case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2023-11-25 04:03 pm

[ SECRET POST #6168 ]


⌈ Secret Post #6168 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 36 secrets from Secret Submission Post #882.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
No. The position in contention is, "I would kill my child, my mom, and my wife, and anyone who doesn't is a bad person."

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 05:29 pm (UTC)(link)
The position of contention is that I would allow my child, my mom, and my wife, and MYSELF to go through with the procedure because it's the right thing to do. Anyone who would prioritize their own life over the lives of millions is, by definition, a bad person....

Is it possible that, when the chips are down, I can't go through with it? Absolutely. And I would be a horrible person and probably wouldn't be able to live with myself. There are multiple examples of people throughout history who have not done the right thing in the moment and then basically killed themselves, either directly or through drinking because they can't handle their own immorality.

Also, keep in mind that this is in a very specific set of circumstances. This isn't a whim. This is 20 years, TWO DECADES, after billions of deaths, with no end in sight. No vaccine attempt has worked. Society has collapsed, everyone is either in imminent danger of death all the time or living under martial law being abused by the military and each other. Suddenly, something changes, someone has developed immunity (a thing which happens in real life) which could absolutely lead to a vaccine (again, a thing that has happened in real life). Something that has the slightest chance of returning humanity to the life they had before, of saving millions of lives from death, starvation, abuse, etc. Something that can defeat this plague. This is, quite literally, the saving of the entire human race. And you think it's moral to leave an entire planet of people to die because you'll be sad that one specific person has died?

You seem to have some issues that you need to work through.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
It would not make you a horrible person. It would make you ordinary. How can you say you want to save humanity when by your definition most people are, due to their ordinariness, horrible people?

It is not moral to sacrifice someone because you've decided it's the right thing to do, without them having a say or a choice in the matter. It's especially not moral to do it for what is, as far as I can tell from my knowledge of this story, something that's experimental and is not guaranteed to work.

When we create vaccines in real life, we do not kill people with natural immunity in order to synthesize them. We certainly don't do it while lying to them about the process, keeping from them the knowledge that they're going to die. That would be deeply, deeply unethical, in any context.

Do you think it would be okay for you force your loved ones into it, if they knew exactly what was about to happen to them and they told you "no?" And what if it didn't work? What if you forced your loved ones to die for nothing?
ariakas: (Default)

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

[personal profile] ariakas 2023-11-26 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)
It is not moral to sacrifice someone because you've decided it's the right thing to do, without them having a say or a choice in the matter. It's especially not moral to do it for what is, as far as I can tell from my knowledge of this story, something that's experimental and is not guaranteed to work.

You are correct, but right answer here is to force the unarmed doctors (who may very well not know that she has not consented, or at least, you can't say for certain that they do, the only person you've confirmed to know is their leader who you also know hides many things from her followers) to wake her up at gunpoint then ask her if this is what she wants, not slaughter everyone involved and lie to her later about what happened.

The problem is that, within the story - and this is what drives Joel to act the way he does to get the end he wants - Ellie has strongly implied that she would want to go through with it, even if she hasn't stated outright "yes the Fireflies can kill me to create the vaccine". Therefore, Joel removes that choice from her. He would rather have a living daughter than a chance at saving the world, even if that means murder, even if that means overriding her autonomy.

And that is what leads directly to the events of the sequel. (Where the "correct" answer to the dilemma is given in the form of Abby and her father. Her father (correctly) asks her what she would want in that situation, and her father (correctly) agrees to respect that.)

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
It is not moral to sacrifice someone because you've decided it's the right thing to do, without them having a say or a choice in the matter.

Where did that come in? Where did I say that I would outright MURDER them if they said no, they didn't want to? This is in the context of the game, where Ellie has said that she wants to do the procedure. We can debate on whether or not she had full informed consent, but the fact of the matter is that Joel didn't care about her consent or her choices. JOEL didn't want her to die, so he took her and lied to her. It doesn't matter if she actually had informed consent or not because it doesn't change any of Joel's actions.

She didn't have informed consent? Joel killed the doctor, took her and lied to her about why the procedure didn't happen.

She did have informed consent? Joel killed the doctor, took her and lied to her about why the procedure didn't happen.

Because it was never about her. It's never about what she wanted. It was ALL about Joel.

If my child, my mom, my wife, were told "Hey, you are the only hope we have of developing a vaccine against this thing that is slowly killing the entire human race. We will need to use your brain to do it. Please come to X hospital," and they were as committed to getting there as Ellie is, I would (hopefully) help bring them to X hospital and um... not kill the doctors doing it? Cause invalidating someone's choices is a shitty thing to do normally, but to do it when the fate of the world also hangs on you not being a dick you've become a superdick. A massive asshole. A terrible person.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I mean, you are step away from saying that experiments on children are good because it benefits humanity and somehow anon objecting to that is with issues

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 06:52 pm (UTC)(link)
No? I am talking about this specific instance where one specific person has the only possible key left to the saving of humanity. In this instance, saving the one specific person because otherwise you would have to confront the unprocessed death of your child and you simply Can't Have That - that's an asshole move. And for some reason people are defending the asshole as if he did a morally correct thing in saving himself some emotional pain at the expense of invalidating the choices of the specific person and condemning the human race to extinction.

I'm not extrapolating this into a universal truth that Child Experimentation Is Good. That's what everyone else seems to WANT me to be doing because otherwise they'd have to face the fact that they're not as moral as they'd like to think.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 09:26 pm (UTC)(link)
OK, we started good. Most of the people who are a bit baffled how not wanting to kill a child make them bad people do not have full information about canon. That includes me. And it was mentioned several times. So probably you are right this character is selfish etc etc. I really do not know.
And
And
THEN you had to imply. I don't even fucking know what you are implying. That we all here are amoral because we questioned black and white thinking? We are all cunts because we do not automatically consider person evil for being simply human? I don't even

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 09:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Ahh, I see the issue here. You decided to come into a conversation about a very specific canon circumstance and pretend you knew exactly what was going on.

So, yes. You. Specifically you, the person I am responding to right now, are the biggest cunt because you disregarded the whole context of the conversation I was trying to have with Ariakas about a specific plot point in a game - a plot point that we were complaining about people deliberately misunderstanding because the writers of the game made it explicit - and decided I was talking about general child murder and calling everyone who hated it evil even though I never used the word evil.

You're definitely a cunt, cause what the fuck are you on? Go perform your outrage porn somewhere else.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-26 11:27 pm (UTC)(link)
It's fallible on the part of the characters who claim it that Ellie is the only chance to save humanity. (At least, I believe it is from what I recall. If they were presented as knowing this with certainty somehow, I'd just call that bad writing because nobody can know something like that for sure.) Humans would still live on for a while if she wasn't sacrificed, and there's as much of a chance of another cure being developed without needing to kill anyone as there is of the procedure on Ellie being successful -- that is, it's a toss-up.

Re: Who is Your Least Favorite Character?

(Anonymous) 2023-11-27 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
She's the only known character to have this mutation at all in the last 20 years. She's the first person in 20 years to develop an immunity to any behavioral changes while having the fungus in her brain stem. Which is where it lives. So if they do find someone else with the same immunity which could mean a vaccine, they would still need to get into the brain stem. So, no, no chance of a cure being developed without needing to kill someone. Humans would still live, with the caveat that thousands would continue to die each day from the disease and subsequent environments created by it until someone else comes by with this mutation, or humans would still live, with the caveat that thousands would continue to die each day from the disease and subsequent environments created by it until the whole species dies out from continuing to lose more people each year than are born.

It's only a toss up of the procedure leading to a cure. Which, when your options are Absolutely No vs Maybe.... I'm gonna go with Maybe.