[ SECRET POST #1761 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1761 ⌋


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


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Notes:


Early because there's a snowstorm here, not sure if power will stay on. Better early than late!


Secrets Left to Post: 12 pages, 300 secrets from Secret Submission Post #252.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 2 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 0 - omgiknowthem ], [ 0 - take it to comments ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Sure, calling them sociopaths is an exagguration, that's why I only half agree. But they sure don't feel much empathy for various of the people they work on. I also didn't find Topher particularly redeemed by the end of the show.

DA

[(Anonymous)]

You're not alone in feeling that way.
Myself I don't think Topher would have developed any "empathy" if he hadn't personally been negatively affected by events. It was selfishness.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

I think that people working in areas where they routinely mess up with people's lives tend to end up like that in general, as a defense mechanism.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

This would perhaps be true if the people they "worked on" had not signed themselves over, lock, stock and barrel. Which, with the exception of Pria, all of the dolls did.

I really don't get the whole moral dilemma, plenty of people would sign up to be dolls given the chance. I would.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Pria was a big fucking exception, and it was strongly implied (if not outright stated, I forget) that they routinely took severely schizophrenic patients to use as dolls.

Adele only thought that counted as rape when she realized Pria wasn't actually mentally ill. Sooo, she and Topher were just fine with rape when it comes to schizophrenics. Thus, I lose pretty much any sympathy for what they go through when they finally get consciences (which as one of the anons said, may have been instilled in them by self-interest rather than empathy).

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

Adele was sufficiently morally outraged that she had Mellie kill the handler/security guy who was raping Pria as a doll.

And Pria was taken as a doll on the request of the person, who was a high-up Rossum guy, she rejected as a person, the person who was a doctor and drugged her to make her seem crazy.

When Topher realised this he gave Pria back her orig personality and then helped dispose of the guy's body. Not something you do out of self interest.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

You are completely missing the point.

Yes, Adele is outraged by someone abusing her dolls, but she's not outraged by turning a schizophrenic into a doll. She doesn't think that's rape. She only gives a fuck about it when she realizes Pria was drugged and not really schizophrenic.

Topher only gives a fuck when ditto.

They do not regard schizophrenics as human beings. When they thought Pria was crazy, they were fine with using her.

Thus, I find their moral outrage pretty meaningless. Those acts were not selfish but they were not remotely redemptive either. They don't make them good people. They're still people who are fine with the rape of people with severe mental illness.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

As a person with a mental illness, please stop being offended on my behalf?

And you are missing the point. Because what the fuck are you talking about?

There is such a thing as thinking you are helping someone when you aren't. Enough doctors have done it. Drills in heads and leeches and all kinds of shit. That doesn't make them a bad person.

If someone could "cure" me, and all it would take is five years of my life which I would never remember, I would want them to. I don't care what it would take, so long as I came out the other side able to function, in life, in society, or at anything.

If I died in the process (pre-empting you here), then so be it. It would be better than living my life like I do now.

You will undoubtedly say that I am mentally unstable or something of the like, but people have been saying that about people like me for hundreds of years. I don't really care. I want to be "normal", however you define it. If someone can give that to me, I will take, no matter what the price.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

As a person with mental illness, please stop assuming I'm speaking on your behalf.

They did not think they were "helping" her. Adele did not think it counted as rape. They didn't think of her as a human being. Yes, that does make them a bad person.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

Have rather a one track mind here, don't you?

You own issue, perhaps.

I don't think I ever heard Adele say it did not count as rape, or that she wasn't mightily pissed off, or that she didn't think of Pria as a human being. Same for Topher.

This is your feeling. Take ownership of it, but don't speak as though it was fact in the show. It wasn't.

And as a fellow person with A mental health issue, I understand how you feel, but morality is not black and white. Right and wrong, not as clear cut as you are describing.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

it's perfectly fucking clear what she's talking about. adele only thinks of what has happened to pria as rape once she knows pria is not really schizophrenic, but was drugged. she does not think it would be rape if pria was really schizophrenic. she does think it's rape because pria isn't schizophrenic. she does not afford pria the dignity even of personhood when she believes pria is schizophenic. wtf is hard to understand about that?

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

What's hard to understand about that is why, then, Adele had Mellie kill the person who was raping Sierra.

If she did not think that the dolls were people, or if she simply did not care, why? It had nothing to do with Pria or her being a schizophrenic. So why did she do it?

Clearly, she thought it was abhorrent enough to have the guy killed, which is pretty extreme for someone who doesn't give a shit. What is so difficult to understand about that?

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Hang on, leeches? Ahahaha. I should have caught that.

Good trolling, mate.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Wait, before you come back with "omg didn't you know about leeches?", my point is that their use has been proven medically useful. And was hardly comparable with having your personality wiped then your body rented out for sex, against your will.

question (da)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't remember that they were going to cure her with it then let her go after 5 years. That wouldn't make much sense, how was this cure meant to work, why would it take 5 years particularly?

Are you sure that's how it went? How was it meant to work?

Re: question (da)

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Two different things.

The five years was not how long the cure would take to work; it was the way that she would pay Rossum back for the costs of the cure. (Just assume I'm putting in air-quotes as necessary, to reflect what the characters believe that isn't true.)

The cure was that they were giving her a functioning mind, to replace what seemed to be a hopelessly dysfunctional mind that could not be cured any other way.

Even discounting the fact that, as they discovered, their "cure" wasn't Priya's only hope to someday be mentally well, it's still hella morally questionable on all sorts of levels. But, I would argue, that's the point - and it's not necessarily a question with an easy answer. Like someone said earlier in the thread, if someone is actively refusing medication because they're too delusional to understand their choices, does that mean you shrug and say, "Hey! I'll leave them to suffer!" If there is any case where you say, "No; I believe in letting rational people make their own choices, but this person cannot do that, and someone else has to make those choices for them," then the question becomes when you believe that your overriding of their wishes is justified.

Re: 0/10

[sleepykatt.livejournal.com]

No. You, very seriously now, are missing the point.

>> There is such a thing as thinking you are helping someone when you aren't. Enough doctors have done it. Drills in heads and leeches and all kinds of shit. That doesn't make them a bad person. <<

If Rossum, or Adele, or Topher, wanted to help Priya and were misguided, that wouldn't make them bad people.

Selling her for sex when she didn't consent to it is what makes them bad people.

To help her, they did not need to sell her for sex. They knew she didn't consent and that made it rape. Are you following so far? Okay good. The next step is that they didn't care about it being rape, and in fact Adele specifically did not name it as rape, until they discovered Priya had been drugged and was not genuinely mentally ill. That is what tells us, by a simple process of deduction, that when she did think Priya was mentally ill she didn't think it was rape because she didn't regard a severe schizophrenic as a person worthy of human dignity.

Keep it straight. It has nothing to do with helping her or curing her, because there was no reason they had to sell her for sex, even if the process of turning her into a doll was a magical cure for schizoprenia.

Got it?

thank you!!!!

[(Anonymous)]

this is what i would have said if i'd gotten here first, except probably not so well so thank you.

cannot believe it needed saying. kept reading this whole thread and shaking my head in stunned and depressed wonder.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

It's such a relief to come back to this thread today and find people with a clue.

I honestly, honestly do not understand how Anon up there could even need this explaining to them.

I suspect their own issues with the desire to be cured and made normal were so overpowering that they couldn't see anything else.

da

[(Anonymous)]

This annoyed me at the time as well, and I was never 100% certain if it was the writers deliberately making the characters that vile, or if the writers themselves were just clueless, which I don't want to think of Joss but :/

Also I'm bipolar and my best friend is schizophrenic, I think people with mental illness or disabilities are more likely to understand and agree. Though not all, but then not all can follow basic chains logic, or understand that because THEY would choose something, it doesn't follow that it is okay to assume that all others would choose it too.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

As a disabled mental health professional, I completely agree.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Senator Perrin, he didn't sign himself over either. Not Topher's responsibility, but Bennet's.

Re: 0/10

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, Perrin was probably not willing, but that does not mean that Topher and Adele knew, or agreed, with people who had not signed up being dolls (and in fact it was explicitly said that they didn't).

They tried to stop Rossum.

Judging them because of another place they had no control over is odd, I make no excuses for Bennett. I'm only arguing that Topher was not completely unemotional, as the above commenter suggests.

Re: 0/10

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was using Perrin as an example for Bennett, not Topher. Though it shows that Rossum obviously had no general problem with using unwilling people as dolls, though, and Adele and Topher went along happily with Rossum for quite some time before having an attack of ethics.

Re: 0/10

[meadowphoenix]

In a world where that kind of technology is possible, I think it's a quite arguable position to say that the original people could not consent for any of the other personalities they were given. I mean, I think there are very obvious consent issues for any of the dolls, when essentially they were turned into completely different people, who hadn't consented. The issues seem quite glaring, imo.