(no subject)

[feotakahari]

Tanadrin: “One thing I really appreciate about Michael Schur’s metaphysics is that the powers that rule are not omniscient or omnipotent, and also don’t pretend that they are. This doesn’t devolve into Greek mythology-style “gods are just humans with magic powers,” because they still are emphatically the Powers That Be: the judge of all the universe, the eternal arbiter of right and wrong might eat burritos spiced with envy, but she actually is that judge. But she can be wrong.”

I don’t understand the distinction here between a Power that Is and a human with magic powers, and I get the impression I should.

The rule I tend to operate under is that anything that thinks like a human is a human. Robot with emotions? Human. Elf? Nice try, that’s a human. Nature spirit? It wants the same things humans want, so it’s a human. Sometimes it’s an autistic human, but I don’t consider that relevant.

I don’t watch this show, and I’m clearly missing context. But it sounds like this character thinks and feels like a human does, so I’m not getting the distinction between them and a human. Maybe the character knows things I as a human don’t, or does things I as a human can’t, but there are humans who know and do things I don’t, and they’re still human.

(Relevant: I used to write a lot of stories about characters who got royally smacked down for thinking they weren’t human. Thinking you’re not human in a Feo story is like thinking you’re immune to karma in a Zen koan.)

Comments

[feotakahari]

In retrospect, maybe the reason why I always recoil from The Good Place is bad memories of Death Parade, which has a similar plot, but has very little humor and is just straight-up horrific.