Annotated 48-32
FB: “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means that Syr’Nj would be better off getting blown up than finishing the oratory.”
–Jerry Seinfeld, edited.
Time to check back in with this outfit’s chief military leaders, wouldn’t you say? And at the same time, we get the full consequences of the decision Jarvis has just made…the last of many sins by the Altruists against the people they claimed to uplift.
I feel like some of you might’ve misunderstood me when I said that Jarvis’s never-say-die attitude was a “heroic quality.” I do think it’s admirable in isolation (it’s certainly better than a Taro-style tantrum or total denial). But you can’t isolate it from the rest of him forever, and it’s his many less savory qualities (like, oh, willingness to sacrifice the lives of common citizens) that seem more likely to tip Anubis’ scales in the end.
One does not really think about death, until one comes face to face with it. And even then one usually figures that no matter how much trouble dying itself is, after it you’ll be in state where your death no longer plays any role. Unless you turn into a vengeful spirit, then it might be a bit more bother…
Public speaking, you do see it a lot, you can imagine yourself in such situation very easily. You’ve been in such situation, even if it was just talking to your friends in a public space. You know how it feels, how it works. And WHEN (‘cose obviously it will be when) you screw up, you just don’t end up somewhere nasty, but where almost everyone has it just as bad. You’re still here. And you have to carry all that bother, shame and whatever else comes from your goofup until you die.
Which in that light is for many the more preferrable option.
…
But honestly it shouldn’t be. There’s absolutely miniscule amount of public speaking goofups that couldn’t be fixed somehow. No matter how bad. Dying… You can’t fix. At least not with current medical knowledge. Maybe later. But you should really, really waut until it if you can, ‘cose only so many people have come back from the “last trip” and a lot of them were legit gods. Humans have reaaaaally tough time coming back from it. Public speaking? Not so much. That’s hella easy compared to escaping hell.
My rule for public speaking: Avoid it if you don’t know what you want to say, make it an expression of yourself if you do. Don’t try to use other people’s words, use your own. And if you make a whoopsie: A little comic interlude never hurt noone.
But on the upside, if you die you never have to speak in public ever again.
I’m more blinking at the “arguably” in “arguably villainous,” myself. Like. Put on his tombstone “he was better than Taro,” if that was really worth noting, but I am not seeing the case that he was anything but a villain at any time in the memory of any other character in the story.