shame in his body (and even if he's a complete snob he should at least respect for Song's death), he'll back off. If not, at least everyone else will see what an ass he is too.
I can respect wanting to take the high road, but I can't agree.
Out of everyone causing a ruckus in the bar, he singled Anja out because she's Saturnian. He's an aristocrat, a bully, and a racist. The first two options we could take feel too much like appeasement to me, legitimizing his awfulness by trying to engage with him, and neither of them express any support for Anja. Anja shouldn't be the one made to feel bad just because he has a problem with her existing. Trying to argue for forgiveness based on extenuating circumstances, long flight on the Rose, very stressful, and so on, is just a weaker version of an apology, implicitly saying she was wrong to be loud and crude even though she lost someone important to her. Solidarity with the rest of the crew is the only way out I can really get behind, because it undercuts what he's doing, without pretending that Anja did something shameful worth being contrite over, when half the bar is doing the same.
Barring that, I can live with North making an enemy by blowing up in his face.
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- Location
- 1
[X] Call the Lord Secretary racist
[X] Try to get the attention of some of the other crew members from the Rose who might be in the room
How dare you call the good Lord Secretary a Racist? Surely, our Wise Leaders don't get bothered by such petty and base things as Race! Why, The poor fellow wouldn't even know the difference between a marathon and a 50-metre sprint! Races are for peasants and those damn filthy S-oh wait it's not that kind of race nevermind.
How dare you call the good Lord Secretary a Racist? Surely, our Wise Leaders don't get bothered by such petty and base things as Race! Why, The poor fellow wouldn't even know the difference between a marathon and a 50-metre sprint! Races are for peasants and those damn filthy S-oh wait it's not that kind of race nevermind.
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