“I wonder.  Rape culture is a funny thing.  People gloss over some pretty shitty, creepy, wrong behavior, little brother, when they know the person in question.

Ooh boy, here we go.

So she’s going for the body control sexytimes. I suppose it’s not a coincidence that Alec brought up his experiences with sharing his bed earlier.

But you raise the reality of what they’re doing, and it’s a whole lot harder to shrug it off.”

I guess she’s about to describe in detail the process his victims underwent, from their perspective?

Though she doesn’t have that much time if she intended to go on to the others.

Rape.  It was a loaded word, but Cherish was right.  She was a horrible person, to be sure, but she was right.  Did I really want to face what Regent had done, before we knew him?

Not really, and he himself acts like it’s no big deal, which spreads.

Ooh, I wonder if Cherish is going to bring up what he did to Sophia.

Rape.  Murder.  He’d said, this very morning, that he’d done what he did because he’d been young, but that was just an excuse.  The deeds were still done, the consequences very real.

The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final.

“So there’s no right or wrong?  People and animals should do whatever?”

That’s an easy conclusion to come to based on what Taylor just said, but I think you’re thinking on the wrong axis of the D&D alignment chart. No rules doesn’t necessarily mean no accounting for good vs evil, altruism vs malice.

“No, there’s always going to be consequences.  Believe me when I say I know about that.  But I do think there’s always going to be extenuating circumstances, where a lot of things we normally assume are wrong become excusable.”

I see.

This is really helping to sell Taylor’s descent into villainy. And the idea that the things are not so much “not wrong” as “can be excusable” ties in perfectly with an aspect of Taylor’s personality I’ve been pointing out ever since Agitation: She’s always had a penchant for rationalizing her actions and treating them as fine as long as she has something she can claim as a “good reason”.

“Like rape?  Are you going to tell me there’s a situation where rape is okay?”  Charlotte asked.  I would have thought I’d touched on a hot subject if her voice wasn’t so level.

Charlotte bringing out the big guns. But yeah, it’s a good question.

Be careful when you talk in absolutes like “always”, Taylor.

I shook my head.  “No.  I know some things are never excusable.”

Good 🙂

Or, worse, I could imagine that some were moving in and keeping the residents around for their own amusement.  It was not a pleasant thought.  The kind of people who had gravitated towards the Merchants tended to have a lot of resentment.  

Oh boy.

Specifically, they had resentment towards people who had what they didn’t.  If they happened upon a family with Kate the soccer mom, Tommy, the kid with more video games than teeth, and Joe the blue-collar worker with a steady job?  If they weren’t letting them go?  I was guessing that hypothetical family would be in for a hell of a rough time.

Yeeeeah that doesn’t sound pleasant.

It might have sounded silly, that line of speculation, but I’d spent time in the shelters.  I’d heard about how vicious and depraved the Merchants were getting.

They were depraved to begin with, too. There is nothing good about this.

It fit their modus operandi.  They had been bums, drunks and addicts, looked down on others, before Leviathan came.  In the wake of what Leviathan had done to the city, leaving everything in shambles, with social services gone or in chaos and even basic utilities in short supply, everyone else had been brought down to their level.

…which would be why they had a membership boost. I see.

The Merchants were even, I suspected, thriving.

Yeah, judging by what Piggot told us, that would be accurate.

With strength in numbers and virtually nothing holding them back, they had become like pack animals.  They roamed the city in bands of three to twenty, robbing, raping, pillaging and stealing.

Eesh.

They were settling in some of the better areas, the neighborhoods that still had power or water, and forcing the existing residents out.

I mean I get that many of them got the short straw, but that doesn’t justify stealing the long straws.