Think of the use of the funnel as an execution. She was a murderer, she killed countless innocent people. Capital punishment is still legal in places in the US and Gwynn basically played judge, juror and executioner all rolled into one. Is that right? Judiciously speaking, no, there needs to be a proper trial, but is it murder? No. She wad executed for her crimes.

I think if the question was simply about dispatching the demons, there would be no moral qualms. However, the funnel doesn't just "murder" or "execute" demons, their secrets are "forcibly and terribly taken". That phrase infers implies monstrous torture.

Edited to fix improper vocabulary choice (thanks, Lord Golbez), and to highlight what I believe is the true crux of the matter.

Implies.

I think Gwynn has the right idea but not even just because she got useful information. To me that book is like the ghostbusters storage facility. It seems like a great idea storing all the monsters in there until it springs a leak.

It's not like the group is against murdering demons. It's the fact that they are essentially executing prisoners that makes it morally gray.

For what it's worth, I think the word "murder" is being misapplied here.

If you come across someone who is killing/injuring someone else (and may be a threat to you as well), and you then end up killing that person to prevent the harm they intended, a court isn't going to convict you of murder. Murder has a very specific definition that does not apply here.

On to execution. To quote Tom Holland's Spider Man in Civil War: "When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you" (a slightly awkward rewording of "with great power comes great responsibility").

There is no court, no body of authority, and most importantly, no one else (that we've seen) with the capability and intent of executing justice here. Nobody else will end the threat of a mass murderer -- who has stated and demonstrated that she will continue to trap and destroy more children. It's our gang, or it doesn't happen. They don't take that lightly, but they also can't shy away from it.

Like I said earlier, and like KaBob said just now, imprisoning them is only a temporary solution -- and it comes with the very real possibility that they'll all escape and become an even bigger problem, killing even more people.

Yeah. Bun-Bun is not so much a friend but rather someone they have no choice to have the companionship of, Sam has technically killed no one (yet) (that we know of) and Torg and Riff have either relied on self-defence or have non-intentional manslaughter, not murder. Yeah, I don't even count what it did when fighting Hereticorp as murder. At most a war-kill, even if not an official one.

Sasha was never a friend (though I still hold hope she might become one) and she was not responsible of any of the killing she committed (at least according to Chaz). You could even argue that what she did once she (apparently) broke free of Hereticorp's control was self-defence.

Almost the same deal with Oasis, though her burning the ship full of Hereticorps people could be considered her actual first murder, but even then, would anyone actually consider Aosis and Zoe to be friends? I don't think so...

So, Zoe has two murderous friend, Aylee and now Gwynn.

Sam basically killed Muffin and her crew.

Unintentional manslaughter.

This could be a valid point if there were no alternative. If they had no other way to deal with the demons. But the book is an alternative. Saying "I had to take measure of my own because there existed no other structure or people to deal with that situation" doesn't apply when there is a way to hold that threat at bay.

For the sake of the argument, I categorise murder as killing someone who is not itself an immediate threat to either you or a non life-threatening bystander. I'll also add that it concern anyone who has an equivalent level of sapience as a human being, so that all is clear.

The demons captured in the book were clearly NOT an immediate threat. You could argue they might escape later, but so is the case of much prisons. Even in state were lethal executions still exist the "your honor, no prison is foolproof" argument is not a receivable one to motivate capital punishment. Furthermore, Gwynn didn't do this for the sake of the world's safety but to get intel. This is literally torture, not Justice.

And even if it was , I clearly don't consider Gwynn can pause herself as a substitute of Justice. Justice stem from a society trying to come up with a set of rules that would allow them to live together in what (at least most) would consider to be fair for everyone. Until there is an covenant of humans and demons (and faes?) who can agree on common rules on how to deal with the case of a being ending the existence of an other, there can be no action set within the parameter of Justice.

Until there is such an authority to enact execution, no killing can be seen as such and should only be seen under the scope or whether the persons are responding to an immediate threat or not.

I've been using the same analogy in my head. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?






All right, all right! I get the point!

I've been thinking that for awhile.

Also it's not very secure. Anybody can put something in or take it out if they know the incantation. It's not like Lord Poopy's prison, which is much more secure. This is more like a jail holding cell.

You can still go to prison for manslaughter.

Does someone have a link for the Muffin storyline? I tried the niftysearch, but never quite got to the right point.

Muffin is first mentioned here, but the actual Muffin storyline starts about eight months later.

Then she had a brief cameo in 2004 and again in 2009. She got a mention in the notes in 2015.

Thanks, garyfritz -- I should have been more specific. I meant the part where Sam accidentally kills them.