Intermission 10 Page 8
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“Regardless of what any of us wants, though…”
“You know what’ll happen if you just go back to the capital, right?”
“The Guard is after you. They’re after most of us.”
“They’re after me over a misunderstanding!”
“They’d arrest me, yes…”
“But once I explained everything, I’m sure it could all be worked out.”
“I could put in a good word for the rest of you, too!”
“You’re technically breaking the law, but it’s not like you’re hurting anybody.”
“The Emperor is known for His mercy.”
“…IS HE???”
Mac is quite a believer, isn’t he?
I almost expected the last line to be “Have you been paying attention at ALL!?”
Wow, I did not expect his glasses (or goggles? Or are they mining lights?) to be this rose-tinted.
If that’s really what Macadamia thinks (and not just wishful thinking), why on earth is he still here?
He can’t make decisions on his own.
I can’t believe I have to spell this out for you, but I meant why is he still here in character?
Because he can’t make decisious on his own in character. It’s how it is for people like him who live in a totalitarian state and adjust to living in it. They need to have a master to decide for them what’s right and what’s wrong and what they should do.
I really want to disagree on this, but … you’ve made me realize that even the (basic, driven by sheer survival instinct) decision (that most people would have come to on their own, namely) to run away from the guard in the kobold warrens has been made for Macadamia back then.
Thanks, I guess I can see/acknowledge the perspective now, even if I don’t understand it.
And I can say luckily I haven’t been in a comparable situation in all my life, so I have no idea how I would actually react in such a case, but at least I would hope that I’d still make decisions of my own, as I have done all my life.
I am happy to hear it.
There’s the part that everyone was forgetting on the last page: Mac has the Believer trait. He probably genuinely thinks that things would be better in the long run if they went home before committing too many crimes – not just for him, but for all of them.
I like that Ricki (and apparently everyone in the comments section) is so incapable of basic empathy here. She’s never even considered how the people she steals from might live their lives, because she’s worse off and anything she does is justified as long as she doesn’t kill the people she’s ruining. Her existence is a crime and nothing can make that better or worse, so the rules are irrelevant.
She’s approaching a point now where she has something to lose. Belittling someone else’s problems for not being as bad as yours isn’t a great way to make friends.
Um no, it’s not “incapable of basic empathy” when you’re a genocide victim and someone tells you “well actually it’s your own fault, the government only wants you dead because you’re a criminal, and I ignore the fact that the government had been exterminating your people before you were even born”.
You realize that mac might not even be aware of the darker side of the empire? Im not saying im fully agree with top comment, but this one seems a bit extreme as well. Not every character knows what we do.
He claims that he knows how things are, and he’s been living with two participants of the genocides (from both sides) for a long time. Yes, he might be unaware; but he’s in a better position to know it than the majority of population.
It seems unlikely that Ricki was “ruining” anyone, even the fruit stall owner, by stealing food back in the city. That said, she’s certainly in a position to ruin people now, like the caravan merchants. The point she’s approaching, if she isn’t there already, is not so much that she has more to lose as that she can hurt (and help) people in a much more significant way now. So she has to choose how to use that power.
I don’t remember Ricki doing that, although maybe she’s about to – I can’t really read her expression in the last panel of this page.
The most important thing, anyway, is to make sure that Mac doesn’t get the chance to “put in a good word” for us with the Emperor. My hope is that we can persuade him that his plan is hopelessly misguided. But my fear is that we’ll have to use force. Speaking of choosing how to use our power 🙁
Oh wow; I think Mac needs a conversation with Kamui because he was the emperor’s champion and look what happened to him. :< At least we are addressing it now because who knows if mac was going to betray us or not.
Yeah, can’t defend this, this is staggering levels of naivety on Mac’s part – even if he got a relatively peaceful life thanks to his skills, how can he not be aware of any of the issues with his last sentence (e.g. any such “mercy” is likely reserved solely for humans only, and probably only for a select few at most, and that mercy can easily be rescinded as we just learned with Kamau).
Really?
Mac doesn’t know much about Kamau. Mac can probably guess that he’s a former guard, but to the best of my knowledge Ricki is the only one who know he was a Champion, or the events leading to him no longer being a Champion. If anything, the fact that Kamau is such a good guy probably encourages his belief that the Guard is good.
He most likely doesn’t know about Lohk’s tribe. In fact, he probably got the propagandized version Kamau mentioned – that the empire was bringing in Goblins for their own good, so the poor things had a city to live in. He likely knows in abstract that they live in a poor neighborhood, but almost certainly doesn’t know how bad it is or the consequences for trying to leave.
He probably knows the same reputation of Arachnomancers that Kamau mentioned – that they’re a dangerous cult that practices human(oid) sacrifice. I really doubt he knows that they used to be self-sacrificing and changed in response to aggression from the Empire.
He (like most valuable Empire citizens) probably has heard quite a lot of propaganda about how wonderful the Empire is, and how they should all give thanks (and prayers and belief) to the Empire.