Newton - some thoughts

A Practical Discussion (PGTS)
1

So this is gonna have some spoilers for book four, even if I try to keep them vague.

First off, I love this guy, he was such a wonderful person.

But I have to stop and think about how much of what the newspaper was actually true as others saw it.

And his downard slide and bad rap was because of our girls (rightful) obsession with the other student aid.

We only see the world through a handful of eyes, most of them understanding things as we do, but let’s look at it from an outsider’s perspective.

Here’s this really nice, smart guy, who seems to be willing to help anybody, and can even put up with Alec struggling to learn some of the most simple stuff.

Then rumors come across that his father is ill, and at first, not that much has changed

But then he starts spending a lot of time with his counterpart

Seeming almost obsessed with her, he seems to either be with her, watching her, or tense when he’s not sure where she is.

They don’t seem to be dating, and if you bring it up he kinda blows you off, that’s not like him.

Maybe he’s trying to work up the nerve, but it’s till odd behavior.

Then the night of the stupid gangs fighting each other happens, a lot of people’s homes and businesses have been brought to ruin.

And so has newtons.

He seems to be barely keeping it together, but maybe a little more desperate for crowns.

His behavior is definitely getting a bit more weird towards his counterpart, and you can’t figure out why.

Then the break event happens, and oh, now it makes all the sense why he’s been acting weird, he’s been doing stuff to corrupt his will, of course.

– there is a quote one of the students said about not really knowing him.

But now let’s jump to another point of view, like investigator kitchen

He shows up the the scene where Norton became that thing, his counterpart seems cursed into not being able to speak ( I think the agents of Kronos, the and the meets themselves together stopped her from being able to speak, then what the red guard did did not help)

A few surviving murrows with an interesting tale of the raven queen summoning her shadow friend and then the monster taking over newtons body.

The family gives an eye witness account as well.

Then this kid shows up, who is being ‘protected’ by some stupid civilian that everybody seems to hold a lot of respect for (how does he not know who lacer is?)

But the kid has some very interesting, if mildly conflicting things to say about the monster.

He was there because

"Newton asked me to. He said he was going to do something dangerous and he wanted backup. He gave me a warded, linked artifact, and I was suppose to be close enough to come find him quickly if he triggered it.

“Well. Newton said it probably wouldn’t be dangerous. He wanted someone available and able to find him just in case. He asked me to keep it a secret.”<

And this kid has learned an esoteric spell from him? Humming? And the raven queen was humming? Who did this monster learn the spell from? His grandmother or the raven queen?

~~

This book finds a chunk of its humor with people making assumptions based off not knowing all the information.

Of course our girl, Damion, and Alec are pissed off about paper being wrong about him.

While Alec only knows how nice he is because of how Newton treated him

Our girl and Damion were paying Newton to be kinda sketchy, and they don’t seem to yet realize how his behaviors might have looked to outsiders.

… I know our girl goes crashing into Lacers wherever and is like “you know he was using a harmless spell, not wherever was being said” (please remember that I’m in several different spots in the series at any given moment, just my slow reading gives me the most information, I’ve heard that part a few times, but I haven’t read that yet)

So how wrong was the reporter?

That being said,

At the start of book three there is a really weird scene where some red guards are coming to take away two aberrants, and this is where you learn that they are kept alive, but why?

And someone says they wish they could keep one of them, and seemed pretty scared of the other.

Why would they want to keep one? What possible, someone might recognize? Wait, do they mean?

~ then in book four damion’s mission about reading all reports… Are they being used?

~that meteor attack…

– lacer clearly knows, and blue seems to think he’s in agreement, but I think maybe he knows he can’t do anything to fight the system now.

He understands the rules, and agrees to um, machliously comply with them.

I absolutely adore how well thought out this world is. While we don’t always see things from the NPCs points of views, if we read between the lines, if we pay attention, we can see what they are seeing and it actually makes sense.

Our girl is trying really hard to do right to the people in her life that she cares about (what a good little Slytherin, nobody outside of her bubble seem real, so she just has to be tolerant of, but not care about what anybody else sees or thinks. More and more she seems to be the perfect example of someone from that house.)

It just takes to long for her to realize what she says might bite her in the butt

2

Among other pieces of evidence that S. is a little self-absorbed: on Royal Road, this story is categorized as an “anti-hero lead.”

There’s only a few people that realize that Newton’s dangerous thing is actually less dangerous than the stuff the Architects give Tanya.

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3

Oh man, poor T, her bosses keep throwing her at the bus, I think hoping she’d die to get her out of the way she knew to much, whined and talked back.

Newton was only in trouble because they had her watch T.

To be fair, at least our girl didn’t tell him to go in town with her, T offered that and he chose to accept, maybe our girl should have tried a little harder to talk him out of it or warn him of the trouble more.

That T was a part of at least two deaths was not enough warning

4

On the other hand, Newton would have never gotten into the crisis if Siobhan hadn’t been trying to help. Check Chapter 82 – Things Go Wrong – Azalea Ellis to verify.

Siobhan argued herself out of feeling guilty over it. But Tanya can’t even talk to anybody about what happened. And Tanya clearly feels guilty over how her attempt to trap The Raven Queen lead to Newton dying.

5

How rude of you to suggest that our favorite anti-hero (sorry Taylor!) could possibly be problematic, and, dare I say it… narcissistic.

This book is full of truly narcissistic characters and, somehow, I still love them.

Back on topic: I love this different perspective of Newton’s behavior. I hadn’t thought of it this way, but it makes sense. He could have seemed creepily obsessed. He was stressed out, desperate for money, nervous and literally stalking a woman at school. His poker face was terrible, and if people around him did notice these changes, it makes sense.

I mean, wouldn’t you be concerned if you saw a young man stalking a young woman?

As to the bit about the RG being concerned with someone recognizing the Newton aberrant, that question has haunted my brain. Does it mean they might actually unleash it for some reason? Or use components of it for spells that other organizations or people or governments might somehow recognize? Or are there different factions in the organization and people are keeping secrets? It’s a puzzle piece that’s probably quite simple, but I can’t seem to find a logical fit.

That, combined with the lead chests that Tanya was injured while transporting, do make me wonder if aberrants or aberrant components are being traded outside of the RG. Imagine if the AOK get their hands on an aberrant or two and somehow set it loose in the palace. It would be a disastrous mess, and probably create more aberrants for the RG to clean up, but it would be a surefire way to eliminate the enemy.

Or, better yet - set them loose at a ball or government function. Somewhere that all the Crown Lords would be at. A location less protected than the palace.

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6

When it was mentioned in another thread here about asking deeper questions, I seriously mean that as something I always try to do.

Why does this person behave why they do, what are they seeing that I am over looking, what beliefs and morals where they raised on, or personal past history that they might be filling in the blanks from.

And I do mean ALWAYS. The amount of self righteous, narcissistic people that I have pissed off because when defending either myself, or something I care about, I am almost always able to spell out not only their side, but why, before going into mine.

That tactic normally disarms people, and when I finish by handing over my evidence and walking off, they have two choices, look at what evidence I was able to hand them, or look for a way to attack back with something I miss

Which I try not to miss. Because of my nonverbal skills, I am not up for a debate in real time.

I have been wrong a very few times, not fully wrong, but missed a detail, however, nothing that makes my point any less valid. All but once it’s made my point more valid, which would be humorous if it wasn’t such a problem

Because it takes a lot for me to get to that point.

I know this book series isnt real, I’m not stupid. However, the behaviors mimic real life, tell me, minus the magical stuff, that none of these behaviors and reactions have happened?

It’s a trope cause it’s real and it’s bs and prob should be.

In a handful of writing workshops I’ve attended one thing that is constantly brought up is “the bad guy normally doesn’t realize he’s the bad guy, everything makes sense to him”

I love series where you can see NPCs in the background hinting at what they are seeing.

I’m having a bad health day, so I can’t grab elsewhere right now, but go reread chapters after the big fight with the murrows, not what’s happening in front of the camera, but the blurry stuff in the background that’s hinted.

Now heres the hard part, when people wrong you, for whatever reason, try to see what they are seeing, what do you know of their past? Do they even know what they did is wrong? Remember the story about Oliver offering to help the sun eater and how that was such a huge taboo, nobody was allowed to touch her, but he didn’t know.

Okay, sin eater might not have been what he used, but back in the colonial time period it wasn’t uncommon to find someone who was willing to eat the sins of the dead so the could go to their afterlife pure, and if I recall correctly, it was very taboo to touch them lest you become the new sin eater.

Quite a few cultures had someone like this.

So I try to not think I’ll of someone until they have repeatedly done things I have called out as rude, disrespectful, or upsetting, and when I can, just don’t have them in my life.

Life is so short, every moment is a gift. I’d rather be thankful for those who respect me than spend time with/on those who dont

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7

I used to have attitudes more like yours, but I’ve mellowed in a couple of key ways.

The first is that I realized that I’m less able to correctly summarize other people than I thought. We’re all good at summarizing every part of another’s message that we can hear. And when they repeat what we struggled with the first time, it makes no sense. It is always easy to blame them, but sometimes I really was the problem.

Secondly, I’ve become better at understanding why people can’t hear certain things I say. It all comes down to cognitive dissonance, and what they have mental pain around. When I find those things, the solution is not to beat harder in simpler and clearer language. They will still be in pain, and they will still resist. I’m just creating conflict. Instead I recognize the problem area, accept that I can’t change it, and decide whether I can avoid it. Since doing that, I’ve been able to keep people in my life that would formerly have been conflicts. And where I do have to invite someone out of my life, I get there with less unpleasantness.

The downside is that I wind up with sometimes knowing that I’m right, but also accepting that there is no point in trying to prove it. Accepting that is not always easy.

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8

Oh, yeah, no

As I grow older I find myself doing this more and more and more. I want to understand, though for the most part, I just file the information away to try to keep my information up to date and correct.

The times I have been proven wrong is a tiny amount, and it’s normally a detail that I missed, nothing that disproves my findings.

But, unless it bothers me, because someone is lying, hurting, or doing “illegal” stuff, I choose to keep my mouth shut most of the time.

Because, you have to look at everything from all points of views, I completely understand why some people choose to pirate music and movies, I do. It is NOT a victimless crime, however, there really isn’t a point in fighting the issue, I just choose (almost always) not to pirate.

After over a decade, I finally broke my rule and have ordered a bootleg DVD of our flag means death because they refuse to put it somewhere I can just download and have, and there is talk of them removing it from streaming.

I have stopped talking to someone because they think i am stupid for not using temu, AliExpress, and other Chinese sellers who do a crap ton of questionable stuff to sell stuff so cheap while avoiding customs and stuff.

I also try really really hard to not offend people, at least not for the same reason multiple times, understanding what they see, what they believe, helps me keep the peace around my person.

I am someone who strongly believes in platonic relationships, and who was also a gypsy moving 1-3 times in a year. A friend just assumed that I was breaking up and moving in with new people every time, never realizing that maybe I was renting a room from someone and then moving on because I was getting transfered. I have had very few partners that I have been serious enough to live with. And only once have I moved in with someone and then started dating them. That was a happy accident :slight_smile:

If you also consider that I am the type of person who smiles at EVERYBODY, like you are the most important person in the world, for the 1-2 seconds that I make eye contact with you…

People who don’t know me, who don’t ask, just assume I’m some home wrecking flirt >.>

I would get in trouble because if I smile at someone I was flirting? No, I was just trying to make them smile . when you are on deployment, sometimes you have to search really really really hard to find a reason to smile. Me smiling at random people saved lives, which makes me a little uncomfortable, but taught me how much it meant to others.

Me doing this when I believe someone has offended me, normally helps me understand that most of the time, they didn’t mean to. However, there are jerks in the world.

I don’t always speak up and act, but I always always always do, because I want to make sure I understand the full picture before deciding my next move.

I try to not worry about being in the right (unless someone is getting hurt) but how to stop whatever bad thing from happening again. I don’t care who left the freezer open, can everybody please take the extra second to make sure it’s closed in the future.

It doesn’t matter who did whatever, but moving forward, can we be mindful to not?

But in the book, our girl, Damion, and Alec get all butthurt over people lying to the reporter

And I wanted to point out, were they really? If you look at the situation, How much were those who were interviewed actually lying?

Now the jerks commenting on the newspaper were just taking glee in someone not them falling down. There’s a whole psychology response about why that happens. It’s a stupidly taught and reenforced behavior and you can see it happening in the real world when it comes to some forms of racism or abusive bs…

But his friends, his actual friends before that term?

Look at what they saw Newton doing, look at what they have been taught about what caused an aberrant.

How much was anybody lying?

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9

I agree with you that people were offering their predictably distorted perspectives on Newton.

To everything else that you said, I will add victim blaming. When we see something bad happen to someone else, we want to distance ourselves from the thought that it could happen to someone we like. And therefore we look for some way to blame the victim. Because, having blamed them, it is easier to convince ourselves that what happened to them can’t happen to us.

“Newton became an Aberrant? That’s his fault. How could he have been so horrible? I’m glad that I’m not horrible like that!”

Once I learned to look for that, I saw it all around me.

Part of what I love about Azalea’s writing is how well she manages to capture people’s real responses, and natural responses to those responses, without engaging in undue editorialization about how the world should be.

As to the rest of your response? We are different people with different challenges, and take different paths through life. I know that your approach was not right for me. I’m clearly not in a position to have an informed opinion on whether my approach could be workable for you.

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10

Oh, this is not for everybody, because I have to be in personal about all the facts.

But where you mellowed out, I was trying to point out that I became more focused, looking deeper. My reactions have “mellowed” but I still make a point to get every drop of detail

I do my best to not victim blame, I have to ask “well, what was going on at the time”

I tried to teach my kids to always ask “well, what happened before that” not to blame the victim, but to try to understand more of the picture than what they are seeing.

Newton is kinda screwed, because if you look deeper, he was acting sketchy, though he wasn’t doing blood magic or anything bad, the population has been lied to.

This book seems like a wonderful way to show what misinformation and misperceptions can turn into.

Because like you said, all of this are very real reactions, just about every reaction I see feels natural for how the people have been raised and what they are looking at.

… I was watching a YouTuber the other day talking about Mary Poppins and saving me banks and stuff, and one thing that kinda stood out to me is that yeah, the whole point of that book series was about trying to saving mr banks, but he read the series and the guy was barely there, barely has any screen time.

And I was like, if you read between the lines, wasn’t that the point, the dad was missing everything.

I’ve seen people sit there and complain about various characters or crying something is a plot hole, when no, if you pay attention to what’s happening around them, how people are acting around them, it’s been right in your face the whole time.

It’s why I like people like mattpatt who will analyze frame by frame, which might sound excessive, but look at how much information they are able to pull.

In this series we are able to see the view through our girls eyes, and she tells us her tricks and thoughts.

And then we sometimes see the world through others eyes and how much everything makes so much sense, even if it’s nowhere near the actual truth.

And I try to see everything from both sides of the view to get the whole info.

[spoiler]Like ana denying the textial thing for Oliver so she could give it to our girl, and then being clearly so protective with our girl after. Though our girl had no idea, and Oliver pins it on our girl, not ana. (And our girl hasn’t seen to have corrected him yet)

Had Oliver sat there and asked himself who really had the most to gain, tried to get the whole picture before just assuming… And acting out of hurt because our girl has clearly been trying to stand on her own feet and not rely on him for everything
[/spoiler]
…
There would have still been drama, but less… however it was perfectly natural for Oliver to react how he did

I just try to never do that

I get a report something happens, I try to get all the details, because it could be a misunderstanding.

It’s a lot of work, I don’t seem to know how to do things the easy way

11

Bringing up Mary Poppins reminds me of this video about how they had special effects that nobody before or since has matched. (Until just a few months ago.)

Skipping past that, one of the things that caused me to mellow out was that reality confronted me with the knowledge that I personally have the same faulty wiring as those I had been dismissing. The work that I’ve put in to be more trustworthy is worthwhile. But my best is still fallible. And doubling down on trying to be perfect does more to block my later improvement than it does to improve the result of my reasoning.

Worse yet, there is nothing random about where my fallibility surfaces. It surfaces exactly where I care the most about getting things right. Exactly because the thought of failing there is most painful. I talked about this a little bit before. And one of my coping strategies is to distance my identity from the need to come to the correct conclusions. Which, ironically, now makes it easier for me to actually be right!

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12

Oh no, striving for perfection, it’s a nice goal on paper.

Yeah, I can really understand why you “mellowed out,” or at least I think I can.

I use these techniques to understand everything around me, but not to write

No I just black out and let whatever happens happen and I try to not think about the stories I come up with.

Let’s just say, my subconscious has been wanting me to write adult themed stuff that included lgbqt+, poly, BDSM and more since I was in elementary, and my ace self being raised in a place where not only wherr those themes taboo, I wouldnt have vocab for them for decades.

The story where I get Arieth as a name is one I could never write, because I was 12 and no matter what I did my (17year old) characters were going to have sex, no I didnt have to write it, but it was going to happen and I was so not okay with that. And sometimes it was with the lead and a female, or the lead with both the female and a male and I was like wtf? And id walk away for a few weeks before trying a different introduction

13

I do the stuff because I want to understand everything around me, however, it’s a defense mechanism. And I actually know how to remove my feelings from the occasion.

Which is supposedly akin to splitting your will.

14

No. I’m very, very sure that you really can’t.

The old me wouldn’t have claimed to have been aiming for perfection. I would have denied that I did any such thing. I was painfully aware that any rationality that I had was the result of a lot of hard work. I could talk at length about what I had been through, how imperfect I knew myself to be, and so on.

I just also happened to believe that I’d achieved a certain standard. And that continuing to do what I was doing would naturally result in improvement. I took a modest amount of pride in having achieved some intellectual integrity.

I was entirely unaware of the extent to which I was self-deluded. And, under normal circumstances, would have spent my life remaining blissfully unaware. Absolutely nothing that I’ve stated so far even hints at the kind of disaster required for reality to smack me upside the head, then rub my face in my own lack of intellectual integrity.

And no, I don’t wish to share what it took. Just be assured that you so far have no hint, and the process was extraordinarily painful on levels that I could not have previously imagined being possible. And that was not for any lack of painful experiences that my old self had to compare it to.

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15

Actually, yeah, I do understand, and striving to be able to sit at any level is a form of perfection, or good enough

I read something when I was a child that explained this mindset to me,

to me, this is the defense mechanism that has kept me from being gaslit, it’s the mech that made me realize that 90% of the time I just don’t have the whole picture.

I’ve known since I was a child that I will never be perfect, that there was never a standard that I should strive for.

If I make a mistake, own it, take responsibility, figure out what I did wrong, and never do it again (if it can be help, just f* up in new and wtf ways).

When those around me make a “mistake” try to understand why, rarely is it malicious. Call it out, and forgive (but don’t forget, and try to not do the mistake yourself)

Try to understand the traps of complainacy and not fall in them.

And anything I say under any kind of influence (even emotional) should be held against me, should always be true

Who you are in the dark is just who you are.

If I can understand the other person, then when I am fighting with someone I can go "look, I realize [their opinion, background, what they saw, just as much information that I have on their part of the situation] but maybe you don’t realize [give extra context that they are lacking] and that is why I [feel the way I do, think they are wrong].

I’m non verbal, I get one shot if I am speaking, so I have to lay EVERYTHING out, I have almost never been allowed to make a second argument unless it’s texting.

The number of times I have been told I have wrong about something has been few and far between, and most of the time, it’s I forgot a small detail that makes the whole situation WORSE

… Let’s look at a conversial topic

Nazis are bad right? During world war 2, how many nazis do you think actually knew about the camps?

And how many Americans knew about the camps that we had in OUR country.

Can you hold every patriotic person in either country accountable when both of had those camps?

And then, how bad exactly were the people who worked at those camps, what where they told, did they truly understand just how stupidly “evil” those camps were.

If I am true to myself, I could prob work at those camps if I believe in my boss so much and they gave me the right story.

I have worked at an animal testing facility (as a security guard). One thing I want to say about that country, any deliberate mistreatment is not only a fireball offense, but the higher ups will do everything they can to keep you from working anywhere again. (Someone tricked someone into doing something really bad so they could “whistleblow”) And so many people did overtime to make sure the animals were happy and healthy if one fell sick or gave birth, it became around the clock care until the animals were happy again, and a couple of times a year some of the animals got adopted out.

They only killed the animals if they absolutely had to, and very rarely did they die unexpectedly or from illness. And you knew when it was that day, it was the days when people did not smile going into work and where not happy with their job.

And I had no qualms working there, I understood why they were doing it, and omg they cared about the creatures.

I was also a security guard at a chicken processing plant, like the place where they kill the chickens and then do whatever to be able to sell it

Day one I had to go on a tour (while everything was off thankfully) while they explained step by step how they did their best to make the killing of the chickens as humane, painless, and fast as possible. I was even explained to as why they chose how old the chickens were

I do not believe I am a bad person for working and supporting a place like that. The meat has to come from somewhere right?

Now when I say them like that, giving you full details, I hope you won’t be upset that I worked at said places.

I’ve had to learn to say that whole thing, because the few times I said that “I worked at an animal testing facility” or “chicken processing plant” people have gotten disgusted, horrified, or just angry, how could I work at those evil places.

…

This is a tool that I use to understand, to coexist, and I need it.

However the few times that I realize I screwed up the same way as before, I normally break, because how could I do that, I knew it was a problem and blah blah blah, it can get bad… I kinda loose the ability to function for a few hours

Thankfully it’s only happened like 3 times that I can remember, twice while I was working though (retail jobs at two different companies, one happened in the break room, one happened at the customer service desk during the early part of dec, the break room company got upset, the in front of customers company just helped me get to the break room and made sure I was okay before letting me back on the floor)

Not everybody can handle this mindset, it can be a trap. I constantly check myself and my situation, because I am trying so hard to not fall into that trap.

I just want to understand why of everything. Unless someone repeatedly, like makes the same mistake every day for several days, and they are told hey it’s not okay every day, do I blow up at said person.

When I find out that someone is lying or just so freaking wrong, and not only do I care about the situation, but I have actual evidence, do I call out the behavior.

I have to pick my battles, just because I want to understand everything, doesn’t mean I’m stupidly stressed about it, I file it away for information that I might need to know later to understand what is going on.

It’s like plot twist, most of the time I can see them coming, I’m curious about how it’s gonna get there or exposed, very rarely do I not catch it and it takes a second or third reread to get where it’s coming from, if it doesn’t come out of the blue.

I actually don’t mind spoilers, because I either forget them, or it’s like “okay, now I have to know how they get to the point, what exactly happened to cause that”

It’s almost never “okay, now I know the end, I don’t have to read the book”

Though I wish someone would have just told me what happened to the sister in the 50 shades series… I wouldn’t have finished reading it .

16

Um, this really isn’t a reasonable comparison. Most of our camps were prisoner of war camps. They were better than the German equivalent, but neither was terrible.

But when people talk about German camps, they mean the concentration camps where the Holocaust happened. Where they killed 17 million people, most famously including 6 million Jews. There is no equivalence here. The closest that the USA came to similar atrocities in camps was sending 112,000 Japanese to relocation camps. Where they lost stuff, and lived a sucky life, but with no mass casualties.

This is not to disagree with your point. But if you want to pick horrors for the USA, I’d suggest looking somewhere like the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, or more broadly our treatment of Native Americans.

However the few times that I realize I screwed up the same way as before, I normally break, because how could I do that, I knew it was a problem and blah blah blah, it can get bad… I kinda loose the ability to function for a few hours

Thankfully it’s only happened like 3 times that I can remember, twice while I was working though (retail jobs at two different companies, one happened in the break room, one happened at the customer service desk during the early part of dec, the break room company got upset, the in front of customers company just helped me get to the break room and made sure I was okay before letting me back on the floor)

Now try to imagine what it would be like if what you went through for a few hours, instead lasted for over a year…

17

… Our prisoner of war camps? Is that what you really believe? Do you not realize that we forced innocent families there, some American born?

No, we didn’t experiment and kill them, that I am aware of, but children were raised in those camps. We treated them like 2nd class citizens. -to me this is still wrong and bad.

And do you think that most of the German country knew what was happening in those camps? I’m talking about the people who loved and supported their country, they had no fing clue just how deep that rabbit hole went.

The comparison stands, it’s the same. We know what some of the jerks were doing in the country, but was everybody in that country wrong?

And I described two short times, I didn’t describe the third, because I wasn’t wanting to go into details.

But maybe I paint this picture for you.

I am non verbal, and logical, I have been since I was born. My father and grandparents picked up on this right away, and me and youngest aunt and uncle (who are 10 and 5 years older than me) were raised kinda like this.

You think differently, you have different beliefs than others, and that isn’t a bad thing, but that doesn’t make you always right, not that people who think differently than you are always right, they just might believe that, and there really isn’t anything you can do about it.

You just have to be you, try to be happy and keep our of trouble.

– when I didn’t understand something my papa would start off “you have to understand what they are thinking…” Then explains everything he knows the other point of view does “now, know that, what does that change? What can you do differently next time?” And if I tried to force my issue I was shut down unless someone was getting hurt. Or breaking a law and being stupid enough to get caught.

Though he taught me to understand the rules and laws, they are there for a purpose, in Texas, some are outdated BS, but they are rarely made for no reason.

In the Navy breaking rules can get people killed if your some kind of tech.

This type of thinking isn’t for everybody, but for the few it works for, it does work.

I have been taught to sit down and really think about all the possible outcomes, what happens if you do this, do that. What are the consequences of what actions,

I make mistakes, I do, but I own them, and I try so damn hard to not repeat them.

In the series Lacer talks about being willing to change your information on the fly as new evidence shows up. Oh gods, yes, I’ve seen what happens when you don’t.

And the few times I take alllllllll my info to attack someone, I sit down and make sure all my facts are in order and valid, 99% I have all the proof in front of me for about a week before I do it, I have to be sure, I can’t be wrong. One thing wrong makes the whole argument invalid (no, it really doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter)

I respect you mellowing out for whatever reason okay. I get it, I just can’t. This is how I’ve been wired since birth, and I do a lot to try to make sure I don’t have wrong information.

If I have incomplete information, that’s okay. I constantly gather information, because I want to understand the whole picture.

Why is this person doing what I believe to be a bad thing? Why do they think this is okay

Is it really okay for a child to bully a friend to turn on the web cam so they can shoot their computer point blank like they are shooting the friend in the face.

What is the whole story, why does said child think that kind of play is okay.

I support kids learning how to handle real guns, I support kids playing with toy guns, but that behavior crossed a line.

I know a lot of that kids background so I informed the parents and yeah, internet turned off. I haven’t asked the child what was in their head that that kind of behavior is okay because 1) not my child, 2) there is just no way in hell I can ask that calmly right now. Because of the about a dozen reactions I can predict them saying, I want to blow up at all of them, I’m still trying to figure out when it’s acceptable to pretend to shoot someone in the face as a child

And btw, bully, demand, while the other kid is saying no, I don’t want to at least three times.

And I don’t accept children being children as an excuse. Someone has to teach him that behavior was okay, because I know his parents told him that it was never okay to do that before giving him a nerf gun.

-and please note, this isn’t me trying to tell you to get back into it

This is me trying to explain to you how I do it, why I still do it.

Unless someone can completely remove themselves from situations, I don’t think most people should go to the level that I do.

I just wish more people would at least try to understand what other people are seeing, why do you think the thing you did was okay? Why do you think it bothered me? Or vice versa

19

This discussion has gotten a little heated and very, very off topic, so I am locking it for now.

In the future, let’s try to keep on topic or topic adjacent so that we don’t have any misunderstandings. Thanks everyone!

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