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Author Topic: Culpability Game!  (Read 872 times)

JoshuaFH

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Culpability Game!
« on: December 31, 2015, 08:51:33 am »

Partly inspired by a similar game found in Silent Hill: Frozen Memories, I just recently have been pondering this and was thinking it'd be fun to gauge other people's responses.

I just finished reading a book, a rarity for me: Life Support by Tess Gerritson. This 'game' explicitly spoils the events of the book, so I thought I'd throw out that warning in the odd 1/10000 chance of someone being partway through the book and not wanting spoilers, but I'm only going to summarize the events of one character.

Here's the story, in short: Molly Picker (16 years old) is a bad kid who has a pretty seriously bad relationship with her parents. Running away one day, she meets a man, Romy, who promises her a life of comfort and luxury as a prostitute. It's pretty obvious to anyone, but Romy is a filthy liar, so when he whisks Molly away to the faraway city of Boston, she finds herself trapped into this profession and abused both physically and emotionally by Romy. Molly's parents, being hardcore religious types, waste no time in completely disowning their daughter for this action.

Romy isn't just an ordinary pimp, he also just so happens to be friends with a one Dr. Wallenburg and his associates, who just so happen to need young women for a completely illegal operation they have. Dr. W pays Romy to allow him to drug Molly unconscious, where he then artificially impregnates her with a genetically altered ovum, without her knowledge. Five months later, when Molly starts showing signs of pregnancy, she believes it is simply an unwanted child from one of her clients. Molly becomes very scared at this point, and makes a phone call to her parents, begging to be picked up. Despite having the power and the possibility to remove Molly from this situation completely, her parents stick to their guns and refuse to even acknowledge her.

Molly runs away from Romy at this point, and being unwilling to go to the police due to an innate distrust of the law placed into her by Romy's manipulation, she bums it out and is eventually found by the book's protagonist, Dr. Toby Harper, who immediately realizes something is very wrong with young Molly and gets her into a hospital room.

Romy, to remind you, is being paid a lot of money to deliver her to Dr. W, so he tracks her down to the hospital and gets as far as her room before being chased out of the building by Toby Harper. She doesn't catch him, but before returning to Molly's room, she has an inexplicable romantic rendezvous with another doctor she's had her eye on for a while now. When finally returning to Molly's room, it would seem she was so spooked she fled the building, leaving her completely unguarded again. Perhaps Toby shouldn't have left her alone for so long...

Wandering the streets, Romy and Dr. W find her eventually, easily capturing her. Dr. W forces her to go into labor to extract the fetus, which is genetically modified to have several dozen pituitary glands, so he can harvest them and use the pituitary hormones as the key ingredient of an illegal surgical operation to return youth to his very wealthy geriatric patients. Molly dies on the table from complications during labor, unfortunately, and Dr W did not intend to kill her during this.

At the conclusion of the book, Dr W is apprehended for his crimes, but it's also revealed that his illegal surgery works wonderfully, returning youth to his geriatric patients and greatly extending their lives.

Now, for the culpability game! Who in the story is most responsible and least responsible for Molly's death.

  • Molly
  • Molly's Parents
  • Romy the pimp
  • Dr. Wallenburg and Associates
  • Dr. Wallenburg's patients - Note: They don't know where the hormones are coming from, but they don't ask either.
  • Toby Harper

Rearrange from the top (most culpable) to the bottom (Least Culpable).

I have my own opinion, but I wanted to see what other people think.
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Criptfeind

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2015, 09:02:38 am »

Hard choices some of these.

Dr. Wallenburg and Associates is my top.
Romy the pimp is my second although in very close competition with wallenburg, could easily be my top. Both of them basically killed her directly so...
Molly's Parents, she's only 16 or 17, they sorta have a responsibility to her, and since they had a direct chance to save her but refused, I rate them pretty highly. (if she was older then I'd probably rate them lower.)
Molly.
Dr. Wallenburg's patients. Tough one. For Mollys death? I don't think they share as much blame as anyone I've put above them. If this surgery becomes popular though that's going to be a lot of blood on their hands (especially since they can't pretend to not know what happened after Wallenburg is caught) Edit: Also I think these guys are going to be the most controversial, my gut instinct is to really, rate them higher. And they certainly did things that are wrong. If the question was "Who's more evil" I'd probably put them in third place. As it is for just Mollys death though, I can't rate them higher then anyone else except Toby.
Toby Harper.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 09:05:57 am by Criptfeind »
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scrdest

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2015, 09:33:50 am »

Oh, hello, Robin Hood Morality Test (with a twist), long time no see!
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Reelya

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2015, 09:35:47 am »

I don't rate the patients very culpable unless they have a good reason to suspect the source of the medicine is coming from killing people. It's the same as buying any product. Have a mobile? You're killing kids in the Congo probably. Drink coffee or eat bananas, probably someone being slaved to death to make that unless you scrupulously buy fair trade or local organic all the time. Shoes? Sweatshops in Asia. Even if you decide not to buy anything on the off chance that it's made exploitatively, you're probably harming someone. A full first-world person's income feeds a LOT of third-world workers, so you have to face the fact that if you don't spend anything, you are probably dooming multiple people to starvation.

I don't blame Toby Harper at all really. Toby did nothing to set the situation up, tried as best as possible, and you can't take responsibility for someone 24/7 if they're just going to run off. The doctor rendevous was a plot detail, but Toby Harper couldn't stand guard 24 hours a day to make sure this person doesn't run off.

The Hospital: they have much more responsibility for how the facility is run than someone who dropped a patient off. Once they're in the hospital it should not be up to the person who admitted the patient to stand guard constantly.

Romy I'd actually rate as #1, seeing as he is the one who derailed her life pretty much completely. She could have met any number of Bad Ends from that route, not just Wallenberg-related, though Wallenberg is clearly #2.

The parents are clearly in the middle.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 09:44:02 am by Reelya »
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Bouchart

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2015, 09:40:48 am »

Romy, Dr. Wallenburg, Molly, Dr. Wallenburg's patients, Molly's parents, Toby.
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Tawa

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2015, 12:40:08 pm »

Romy -> Wallenburg -> Molly's parents -> Molly -> the patients -> Toby.
Romy was a massive jackass and got her into the situation in the first place, then worked toward everything else here happening.
Wallenburg is almost as bad as Romy, but something I can't put my finger on made Romy slightly more culpable. Instigating it, I suppose?
Molly's parents had a responsibility toward their child, even if they had a very bad relationship with one another--Molly is still a child, after all.
Molly ran away, but she didn't really intend for or expect everything else to happen--I suppose she instigated everything, but it was accidental, so I wouldn't blame it on her.
The patients' involvement was limited to being the reason for Wallenburg's treatment--they otherwise had no part in the matter, and at least a couple might have tried to intervene had they known the whole story.
Toby just tried to help.

Heh. Looking back, I can see that my idea of culpability is most often based on intent. The road to hell...
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Strife26

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Re: Culpability Game!
« Reply #6 on: December 31, 2015, 05:30:43 pm »


Dr. Wallenburg
Romy
Molly
Molly's parents
Patients (assuming reasonable ignorance)
Toby
[/quote]
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