Animus

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

Searzon, The Twin Headed Demon

A thunderous sound could be heard, echoing throughout the battlefield. It was a deafening roar all could here. Where it came from was hard to distinguish, as it was mostly muffled by the screams of men and women as battling across the ruined landscape- though rather than ignore this disruption, it was merely noted by those who heard it and shrugged off as nothing. A Water Kingdom soldier was knocked mid-air from the recoil of a hellfire blast that came from Searzon, landing on his back nearly unconscious and hazily standing in efforts to get back into the fight that was raging before him.

As he got up, he noticed the rest of the soldiers deployed along with him staring in his direction. Breathing could be heard behind him, it was loud and rough, the smell was bad too, like that of an old dried corpse left for the vultures. The poor man who was momentarily confused stared at his allies as they gawked at something behind him. Although they said nothing, their expressions were more than enough. The battered man reflexively turned to see what had been breathing behind him.

“Fuck...”

What happened was so rapid he had not time to register it, the towering monster grabbed the man by his forebody, lifting him several feet in the air. Its head..no, heads were scaley, spined with a red-stone texture like that told of in fairy-tales to keep children from staying up too late. The razored fingers impaled him with ease, as if the man was fragile in his armor. Who knows if he would have stood a chance, he was caught off guard after all. No. This monstrosity was nothing to be trifled with, and with pride it reminded the surrounding men of it’s presence one last time.

ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

Searzon whipped his razor sharp tail at the souldiers, the metallic looking tail whisked at breakneck speeds, taking off the legs of five soldiers in an instance. Panic ensued. Searzon then dropped the mangled soldier he had impaled earlier, he was young, just old enough to be there really. The only reason this was recognized even though much of the body was ruined beyond repair, was that the face of the soldier remained untouched. And on the soldier’s face was an expression that spoke to the crowd, in a language that every nation could understand. And what that expression said was...

“Run.”

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

Sweet.

The Idea Bank

A roleplay in a highschool setting. Or any setting, actually.

It revolves around a mobile phone game and the dice it gives as its rewards. You can roll dice and use the resulting number to upgrade your 'stats'. Making yourself more intelligent, athletic and maybe even possessing supernatural powers might be possible.

Preferred Narrative Fallthrough

Poster A was wrong.

Simple as that. An RP is a collaborative work to generate a fun and/or interesting story. We assume everyone as equals so to do something as "I have a plot in mind, ya'll are not to interrupt it and instead accommodate to me," sounds downright ridiculous. Who are you to dictate that you or your characters possess more importance than others? Why on earth should other people accommodate and compromise around you so you can your ideal plot out?

Some might argue and say Poster B was partially at fault for not accommodating. Well, if someone copied your homework without permission then you have the right to be angry. Would it make sense if someone told you that you shouldn't have gotten angry and instead have been mature about the matter? You could have but you are not obligated to nor are you in the wrong for not letting the matter slide.

I don't think this is really debatable.

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

@QT@wolverbells@TheDarkTemplar

Collab anyone? Since we're probably having a conversation on the way, a collab would be easier.

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

We wrote a short story. It's pretty much all just character development/interaction, so don't feel obligated to read it.

@Diggerton

Wut. Of course I'll read it.

Human experimentation.

@Vilageidiotx I study pharmaceutical sciences so I've seen and studied human trials, the pay is good for it considering you just sit a room all day playing xbox and pool. Basically they're on the 0.01% risk threshold I mentioned earlier and that isn't even the potential for death but merely for more serious adverse effects. These trials are basically a must for all new drugs as the final testing stage. I suggested reducing the stringent rules on them to allow for more rapid development. Say a 90% threshold for adverse effects and a 1% threshold for death. This might sound unappealing to some but this is an amazing good offer considering the risk involved. A standard trial held today pays out between $1000 to $3000. I'm sure companies would offer much more considering the increased risk for these more dangerous trials. A person living in a third world country spends an average of $2 or less a day. You'd essentially be offering them to cure their existing ailments (so you can get accurate tests) and offering them years of livelihood. This is the same as todays trials which still carry an inherent but smaller risk why is why people are paid for them. To change this into a more relatable example... imagine you have a serious ailment. If you don't do anything about it you'll die within several years. Theres a surgery option available but there is a 10% risk of death but if it succeeds, you can live life as per normal. Their ailment is their current lifestyle. Their surgery would be these trials. When you phrase it this way, you realize that it isn't as bad as it sounds and no, this is not sugarcoating it. Pretending that their lifestyles isn't as difficult as I've described would be the sugarcoating.

Regarding the regulations and exploitations; this will always be a debate. IMO as the past has proven time and time again, exploitable and abusable systems can be controlled if proper effort is invested into it. You say that these hospitals might attempt nasty stuff (you have no FUCKING idea what they already do) but I say you can stop them. Make the punishment for breaking regulations severe. Hire an ethics community. These are just random suggestions. There will always be exploitations as any system will have but you can keep it to the absolute minimum if it is properly done. Take the law system for example.

@mdk

This is what I'm disagreeing with. Or rather, the insinuation that this is an injustice. "First, do no harm." That is the bedrock of medical ethics and it should be. If you want to harm yourself to save others, that's your prerogative -- but medical institutions can't make that call. It's hairy enough with organ donors coming into an ER. Open those doors and things get miserable really darn quickly.

What I said already applies to existing trials today and since you've done one before, you should know of it. Companies will make you sign a form that basically washes them of responsibility if anything happens. Nobody knows what they're drugs could potentially do which is why they conduct those tests in the first place. There is nothing wrong with my statement because it is in fact used in modern day trials. There are deaths in modern day trials as well. This is more or less my response although I don't understand where you derived if you want to harm yourself to save others.

What you're advocating is skipping the part where the life-saving machine was tested and proven effective on animals first. What you're advocating is Joe Scientist coming into the patent office and saying "Hey, I bet if I chop open a sick guy's chest I can hook up a motor and probably keep him alive. Send me a hundred brown people and I'll prove it." What I'm advocating is exactly what happened -- the life-saving device was tested, proven effective, and successfully implemented with no human suffering, and the safe practice was refined over time as our understanding improved. It didn't save everybody, but it didn't kill anybody. That is a night-and-day distinction.

I am baffled as to how you do not see the flaw in this statement. First of all, his experiments on animals did not yield a 100% success rate nor anything close to it while in modern times, drugs have to yield a near 100% success rate with a low as possible risk before it is tested on humans. Isn't this the false equivalency you were talking about? It didn't save everybody, but it didn't kill anybody. And this is contradictory to what you said earlier. So patients with terminal illnesses should be allowed to offer themselves as test subjects, no? And no, I am not advocating some random doctor suggesting a mad scientist experiment. How is anything like a 90% threshold of risk comparable to that? A 90% treshhold should sound like a paradise if you were okay with the history of the heart-lung machine.

The only moral thing to do in that situation is to give you a meal for a fair price (I know, I know, you hippies reading this are saying FREE MEAL! bite me). The person taking $10k for a cheeseburger is stealing from you. That person is objectively terrible. What I've been arguing all along is that we continue to practice humane research to help people safely. And I've already linked like a handful of new treatments (just from the last couple of years) to demonstrate what should be readily apparent just from the state of the world you keep moaning about -- western medicine works. Ebola broke out in Africa, not here, and we still cured it in weeks. We're doing everything right, far as research is concerned, and the crazy part is you already implicitly recognize this by comparing the US-Africa health situations.

He is indeed a terrible person. However the point here is that if you aren't going to contribute anything to me, then don't stop that man from selling me his burger because at the end of the day no matter how horrible the deal, its still better than my current situation. Otherwise I wouldn't accept the deal and then this whole debate about forced into it would be off. And I am bringing up the many situations where how the current standard western medicine development DOESN'T work. While medical breakthroughs still occur, they are occurring at a rapidly lower rate than the past despite our increased knowledge and advances in technology. This is because of all the tape that's laid around clinical trial technicians.

Bullshit. That's exactly how it works, and if you're not already doing it, you don't actually care.

I mentioned this earlier. People care... but they don't care enough. Thats me! If I see a beggar in front of me, I'll give a few dollars but I'm not going to send funds off every month to people I will never meet in my whole life even though I feel sad for them. Besides the point isn't about me, I have no idea how you wrapped this around me. The point is that people prevent these experiments because they 'care'. Yet these people are doing close to nothing to help those they 'care' about. When ethics is brought up, people make a big hoo haa. You could get a government to do a nationwide survey and ask if support should be sent to these third world countries. I'll tell you most people would say yes, at least I believe that much in humanity at least. Then I tell you what, the government then charges them money in order to raise funds. You'll see a lot of angry people. Fucking hell, these are the people that already complain when taxes are redistributed into helping their own country people. I'm just saying people need to realize how they're being gigantic hypocrites by so strongly advocating ethics and why we should protect the rights of others.

You can't solve everything =/= you can't do anything. =/= you should just use them as lab rats instead.

People will give them money, food and healthcare in exchange for the experiments. The money, food and healthcare that people would never otherwise give for free or at least not on such a substantial level. They win because (read my response to villageidiot in this same post) and you win because you get medical breakthroughs.

What? Exactly that is 'done and implemented,' and it's because the populace is concerned about ethics. Rightly so. You have an unreasonable definition of what's 'relatively safe to the individuals,' and that's where your frustration is coming from. If you get rid of that, you'll see that the system already actually does what you want it to do, better than how you want to do it, without killing people. Stop trying to fix it with murder.

No, my frustration comes from the hypocrisy of the masses. Which I mentioned earlier in this post. Everyone raises a big fuss because they 'care'. When in reality, they don't care. My frustration is that I wanna yell out to them "hey, you don't really care so stop making yourself feel better, OTHERWISE do something that ACTUALLY shows you care! Otherwise, shut your mouth about ethics."

E: And if you somehow divert this again to it being about me. Then I will repeat it again. I care to a certain degree. And I know what that degree is. I'm not a saint nor am I devil. I'm not going to work my life away to slave for others. If you say that because of that, I have no right to argue about other people, then I can't complain. However, just read what I've typed and take it with a grain of salt before changing the topic back to me and whether or not it makes sense.

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

<Snipped quote by SwarthyBard126>

I'm down

PS, why r we called Babettes?

@Crimson Lion

It's a meaningful name. Do not doubt it.

@RavenxVoid Yes.

Human experimentation.

This post may be a bit jumbled up as I respond to bit by bit in no particular order.

First off, I should have better phrased human experimentation.

"Imma explode your crotch so I can see what that is like."

You're all making it sound much more horrible that it really is. For example, Hitler or Hitler-like experiments are repeatedly brought up. And exactly what medical benefits does this bring us? I'm suggesting the testing of experimental drugs/techniques that theoretically have a positive effect on the human body but we have no idea if there are potentially unknown side effects. Such drugs take incredibly long times to be approved because they have to give many theoretical reasonings behind why they believe the drug is completely safe for human use.

Regarding the history of the heart-lung machine... the machine itself was perfected through use on humans and adjusting it accordingly. The first patient was a success but subsequently it was discovered that it had a high fatality rate. Only 7 years later after many operations was the machine drastically improved but still had a much higher risk than today for obvious reasons. Is this not exactly what I'm advocating? I'm not telling you to do pointless pain experiments like Hitler wanting to see what happens if you hammer a little boys head every several seconds for days (he really did this). I'm telling you to conduct experiments on techniques or drugs that are mostly complete but need final tweaks and experimentation before they are officially completed and save for human use. As to how much these would improve medical developments, ironically the longest stages and most difficult stages of it are the end experiments where they have to eliminate hidden or long-term risks that are impossibly difficult to spot without actual human testing.

I wouldn't want them to do it on me because it's unsafe. I don't want them to do it to other people because it's also unsafe. "You put a quarter in the Cancer jar -- so why not let me stick a needle in this guy's eyeball?" I don't want people to be manipulated into unsafe experiments by force of circumstance, either. That's a very big leap. In your mind you've set up what's called a 'false equivalency Another example would be, "I've got a friend who keeps a fluffy bunny for a pet, and she loves that it's furry. So why not keep a grizzly bear?"

That is a horrible example and somewhat irrelevant? How do those examples apply to the ideas I'm advocating/my examples. I'm using the concept of "one man's trash is another person's treasure". My friend loves bunnies but that doesn't mean she likes grizzly bears - This example plays on her own preferences and focuses on her individually, which is what you're doing. A correct example would be "My friend doesn't like snakes because they're relatively dangerous when compared to other pets. She tells me I shouldn't keep one. But I want to." You see, I'm going to have to repeat myself earlier. You find the idea ludicrous because you would never accept it being done to you. You argue that they have no choice. This line is the real important one. They're in a situation where it would be ridiculous to NOT accept the offer and you found that wrong. Because thats essentially forcing it upon them. Heres another relevant example to this, I haven't eaten for 3 days. I'm on the brink of death and someone tells me they'll give me a meal except I have to pay them $10,000 dollars for it. In your perspective, thats a despicable thing to do. They're taking advantage of my situation. So you step im and prevent them from doing it. In reality you just stole my meal away when I would have accepted that $10,000 offer.

Third, if 'that's how crappy their lives are,' and you care, then make their lives less crappy without murdering them. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately, thats not how it works. How would you improve their lives? Amass millions of dollars and invest into upgrading their entire country one tier? Where would that money come from? You see, this part is human nature. Nobody is inclined or obliged to help others out. Thats why even though everyone knows how much third world countries suffer, only an extremely tiny percentage of a first world country's GDP is sent to them as donations. I'm sorry if this sounds really cruel buts its reality, most people don't care OR at least, they don't care enough that they should help out complete strangers. Thats why many conditions such as ALS have almost no investments made into developing a cure. Why? Because theres no profit for companies out there! They lose money.

Lastly, the primary issue that I see @mdk and @Vilageidiotx having is that you're worried about such things being exploited. Fortunately, other similar exploitable systems already exist in the world yet they work with proper regulations. By the logic from both of you, wouldn't life insurance be a ridiculous thing? A poor family tries to get their grand parents killed so they can get the lump some of money. "Life insurance should not exist otherwise!" is what you're otherwise saying.

Human experimentation can definitely be regulated to prevent exploits as well as being relatively safe to the individuals it is performed on. At least to the extent, that the benefits to them outweigh the risks for those being experimented on. However, this is not done nor implemented because the populace is concerned about ethics. For example, theres a huge controversy about sending expired food to third world countries. People bark and shout against it, saying that we should be sending them proper food. Well then, if money were to be asked so they could send proper food, what happens? Everyone shuts up and pretends they don't know about it save for a tiny part of the populace.

The Battle for Astrea [Always Open]

I'm finally done ;_;