To Henry
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IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
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To Henry
Why is it that you aren't that big on Dominions, exactly? Aren't they more optimal than dealing with mood swings or someone else's lack of motivation?
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IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3710
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Henry
"Ah. That question. The one question every human I ever meet for the first time asks me at least once.
By way of an answer, I usually direct people to the oldies - or, well, the oldies as of 2025. I dug around online a few years back and wasted a few summertime evenings burning through the Ren and Stimpy Show. It's a brilliant piece of absurd entertainment, the kind of stuff that leaves purebreeds puzzled and humans nodding their heads at the smart call-backs or adult-oriented innuendo. It really was the first of its kind, before The Simpsons gained the notoriety it would enjoy and before about a dozen imitators would surface. An adult show, essentially, but with enough craziness to earn a Primetime slot.
One episode that comes to mind is The Happy Helmet. For the uninitiated, Ren Hoek is a neurotic chihuahua who's constantly overworked and under-appreciated, while Stimpy is probably the dumbest cat in existence. One's a bag of issues and of forming psychotic tendencies, the other could actually stand to have a few worries in his life. Well, Stimpy decides he's had enough and designs a device that'll make his friend stop worrying so much. The Happy Helmet makes Ren very happy, but Spumco's animators really accentuate how much of a strain this happens to be for his mind and body. This is a guy who's always at least moderately grumpy, and his friend just plugged him into a live wire of pure, unadulterated glee.
For about a day, Ren goes about being a disturbingly nice counterpart to his usual self, his entire body alluding to the fact that he's probably kicking and screaming, somewhere inside. Then Stimpy comes home with a new vinyl 8-track, titled Happy Happy Joy Joy.
Ren starts dancing with his friend, but we soon see him wrestle against himself until he eventually makes it in the kitchen, where he pulls out a hammer from one of the drawers. Then, ecstatic smile still firmly plastered on his face, he bashes the helmet into smithereens and proceeds to choke Stimpy in retaliation. In true cartoon fashion, the cat's not in any real danger, while Ren realizes - seemingly for the first time - that he enjoys being angry. Perennial frustration is what motivates him, and a vapid state of bliss happened to be absolute agony for him.
Terran species are a bit like softened-up relatives of Ren Hoek. You value your feelings, even if they sometimes lead you astray. More often than not, they actually tend to point you in the right direction. Whenever they don't, there's another one of you with a different perspective who happens to be around to compensate. Barring extreme mental illnesses, the Terran social tissue lives and breathes on emotion far more than it does on reason - and my nature as someone who married a human woman wouldn't have it any other way.
I've seen Dominated humans before, mind you. I've been asked to try my hand at establishing a Dominion only once by Internal Investigations. They wanted to know I'd have a clear understanding of the ethical challenges mind control poses. The best way to understand was to simulate a Dominion. For a week, I had five people under my sway and had to note down everything that crossed my mind in this regard. I didn't like one minute of it.
Dominated Terrans are... unsettling to me. You become so calm, so flexible, so reasonable and so given to follow Reason that you all start feeling like... like puppets, honestly. If the head of the Hierarchy has a specific point of view and his reasoning is strong, then everyone in the Dominion will blindly agree. This might work in fragile environments and societies, places where dissent and chaos need to be virtually nonexistent for the group to survive - like my people's native colonies - but on Earth?! Of course, it wouldn't work!
Seven billion of us, dozens of cultures, thousands of ideological currents, millions of broad points of view and an infinity of nuances between each of them... Looking at that complexity, anyone can see you depend on your own diversity to survive. The things that make you separate and distinct also make you unite as one when the cause is just.
Again, as a xenophile, I'm stuck with a heart that understands the emotional transports of the human soul and a mind that has to wrestle with the millions of ways in which they don't make sense."
By way of an answer, I usually direct people to the oldies - or, well, the oldies as of 2025. I dug around online a few years back and wasted a few summertime evenings burning through the Ren and Stimpy Show. It's a brilliant piece of absurd entertainment, the kind of stuff that leaves purebreeds puzzled and humans nodding their heads at the smart call-backs or adult-oriented innuendo. It really was the first of its kind, before The Simpsons gained the notoriety it would enjoy and before about a dozen imitators would surface. An adult show, essentially, but with enough craziness to earn a Primetime slot.
One episode that comes to mind is The Happy Helmet. For the uninitiated, Ren Hoek is a neurotic chihuahua who's constantly overworked and under-appreciated, while Stimpy is probably the dumbest cat in existence. One's a bag of issues and of forming psychotic tendencies, the other could actually stand to have a few worries in his life. Well, Stimpy decides he's had enough and designs a device that'll make his friend stop worrying so much. The Happy Helmet makes Ren very happy, but Spumco's animators really accentuate how much of a strain this happens to be for his mind and body. This is a guy who's always at least moderately grumpy, and his friend just plugged him into a live wire of pure, unadulterated glee.
For about a day, Ren goes about being a disturbingly nice counterpart to his usual self, his entire body alluding to the fact that he's probably kicking and screaming, somewhere inside. Then Stimpy comes home with a new vinyl 8-track, titled Happy Happy Joy Joy.
Ren starts dancing with his friend, but we soon see him wrestle against himself until he eventually makes it in the kitchen, where he pulls out a hammer from one of the drawers. Then, ecstatic smile still firmly plastered on his face, he bashes the helmet into smithereens and proceeds to choke Stimpy in retaliation. In true cartoon fashion, the cat's not in any real danger, while Ren realizes - seemingly for the first time - that he enjoys being angry. Perennial frustration is what motivates him, and a vapid state of bliss happened to be absolute agony for him.
Terran species are a bit like softened-up relatives of Ren Hoek. You value your feelings, even if they sometimes lead you astray. More often than not, they actually tend to point you in the right direction. Whenever they don't, there's another one of you with a different perspective who happens to be around to compensate. Barring extreme mental illnesses, the Terran social tissue lives and breathes on emotion far more than it does on reason - and my nature as someone who married a human woman wouldn't have it any other way.
I've seen Dominated humans before, mind you. I've been asked to try my hand at establishing a Dominion only once by Internal Investigations. They wanted to know I'd have a clear understanding of the ethical challenges mind control poses. The best way to understand was to simulate a Dominion. For a week, I had five people under my sway and had to note down everything that crossed my mind in this regard. I didn't like one minute of it.
Dominated Terrans are... unsettling to me. You become so calm, so flexible, so reasonable and so given to follow Reason that you all start feeling like... like puppets, honestly. If the head of the Hierarchy has a specific point of view and his reasoning is strong, then everyone in the Dominion will blindly agree. This might work in fragile environments and societies, places where dissent and chaos need to be virtually nonexistent for the group to survive - like my people's native colonies - but on Earth?! Of course, it wouldn't work!
Seven billion of us, dozens of cultures, thousands of ideological currents, millions of broad points of view and an infinity of nuances between each of them... Looking at that complexity, anyone can see you depend on your own diversity to survive. The things that make you separate and distinct also make you unite as one when the cause is just.
Again, as a xenophile, I'm stuck with a heart that understands the emotional transports of the human soul and a mind that has to wrestle with the millions of ways in which they don't make sense."