Seth Nightlord: a study in rejections
Sep. 29th, 2008 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcassePicking up from comments here it struck me that Seth’s dull gaze as she comments she’s hated again in Act 33 really is only the latest in a long series of rejections that she’s been subjected to.
To begin with, the scene in Act 33 occurs after she’s defeated Dietrich who was engaging in a little software piracy using his Radu-Autojäger. To accomplish this Seth utilised her Crusnik abilities which caused a visible change, insta-violence and a lot of loud noise thus understandably her pet squirrel wasn’t too pleased about that. And it can be argued that Seth overreacts to squirrel-Abel’s reaction since said squirrel might easily have willingly come back to her with some careful coaxing and reassurance that sudden violence and noise wasn’t likely to erupt again but nevertheless she takes it to be outright and eternal rejection on the squirrel’s part. Which poses the question of why should the rejection of a squirrel effect an individual who styles herself a goddess so much? The answer most likely lies in what Seth takes that rejection to signify.
As Empress, Seth clothes herself in green and takes that colour to be hers and hers alone. She even goes so far as to decorate her throne room with images of Canadian forests. Thus she more or less attempts to style herself an eternal goddess mother earth figure. Nature then is the one thing that won’t ever reject her and of which she makes herself a part. The squirrel companion on her shoulder as she masquerades as a simple tea seller is just an extension of that and perhaps she even feels that having such a companion is her secret sign to common mortals that their eternal nature goddess walks among them. Unfortunately if she takes the squirrel to signify her link with nature then that fear and with it rejection displayed by the squirrel once she’s shown her Crusnik form becomes not just the rejection of one scared animal but rather the rejection of nature itself. She’s passed as a natural part of the cycle of things for quite some time but now that her inhuman form is revealed even nature itself calls her abomination and recoils in disgust, or so it seems to her.
The rejection of nature is only a step away from any number of typical traits displayed by ‘unnatural’ things, though the Promethean: the Created game system probably phrases it best as the disquiet caused by the presence of something that simply should not exist. Disquiet beginning in small ways such as slight reactions by nature that might not be entirely noticeable right up to plants withering and the area being occupied by the promethean turning into a wasteland. Seth may be a far cry from crops withering beneath her feet and wildlife fleeing in literal terms but figuratively she probably feels that she’s not far off. Because being rejected by nature in the form of her squirrel companion only compounds earlier rejections she’s suffered.
From her statement that she’s hated again it can be surmised that Seth’s been hated before and in fact she seems to build her entire society on the idea of her rejection by everything else. As the Empress she doesn’t engage with her people, she directs and orders them about but she is a separate entity, going so far as to hide her face and only make the rarest of public appearances and even then mostly via screens. Whether she’s been outright rejected by Methuselah could be debatable if not for the fact that other Methuselah exist and not just the ones who sided with Lilith. So there were other colonists who were injected with bacillus who didn’t accept Seth as their leader. Some did choose to follow a Crusnik but with Methuselah existing in places like Amsterdam it might easily be supposed that there were others who simply rejected Seth’s leadership outright before they even began to consider other factors. Seth’s Methuselah ‘children’ then are apt to reject her so she chooses not to run the risk of that again by deliberately separating herself from them and setting up a state system that doesn’t require their acceptance to function.
But so far that’s only two outright rejections and having one prior probably isn’t entirely enough to lead her to jump to those conclusions about a squirrel. The rejection preceding that then must have been rejection by terran. Having come as their saviour Seth was still rejected by the terran that she supposed she was aiding. Though this is a case where they most likely would have accepted help just as Lilith extended her aid to the Vatican but they chose to reject Seth’s aid which would have led to domination, quite understandably. This then ties in with a fourth rejection which may well have caused the fissure in her entire sense of self to start with.
As one of the genetically engineered leaders of the Mars project Seth at least should have found acceptance amongst her siblings and she may have done to a moderate degree on Mars but once they returned to Earth matters changed considerably. Lilith rejected not just Seth but the rest of the Contra Mundi triumvirate. Seth might have tolerated Lilith’s rejection because she was part of that triumvirate but Cain’s rejection was of everything and with Lilith’s death Abel proved that he too in his own way rejected everything that wasn’t Lilith herself. All of which left Seth exposed to the rejection of a family that didn’t value her as much as they valued something else.
Overall then, Seth has been rejected by the terran who she thought she’d save, her family who she believed she would find similarity with, her Methuselah ‘children’ who perhaps she feels ought to ‘owe’ her acceptance and at last by nature itself. Each rejection building on the message that she herself does not belong, not to family nor humanity nor to enhanced humanity and finally not to the natural order of things at all. And at last to all eyes she becomes an abomination, yet she is an abomination that attempts and fails to save everyone. Because despite her rejection she does in her own flawed fashion believe that she can achieve some good. Unfortunately for her because she is seen as an abomination and has internalised that she becomes a perfect example of the ends not justifying the means since whatever she may achieve is undercut by her nature as an outcast. And in her state of disconnection it’s pretty easy to see why all her good intentions flounder and how with each step she sees as progress she only builds a stronger argument on which is founded the means for her rejection time and time again.
Disclaimer: Of course I am slinging around the term ‘abomination’ here because Seth probably works quite well as a parallel of Alia in plenty of ways. Yes, it does always come back to Dune in the end.
To begin with, the scene in Act 33 occurs after she’s defeated Dietrich who was engaging in a little software piracy using his Radu-Autojäger. To accomplish this Seth utilised her Crusnik abilities which caused a visible change, insta-violence and a lot of loud noise thus understandably her pet squirrel wasn’t too pleased about that. And it can be argued that Seth overreacts to squirrel-Abel’s reaction since said squirrel might easily have willingly come back to her with some careful coaxing and reassurance that sudden violence and noise wasn’t likely to erupt again but nevertheless she takes it to be outright and eternal rejection on the squirrel’s part. Which poses the question of why should the rejection of a squirrel effect an individual who styles herself a goddess so much? The answer most likely lies in what Seth takes that rejection to signify.
As Empress, Seth clothes herself in green and takes that colour to be hers and hers alone. She even goes so far as to decorate her throne room with images of Canadian forests. Thus she more or less attempts to style herself an eternal goddess mother earth figure. Nature then is the one thing that won’t ever reject her and of which she makes herself a part. The squirrel companion on her shoulder as she masquerades as a simple tea seller is just an extension of that and perhaps she even feels that having such a companion is her secret sign to common mortals that their eternal nature goddess walks among them. Unfortunately if she takes the squirrel to signify her link with nature then that fear and with it rejection displayed by the squirrel once she’s shown her Crusnik form becomes not just the rejection of one scared animal but rather the rejection of nature itself. She’s passed as a natural part of the cycle of things for quite some time but now that her inhuman form is revealed even nature itself calls her abomination and recoils in disgust, or so it seems to her.
The rejection of nature is only a step away from any number of typical traits displayed by ‘unnatural’ things, though the Promethean: the Created game system probably phrases it best as the disquiet caused by the presence of something that simply should not exist. Disquiet beginning in small ways such as slight reactions by nature that might not be entirely noticeable right up to plants withering and the area being occupied by the promethean turning into a wasteland. Seth may be a far cry from crops withering beneath her feet and wildlife fleeing in literal terms but figuratively she probably feels that she’s not far off. Because being rejected by nature in the form of her squirrel companion only compounds earlier rejections she’s suffered.
From her statement that she’s hated again it can be surmised that Seth’s been hated before and in fact she seems to build her entire society on the idea of her rejection by everything else. As the Empress she doesn’t engage with her people, she directs and orders them about but she is a separate entity, going so far as to hide her face and only make the rarest of public appearances and even then mostly via screens. Whether she’s been outright rejected by Methuselah could be debatable if not for the fact that other Methuselah exist and not just the ones who sided with Lilith. So there were other colonists who were injected with bacillus who didn’t accept Seth as their leader. Some did choose to follow a Crusnik but with Methuselah existing in places like Amsterdam it might easily be supposed that there were others who simply rejected Seth’s leadership outright before they even began to consider other factors. Seth’s Methuselah ‘children’ then are apt to reject her so she chooses not to run the risk of that again by deliberately separating herself from them and setting up a state system that doesn’t require their acceptance to function.
But so far that’s only two outright rejections and having one prior probably isn’t entirely enough to lead her to jump to those conclusions about a squirrel. The rejection preceding that then must have been rejection by terran. Having come as their saviour Seth was still rejected by the terran that she supposed she was aiding. Though this is a case where they most likely would have accepted help just as Lilith extended her aid to the Vatican but they chose to reject Seth’s aid which would have led to domination, quite understandably. This then ties in with a fourth rejection which may well have caused the fissure in her entire sense of self to start with.
As one of the genetically engineered leaders of the Mars project Seth at least should have found acceptance amongst her siblings and she may have done to a moderate degree on Mars but once they returned to Earth matters changed considerably. Lilith rejected not just Seth but the rest of the Contra Mundi triumvirate. Seth might have tolerated Lilith’s rejection because she was part of that triumvirate but Cain’s rejection was of everything and with Lilith’s death Abel proved that he too in his own way rejected everything that wasn’t Lilith herself. All of which left Seth exposed to the rejection of a family that didn’t value her as much as they valued something else.
Overall then, Seth has been rejected by the terran who she thought she’d save, her family who she believed she would find similarity with, her Methuselah ‘children’ who perhaps she feels ought to ‘owe’ her acceptance and at last by nature itself. Each rejection building on the message that she herself does not belong, not to family nor humanity nor to enhanced humanity and finally not to the natural order of things at all. And at last to all eyes she becomes an abomination, yet she is an abomination that attempts and fails to save everyone. Because despite her rejection she does in her own flawed fashion believe that she can achieve some good. Unfortunately for her because she is seen as an abomination and has internalised that she becomes a perfect example of the ends not justifying the means since whatever she may achieve is undercut by her nature as an outcast. And in her state of disconnection it’s pretty easy to see why all her good intentions flounder and how with each step she sees as progress she only builds a stronger argument on which is founded the means for her rejection time and time again.
Disclaimer: Of course I am slinging around the term ‘abomination’ here because Seth probably works quite well as a parallel of Alia in plenty of ways. Yes, it does always come back to Dune in the end.
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Date: 2008-12-02 08:38 pm (UTC)It also says Lilith knew she was going to die and purposefully gave Abel a message of hope and love about thee world before reuniting with Cain (I wonder if she didn't plan it: her death cause the end of the period of wars that had began for decades in Earth AND Mars plus changed Abel's ways as she wanted to. Didn't last forever, but that was exactly what the world needed to rise from the ashes).
This is true. Seth isn't charismatic like Lilith or Cain are, neither is Abel. They are well-liked but certainly not "leader" material. Seth keeps herself veiled because mystery helps her to keep her goddess status.