Your superhero soulmate intends to sacrifice multiple lives to ensure your safety. Dissuade her?

We’re back to fantasy hypotheticals, ladies, gentlemen, and others; people who don’t like these are invited to bite my shiny metal ass. Let’s see what I can bang out in twenty minutes.

So here’s the sitch. Some time again, during an adventure whose details I see no need no contrive, you made the acquaintance of Esme, the brainwashed slave of a supervillainous cabal. Esme bears an uncanny resemblance to Swin Cash, which I only mention so as to have an excuse to post the following NSFW links.

[spoiler]All right, this image is clean enough for church, but the next one ain’t.

[/spoiler]

Using the power of friendship you free Esme from the villains’ mind control, and in return she rescues you from the grisly fate they were planning for you, then embarked on a campaign to bring down the entire evil organization.

As the above implies, Esme is extraordinary. She’s got strength, speed, and durability comparable to, oh, let’s say Spider-Man, along with a genius intellect; and when she freed herself from the villains, she helped herself to some super-tech: a flying car, a cozy subterranean headquarters, a collection of hand and rifle phasers, and such. (She does’t have any teleporters or time travel gizmos, though.) But she does have some emotional deficits. While she loves you more than ice cream, her attitude toward the rest of humanity is … guarded. She’ll fight to protect the innocent for reasons of principle rather than empathy; contrariwise, the worst thing she can imagine is you dying, and the prospect of losing your friendship has sent her into a panic attack.

Anywhistle–in the three years since you met Esme, her villainous erstwhile masters have continued their plot to cover the land in a second darkness. (Or third or fourth or tenth; I lose count.) Their campaign has recently moved from shadowy subterfuge to open war. The city you live in is under attack. In the middle of a running battle, you have been separated from your family and friends, but you know approximately where they are in the same building you are in right now. When you’re moment from being overwhelmed, ravished, and eaten, Esme arrives. She kills the orcs real good, then puts you in the passenger seat of her skycar and prepares to take off.

“Wait!” you say then. “What about my friends and family? Have you seen them, are they dead?”

“Not yet,” Esme replies. “As soon as I get you safely to the lair, I’ll come back and save as many as I can.”

“But that means you’ll be gone for at least ten minutes! How many people will die in the meantime?”

“Sensors say there are 1024 humans in the building right now,” Esme replies tonelessly. “No assistance save me is available within the next half hour. If I intervene now there is a 78% chance I can defeat the hostiles with a loss of 12 innocents while surviving myself, whereas the 10 minute delay will result in at least 200 innocent deaths. But–” (and her voice changes from toneless to terrified) “I must do get you to safety first. I must. The probability of your dying if I don’t take you away immediately is…is…I cannot say it. I can calculate it, but please, please don’t make me say it. Please. I cannot bear thought of endangering you, must less losing you.”

Now, before anybody goes all internet tough guy, let’s be clear. Esme can punch holes in concrete, and you’re a norm; there is no possibility of you physically forcing her to do shit. (Hell, you can’t even use the skycar’s weapon, as most of its controls are optimized for someone with super-strength.) But you can still affect her – if you play dirty. She can’t stand the idea of your being unhappy, so you can beg and plead for her to intervene immediately, she may well. And if that doesn’t work, you could blackmail her emotionally–threaten to end the relationship, to never so much as speak her name again, unless she goes and does her hero thing.

What do you do, and why?

The theoretical me has lived with this chick for three years and she still won’t let me fly the sky car? Bring on the emotional blackmail. Besides, she may love me more than ice cream, but the woman in those photos does not eat a whole lot of ice cream. (Or anything else, probably).

  1. The hypo does not say Esme lives with you. And since she doesn’t appear to be boffing you, I’d say she probably lives in the lair.
  2. It’s not that she won’t let fly the skycar. It’s that the skycar is set up for HER to use, and she’s super-strong. Naturally the buttons and switches and levers and steering wheel are set to respond to a normal amount of pressure; she doesn’t want to have to remember not to inadvertently break still all the time. Probably the only controls set for normal-strength people are in the passenger to you seats.
  3. That’s Swin Cash, you craven elf. Ms Cash to you. She eats whatever she goddamn well pleases.

Sorry, Esme, but unless you put me down and rescue my family, I will never speak to you again. Plus, cheesecake. Yes, she’s hot and all (I am taking your highly qualified word for it; I am at work and must refrain from clicking the links) but the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan and the Shodan-ettes must take priority. Plus, cheesecake.

Regards,
Shodan

PS - mmm, cheesecake.

I would let her save me without any delay. We all know how emo these superheroes are these days, think of how many thousands will die during their six month down time.

One of the first two. Absolutely not the third.

First, only an asshole would emotionally blackmail somebody because you think that saving 800 lives single-handed isn’t good enough. She doesn’t deserve that.

Second, the more people dig in their heels and refuse to be saved, the harder it is for her to save people.

Ditto. It’s not even a choice. AFAICT, it’s simply how I’m hard-wired.

I’m not going to bother. She’s not going to listen, I’m obviously just a hostage in this situation anyway and I’ve been trying to get away from her for years.

That’s some Cash I wish I had in hand.

Unless my chances are in the single digits, I do everything short of coercion to get her to help. Some of those people are my friends and family after all. If she still refuses well, can I get Swin as a consolation prize? I’m even willing to watch WNBA games if necessary.

Please rescue everyone else! That’s by my account 188 lives lost because I can’t hunker down for the time it takes her to kill the baddies.

Also, want cheesecake.

Also, where does it say we’re all black in this scenario? If so, am I black, too?

First off, I’m female and whatever that ‘cis’ thing is everybody is talking about that means I like guys. So Es and I are just gal pals. BFFs, maybe. I’m no spring chicken and have contributed just about as much to this old world as I can, so just park me with the cheesecake and a bottle of Wild Turkey and go save red-headed-grandson-future-president-of-the-US in that building tout suite! If she has time to come back and get me, well ok. I’ll be drunk and have a full belly and will be hella glad to see her.

As you know you’re my favorite (apart from what’s-her-name and the busty blonde and the other one), so, of the persons who have voted for emotional blackmail thus far, I’ll take you to task first.

Are you not bothered by the fact that Esme has abso-smurfly no emotional defenses against you? She’s as detached and rational as that TNG droid when talking about everyone else’s chances, but cannot bear even to articulate the odds of your death if she does as you’re about to ask. Clearly she has a lot of emotional damage from whatever she went through while being brainwashed (not to mention what she did under mind control). Or maybe you’re just that awesome.

Why does that matter? Well, it’s probably within your power to extort Esme into saving the others before getting you to safety. But that will be far from kind. More to the point, it’s gonna leave her severely emotionally compromised while kicking ass, and as she’s Spider-Girl rather than Superwoman, that may end up getting her killed (along with the people she’s supposed to be rescuing.

As to the black thing: You’re Asian Indian. Racist white Southerners will call you a nigger as quickly as they will me. Maybe faster.

I certainly intended the relationship to be read as platonic, not as dull sublunary love, if only for ethical reasons hinted to above. But, as I just told Fave!Doper #1, it may well be that your safety is necessary for her to act efficiently.

I am not in charge of whom Swin Cash boinks. Anyway, she’s beautiful but not hot, in my view anyway.

They only hit until you cry
After that you don’t ask why
You just don’t argue anymore
You just don’t argue anymore
You just don’t argue anymore

With great power comes great responsibility, hunny-bunny. That doesn’t just mean her power. That means, if I have power over her, then I am also responsible for the 188 deaths.

And then we’d have to have a serious talk, I think. I don’t think anyone should worry about me that much except maybe my parents or my love. It feels like a form of control, don’t you think?

I’ve lived amongst racist white Southerners. I didn’t like it. Sometimes I wonder if I could move even further north…? That being said, I was just curious if I was black in this scenario too.

There is only one true response. If the baby is lost, so will I be. I have a better chance of making it through if I know my family is taken care of than I would ever do if I knew they weren’t. There is safety and there is safety. Perhaps she could keep my physically safe, but would it matter to her if I were physically safe but mentally unhinged?

If it is my family and/or certain select friends, I am not leaving without them. Period. Esme can help me rescue them or she can walk away. If she’s known me for several years, she knows this.

Not to mention the emotional pain you’ll be inflicting on her with the blackmail, and the reduction to her effectiveness when that extortion succeeds and she has to fight while fretting that her best and perhaps only friend is in danger.

Tain’t no evidence Esme is trying to control you in this scenario (unless you count not adjusting the skycar so you can operate it, which to me seems purely practical). She’s not keeping you locked in the lair; she’s just not taking you along on adventures–and, honestly, do you want to fight menaces against whom her strength is required? What’re you gonna do but bleed?

Remember that book of mine you read back in the day? Some hoser asked me once why all the human characters were black. I asked him why all the characters in Narnia were black. Annoyed words were exchanged and at some point I probably threatened to bean him with an omelet pan. I was thinking of that. And of Bob X and Suzy the Insufficiently Evil Technomage. :smiley:

Ah, but the question is how much psychological pressure you’re willing to apply to Esme to keep her from just flying off to her lair, tossing you out, and going back alone.

Approach the question differently. If your buddies were in danger and you were going to their assistance, would you rather the Druidess helped you, or would her exposing herself to danger make things harder for you?

The mental health of my super hero GF is very important. If I die, she may slip off into a severe depression. At which point she may very well say “fuck it all” and refuse to save any more humans in future predicaments.

So yeah, go ahead and save me baby. You’re a valuable asset to society. We need you healthy and in tip top shape.

Gotta look at the big picture guys.

I tell her, “It’s very important to me that you save my family and friends now, if you can. I’d feel awful if I knew I got preferential treatment and lived while they stayed here and died between now and whenever you returned. Please, Esme, do your best to save them!”

And I would say it very persuasively, because it’s true.

I need to know the odds that I die before I can assess the situation.

Were I in her shoes and I knew that my spouse had a 99% chance of dying unless I rescued her first and came back… sorry innocents, but 200 of you are going to have deal with it.

On the other hand, she seems a little unstable. Maybe the “unspeakable” odds of me dying are just 5%. In that case, get your skinny ass out of the car and go save some people! (at those numbers, I’d even put myself at 20 or 25% risk.)

Also, we have 78% chance of 12 people dying if she deals with the orcs right now, but I’m not clear what the other 22% chance is. Is she implying that she has a 22% chance of losing, and thus everyone dies? or is the 22% just a different number of people who die while she stops the orcs? How does that 22% chance look if she saves me and comes back?

I will add, though: if she can’t come up with an explanation of the odds that makes her decision seem at least semi-rational then it won’t be emotional blackmail to say that I’ll never talk to her again. I have enough crazy in my life without super powers, thanks.