RicOlie_2

sitting in stagnant sulfiric acid.

mother, who was fond of

violently murdered an innocent ant

wasn't a damsel in distress

Once again--trying to double his post count so he can make it to 40,000 by the end of the year...

;)

I lied about posting pictures, but I had planned on having an opportunity to snap a few photos before we set up the furniture and blocked the view. I didn't want to bother, since nobody here has much of an interest in this kind of thing. I also can't figure out how to post pictures from Flickr since they changed it again in the last update.

Admit it--you're just trying to get your post count up.

In my scenario, the viewer doesn't find out about Darth Vader being Luke's father until ESB either. The multiple masked Sith Lords lead the viewer to believe that Darth Vader was always one of them and Anakin is a different person (since we see him duel one of the masked Sith). The concept of a Sith Lord taking the name of the first Jedi he kills is very interesting though. Maybe that could be worked into my synopsis as well.

In my synopsis, I did establish that Obi-Wan had had other pupils, and the viewer would find out that one turned to the Dark Side. In Episode IV, the viewer would just assume that Darth Vader was in fact that former apprentice, though in reality there was another as well.

An additional point: Obi-Wan would adopt the name "Ben" once the Empire started hunting down Jedi, to make his statement in ANH make sense.

darth_ender said:

I don't think he's saying it's more acceptable.  I think he's saying it is unacceptable for similar reasons.

 Correct. And of course, my wall of text elaborates and improves on the analogy, as well as providing a comparison and an anecdote to further my point.

And I repeat myself a lot, but that's simply for emphasis, of course, and has nothing to do with the fact that I'm still tired and not going to bed early enough. :P

TV's Frink said:

Warbler said:

?  what RicOlie_2 said made sense to me. 

 Killing a person to pay rent is more justified than killing a clump of cells?  Oh yeah, makes perfect sense.

 You missed several details.

A) I never once wrote about a clump of cells. I'm being general here, but let's just say I'm referring to a viable fetus.

B) The man in question is quadriplegic, unaware of his surroundings, and thus no more conscious than a baby.

C) However, he has lived his life out, and the baby/fetus hasn't even had a chance.

So I ask, why is it justifiable to deprive that fetus/baby of its chance, yet it is shocking to hear about a man who is practically in a vegetative state being killed so that another man can pay his rent?

To improve my scenario, since there wouldn't really be a reason to kill a quadriplegic to get money, let's say that this man who can't pay his rent is the son of the immobilized man, who is this time recovering from a serious stroke, and has not regained use of his mental or physical faculties, but may do so in the future. He has to pay for his father's care for some reason or other, but simply cannot afford to pay for the rent as well. So, one day, he decides to kill his father. He is imprisoned for murder, and many people are shocked.

Now for another scenario: let's say that there is a single woman who has become pregnant. She realizes that once here pregnancy advances far enough, she will have to quit her job and will no longer be able to pay the rent, etc. Because she will simply not be able to afford caring for a baby and pay the rent on top of it, she decides to abort her baby/clump of cells. Let's say that this baby/clump of cells is 20 weeks old (i.e. distinctly human, but not yet viable). She suffers no consequences, aside from possible emotional or psychological effects, which may or may not have occurred. She has the approval of many people in society, including some of her relatives, who knew of her situation. Others decry it, but since the action was entirely legal, she suffers no legal repercussions.

Now let's compare these two. Both of them have the destruction of a life that is barely aware of its existence. Both of them save someone in financial distress. Both of them involve destroying a person's potential. In one case, the life has already been mostly lived, and the remainder of its life will be spent in old age, with the man having limited mobility and mental abilities. In the other case, the baby/fetus has its whole life ahead of it. It may be born into an unwanted home, but it could be adopted, or it could recover and live an enjoyable life later on. In the first case, society was horrified. In the second, society approved. Why is it so wrong in the first case, but not wrong in the second?

For those of you who think it would be an act of mercy to kill a baby to prevent it from being abused and unhappy, I have a fifteen year-old friend who, for the first eleven or twelve years of his life was in such a scenario. He hardly wants to be dead, and I doubt he would have appreciated being aborted. He was born to a couple of drug dealers in the Ukraine who did not want a child (his mother was eighteen). His parents were abusive, and he was removed from his family three separate times. His parents regained custody of him twice, and he spent time in foster homes during that time. The third time, he was removed from them permanently (though he is still in touch with his biological uncle and some other relatives) and was placed in a series of homes with foster parents. He was abused in a couple of them, and over time developed some psychological disorders which got him into trouble a few times. Finally, he was adopted by his current parents, when he was eleven or twelve years old. His sisters were adopted by a different family, and he visits them often. He is generally pretty happy, has friends, and works past his sociopathy (which his uncle--a psychopathic sniper) helps him with. He has a job, is very intelligent, a talented pianist, and overall lives a pretty good life now, aside from his past experiences.

Who are we to say that it is better to abort a fetus than have that fetus become an abused child if we don't know the final outcome? There are so many variables we don't know, so we cannot determine whether the child will be happy or miserable. Some might then say that it is better to prevent that, but think of this: you have a serious stroke when only in your forties or fifties. You have a chance to recover, and live happily for another thirty or forty years, but you also might be stuck like this for the rest of your life. Even if you are stuck like that, though, you will almost certainly gain the ability to speak, eat, see, and maybe even move your limbs a bit. You will also retain most of your mental abilities, though it might take a bit for them to be restored to their full ability. Would you want someone to kill you for any of the following reasons (I'm assuming, since you have limited mental abilities in this scenario and I am comparing you being taken off life support to an abortion, in which case the fetus has no choice in the matter):

1. You're too expensive for a temporary vegetable.
2. Your family doesn't love you anyway. Good riddance if you're gone.
3. You might not recover, and probably wouldn't live happily anyway, since you'll never play sports again, most probably, and likely won't even walk.
4. You won't even know what happened if you're taken off life support. It's better to finish you before you're aware of your condition.
5. You've lived your life already. There's no point in allowing it to continue in suffering (even if you're perfectly happy watching TV, and if you recover more fully--let's use Frink as an example now, since he's close to his fifties--posting on internet forums, making fanedits, and never working another day in your life).

Maybe you would rather they kill you. But maybe you would rather they waited until you could decide?

That isn't to say I condone euthanasia, however. Even if you wanted death, euthanasia ends up extending past people with such desires. Just look up what's happening in the Scandinavian countries, for instance. Child euthanasia is being pushed for, and it isn't uncommon for an elderly relative to be killed without the family's knowledge. Sometimes they are mentally unprepared to give the answer, and are killed anyway, without their family getting a chance to say goodbye. Sometimes they don't even consent, but their situation is deemed hopeless and they are left to die. It leads to the devaluation of the elderly and mentally ill or handicapped, so I cannot accept it.

In case you don't see where I'm going with that last paragraph: is it better, let's assume that there the victim in the following scenario is given no choice in the matter, to allow an elderly woman "euthanized" without her consent, or to have an unborn child (yes, child--I assume you don't speak about the clump of cells within someone when the child is wanted, you call it a baby) killed when their whole life is yet to be lived? ['Twas a bit of a clumsy sentence, I know, but there is some stupid text over-write on that I can't turn off, so I ain't making it easier to read.] Why is abortion so acceptable, yet it is horrible when a disabled elderly person is killed? Sure, the elderly person has friends and family who love him/her, but he/she has lived there life already and would have only had another few years to live.

I know I repeated myself many times, but I wanted to make my point very clear, and wanted you to think about it in a couple different ways.

In case you didn't bother reading my lengthy post, you'll have to if you want to know what I was getting at.

LOL, I love that video.

darth_ender said:

I see.  It seems still over the top.  Maybe to improve it, the organ loaned would not be so critical as the heart (which unlike the uterus [which is designed exclusively for pregnancy, btw, and therefore is fulfilling its design, while a heart transplant does not], is absolutely essential for human life to continue).  Perhaps a kidney would be best.  A person can live without it, but the potential for death from the surgery or future loss of the other kidney probably better matches the risk.  And in a finite period of time, the person would get the kidney back.

Yes, the kidney analogy is far more appropriate.

Twister, you exaggerate the risk involved in pregnancy by a hundredfold, and you are forgetting that both ender and I share the belief that abortion is justified in cases where the mother's life is in danger.

Your concerns about C-Section are exaggerated as well, as the procedure carries less risk than you seem to imply. That's how I was born, and my mother had six kids after me, and I know other women who have had C-Sections.

You also ignore the risk of abortion, and in your analogies, don't portray that option as having side-effects. Some women, who have had abortions are not incapable of having children, because their uterus was damaged in the operation. Not to mention the emotional and psychological effects it can have, and the loss of a life and a person (not that you consider it a person, but it at least has the potential to become a happy, intelligent, and productive human being.

[...]

Remember that even post-birth children still require the physical, emotional, and monetary resources of their caregivers for survival.  My children take a toll on my health and billfold.  But I don't think I'd get away with aborting them at this point it their lives.  As unique individuals of my creation, I am now responsible for their survival, regardless of the fact that I am less healthy than I would be if I didn't have them.

 Exactly. The drain on resources all comes down to convenience in the end. If someone had to kill another person in order to steal that person's money so they could afford to pay the rent, would the murder be justified? Let's say that the murdered person was a quadriplegic, and was mentally impaired so that they were barely aware of their surroundings anymore. One would think that that would be far more forgivable than the deprivation of a human being's life, before it even has a chance to properly start, yet most people would probably protest against the action and press murder charges against him. Our society has a bit of a double standard that way.

I don't understand how you can think the way you do, Twister, but I'm afraid I'm far too tired to give you a proper reply right now. Maybe tomorrow. I doubt I'll convince you that your analogy has so many serious flaws, though.

DuracellEnergizer said:

darth_ender said:

This world is overpopulated anyway
This world sucks and I don't want a child to be subject to the evils therein
...

Wow, those all sound like they boil down to convenience.

How do those "boil down to convenience"?

 Those too don't quite boil down to convenience, but I don't think either of those reasons provides a valid excuse for abortion.

Since criminals are detrimental to society, why are we not killing them and not unborn babies who could grow up to be productive members of society? I'm not saying there aren't reasons, but why are their lives so much more valuable than those of innocent babies who haven't had a chance to live their lives yet?

Of course the world sucks in many ways, but the mother should think about whether it sucks enough that they would rather have been aborted. In some cases, the answer may be yes, but does the mother really have the authority to decide that the baby's life will be too rough to let it live? How come it isn't legal to kill children who have lived terrible lives? Why aren't babies in Africa being killed to prevent their future starvation? We have it good in North America, so that logic doesn't really work here.

twister111 said:

RicOlie_2 said:

 Twister, let me be the first to point out that darth_ender's analogy is far better than yours. A woman does not have a high risk of death when she is pregnant, and an abortion is more harmful than giving birth (repeated abortions can result in a damaged uterus, preventing the woman from ever having children again).

The risk of death is determined on an individual basis as is the risk of abortion. Besides in my scenario I said that she could theoretically handle it.

But there is only a very tiny risk of death for a woman in pregnancy. Very tiny, unless there are complications, in which case, it may be OK to abort. If the mother's life is in danger, the Catholic Church, and most other Christians, including ender, agree that abortion is justified.

RicOlie_2 said:

She can also walk around and perform many activities that someone hooked up to another person would not be able to do. In fact, for the first two/three months of pregnancy, most women have no trouble performing activities they could do before they were pregnant.

Well I said my analogy's not perfect either but it's a better representation than just needing to give money to doctors. If that's all that was required for pregnancy I really don't think abortion would even be a thing to exist at all. There is an undeniable physical toll on the woman while pregnant that the previous scenario is entirely absent of. Lowering that to only his and her's bank accounts is flawed.

His analogy wasn't perfect, that's true, but let's say that instead of just having to cover his bills, they were required to donate blood for a blood transfusion (a small crossover between both of your analogies). Would they then have the right to just end this man's life?

RicOlie_2 said:

It is also usually the woman's fault if she is pregnant, since she (in just about every case) consented to sex with a man. In ender's scenario, the man and woman made a choice to drink enough to get drunk, and then drive, causing an accident. In your scenario, there was no choice involved, and it is analogous of a pregnancy that was caused by the woman hugging her boyfriend, immobilized her for all nine months, and had the possibility of killing her.

I presented two scenarios. The first is modifying ender's with the inclusion of the heart condition. So the car crash still happened. That choice was still there. The second is absent the car crash and it's their choice to be a part of a genetic study. Both presents choice. Without that choice the guy's condition would've never come to light and he would've died anyway. Similar to if a couple never has sex/donates their egg and/or sperm that fetus wouldn't exist anyway. In ender's scenario if the car crash didn't happen that guy would've theoretically lived a long time just fine. It's completely faulty compared to mine. Ender's scenario could only represent some weird scenario where their kid could just come into existence with absolute zero interaction with the parents. Not even needing to donate the sperm and egg.

But here's the serious flaw with your analogy:

They had no idea, when they signed up for the study, that the man's condition would come to light and they would be needed. Pregnancy is, on the other hand, a well-known consequence of sex. Accidents are a well-known consequence of drunk driving. In both latter cases, both people knew what could happen. Both involve acts of pleasure that can have life-changing consequences. If anyone decides to drink a lot, or engage in sex, they are accepting the possible consequences. 

The stranger needs to rely on her somehow for his life in order to be relevant to abortion. That reliance needs to be there car crash or not because there are plenty of non-drunk occurrences leading to a kid. Further that reliance needs to be something that could potentially kill her because pregnancy still carries a risk of death. Maybe lowered risk today but it's still there and it shouldn't be denied.

There is a very low risk of death in pregnancy compared to the risk of death in abortion, which is 100% (the victim of course being the fetus/baby/whatever you want to call it/him/her). The reliance in your analogy is a bit exaggerated. The woman in your analogy did not make a choice that caused the man's condition. In the case of a pregnancy, the woman makes a choice that directly leads to it. If she is impregnated and didn't plan on it, she obviously wasn't thinking things through very well and should be prepared to carry the child to term.

RicOlie_2 said:

Try again, Twister. I fail to see how your analogy corresponds whatsoever to the realities of pregnancy, and the choice made that begins it.

Well I hope I've clarified my scenario to you.

 Somewhat, but your analogy is still more flawed than ender's.

If I'm way off base with my understanding of the two analogies, forgive me, as I've had about five hours of sleep a night (and less) for a couple weeks. :P

twister111 said:

darth_ender said:

Now let's hypothesize on an analogous train of thought.  Think of a man.  This man, due to the actions of a young male and female having fun with alcohol and a car, is injured and ends up comatose in a hospital bed.  In our little scenario, we have the technology to make a 97% guarantee that this man will not only come out of his coma (in about nine months), but will in fact ultimately make a full recovery, though there is a good chance his memory will be impaired.  But at the present we cannot detect any: a) consciousness; b) evidence of reasoning or significant brain activity; c) self-motivated activity; d) effort to communicate; d) enduring self-concepts.  This man is, according to Ms. Warren, not a person.  He is genetically human, but not a person.  The young couple involved did not have insurance, but because they are at fault in this accident, are required to pay for this man's medical bills and treatment.  However, simply euthanizing him is a cheaper option, and they won't be responsible for the physical therapy that would follow.  You see, when they chose to drink and drive, as fun as it was, they simply weren't ready for the consequences/commitment that might follow such actions.  Thank goodness this man was, at least for a time, a very large but ultimately nothing more than, a bunch of cells.

I suspect you would find horror at this situation.  But fortunately, with only a little more fiddling with the definition of person, you could argue that the man in question also has a history, and thus retains his personhood, whereas a fetus (an unborn, and in early stages unformed, baby) has no history.  But now it really seems like we are creating definitions to suit our own ends rather than simply relying on reality.  Let's look at an analogy of such behavior.

Many conservative" title="www.letusreason.org/Cults1.htm">conservative" target="_blank">http://www.letusreason.org/Cults1.htm">conservative Christians define the word "cult" to meet their own ends and thus exclude other religions, such as Mormons.  They come up with specific criteria so they make sure they can fit in while other groups do not.  Such does not meet technical definitions of a cult, but since it carries such perjorative weight, they utilize the word according to their own definitions.  I'm in the "in" club, but you're not.  I have the right to be treated with a full amount of respect, and you do not.

It's an identical method of exclusion for convenience.

Your analogy is horribly flawed. The injured stranger would've been just fine had he never encountered the young couple. A fetus would need that couple to get together, in some form, to even exist in the first place. A better analogy would be if the woman in the car had a healthy heart and the injured stranger had a heart condition. For whatever reason only her heart could save him before 9 months are up. They could give her a pacemaker and a heart from a corpse, because her body could theoretically handle it, but his definitely needs her heart. Should she be required to give up her heart to this guy?

Now let's remove the car accident from the equation and put the same specifications. Let's say there's some genetic study her boyfriend thought would be neat and she thought so too. The stranger was a part of the study and it's found out that way. For whatever reason he still needs her heart. He will die without it and she could die too from the surgery or organ rejection. Course she might be willing to give her heart to this guy but what if she's not? Would you be okay with forcing her to go through with the surgery if she didn't want it? With laws being made in place to force her to get her heart cut out for this guy? Let's also say that during these 9 months she'd have to basically be a lifeline for this guy by constantly giving blood because of the virus's replication rate. Because of this there are certain food and drink restrictions that she'd have to endure. Plus she'd have to deal with recovering from surgery herself during the time she's giving blood to this guy. Same deal with the heart, only her blood will save him. So what would you say if she didn't want to do any of that? Would you be an advocate for forcing her to give up her heart, blood, 9 months of her time, and quite possibly even her own life for this guy? Moreover would you be okay with laws being put in place that force any individuals found capable of saving people with the same virus to undergo the same surgery/constant blood transfusions?

My analogy's not perfect either but it's a better representation of the situation than a random stupid car crash.

 Twister, let me be the first to point out that darth_ender's analogy is far better than yours. A woman does not have a high risk of death when she is pregnant, and an abortion is more harmful than giving birth (repeated abortions can result in a damaged uterus, preventing the woman from ever having children again). She can also walk around and perform many activities that someone hooked up to another person would not be able to do. In fact, for the first two/three months of pregnancy, most women have no trouble performing activities they could do before they were pregnant. It is also usually the woman's fault if she is pregnant, since she (in just about every case) consented to sex with a man. In ender's scenario, the man and woman made a choice to drink enough to get drunk, and then drive, causing an accident. In your scenario, there was no choice involved, and it is analogous of a pregnancy that was caused by the woman hugging her boyfriend, immobilized her for all nine months, and had the possibility of killing her.

Try again, Twister. I fail to see how your analogy corresponds whatsoever to the realities of pregnancy, and the choice made that begins it.

Thanks.

When is the show supposed to start?

The problem is that you're redefining the word "person." The word does not mean what you're saying it does. Your logic could be used to justify many, many atrocious acts, so the term "person" must be kept more inclusive to prevent that. Slavery was justified in part by your logic. Abortion is now being justified the same way.

Yeah, it isn't perfect, but I'm pretty sure it would be possible to work around that.

Perhaps the Emperor could have several Dark Jedi, or something of the sort, under his command, all of them wearing masks that are somewhat like the OT Vader mask. Vader is just another one of them at first, but over time he surpasses them. The one remaining one (besides Vader) is told to kill Skywalker (since the Emperor either doesn't know that Vader and Skywalker are the same person, or he wants a way to eliminate Vader without people knowing that he did it). In the battle, Anakin falls over the edge of a cliff, into the lava pit (though he of course actually lands beside it, as we can deduce from his survival, which we learn about in Episode V).

In the third movie, we see Vader in the same mask that the masked warrior in ep. II, and the other masked Dark Jedi were wearing. He kills the man who had actually fought Skywalker--with an excuse besides revenge, perhaps. Maybe the two of them had not met for some time (or so they thought). The Dark Jedi taunts Vader about some new injuries he appears to have sustained, and mocks Vader's need to use a breathing apparatus like a dying old man. Vader says something about being injured on Mustafar (as I shall conveniently call the planet on which the volcano battle took place), then strikes the Dark Jedi down. He later dons a more customized mask that looks more like that of OT Vader. The rest proceeds as previously described.

I'm sure there are flaws in that too, but with minor tweaks, I think my proposed storyline would have worked without spoiling the OT for first-time viewers.

LOL

Ever since I've seen AOTR, I have almost consistently been using "AOTR" instead of "AOTC" unintentionally. :P

DuracellEnergizer said:

I wonder if the EU ever explained which of the two skeletons were Owen and Beru. ;-)

 I believe Owen and Beru were both separate skeletons.

;)

Tyrphanax said:

RicOlie_2 said:

It could have been done, it just wasn't....

I think this is the main point to be made here; I don't know how exactly it could have followed the PT storyline we have now (your synopsis was pretty great, Ric), but I feel like it could have been done given the right talent and the right mindset.

I do feel like it would be weird without the droids, though...

The droids would have been missed, since they were a big part of the dynamic of Star Wars. Another droid duo (or maybe trio, for variety) could have replaced them. Some of the atmosphere of the OT would have been impossible to reproduce in the PT without copying the OT too much. It still could have been made to be more in line with the OT in terms of visuals.

Fang Zei said:

Perhaps I should clarify my original questions.

I'm not so much talking about syncing up in terms of story, but merely in terms of looking/sounding of a whole with the OOT.

But this kind of leads me to my other question: does it really matter? Does the fact that some of the environments in the PT are cg whereas even the most fantastical locales of the OOT (like Bespin) are still "analog" actually matter?

In a world without the SE, would it matter that the PT is as cg-filled as it is?

I feel like I addressed the first part of this in my first post fairly well; as for the second part, I'm almost not sure if it does matter.

I think the vast majority of what's wrong with the PT is story-related, and I feel like we could have ignored its over-reliance on CGI if it had a story that was on-par with the OT. I think the majority of us would have just shrugged it off as the progression of technology (which made heavy CGI use in the PT almost inevitable, SE or no).

If the Special Editions failed, I feel like the PT probably would never have happened.

 I agree. The bad CGI in the PT doesn't bother me at all (in fact, I wouldn't know it was bad were it not for the criticism it gets here). A lot of the poorly done effects (not that there are many) in the OT bug me more. It is possible I haven't noticed the bad CGI in the PT because I've only seen AOTR in HD though...

To add to that:

We see C-3PO only briefly on Alderaan and R2-D2 doesn't make an appearance at all, to avoid universe shrinkage as much as we can.