- Location
- Illinois
Madokami above. I go on vacation for one day.
On degemming as an action:
Let me begin this section by asserting it to be clear and obvious that action must be taken to prevent Rionna from doing harm to others. This is, at this point, not simply my own moral argument, but GM fiat.
Absent an extraordinary event, then:
-She must be prevented from using her magic. She has demonstrated by her words a willingness and ability to murder with it, ergo it must be denied to her.
-She must be prevented from re-obtaining her magic.
-We must not, in that process, allow her to witch out.
People, myself included, have in the past likened degemming to killing. But it is not killing: it is coma.
We have, to my eyes, at most two options here. We can keep Rionna concious and chained. Or we can separate her gem from her body.
There was, for a long time, an assumption on my part that the former was inherently more moral than the latter: that gemming someone was simply wrong as long as there was an alternative.
But that is a supposition based on a view that living is inherently good and enjoyable.
Before I changed my vote to Godwinson's, I asked myself this: would Rionna be happier in chains or gemmed?
Quite frankly, given that either option involves dissipating her shades, and goven what she has said, I cannot imagine that she would enjoy being concious, except for the advantage of being able to try to work against her imprisonment!
Give me a case otherwise! Show me where she has a pasttime, a care, beyond her own grief and her sister's killer. Show me some evidence that it would be more moral to chain her than to put her in a coma! Do this, instead of simply saying "we shouldn't do that." Because I simply said that, and I feel that that was fallacy.
On doing bad things:
Honestly, I expect Sayaka to be more eloquent than I on this topic.
We must restrain Rionna's ability to do evil, because she has expressed intention to use that ability to do evil. That is a moral imperative.
We must do her no unnecessary harm. That is a moral imperative.
As far as I am aware, that's it for morality, here in this section. Hospitality or guest right is another matter.
It has been heavily implied that Rionna did not and does not abide by these moral imperatives: "I raised the shade of my sister's killer," she said. This is depicted as unnecessary harm, as opposed to Sayaka's powers which are not. This raises the question: is necromancy evil in PMMM? For many of us the answer has been a resounding "Duh." For others, not so much.
It is my opinion that Firnagzen meant to portray the raising of shades as an action which was an inherent violation of "do no unnecessary harm" in a situation where the raising was not needed for protecting oneself or others. Frankly, I wish we would have just gotten a GM post on that, because then I wouldn't need to type this.
Did he succeed at portraying that? Many feel he did. Clearly, others do not. What he did succeed at portraying was showing that Rionna does not care whether or not she is abiding by "do no unnecessary harm" in her raising of shades. Her reply to us asking if the shades suffer was that she doesn't care. That alone should be enough to distinguish her from us in this matter, and it astounds me that people would claim otherwise. Someone with a declared ability and intention to commit murders whose response to the moral imperative of doing no unnecessary harm is "I don't care if I'm doing unnecessary harm or not" is OBVIOUSLY distinguishable from Sabrina's proposed actions here.
On hospitality and guest right:
Note that I do not have this section "on our word." We have given word that we will protect those who abide by our requests of being excellent to others, among other declarations. But we have given Rionna no promises and no guarantees, as she has given us none. If she had wanted she could have asked us on arrival for a mutual promise of hospitality, and we would have given it, because of course we would have!
It is worth remembering why she did no such thing: because she wanted to reserve the right to murder us. Because she came here expecting to murder us. Because she did not want to be our guest.
It reflects in what she has done, no? The attempt to affect our mind. The threats, the casual disregard...
And yet, some argue that we are her host, and that it is not our place to lower ourselves to that level. That we extended an unspoken guarantee to her when we did not turn her away on arrival. That her attack on us was justified by the implication that we were holding her.
It is a good argument. It rings true in certain ways. And yet it falls apart under inspection.
Let us suppose that we have a moral imperative to keep our word, and that we have given her an unspoken guarantee of safety for the duration of her stay.
We additionally have a moral imperative to not endanger people unnecessarily. So, lets say we threaten her so that she doesn't do anything for the duration of her stay. Okay.
When does her stay end?
Do we guarantee her safe passage home? Okay.
So we attack and subdue her in Edinburgh the next day and haul her back to Japan, in an operation that exerts twenty times as much stress on us and our friends, involves twenty times more danger for us, pushing at the moral imperatives of no unnecessary harm and not endamgering others unnecessarily, and produces... What difference?
And what does doing that make our unspoken guarantee, anyway? "You're safe as long as you don't go home, and as long as you abide by our demands while you're here"? That's no guest right.
So, no. I agree: we have an imperative to not break our word. But we've given no word, and any word one might say we've implied is at best ludicrous and at worst immoral.
Giving Rionna a chance:
What I understand this argument to actually mean is this: people making it think that if we let her go and put in a bunch of effort, we can convince her agree to the things we want without bloodshed.
First off, I want to say that I think the way this is being delivered is honestly pretty disingenuous, because what I'm seeing written on it amounts to "we might be able to accomplish this and we should try." There's no accounting of the complications involved or the difficulties or the risks. Nobody is suggesting a real plan for pursuing it beyond "let's try to talk with her on even ground and see what we can do."
And yet, there are clear complexities involved in it that we can already see, and which everyone suggesting it is ignoring.
Example: one of the key things we can basically assume Rionna won't budge on quickly, if at all, is the topic of her sister's killer's shade. She is, presumably, engaged in doing unnecessary harm to that shade/soul -- given all the "I raised her shade" and "I hate her" bits, I think she clearly *wants* to do that.
But nobody is mentioning the difficulty of getting her to give that up, only how we should talk with her on even ground.
The real question is, is there something we could do that she would agree to give up the shades and stop murdering for? And in part that has been answered -- she wants her sister back.
What isn't answered is whether or not she'd give up her shades -- including that of the killer -- for her sister. And, for that matter, whether she'd cooperate with us is also unanswered.
The only thing I've imagined which could bring back her sister would be a wish, because presumably she doesn't have her sister's shade, or she'd be trying to bring it back to life -- or so you'd think.
But suggesting a wish to her... There's little reason for her to give up what she has before or after hearing that suggestion. From what I've seen of her I don't think we can trust any deal with her around that.
Anybody saying we should "give her a chance" needs to first lay out a coherent plan for how to do that *and also how we should expect it will yield some result except her being a much tougher opponent.*
On degemming as an action:
Let me begin this section by asserting it to be clear and obvious that action must be taken to prevent Rionna from doing harm to others. This is, at this point, not simply my own moral argument, but GM fiat.
Absent an extraordinary event, then:
-She must be prevented from using her magic. She has demonstrated by her words a willingness and ability to murder with it, ergo it must be denied to her.
-She must be prevented from re-obtaining her magic.
-We must not, in that process, allow her to witch out.
People, myself included, have in the past likened degemming to killing. But it is not killing: it is coma.
We have, to my eyes, at most two options here. We can keep Rionna concious and chained. Or we can separate her gem from her body.
There was, for a long time, an assumption on my part that the former was inherently more moral than the latter: that gemming someone was simply wrong as long as there was an alternative.
But that is a supposition based on a view that living is inherently good and enjoyable.
Before I changed my vote to Godwinson's, I asked myself this: would Rionna be happier in chains or gemmed?
Quite frankly, given that either option involves dissipating her shades, and goven what she has said, I cannot imagine that she would enjoy being concious, except for the advantage of being able to try to work against her imprisonment!
Give me a case otherwise! Show me where she has a pasttime, a care, beyond her own grief and her sister's killer. Show me some evidence that it would be more moral to chain her than to put her in a coma! Do this, instead of simply saying "we shouldn't do that." Because I simply said that, and I feel that that was fallacy.
On doing bad things:
Honestly, I expect Sayaka to be more eloquent than I on this topic.
We must restrain Rionna's ability to do evil, because she has expressed intention to use that ability to do evil. That is a moral imperative.
We must do her no unnecessary harm. That is a moral imperative.
As far as I am aware, that's it for morality, here in this section. Hospitality or guest right is another matter.
It has been heavily implied that Rionna did not and does not abide by these moral imperatives: "I raised the shade of my sister's killer," she said. This is depicted as unnecessary harm, as opposed to Sayaka's powers which are not. This raises the question: is necromancy evil in PMMM? For many of us the answer has been a resounding "Duh." For others, not so much.
It is my opinion that Firnagzen meant to portray the raising of shades as an action which was an inherent violation of "do no unnecessary harm" in a situation where the raising was not needed for protecting oneself or others. Frankly, I wish we would have just gotten a GM post on that, because then I wouldn't need to type this.
Did he succeed at portraying that? Many feel he did. Clearly, others do not. What he did succeed at portraying was showing that Rionna does not care whether or not she is abiding by "do no unnecessary harm" in her raising of shades. Her reply to us asking if the shades suffer was that she doesn't care. That alone should be enough to distinguish her from us in this matter, and it astounds me that people would claim otherwise. Someone with a declared ability and intention to commit murders whose response to the moral imperative of doing no unnecessary harm is "I don't care if I'm doing unnecessary harm or not" is OBVIOUSLY distinguishable from Sabrina's proposed actions here.
On hospitality and guest right:
Note that I do not have this section "on our word." We have given word that we will protect those who abide by our requests of being excellent to others, among other declarations. But we have given Rionna no promises and no guarantees, as she has given us none. If she had wanted she could have asked us on arrival for a mutual promise of hospitality, and we would have given it, because of course we would have!
It is worth remembering why she did no such thing: because she wanted to reserve the right to murder us. Because she came here expecting to murder us. Because she did not want to be our guest.
It reflects in what she has done, no? The attempt to affect our mind. The threats, the casual disregard...
And yet, some argue that we are her host, and that it is not our place to lower ourselves to that level. That we extended an unspoken guarantee to her when we did not turn her away on arrival. That her attack on us was justified by the implication that we were holding her.
It is a good argument. It rings true in certain ways. And yet it falls apart under inspection.
Let us suppose that we have a moral imperative to keep our word, and that we have given her an unspoken guarantee of safety for the duration of her stay.
We additionally have a moral imperative to not endanger people unnecessarily. So, lets say we threaten her so that she doesn't do anything for the duration of her stay. Okay.
When does her stay end?
Do we guarantee her safe passage home? Okay.
So we attack and subdue her in Edinburgh the next day and haul her back to Japan, in an operation that exerts twenty times as much stress on us and our friends, involves twenty times more danger for us, pushing at the moral imperatives of no unnecessary harm and not endamgering others unnecessarily, and produces... What difference?
And what does doing that make our unspoken guarantee, anyway? "You're safe as long as you don't go home, and as long as you abide by our demands while you're here"? That's no guest right.
So, no. I agree: we have an imperative to not break our word. But we've given no word, and any word one might say we've implied is at best ludicrous and at worst immoral.
Giving Rionna a chance:
What I understand this argument to actually mean is this: people making it think that if we let her go and put in a bunch of effort, we can convince her agree to the things we want without bloodshed.
First off, I want to say that I think the way this is being delivered is honestly pretty disingenuous, because what I'm seeing written on it amounts to "we might be able to accomplish this and we should try." There's no accounting of the complications involved or the difficulties or the risks. Nobody is suggesting a real plan for pursuing it beyond "let's try to talk with her on even ground and see what we can do."
And yet, there are clear complexities involved in it that we can already see, and which everyone suggesting it is ignoring.
Example: one of the key things we can basically assume Rionna won't budge on quickly, if at all, is the topic of her sister's killer's shade. She is, presumably, engaged in doing unnecessary harm to that shade/soul -- given all the "I raised her shade" and "I hate her" bits, I think she clearly *wants* to do that.
But nobody is mentioning the difficulty of getting her to give that up, only how we should talk with her on even ground.
The real question is, is there something we could do that she would agree to give up the shades and stop murdering for? And in part that has been answered -- she wants her sister back.
What isn't answered is whether or not she'd give up her shades -- including that of the killer -- for her sister. And, for that matter, whether she'd cooperate with us is also unanswered.
The only thing I've imagined which could bring back her sister would be a wish, because presumably she doesn't have her sister's shade, or she'd be trying to bring it back to life -- or so you'd think.
But suggesting a wish to her... There's little reason for her to give up what she has before or after hearing that suggestion. From what I've seen of her I don't think we can trust any deal with her around that.
Anybody saying we should "give her a chance" needs to first lay out a coherent plan for how to do that *and also how we should expect it will yield some result except her being a much tougher opponent.*
