#also when you tell gov!Marz about th3 Overseer's offer and shes like 'yeah we know about the aliens' umm?

[cannot-kill-the-sun]

Hello yes i also have a lot of thoughts about this and the very not cold war Dys is living in

Regardless of how early Sol meets Sym, including "no just take me to your leader" past life jumps, Dys knows about the Gardeners before Sol tells him about Sym. Theres also the fact that the colony is busy enough they don't noice Sol and Dys camping out at age <13 when they've snuck out, weren't planning on staying overnight, and at the very least Sol has parents that are physically present/alive (while busy trying to get food set up... but also like... your child???). Things slip through the cracks and its very clear that Dys in particular slips through the cracks even before landing on the planet.

Its also very easy as a player to want to side with the Gardeners? Because the player knows the real world history of colonisation and is likely going to think "yeah the sentient sapient indigenous life should get priority/preference over the humans that Just Showed Up". Because of that, and how the game introduces Sym, its easy to miss that Lum was factually correct. The planet is actively at war with humanity. Gloom and the Shimmer and the destruction of specific buildings (geoponics, engineering, command) are not a series of accidents but the planned calculated destruction of the most important buildings.

And Dys likes exporing. Has no fear and will happily go into forbidden areas with Sol if Sol is brave enough. Dys could very well be feeding that information to the Gardeners because he's an incredibly isolated teenager - he doesn't have anyone else to talk to but here are real aliens who really care what he thinks and believe he's good for something, he's useful. We know Dys has a hobby of snagged broken tech and trying to fix it (the radio jumps to mind) so intentionally getting data drives isn't a big leap. Also from the radio scene its very clear that Dys wants to believe in something, is trying to find a place and a purpose in a colony that doesn't seem to know what to do with him. That is the psychological jackpot for following a dangerous rabbit hole that says "yes you get to have secret knowledge (aliens are real) if you just help us do..."

But being useful means keeping more secrets and being more isolated, and the Gardeners being the people he trusts first. See also how anti-telling Utopia/adults about the Gardeners spy/observation capabilities Dys is.

And thats also why Dys becoming a Gardener pre-Y10 doesn't affect the survival of the colony they way Dys+Sol being Gardener does. As an isolated teenager Dys was able to provide information on structures the make up of the colony but is missing the social/political details that Sol gets just because Sol isn't isolated. I also think its really telling that Gardener!Dys doesn't visit the colony in any epilogue unless he also became a Gardener in the epilogue? Sol is the one to check in on the colony if they both become Gardeners.

I also have thoughts about how setting Noctilucent up as the extremest-anti-human and Sym as the moderate-pro-human means that there is more opportunity to push Dys and Sol into doing things. Its very striking to me that Noctilucent is the one who tells Dys to set the bomb is he wants to be a Gardener, but its Sym that comforts Dys in the aftermath and is the one who actually makes Dys(/and Sol) a Gardener.

can it be said how much i love the implications made if sol fails any of the glow 19 negotiations for peace? because i love this exchange.

a couple things:

- noctilucent LIKES a human?? and admits to it even if dys doesn't become a gardener??? ig all it takes is knowing a shit ton about vertumna and also having immovable beliefs that subscribe neatly with noctilucent's in almost every way. interesting that noctilucent characterizes dys as sad- do they like that about dys too, or was it just what stuck out to them most?

- this confirms rhett's accusations; sym and noctilucent were going after children, they were using them to infiltrate humanity, and they were trying to "turn" them

- i say this also adds credence to any theory about dys giving noctilucent data drives too (how did they learn esperanto so fast?)

- the "little spy" thing is probably referring to the data drives sol gave sym. let's give sym the benefit of the doubt and say the request was innocent. maybe sym was just trying to "turn" sol into a peacemaker, buuut.. it does make sym's offer to become a gardener more sinister. because when you really think about it

- one of the only ways the colony is defeated after arriving on vertumna (barring 'colony destroyed' & maybe if the ships arrive) is if sol joins the gardeners. dys joining the gardeners bears no relevance to if the colony is destroyed, but with sol's combined intel "any plans [the colonists] had for combating the Gardeners were quickly stomped out". it's hard to believe sym didn't know this would happen—what else is going to happen if the only human the gardeners ever communicated with about peace joins their side? surely not peace

- ik this sounds very critical of sym and while i do think hes less wholesome than he wants to be, there is a certain innocence in that he can only act in service to what he was made for. but the parts of sym that are for himself, he uses to love humanity and vertumna, sol and dys

then there's the whole sym-getting-permanently-reassimilated-into-the-gardeners-consciousness thing. i can't even begin to unpack that