Off-Topic Thread vol. 2

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
2069

And if you choose to see it this way, certainly you can. It will not lead to a useful understanding of the conflict at hand, nor will it likely lead to much chance of de-escalation, though. Morality that for its definitions depends on personal feelings rather than understanding of the systems of kin and power in place will necessarily be lacking.

Tell me, Saronu Yassavi - do you think the answer to “when is it acceptable to put pressure on someone by threatening and attacking their civilian kin” is “never, in any circumstance”?

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2070

When all other options are exhausted, and there is a reasonable basis for a positive result. You tell me Elsebeth Rhiannon, do you think a man who proudly broadcasts the aftermath of his Sanist bloodbath exhausted many other options? Or for that matter will ever be complicit in de-escalation?

2071

Sanist is a misunderstanding though I get where it comes from.

As I explained in the thread proper (I moved here only because I did not think the Nauplius quarrel there was helpful for the discussion), no, I do not myself think we were there yet. And no, I also do not think it is reasonable to look to Harkon Thorson for de-escalation, but that is a fact that has not really changed recently.

I do believe, however, that he would prefer other methods and would use them, if he was given a reason to believe progress can be made otherwise. Pol Macsliebh, even more so.

2072

That’s alright, plenty of dumb ■■■■ has tried to fix Nauplius over the years and ■■■■■■■ failed. Private ■■■■■■■■ is the will-o-the-wisp that keeps us sleeping with evil. You know what it takes to not be a ■■■■■■■ monster? You got to realize you’re a ■■■■■■■ monster, and that there’s no ■■■■■■■ excuse. And you don’t ■■■■■■■ get there when people make ■■■■■■■ excuses for your ■■■■■■■■.

Fact is, some people are just ■■■■■■■ evil, they like it, they’ll do it until they can’t anymore and they’ll find every ■■■■■■■ excuse they can to justify it. I’d know that better than most of yinz. Believe me, I was right the ■■■■ there.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, you’re part of the ■■■■■■■ problem calling them ‘broken’ instead of ‘defective’, but you’re a drop in the ■■■■■■■ ocean. CEWMPA was ■■■■■■■ built to stroke the ■■■■ of these kinds of psychopaths at worst and at best treats massacres like the ■■■■■■■ weather. And when you’ve got a whole system built on holding sections of space hostage for ■■■■■■■ serial killers and calling their cancer ‘necessary’, you breed the ■■■■. It’s the Diana Kimification of these crazy idiots. Maybe some ■■■■ could have been different, everyone’s always seeing some flicker of ■■■■■■■ decency, but when you get nothing but blood like candy from daddy every night you visit, you don’t switch your own diet up.

That’s why you shun these murder freaks. It might not even ■■■■■■■ work, but it’s all that might. They sure as ■■■■ ain’t gonna get it from anyone using the likewise insane ■■■■■■■■ of the 24IC to justify splattering someone’s ■■■■■■■ green grocer. And it dirties everything it ■■■■■■■ touches.

2073

While I understand the impulse to say so, and I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to reject evil, I think you’re being somewhat dismissive to the condition of the mind. Insanity is infectious, that’s true, and selectively encouraged when it is convenient by fools, healing is also a collective effort. God knows if you’ve lived your entire life knowing misery as your speech and the gun as your tongue, you will never, of your own volition, learn otherwise.

Involving Ushra’Khan is the same as treating with anyone who has been conditioned thus, it’s always a calculated risk that one’s own humanity will temper the unfettered mind before the unfettered mind convinces the beautious that horror is more effective. It does to limit that exposure, but it also does not do to leave the infection to fester. Healing does not occur that way, and there are few, I would think, truly beyond the reach of the arms of a loving society.

Most violence is a cry in the dark, a deeply personal wail of internal anguish made manifest. It isn’t something that fixes itself. So I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your rationality, I’m only saying maybe don’t throw away the entire idea of a communion pulling one back from the brink. Tossing those that seem infectiously violent callously aside is also a calculation, but it isn’t worth never trying to save a soul.

2 Likes
2074

Where did I do this? Pretty sure I intended to call anyone neither of those things.

2075

These are good words and beautiful principles - for a time of peace, where the only real cause for violence is personal anguish.

Fighting for survival one fights with what allies one has. There is, of course, always the hope that one’s presence will affect the minds of those one sees as erring, and the risk that one in turn is changed by them. Nevertheless, those cannot be the grounds for choosing allies when the conflict - both the violence and the peaceful methods of the conflict - in the end is about one’s whole tribe’s right to exist as it is.

When it is, in the end, about life or death, existence or oblivion, one must choose solely based on what gives one’s people the best chance.

And the Minmatar people, in this conflict, absolutely must stand united. Neither personal moral or private tastes can come to the way of that.

Whether I like it has exactly nothing to do with it.

(Nauplius, on the other hand, is no one’s ally and in no way relevant to the survival of the Amarr Houses.)

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2076

That might be true from your perspective, Elsebeth, but it’s also precisely Roman’s point. The reason he, I think, drew the point of comparison is exactly this:

That is by design. Now, I’ll in no way impugn Nauplius’s ability as a pilot. Years of being an object of abject hatred almost well-nigh universally throughout the cluster have probably made him one of the better combat pilots in New Eden. Any Amarrian could feasibly say that the Republic is a clear and present danger to the existence of the Empire under the same basic principle, especially with this evidence. They could say that no pilot, especially a skilled pilot, should be turned away.

Yet that does beg the question, if Nauplius is of consequential import to the Empire, what then is the Empire at all? If Nauplius is a necessity to its survival, and Nauplius being… well, Nauplius, should the Empire be saved? It would have fallen far from God to be in such a position. Many would fight, kill, and die for the Empire, but for him? Everyone, almost every day, must make that decision.

Now, no one is saying it would be easy. Believe me, I think we’ve good cause to say as an alliance in Khimi Hirar that we’ve done a lot of things which we’ve neither liked nor thought good would come of based on a principle, that the Empire needs to be bigger and greater than a utilitarian weapon that we think will change back to something principled when all is said and done. And, even if others do not believe so to the same extent or by the same means we do, the well-night universal shunning of Nauplius, I think, indicates that a great many of us have a level of desperation we will not sink to. That unity at all costs is the path to weakness, that the strength of unity is only garnered if the purpose is pure.

And hence lies the dilemma. You believe the end of the Republic is coming, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. I do not agree; I’ve been privileged to see the length and breadth of the Republic in a way few Amarrians have because of the goodwill and generosity of many brave Matari souls who took a chance in treating with me. And it’s a place I don’t think is dying. You may not believe me, but ask yourself, if you pull together the miracle you must think is necessary and survive, and your legacy are these things which offend your morals and tastes are then integral to your Republic, would it truly survive at all? If the murder of civilians, a thing you abhor, is worth entreating into the Republic solely to position it for a political discussion about sanctions, is the Republic a place anymore, or a reciprocal device you wouldn’t tolerate were you not a part of it?

I like to think the Republic is a better place than that, and that it can survive as a better place than that. It must, for if it can’t survive as a place you’d feel morally comfortable with, it’s already dead, and you’re defending something I don’t think you’d want to die for.

1 Like
2077

If you would only read, and not just wait for your turn to pontificate, you would notice that Elsebeth is speaking about the Tribes, not the Republic. We are a fighting for a way of life, and its very existance is under threat by the butchers of House Sarum and the Empress that holds his leash.

This ■■■■■■■■ about sanctions is only relevant now that Sarum is losing his war in Floseswin and the wider Warzone. Its a naked attempt to change the context of the conflict away from the reclaiming that he so rashedly declared, in an effort to save face.

In the end, you are all Nauplius.

1 Like
2078

And they should say that, because they would be right. As long as Reclaiming is a central tenet of the Amarr religion, we are absolutely a threat to your people.

Harkon Thorson is and the Ushra’Khan are much more than “a skilled pilot”, though. What they are doing for us is not theoretical “what could they do if we let them”.

And this is where you fail to understand. I do not want to save my tribe because I think it is better or more moral than something else. I want to save it because it is mine. If saving my people takes murdering every single one of yours, so be it.

I hope it won’t, but if that will in the end be the only way, then it will be the way I’ll take, and yes, I will consider it worth it.

And here is another thing you don’t understand. You, Constantin Baracca, are a threat to my people. Not because you want to kill us, but because you want to change us. Not because you are violent, but because you are too well-meaning.

You lead an organization of missionaries. You want my tribe to worship your God, the one we name the Evil God, that we have renounced. You want to end what makes my clan my clan. You believe you are doing it because it is the best for us, you do not do it out of spite or out of hating us or out of any evil wish, you do it with sweet words instead of gunpoint - but you are still doing it.

If you get your way, my people as we are will cease to exist.

Moreover, you want to convert us to a religion that still does hold as its central tenet the Reclaiming of us into slavery. Maybe you do not believe in slavery yourself, I don’t know, but your religion does, and last I heard, they did not consider you a Heretic. You are luring people in with your words of honey and love, but you are not luring them into the God’s goodness you believe in (and I think you do sincerely believe it); you are bringing them into the Imperial Rite and the Church of Blessed Servitude. And as is, there is no room in those for the free tribes, not as we know them.

You don’t have to like that any more than I like my options, but it is still a fact of life, and no amount of talking about friendship and peace and love and goodwill and generosity will change it.

3 Likes
2079

The entire point of my post, though, is that if your tribe only exists by the opportunity of murdering civilians, and it has made peace with that, but you haven’t, is it truly “yours” anymore?

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2080

But I have made my peace with the fact that if it will be the only way, it will be the way.

2081

Have you made peace with the more probable outcome of that way?

2082

Not completely, but I’m working on it.

2083

what - ifs don’t matter.
Reality matters and I don’t think the tribes will fall to this fate.

2084

Better dead than on our knees.

3 Likes
2085

If you wish to live a long and bitter suicide, that is your failing. Choosing it for your people isn’t sacrificing for them, just sacrificing them.

2086

I can definitly see that insanity contagious. The IGS shows it to be true. The more time people spend here the less sane they seem to be.
Brainwashing missionaries and crusading butchers claim a moral highground in a conflict that is not only cause by their side but that can also only be ended by peaceful means from their own side.
The Matari can not end the conflict as it would end the Matari. All your arguements here are void. Your claims fo morality are void as you continue to enable the end of our people. All your excuses while judging others and claiming we were looking for those.
I am a monster to the Amarr and as long as they hold our people in slavery and aim to have us all dead or in chains I will continue to be one.
On the day that the Empire falls to ruins or renounces their wicked ways I will stop being a threat as there will be no more need for the monster that I have become. Who knows I might even hand myself in to answer for all the things that I did.
Elsebeth is right when she supposed that I don´t want to do what I do. I do not enjoy it and while you can claim it is an excuse it is true. It will however not stop me from doing it if I deem it necessary to help my people in their struggle to survive.
Could I be wrong? Could there be peaceful or atleast more peacefuls means other then letting them put us all in chains? Maybe. But I haven´t seen them and you lot have failed to show them so I´ll do what I can while you can keep discussing the morality of it and continue to ignore the fact that it is and has been for ages the Amarr that can end this any time.

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2087

Yeah, genius, ever heard of a positive feedback loop? The only reason you don’t ■■■■■■■ get it is because you’re part of the ■■■■■■■ system. That’s why I don’t even begin to ■■■■■■■ believe you. Say what you want about Elsebeth, and I ■■■■■■■ will, I actually buy her self loathing. I definitely don’t buy it going from what you originally posted to suddenly wishing so hard for peace, but being so unable. ■■■■■■■ please.

You not only don’t want peace, I don’t for a second think you’ll be above killing your own if you don’t get what you want and the Amarr aren’t easy enough targets. You don’t fake being a penitent soldier anywhere near ■■■■■■■ well enough to buy that.

2088

Wish for it? My failing?

Gods and spirits.