Comics Discussion => Flipside Discussion => Topic started by: Stargoat on December 30, 2015, 02:35:05 pm

Title: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Stargoat on December 30, 2015, 02:35:05 pm
Ooh. Seems to be a Crest chapter. Right on.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on December 31, 2015, 09:54:06 am
Awwww. I wanted to see May get turned into a monster.  :'(
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Stargoat on January 04, 2016, 10:31:41 pm
Maytag already is a monster.

Why did Chrest believe those folks are Susperina's parents? The crazy witch person already admitted to killing them. http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1963
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 05, 2016, 04:35:24 pm
I suppose if one assumes that Suspiria is unreliable due to having been altered into a "monster" and one accepts that she's a level four sorcerer (or at least very exceptionally powerful now) one could assume that it's possible or even likely that she physically manipulated everyone but Halcyon (if not also him), or created puppets of them after having disposed of them (in Qtalda's case only disposing of an "avatar" by mistake (assuming the current Qtalda is an independent being!)) in order to convince Crest to trust her in a concretely demonstrable way (that may also reinforce his commitment to her) by committing to using the sword on her (perhaps there was no need for this either, and thus no physical risk to Suspiria, if it was all a staged scenario). I don't find this especially likely at least in whole from a story standpoint, but if Crest reset his opinion on the basis of being unable to trust in Suspiria's nature given that it may have been altered by a large amount by the mysterious Thin Man, it could make sense.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 06, 2016, 12:19:31 pm
I'm sorry.. I'm NOT buying this.

I think Suspiria truly believes her parents are dead and that Qtalda killed them.  Right or wrong she was motivated by that... I can't really swallow the whole, 'oh she mind controlled everyone to act this way'.. to quote Crest~ What would be the point of her doing all that?  For who was she possibly putting on a show for?  Not Crest cause she apparently left him behind for parts unknown. 

Something else is going on here...

And let's not get too lost on some VERY important details.. Suspiria did NOT kill the Council... 'THEY ALL unanimously decided SHE needed to be murdered'- then she revealed herself and Qtalda attacked her!  She defended herself and the spell backfired on them.  She Never hurt any of them directly or attacked any of them!  Yeah she may have frightened some girls who were especially mean to her as an apprentice.. but she did not harm them.

As far as I'm concerned I'm with Crest on this.. what IS the point in hunting her down?  Its not illegal to be a power spellcaster.. and in fact she is a student and licensed spellcaster of the conclave but most of all she has not killed anyone who did not try to kill her first!

She's done nothing wrong.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 06, 2016, 06:05:13 pm
We don't actually know why she might've wanted Crest to stay on her side...it could even just be sentiment. Leaving him behind for an unknown period of time doesn't really invalidate Crest mattering to her (and clearly she wanted him to be on and/or demonstrate being on her side when she set it up such that he'd have to use (or appear to have to use) the sword on her, which implies that he does matter to her). If she could be altered to think that the Conclave killed her parents then it's possible that instead or additionally she manipulated the Conclave members to act as and say what she wished (perhaps excepting Halcyon for whatever reason). Her killing (you mean she didn't murder them; she did kill them unless that was all faked) the council "illegitimately" would be based on the idea that Qtalda found her parents, who are alive, which is one possibility.

I do agree that Crest probably can't do anything, since if Suspiria knew her parents were alive then Crest telling her wouldn't help (and could backfire), while otherwise she'd be unlikely to trust in Crest's reasons for believing Qtalda and friends (and this could count as a betrayal of sorts on Crest's part to Suspiria). Crest doesn't actually have significant proof (that I know of) that these are Suspiria's parents, and if she was altered to not remember them as they are now then he's unlikely to have anything convincing to say. Anyway, hunting down someone that killed most of the leadership of a powerful country is nothing surprising. Whether or not what she did was "wrong" doesn't make such a response unlikely in the least, especially when it's "monster" Suspiria's word against leader Qtalda's. The main issue is just that they apparently have no plan (although perhaps this is a lie), instead just gambling on Crest saying "something" to Suspiria (perhaps as a distraction if they in fact have a real plan).
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 07, 2016, 02:18:27 am
Ok.. THAT I can buy.

No, Suspiria did not Murder the Conclave... but her defensive spell did turn the lethal spell that was cast at her back on them that cause their own deaths.

Taken in the idea that she may be falsely accused of murder is THIN because Crest was there and saw the whole thing... unless they have decided NOT to believe him in which case there is a strong evidence to suspect they are indeed using Crest just to get close to her so THEY can enact some plan he knows nothing about.

Here is something else to consider... what makes you think all those present are who they say they are?  I'm not talking Suspiria's parents... I mean Miss.. Invisible Woman Qtalda.

Why could she not weave a disguise to appear as one of those present ...since she is apparently not attached to any real physical appearance, and is just using this as a way to get close to Suspiria to try to kill her again? 

Heck it could be even simpler than that! Qtalda could be present and she is controlling or even just out and out working with one of those present to try to get Crest to help betray Suspiria!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 07, 2016, 05:46:21 pm
I suppose if one assumes that Suspiria is unreliable due to having been altered into a "monster" and one accepts that she's a level four sorcerer (or at least very exceptionally powerful now) one could assume that it's possible or even likely that she physically manipulated everyone but Halcyon (if not also him), or created puppets of them after having disposed of them (in Qtalda's case only disposing of an "avatar" by mistake (assuming the current Qtalda is an independent being!)) in order to convince Crest to trust her in a concretely demonstrable way (that may also reinforce his commitment to her) by committing to using the sword on her (perhaps there was no need for this either, and thus no physical risk to Suspiria, if it was all a staged scenario). I don't find this especially likely at least in whole from a story standpoint, but if Crest reset his opinion on the basis of being unable to trust in Suspiria's nature given that it may have been altered by a large amount by the mysterious Thin Man, it could make sense.

I wonder. It seems like some of these experiments have side effects. Bloody Mary has insatiable hunger for flesh. Suspiria has incredible mental (or whatever) development and grows horns. Okay, let's think about this. Brain on overdrive. Could it be possible for her to have distorted memories? Well, it worked on Final Fantasy 8 with GF junctions.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 07, 2016, 08:47:51 pm
Technically you could say that there's no reason Suspiria's defensive spell had to reflect rather than merely block the spell, as "normally" it is much easier to block or deflect than to reflect (and Qtalda's spell was biological rather than energy-based). Yes, it makes it up to Qtalda whether all of the Conclave except for her die, but Suspiria theoretically chose to give that choice to Qtalda, expecting her to take it, or at least making it easy to retaliate without looking as bad to Crest. Naturally this did result in Halcyon's death, which wasn't "fair" if the situation was in accordance with how the Conclave members were acting. Incidentally, the situation ended up being pretty convenient to Qtalda if Qtalda wanted to take over sole leadership of the Conclave, so it's possible she expected the result or cooperated with Suspiria to whatever degree.

Yes, Crest saw things...I wouldn't trust Qtalda and friends now if I was him. And of course they've decided that Qtalda is more trustworthy than the situation Crest observed (and/or more trustworthy than Crest himself), without establishing why to Crest in any convincing manner that we know of. One could just say Suspiria looks like a monster now (although as you said she didn't do anything noteworthy outside of destroying the Conclave), but Qtalda is pretty weird herself, too. Maybe the group is patriotic or something.

Qtalda is obviously a big question mark from Crest's perspective. He had no relationship with her anyway (I think), so he really has no reason to believe her or care about her. I assume they just wanted to convince Crest that helping the group was morally right for him to do (since we haven't seen them force him to join him, although he still might be worried about their response if he refused them), but clearly he feels extremely uncommitted, so they did a poor job (which makes sense given how little evidence we've seen them give him).

Anyway, she could be using another disguise, yes. I don't know what the plan is, but the default plan in this situation would be killing Suspiria. Crest shouldn't be very likely to actively help with this without more proof than I've seen, so using him as a distraction (with words to and/or "betrayal" of Suspiria) is the only main idea right now. Unfortunately due to high magic very little is reliable, so almost anything could happen.

bulmabriefs114, her memories could be altered in a controlled or uncontrolled manner, which is why there's even a reason Crest can entertain the side of the story Qtalda and friends gave him.

EDIT: In response to page six (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2755), either Crest is a good actor or he's a bit slow, unless of course there was lots of off panel proof that we didn't see or at least proof that I don't remember.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 08, 2016, 11:16:45 am
He's decided that because the facts seem to add up a certain way, to not test them.

We have a passionate but troubled person, who is upset about her schoolmates bullying her and believes rightly or wrongly that her parents are killed. Who put her life at risk to make sure Crest was on her side.

Next we have being with no body, and a freaking flesh eating summon, who for all Crest knows, could have hired actors to convince Crest. We know NOTHING about this person. Who actually admitted to killing the parents earlier, meaning at least one of his statements is a blatant lie. And yet Crest trusts them instead of someone he's spent time with.

This is actually the second time Crest has let HIS feelings of betrayal get in the way of trust. The first was when Maytag came out as an emotionless girl. Rather than being "we love you anyway" Crest acts like she did something horribly wrong.

Dude WTF?!?

Now, in terms of feeling betrayed. I can get that. I can even get the feeling of "what's the point?" futility. But I think when a person has shown trustworthiness, it seems like you should at least check them. A person known for killing people (to the point of a patented spell), on the other hand, is likely a murderer.

I pride myself at having some knowledge of people's character and of logic. Logic tells me Qtalda is lying about something. Knowledge of Suspiria tells me she's a revenge obsessed person, not a manipulator. Without a reason for revenge, her past makes no sense.

Quote
bulmabriefs114, her memories could be altered in a controlled or uncontrolled manner, which is why there's even a reason Crest can entertain the side of the story Qtalda and friends gave him.

Ohhh, I misread. Qtalda's story. Yes, I suppose that would make some sense. Still, it would not render her guilty of anything, just dangerous by reason of insanity.

In either case, if Crest likes Suspiria, there is no reason to go after her on Qtalda's behalf. If he doesn't like her anymore, there is also no reason to go after her. This is a Morton's Fork.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 08, 2016, 07:45:20 pm
I agree that Qtalda should be much less trustworthy to Crest than monsterized Suspiria, who did still at least appear to have reasons for revenge in all instances of what she did, plus appeared to leave her choice of living up to Crest via the healing sword.

I hope Crest is acting or at least considers that possibility that this group is full of shit (either directly and/or by being misled by Qtalda, patriotism, or whatever) even if Suspiria may also be a liar or mistaken. It's not really possible to tell because he really has no reason to confront Suspiria anyway, so whether he's ruled out the things either side has said has little relevance to what he's saying now. I hope he gets more of a plan out of this group, since it would be a bit sad if they didn't even have a false plan to feed him and just hoped he was a total dope that would just randomly talk to Suspiria while they did "nothing in particular". Of course they could simply threaten Crest instead of telling him a plan, but this might not be the best once he does talk to Suspiria, since he could just tell her he's a hostage to people that want to kill (or stop; he can say whatever) her.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 09, 2016, 02:02:03 pm
The smart thing for Crest to be doing now is to be testing whether the people around are speaking the truth. However, I suspect Crest is, as I say reeling from "fool me twice" syndrome. He believes that he can't trust May, so he spent all of his energy trusting Suspiria. And now he believes he can't trust her either. He could be wrong on both counts actually, but so far he doesn't seem prone to testing things out.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 10, 2016, 06:33:28 am
Yeah, that's the one quirk about Crest that I realy don't like... he's Very Judgmental and does not try to show a bit of empathy with people who are supposed to be his friends... when he is told something that conflicts with his established mental image of who they are.  He won't give them the benefit of the doubt and try to communicate with them to understand why they are the way they are or why they have decided to act or behave in a way he does not understand, on the surface.

I mean honestly.. if you really consider someone your dear friend don't they deserve a little of your own faith in them?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 11, 2016, 01:52:21 pm
Well, it's easy for us to judge Crest, but that's effectively the same thing.

Crest is probably Borderline Personality Disorder (which accounts for some of his idealization and devaluation (http://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/what-is-bpd/) patterns). Emotionally unstable people need love too!  :-*
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 11, 2016, 11:02:45 pm
Potentially.

Though it is totally possible Crest was just feeding them all a 'smoke-screen' to get them to stop watching him while HE goes off on his own to find Suspiria.. to ask her himself..what's going on.  He INDEED may not trust any of them entirely!

As for ...for the life of me I cannot remember this chick's name, so for now I'm calling her 'Star Cheeks'... I've always felt.. there was something... kinda out of the ordinary..more than just thrill seeking interest she has shown Crest.  she was the one that went with him to find Suspiria... when everyone else cowered or decided to discus the matter in a committee.

Storywise it would be 'cute' if 'Star Cheeks' secretly felt something more for Crest than casual acquaintance.  On a more sinister note she may not be who she seems to be.. she could be Qtalda in a magical disguise... her only interest in Crest being he is the best way to approach Suspiria from surprise with him as a distraction.. she she can be killed.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 12, 2016, 12:59:45 pm
She's Moby, and she's a tailor.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1072

While she could be potentially sinister, this is sorta on par with suspecting the person who bakes your bread of poisoning you. In this age of preservatives, maybe, but typically some sense of trust is needed to keep us all from going paranoid.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 13, 2016, 07:48:42 pm
Ah.. Thanks for the reminder Mrs Vegita.

Actually, Moby is kinda cute... I think Crest could do much worse than end up hocked up with her, she's kinda sweet.

Not that I would want Crest to NOT accept Suspiria's professed love... it at least seemed clear to me that Crest did not share those feelings for her last time, yeah friendship... but not at that point love for her.  Perhaps he might come to love Moby... but of course the same could be said of Suspiria as well.  Though one thing that STILL puts me on Suspiria's side is the fact that she told Crest she knew he did not exactly feel the same way for her.. and she was cool with that... she just wanted him to have no doubts as to how she felt about him.

Non-possessive love is very cool.  So.. I like Suspiria... and until something concrete shows her as a bad-guy... I'm STILL a fan of hers.

And I STILL think Moby feels something more for Crest than just the casual acquaintance congeniality.  A woman who keeps coming to your side in support when everyone else seems willing to let you walk away... is sending a message...that unfortunately.. most men {including} me... many times miss or take for granted.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: TheCollector on January 13, 2016, 10:17:57 pm
Ok so     Does anyone else feel like Moby is playing reverse psychology on Crest here? Cause I'm getting serious reverse psychology vibes from this page.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 15, 2016, 06:32:18 am
DAMN THEM ALL! The rat bastards ARE working with Qtalda!  >:(
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 15, 2016, 05:54:32 pm
Did you think the group spontaneously formed or what?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 15, 2016, 10:11:21 pm
Did you think the group spontaneously formed or what?

I was hoping the group was only interested in the Public safety... but now I'm pretty sure that is NOT the actual motivation behind Qtalda, who is directing it all...

Remember this... Last Cell...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1969

It was clear Qtalda intended to murder again to protect the dirty secret she and the Counsel were keeping, and they ALL went along with it... murder is murder despite the justifications for it.  It was also clear that the 'figurehead' of the Counsel... ALSO thought Suspiria's parents were still alive... so its clear to me that the Amberynth Network are either JUST as duplicitous as the Counsel or just as in the dark as the now-dead counsel leader.

When Crest finds out they are working for Qtalda.. who was very likely going to kill him he had been found in the forest in their search {doubt she'd risk memory altering again as it failed with Suspiria}... this is going to do WONDERS for his "lack of trust issues"! {Sigh}
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 16, 2016, 01:35:25 am
Well, I don't know how the group formed but I assumed Crest knew Qtalda was part of its formation. Qtalda did directly meet with Crest (or good enough) to give her side of the story, after all.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 16, 2016, 04:02:48 am
When did she do that?  As far as I know.. Qtalda has not been 'seen' again as yet...  I may be wrong about that.. if I am what page has she made a official new appearance on since the spell-backfire?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 16, 2016, 05:42:59 pm
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2301
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 16, 2016, 06:40:15 pm
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2301

Ok.. I feel like an idiot.. completely forgot that! :)

I guess I'm in the same ballpark as Crest.. I don't know who to believe.. but I certainly think the; 'We were ALL mind controlled to say those things...', is a load of crap!

Again I come back to my original point of view... What possible reason would Suspiria have to put on that entire dog & pony show... JUST for Crest's benefit?  If she had the power to control minds so thoroughly.. why not just MAKE Crest love/believe in her!  Heck she didn't EVEN use that 'alleged' power to coerce Crest to give her the affection she so wanted and just have her way with him..EVEN just once... she likely could have made him believe he wanted her {which.. I'm not entirely convinced in some part of his heart he did not desire her..small as it might be}, or even just erased the 'coupling' from his memories.

Occam's razor -

"other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones"

I STILL Think Qtalda's lying and she has the magical power to cover her tracks by altering other people's memories... but only time will tell the truth.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 16, 2016, 06:55:25 pm
I agree that it's flimsy, but there would still be some chance that Suspiria wanted "genuine" loyalty/other from Crest based on lies more than she wanted to just turn Crest into a puppet directly. That or she wants to use him somehow where such mind control would be discovered, undermining her plan.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 18, 2016, 11:19:13 pm
Quote

Again I come back to my original point of view... What possible reason would Suspiria have to put on that entire dog & pony show... JUST for Crest's benefit?  If she had the power to control minds so thoroughly.. why not just MAKE Crest love/believe in her!  Heck she didn't EVEN use that 'alleged' power to coerce Crest to give her the affection she so wanted and just have her way with him..EVEN just once... she likely could have made him believe he wanted her {which.. I'm not entirely convinced in some part of his heart he did not desire her..small as it might be}, or even just erased the 'coupling' from his memories.

Occam's razor -

"other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones"

I STILL Think Qtalda's lying and she has the magical power to cover her tracks by altering other people's memories... but only time will tell the truth.

I think you're overthinking this.

From what we've seen of Suspiria, she tends to use direct magic. It also seems like in Flipside universe, people tend to learn spells that suit their personality.  Qtalda is a creepy killer, so she has a death bug spell. Suspiria tends to rely on spells that are reflection, flight, and raw power and very to the point (no illusions then). So it wouldn't stand to reason she's been playing a manipulation game, unless she started even at the point where we first met her. That explanation is so hopelessly complicated it makes no sense.

On the other hand, a simple "but here are her parents? See?" sham is rather easy to pull off. If Crest chills out a bit, he'd get just how flimsy that lie seems.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2317
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2319
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1951

Also. This makes no sense. She appeared in front of her classmates, hurt but not killed them and destroyed the wall of her room.  From an even basic read of the situation, this is not a manipulator, this is someone out for revenge.
Her "violent" side, considering her awesome power, was relatively controlled. Her classmates hurt her, but aren't the target of her revenge. On the other hand, their first action is to use lethal force against her. Further, Qtalda admits to erasing her memories, killing her parents, the whole bit. But only Crest and Suspiria know this, and Qtalda pulls out these people to call her motives and sanity into question. What were her motives if not revenge?

 What really troubles me is the whole deal where Qtalda's body is elsewhere. We have no idea what this person looks like.

Quote
I agree that it's flimsy, but there would still be some chance that Suspiria wanted "genuine" loyalty/other from Crest based on lies more than she wanted to just turn Crest into a puppet directly. That or she wants to use him somehow where such mind control would be discovered, undermining her plan.

It most definitely does not add up.


The simplest explanation involves no mind control:

Suspiria is troubled and angry but not insane, there is some definite stuff going on here, without any manipulation from her. Qtalda is produced fake "parents" to throw shadow on her accusations of dead parents. She probably even had them "move into town" and introduce themselves so as many people as possible knew them. Suspiria thought she was crazy, everyone else didn't know better.  I also think this is less "mind control" and more Qtalda using Jedi mind tricks to make what he's saying sound reasonable. As in, Qtalda isn't controlling minds so much as propping up words and "proof" with magic. Everyone acted like they took stupid pills, and didn't question why she would randomly attack someone with no motive.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 19, 2016, 04:36:09 pm
You seem to think flimsy or complicated or unusual for the story should make it exceedingly unlikely, and go with the standard explanation. This explanation could be completely right, but hopefully there are some alterations that spice it up. I'm simply taking an agnostic stance while recognizing that it's hard to take Qtalda's explanation seriously. Anyway, asking why Suspiria did things when she's been physically and even mentally altered (either her memories were altered or unaltered (with alteration likely possible alongside this due to actual unalteration being provably possible due to occurring) when she was monsterized) is somewhat meaningless, as she could have reasons now that she would not have before, even if she believed the same information before.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 20, 2016, 03:36:27 am
I suppose this is true. I'm just putting together the facts to arrive at a conclusion. No matter what, there are certain ways a story has to happen, given previous information.

For example, in a creation story we know that everything we see in this world is a result of natural or human causes. Rocks form from earthquakes, water from moisture buildup, trees from seeds, manmade objects from humans. Given this, creation stories never involve creation out of nothing. Instead either:
1. A law is behind creation (either scientific or cosmic like the Tao)
2. A force (big bang)
3. Creation from some sort of primordial egg
4. Or some sort of deity
5. Or humans created their own universe

That is, I'm not talking about creation stories. I'm talking about, in the above situation mythmakers and scientists alike use the information they already know.

Yes, there probably will be a surprise. But the working theory is that either suspiria is telling the truth, or she doesn't know the truth due to mental distortion of the seed of power. If she was using the heroes, we have to examine her behavior even prior to meeting and assume something strange like that she sent Bloody Mary. Studying Kindred reveals how unlikely that is.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 20, 2016, 05:51:13 am
All true.. I agree.. but one thing I do not agree on...

I believe Qtalda is lying about her body not being present at the time.. some-thing was there and we can 'see' it walking away...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1995

So Qtalda is something she does not want everyone else to know!

...and for the record...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1959

...I find Suspiria Terribly SEXY in her new horned form!  :-[

Does that make me a bad person?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 20, 2016, 06:18:51 am
Wait, where do we have a scene that shows her footprints? Also, I believe part of the whole invisible thing is solid-form astral projection. So, yes, technically she was there, but no footprints are likely to appear. Assuming Qtalda is even a she.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1995

...Oh, didn't notice last frame.

And yes, yes she is. But you're still a bad person.  ;D
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 20, 2016, 04:21:42 pm
ok.  Just checking!  ;)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 20, 2016, 07:28:36 pm
The footprints could be anyone, such as that invisible guy that stopped Maytag from cutting off her breasts. At the least he's a top candidate due to being known to make himself invisible and watch important things, as well as claiming to work for the appropriate nation.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: mittfh on January 20, 2016, 11:05:08 pm
Just been catching up on the last few, what does Maytag's note in 2761 read?

"I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy [something] gold [something] promise!"
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: maddhopps on January 21, 2016, 06:02:08 am
Just been catching up on the last few, what does Maytag's note in 2761 read?

"I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy [something] gold [something] promise!"

It's from this page of the comic

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=403
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 22, 2016, 04:22:53 am
Hmmmm. Even if it means cutting off a piece of myself... why that note, and not one telling them she's fine? Kinda makes me think she might do something drastic to get through the Dark Cell.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: maddhopps on January 23, 2016, 09:26:44 pm
The flashback to the note from 403 was to show how Crest would recognize Maytags handwriting in the note that says she is fine .
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 27, 2016, 01:26:09 pm
Hmmmm... "Because, Fuck Men."

Not really an answer. But a very curious reaction... has she Always been a man - hater or did 'some' man hurt her? What I find interesting is that it seems among lesbians the frequency of man haters is often portrayed as high... yet I have never heard of mysogyny among gay men? I wonder how the actual facts fit this admittedly 'percived' difference... or if anyone has actually done any surveys on the subject?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 27, 2016, 05:23:48 pm
Oh, I like her.  ;D

Sometimes man hatred has a source that can't be easily rooted.  I'm a trans woman, and I'm pretty firmly lesbian. It goes back to a time at daycare called the "Fun Factory". I blanked out the memory, but my dad sat in on one of them, and apparently whenever we did anything wrong, they were quick to blame the boys. I kinda get the feeling guys were blamed for alot, as in I got the impression that men were useless. That, and alot of stories of rapist murderers, I don't think much of men. Watching a few Lifetime movies didn't help. Plus, in general, I find women cuter.

http://www.xojane.com/family/i-was-raised-to-hate-men-and-now-i-dont-know-what-to-think-about-feminism

Personally, I think we are all bisexual at birth, and at a certain age our sexual preferences usually become fixed, with the exception of some people who remain fluid about their  gender preferences. A typical homosexual  learns to love men, but it feels like lesbians have a later age where gender is fixed, and have run into so  many horrible men they learn to hate them.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 27, 2016, 06:36:47 pm
I see. I 'try' to judge people on their personal merit as a individual and on how they behave with or without honor and respect to others differences.  Like in your  particular case Ms Briefs... I'm male firmly hetero-sexual and would never consider a transgender or gay life choice... but I see in you a intelligent and polite personality... so I try very hard to show no bias or disrespect to your choice... though i may disagree with it~ it is not my place to condemn or criticise any polite or equally respectable person who treats other with the same politeness.  One of my best and closest friends is openly gay... and though don't agree with his choice he is still a dear friend of mine whose life I would gladly protect with my own or even surrender my life in his behalf if it would protect him from harm.  To add to that complicated friendship.. he's Caucasian and I'm African American.  I'm well aware from my life experiences, as such, of the unreasoning, unfair, flat EVIL of bigotry... and would NEVER want to behave that way, to ANYONE for ANY reason!

I'm not perfect... but I aspire to see NO race, gender, sexual orientation, social status or, for that matter, species in the polite meeting of sentient intelligent beings in peaceful cooexistance.

Let Jehovah God judge.. he directs us to love each other as we would be loved in return. So that's how I try to live.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 27, 2016, 08:59:01 pm
Well, it seems either Vennice is arguing in an extreme, reactionary way to get out of an argument she has no real explanation for or Vennice is a true man-hater for some reason Brion may develop in the future and/or Vennice is trans and thus reacted extra-strongly to avoid being seen naked and is so unwilling to share that she's trans that she simply picked another extreme to get out of the conversation (either part A is true or part B is true or part C is true or parts B and C are simultaneously true). Her being a random undeveloped man-hater is another possibility but seems even more shallow than her having no reason whatsoever for modesty. So I'm hoping A and D are not true and that B and/or C are true. Of course it's possible that B and/or C are true but Brion will kill her off or otherwise remove her from the story before explaining/revealing B and/or C in any depth, but this makes the conversation a waste of time outside of developing Regina, and I'm not sure the conversation did much for Regina other than cement that she idolizes Maytag and wants to be like her.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 28, 2016, 08:47:33 pm
I see. I 'try' to judge people on their personal merit as a individual and on how they behave with or without honor and respect to others differences.  Like in your  particular case Ms Briefs... I'm male firmly hetero-sexual and would never consider a transgender or gay life choice... but I see in you a intelligent and polite personality... so I try very hard to show no bias or disrespect to your choice... though i may disagree with it~ it is not my place to condemn or criticise any polite or equally respectable person who treats other with the same politeness.  One of my best and closest friends is openly gay... and though don't agree with his choice he is still a dear friend of mine whose life I would gladly protect with my own or even surrender my life in his behalf if it would protect him from harm.  To add to that complicated friendship.. he's Caucasian and I'm African American.  I'm well aware from my life experiences, as such, of the unreasoning, unfair, flat EVIL of bigotry... and would NEVER want to behave that way, to ANYONE for ANY reason!

I'm not perfect... but I aspire to see NO race, gender, sexual orientation, social status or, for that matter, species in the polite meeting of sentient intelligent beings in peaceful cooexistance.

Let Jehovah God judge.. he directs us to love each other as we would be loved in return. So that's how I try to live.

Oh, I like you too!  :-*

Basically, the odd thing is, I'm a moderate-conservative (don't vote conservative because I'm too far middle) Christian too, so I had a fair amount of angst about this for awhile too. Being trans means sexuality is all mixed up, so I'm actually heterosexual in terms of my original (?) gender, it's just that I don't really feel comfy with male gender roles (don't feel, lift this/that, be tough, fight fight fight) I have a need inside to be seen by others as something other than male.

Quote
Well, it seems either Vennice is arguing in an extreme, reactionary way to get out of an argument she has no real explanation for or Vennice is a true man-hater for some reason Brion may develop in the future and/or Vennice is trans and thus reacted extra-strongly to avoid being seen naked and is so unwilling to share that she's trans that she simply picked another extreme to get out of the conversation (either part A is true or part B is true or part C is true or parts B and C are simultaneously true). Her being a random undeveloped man-hater is another possibility but seems even more shallow than her having no reason whatsoever for modesty. So I'm hoping A and D are not true and that B and/or C are true. Of course it's possible that B and/or C are true but Brion will kill her off or otherwise remove her from the story before explaining/revealing B and/or C in any depth, but this makes the conversation a waste of time outside of developing Regina, and I'm not sure the conversation did much for Regina other than cement that she idolizes Maytag and wants to be like her.

I wonder how trans works in Flipside world.

And yes, reading between the lines, I have the impression of something like this. Not necessarily trans though. "No one gets to see this body! It's too good for them" kinda reads as there's something I especially don't want men to see, but I don't think women would understand either (covering insecurity with fake narcissism). This feels like either gender dysphoria or more likely she is sorta intersex. I knew a girl that now looking back on it, I still love her completely, but I wonder, since she did appear to have an aversion to swimsuits. I kinda wish I had seen her in one as she was sorta cute, but she was curvy and tall and insecure in other ways.
http://www.isna.org/faq/concealment
These are people I feel for, as from birth, people try to surgically alter them and they walk around with fear of being rejected. But I want to be cool with this.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 29, 2016, 11:02:30 pm
Intersex can make sense, but it doesn't seem very common in stories compared to trans, so it didn't occur to me. It would fill the same role in my possibilities as C, although it wouldn't be the same to Vennice, of course.

Anyway, I believe that surgically altering intersex babies must lead to additional transgenderism.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Stargoat on January 30, 2016, 12:05:26 am
...and for the record...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1959

...I find Suspiria Terribly SEXY in her new horned form!  :-[

Does that make me a bad person?

Pish posh. Of course not. We all know you were a bad person well before finding Suspiria Terribly SEXY in her new horny form. Never you fret.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 30, 2016, 03:57:50 am
Intersex can make sense, but it doesn't seem very common in stories compared to trans, so it didn't occur to me. It would fill the same role in my possibilities as C, although it wouldn't be the same to Vennice, of course.

Anyway, I believe that surgically altering intersex babies must lead to additional transgenderism.

Ironically, it's done by the same type people who object so heavily to LGBT. They don't want to admit that such exist because it helps prop up the two gender binary so we have the whole deal with separate restrooms. But even if we didn't have intersex, even back in biblical times it admits to having "natural eunuchs". (It's a sore point, because it isn't publicly done, often isn't done even with the say of the parents, and is done too young all in the name of enforcing normalcy)
http://www.gotquestions.org/eunuch-eunuchs.html
 Which, ironically, since I probably won't do SRS (as much as a luxury car) that's what I'd become post surgery (cheaper option is castration of testes, plus hormones).

Anyway... if I haven't grossed you all out, this is consistent with the amount of modesty/shame of someone unwillingly different down below. This is why I discount transgender. They are generally okay with stuff down there, assuming they made the switch.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on January 30, 2016, 01:13:05 pm
...and for the record...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1959

...I find Suspiria Terribly SEXY in her new horned form!  :-[

Does that make me a bad person?

Pish posh. Of course not. We all know you were a bad person well before finding Suspiria Terribly SEXY in her new horny form. Never you fret.

Thanks Stargoat... just checking! :P

Now is it just me.. or does Moby look especially happy to have Crest putting his hands on her?  Crest seems much more relaxed about riding her carpet from last time {...er no pun intended}.  ;D

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: mittfh on January 30, 2016, 02:26:07 pm
While having a 'plug' or 'socket' is binary from the point of view of reproduction, humans have attached many attributes to those that aren't associated with the act itself (including many that aren't directly related to biology, e.g. hobbies / interests, preferred peer group, clothing / hairstyle choices). Pretty much no other area of biology / genetics is binary, but either has a range of discrete values (e.g. eye colour, hair colour) or continuous (e.g. height, metabolism). When you look at the range of intersex conditions, it's almost miraculous that over 95% of the population don't encounter any errors in the numerous steps required to convert karyotype and genotype into phenotype and biochemistry. There's an interesting school of thought that transgender may be a form of intersex, in that the body receives the signals to develop along one path, but the brain doesn't.

-oOo-

Anyway, back to the tale, and woo! Flying carpet!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 30, 2016, 05:19:17 pm
This is why I discount transgender. They are generally okay with stuff down there, assuming they made the switch.

Well, I have no idea what quantity or quality of change is possible in Flipside, nor what it would cost. Regrowing an arm or other body part that is intended to stay the same as before seems easier (from a genetic or "default state" perspective), less controversial, and more useful in war or other potentially dangerous skilled labor than relevant changes one could effect upon transgender and/or intersex people would be.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on January 31, 2016, 05:34:58 am
From a genetic perspective, if you are able to regrow limbs, you are able to perform a perfect sex change. By perfect, I mean normally the procedure is a simple surgery, and is more similar to carving a pumpkin into a desired shape than making something biologically work.  Because of the general shape, it will work as a sexual receptor, but it is completely infertile.
On the other hand (pffft, get it, the otger "hand" while we're talking about growing organs? Sigh that was unintentional) if you are growing organs, you are basically able to work with genetics and nanomachines to selectively grow one organ, remove the other, and attune the new organ so it will not be rejected by the body. This would also allow body modifications like wings or tail. You could definitely have a male become a female, no sweat.

But the deal here is unless her process was somehow botched, she would appear fully female after this, to the point where nobody would notice.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on January 31, 2016, 05:31:40 pm
You say "from a genetic perspective", but I do think there is an extra step (or likely many more) involved in not merely refreshing the original body part. You also seem to be thinking of real world SRS rather than creating completely normal body parts. I also don't know why you think real world body part replacement would require nanomachines...we don't need those for all the transplants performed today, so we should only need to grow body parts, which again doesn't necessarily need special genetic manipulation (in the sense of editing the original genes to create something preferred instead of the default thing) beyond getting the body part to grow in the first place (and since there's no genetic inconsistency with the original there's little chance of rejection). Of course there might be similar SRS in Flipside, but I was thinking about something more like replacing Maytag's arm with magic, which gave her a fully functional arm that would be more or less indistinguishable from her original arm. It seems to me that it would be easier by default to create a default body part than to just create whatever the body didn't naturally express in the first place. I know magic in Flipside could potentially do all sorts of things, but in practice you need skilled enough people to create and perform the magic, too. Replacing missing or damaged body parts with equivalent-to-the-original body parts surely has a much higher demand and payoff in Flipside than doing whatever random modifications, and should be easier to boot.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 01, 2016, 10:05:12 pm
Sidetracking for a second before addressing your latest post.

From Moby's narrative we have:

This is obviously the truth from Moby's perspective, however, as TvTropes points out, there is such a thing as an Alternate Character Interpretation:

This isn't much of a stretch.

The sex change of the future would likely need those to extract the DNA of the host, compile a genetic 3d printout, and perform minute surgery on the organs and culturing of organs within the body. As for immune system suppressors. Well, there are problems with this. First off, immunosuppressants are essentially chemotherapy medication (http://www.sclero.org/scleroderma/treatments/mainstream/immunosuppressants.html), given a much lower dosage. The body is not really designed for them in the long term. Second, well this describes the complications of immune system drugs during pregnancy (http://www.secondtype.info/pregnant.htm), namely that the drugs interfere with the immune system. That kinda... endangers the life of the child. And the mother.

No, you would need some way of making your own organs from the opposite sex, and/or actually rewriting the DNA. Mebbe not nanomachines, but some sorta reverse gender cloning deal then.

 



Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on February 02, 2016, 01:13:15 pm
Right with there on every point Ms Briefs... you were reading my mind! :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 02, 2016, 10:20:56 pm
bulmabriefs144, you seem to agree with me that there is an extra step, namely having to edit the DNA. Regardless of what one does to avoid rejection by the rest of the body, whether or not this involves nanomachines, this alone makes it harder than simply replacing damaged parts with copies of what the original was or would've been according to the original DNA. And as I said there is more demand for this than for "random" edits, so between that and the default greater difficulty of "random" edits it's plausible that Maytag's healing was possible while things like sex changes or adding wings would be impossible or prohibitively expensive compared to the former. It's only equal and thus a given that since Maytag was healed anyone could edit Vennice or whoever easily if magic is so developed and commonplace that all sorts of extreme body modification would be common. I don't see a lot of people in Flipside running around with bones stronger than titanium, muscles that can throw ten ton boulders one hundred feet (of course you'd need better bones and other body parts for this, too), extremely fire or cold resistant skin, or regeneration that lets one heal major wounds in minutes or seconds without exhausting the person, not to mention new body parts like wings or tails, so it's easy to imagine that Vennice has either no or very limited options, assuming she would want to take such an option. For all I know Maytag's healing was already something only a very rich person would normally have access to, making "random" edits only possible for extremely wealthy people and/or rare, high-powered sorcerers, if anyone. We do already know that even lesser healing (such as of Bern's father) can be expensive, after all.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 03, 2016, 03:52:50 am
Well, actually one or more of those conditions is already met by Bloody Mary herself.

It is the same technology, but while sex or skin color changes might be justifiable (by the way, if it was prohibitively expensive, why did they act like no big deal? It's upper court procedure but obviously relatively simple. Meaning there are more complicated things, like regrowing a broken heart), I imagine there are arbitrary moral restrictions, for the same reason we don't walk around with cloned parts despite being on threshold of stem cell breakthroughs. People get squicked out by cloned organ so we're instead using dumb old robotic prosthesis (ppl are dumb, haven't you guys seen movies about malfunctioning machines?) .
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 03, 2016, 04:27:40 pm
I said a lot of people...and there are not a lot, are there? Is Vennice known to be one of those people? And Bloody Mary must be beyond the capabilities of almost anyone to create, plus she has drawbacks few would accept. As for Maytag, she was helped by important people. And we KNOW other healing that should be simpler and in higher demand than what Maytag received is still expensive. Also, regardless of "morality" I don't see how Maytag's healing is in the same category as "random" modifications.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 03, 2016, 07:39:36 pm
Given what we know about the "magic" or technology of this world, it's not throwing more power at the problem. It's different application of the same technique. Regrowing limbs, growing wings, growing organs. Same difference all around. The difference, is that the Thin Man (or rather his backer) is a mad scientist. Same technology, different willingness to do stuff with it.

Bloody Mary is essentially my nanomachine design in play. Except they might be symbiotes or something. They detect wounds in the body, and horde on it stimulating almost cancerlike healing and regrowth of wounds. This is the regrowth technology as a constantly active effect. I am thinking symbiotes, because most of her other effects seem to be biological (the "fear demon" could easily be a type of ooze (read: low level lifeform)  that gives off some sort of fear hormone, and the claws are definitely some type of necrotoxin venom or acid). Given the level of science we are dealing with, all you would need is someone mad enough to do this.  Btw, the venom Bloody Marry has? I think this is not actually for her benefit, so much as a failsafe (where someone like Bern can kill her with her own toxin) if she gets too out of control.

Drinking makes everything better!  ;D 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 04, 2016, 04:44:07 pm
You call it the "same", but there's no evidence of that. To me it's restoring the default properties of something vs. creating something arbitrary. If everything was the "same" just because nanomachines can do lots of things then we ought to have more and/or more powerful sorcerers, alongside greater effects upon the world. Given that healing IS expensive and there don't seem to be loads of heavily modified people running around I can't just jump to wings and whatever being no big deal for any random Vennice or whoever wants them.

Your nanomachine design? What are you talking about. ;p In any case, there is a lack of hard details on how Bloody Mary works, isn't there? Perhaps it's one thing, perhaps it's another. When I said it has drawbacks few would accept, it implies that the exception (although I specifically didn't say there were none, so it's an exception to what's common in Flipside, not to the logic of what I said) came with horrendous drawbacks that wouldn't normally be acceptable to people otherwise wanting regeneration. And since there's no other example of high quality regeneration that I know of this means that all regeneration I've seen has not even been good overall, which kind of defeats the "anyone can have anything and therefore Vennice would surely have whatever she wanted" theory.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 08, 2016, 10:02:26 pm
I am Al Gore. I invented the invented the internet.  ;D

(As in, the idea I mentioned earlier)

Recall the entrance to Eschelon.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1029

We had massive floating rocks, flying city, "burial" using magic, regrowing organs.

There is no sign of any limits to this "magic". For that matter, human being can be brought back to life (it's expensive, and some deaths are a no-go, but quite a bit beyond what any medicine now can do).

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1037

They call this process "easy". If you had a model, you could definitely make wings. Or whatever else. Beyond that is mirroring, to make things symmetrical. Given this, the reason people aren't walking around with wings?


Given that some people have "curses" and other anomalies, there are some exceptions of this. But it seems like anything too extreme tends to provoke action from law enforcement.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 09, 2016, 03:58:27 am
I have no idea how many sorcerers may have collaborated to do whatever to Eschelon, when this occurred (or if it needs ongoing, possibly "expensive" maintenance), or if it's partially or wholly some effect from pre-sorcerer times (when nanotechnology may have indeed been spammed more heavily). Many nations today have aircraft carriers (which can cost billions of dollars each) and other super-expensive things, so even if something was "possible" it can still be inaccessible to Vennice for financial reasons, which is part of what I've been saying. By the way, the next page says the floating rocks are clouds, not rocks. ;p

Maytag's arm replacement was "mirroring" in your link. Good luck mirroring wings or genitals you don't have or that you want changed. It seems to come back to the idea that restoring a default is easier (although mirroring being copying with a minor twist makes it even more basic, since it would seem that if Maytag lost both arms she may have been fucked), like one would think it would be in a story. In fact since it's not based on DNA this is a bit difficult to make work for random body part choices...good luck mirroring some random wing or genitals that aren't yours in the first place and having your body not reject it. And even if you didn't reject it there would be the question of sensing and controlling the new body part properly...perhaps not so much of an issue with mirrored arms, but extras like wings or swaps of genitals may not be easy at all to make work as though they were your own since birth. So we can easily be back to no luck for randoms like Vennice (perhaps Vennice is wealthy or a powerful sorceress or has such friends, but I have to assume not until otherwise is proven).

Anyway, calling it "easy" is relative. Clearly that location was well set up to do that, but if Maytag didn't luck into getting such help how "easy" might it have been to find and purchase it? Obviously healing is not "easy" in some areas, where "easy" should mean cheap, not "we're in the best area with the most sorcerers and specifically have a set up for this and have done it over and over to the point where we can reliably do it well". Basically, a surgeon in a hospital might call some operation "easy", but is it cheap? ("Free" healthcare just obscures the cost rather than actually lowering it, to be clear.) If you aren't relatively wealthy (let's say you're a random peasant such as might exist in Flipside or our third world) what are your chances of purchasing this? Vennice might not be a random peasant, but if she wants something better than mirroring an arm she already has one of she might be out of luck, as the price would normally be higher, since it would probably be harder than "easy", and "easy" very probably doesn't mean cheap.

I see no evidence law enforcement is doing much of anything. Of course if you looked and acted like a monster they'd normally act, but if you looked "weird" but didn't do anything is there a reason to believe they'd do anything? And of course one has to consider where one is...perhaps the knights would be very proactive, but as I recall they don't rule very much of the total land in Flipside.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 11, 2016, 08:11:02 pm
Meh, nvm. I think we're getting off story a bit.

Brion will probably explain sex changes if it's relevant to the plot, otherwise it's kinda whatever.

This is kinda a weird story, no? We started with a sense of mission then, nahhhh, let's go drinking. Meanwhile, we have wizard girl Regina getting a first taste of perversion. Unless it's filler or humor section, it's kinda "where is Brion going with this?" chapter.

 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 11, 2016, 09:13:34 pm
It's still discussion about the world, which can be interesting. ;p

Regarding the current story with Regina, I try not to speculate too much about future events because it could influence Brion regardless of whether my speculation matched what he planned to do or not. There are obvious story options Brion could take for one purpose or another, though.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Abstract Vagabond on February 12, 2016, 12:12:21 pm
I was expecting some comments about Glyph turning Regina to the dark side or something, but it was mainly an interesting transtopic ("That's not a word." "Says you.") that I won't add anything to because 1) the conversation's already moving on and 2) I'm not interested in writing a mini novel of a post. But this has been a fun chapter so far.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on February 12, 2016, 01:25:16 pm
...aheh.  Seems like he's getting a 'convert'! :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 12, 2016, 07:20:51 pm
I was expecting some comments about Glyph turning Regina to the dark side or something, but it was mainly an interesting transtopic ("That's not a word." "Says you.") that I won't add anything to because 1) the conversation's already moving on and 2) I'm not interested in writing a mini novel of a post. But this has been a fun chapter so far.

Why I ultimately veered away. 5 or 10 such posts was beginning to grate on my nerves.

Seems like Glyph has nothing to hide.  ;D
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Abstract Vagabond on February 17, 2016, 08:35:33 pm
Well, never mind the convert. She's going to join a nudist colony at this rate.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 18, 2016, 05:26:08 am
I'm not sure I agree with Regina's utopia wholeheartedly.

A nudist colony would likely not be a wonderful world for anyone wearing clothing. Nor would it be for anyone who actively wants to be something else (taller, shorter, heavier, skinnier, a female like me, etc). Basically, it's a fine idea, but I'd rethink it since it smacks of conformity. Here's what I do think though.

I've been trolling Pinterest and Facebook, and one of the pictures caught my eye. It was a split screen picture of the same block. On the left we had police grabbing people on their knees, super-ultra-megapharmacy, drones, pollution, and so on. On the right, we have an organic health food store, trees, shiny happy people everywhere, and just a general sense that people are happier and more free. After looking at this, and looking at the other picture, I came to the conclusion that I want this sort of thing too. The reason I came to that things are so messed up is because a number of cause but mainly: an oppressive police state built on fear and shame (that is, the only actual crimes that there are would be based on mistreatment of other people, like rape or murder, and those could be policed by people seeking revenge; the rest of our laws are arbitrary restrictions like "white and colored folk can't use the same bathroom" or "you can't sleep just anywhere in a town, you gotta pay rent" or "you can't copy that DVD, and you can't play that here in this country"),  advertising companies that thrive on people feeling worthless, and our health system has decided to cause disease (look up pinkwashing and the cancer corporations, you will literally become sick to your stomach at how companies have suppressed the use of any other approach to cancer than chemo (which several sites have listed as 93% ineffective and weakening to the body), surgery (which is effective, but not always permanent since lifestyle is the cause of cancer), and radiation (known to cause cancer) when there are in fact organic foods that lower cancer risk, called antioxidants). In short, we have a society bent on making us feel worthless through constant reinforcement of insecurity, and things that use that to kill or frighten us. We need one that lets us be us.

Our military should not invade other countries, it should only defend from attack, and we shouldn't be excessively aware of its presence. Our medicine should be a combination of gene therapy, herbal cures (herbs do work, and they are often safer than many of the synthetic drugs because they have all the other stuff in the plant), surgery, and an emphasis on prevention (with most of its money coming from optional treatments like people wanting elf ears or something). Our police should be either volunteers or bounty hunter style and mainly work on murder and rape investigations, if they are there at all. We don't need to be told we need makeup. Makeup is like accessories, it defines our style (less "I look ugly without it" and more "I want blue fingernails today"). And our science could be extremely green, using ambient solar energy, wind power, geothermal energy and have a pollution free society.

What we need is not to feel bad about having shame of our own. Maybe we will be ashamed of our bodies. We are allowed any insane and expensive procedure we want, because it is our bodies. What we need, is to do away with external shame, the sort that is like a mom harping on her daughter "why aren't you married yet?" causing her to rush into abusive marriage.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 18, 2016, 05:52:41 pm
Well, I don't think a society where people seek revenge based on the random claims of themselves or other people (obviously many people won't be willing and/or capable of getting their own revenge or "revenge" but will simply enlist family and friends) is good, since it would easily spiral into everyone being paranoid about their defense from random bullshit claims, which of course means that eventually people just isolate themselves (fragmenting society and making it inefficient) and/or shoot first (people WILL get guns because they NEED them to SURVIVE in that society, but even without guns it would just be other deadly weapons) because who knows when someone (or some lynch mob) is going to try to viciously attack or kill you based on whatever bullshit they or someone else claims. And of course when you shoot first you just get your mob to defend you from the lynch mob that's coming for you because you shot first (you claim whatever is necessary to survive), or just shoot enough to ensure everyone that could tattle on you is dead, etc.

Also, a shame-free society likely isn't sustainable in the long term (without robots doing almost all of the critical jobs, anyway) because way too many people won't care about profiting society in the long term (of course this is effectively a scam and/or slavery for the many people that get back less than they put in, but without these people society collapses), so they'll generally do the minimum to sustain themselves. Then everyone will see that society doesn't have anything extra for them when they need it, and everyone thus will tend to contribute less and less back, which is a vicious cycle. Of course western society is already low on shame for many things, which is part of its current decline (from a long term societal sustainability standard, not a momentary personal freedom standard). Without shame you can't get people to stop being parasites or to become slaves (to support the parasites) nearly as easily, especially if it's combined with a lack of a real justice system (the justice system of course is already degraded beyond belief, too).

This probably doesn't make sense to many people, but it's complicated how shame interacts with other things that are critical to having a society work with rather than against itself. If everyone just goes for full decadence (which is personally attractive to humans) society becomes unsustainable (unless no one is needed for critical jobs (if those are covered by robots then basically everything is covered), but even then you could have other severe problems). I'm not saying I'm contributing myself, though, but part of this is is due to the treatment I've received, which makes me not care at all about giving anything back, since I consider myself to be owed quite a lot in the first place. Shaming me won't work either since I know that I am unable to shame society into making some critical things up to me, which makes me know that I am worth nothing to society, which makes society worth nothing to me. I guess society should've had better laws and justice for me if they wanted me to have a chance of caring. ;p
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 19, 2016, 04:10:24 pm
Erm, lemme rephrase that. I don't think revenge seeking is good.

Essentially, yeah maybe you're right. We do need courts, where actual evidence that someone wronged us is brought up.

But we don't need cops coming to our house to arrest us because of something they have decided is illegal to even have.
Our current justice system is very much based on fear and shame. A prime example: indecent exposure. Honestly, is it anyone else's business how we are dressed? How about possession of guns? Possession of alcohol or drugs? There are laws that don't affect anyone at all unless we use such things to hurt others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimless_crime

We need courts to prove that people who hurt us actually hurt us. And maybe mercenary cops to bring them into such courts. But we do not need police to enforce right and wrong.

I am not convinced of this. Without being made to feel ashamed, people can still be fired. And if we had no shame, we would be doing possibly unethical (under our current norms) jobs. Alot of people would be artists or writers (or prostitutes or really weird jobs).  For that matter, our current food industry is fucked up precisely because there are too many humans involved in it. If aside from people who loved to farm, the food industry was largely mechanized, we would have largely have healthier food. This would be true of many of the "conventional" jobs that everyone currently overrates because they are afraid to strike out alone and do what they love. This is already starting to happen, the big industries are becoming unnecessary. We currently have too many people involved in jobs that hate their job, this means rather than having a positive production from our jobs, we are making stuff that is garbage because there is an almost criminal lack of pride in work.

In short, if in order to retain money you have to work, then lacking anyone's opinion on the "sensible" thing, people do their dream jobs. McDonald's and alot of the really crappy stuff become mechanized. You would actually be surprised at how unsustainable our current culture is, it literally relies on force to get people to do what they don't want to do. Everything from sanctions, to isolation, to making people almost unemployable. This cannot last. We currently have millions paying into college but they have nothing to do. We call it a recession but the reality of it is, there are recession-proof jobs, and most of them are creative and/or entrepreneurial. A shame-free society, not only will not be decadent, but will sustain itself.

Also, decadence does not come from lack of shame. The reverse is true. Decadence is when the culture is sick. And this happens more from an excessively vain group of people. Think about this. An unashamed person goes out and does what they love. A vain person worries about what others think, and spends all of their time at parties, checking facebook, seeking the approval of others. A content person doesn't need approval, so they go find their own path. If their path doesn't work, they will screw themselves over and probably wipe themselves out. Or they get a new one.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 19, 2016, 07:44:48 pm
I completely agree that there are way too many laws. I think most people in jail or prison (or otherwise punished) shouldn't be, either because what they did shouldn't be legally punishable or because the punishment is way too severe for the act.

Well, without shaming people into working harder to provide for a family they may also have to be shamed into creating (and the former is more or less a prerequisite for the latter for men because women are extremely unlikely to start families with losers or unemployed men, although they may be willing to have children with such men (if they're sexually attractive) if there's free money from elsewhere, which can include a cuckolded husband) the non-dream jobs will be much harder to fill. The critical jobs in society, where things are invented, created, maintained, or moved, are very often of this type. And if men or women choose to have no, small, or unstable families the economy also suffers due to fewer useful (intelligent or creative while not being dysfunctional) people existing via not being born or via being ruined by bad childhoods. Importing masses of immigrants with no qualifications for good jobs and often with no desire to assimilate doesn't fix this problem, and makes things even worse overall.

Basically no one "loves" to farm, but we need enough farmers, and they need to be functional people with enough skill to efficiently farm who are also motivated to farm. This is done by offering enough money to attract them. Shaming people into trying harder to get money is a general effect that feeds back into getting people to do such unwanted jobs (which are most jobs, but farming in particular is a critical job). Conversely, many people would love to have creative jobs such as artist or writer. However, it's hard to be skilled enough to stand out compared to the others who want those jobs, and society technically doesn't need such jobs to function, so the pay is slim to none unless you are skilled. This combined with shaming people to make more money causes us to fill the unwanted critical jobs such as farmer while only the best creative people are able to sustain themselves on creative jobs. The reason people can't just do their dream job is because the value they provide to others in doing so is too low to cause others to buy enough of their work to sustain them.

You call current culture unsustainable, and that's true, but forcing people to do all sorts of undesirable jobs is something that has been the case since time immemorial. I think you mainly just dislike this and want to dream of a reality where this doesn't have to occur. I mentioned robots doing everything critical because this is a way out, depending on who benefits from this, of course. Without such robots there is no way to have a functioning society with a good standard of living without there being economic pressure to get people to do undesirable jobs. And it's much easier to get at least men to do these jobs if you shame them into feeling like losers or worthless if they don't make lots of money, since this plays on the fact that women that are in demand will routinely reject average or below average men as losers, not to mention unemployed men.

I don't know why you think there enough jobs for everyone right now could be made to exist (where job means something that provides enough value to others to cause them to voluntarily pay the jobholder enough for their work to sustain themselves (government jobs for the most people are just welfare via busywork and do not qualify as real jobs due to the fact that without taking people's money at gunpoint people would not pay to keep these jobs around)). In the United States (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm) 29% of people aged 18-64 in the "civilian noninstitutional population" are either in the "civilian labor force" but unemployed (meaning that they are unemployed and are trying to get jobs) or are not in the labor force (meaning that they are unemployed and are not trying to get jobs), overwhelmingly the latter. Of course people from other age groups also compete for jobs, which means that 41% of people age 16 and over (and the extra people are overwhelmingly 65+, not 16-17) are unemployed, and again overwhelmingly are not trying to get a job. There is not enough demand for labor relative to the population to get real jobs (where people voluntarily pay for value) for everyone or even close. The reason the unemployed people aren't simply doing their dream jobs is that they have no capability to do so in a fashion that causes people to voluntarily pay them enough for their work to make it worthwhile. There is no actual need for more artists and writers. Only the good ones (as consumers judge them) sustain themselves on that. Adding tens of millions more would result in almost all of the new ones being low quality and receiving little to no money in return, even if they were able to try for a while in order to reach their maximum creative potential.

Creative jobs are actually the least recession-proof, because no one really needs entertainment. There is always media (mostly things to watch, listen to, or play) that already exists as well as other pleasurable activities to entertain people. So if you had the mother of all depressions and many people lost their jobs or at least part of their income the total remaining money to spend would mostly go to things people consume and/or need, like food, housing, energy, etc. Entertainment would be paid for far less because the money left over after paying for the former, more important things would be far less. As for "entrepreneurial" jobs, if they produce things people need there is already demand for them, which means that this demand is being filled at more or less the rate it can be filled at. Of course the government could lower taxes and lessen regulations to encourage more economic activity, but it's not like there is any particular lack of labor available to perform these jobs already.

If no one is shamed people will act irresponsibly towards their future and especially towards other people's futures. This is because responsibility is unattractive to humans for its own sake. Sacrificing in the present for the future is unattractive, in part because the future is uncertain and thus is devalued relative to the present. Common idiocy enhances this effect. Being responsible by sacrificing for others is even more unattractive for obvious reasons. Without shame people will more freely do all sorts of economically and socially negative things to themselves and others that lead to, in the long term, far many more poor and/or dysfunctional people who typically lack or are unable to use (due to dysfunction or a lack of money or opportunity) skills that are actually valuable to others. You can't simply rely on people to magically become the best people they can be...this is the unconstrained vision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Conflict_of_Visions#The_Unconstrained_Vision) and is the ideal enabling people to believe in much of the nonsense being attempted in the west over the last century or so. If you believe in this you only need to wait as society rots further to see how wrong it is, and that people are actually innately selfish, irresponsible, stupid, and...decadent. It wouldn't matter as much if people didn't need society in the form of other people to make everything function to a high standard, i.e. if robots did everything critical.

I have no idea how you think you'll cause people to become less decadent and vain without shaming them (you could just make loads and loads more things illegal, but this is more painful than shaming people anyway, so it's not a real improvement over shaming). People don't naturally care about others as much as they care about themselves, for obvious reasons. Society is a heavyhanded compromise that involves shame even now, and especially in the past when excess wealth didn't enable nearly as much decadence to be sustained for long periods of time. Without shame people are much less motivated to properly create and develop the families and skills/jobs/companies that are needed to sustain and/or improve the future. This means that more people act in isolationist, parasitical, or dysfunctional manners that, when allowed without even shame to help prevent them, only encourage yet more people to do the same, since being a decent, sacrificial person is painful in comparison, and very much not worth it when so very many others are allowed to make things worse for everyone without consequences. This is a vicious cycle that only results in maximum decadence and societal rot until the society collapses economically, violently, and/or by not having enough people remaining (due to flight and a lack of births) to outweigh new people with different values that push into the original society's land.

EDIT: theory --> vision
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on February 19, 2016, 09:49:33 pm
Interesting discussion.  I just want to point out that in the current comic, Regina is talking about a specific kind of shame, and not shame in general.  In case that wasn't clear.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 20, 2016, 03:44:54 am
Urgh supermegablock. I kinda got lost in parentheses so for now since I goto work, I will only respond to part of it.

You're obviously from the city. There are people who love all kinds of things. I for years worked on either a farm or garden. Why? I disliked the whole stifling bustle of the city, the urge to make ends meet doing alot of jobs that sat you in the back of an office. Farming was something where you could see the impact of what you did and felt connected to the land. I eventually burnt out in the loneliness and crummy wage, but it still help family out with yard work, and now work at a library. It was a job that I never thought I'd be doing but sorta landed upon with the sense that I also got annoyed between the highly seasonal nature of the job. I guess I saw these people always having fun, while I was usually looking for a new job come winter instead of just watching the seasons change. I tried retail first, but I didn't like the direct sales agenda (even though we worked at a fucking walmart). I liked books but the first bookstore I applied made me realize I love libraries. So I had like the most relaxed interview at the bookstore.

In short, no there is a possibility of loving farming. But nobody loves working at McDonald's, nobody loves working at food factories where junk food is made, etc. These are soul destroying jobs, because you know in your heart that your actions hurt the health of millions. These would be fine run by robots, if they even existed. Because they are jobs most people feel shame about, where it is possible to be proud of growing crops.

I'm going to look at the rest later.

Okay, back. And yes, Brion I understand the point of how it's only sexual shame, but as you've experimented with alternate political systems (including one that seems to be a mercantile constitutional anarchy) I think it's only fair to take a look at this as a universal system.

Art would run the same. People who don't do good work, or at least popular work, will not have people buy their stuff. This would drive the people who just want art because they think it's easy out, and make the rest work better. As for farming, in this country certain subsidies for growing certain crops mean that even if they cannot sell to local markets, they have guaranteed income.

Recession is not defined as unemployment (that is depression), it is defined as negative economic growth. This means, the country as a whole is not producing money. This is as a result of several factors, some of which as purely fiction, like "there aren't enough jobs". Wrong. You can create jobs, and anyone can be an employer. The only limit is whether the job is viable at making money and preventing loss. In fact, the way we understand "making jobs" is often totally bogus. I have seen this many times. A town is doing okay with many shops in town, then we have a Walmart or ballpark or some other megastore. Do new get created? Hmmmm, let's think here... We have retail shops all over that area. They have the people they need, so no new jobs there. In theory that would make new work, since there would be now a place for people to work. In actual fact, however, there is limited physical space, so this ballpark is competing for space and probably knocked down retail stores. These people can't all work for the ballpark, so they are evicted from their businesses. This equals lost jobs not new jobs. The only way to create new jobs is to build a business that is not in competition with other businesses. This equals: (1) home business or (2) online business or (3) both. The business now operating outside the current businesses in town, is able to hire new people that are not currently employed.

Creative jobs are recession-proof if they are a creative usage of niche. Everyone becoming an artist, is decidedly not creative. That is, if I find out that there is a desperate need for pet therapists, I make the pet therapist job, and become the best paid (the only one, but anyway) pet therapist in town.   

I have read nonfiction books aplenty. I've learned some on business and economics, some on ethics, and a few on self-help. Basically, I'm a huge nerd that reads either books or the internet most of my waking hours, filters it until something fits logically. Not always right, but yea, this feels wrong. The best resources for self-help on this subject are The Gifts of Imperfection and When Panic Attacks. Guilt does not make people behave. Consider the following: a person dieting (I have my dad to use an example). When he is guilt tripped does he suddenly stick to a diet? Not hardly. He responds defensively to people "pestering" him about his eating, and now that he feels bad, eats even more self-destructively. This is, guilt/shame backfired, making him more prone to bad behavior than before.

Decadence is a product of dissolute culture. That is, when people feel insecure about what they have to offer the world, they just sit and watch movies all day.

http://www.ask.com/family/causes-moral-decadence-among-youth-92fb16619b2e1b2

Quote
Causes of moral decadence among the youth can be categorized into social, economic, cognitive and technological factors. Social causes include peer influence and unstable home environments, while economic factors include poverty. Technological innovations, such as media and the Internet, expose young people to potentially unwelcome information and cognitive causes are related to the need for belonging among the youth driven by physical and psychological needs.

Did you see, "lack of authority structure" anywhere here? No, but you did see unstable houses, peer pressure, and need for belonging. This is short for shame. They are ashamed of being homeless so they act rich. They are ashamed of not fitting in, so they do high risk behavior to impress peers. And they receive loads of ads from technology that convince them they won't measure up without the latest whatever.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 20, 2016, 05:57:02 pm
Yeah, I know it was bulmabriefs144 that seems to be anti-general-shame, Brion.

Just because you liked farming (although you really favor my side of the argument by admitting you burned out AND wanted more money...clearly it isn't a dream job in either sense for you) doesn't mean it's popular, nor would it mean that jobs like janitor, miner, construction worker, truck driver, etc. would be naturally popular. I agree that "creative" jobs would be popular, but that's part of why so many people try to do them but end up having to do something else instead of or in addition to them. I'm speaking from a zoomed out perspective. Individual exceptions can not support an overall system unless they are more numerous than required for the work, and even then there is the question of natural talent plus skill development needed to do the job efficiently. It's more efficient to have the right people working for money than it is to have two or ten times as many relative failures working the same jobs. Unfortunately societies/nations do compete with each other so being inefficient means your society/nation dies faster. As for a bookstore job, this is basically retail, right? Just a kind you like. Most people can't simply get such a job...if working at a bookstore was popular it would pay nothing as well until people stopped trying to get that job, since the job doesn't filter heavily based on skill. There is only so much demand for books.

For "soul-destroying" jobs...someone has to do them. You have to pay them more and make sure they feel like losers if they don't make money to get them to take and keep those jobs. If they don't feel like losers without money you have to pay them far more, which means the standard of living for the society goes down as the society has to pay more money for the same amount of services (really this would result in paying less money for far less services in most cases, but either way society gets less for its money, making it poorer). There is the issue that without people feeling like losers for not having money they will put less back into society via taxes and via not creating prosperous, large families often, instead having nonexistent and/or small and/or dysfunctional (being poor will push many people over the limit if they would otherwise not be) families.

So you agree that inept artists would be driven out, and yet you call it a recession-proof job... I already explained that entertainment budget comes out of excess, which is disproportionately affected in a recession, which means that these jobs are the most dependent on a strong economy, which is the opposite of recession-proof. Maybe you think that if they just do a good enough job it doesn't matter, but this isn't really true since entertainment isn't a NEED. I don't know what mentioning subsidies for farming is supposed to be about. Are you saying you support them because they give some level of "guaranteed income"? Subsidies are effectively involuntary business and hurt the efficiency of the market and society. Doing this for art would be even worse as at least you do need some level of stability in farming regardless of good or bad years for crops, since the need-based demand will never drop below a certain level. There is no need-based demand for entertainment.

I wasn't defining recession as unemployment. I don't agree that "anyone" can "create" jobs. I defined a real job as providing a service that people will voluntarily pay for. So sure, the government or anyone with money to burn can create jobs, but if they don't provide value that people voluntarily pay for they're for the most part a drain on society and not real jobs. Jobs really need labor, capital, technology, ingenuity/skill, and demand to come into sustainable, voluntary existence. Your examples with Walmart just seem to be some anti-big business sentiment...if Walmart was not favored by the local population it would be the Walmart that failed and left rather than the other jobs. The fact that Walmart employs fewer people while replacing the same (or discarded, evaluated to be unnecessary relative to the Walmart) services means that Walmart is more efficient, freeing labor for other jobs and/or for leisure. Of course our society is not set up to allow people to not have jobs, but the solution isn't to mandate inefficient or unnecessary jobs for everyone. As I demonstrated, there is absolutely no way to give everyone a REAL job in the United States. You would need to create tens of millions of jobs out of thin air, which won't happen. So there are only two relatively efficient solutions...some sort of minimum guaranteed income or eliminating the unemployed, useless humans in one way or another. Replacing Walmarts with local jobs that the population clearly prefers the Walmart over is a tax on the population, not a source of real efficiency.

The problem with your idea of small entrepreneurial businesses is that it's basically hand-waving. You have no hard examples of things people can do now that are in sufficient demand to sustain new real jobs, and no proof that these jobs wouldn't also end up consolidated and made more efficient by larger businesses. So there's no reason to believe in the existence or stability of such jobs as a solution. There would be more jobs if taxes and regulations were reduced (although it's not like all regulations are bad, and some level of taxation is a necessary evil as well). Even then there's no reason to believe tens of millions of jobs would appear for the low skill, low quality people that tend to be unemployed at the moment. Right now we already have plenty of inefficient jobs that ought to disappear for the good of all (most government jobs and lots of other bureaucratic or regulation-created jobs in the "free" market), so you really need to create even more than just tens of millions of real jobs. I don't see this as a possibility as automation relentlessly makes ever more unintelligent or dysfunctional people unnecessary as labor. If there was a major collapse and we needed way more farmers or whatever then there would be jobs, but we would also be much poorer.

Creative jobs aren't recession-proof...only needs are recession-proof, although needs (even including hunger) are basically just wants that are high in the hierarchy of wants. I didn't consider pet therapist to be a creative job by default because you mentioned artists and writers, but now you just seem to mean any sort of creative idea for a job, and not a job that itself is creative in the sense of crafting ideas. I can assure you that pet therapists are wildly vulnerable to recessions, though, as pets don't really need them very much and can't pay for them directly, instead relying on the fancies of their owners to pay for their therapy. If the owner is poorer they may wise up and realize that they can simply feed and treat their pet well and fire the pet therapist. 

What feels wrong? That shame causes people to harmonize with society better? Listen, I already mentioned that the unconstrained vision is the ideal of society now and this ideal believes people can magically be encouraged to become wonderful special snowflakes without shaming, responsibility, sacrifice, etc. If you believe this then of course the idea of shaming having value depending on the goals (such as having a healthy, sustainable society rather than maximizing personal freedom) will "feel" wrong. And there are endless books that are based on the ideal of the unconstrained vision, so of course you can find endless examples "supporting" that idea. Like I said, if you believe in the unconstrained vision you simply need to wait as society inevitably maximizes decadence, parasitism, irresponsibility, and apathy because people more and more often see no reason to sacrifice themselves for a rotting society. Or maybe you're right and we'll end up in some magical utopia of pet therapists and only people that love being janitors being janitors and whatever else.

Also, shame is not guilt. Shame in fact is more useful against those with less likelihood or ability to feel guilty, which are the very people more likely to fuck everything up for everyone else. Someone that feels guilty is more likely to self-adjust without shame, although it's not like the guilt will match societal norms at any given time, so shame can guide such a person, too. But someone with low to no guilt needs either shame or harsh, strictly enforced laws (or vigilantes getting revenge as a normal response) to conform. Your example of someone already dieting reacting one way is just constructed. There are societies for example in Asia where you get shamed significantly more than in the west if you gain weight, and people work harder to not gain weight than in the west. Counterexamples can exist, sure, but in general the more shame, the more conformity (although suicide rates may also increase, but everything is a trade off on the grand scale). It takes will (or dysfunctionality) to resist shame from society in general (meaning without significant portions of society clearly rejecting the shame as legitimate) consistently being applied over time.

Okay, so you agree that unstable home environments contribute to decadence, but you think removing all shame on bad parents is a solution. Hey, whatever, the unconstrained vision makes sense to you, then. And what exactly is an unstable home but one with a lack of legitimate, consistent authority structure? For example a single mother that constantly rotates men who don't want her in the long term and certainly don't want to care for a child that isn't theirs, while she has to work and becomes stressed by work, childcare, and constant long-term romantic failure and takes it out on the kid? She has authority over the child but is dysfunctional (in terms of providing a proper environment for the child, but likely in general, too) and the child is statistically proven to be 5-30 times as likely to become dysfunctional in each of many different ways. (Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1xf78EltKM) is one collection of such data.) But I guess we shouldn't shame single mothers, who choose inferior lives for their children. The likelihood of unstable houses and an unfulfilled need for belonging of course increase for the children of single mothers, and peer pressure is something children of single mothers are more likely to give into, since they are more likely to have a bad relationship with their mother and a bad or nonexistent relationship with their father and not respect their authority, possibly for good reasons.

In the end I have never been saying that shame in general is good, just that some shame can have good general outcomes. You seem to think shame is inherently bad, in that it can only make things worse, at least in the general sense. This seems ridiculous under the constrained vision, however.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 21, 2016, 04:59:46 am
Judging what is and isn't a creative or fun job is about the least creative thing you can do. It's not to your taste, but this doesn't mean there aren't people who love to do it.

I'm going to stop right there. Where you say "the non-creative jobs someone has to do them." No one has to do them.

Long ago, car washing was a team project or at least hard work for someone. Then the automatic car wash was invented, and one person making their living collecting the coins. Ditto for a laundromat, one person's creative juices made individuals reasonably rich and free to do whatever in their own time. Not only are those workers laid off but the one guy who collects the coins has the rest of the day to write books, pursue hobbies, even work another part-time job. The same for the laundromat. Yes, dry cleaning has persisted but they are experts at dry cleaning, and eventually that too might be automated. On the other hand, library despite having autocheck scanners still have  staff. Banks despite having ATMs still have staff. Why?

One word: customer service. It is the one thing that a computer, short of being like Watson, cannot do
 And it is the one thing it shouldn't do. That job needs a personal touch, and will always need employees. Oh sure robots, but they always make the logical decision not the other ones.

The less creative a job, the more it is likely to have a genius type be like, "hey this job has no components other than the task (no customer service, no repair, and no sales or creative aspect) I can mechanize this whole thing pay my boss and run the company myself." That becomes a job freed up. Mining and farming both have large scale machines for the big commercial stuff. But they can't do organic farming. And they can't do gem mining without butchering the materials.

So no, we don't need uncreative soul-crushing jobs. For that matter, I don't need "that'll never work in the real world" or especially "that's not the way we've done it before." If the current plan is inefficient that is the thing that should be replaced. McDonald's is literally just the order. The entire thing, including the cooking could be mechanized, with just some guy running the automatic order system making sure it has no pickles.

I'm not going to drag this on. Because I'm obviously right. :D There are probably examples each of us could give about a structured vs unstructured world, but the major point is that it's a sorta balance. I would say you could indeed have a world like you described, but unless some people were a little more shameless, nobody would really be happy. I could also show a world like I described, but I'd concede there might be some less than perfect things unless people had a firm sense of boundaries.

So about Regina and her modesty-free nudist world, let's examine why that would or won't work? And what she means by being stronger. Is this about the 2nd dissolving test, or about Maytag?

Update: Pfffft. Funny we should mention stuff like this. Today my dad gave me a "not in that outfit" lecture. Apparently something I was wearing was rather short.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 21, 2016, 11:06:03 pm
Okay, so I can't judge what a creative job is (by assuming that you mentioning artists and writers meant that you had a similar opinion to mine on what counts, which seems reasonable given that people looking to be "creative" tend to try to get/keep such jobs), but you can judge that a category of jobs, which is apparently undefined in any meaningful way, is recession-proof. Sure. If you just mean judging such jobs AS A JOB, this has no relevance to what I was saying that I can think of. In any case, you can't prove that there are enough people that love such a job without special positive and negative incentives, can you?

Yes, people DO have to do the non-creative or even soul-destroying jobs. Granted, some of these are unnecessary, but people in general don't want to live in a world where only the wealthy (not rich, but WEALTHY) can afford proper homes, sanitation, electricity, and so on. These jobs need far more people to do them than want to do them.

I assume the banks at least believe enough customers prefer using a teller, and besides, it's not like an ATM covers all possible interactions with a bank. Whether or not a computer SHOULD do a job "needing" a personal touch is up to the customers. If they're willing to pay more they'll maintain their personal touch. If not, why do you want them to pay more anyway? They clearly don't want it, as they're not willing to pay. It just seems like you have some ideal of how things would be nice, and all I'm saying is that instead everyone can collectively decide on what they get by paying or not paying, or paying less or paying more.

The job isn't freed up, the labor is. But as I have demonstrated there is a huge glut of labor already. So I suggest that the only relatively efficient solutions are that either useless humans are eliminated in some sense (death camps, starvation --> crime --> execution (prison, military service, bureaucratic government jobs, etc. count as inefficient welfare, and the starving will take these over death), exile, or who knows what else) or there is a minimum guaranteed income imposed, at least until labor is needed again, i.e. when technology and/or energy/material supply is reduced due to a collapse. If you know of another realistic (meaning not creating tens of millions of jobs out of thin air in the United States alone) solution I am of course interested.

Uh, machines can do modern farming but not organic farming? This feels like your previously mentioned preference for organic food is clouding your judgement. Can you describe exactly how organic farming differs from normal farming in a way such that robots/computers/AI/etc. could never replace a human? As for gem mining, I'm sure they're working on that if you're right. Are you looking at machines as not having more capabilities in the future or what? If you assume there will be a collapse then sure. But in that case I assure you that organic farming and making sure no one has to do jobs they don't want to do will not be foremost on people's minds.

We need uncreative and/or soul-crushing jobs filled right now. If robots were covering them completely then we wouldn't, but that isn't the case right now, so what are you hoping changes now outside of robots being made able to cover 100% of these jobs?

You're obviously right? Maybe if I understood what you think differently from me I could understand. Apparently you claiming we "don't need" people doing unwanted jobs was just futurism. Normally when someone says "we don't need ___" it means now, not in a theoretical future. I already preempted you on the future by stipulating long ago that if robots can cover all the critical jobs then shaming people into taking them will be less important, so I don't see the point of you "explaining" the future to me.

Okay, so "unless some people were a little more shameless, nobody would really be happy". Don't you just mean that the people who "need" to be more shameless would be unhappy? If you mean what you said literally then the implication is that the "some people" that are stopped from being "a little more shameless" would ensure that EVERYONE else would be unhappy, since this is the only way "nobody would really be happy". I feel like you're just projecting here, which caused this strange statement. I haven't even been suggesting that shaming trans people was necessary or desirable, just that shaming people CAN be used in ways that create long term positive outcomes, as well as in bad ways. Anyway, the world is not going to come to a place where everyone can be happy any time soon, so the matter is really of choosing which, how many, and how strongly people are unhappy. Please "show" your functioning, currently existent example of a world of the type you think would work for all, if you have one. If it's pure theory then I can simply point at the current world ask you how we get there without a major upset for many people who will resist at all costs, possibly for good reasons, as well as point out any reasons why people wouldn't desire this world (making it not ideal for everyone).

I notice you said nothing about my belief that rewarding single mothers with prizes for their statistically proven destruction of the future (I omitted the former part but it is part of the current problem, as it incentivizes people to make this devastating choice) instead of near-universally shaming them so that future women choose to avoid becoming single mothers is bad and leads to decadence even under your own stated causes of decadence. If you have nothing then one must conclude that this would indeed be a legitimate use of shaming (unless one is in favor of decadence and social fragmentation, as well as ultimate collapse, unless the robots and mincome save us ;p), which means that your ideal of a shame-free world is just that; an ideal.

Okay, so do you live with your dad? Is he supportive of you transitioning (not that I know your status or plans on this)? I'm just curious, so no need to say anything if you don't want to. But if he's unsupportive or opposed, as would usually be the case, it could explain why you are so anti-shame. I don't actually love shaming people and said myself that I would not be shamed due to personal reasons, but I do see the long term logic of it, and since I believe in the constrained vision (as it is explanatory rather than a prescriptive ideal) I see no reason to try for the impossibility of a world where everyone is happy.

"About" Regina, personally I think people should be allowed to be nude, but the fact is that most people don't want to see others nude (if nothing else most people are unattractive, and often much more so when nude). Since I support freedom of association I believe that homes, businesses, etc. should be allowed to bar nude or otherwise unwantedly dressed people from entering, participating, etc. I think people that went around naked in public places (this not being illegal in this scenario) would have to plan to not use such spaces or services (since most would bar nudity) and would, in particular if they were ugly, be shamed (or otherwise complained about, but this is basically a form of shaming as well) by others who didn't want to see them in that state. It would be up to them to decide if it was worth the displeasure of others being reflected back upon them in an attempt to cause them to change their behavior or not. If it wasn't worth it then I guess enough people viewed it negatively enough to outweigh the person's desire to go around nude, which may indeed be a net gain of happiness for society, even if a given shamed person ended up less happy. For attractive nudists that only want to be in public spaces, they have to consider the unwanted attention they get from others looking at them, and that any attempts on their part to shame people into not looking in spite of their nudity to be hollow to many people (and thus ineffective), who can easily tell them that they could clothe or otherwise cover themselves if they didn't want their body parts to be visible to all.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 22, 2016, 07:53:04 am
One more comment, and then I'll totally move on to Regina (later on today).

Here's my take on it from my own life experiences. My first job was at 6, I was feeding cat food to kitties. I got maybe a few dollars of spending money. It was not minimum wage, but I had no real need for it. It was a quiet job and sorta fun for a kid. My second job, I was maybe 13 or 14 (it was under-the-table). I was helping a neighbor pull weeds and fix his house. I worked about 60 hours (over several weeks), and he shorted me, as at the time minimum was was maybe $5 or something. I wound up with $200 for my trouble, the math didn't add up and I've been slightly cynical about work since. I've done alot of gardening jobs where I worked maybe 3 hours a day, $10/hr, maybe 2-3 days a week. In other words, pfffft crappy wages. I had other job, some of which we on call and sucky hours, some of which were fulltime, some like Amazon were overtime. Some like Walmart were shifting schedule. Whenever I started to really hate my job, either my work would suck and I'd get fired, or I'd begin to work less hours for one reason or another (maybe I'd get sick, maybe the boss wouldn't need me, maybe I'd ask for more flexible schedule).

The point in all of this? We, as humans, take jobs based on what we think we deserve. I have also noticed that we tend to take lovers based on what we think we deserve (explaining why I'm still single). So, the natural progression of these suck jobs is that without a demand for them, people find other ways to do them. If people hate the tipping system, either waitresses start demanding real wages, or formal dining goes the way of the dodo. Likewise, if people are tired of fast food, the industry collapses, and there is only traditional restaurants. If people eat at home, we have neither. An industry only needs to exist if If people stopped depending of conventional farming, we would have hydroponics businesses. Or if we stopped liking other people making money from food, we'd all have home farms or labs where we grew our own food. Nature abhors a vacuum, and something fills the need. But no, the need as such is not fixed in stone (someone gets food to the public, someone grows food, someone delivers water and other necessities, but the method this happens is NOT fixed).  So no, there is never a need to do such jobs. We just convince ourselves that is what we are worth. It's a self-punishment.
I'm a librarian, because I like dealing with customers but I don't like selling people stuff. When I finally understood that I was better than these crappy jobs that were like SELL SELL SELL, I started being able to move towards even halfway decent work. Are there days when work sucks? Yes. But these are days when I realize that I've been feeling bad, and this reflects itself in the choices I make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmN2RL4VJsE

You can take this guy with a great of salt, but effectively, positive thinking does impact outcome. So, when we feel ashamed about our job options, we only get drudge work with no option of promotion. You see alot of money, maybe, but like for Amazon, I was making tons of money, but other costs would eat it up. "Someone has to do these jobs" I used to think. If someone has to do them, why aren't they valued more? Truth is, they can automate many of the jobs, as I said before. This would leave many people out of a job, but this would leave more people time to think about their own businesses. Jobs that use creativity and the mind are valued more because you need an actual person making a decision. Grunt work is expendable.

It isn't just preference for a teller. The ATM can pull in and pull out money. It cannot license changes of name or address, approve loans, or decide ANYTHING, it cannot instruct people in the exchange rate of foreign currency, give stock advice, or whatever else a banker can do (my knowledge on that is limited). There are specific instances where you need someone caring at the other end, and this is where purely automated stuff loses out. A computer can do some of our work at the library like searching titles, cataloguing, and checking in and out. It cannot show people where the W2 form is. It can't help people with computers, or advise on resume writing. It can't help people log in to the right WiFi connection, or help them print their phone stuff to a copier. It can only do repetitive stuff.

The labor is freed up, yes. That labor can go on begging other employers for scraps only to have them say "hmmmm, based on your (previous service/criminal record/driving record/other stupid piece of paper), I can't hire you." Or the labor can say, "well I guess if we aren't good enough, we can walk to somewhere we we are good enough." When I have been self-employed, that wasn't an issue so much as making sure the work was good. And when I wrote a book, well, nobody ever bought it, but it was completely my own time. 

The organic farming is often done with a minimum of chemicals and pollution. Many of the organic farmers insist that diesel fuel gets absorbed by the crops and taints the flavor. Or pesticides, or other fumes. This is why it's more expensive, because it's done using alot of trained workers. The jobs I have worked at, they didn't have 500 acres of land plowed by big tanker tractors/sprayers/other stuff, they had alot of people that were weeding by hand, and it was very hard work.
Likewise, while some of mining can be done in 5 min using a digging machine, getting an intact vein of gems tends to be more of a skill than a mechanic. These are things that need expertise, otherwise you have nothing but tiny fragments, rather than a giant statue at the end waiting to be carved into an emerald woman (which you would get if you mined a vein out perfectly.

We don't need these untrained grunt jobs. We need for people to think hard about what they actually want. There is an oversupply in jobs, because people all head like sheep into the city, where they all compete for the same jobs. If you're a minister, for instance, many of them won't take jobs on the outskirts, so these churches struggle. But there are plenty of openings there. Want to work in a small town, and got IT experience? You can set up better network lines there, but *gasp* out in the boonies. Where you can, duh, order stuff online anyway.
 People aren't honest about what they really want. "I 'should' go out and get a conventional job. I 'should' commute to the city." Really, should you? Because it seems like the commute is killing you. Not that everyone is suited for the country either.
But if MSN News says "all the openings are now in nursing" everyone gets retrained as a nurse, where are there likely to be no openings? Nursing. If wewere instead to stop being ashamed of doing something more like us, suddenly, we would find our niche. Some would work at comic shops, some would work at burger and fry places because they like the whole fast food culture. But you wouldn't see this desperate job culture because people were there because they wanted it. If you've ever seen someone who loves their job, it's a whole different deal than the guy doing it for money, and I think you'd even see the difference.
 
I would also recommend the book ReWork. You're locked into a certain business mindset that is not really true.   

Now, about Regina... Looks like I'm out of time. Suffice it to say, the whole nudity issue is precisely because you view being naked as an invitation to sex. There is such a thing as topless feminists, people who see there as a double standard that guys can go shirtless but gals can't. Being nude, around other nude people means they see everything. That hot girl you're talking to? She knows you like her, if you know what I mean. If everyone was nude at a restaurant or even a majority of the people, they really would be blind to it.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1609417!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/nude12n-2-web.jpg

http://www.nickscipio.com/pod/media/2012/10/Church-flashers-Unorthodox.jpg

(Contains nudity. Because duh we're talking about nudity)

Compare picture 1 & 2. The first has a guy not giving two shits what others think, the second has a bunch of oversexualized girls flashing, when actually they are ashamed of baring all (because for them it is sexual).

"Weird bodies", huh? Pffft. :D
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 22, 2016, 08:14:38 pm
You continue to think of jobs as having demand based on the wants of the employee. That's just not how jobs work, not really. A job is supposed to provide a good or service to a customer that voluntarily pays for it. This is where demand comes from. The demand of the employee is by default money. Yes, people have varying preferences for varying jobs, but this is swayed by money and other concessions/bonuses in working conditions. The employee absolutely does not get to just work at what they "deserve" to do simply because they want to! This is why most jobs have too few people that want to do them unless positive and negative motivators such as money and shame are involved. The few jobs that people want to do in numbers beyond what the customers require tend to require skill beyond what most can provide (such as creative jobs) and/or pay very little (because so many people can and want to do them). If you realize these truths you can clearly see why creative jobs are obviously VERY susceptible to recessions. Do you really think the overwhelming mass of underskilled people that want creative jobs will choose to start or continue doing them when the pay is nothing or close to it? Because that's what the customers will pay them in a recession! It's not a matter of the workers "feeling" they "deserve" to work at that job. The market of customers says they provide little to no value, and therefore won't voluntarily pay them. So what are you suggesting? That they are paid involuntarily, which means that the government or some mob comes over with guns and forces them to pay even though the robbed people receive no value in exchange, or that people should change and start to value the garbage-tier work of the underskilled, self-important special snowflakes? The latter is laughable, of course. And the former is inefficient (compared to mincome, for example) and rotten.

I'm telling you that only having people that want to farm farming is inefficient. These are not actually the most skilled people, and besides that, most of these would probably rather have an easier job anyway, which under your sentiment of people only taking jobs they want/deserve means they don't farm. And there's no proof there are enough even if you made anyone that slightly likes farming farm. Even if there happened to be enough farmers, would there be enough janitors? I mean, come on. Some jobs are literally shit. And no, society can't just have few to no people doing them without a major penalty to everyone's standard of living (except for the wealthy's). So we do NEED people doing those jobs. You seem to use "need" when you mean "want" and "we" or "society" when you mean "I". I'm sorry, but this isn't how thinks work. It's an ideal, and you have no way to make it work, just like how your ideal of order based on revenge was unworkable in the extreme.

You're a librarian because you provide a service. Your feelings are ALWAYS secondary to this. I don't care what you think you deserve; once you can be automated in a way that customers prefer when it comes to the combination of service and price YOU ARE FIRED. The job doesn't exist for you. It exists for the customers. Of course in your case it's a government job, is it not? Which means it's already involuntary to pay you, in that you don't have to care and can just ramble about ideals knowing that you have far more job security than you would in a voluntary market, because you will receive the money of others which was taken from them at gunpoint no matter whether or not they use the library or think you're worth the money they have to pay.

It's funny how "SELL SELL SELL" is bad to you. This further establishes you as a naive idealist along the lines of your ideas on revenge-based order. Do you not see that if you sell nothing you should be paid nothing? Why exactly is it good for you to have a job that provides less value to customers than the customers would voluntarily pay you? That sort of job is a tax on society and should be eliminated (special, limited exceptions for maintaining order which people can not efficiently and effectively pay for only when they have a problem-based need aside).

I didn't watch your link (and it's not like you paid attention to the statistics I handed to you, either). Based on the lying title I can assume it's fluff about anything being possible, which is a lie. IT IS A LIE. People have to accept their limitations to improve their quality of life. Sure, thinking positively helps, but you extrapolating this to "we can make society anything and have only wanted jobs for everyone" is very wrong, unless you favor a collapse (which is the result of enforcing this ideal), in which case the main jobs will be farmer, prostitute, criminal, and soldier. Which are not very attractive jobs.

The reason jobs that must be done aren't valued more is that people have no better options, and for the most part these jobs are low-skill. There is supply and demand on both the employer (who coordinates the work and risks his own money for the customer by creating the business; note that an employee does not do the latter and simply moves on relatively cleanly if the business fails; this makes the employer DESERVE more money, at least in the employer's mind, and you would respect that by your own standards unless you happened to be a communist or similar) and employee's end. The employer wants people of a certain level of skill. The employee wants to not starve, to not be a loser to women, to have a nice home, or whatever.

If the level of skill required for the job is low this increases the number of people able to do the job. As I have proven there is a glut of labor at the moment, especially of low-skilled labor, so there is a huge supply of potential employees desperate to take the job, which means that employee can be paid down to a level that more allows the employee to live than thrive. Now, I can imagine that you hate this, but if the employer chooses to pay the employee more he has to pay himself less (but he DESERVES more), and ultimately even this "buffer" runs out easily, if the raise for the employees is not minor, FORCING the employee to CHARGE CUSTOMERS MORE. This has two effects. Firstly, it makes competitors who keep their prices down by not foolishly overpaying (note that if the competitor values the employees enough more to pay them more AND gets away with it then this simply NATURALLY becomes the standard price to meet for that labor) their employees more competitive, resulting in the ultimate doom of the generous employer's business. So it's not sustainable anyway. Secondly, the overpriced goods or services effectively cut the income of everyone else! Everyone else can't afford to buy as much of the goods or services the generous employer is offering anymore. This is part of why such businesses are unsustainable. They provide a poor value to cost ratio to the customer.

Now, in the alternative scenario where few people have the skill to do the job (however talent and time/money-expensive training line up to limit the number of prospective employees) the employer will pay more, because otherwise people will simply work at an easier job for the same money or an amount of money that is acceptable for the reduced difficulty, and in the long term people will stop trying to get that job, which can result in fewer people wasting their time on education or trade schools that would train them to do the job, which will lower the supply of potential employees and therefore increase the wages, assuming the job is valuable enough to the customer to support this. Paying more means that more of the population that has more skills will be employed, because they can get jobs that pay them more on average. This means that the unemployed population will always be of lower skill than the employed population.

In conclusion, if you felt you were worth more than you were being paid, you should have quit and eaten the consequences. You could try to improve your skills or you could just complain. If you just complain you can't expect too much, though. If you just complain and happen to be WRONG about being worth more, too bad. But one can indeed be WRONG.

You keep speaking in the current tense about "grunt work", "soul-crushing jobs", or unwanted jobs being "expendable". I have already corrected you on this, so why do you persist? I also already reiterated that you are UNABLE to explain the future to me because I PREEMPTED you on this long ago by stating that if robots take ALL critical jobs the pressure to fill such jobs will be much lower. What are you doing? It seems to me that you are doing your usual naive, idealistic rambling, which if enforced right now would lead to greater inefficiency and an accordingly lowered standard of living for the society that enforces it. Does anyone else have another opinion? ;p

You AGAIN refuse to read what I'm saying. I already said "I assume the banks at least believe enough customers prefer using a teller, and besides, it's not like an ATM covers all possible interactions with a bank." So you're merely agreeing with me that an ATM is an insufficient replacement, and therefore have no point. You're not explaining ANYTHING to me, but you act like you are. Please try harder, unless you're a troll, in which case you're doing a good job. Besides, you continue to think of computers as having no future ability to replace tasks you consider "human". This is arbitrary and will ultimately be proven wrong unless technology stagnates or regresses. I have no idea (other than naive projection) why you actually prefer humans doing "human" jobs which, by and large, are STILL undesirable to the worker, rather than having robots replace as much work as possible, no matter what, and giving humans mincome.

And why shouldn't the labor "beg" employers if they're that low in value to the employer? People with extraordinary skill are in such demand that the employers "beg" them instead! Do you find that acceptable, or does it only go one way? Should employers be able to ordain that these wonderful employees can't make too much money, even though they're worth it (and would therefore have a strengthened tendency to move to somewhere with more fairness and freedom that would pay them what they're worth)? If not, why should we ordain that employers pay employees more than they're worth? Never mind that the inefficiency of either degrades the quality of life for society, and will lead to failed businesses and fewer jobs...

What happens when the quality of labor is not good enough for anyone, as is the case for tens of millions of people in the United States alone? Do you have a realistic, efficient third alternative to mincome (minimum guaranteed income) and elimination for these truly useless people? No, there will NOT be jobs for them. It's funny how you suggest everyone can get a job they deserve alongside the idea that all the jobs for low-skilled people (most of the current unemployed) should be automated. If the latter occurs it just increases the number of unemployable people, but I guess in your mind everyone can be an astronaut or something instead.

Continues due to the character limit...
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 22, 2016, 08:15:00 pm
Continued...

It sounds like organic farming is inefficient, which explains why few people choose to pay the necessarily higher price for it (since after all the quality is not remotely enough higher for most people to voluntarily pay the higher price). Besides, as far as I know there is no realistic way to feed the world on organic farming alone. It seems more like a personal preference or fetish to me than anything important to strive towards, although I support the freedom of people to farm organically (and alternatively in a modern fashion) and attempt to sell that food to voluntary customers. As for gems, I'm sure some of them are mined by enslaved children over in Africa, so it's probably going to take a little longer than usual for robots to take those jobs, seeing how little some of the current workers are paid. I don't see it as an impossibility, though, unless technology stagnates or regresses. Do you?

Again, you seem to think of "us" not "needing" undesirable jobs in a very unrealistic fashion. YOU don't like that CUSTOMERS demand that they be filled. People that would otherwise be unemployed and homeless actually do want to take those jobs, but they still hate doing those jobs, in that the jobs are not enjoyable for their own sake by any means. There is no oversupply in jobs...I PROVED otherwise with HARD STATISTICS. If people choose to compete for jobs in the city they simply value living in the city enough more than not living in the city to make their choice. They are not WRONG just because you don't feel like what they're doing makes sense [probably for you]. It's funny how you speak of things in some humanitarian sense and yet I offer the best solutions for the economy (society's standard of living) as well as for personal freedom. You simply suggest ideals that CLEARLY are unwanted by MANY people, but I guess it's okay to you as long as YOU "feel" they're right [for everyone].

Haha, "People aren't honest about what they really want.". So they should instead all bend to your ideals, right? Let's all quit being janitors and become organic farmers, even though society wants the former more than they want the latter. Have you considered that different people have different desires, and your ideals are just not right for everyone, and therefore would impose misery on those they are not right for?

So you admit not everyone is suited to the country while just previously going on about how wrong people are for competing for jobs in the city. I would ask you to be more consistent, but I really doubt you can be at this point. It should be obvious if you admit that there are people not suited to the country that the city can be preferable to people, which means that it can be the right choice for most people to choose to compete in the city, since it can be the case that most people would prefer to live in the city. This isn't a very complicated chain of logic. You must be irrationally assuming that lots of people would be "better off" in the country even though they are personally voting otherwise with their feet.

If MSN says there are many openings in nursing (not your unlikely maximally exaggerated automatic lie of "all the openings are now in nursing") it will encourage more people to become nurses. So what? Never mind that MSN is not definitive enough to singlehandedly convince everyone with no other sources backing up the same information, why is it bad that a job which needs to be filled will get filled? Yes, some people will be unable to be nurses in the long term after or before doing the work, but the others still need a job. Your solution seems to be that they create jobs based on their own desire to do those jobs, but this is a sucker's bet for most, because jobs only persist based on persistent demand. Of course you could demand that the government inefficiently act as their employer even though they provide too little value for customers to voluntarily pay for, but this is clearly worse than mincome would be.

I'm sorry, but there is no "niche" for everyone. There is supply and demand from customers, employers, and employees. As I have PROVEN we are already short tens of millions of jobs in the United States alone. There is no particular work waiting for these mostly useless people, because CUSTOMERS do not value their output enough to pay them. Without customers where does the money come from? Why should they waste their time tilting at windmills by doing a job that provides low to no value to society? It's just silly. Your ideals do not feed or fulfill people. They are purely empty speculation or prescriptions and do not explain why or how things can actually work in the sense of having customers, employers, and employees voluntarily exchange value with one another to create value via specialization in an efficient manner. If you only care about employees you're effectively a communist and have no sustainable solution.

"Comic shops", "burger and fry places", and so on exist at the whims of their customers. It's not a matter of people just deciding they want those jobs. THE JOBS HAVE TO BE IN DEMAND FROM CUSTOMERS FIRST, OR THEY WILL BE UNSUSTAINABLE. The reason there's a "desperate job culture" is that there are more people needing to work than jobs needing people to work at them. So again, why would you not favor mincome over your unworkable, inefficient, hand-waving ideals? If people had mincome they would have a measure of freedom to create their own jobs by being able to attempt them without having to go homeless or starve. Once that [usually] failed they would just go back to mincome, or get a real job that customers currently have demand for. If they succeed, that's fine, too. Customers will make their choice. Mincome would make it easier for employees to switch to jobs they want more while avoiding having to eliminate the ever-increasing masses of useless, unemployable people. Mincome would also ensure that no one falls through the cracks and ends up as a starving criminal. Mincome is more efficient than prisons, forced military service, and bureaucratic government jobs that provide nothing to society. Mincome is better than the type of welfare that exists now because it ensures no one falls through the cracks and because you can then fire the government bureaucrats that currently consume more than 50% of welfare spending, in that the administration costs are greater than the actual welfare given out to welfare recipients. Of course the government is highly unlikely to downsize, but this is at least a functioning solution and not hand-waving about everyone having a niche without any proof nor reason to believe this, alongside a clear lack of concern for why customers would want to fund these superfluous employees rather than simply buy from businesses that only hire the labor they need, which can be in some other nation, too, leaving no jobs in the formerly uncompetitive, now dead businesses in the nation adopting your ideals.

Sure, someone that loves their job will TEND to do a better job, but that doesn't mean that those most skilled in a given job will be those that love the job the most. There are people who are just BETTER than other people. They may have the skills to do any of many jobs better than a useless person can. This is natural inequality, and you can't paper over it in the way you seem to want without enforcing massive inefficiencies, typically at the barrel of a gun. This degrades the standard of living for society and therefore will be rightfully resisted by many, who will naturally loathe your inefficient ideals.

I'm sorry, I'm not locked into a business mindset...I'm locked into a value mindset. It's just that at the moment the typical employer "has an advantage over" the typical employee because there is a ridiculous glut of labor. There are cases even today where the employee is in high demand and squeezes the employer for all they can get, and that is equally legitimate to me. Ultimately you have no solutions and can't explain how people would voluntarily form your favored type of society. If you have to point guns at people to make things "work" you need to seriously reconsider what you're doing. I do admit that violence is necessary to maintain basic order and national defense, and to perform services humans generally "need" but don't have the mindset to pay for in a both efficient and effective manner beforehand (perhaps firefighting services would be an example), but otherwise it should be minimized in favor of voluntarism. As for mincome, it's ultimately that, relatively highly wasteful welfare and unnecessary government jobs such as we have now, or elimination of the ever-expanding useless population in one sense or another. Unless you have another REAL suggestion that isn't just fluffy ideals.

I see you still have nothing to counter my example of an anti-decadence use of shaming, so you therefore automatically concede the point. Shaming CAN be used in net positive ways for both society and individuals.

Don't tell me what I think choosing to go naked means. I already told you I think it should be legal to be naked in public (even though I mentioned that most people are ugly and on average more so when naked), so this is ridiculous. I simply think that being naked is not an act of violence, nor does it constitute significant harm to others. I mentioned freedom of association because limiting this causes significant harm, and wanted to make it clear that nudity could be legal without it becoming the norm to allow in homes and businesses. Ultimately it's not up to me how many people accept nudity in their homes and businesses. That's freedom for you. I would only have the choice of not visiting homes or businesses that allowed nudity IF it bothered me significantly enough for me to do so. Nudists, if numerous, would have homes and businesses that allowed them.

As for topless feminists...my view is not based on feminism in the least sense. And obviously if someone can legally go naked going topless would not be a problem. I guess you're assuming I'm getting an erection or getting wet when I see some "hot girl", or more likely assuming the former since you likely assumed me to be male just as you assumed a "hot girl" would be for me (I am a lesbian so you randomly got my gynephilia correct). I don't actually have anyone I like in person and don't expect to any time soon, but I would be wearing clothes anyway, since that would be allowed. The fact that being naked would stand out more while most people wore clothes is just how it is. I don't think that people wouldn't notice males' erections or females' severe wetness even if everyone was naked, though. I don't think the girls in the second picture are ashamed to be flashing their breasts. They certainly don't look that way. They seem to be having fun WHILE thinking that it's sexual, because sexuality is the reason that anyone is interested in their breasts anyway, and that's why they are specifically showing off their breasts.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 23, 2016, 08:09:36 am
I know you don't believe me. But look around your area, with a different attitude. Not, "that'll never work," but "what if we..." Yes, some ideas won't work. But let's leave those after we've tried stuff.
Culture can either be enriched or depleted. In the latter case, opportunity is lost, and jobs become a matter of having an excess of labor (read: people who are only skilled at lifting boxes and simple tasks) and a dearth of real skills. A person who has real skill doesn't need another person to hire them. They can work for themselves. 

The anti-decadence with shaming is based on a faulty premise, that decadence is from a lack of guilt. It's not, it's due to a culture that leaves us with nothing to do. This is not because he haven't had enough fundamentalist priests tell us how sinful we are. It is because we have nothing to do to make ourselves useful, and we spend all of our time hanging out on video games, social networking, or attending parties. These are not evil things. But they are unproductive, compared to being employed at something that is a real craft.  I don't need to prove this. I've lived it. When I apply myself to video games, I feel like nothing is done. When I do art or writing, suddenly I'm doing something that can add to a community. The cure for decadence is not shame, it's doing something productive. That said, I think I'll spend a large portion of today playing Skyrim.  ;D

Now, since I am really really tired of hitting the same brick wall with this (at this point we either agree, or we don't), we will move on to Regina. For real, this time. Really, let's move on to Regina.

Regina sorta reminds me of me, about ten years ago. I couldn't speak in public. I shut myself in my room. Nevermind popular jobs, I couldn't apply to any jobs. I was painfully shy. She is trying to emulate Maytag (who is a natural extrovert, unlike her), but you can tell she is still very modest. This entire sequence is funny because we have a pervert type interacting with like the world's shyest girl and she is attracted to this whole thing because she sees a world where her insecurities don't matter as much. I'm thinking about how this girl relates to all of this, and whether she could create a world where she could be more confident.

Quote
Don't tell me what I think choosing to go naked means. I already told you I think it should be legal to be naked in public (even though I mentioned that most people are ugly and on average more so when naked), so this is ridiculous. I simply think that being naked is not an act of violence, nor does it constitute significant harm to others. I mentioned freedom of association because limiting this causes significant harm, and wanted to make it clear that nudity could be legal without it becoming the norm to allow in homes and businesses. Ultimately it's not up to me how many people accept nudity in their homes and businesses. That's freedom for you. I would only have the choice of not visiting homes or businesses that allowed nudity IF it bothered me significantly enough for me to do so. Nudists, if numerous, would have homes and businesses that allowed them.

As for topless feminists...my view is not based on feminism in the least sense. And obviously if someone can legally go naked going topless would not be a problem. I guess you're assuming I'm getting an erection or getting wet when I see some "hot girl", or more likely assuming the former since you likely assumed me to be male just as you assumed a "hot girl" would be for me (I am a lesbian so you randomly got my gynephilia correct). I don't actually have anyone I like in person and don't expect to any time soon, but I would be wearing clothes anyway, since that would be allowed. The fact that being naked would stand out more while most people wore clothes is just how it is. I don't think that people wouldn't notice males' erections or females' severe wetness even if everyone was naked, though. I don't think the girls in the second picture are ashamed to be flashing their breasts. They certainly don't look that way. They seem to be having fun WHILE thinking that it's sexual, because sexuality is the reason that anyone is interested in their breasts anyway, and that's why they are specifically showing off their breasts.
     

You did? I have trouble wading through these long texts. The point, (I think) I'm making is that is the very average/ugly nature of regular people that this would be good. We have too many ads that are like "wear tons of makeup and the best clothes" trying to make girls like Regina who are already insecure even more so. If you look at a bunch of people, suddenly it's more honest. I know my body doesn't look great, but the rich white man, well, he has testicular warts. So maybe he's not as privileged as he tries to lord over people like. You stop worrying about people in a higher class than you, and realize when naked, we're all about the same. I think that's what Regina means by stronger, that she wouldn't feel so insecure about things. She could see people as they really are, rather than being hung up over the fact that she's too modest.

I think it also sounded like the focus was on, "but businesses would never allow it" rather than "we need to have the freedom to do it without making it a mandatory universal" which I also agree with. I also wouldn't like it forbidden anywhere, just kinda a choice like any other fashion choice. The idea of nude-only or nude-restricted spaces smacks of the same mentality that caused "whites only" restrooms.

The idea of toplessness stems from the whole idea that our society doesn't blink at this (http://cos.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/14/25/539f7086ba702_-_guy-without-his-shirt-0507-xlv-large-new.jpg) but acts downright horrified at this (http://i.imgur.com/kz3k6vZ.jpg). As it is a double standard, it has more to do with feminism than nudism.

Aesthetically, I don't believe anyone, male or female objects to attractive women.  I think it's fine that you're lesbian. If I was born a woman, I could not see myself being into men (even when they're muscled out they're not attractive, and alot of men resemble fat hairy critters). Lastly, the point I was making were too, that (1) nudism is more honest, and (2) the women are having fun, but they look very much like they are overthinking it.

We're going to discuss #2. There was an old one-panel comic in like the 20s where a man was in a nudist colony, had attractive nude women around him. But he ignored them, and was looking at a clothed girl who had wind expose her panties. Besides being funny and ironic, the moral of this story is that the reason we are so sexualized is that we are hung up on our clothing, and think that without it, we are initiating sex. If we were ever without clothes for any length of time (it would have to be during the summer, nudism during the winter is a no-go) we would find that most of us were average, and the only sexual behavior had a necessary social component. The reason I say that this exposure of breasts is shame behavior is precisely because they give such a damn about it. I compare "Girls Gone Wild" with the topless feminism movement. There is a completely different mindset. The topless feminist views what she is wearing as "this shouldn't matter because men are allowed to go around with no shirt, it's just clothing." The Girls Gone Wild motif is more like the above picture. The problem with the latter is that it not only perpetuates a sort of female chauvinism, but the women in question are still fixated on how their bodies being naked is somehow different. They still are attached to the idea of needing clothing, seeing the loss of it as sexual, because they still have shame.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1327

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1217
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1219

May doesn't care if people see her naked, because she has no shame. Regina has shame, and see the difference in her attitude? For her, it is an issue, for Maytag it's really not.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 24, 2016, 01:38:19 am
Your ideals happen to clearly favor you (as ideals tend to) and certain...whims you have that don't necessarily apply to MANY others. I really doubt you understand how to make things work since it was established (even to the point that you immediately reversed your position on it) that you have ideals which ultimately turn out to be naive fantasies (revenge-based order being an extreme example).

We have tried a lot more things than you seem to think. And honestly, you still have no consideration for employers nor customers, even though you should be a customer yourself (or is that your dad's job? I don't know either way). As well as for the fact that businesses, labor markets, and nations compete globally. And you still strangely have no opinion on mincome, minimum guaranteed income, basic income, guaranteed basic income, unconditional basic income, or whatever one wants to call it. I find this solution far better than trying to materialize low-skill jobs for tens of millions of people out of thin air in the United States alone.

I'm telling you your "enrichment" is based on the unconstrained vision, something you also have no expressed opinion on, and has been tried MANY times recently and throughout history. I'm sorry, but we don't need another cultural revolution, and actually getting your ideals to be enforced on society REQUIRES forcing people to act against their own interests at gunpoint. This is slavery enforced by violence and is wildly inefficient as well as miserable. Your ideals will fall on deaf ears to whatever degree (people who want free money or who want to buy votes will pretend it's good under the ideal of the unconstrained vision while in fact acting under the constrained vision by benefiting themselves at the expense of society and the future) for GOOD reasons.

People that have "real skills" can find employment. MANY people lack such skills AND lack the combination of talent and motivation (and not merely the opportunity) to get them. There are USELESS people. People who are dysfunctional or mentally deficient (with no other compensating talents). They will get some form of welfare (so let's pick the best one), be sterilized, or be killed. So pick one. No, you can't pick "everyone gets a dream job". It's beyond preposterous, but you seem to lack the experience or position to see this.

Okay, so you blame "the culture". People aren't responsible for themselves even if they were merely given freedom to make either good or bad choices. This is again the unconstrained vision. We will simply have to wait while it continues to ruin society to see the end result (in this case; we have historically seen it MANY times already). The idea that people will act good without shaming or legal (or mob) punishment is the unconstrained vision, and is WRONG. People, en masse, act selfishly. If you don't use shaming or violence to stop people they WILL make decisions that hurt many others. It's not a matter of "culture". It's a matter of incentives. We took away the negative ones in various cases and often also replaced them with positive motivators to do the wrong things! And yet, if people were good by nature it wouldn't matter, because they would still choose to be good. But they clearly don't. They want to be bad, because they are selfish. This is the world we live in.

Anyway, "the culture" doesn't leave us with "nothing to do". The glut of labor simply means there IS NOTHING TO DO for a ton of people! I'll wait while you create dream jobs for everyone at a faster rate than jobs disappear to automation. Until then what do you offer that is of true substance?

I don't care about which things fundamentalists are wrong or right to shame people for, for one purpose or another. You claimed in the first place that a shame-free society would be a nice thing. I told you that it wouldn't be sustainable under anything resembling the current conditions, and no, these aren't merely "cultural". I understand fundamentalists may shame you or I for our "alternative" lifestyle desires, but that's not the point. I needed to only prove in ONE case that shaming can prevent more damage than it causes, on either a societal or personal level. I did, and you have no direct response to my example. You're effectively making a straw man argument by jumping to instances of shaming that happen to probably affect you personally, which I also never said I supported. The whole idea was simply that shaming CAN be a net good, and it CAN be. The unconstrained vision is just wrong. It doesn't explain our world. It's an ideal, and is abused endlessly once it grabs ahold of the culture, as it has in the modern west (but also in many other places and times).

Yes, I get that you like the idea of having a "useful" job that you also enjoy enough. I have my doubts that librarian is actually a useful job anymore, and you can't counter this so long as you are paid with money seized from people at gunpoint. If you worked for customer rather than government money you'd be back to the "SELL SELL SELL" mentality you specifically said you loathe. In any case, what is possible or desirable for you is not possible or desirable for everyone. It just isn't, and it's so basic it's silly. WHO will deal with sanitation? Don't lie to me that enough people will make those jobs their first choice over all sorts of more interesting creative jobs, crafts, and whatever else. Do you want society to only provide sanitation to the wealthy? If not, admit that the jobs are NEEDED, RIGHT IN THIS VERY MOMENT. No idealistic baseless theorizing. Your ideal CAN'T work RIGHT NOW, and needs all critical jobs to go to robots to be workable in any sense. And this is something I said WAY back at the beginning, in spite of which you for some reason feel you can "explain" to me in some cases.

We don't agree because you ignore everyone that isn't highly like yourself, and think your ideals can be reached under the unconstrained vision, which is the false vision. Masses of other people, who aren't like you, will resist you to the bitter end for completely explainable, reasonable reasons (maybe they want a good life for their families, for example)...if you have the sense to adopt the constrained vision. It explains instead of demanding conformity to an arbitrary ideal.

Regina can't create that world. Brion could, but it would be a more shallow, Mary Sue-ish world of sorts. A world that doesn't really make sense. Given Brion's apparent interest in different societies (he has created three in Flipside, I believe) I don't see it happening at least in the sense of it becoming the new world the story continues on in for a significant period of time.

Well, again...your view seems based on the unconstrained vision. It's easier to consider it my way, where makeup is advertised because people can have the desire to wear it, for selfish reasons. Women compete with each other. Those with better makeup appear more attractive, at least in the short term. If women were assigned husbands like in the past and just stayed at home I imagine the urge to compete hard with makeup would naturally be reduced. To avoid confusion, unless I specifically say I endorse something in particular you shouldn't assume I do. So I'm not saying assigning women husbands and then having the women stay at home would be fantastic, just that it would likely reduce the desire of women to use makeup. Clothes are similar to makeup. Of course beyond competition there is validation for appearing more attractive, too, so it's not as if it's likely that all demand for fancy clothes or makeup would go away under almost any scenario, but it can be reduced, advertising or no advertising. And if women didn't buy makeup and clothes as much the money to advertise them (in order to compete as a business with other businesses) would also be reduced.

Well, maybe you'd enjoy nudity, but you know...there's no reason these people you compare yourself favorably to would want to go along with a nudist society being enforced at gunpoint. And then you have those that want to ration out looks at their bodies as well as those that want to appear more attractive than they are. Lots and lots of people would prefer to wear clothes. Short of the government pointing guns at people that defy nudism, how will you possibly get them to create this society? Shaming? But you hate that categorically. And it's quite clear that you can't appeal to them rationally, for they have very good reasons indeed to reject your grand solution. My solution is the freest, but it wouldn't likely result in a huge amount of nudity, rather than simply not punishing people and ruining their lives for what I view as a relatively trivial "offense".

Yeah...we're not the same when naked. The amount of variation in health and attractiveness is quite large. People will see this and more which they often don't want to see and often don't want to show. Do you not like freedom?

What do you mean you wouldn't want it forbidden anywhere? There are sanitary concerns for one thing, and what do you do when people freely choose to not associate with those that refuse to wear clothes? Do the government guns come out? I keep pressing you on this because this is the ONLY way many of your ideals can come into existence, outside of what is effectively science fantasy. You will NEVER get people to go your way remotely uniformly by choice. And you can't even shame them into doing so without changing your mind on that, never mind that it wouldn't work in this case anyway.

I said homes and businesses...SURELY you can understand if people would refuse entry to and kick out those who were or became naked in THEIR homes. Or are you THAT anti-freedom? As for businesses, these are also property such as homes, and in any case ideally serve the customers. If the customers don't want naked people around then so what? The business can make its choice. It can choose to be naked-only for all I care. As to the quality of service provided, this would depend on the customers. Just remove the government guns and things can settle into a natural, more efficient state. If it happened that nudists tended to be richer then they could have better services at nude-only businesses. That's fine by me. The reverse is also fine. It's freedom.

I don't think feminism needs to be involved in discussions on nudity. I didn't need to involve it. People may choose to involve it, but it's not inherently a subset of feminism. As to the standard, it differs in places in Europe, Africa, and so on. I don't really care what people think about it...just get the government out and freedom in. Toplessness can then regulate itself according to the myriad varying personal demands of everyone. There is no one true solution. Except that to me the government is interfering, by deciding in some places that toplessness is sometimes bad and sometimes not bad, even though it's not in my opinion important enough to require the use of violence to control.

Lots of things are more "honest", but freedom should exceed this. A world where you have to rigidly obey violently-imposed universal standards that you neither agree with personally nor can be made to understand the importance of is not so great to me. Outside of contracts "dishonesty" is already the norm, and that's not changing any time soon. Trying to make it change would mean a police state the likes of which has never been known. It would be amazingly severe if it even mostly achieved its goal.

I don't know why you think they're "overthinking it". It seems like projection to me, based on your desire to normalize and desexualize their behavior. It's easy to explain it other ways, too. Short of asking them and gambling that they both know and tell you the absolute and complete truth there's no way to know. There's no reason to assume anything meaningfully negative from my perspective.

Sure, clothing, makeup, and many things relate to sexuality. It's not purely cultural, though. And it is possible that things may work more smoothly if clothing is the norm, for many reasons that would include non-sexual ones. I think you're really optimistic about the lack of downsides from a violently imposed nudist society. Besides that it really opens anything up to violent imposition, which is a dangerous precedent to set, since it WILL be abused even more than it already is if you go so far as to use it to enforce nudity, of all things.

I really don't care about feminism's reasoning for things. It's often scatterbrained and itself full of shaming, including shaming those who shame without thinking it quite ironic (meaning that hypocrisy is fine as long as the target is defined as "bad"). Is being naked violent or otherwise costly to others, provided that you respect their personal space and property, including their homes and businesses? If not then don't enforce government violence to prevent it (but also don't subsidize it...this is violence against those who would not voluntarily do so).

I would not care nearly as much about being naked if the trade off was that I get to perpetually have a well above average body and face, such as Maytag does. It's a bit harder when your value is lower, and that's just life.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Abstract Vagabond on February 24, 2016, 01:00:24 pm
"Who doesn't like having a good penis?"

AbVag alters to keep his insecurities protected.

Oh, you can resume your conversation. :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 24, 2016, 01:37:34 pm
Of course. I always base my thinking about life as I have experienced it. It may not be universally true, but the ideal is based on thinking that "seriously, this needs to be fixed." You ignore my vision as a false vision, but this isn't the case. I am telling you what the world could be, if people who had their stuff together helped to make it so. I don't need disillusioning about what the world is, I know what a crapsack place it is. Do I know everything that can be done to improve the world? No, I only know my perspective, and that of those who have shared theirs.

I'm not going to go into great depth, because frankly I'm tired about talking about this, but I'll give you a bullet point. Please bear with me, and don't pick apart point by point. Some of these points are nonessential, as I am ADD, and tend to non sequitor.

I think that was most of what I wanted to discuss. About that, anyway. Everything else I could say is just fluff. Aren't you glad I didn't go into great depth?  ;D



I'm gonna blue this out so I can focus on points rather than trying to respond to an entirety.

Quote
I don't think feminism needs to be involved in discussions on nudity. I didn't need to involve it. People may choose to involve it, but it's not inherently a subset of feminism. As to the standard, it differs in places in Europe, Africa, and so on. I don't really care what people think about it...just get the government out and freedom in. Toplessness can then regulate itself according to the myriad varying personal demands of everyone. There is no one true solution. Except that to me the government is interfering, by deciding in some places that toplessness is sometimes bad and sometimes not bad, even though it's not in my opinion important enough to require the use of violence to control.

I would agree. The government needs to butt out, stop criminalizing "indecent" exposure, and let people wear whatever. The feminism comes in, as soon as we have men going around saying "well, she was naked so I raped her. Cuz she was asking for it." Any progress to nudism would butt heads with these assholes.

Lots of things are more "honest", but freedom should exceed this. A world where you have to rigidly obey violently-imposed universal standards that you neither agree with personally nor can be made to understand the importance of is not so great to me. Outside of contracts "dishonesty" is already the norm, and that's not changing any time soon. Trying to make it change would mean a police state the likes of which has never been known. It would be amazingly severe if it even mostly achieved its goal.

By honest, I mean that many of the lies our culture rests on (like shaming women for not looking like Barbie) get unfounded once nothing is left to the imagination. Yes, clothing freedom is essential. But this would also be a great tool to break social castes.  Hmmm, maybe that's why it's forbidden.

I don't know why you think they're "overthinking it". It seems like projection to me, based on your desire to normalize and desexualize their behavior. It's easy to explain it other ways, too. Short of asking them and gambling that they both know and tell you the absolute and complete truth there's no way to know. There's no reason to assume anything meaningfully negative from my perspective.

This is not even my opinion. I have read about nudist retreats/colonies, and what they personally believe. They usually have a distinctly non-romantic non-sexual outlook on nudity, the clothes are just clothes according to them, they go about business as usual. Here, I can even find examples.

http://www.justluxe.com/travel/luxury-vacations/feature-1915997.php


Sure, clothing, makeup, and many things relate to sexuality. It's not purely cultural, though. And it is possible that things may work more smoothly if clothing is the norm, for many reasons that would include non-sexual ones. I think you're really optimistic about the lack of downsides from a violently imposed nudist society. Besides that it really opens anything up to violent imposition, which is a dangerous precedent to set, since it WILL be abused even more than it already is if you go so far as to use it to enforce nudity, of all things.

And that's the point I was getting red in the face about above. Whether or not my idea of utopia could work (maybe not), the opposite is a dystopia, a world where people are shamed into doing jobs they hate. I believe the Matched series by Ally Condie has a good representation of society when people have no real choices. Shame is powerful motivator to make people do a number of violent impositions.

I really don't care about feminism's reasoning for things. It's often scatterbrained and itself full of shaming, including shaming those who shame without thinking it quite ironic (meaning that hypocrisy is fine as long as the target is defined as "bad"). Is being naked violent or otherwise costly to others, provided that you respect their personal space and property, including their homes and businesses? If not then don't enforce government violence to prevent it (but also don't subsidize it...this is violence against those who would not voluntarily do so).

If you feel shamed about it, we shouldn't talk about it. Feminism should be about equality, but I've run into a number of feminists that appear to like using shame tactics themselves.

I would not care nearly as much about being naked if the trade off was that I get to perpetually have a well above average body and face, such as Maytag does. It's a bit harder when your value is lower, and that's just life.


Value? Pffft. I currently work at the library with two other women. I'm trans as I say, about to go into surgery, but I like women. These two are sisters. The older one is married, so kinda off limits, but even so I've decided the one who interests me more is the younger sister. Unlike the older one, who is super tall and skinny, she's kinda short and plump. Do I see her as having less value? No. Not only is she adorable, but I really value our conversations, even if sometimes we don't agree. Because of this, even unmarried, the older sister naked would kinda be like "meh." The younger sister on the other hand, I think I'd be extremely interested in seeing her naked. What I meant by honesty, also extended here. One of the lies is the one you told here, to yourself. It's subconscious so you may not even be aware of it. It goes as follows:

People will reject me if they see how I look really.

Trust me when I say that this is NOT the case. The very first thing I noticed when I was transitioning and wearing women's clothing more often, was that contrary to my suspicion that everyone would notice and get offended, I saw that generally people either did not not notice, or actually pretended not to notice and were pretty easygoing about it. If you were naked in a setting where many people were naked, your real friends would treat you exactly the same, strangers would stare but it makes no difference because they would stare anyway. Not one person would bring up that your body type, whether short/tall, black/white/other, male/female/intersex, fat/skinny makes you less "valuable." The people who care about you would still be okay. And the rest aren't "valuable" enough to warrant consideration.

Also, I have seen alot of attractive women over the years. It seems to be more about region and culture than averages. As in, you think of average as median weight. The "average" woman is below that median, and I've seen everywhere from model thin (size 2ish), to what most men think of as average (8ish) to what actually is average (roughly 12 or 14).

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/eb/a7/7f/eba77fc0db8dc61bad412cca498c93bd.jpg)

These women here? All of them are technically average. All of them, in fact are likely to get dates. There is a rather wide average, and then outliers or overweight or underweight. Most do not even mind the outliers unless it looks like you have health issues. I was tall and superskinny (for the male average) for my entire high school, roughly 5'11" and 120lb. I wasn't starving myself, I just had fast metabolism. I like a size 8 about as much as a size 12. 30 is about when I worry for her health, but is she ugly? Less valuable? NO!!! Stop hating yourself.

In fact, the core of your dismissal to my image of what reality is and could be, is based on a different essential notion of what people and reality is and could be. You view stuff in terms of value. I see things, in terms of ranges, I have been fat as a child, then super skinny, now I'm about average. I have been everything from rich parents, to poor and out on my own, to making enough income to live independently, to making some but not enough to live independently. Everything is able to change, including society. Also, listen to this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIy3n2b7V9k

I have known people who later became at least marginally famous. A kid in my school became part of an indie band that produced a song called "Hooch" that I think was either covered or they changed their name (I think they were originally gonna call themselves Mulch but either they became Everything, or Everything covered their band).  So, who are we to say what your "value" is?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 24, 2016, 09:31:59 pm
The problem is most "fixes" are limited in that they cause new problems for others. And then THEY are more pissed off than before and want to "fix" what someone else "fixed". Your vision is false because the idea of "what the world could be, if people who had their stuff together helped to make it so" is unworkable. There's no real compromise nor consideration for those that don't willingly march alongside you. The idea that they just need to get "their stuff together" is wrong. From their perspective you would often be the one that needs to change, not them. In any case, human nature is selfish and is NOT a blank slate you can just push endlessly in whatever direction. If you don't take selfish desires into account you'll find that any "solution" you impose will "strangely" work far less optimally than you'd like. In most cases the "solution" will make things worse, often including the original goal the "solution" was "supposed" to improve.

People have always worked to live. It is the natural state of things. Welfare is a luxury that comes out of excess, and has many negative points to it as well as some positive. SOMEONE has to produce value. If everyone that didn't feel like working "just" to eat, have a home, have a nice family, or whatever didn't we'd be back to tribal living quickly. More importantly, we'd have never gotten here. It would have always been tribal living, which is actually far more brutal and violent than modern living. So it's easy to see how having people work is desirable on many levels, even if individuals dislike it.

Well, if you don't want to program that's fine. I mean, you can get and keep whatever job you can get and keep (whether that job would exist voluntarily is another issue, but that's not really very important in comparison, although as I've said having a job not based on customers voluntarily trading with you can bias your opinions). You're probably pressured, at least in many previous cases, because they don't want a burden (they want to keep more of their own money, time, emotional consideration, etc.) and possibly because they have expectations of you doing the normal thing and forming a family, I assume with you as a male. Males get pressured hard because males are not neotenous and thus aren't treated as softly, as well as being viewed as having agency even in situations where there are few real options, as well as being expected to be the sacrificial provider for the family, the state, and generally everyone else. There are often different pressures for females, and of course it can vary by person, family, area, and so on.

Generally speaking people don't stay in jobs where they provide negative net value to the employer/customers, because this is pointless and is thus eliminated. The government interferes with this, too, though. It's up to each person to decide what the pressure on them vs. their options means. Most people don't choose becoming homeless, isolated from their family, and so on. Goods used to last longer because work ethic was higher and because people could afford to pay for sturdier things. There are many reasons that this changed, but in general the unavoidable shrinking of the middle class and the lowering stability of jobs are major factors. There's no real way to "fix" this without bringing about inefficiencies (which lead to a worse economy and the flight of capital and labor from your nation), and besides you'd have to take a nationalistic perspective, where the many in other nations get sacrificed as much as possible for the few in your nation. Repairing things isn't really viable now because the complexity of things and their miniaturization have increased, and it's often cheaper to just replace them. You can't realistically "fix" this, either. Never mind that many people have no desire to repair things, too. The price of goods is high due to an endlessly inflated money supply combined with ever-increasing competition for labor (stagnating wages and increasing unemployment) from automation and from poorer workers in other nations. This is unfixable outside of things like making the government/banks not inflate the money supply (no chance; we're fucked) and not add endless debt (but that debt is mainly for socialist programs used to bribe voters).

Mincome would be a partial fix in that it is a way to fire useless government bureaucrats and cleanly and fairly have welfare for adults (I don't want to pay "owners" of children directly or indirectly for having children...any mincome for children would go into parents' pockets and therefore incentivize shitty people in the way that single mothers are now incentivized to have children that have overwhelmingly high rates of dysfunction). No doubt under our current system the government would keep the bureaucrats and the same stupid voters would push to have mincome increased until it neared the average wage, causing taxes on the working to near 100%, meaning that almost everyone quits and the economy crashes. But if it could be frozen at a fairly low level it would be cheaper than current welfare and prisons.

Trying to reduce respect for employers is not that useful. It's like how you might get the occasional fully functional relationship between parent and child that considers the two to be "peers", but you otherwise overwhelmingly need a hierarchy. Why exactly would employers want employees that just fucked around and had no consideration for obeying on the job in exchange for the money they're being paid? It doesn't make sense unless you idealize it. The average person would totally fuck around if they just thought the employer was no one special. As for image, unfixable. You could fix it on a small scale by starting your own business and allowing casual attire, though. Wanting it to change without offering anything to those you wish to have cooperate with you is futile in comparison. Personal best is obviously not agreed upon. If there are no rules you will get people that are just lazy and say it's their "personal best" or whatever bullshit will get them out of having to care. And thus a dress code is born...

You not liking work or interviews is common. There's no solution. The interviews and jobs you want to appear just for you (even though you're not special to almost anyone else) won't appear. Even if they do it's just on a small scale, and becomes a game of musical chairs for the huge group of people like you. The jobs don't exist because they don't provide value to customers they're willing to pay for. Letting go and admitting that the jobs have no reason to exist leads directly to ideas like mincome...

You were probably pressured to get more/better status/better-paying/etc. work because that's the main path to traditional success for males. I say traditional but feminists have the same demands of men, as evidenced by many things such as complaint articles about the "good" (actually meaning high status, high money; these demands are clearly confirmed for females in surveys of each sex on what they look for in a heterosexual partner) men not existing for them. Unfortunately part of the money issue is a demand that the man make at least as much as her...preferably 200+% as much. This obviously doesn't work as well when the same women are competing with men for jobs, and it's even worse given that the government enforces quotas that ensure that low quality women get far more work (quantity of employment and often quality of position as well) than employers would be willing to give them, leading to even greater hurdles for men that want to meet women's standards. The idea that the traditional life is quite bad for males right now and probably mostly always was isn't a consideration, because males are expected to provide, since otherwise society goes downhill. Even now males pay about 70% of taxes while receiving about 30% of benefits from those taxes. Anyway, since you probably have no desire to fill the traditional male role their pressure probably feels like more of a straitjacket than usual. The pointlessness of current society, where there's no adventure and anything you can do, someone else can and will do better, and cheaper, is just how it is. Humans didn't evolve under modern society rather than under primitive, hyper-violent, tribal society, so we're naturally not adapted well to the current reality.

I don't know why you think everyone ought to try to be an entrepreneur. It's very costly when it fails and having everyone try it would increase the failure rate to near 100%. This would lead to loads of debt and suffering for all. The reason they won't succeed is that it's already hard enough to provide the right value at the right price for customers and flooding the market with inept, unmotivated people will naturally result in few successes. It's basically a punishment to get people to try when their likelihood of failure is too high. Maybe you want the failures to not cost people, but again, this is more the case under mincome, where at least you won't starve if you fail.

People won't get off their asses, for many reasons. The demand for their labor isn't even there, and for good reason. They are useless. Perhaps you dream of personally doing something useful even though you simultaneously hate hard work and compromising personally on many things that others routinely compromise on, but it's a dream and nothing more, in the general sense. Useless people are useless people. Many people lack passions or have passions they are nonetheless unable to monetize or at least are not skilled enough at to compete with more competent people on. Just lie about why you want the job. I'm sure lots do. Yes, it's for money. Oh well. Money comes from customers or it comes from the government (or a mob) stealing money with threats of violence they will follow through on if the victims don't comply (and oftentimes even if they comply but are simply unliked or "in the way" or whatever). One seems better than the other to me...

Talents are developed...If you have the genes for an 80 IQ (IQ is 60-80% inherited and mostly can be made much lower by the environment (lead for dinner, horse kicks to the head, etc.) but not much higher) and have no particular other talents you can't do much. You can't just "develop" yourself. Technology has ensured that the overwhelming number of well-paying jobs require more than an 80 IQ to do well. Even a 100 IQ is rather mediocre right now, and is probably mainly good for Starbucks-level jobs assuming no particular other talent. And most people aren't super-talented at much of anything, and most talents are economically useless. Yes, people without motivation often don't get far. What's your point? This doesn't establish that skills are developed ex nihilo in any sense.

Overpopulation of desired jobs? You're complaining that customers don't demand more than is worthwhile to pay for to them. Just because a job is desirable to a theoretical worker doesn't give it the right to exist. My ideal "job" (short of omnipotence and other such completely unidentifiable scenarios) is immortal maximally talented ever-improving magical, combat, and intellectual ability adventurer in an infinite world of magical adventure and intrigue. Funny how that job doesn't exist, isn't it? You just really ignore the flip side (;p) of things. Why should other people that have value to trade be forced at gunpoint to hand it over to you in exchange for you wasting resources and time providing a service that is already well covered by others? It's just inefficient by nature, to an extreme degree.

Okay, so you're seriously suggesting that "hipsters" constitute some mass solution? Hipsters that don't work shit jobs like at Starbucks must receive money from elsewhere (you mention tourists) or they will be no more of a net positive than other random workers. There is not an endless supply of hipsters of the caliber needed to sustain towns all over the place, much less cities. You can't save the average dying town or city. It just doesn't have any particular reason to exist as it once did, because the value it used to provide is now lacking or gone. A "hipster subsidy" is just a random small-scale "solution" that doesn't exist in numbers high enough to save many places, and which itself is quite possibly unsustainable in many cases. The supply of tourists is itself dependent on those tourists having generated enough value in their lives to enable them to afford to become tourists, and in any case there is a limited demand for tourism. If you made every failed town or city into Hipsterville most of them would not stand out, would have no mindshare, and would not receive many tourists. The market would be oversaturated. It's not a mass solution.

Minimum wage should be eliminated under mincome so that every person has the ability to choose for themselves how much EXTRA money they want to receive. There are jobs that are worth less than minimum wage, but if you're not allowed to pay less you just won't have the job done at all, even though someone may have been willing to do it. Mincome would eliminate the stated reason for minimum wage anyway, so you may as well maximize economic freedom by eliminating minimum wage once you have mincome. Yes, employers can pay less when the labor market is bursting with interchangeably skilled people for their purposes. What's your point? How about we just accept that there are no jobs for useless people instead of fighting it by trying to ruin the prospects of both employers and customers? What a low-skill person "needs" as a job doesn't matter. It MUST provide value as judged by voluntary customers or it is literally violent theft! You just don't care about this and want us to all just be nice and do things that severely punish various people arbitrarily. Well, those people DON'T LIKE IT, and they're not wrong. We're way past the point where real jobs for all is plausible. Do you love communism or what? Because that's how you get jobs for all. Never mind that they're generally jobs that provide no value to both employees and customers...they keep people busy, right?

You keep making all these stipulations on what the worker "needs". It's basically childish, and is backwards. The job needs demand from customers FIRST or its very existence is an act of violent theft! Why exactly is there a point in wasting your time working to provide no value to others in exchange for money people don't want to give you? I mean, this is basically mooching at gunpoint while pretending that you're working. It's insulting to the victims of theft and it's pathetic for the person pretending to work. Mincome at least fixes the former part. Boom, you don't waste time and resources effectively running on a treadmill to nowhere. You have leisure time, stability to change jobs, reject jobs you dislike, and take jobs that pay as little as YOU decide is right (without minimum wage) without worrying about starving (this itself would make employers compete harder as the lower quality people more or less permanently drop out of the labor market, pushing the labor pool towards the favor of the labor from where it is now), and the ability to be an entrepreneur without it being as much of a risk to you.

Continues due to the character limit...
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 24, 2016, 09:32:22 pm
Continued...

If you set mincome at say 15% of GDP, and spread this equally among all adults, it won't matter as much if the costs of things go up. Because these costs become part of the GDP, and mincome would rise accordingly automatically. The funny thing is this is already a similar amount to the amount currently used on welfare, but...more than half of that money is wasted on useless administration! Mincome would ideally fire these people (who would be fine since they get mincome) and spread nearly 100% of the money, much more fairly, to all adults! No one would slip through the cracks, and waste would be minimized. Now obviously there are problems like ever-increasing inflation and debt, too, but these are always bad things and should be fixed regardless of other things. Fixing the labor market so that everyone not only has a job, but a job they find easy and like to do, is just tilting at windmills, however. It's literally fighting the very basis of specialization and trade that enables a real economy and technological progress. I don't want us to be poor and technologically backwards.

A lot of wage slavery stuff is self-imposed. If people choose to have roommates, to not have families or family "needs" they can't afford, to not waste money on luxuries they don't need, etc. they won't go into debt (credit card, mortgage, car payment, etc.) in the first place and will be able to be much less of a wage slave. Unfortunately our education system is more of a daycare-prison-indoctrination center combination that was formed for the purpose of creating interchangeable drones that are easily abused for both political and business purposes than anything that teaches people to save money, think long term, and be less wastefully materialistic. I would get government out of education in the sense of running the schools themselves. If parents decided and used government vouchers to pay the schools of their choice then everyone gets an education while freedom and competition between schools (increasing quality) is as maximized as it can be.

Well, it's obvious that you're a feminist, as well as having a very communist way of thinking that ignores many critical things you expect people to just work with you on even though they have no reason to want to. This way of thinking goes along with feminism well because feminism has its own "oppressor class" definition which is considered immutable regardless of personal variation or even factual and statistical evidence. You jumped to trashing men and bringing rape into the discussion because this is the obsession of feminism. The fact is that nudity is not so simple, and it's certainly not a wholly owned subset of feminism.

A LOT of shaming of women for substandard appearance, slutty behavior, etc. comes from women. Feminism works to remove this, sure, but there is a natural reason for it. Appearance simply has value, sex simply has value, and so on. It's more complex than feminism's talking points make it out to be. It's probably more likely that nudity is forbidden because people didn't want it in the past, and because people now either don't want it or don't want it enough to push hard to legalize it. No strange, vague theories on social castes needed.

I don't care what you read about nudists and what they claimed (never mind that they're self-selected and therefore could easily not remotely represent what the average person could feel if FORCED to go nude). I was talking about those three women flashing their breasts in that picture. You kept reading things into their playful, smiling faces that didn't NEED to be there. Nudist colonies are a tangent relative to this, since those women didn't seem to be nudists. Human behavior is more varied than you seem to give credit for, and not arbitrarily so. We are not blank slates.

I looked briefly at your link and the assumptions I saw made were arbitrary. So it's no surprise that they didn't match reality. Either the writer was a common idiot beforehand or they're just writing whatever interests their audience, meaning that they're just writing whatever they think their audience would assume as an extreme belief for themselves or others in order to get more hits.

There are levels of dystopia. If no one works and robots aren't perfectly covering the slack the economy and thus society completely collapses and we go back to hyper-violent tribal living. Almost everyone REALLY doesn't want that, so kindly desist with your ideals until such time as they become practical. ;p

Shame is a motivator, but it's better than violence, which ironically is how you would have to get your way. And I made my case that shame can be used for good and bad. Even if shame itself is a sort of "verbal attack" and threat of ostracism, that doesn't mean that its use is automatically bad on balance. Government is based on violent theft to fund itself, and yet I freely bring up that some functions of government ARE necessary. Compromise is necessary to avoid greater pain. You don't seem to do compromise, and don't seem to like freedom rather than conformity. Sure, you hate the conformity others want for you now, but you seem to have zero qualms about having your version as the ideal for all. My way is simply allowing people to voluntarily interact as much as possible. It maximizes freedom and minimizes violence, and it leads to efficient compromises between everyone in a natural manner. These things seem good to me, but you continue to go on about ideals that just have no path to them but violence and oppression. If there's no good path and people clearly disagree with you in large numbers perhaps the ideals themselves are bad?

I don't feel shamed and said already that I won't be shamed. Certainly I won't be shamed online very well without being doxxed (something feminists also love to do). I could be censored here in one form or another, but that wouldn't actually shame me. Feminism can't be about equality. The very name chosen for it represents "the advocacy of women's rights". It's not a neutral name, which makes it make perfect sense when the actions of feminism (talk is cheap and is often a distraction) result in as much freedom, money, authority, and rights for women as possible with no consideration for balance or what this does to men, children, or society in general. Children are hapless victims that become ruined. Men respond in many ways, mostly isolationist or self-destructive ways, because men and women both have a group preference for women, which means that men have little ability to unite purely as men (useless MRAs have tried to get things done for a century and have nothing to show for it). Men are also the minority, and more of a minority yet as voters, since women live much longer. So as long as women are more united for their own benefit than men are for theirs women can slowly force whatever they want (mainly socialism and the erosion of society and the rule of law) under a general democracy. Of course there is no solution and I don't really care. I don't want a traditional life and traditionalism is dead in general. Feminists still want men to act traditionally, though, and this is an unstable situation.

Youth is also value. Besides, this is obviously going to vary on a personal basis. There are other ways to have value than physical attractiveness, but adding more physical attractiveness adds value under almost all scenarios. The value is really an average based on what others, particular those you value and thus want to have value you, think. It's fine if someone likes the person others in the world consider the ugliest of all, but this person does have lower value for it. If that person was less ugly they would have more options than just the one fluke person that likes them in this example. More options allows one to have more leverage and achieve better deals for oneself. Men with lots of money may choose to cycle through young women forever, for example. They can because they have value.

Well, good luck to you with the younger sister. But again, your random personal ideals and experiences...do not map well to any average that can describe and explain society well. People aren't blank slates, and surely you know that you're different from others. It's not easy, but judging that ideals that don't work under the constrained theory are nothing more than fantasy is healthy, because knowledge is valuable. If you really believe your ideals are possible, especially without violence or shaming, you will be disappointed forever.

People reject me already, and I reject others. I'm sorry, but you aren't going to get humans to not care about looks. It's a huge deal and is ineradicable without tens of thousands of years of evolution under strict conditions that don't value appearance. But this is not going to happen since humans already value and thus reward appearance, which makes appearance valuable and thus selected for. I know that may seem arbitrary, but traits can be evolved that are costly and yet are selected for (like a male peacock's tail) because they're already selected for. In the case of human appearance the initial spark was judging healthiness. This is why women that are unlikely to have a high quantity or a high quality of children due to their age look much less attractive to men. Men don't all judge based on fertility, but the genes that do are burned into them, since those that chose otherwise were reproductively unsuccessful and thus had their genes disappear.

I can't go based on your experience. For all I know you were a very androgynous Asian to begin with. In any case, it can vary for other reasons, too. And I don't really want to be naked in public. It serves no purpose to me, just like being loud may serve a purpose to me sometimes but isn't something I would do in public for no reason. Clothes make it easier to stay clean and keep seats and such clean and simply avoid me having to care about reactions from others who could have any personalities or motivations humans may have, without me knowing which they have beforehand. This isn't really shame, just practicality. Now I do wish I was more attractive, but having lower value due to not being so is just how it is. People that would shame me for this simply cease to be interacted with by me. I have no desire to see my friends naked either. I just don't see the reason to become a nudist, but if others want to be without imposing themselves on others' personal space or property (this includes businesses) I have no problem with them.

Sure, most women can get dates with men. But which men? The "good" men that women collectively want much more are in demand and on average will use this advantageous position to either get the best single woman they can (if they want to be monogamous) or to get whatever high quality women they can at any given time. Women generally will want to be the former even though the latter is common (and women often irrationally or amorally try to change the latter into the former or trap them using anti-freedom laws and applications of the law in their favor). A good way to increase attention from "good" men is to be more attractive. How much is possible or desirable to attempt is up to each woman. The women that try hard often want a "good" man more or have more capability to be above average. Unmotivated or hopelessly ugly women try less hard, or not at all. Anyway, I'm not trying personally, especially for getting a man, of course.

Well, you seem to have this idea that people can all be equally valuable or whatever that conveniently means for whatever purpose. I just don't. Some people are better than others. Those who are better end up better off on average. This is why people tend to perceive some people as better...because they often are.

I don't particularly hate myself compared to hating others. I simply am in a place where there is insufficient positive or negative motivation to attempt much of anything. I'm not trying to date or make anything of myself. I recognize my own selfish desires but do not think myself particularly better or worse than others in this sense. People who would shame me often never get the chance, and certainly don't get many chances easily. I'm self-aware but the environment simply doesn't have value to offer me at a price I'm willing to pay. Other people are willing to pay but I'm not. I'm not interested in slaving away attempting to "better myself" or get dates with a low likelihood of return. That's just how it is. If I existed with the talents I wish to have in a world of magical adventure that was to my liking my motivation would be MUCH higher and I would do things, although I probably wouldn't do much of anything with dating there either.

A range means nothing if it can't be expressed in terms of qualitative and/or quantitative value. I mean, the fact that something is average or rare doesn't make it not valuable or valuable on its own. Everything is not able to change unless humans evolve the change. We are not blank slates. We are not good by nature. We are not endlessly modifiable into adopting and internalizing arbitrary ideals. Attempts based on the idea that otherwise is true have been attempted time and time again, and they all ended in miserable failures. Compromise, reasoning, and the acceptance of innate selfishness is necessary to achieve the maximum efficiency for a group as a whole.

I am not interested enough in Avril Lavigne's music or the title of that song to listen to it. I have other ways to use time, and these posts already use a lot.

I don't know what your issue with value is. It is whatever it is at any point in time as judged by anyone. If people do things based on valuations that are not shared by many others, particularly others who themselves have value to provide, it will often result in suboptimal or even distastrous results. For example, a feminist with a degree in bullshit studies who holds out well into her thirties for the perfect man. There likely is such a man, but there are not enough to go around and he has his own goals, too. Waiting too long can result in her having nothing in the end. No kids that she wanted, no man, nothing. So it's important to know your values and your goals, and evaluate things properly not just in terms of what you want, but what you can get, without ignoring that other people also expect to get something, and it may not be what you personally want to receive or give.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on February 25, 2016, 02:23:12 pm
"Who doesn't like having a good penis?"

AbVag alters to keep his insecurities protected.

Oh, you can resume your conversation. :)

LOLS! I think he should quit while he's ahead.. he's getting dangerously close to putting his foot in his mouth.. and getting a uncomfortable & awkward silence ..meaning she's not trying to judge  him and having a hard time of if so she has nothing to say in reply..! :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 26, 2016, 07:34:04 pm
I really loathe lengthy discussion on politics. I like religion. And the focus of my religion, is a better world than this one. It may not be possible now. But don't you think a better world, regardless of the model, is a thing worth aspiring to? If not, then we can end our discussion here, because you have missed the point. This world could be better, I firmly believe this, even if I have no fucking clue how to do so except I can't do it alone (I need someone to be able to work on the flaws of whatever idea, and make it work). But it currently isn't. 

I don't think Brion wants a religious discussion, and I don't want political factionalism (as far as I see it, both parties are selling horse crud), so we're gonna move on, mkay? Whatever, you win the debate, I don't care. But I do want this world to be better.

Instead, we're going to talk about parallels. Crest mentioned a similar locale for being taken on a date. I'm going to mention another one. Dark Goluth.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic/book0/fs01pg10.html

Obviously, this parallel is here to remind us of something similar in this situation. The question is, what? 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on February 26, 2016, 10:09:57 pm
I just want to point out that there is a forum section for debates, and that you should feel free to use it for this kind of thing.  You can have all the debates about politics and religion in there that you want.

It's also okay to talk about that kind of stuff in here when it relates to the current chapter.  But maybe try not to post pages and pages of stuff.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 27, 2016, 01:40:50 am
Brion, the initial spark was bulmabriefs144 mentioning a bunch of idealistic stuff mostly not that strongly related to Regina's sentiments, a minority of which I found "worth" criticizing, and the discussion on and around that. If you want to move it you can. I didn't really consider the placement because I didn't start it and thus considered it informal enough here since there were no warnings, nor was the initial post officially considered topical overreach for its placement.

bulmabriefs144, sure, a better world is worth aspiring to. Nonetheless, some of the worst tyranny, oppression, and abuse comes at the hands of true believers in an ideal. I think it's more important to consider how to make the next moment better (while considering that one person's better can be another person's worse without either being the one true way) than to focus on an endpoint that is thoroughly divorced from anything possible now. And I still think your ideals are limited in that they don't find the desires of others legitimate, nor do they consider some downsides that would occur because people do want other things and will work to get them (especially in nations that didn't listen to you and thus happily outcompeted "your" nation; this is not a good in itself but it is a major flaw as to the sustainability of your ideals), hampering the efficiency and/or purity of implementations of your ideals. If everyone shared your ideals I suppose it wouldn't matter, but then you wouldn't be able to complain about the ideals you have now not being implemented, since they would be. I've mentioned that people have tried to do various things with the unconstrained vision, communism, feminism, and so on before, and they ended in failures (note that this means involuntary implementations, where the system was imposed on a society...voluntary communes and such I don't have a problem with, since people can simply leave if they disagree and the system will succeed or fail naturally). I don't think it works well while you need masses of people (and not robots) earnestly working hard to support society. That doesn't mean I like the current system; I've mentioned many places where it's corrupt and inefficient.

Well, you say you need someone to make your ideas work, but this presupposes that they're workable without major changes like robots doing everything that matters. I wish a lot of things could be better for me but that doesn't mean that there's any real path to such a reality, especially without making things worse for others. In practice neither of us has any real control anyway, but I'm simply trying to explain that there ARE reasons people don't implement your ideals already, and you shouldn't simply dismiss these reasons as bigotry, meanness, stupidity, and so on. Of course there's plenty of that as well, but you seem to ignore people that don't share circumstances and beliefs with you a lot. I try to avoid doing this since I realize that these people will have their say as well, and have zero reason to care about my personal preferences rather than their own.

I don't know about political factionalism. I don't support any party. You've mentioned feminism, which is practically a political party in many nations. Mincome would probably be supported by many parties (relative to the total number that support mincome) that are heavily feminist and opposed by many of their opponents, so clearly I'm not very cleanly on any "side" overall.

Maybe Brion doesn't want to come up with lots of types of alcohol, or maybe there is a parallel. How many times have you read Flipside in order to commonly make such references?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 27, 2016, 02:04:39 am
I just want to point out that there is a forum section for debates, and that you should feel free to use it for this kind of thing.  You can have all the debates about politics and religion in there that you want.

It's also okay to talk about that kind of stuff in here when it relates to the current chapter.  But maybe try not to post pages and pages of stuff.

Sigh... Look, I don't even LIKE debate. It's exhausting, and I see my mom and dad having a heated argument everytime it happens. I don't have the whole mentality to stay detached from it.

The passage about the New Jerusalem resonates with me, so I dream of seeing and/or building a better world, and theorize as to how this would be. Debbie downer over here wants to spend four pages picking apart why that would not work in the real world. Okay, we get it, people are too self centered. Maybe I'm too idealistic. Maybe I'm also entitled to my dreams.

And maybe I don't like to see four pages of telling me that I'm an idiot. Can we keep this discussion and not debate, Daisuki?!? I do like to discuss things. I don't like to argue.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Furcas on February 27, 2016, 09:21:54 am
So, back to the story... Is Crest finally going to get laid?!

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 27, 2016, 10:34:53 pm
Well, I probably became overinvested at least in part because you quickly and easily saw that you were wrong about revenge-based order. You then had problems with shame-free and anti-voluntary-business societies not working well. If it's any consolation I'm sure I appeared at best like a time-wasting fool to various people here. I don't think ideals are bad, but it's hard for me to accept the idea that people in general would willingly or happily adopt any one set of ideals. I feel like hoping too much for that can be self-destructive in the long run, but whatever. If you were just describing a theoretical heaven or similar then it wasn't clear to me (because you were referring to things in reality very often). I'll try to not waste our time in the future.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 28, 2016, 05:52:07 am
The thing is, I have a different mentality about debate. Most people got on debate teams in college, and come across with the impression that debate is a fun activity and that the point is to win.

The reason I even enter debates is that I have stuff I want to figure out, so I test it out against other stuff until it either gets proven, revised, or disproven. The point is to learn, not to win. So I'd really say I try to discuss more than debate.

That said, I either win (to the extent that I see nobody after me giving a realistic argument) in which case I leave the thread in boredom only to find weeks later they are STILL talking about that, or I usually lose horribly in which case I can't seem to just disengage. The times when we're both right, and I come up with something new are rare, so I never am actually happy debating.

Debate is like war. Sometimes you win, sometimes the other guy. But as far as I'm concerned, nobody actually wins or understands each other as long as the two of you keep fighting.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on February 28, 2016, 09:58:36 am
So, back to the story... Is Crest finally going to get laid?!

Maybe...? But I just don't think he 'feels' that way about.... the arguably smokin' hot Moby. Maybe I'm Too much of a romantic... but I get the feeling from Crest he's not sure How he feels about any woman right now! And... I feel a man who has sex with a woman... just "because"... she's  there is not much of a man to treat something so intimate and personal so flippantly.  Crest may 'seem' whisy-washy some times... but I think he's  better than that!  He does not seem lonely enough to need that kind of physical intimacy right now. His convictions seem rock solid... I 'm not certain he's even thinking about that right now.

As for Moby... I might be wrong on this in typical... male obliviousness but she 'seems' like Crest interests her at least. But the get him 'drunk and laid' ploy seems a little too low - brow and crude for her! But maybe I'm reading more into her than is actually  there?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on February 28, 2016, 02:25:33 pm
Show of hands.

How many people think Moby is into Crest? How many think she's part of an even plot to turn Crest against Suspiria? How many think something else is going on besides option A or B?

I vote no on the getting laid end. Crest kinda reads the same as Tom from 500 days of summer. Too unrealistic "nice guy" without having grasped yet what it takes to actually be a decent guy.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on February 28, 2016, 08:54:40 pm
bulmabriefs144, I don't think "winning" a "debate" necessarily accomplishes anything (it could happen to or it could not, usually not). I simply overinvested in part because you were easily convinced earlier, which put me in a sort of mental binary mode (meaning a personal quirk rather than a "justification") where I thought arguments (to be clear, this doesn't mean "fighting" to me) using facts and reasoning made sense to present. When you skipped over lots of things I said I tried to impress the points. I don't like it when I respond to essentially 100% of what one person says, paragraph by paragraph, but the other person purposefully refuses to acknowledge lots of key things I say (this is clearly undebatable and constitutes truth rather than any "hostility" or attempt to judge you as being bad, so please don't take it as more than an explanation), presumably because they're personally inconvenient to acknowledge in some way (from my perspective, by default, in the general case of this type of thing happening). I realize I was slow to adapt to the lack of progress.

Anyway, you say you want to "learn", not "debate", but it seems to me that how one judges the things I said to fit one (let's say "explain" instead of "learn" since it's coming from me rather than to you for the purpose of this sentence) or the other ("debate") is a personal choice that can be based on for example how "strenuous" "discussion" can be before it turns into a "debate". I did link to various information but you mostly didn't acknowledge it (among other things), while I tried to respond to everything you said every time (resulting in lots of text from me, increasing your problem or however you would categorize it). I realize this "burdened" you, but it's rather one-sided to categorize things as though you were just looking to learn and I was just looking to debate. If I was looking to learn I wouldn't simply ignore key things "against" my initial view, but I don't really care what in particular counts as what to you as long as you accept that I can't accept that your categorization of me is fair. I've tried to explain this but it feels like you view anything I say as hostile to the point where any explanation of my thoughts, given that they don't naturally favor you, seems like continued "fighting", "debate", and so on.

I have tried to disengage by acknowledging the uselessness of my efforts, the likely negative "public" perception they received, and so on, but you seem so far unable to accept that I believe I had reasons for what I did other than malice (as I would define the following) in the form of a thirst for "debate" in the same sense that I accept that you apparently had your own, dissimilar reasons for what you did. I don't expect to understand your reasons perfectly nor for you to understand mine, but please just let me have my reasons. I realize that you feel like it was a debate rather than a learning experience, whatever that means to you, but it feels differently to me. I'm sorry if my explanations disfavor you and make you feel as though you must defend yourself further from "debate", but I don't mean to do anything but as neutrally as possible explain my perspective (the steps that led to this waste of time, very likely more on my part (and therefore presumably "punishing" me more than you) than yours considering how much I typed in total), for I can't simply leave it at your apparent categorization of me as merely some errant debater that popped in.

For what it's worth, I know that you are also trying to disengage. I simply feel like you're reading unnecessary hostility into what I'm saying, when it's simply impossible to explain myself without mentioning the things you did which I reacted to, admittedly not in a very useful way. I understand that you felt and feel hostility, malice, "debate", "fighting", or whatever negatives you may or may not ascribe to me, but I assure you that I merely became annoyed as you purposefully didn't react to various things I said WHILE I stayed in a mental binary mode that was assuming that you could process what I was saying usefully, which was incorrect of me. This combination was of course irrational on my part, but such things happen to humans.

Okay, so you say you can't disengage well (let's say this is your "personal quirk" as minorly related to mine above). Well, it's over now (hopefully). As for "fighting", if this is all you think of it then that's unfortunate, but I realize you weren't looking for what I gave you and therefore don't need me to continue with the arguments on the main topics (which I have not been doing). Hopefully this explanation is sufficiently acceptable to you. I avoided this level of elaboration earlier because I hoped it was unnecessary and because I realized that elaborating upon the things you did which annoyed me (which is necessary to fully explain myself, and not an attempt to get you to apologize to me or to think poorly of yourself in any way) could easily not be received well, but hopefully you are able to tolerate it, and my apologies if not.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on February 29, 2016, 05:08:03 am
Hmmm.. now that I ponder it.. the comment "Who doesn't like a good penis...", was a provocative way to segway to Moby and Crest.  Hidden message Brion? :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Caffinator on March 02, 2016, 12:54:09 pm
Show of hands.

How many people think Moby is into Crest? How many think she's part of an even plot to turn Crest against Suspiria? How many think something else is going on besides option A or B?

I vote no on the getting laid end. Crest kinda reads the same as Tom from 500 days of summer. Too unrealistic "nice guy" without having grasped yet what it takes to actually be a decent guy.

Looks like you called it on "option A". I sort of saw it coming though. Who knows, maybe Crest has enough alcohol in him to loosen him up enough for a "Moby Dick" collaboration project.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 02, 2016, 09:30:48 pm
 ???

Ohhhh. Ew. I initially (having read part of Moby Dick, and all of the abridged version) thought you were referring to the incredibly dry prospect of hunting elusive prey. Or Platonic cave imagery. Or homerotic imagery.

Then an hour later I got the pun.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 03, 2016, 05:20:41 am
I... HOPE Moby is not just trying to 'work-Handle' Crest for Q'talda and Company.  I mean I really REALLY hope she is actually being sincere cause 'THIS' kind of ploy at manipulation... is NOT the kind of Bull-shit Crest needs right now...

I'm not sure Why I'm suddenly super-suspicious... call it male gut instinct about what she said and how she said it.

"When I first met you You made like zero impression on me. I thought you were some boring lame guy."

- Ok, what has Crest done to change that opinion?  Not a criticism of Crest but a criticism of her reasoning.  Crest has NOT done the typical male 'stereo-type' thing of rushing around putting himself into mindless danger or fights making demands.  Yes, he WAS practicing his swordsman skills on the local criminal element of his hometown... but that was measured and with precise purpose... and no one was actually hurt.  He went home leaving the Wizard College.. prompting Q'talda and company to pursue him.  His first reaction was surprise to see any of them there... including Moby. 

Now Moby WAS witness to his loyalty and support of Suspiria and how bravely he sought her out and confronted her when everyone else was scared out of their minds about her.
But she was not there to witness his decisiveness to spare her life with the sword Panacea. 
Crest stood up to the Q'talda and company... and also out of 'stereotype' male behavior was not consumed with rage and desire for revenge upon Suspiria {likely cause he finds Q'talda's "We were all forced to say those things"... lame}, and saw no point to seeking her out~ likely cause she is powerful enough to kill them all.

So what exactly has Crest done to make himself so 'Newly' interesting to Moby?  She has not elaborated...  If she would have said, 'Crest, your deeper than a typical guy thinking only with your muscles or your sword you are contemplative and self-reflective in a way that gives pause.  You are judicious in your actions and loyal to your friends!'  THAT would make since.. but perhaps I'm not giving her time to state her case?

Then the "I don't know what it is... but there's something about you, Your Attractive."

- Now don't get me wrong.. Crest is not unattractive.. but he is not portrayed in the comic as an Adonis.. he is Attractive as certain female characters have been seen to recognize.. but only recently after he's been more experienced with events in his life...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2287

But that is such a ...lame pick-up line on Moby's part, it causes me to wonder at its sincerity?
That and the fact she rapidly trying to get herself plastered makes me suspicious if she has not been.. pushed into trying to seduce Crest?

I guess I'm only actually concerned because.. I'm really starting to like the man Crest is developing into and I don't want to see him messed over by Q'talda into ruining his chances with the lovely Suspiria. 

I just wish Crest would 'story-wise' be given the time to ponder the developments enough to come to his OWN decision of the need to seek out  Suspiria to get to the truth because she's a friend and she deserves a chance to answer these accusations!

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 03, 2016, 06:26:20 am
I thought that too.

Perhaps it was okay to blindly hunt Suspiria down with attempt to kill. And now that he's off the reservation, perhaps Moby is there to make sure he doesn't do alot of thinking by himself and decide she's telling the truth. To keep him inactive if he's inactive, and blindly chasing if he's active, but never sitting down and thinking "hold up, why are we siding with Qtalda? That bitch tried to erase her."

For that matter, this story of Moby's (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2775) sounds kinda like this webcomic.

http://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie742/

"She's... uhhh just randomly crazy."

Suuuuuure.

In any case, when people were tormenting her after Kin's death, Moby was one of them. That doesn't put her exactly on the best friends list, and he can take this whole story with a grain of salt.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 05, 2016, 05:04:13 pm
Uhmm... to Quote George Takei...

"OH MY!"

But seriously... in this situation.. there is no ambiguity about what the young woman is offering here...

So, if I were in Crest's situation... the only mature.. and hopefully respectful and not insulting response would be...

"...Ok, Moby.. I can see you're serious, are you sure this is what you want? I am more than a little surprised.. I'm not use to women companions being so.. forward with me?  I'm only asking because.. I'm not sure what I'm feeling right now.. your beautiful no doubt.. but I've not had the best of..'fortune' with romance in my life.  Your a friend.. maybe even a close friend.. I don't want to hurt that... so are we becoming a WE or is this a one-time thing?"

After all he would not want to make more of this than is actually there..but he also does not want to hurt her feelings either.  So many relationships in life are ruined by both  individuals not having the same ideas of what they want out of a relationship. 

A 'Purely' physical relationship is.. possibly satisfying for a short time.. and short could be several years... but likely that won't last and could end very VERY badly if one partner was hoping for more or feeling more deeply than the other.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 07, 2016, 04:59:23 pm
Now I'm convinced she's playing him. There's no way that she could be interested in someone like him, right?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 07, 2016, 08:37:27 pm
Now I'm convinced she's playing him. There's no way that she could be interested in someone like him, right?

Two things...

One, I'm not sure she's playing him.. as in trying to seduce him for some ulterior goal... make no mistake.. Moby want's to 'play with him'... but I'm not sure its more than that.

Second, from what I've seen of Crest and how he treats and interacts with women in general... he's the marrying type.. he's not "a lady's man".. not a skirt chaser.  Crest seems to me the kind of guy who would never 'cheat' on his girlfriend or even flirt with other women that he was not in some relationship in.  He's a "Nice Guy"... if a little shy and quiet perhaps.

Which, is sadly why this whole~ In-Your-Face seduction by Moby is failing miserably!  She would have had more success just cuddling up close to him ...a softer less blatant approach.

Much as I'd like to see Crest with someone.. I'm not thinking Moby is the woman for him... as she has either totally misread him {which I find hard to believe..cause she is clearly very observant and always watching, listening and not speaking much herself}, or she is just doing what she thinks is the way to a man's heart... she may know no other more endearing'?' way to offer herself to a man she's interested in.  Which in itself is even sadder...

The Darker view is that this blatant slutty approach is because she is doing this on someone else's orders~ so she is not actually being sincere.. and she thinks THIS is all it will take to get Crest to come around their plans...with the added bene' that Crest IS attractive and she gets laid in the process or at least has some fun 'breaking-In' the virgin; which could only mean Q'talda is the real instigator of all this!  I really, Really, REALLY hope this is not the case as it will severely hurt my respect and like of Moby~ cause this is dishonest and in bad taste...friends do not 'work/handle-MANIPULATE' friends like this, its wrong and taking advantage of their friendship!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 07, 2016, 11:41:01 pm
#2 was what I meant. And it was semi-dark humor. I have a similar mentality, I'm attracted to women as a whole, but I tend not to flirt a lot. On the other hand, I have had alot of relationships just end, sometimes my fault but alot were because of moves (we, uhhh, moved alot as a kid). I took it personally.
This is semi-dark humor because it represents my own internal outlook of rejection mentality. As in, someone could strip in front of me, and I would immediately suspect "surely she isn't interested in someone like me" then follow it up with "this must be a scam" then simply walk away, leading her to think not interested. When actually I am interested, just one, not in casual just met thing, and two I immediately overthink everything.

I had one or two intimate times in my life, and they were usually followed by an abrupt end of the relationship. As in, I've had my second kiss about 16 or so years after the first, then I got into an argument with said girl a week later, and had about 286 text messages at 3am. Then another girl, we had a power outage, and decided to snuggle together for warmth. We were both mostly clothed. Then the power came back, and we kinda continued to snuggle, but then my arm fell asleep and her butt was alittle close to... anyway, she decided I wasn't comfortable, and I was alittle like wtf, but didn't force the issue, so we made breakfast and went our separate ways. That one's still friends, but it just seems better that way. Anyway, the point is, because of stuff like this, I overthink stuff.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 09, 2016, 10:34:19 am
Well she's dead.
Bye Moby.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 09, 2016, 04:08:28 pm
Well.. I'm, more interested in Crest's resons for rejecting her advances.. but he's not 'using his words'... exclamations of 'stop!', 'No', 'You can't just take your cloths off...', don't really tell us anything behind what he's feeling or why! 

STOP Being just reactionary Crest!!! Talk... damn it, Explain yourself!  Don't just reject her and then give no reason why!  Moby is Clearly interested in going all the way with you... you don't have any current girlfriend that your admitting too.. and your both consenting adults.. so ... why not?  Would Crest reject such an advance from Maytag...? THAT'S the issue I have with this sudden turn-off on his part.  You're going to hurt Moby's feelings Crest... and unnecessarily cause she may jump to all sorts of conclusions that have no actual basis in truth! COMMUNICATE.. its the Adult thing to do!!  If your STILL holding a torch for Maytag.. you need to be clear about that {useless as such attraction might be cause Maytag is certainly already committed to Bern}!!!

...Moby's advances may actually be genuine.

Though her words DO give some insight into her thinking slightly... 'Your a guy... you won't say no!'
That denotes ...as her previous words 'Hey Friend, Lets have some fun!'  That indeed Crest is NOT the first male she has used this tactic on... so.. is her advance just her usual way of getting male companionship?  This might just all be her idea indeed of plain... fill-in-depressing or lonely moments of life favorite brand of 'Entertainment'. 

Nothing particularly sinister with that...
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 09, 2016, 07:33:15 pm
Didn't Crest actually reject Maytag for being "scum" earlier? And wouldn't he be holding a torch more for Suspiria than the "newly" unavailable Maytag in any case?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 09, 2016, 07:39:59 pm
"You're a man, you won't say no."

This is a sexist double-standard if I ever heard one.

Crest doesn't need reasons. Anymore than a woman needs reasons. No means no. Too many men are like "Well she said no, but I'm gonna try to convince her..." No. Just no. Crest is a consenting adult, but you need him to explain himself?

It's pretty simple why. Nothing to do with Maytag, he's long passed on to Suspiria. Crest is depressed and needs a REAL friend. Not a "friend" that wants to use him for sex. 

And yes, Crest is probably a hypocrite.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 11, 2016, 08:36:32 am
Maybe he doesn't want to have his head to be removed while being turned inside-out by a certain jealous, horned demon goddess thing with anger issues who may or may not be watching at any given time.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: ducky_worshiper on March 11, 2016, 02:39:52 pm
Crest has never really been characterized as the kind of guy to have a random hookup. Even the women he's expressed interest in are women he's had deeper interest in - Maytag, Suspiria, the girl from the gang in Chapter 1, etc. So I don't really think it's out of the ordinary for him to not want to have sex with a woman who, unless there has been a significant amount of development outside of what has been shown, is someone he doesn't know very well.

I also agree with BulmaBriefs in that, while I can understand how an explanation could be a nice thing to give, he doesn't need one. He doesn't even need a reason beyond "I don't want to." It's not necessary that he be hung up on another woman.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 11, 2016, 07:23:21 pm
Link time!

I've read several articles on rape culture.

https://radfarmerfemme.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/how-romantic-comedies-perpetuate-rape-culture/

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/how-rape-culture-victimizes-men/

I guess I've never thought about it before, but men are kind of sucked in to that culture too. If they don't want to be alone, they have to be open/willing/kind of pushy. In other words, they get typecast as "you won't say no because you're a guy." But feminism also is about improving the lot of men, not just making abortions easy. Which by the way...

http://www.feministsforlife.org/can-you-really-be-a-feminist-and-pro-life/

Feminism is, and should be about equality. As long as men are seen as the aggressors, the ones that won't say no, we have a problem on our hands.

http://www.antiserious.com/2014/10/08/because-everybody-needs-feminism/

The gang girl has a name. I think it was Dice. And she's a far better match for Crest.

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=69
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 12, 2016, 05:03:14 am
Oh no...

Edit:
He's not in the mood, it's all a bit too much, not actually interested in her. Fine.
Don't give me this whole "every act of spontaneity is rape" and "consent is hot" bullshit tho.
Especially after he just questioned her seriousness, intentional or not.

We can start talking "rape" if actual rape is happening.
And don't you dare strawmaning me with "oh so you're saying men can't be raped?" now.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 12, 2016, 01:04:54 pm
The idea of rape is not the sexual act. That's a mistake people make.

https://www.mnsu.edu/varp/assault/myths.html

Rape is an attitude that you can make someone fall in love with you.

That sounds harmless, right? Say it again.  Rape is an attitude that you can make someone fall in love with you. It's about power, not sex.

She said no to you? Well, she doesn't know what she wants does she? It's okay to assault men, because they don't really have feelings. Et cetera. All of these are just excuses to ignore what the other person wants and do what you want. 

Rape is essentially force, a sort of coercion. The word rape is not about the sex act, it's a shorthand for "I don't want this." This even includes crude pickup lines, pawing at someone, asking for favors, insisting someone "owes" them. All of this is a subset of the same mentality, that you are able to trick or push someone into liking you.

That's not even the real issue here, though. Rape is a poor substitute for love. As in, Moby, instead of having a meaningful long term relationship, wants a cheap fling after which both sides will feel cheap and want nothing to do with each other.

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 12, 2016, 03:46:48 pm
That's a really strange definition.  It's obviously not true that the goal of all rapists is to force someone to fall in love with them... unless you are using the word "love" in a seriously unconventional way.  But even if that's the case, rape is too much of a bombshell of a word to be used carelessly like that.  It's insensitive.

Let's stick with the standard definition for discussion if you don't mind, so as to not needlessly offend anyone.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 12, 2016, 04:36:03 pm
Yeah let's stick to the no consent + sexual act definition of "rape" and so far, moby has done nothing to disregard crests consent.

Everything after "yeah I can" feels a tad bit ham-fisted and I hope you'll resolve this gracefully.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 12, 2016, 06:18:47 pm
But Crest and Moby are the hamfisted type!

But if what you mean is you're worried about it going in a preachy direction, don't worry too much. 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 13, 2016, 06:31:16 am
Yeah let's stick to the no consent + sexual act definition of "rape" and so far, moby has done nothing to disregard crests consent.

Everything after "yeah I can" feels a tad bit ham-fisted and I hope you'll resolve this gracefully.

Okay, Brion, maybe too much.

I'll stick with no consent + sexual act, though... 

If you are getting naked in front of a person and saying "let's have sex" it is only one step or so from actually having sex. It may not be rape, but it is still "attempted rape." In terms of the emotional scars it leaves, it's pretty messed up. 

http://rape.uslegal.com/attempt-to-rape/

Quote
Any overt act beyond mere preparation and in furtherance of intent is sufficient and it does not require a last proximate act prior to the consummation of sexual intercourse.

Overt act? Big doublecheck there. Furtherance of intent? Check. Sexual intercourse? Well no, but this much would be enough for Moby to get locked up as a real creeper in US courts. The only thing she didn't do is get frisky with his parts, or rip his clothes off.

The other stuff (unwanted pawing, saying creepy stuff, whatever else I mentioned) is still sexual assault, as it still counts as extremely creepy for someone not interested. Between saying "You're a man, you won't say no", stripping naked, and trying to get him to do something, she may not have raped him, but she certainly disturbed him, and definitely is already assaulting him (Crest is correct).

She's using force. Time to send her to the Colosseum! Oh wait, wrong country.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 13, 2016, 08:23:43 am
She just confessed to him and it all kind of lead to this.
At best there's a misunderstanding of her interpreting his "yeah right" as a challenge while he actually wasn't interested and all it takes to clear that up is what just happened.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 13, 2016, 08:47:38 pm
Someone naked saying to another person "let's have sex" but doing absolutely nothing to rape it into happening (meaning that the other person simply says no and/or leaves) shouldn't be even remotely as emotionally scarring as actually being raped (if it is then that person needs a padded room...I mean a "safe space" to live in, far from society until they can be "fixed" (in any case the punishment should match the CRIME, not the victim's unverifiable AND random FEELINGS)). It's also already illegal to do in public and therefore surely needn't count as anything like rape when it's nowhere near as bad. Even a failed rape attempt would on average be much less scarring than a successful one, although how violent this was would be a large factor. In the real world people know what is and isn't rape and don't need to constantly push the boundaries (especially to the point where the original term becomes meaningless, as feminists often do with rape and harassment) because they're not angling to be a victim and/or to gain political power. I'm sorry, but your feminist links don't prove anything because feminists have a strong track record of both lying and ignoring the truth when it suits them. It's quite clear that Brion knows much better than you what rape ACTUALLY is, assuming rape is meant to ACTUALLY count as ALWAYS "rape-level" bad, that is, rather than "maybe really bad, maybe bad, maybe annoying, maybe trivial, maybe NOTHING".

As a parting "shot" (one of many possible since you routinely try to "educate" the forums with feminist "information"), no, rape isn't about power. At least not usually, out of the times when men do it (feminists aren't very interested in why women rape (assuming they even admit it's possible) so it isn't discussed much in comparison). The female rape victims of males tend to be youthful and/or easy targets, which makes sense if your goal as a rapist is the easiest, highest quality sex (obviously if you can get "enough" other sex you wouldn't tend to rape because the downside when you're caught is extremely severe; anyone who ignores this is uncontrollable anyway and not worth cracking down on or "matronizing" normal men over, as they are already not raping). Quality includes how attractive the victim is, so a disproportional amount of female rape victims are young and attractive, because that's what men are attracted to in women anyway. The fact that you need power in order to rape doesn't mean that male rape of women is usually committed for the purpose of gaining or demonstrating power. A rapist believes they have the power already, or they wouldn't likely try. Instead what they want is SEX. Perhaps you could try pushing for the legalization of prostitution, porn, and sex/masturbatory aids as much as possible for everyone if you want fewer women to be raped. If you make the alternatives to rape as attractive as possible to the potential rapists ALONGSIDE punishing rape heavily you'll tend to minimize the amount of rape (of course it would help if men weren't commonly raped in prison and in any case had the ability to get their lives back on track after leaving prison, minimizing recidivism, neither of which is the case in the U.S. and many other places). I realize that feminists have their dogma on this, but feminism lies and ignores evidence whenever convenient, and pushing the idea of a "rape culture" is convenient to feminism. The only real rape culture the U.S. has is in prison, and feminists refuse to fix this, instead preferring to pass more and loonier feminist laws instead, for the sake of the "fem" in "fem"inism (although ruining the law, justice, and society ultimately hurts women in the long term, too, not that feminists admit this).
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 14, 2016, 01:24:27 pm
Well to be fair, it's about power AND sex.  It's about "power" in the same sense that any type of coercion / force is, in that you're using power to exert your will over another.  And obviously it's about sex as the goal is forcing sex that would normally be unobtainable.  So I think you could fairly say it's about both.

Oh, and also... for some rapists, it may be that the forcing sex has a certain thrill which is more appealing to them than consentual sex.  So for that type of mindset, you could fairly say that it's as much about power as sex, if not more so.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 14, 2016, 05:37:34 pm
I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 14, 2016, 05:39:20 pm
Fair enough.

Lucky.

I had a roommate with a girlfriend who was seriously neurotic. And both of them were extremely emotionally unstable. Basically, think bad romantic drama on again-off again with some physical and verbal abuse on both sides. He had a body scar with a painful birth and was hung up on the idea that nobody would love him. Part of what attracted him to her was that she was okay with that.

Then later during one of their abusive periods she said that he was "lucky" he found found someone who loved him despite this scar. Only, later on he found a girl who seemed much happier and healthier, who didn't see it as a problem either. He found some lame excuse not to stick with this one, and went back to the first. There is an important lesson here. Well, two. The first is that abusers try to keep each other down by convincing them that they can't do better. The second is that we gravitate towards either what we want (which is mostly healthy), or what we believe we deserve (which is mostly not healthy).

I seriously doubt they "love" this. More likely they are either too stupid to protest, or too horny to care.  Suspiria is looking better and better. Pass on this one.

9_6, probably both. 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 14, 2016, 06:07:04 pm
I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 14, 2016, 06:45:47 pm
Rape is only necessarily about power to the extent that power is necessarily required to make the rape happen, but varying degrees of power are required to make ANYTHING happen. I'm sure some rapists enjoy demonstrating their power (I clearly wasn't denying this, I think: "The fact that you need power in order to rape doesn't mean that male rape of women is usually committed for the purpose of gaining or demonstrating power."), but there are MANY other ways to do this (and indeed other forms of violence and abuse are far more common), so it's clear that a desire for sex is the primary cause of rape (incidentally, soldiers at war supposedly are pretty rapey, which makes sense since they're super-duper-stressed (orgasm helps with this) and from a biological perspective "need" to pass on their genes NOW (meaning that men that didn't have sex in these situations were outcompeted in the genepool by those that did, regardless of anyone's "actual" motivations), since they are likely to be dead tomorrow (and since most men throughout history failed to reproduce (while most women succeeded in doing so) they quite often wouldn't have any children already, not that having more wouldn't be "better" for their genes, but rising above zero children is the greatest proportional improvement of all)). A would-be male rapist of women with no desire to have sex would be unable to get erect and would thus have to use other body parts and/or items to rape, but this doesn't seem to resemble the average rape to me, and doesn't explain why women of ages where women are far more attractive to men are raped significantly more often than for example 45 year old women. It's pretty much impossible to make people not enjoy having power (it's too advantageous to have power, after all), but making sex and masturbation as cheap, easy, and satisfying as possible would lessen the desire for some...unwanted, undersexed people to rape, and desire for sex is a basically ubiquitous thread throughout rape in comparison with desire for power (in the sense of power for power's sake rather than power for the sake of having the ability to rape, since the latter means that EVERYTHING AT ALL TIMES is about power) is. Anyway, I understand that people vary and can have many different pathologies or reasons to do bad things, but the most common thread for male on female rape is that the male wanted sex, since this is the only typical reason to choose to rape instead of doing any of many other terrible things (which can also be about power, but not sex), most of which are punished much more lightly than rape is.

As for Crest and Moby...Crest obviously is naive and thinks justice is blind, while Moby is used to men being happy to accept casual sex with her attractive body (note that her brain contents don't particularly matter in this equation to many of the men she selects so long as they still receive propositions from the same body; this is why she's turned down so infrequently, since it's obvious that almost nobody has a personality THAT great, to where "everyone" loves them, and I don't as of now see why Moby's personality would be so magical). Moby may indeed be happy with this while she's able to select the more exciting, attractive, or whatever type of men she likes, although it tends to be unsustainable one way or another (if the brain doesn't care about doing this forever then eventually the body will age and fail to attract the same level of quality in men).

Incidentally, there aren't many non-young women in Flipside in terms of character presence and importance (as I recall even Crest's mother has aged much better than average, not that she's a terribly important character), but I don't mind this since there's no need to make a fantasy as bad as reality is, where people inevitably become less attractive. Reality is bad and Flipside is one escape, so I prefer it this way! ;p
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 14, 2016, 09:48:31 pm
I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.
Yeah, I know.

Guess I just find it weird that this magical fantasy land just so happens to perfectly mirror this real world issue and how none of the fantasy magic stuff seems to influence it. I mean surely the century-long presence of blasty mc mind control would kind of shake the whole "men strong, men threatening, women weak, protect women" paradigm up a little, would it not? And this is not a low-magic universe, practically everything is enchanted left and right or at least the things we get to see are and since magic doesn't seem to favor either gender, out the window goes that level-of-threat-indicator.

Also magical healing is a thing, d-bags are a thing, magical x-ray glasses are a thing so I assume the consequences of sex, stds, pregnancies, you name it are non-issues in flipside land and can literally be hand-waved away at any stage, no problem.
So how come this inequality still persists in this universe?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 15, 2016, 01:45:07 am
Well, I decided to keep certain things the same as our world for storytelling purposes.  I don't personally see that as a contradiction with the existence of magic, to me magic is just like technology in that it's something which improves our quality of life, but it doesn't necessarily cure society of all it's ills.

I think maybe you're getting the wrong impression if you're reading into this scene evidence of "inequality" between genders.  After all this is just the ravings of one human being.  But even if what she says is true, I wouldn't find it unnatural for asymmetry to exist between genders, because after all men and women are asymmetrical beings.  Which simply means they're not exactly the same.  I would assume that cultural differences would tend to arise from biological differences in any society.  And I don't think that sorcery changes that.  That's not necessarily the same thing as "inequality," though.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on March 15, 2016, 05:52:36 am
That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it." >:(

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 15, 2016, 06:12:44 am
I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.
Yeah, I know.

Guess I just find it weird that this magical fantasy land just so happens to perfectly mirror this real world issue and how none of the fantasy magic stuff seems to influence it. I mean surely the century-long presence of blasty mc mind control would kind of shake the whole "men strong, men threatening, women weak, protect women" paradigm up a little, would it not? And this is not a low-magic universe, practically everything is enchanted left and right or at least the things we get to see are and since magic doesn't seem to favor either gender, out the window goes that level-of-threat-indicator.

Also magical healing is a thing, d-bags are a thing, magical x-ray glasses are a thing so I assume the consequences of sex, stds, pregnancies, you name it are non-issues in flipside land and can literally be hand-waved away at any stage, no problem.
So how come this inequality still persists in this universe?

To a large extent, because all those things exist. If you can wipe away any sexual encounter with a magical birth control pill, there will be no baby but it doesn't change the reality of being raped. In fact, because rape has no consequences, that guy can go on raping 6 other women (and as Moby points out, it isn't just men). No pregnancy = no accountability.

In many ways, Flipside does present a world where women are more empowered. The only real objection to Bern being a knight (before the whole lesbian deal) was that it hadn't been done before. Same with May being a jester. In terms of magic on the other hand, no prejudice exists at all, a talent wizard or witch is just that, with their gender never brought up.

In other ways, the fact that Flipside has a violent culture means that violence between men and women will exist, not in spite of equality elsewhere, but practically because of it. The more people are able to claim sexual freedom, the more the backward medieval folk will abuse this.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 15, 2016, 11:56:37 am
Well, I decided to keep certain things the same as our world for storytelling purposes.  I don't personally see that as a contradiction with the existence of magic, to me magic is just like technology in that it's something which improves our quality of life, but it doesn't necessarily cure society of all it's ills.

I think maybe you're getting the wrong impression if you're reading into this scene evidence of "inequality" between genders.  After all this is just the ravings of one human being.  But even if what she says is true, I wouldn't find it unnatural for asymmetry to exist between genders, because after all men and women are asymmetrical beings.  Which simply means they're not exactly the same.  I would assume that cultural differences would tend to arise from biological differences in any society.  And I don't think that sorcery changes that.  That's not necessarily the same thing as "inequality," though.

Magic isn't just someone having a gun, magic is someone being a gun.
That someone could be anyone and you have no idea how that gun operates. It's learnable too, wide-spread and can manifest in all kinds of shapes.

You can't separate that from people like you can with technology. Can't take their "gun" away.
It's a part of them just like their gender and that asymmetry seems a lot more lopsided than men vs women since one "half" can casually fart lightning bolts.
Kind of blows making use of their muscle-mass more efficiently out of the water.
I'd imagine, over time, that would function like an equalizer so women are perceived as no less threatening than men and everyone is just a "player" in the matrix in which muscles and strength are only secondary.
https://youtu.be/V8ZdGmgj0PQ?t=2m50s

So yeah now in that climate, women are still favored by society.
Or at least moby appears to be and it's the most natural thing in the world to her.
Just seems a bit odd to me.

This is all based on my belief that this comes from which gender is perceived as the greater threat by the way.
Men are the "aggressors" and treated as such.
A woman beats up a man, societies reaction is "haha, funny", "he had it coming".
The other way around, all hell breaks loose.

In flipside world, I can't really see that happening.
A woman beats up a man "oh no, poor guys enchantments were probably weaker than hers/he had none/was just weaker", "why did she beat him up?".
Nobody would think of laughing at, say, bloody mary nibbling on crests nipples and nobody laughed at someone losing to bern so far.
Conversely, not attacking a woman "because she's a woman" doesn't even appear to cross the mind of any man who did so in this comic so far, that concept doesn't seem to exist in this world.
And why would it.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 15, 2016, 03:36:14 pm
I'm still not convinced that technology is different because "you can take someone's gun away."  I mean, that's only if they don't shoot you, first!  Guns are really a huge equalizer in our society, there's basically no difference between a well trained man or woman with a gun.  It seems like a nit-picky difference to me.

And also, not everyone in Iscariot is a sorcerer, it's not easy and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a powerful sorcerer.  There's magically enchanted weapons that anyone could use, but those are expensive, and can be taken away as easily as a gun.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 15, 2016, 05:44:40 pm
Well if we advance technology to the point of transhumanism, it is similar to the concept of magic, sure.
At some point, those 2 things become indistinguishable from each other.
Maybe one day we can think "pizza" and materialize a pizza from our d-bag or just re-grow limbs and do all the cyberpunk, star trek and shadowrun things.

Our current technology which I guess is what you're referring to isn't on that level though. Not yet.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 15, 2016, 05:58:24 pm
Well the way I see it, our technology can do some things Iscariot's sorcery can't do.  And vice versa.  For example, they don't have ipads!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 15, 2016, 11:04:12 pm
No ipads.
They live like animals.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 15, 2016, 11:08:02 pm

I wouldn't call that an improvement.

(PC user, can't stand touchscreens)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 16, 2016, 03:54:29 am
That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it." >:(

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).
It wasn't seductive to Crest, but from Moby's perspective just flashing some skin has typically been good enough to get it to voluntarily (on both the man's part and hers) happen time and time again. She didn't try to make him comfortable by his standards because she doesn't know him well at all and she never or rarely needed to know anything much about the man in her past experiences...it was enough to appeal with pure sexuality to other men. Anyway, she's unapologetically entitled and Crest had to call her "rapey" to get her to even understand that he was serious about not wanting things to continue, but so far she hasn't actually done anything to force Crest to have sex with her. She simply assumed he wanted to and was just being shy or whatever. It's wrong and shitty, entitled behavior, but it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY below actual attempted rape (which could represent forcibly altering the victim's consciousness with drugs or magic without their consent and then trying to make it happen, or just using nonmagical or magical violence to attempt to make it happen; surely these are crazily worse?) so far.

Note that I'm truly not defending Moby's actions as if they were proper here, but this REALLY shouldn't affect Crest ANYWHERE nearly as badly as an ACTUAL attempted rape or more especially a successful rape of him would. I think he could easily be more negatively affected by having to face that the justice he naively assumed would care about him is not remotely blind. Maybe he should ask his mother why she didn't teach him that women are no more wonderful than men. Or maybe she taught him but in the society he grew up in a "slut" would be shamed HEAVILY (if not more), so he didn't consider it a possibility where he is now, where Moby can possibly be much wilder in comparison.

I realize that a man in our society doing the same thing to a woman would practically just be executed on the spot on the woman's word alone, but there's no need to jump in with the feminists and redefine words to the point of practical meaninglessness. Unless you like it both ways, that is (basically no one only likes it the "reverse" way, where only the male gets extreme "defense" and reversing Crest and Moby's sexes would receive a far lighter response to male Moby's actions). I like it neither way because I don't see the point of having to replace words that used to have relatively clear meanings with speeches to get the truth across, since now who knows what anything means...was it newspeak or not? You never know and therefore have to treat it like it quite possibly was! Sadly, newspeak is winning, and people are getting loonier as the signal to noise ratio approaches zero.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 16, 2016, 05:47:02 am
That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it." >:(

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).
It wasn't seductive to Crest, but from Moby's perspective just flashing some skin has typically been good enough to get it to voluntarily (on both the man's part and hers) happen time and time again. She didn't try to make him comfortable by his standards because she doesn't know him well at all and she never or rarely needed to know anything much about the man in her past experiences...it was enough to appeal with pure sexuality to other men. Anyway, she's unapologetically entitled and Crest had to call her "rapey" to get her to even understand that he was serious about not wanting things to continue, but so far she hasn't actually done anything to force Crest to have sex with her. She simply assumed he wanted to and was just being shy or whatever. It's wrong and shitty, entitled behavior, but it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY below actual attempted rape (which could represent forcibly altering the victim's consciousness with drugs or magic without their consent and then trying to make it happen, or just using nonmagical or magical violence to attempt to make it happen; surely these are crazily worse?) so far.

Note that I'm truly not defending Moby's actions as if they were proper here, but this REALLY shouldn't affect Crest ANYWHERE nearly as badly as an ACTUAL attempted rape or more especially a successful rape of him would. I think he could easily be more negatively affected by having to face that the justice he naively assumed would care about him is not remotely blind. Maybe he should ask his mother why she didn't teach him that women are no more wonderful than men. Or maybe she taught him but in the society he grew up in a "slut" would be shamed HEAVILY (if not more), so he didn't consider it a possibility where he is now, where Moby can possibly be much wilder in comparison.

I realize that a man in our society doing the same thing to a woman would practically just be executed on the spot on the woman's word alone, but there's no need to jump in with the feminists and redefine words to the point of practical meaninglessness. Unless you like it both ways, that is (basically no one only likes it the "reverse" way, where only the male gets extreme "defense" and reversing Crest and Moby's sexes would receive a far lighter response to male Moby's actions). I like it neither way because I don't see the point of having to replace words that used to have relatively clear meanings with speeches to get the truth across, since now who knows what anything means...was it newspeak or not? You never know and therefore have to treat it like it quite possibly was! Sadly, newspeak is winning, and people are getting loonier as the signal to noise ratio approaches zero.

This isn't loony. Killing unborn children is loony. Declaring war on people you have never met is loony. Wanting to go one day without being hit on or harassed is perfectly sane.

Newsflash, so to speak. Most rape victims do not speak up. The problem is, there are a few that cry wolf for celebrity status or for money. But this is actually a disservice to the rest of them, meaning they can't speak up or be told "you just want to make trouble".

As for Moby, this is totally off base. Switch the genders like Crest said. Suppose you were at a bar some guy closed the shades, took off his shirt, and expected women to jump his bones. He has a ripped chest but he's not an actor or anything, just some random guy? Most people find it charming? Not really. Most people find it weird, then creepy as when you say no he wants to take off his pants and show his package. Ummmm, yeah I can't imagine this works on ANYONE and the entitled behavior after calling on it is seriously unappealing.

This isn't loony thing. This is real. There are some frivolous rape "victims" but you should at least know when the claim is valid.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 16, 2016, 09:38:12 am
Hey guys, a friendly reminder to keep it civil, okay?  Neither of you are loony.

All I can say is that Moby's little awkward "seduction" would probably work on me.  That's just me.  That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

I have a feeling that there's a general difference between how men and women would react to this situation, but that's just in the aggregate.  How an individual reacts is going to be unique to that individual, and that's more important than whether they're a man or a woman.  Crest is definitely a very different guy than me, and that's okay too.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 16, 2016, 11:25:55 am
I dunno, if the devil was onto me I probably wouldn't have the head free for random butt-touching OR societal criticism by pointing sexisms out and calling things rapey.
The fact that the freaking devil is nearby would probably dominate my mind at that point.

Now some people get turned on by danger, sure, but I'd probably just boringly poop my pants and think of a way to avoid dying prematurely first and touching butts later.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 16, 2016, 04:40:46 pm
Hey guys, a friendly reminder to keep it civil, okay?  Neither of you are loony.

All I can say is that Moby's little awkward "seduction" would probably work on me.  That's just me.  That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

I have a feeling that there's a general difference between how men and women would react to this situation, but that's just in the aggregate.  How an individual reacts is going to be unique to that individual, and that's more important than whether they're a man or a woman.  Crest is definitely a very different guy than me, and that's okay too.

Mmmm. What Crest said is perfectly valid. People are not all the same. Some people go for that.

But those people are evil and should be shunned.  ;D

It's just me, maybe, I find that situation very messed up. Clean, safe, and consensual for me. That said, I'm likely demisexual.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 16, 2016, 11:48:25 pm
This isn't loony. Killing unborn children is loony. Declaring war on people you have never met is loony. Wanting to go one day without being hit on or harassed is perfectly sane.

Newsflash, so to speak. Most rape victims do not speak up. The problem is, there are a few that cry wolf for celebrity status or for money. But this is actually a disservice to the rest of them, meaning they can't speak up or be told "you just want to make trouble".

As for Moby, this is totally off base. Switch the genders like Crest said. Suppose you were at a bar some guy closed the shades, took off his shirt, and expected women to jump his bones. He has a ripped chest but he's not an actor or anything, just some random guy? Most people find it charming? Not really. Most people find it weird, then creepy as when you say no he wants to take off his pants and show his package. Ummmm, yeah I can't imagine this works on ANYONE and the entitled behavior after calling on it is seriously unappealing.

This isn't loony thing. This is real. There are some frivolous rape "victims" but you should at least know when the claim is valid.

I didn't claim anyone here was loony as some general rule, although I'd say everyone is pretty much guaranteed to be loony about some things, myself included. I should be able to claim that newspeak, pushing for cruel, unfair laws and "justice" while ignoring SEVERE suffering that could be fixed by the same group clearly able to get the laws to change over and over again, and other THINGS are loony. Or stupid, or wrong, or bad. If these things are so core to one's identity that this is "triggering" then all I can say is that you're free to explain to me how I'm wrong with pure facts and reasoning. I don't always care what arbitrary feelings are out there in others any more than they care about my feelings when I see our disgusting world and they complain about metaphorical paper cuts when they could care about metaphorical beheadings instead. Obviously I can't give good solutions in many cases, but some things are just "loony" to where a clear improvement is simple to conceptualize.

I consider newspeak loony in that it pollutes our world and causes enmity and disorder by abusing trust in the honesty of people when they make a claim. It's clearly not a good thing. Moby DIDN'T attempt to rape Crest by a definition of rape that ONLY includes a range of activities worthy of heavy punishment. Trying to shove more and more and MORE under the term "rape" just makes the term soften to the point of meaninglessness, because you now never know if someone was just made uncomfortable or if they were actually ASSAULTED.

The reason I brought up feminism is because this newspeak definition of rape is overwhelmingly feminist. There is other newspeak (for example the "defense" budget) that is non-feminist in origin, but this is this and that is that. I'm sorry you can't accept that feminism is as untrustworthy and abusive as pretty much any other dominant form of politics, but the truth is the truth, and feminist newspeak is feminist newspeak. I honestly don't know why you were "triggered" to defend this clear violation of the concept of rape unless you continue to view feminism as a great thing for all and/or continue to reject the TRUE definition of rape which Brion already corrected you on, but which you must have rejected. In the former case you should simply accept that nothing is pure, and in the latter case I don't know what you're doing, really, unless you actually like the endless grab for power feminists make in part through redefining words such as rape and harassment. Certainly rape victims are not better off with the definition of rape watered down, nor is society better off by misunderstanding the motivations of rapists.

There are lots of false rape accusations, too (especially the ones made publicly), and REAL rape victims tend to view the redefinition of rape to include this, that, and the other thing (such as "I totally consented at the time but my boyfriend will think I'm a slut so I'll just say I was raped, since I know women are RARELY punished (and almost never punished heavily) for false claims." or "Boohoo "Moby" made me uncomfortable but I was totally able to refuse and leave whenever I pleased and "Moby" was totally nonviolent..."MOBY" TRIED TO RAPE ME!", etc.) to CHEAPEN their ACTUAL HARD EXPERIENCE to the point of meaninglessness. This is what Brion was probably at least in part alluding to when he called your 100% wrong definition of rape "insensitive".

Never mind that mixing truth and lies, harsh reality and hyperbolic inflation or even pure fabrication of victimhood, makes it harder to effectively act to prevent rape in the future. Victims by definition can't do anything to reasonably prevent being victimized, so their feelings don't matter when it comes to prevention, since the one you have to prevent is the victimizer, who again by definition doesn't particularly care about the victim's feelings either. This may seem cold to you but it's not because the focus is on minimizing victims, not ONLY coddling them by lying to them about why they were victimized by conflating their feelings with the cause of the victimizer's actions. One doesn't call lightning striking someone to be "about" a shocking, burning feeling and project this onto the lightning; one instead recognizes that the laws of electromagnetism dictated that you were a convenient target, and that in the future one may try using things such as lightning rods (and avoiding holding things that function as such) to avoid being struck again in the future (or for others who were never struck to avoid ever being struck).

The claim that Moby attempted to rape Crest is NOT valid. Brion clearly understands this (I doubt he's self-hating enough to say he would've accepted Moby's offer while believing that she was trying to rape him) but you want to defend someone trying to stretch "attempted rape" from 100% serious to approximately 0.01% serious (and I'm being generous here) in comparison with ACTUAL attempted rape. This just makes the whole thing ridiculous to people who care about REAL RAPE and not nearly so much about mere discomfort, jerk behavior, etc. Moby acted entitled, but this is NOT attempted rape unless rape is stretched to include things that are TRULY trivial in comparison with forced or non-consenting sex or the attempts of such. Crest was made uncomfortable and his sense of fairness was trampled on, but SURELY this is nowhere near an actual ASSAULT.

In your example with male "Moby" and female "Crest" I would ALSO say there was no attempted rape, so long as it was the same, meaning that "Moby" didn't alter "Crest's" mind (to induce direct (but ultimately false) consent where there would otherwise be none or make "Crest" unconscious) without "Crest's" consent or initiate any violence against "Crest". This is key to ACTUAL equality, justice, and truth. Just because something is uncomfortable doesn't make it on the level of ATTEMPTED RAPE. For a comparison, imagine someone, let's say a hobo, said "How about you give me your money?" to you on the street, but you said "No." and were completely free to walk away alongside the hobo initiating NO violence towards you. Is this "the same" as if another hobo pulls out a knife, corners you, and ignores your wishes? It's NOT. This should be easily understandable, but our current world is just a sad place in this respect.

Quote
But those people are evil and should be shunned.  ;D

I just have to ask...what happened to your ideal of a world without shaming? Because you just unambiguously declared shaming to be good in this case, undermining what you were saying before. Well, I doubt it matters how you answer (so don't feel like you need to), since you probably don't really care that much about justifying this to me, and that's fine.

------------

I sent Brion a PM semi-related to things here, since apparently even he can't get through to some of you sometimes even though he's super-tolerant and reasonable, and it sometimes becomes "loony" to me.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 17, 2016, 03:20:54 am
Meanwhile, in Reginas crazy-ass sex dungeon that she totally has, Glyphs nipples get blow-torched b/c that boy needs to be spanked!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 17, 2016, 11:05:42 am
I already sent Daisuki-chan a cautionary message.  Let me just post a reminder in here for everyone.

Please remember that the page discussion forum needs to stay very respectful.  I dislike the term "safe space," but this particular part of the forum, where the new Flipside comics are discussed needs to stay on topic and welcoming for everyone.  Arguments have no place here.  If you read the forum rules, you'll see that this is made clear.

So while it is okay to bring up your own personal beliefs and to discuss them with others to an extent, please exercise some restraint getting into those things here.  This is not a good forum to challenge people, or for debate.  We have a debate forum specifically for that, and you should take more challenging discourse there.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 17, 2016, 11:55:45 pm
Well, I'll keep my main response to Brion via PM, but I'm not sure we agree on what real/phony respect vs. courtesy (I'm not sure if he really means the former or the latter) are and/or what a safe space is. Hopefully he can help me understand, but so far I don't feel like I've been considered by others as seriously as I've been considering them (maybe this is instead just meant to be a circus where everyone just reacts to characters however without interacting with each other at all on any serious level; I don't know), which feels rather safe spacey to me (if only I should be cautioned; I have no more information so far).
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 18, 2016, 12:15:45 am
Right, courtesy is what I actually mean.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 18, 2016, 05:15:30 pm
So, I just wanted to post this for the record.

The current legal definition of rape in the U.S. is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

So, what Moby did wouldn't come close to meeting the definition of rape.  If she had gone a bit farther, it may possibly have been considered assault, but since the only touching was to stroke Crest's cheek and lean in for a kiss, I don't think it would quality for that either.  "Pushy" and "rude," definitely.

Since the word "rape" is a very hot button word, personally I'd prefer it if we would stick to the legal definition when using it. 
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 18, 2016, 08:43:14 pm

Instead of quibbling over what is (or isn't) rape, though, let's just agree that what she did was definitely sexual assault, and leave it at that. Sexual assault is way broader, and what she did definitely qualified.

Quote
Types of Sexual Assault

There are many types of sexual assault. Some victims may not even realize that they've experienced sexual assault unless they become educated about the different forms of this violent act. Any type of nonconsensual sexual activity or contact qualifies as sexual assault, including:

    *Rape – both stranger and acquaintance
    *Date rape
    *Attempted rape
    *Inappropriate touching or fondling
    *Incest
    *Child sexual abuse
    *Vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse
    *Exhibitionism
    *Voyeurism
    *Obscene phone calls
    *Sexual harassment

Anyway, moving on. Crest is going to need to determine whether he is cool with Moby or not.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 18, 2016, 11:36:05 pm
We'll have to agree to disagree on that as well, because I'm not sure if any of the ones you've bolded actually apply to that situation, legally speaking.  Sexual harassment is generally a workplace term, exhibitionism should only apply to public nudity and not in a behind closed doors situation (the "love restaraunt" they are in has curtains for that purpose), and Moby barely touched Crest and more or less stopped when asked.  Of course I'm not a lawyer so I may be misinterpreting one or more of those.

In my opinion if she had begun to force herself on Crest after the "no no no" moment it would definitely have crossed into the realm of sexual assault.  But in any case, she was certainly pushy and rude, and skirting the line of sexual assault.  Certainly not a way people should behave, no doubt!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Daisuki-chan on March 19, 2016, 01:36:43 am
It's impossible to get anywhere here, because in the end there is what is reasonable, there is what is nominally the law, and then there is how the law is actually applied. Feminists (and others, but it's mainly feminists relevant here) work tirelessly and successfully to warp things in their "favor", so all sorts of nonsense gets treated like it matters, alongside all sorts of injustice such as "Man is victim of domestic violence, man calls police hoping for help, man is arrested and treated like he was the aggressor when he did nothing.", etc. occurring. Note that Brion's listed legal definition of rape doesn't even allow women to rape men except via the men's anuses (although in practice fat chance even that is treated fairly). That's how ABSOLUTELY absurd things are, so no, the law means nothing. NOTHING. Law without justice in both the letter AND application of the law can ONLY mean nothing.

Sexual assault is likewise watered down and unequally prosecuted to the point of meaninglessness. Assault should mean violence or at least some severe invasion of personal space that is hard to resist physically or due to strong reasons such as "I would be fired and go homeless." (note that you should be obligated to clearly object and try to get out of it (if it's a suggestion/request/etc. rather than something already in action without consent, although obviously you have to object there, too, but in that case you're already being assaulted (IF you find it objectionable and therefore clearly object), whereas for mere speech sans action things MUST be clarified if there is to be justice), not merely imagine that this might be the situation...let the boss prove it to either be or not be the case; otherwise leads to wild disparities in information that can't be ideally dealt with because justice by definition doesn't automatically favor the CLAIMED victim). These things are frustrating to see supported if you're just a "normal person" (probably a minority at this point if it ever wasn't) who wants a world where only legitimately life-crushing things are cracked down on, rather than a demotivating, paranoia-inducing/cultivating, wildly unjust police state. But it just can't be helped, right? This is the world we live in, and lots of people actually like it this way... Let it burn, let it all burn...

The world works better if Moby is simply treated like an entitled jerk whether male or female. No need for society-wide shaming, ostracism, or violence and/or imprisonment. People that don't appreciate her can simply avoid her (the key issue here!) and life goes on. Since she's a jerk (IF she's actually a jerk often, that is) she'll end up mainly associating with other jerks and/or people that "use" her, so she still gets punished without any need to waste resources on her (so you can violently steal less money from people via taxes as well as not waste time employing people to accomplish nothing worthwhile when they would otherwise at least sometimes do something worthwhile), as well as no randomly punishing person after person after person that didn't do anything significant, if anything at all. If you legally punish or take from people unjustly they naturally often don't give a damn about things as they're already heavily owed by society, and who can blame them? Not me...

------------

It seems that Crest and Moby are able to get along again now, although I still don't think she's that great of a person given that she "pressed" him into an apology for this before actually apologizing for what she did first to contribute heavily to his speech. Of course this is not uncommon behavior, but she's still being entitled or similar like this, because she still cares more about being called "rapey" than how she made Crest uncomfortable up to the point that he objected THAT strongly...and she cursed at him in response, too, which apparently doesn't matter either as it has "slipped her mind".
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 19, 2016, 07:32:05 am
Hey hey, cmon.  No more rants about feminists, okay?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on March 19, 2016, 08:27:20 am
Glad to see Moby admit she was wrong... but DAMN has she got a rather low opinion of men. And from "personal experience?" What kind of guys did she date?

Yeah, there's a perception going back hundreds if not thousands of years that humans of the male gender are just walking erections looking for a warm hole to put it in.

That is simply not true.

Crest isn't the only guy who has hang-ups about women.

In fact, a significantly large population of the male gender is very insecure around women, and even in those that are not, the fear of rejection, or being entrapped is very, very high.

A woman, who is a complete stranger, starts ripping her clothes of and physically jumping on a guy, is going to send MOST of them running. It's just so out of the norm, for starters, that they're not going to handle it well.

The guys that go "yeah baby!" and jump in with gusto are NOT the kind of guy that will do well in society, at all.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 19, 2016, 09:33:03 am
The guys that go "yeah baby!" and jump in with gusto are NOT the kind of guy that will do well in society, at all.

I think you kind of missed the point, which is that *any* kind of sweeping generalizations like this about a group of people are almost inevitably wrong.  The "type" of guys who are into aggressive women "will not do well in society?"  Isn't that just another unfair stereotype?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 19, 2016, 09:55:21 am
I thought this was more about male vs female rejection rather than stereotypes because she just assumed she had him in the bag and was offended when he rejected her while glyph will probably not have the luxury of that assumption.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 20, 2016, 08:12:21 pm
We'll have to agree to disagree on that as well, because I'm not sure if any of the ones you've bolded actually apply to that situation, legally speaking.  Sexual harassment is generally a workplace term, exhibitionism should only apply to public nudity and not in a behind closed doors situation (the "love restaraunt" they are in has curtains for that purpose), and Moby barely touched Crest and more or less stopped when asked.  Of course I'm not a lawyer so I may be misinterpreting one or more of those.

In my opinion if she had begun to force herself on Crest after the "no no no" moment it would definitely have crossed into the realm of sexual assault.  But in any case, she was certainly pushy and rude, and skirting the line of sexual assault.  Certainly not a way people should behave, no doubt!

It's actually not. It's just sexual harassment tends to happen more there because two people are working together in close proximity. But it can happen as often in a bar. We talk about sexual harassment alot at the workplace because people tend to hand around and overstep boundaries, and because it can be policed there. But sexual harassment can happen on the street, in church, in a train, or at tea.

Exhibition in sexual harassment refers to just this sort of situation actually. We talked about public nudity here earlier. Public nudity is just that, public nudity. On the other hand exhibitionism is stripping naked because you want something. Yes, she is pushy and rude. That's basically the sum of the term. Physical assault is being pushy and rude in a physical way, beating people up or otherwise (there's a list of what that is, too). No arguing here, at some point, Crest was right, and she crossed a line. We could quibble about when that point was, but if it's good enough for Crest, I'll buy assault and even "rapey."

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/assault-battery-aggravated-assault-33775.html

Quote
Assault is sometimes defined as any intentional act that causes another person to fear that she is about to suffer physical harm. This definition recognizes that placing another person in fear of imminent bodily harm is itself an act deserving of punishment, even if the victim of the assault is not physically harmed. This definition also allows police officers to intervene and make an arrest without waiting for the assaulter to actually strike the victim.

Yes, you read that right. Not the act. The causing fear of the act alone is the crime.

Was Crest raped? I'd have a pretty hard case of it. But if you're feeling sexual assaulted, you're usually right. Especially since what she did was already very sketchy.

I have a feeling Glyph is nowhere near going to try anything like this. But this is also about Regina's fears and expectations.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 20, 2016, 09:44:48 pm
No offense Bulma.  But according to some quick google research there's some inaccuracies in the things you're saying.  Mainly with sexual harassment:

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/fs-sex.cfm

"Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to the federal government.

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment."

So sexual harassment does indeed seem to be a workplace term only.

In relation to sexual assault, you could be right about exhibitionism, I wasn't able to find much about what specific circumstances qualify.  I personally feel like that more applies to people you don't know coming up to you and suddenly exposing themselves.  It's a little different with Moby because she could reasonably say she believed she was on a date, and Crest willingly came with her to an establishment that is known to be a place where people have sex.  I don't believe this would hold up in court, but I don't know for sure.

You seemed to miss something important from the definition of assault that you posted: "Assault is sometimes defined as any intentional act that causes another person to fear that she is about to suffer physical harm."  It's not just about causing fear, it's about causing fear of *physical harm,* specifically.  This definition doesn't apply to Crest's situation at all.  By "fear of physical harm" it is more referring to things like holding someone at gunpoint, or threatening someone with a weapon.  It's worded that way specifically to include these things.  But if you took it to court, you'd still have to provide evidence that there was a reason to fear physical harm.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 21, 2016, 06:30:34 am
Okay sorry, I at one point must've used the word sexual harassment interchangeably with sexual harassment. Sexual harassment usually is used in lawsuits, because it's nebulous.

I meant sexual assault. Assault of any sort is defined as the above, to give the person reasonable fear that the action will take place. Crest is being sexually assaulted.

Does this mean that Moby should be immediately locked up? Well... no. Part of this is determining the person's reaction. Crest didn't want that sort of rapey behavior, but if she kinda tones it down, there's a chance Crest can shrug it off. Assault exists only as long as the fear of the event persists. If she lets it go, it's like he was assaulted but not anymore. As in, if Crest grows to like her, he doesn't need to press charges.

The fact that it is a date doesn't matter (this is why date rape is still rape). In this matter, even being married doesn't matter too much. Typically, most dates don't go this way this soon, and if we look at the "date" in question, it was starting to go south at the point where she started removing her shirt. As in, the implication behind exhibitionism is that you go up to them either just because you like showing off your stuff to random strangers or because you want something. I've looked back at the comic, she talked about how Crest is attractive and while he was still going "Huh?" she starts ripping off clothing. Mood is wrong here. If they had a nice time, and were kissing or stuff, this would be the right time to start removing clothing. Right here, we are all still going "Huh?" because there is no logical jump from casual dating with lukewarm reception to stripping off clothing. If they came to the date nude, if they were already kissing, if Crest asked her to do this, if she asked to do this, even if Crest said he was having a nice time and seemed to want it, the mood would be better than this. This came as a complete non sequitur to audience and Crest alike. He didn't ask for it, didn't want it, didn't even understand why she did it. At this stage of the game, she could have done this, if they were having fun, and both of them were involved such as "hey this restaurant has naked fun time, wanna do this?" The same thing as him suddenly removing her shirt. With no context (even checking for ticks) it comes across as weird and sorta creepy.

The above definition was for physical assault. The definition for sexual assault is just to replace the latter part. If you have reasonable suspicion that you are being molested, this is enough.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 21, 2016, 09:04:38 am
Well according to womenshealth.gov, it does specifically say that "exhibitionism" is "when someone exposes himself or herself in public," and since they weren't technically in public I would say Moby's situation wouldn't qualify.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Furcas on March 21, 2016, 10:06:51 pm
I liked this chapter.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 22, 2016, 05:17:00 am
Well according to womenshealth.gov, it does specifically say that "exhibitionism" is "when someone exposes himself or herself in public," and since they weren't technically in public I would say Moby's situation wouldn't qualify.

Uhhhh, in a restaurant? I'm sure even though the blind are drawn most people have seen Moby make this play, and they're talking loudly.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Brion Foulke on March 22, 2016, 09:25:58 am
Uhhhh, in a restaurant? I'm sure even though the blind are drawn most people have seen Moby make this play, and they're talking loudly.

Maybe it's not super obvious, but this is the same sort of restaurant as the ones from Book 0 Chapter 26 and Book 1 Chapter 5.  It's kind of like a "sex restaurant," it's a place where people go to have sex.  That's why the curtains are there.  In Book 0 chapter 26 you can see an example of this happening.  Sorry if the comic doesn't make that totally clear.

I liked this chapter.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 22, 2016, 06:39:07 pm
A sex restaurant?!? We need more or these.

Always hated nihilism. It tends not to be used by serious thinkers but by angsty teens looking for a copout so they can do whatever they want and not take responsibility. "Not only is there no God or afterlife but nothing matters. So it doesn't matter if I light that police officer on fire." Well, most of them don't get to that last line of reasoning but instead sink into a sort of depressive uselessness where they lay about all day musing about their ideal despite the fact that it flies in the face of evidence. If nothing matters, why are you being kicked out for being a uselessperson who hurts others? If nothing matters, why is it necessary to work to eat? If nothing matters, why then does it matter that people like Crest say no to uour advances? Because these things do matter, and you're making excuses.
About the other stuff, there are people skeptical about religion and that's cool by itself. But here it's used as another way to avoid responsibility. F*** the police because I'm going to die anyway. Only that doesn't add up, because if there is nothing after death, you have more to fear not less, because you are actually hastening the point where you don't exist. To say nothing of the fact that there have been some documented cases of reincarnation (look them up on google) so even if there is no afterlife place, something happens after death. I think I like the FF7 lifestream theory.
Between her assault-like behavior and her complete apathy about other people and this wrinkle, I'm feeling the Rhett Butler thing for Miss Moby here. Don't gove a damn.

To clarify, I do not believe in a set calling. I believe the point of life and having so many choices is because we have a "duty" to find our personal happiness. Someone like Moby has given up without trying.

Hoping Crest can find someone who has a good core to her (Moby in terms of this, is totally empty), is sweet and kind, and cares for him. That still seems to be suspiria, so I don't know why he's hanging around someone who only wants him for sex. Hoping we switch back to Regina (pffft I first typed Serena, been watching too much pokemon XY)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on March 24, 2016, 05:31:36 am
Ok, yeah. Life without meaning is pretty damn depressing.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 25, 2016, 07:01:55 am
Sorry I've been away..

That was a terribly sweet and giving expression of friendship by Crest~ the SAME thing I would have done for the EXACT same reason!  Crest CARES about those around him, I'm sold.. I think Crest is now my favorite character in this comic!

And despite her rebuttal Moby's expression in panel 3 tells me Crest struck gold... he touched Moby's heart with that simple hug of 'true heartfelt-affection'!

Crest has a HERO'S Heart.

...And Moby has an awesome rack!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 26, 2016, 10:18:17 am
Of course he does. Crest is a woman.  ;D

I still think my favorite characters are the mains, but this is a nice change of scenery.

I have no idea at this point whether he actually did touch her heart, or she is still trying to work on him, but we'll suspend judgement for now.

Meh, it's okay I guess.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on March 28, 2016, 05:27:54 am
"Are you ready?"

"Yes, let's do it!"

{No. Shame.}

...

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky...?"

"I don't know Brain... was it really a good idea to put sand in the KY jelly?"

{Don't. Judge.}
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 28, 2016, 05:47:26 am
Yay! Fun times.  ;D
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: 9_6 on March 28, 2016, 05:00:00 pm
Huh.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Abstract Vagabond on March 28, 2016, 07:01:57 pm
To ship or not to ship? That is the question.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on March 29, 2016, 05:24:17 am
Page 41, and thus streaking was invented.

Well, at least they're having fun.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on March 30, 2016, 05:11:09 pm
This is what I meant. Nude just because, not to try to initiate anything. Consent was asked, and it actually is cool with her if he says no. I'm cool with this one.  :-*

This cannot possibly be an April Fool's strip.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: mittfh on April 02, 2016, 07:34:47 am
The current page 43 - what makes me think it was published on Thursday? :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 05, 2016, 05:25:29 am
Not a really good reason, girl. You're not Maytag, you're you. In Glyph's place, most decent guys would go "no" because there's no solid, stable relationship there.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 05, 2016, 12:30:56 pm
Not rape, but not a good reason.

Sex is not about being bold but enjoying the person you're spending time with. That said I'm rooting for the single lady to get some action.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 06, 2016, 04:33:11 pm
"So shines a good deed in a weary world." - Willy Wonka

Way to go Glyph!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 07, 2016, 04:13:55 am
D'awwwww!  :-*

All of which leads back to an unfortunate point. Remember Bern's "reward"? Having a deal where you get off for someone else's amusement promises to be extremely awkward. I have a sinking feeling this is next.  :o
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 14, 2016, 04:55:24 pm
Too true.. Crests eyes are not painted on.. {he's no dummy}.. things are NOT adding up... so as apparently Supiria's ONLY friend.. he owes it to that friendship to get to the bottom of what's REALLY going on!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 15, 2016, 04:58:32 am
God they're dumb. If it was a trick, the very first premise falls apart when you consider that the very people she accuses of being dead are alive. This implies that she knows something is up. They could have been raised. But this seems more like someone who knew there was something weird about her parents.

It seems so obvious, you wonder if everyone in the room with Qtalda didn't encounter a massive Jedi mind trick. "Those are her parents... you will not think about this..." Which brings up a good point. What does mind control look like to those experiencing it? Would it be like Maytag's latest room where you see stuff completely different from other people? Or would you be aware you are being controlled but hostage to you own body (sort of Ella Enchanted).

http://www.bustle.com/articles/113750-3-problems-people-from-toxic-families-often-struggle-with

Suspiria's reaction to Qtalda admitting that was similar to someone who realizes the have been gaslighted (#3).
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 15, 2016, 07:16:24 pm
Yeah, I like Crests reply to 'Mr, I've drunk the Reverend Jim cool-Aid', Quote "...". 

Yeah I smell more bullshit the more that guy opens his mouth... it categorically is NOT evident that Suspiria is 'Mentally Unstable'~ whatever the hell THAT is supposed to mean; and it is even less obvious that 'she was controlling the conclave'!  What evidence do you have to support that other than the conclave..ulp.. how convenient their all gone..!?!  So its Qtalda's word that Suspiria was controlling her... OF FUCKING Course she would say that; as SHE is being accused of conspiracy to commit murder!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: SAGG on April 15, 2016, 08:20:58 pm
Oh I'm sorry. Isn't that what Crest just SAID?! Doesn't that person who heard that have EARS?!  ???
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 18, 2016, 05:19:56 am
Yeah this guy is kinda...

Where is it obvious that she's controlling anything? Because it seems like the one with psychic control powers was the one who got you to believe an obvious lie. Suspiria seems like a straight up battle mage.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 18, 2016, 07:51:05 am
Yeah... and EVERYONE ...save maybe Crest, keeps conveniently forgetting... Susperia DID NOT KILL the Conclave!  She had a defensive spell that when she accused Qtalda of killing her parents SHE admitted the entire Conclave...except their poor clueless leader was in on it and Qtalda cast the spell to kill her in response!  Suspiria did not threaten to kill ANYONE!  THEY..or more to the point Qtalda did that herself!  Suspiria never cast a single offensive spell on ANYONE... in fact her defensive spell was not even a complete save as she was STILL dying also from the spell that Qtalda cast!

This is ALL BULLSHIT!  Qtalda is playing a 'save my ass... cause I just got played', game... and I don't think Crest is buying ANY OF IT!  But he's playing along cause Qtalda is FAR more dangerous now than she was before..with no council looking over her shoulder... even though apparently most of them were in her pocket anyways!

Suspiria may be the only sorceress powerful enough to stop Qtalda's schemeing murderous plans for power!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: SAGG on April 18, 2016, 08:08:57 pm
Interesting quote there: "Qtalda's not THAT evil." So, the dude's acknowledging that she HAS evil in her to SOME extent, just not as much as Crest thinks? Yeah, THAT would comfort my doubts...
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 19, 2016, 02:49:12 am
Something about this dude irritates the hell out of me.

Maybe it's the whole brain fog thing where everyone he talks to seems to get dumber by comparison.

Look "I've known her for years" or "they are public figures" is not really a suitable explanation. By known for years, do you mean regularly attend the shop where she was, without really meeting Suspiria until she was three or five? Did you see her being born?

Suppose this scenario. You see them in town at this restaurant first about 14 years. But Suspiria is 17! Just knowing them that time still leaves a gap. Or maybe they are around town for longer than Suspiria but she introduces the child in the restaurant at a young age after having raised her for a few years in private. Or even simply introducing her as an infant without having seen her born.

Suspiria could easily have been kidnapped and adopted at a young age, and you would have no way of knowing! But Suspiria might if she had childhood memories of trauma. Known her parents for years is not enough. How long have you known her? And how can we be certain we can trust you? You don't need to act like an impostor to be an adopted mother and father. You just omit the fact that a child isn't yours and everything else is real. Lots of families play off the fact that one of the kids isn't theirs. Watch Switched At Birth. It's only really the child in some cases that figures this out and the parents needn't be "impostors".
For that matter because of childhood amnesia you aren't sure of any of the details of your life, including your birthday.

Perhaps this is why he annoys me so much, his arguments are so specious but he acts like they are the  truth that everyone needs to believe. They aren't. And people don't.

But no, nobody else can possibly be right once you employ Occam's Razor. Yes it is more reasonable to assume horses than zebras. But not if you live neara zebra farm.

Uhhhh what?!? Why would this scenario need to play anything more than this: A powerful wizard family won't let her join as a wizard, so she kills the parents like a day after giving birth to her, and asks a sterile couple to pad her stomach for about nine months in exchange for a child. She is nine months older than she should be in and with a simple ruse (possibly augmented by a spell keeping her from growing by putting her in suspended animation) most of the town is fooled. No conspiracy involved, just Qtalda bribing a couple. That's hardly dumb either, and qtalda is that evil.

http://m.wikihow.com/Fake-Pregnancy

Just so you know.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 19, 2016, 06:05:40 am
I'm right with you there Bulma...

Cause his entire specious argument ASSUMES.. he's not working for Qtalda and gonna say whatever to back her story!

And as for the entire Council not being in her pocket.. uhm.. excuse me ..THEY WERE! The Only person who was surprised at Qtalda's admission was their leader... NOBODY else stepped forward to side with him in condemning Qtalda's actions for the crime they were!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 19, 2016, 08:05:28 am
As much as it pains me to say this. Unfortunately, the burden of proof is on Suspira at the moment.

First, prior to the confrontation with The Conclave, Suspira did attack those three students. Granted, the students were up to no good, and did, quite publicly, attack her first, but her actions were legally considered assault.

Second, the fact that Suspira's "parents" came forward, puts doubt on Qtalda's "confession," and the events leading up to it.

Third. It is readily apparent that the Thin Man, through Melter did something to her, and she hid it, until it was too late to do anything about it. People who are "clients" of The Thin Man are, without exception, mentally unstable once they are returned to the outside world. We are yet to be shown if this is by design, or merely an unintended side-effect of his experiments.

Fourth, Crest has no way of knowing which is true. Suspira's parents alive or dead?

Crest's only hope is to try and find some independently verifiable evidence.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 19, 2016, 03:11:22 pm
I'm not sure that's so.

I also post on a Religion & Spirituality forum at City-Data. One of the things they do talk about is burden of proof.


Bottom line, burden of proof is always on the one that makes a claim or accusation. In law courts, this is the same way.

It seems like that guy (forgot his name) keeps spouting nonsense. But he has very little to back it up.

We have someone who literally saw her admit to that, saw her attack in self-defense, etc. Versus the words of someone who seems like they could be a liar, and another who wasn't there.

We have the words of someone who also could be a liar saying they have known these parents for years.

In an actual court, I believe this evidence would be hearsay, and all you would get (since Thin Man's experiments, as far as the public knows are taken without consent; even though he says they are voluntary and with a reward, he still routinely mind-wipes people) is actually just the charge of assault. Which as far as we can tell, was wholly deserved.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 21, 2016, 07:30:33 am
Wow, so Crest agrees that Suspira's parents are "genuine" but still doesn't buy the "Suspira was controlling everyone" bit, and he's got good arguments to back him up. Crest may be no sorceror, but he's a damn smart cookie.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 22, 2016, 05:04:21 pm
Brion, who are the rest of the Conclave? I only know Lord Halcyon and Qtalda.

The next scene probably won't work if we don't know who the rest of these guys are.

Okay, relooking, we have Qtalda (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1939) the mummy man, Bell (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1945) the receptionist, Lord Halcyon (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1949) the leader, and these guys (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1951).

Since most of them get offed (eliminating them as suspects), and this includes Lord Halcyon (who also was duped), we have just two candidates.

Qtalda (notice when she said that she must be erased, they all decided this was reasonable) and Bell. It's always the secretary!  ;D

Oh my. Look at this scene. There is someone standing behind Crest (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1961)!

So yes, Crest is right, there was someone else.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 24, 2016, 04:59:00 am
That looks like Crest hiding behind a tree looking at Q'talda. Still.. Do you suppose Halcyon was using a body double too?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 24, 2016, 08:48:56 am
You know going to the next page... after that scene with the hiding figure... who I thought was Moby.. when I saw it the first time... Qtalda has Suspiria in her cube of force trap.. and Qtalda's words...

Quote: "Humph. Considering your about to die, I suppose you deserve to know the TRUTH..."

THIS is all bullshit.. I'm NOT Buying any stupid what if's about mind control.. Qtalda thought she could get away with it as she would be killing or altering the memories of everyone present so she... like some evil mastermind villain got caught in monologue.. and she SERIOUSLY underestimated Suspiria!

CAUSE on the same page Qtalda admits that...

Quote: "I guess whatever the thin man did to you brought back the memories I erased..."

She reveals she can alter memories.. so this dude.. her puppet mouth-piece .. MAY be as much a victim as Suspiria real parents.. or the imposters who may very well believe Erroneously that Suspiria is their daughter!

Qtalda is a dangerous Bitch.. and needs to be given a permanent Dirt Nap real quick like!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 25, 2016, 04:37:48 am
You know going to the next page... after that scene with the hiding figure... who I thought was Moby.. when I saw it the first time... Qtalda has Suspiria in her cube of force trap.. and Qtalda's words...

Quote: "Humph. Considering your about to die, I suppose you deserve to know the TRUTH..."

THIS is all bullshit.. I'm NOT Buying any stupid what if's about mind control.. Qtalda thought she could get away with it as she would be killing or altering the memories of everyone present so she... like some evil mastermind villain got caught in monologue.. and she SERIOUSLY underestimated Suspiria!

CAUSE on the same page Qtalda admits that...

Quote: "I guess whatever the thin man did to you brought back the memories I erased..."

She reveals she can alter memories.. so this dude.. her puppet mouth-piece .. MAY be as much a victim as Suspiria real parents.. or the imposters who may very well believe Erroneously that Suspiria is their daughter!

Qtalda is a dangerous Bitch.. and needs to be given a permanent Dirt Nap real quick like!

This reminds me. I think there was a quote attributed to a mystery detective:  "Remove the impossible, and whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth." Or as Detective Conan says "One Truth Prevails!"

Let's suppose that he is right, it is impossible to control the entire conclave. What does that leave?

An illusion, or the situation as it happened. Illusions work on of two ways, either by altering the minds of those subjects around them or by creating a large scale simulation VR. In the former idea, we have the same exact problem as the control theory, plus we are assuming that Crest is well hidden (oops, this theory just doesn't work). The wide scale VR sim seems likevit would be cost prohibitive in terms of magic, given the wide range and the fact that also shows to to those looking in. Plus it would not be able to manipulate all those people, as that would involve showing them tailor made images to get them to act, and even then? Qtalda still admitted to something.

So which is more possible, a wide scale illusion (the only way this would even work is if the people weren't really there besides Suspiria, and this is sharply contradicted by the use of death spells, one of which is causing her and crest to decay), a wide scale mind control? No, these are impossible given the circumstances. Short of the person behind crest setting it up just for him but this still leaves someone whose power dwarfs suspiria pulling strings. And there is nothing to suggest this isn't qtalda. So why was this necessary?

Remove the impossible, what do we have? The scene Crest saw. Two hired actresses, a very suspicious little girl, who is gaslighted, the Conclave in on it. All of these, so far require no magic, just convincing actors and gullible people. Then we have one scene where moby, regina, crest, and what's his name are shown the parents. At some point, a suggestion spell could have been silent cast. Suggestion is not difficult, compared with mind control, just say something and the words are convincing. This is plausible. The ither thing, is there is a strong suspicion that this guy is also a mole for Qtalda, since he has done little to show otherwise. This even requires one less person to suggest. So we have three stupid kids, that get fed "look here these two random people are the parents." We can narrow the spell effect down to just Crest and Regina if we accept that moby and the other guy are also stooges. Or dupes.  Let's call Moby and. Glasses guy dupes, and this guy a stooge. Qtalda has to resort to very little to fool everyone in that room. That's very possible.

Suspiria never even seemed to be casting a control spell, and would need to disperse it in a radius. Not happening. On the other hand, Qtalda and four others attacking with maybe some sugggestion (but they looked bloodthirsty anyway)? Yeah this is doable.They ask her and suddenly there is a switch from wanting her alive to "let's kill her". Wait, but look over this scene again. It feels odd. She assaulted her schoolmates. This deserves maybe a stern talking to. But there is a logical leap from that to execution, that just isn't there.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 25, 2016, 09:44:38 am
Or.. worse yet. Q'talda, who may or may not have been the extra "invisible" person there may have set all this up to off Halcyon and take over. After all, she's the only one who knows how to prepare  the special "anti murder microbe" resin to protect herself.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on April 25, 2016, 12:17:08 pm
Yeah, its clear to me she was LYING about not having her body there to explain why she survived.. all bullshit as well.. I'm pretty sure the invisible foot-prints we saw walking away were her/it.

Which brings up the question.. what the hell is she?  clearly her body is not composed of flesh as we know it... so.. what's HER story?!?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 25, 2016, 02:05:40 pm
Yeah, its clear to me she was LYING about not having her body there to explain why she survived.. all bullshit as well.. I'm pretty sure the invisible foot-prints we saw walking away were her/it.

Which brings up the question.. what the hell is she?  clearly her body is not composed of flesh as we know it... so.. what's HER story?!?

She spent years developing a flesh eating creature spell.

Spent years developing.

It's entirely possible that some of those years were spent either transforming her body into a largely intangible one, or learning how to make a solid astral projection that returns to her real body when damaged. After all, if she lost control of the critters, it's pretty much instant gameover for her, so it makes sense if her body is now not flesh-based.

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Darque on April 25, 2016, 03:23:51 pm
I love how the rest of the cast is hanging on to Crest's every word here, when any sane individual would have said 'Is there a coherent point to this rambling, and if so can you please get to it' by now.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 26, 2016, 05:10:02 am
I love how the rest of the cast is hanging on to Crest's every word here, when any sane individual would have said 'Is there a coherent point to this rambling, and if so can you please get to it' by now.

He's already shown there's more than one coherent point to his "rambling" and what he's saying has to be taken step by step or it's not going to make sense.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 26, 2016, 03:59:15 pm
I wonder what he means. Let's examine that scene around Halcyon and see if we can make sense of it.

Rereading that scene, I saw something completely different.

Halcyon isn't present while Qtalda burns someone to the ground with decay magic (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1941)

Halcyon asks what should be done. They all seem to be in agreement already, aside from him. (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1951)

Then they all confer to Qtalda (http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1953)

He already seems blindsided, just from her response. She goes on to explain a lame excuse about how "difficult" this is, how she knew her like a sister or something. It smells like a lie, and it smells like manipulation. But distinctly not like Halcyon was the one pulling the strings. More like, there was some reason Halcyon remained a figurehead, that it was more convincing to have someone with conventional leadership in charge vs someone who had to exert magic to control people. As such, he is very much out of the loop.



Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 28, 2016, 05:51:08 am
Ok. THIS. This I pointed out at the time of the event. Either Halcyon was "in on it," deliberately "turned a blind eye" to the Conclave's actions, or was a complete idiot who was only useful as a figurehead despite his insanely high magical power.

I'm glad to see Crest picked up on it. So that explains why Crest has come to the conclusion that someone mind-controlled the Conclave and Suspira. Very interesting.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: IronSoul on April 28, 2016, 08:37:30 pm
I agree that Crest has a point about Halcyon's behavior being a little fishy. That's fine, but, correct me if I'm wrong, but does any of this really suggest or prove that Suspria could be innocent, either?
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 29, 2016, 04:35:50 am
Maybe he was muddled.

Think of mind control as snatching water from a river, and holding it in a jar. You own the water completely, and can pour it wherever you want, even places far away where it would not normally go.

Suggestion is like cupping water in your hands. The water is free to go where it wishes, but you also hold it. It takes less effort to do this, and the subject retains their personality (as in, they are not acting out stuff you want, they are them, but they are more inclined to agree with you). But for someone like Halcyon, you would be aware of the magic cast here, because his perception of magic is like a beacon of sunlight.

What else can you do with a river of water? Kick dirt up until it becomes cloudy. I would be very surprised if during this event, Halcyon could have cast anything more powerful than a cantrip. His mind was clouded to the point of a doddering old man. And yes, he did seem to be out of the loop.

But Crest isn't done talking, so let's see how this plays out.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: MaronaPossessed on April 29, 2016, 12:11:45 pm
This chapter has Phoenix Wright written all over it...XD

I'm even listening to this song while reading it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3R8tkvlAlk
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on April 29, 2016, 05:48:16 pm
Let's see if I can make sense of this (Crest and I have different logic, so it's hard):

Pretty sure this rules out both Halcyon and Suspiria, as they would not act against their own self-interest just to deceive Crest, which in the former case, they didn't know was there and in the second, was willingly putting themselves in harms way to make a baseless accusation.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on April 30, 2016, 04:32:15 am
Glyph. You're suggesting that Suspira is stronger than Halcyon.  This has yet to be proven. Further, even if Suspira is stronger than Halcyon was, she's far less experienced, and her mentality wasn't exactly stable, considering the sudden, and traumatic, changes she recently went through at the time. Being able to "control" Suspira while failing to be able to control Halcyon is far less of a contradiction than one might think.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on May 02, 2016, 04:09:50 am
We don't actually have any proof that she's that much stronger, period.

We have her taking revenge on her old school bullies. Strictly speaking, she probably could have done that already with her genius level power/ability before, she was just too meek.

We have her inventing a reflect golem. That takes skill but not necessarily strength.

We have her failing miserably to break a shield barrier.

And we have the words of Qtalda, who, again has not been shown to be trustworthy telling people they have to team up because she's much stronger. And we have a freak transformation. That's it.

Plus yes, experience wins out against untrained power most days of the week.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on May 02, 2016, 06:53:16 am
I notice Crest is being very shrewd in not mentioning the fact he knows someone else was there.. the unidentified 'person' in the shadows of the trees...

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1961

It looks to me as if Crest saw them there...

AND.. I'm STILL NOT BUY No MIND-CONTROL CRAP!

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1969

...these are NOT the ponderings or actions of someone being Mind-controlled! 

'Why would she admit to murder?', Cause she's a prideful arrogant, power-hungry Bitch who controls the conclave and apparently is NOT afraid of Halcyon's 'Alleged' superior power.  Pretty simple actually.. she knows .. or at least thought she knew.. no one could stop her or bring her to justice whom she could not threaten, Eliminate or mind-alter to no longer be a 'issue'!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on May 02, 2016, 10:50:20 am
You and me both. Internal dialogue generally doesn't happen in a mind-controlled  person. By definition, they are not able to think thoughts of their own. Simpler explanation is that Qtalda really IS that bad, and played you too when she came in the room. But that involves admitting that you've been mind controlled. Couldn't do THAT!

Also, the Thin Man is not interested in control. Why? Because he told us.  ;D

But no, he probably isn't. He seems like an anarchist type that likes to overthrow world powers and leave a gap behind.

Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: monimoni on May 02, 2016, 01:50:33 pm
Well, it's pretty clear that Suspira's memories were altered. First she says this http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1455 and then this http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1511. There's also the question what Suspiria's purpose is altogether. If she is being controlled by the thin man, it's interesting to me how she now wants to kill him. So, I wonder if Melter and perhaps that creepy lady are behind it. Looking back now, it didn't seem like he was "following protocol" when he went asking about Suspiria. Didn't say a word about her when he went back with news of a high-potential recruit..
Excellent stuff so far, looking forward to how this plays out.  :)
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Smiles on May 02, 2016, 07:33:58 pm
"the them"? Brion how late were you up making this page? lol. i like where it's going though. everything pointing to the thin man is interesting. is that like a lead back to maytag idea or are we going to see more Bern before we get back to maytag? either way i get the feeling everyone is going to end up in one place somehow.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on May 02, 2016, 07:54:27 pm
For some reason... I get the feeling..Crest.. is being subtly deceptive about something.  Yes, its clear he wanted everyone to follow his line of logic.. but I get the feeling.. he's holding something back.. a significant something.

He's got his own schemes going on inside his head...  not in the sinister "I have you now.."... but in the shrewd gambler kinda way.  He knows or suspects something he's not telling anyone .. at least not outloud... where say a naturally invisible Qtalda sitting quietly in the room can hear...
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on May 05, 2016, 01:17:53 pm
Me too. Like he's going to lead them into being all gung ho about going after Thin Man's stooge, and then be like, "Oh btw, the person I saw was Moby."
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Furcas on May 05, 2016, 04:44:22 pm
Good going, Brion. Stuff like this is why I keep reading Flipside after all these years.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on May 10, 2016, 06:12:09 am
Crest being the leader of the mission? That's a tall order. Crest really doesn't have much experience being in charge. He has made some good calls before true, but actually being in control and responsible for the outcome? Not so much.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: sunphoenix on May 10, 2016, 06:34:13 am
I think Crest has got what it takes now... he has been operating on his own for some time now.. making judgement calls.. knowing when to push a fight and when to back off.  He's motivated, he's REALLY thinking through all the presented information in a logical way.. and he's not dismissing anyone's observations out of hand or ignoring inconvenient facts to suit himself.

Part of being the 'Man in Charge'... is simply "BEING the Man in Charge".. sometimes you just have to walk the path to 'Be on the path'.  No on is ever 'Completely' ready to be a leader.. and look out for those who tell you they believe they COMPLETELY are!  Part of being a good leader is knowing an accepting.. You DON'T know everything... and taking support and advice from those who trust your judgement.  You make the best call you can.. and live with it; being flexible enough to admit a misteps AND be ready to take efforts and make changes to not repeat them!!
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: bulmabriefs144 on May 11, 2016, 02:42:47 pm
Oops, wrong demon girl. Hopefully Demon Girl B will save them from Demon Girl A.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: monimoni on May 12, 2016, 03:39:27 am
Interesting. So Mary is likely changed since that encounter with Maytag, eating only "bad guys".. I hope she won't get killed.
Title: Re: Chapter 45: discussion
Post by: Azure Priest on May 12, 2016, 06:43:16 am
Interesting. So Mary is likely changed since that encounter with Maytag, eating only "bad guys".. I hope she won't get killed.

Not like anyone can. She somehow managed to shrug off Q'talda's killer microbe spell, after all.