Annotated 45-15
This may be belaboring the obvious (always a risk with these annotations), but one of the strengths of Sepia World is that it lets us show violence through a different lens than in Arkerra. Arkerra has occasional nods to violence’s real-life consequences, like Byron’s and Bragga’s PTSD and how Rachel’s death hits Frigg and E-Merl. But I can’t really imagine any of its adventurers agonizing like this over ending a single, non-innocent life.
Chrissie’s not wrong. It was kill or be killed, and even if it did go to trial, the self-defense case is close to inarguable. JJ threatened them all on a live feed. And yet…any life’s loss is a tragedy, regardless of how that life was used. Shanna is also not wrong to take a moment and feel the weight of it.
FB: Fortunately, Shanna is too distraught right now to worry that her supportive nerd allies’ next moves are going to be to sew her an off-brand Punisher costume and start suggesting catchphrases.
Better to be acquitted by twelve, than carried by six.
Killing itself isn’t really what’s wrong. The reasons why it is done then again…
Otherwise we’d be killing off every tiger and lion from this planet.
…
No wait, we kinda are, aren’t we? OnO
Heck, if you’re a unrepenting killer, you can get killed as well. If you’re deadly ill, you should be allowed to leave on your own terms, rather than tax already taxed medical systems for the sake of few moments more in agony and pain. If a pile of cells is going to develop into a child who no-one wants, nor wishes to care for, we have way more than enough people in here that nobody cares for and who are even actively ignored by those who should care for them, for one more to become human who will with any chance be thaught to just hate themselves and everyone around them. Heck, even people initially wanted, get thaught that, let alone those who aren’t wanted in the first place.
And…
If those were easier, more possible, it wouldn’t be just unrepentant, proven murderers that would get jabbed, but many kinds of people just doing wrong, it would not be just the deadly ill, but those of poor mental, emotional or just physical health that would receive “mercy” and some people would probably use abortion as bizarre birth control, not to mention when it would be forced for whatever reasons…
…
But… I would still lean towards allowing each of them. Most for abortion, very much for mercy deaths and I really, really wouldn’t mind seeing some more vicious creatures just being put down, despite having rather little trust in the wisdom of my fellow kin when dealing with death in any sort…
It’s even my belief we might have translated one passage a bit wrong. That “thou shalt not murder”. For there is big difference between killing and murder.
In the Torah it is generally translated as “thou shalt not murder,” though the word (רצח, ratzach) is used later (Numbers 35:11 and 35:31) to refer to both intentional murderer and accidental manslaughter while marking a line between the two and the compassion afforded.
The meaning is definitely broader than first degree murder, but it’s also narrower than “kill”. For example it is distinct from the actions of the “avenger of blood” in e.g. Numbers 35:19, who has both a right and an obligation to kill (מוּת, mûṯ) the murderer of his kin when he finds him, if that murderer doesn’t straight away flee to a city of refuge for judgment.
The topic of gun control in the US is regretfully relevant today. My condolences to the victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas