Well I don't think most people have to answer the sort of questions I asked. I get that it's your job, but as you said, you aren't supposed to handle cases like this. It's complicated and really messed up. So thank you for handling what I threw at you.
I'm not, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen sometimes anyway. One of the guys that's got about the same amount of experiences as me has handled some pretty messed up things and we still aren't sure why. He got a pair of marked guys once, it was screwed up as hell.
Yeah. Marked people...those are the ones I've told you about, the ones who kill for unjust reasons. Self-defense doesn't count toward that, war doesn't count toward that. If it's survival then you're clean, if it's an accident you're clean, if there was no malicious intent behind what you did then you're clean. But people who knowingly murder other people are marked.
The guy I know...we'd talk sometimes after the cases that were screwed up, the sort of thing that warrants some time off. Not really indepth because we didn't get along. Just talking about the mess we'd gotten done handling, as you do.
The one I'm thinking of involved a pair of guys, a cop and some teenage kid. The cop had been fucked over by someone, I think his wife died, and so he started killing people that he thought were "guilty" without bothering to go through the justice system because he decided that he had more right than anyone else to go full judge, jury and executioner on people. He also liked to watch the people he wanted to kill do bad things to other people, so he'd have a reason to go through with it. He'd let them do whatever they were going to do and then he'd get all high on justice and kill them later.
So this came around to its logical conclusion when the kid's sister got brutalized by somebody while the cop just watched. The kid killed the guy who did it, then he and the cop managed to do a great job killing each other or something.
That's terrible. I'm so sorry this was something your coworker had to handle. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been.
But I have a question for you. What's the "justice system"?
[NATURALLY HE'S FROM A VILLAGE WITHOUT THAT AND NO ONE BOTHERED TO EXPLAIN STUFF LIKE THIS TO HIM]
I know there are a lot of awful people out there, but sometimes it's hard to remember it. I've been very lucky to be surrounded by good people. And even the chief wasn't a terrible person - he was wrong to do everything he did, but he really seemed to think it was for the best. Though maybe that guy thought killing people who had committed crimes was for the best too.
No it's definitely better to not remember things like that all the time, some people go through life thinking that everyone around them is evil and that always leads to really bad life choices later down the line. So it's probably better to think that everyone's mostly good as opposed to thinking everyone's terrible. I still don't really think people can be either, but most humans don't really get that.
As for the justice system, it depends on where you live. It's pretty much a bunch of people who make sure that laws are followed. Like the police here, there are some of those cop girls in blue skirts wandering around and all of them are called Jessie or Janice or something? ...Jenny. I think they're all Jenny. But those people are part of the justice system here. If you do something illegal like stealing or attacking cities or whatever and they catch you, they can arrest you and put you in jail. Stuff like that.
Some places don't have one at all. In the place that guy came from, he was a cop, which means he was in charge of arresting people suspected of breaking the law. After he arrested them, he was supposed to bring them to court, where the person who supposedly broke the law can either confess to doing it, or they can try to say that they didn't, but if they do that they have to prove that they didn't. There are people who are appointed to help argue that - that's their job, it's what they do with their lives, they review cases where it looks like someone broke the law, and they take the case in front of an impartial person whose job it is to hear stuff like this and make decisions about it, and they try to prove whether the person is innocent or guilty.
It's not the cop's job to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty and it's definitely not his job to kill them after witnessing stuff like that, he's supposed to take them to court and give them a fair trial because where he's from it's important to treat everyone equally like that - just because you might have done something bad it doesn't mean you're not a person anymore, you still have rights and killing you on the spot takes those rights away.
Oh, I see. We didn't have anything like that in our village. Everything was pretty peaceful. I remember there was one time when someone stole food from another house, but the chief resolved that. We didn't really have any reason for a system like that, but there were only fifty of us. In a larger village or in a city something like that would be vital, I'd imagine.
Thank you for explaining it to me. I still don't really understand how that works, but I suppose that's normal considering where I'm from.
I don't understand why that man would want to murder people. Even if he could justify it in his own mind, he had to actually kill them himself, correct? It wasn't like leaving them to die. I think there's a pretty big difference there, but that's not really something I understand either.
No, it isn't. But it's... less personal, I suppose? I think it would be easier to excuse something like that in your head. In the chief's experience, he never knew if any of those people actually died or not. I'm sure he assumed they did, but since none of us could go up to the surface to check...
Sorry, I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to get across here. This is just something I've been thinking a lot about. You've said that people who kill because they were fighting in a war aren't marked, right?
Oh. Well if that's how you're looking at it then yeah, it's less messed up to leave someone to die. Like you said, it's less personal and it's not like you have to watch them die either and it's usually the watching part that messes people up.
As for soldiers and stuff...I haven't really dealt with a lot of war stuff either yet because that's a different sort of messed up but I don't think the whole marked thing is the reason. It doesn't count as murder though.
Yes, that's what I meant. It's still really messed up, but I can see where the chief was able to distance himself from it. I don't like that at all, but at least I can sort of make sense of that.
...I'm asking about soldiers because my friends and I are fighting against the beastmen. They're the ones who control the surface world and kill any human who sets foot up there. We're fighting to reclaim the surface for humanity and while there aren't very many of us, we've managed to capture a battleship. (I believe that's what it's called?)
My friends have killed a lot of people. Beastmen are a lot like humans. They're intelligent and they can clearly think for themselves, so they're closer to humans than beasts. No one really seems bothered by the fact that so many people died. We captured the battleship a week before I arrived here and before that we hadn't seen very many people die.
Then our leader died and it messed everyone up. I understand why, but no one really seemed bothered by the fact that so many beastmen died too. I understand that they're our enemies and honestly, I wasn't bothered by their deaths back home either.
But I've had time to think about it and being here surrounded by Pokemon... it makes it kind of hard to process what happened.
Our leader controlled a gunmen and it's one that no one else has stepped forward to pilot. I've been practicing with it, so they sent me out in it and... I think I'm going to have to fight some beastmen on my own. I'm going to have to kill them in order to survive and while I don't know how much of a problem that would be for me back home, it's kind of messing me up here. I don't really want to go back. I know I have to because they need me, but...
I'm sorry, I got carried away. This isn't really something I can talk about with anyone but that doesn't mean I should keep dumping all of this stuff on you.
It's like I said, I don't mind if you want to talk about stuff I guess. Better me than most other people because at least I've got some experience with this sort of thing even if the actual situation is pretty much beyond me.
[There's something else that's bothering him, though, outside of the situation itself; he wants clarification on that before even trying to look at anything else.]
Okay, before I get into the rest of what you've said I kind of want to know first - how old are you?
[Because this one had looked really young over the video a while ago.]
Yeah, I think it's better not to bother most of them with this sort of thing. A lot of them seem very innocent.
I'm fourteen. I believe our leader was seventeen, maybe? A lot of our friends are in their late teenage years or early twenties, though some of them are older than that. Why?
[And that really is all that it is; he's not a soft touch normally anyway, and he's not going to say that kids shouldn't die because the fact of the matter is that they do, all the damn time. It's not something arbiters are ever crazy about dealing with, but at the same time as far as Ginti is concerned, humans live just so they can die eventually - kids just happen to die a lot sooner than others.
Is it fucked up? Probably. But that doesn't make it any less of a reality, now, does it.
So this is a literal kid. That's fine. The literal kid is also indirectly asking him if he'll go to hell if he dies in some war that exactly no one asked for, which is sort of less fine but you know what, he's seen worse.]
Look, you and your friends aren't going to be marked for whatever it is you guys are doing out there. Because war is just like that and because if it wasn't them it'd be you. You called it survival right? That's an important thing, it's something you should keep in mind because that's why it matters when your leader dies but it doesn't matter when the people that are trying to kill you die, and there's no arbiter in the entire damn tower that's going to call you on that and say you deserve the Void for it.
Whether anyone's life is worth more or less than anyone else's is something that we decide all the time, but it's not something that the living can be expected to choose for themselves and like I said to you before, intent matters. You just do what you think you have to and you do what you think is right, and we'll take care of you once everything's said and done because that's what we do. If the idea of killing people messes you up that's a good thing because there's a reason it's considered so bad by pretty much every standard that's out there but we get that sometimes people die because they're in circumstances that no one in their right minds asked for and sometimes they die because war breaks out and sometimes they die because it's them or someone else and that's just how things shook out.
We get all of your memories when you come to us, we can see everything about your life and all the decisions that came along for you to deal with and we know how you think. If this is survival for you and your friends we'll get that too.
Thank you very much. I really needed to hear that. You're very good at saying exactly what I need.
I don't know everything our leader did before I met him, but he was a very good person. I don't believe he's in any danger of being sent to the Void. I really do appreciate hearing that though - that if it's survival it's different. I don't like thinking that any one person's life matters than another's, but you're right about that too. I was upset about losing my mother, not about the other villagers that were sent up to the surface world before and after her.
I think I'll need time to work through all of this as well, but I feel better. I feel like things will be okay now, even if I'm not sure how everything will turn out back home.
Thank you very much and I'm sorry I keep doing this. You're a very easy person to talk to!
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The guy I know...we'd talk sometimes after the cases that were screwed up, the sort of thing that warrants some time off. Not really indepth because we didn't get along. Just talking about the mess we'd gotten done handling, as you do.
The one I'm thinking of involved a pair of guys, a cop and some teenage kid. The cop had been fucked over by someone, I think his wife died, and so he started killing people that he thought were "guilty" without bothering to go through the justice system because he decided that he had more right than anyone else to go full judge, jury and executioner on people. He also liked to watch the people he wanted to kill do bad things to other people, so he'd have a reason to go through with it. He'd let them do whatever they were going to do and then he'd get all high on justice and kill them later.
So this came around to its logical conclusion when the kid's sister got brutalized by somebody while the cop just watched. The kid killed the guy who did it, then he and the cop managed to do a great job killing each other or something.
...It was messed up.
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But I have a question for you. What's the "justice system"?
[NATURALLY HE'S FROM A VILLAGE WITHOUT THAT AND NO ONE BOTHERED TO EXPLAIN STUFF LIKE THIS TO HIM]
I know there are a lot of awful people out there, but sometimes it's hard to remember it. I've been very lucky to be surrounded by good people. And even the chief wasn't a terrible person - he was wrong to do everything he did, but he really seemed to think it was for the best. Though maybe that guy thought killing people who had committed crimes was for the best too.
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As for the justice system, it depends on where you live. It's pretty much a bunch of people who make sure that laws are followed. Like the police here, there are some of those cop girls in blue skirts wandering around and all of them are called Jessie or Janice or something? ...Jenny. I think they're all Jenny. But those people are part of the justice system here. If you do something illegal like stealing or attacking cities or whatever and they catch you, they can arrest you and put you in jail. Stuff like that.
Some places don't have one at all. In the place that guy came from, he was a cop, which means he was in charge of arresting people suspected of breaking the law. After he arrested them, he was supposed to bring them to court, where the person who supposedly broke the law can either confess to doing it, or they can try to say that they didn't, but if they do that they have to prove that they didn't. There are people who are appointed to help argue that - that's their job, it's what they do with their lives, they review cases where it looks like someone broke the law, and they take the case in front of an impartial person whose job it is to hear stuff like this and make decisions about it, and they try to prove whether the person is innocent or guilty.
It's not the cop's job to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty and it's definitely not his job to kill them after witnessing stuff like that, he's supposed to take them to court and give them a fair trial because where he's from it's important to treat everyone equally like that - just because you might have done something bad it doesn't mean you're not a person anymore, you still have rights and killing you on the spot takes those rights away.
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Thank you for explaining it to me. I still don't really understand how that works, but I suppose that's normal considering where I'm from.
I don't understand why that man would want to murder people. Even if he could justify it in his own mind, he had to actually kill them himself, correct? It wasn't like leaving them to die. I think there's a pretty big difference there, but that's not really something I understand either.
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...Maybe it's just me, but I'm really not seeing how leaving someone to die is any better.
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Sorry, I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to get across here. This is just something I've been thinking a lot about. You've said that people who kill because they were fighting in a war aren't marked, right?
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As for soldiers and stuff...I haven't really dealt with a lot of war stuff either yet because that's a different sort of messed up but I don't think the whole marked thing is the reason. It doesn't count as murder though.
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...I'm asking about soldiers because my friends and I are fighting against the beastmen. They're the ones who control the surface world and kill any human who sets foot up there. We're fighting to reclaim the surface for humanity and while there aren't very many of us, we've managed to capture a battleship. (I believe that's what it's called?)
My friends have killed a lot of people. Beastmen are a lot like humans. They're intelligent and they can clearly think for themselves, so they're closer to humans than beasts. No one really seems bothered by the fact that so many people died. We captured the battleship a week before I arrived here and before that we hadn't seen very many people die.
Then our leader died and it messed everyone up. I understand why, but no one really seemed bothered by the fact that so many beastmen died too. I understand that they're our enemies and honestly, I wasn't bothered by their deaths back home either.
But I've had time to think about it and being here surrounded by Pokemon... it makes it kind of hard to process what happened.
Our leader controlled a gunmen and it's one that no one else has stepped forward to pilot. I've been practicing with it, so they sent me out in it and... I think I'm going to have to fight some beastmen on my own. I'm going to have to kill them in order to survive and while I don't know how much of a problem that would be for me back home, it's kind of messing me up here. I don't really want to go back. I know I have to because they need me, but...
I'm sorry, I got carried away. This isn't really something I can talk about with anyone but that doesn't mean I should keep dumping all of this stuff on you.
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[There's something else that's bothering him, though, outside of the situation itself; he wants clarification on that before even trying to look at anything else.]
Okay, before I get into the rest of what you've said I kind of want to know first - how old are you?
[Because this one had looked really young over the video a while ago.]
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I'm fourteen. I believe our leader was seventeen, maybe? A lot of our friends are in their late teenage years or early twenties, though some of them are older than that. Why?
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[And that really is all that it is; he's not a soft touch normally anyway, and he's not going to say that kids shouldn't die because the fact of the matter is that they do, all the damn time. It's not something arbiters are ever crazy about dealing with, but at the same time as far as Ginti is concerned, humans live just so they can die eventually - kids just happen to die a lot sooner than others.
Is it fucked up? Probably. But that doesn't make it any less of a reality, now, does it.
So this is a literal kid. That's fine. The literal kid is also indirectly asking him if he'll go to hell if he dies in some war that exactly no one asked for, which is sort of less fine but you know what, he's seen worse.]
Look, you and your friends aren't going to be marked for whatever it is you guys are doing out there. Because war is just like that and because if it wasn't them it'd be you. You called it survival right? That's an important thing, it's something you should keep in mind because that's why it matters when your leader dies but it doesn't matter when the people that are trying to kill you die, and there's no arbiter in the entire damn tower that's going to call you on that and say you deserve the Void for it.
Whether anyone's life is worth more or less than anyone else's is something that we decide all the time, but it's not something that the living can be expected to choose for themselves and like I said to you before, intent matters. You just do what you think you have to and you do what you think is right, and we'll take care of you once everything's said and done because that's what we do. If the idea of killing people messes you up that's a good thing because there's a reason it's considered so bad by pretty much every standard that's out there but we get that sometimes people die because they're in circumstances that no one in their right minds asked for and sometimes they die because war breaks out and sometimes they die because it's them or someone else and that's just how things shook out.
We get all of your memories when you come to us, we can see everything about your life and all the decisions that came along for you to deal with and we know how you think. If this is survival for you and your friends we'll get that too.
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Thank you very much. I really needed to hear that. You're very good at saying exactly what I need.
I don't know everything our leader did before I met him, but he was a very good person. I don't believe he's in any danger of being sent to the Void. I really do appreciate hearing that though - that if it's survival it's different. I don't like thinking that any one person's life matters than another's, but you're right about that too. I was upset about losing my mother, not about the other villagers that were sent up to the surface world before and after her.
I think I'll need time to work through all of this as well, but I feel better. I feel like things will be okay now, even if I'm not sure how everything will turn out back home.
Thank you very much and I'm sorry I keep doing this. You're a very easy person to talk to!