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Post by Runningflame on Jun 1, 2022 14:50:38 GMT
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Post by bedinsis on Jun 1, 2022 15:14:37 GMT
I'm with Reynardine on this. I wouldn't trust the Court with acting ethically. Maybe you meant you and Tony, the guy that gets so angry at his own daughter he actively was ruining her life instead of managing to have a talk with her one way or another? Where did you get the image that Tony felt anger towards Annie?
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Post by hp on Jun 1, 2022 16:23:39 GMT
About the morality issue... Kat and her friends are already living under a set of imposed rules, created according to a limited groups's interests and notion of right and wrong, enforced with little to none accountability and oversight, and which they have little possibility to influence unless they rise in the ruling hierarchy of that system (which probably also wouldn't happen in a democratic, transparent and meritocratic way).
So Rey's moral issues seem to be kinda abstract in a centrist way. "No one should have the power to dictate right and wrong by themselves". True, but so what? It's already being done. They are already living under an arbitrary set of rules and interests that has been proven time and again to not be shaped by sound moral qualms. How would a release from that system be more problematic than helping advance the interests behind the current rules?
...That being said, I don't understand Kat's reasoning in this talk. If she went with the Court, she would be *remaining* under their rules and interests in whatever new place. Which restrictions to her work are caused just by the Court's location, and not by the Court hierarchy and system? At most a focus on managing the immediate relationship with Gillity Wood beings. Besides not having to point her work to that issue, what freedom would she gain?
It seems she and her friends would have more freedom by staying, not going. Even though they'd probably have way less resources for research.
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Post by todd on Jun 1, 2022 16:37:56 GMT
I still don't see why they'd need a huge amount of Ether, an amount equivalent to Coyote's powers. Maybe to create a barrier around this system to keep all etheric entities and influences out? With the irony that such a defense would itself be powered by the ether. One other thought: back in "The Torn Sea", Kat was so excited about being able to mold the ship's form with her thoughts that she forgot (until Paz reminded her) that she was doing this to abet a would-be adulterer.
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Post by davidm on Jun 1, 2022 16:39:25 GMT
Kat already risked creating skynet/terminators or cylons that wipe out humanity. She's got a bunch of "new people", with cult robot leader who may be Diego's final plan, already willing to push ethics to the side, eg "love boat" drama that he secretly lead, then got all the other seraphs to take the fall for it.
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Post by davidm on Jun 1, 2022 16:44:03 GMT
"I still don't see why they'd need a huge amount of Ether" one option is to completely destroy the ether, create a sort of black hole ether device that continually sucks out all ether from world and then bury/hide it like they did Jeanne, so no one can turn it off. Being far away makes it harder for others to stop them till too late.
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Post by Gemini Jim on Jun 1, 2022 17:04:22 GMT
The flaw in Kat's argument isn't that people don't know right from wrong.
The problem is that the racists, the bigots, the slavers, the warmongers, etc. will always come up with justifications for their actions. From their point of view, "it is morally right and good that we do this," therefore they have done no evil. This is not a problem limited to 100 years ago, either.
(For that matter, we have no proof that the forest is immune to this sort of reasoning. There's no guarantee that the forest folk, separated out from the Court, would act in a manner morally or ethically superior to the Court.)
=
Coffee Break Wild Spec: The Court will get a version of the Omega Device fully armed and operational in the future. To do that, they needed Kat to sail off with them to the Undying Lands. But she needed a push to separate her from Annie. We are retroactively seeing some of the effects of that now.
The "Snare" is a Kat trap. Dun DUN duunnnn.
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Post by maxptc on Jun 1, 2022 18:43:01 GMT
"Everyone has their reasons. That's what's so terrifying; people can find a way to justify any action, no matter how evil."
Kat is exposing her ignorance hard. The idea that "we" know what's right and wrong and that a level of omniscience would only be a problem if you did "bad" stuff is something only someone with very little knowledge and understanding of ethics would say.
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Post by antiyonder on Jun 1, 2022 19:27:56 GMT
The problem is that the racists, the bigots, the slavers, the warmongers, etc. will always come up with justifications for their actions. From their point of view, "it is morally right and good that we do this," therefore they have done no evil. Exactly. Taking say homophobia (which as Kat demonstrated does still exist in-universe), no one ever caves to disliking it. It's "justified" on the grounds of: A. Keeping the population a float. B. Helen Lovejoy: "Won't someone think of the children?!":-D C. It makes God cry. D. All of the above.
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Post by mochakimono on Jun 1, 2022 19:30:14 GMT
Come to think of it, Renard has a uniquely personal perspective on the lengths the Court will go. He started out this whole story pinned to the floor of a storage unit with spikes through his limbs to keep him indefinitely immobilized as they researched a "safe" (for the dragon, not him, I assume) extraction method to soul-ectomy him out of the host body. I won't debate the ethics or necessity of any of that since I'm sure it did the rounds years ago on the forums anyway, I'm just saying it points to his pretty keen awareness that people will get hurt, even to help other people - it's just another example of the Court creating a hierarchy of whose suffering and death is worth more than others. Forget lab mice, they'll crucify sapient entities in a shed.
Edit: Alright, I went back to look and the spiking was... mayhaps an accident on his part? He appeared merely shackled, though still injured for his escape attempt. But, still. The Court's fine with trial-less incarceration, so to speak, it's an adjacent can of worms.
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Post by alevice on Jun 1, 2022 21:53:13 GMT
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Post by bicarbonat on Jun 2, 2022 0:10:17 GMT
JEANNE: am i a joke to you
Knowing what's right and what's wrong is what gives the heinousness that extra kick.
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Post by warrl on Jun 2, 2022 0:28:48 GMT
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." - J. Stalin
Not a guy I recommend turning to for moral advice, but he's right about how people see things.
Or as it was put in another story, "you prioritize the dangers you can do something about." Think of the folks for whom a long stick with a sharp stone somehow attached to the end is the ultimate in high tech. They're your ancestors. Anything that would wipe out an entire tribe, they couldn't do anything about, so meh - but a predator that took a single child, they could, so GRAB YOUR SPEARS AND LET'S GO!
Kat's at risk of falling into the trap of thinking of unpleasantness for many as a statistic.
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Post by mturtle7 on Jun 2, 2022 1:59:06 GMT
Yeah...honestly, I kind of feels like all of Kat's character development from that chapter in particular is just being erased right now. It's pretty weird.
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Post by maxptc on Jun 2, 2022 2:23:09 GMT
Yeah...honestly, I kind of feels like all of Kat's character development from that chapter in particular is just being erased right now. It's pretty weird. I dunno, I feel like Kat has been developing into a supervillain rather well, in a very natural progression. She started out idealistic, but she now has major power, and that changes people. It's been steadily shown to be changing Kat. We all know what she is becoming, and it doesn't look like something an ethics committee would approve.
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Post by shaihulud on Jun 2, 2022 5:36:58 GMT
Yeah, she's been getting like two whole years of "you're a genius" and "you would be a valuable asset" and "you're one of us now." Plus people have been saying that everything bad going on is actually Annie's fault and that if Annie wasn't around everything would be better for Kat. A friend betraying someone they claim to love because of peer pressure is actually pretty normal.
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Post by blahzor on Jun 2, 2022 6:37:27 GMT
*person runs in frantically*
SOLYENT ETHER IS PEOPLE! IT'S PEOPLE!
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Post by razgrizx on Jun 2, 2022 13:19:20 GMT
I think people here are misinterpreting the "we" in Kat's sentence. I read "We" here is not the court but Kat and Annie especifically in the hypothetical scenario they'd leave together with the Court Except that Kat had been explicitly told that Annie would be left behind.Oops, I forgot that. Then Kat and Paz and whoever would go with her in this hypothetical scenario that is close to her. My main point is the we is not the Court
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Post by saardvark on Jun 2, 2022 15:02:04 GMT
Edit: Alright, I went back to look and the spiking was... mayhaps an accident on his part? He appeared merely shackled, though still injured for his escape attempt. But, still. The Court's fine with trial-less incarceration, so to speak, it's an adjacent can of worms. Indeed - an accident, or maybe instead, an injury incurred when someone strong (Eggs?) desparately tried to stop his escape but without pepper equipment (eg, anti-dragon sword). In www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=50we see Rey-Sivo shackled after recapture. His arms are cuffed and we can see his left arm cuff attached to the floor by a metal rod. Another rod can be seen passing under the left arm, near to the similarly cuffed right arm - presumably this rod similarly attaches the right arm cuff to the floor out of sight. Behind R-S is some sort of device with two knobbed shafts protruding downwards behind him. These look a bit like (if ripped out and the top piece broken off) the rod that impaled Rey-Sivo's left knee in www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=43Perhaps (speculating a bit wildly) Rey-Sivo broke free, Eggs was nearby but not in his dragon-fighting gear, and thinking fast, he desperately ripped one of these knobbed shafts out of the device and used it as an improvised weapon.. and managed to impale R-S's knee before the possessed Orjak escaped. Note that after recapture, the Court (Eggs?) has removed the knobby rod from R-S's knee - they are not so evil as to refuse medical care to their prisoners.
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Post by saardvark on Jun 2, 2022 15:18:37 GMT
Yeah...honestly, I kind of feels like all of Kat's character development from that chapter in particular is just being erased right now. It's pretty weird. I dunno, I feel like Kat has been developing into a supervillain rather well, in a very natural progression. She started out idealistic, but she now has major power, and that changes people. It's been steadily shown to be changing Kat. We all know what she is becoming, and it doesn't look like something an ethics committee would approve. On the other hand, the Norns said that by saving Annie, Kat also saves herself www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2350... perhaps Annie prevents Kat from turning into dark Kat? Even the Zimmster is worried about what Kat could get up to... www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2265but perhaps the salutary influence of Annie the Good will keep Kat on the side of the fluffy bunnies and prancing unicorns and all goodness and light....
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Post by agasa on Jun 2, 2022 15:25:47 GMT
This seems oddly out of katracter for all the experiences she had so far.
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Post by maxptc on Jun 2, 2022 18:07:14 GMT
I dunno, I feel like Kat has been developing into a supervillain rather well, in a very natural progression. She started out idealistic, but she now has major power, and that changes people. It's been steadily shown to be changing Kat. We all know what she is becoming, and it doesn't look like something an ethics committee would approve. On the other hand, the Norns said that by saving Annie, Kat also saves herself www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2350... perhaps Annie prevents Kat from turning into dark Kat? Even the Zimmster is worried about what Kat could get up to... www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2265but perhaps the salutary influence of Annie the Good will keep Kat on the side of the fluffy bunnies and prancing unicorns and all goodness and light.... Saving yourself and better path doesn't necessarily mean goodness and light. Like, if OG Kat destroyed the planet, then destroying a country would be a better path. If she literally died due to the path she took, then any path that doesn't end in death is saving herself. That conversation was very open ended. She is on a different path, but that doesn't mean she won't have similar emotional and developmental setbacks and moral failures to OG Kat, just that Annie might be able to curb and change the end result.
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Post by mochakimono on Jun 2, 2022 20:09:24 GMT
Perhaps (speculating a bit wildly) Rey-Sivo broke free, Eggs was nearby but not in his dragon-fighting gear, and thinking fast, he desperately ripped one of these knobbed shafts out of the device and used it as an improvised weapon.. and managed to impale R-S's knee before the possessed Orjak escaped. Note that after recapture, the Court (Eggs?) has removed the knobby rod from R-S's knee - they are not so evil as to refuse medical care to their prisoners. I think you're right. Either that or Rey tripped on it on his way out, heh. I'm sure he wouldn't leave the accommodations a glowing review either way, plus he's been around a lot longer than any human in the cast, observing the Court from without and within. He's got good reason to mistrust them... but then so does Kat, with what she's seen as well... Folks have pointed out the cruelty of Jeanne and her beau's fate already. Overall I agree that this exchange is a little confusing, because it feels like one of those conversations where an author is operating with a lot more context than the audience and forgot to include some of it in the actual text beforehand. A character's inner workings are generally not an enigma to their creator, but sometimes in fiction there's a disconnect between what the writer already knows quite well, and what the audience actually sees. What we've seen Kat actually doing and feeling so far doesn't mesh greatly with... whatever she's trying to argue for in these pages, so this scene doesn't feel like a natural continuation of the story, but a natural continuation of a deleted scene.
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Post by Per on Jun 2, 2022 22:59:11 GMT
The scene hasn't ended, so it's very possible Rey's speech is leading into a more coherent point, but the nature of webcomic forum discussion is to assume the comic has ended with the current page.
Kat: Of course, in a place without voodoo magics, maybe we could get some cool science done.
Annie: What? You'd do human sacrifice!? That sounds horrible!
Kat: No, I mean just science like I've done before without human sacrifice...
Rey: If you'd reject voodoo magics... what's to say you wouldn't also sacrifice humans?
Kat: Geez! Of course I wouldn't sacrifice humans!
Rey: That's what some Incan guy said. And then they sacrificed humans! Learn from the past, girl!
Readers: *furiously nodding sagely* Yes... it does make sense Rey would be against human sacrifice. He is wise. And Kat, you are on a dark path! As foretold, yesyes.
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Post by drmemory on Jun 2, 2022 23:33:05 GMT
While it is true that the Norns said Annie saves Kat from becoming Dark Kat (paraphrased, obviously), I'm not convinced we've seen the actual event happen yet. I really think she's still on that trajectory. Very much so.
Also, nice to see Renard actually acting like the adult in the room. Which he is...
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Post by maxptc on Jun 3, 2022 4:01:24 GMT
While it is true that the Norns said Annie saves Kat from becoming Dark Kat (paraphrased, obviously), I'm not convinced we've seen the actual event happen yet. I really think she's still on that trajectory. Very much so. Also, nice to see Renard actually acting like the adult in the room. Which he is... I dunno if its true they said that. Implied sure, but implications are tricky things I dont always trust in stories, vaguely worded ones even less. Saving herself, better path and major changes to the world isn't the same as saying Annie prevents dark Kat. Maybe she just prevents darkest Kat. Maybe she stops dark Kat before she goes to far. This would definitely make sense with your Kat is still on that path idea, maybe Kat isn't getting "saved" by Annie until she has become mechdemon Kat, and who knows what that saving will truly be.
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Post by theonethatgotaway on Jun 3, 2022 7:19:29 GMT
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Post by worldsong on Jun 3, 2022 7:39:22 GMT
It's really strange that Kat would suddenly describe her sense of ethics as being aligned with those of the Court. Reynard questioned whether the Court would leave ethics and morality behind, and Kat clearly interpreted it as an attack on a group she considers herself part of. It seems that during the time that Forest Annie was still talking to Loup the Court has made some real progress getting inside Kat's head.
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Post by Polyhymnia on Jun 3, 2022 13:52:07 GMT
It's really strange that Kat would suddenly describe her sense of ethics as being aligned with those of the Court. Reynard questioned whether the Court would leave ethics and morality behind, and Kat clearly interpreted it as an attack on a group she considers herself part of. It seems that during the time that Forest Annie was still talking to Loup the Court has made some real progress getting inside Kat's head. To me, I see this all as an extension of the “war with Loup” arc. If we think back to when we had Court Annie with us and we saw her laser and Kat’s computer development, it seemed like the girls had been deployed and had been hardening up. We saw Kat’s existential crisis over Annie, but it was an existential crisis and not a moral crisis, like the one of her youth. I think that as the war has gone on, she *has* come to identify on the side of the court more and more, even if she does consider herself more of a free agent. She’s resolved the ethical crisis of her youth about working for a bad organization, but in the face of deadly forest actors (mostly Loup), she isn’t questioning if she’s on the wrong side, even knowing about Jeanne. And what do we see her using today? The arrow used on Jeanne’s lover but on automatic. Annie isn’t going to change as deeply when it comes to which side of the court she’s on because her association with the forest is far deeper and far more personal and the court is fundamentally hostile to her as an etheric being in a way it will never be to human Kat. I guess this page (in the light of today’s page) made a lot of things click into place about Kat’s arc. She seems more self-assured and less distressed about the dilemmas (moral and otherwise) in front of her, and she is less emotional and innocent than she was as a younger child. Some of that makes sense just because she’s older, but I think part of it is a specific character direction to take. I’m thinking about her reaction to the barrier wall and mind-crabbing the robots. She didn’t go along with it and was definitely subversive as she made robot bodies, but she didn’t seem *betrayed* to find out that their autonomy had been taken from them. She just launched into finding a way to help them. In some ways, that’s a huge strength and sigh of grown: she’s more able to act and less overwhelmed on the case of everything. But it can also lead to less callousness, I guess? But not exactly, because I think Kat is still sensitive and compassionate in many ways. But more willing to believe in “acceptable targets,” maybe, and less automatically critical of what’s placed in front of her. She’s always had the “devil may care, I’m gonna break known laws of science if I need to and if it helps a friend/protects those I love” as we saw from Annie’s first bridge-falling incident, but I think she’s slowly grown into a “side” of the conflict.
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Post by bedinsis on Jun 3, 2022 16:54:13 GMT
I saw it as an extension of his self-pity/self hatred over his failure of saving/bringing back his wife.
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