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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates

[UPDATE][SPEC][SPOILERS!] 10/19 sound clips

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TridenT
Unfettered

Joined: 29 Aug 2004
Posts: 433
Location: GameFAQs frequenter

Well, to break up the large rants and huge posts, real_trusting is up. Yay!

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Sophia was in prison before? Hmmm...

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:05 pm

BeeNetter
Boot

Joined: 13 Oct 2004
Posts: 49

Phaedra wrote:

As for the last, I wonder if it was a deliberate evocation of Churchill and Coventry?

I think it pretty obviously is. Herzog even refers to World War II, although he doesn't mention Coventry by name.

Phaedra wrote:

People doing unethical things because they believe they need to in order to survive, but I'm not sure that we're meant to take it as the moral of the story.

I didn't mean to suggest that it was the moral of the story. I'm not sure the story has a moral. It is certainly an interesting moral dilemma, as you explained in much greater detail in your post.

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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:10 pm

Buzzkill247
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Joined: 12 Oct 2004
Posts: 187
Location: Galesville WI

Phaedra wrote:

But I think the story also implicitly raises the question as to where the line is that marks us as having sacrificed too much to continue to be considered fully human.

I cannot agree more. I believe this to be one of the major underlying points of this entire web we are tangled in. The whole deal about whether or not to turn in Dana, whether we should help Melissa "eliminate" her of talk her out of it, the unfolding of the story of Jan and her apparent (possible) fight to maintian her humanity and not turn into a killing machine, etc. I believe all of this is pointing us towards a questioning and self analysis of our values and morales as the people we are. These stories automatically invoke a rhetoric of "what would I do given the same situation?"

Given current world events and what we may consider everyday mundane occurances in our lives, we need to question what is the cost of remaining human. What does the term human mean to me? What is the value of our humanity as a whole and as self?

Humanity is the core definition of what it is to be human. If we lose this - even to relinquish a part of it - we alter the definition of what we are now, and for our generations to come. Maintaining humanity often comes at a sacrifice. Many times the sacrifice of one... sometimes the sacrifice of many. The question that is posed is what price is acceptable for us relative to our morales/ethics/etc. That is not so much a theme of this story, as more of a highlight/reminder.

But nonetheless - theme or not - well worth some serious introspection from all of us

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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:42 pm

MeKiwi
Decorated

Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 260
Location: San Francisco

JasonShin wrote:

Durga: (little girl voice) Like half memories of this... big stone building with a lot of rooms and (gradually becoming more normal voice) I run around and hide and send messages to people.

This seems to suggest that the girl we're talking about is *our* sleeping princess, and not some Durga-version. Unless Durga's sleeping princess is sending messages behind her back. In any case, I'm still voting for the split across time SPEC. It seems that the battle for who will be the dominant aspect of the merged AI is ramping up, with th eactivities of the various AIs really starting collide with each other.

Hmmm... are you suggesting that perhaps the Sleeping Princess IS the " fragile connection to a Durga in the future"? That the SP is actually the conduit between Melissa and Durga? Very interesting...

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:17 pm

MeKiwi
Decorated

Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 260
Location: San Francisco

Shadowkiller wrote:

MeKiwi wrote:

Sorry, I think I may have missed something... do we have confirmation that more Spartan-II classes actually exist? Or are you mistakenly referring to JJ, Gladys, and Gillie (Spartan-Is)?

In a round about way we have. Last week when Durga found out who she was from Jersey. They've been hinting all along that Yasmine was kidnapped to make a Spartan II. Smartest, fastest, strongest, all trademarks of a kid taken to become a Spartan II. I haven't mistaken JJ, Gilly or Gladys as a II.

Thanks Shadowkiller, I figured that out after posting. But thanks for the clarification! ^_^

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:21 pm

JasonShin
Boot

Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 26

MeKiwi, no I wasn't actually thinking that specifically, but it may well have been rattling around in my brain. What I actually meant to convey was that I felt that the three aspects of the AI - that is, SP , Durga, and Melissa - are all really starting to increase the amount of effort they put into being *the* dominate aspect of a merged A.I., whether conciously (Melissa) or unconciously (Durga, who's mostly reacting and trying to figure out what's going on).

However, for the other SPEC, I'll be happy to take credit for it if you don't want any Razz

. It's certainly something I'll think about. I believe what happened is that the possibility was there and my post enabled you to see it. I was glad to have been of help Smile

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:15 pm

TheBiggestSean
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 90

Phaedra wrote:

BeeNetter wrote:

As much as we all hate Standish, I have to wonder whether the world has to be saved from him, or if Standish is saving the world. Unless he is actually a cleverly disguised Elite...

I knew it!

Quote:

One of the big themes in the Halo universe is that, against an enemy as powerful as the Covenant, you have to do totally unethical things just to survive. Things such as kidnapping 6 year old children for enlistment in a program that kills half of them, or allowing the enemy to kill millions of people whom you could have evacuated.

As for the last, I wonder if it was a deliberate evocation of Churchill and Coventry?

Anyway, back on topic, I'm not sure if it's safe to say that:

Quote:

One of the big themes in the Halo universe is that, against an enemy as powerful as the Covenant, you have to do totally unethical things just to survive.

People doing unethical things because they believe they need to in order to survive, but I'm not sure that we're meant to take it as the moral of the story.

Just because a character in a story (even a main character...even the hero) does something, it doesn't necessarily follow that the author agrees or is trying to support such an action.

For example, in C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy, the savior of his world, the man who founded the Church that allows the settlers of his planet to survive amongst dangerous alien forces, the man who may have created the protection that his people revere as G-d, essentially sells his soul to the devil in order to see it through, becoming a rather vampiric demon that sustains itself by feeding on fear, hunting and torturing his victims.

When he finally does come face to face with a power that may be the fruit of what he's created, or (it's hinted) may actually be G-d Himself, the experience is anathaema to him, and he realizes that he is truly damned by his own intelligence, his own power, and his own resourcefulness.

Ultimately, he's involved in saving the world. Ultimately, he sacrifices himself for it, and that salvation could not have been accomplished had he not done what he did.

Does this mean that the moral of the story is that if you're trying to save the world from an alien force that feeds on humans' minds, you should go to whatever lengths are necessary? Can we assume that was what the author was trying to say?

I don't think so. I think you can read the "moral of the story" as the idea that even something that seems irredeemable can be turned to good ends, but I also think the story is too ethically complex to be reduced to having one obvious moral.

I believe the same is true of the Haloverse. I'm not sure we're supposed to read it as "Standish is right, sometimes the ends justify the means." I think we're supposed to wonder.

For example:

TheBiggestSean wrote:

Standish is probably more afraid of his power base being erroded. It's amazing what people are capable of doing in terms of evil/misdeeds when it comes to THEIR personal security. If Standish knew what Rani and Herzog knew about the device, he'd disappear and act on it accordingly, but he probably thinks of it as a weapon or a bargainning tool...<snip>...Whether or not the Covenant are coming is immaterial to him - he has a job to do, and he will see that it gets done. No matter the methods...<snip>..Even if we do assign him this view that he thinks of himself as a hero, he's a hero for the wrong reasons. The relative moralism theme is important here, and Standish lacks that. He sees everything big pictures of black and white, not the grayscale that the Master Chief, Dr. Halsey, Jersey, Kamal, and Jan see the world in.

Beenetter appears to assign relative moralism to Standish: "the ends justify the means." TheBiggestSean sees Standish as an absolutist instead. So, do we have here competing forms of moral relativism? It seems to me that there is no univocal endorsement of one type of morality; the writers are multivocal and ethically ambiguous because as far as morality goes, it's not "what the text says" so much as what we, the readers, bring to the text. In some ways, the story is reading us as much as we're reading it.

Kind of like those wonderfully morally ambiguous Biblical stories...oh wait, you got there ahead of me Smile

BeeNetter wrote:

However, it is significantly different in the Haloverse. The Covenant mean to exterminate every last human being. Language such as "Your destruction is the will of the Gods" is similar to Biblical tales in which God commands Israel to destroy enemy tribes down to the last man.

It's debatable as to whether the divinely-ordered wars in the Bible are analogous to what the Covenant are doing; Amalek, for example, in Hebrew writings is synonomous with "evil," so it's questionable as to whether the story should be read non-allegorically, but this is probably a discussion for another time and place.

BeeNetter wrote:

How much morality can we sacrifice when the survival of the human race is at stake? Quite a lot, if you ask me.

But I think the story also implicitly raises the question as to where the line is that marks us as having sacrificed too much to continue to be considered fully human.

You rock, Goddess.

I'd go through and "Snip" the parts that strike me as most important, but the entirety of the post screams well thought-out and articulate.

Of course, who expects anything less. Smile

In any case, there's a lot at stake that we haven't seen pulled into the story arc yet, and I truly believe that to re-inforce this "grayscale ethics" system that they've been pushing, we're going to see "Black and White" AND grayscale from BOTH sides of the current war in th Haloverse.

That's right. Maybe HERO Covenant. Or at least Heretics. It's important to remember that deciding that ALL The Covenant are bad is a very Black & White thing to do.

And that's not where we seem to be headed is it...

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:35 pm

Cherry Cotton
Decorated

Joined: 04 Aug 2004
Posts: 237

MeKiwi wrote:

JasonShin wrote:

Hmmm... are you suggesting that perhaps the Sleeping Princess IS the " fragile connection to a Durga in the future"? That the SP is actually the conduit between Melissa and Durga? Very interesting...

Or maaayybe.... the Pious Flea? It can get messages to Durga, it seems to have worked its way into Melissa's head, perhaps it's getting the messages from Durga as well...

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:55 pm

Gram
Boot

Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 35
Location: Cold, with a 86% chance of Rain

Quote:

It's important to remember that deciding that ALL The Covenant are bad is a very Black & White thing to do.

They WILL.. KILL... US.. ALL! If that's not bad, what is? Heretics and failures in Covenant society are treated WORSE then humans. So I don't see it happening.

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Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2004 2:49 am

TheBiggestSean
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 90

Gram wrote:

Quote:

It's important to remember that deciding that ALL The Covenant are bad is a very Black & White thing to do.

They WILL.. KILL... US.. ALL! If that's not bad, what is? Heretics and failures in Covenant society are treated WORSE then humans. So I don't see it happening.

I think you're jumping to unnecessary conclusions. If the Covenant Heretics understand that perhaps embracing infidels will give them a chance at what's left of their lives, then who can say? I just don't think it should be counted out.

It's long been speculated that Halo's creators love good classic Sci-Fi themes.

One of the only ones I haven't seen used so far is "The Enemy of my Enemy, is my Friend."

You also forget the Engineers. Peaceful, docile creatures that don't deserve to be subjected to a mass genocide any more than we do.

Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:53 am

Phaedra
Lurker v2.0

Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously

Morality again.

Had meant to reply to these, had gotten caught up in other things, doing it now.

Buzzkill247 wrote:

Phaedra wrote:

But I think the story also implicitly raises the question as to where the line is that marks us as having sacrificed too much to continue to be considered fully human.

Yes, although I wonder how much one's decisions in a game, writing a story, or even having a theoretical discussion can be trusted as an indicator of what one would actually do.

For example, if -- in a game, story or theoretical discussion -- the question were: "If you had a chance to go back in time and smother Hitler in his cradle, would you?" my answer would be an unqualified yes.

Even in real life, if the question were asked of me in reference to someone else: "If we can send him back in time, do you think he should take out Hitler?" my answer would be yes.

I think that in real life, my answer would be yes. But I'm not sure. When I start to try to picture myself in that situation, I start to feel queasy. What if that act had unexpected consequences? Could I really kill another human being in a case that was not self-defense, even to save the lives of twelve million people (not counting the WWII casualties)?

I don't know, and the fact that that I would have difficulty doing it myself makes me question the ethical issues. However, as long as the question isn't real, for the sake of a game, fiction, or even for a theoretical question, my answer remains yes.

Quote:

Given current world events and what we may consider everyday mundane occurances in our lives, we need to question what is the cost of remaining human. What does the term human mean to me? What is the value of our humanity as a whole and as self?

Indeed, that is very much the question: How much can we subordinate our humanity to necessity without losing it?

Quote:

Maintaining humanity often comes at a sacrifice. Many times the sacrifice of one... sometimes the sacrifice of many.

And here, I think, we differ. My own code of ethics says that we lose part of our humanity if we sacrifice even one unwilling soul. If someone says he is willing to die to save my country, fine. However, if I cause his death, even to save millions of people, when he was not willing to die for them, then I think I've lost part of what makes me human. I'm not saying that people who have to make decisions like that are less worthy or less good, or anything else. But I do think that being responsible for something like that changes you, and I'm not sure it's a change that I could live happily with.

But I don't think that maintaining our humanity ever requires the sacrifice of either one or many. Maintaining our existence does. And sometimes, unfortunately, the former must bow to the latter.

Quote:

The question that is posed is what price is acceptable for us relative to our morales/ethics/etc. That is not so much a theme of this story, as more of a highlight/reminder.

This, I agree with completely. I think it will be more of a theme in Halo 2, and we've already seen that it became a pivotal theme in the Melissa-SP story -- the SP (and, in some ways, the Melissa we knew) had to die for Melissa to regain her humanity. Paradoxical, no?

TheBiggestSean wrote:

I'm going to run out of burritos pretty soon. Very Happy

Thank you.

Quote:

I rather suspect it -- the new trailer shows what appears to be an Elite speaking English (perhaps through a translator? I don't know) and prophets who speak. It seems to me that by hearing any Covenant other than lowly grunts speak in a way we can understand, we're going to encounter some of the "other side of the story."

I'm certainly not saying that I think the Covenant may be right, obviously, but their reason for wanting Earth to fall may not be as simple as "Our gods told us too," and any time there's complexity, there's more room for competing or even conflicting ideas.

I'm not sure about "hero Covenant," but I have a feeling we might meet up with Covenant who don't quite qualify as evil.

For that matter, why are they called the "Covenant"? The term "covenant," basically means a contract or an agreement. One who is in a covenant is bound.

So (and perhaps someone who's read the books can help me out here) -- to what are they bound? Is it merely that multiple alien races have bonded together in order to accomplish whatever it is that their major goal is? Or is there some larger principle to which they are bound?

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Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:57 pm

Kali
Decorated

Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Posts: 162

Re: Morality again.

Phaedra wrote:

For example, if -- in a game, story or theoretical discussion -- the question were: "If you had a chance to go back in time and smother Hitler in his cradle, would you?" my answer would be an unqualified yes.

Even in real life, if the question were asked of me in reference to someone else: "If we can send him back in time, do you think he should take out Hitler?" my answer would be yes.

I think that in real life, my answer would be yes. But I'm not sure. When I start to try to picture myself in that situation, I start to feel queasy. What if that act had unexpected consequences? Could I really kill another human being in a case that was not self-defense, even to save the lives of twelve million people (not counting the WWII casualties)?

I don't know, and the fact that that I would have difficulty doing it myself makes me question the ethical issues. However, as long as the question isn't real, for the sake of a game, fiction, or even for a theoretical question, my answer remains yes.

Except that we don't know what the effects of his absence would be.

Perhaps it would make the world all sunshine and chocolates, but I doubt it. Remember that it was only after Hitler that the Geneva Conventions were conceived. They were a direct response to the horror of that period. Although I acknowledge that it seems the GC and UN have little effect at present, but we don't know what the world political situation would be like without them. We don't know how it would shape our (or others) future actions if we didn't have them in our collective conscience.

Hitler's actions brought a new level of horror to WWII, but I don't think he instigated it in the sense that, no war would have happened if he hadn't been in charge. The social and economic situation in Germany at the time was such that another war was all but inevitable. We don't know what sort of atrocities would have occurred under someone else.

I'll I'm saying is that there's another moral question hidden in your scenario. If you could alter history without knowing what the consequences are, would you still do it?

*sigh* I just realized that that understanding of time is dependent on the Multiple Worlds Theory.

So go ahead, get yourself a Dalorian and kill the Censored

Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:26 pm

Phaedra
Lurker v2.0

Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously

Re: Morality again.

Kali wrote:

Except that we don't know what the effects of his absence would be.

Which is one of the reasons that, in real life, I'm not certain I would do it.

Kali wrote:

Perhaps it would make the world all sunshine and chocolates, but I doubt it. Remember that it was only after Hitler that the Geneva Conventions were conceived. They were a direct response to the horror of that period. Although I acknowledge that it seems the GC and UN have little effect at present, but we don't know what the world political situation would be like without them. We don't know how it would shape our (or others) future actions if we didn't have them in our collective conscience.

Well, and if Hitler hadn't done it and thereby horrified the world, someone might have gotten away with an even more extensive genocide.

However, whether it would have destroyed the Yiddish-speaking culture of non-assimilated European Jewry, which I feel held some potential solutions for some of our current cultural woes, especially some of the gender issues that are beginning to cast doubts on the success of second-wave feminism.

Kali wrote:

Hitler's actions brought a new level of horror to WWII, but I don't think he instigated it in the sense that, no war would have happened if he hadn't been in charge. The social and economic situation in Germany at the time was such that another war was all but inevitable. We don't know what sort of atrocities would have occurred under someone else.

I would still argue that without Hitler, the Holocaust would not have happened. Studying the Holocaust has made me doubt whether the "Jewish problem" was simply a matter of having targeted an obvious scapegoat; rather it seems to have been a central issue from the beginning, and one with which Hitler was obsessed. And I mean obsessed. Throughout the war he did things which threatened the security of Germany and his ability to win the war in order to continue killing Jews.

But who knows. Maybe the Cold War would have ended in a nuclear winter if someone had smothered him in his cradle.

Quote:

I'll I'm saying is that there's another moral question hidden in your scenario. If you could alter history without knowing what the consequences are, would you still do it?

Depends. Because...

Quote:

*sigh* I just realized that that understanding of time is dependent on the Multiple Worlds Theory.

Good job.

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Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 12:35 am

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