But it’s not her job. She’s an evil (or at least amorally violent) person with a job helping people that she’s sporadically adequate at. Ginny is a good person with an evil job that she’s really, really good at. Which is worse?
(Show your working, including the fact that Ginny is at least partly responsible for any evil Unity does, because creator.)
That’s the crux of the matter, though, isn’t it? Virginia Lee is a genuinely good person, who is very smart and has a lot of skills in the scientific fields. Dr Lee, the anasigma scientists, is an amoral genius who works on whatever she is told to work on, and is very, very, good at it. Unity, on the other hand, is an amoral and violent psychopath with people that she truly cares about, people that are anchoring her to actual morality, and who has a day job that despite her personal skills and abilities is, in fact, centered on helping people. So really here, which is more the bad guy of them? (There are two obvious answers.)
She’s a mad scientist though, ergo insane, so -should- she actually know any better? If her actions are the product of her mental illness, can she truly be held accountable?
More than that, however, there’s also long been a schism among scientists on the topic of exploiting things like politics and wars in order to further scientific knowledge. Some argue that science must never cooperate with “evil forces” on principle, while others say wars are going to be fought either way so why not exploit that fact to serve the purposes of science?
And of course, things haven’t always played out neatly and simply. Despite being a staunch moral opponent of violence, Alfred Nobel naively invented dynamite, which would go on to revolutionize warfare, making it deadlier than ever. Meanwhile, the German scientists who built the rockets which bombed London later went on to build the rockets which carried astronauts to the moon. And the nuclear physicists who worked at Los Alamos brought untold destruction into the world and sparked the nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War – but at the same time, they made nuclear energy a reality, producing pollution free electricity for countless millions. A mixed bag, to say the least.
Maybe Ginny sees her work as being for the greater good, believing whatever harm it allows Anasigma to cause is an acceptable price to pay for advancing science in ways that may ultimately do far greater good. She clearly doesn’t seem interested in actively promoting “evil” – she just seems indifferent to it in certain contexts. There’s a thin line between personally using your work for evil, and standing by and allowing others to use it for evil instead, but the distinction exists.
And aren’t we all, in the end, similarly indifferent to some extent or other? Must we not kill and harm other living things in order to survive by eatting them? Do we not trod ants and other insects underfoot, without caring, or even without meaning to? Is not our entire existence a constant lethal struggle against untold numbers of microbes? We discount the death we cause as unimportant or trivial, in part because we view it as inevitable and unavoidable, and in part because it’s impossible to psychologically respond to it all. But we’re still guilty of evil – we just consider it acceptable evil.
Perhaps Ginny is just more cynical than most ordinary people, and she’s less picky about what happens with her work so long as she advances science in creating it. Or perhaps she’s just crazy. But at least she has a sense of empathy, and at least she can be confronted with logic and convinced to change her mind about her own actons.
But Unity? She hurts people because she wants to – because it’s “fun”. She’s like a sadistic child. The only time she refrains from doing whatever awful thing strikes her twisted fancy is when she’s faced with threat of punishment. She doesn’t refrain from violence because it’s wrong, but because she personally might suffer as a result. Where Ginny likely turns a blind eye to certain ramifications of her work in the name of scientific gain, Unity actively seeks out new ways to hurt people just to amuse herself.
There’s no contest. Ginny is morally gray, but Unity is downright evil.
Heh, after unleashing a living swamp on the middle of a city, and discovering the SH team destroyed civilization in a parallel reality… well, what IS evil, really?
Quite. You can’t go around using a mind-control superpower like that on the staff! (unless, that is, they need to teleport somewhere really fast. I wonder if it can adjust reality in other ways, too?)
Gavotte never resigned. Skin Horse was disbanded while she was non-compos mentis, and then Anasigma pulled strings to reestablish it with Captain’s Fancy Valentine Sweetheart as Director of Operations.
Just last week the Anasigma
Secret factory was wrecked.
Maybe a swamp got good and angry,
But that might be incorrect.
Still, it left our girl, Virginia,
At her leisure for a while.
So at Unity’s suggestion,
She found something to defile.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
No matter that their pasts have been so free (been so free).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
It’s a brand-new bureaucratic policy!
Dr. Lee was bored and willing
‘Cause she needed to kill time,
So she volunteered at Skin Horse
Without benefit of crime.
She’s been kinda at her wit’s end
Since they closed her abattoir.
And she brought some assets with her,
But we all know what they are.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
It’s been nothing but disastrous before (‘trous before).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Tip will have to find another way to score!
Her presence at the office
Was to some a fantasy.
But this inconvenient presence
Was opposed by Unity.
Since she promised not to kill her
Their relationship is done.
Since they came to that agreement
It just isn’t any fun.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Sweetheart’s gone and pulled off something of a coup (of a coup).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Fraternizing’s just a euphemism, too!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Sweetheart’s smart but they will fool her,
They’ll just hang out at the water cooler!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Rules are fine but this won’t stick.
What will it do to her thing about Nick?
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Had enough of the big palavers?
Eat their brains, then eat the cadavers!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Fraternizing’s just a euphemism, too!
—from “Lizzie Borden,” the Chad Mitchell Trio version.
I really hope someone will chew Unity out about how she’s more evil then her creator.
But it’s not her job. She’s an evil (or at least amorally violent) person with a job helping people that she’s sporadically adequate at. Ginny is a good person with an evil job that she’s really, really good at. Which is worse?
(Show your working, including the fact that Ginny is at least partly responsible for any evil Unity does, because creator.)
I question the assertion that Ginny is a completely “good” person. She enjoys her work with Anasigma way too much.
That’s the crux of the matter, though, isn’t it? Virginia Lee is a genuinely good person, who is very smart and has a lot of skills in the scientific fields. Dr Lee, the anasigma scientists, is an amoral genius who works on whatever she is told to work on, and is very, very, good at it. Unity, on the other hand, is an amoral and violent psychopath with people that she truly cares about, people that are anchoring her to actual morality, and who has a day job that despite her personal skills and abilities is, in fact, centered on helping people. So really here, which is more the bad guy of them? (There are two obvious answers.)
Unity is only evil when she’s loaded up with brains. Normal Unity (by some definitions of normal, anyway), is completely amoral. Kind of like a cat.
Virginia, on the other hand, really ought to know better.
She’s a mad scientist though, ergo insane, so -should- she actually know any better? If her actions are the product of her mental illness, can she truly be held accountable?
More than that, however, there’s also long been a schism among scientists on the topic of exploiting things like politics and wars in order to further scientific knowledge. Some argue that science must never cooperate with “evil forces” on principle, while others say wars are going to be fought either way so why not exploit that fact to serve the purposes of science?
And of course, things haven’t always played out neatly and simply. Despite being a staunch moral opponent of violence, Alfred Nobel naively invented dynamite, which would go on to revolutionize warfare, making it deadlier than ever. Meanwhile, the German scientists who built the rockets which bombed London later went on to build the rockets which carried astronauts to the moon. And the nuclear physicists who worked at Los Alamos brought untold destruction into the world and sparked the nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War – but at the same time, they made nuclear energy a reality, producing pollution free electricity for countless millions. A mixed bag, to say the least.
Maybe Ginny sees her work as being for the greater good, believing whatever harm it allows Anasigma to cause is an acceptable price to pay for advancing science in ways that may ultimately do far greater good. She clearly doesn’t seem interested in actively promoting “evil” – she just seems indifferent to it in certain contexts. There’s a thin line between personally using your work for evil, and standing by and allowing others to use it for evil instead, but the distinction exists.
And aren’t we all, in the end, similarly indifferent to some extent or other? Must we not kill and harm other living things in order to survive by eatting them? Do we not trod ants and other insects underfoot, without caring, or even without meaning to? Is not our entire existence a constant lethal struggle against untold numbers of microbes? We discount the death we cause as unimportant or trivial, in part because we view it as inevitable and unavoidable, and in part because it’s impossible to psychologically respond to it all. But we’re still guilty of evil – we just consider it acceptable evil.
Perhaps Ginny is just more cynical than most ordinary people, and she’s less picky about what happens with her work so long as she advances science in creating it. Or perhaps she’s just crazy. But at least she has a sense of empathy, and at least she can be confronted with logic and convinced to change her mind about her own actons.
But Unity? She hurts people because she wants to – because it’s “fun”. She’s like a sadistic child. The only time she refrains from doing whatever awful thing strikes her twisted fancy is when she’s faced with threat of punishment. She doesn’t refrain from violence because it’s wrong, but because she personally might suffer as a result. Where Ginny likely turns a blind eye to certain ramifications of her work in the name of scientific gain, Unity actively seeks out new ways to hurt people just to amuse herself.
There’s no contest. Ginny is morally gray, but Unity is downright evil.
Dr Lee is not mad. Naive, thoughtless, irresponsible, and doesn’t think about the consequences of her actions/research, but not mad.
Apart from that, nice essay.
Heh, after unleashing a living swamp on the middle of a city, and discovering the SH team destroyed civilization in a parallel reality… well, what IS evil, really?
Shout out to Tip’s total about face in panel 3
He’s perfectly honest about his motives!
…if you consider lies-by-ommission to be honesty.
Me, I consider that deviousness and backhanded duplicity.
It never cease to amaze me how tip can look more masculine when he’s fixed up like that
I’ve noticed that too. It’s a credit to the art, I think — his shape and features are defined subtly in ways other than hair and clothing.
Nice cheongsam Tip.
The world needs more hot guys in cute cheongsams.
That new anti-fraternization policy will cost the project at least half its staff.
Only half? The only one *not* fraternizing is Sweetheart…
… and she badly needs to have an anti-fraternization policy so she can keep herself that way.
I thought she was at least trying to fraternize with Bubbles.
Sweetheart didn’t explicitly say that the new anti-fraternization policy applies to anyone but Tip.
Certainly if I were writing an anti-fraternization policy for the team I’d just have it apply to Tip.
Tip’s fraternization is his most useful ability, though.
Quite. You can’t go around using a mind-control superpower like that on the staff! (unless, that is, they need to teleport somewhere really fast. I wonder if it can adjust reality in other ways, too?)
Well if you get rid of half, the other half are no longer fraternizing with staff, now are they?
“Ma’am?”
It’s the respectful way of inferring that Sweetheart is being a total bitch. After all, Sweetheart /is/ a bitch, hence ‘ma’am’.
Also there’s the fact that Sweetheart is the acting head of Skin Horse in Gavotte’s absence, making her his boss.
Not “acting.” I thought Gavotte resigned and is gone for good—unless and until someone higher up in the Shadow Gov decides to bring her back.
Gavotte never resigned. Skin Horse was disbanded while she was non-compos mentis, and then Anasigma pulled strings to reestablish it with Captain’s Fancy Valentine Sweetheart as Director of Operations.
Just last week the Anasigma
Secret factory was wrecked.
Maybe a swamp got good and angry,
But that might be incorrect.
Still, it left our girl, Virginia,
At her leisure for a while.
So at Unity’s suggestion,
She found something to defile.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
No matter that their pasts have been so free (been so free).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
It’s a brand-new bureaucratic policy!
Dr. Lee was bored and willing
‘Cause she needed to kill time,
So she volunteered at Skin Horse
Without benefit of crime.
She’s been kinda at her wit’s end
Since they closed her abattoir.
And she brought some assets with her,
But we all know what they are.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
It’s been nothing but disastrous before (‘trous before).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Tip will have to find another way to score!
Her presence at the office
Was to some a fantasy.
But this inconvenient presence
Was opposed by Unity.
Since she promised not to kill her
Their relationship is done.
Since they came to that agreement
It just isn’t any fun.
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Sweetheart’s gone and pulled off something of a coup (of a coup).
Yeah, she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Fraternizing’s just a euphemism, too!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Sweetheart’s smart but they will fool her,
They’ll just hang out at the water cooler!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Rules are fine but this won’t stick.
What will it do to her thing about Nick?
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing—
Had enough of the big palavers?
Eat their brains, then eat the cadavers!
But she can’t take the job and do some fraternizing,
Fraternizing’s just a euphemism, too!
—from “Lizzie Borden,” the Chad Mitchell Trio version.