obsessed with the fact that rather than mstief taking some usamerican washed out response to the troubles its literally all the violence of american capitalism in the end that draws niall and then declan in to violence. it’s all about selling dreams, making dreams into profit, making your family’s legacy into profit, getting rich or dying trying. it’s about Mór walking away to join Boudicca, its about niall getting struck down by a tire iron because he put his own son up as the incredible product up for sale, it’s about how declan was born working class in ireland and grows up as a rich american who pulls a gun on the hitman that comes to collect. it’s about how money won’t save you, in the end, - they’ll be some situation where you never have enough. declan doesn’t have enough to buy the sweetmetals to keep jordan and matthew awake, and then he walks down a hallway guns blazing and dies for it as well
obsessed with Niall and Mór’s introduction highlighting the fact they can’t straight up dream money. they can’t dream money. and how the entire plot spirals off that. how will you get rich off this talent you were born with if you can’t make money? How Mór is called with more, more more. How Niall kills his dream cattle to pay for his mother’s ticket home. the opening pages talk about how its a good thing for dreamers to keep their heads down. someone might want to exploit them for profit.
i’ve seen people chatting about how kind of disappointing it is that when we finally meet Mór she ISN’T the bad bitch honcho of the entire function of boudicca. (which, to be fair, canon never suggested- she’s just kinda walking round the fairy market in CDTH). she’s just some woman who works for boudicca, who clearly is involved in their mob brutality but really doesn’t have the power or the money in the end when it matters, when even SHE can’t afford a sweetmetal to keep the new fenian awake. she has to steal the sweetmetal to get it. and she has to kill her son. in the end, she’s just some middle manager, and even she can’t master the mob, or capitalism, or violence.
(let’s talk meta in terms of Stuff I Wished Was Explored in the Third Act, but not only has declan now successfully faked his death, i suspect it’s very necessary for him to do so because he has let so fucking many boudicca prisoners go. and speaking of that, how IMPORTANT it is that declan’s incredibly violent run of victory includes him breaking the bonds of boudicca’s power and setting all these prisoners, these women whom for the most part he doesn’t know at all, free! it’s his heroic apex! it’s great! it’s absolutely to me where the irish mythological hero parts come through, because he’s the one with the unbreakable, almost mythic feeling riastrad, in the end, unleashing the hounds of ulster from the water bottle onto the mob. but also now he’s definitely very dead. also Mór is the one to shoot him. we love epic and messy family drama)
The hunt for money will lead to you putting your son on the altar as the source of your wealth, And it will make your son into a killer who waits with a gun in his hands, and it will lead to you being knocked Down with a tire iron, and it will lead to you shooting your son. Greed will hand violence down the line and you will pay for this wealth in blood
