text; un: talon

[honededge]

yo, i don't normally pay attention to the network but like i'm losing sleep over this shit and i need some outside opinions.

think we can change? like really change? i'm not talking about the ability to overhaul your look or attitude, i mean like. change in the long run. if we've done really bad things, even if it was just to make it by, do you think we can still be good people one day?

like what even counts as a good person or a bad person, you know? if you kill someone so that you can continue living, are you a bad person? if you steal from the exceptionally wealthy because you're exceptionally poor, is it still a bad thing to do? are you only bad if you do it without reason? does the reason have to be good enough? good enough for who?

i dunno, what do you guys think? i'm starting to think i'm a real bad person by this station's standards and it's kinda freaking me out.

Comments

[letsplayer]

IDK I just go by like

for a lot of people it's mostly a know it when you see it kinda thing this isn't really objective

you wanma be more specific about what's on your mind

[honededge]

well the thing is, i've killed a lot of people and stolen a lot of things. mostly for money, sometimes to make a statement on someone else's behalf. i did all those things because where i'm from, you have a tag attached, and if you lose that tag like i did, you're a criminal for life whether you like it or not.

but i wanted to protect people once. think i still do.

can't decide whether the good intentions now make up for the bad actions way back when.

[letsplayer]

first of all I have to ask

is any of this navel gazing shit about yoshi

we've all got different priorities

personally I don't think stealing stuff is too bad if you don't leave people out to starve because they don't have shit

but I also don't think it's possible to make up for shit you did in the past with shit you do in the present

not that people can't change

they just don't get to be forgiven for stuff they did before the fact unless the person they did shit to wants to

like a lot of people view all your moral choices as operating on some kind of point system when really they're all kinda unrelated from each other most of the time

but also that tag thing is a load of shit

what I'm saying is instead of trying to view the whole picture maybe just try to help people in the moment

text; luciferskylight

[burninglight]

probably

people do bad things for good reasons all the time, doesn't automatically make them irredeemable

morality's a pain in the ass like that

[honededge]

dunno if i'd call it good reasons. where i'm from, if you're a criminal once, you tend to be a criminal forever. i kinda fell down the criminal rabbit hole and got stuck doing crime in order to survive. which is a good enough reason for me, but like.

who gets to say whether your life is worth the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds by the time you bite it, of others.

[burninglight]

the world doesn't operate on perfect justice or ideas of what is or isn't fair.

you did what you had to to survive, not just because you felt like it from what you're saying. already that doesn't sound like the most terrible thing in the universe

[fistsofchange]

Can I tell you a story about a man I knew?

[honededge]

by all means, shoot

Gonna break the story apart into a couple of tags, Talon can just interject where he pleases

[fistsofchange]

His name was Yang Wei, and he was a monster. He led an army of some of the most vicious raiders the land had ever seen since the war, pillaging and conquering every settlement he came across.

[fistsofchange]

He was finally stopped when his army attacked my valley, when I was an initiate. The Temple of the Soaring Fist where I lived at the time guards the only practical entrance for an army to attack through, and it is a fortress that has never fallen in battle.

After his defeat, we watched as his army tore itself apart from infighting. We didn't find out until later that Yang Wei had vanished that very night.

[fistsofchange]

[This part of the text takes a while to appear, as Lin spent a while trying to figure out how to put down painful memories.]

Later, after I had left the temple, I met him.

I didn't know that it was him until later. He was a quiet and withdrawn man who was still deeply deeply stained with the violence he was done, but was determined to make things better by taking down others who sought to be like he had been.

[fistsofchange]

The story doesn't have an entirely happy ending, I'm afraid. Yang Wei died, but he died helping us stop a madman from driving the world even deeper into chaos than it already was.

One day, a butcher of a man just sort of woke up, and spent the rest of his life working to undo everything he had once stood for. I don't know if it was enough to undo all the wrong he had done, but without him, we all probably would have died. I like to think, at least, that in his next life he found a measure of peace.

Done!

[fistsofchange]

The point is, I don't think anyone is ever so deeply corrupted by their past that they can't turn their life around. You're never so far into the dark that you can't find the light again if you want to try. Blood and dirt wash off. All it takes is commitment.

un; inconvenient

[theosophomoric]

I honestly don't think it's possible for a person not to change, one way or another.

[honededge]

yeah that's not unreasonable. guess i'm just wondering if it matters.

like i'll never undo the people i've killed or the things i've stolen from people, even if i turn into a saint from this day forth. can someone ever make up for their actions, you know?

text; carnivac

[anarchia]

Stealing is a crime, but what about the wealthy wallowing in the comfort of excess whilst others struggle in poverty? Do the elite not cause greater suffering than those scraping to get by?

If anyone is at fault in that situation, it's those who allow that to go on, who profit and thrive from it, whilst those worse off are pushed to the brink.

Sometimes these things are necessary. Whether they're 'good' or 'bad' depends on why.

[honededge]

well the "why" is that i lost the right to legally work or live anywhere so the entire world considers me trash. i pretty much hard committed to crime because i didn't really have a choice in the matter.

the rich get richer in my world, that's just how it's always been. i spent a lot of time stealing from people who had too much money so that i could have just enough to get by. usually because someone else was telling me to. i also killed for money quite often. sometimes the people deserved it, sometimes they were just like me, they just picked the wrong guy to cross. but i was always doing it so that i could stay alive.

don't know how right that makes it in the end.

yuurinokimi

[serrata]

I think the fact that you're worried enough about this to ask us means you're on the right track, at least. But I also don't think it's up to any of us here to make that sort of choice for you. We're all from different worlds and we all have different ideas of what could be right and wrong.

But for what it's worth, I think even if you do start off as a bad person, it's not impossible to change yourself eventually.

[honededge]

but does it matter in the long run? if you're never really forgiven by the people you wronged, or by yourself, or by the people you meet later? even if i were to save as many lives as i've taken and/or donate as much money as i've stolen, would that ever make up for what i did in the first place?

i know it comes across as dramatic but. fuck it, the whole station's having a drama week, might as well be part of it.

text; darkwings

[thoroff]

I couldn't tell you what a good person is - gods know I have too much blood on my own hands - but as long as one lives, one does have the ability to change. That's what I believe, at least.

[honededge]

and do you think it matters if we change? does it make up for what we did before?

text; elevencrows

[founderinglight]

Doing bad things 'just to make it by' is not really so terrible in the first place.

Intention matters. The desire to survive is perfectly understandable, in virtually any circumstance. I don't think it really makes one a bad person at all, myself.

No one is perfect. What matters is less what it is you've done, and what you want to do in the future, if you ask me.

[honededge]

intention may matter to us, but i don't think it matters much to the dead. guess i worry that my life isn't worth the dozens i took to keep it.

i want to protect people in the future. i want to make people feel safe and have them know they can count on me to watch out for them. can't do that if people hate me for what i've done. glad to see the majority opinion is that i'm not scum of the earth.

maybe if i save as many lives as i took it'll balance out on the scale.

voice; un: morganathegreat

[meowna]

People can change, for better and for worse. I've seen it with my own eyes!

As for being a good person..... well, it's not that easy to pin down, you know? You can be a good person and do bad things, or be a bad person and do good things. You can even do anything with good or bad intentions, and those don't always color the result.

In the end, though..... I think it depends on how much control you have over your actions. If you choose to do more harm than you really have to, or deliberately do it when you didn't have to at all, then you're probably doing something bad.

[honededge]

[Talon hesitates to use the voice feature, but eventually says "fuck it" and gives in. It just removes a step of anonymity, he feels. Unsettling.]

Yeah, I guess. I'm getting the impression that my crimes are not considered excessive by the station's standards. Which is comforting, but I'm still not like. Completely convinced that I'm in the clear? Dunno, I guess I'm just hoping that my life is worth the lives I burned through to keep it. It feels like those actions were either critically bad or largely acceptable, with very little space in between.