That would be “restitution”, and it exists specifically to stop the otherwise infinite regression of eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye that led to the blood feuds and general chaos of the past. The goal is having the perpetrator compensate the victim, proportionate to but not equal to the crime, and to have that punishment and the implementation of it be at the hand of a neutral third party, in the interest of justice rather than merely revenge. It’s why murderers aren’t unconditionally put to death, because we recognize that a single action does not define a person. The victim, or their family in the… Read more »
The question isn’t ‘what would our system do’. If Zeke’s space is in his eyes sovereign territory, then it should follow his legal system. It’s a little problematic to retcon the fact he doesn’t have one and now he has a potential case, but things are always messy at the start of a new polity. We cannot assume he is a citizen of the country the store is in and we can’t assume that he would be bound by their rules. He doesn’t have diplomatic immunity, but I’ll bet he could get some. Of course, if they found out he… Read more »
Rake
2 years ago
Gotta say, big fan of how the whole Zeke storyline gets treated. I get excited every time there’s more of it.
Rolan7
2 years ago
Ethan’s doing really well here. I only expected him to defuse Lucas, but I’m starting to think he has a hidden talent for philosophy-under-duress.
The “philosophy” parts that Ethan is good at, are not so much what we usually consider “philosophy.” Just basic social norms and common sense. And Ethan, while eccentric to a fault and prone to lapses in this area, DOES understand such norms and sense pretty decently.
In fact, considering he’s a superhero that refrains from abuse, pettiness and vengeance… I’d say his grasp of such concepts is pretty solid. Maybe above average, even.
Maybe he’ll turn out to be like Mal: A good man. <stab> Well, a not so bad man. <stab>
We haven’t seen what this Ethan will do when he is put in a situation where he really, really wants to kill someone because of the harm done to him or others.
Dodgy
2 years ago
Half a murder sounds reasonal. But we’re talking about Ethan here. Half a murder won’t make him respawn so a full murder seems to be the way to go here. Also all bones simultaniously sounds like a better option than one by one. Sure all bones snapped may sting for a second or two but after that it’s blip and Ethan’s good as new again.
I think that was saying to commit to your descisions, and follow through, not a binary choice. The student was asked to perform a task and responded with “Well, I’ll try…” not believing they had the capacity and therefore not truly giving it their all. The saying is basically ‘listen you bitchy little pip-squeak, you came looking for me. Either you do the training properly or you go home on that wet space ship you landed in my lake and let me live in peace.’
Sure, but it still fails to recognize a continuum. They whole statement is rather disingenuous. Yoda obviously got his own green @$$ handed to him by palpatine and then he went to hide in a swamp. I guess he didn’t do, but it did seem to me he tried.
He’s a hypocrite. So are most of the Jedi. So are the Sith. It is one of their commonalities.
Lazlowi
2 years ago
Congrats on incorporating the teaching moments from your life as a parent into the comic! I’m thoroughly enjoying it 🙂
Rufus S.
2 years ago
So, welcome to the wonderful notions of Mens Rea and Actus Reus, on one side and the evolution of justice from Hammurabi to Scandinavia and Finland on the other.
I wonder where modern indigenous sentencing circles and notions of restorative justice and community involvement would sit on that continuum you describe…
James Stakey
2 years ago
Zeke, there’s a concept called “proportionate response.” Maybe look that up? Haha
Mallengar
2 years ago
Wait… I get why Ethan is worried because he tends to forget things, but why is Lucas worried? He knows Ethan will just respawn.
They have been worried about if ZK is trustworthy or redeemable. If he goes and murders someone, regardless of the respawnability of that clumsy human, it might make ZK less redeemable in the eyes of others.
An important step here is also whether he backs down from being talked to instead ot the threat of force.
“Didn’t kill Ethan because someone showed up to stop him” would still not look good on his resume.
Eldest Gruff
2 years ago
Here’s hoping that Lucas can remind him that Zeke did FAR worse to him, and not only did he and Lucas not destroy Zeke when they had him fully incapacitated, they took him from his captor, repaired him, ‘fed’ him electricity, gave him access to games and the Internet, and ultimately his freedom.
And not because Zeke’s some superior being, but because as a slave acting out orders on threat of death, one can see that he didn’t necessarily choose to be a killer, but rather had that forced upon him.
Christopher
2 years ago
I know *this* Ethan isn’t as thoughtless as Original Ethan; but I definitely see how this could be a good learning moment for both parties.
Chris
2 years ago
I think this episode more than any other shows the difference between this universe and the one we knew for so long, specifically in that the Ethan we have always known would NOT have been able to articulate what he is in this panel. Ethan understands fully here the concept of actions, forgiveness, and atonement
Dr.Synth
2 years ago
Welp, time to sleep for 16 hoursto see the next one ASAP.
Ian
2 years ago
I am all for this arc. Loving it, Tim.
Eldrik
2 years ago
Zeke’s gonna learn the concept of “reparation”, how the offender need to make up for the damage to the victim. And from there he’ll try to think of a way to guilt trip all of humanity into working for him lol.
Halosty
2 years ago
It doesn’t seem like Ethan has gotten to the point where he says he’ll help get the eye fixed yet. That’s an important part of this sort of apology.
Tomn
2 years ago
If nobody minds I’m just going to rant a little bit here about apologies because this is something that’s been rolling around in my head now and then and this seems a perfect excuse to go on about it. A lot of folks grew up being told to apologize, but not everyone I think was taught why exactly – as a result, there’s quite a few folks who think “apologies are what you do to stop people being angry at you,” and of those there’s a subset that goes on to say “and if they don’t accept it, they’re jerks.”… Read more »
When we taught our daughter to apologize, we would not let her off the hook until she could articulate what harm had been done, what led to the harm (accident or decision), and we would look for restorative justice where that was possible. We also applied consequences when our daughter misbehaved that are grounded in logical consequences if similar behaviour was used in the larger community as an adult. That said, I disagree with one thing you said: An apology is not necessarily of no value just because it can’t take back the harm. Two friends have a fight and… Read more »
Karrde
2 years ago
yeah, “their” just doesnt sound right. Plural as a singular just doesnt work.
I’ve long said that English could use a widely recognized gender-neutral pronoun for situations where the gender of the person in question isn’t known (such as anonymous conversation through the internet). But until there is one, using gender-neutral plural pronouns is pretty much the go-to solution for most people, as far as I have seen.
The problem that Karrde specified wasn’t unknown gender; the problem was number agreement. “They” is still widely associated with plural. The thing is, that there is such a gender-nonspecific singular pronoun: “it”. But I don’t think there’d be many people strong enough to claim for their own a pronoun so thoroughly associated with “not-a-person” – or, derisively, as “subhuman”.
But it can be perfectly correct. When viewing a person at a distance, gender unidentifiable, someone asks: “What’s that person doing?” Another person responds: “I don’t know, but it looks like their phone fell on the ground and they’re seeing if it’s broken.” There is only one person being described, and we have no knowledge what gender they are (see how it works?).This is completely fine, and nobody would bat an eye. But when someone does not identify as “he” or “she”, then “they” becomes the default. It’s not wrong, it does work, people just need to learn that it’s… Read more »
That situation isn’t simply no knowledge of gender, but no knowledge of identity. Even though it’s only one person being described, that unknown person is still a member of a group, classification: “people that I can not yet identify”. Any eye-batting would come after identification, when “they” as a pronoun becomes personal.
Your argument has now turned from the notion that ‘they’ cannot be used in the singular, to the argument that they cannot have an identity other than ‘he’ or ‘she’ that you’re ever going to accept. So by that statement, ‘they’ is still correct, you just don’t accept non-binary gender definitions.
I originally started out by agreeing with Karrde’s statement about grammar – about number agreement, specifically they/them vs it/it. To some of us (I can only speak for myself) who have the grammatical rules firmly educated into our heads – hearing them/they as plural requires an interruption in thought in order to parse unfamiliar definitions: it ruins the verbal flow, or in Karrde’s original words, “just doesn’t sound right.” Reducing that extra parsing time to zero is going to take some time; obviously not as little time as you’d like it to, but eventually. Please help by keeping other pronouns… Read more »
Well that’s good to hear, and I understand that it takes some time to get used to. I was simply pointing out the meaning of your statement as you put it and the consequence of your own argument. Perhaps it came off a little harsher than I meant it, that was not the intent. Also, please notice you did use the noun ‘identity’, in the first sentence of your reaction. I quote, That situation isn’t simply no knowledge of gender, but no knowledge of identity. I agree with you that there ought to be number-appropriate pronouns, or things will just get… Read more »
The only reason your example works is that you have setup a lengthy preamble and that provides context. They went to the store. If that’s all you’ve got, you do not know if it is one or more people going to the store or anything about their gender choice. You are left wondering now if it is one person with a gender pronoun that is not he or she or is it more than one person? This is my objection. It’s a poor choice to overload ‘they’. It muddies the waters. What was wrong with introducting one or more additional… Read more »
Context is how we view our world however. Your example “they went to the store” would be tied to a previous comment/question. Also, “lengthy preamble”? “When viewing a person at a distance, gender unidentifiable, someone asks:” is not that lengthy, and is for purpose of text. If it was in a visual setting (a comic or real life), that “lengthy” preamble would be filled in less than a second via optical input. Eg: Where’s Arden? -They went to the store. Now we know where Arden, a singular human being who does not identify within the binary gender system, went. Eg… Read more »
Insofar as ‘they’ gives you no information about the gender of those involved (pre-non-binary gender pronoun days). It could have been a bunch of males, a bunch of females, or a bunch of mixed males and females. You didn’t know (without some other information) what genders were involved. I suppose we did have phrases like ‘The perpetrator broke into the house. They did X, Y and Z.’ However, to know they was a singular, you needed the singular perpetrator to be identified in the other sentence. If you just got ‘They broke in and did X, Y and Z.’ you… Read more »
You’re not wrong when you say they deserve no less. That’s a great spirit of inclusivity. If we end up with 47 different pronouns, that’ll be great, if not hard to remember sometimes, but great because people will have something they identify with. But right now, there are people identifying as “they”, and if that’s what is desired, that’s what I’ll go with.
Roses are red, violets are blue
Singular “They” predates singular “You”
Woodrobin
2 years ago
Zeke needs to learn the concept of restitution: if Ethan fixes what he damaged, didn’t intend to cause the damage, and apologizes (and he’s already done two of those things), then Zeke needs to understand the matter should be considered settled. Unless he want to a dick who hold pointless grudges over accidents.
And what if it had been Lucas’ eye that stopped the dart (and likely it would have sunk into his brain)?
If Zeke is to be treated as a sentient with a right not to be assaulted, even by accident, then by rights, Ethan would (were his victim human) be guilt of negligence causing bodily harm which in most jurisdiction would send you to jail.
Mark
2 years ago
This may be the greatest series ever to come out since the strip began
Bope
2 years ago
You get kind of worried until you remember Ethan is immortal. It probably helps him stay Somewhat calm in the situation.
Pluveus
2 years ago
It’s kinda nice to see Ethan talking about the value of “meaning” to do something considering his big internal struggle is about not knowing whether him dropping the troll was intentional or accidental.
Smiffwilm
2 years ago
So…. will Ethan eventually offer Zeke the option that whenever he fills the need to kill a person, he may do so with him?
TomB
2 years ago
They need to setup a kangaroo court where Ethan can answer for his negligent damage to another sentient. Because he can’t be really killed for good, or otherwise jailed really, there ought to be some form of restorative justice. Maybe the bot gets to beat him up some. And again. And again. On the other hand, if the casing and other parts aren’t super hard to replace, it doesn’t have the same severity as it would for a human. It’s a quandry. Mind you, I’d have blown Zeke’s head off long ago and not taken any chances. Been bitten enough… Read more »
24
Time for a lesson on revenge next. He knows revenge wont make his eye less damaged either.
Time for the biblical education, “an eye for an eye”, after all Ethan doesn’t heal instantly if you don’t kill him.
But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is clumsy. But if anyone shoots out your right optic lens, turn to him the other also.
That’s beautiful, man. Brought a tear to my eye.
we should make a religion out of that
Only for the purposes of target acquisition and accurate firecontrol.
I don’t know much about the Bible but I always thought that was Hammurabi’s Code sort of thing.
“Eye for an eye” is the monetary compensation of damage that a judge is supposed to demand.
That would be “restitution”, and it exists specifically to stop the otherwise infinite regression of eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye that led to the blood feuds and general chaos of the past. The goal is having the perpetrator compensate the victim, proportionate to but not equal to the crime, and to have that punishment and the implementation of it be at the hand of a neutral third party, in the interest of justice rather than merely revenge. It’s why murderers aren’t unconditionally put to death, because we recognize that a single action does not define a person. The victim, or their family in the… Read more »
The question isn’t ‘what would our system do’. If Zeke’s space is in his eyes sovereign territory, then it should follow his legal system. It’s a little problematic to retcon the fact he doesn’t have one and now he has a potential case, but things are always messy at the start of a new polity. We cannot assume he is a citizen of the country the store is in and we can’t assume that he would be bound by their rules. He doesn’t have diplomatic immunity, but I’ll bet he could get some. Of course, if they found out he… Read more »
Gotta say, big fan of how the whole Zeke storyline gets treated. I get excited every time there’s more of it.
Ethan’s doing really well here. I only expected him to defuse Lucas, but I’m starting to think he has a hidden talent for philosophy-under-duress.
The “philosophy” parts that Ethan is good at, are not so much what we usually consider “philosophy.” Just basic social norms and common sense. And Ethan, while eccentric to a fault and prone to lapses in this area, DOES understand such norms and sense pretty decently.
In fact, considering he’s a superhero that refrains from abuse, pettiness and vengeance… I’d say his grasp of such concepts is pretty solid. Maybe above average, even.
Maybe he’ll turn out to be like Mal: A good man. <stab> Well, a not so bad man. <stab>
We haven’t seen what this Ethan will do when he is put in a situation where he really, really wants to kill someone because of the harm done to him or others.
Half a murder sounds reasonal. But we’re talking about Ethan here. Half a murder won’t make him respawn so a full murder seems to be the way to go here. Also all bones simultaniously sounds like a better option than one by one. Sure all bones snapped may sting for a second or two but after that it’s blip and Ethan’s good as new again.
All bones snapped would end up with shards of bone in the brain, so i think it would be a pretty quick and painless blip for ethan
Not gonna lie. Totally forgot that Ethan respawns.
Not a big deal, we haven’t seen Ethan’s power referenced on or off panel since November of 2020
Yeah, the issue is we don’t know how many continues he still has remaining. He could be on his last man.
Nah, he’s modern day console Ethan: unlimited last save loadings
Once you settle on half a murder, another decision presents itself: should it be a mur, or a dur?
@Freddie dependson the comedic context – if its funny its a dur, if it isnt its a mur
Neither. Just education.
“zeke, life isn’t all in 0s and 1s”
“does not compute…”
Talk about binary perception, black and white morality, “Either you’re for or against” tunnel-visioned issue tracking…
Only a sith deals in absolutes…
“Do or do not. There is no try.” I seem to recall that coming from a Jedi Grand Master. Black and white thinking if I ever saw it.
I think that was saying to commit to your descisions, and follow through, not a binary choice. The student was asked to perform a task and responded with “Well, I’ll try…” not believing they had the capacity and therefore not truly giving it their all. The saying is basically ‘listen you bitchy little pip-squeak, you came looking for me. Either you do the training properly or you go home on that wet space ship you landed in my lake and let me live in peace.’
for real, Yoda was the original Shrek
“outta my swamp, get the hell out you must”
Sure, but it still fails to recognize a continuum. They whole statement is rather disingenuous. Yoda obviously got his own green @$$ handed to him by palpatine and then he went to hide in a swamp. I guess he didn’t do, but it did seem to me he tried.
He’s a hypocrite. So are most of the Jedi. So are the Sith. It is one of their commonalities.
Congrats on incorporating the teaching moments from your life as a parent into the comic! I’m thoroughly enjoying it 🙂
So, welcome to the wonderful notions of Mens Rea and Actus Reus, on one side and the evolution of justice from Hammurabi to Scandinavia and Finland on the other.
I wonder where modern indigenous sentencing circles and notions of restorative justice and community involvement would sit on that continuum you describe…
Zeke, there’s a concept called “proportionate response.” Maybe look that up? Haha
Wait… I get why Ethan is worried because he tends to forget things, but why is Lucas worried? He knows Ethan will just respawn.
They have been worried about if ZK is trustworthy or redeemable. If he goes and murders someone, regardless of the respawnability of that clumsy human, it might make ZK less redeemable in the eyes of others.
An important step here is also whether he backs down from being talked to instead ot the threat of force.
“Didn’t kill Ethan because someone showed up to stop him” would still not look good on his resume.
Here’s hoping that Lucas can remind him that Zeke did FAR worse to him, and not only did he and Lucas not destroy Zeke when they had him fully incapacitated, they took him from his captor, repaired him, ‘fed’ him electricity, gave him access to games and the Internet, and ultimately his freedom.
And not because Zeke’s some superior being, but because as a slave acting out orders on threat of death, one can see that he didn’t necessarily choose to be a killer, but rather had that forced upon him.
I know *this* Ethan isn’t as thoughtless as Original Ethan; but I definitely see how this could be a good learning moment for both parties.
I think this episode more than any other shows the difference between this universe and the one we knew for so long, specifically in that the Ethan we have always known would NOT have been able to articulate what he is in this panel. Ethan understands fully here the concept of actions, forgiveness, and atonement
Welp, time to sleep for 16 hoursto see the next one ASAP.
I am all for this arc. Loving it, Tim.
Zeke’s gonna learn the concept of “reparation”, how the offender need to make up for the damage to the victim. And from there he’ll try to think of a way to guilt trip all of humanity into working for him lol.
It doesn’t seem like Ethan has gotten to the point where he says he’ll help get the eye fixed yet. That’s an important part of this sort of apology.
If nobody minds I’m just going to rant a little bit here about apologies because this is something that’s been rolling around in my head now and then and this seems a perfect excuse to go on about it. A lot of folks grew up being told to apologize, but not everyone I think was taught why exactly – as a result, there’s quite a few folks who think “apologies are what you do to stop people being angry at you,” and of those there’s a subset that goes on to say “and if they don’t accept it, they’re jerks.”… Read more »
When we taught our daughter to apologize, we would not let her off the hook until she could articulate what harm had been done, what led to the harm (accident or decision), and we would look for restorative justice where that was possible. We also applied consequences when our daughter misbehaved that are grounded in logical consequences if similar behaviour was used in the larger community as an adult. That said, I disagree with one thing you said: An apology is not necessarily of no value just because it can’t take back the harm. Two friends have a fight and… Read more »
yeah, “their” just doesnt sound right. Plural as a singular just doesnt work.
I’ve long said that English could use a widely recognized gender-neutral pronoun for situations where the gender of the person in question isn’t known (such as anonymous conversation through the internet). But until there is one, using gender-neutral plural pronouns is pretty much the go-to solution for most people, as far as I have seen.
The problem that Karrde specified wasn’t unknown gender; the problem was number agreement. “They” is still widely associated with plural. The thing is, that there is such a gender-nonspecific singular pronoun: “it”. But I don’t think there’d be many people strong enough to claim for their own a pronoun so thoroughly associated with “not-a-person” – or, derisively, as “subhuman”.
But it can be perfectly correct. When viewing a person at a distance, gender unidentifiable, someone asks: “What’s that person doing?” Another person responds: “I don’t know, but it looks like their phone fell on the ground and they’re seeing if it’s broken.” There is only one person being described, and we have no knowledge what gender they are (see how it works?).This is completely fine, and nobody would bat an eye. But when someone does not identify as “he” or “she”, then “they” becomes the default. It’s not wrong, it does work, people just need to learn that it’s… Read more »
^ This.
That situation isn’t simply no knowledge of gender, but no knowledge of identity. Even though it’s only one person being described, that unknown person is still a member of a group, classification: “people that I can not yet identify”. Any eye-batting would come after identification, when “they” as a pronoun becomes personal.
Your argument has now turned from the notion that ‘they’ cannot be used in the singular, to the argument that they cannot have an identity other than ‘he’ or ‘she’ that you’re ever going to accept. So by that statement, ‘they’ is still correct, you just don’t accept non-binary gender definitions.
I originally started out by agreeing with Karrde’s statement about grammar – about number agreement, specifically they/them vs it/it. To some of us (I can only speak for myself) who have the grammatical rules firmly educated into our heads – hearing them/they as plural requires an interruption in thought in order to parse unfamiliar definitions: it ruins the verbal flow, or in Karrde’s original words, “just doesn’t sound right.” Reducing that extra parsing time to zero is going to take some time; obviously not as little time as you’d like it to, but eventually. Please help by keeping other pronouns… Read more »
Well that’s good to hear, and I understand that it takes some time to get used to. I was simply pointing out the meaning of your statement as you put it and the consequence of your own argument. Perhaps it came off a little harsher than I meant it, that was not the intent. Also, please notice you did use the noun ‘identity’, in the first sentence of your reaction. I quote, That situation isn’t simply no knowledge of gender, but no knowledge of identity. I agree with you that there ought to be number-appropriate pronouns, or things will just get… Read more »
The only reason your example works is that you have setup a lengthy preamble and that provides context. They went to the store. If that’s all you’ve got, you do not know if it is one or more people going to the store or anything about their gender choice. You are left wondering now if it is one person with a gender pronoun that is not he or she or is it more than one person? This is my objection. It’s a poor choice to overload ‘they’. It muddies the waters. What was wrong with introducting one or more additional… Read more »
Context is how we view our world however. Your example “they went to the store” would be tied to a previous comment/question. Also, “lengthy preamble”? “When viewing a person at a distance, gender unidentifiable, someone asks:” is not that lengthy, and is for purpose of text. If it was in a visual setting (a comic or real life), that “lengthy” preamble would be filled in less than a second via optical input. Eg: Where’s Arden? -They went to the store. Now we know where Arden, a singular human being who does not identify within the binary gender system, went. Eg… Read more »
As far as I learned, “They” may have been used to reference an unspecified gender in former times.
Insofar as ‘they’ gives you no information about the gender of those involved (pre-non-binary gender pronoun days). It could have been a bunch of males, a bunch of females, or a bunch of mixed males and females. You didn’t know (without some other information) what genders were involved. I suppose we did have phrases like ‘The perpetrator broke into the house. They did X, Y and Z.’ However, to know they was a singular, you needed the singular perpetrator to be identified in the other sentence. If you just got ‘They broke in and did X, Y and Z.’ you… Read more »
You’re not wrong when you say they deserve no less. That’s a great spirit of inclusivity. If we end up with 47 different pronouns, that’ll be great, if not hard to remember sometimes, but great because people will have something they identify with. But right now, there are people identifying as “they”, and if that’s what is desired, that’s what I’ll go with.
Roses are red, violets are blue
Singular “They” predates singular “You”
Zeke needs to learn the concept of restitution: if Ethan fixes what he damaged, didn’t intend to cause the damage, and apologizes (and he’s already done two of those things), then Zeke needs to understand the matter should be considered settled. Unless he want to a dick who hold pointless grudges over accidents.
What about Zeke’s pain and suffering?
And what if it had been Lucas’ eye that stopped the dart (and likely it would have sunk into his brain)?
If Zeke is to be treated as a sentient with a right not to be assaulted, even by accident, then by rights, Ethan would (were his victim human) be guilt of negligence causing bodily harm which in most jurisdiction would send you to jail.
This may be the greatest series ever to come out since the strip began
You get kind of worried until you remember Ethan is immortal. It probably helps him stay Somewhat calm in the situation.
It’s kinda nice to see Ethan talking about the value of “meaning” to do something considering his big internal struggle is about not knowing whether him dropping the troll was intentional or accidental.
So…. will Ethan eventually offer Zeke the option that whenever he fills the need to kill a person, he may do so with him?
They need to setup a kangaroo court where Ethan can answer for his negligent damage to another sentient. Because he can’t be really killed for good, or otherwise jailed really, there ought to be some form of restorative justice. Maybe the bot gets to beat him up some. And again. And again. On the other hand, if the casing and other parts aren’t super hard to replace, it doesn’t have the same severity as it would for a human. It’s a quandry. Mind you, I’d have blown Zeke’s head off long ago and not taken any chances. Been bitten enough… Read more »