April 29th, 2022
29 Apr 2022 · page 1109 of 1306
Hang on wait that's not what I meant
Cast: Lei Feng, Thea Pryce
Comments (83)
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14 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
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31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
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Ah so its a "greater good" situation is it.
Those damn crusty jugglers... Tim should watch out.
oh, crap.
Don't worry. The rain's about to wash away the incantation circles.
Railroad Chalk is water resistant...
Agree to disagree
we love character growth from Lei! it's just unfortunate Thea's having some growth in another direction...
I mean... In long term, Verity might not be wrong.
Heck, we still have Murican's to punish for slaughtering innocent with atomic bombs. Mainly because "it prevented the loss of more lives", as the narrative goes.
In turn, the Nazi research on people during Holocaust advanced medical science in leaps.
One killed rough 100k to 200k and other millions, so it could be a numbers thing too...
But yeah. Any kind of development brought on by suffering and death of many should always be very carefully considered before execution. Of said plan and the people in the way of "the greater good".
Especially since in this plan, they could have had shareholders in the idea and plans to have some measure of protection against the natural calamity, buuuut... Fast and loose is usually the playstyle in these.
not to say that i think you're doing this exactly but i am gonna request that no-one tries to argue about the "necessity" of various real-world atrocities here, thanks
Sorry. Yeah. Definitely not arguing over them having been necessary in any capacity.
Though I did write that knowing it's a veeery hot potato.
Just for the sake of argument that good can come out of evil, but it's always better to exhaust every option that does not bring ill before striving for "the greater good".
Eggs and omelets, as they say. But even then it's better to make sure the person didn't ask for toast instead before wasting the eggs. It's really isn't "just as good" then.
Fact check: the advancements in medical science made by the Nazis is a myth perpetuated by apologists. The truth is that the "experiments" were little more than torture sessions playing make-believe. There was little, if any, scientific rigor, and even if there had been, the experiments were largely unnecessary explorations of the limits of the human body in dealing with things that medical science already knew killed people.
There's been no doubt a lot of glorifying when it comes to it. But so there have been a lot of downplaying and bashing, since... To say otherwise usually has people viewing you to agree with Nazis.
But there was discoveries made during Nazi regime. Would they have been made regardless? For most parts yes. Were they all genuinely Nazi inventions and not something they took from others and developed on like Edison in his prime? Absolutely.
A lot of the data they accumulated though was, and truly is, "just" iffy to use. Since it has been accumulated in the most immoral ways possible.
But like John Hayward, an expert in hypothermia at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, has been said to comment: “I don't want to have to use this data, but there is no other and will be no other in an ethical world, -- I've rationalised it a little bit. But to not use it would be equally bad.”
To say that they would have found nothing is pretty myth-like as well as claiming we should thank them for their achievements. As neither is really 100% true and is coloured by your views on Nazis, whether with or against them.
But one fact that remains is that whatever they found, no matter if we would have never, ever found it without them... Was not worth the price we paid for it. And never will be.
Sometimes to gain you'd need to lose too much.
When you can explain to me what scientific rigor is and why Hayward was a dumbass for using data collected without it I'll stop calling you a Nazi apologist. Deal? Deal.
yeah and with that comment we are done with this thread cus this is the bottom line of this particular conversation! thanks!
Petal my dear, if you really wanted to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people you might have at least given Chile warning to expect a tidal wave so they could evacuate the coastal communities. Not to mention a generous donation to help them rebuild and take advantage of the wonderful New Age of magic.
This. So much this. They could still claim the largest stake on all this, 'cose they know what to do.
Heck, even if they do get "the greater good" done now, there'll be such a backlash that they might not even be allowed to have their piece of the tsumani-cake.
The correct answer here is clearly not "Stealing the anchor"...
Theft is never the answer when "Underwater anchor-city" is an option!
That assumes the Thea sees Chileans as people. There's some question about that in my mind.
Thea probably does...but she's viewing them as statistics instead of individual lives.
"Sacrificing for the greater good" is a double-edged mantra.
The thing is that very often when people talk about sacrifices for the greater good, they aren't the ones who deal with that sacrifice. They aren't the ones who lose something. The people on this boat could reasonably be believed to have not ever met someone who lives in Chile, much less have a personal connection to them. Meanwhile, they likely have connections all over America, which is where the payment for their sacrifice is going.
Making another group pay your sacrifice, so you can personally benefit from the payment of the sacrifice is clearly biased.
I don't think you can commit Genocide and consider the people you're killing en masse as people at the same time.
"Sorry, how many people have to be helped out a bit to make up for each person actually killed?"
"drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"-dril
Some of the worst evils people have done to others have been "for your own good."
In fairness, the other half of the worst evils people have ever done were in the name of profiting their tribe over the needs of the many.
Guess where this lands on the Venn diagram.
Which Venn diagram?
Edit: Oh, are you suggesting that this is exactly what's going on here? That Thea is prioritising benefits to her tribe as more weighty than costs to other people? That her home country going through a golden age is worth killing thousands of people in a country she doesn't care about?
Her father is doing it for greed, she's doing it for "the greater good". I think her father sold her a line and she still trusts him enough to buy into his lies.
Given the combination of their interests, this falls smack in the middle of where said Venn diagram overlaps.
Yes.
gasp
The bad guy is actually a bad guy, and not just misunderstood/under someone else's sway? How can this be?!
Not bad, not a guy.
She's not risking a natural disaster for personal profit, she's doing it because she genuinely believes the world will benefit from it. She is convinced that the most good can be done for the most people by essentially uplifting America by bringing magic to it.
I think her calculations are off, but someone is not bad for doing what they believe is best for humanity.
That's, uh, pretty bad.
A much better solution would be bringing land to the fourth anchor, or at least a semi-permanent floating trading post. Don't risk natural/magical disaster, but still take advantage of the anchor.
This would also just happen to confer more of a lock-in to whomever established said floating pseudo-land.
That said, to maximize the benefit, you'd probably need a fourth anchor witch, but that would probably come in time.
Quite possibly. I don't know how feasible this would actually be, given that they are in open water and the ocean floor is probably in the order of 4km beneath them maybe more. Possibly less benefit, but also less risk.
I'm absolutely not saying that Thea is making the right call here. I just think people are seeing this entirely as black and white, when it is far more complex.
Cool motive; Still attempted mass murder/genocide.
And so: still a bad guy.
That said, let's not be sexist here: women can be bad guys too.
The word "villain" is right there, I'm not sure why everyone insists on gendering this.
"Guy" is gender neutral
"Guy" is not gender neutral. See: "Guys and dolls".
"Guy" is explicitly male, and is used as a neutral term because male is the default. Mostly in the US.
[https://dictionary.cambridg...](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy "https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy")
Language and its usage has changed a lot since the '30s.
While true, the Oxford dictionary still recognises the word "guy" as primarily referring to males, making your comment irrelevant in this case.
Also, nice B99 ref but as per my reply to Radiance this is neither mass murder nor genocide.
I'm willing to say anyone who murders a whole population to get their hands on a natural resource is bad. Even if they really, genuinely, sincerely think that's a good idea.
It's neither mass murder nor genocide though? There is no intent to wipe people out. There is no intent to kill people at all. That is kind of a pre-requisite for murder/genocide. Both list intent in the definition, and intent is clearly lacking here.
There is a risk of tsunami, but we don't know how high a risk, we don't know how big a wave we're risking. They are clearly willing to accept that risk to other people in order to benefit themselves and their country, but it's also clearly not about pure greed for Thea.
The benefit to America is not just rich people getting richer (although, capitalism being capitalism there will be plenty of that) it's about technologies that will literally save lives. Medical advancements literally save lives. It's not a single big, flashy event like a tsunami, but risking lives for overall benefit is a calculation that is taken literally millions of times a day. Whenever someone takes to the road in a truck, they are risking lives. But without trucks to transport food, people will starve.
To take the argument that Thea is an attempted murderer to its extreme, means you also believe truck drivers are attempted murderers.
You could, however, make an argument for something like culpable negligence.
Similar to how an exterminator flinging around poison carelessly in a preschool to get rid of the pest isn't really committing murder if one of the children eats a 'candy' they find on the ground.
It's reasonable to assume that their actions will cause damage to others, but not directly assured. But the probability is considered high enough that it's still on them if it does happen.
Very much this. The pests may be a significant threat to health - they're getting into the food and risking making everyone in the preschool sick. That means the exterminator coming in is totally in the best interests of the public, and the risk of a toddler swallowing a "candy" can be excused as a necessary one to keep the rest of them from getting sick. It's absolutely not murder, they're doing it for the greater good even!
And if you twiddle with the odds of people getting sick vs. children eating poison, you can totally find a point where most people would agree that risking the poison was the safer option. At least, the safer of those two, if we assume that there absolutely is not any possible outcome where the exterminator is actually careful about not leaving deadly neurotoxins lying around in a preschool, yet still manages to do their job and remove the pests.
If Thea hasn't really looked into this sort of option much, if she hasn't tried to do any kind of risk reduction or harm mitigation, then she is just hoping that the tsunami doesn't happen and "sorry" if it does. Incredibly negligent on her part, but not overtly malicious.
These last posts feel like false equivalence.
If you really wand a preschool/pest control comparison, it's more like having a plane releasing DDT near a school.
It's not negligence. It's a deliberate attempt to undermine consequences.
Also calling it "not mass murder" or "not genocide" is also a play on words - can't call it genocide anyway the acception didn't exist. What "mass" is relative, and in this case very easy to figure out.
I'm a bit touchy on this because this exactly the narrative we get everyday about climate change consequences and the "need" about continuing growth in order to get "innovative solutions"...
It's entirely fair to be touchy about this subject, and I guess at some point arguing over what word best describes it is more of a distraction from any real point than a discussion of the morality.
I think, for me, the point lies in that the tsunami is something they are aware of as a possibility, but I don't think we have any real indication of the probability.
You may remember, from a few years back, the furore surrounding the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC was going to be creating microscopic black holes, and the fear was that these had the potential to escape containment and destroy the entire earth. Now, the physicists involved were confident this was not realistic, the same theories that they were operating on for the creation of the black holes also predicted that they would evaporate almost instantly, with no risk to the planet. But was there the possibility that they were wrong?
We're not talking genocide, but omnicide. The extinction of not just humanity, but the sum totality of life as we know it, from the largest mammals to the smallest microbes. The entire Earth would be destroyed because Scientists were so eager for knowledge that they risked our entire planet on their theories being correct. Is there a probability at which this gamble is acceptable?
There's a difference between intent and guilty knowledge. Thea knows that people are going to die -- she's been told that several times. Guilty knowledge is absolutely enough to establish genocide.
If you want a real-world, historical genocide which was performed at second hand without direct intent, consider the extermination of the Plains Indians during the 19th century in the United States. The weapon was the mass slaughter of bison, leading to starvation and mass death. The nominal purpose wasn't actually death, but rather moving the Indians onto reservations to free up the land for homesteading and farming, higher value uses of the land. The greatest good for the greatest number!
Still a genocide.
Hrmm, that seems to contradict the definition in I was working off, but I'm not going to argue the point.
Yeah, and the Lebensraum im Osten will provide the chosen Volk the ability to prosper and usher the world..
yeah, no, coming from a people who know their genocide, this would be one. People are always their own protagonist and can have VILE ideas because they think they are doing the best for the world.
I'm of the opinion that Daddy Dearest hasn't been totally honest with Thea about the scope of the consequences of what they're trying to do. His motivation IS greed and he's not above lying to reach his goal--even lying to his daughter.
The worst villains always do.
I was going to bring up that old yard about the road to Hell, and then I remembered that the ship is literally called "Good Intentions".
Well played, @KateDrawsComics:disqus
Thea is a wizard. She can't go through the door she forced open.
Unless it turns out she's actually the fourth Witch.
"And it just so happens the greatest good is the one that makes my father the most money!"
"Consequences schonsequences! As long as I'm rich!"
This is the problem when you grow up hearing only propaganda about "the greater good" -- you can be the most empathetic and morally conflicted person within that orbit, but your morals are still drawn from it. She believes she's weighed the costs, but she only knows them in the abstract. Believing you hurt along with all the people you're going to hurt, you can talk yourself into terrible things.
Really fascinating character!
Some days, I just feel like, yeah, the math is important. Other days...
@KateDrawsComics:disqus I just noticed the character tags for this page list Verity instead of Thea. (Not that Vee would object, I'm sure...)
Thea, don't be a Farquaad.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
Mathematically, death outweighs convenience.
Especially in the case of potential end of the world scenarios. I mean, unless the challenge that the world was created to pose was "see who can find and try to move the fourth anchor first", such that the world ended because somebody won, it's bound to look really bad at judgement time.
"So, what did you accomplish in life?"
"I killed everyone, and I mean everyone."
RIP
It works because both Rest In Peace and their plan is to rip the anchor out of its place.
One could also, simply not do harm.
Also, Kate? I don't think that Verity Cunningham is in this strip.
Verity is everywhere!
Clearly, Verity has donned a cunning disguise and taken Thea's place! She's just pretending to go along with the plan so that Pemberton won't suspect until it's too late.
Actually, she's disguised as the bathysphere. Patience is going to get a rude surprise when they hit the water!
Verity Cunningham: "Oh, the tag makes sense. When I am featured, I'm clearly present. And when I'm not featured, the obvious absence of the most wonderful and important person in this reality is so obvious, so galling, that it's tantamount to my being present in essence. So I should be tagged on every strip always."
Well. It's time to punch her, I guess.
oh no she's a utilitarian
Maybe her thinking is (a) a tsunami is possible but not likely and (b) even if it happens, it'll be small, and maybe some people's houses will get flooded, but Daddy can just pay them off. That is, she is minimizing the risks so she can justify doing what Daddy really, really, really wants her to do.
Ummm - why is Verity tagged and Ms Pryce not?
Stalin:
gonna update on this coming friday- we bought a house (!!) and are setting up to move so it's been kinda wild here and I wanna try buffering a little bit.
Congratulations!
What a wonderful reason to be late with or to skip an update! Congratulations on your new house! Of course, whether it's actually new or new to you, there is a lot of time and work involved to making it truly yours, so be prepared. (In the unlikely event you hadn't already figured this out.)
New here, via [the Comic of the Month thread at the Stand Still, Stay Silent fan forum](https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=1237 "https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=1237").
This is an excellent comic! The characters are well-realized and endearing. I especially love that each chapter tells a complete story, even as it sets things up for future stories.
oh gosh, thanks! what a great idea for a thread too, hope any readers from there have fun :)
Also here from the SSSS fan forum! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this comic (to the point where I definitely stayed up a bit too late a few times because just one more chapter - the plot and characters are engaging and the worldbuilding is cool and it's just a good read!
I am sad about the demise of SSSS, and particularly how it happened. But this comic has always eclipsed SSSS IMO. You found a great comic to follow!