Neutral critters are people too

A long, long time ago, in a different universe, I was walking around Azeroth along with my online girlfriend at the time, when I told her I'd kill the bunny we were passing by. She told me not to do it. I thought it was fine, because it was just a digital character. You know, not real. To my surprise, I felt TERRIBLE. Absolutely terrible. I was speechless. My girlfriend must have thought I'm an asshole. That's how I felt. Like a prick.

But it's still just code in a game. That won't change, no matter what moral dilemma we might consider. It's just code, so how can it affect me, her, and so many others in such an emotional way? Back then, I thought it would be simple. We just have to not kill the bunny if it bothers us, right? Wrong. Over time, as a traditional gamer, I often across RPGs and whatnot where I had to kill a neutral animal NPC to progress through the main storyline. So not killing wasn't even an option if we wanted to progress, instead of uninstalling the game.

We are back at square one. To kill or not to kill? That is the question. You will be surprised to hear I came up with a two-fold loophole to this problem. First, I told my dearest friend whom I share my home with that when she sees me killing something, I'm not really killing it, because it will come back after a while. It will respawn. So it doesn't really ever die, because it's always ressurecting, like an immortal. Either that, or its species are one collective being that isn't ever hurt, because it quickly regenerates whatever part of it is cut off. In both interpretations, I'm not killing it, even when programming logic is considered.

Yesterday, this friend told me she had a nightmare. She said our cat, Ziggy, was swallowed whole by a tiny creature, maybe kind of like Kirby? In her nightmare, she started crying. I was there, too, but I wasn't worried. Apparently, I told her in that dream how our cat will be back in a little bit, so there's nothing to be worried about, nothing bad happened. Even so, she woke up, panicking. Ziggy was right in front of her, licking his fur while posing in one of those incomprehensibly cute and fluffy stances only cats can perform. Relief washed over her.

Image sources: wowhead, pixabay