Author Topic: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire  (Read 1264 times)

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Offline Aluminator (Kit)

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Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« on: July 29, 2013, 11:33:52 AM »
We all know that what the Yeerk Empire was doing was wrong, yes? Taking involuntary hosts, controlling people against their will-- there seems to be no question that this makes the Empire evil, something to be reviled, and constantly fought. This particular point has been rehashed and restated a thousand times over. The Empire was in the wrong. End of story.

But now imagine what it's like on the other side. If you're an Imperial Yeerk, how do you justify what you do? What arguments can you come up with that support the Empire's MO? Why do you believe you're in the right, taking involuntary hosts? Is there any way you can argue this without completely discounting the value of hosts' rights? Can you see reasons to continue fighting aside from just fear of the repercussions from the Empire?

I'm not talking about Peace Movement Yeerks who believe in only taking voluntary hosts. I'm talking about full-on Imperials who wholeheartedly believe in their cause, including involuntary infestation.

I have actually already done a lot of thinking on this, and will put in my two cents' worth before long, but I wanted to see what some other people came up with first.

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Offline Chad32

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2013, 12:17:10 PM »
I think the most common answer would be that there are just too many Yeerks for them to rely on voluntary hosts, and since they started a war they need as many hosts as soon as possible. If a Human can justify owning members of their own kind, then it wouldn't be hard for yeerks to do the same. It's just kind of funny that these things that think they're so superior would be helpless without their prisoners.


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Offline RYTX

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2013, 01:00:41 PM »
I think the superiority mentallity is enough to justify it.
You physically can. You've no reason to care about how members of this or species feels, they're inferior, even if it's just in this one way, that's a source of righteous justification.

I disagree with the Yeerk Empire because I'd be on the losing side, but seriously Aftrans argument of host=live stock seems damn good justification to do whatever the hell you want with lesser beings
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Offline Azguard

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2013, 06:28:42 PM »
YEah, to them we are lesser beings who are only serving them, even involuntarily. And their whole environmental upbringing reinforces this.

Imagine growing up and all you hear is that it's perfectly acceptable and necessary to take hosts, that other species are blessed to have you bestow superior intelligence upon them, and that there is an entire race of people (the Andalites) that are opposed to this way of life and will use violence to end your rights. Even if you feel bad about taking hosts, this second part about violent opposition will probably have you joining the cause if not out of loyalty, certainly out of survival. I guess in our minds it would always be wrong, but we're taught morals growing up and certain morals are programmed into our genes. Yeerk genetics are most likely vastly different.
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Offline donut

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2013, 09:24:14 PM »
I love this idea.  Where's Tara?  She'd be great at this.


Alright, so I'm a yeerk who's justifying what we do to humans.

You humans keep cattle and chickens, animals which you slaughter so you can eat. You keep them locked in tiny stalls and force them to produce for you.  They make you milk and eggs, and you keep them in terrible conditions and hardly let them leave their cages.  We aren't any different than you.  We need animals so we can live.  Without them, we live blind, we can barely move, we can't even build tools to build a civilization.  We live an eternal death.   You can survive without caging and slaughtering the animals you do.  Only a sadist would call what we have without hosts surviving. 

We treat our hosts better than you treat your animals.  We keep them fed.  We exercise them.  We take them out into the world, and we would never kill something so valuable to us.  You throw their lives away on a whim. 

What right do you have to condemn us to a living hell while you slaughter hundreds of thousands of creatures just so you can eat meat?  Do we not have  a right to live?  Can we not experience this world, this universe the way it was meant to be experienced?  How can you imagine a life, that you never can look up at night and see the stars shining?  Imagine a life where you can never fill the wind blowing, or see something as wonderful as a flower or tree?  Imagine seeing a sunrise for the first time, and looking over to see, to SEE, your brother and sister for the first time in your life.  To hear them, to touch them.  You slaughter and enslave animals and each other for your own convenience.  We take our hosts, and treat them better than you ever have, because we can't live without it.

You call us parasites, evil, monsters, only because we want to survive and live.  You do far worse just so you can enjoy yourselves.  We aren't the monsters here.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2013, 09:30:39 PM by donut »

Offline RYTX

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2013, 01:05:38 PM »
It's funny, there's an article on google news today about the ethics (and science???) of killer whales in captivity, reminded me of this thread.
Really it's more fitting than the livestock- it's not even about survival, it's about enhancing life.
Yeerks can live fine without host, but while I know a bunch of hippies who'd disagree, meat's an important part of the human diet.

But do we need ceteans to jump through hoops? No, but we enjoy it. And it's okay because, they aren't human. Could argue it about pets too I suppose
Even if they're loved and treated well, compelling a human into a relationship like that is a no-no. Now. Just because they're human.
But I'm willing to bet there's a few things at marine world smarter than certain aforementioned hippies
/ramble
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 01:18:04 PM by RYTX »
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Offline jashykins

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2013, 03:08:44 PM »
As a Yeerk there's a more enjoyable life in a host. As for the host wanting me or not: who cares?

They are not me and, while I know everything they have done and felt, they're not even my species. The host is a means to an end. While a voluntary host would be best (as they wouldn't be complaining all the time), taking an involuntary host isn't wrong.

As for the Andalites? They are trying to make my species live a life that is less than life. THEY can run, see through four eyes, and yet they feel no pity for leaving my kind blind.

Offline donut

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2013, 11:18:18 PM »
The andalites would have you believe we are trying to conquer the galaxy.  That we only live for war.  The andalites would kill us all if they had the chance.  We fight because the andalites chase us.  They want to exterminate us.  The andalites say they want peace.  What they won't say is they only want peace if it's without us.  They They believe we are a mistake, and they won't stop until we are dead.  They proved that with their genocide of the hork bajir.  Tens of thousands of hork bajir, dead in hours.  Killed by a plague the andalites created.  They killed them just to try to destroy us.  They tried to kill an entire species.  We saved the hork bajir we could, their race only survived because of us.  We saved them from the andalites' brutality.

We want peace.  We only expand because the andalites are more powerful than we are.  They would crush us if we didn't build and expand.  The andalites will not let us end the fighting.  We want an end to the fighting.  We want what every intelligent species in this galaxy has: the right to build our civilization.  You humans don't understand how amazing it is just to have hands to build with.  The andalites would wipe us out, force us onto a barren world, and imprison the survivors, blind and lame, in the pools there.  We want the freedom, the right, to build a great culture.  To produce our art and our philosephers.  We want the very thing the andalites say they fight us for.  We want the rights and freedoms you cherish and hold above everything else.

Are we so wrong to ask for that?  Are we evil to want the same rights you have?

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #8 on: July 31, 2013, 09:03:38 PM »

     I think the whole "lack of above average senses" is the only justification the Yeerks have. It's definitely the one they keep falling back on. But we have proof that the Yeerks--if not all, then the majority-- couldn't care less about beauty. While the Andalites unleashed the quantum virus on the Hork-Bajir, the Yeerks used Hork-Bajir resources to build their own ships, bases, and pools--effectively destroying the environment that the Hork-Bajir had. And they did kill Hork-Bajir who, for whatever kooky reason, didn't want to be slaves.  And then there's the Mak, the Nahara, and the Ssstram--who the Yeerks claim to have conquered entirely. You can take that as the Yeerks infesting the whole population, or bringing them to extinction. They slaughtered a whole bunch of Hawjabran just because they couldn't use them as host bodies. I guess I would buy the Yeerks "we want what you humans/Andalites have" if they didn't contradict that with all the slaughter, and the fact that they completely take advantage of the host's body and planet's resources. They just destroy everything they touch.

     But, they are correct in that they aren't doing anything differently than the humans do to each other. Our history is chock-full of slaughter, slavery, etc. The only difference is that we have better bodies.
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Offline Aluminator (Kit)

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #9 on: August 07, 2013, 11:44:19 AM »
Gnawlrighty then, here's my take. I'm speaking as a Yeerk, addressing humans, here. Jessi, if you happen to make your way in here, I hope you don't mind my stealing of some of your words and ideas.



You make us out to be evil. We are not evil. You call us destroyers, but we seek only to protect and improve. You make us out to be slave masters, but we are your liberators.

You place far too high a value on what you call your 'free will,' human. As a human being, you have a lot to gain from one of my people. Think of how little you'll have to worry about, about how much better off you'll be-- you'll have the resources of the whole Yeerk Empire at your disposal. Think of what we could accomplish together. Two heads are better than one, as they say. You get to keep your sight, your feelings, your thoughts, nearly all of your freedom. All we take from you is a little control.

On your own, you humans are a violent, unpredictable species. You cannot even manage to exist together in a single society. You fight each other constantly, over land, over resources, over what you perceive to be right by your religion, over skin color. Murder and greed run rampant. While your poor gun each other down, your rich sit back and watch as they die of starvation. Tell me, where's the free will for those innocents who are killed? Tell me how much choice you really have in life, human.

We will eliminate all of that, when we take your planet. Yeerks do not fight wars with each other, do not kill each other over conflicts (with a few notable exceptions). We do not allow our hosts to starve in the streets or be murdered for no reason at all. We will free you humans from all the dangers of your so-called culture. With us in charge, Earth will never again see the likes of war, crime, disease, prejudice, violence, fear, slavery. We Yeerks place a higher value on the lives of you humans as our hosts than you do on each other.

You see it everywhere in this war. If it were left up to us, every world would all be taken in much the way the Taxxons were. There was very little resistance, very little Taxxon death, comparatively speaking. The only known Taxxon rebellion, the only cause of the loss of Taxxon life on their homeworld, was led by an Andalite. We have raised the Taxxons to being so much greater than they once were.

Now compare that to the Hork-Bajir homeworld. Our infestation of the Hork-Bajir would have not only kept most of the population alive, it would have brought them to the stars. The idiot Andalites thought much as you do-- that the freedom of the Hork-Bajir should be valued more highly than their lives. It was the Andalites who decimated their race-- once again, we see a case of the great Yeerk Empire improving, and the Andalites destroying. When the Andalites come to Earth, do you think they'll be the ones defending humanity? Or do you think they'll simply try to wipe you out, to eliminate humanity in its entirety? And when they try to wipe you out, who's going to stand in their way, if not the Yeerk Empire?

Really, what's the alternative? We go back to swimming, blind and helpless, in our pools, while the Andalites strut about the galaxy in their technological superiority, and you humans go back to killing each other for oil, and you all continue to abuse the bodies and the sight that we've been denied? Explain to me, human: where's the "free will" for my people then? If we allow you humans to continue to choose whether to watch football or porno, we're denied the ability to learn, to have a culture of our own, to grow to our potential. We're denied our entire world.

We can't help what we are, but we can do something about our lot in life. We can only do what we were born do do. Don't deny my people their lives, simply because you place too much value on your illusion of free will. Good Yeerks are wasted in the pools, living and dying without ever once seeing the sun. We've been gifted with the ability to take control of other species, and the intelligence to appreciate them. We are not going to ignore our gifts and live our lives unfulfilled. My people deserve so much better than that. My people deserve to be allowed to travel the stars.

Don't think of yourselves as slaves, human. Think of yourselves as children. Left to their own devices, your children will eat glue or jump bikes or wander into traffic and wind up hurt or crippled or dead. You don't let them do those things, because, as their parents, it's your job to guide them until they know better. Even if they kick and scream and cry, you'll do what's best for them. You humans, you're children. Left to your own devices, you will fight and kill and decimate your planet's resources until there's nothing left. We are here to guide your species, human, until you realize that life with the Yeerks was always the better option, and stop kicking and screaming and crying. But that can't happen as long as there are still free humans out there espousing the benefits of 'free will.'

And we will fight, human. I will fight. The Empire will bring a better life to everyone, and we will not stop... I will not stop... until we've taken every last one of you.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2013, 11:48:25 AM by Arch Aluminator »

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Offline Shenmue654

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Re: Devil's Advocate-- Arguments for the Yeerk Empire
« Reply #10 on: August 07, 2013, 02:28:14 PM »
I'm gonna do a really...interesting one. Speaking as a voluntary Controller, to other humans, about why being a Controller isn't so bad at all. We have a few guesses. ;)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life is so often a meaningless waste, for people. We go through endless identical days with pointless first-world problems piling up, that we stress and fret and ruin our minds and bodies over despite having far better things to do. We die of drug addiction, we kill our own kin, we mock and insult and degrade the lives one another to feel better about the emptiness of our own. And it is empty, for so many of us in the end. Cradle to grave wondering if we could have chosen differently, if we could have lived for more than ourselves. An endless parade of people with petty, false smiles patting us on the back and telling us that we were great, that we were loved.

What if you could guarantee the opposite? What if I could guarantee you a cause to fight for, a glorious culture as yet unbuilt that you would play a pivotal role in constructing? What if I could guarantee a world where no one would hate, no one would fear, where anxiety was a memory? Where merit and not birth was the key to success? Where you could live vicariously through the actions of a better, stronger, smarter you, share and feel the triumph and the glory, influence it through feelings of your own? What if you could find absolute love and loyalty to feel for another person again, a leader to strive after? And all this without even having to lift a finger, without effort, without trial.

All you would have to give up is control, free will, the right to do it completely by yourself. You would become a citizen of an Empire larger than Rome and with all of its layered politics. You would accept an alien, a second sharper mind to complement your emotions and body, who would then proceed to run and improve your life. .....so what? Free will is painful---- it presents itself as a never-ending parade of exhaustion and fear. It drives people to suicide and most to despair, in the end. You would never again know that feeling, because the responsibility is not your own and your life is completely necessary to that Yeerk. Your life has a purpose and a meaning.

The Yeerk would be as a Father to an adoring son, if you let him. A lover of unparalleled intimacy, if you let him. A friend that would always be with you, so that you would never know loneliness. Yeerks can be taskmasters, and cruel tyrants---- but it is highly unwise to underestimate the persuasive power and pleasure obtained by a skilled and loyal servant. You could win him over, and he you. You would live for his dreams, and he the pleasure of being alive through you.

And through the Yeerk you would know hierarchy, and Empire, and the starry sky wide open. A blazing inferno of a million suns for you two to experience together. Perhaps you would both in the end taste power and authority absolute and sacred, if you were very skilled and lucky. Perhaps you would be the next Lord General, a Visser---- or even a Councilor. In our democratic and lawless society this is a feeling we will never know otherwise.

Do you see what can be accomplished if you just let go? Hell, we're almost getting the better end of the deal. We have an opportunity to gain everything we ever wanted from life--- Passion, success, the opportunity to travel the stars and conquer the galaxy----with total freedom from the consequences.

« Last Edit: August 07, 2013, 06:57:27 PM by Shenmue654 »