ayyyyyyyyy paper season's ending

[lessthanelementary]

What? No. No, I'm not going back.

Be reasonable about this. There's hardly enough there to hold my interest, let alone yours. There's no magic, and I will never be adept at muddling by without it, however many devices they shove into my hands to replace it. Really, dying is the only skill I have to offer that world, and I've proven to us both already that I'm no good at it-- not to their exacting standards, anyway.

It's not a productive use of my time, being there. It can't be a productive use of yours, either, watching me stumble around and make terrible noises when people stick knives in me. Think of all the good I could be doing any other world but that one! Think of all the places that could use me!

...That always was your problem, though. There's simply no bargaining with you.

Comments

[orestes]

I had figured even you might know better than to argue with the omnipotent.

[lessthanelementary]

What are our lives, really, but bargains struck with gods-- fixed-term contracts written by omnipotent hands? [A rhetorical question, spoken with all the sincerity of rote repetition.]

I see they haven't had you executed for sedition yet. My warmest congratulations.

[orestes]

By that logic, our lives are nothing. But I am by some degree an Aristotelian and thus freewill is paramount. I could argue existence by your scenario, but perhaps not living. [What do you mean, "rhetorical"?]

Why execute me when I can be made to continually suffer their system for the public good?

[lessthanelementary]

...I suppose you have a point. The threat of execution's less dire when in every other circumstance they treat it half as a reward, isn't it.

But more importantly-- you're debating my logic with an incomplete understanding of my principles! [Really! He wouldn't have expected it of you.] I would never refute your Aristoteli's freewill. The existence of a contract, you see, implies that both parties did at one point sign it.

[orestes]

In most circumstances, they treat it as a reward which is more often than not withheld.

[Neffa, you are not debating contracts with Enjolras.] The trouble with most societies is that your contract is not something we will ourselves into. We are products of a system which has been in place since before either of us came into being and which has, to some extent at least, dictated our form of existence.

And again, I specify existence because Aristotle would have little to do with this whole arrangement. May I ask when, exactly, you agreed to be ruled by omnipotent puppeteer?

[lessthanelementary]

Ah, that's where the theologians differ! Some say we set the terms of our contracts before birth, and in the passage to the mortal realm forget them. Others think they were all written at once when the world began. There's a great deal of disagreement, and I certainly haven't been following the debate. So I couldn't tell you, exactly.

Though who's to say gods don't make contracts with societies, as well?

[orestes]

Reason, Neffa. Reason is to say that Gods do not make contracts with societies. For if they do, what is to deny something as ridiculous as a divine right, or a preordained ruling caste?

Taking what we both know, what is to say that Panem did not make some contract with God if not reason? Other than our own repulsion at its results, of course.

[lessthanelementary]

I'm not acquainted with Panem's gods, and mine, regrettably, did not make the journey with me. But if gods only made reasonable contracts, Enjolras, I think the worlds would be a good deal more pleasant than they are.

[orestes]

Reason would argue that Gods do not make contracts at all.

[lessthanelementary]

Why should gods care for reason?

[orestes]

They do not. But contracts are a matter of reason. One cannot enter into a contract without some semblance of it, ergo I shall state again: Gods do not make contracts.

[lessthanelementary]

[His smile is unbothered.] Perhaps your gods don't.

[Gods, why is this not the angle he took dealing with you in the Capitol, why did he ever argue morals with you when he could have been arguing religion?]

[orestes]

[Enjolras maintains standard look of passive, but overall unimpressed.]

My God. I haven't the knowledge of that aspect of Panem's culture to speculate on their religious practices, however, I can safely say that for the French, there is but one God. [Because while he remembers the Cult of the Supreme Being, that was some reactionary bullshit and we don't need to rehash it all over again. Besides Roman Catholicism by any other name, etc.] Regardless, why would a God bother to negotiate with you? What purpose would it serve him? No, my friend. No God is responsible for this farce.