[Totally unlocked so the whole crew can see, after the clones are dumped at the hotel]

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

Nightwing, they branded us! They freaking branded us!

[ooc: warning for swearing in comments. Please read this post for the plot timeline before commenting.]

Comments

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

It's not just about the freakin' mark, you moron, it's about the fact they don't see us people. And we're from a party of foreign dignitaries. They do this to their own people, and apparently Nightwing says they want us to help put down the rebellion of clones trying to fight that?

Screw that. We should be helping them.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Pfft. I'm a book. If someone told me, "you gotta file that book in the library and index it while you're down here," you all would've snickered and told me my dignity isn't as important as getting the medical tech.

Seriously. Is making this society, that we'll never deal with again, recognize you as a person really more important than the crew of this ship?

[twilit-midna.livejournal.com]

Hey, your pages are looking a little moldy, there, Zetta. I'll be happy to restore them!

[badassfreakingoverlord]

And I'm supposed to be the undiplomatic one.

[twilit-midna.livejournal.com]

Hey, it was an honest offer to help! You don't want to fall apart at the next Council meeting, do you?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Somehow, I think I'll be fine.

[twilit-midna.livejournal.com]

Eee hee. The offer's always open ♥

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Noot interested. In fact, same message for you as for the clones:

[twilit-midna.livejournal.com]

Aww, too bad.

♥♥♥

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

Is the crew of this ship more important than the freedom of an entire enslaved people?

Don't you get it? This isn't just about us. They showed us the clone banks. They make people to be enslaved. That's their whole lives. That's all they get to know. They make them, and mark them, and program them, and if any want anything different from that, they call in outsiders to help them beat them down.

It's wrong.

You're not a clone. There's no way you could understand what it's like to be made for a purpose you don't want, or to be told you're property. There's also no way you could understand what it feels like to see other clones treated that way.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Uh, unless I'm wrong? Yeah. This crew is more important. We're lugging around an orb that's gonna get us a Wall Hanging that pretty much tells us so. And since this is our lives, maybe, on the line, this is a pretty bad time to be getting an 'I have issues about my tragic past' complex going here.

By the way, I don't think I ever heard you speaking up when certain someones start ranting about how all demons can't be trusted and I'm gonna betray you all the moment I get the chance because I'm stupid-evil, so I'm not getting how you can figure social justice on some random planet is a top priority.

The Ohm are our enemies. Not this planet or its society. Let's focus.

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

Dude, you even say you're stupid-evil. I'm not going to argue with people that take your damn word for it, but I'd sure as hell not let them try to waste you, because that'd be wrong unless you actually did something bad.

This isn't about tragic pasts. They're doing a horrible thing here and the mission is for us to help them keep doing it. We are allowed to say no. We can also work against them if it seems right. For all we know, we can get the tech that way, too.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

No, I say I'm evil. Stupid evil is that scorpion in that story where something carries it across the river, it stings its ride in the middle, and everyone drowns. That's not what I'm doing, you'll note.

Here's the problem with righting all the wrongs: That planet is just gonna get shredded by the Ohm anyway. Especially if we weaken ourselves. Everyone who gets hurt or maybe killed down there is one less person we have to fight our fight when we leave.

And even if no one gets hurt, think about about this: Who sent us to that planet to help? Who loses a hell of a lot of face if we tear their society apart? And who has the freakin' override codes and crap to the ship we're all in?, and might be tempted to use them since we 'can't be trusted' or something?

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

Same difference. You say you're evil, and people'll take your word for it, but you can say you're evil all you want, and I wouldn't let people stick a big holographic sticker on your cover that says "Evil" and let them take your rights away if they wanted to.

We're not helping take away people's freedom. And face it, bookboy--you need us. You're not infiltrating a clone resistance without clones.

As for Stacy, she can go rot. If she didn't want us making a choice like this, she shouldn't have put us in this situation. She can't make us do something morally wrong.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Back up a moment. It's the morally right thing to put the entire crew against the ship, the Daligig, and the GIA either just on your own personal feelings about this situation? This may just be a shot in the dark, but I'm not sure most of the crew is up for, oh, I don't know, what's one possible outcome. This ship used to be a prison ship, I think I heard? Being reduced to prisoner status because someone with a sort of not very objective opinion on this whole mess went rogue.

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

I know the finer details of morality are possibly a little beyond someone that calls himself evil on a regular basis, but that's what morality is.

Whether or not we help the clones is up to 'Wing and whether he thinks we can do it without causing their entire society to crumble. He's the commanding officer in charge. But I won't help hurt them. The crew's lives aren't more valuable than theirs and vice versa, and we could just as easily be splattered by the Ohm at the next fight too, so that doesn't factor in either. People aren't just something you chalk up as a lost cause so you have an excuse to hurt them because it's convenient.

Doing the right thing means when the world, and the public, and everyone tries to make you do something wrong, you put your foot down, and refuse to. And you see it through. If there's consequences to that, I'll fight those, too. I'll take Punishment if that's what it takes to make Stacy happy and leave everyone else on the ship alone.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Except back up again, we've already got the "we're more special than they are" thing going for us. Maybe you don't think so, but I've had a word or two with Cargn and I've seen that map thing. Something big's rolling down the line and it's our job to do something about it, not this planet's.

And when we WIN this fight, we're bringing back everything that got lost. Is one planet's society worth risking all of the people and worlds that died?

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Just like all those people and worlds aren't any more important than each other.

Don't you get it. They're all important. Every world we go to, every mission we go on, every world we help or hurt. They're all important. What's the point of even fixing the stuff on the missions Stacy sends us on if they're not important? So Stacy gives us a cookie?

[fireforger]

How dare you claim you believe the crew is more important, when not only do you show them no sympathy you callously demand that they simply put up with this! They have already been harmed once, and there is no guarantee that they will no be harmed again as long as they are within a nation that views them as without rights or worthy of protection!

I cannot understand why you were chosen to be a Councilor, when this is how you behave. As if your declarations of your own evil were not enough!

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Wait.

Wait.

Are you seriously arguing that because I think the long-term lives and health of the crew are more important than some marks that will be removed later, that just mean one planet thinks they're less worthy, that I don't respect the crew?

Well that's logical.

And yet if someone down there laughed at me because I was a book, and I said two words about that, pretty much everyone would tell me to shut up and don't screw up the negotiations. Double-standard, much?

[fireforger]

How can you respect the crew when you are willing to sacrifice a selection of them for a piece of technology? Will you demand that some die, or be tortured to save others as well?

Your life is not at risk here. Regardless of your position, you do not have the right to inform these people that they must 'take one for the team', to use your words. That is their choice, if they wish to do it, and I would expect that someone who respects the crew would at least allow them the dignity of being able to make their own choices.

And you are foolish if you confuse simply being laughed at and ridiculed with slavery and bodily harm, Overlord Zetta.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Wait, wait. Who's putting their lives at risk? They got processed and they're being treated crappy, sure, but no one's slated them for the next batch of Soylent Green Lite.

(Lite: because they're clones.)

What the hell kind of Councilor would I be if three months down the line, I'm giving someone a eulogy that goes, "It's a pity we could have saved their life with advanced medical technology, but I'm sure they understood that their screaming, agonizing death was all for the sake of a few crew-members not being temporarily branded while on a mission"?

[fireforger]

Do you honestly think that they are safe? My home was once visited by pirates who intended to enslave us all. They would magically enforce obedience, so that any slave who went against their orders would die. They had no qualms about murdering their own slaves if it suited them, and they considered it their right to do so. What you are sacrificing is the very rights of crewmembers, Councilor, while tossing them into a situation where we cannot know for certain that there are no further unpleasant surprises in store for them.

And if you believe that you have the right to put them through that without their permission, in order to obtain what you consider justifiable payment, then you may as well be selling them into slavery yourself. Is that the kind of Councilor that you are?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

So magic pirates from your past mean that this situation is exactly the same as that one?

No, this is a pointless argument, because you're playing the "this is slavery and slavery is bad and therefore anything and everything you say is wrong because slaver" card. So, way to argue productively.

Look, this was OBVIOUSLY a setup and our chains are clearly being yanked here. I'm not arguing that. But there's this thing called "play the hand you're dealt", which generally tends to turn out less messy then "kick over the table and scream and scream" no matter what. If their lives are endangered just for being clones, sure, we step in. The crew comes first. But crew coming first means we don't overthrow a society and risk death and dismemberment a couple months down the line.

[fireforger]

My point was that when people view other people as property, those people who are property are not and can never be truly safe. And I have not been arguing that we must eradicate this slavery and lead a revolution - I have been arguing that you cannot simply demand that other crewmembers take part in this horrid affair for our own personal gain! I can understand not wanting to support a revolution, but I cannot understand why you are so insistent on forcing them to actively help perpetuate the very atrocities that have been committed against them!