fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, November 12, 1st period]

Anakin stalked into the room precisely on time and shut the door firmly behind him. "Today we talk about wrath," he said. "There's something very human about giving in to our temper," he said. "It's freeing, uncomplicated."

He paused. "At least at that moment. The repercussions are always waiting."

He waved a hand and the holoprojector flipped to life. Frozen in time was a young Jedi with two lightsabers at the neck of an older, clearly defeated enemy. The students might remember the scenario from a few weeks ago.

"This was me," he said, pointing at the young man. "And that older man was evil and threatened my family. It didn't make the choice I made--to kill him while he knelt there--any less wrong."

He looked around the classroom making eye contact with every student before continuing. "Wrath is very, very tempting. It urges you to listen to that dark little voice inside of you--to cut loose, live without consequences."

He pointed at the holo again. "There are always consequences. This moment has stayed with me, made me the person I am. It wasn't a positive influence."

Anakin stopped pacing. "What would it take for you to get to that hazy edge? And more importantly, how do you stop yourself from giving in?"

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"I think we're drifting away from the original question," Karla said, speaking up to hopefully be heard by the entire class. "The question is: what are the things that would make you angry enough to kill? Not killing in the line of duty, not killing because your life is on the line. Just killing because you're that angry. What could bring you there?"

She glanced down at her hands, which were clenched into fists. "I've been in that position several times now, both really recently--" Karla couldn't help shooting Anakin a small glare "--and further back, during the summer. I have killed before, I'm not going to lie. Three of the people I killed people were in that other Fandom. Maybe it didn't count, because they were vampires, but, dammit, they were wearing the faces of friends. It felt like killing. And I killed there because I was angry. Because they had hurt and killed my friends and there was nothing I could to protect them. One died in my arms just yards away from the dorms. But I didn't kill those vampires because of justice. Oh, the concept was there, but it was buried under rage and fear. How dare they harm those I'd swoorn to care for? How dare they rob me of my friends? How dare they go on living--as it were--when my friends were dead? And how dare they live on to be a continued threat to me?"

That wasn't all of the reasons she could get angry enough to kill, but it was one that she knew a bunch of students here could relate to.

"Why do you have to be angry to kill?" Emma asked. "If I'm pissed, the odds are that you'll wish I'd killed you by the time I'm done."

Anyone who'd been in Briarwood had barely the barest hint of what Emma would do if you were stupid enough to rouse her wrath.

"I don't," Karla said, shrugging. "I'm simply pointing what the question presented to the class was. It's easy to talk about killing as a duty or in sdelf-defense, but the questions really isn't about whether or why someone would kill. It's asking what would push that person to the point where they were so angry, they would kill. Or worse."

"I think it's a useful baseline," Elena suggested. "What gets you mad enough to kill is partly going to depend on what you'd kill for when you're entirely yourself. Some people can't imagine themselves ever taking a life; others do it for revenge, or self-defense, or a paycheck, or to pass the time of day."

"Exactly," Rose jumped in. "Obviously the answers are going to be different, but if you're already comfortable in the knowledge that you will kill, you don't so much have to get angry to do it."

She shrugged. "And maybe next time you should be a bit more careful about saying things like 'vampires don't count.' Some of us might not be so on board with it."

"How can they count?" Tara blurted, shrinking a bit before she continued. "That is -- they're soulless demons. They kill people."

Edited 2009-11-13 01:33 (UTC)

"Who says all of them are?" Rose asked, turning fast to glare at Tara. "More than a few kinds have souls just fine. Some of 'em are more tied to the earth's magic than I am. Jesus. It's Fandom. Is it so shocking that there might be more kinds than you have at home?"

Tara visibly shrank at the sudden burst of anger.

She opened her mouth to try to answer, stammered a few times, and finally came out with, "Your aura. It's ..." black, and that would be a really dumb, nonhelpful thing to say "...not what we were talking about, sorry. I've never heard that vampires could have souls."

"...my aura?" Rose repeated, frowning a little but more curious now. "The hell?"

She shrugged. "Some vampires do. At home there's two kinds. One with souls and one without. I don't disagree with you about the kind without."

"I'll tell you later," Tara promised. She felt like she already had enough people looking at her funny. "And oh. We only have the bumpy forehead no-souls mean kind. I mean, I've never met one? But, uh, y-you hear stories."

"Are you from the same world as Kennedy and Buffy?" Rose asked, totally just curious now. "Are you going to be a Slayer or something too?" She shrugged easily. "Probably better not to meet 'em if you're not ready to fight 'em."

Tara shrugged, trying not to feel condescended to by the tone of the last sentence. It wasn't as if she disagreed. "I don't -- how would you know that? I don't even know Buffy." Though that was something to try to figure out with Kennedy sometime.

"And I'm about the least Slayer person in the world, anyhow. Just, uh, a witch."

"No idea how to know," she admitted. "Just everyone I know who's talked about Slayers and those weird vampires with the funny faces is from that world."

"From what I gather from other people around the island, there are different kinds of vampires," Karla pointed out. "The kind we fought in the Other Fandom were the kind that weren't people anymore. That's what I meant about 'don't count.'"

It all had something to do with demons, which Karla didn't really understand because they weren't the kind of demons she'd grown up with.

"It's not what you said though," Rose pointed out. "And yeah, the ones that were on that other island were souless and evil. They had to be killed, and if I had been one over there, I'd pray someone would do that job for me."

She shrugged. "I just call bullshit on saying 'maybe it's vampires so they don't count.'"

"I'd said being in the Other Fandom so people would know the kind of vampires I'd meant, but your point is well-taken. Since there are several different uh, races? kinds?" Karla was at a loss for a moment before shrugging off the matter of terminology, "of vampires, not being clear about which one I meant is insulting. I'll be more careful in the future--though in this case, I was definitely referring to the soulless and evil variety."

Ethics [Thursday, November 12, 1st period]

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