cidjen wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 5:06 pm
Slightly my fault too sry.
Not really (nor anyone else's); I sometimes tend to lose a bit of rudder control when confused (especially when it's something I think I shouldn't be confused about -- you'd think a guy always burbling about questioning assumptions would have a better handle on that). Please interpret my tone as indicating that confusion rather than any actual intent to escalate. In any case, cookies and/or apologies to any who wish.
So anyway -- not to repeat my "Miho as foie gras" thing (which was already too long), but trying to back up to a bigger picture -- I have a serious question for the Miho-disdainers (including but not limited to Teddy-Werebear). The past few chapters it seems as if the things we've been learning about Miho point in a consistent direction of her being the victim of whatever happened to turn her into whatever she is. Okay, yes, she could be lying, she could have made some pact with a malevolent Irish spirit to obtain eldritch powers, or the whole thing could be a whole cloth Kaiser Soze fabrication.
But supposing the picture we've gotten so far isn't her lying, and supposing that she is the victim of rather than willing participant in whatever the deal is with her... would that be enough to modify or in any way call into question the model of her being as evil as many claim her to be? It might not; a zombie for example didn't choose to be a zombie but ya still gotta kill it (it's well past choosing not to be a zombie now, or choosing anything at all except trying to eat your brains). A more complex example, if you're a Doctor Who fan anyway: remember the bit about the Master in the last of the 10th Doctor (Tennant) episodes? How he wasn't born a murderous psychopath after all? How the Time Lords deliberately turned his brain to porridge just to send out a signal, for the sole purpose of saving their own sorry asses? (Which didn't even work, making the whole thing -- all the evil and suffering he ever perpetrated as a result -- utterly pointless?)
Okay, but is Miho
that evil? I mean operationally, what evil acts have we actually seen her commit? I asked that in the old forums a long time ago and a bunch of the answers basically said that she was summoned from the Necrowombicon, Largo "knew" she was evil, that was plenty good enough. But... Miho isn't the only one who's talked about the influence of "fans" on her "story"... If Largo
wanted (badly enough) a source of evil to confront, and if being an "analogue" was enough to force Miho onto those plot rails for the first few chapters, then we're back to the first question, would her inability to '"choose" reduce in any way her culpability (for whatever you most feel she deserves being "punished")?
Summing-up questions. For the anti-Miho bandwagoneers: what more would need to be revealed about Miho's past that would start to shift the preferred hypothesis away from "she's just plain evil" to "hmm, she may be more of a victim of circumstance than previously thought"?
For the Miho thralls (myself included): the way she dumped Piro is described as quite nasty, and she's behaved in ways toward him the past couple of chapters that could fairly be called manipulative. More ominously, she's said she
[led] others to their deaths... who [she] wanted to die. What more would need to come to light for us to stop thinking of her as the wholly innocent girl controlled by unknown forces, and see her as more... Master-like? Someone who, no matter how sympathetic we might be to her initial plight,
needs to be controlled and contained the way Stability apparently tries to?