The Dear, Hunted

No no, I think I am going to talk about it because it pisses me off personally

I’m a research technician and let me tell you the whole “research” scene in tm9a killed me. (Not because I think it was bad writing or done poorly. I think it absolutely served the narrative purpose of characterizing Trent, Essek, Astrid, and Eadwulf as well as giving us more plot information about the Beacon)

But like…Essek was right. You just killed a guy for nothing!! You’re not taking any notes! You have two perfectly capable research assistants right there and no one is writing anything down! Instead, they’re just clean up crew and subject transport. There are no qualitative notes being taken and no quantitative data being measured either! Do you have any demographic information for your subject? Would the relationship between a subject and a divine source influence the outcome of the experiment? Are you controlling for the way that you kill them? Does killing them with a magical weapon vs a non-magical weapon have an effect? Are you taking into account exhaustion from the researcher opening the beacon? Are you just trying to replicate the first experiment or are you going to change something to actually experiment instead of doing the DEFINITION OF INSANITY?! Are you even making sure that any of this is replicable? Where are your control trials? Or are you comparing what’s happening here to previous consecuted deaths? (Which I doubt there’s any actual research on)

“I am going to create an experiment that is so unethical” Yeah, to do so, you would have had to CREATE AN EXPERIMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

The opening scene of the same episode where we learn Bolaire’s secret is a planned murder. Bolaire arrived with an empty package (just the right size to fit his current head and hands, because he planned to keep them) to a meeting place of cutthroats with the intention of luring a man he barely knew into putting on the mask. He chose a fence from a thieves’ guild—someone greedy enough to think the mask would have value, ambitious enough not to leave this type of meeting empty handed, but not necessarily one of the types known for killing people freely. Whether the man threatened death to Bolaire wasn’t the goal; it was that he needed to take the mask, see the glyph inside it, and put it on.

Defenses arguing about the violence or threats toward Bolaire aren’t just missing the point. It’s an attempt to justify a decision that had been made before that even happened.

Taliesin made a character who should cause discomfort in the audience, and what we’re seeing is the audience doing mental gymnastics to find ways to be okay with it rather than sit in the discomfort. Not everything is meant to be palatable. The cast joked about “goth energy” for episode 4, but that’s what it is. It’s reveling in something that is fucked up without pretending that it’s good.

If you’re trying to justify Bolaire’s actions, you’re missing the point of the character. It’s not whether he’s right. It’s what the existence of this type of entity—who thinks so little of others’ lives, who collects artifacts and curates a museum, who keeps the favorites for his own pleasure in a secret sanctum with his wine stash, who was created for and enjoys theater, who adores Hal so desperately that he told a palatable story in the hopes of preserving their relationship—means for the state of Aramán and Dol-Makyar. He’s a fucked up little guy! In a fucked up world! It’s excellent!