#involved the trolley problem

[reijndeers]

had a (lucid?) dream about kloppdiola and i don't think i'll ever have such an entertaining dream again

[sundancefemme]

we need to start tar-and-feathering oil barons im 100% serious

[nereidprinc3ss]

trolley problem

in which fem!reader has been gambling with her life and spencer reid is more than a little concerned

flangst, hurt/comfort warnings/tags: passive suicidal ideation from reader, she keeps risking her life, that really grinds Spencer’s gears, established relationship, existential dread, existential euphoria, lots of stuff about grief and death and self worth, not advocating for this, pretension from the author, blasphemy probably?, reader gets fuzzy from prescribed painkillers, arguing, hospital stuff, mention of sleep paralysis involving spiders, reader gets shot but she’s fineee, I pander to intro to philosophy takers, bau!reader, neurodivergent coded reader, if she’s not exactly like you I’m sorry, bean soup a/n: one day you’re in a writing slump literally the next you are in your notes app for six hours writing whatever the fuck this is but I think I love it even tho it’s weird and I hope u like it too!! btw this was gonna be called cotard's syndrome but then I never once talk abt cotard's but if u care that might be interesting context for the motif of not feeling human/alive, WC 3K

Spencer hasn’t spoken to you since the doctor left the room five minutes ago. 

The air is antiseptic as you take it deep into the hollows of your lungs and trap it there for a moment, trying to optimize oxygen intake without actually having to breathe very often. Hospital smell is as universal as it is suffocating. It reeks of everything but death—flowers, blood, bleach, vomit. A humiliating, desperate scramble to defy the very thing that defines mortality. It’s pathetic. It reminds you of the worst instances of failure and loss and denial in your life. It curdles your blood. Literally rots you from the inside out. 

You’ve had ample time to ponder that smell over the last few months because you keep ending up here, and some time ago you decided the institution of the hospital is inherently absurd. It’s stupid to think you could avoid the one absolute condition on your corporeal form: impermanence. It is the only thing that is promised, and people still waste their lives away running from it. It is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. 

So around the time you acknowledged that hospitals are simply monuments to the self-importance of man, you gave up on trying too hard to preserve yourself. You’ve seen death too much and too often. You’ve tried staving it off with prayer and the miracles of modern medicine, and it never matters in the end because it’s all magical thinking anyway. All the wallowing and the bargaining and pleading never got you anywhere. 

You’ve accepted that from the moment you were born, you were marked for death. 

But you’re not a complete nihilist. You’re not even totally resigned to the abject certainty of death—because you’ve found a loophole.

Everyone has as many chances at escaping death as other people are willing to offer them at the cost of their own lives. Not many people are willing to make that trade—someone else’s life for their own—but you’ve decided you are. Because if not you, then who?

It’s not that you don’t see the value in your own life, as Spencer keeps making it sound. It’s just the opposite. You understand that you’ve got an extremely valuable resource, and you don’t just have to sit on it. There are things you can do. Choices you can make. Ways to defy death. 

Just… not yours. 

Or maybe you’re just in deep denial. 

Either way—this is a philosophy your boyfriend intentionally refuses to understand. He gets mad, or some kind of upset, every time you try to explain it. Usually he ends up leaving the room close to tears. You never feel good about it.

Right now he’s presumably trying to give you the silent treatment and not doing a very good job. 

“Stop holding your breath. Why are you—stop that.”

Spencer’s frowning, skin sallow and milk-blue under fluorescent lighting. Purple seeps from around his eyes like spilled wine on a white table cloth. Your stomach turns. 

“Sorry.”

He doesn’t tell you not to apologize. You don’t expect him to. 

“Why are you doing that? Does something hurt?”

Other than your entire bicep being on fire due to the 9 millimeter Luger it recently came into contact with?

“Not really. I just don’t like the smell of hospitals.”

At that, he gets stony again. Like, Medusa stony. You feel a tightening in your chest that has nothing to do with a lack of air. His arms are crossed. A silk lined blazer drapes over your lap, and you wonder if he’s cold in just that white button up. It’s translucent in this light, like onion skin, or maybe something less organic—the folds and wrinkles look like fabric, but lots of things look like something they aren’t. In the Pietá, Jesus lounges dead on his mother’s lap, his cheek pressed to her arm like either of them have warm flesh, and her skirts drape from her knees and fall to the ground in delicate folds just like Spencer’s jacket and looking at pictures of it you swear you could find comfort there too—but if you wanted to make space for yourself next to Jesus you’d have to do it with a chisel and mallet. You’re starting to think that’s what it’s going to take with Spencer, as well. 

“So stop walking into active gunfire. You’ll spend a lot less time here.”

Every deep sigh (of which there have been several) calcifies you further. Ironically, you never feel less alive than you do in a hospital. 

“I didn’t walk into active g—”

“I’m not debating it with you. It’s not a discussion.”

“So you’re just going to be pissed at me for the rest of forever? I mean, if it’s not a discussion—what are you gonna do? Break up with me?”

You feel yourself dripping poison in the well. Even as you say it. As his head tilts toward you slowly and intently from his spot against the wall, and his warning gaze is cold and unforgiving and weighs 3.35 tons.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Talk?”

“Don’t try and manipulate me by implying that there are no options between permissiveness and dumping you!”

“I’m not manipulating you. And I don’t need your permission to do anything.” 

The first part is an incredulous scoff as well as a blatant lie. You are manipulating him. Chisel and all. At least, you were trying to. It clearly doesn’t work very well. His jaw clenches.  

“Is this worth it to you? Fighting with me like we’re children solely so you don’t have to take accountability?”

“Accountability for what? I made a choice. I don’t regret it. You’re upset because I did my job.”

A beat. 

Silence always makes you feel the gravity of your words. 

“Do you believe that?”

His voice softens so much, so quickly, it splinters down the middle. 

You’ve never been known for your light touch. For someone who sees eviscerated bodies nearly every day, and prides herself on her evolved understanding of mortality, you often forget other people are not, in fact, impenetrable marble—they are flesh and blood and bone, and you’ve splattered yourself in the evidence of that. 

“What?” You murmur. You easily turn timid, when you’re afraid you’ve been too heavy-handed. Spencer’s seen you sob over the birds who hit the windowpane and never reappeared from the shrubbery—their delicate wings, their little beaks—he didn’t mean to, Spencer, and now he’s dead! He’s seen you spend forty minutes catching a spider with a cup and an envelope rather than smush it, even though you have reoccurring episodes of sleep paralysis wherein a giant arachnid is sitting on your chest, hissing and clacking its pincers. He knows you are, at your core, kind and good. 

It’s a little scary for someone to know that about you. It’s a little scary when you see your own vulnerability reflected in their eyes and the way they speak to you, the way you see it in him now. 

“Do you believe that the choices you make regarding your safety don’t concern me at all?”

“They’re… my choices to make,” you whisper, but you’re less sure than you were a minute ago. 

“I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about how it feels like you are trying to kill yourself every time we’re in the field.” His voice shakes. You swallow. “You have been hospitalized for four serious injuries sustained on the job in the past five months. Every time I bring it up, you—you talk about life like it’s optional for you. Like you’re not only willing to give it up but are actively looking to throw yourself in harm’s way every chance you get. You think that doesn’t terrify me?”

There’s a small chip in the paint on the wall next to him roughly the shape of Africa. 

“It’s not like that. I’m… I’m just having an unlucky streak.”

He snaps. 

“Luck isn’t going to get between you and a bullet. Ever.”

“It’s my job, Spencer.”

“No. It is a risk of the job. Not a defining feature or requirement. But you keep running toward gunfire like you have a quota to meet.”

“Spencer, I’m not doing it at you. I’m not trying to get myself hurt.”

“Well it doesn’t really feel like you’re trying to avoid it, either,” he shoots back immediately, and you feel the anguish radiating from him until it lodges in your own chest, like it was always yours. Maybe it was. 

You want to make it better, but you don’t know how, and even if you did, he’s pushing off the wall and crossing the room toward the door. 

“Where are you going?” You call, a little too desperately for your liking. 

“You need to eat something.”

Which translates roughly to he’s pissed and upset and he needs to leave the room. You’ve done this song and dance before. 

However, food and an absence of him are contenders for the absolute last two things you want right now. 

“Spencer, please don’t—”

But the door is already whooshing closed. 

You stare at the grey and white checkered floor. Light bounces off the waxen reflection—some sort of parallel universe you can’t reach, perhaps. The whole room is desaturated. A mechanical humming threatens to drive you insane. It doesn’t feel like a place for living humans. You’re not convinced you are one. 

When he comes back, maybe ten minutes later, nothing’s moved at all. In fact you’re not even sure you’ve been breathing. 

The door closes as quietly as it opens. 

This time, wordlessly, Spencer comes to you. You see his shoes first—his serious adult shoes. You wish he was wearing his Converse. 

Then you see the bottle of apple juice he’s cracking open for you. Blue lid. Same kind you always get. 

“You didn’t bring food.”

“You wouldn’t have eaten it.”

Fair enough. 

You take the bottle with your good arm and sip shallowly—all that adrenaline and the subsequent interpersonal strife has left you nauseous. The drink is too sweet. It clashes with the tang of metal in your mouth. 

Still, you drink enough to satisfy him, and then you’re tossing his jacket aside before balancing the bottle between your thighs so you can screw the lid back on. He doesn’t go back to the couch or his spot on the wall. 

Spencer doesn’t pull away when you lean into him, but it does take him a moment to reciprocate. You’re still grateful all the same when he cradles the back of your head to his stomach like you’re made of porcelain. 

“I don’t think you understand how upset I am,” he says quietly. 

Only Spencer Reid could be furious with you and still hold you like this. 

“I’m sorry,” you murmur. 

“That’s not good enough. You need to stop risking your life like that.”

He doesn’t get it. Your brows flutter as they try to furrow but even holding that expression saps you. Maybe the pain meds are finally kicking in. 

“I just wanna help people.”

“That doesn’t explain to me or justify your urge to do it at the cost of your own life. We all want to help people, angel. The whole team. That’s why we do what we do. But we don’t run into shootouts. We don’t split off and provoke people with guns when we’re unarmed and unprepared.”

“But it worked. She got away.” You feel a spark of fulfillment at the memory of Gloria Sanchez in JJ’s arms just before the ambulance doors had slammed you into your first cage of the night. 

“We don’t know if he was going to kill her. He might not’ve fired at all if you didn’t go running toward him. That wasn’t strategic, it was reckless and irresponsible and you know that. I know you do. So something else is going on.”

The pressure in your nose that usually precipitates tears comes as a surprise. 

“I just—if that’s how I can save someone, why shouldn’t I, you know? Why do they have less of a right to live than I do just because they’ve been deprived of the choice? If I have a choice, and they don’t, I should choose to… to help them. That’s my job.”

For a long moment, you listen to your own breath, muffled by Spencer’s shirt, and the mechanical humming, and something dripping, and the low, buzzy chatter of nurses far down the hallway.

When Spencer next speaks you get the sense he’s holding a lot back. His voice is taut enough it wavers slightly. Taut enough that if he weren’t speaking so quietly he might be yelling. It’s like pinpricks all over your body—not enough to hurt, but enough to make sure you’re paying attention. 

“You can’t help anyone if you’re dead. Do you understand me?”

And yes, in theory, you do. But that doesn’t negate your original point. It only takes one life or death moment for you to utilize the most valuable resource you have. What happens after is no longer your concern. 

“On the psych evals you helped develop it asks if you think it’s appropriate to sacrifice the one to save the many. The answer is supposed to be no. If you say yes you get flagged. The FBI frowns upon… lever-pullers. And that’s exactly what I’m doing if I let one person die when I could’ve potentially saved them.”

“Protecting your own life is not pulling the lever. What you’re doing isn’t smart or morally righteous. You’re just throwing yourself across the tracks, too. If you were to fail a psych eval right now it would be because you’re passively suicidal. And you know what? The FBI also tends to frown upon self-immolative delusions of grandeur and girls who like to play sacrificial lamb.”

“’M not a… sacrificial lamb…”

“No,” Spencer agrees quietly, stroking your hair. “You’re not.”

And you can’t react to the fragility in his voice, or the content of his words, and the fact that when he says it he means something different—you can’t do anything about it. You can only catalogue it. You can only know that he loves you, and feel a little guilty about it.

Some time passes. You don’t know how long he remains standing so you can doze against him. He does not smell like the hospital. He’s the antidote for whatever grief they distill from widows and orphans before aerosolizing it through the whole place. 

“Baby?” He asks eventually. You know the lilt of it. He’s been thinking. 

“Hm?”

He hesitates. 

“Can we talk about you maybe taking some time off of work?”

“You heard the boss,” you mumble. “I can’t come in for at least a week.”

“I mean beyond that.”

You intend to respond, but by the time you open your mouth you’ve lost the prompt in all the brain fog. 

“You’re so comfy,” you murmur dreamily. “Thank you for being mad at me.”

If he responds, you miss it. 

You’re imagining the bed waiting for you at home, once the doctor is done observing you—warm, neatly made. Blankets woven with soft fibers. A mattress that will sink under your weight. You think of Spencer, who’s shaping himself to you, Spencer, who intentionally inhales when you exhale at night to make room for the rise and fall of your chest against his. You think of the imprint of his buttons on your cheek. You are both flesh and blood and bone. 

Strange, pill-induced half dreams and visions and memories take over. You’re in that alleyway again. That man fires. You don’t blink or scream or feel. 

Just before the bullet makes contact you’re standing in front of the Pietá. It’s massive. Spencer is there, too, holding your hand. 

You can’t actually see him, only, you know he’s there. You feel his warmth, his presence, when he leans over to whisper in your ear. The way you know him goes beyond sight. 

The Pietá—meaning the pity, in English—is 6’7” and six feet wide. It weighs 6,700 pounds. Michelangelo had to quarry the block of marble himself. He was only 25 when he finished. The Basilica keeps it behind bulletproof glass. 

Jesus and Mary behind bullet proof glass. 

God. Who’d try to kill Jesus a third time? He’s already dead. 

Besides—they’re both made of stone. Bullets would probably just ping right off of them. Or maybe they’d shatter just like you did. 

Probably not though. You’re not actually made of marble. You’ve no idea what it feels like to be a statue and get shot at. You sure know how it feels as a human, though—and it feels like shit. You don’t really know why you keep doing it. None of your reasons are good enough for Spencer, and he’s, generally speaking, pretty smart about some things. 

Maybe you’re tired of being human.

Maybe you’re tired of sleeping on your arm funny and waking up to a hand in your bed that doesn’t feel like yours and remembering all the hands you’ve held moments before they couldn’t hold yours back. Or tired of those moments where you are being held and it’s so unbelievably perfect and then someone has to let go, or when someone you love hugs you goodbye and you realize that there will always be a final I love you, or simply getting older and watching potential life paths fall away like rotten fruit to the ground. Maybe life is sometimes so good it hurts and you can’t bear it. So you tempt fate. You walk a tightrope because even if you fall and it can’t ever feel good again—at least it can’t hurt either. At least you won’t lose anymore. 

And yet. 

It does feel good, sometimes. Sort of often, actually. Even when it’s awful. 

Dead Jesus and Mary, with their marble skin and their bulletproof glass and their holiness and their virginity and all the other things they have that you don’t. Nobody can hurt them anymore. Not ever. 

Maybe that’s something you envy.

But you doubt they’ve ever been so terribly, wonderfully alive as you’ve been, or as comfortable as you are like this, leaning into Spencer’s warmth and his softness, in the hospital, or the Vatican, or your dreams. Your bicep was ruined but it’s healing. You are capable of ruin and rebirth in the same lifetime. In the same day, in the same hour. 

You doubt that in 520 years, behind bulletproof glass and unyielding, eternally flawless skin, they’ve ever felt as invincible as you do now. 

You doubt they ever could. 

[perkwunos]

But there’s a cruel reality behind the decision to track right: The campaign, once it hitched its wagon to Biden’s policy of unqualified support for genocide in Gaza, really had no other choice. In 2020, the Biden campaign tentatively rode the progressive wave of the George Floyd protests, anger about Trump’s racist border policies, Covid activism, and anti-war protests against Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen to energize the Democratic Party base to defeat Trump. It was, in retrospect, mostly lip service, and certainly no one at the time thought Biden a firebrand progressive. But the broader theme of the campaign was that everyone would have a seat at the table, even if the plate would most likely end up being empty.

Harris made no such pretensions, because any strategy that played to similar themes would have had to address the elephant in the room: the Democratic Party’s ​“ironclad” support for Israel’s elimination of a people in whole or in part. And this simply would not have worked. One can’t really bank on activist energy, youth turnout, and base-mobilizing when those involved — while canvassing together, or running phone banks at each others apartments, or getting drinks afterwards — have to awkwardly address the fact of genocide and their candidate’s support for it. This isn’t to say there was no activist or youth energy in the campaign — clearly there was. But those in charge quickly decided against making this their central theme and vote-gathering strategy, given the uncomfortable questions that would naturally arise from campaigning in these spaces. So Liz Cheney and her negative-2 favorables it was. 

Countless pro-Democratic Party pundits tried to warn Harris. Polls were commissioned. The Uncommitted Movement very politely, and well within the bounds of loyal party politics, begged Harris to change course. But she refused. The risk, to her, was worth sticking to the unshakable commitment to ​“eliminating Hamas” no matter how many dead Palestinian children it required, or the degree to which images and reports of these dead children would fuel cynicism and create an opening for Trump to win. 

... Turning every party advocate into a dead-eyed trolley problem expert triaging which genocide was morally preferable may have made cold logical sense, but it was hardly an inspiring message. Making it less compelling was that, by and large, it was not a position emanating from Palestinians themselves, as virtually every major Palestinian organization and the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to endorse Harris.

[dead-fandom-society]

remember. choosing to not involve yourself in the trolley problem because you don’t like either outcome does not solve it. you will not be a hero to anyone if you abstain from voting in this election

[incognitopolls]

In this hypothetical scenario, you don't know anything about any of the people involved, there's no time to stop the trolley or get the people off the track, etc etc etc. It's just you and this lever.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[jabberwockypie]

I think their big problem there is that "disability" means a wide variety of things, with a wide variety of different problems and levels of functionality. You can't say "this thing is good for disabled people" or "this thing is bad for disabled people" because most things are going to be good for some disabled people and bad for others. What's inaccessible to me, as a person with a chronic pain condition, balance problems, and an ankle-fusion surgery, isn't going to be the same as what's accessible to, say, the woman in the article who has nystagmus. She can ride a bicycle. I can't.

I'd love it if they specified what "disabled people who qualify" means when they're talking about various programs in different cities, because anyone who's had to sign up for any kind of program where you have to be "Disabled Enough" in some way knows people can fall through the cracks.

For instance, in my area, you don't qualify for reduced transit fare or paratransit if your disability is "caused by obesity, or alcohol, or an illegal-drug-related-problem". Mine isn't, but I've been unable to access paratransit services or a reduced-fare pass because I'm disabled and ALSO fat, regardless, because IN PRACTICE what this means is that the people who process the forms saw the assorted diagnoses listed on the form my doctor's office filled out, and went "Ah, your disability must be Because You're Fat" and rejected it.

[qiu-yan]

one topic i've been interested in lately is the idea of moral luck.

let's start somewhere else. i was surprised to learn that the question of "do moral dilemmas exist" is actually debated upon in moral philosophy. broadly speaking, a "moral dilemma" is a situation in which the agent can only choose one of several mutually exclusive options, and yet the agent has moral reasons compelling them towards each option. some philosophers have argued that, given a sufficiently robust moral philosophy, a "genuine" moral dilemma cannot exist: the moral philosophy will organize the differing moral reasons for each course of action into a hierarchy, in which more important moral reasons override the others; thus, the moral philosophy will always be able to identify one or more correct courses of action.

based on my own analysis - if one takes a more moral-pluralistic point of view, though, this is no longer true. moral pluralism indicates the view that multiple different values can all be equally valuable and morally significant, even when they are contradictory. in this case, a moral reason may not be able to override another moral reason. in my opinion (which i am not sure if lines up with official ideas of moral pluralism), this entails the return of the moral dilemma. after all, if the agent can only choose one of several mutually-exclusive courses of action, and the agent has genuine moral reasons for each course of action, and these moral reasons also cannot override each other - then it seems the agent is doomed. no matter what the agent chooses to do, they will be violating some moral reason. they will be committing some moral wrongdoing.

the idea that someone is doomed to commit some moral wrongdoing is referred to as moral tragedy.

this is all kind of abstract, so let us consider a more concrete example. first, let's consider the trolley problem. from a deontological perspective, the perfect duty of not violating the categorical imperative by killing the 1 person comes before the imperfect duty of taking action to save 5 people from death; hence, the correct choice is to not pull the lever. from a utilitarian perspective, the outcome in which 5 people live and 1 person dies involves less harm than the outcome in which 1 person lives and 5 people die, so pulling the lever is the correct choice. however, from a more morally pluralistic point of view, both the choice of pulling the lever and not pulling the lever involve violating some moral duty. people have a moral duty to not kill people, and people also have a moral duty to not allow people to die through inaction. you can only either kill the 1 person to save the 5 people or allow the 5 people to die through inaction. no other choice exists. thus, no matter what choice you make, you will be violating one of those two moral duties; you are trapped in a moral tragedy.

now let's consider another example. suppose you are jiang cheng, and wei wuxian has just busted wen ning's wen remnants out of the jin labor camp at qiongqi pass. from a more morally pluralistic point of view, you are also caught in a moral tragedy: no matter what choice you make, you will be violating some moral duty.

if you choose not to stand by wei wuxian, then you are violating some of your moral duties. wei wuxian is your martial brother; you have a duty towards him. wen ning and wen qing helped you greatly in the past; by the virtue of reciprocity, you owe it to them to help them too. furthermore, as a human being, you have a moral duty to stand against the mistreatment of innocent people. choosing not to stand by wei wuxian entails violating all three of these moral duties.

however, if you choose to stand by wei wuxian, then you are also violating some of your moral duties. you are the leader of the yunmeng jiang sect, which is currently recovering from near-absolute annihilation and thus lacks the resources the other great sects have. as the leader of yunmeng jiang, you are its representative: thus, you standing by wei wuxian when he has alienated lanling jin means that you are making yunmeng jiang stand against lanling jin. and since the jin sect is tied to the other two great sects via the venerated triad, if yunmeng jiang stands against lanling jin, then the situation will become all three of the other great sects against your one weak recovering sect.

you are the leader of the people in yunmeng jiang. those people just fought a war for you. as their leader - or even simply as someone for whom these people bled and suffered - you owe it to them to put them first. as a leader you exist for your people. if you act in violation of what is best for your people's safety and happiness, if you actively choose to put them in danger, then you have broken the social contract by which they gave you authority. then you have failed your duty. and since choosing to stand by wei wuxian puts everyone under your protection in danger, choosing to stand by wei wuxian entails violating your moral duty as a leader.

so. no matter what choice you as jiang cheng make, you will be violating some moral duty. you will be committing some moral transgression. you are caught in a moral tragedy.

from a morally pluralistic point of view, any choice in a moral tragedy entails some moral wrongdoing. so what determines whether you end up in a moral tragedy or not?

luck.

it's commonly said that a person's moral character can be determined from the choices they've made in their life - judge a man by his actions and all that. in other words, we look at what moral violations he has committed, as well as what morally upstanding acts. and yet! if he's ended up in a moral tragedy before - then he had no choice but to commit a moral violation, because all of the available choices were moral violations! does that mean that a person's moral character is subject not just to his own choices, but to luck as well? whether or not you can be called a good person or a bad person is affected also by merely how lucky or unlucky you were?

i do not personally use the framework of "good person" vs "bad person" very often; the utilitarianism i favor cannot be used to judge entire moral characters. however, it certainly is the case that other people will judge an individual's entire moral character by the choices they've made. and yet, it seems that - again and again - the concept of moral luck is not considered.

who did not have moral luck? who ended up in a moral tragedy?

wei wuxian. jiang cheng. lan xichen. jin guangyao. nie mingjue. and many others.

who did have moral luck? who avoided all the moral tragedies?

lan wangji.

[robjn93]

hello charlie! i dont know if this is a weird ask, but this is a question about a certain fanon tim drake misconception and i was wondering if you know its origin. people sometimes characterize him as 'morally grey', when i am 98% sure that in canon, it was very pointed out that he has a strong moral compass. like, an notorious example i can remember is in yj98 (#3, i think): when red tornado adresses to tim as 'super ego', being the most 'ethic' one out of kon & bart. i think im rambling over here, but i wanna hear your say on this LOL

ASK AWAY I LOVE TO RAMBLE 'morally grey' tim drake is pure fanon based on either mischaracterization of red robin tim drake or people's unbridled desire to have him and jason bond over hating bruce or whatever else. i made like a giant thinkpiece for oomf about a personal hc on how tims nightmares affected his moral compass but absolutely, tim is PURE super ego. given the trolley problem, tim would probably throw himself on those rails to die. he has proven it many times.

in robin #4-5, given the choice of putting steph in danger by letting her confront her father or killing arthur brown, he chose option 3: throw himself in the truck, which ended up with him nearly suffocating to death. what i personally find interesting of this is less his actions per sè and more his thoughts; every second a thought about ‘doubling air supply’ comes to his head, he punishes himself for it. he is only afraid of 'disappointing bruce', finding himself in a situation where he even had to choose 'who to save'.

in one of my favorite stories, 'batman: contagion', tim would rather die than let is father know he was dying. he wanted to avoid giving his father thta heartache and make sure that batman and robin's identity were safe so he preferred wallowing in his pain instead.

in the titans of tomorrow storyline, he didnt hesitate to put a gun to his head and nearly pull the trigger and it has to be noted that the only reason why he failed to take his own life was external factors. if it meant saving others, he was willing to let himself die.

finally (because i have too many examples LOL) a lonely place of living. too good. between letting the kanes become the target of the bombs or letting people perish, he chose the final option: redirect all explosives towards himself and let himself die.

tim counteracts hedonism, he is a pure self harming machine and most importantly, he is a masochist and a hypocrite. in his fantasies, he wishes for an easy life yet does everything in his power not to achieve that. he dates ariana, a girl whos life (as troubled as any gothamite’s can be) is fairly uncomplicated, overly accepting of his committment behaviors yet cheats on her with steph, someones whos life is an absolute mess and does nothing but make it even more complicated by being a vigilante and choosing to be involved in the vigilante life.

he says he wants to eventually quit robin and have an easy life yet, when offered the chance of actually quitting, he is trembling in his boots and afraid of a life without being robin. he comes back to bruce all the times, no matter how many times bruce disappoints him and manipulates him. he needs that complicated life, he needs to be a part of that change. he needs that pain.

[opalescent-apples]

Super easy mode hint!

It's not Feferi.

So we all understand because everyone knows the Karkat thing about how he feels like he messed up with Gamzee and Gamzee’s actions are his fault, we all understand that Karkat doesn’t have to feel like that and its not his fault correct. Correct? We listened to friend leader right?

Okay then let me ask you a Really important question. Who is responsible for Eridans actions, outside of factors like his upbringing and society or whatever.

Go ahead. Answer the question Homestuck fandom. Answer the fucking question.

[huntedsmark]

DND Ask Meme but it's random questions I've asked other players apropos of nothing within the last 6 months

Does your PC believe it’s possible to save someone?

What does saving a person involve?

How would your PC describe themselves?

How do they perceive themselves?

What is your PC’s idle animation?

What weather does your PC prefer? Why?

So if your PC had a car what kind of car would it be

How decisive is your PC?

If your PC rolled through a McDonald’s what would they order 

How does your PC fidget?

How does your PC show affection?

If your PC had to set up a date, what would they plan for it?

What’s your PCs favorite color

How does your PC feel about white lies?

How does your PC feel about marriage? Weddings?

What scents do you associate with your PC? 

What are your PCs favorite fruits (not including gay people) 

Where would your PCs fall on the futch scale? 

What is your PC’s Pokemon Gym Leader type and Signature Pokemon?

What type of chocolate do they prefer? 

What tarot would your PC be? 

What is your PC’s #1 personality strength?

What is your PC’s #1 personality flaw? 

If your PC found a book that detailed their whole life, from birth to whatever death they’ll have, would they read it and why? 

What are your PC’s charm point(s)! 

How would your PC answer the trolley problem? 

When your PCs hit rock bottom, what do they do?  

When your PCs want comfort, what do they seek out? 

Please describe your PC’s romantic type 

How does your PC flirt? 

What’s your favorite part of playing your PC? 

How much does your PC think about their actions before they execute them? 

How considerate is your PC? 

Is your PC an effective communicator? What is their communication style? 

If your PC was a dating option in a farming simulator (a la harvest moon or stardew valley), what kind of items would they like? 

Your PC meets a trickster being whose face changes to the most beautiful face a person has ever seen. Whose face is your PC seeing? 

What flower represents your PC? 

How did you choose your PC’s name? 

What would your PC put on their pizza? 

What are your PC’s eating habits? 

Does your PC have a favorite spell, and if so, which? 

Who is your PC’s favorite NPC(s) and why?

When your PCs make decisions, who or what are they making those decisions on behalf of?

[bestangelofall]

edit: i forgot to include "other" D: pls say in the tags if you think of something else

[willyeeton]

I'd probably agree with Sean Bean in this case. A trip to Mars makes an incredibly dangerous and huge rescue, unlike anything we've done in the real world.

I get to thinking about the costs and where they may help somebody else later.

I'd agree with others here that the people doing the rescuing have a full right to decide what they risk their lives for, but there are other resources involved in a trip to Mars that aren't explicitly their right to decide on. Rocket ships, rations, equipment can all do a lot of good for other people later if we don't gamble them on that one trip.

But then that feels very callous. Wrong. Bringing the worth of a man's life down to the steel, fuel, and money required to save it. I understand people saying damn it all and going all in for a human life. It's a commendably good natured instinct.

It brings my mind back to a long video I watched about a man who got pinned in a cave collapse in the early 1900s. His long battle to survive and the attempted rescues became national news. His brother and friends kept coming back to give him food and water, to try and move him, or just to talk. Rescuers eventually set about digging straight down above him, but the work was too slow and he died.

I don't think anything was lost there that wasn't worth the effort. He died, they failed, but the firefighters and construction workers and cavers that worked to save him all came back alive. All the money was made back later and heavy equipment wasn't a concern. This situation doesn't promise that.

My answer to the basic trolley problem is to pull the lever. It's simple numbers. But it gets so much harder when real world context moves in.

I should watch this movie.

I tend to be quite intrigued with movies when there are quite literally *no* bad guys. The Martian is a great example.

You accept Sean Bean’s point: You can’t give up six lives for the slim chance of saving one.

But at no point is he considered a villain. Because he isn’t.

The trolley problem.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I've perfectly understood protagonist and antagonist, but now I've lost understanding on heroes and villains. I used to think, unlike antagonists, villains are usually evil or have malevolent intent. But when I think about it, that's not what I see in most stories. When I plan out my own story, I always fail to make anybody evil - including the villain. I just don't think anyone is evil. I don't believe in it. So now my understanding of these archetypes are all messed up.

Heroes and Villains

Bear with me while I try to unpack this, because what you've stumbled into is a philosophical quagmire...

I think where you're getting hung up is the discordance between the definition of true evil, and the loose application of the word to anyone or anything that causes harm. Complicating matters is the popularity of morally gray villains, which is what I think you say you're seeing ina lot of stories.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines "evil" as "the most severe condemnation our moral vocabulary allows. Murder, torture, enslavement and prolonged humiliation are some examples of it." The definition goes on to explain that evil must involve serious, unjustifiable harm that causes suffering and damages the victims' capacity to function normally.

The keyword here is "unjustifiable," though, because... and here's where the philosophical ramifications come into play: what is and isn't justifiable can be up for debate, as is who gets to decide that.

I'm sure you've heard of the "trolley problem." If there's a runaway trolley heading toward five people stuck on the track, and you can pull a lever to divert the trolley onto another track to save them, of course you'd do it in a heartbeat. But what if there was one person stuck on the other track, so you'd be killing them to save the other five people. What do you do then? On one side, there are all sorts of arguments about the greater good, sacrificing the few to save the many, and the potential immorality of doing nothing. On the other side, you have arguments against "playing God," interfering with fate, and turning an accident into a deliberate decision to kill.

And then you get into the persnicketiness of justifiability, because killing the one to save the five is justifiable to the five people, their loved ones, and people arguing on the side of the greater good and the immorality of doing nothing. But, killing the one is not justifiable to the one who dies, their loved ones, and the people who argue against playing God, interfering with fate, and turning an accident into a deliberate decision to kill. So, no matter what you do, it's unjustifiable... but does that actually make you evil? Of course not.

And that's where things get complicated with villains in fiction and how we apply the definition of evil. One of my favorite villains ever is Niklaus Mikaelson in the Vampire Diaries universe. He's one of the original vampires... a young Viking man, abused by his father since childhood, cursed with immortality as a means of protection by his well-meaning witch mother. This leads to him and his siblings being chased by their father-turned-vampire-hunter through the centuries. Klaus's ultimate motivation is to protect his family, but as the lengths he goes to become increasingly more harmful, the justifiability of his actions becomes increasingly twisted. Klaus is certainly evil by definition of causing unjustifiable, serious harm. However, when we start to look at who he is, why he is the way he is/does what he does, and his overall motivation, we get into some gray areas.

Which is why morally gray villains are so popular in fiction, because if we can argue what is and isn't justifiable, and who does and doesn't get to determine that, things start to get really complicated, making fiction a fertile ground within which to explore the concept of evil, good vs evil, morality, etc.

So... having said that... I think you know what antagonists are, and I think you know what villains are. Don't get too caught up on the idea of pure evil. You can have a villain who causes harm for reasons that are justifiable to them or others, even if the majority of others would not see it as justifiable.

I hope that helps rather than muddying the waters!

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[howsdeanshole]

in the deancas post canon that lives in my heart where cas is back from the empty and mostly human with a finite amount of grace (more than he could have hoped for!) cas is constantly experiencing a trolley problem of how to spend himself. what hurts merit his involvement? what illnesses? what if he uses too much on something human medicine could fix and then something beyond medical intervention happens later and he doesn’t have enough? when he runs out he doesn’t THINK he’ll die but he knows now that his death will kill dean. so he has to take care of himself, too. and dean has been developing the worst health practices a man can live through for the last 40 years and it’s miserable to rewrite all those bad habits into something that will give them enough time together. and if cas tries to earnestly lecture him about eating healthier or being more careful or, god forbid, doing daily stretches, it will start a fight that lasts anywhere from 5 hours to 5 weeks, which—again—is not time he wants to waste that way. so what i’m saying is cas is going to figure out fast how to turn the maintenance of dean winchester’s health into a sex thing to get him on board.

[nothorses]

I mean, people are making these decisions, but they're not making them based on How Valuable The Life Is.

They make them based on situationally-relevant data: how big the organ is in relation to recipients, blood type compatibility, geographic location/logistical ability to transport (will it make it there in time), and urgency (can they afford to wait for the next one or not) all play a role.

But a child is never being pitted against an adult in that consideration in the first place, because it's not about whether these people "deserve" to live, or who "deserves" to live more. Like I said in my post, it's about the actual situation at hand; that's how you tailor your help.

Choosing to volunteer for a particular cause, or spend your time on particular work, is also not choosing Which Thing Is Objectively Most Valuable. And it's frankly weird to think that way!

I don't think education is the most important thing anyone can be doing; I think it's important, I believe in it, I'm good at it, it's interesting to me, and I feel good doing it.

I talk about transmasc issues because I'm transmasc, it's relevant to me, I know a lot about it, I'm interested in it, I believe in it, and I enjoy engaging in these conversations.

I don't think other issues are less important. I think we need people to organize community gardens and preserve heritage tomatoes, to focus on transfemmes and nonbinary people and lesbians and aces and other specific queer issues, to solve world hunger and engineer renewable energy, to draft and push necessary policy in their local county or city government... and everything else anyone could be doing.

But I think it's weird and frankly harmful to act as if this is all about "what's objectively most important".

We need people to pick what they can do, according to their context, strengths, and interests, and we need people to be able to ask for and receive the specific help they need, even if it's not The Most Urgent. We need to be able to value that work, and those lives, without trying to calculate on paper whether they deserve it more or less than the next.

Idk I just feel like looking past personal biases to evaluate things within their own unique contexts is perhaps less "silly" than thinking there's some math you, personally, can do to correctly rank the value of all human lives against each other.

also, the trolley problem is a thought exercise. the whole point of it is to be a thought exercise.

I feel like some of y'all took the wrong message from the "decide who gets the heart transplant" activity in high school.