Oh, eww. That’s gross. Those Gallente and their hedonistic, barbaric ways.
I was only referring to an old nautical term, used by the Caldari to unify forces. Better to increase the odds of survival, and thus ensure continuous service to the state.
Leave it to the Gallente to fetishize that.
I don’t know who you are trying to fool. Both your likes and posts on this forum are public record.
Your explicit support for Flavours’ defamatory nonsense is well known, and trying to wriggle your way out of it is pathetic.
If you have even a shred of honor left to preserve, I would advise you start acting like it.
Why no one, Miss Malitia.
As a matter of public record, you’re the one the derailed the thread and deliberately drew attention to that nasty propaganda. Somehow you’re the one that assumed that what I was saying had something to do with that nonsense when all I was trying to do was praise yours, and Miss Kims efforts at keeping the Gallente at bay. And merely suggested that your combined forces would be a force multiplier.
I’m no psychologist, but it seems that you’re a bit triggered by Gallente nonsense. I would be too, if a low quality, low effort, attempt to meme-amize me into some low-brow public attempt to defame my integrity. You shouldn’t let that stuff get under your skin. It allows the Gallente to live rent free in your head. And that’s the worst kind of occupation there is!
Look at you, putting all those brain cells to the test to try and craft an almost-believable narrative to cower behind.
Seems like I was too charitable in thinking you were a man of any substance. Next time, do everyone a favor and keep my name, misspelled or not, out of your mouth, and your bizarre fantasies away from the public’s sight.
I am done here.
The warm weather means body paint is back in vogue.
I’m reminded of the old joke where you’d say to someone whose punctuality was lacking, that “you’d be late for your own funeral”.
I wasn’t present.
But, technically, we’re - we capsuleers are - all ghosts. Dead in body, but wandering the cluster in spirit, causing grief and destruction.
I suppose, so will the Upwell clones be.
I don’t know if you even meant to make that sound as totally awesome as you did. You should write capsuleer recruitment media.
It’s a mythical phrasing for describing ghosts so it’s awe-inspiring by default. Like all Keepers of Tradition, I’m just quoting something I heard, in a new but applicable context. (And so can the recruiters if they want to.)
My predecessor liked it, too. It won’t surprise you that I don’t.
It’s an excuse for how we are, an excuse for us to etch our pain and hate into other people’s lives. It pardons us by stripping us of our humanity. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a pardon for you, but for people like Miz or my predecessor, maybe me also, it validates our sense of being apart-- not by murderous acts, but by our nature.
We’re not even human, this story whispers. How could we be otherwise? Why even should we be otherwise? This is what we’re meant to be.
No, we couldn’t just be fragile, flawed human beings with some neat toys and a lot of blood on our hands, like so many other privileged battlefield commanders throughout history.
Damaged though it is, my mind requires matter to run. My heart beats. My body is warm, I breathe, I feel. If that isn’t life, I have no idea what would have defined mine but miseries I can’t even remember.
We’re not even made out of cadavers anymore. I didn’t steal someone’s body so I could have it. This body is mine.
I’m not a ghost, Elsebeth.
You seem to have entirely skipped the “technically” part.
It is not, obviously, the whole truth. Nor is being a vengeful, destructive ghost something to strive for, for me. Maybe it is for some but it would be that for them even if they did find a myth’s words fit to describe it.
As is usual, you read something I say, jump to conclusions, and attack those conclusions, leaving me outside of the discussion wondering what the hell just happened.
Yes, we are human.
It’s why I didn’t respond sooner.
Actions and even arguments come with corollaries, Elsebeth. If you move a part of the world, the world will shift around that thing. Usually what I try to point to, and which you seldom seem to want to see, is what is to me either an unexplored angle on the question or the natural consequence of what you are putting forth.
No, you didn’t ask for it. No, the world doesn’t care that you didn’t ask; it’ll happen anyway.
I love exploring issues, especially the angles people don’t want to explore because they’re uncomfortable. Though you may not believe this, it’s not personal in any respect; it’s just how I am.
In this case I held off because it was clear you were portraying it as a negative.
… Although how can a person technically be a ghost? Whose rule book is the technicality constructed from? I’m not dead in body and can pop down to medical for an exam if proof is needed. Sure I’ve left a long string of piles of lifeless meat behind me but none of them are “my body” any more than the skin cells I and everybody else more-or-less constantly shed.
This is my body. There are many like it but this one is mine. … And so will be the next, and the next, and the next, and …
Anyway, I didn’t argue at first because it was clear what you were going for and quibbling felt like picking a fight. Then Miz stepped in with more or less the unintended bit (the validation/excuse aspect reduced to “totally awesome” but basically the right thrust) and …
Acknowledging, correctly, that it can be spun as a positive. I wasn’t going to respond at all until that.
I don’t like us being compared to ghosts, just in general, Elsebeth. I really don’t. It’s why I was tempted to quibble earlier, even if I didn’t, and it’s why I’m arguing now. It validates our worst and also makes a case for our exorcism/disposal/mass-murder.
Humans don’t like stuff that creeps them out even when it’s harmless, which we aren’t. We proclaim ourselves other-than-human, even rhetorically, at our peril.
So, thank you for this.
It’s ok, you don’t have to like it.
It is unlikely though that I will stop doing it. Even if you are not “dead in body” now - which admittedly is the wrong phrasing - you died in body once. Probably more than once. You have died in body, yet in spirit you have not moved on to God or to your ancestors or to eternal oblivion. That is, technically, what makes a ghost, in the mythology I am familiar with. I find that idea amusing, myself.
I don’t think you are correct that it sets us apart, though. Ghosts are human. Technically. Just often very confused and lost humans.
I don’t think stories tend to treat them like humans, though, Elsebeth.
Usually in stories when a ghost goes and murders a bunch of people we don’t blame the ghost-- it typically has its reasons, even if they’re confused reasons. Often we feel sorry for it. We do normally sympathize with efforts to contain or get rid of it, though.
The best thing that can be done for a ghost, in almost every case, is to do whatever’s necessary to either imprison it or make it get on with the business of being dead. That’s not how we usually treat humans.
It’s not how we would want people to treat us.
(Does the word “technically” even belong in something so inherently ephemeral as matters of spirit? I mean it makes sense maybe for legalistic, rules-based cosmologies but is that either of ours?)
Um. Minor thing …
Speaking as someone who expects to go out like a candle when I die, this is odd and maybe-unintentionally scary phrasing. It makes it sound like falling into the void, forever.
What I’d more expect is just reverting to not-being, dissolving back into the Totality, like returning to never-having-been-born. Did you have a sense of time before you were born? Was it dark? Was it scary? Did you suffer?
… It’s none of those things I don’t think. It’s just, not-being. So “eternal” is a weird way to describe something that lacks experience of anything, including time.
I was not-here for all the time before I was born. I will also be not-here for all the time after I die. But since I wasn’t/won’t be around for any of it, it’s very strange to call it “eternal.”
The way to deal with ghosts is to find what’s bothering them and keeping them from moving on with their (after)life, and then to help them deal with that. Maybe you do not want that kind of treatment, but please do not generalize. Of course, there are many traditions with ghosts in them, and when I say “technically, we’re all ghosts”, I am not referring to all of them, necessarily.
To the “minor” thing I apologize for any offense caused by not including your beliefs on my list. I want to assure you the phrase was not meant to be all-inclusive, but to merely give some examples of beliefs about what happens to a person after death. What translates to you as ‘eternal oblivion’ is a term other people have used to describe their own beliefs; I merely adopted it. Whether it was intended as scary originally, I cannot say, but I did not intend to scare anyone.
I am afraid I cannot help it that when I talk about spiritual matters in a cluster with millions of beliefs and moral customs, through a translator, not every nuance of every phrase works for every listener in the exact same way.
Well, the clearest thing that is keeping me from moving on with my (after)life is a series of working cloning facilities. I wouldn’t say those bother me though I guess. I’m not short on stuff to live for either, though.
On the other … I’m not such an easy person to offend, Elsebeth. It seemed weird, is all, like characterizing a building that has been abandoned, rotted out, fallen over, crumbled to dust, and had a forest grow where it once stood as having its “power out.” Not wrong, quite, but deeply strange.
Eternity and oblivion seem to me like incompatible concepts. Eternity is a spiritual forever, where the universe can burn out and you’re still there, maybe watching but in any rate having your spiritual existence in Paradise or wherever (I still don’t get why the directrix sees this as desirable). Oblivion is a death of spirit, mortality extended to soul as well as body-- a snuffing out, a disappearing, a not-being-anywhere (or anyone, or anything).
A final, permanent freedom from suffering. (Or a terrifying notion, depending on who you ask.)
I’m not offended. Just, are there really different traditions for what those mean?
You seem to read a lot to ‘eternal’ here. It can also simply mean “unending”, or “lasting until the end of all time”. I believe in belief structures where it is one of your options, “eternal oblivion” can just be a poetic way to say “you’re dead and not coming back, ever”.
And with respect, the whole thing about being technically ghosts is a myth, a metaphor. You the cloned capsuleer might be stuck and in need of moving on in other ways than final death, making you destructive or harmful.
General you, of course.
In theory, the Upwell clones seem meant to mostly build things rather than destroy them. Of course, perhaps they will be used to build weapons of war. Still … well, Upwell may cause the people who sign such contracts grief, certainly. But the Upwell clones themselves may perhaps be ones that build rather than destroy, and perhaps bring some joy.
Well, we shall see at least.
The mechanic constructing the fourth starboard bulkhead from the prow of a warship is also “just building things”.