#bonesaw

Here's a man who has been abandoned by the Viltrum empire and has abandoned it in turn, but he is still a Viltrumite. They are currently trying to kill him and so he will defend himself, but these are still his people. He's willing to help the Coalition gather assets for their war against Viltrum, because he recognises the necessity, but he isn't going to be joining it himself, because that culture is still very much a part of him.

And then this season keeps asking him what that means. What does it mean to be culturally a Viltrumite when you're no longer aligned with the empire politically? Nolan has, in some sense, redeemed himself, understood that dominating and exterminating and subjugating entire peoples is abhorrent, but he spent centuries being a Viltrumite, and that has to mean something. It's a core part of who he is!

And yet, throughout these episodes, every time he tries to grasp for a positive aspect of the culture of violent maniacs he belonged to, he has to face the fact that they are, in fact, a culture of violent maniacs who have ravaged the galaxy and been responsible for unimaginable death and suffering. He keeps trying to find meaning in who he used to be and he keeps getting that door slammed in his face.

And this reminded me of a post that's been going around about another character whose life, upon 'redemption', didn't actually get any easier, which is to say, Bonesaw. Bonesaw, too, is now on the side of the good guys, but she is mistrusted at best and hated at worst, has abandoned everything she ever cared about and gotten no friends in return for it, and the only reason she keeps going with it is because there is one revelation, one realisation she's had that she can no longer put back in the box:

People are people. They are individuals whose existence matters, and snuffing them out has an incredible amount of moral weight.

Bonesaw finds some recourse in play-acting with Valkyrie and Nilbog, pretending for a few moments that she can put that thought back in the box so she can take a break from the exhausting reality she now finds herself in.

And Nolan, for all that the idea is out of the box, has not yet realised just how all-encompassing that box was, how it has infected everything his people have ever done.

Similarly, him having changed doesn't magically fix all the damage he's done. Debbie sure as fuck doesn't 'forgive' him now that he's 'good' (although she clearly recognises that he has changed, given that she is willing to tell him all of this to his face, what a woman), and Art barely manages to make it through a conversation with him pretending things are like they used to be without having a heart attack from the stress.

And everything he does to try to fix this, like trying to explain to Debbie why he had a child with another woman just ends up hurting his relationship with that child, and even him trying to hold onto his cultural customs where they do seem innocuous, like burying Conquest the Viltrumite way (because Conquest is a man he spent a lot of his life admiring in some sense), that ends up offending the kids that man was just trying to murder.

His redemption really is just him continuing to step on rakes because he's been a jackass for so much of his life he doesn't know how to be decent.

For both him and Bonesaw, their redemption is very context-dependent, with a lot of stuff having to line up right for people to not just try to kill them the next time they show up, and the potential for redemption to even be considered, which is part of why these series are considered to be more grounded.

The main difference between him and Bonesaw, though, is that Nolan had an ally in Allen with him, and he does get to form meaningful relationships with his kids eventually.

They have lose so much but they aleast got one of another

Bearclaw design by @ameliadallon

Weirdly the Slaughterhouse Nine is what I would expect if Joker and the rest of the rogues gallery can work together...see usually that never happens thanks to Joker being pretty unlikable here they're decently able to tolerate each other in the Nine compared to say Joker himself...