i wonder if Geisha’s line of thinking goes “just because i want to make his life a nightmare doesn’t mean that i don’t care. i want to be the one he wakes up screaming about and the one that is always in the back of his mind making his sweet!” well that or Geisha maybe Jason to slick’s Daisy
Kind of reminds me how Melody and Binary used toning to keep Murphy out of their conversation.
Though Geisha could really care…about his own chances of surviving. If things keep going like they have, they might run out of players before the seasons end.
Yeah, no. At the very least, there isn’t a combat team alive who doesn’t want every shooter up and blowing the chunks out of enemy combatants. Not held as emergency food rations. And renamed Menchi.
I’ve been working from the assumption that Geisha is psychotic, not sociopathic. Thoughts?
@Feral: Huh, good catch. Makes sense, though. His species is child-compatible with Talmi, so they’d have to have some similarities, and a tail is an easy way to show that.
Ouch, poor Geisha. On the one hand he probably deserves that for his history. On the other..well, I don’t think there’s going to be an outright TK, but that Andorian recolor there is likely soon to be finding themselves pushed into the role of Point/Spear-Catcher/Trap-Tripper. They haven’t grasped a key element of situations like this–even if you hate someone’s guts on a personal level, as long as they have useful skills and are willing to pull their weight as part of the team, you just deal with it. Arikos being case in point–he may be an arrogant a**, but he’s not *stupid*–and obviously he and Geisha can cooperate for mutual survival. Case in counterpoint being Jason being a complete idiot, though there might have been extenuating circumstances.
Of course what would be a hilarious punchline is if it’s Gangrel who pops (does that character have a name, come to think of it?) them one and delivers a ‘Reason You Suck’ speech before Geisha can do anything. 🙂
@The_Rippy_One: I wouldn’t know now how to classify the difference of a psychotic or a sociopathic person.
All I can really say is that Geisha seems to love his trade more then he cared for complete strangers lives. But Geisha always seemed to at least put thought into things.
It takes a lot of thought to set up people like he did most likely, so he at least approaches things from a thought out possession. So he probably could see losing Slick as tactically a loss to the groups effectiveness.
@josh: strictly speaking, in the current day nomenclature, it’s whether or not the issue stems from internal or external issues – are they messed up because of a chemical imbalance/neural mis-wiring/whathave you, or were they driven to it by social factors.
I’m curious mainly out of an interest in what degree of intervention is available in the current setting. Fixing a purely bodily condition seems like something that is more likely to be possible in the Future, while social misalignment..I’d guess it would have to do as much with the species as much as any particular advancement in the science…
Or, to put it another way, could Geisha have a “chip in his head” (for some value of “chip” and “head”) that effectively cures him, but has left him with the general lack of social skills inherent to the condition, or is he supposed to be getting counseling, or is he entirely a lost cause because of the psyche factors of his species?
@The_Rippy_One: I bet he could totally have a chip in his head that could “cure” him, but there seems to be enough concern with supposed legality and personhood in this future that it might be simpler to imprison him than force him to change his brain chemistry.
For species-specific social misalignment, wouldn’t that be less of an issue since everyone’s been in the same cultural melting pot for so long?
@Sulucamas: It is thought not (we haven’t run into any aliens, so no proof…but). Yeah, there is a certain amount of acculturation that will affect behavior, but…melting pots work when what is melted share common elements, and only to the extent of those common elements. When the local focus is on differences, the melting pot doesn’t happen – witness the middle east for several hundred examples. Or the KKK. When dealing with an entirely different biology, there are likely some hardwired limits to “what will melt.”
There are a lot of ways that this can play out. Critters that go for r-type reproduction (have 1,000 babies in a go, and ignore the results) wouldn’t bat an eye at child-murder (or -cannibalism, frankly) – that’s just how it goes, right? Aggressive soloists, as a species, would probably look rather psychotic to we humans on the whole. Would you see either of those moving easily into our society?
Jig’s universe is culturally fairly close to human standard, but that doesn’t mean that the aliens are close enough to human that our version of psychiatry would be useful. Or accepted, frankly. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if most every species shown are mainly K-types (care for and protect a relatively small number of kids at a time). But you can have K-type clans, packs, herds, and soloists. A pack could potentially allow an “outsider” into its ranks relatively easily (outside challengers being a standard part of a pack’s life cycle), while a soloist is more likely to disembowel anyone under most conditions. To further confuse things, you get differences like zebra herds versus Cape Buffalo herds, who structure the same way, and show similar priorities, but have very different threat responses (zebra’s run, cape buffalo will KILL you. With extreme prejudice). I have no idea if there even is a standard psych profile for Celeste…all that crossbreeding has to do some interesting things to neural structures…
@The_Rippy_One: I didn’t mean to say that a melting pot would wipe away their cultural and biological quirks, just that the ones that live and work together would supposedly have moved enough towards some middle ground that they could tolerate each other. That or put on enough of an acceptable, public mask when they interact. They may not all get along with each other (nobody likes to live with the Arander), but at least they aren’t all trying to kill each other.
I think you’re completely right about all of the potential diversity in reproductive styles and the kinds of individuals and tensions that would arise because of that. There are bound to be all kinds of ugly stereotypes and underlying truths that get in the way of things (yay, “fun!”). Surely though, they’d mostly be able to look past those potentially extreme oddities if there’s some mutual benefit to be had.
Now, alien psychiatry would be a really fascinating thing to try to wrap one’s head around. 😀
@Sulucamas: Well, that would depend on to what extent that the biology controlled a given species. Read an interesting story involving first contact. The new arrivals lost half of their team because the natives (a very strongly scent-oriented species) literally could not resist destroying them – their smell set off a uncontrollable rage response. Yeah, they eventually got around it, but…
I have this scenario in my head now, alien backing out of the driveway, *ka-thunk* *ka-thunk* drives off. Gets this look on his face, and thinks to himself (in the same sort of tone as “Did I leave the garage door open?”) “Was that my kid…or my neighbors…? I should go back and check.” silly r-type alien 0_0 And then the nice men in the white coats arrive to take me…
I’d hope that things like that would happen frequently enough that everyone got the message that this was a genuine (potentially intolerable) difference and not some freak accident. Maybe that kind of thing is exactly why not everyone is part of The Connection. Addy and her people might off others too often for comfort… 😛
Even if there are species out there that fall into this category, I doubt this pertains to probably any of the characters here, even Geisha. It would seem as though they’re pretty well judged on at least a similar scale (considering who’s doing the judging) as we do here, implying their societies have at least accepted that as the standard. True, Addy’s willingness to make such a swift (and clearly thought out) killing may raise issues about societies outside The Connection, the ends to which the differences could reach are extreme, but I think for most of the races we see we can assume (there’s that word) it’s intolerable by government (or whatever) standards because it’s intolerable by their own.
For the record: I admire the arguments you guys have put up and wish I had gotten involved earlier when all the good points weren’t taken.
While we were discussing species as generally being “out there,” the discussion does have similar relevance to when an individual of a species goes mad as well – which may or may not apply to Geisha, admittedly. For example (time to play the “way out there” game), if, in his species, there is a bone deep, evolutionary drive for success (as in, for the heck of it, they can’t mate unless they feel that they are successful/superior in some fashion), and what happened to Geisha isn’t so much sociopathy/psychopathy, but an unnaturally strong obsession influenced by that drive?
Of course, that has no evidence of this in the comic, and really isn’t worth referring to, even as conjecture – the point is that, with an alien biology, the nature of the problems, and their solutions (if such are even possible), could be very different. To run with my absolutely unsupported (and fairly simplistic) example, “fixing” Geisha would rely on trying to weaken the compulsion and maybe mucking with his sex drive (the underlying theoretical push for the obsession), not trying to introduce a sense of empathy. Which may or may not be possible (in any of those case).
Second, I sort of agree, pretty much all the current races in the Connection probably naturally socialize to something close to “human standard,” as evidence by the fact that they are “averaging” out to something along those lines.
Third, there might be an exception to the above. I’ve been thinking about half-celeste. From an evolutionary stand point, maximizing the number of combinations makes sense (and would have been backed by the government after the Other War), as would only supporting the ones that “work” (functionally mid-lining on their reproduction style [have a very large number, and care a little about all of them, more-so as they get older/more successful]). Of course, the non-celeste parent, if the second supposition holds, would (on average) socialize for a social K-type. Bit like a cuckoo’s strategy. Except for the ones who screw things like tigers (what is wrong with you, Celeste grandparent?!)
Hm…how many non-celeste are on Celigan? and how many are there, not married to a half-celeste or pregnant?
I sense a TK coming up
i wonder if Geisha’s line of thinking goes “just because i want to make his life a nightmare doesn’t mean that i don’t care. i want to be the one he wakes up screaming about and the one that is always in the back of his mind making his sweet!” well that or Geisha maybe Jason to slick’s Daisy
notepassing in tone….why do I suspect they’ll now find a way to take Arikos out of commission so they can tone notes in secret?
Kind of reminds me how Melody and Binary used toning to keep Murphy out of their conversation.
Though Geisha could really care…about his own chances of surviving. If things keep going like they have, they might run out of players before the seasons end.
I think I heard a twang sound..
Arikos has a tail?
Yeah, no. At the very least, there isn’t a combat team alive who doesn’t want every shooter up and blowing the chunks out of enemy combatants. Not held as emergency food rations. And renamed Menchi.
I’ve been working from the assumption that Geisha is psychotic, not sociopathic. Thoughts?
@Feral: Huh, good catch. Makes sense, though. His species is child-compatible with Talmi, so they’d have to have some similarities, and a tail is an easy way to show that.
Ouch, poor Geisha. On the one hand he probably deserves that for his history. On the other..well, I don’t think there’s going to be an outright TK, but that Andorian recolor there is likely soon to be finding themselves pushed into the role of Point/Spear-Catcher/Trap-Tripper. They haven’t grasped a key element of situations like this–even if you hate someone’s guts on a personal level, as long as they have useful skills and are willing to pull their weight as part of the team, you just deal with it. Arikos being case in point–he may be an arrogant a**, but he’s not *stupid*–and obviously he and Geisha can cooperate for mutual survival. Case in counterpoint being Jason being a complete idiot, though there might have been extenuating circumstances.
Of course what would be a hilarious punchline is if it’s Gangrel who pops (does that character have a name, come to think of it?) them one and delivers a ‘Reason You Suck’ speech before Geisha can do anything. 🙂
@The_Rippy_One: I wouldn’t know now how to classify the difference of a psychotic or a sociopathic person.
All I can really say is that Geisha seems to love his trade more then he cared for complete strangers lives. But Geisha always seemed to at least put thought into things.
It takes a lot of thought to set up people like he did most likely, so he at least approaches things from a thought out possession. So he probably could see losing Slick as tactically a loss to the groups effectiveness.
Who’s pretending? Everyone loves Slick. 😛
@The_Rippy_One: Errrr…psychopath, I guess? Wish I could speak to that better. 😕
@Vulpis: Do you think Temporary Executioner Geisha picked Arikos as his lieutenant, since they seem to get along so well?
@josh: strictly speaking, in the current day nomenclature, it’s whether or not the issue stems from internal or external issues – are they messed up because of a chemical imbalance/neural mis-wiring/whathave you, or were they driven to it by social factors.
I’m curious mainly out of an interest in what degree of intervention is available in the current setting. Fixing a purely bodily condition seems like something that is more likely to be possible in the Future, while social misalignment..I’d guess it would have to do as much with the species as much as any particular advancement in the science…
Or, to put it another way, could Geisha have a “chip in his head” (for some value of “chip” and “head”) that effectively cures him, but has left him with the general lack of social skills inherent to the condition, or is he supposed to be getting counseling, or is he entirely a lost cause because of the psyche factors of his species?
@The_Rippy_One: I bet he could totally have a chip in his head that could “cure” him, but there seems to be enough concern with supposed legality and personhood in this future that it might be simpler to imprison him than force him to change his brain chemistry.
For species-specific social misalignment, wouldn’t that be less of an issue since everyone’s been in the same cultural melting pot for so long?
@Sulucamas: It is thought not (we haven’t run into any aliens, so no proof…but). Yeah, there is a certain amount of acculturation that will affect behavior, but…melting pots work when what is melted share common elements, and only to the extent of those common elements. When the local focus is on differences, the melting pot doesn’t happen – witness the middle east for several hundred examples. Or the KKK. When dealing with an entirely different biology, there are likely some hardwired limits to “what will melt.”
There are a lot of ways that this can play out. Critters that go for r-type reproduction (have 1,000 babies in a go, and ignore the results) wouldn’t bat an eye at child-murder (or -cannibalism, frankly) – that’s just how it goes, right? Aggressive soloists, as a species, would probably look rather psychotic to we humans on the whole. Would you see either of those moving easily into our society?
Jig’s universe is culturally fairly close to human standard, but that doesn’t mean that the aliens are close enough to human that our version of psychiatry would be useful. Or accepted, frankly. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if most every species shown are mainly K-types (care for and protect a relatively small number of kids at a time). But you can have K-type clans, packs, herds, and soloists. A pack could potentially allow an “outsider” into its ranks relatively easily (outside challengers being a standard part of a pack’s life cycle), while a soloist is more likely to disembowel anyone under most conditions. To further confuse things, you get differences like zebra herds versus Cape Buffalo herds, who structure the same way, and show similar priorities, but have very different threat responses (zebra’s run, cape buffalo will KILL you. With extreme prejudice). I have no idea if there even is a standard psych profile for Celeste…all that crossbreeding has to do some interesting things to neural structures…
@The_Rippy_One: I didn’t mean to say that a melting pot would wipe away their cultural and biological quirks, just that the ones that live and work together would supposedly have moved enough towards some middle ground that they could tolerate each other. That or put on enough of an acceptable, public mask when they interact. They may not all get along with each other (nobody likes to live with the Arander), but at least they aren’t all trying to kill each other.
I think you’re completely right about all of the potential diversity in reproductive styles and the kinds of individuals and tensions that would arise because of that. There are bound to be all kinds of ugly stereotypes and underlying truths that get in the way of things (yay, “fun!”). Surely though, they’d mostly be able to look past those potentially extreme oddities if there’s some mutual benefit to be had.
Now, alien psychiatry would be a really fascinating thing to try to wrap one’s head around. 😀
@Sulucamas: Well, that would depend on to what extent that the biology controlled a given species. Read an interesting story involving first contact. The new arrivals lost half of their team because the natives (a very strongly scent-oriented species) literally could not resist destroying them – their smell set off a uncontrollable rage response. Yeah, they eventually got around it, but…
I have this scenario in my head now, alien backing out of the driveway, *ka-thunk* *ka-thunk* drives off. Gets this look on his face, and thinks to himself (in the same sort of tone as “Did I leave the garage door open?”) “Was that my kid…or my neighbors…? I should go back and check.” silly r-type alien 0_0 And then the nice men in the white coats arrive to take me…
@The_Rippy_One: That scenario is hilarious! xD
I’d hope that things like that would happen frequently enough that everyone got the message that this was a genuine (potentially intolerable) difference and not some freak accident. Maybe that kind of thing is exactly why not everyone is part of The Connection. Addy and her people might off others too often for comfort… 😛
Even if there are species out there that fall into this category, I doubt this pertains to probably any of the characters here, even Geisha. It would seem as though they’re pretty well judged on at least a similar scale (considering who’s doing the judging) as we do here, implying their societies have at least accepted that as the standard. True, Addy’s willingness to make such a swift (and clearly thought out) killing may raise issues about societies outside The Connection, the ends to which the differences could reach are extreme, but I think for most of the races we see we can assume (there’s that word) it’s intolerable by government (or whatever) standards because it’s intolerable by their own.
For the record: I admire the arguments you guys have put up and wish I had gotten involved earlier when all the good points weren’t taken.
@Nikolai: Better late than never. Three bits.
While we were discussing species as generally being “out there,” the discussion does have similar relevance to when an individual of a species goes mad as well – which may or may not apply to Geisha, admittedly. For example (time to play the “way out there” game), if, in his species, there is a bone deep, evolutionary drive for success (as in, for the heck of it, they can’t mate unless they feel that they are successful/superior in some fashion), and what happened to Geisha isn’t so much sociopathy/psychopathy, but an unnaturally strong obsession influenced by that drive?
Of course, that has no evidence of this in the comic, and really isn’t worth referring to, even as conjecture – the point is that, with an alien biology, the nature of the problems, and their solutions (if such are even possible), could be very different. To run with my absolutely unsupported (and fairly simplistic) example, “fixing” Geisha would rely on trying to weaken the compulsion and maybe mucking with his sex drive (the underlying theoretical push for the obsession), not trying to introduce a sense of empathy. Which may or may not be possible (in any of those case).
Second, I sort of agree, pretty much all the current races in the Connection probably naturally socialize to something close to “human standard,” as evidence by the fact that they are “averaging” out to something along those lines.
Third, there might be an exception to the above. I’ve been thinking about half-celeste. From an evolutionary stand point, maximizing the number of combinations makes sense (and would have been backed by the government after the Other War), as would only supporting the ones that “work” (functionally mid-lining on their reproduction style [have a very large number, and care a little about all of them, more-so as they get older/more successful]). Of course, the non-celeste parent, if the second supposition holds, would (on average) socialize for a social K-type. Bit like a cuckoo’s strategy. Except for the ones who screw things like tigers (what is wrong with you, Celeste grandparent?!)
Hm…how many non-celeste are on Celigan? and how many are there, not married to a half-celeste or pregnant?