ModernVintage

PART 1: Setting the Stage

The way I see the Roaring Knight fight is like this.

It is two colossal titans going up against the other.

The true battle that is about to go down here is that of The Player and The Roaring Knight. The outcome of this duel will determine which side will actually prevail in the long term.

Both sides are defined by what they know... and what they don't.

To be more specific:

The Knight is aware of the Player's Existence, on at least some level. But I think, as I will get to later, is demonstrably unaware of the deeper mechanics of how we work. I think, at minimum, The Knight does not understand the power to SAVE- or at least, is not properly thinking about its larger implications. The Knight is going into this fight, therefore, with pure brute strength. The Knight is expecting this to be a clear-cut, instant, decisive victory against the heroes of prophecy. After all, there's a whole lot of stuff written in its life that it hasn't gotten to see yet, stuff that can only happen if it prevails. Further, the Delta Warriors are still at the very start of their quest. They know nothing of the hardships they will come to face. So this is going to be an easy victory.

The Player, on your first playthrough, is similarly aware of The Knight's existence, but is very, very unaware of what exactly we're dealing with. Most of us thought that The Knight would be someone we fight in the main story- a regular antagonist. Many of us even thought that The Knight would be done and dusted by, say, the end of 5. (Chess Theory my beloathed).

DELTARUNE itself even kind of misleads us with this, with Swatchling Dialog in Chapter 2 implying that It and Queen were at least comparable, with GIGA Queen being "more powerful" in the eyes of the Swatchlings.

Both sides are going into this battle, this duel, with a fundamental knowledge gap over the other. The Knight expects this to be over instantly. The Player is expecting this to be just like any other foe we've faced.

Both sides go into this expecting the same result: "I've totally got this, right?"

As it turns out, we don't got this. We lose, and The Knight's viewpoint, and strategy, proves correct. You are, more likely than not, unless you're some insane pro gamer god, going to lose your first encounter to The Knight. It is, as Gaster describes it, "Fate".

However, with this loss, the Player's knowledge gap closes. We now understand that The Knight got Hands. The difference between these two colossal forces... is that we get a do-over, and get to try again.

See, the truth is, we've seen this fight before.

It's the same fight that UT Geno showed us, twice.

The Ability to SAVE is... extremely broken. As the player, so long as the theoretical capacity for victory exists... we can achieve it, eventually.

The Knight... simply does not understand this. If it is aware of the Player's ability to time travel, I do not think they understand its significance in the larger picture. The Knight is much more of an Undyne the Undying than they are a Sans.

Our loss is, as Gaster puts it, our fate. But, we can try. By the angel, we can try. And we can lose! Over, and over, and over again, until our Determination to succeed eventually gives us the strength needed to surpass the impossible.

Slowly, over so many attempts, the tables of the match turn. We are slowly able to learn, to adapt, to overcome, to persevere enough to start making progress, to survive multiple turns.

At the center of this whirlwind of a showdown between two extremely powerful entities is Susie.

PART 2: Susie

Susie... does not really understand the greater "game" being played. How could she? She knows nothing of the Player, nothing of SAVE files, she knows about as much about the Knight as we did on our first go, probably less so.

She cannot begin to truly understand the larger power struggle going on here. But, she does know two things.

A) Holy #%@# this thing has got hands. Like exceptional legendary hands. This absolute beast is hitting with the force of a truck. This is an opponent leagues beyond anything we have seen before. We are Cooked. B) ...Somehow, despite (A)... She is still standing. Susie, bless her heart, does not have any idea how these two things can both simultaneously be true. She fundamentally lacks the context to understand what is allowing both of these things to be true, but she recognizes the significance of this. She is insightful enough to recognize that... something is wrong here, that this Does Not Make Any Sense, and, I believe, reasons that if even SHE is confused as to what is happening... Surely, The Knight must be as well?

So, she starts talking trash.

She points out the truth of the matter- The Knight fully expected this battle to be over before it began. And, by all means, SHE'S RIGHT!!! It REALLY should have been. It WAS, the first time around.

The Knight also realizes this. They, over the course of the fight, begrudgingly start exchanging their defenses for increased attack output to try and accommodate for this unexpected pushback. The attacks loop, this time more intense.

But it doesn't work. We continue to survive, and Susie continues to talk trash.

This ultimately culminates in The Attack. The Attack that, to me, is perhaps the most impactful single moment of the entire fight. This one Attack, to me, tells me literally everything we need to know about this matchup.

The rotating spinny slashy attack. Rotating Slash 3.

I actually did a whole standalone post about this, but I'm going to retread that ground here again because it's Important.

See, this attack is fascinating to me. Rotating Slash 3 is different from the other Final Versions of the Knight's attacks in that it has a completely added tacked-on bonus section at the very end. I suppose the later variants of Stars could be interpreted in a similar way but that's at least a direct evolution of the star exploding bullets already- this is like, an entirely different sequence.

In it, The Knight spams slashes in a rotating circle. Just looking at this attack in motion really gives off the impression that The Knight is Pissed. This is not a calm, calculated, precise maneuver, this is Rage. This is Fury. This is Passion.

But you know what makes it incredible?

Anyone who is seriously attempting this fight in DELTARUNE has probably beaten Sans. At the very least, anyone attempting this fight is probably at least FAMILIAR with his fight, through and through.

Which means you've already seen the Gaster Blaster Spinny Circle. It's iconic. Everyone knows it.

And what that means here is that THIS ISN'T EVEN A GOOD ATTACK.

Sure, maybe this thing catches you off guard the first time... but chances are? You just... dodge it! Because you already know how to do this! You've played these games before!

It is, in a sense, a culmination of the entire thing I'm outlining in this post- The Knight, functionally screaming "WHY WON'T YOU DIE ALREADY", and The Player just dodging it effortlessly for reasons that are entirely beyond its grasp.

And what makes me confident in this reading of the attack as Important is the fact that the Knight will always do this one. You Cannot beat The Roaring Knight without seeing this attack. If you get their HP down early, they skip directly to Rotating Slash 3, then Charge, then Neo Roaring.

Why? It's because this attack is narratively relevant, that's why. I also believe this is why we get the unique flavor text after it uses this attack:

You specifically get this flavor text if Rotating Slash 3 was used in a context that leads directly into the final chargeup phase of the fight.

If Susie is SWOONed, it instead says that "Susie struggled to give some kind of warning", but, how? How does she know? This isn't the turn The Knight has begun charging, this is the moment BEFORE the Knight starts charging. How does she know something is coming?

It's because Susie, too, noticed what I just talked about. The Knight, this entire fight, has been an angel-damned poker face, and has completely ignored any attempts to talk to it, has not said a damn thing, and beyond looking cool and aurafarming, has never once reacted to literally anything the party has done.

Until now. Because after THAT attack, it's displaying One actual emotion: Anger.

And if it wasn't angry before... dear fuck what is it about to do now.

So, she grows pale- She recognizes that Something Big is coming and that we might be cooked.

PART 3: RESULTS

Ultimately, the truth of this battle is that it was only ever destined to go one way. The Knight has fate on its side. It has pure power beyond anything we've seen...

...But we're The Player.

We have the power to be Good at the Video Game.

The Battle is, technically, in theory, winnable. And so, it is.

Through repeated Trial and Error, victory is achievable.

Of course, The Knight does have fate on its side- the prophecy does dictate there are things it must do, and so we are forced to "Lose"... but does it really matter? We won. We didn't win the battle, per se, but we proved that winning the war is possible.

We made The Knight "bleed". We proved, directly, that it is possible to stand up to them, that it is possible to prevail, that their immense strength is ultimately not enough to keep them safe from Skill and we managed to force them to lose a chip of their sword and managed to force them to drop their Shadowcrystal.

In the final game, The Knight's blade is chipped slightly. In early sprites, however, The Knight's blade is completely snapped in half. I think the intended message is clear.

...

Upon victory, Susie realizes, in shock, that we actually did it. Somehow, we won. Somehow, despite this thing being way out of our league, we won. Even Susie is surprised by this. Her immediate reaction to victory is:

Because even she was concerned that we didn't have it. Again, she lacks the context, but is able to understand the significance of what just happened.

Unfortunately for her, she becomes extremely overconfident in this and this is her downfall. After clashing her Axe against the Knight's Sword, the Knight is only barely able to repel her away, chipping its blade in the process.

This makes Susie way too cocky for her own good, and seemingly confirms to her that everything she was saying about The Knight losing and being nothing compared to the power of Friendship or whatever was, just, actually true.

The Knight lost. We actually beat it. It's cooked. Look at it, it's barely even able to maintain its shape. Can you believe we were nervous??? That we were scared??? Look at it, it's over! We literally w-

The Knight uses this overconfidence, this moment of Susie dropping her guard, to pry victory back into its "rightful" hands, followed by using Ralsei's shock over how such a thing was possible against him as well.

All that remains is Kris. The squire, the pawn, the one who listens.

Kris is knighted, but not willingly. The blade is pressed into their shoulder, and they are forced into the floor. Kris is forced to kneel.

The act of being Knighted is supposed to be an honor. You kneel before your lord, and the blade is ceremoniously lowered onto your shoulder as a mark of respect.

This is not that. This is a mockery. A very stark reminder, that, at the end of the day, "You are My soldier."

Kris is not SWOONed, but they are still forced to suffer, being attacked offscreen and forced down to 1HP. It reads to me like a "Know your place".

From here, the story continues as normal. But there is so much more to talk about. There is legitimately so much more to talk about.

Every.

Aspect.

Of this fight.

Is designed to hammer in this one core idea.

That idea of "The Knight is destined to fail because The Player is beyond its comprehension".

PART 4: It's in the Everything

If you go back and SAVE right after defeating Tenna, something very interesting happens.

You are left on this screen, with Tenna right there to the right. Susie literally tells you "Alright, let's go!" and obviously, every player ever is going to move right to continue the story. Because why wouldn't you.

Why... wouldn't you?

Well, if you know what's coming, you know you want to SAVE here, because you don't want to have to re-fight Tenna every time you change your equipment or close out of the game. So, you walk to the left.

It's actually a pretty long walk. You have to walk for several seconds to the left to get to the SAVE point, since it's placed at the very start of the room.

And wouldn't you know it, inexplicably... there is dialog for this.

The dialog for the SAVE Point changes after you beat Tenna.

It emphasizes that Kris' hand lingers in the SAVE Point.

It emphasizes that only Kris can see the SAVE Point- that they can see it, that they are aware of it.

It emphasizes that they are calmed.

...Why? This is, to my knowledge, the first time since Chapter 1 that the game directly acknowledges that Kris can see the SAVE points.

Why is this here?

It's because it ties into the Everything. Kris is, I believe, the only member of the knightspiracy who actually understands the ability to SAVE- if not the only one who actually knows it even exists.

And the fact that we've just done this- that we've just completely ignored the obvious progression to make a detour that makes no sense, to SAVE, proves to Kris something simple.

See, Kris knows that The Roaring Knight is due to arrive any second now.

Kris also knows about the SAVE system.

Kris also understands the clash of powers that is about to take place. And they know that if The Player is not ready to play their part, that if the Player is not going to lock in and use their power to Go Back, there's just no way we win.

Kris, I believe, wants us to win. They want us to beat The Knight. They want out of this. (After all, "Don't forget, you promised..." is not exactly the sort of thing you tell your conspirator if you're 100% confident they'll stay loyal. That's the kind of thing you say to someone you think might choose wrong. )

Something, something, this Seth dialog from 5. (Remember that Aqua is very Kriscore and also Seth is like, somewhat part of the Plan since Kris ropes them into stopping us. So like.)

ANYWAY-

Kris wants us to win. To beat The Knight, to be free of all of the obligations and shackles that bind them.

And they understand that this action- this action of going back and SAVEing- indicates that we, too, are ready for what is to come.

Under this interpretation, Kris dealing more damage when their allies are SWOONed becomes more meaningful to me. It's not just that they're filled with adrenaline and maybe are angry that their friends are hurt. I think that, at least on some level, Kris desperately wants to win, and when the cards are on the table, and the curtain falls, their choice, when they are the last one standing, in the heat of the moment, is to give their all.

What does the Cough mean?

The general interpretation of it seems to be that Kris is basically telling the Knight "bro, it's over, wrap this up NOW." but I don't think that really makes sense. For starters, I feel like the Knight is not able to "instantly win". I don't think the Swoon Cutscene Slash is a universal ability. I hope you can see why from everything I've just went over- the struggle in this fight is Very Real and Very Important. So surely The Knight can't just call it at any time.

So what does the Cough mean?

I think it's truly as simple as: Kris is kind of caught in the lie? Kris knows exactly how the SAVE system works and is keeping this information secret from their allies because it's like, the one trump card they have. But we just used that power to completely humiliate the Knight by not getting hit even once. So it's kind of awkward and I think Kris just here like:

"*cough* Oh wow hahaha damn you didn't like hit us at all huh wow that's uh. that's crazy I have no clue how that happened." ( <- knows EXACTLY how that happened )

And the Knight tilting its head is like.

The Knight staring into the depths of Kris' SOUL trying to figure out if there's something they're not being told because The Knight, too, is realizing that this doesn't make any sense and is maybe some Bullshit.

I don't know about you but that's like infinitely cooler (and also funnier) than the general interpretation of Kris telling the Knight to wrap it up.

...Wow, that's a lot of yapping about like 3 lines of SAVE Point dialog. Surely that's it, right?

NOPE

Have you ever listened to Black Knife?

Okay, that's a dumb question, you almost certainly have.

The player is likely to lose this fight in the first few turns. On your first attempt, you're probably not hearing the song to the end.

Isn't it interesting how the music starts out as super threatening and imposing, but becomes inspired, almost hopeful, dreamlike, near the end?

This power struggle is baked into the music itself. As you get better at the fight, you start to hear more of the music, which means the music starts to get more hopeful. It's like the song itself is going from "You're screwed" to "Wait... is this possible?"

Speaking of that! Isn't it interesting how Gaster shows up here?

Upon attempting The Knight again after failing, Gaster appears to give thoughts.

He basically concludes that our loss is all but guaranteed, and yet we are trying anyways. He offers to allow us another attempt.

And another. And another. At this point, Gaster does not Believe. He is here to ease the transition of trying over and over again, but... even he seems to kind of think this isn't gonna work.

But if you get close...

He begins to believe. He sees the light. He recognizes that it's within reach, and urges us to go just a little bit further.

Again, the game is emphasizing the importance of repeat attempts here- the importance of trying over and over again, slowly improving.

OH YEAH, also, Eram!!! What does Eram talk about?

The burning red flames in Kris' eyes. It feels pretty clear to me that on some level this is about The Player. So also in relation to this fight is another separate fight that really emphasizes the power of the player, and is also one the player is likely to need several attempts for.

Finally, I'd like to talk about the final attack, the fullscreen attack.

It is my opinion that the ability to do these fullscreen attacks is one of the "strange powers" the Shadow Crystals have. You don't need to really buy this but I did another post about that a while ago. Anyway point is if you believe that then I think the reason The Knight's neo attack is so much stronger than Jevil and Spamton's (and can actually kill you) is because The Knight fully understands the mechanics of the battle system and knows that they need to fully commit their turn to using an ITEM. This suggests The Knight has a deeper understanding of the combat mechanics which is important to this tangent but even if you don't buy this specific explanation I think Flowery indicates pretty well that The Knight knows what it's doing and how the battle system works- it can ignore Fake Statistics.

This, to me, is an extremely strange moment in the fight. It seems to me like the implication is that doing the fullscreen (or "Neo", as I call it) attack basically drained the Knight of its energy. This makes sense- Spamton and Jevil use their Neo Attacks near the end of their fight, and The Knight functionally pops it much earlier.

I also don't think it makes sense to say that The Knight didn't anticipate this. I don't think it makes sense to say The Knight somehow didn't know that using its ultimate move would leave it defenseless. I also don't really buy that the Knight was deliberately doing a fakeout to give us false confidence because, as I hope I have made clear throughout this post, I feel everything about this fight is designed to point us in the direction that this is a Real Power Struggle and The Knight severely underestimates us .

So, then, the fact that The Knight chose to do their neo attack like this... Well, They're basically going "Okay, damn, they're somehow still standing? Fuck it, we ball, I'm using my ult. That'll get them."

In essence: "This battle ends now, either I win this turn or you win next turn".

They are aware that technically if we survive this they'll be cooked but. Surely we don't survive this. It's like the ultimate attack, there's no way we survive. The fact, then, that the Knight chooses to do the neo attack anyway, implies that The Knight believes the odds are in its favor- That is, The Knight believes that we will Not survive the neo attack and will die to it. (An assumption that, in my experience, seems more true than not- the Knight's fullscreen attack is pretty dangerous and I've seen many people die to it. I died to it twice...)

This, in my eyes, is The Knight's ultimate blunder, and it's what makes me confident that The Knight does not understand the SAVE System, because this sort of tactical decision makes zero sense if you know the enemy has the SAVE System.

Imagine if Sans, at the very start of Phase 2, decided to throw a Bone of Super Death at you really quickly that oneshot killed you if it hit, but if it missed, he immediately had no energy and instantly fell asleep and so died on the next turn.

Would that make any sense?

No, it wouldn't, because Sans is someone who understands the larger metagame of the battle and knows that his priority should be ensuring the battle goes on for as long as is physically possible. Any sort of gambit of "Either you die Now or I'm cooked" makes zero sense because even if it works once, even twice, the Save-wielder can simply keep trying and if they survive even once, you're basically just handing the win to them.

So the fact that The Knight chooses to make this call- the call to risk everything for the big finish- heavily implies to me, at least, that they truly do not understand their opponent and are treating this like any other fight.

PART 5: CONCLUSIONS

Everything about this fight.

From Susie's Dialog.

To The Rotating Slash Attack.

To The Way The Knight's Damage Reduction Lowers With Time.

To The Music Itself.

To The Gaster Dialog.

To The SAVE Point Dialog Before The Fight.

To The Knight's Ultimate Blunder with the Fullscreen Attack.

To ERAM before it.

To me , at least, it feels like it's all pointing in one direction. It's all part of one single vision, the vision that in spite of everything, The Player has the power to persist and try again, and that The Knight does not understand this and is doomed to fail to it.

It is really fun to me that it's basically an inversion of the big fights in Geno. In UNDERTALE, the player's persistence was a bit of a bad omen- Sans and Undyne are powerless to stop you from destroying their world, it's almost tragic.

But this time, the tables have turned. Because instead of trying to destroy the world, we're trying to save it.

For a change, that DETERMINATION, that DETERMINATION to overcome an impossible opponent... it's being put to good use here.

...

That one attack truly does put it all into perspective for me.

The Knight, lashing out in absolute rage... only for it to completely not work, because the Player has played this before.

This is why The Roaring Knight Fight is, to me, the coolest battle in DELTARUNE.

(And, separately, this interpretation is why I really don't like any interpretation that involves The Knight, like, testing us or something, because I truly do think that everything about this fight is designed to emphasize this power struggle, which kinda means nothing if the Knight is not fully expecting a victory here.)

Those subprime mortgages came with cheap "teaser rates" – the interest rate you paid over the first couple years – but then the interest payments "ballooned" to farcical sums that borrowers had no hope of repaying. Those farcical sums were the risk premium. When financier transmuted these high-risk 30-year mortgages into complex derivatives, they were effectively promising their customers a piece of that risk premium for 28 out of the 30 years that the mortgage ran for.

But it wasn't all financial engineering: subprime mortgage salesmen could also promise customers that they wouldn't lose everything even after a wave of borrower bankruptcies and defaults. That's because mortgages are secured: they are backed by deeds for the homes the borrowers own(ed). If a borrower goes bust, the lender can repossess their house or apartment and sell it to recover the loan amount.

Now, the finance sector did repossess a fuckton of houses after the crash. Foreclosure and eviction became official policy: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Obama that a wave of foreclosures was necessary to "foam the runways" for the banks, so Obama encouraged banks to foreclose on their loans, rather than restructuring them so that Americans could keep their homes:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

But even with these foreclosures, lenders and their customers lost hundreds of billions on the subprime crisis. That's because all that subprime lending pushed the price of houses up and up and up, so when the market collapsed, those mortgages were "underwater" – the money from selling the foreclosed homes didn't cover their outstanding loans.

Collateralization – backing loans with legally binding promises to surrender some asset if you default – is a way to reduce risk, but it can't eliminate it. Assets degrade: houses burn, cars get totaled, jewelry is stolen. Assets also devalue: a loan backed by bitcoin at $111,000 on the eve of Trump's election will be underwater today with bitcoin at $64,000. This devaluation can also occur when your house's value plummets because Elon Musk repeatedly bombs your neighborhood with flaming rocket debris, or when your Tesla's resale value collapses after Musk throws a string of Seig Heils on national television.

The point being that risk mitigation is never risk elimination, but markets have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Partly that's because of risk shifting. A lender who can "securitize" their loans (turn them into bonds and sell them off to investors) can insulate themselves from risk, because the people who buy the bonds are now carrying that risk.

So many of our crises come from the intersection of these two phenomena: the promise of reducing loan risks without losing the risk premium and the fact that risk reduction can fail suddenly (or be revealed as nothing more than risk-shifting). The first phenomenon creates vast credit bubbles, the second one pops them.

This leaves would-be usurers on an endless quest for new ways to lend money at a premium to poor people while reducing their own risk. You don't need technology to do this – all you need is a captive audience of broke people whom other lenders won't touch.

When the US government adopted the racist practice of "redlining" (denying government-backed loans to Black borrowers), they created a market for predatory pseudo-mortgages called "contract buying." Contract buying is like a mortgage, but without the equity: miss a payment and you get evicted, and you aren't entitled to any of the sale price of the house, even if it was 99.99% paid off when you got kicked out.

Lenders can tip the scales in their favor by making up arbitrary junk fees, and a smart lender waits until the house is almost paid off before whacking the borrower with a ton of these fees. The borrower misses a payment, the seller repossesses the house and sells it again:

https://ippsr.msu.edu/public-policy/michigan-wonk-blog/re-emergence-contract-buying-practice-rooted-mid-20th-century

Contract lending never went away. Wherever you find a desperate, disfavored group who are locked out of the credit system, you'll find scumbag contract lenders running this scam. Take long-haul truckers, among the most exploited workforce in America. Long before Uber made worker misclassification (treating an employee as an independent contractor) mainstream, the trucking industry was effectively indenturing truckers, exerting more control over their lives than a boss could ever impose on a waged worker, while disclaiming any employer-related responsibilities. Truckers don't get health insurance or sick leave – and they don't get paid if they have to sit at a port for 20 hours waiting to pick up a load.

But the exploitation of truckers doesn't stop with mere wage theft. Truckers also "contract buy" their trucks. Their bosses issue loans that let drivers buy their trucks on terms that allow the company to repo the truck after a single missed payment. And of course, bosses have total control over truckers' wages, so a canny boss can wait until a truck is nearly paid off and then stop the driver's wages, forcing them to miss a payment and lose their truck, which can be sold on to the next victim:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170616120011/https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/

Subprime auto-loans bring this same profitable arrangement to regular drivers who just need a car to commute, pick up groceries, and shuttle the kids to and from school. A subprime auto-loan often contains the "teaser" and "balloon" rates at the heart of the subprime mortgage bubble: for the first year or two, your car payments are affordable, but then they shoot up to a sum that you can't possibly pay. The lender then repossesses your car, zeroing out your equity, and sells it to another victim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

But the subprime car industry puts a decidedly modern spin on the contract lending scam that has been used to profitably rob so many Black home borrowers and long-haul truckers. Subprime lending's risk-reduction relies on repossession. A subprime car lender doesn't just get rich by charging poor borrowers more money that rich borrowers for shittier, older cars. Subprime car dealers repeatedly "sell" that car to many, many poor people, on conditions that all but guarantee that the borrower will default on their loan and lose their car.

This is where tech comes in. Ubiquitous digital networks and computing make it much easier to repo a car. This started with the humble lo-jack, a simple tracker marketed as a way to locate lost or stolen cars. Subprime auto-lenders were early and aggressive lo-jack adopters, because you can't repo a car if you don't know where it is. Installing a lo-jack is much cheaper than paying repo men to drive around looking for the cars you want to claw back, which means that you can sell cars to people who represent worse credit risks, charging a higher risk premium, and still find the car when those high interest rates force your borrower into default.

The next wave of automotive usury-tech was a kind of systematic exploration of the entire space between a car that is repossessed and a car that isn't. Some subprime cars are fitted with an extra stereo system that can only be controlled by the borrower over a wireless connection. Miss a payment and this secondary stereo turns itself on and starts playing earsplitting threats about what will happen to you if you don't pay up. The only way to turn it off is to make the payment. The next step is remote immobilization: miss too many payments (or violate a lease clause by crossing the county line) and your car just stops working:

https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

But the apex of this usury-tech comes from (where else?) Tesla. Miss a Tesla payment and your car can do way more than just immobilize itself and tell the dealer where to get the car – it also unlock its doors, flash its lights, honk its horn, and back out of its parking space when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

The cheaper the repo, the riskier the loan can be; the riskier the loan, the higher the risk premium. Digital tech makes repo much cheaper, so wherever you find digital tech, you find digital arm-breakers coming up with ways to robo-repo the things you buy.

There's India's subprime phone lenders, who pre-install usury-tech on their phones. This is a tool that spies on the phone's owner, building a dossier of the owner's most frequently used apps. When the owner misses a payment, the phone starts disabling the user's favorite apps, working its way up the list to the most indispensable ones:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

It's the digital version of the mob loan-shark who breaks a finger, then your hand, then your arm. The more graduated the threat matrix is, the more payments you can capture. A borrower with a broken finger can get to a pawn-broker to sell their wedding-ring; a borrower with two broken legs has a much harder time.

Digital arm-breakers aren't an epiphenomenon of digitization alone. Usury tech only works if the device's owner can't disable it. Remember: a computer is flexible. The only computer we know how to make is the "Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine," defined as a device that can compute ever valid program. If your phone is running a program that disables your apps, then you can install another program that disables that program. Same goes for your car's lo-jack; the stereo system emitting ear-splitting complaints about your car note; and the immobilizer hooked up to your ignition.

That's where the law comes in. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to produce a tool that bypasses an "access control." That means that if a computer is designed to block you from modifying it, removing that block is a felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $500k fine. DMCA 1201 doesn't distinguish between modifications undertaken for a lawful purpose (changing your printer so it works with generic ink) and unlawful purpose (breaking the locks on a DVD so you can sell infringing copies). DMCA 1201 criminalizes anything the manufacturer dislikes. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."

DMCA 1201 is the reason you can't neutralize the digital arm-breakers by deleting or blocking the usury-tech in your car, phone or other device:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Here's where it gets interesting. Apologists for DMCA 1201 insist that the law is necessary, because it lets device makers lock malicious parties out of your devices. Apple leads the pack here: they use DMCA 1201 to block independent repair of their devices, insisting that this isn't done to extort high fees from you or to force you to throw away and replace last year's iPhone after you drop it. No, Apple does this to protect you – from unscrupulous repairers who might install malware on your phone:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And Apple says the reason it blocks you from installing apps without using its App Store is to protect you from malicious apps – not to control the app marketplace, where it makes $100b/year on payment processing junk-fees, siphoning off 30% of every dollar you spend in an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

Apple's greatest accomplishment isn't technological, it's psychological. Apple managed to convince millions of people that buying products from a multi-trillion dollar corporation with close ties to both Trump and Xi makes them members of an oppressed religious minority, and those members of the "cult of Mac" tie themselves into knots insisting that Apple would only ever use its powers for good:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

But moral behavior doesn't consist solely of resisting the temptation to do bad things – to be truly moral, you must not put yourself in temptation's path in the first place. Morality isn't the strength to resist the siren's song – it's the humility to recognize your own weakness and tie yourself to the mast:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

By giving itself a veto over its customers' choices, Apple deliberately sailed into siren-infested waters, after first putting a gun on every mantelpiece it could find. Now the company is drowning in sin, while spraying gunfire in every direction.

Today, the company is getting into the leasing business. Having monopolized its markets and eliminated the possibility of growth by making and selling things, the company is becoming a lender. As a lender, Apple wants to maximize the risk premiums it can charge, while minimizing its actual risk. That's why the new version of iOS – the operating system for iPhones and iPads – comes with software that lets lenders brick your device if you miss a payment:

https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-could-restrict-leased-devices-after-missed-payments/

The code steals a trick from India's subprime phone lenders, giving Apple the ability to "restrict apps and services when payments are missed." It hooks into a "Partner Finance Lock," which allows Apple to sell devices to third-party userers who want to get into the subprime game, promising those customers all the imaginative flexibility a digital arm-breaker could dream of.

This was always the trajectory of Apple's decision to sell you a computer that takes orders from its manufacturer, rather than its owner. Apple didn't invent the subprime gadget. It also didn't invent the GUI, the MP3 player or the smartphone. Rather, Apple took those gadgets mainstream – just as it will do with subprime gadgets. Just in time for the affordability crisis, the oil shock, the climate shock, the AI collapse and the tariff shock, the age of the digital arm-breaker has well and truly arrived: