Feb 22 KESSIE!!

[Capnregex]

Heh heh well she got his attention. I have got to get me one of those, just need a few minor modifications.

*hmm*
*Starts drawing up plans for a golem with hardpoints....*

[Fusion]

What about rocket launchers?

[LoneWolf23k]

Ed, you and I have entirely different definitions of "Self-destructive behavior"...

Now, what happened to you was, I agree, incredibly WRONG and HARMFUL. Those people have no right telling who to marry or not to marry, security risk or no security risk. If they don't like it, they can just drum you out of the service or post you at Fort Nowhere-Important, In-the-middle-of-nowhere USA..

AND THAT'S IT.

Using their influence to force your bride-to-be out of town and try to push a replacement on you was quite simply Reprehensible behavior, if not outright immoral.


That having been said, you devoting yourself to hurting those people's lives in every way you can just for the sake of wanting to hurt them was frankly just as reprehensible and immoral in my book. Those people likely had families of their own, individuals who did you no harm, who were just as affected by your little revenge.

We live in a society that operates under the Rule of Law because Vengence isn't Justice.

[Capnregex]

See, that's the beauty of hardpoints.. you can attach all sorts of things to them

[Madmoonie]

We live in a society that operates under the Rule of Law because Vengence isn't Justice.

I am reminded of the Batman Begins movie. It said that I agree. "Justice is about balance, vengence is about making yourself feel better." What happened to Ed was terrible, utterly terrible, but they were not his friends. They were his father's from the sound of it.

[StrangeWulf13]

I'm not even sure they were that, from the sound of things. He put friends in quotes... and said his father was indebted to them I believe.

These were powerful people whom his father owed a favor I guess. Why the hell they decided to muck with somebody's love life is beyond me. Might just have been a cruel game.

*sigh* Broken people in a broken world... so much waste...

[SolidusRaccoon]

These were powerful people whom his father owed a favor I guess. Why the hell they decided to muck with somebody's love life is beyond me. Might just have been a cruel game.

These guys will teach them a lesson.

[Nikas_Zekeval]

Ed, I think you are reading too much into this.

In your case those 'friends' of your father were trying to live your life for you, and did real permanent harm as a result.

With Kessie using her golem to take Fen 'walkies' what does Fen loose? A few hours he was using to sulk, and maybe a bit of embarassment.

The situtation is, does Fen full understand the consequences of his obsession? Or is he unable to see the forest for the trees? Doe he despirately need a clue-by-four upside the head to see what he is actually doing to himself, rather than he knows and is willing to pay the full price? Tackling someone about to jump a bridge with a BASE rig parachute is interfering. Tackling someone about to do the same jump without gear, convinced they can learn to fly under their own power in the few seconds they have before going 'splat' is saving someone's life.

[TMLutas]

EdBecerra, please tell me that I shouldn't take your reply at face value before I throw up.

Nome, I was once in love with a very wonderful lady. There was one little problem, though - in two parts. The first part was that my father had a number of 'friends' who were deeply indebted to him, and searching for some way to escape that debt.

The second was that I was a GI... and Tasha was an undocumented person. No ID papers. Nothing.

OK, here's your first problem. Undocumented in the eyes of the US government is a challenge, not a problem. At one point, you too were undocumented. It happened the first 1-3 months of your existence outside the womb and your parents and the hospital most likely took care of the challenge of getting on the system for you.

My father's 'friends' heard that I'd proposed to her, and decided to break up our wedding. They even went so far as to choose a NEW bride for me, someone socially acceptable and politically connected, the daughter of a colonel who was on the short list for general, the unfortunate child was a victim of that most harsh of curses... "She's got a wonderful personality!"

They turned the law on Tasha, who had to run. Her last act before she fled was to make things look as if she were merely using me, in an attempt to keep ME from getting into trouble for having dated a security risk.

Here's your second problem. Tasha, sorry to say, showed the wrong instincts and fled. What she should have done was to go with you to a lawyer and figure out what the process is (there *is* a process) to regularize her status so that nobody could hurt you, her, or your future children by turning the law on her. That was an unfortunate mistake, at best. At worst, Tasha was something other than you remember her as. I don't know and don't care to speculate beyond noting the possibility. The process might have involved a significant amount of separation between the two of you while the paperwork cleared. Love sometimes sucks.

Personal note: I've made the lawyer trip myself so I know that it is both long, painful, frustrating, and vital to future happiness. My pesonal circumstances are entirely different but I'm happily married with three kids at the end of the process.

Those four, though - I took great pleasure in using entirely legal tactics to ruin their lives over the course of several months. I wasn't QUITE able to drive them to suicide, but I came close enough to satisfy me.

Did quite a bit of damage to my own in the process, but it was well worth the price.

This is not self-destructive behavior from what you're describing. I think it's called "taking return fire" which is something entirely different.

[EdBecerra]

That having been said, you devoting yourself to hurting those people's lives in every way you can just for the sake of wanting to hurt them was frankly just as reprehensible and immoral in my book. Those people likely had families of their own, individuals who did you no harm, who were just as affected by your little revenge.

We live in a society that operates under the Rule of Law because Vengence isn't Justice.

I took some time in replying to this, as I wanted to do so with a clear head. Even two decades later, that's extremely difficult.

First of all, everything I did to them was legal. Unethical, yes. Immoral, quite! But also quite legal. While some of Tasha's friends may have taken independant actions of their own that violated the law, I did not, neither was I under any onus to discover if they did so. Suspicious I have, but I am not obligated nor required to act upon suspicion alone.

One of Dickens' characters said it best: there's many a man driven to suicide through pressures that were completely within the boundaries of the law.

"Vengence isn't Justice." I won't get into that, as we obviously disagree.

My mother's family originated in the highlands of Scotland, a people famous for feuds. My father's, from the Basque region of Spain and France, another people also famous for the same.

One of the things that drew them together was that they both approved of vendetta. Quite highly, at that.

Finally... when we give our word, we keep it. Even if doing so means suicide. We are - or rather were, given I'm the last of my line - quite clear on that. We've never suffered fools gladly, either. We never believed in not punishing someone because their error was "an honest mistake". I recall the time I almost started a fire as a toddler because the "pretty flames" on the stove attracted me. My maternal grandfather responded by offering to play with matches with me. He lit a few, allowed me to light one - then before I could drop it, he seized my fingers in his gnarled hand and held them so I was unable to drop the match.

He forced me to repeat this with both hands until both stung quite painfully from the burns. I never played with fire after that. And I can still hear the words... "Stupid people die. And deserve to."

I took away from that a great admiration for the method the Yakuza use of correcting "honest" mistakes - the removal of a finger as a form of apology.

Grim. Harsh. Ugly. Yes, my family has been all of these things.

And we survived. We've had more internal feuds than the entire series run of "Dallas", we try to kill each other more often than Sirius Black's family.

But we like it that way.

And we survived.

Now the world's a more "civilized" place - a place that seems to have little room for us, and my sisters, at least, have taken their husband's names and left the family behind. I can't blame them. And perhaps what they're doing is right.

But I do not regret what I did to those four. I do not regret it in the slightest. Accusing someone of attempted espionage merely to break up a wedding is contemptable. Interfering with someone's attempt to end their pain is contemptable. Their lives are their own, and if they are in a rational state of mind and still consider suicide an option, s'beit. Their lifechoice should be respected. Claiming that their deaths would hurt others emotionally is only emotional blackmail, and contemptable in the extreme.

Finally - for now - the assertation that we live in a society of the Rule of Law.

Were you physically present in my house, you'd find me laughing myself sick. There is no such thing. There is only "Officer, how many tickets to the Policeman's Benevolent Fund Ball would you like me to buy?"

Someone once said that there's no such thing as impossible, merely impractical. If you're willing to throw enough resources at the attempt to do it, you'll eventually succeed at anything - given sufficiently large values for "enough" and "eventually" (ie, galaxies of resources and millions of years).

By that same token, all men have their price. It's merely a matter of can you PAY that price?

I know my price. I want my dearest dead back. If you can do that for me, you can buy my soul.

Any takers? I thought not.

Other men have other prices. Mine is just more bitter and rather harder to obtain than most.

Yet, were someone, somehow, to do the impossible... I will not deny that I would make that deal without regret.

But I begin to ramble, and I suspect it's pointless. I come from a different world with different beliefs, and I'm no more likely to change your mind than you are to change mine.

After all, it is - when all is said and done - a matter of faith. And that's just another word for religion.

[Nick012000]

[...Finally... when we give our word, we keep it. Even if doing so means suicide. We are - or rather were, given I'm the last of my line - quite clear on that.
...

It's never too late to change that. Men stay fertile throughout their lives, though it does start to decrease slightly as you get older.

You just need to get over your exes, get some self confidence, and get more women.

Also, I'm pretty sure the story about the matches is child abuse.

[EdBecerra]

It's never too late to change that. Men stay fertile throughout their lives, though it does start to decrease slightly as you get older.

You just need to get over your exes, get some self confidence, and get more women.

Also, I'm pretty sure the story about the matches is child abuse.

You're a good man, Nick. But I wouldn't want to curse a child with my genes. I got a little careless and more than a little stupid in my youth.

Amazing how "young" can be so synonymous with "careless and/or stupid".

Heh.

My dna's picked up a few hitchhikers over the years, and I have no desire to curse some child with the garbage I voluntarily allowed myself to be exposed to. I'm old enough to remember the hexachloraphene debacle. Ah, the wonderful world of chemistry...

Besides, I suspect I'd make a positively crap-tacular father.

[Nick012000]

It's never too late to change that. Men stay fertile throughout their lives, though it does start to decrease slightly as you get older.

You just need to get over your exes, get some self confidence, and get more women.

Also, I'm pretty sure the story about the matches is child abuse.

You're a good man, Nick. But I wouldn't want to curse a child with my genes. I got a little careless and more than a little stupid in my youth.

Amazing how "young" can be so synonymous with "careless and/or stupid".

Heh.

My dna's picked up a few hitchhikers over the years, and I have no desire to curse some child with the garbage I voluntarily allowed myself to be exposed to. I'm old enough to remember the hexachloraphene debacle. Ah, the wonderful world of chemistry...

Besides, I suspect I'd make a positively crap-tacular father.

Well, being someone on the autistic spectrum, I can tell you that not all genetic abnormalities are bad. If you think it isn't worth the risk, though, I'm sure you could go to a fertility clinic, and get them to weed out the damaged sperm.

Besides, who knows? You could have had your genes mutated so your kids will all be supergeniouses or something.

[Sariah]

Young often is synonymous with stupid/jerk/careless/naive/etc. But not always. You can grow out of it, but some people just keep on being idiots.