#also also I need to go and read your Elsie vs Vex vs Evil essay!

[cassiefisherdrake]

OH YEAH, you’re totally correct, I should have been more specific when I said “hunt the light.” I was using ‘hunt’ more as a flavour word, but the flavour wasn’t quite right. It’s less “seek and destroy” as ‘hunt’ and more “destroy when seen.” The Vex are ‘happy’ to do their own thing until a Light (or Dark!)- aligned entity (or, really, any non-Vex entity) interferes and then their Fuck You mode activates.

And yes, junction rather than deletion is absolutely part of “erasure through assimilation!” The Vex don’t really care what you do once you’re Vex - or, at least, we don’t see fighting between Vex collectives with very different goals from the rest of the Vex such as the Sol Divisive - so long as you’re still part of the destination: being Vex. It doesn’t matter to the Vex that Asher and Kabr are still doing the stuff they did when they were non-Vex, just that they’re Vex now and therefore furthering their goals.

(Now if Asher and/or Kabr work more and more with the Light… that may change. Unless maybe there’s an internal part of the Vex that resists Vex vs. Vex in-fighting, which could lend to reason why the rest of the Vex aren’t fighting the Sol Divisive for worshipping the Darkness despite the others being unable to stand the Darkness?! Options, options!)

All of this is ALSO why I think the Vex will be a huge part of the Final Shape!!! Great minds think alike ~

I just love the Vex and the exos and all of their associated lore ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@svedupelle making a post as a reply because the quote is long, but oh! The lore is Collective Obligation (ty for prompting me to finally read it, by the way), and the last two paragraphs go like this:

"You see, total eradication may be efficient, but the goal is not to be the last one standing. Rather, it is to remove the obstacles that encumber you and those who remain from reaching your destination.

"Annihilation of your kind was never the goal. But filling you with the right kind of ideological purpose, the kind that serves the finality of shape—well, that's the point of corrupting a beating heart, is it not?"

And I am Thonking.

Does “removing the obstacles that encumber you and those who remain from reaching your destination” is some twisted way of ‘it’s about the journey, not the destination’?? Or is it more convoluted—“those who remain” being Disciples, the Witness’ in crowd, the only ones deserving to see finality? Possibly the final shapes of their respective races/kinds? What IS the destination, then, if not “to be the last one standing”?

I love how he alludes to having corrupted the Hive with sword logic, and even *more* I love the choice of waging a proxy war instead of an actual one w/ the Gardener—let’s corrupt her creation from the inside so that it turns on her on its own!

I guess the question is—as always—whether the Witness is the Winnower / their physical emanation, or is it itself a player in the game and has its own goals, the Disciples being yet one more level of a pyramid scheme to get the Witness to be on top. I am not sure about this, though.

Also “death OR finality” is something I need to crack but haven’t just yet, especially wrt the Hive and how they, in turn, see death.