That wasn't a suggestion of equivalent exchange at all, but what gestures the Shiplords might have considered of their own volition to convince the Zblathu they were honestly trying to negotiate, if they actually believe their own claimed ethics.
OK, I get your argument: that if the Shiplords think there is something so precious that it is worth (repeatedly) inflicting billions of deaths to secure it, they themselves should be willing to die by the billions for it, or as a gesture of how serious and sorry they are, or whatever.
Still, your suggestion was 'yikes' enough that I'm with Snowfire here. You, ah, seem to have gotten carried away here.
That wasn't a suggestion of equivalent exchange at all, but what gestures the Shiplords might have considered of their own volition to convince the Zblathu they were honestly trying to negotiate, if they actually believe their own claimed ethics.
You are under the mistaken assumption that my objection has anything to do with the story.
I'm not risking this quest being permalocked because you got carried away. Please rephrase or remove the section I initially quoted. I will not ask a third time.
You are under the mistaken assumption that my objection has anything to do with the story.
I'm not risking this quest being permalocked because you got carried away. Please rephrase or remove the section I initially quoted. I will not ask a third time.
Is there a problem with... telling fictional people to kill themselves, or something? I think part of the problem is it's not obvious which site rule this is supposed to butt up against.
I think suggestions like that are an inherent risk in a story with a race whose morality licenses genocide, that the story tries to help us relate to.
In any case, since we can and probably will still advocate and vote to kill a lot of them, as is normal in a quest with warfare, as a lot of quests do, I'm not sure how recommending they commit mass suicide could be worse.
Edit: I don't see anything about that in the ToS or rules offhand.
Is there a problem with... telling fictional people to kill themselves, or something? I think part of the problem is it's not obvious which site rule this is supposed to butt up against.
I think suggestions like that are an inherent risk in a story with a race whose morality licenses genocide, that the story tries to help us relate to.
In any case, since we can and probably will still advocate and vote to kill a lot of them, as is normal in a quest with warfare, as a lot of quests do, I'm not sure how recommending they commit mass suicide could be worse.
Edit: I don't see anything about that in the ToS or rules offhand.
For starters the person who writes all of this has literally, explicitly, and repeatedly said there is a problem with the subject you just mentioned this in the thread they run, so yes there is a problem with that.
I strongly encourage you not to press that even if you don't agree with it.
For starters the person who writes all of this has literally, explicitly, and repeatedly said there is a problem with the subject you just mentioned this in the thread they run, so yes there is a problem with that.
I strongly encourage you not to press that even if you don't agree with it.
I'm not disagreeing, just saying it would probably help if they actually said which site rule it--
Look. The author can tell people to do what they want, for any reason. That's their right. But when you say, "I want you to do this because X", then without questioning their authority it has to be possible to ask for clarification about X. I don't think that's unreasonable, and otherwise you get people trying to fulfill their request by just guessing about X, which leads to situations like this.
When you have a position of authority, you can say to do things for any reason, but you can't be, by fiat, right about any reason, because being right isn't a matter of authority.
Not that I'm even saying Snowfire is wrong about the rules, just that I don't know which it would be.
I'm not disagreeing, just saying it would probably help if they actually said which site rule it--
Look. The author can tell people to do what they want, for any reason. That's their right. But when you say, "I want you to do this because X", then without questioning their authority it has to be possible to ask for clarification about X. I don't think that's unreasonable, and otherwise you get people trying to fulfill their request by just guessing about X, which leads to situations like this.
When you have a position of authority, you can say to do things for any reason, but you can't be, by fiat, right about any reason, because being right isn't a matter of authority.
I invite you to consider that this is one of those subjects where if you have to ask if you've crossed a line, you shouldn't post it. The rules on this as implemented in SV are murky and so there is probably not a clear line to be shown to you.
I'm not going to participate in a further derail, hopefully we can all move on to other topics.
To that end: I wonder if any of these forbidden systems have something to do with races that tried to intentionally fiddle with the spooky stuff between the stars? I'm curious about what goes on out there, but that's how they get you isn't it?
Is there a problem with... telling fictional people to kill themselves, or something? I think part of the problem is it's not obvious which site rule this is supposed to butt up against.
There exist real living people who can experience great psychological distress at the words "you should kill yourself." Those words are among the cruellest sneers possible and are viciously effective against the exact people who are most psychologically vulnerable to sneers- those prone to suicidal ideation. Because they implant such ideation, or encourage it. These words are so effective that even using them on third parties not present in the conversation (or entirely fictional) can catch a reader in the blast radius.
Furthermore, there are readers who have friends or loved ones who have considered, attempted, or committed suicide. The topic can be incredibly sensitive to such individuals, for reasons that anyone with a working sense of empathy can understand given a bit of thought.
As such, advocating mass suicides as a 'reasonable' response to a situation, even as a hypothetical, or even about a group of fictional beings, is a very bad position to take.
Advocating mass deaths of enemy soldiers in wartime, by comparison, is far less likely to touch upon such sensitive nerves, even among military veterans.
This is, of course, entirely in addition to the general principle that authors in quest and fiction threads have a right to exercise control over what topics of conversation are permissible in discussion of their work, and that when they wish a subject to be dropped, it should be dropped.
To that end: I wonder if any of these forbidden systems have something to do with races that tried to intentionally fiddle with the spooky stuff between the stars? I'm curious about what goes on out there, but that's how they get you isn't it?
I certainly hope they have such information at one of the sites.
If they don't, it might very well be because the information is such an infohazard that not even other Shiplords can be trusted with it... in which case we should probably avoid poking it.
If they do, it will tell us a lot about the true nature of the galaxy. For instance...
Hypothesis 1: The prohibition is strictly practical and part of maintaining the Shiplords' mechanical supremacy over the younger races. It would, we speculate, be harder for the Shiplords to track and maintain control over the younger races if they had more freedom to travel the stars and to linger in deep space. There might be several reasons for this, such as "it lets them set up isolated redoubts where we don't know where to find them" or "it lets them build big comm/sensor arrays that would let them do _____." Or there might be some special application of the unknown Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth Secrets (or even the First!) that works much better out in Deep Night. One that has purely practical strategic implications for the Shiplords' ability to maintain hegemony- something that would give younger races bigger guns to point at them, or the means to aim them better, but that isn't really an existential threat to (non-Shiplord) galactic life.
Hypothesis 2: The prohibition is specifically aimed at inhibiting cooperation between the younger races and the Neras. This has the advantage of Occam's Razor. We know the Neras live out there and have for a long time. We don't know of anyone else who lives out there. We (think we) know that the Shiplords don't choose to antagonize the Neras directly. This suggests the Neras are the only known thing in the setting that the Shiplords aren't pretty sure they can beat up at will. It would therefore behoove the Shiplords to deprive the Neras of allies that might strengthen them further. Forbidding the younger races to have dealings with the Neras could be part of a plan to achieve this, and as I recall the Neras avoid stars (@Snowfire , you said this was the case, didn't you?). If so, it might have the desired effect of keeping the Neras relatively (relatively) isolated.
Hypothesis 3: There is some kind of profound cosmic horror that can only be accessed from the Deep Night, something that has the potential to alter galactic life very much for the worse. This is something we've already seen discussed a lot, so I won't go into much detail on it. The Neras being somehow involved with this horror would be a subtype, sort of a bridge between (2) and (3).
Hypothesis 4: As (1), only the threat potentially posed by a younger race is more esoteric in nature- something to do with souls, Practice, the seemingly mystical ability of the Second Secret to create life, or other such topics. Not just bigger guns, but something transcendent, something that would be galaxy-altering for better or for worse over and above its effect on the Shiplords... who of course would be at risk of being outscaled and defeated, facing much the same kind of threat Practice arguably does to them.
Now, I'm not sure which of these hypotheses I believe. I'm quite skeptical of (3), honestly, more so than in the last quest. Simply because it invites the question: if the Uninvolved know about this hypothetical horror, why didn't they warn us? Either tell us straight-up about this threat, or give us a warning to continue to obey the Shiplord prohibition against lingering between the stars even though seriously to Hell with the Shiplords. If the Uninvolved don't know about this horror, it's kind of surprising given that they are portrayed as being extremely powerful, albeit far from invulnerable, beings.
(1) and (2) are both plausible. If either is true, the Shiplords become... somewhat more banal, in that their actions become less about some grand design or the fate of the galaxy, and more about the usual grim, nasty logic of preserving one's imperial hegemony and sticking a thumb in the eye of one's enemies.
Is there a problem with... telling fictional people to kill themselves, or something? I think part of the problem is it's not obvious which site rule this is supposed to butt up against.
I think suggestions like that are an inherent risk in a story with a race whose morality licenses genocide, that the story tries to help us relate to.
In any case, since we can and probably will still advocate and vote to kill a lot of them, as is normal in a quest with warfare, as a lot of quests do, I'm not sure how recommending they commit mass suicide could be worse.
Edit: I don't see anything about that in the ToS or rules offhand.
@Simon_Jester nailed my response to this before I could make it. In essence, there is a causative difference for a lot of people between deaths in war and self-inflicted deaths. In addition, creators on SV have some level of responsibility for the communities that from around their works, and we've seen quests nuked in the last year over allowance of rulebreaking. I can't say if this would definitely violate Rule 2
We also expect that you will treat others with a modicum of civility and dignity. In particular, you must be willing to treat them as people. Revenge fantasies (Internet Tough Guy-ing) - whether against fictional groups, like the Na'vi, or against real groups, like the Taliban - are unacceptable. While there is more leeway when it comes to historical or fictional groups, a community that is willing to devalue outsiders is not the welcoming one we are trying to build.
But it comes far too close for our tastes. This is a story that touches upon horrific events, I will never deny that. It covers genocide, cultural destruction, and more. But something I try to do is to do this tactfully. I'd think it reasonable to expect the same from the quest's playerbase. In that regard @thuealing can you please just...remove the direct call for mass suicide. Something along the lines of "sacrifice in similar regard in support of their beliefs" would be acceptable.
The only hidden one. There is a fascinating prevalence of white dwarf system primaries scattered in the direction of the galactic core from that system, though.
Forbidding the younger races to have dealings with the Neras could be part of a plan to achieve this, and as I recall the Neras avoid stars (@Snowfire , you said this was the case, didn't you?). If so, it might have the desired effect of keeping the Neras relatively (relatively) isolated.
The Neras have what appears to be an innate biological capacity to use the First Secret. If you were a race like that, would you ever enter a Stellar Exclusion Zone?
The Neras have what appears to be an innate biological capacity to use the First Secret. If you were a race like that, would you ever enter a Stellar Exclusion Zone?
The Neras have what appears to be an innate biological capacity to use the First Secret. If you were a race like that, would you ever enter a Stellar Exclusion Zone?
This is darkly amusing. We're predisposed to like the sun because we use chemical processing chains that start at sunlight to sustain our lives, but I suppose to a race that innately lives in the Dark between Worlds, the universe would seem to be sprinkled at random with latent fusion bombs. It's an odd but plausible reversal. I wonder if they sundive like humans dungeon dive in Fantasy.
This is darkly amusing. We're predisposed to like the sun because we use chemical processing chains that start at sunlight to sustain our lives, but I suppose to a race that innately lives in the Dark between Worlds, the universe would seem to be sprinkled at random with latent fusion bombs. It's an odd but plausible reversal. I wonder if they sundive like humans dungeon dive in Fantasy.
Or if you are an entity made up of structured electromagnetic fields living in the accretion disk of black holes, the universe is mostly cold and dark except for a few oases sprinkled around ...
That's a fair point. But given that their entire civilisation appears to be spacefaring at this point, there's not much that inner system planets can offer beyond interesting stories and the like. And those can be gotten via lagless transmission.
But something I try to do is to do this tactfully. I'd think it reasonable to expect the same from the quest's playerbase. In that regard @thuealing can you please just...remove the direct call for mass suicide. Something along the lines of "sacrifice in similar regard in support of their beliefs" would be acceptable.
If it's about the mere mention of suicide, your story opened with your antagonists forcing 90% of humanity to kill themselves while begging for the remaining 10% to be spared. And your latest chapter contains sympathetically presented and sympathetically received apologism for such actions. You keep trying to leave the door open to the interpretation that they are sincere in their claims to actually care about all sentient life, are horrified by their own actions, and have a good reason for what they do. In terms of "Doyalist" story construction you have the relatively reasonable and wise Amanda entertaining the possibility contrasted to the mentally unstable Kalhia being the only one to reject their self-serving justification out of hand, implying that not giving genocide apologism a fair hearing is something only mentally unstable people would do.
It's quite gratuitous, you could show the Shiplords actually taking desperate actions and risking things of value to themselves in a search for alternatives (e.g, demonstrating the strength of their own convictions as I suggested - I'd be willing to accept the framing of decent people who believe they are forced into horrible things if we actually had that sort of example, it wasn't a call out of spite), or just explicitly show the humans resolving to break the system alongside contemplating the worth of individuals rather than coyly leaving approval for the whole thing up in their air (I.e, no, it doesn't "go without saying" that bad things are bad when you're stretching to give the people doing bad things a sympathetic portrayal).
I'll remove explicit words but I believe I'm within the bounds of thoughtful presentation that you've demonstrated.
If it's about the mere mention of suicide, your story opened with your antagonists forcing 90% of humanity to kill themselves while begging for the remaining 10% to be spared. And your latest chapter contains sympathetically presented and sympathetically received apologism for such actions. You keep trying to leave the door open to the interpretation that they are sincere in their claims to actually care about all sentient life, are horrified by their own actions, and have a good reason for what they do. In terms of "Doyalist" story construction you have the relatively reasonable and wise Amanda entertaining the possibility contrasted to the mentally unstable Kalhia being the only one to reject their self-serving justification out of hand, implying that not giving genocide apologism a fair hearing is something only mentally unstable people would do.
It's quite gratuitous, you could show the Shiplords actually taking desperate actions and risking things of value to themselves in a search for alternatives (e.g, demonstrating the strength of their own convictions as I suggested - I'd be willing to accept the framing of decent people who believe they are forced into horrible things if we actually had that sort of example, it wasn't a call out of spite), or just explicitly show the humans resolving to break the system alongside contemplating the worth of individuals rather than coyly leaving approval for the whole thing up in their air (I.e, no, it doesn't "go without saying" that bad things are bad when you're stretching to give the people doing bad things a sympathetic portrayal).
I'll remove explicit words but I believe I'm within the bounds of thoughtful presentation that you've demonstrated.
I understand that I'm approaching this from a baseline of greater knowledge, that's one of the curses of the author's trade, and something I've made errors as a result of before. If this was one of them, then I apologise. I will also be honest: I'm not going to continue this discussion much further due to the risk of spoilers. However, I will say this.
Assuming Kalilah to be mentally unstable instead of just deeply hurt by the destruction of her family does her as a character no favours. It's an interpretation that you can make, but it's not one I can understand one making. This is Kalilah, for perhaps the second time in the entire writing of this series, letting her emotions speak. That isn't mental instability. Amanda is, in retrospect, trying to work out what one fragment from many might mean on a grander scale, and if anything out here might be able to explain - explain, never condone - what the Shiplords have done. Right now? The answer's leaning no. But you've got four more systems to go. If what's in there changes your minds? That's up to you.
Amanda is, in retrospect, trying to work out what one fragment from many might mean on a grander scale, and if anything out here might be able to explain - explain, never condone - what the Shiplords have done.
If that's what you're trying to show in the story you need to try harder. The "trying to see if anything explains" is coming through clearly, but her resolve "never condone" is scarcely explicit.
The questbase picked perhaps the worst initial option for me to start sketching out the picture. That's part of why this entire section has been so difficult for me. But them's the breaks of QMship.
The questbase picked perhaps the worst initial option for me to start sketching out the picture. That's part of why this entire section has been so difficult for me. But them's the breaks of QMship.
You wouldn't need to change any of the history or the Shiplords's apologetics to explicitly show Amanda reacting incredulously that the Shiplords seem to honestly believe themselves justified altruists, rather than just showing her concluding that they seem to be sincere.
I'm going to move that we PLEASE stop randomly busting @Snowfire 's chops about uncharitable or downright hostile interpretations of characters in the story. Anything in all of fiction can be interpreted to be bad, to be weak and prone to some terrible vice, to be poorly written, et cetera, by a person who comes in with sufficient resolve to perform a hatchet job.
Doing such hatchet jobs during a quest, when the story in question is literally in mid-writing process, and when many key plot decisions are out of the QM's hands anyway, borders on active sabotage of the creative process.
Give the poor bastard some time and breathing room to develop the characters. Or just go away and stop following the story. Don't harass someone who's clearly already having trouble turning out content on a regular basis, in a way apt to demoralize them and make it MORE likely that they will end up stopping entirely, or that the content in question will decline in quality.
@Simon_Jester nailed my response to this before I could make it. In essence, there is a causative difference for a lot of people between deaths in war and self-inflicted deaths. In addition, creators on SV have some level of responsibility for the communities that from around their works, and we've seen quests nuked in the last year over allowance of rulebreaking.
To be fair, the nuking involved rulebreaking that was consistent, collective, and in which the QM was actively involved- if you're thinking of that horrifying Rome quest, though I suppose it could be something else you mean.
The only hidden one. There is a fascinating prevalence of white dwarf system primaries scattered in the direction of the galactic core from that system, though.
The Neras have what appears to be an innate biological capacity to use the First Secret. If you were a race like that, would you ever enter a Stellar Exclusion Zone?
I have an innate biological capacity to use corrosive oxygen gas as a potent chemical oxidizer. Indeed, my metabolism is designed around the assumption that I will have this gas available at all times, to the point where I have an entire autonomic reflex system designed to keep me constantly exchanging oxygen-bearing gases with my surroundings at all time, through ventilation orifices in my head.
And yet, I have been known to completely immerse my head in water. Despite the fact that if I remained with my head underwater for more than a few minutes, certain death would ensue!
So for all I know, Neras adolescents regularly take selfies of themselves diving into a stellar exclusion zone as their equivalent of the Ice Bucket Challenge or something.
You wouldn't need to change any of the history or the Shiplords's apologetics to explicitly show Amanda reacting incredulously that the Shiplords seem to honestly believe themselves justified altruists, rather than just showing her concluding that they seem to be sincere.
I understand your view, but this is not how we've built Amanda. She's the one who believes that understanding can mend any rift. She's the one who begged for understanding in the literal face of her enemy. She will do all she can to protect humanity and those she loves, that's not up for debate. But incredulty in the face of the unknown is not her style.
I'm sure Snowfire would love to condemn the Shiplords' reasons, but the information necessary to make that call is not yet visible to the characters (or us), and the characters are specifically built to not decide it without insight - and they're standing inside a giant piece of Shiplord genocide apologia art right now. It's kind of an unfortunate narrative position.
If it's about the mere mention of suicide, your story opened with your antagonists forcing 90% of humanity to kill themselves while begging for the remaining 10% to be spared.
I thought that 90% of humanity was either killed or collected (to later be worse-than-killed) by the Shiplords, not forced to commit suicide - did I miss something?
I thought that 90% of humanity was either killed or collected (to later be worse-than-killed) by the Shiplords, not forced to commit suicide - did I miss something?
The 90% were forced to commit suicide in the sense of having to choose between a) keep on fighting and you all die or b) accept our conditions and some of your children survive.
