INBOX (noctium)

[hierophany]

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[hierophany]

That is exactly what I am contending. We solved the same problem in the same way, we just happened to be on different sides of the answer.

I got lucky. It was lucky, that I was both the person forced to answer the question and the correct answer. I didn't have to answer the trolley problem, and so I don't have to live knowing what my answer is. It can remain a hypothetical for me. But if I didn't get lucky, I would still be dead. Everyone I love would be dead. Maybe the entire population of Cairo would be dead.

And I already expressed my feelings on luck as a virtue.

You're not made for an ideal world. You're made for a world where people make shitty unwinnable games and tie other people to train tracks for the sake of forcing people to make difficult choices. You've succeeded where I don't know if I could.

I'm not saying you should take pride in it. Just that you should do the same amount of not taking pride in it as I'm doing.

[freshprints]

You're thinking about it, aren't you. Not about your dungeon anymore.

You're casting your own players into my dungeon, and you're ashamed that in my place, you would've faltered when you were faced with the prospect of throwing Jotaro to the wolves for your own survival.

Because for better or for worse, thev fact that I did still makes me something. Decisive. A strong negative character trait is still a strong trait regardless of its nature. The greater sin in your eyes is to be too weak to accept reality and flail about helplessly in spineless idealism.

Something like that?

[hierophany]

Something like that.

I let a lot of people die that night without even thinking of it as a problem. I suppose, in my dungeon, they would be the dots that made up the floor. The things that don't even register as human until you stop and think about them. People were between us, and he killed them. And that was entirely his doing, but I could have stopped it if I just stopped and turned around and let him kill me.

I didn't. I don't even think of them all that often. I've never lost sleep over it. I was doing the right thing. If I had just died while achieving nothing, more people would be hurt than were from my running for higher ground.

And yet the people whose names I know? I don't think I could sacrifice them.

The trolley problem doesn't interest me in itself, so much as the way that answers change with the identities of the people involved. I could let a hundred people die for the greater good without a second thought, and yet I wouldn't be able to give up someone I cared about.

If there's a difference, that's where it lies. You are callous and ruthless, and I am callous and ruthless only until I might be forced to live with the consequences of my choices.

1/3

[freshprints]

Like the child who grew up on a farm with livestock and foiled the season's meatpacking output by naming all the cows where the butcher could overhear it.

We started this conversation talking about sex and vulnerability, and what I'm capable of when I'm goal-oriented versus when I'm operating on emotion. What you've said is essentially just that I'm better at dropping into and maintaining that goal-oriented state than you are. And...that you have more people you care about than I do.

I can't help but consider the possibility that we're both envious of the other for divergent reasons. I envy you the connections with people that would make it hard for you to kill them. And you envy me the mastery of myself that makes me capable of doing things that others can't.

[freshprints]

[...]

[freshprints]

Socks.

I have no qualms about investigating corpses, even those of close friends and acquaintances. But I don't like to have to touch their socks.

[hierophany]

Ones that people are wearing, as a corpse? Or just the socks of others, in general?

[freshprints]

Mostly in general. It's the proximity to feet.

[hierophany]

I see. I can't say that socks would cause me any more distress than any other item of worn clothing. But then, I have Hierophant to deal with thinks that disgust me.

There are a lot of things that I am somewhat uneasy about, but most of them I can either have Hierophant attend to or at least take comfort in the knowledge that my concerns have a genuine source.

But sunburn is distressing to me. As a concept, and not for any particular reason.

[freshprints]

Oh, is that why you had Hierophant-kun lift me that time on the space station? You left him to deal with me because I disgusted you? I see how it is.

How is sunburn distressing? The heat of the sun caused your outermost layer of skin to cook slowly.

[hierophany]

Precisely.

How are feet distressing? Assuming that the sun hasn't tricked the body into believing it's allergic to its own feet.

[freshprints]

I'll rub mine on your face the next time I see you, and leave you to answer that question for yourself.

[hierophany]

You really are terrible at sexting.