#apologies for 700 words of primo analysis. i like him a normal amount. HOPEFULLY. THIS IS COHERENT.

[cyberdragoninfinity]

I totally agree with your points about Primo and bees, because they do make a lot of sense and are more canonically accurate to him (although I personally have to confess i like the idea of him liking bees just because I like bees-)

I think however one point that could argue in favour of him at least having an interest in bees is the fact that he outright describes how bees dance, if I recall correctly. Literally no one just remembers while riding a motorbike in a life or death scenario which formation bees make when dancing, and also there's the fact that he knows bees dance. He's an android from a post apocalyptic world; just why does he knows about bees, specifically bees, of all things? Considering the state of that world, bees shouldn't exist.

Anyway, what's your take on why Primo just happens to know about bees? i mean one possibility is that he deliberately studied things to compare lester to

That's a good question! Definitely worth examining. Primo does indeed bring up this concept of bees dancing in the sub, and though he doesn't describe the specific formation, he does shares the fact about how they do it to indicate to each other where to find things (though irl it's pollen actually, not honey lol)

To me though, I think Primo having this knowledge is less out of a driven interest in bees themselves, and moreso an interest in what the bees represent to him. Primo is... a not a terribly subtle person, and he is Very Vocal about his interest (fixation, almost) in determinism and destiny. Bees are a social animal, just like humans, and to him the bees' dance is all but the beautiful instinct of a small and insignificant creature, an act they perform not out of free will but out of inevitability--just like the inevitability he believes befalls humanity in their eternal Synchro-driven self destruction.

imo with him knowing this bit of Bee Knowledge, he doesn't actually care about the bee part--he cares about the dancing. I really like his Duel Links taunt that ties into this, actually, I think it's a great little flicker of insight on this topic.

god LOOK at that fucked up toothy grin!!!! what you lookin crazy for!!!! he says it in such a gnarly mean snarly way too. And it's clear here he is Not talking about the "bees dancing to show each other where to find food" tidbit he shares in show, he could not care LESS about that part right now; he's comparing his opponent's implied struggling to the predetermined helpless act of an amusing little insect. Because that's the part he's most interested in. There's no way you can win this, destiny's already determined that. All you can do is repeat your own mistakes, Do the same dance over and over.

So why's he got this bee knowledge in the first place? Personally, I think it's probably something he's tripped over in his own pursuits of examining humanity's inevitabilities (and trying to figure out how to circumvent them and save the world) He's an android, it's not super farfetched to think that he could have just downloaded a swatch of topics related to potentially predetermined instincts of social animals into his synthetic brain, and then later gave pause to bees in particular while mid-working on the Diablo and having a Commanded By External Forces "swarm" of his own. Or, considering that. ah. well. Z-one is quick to compare those he deems insignificant to insects ( 8,) ), Primo might have picked that up as learned behavior and was already inclined to pick bees as his preferred metaphor for unimportant cogs in the destiny's great machine.

Hell, maybe even Z-one himself is the one who preprogrammed the knowledge of creatures great and small into Primo's robo-brain. 5D's is very nebulous about just how long the Emperors have been around, but I'm very firmly in the camp of "a long fucking time, and they have probably been through several time loops and alternate timelines and rebuildings," so i think there's been ample opportunity for Primo to make contact with that knowledge one way or another, not necessarily because he actively sought it out. The post apocalypse Iliaster crawled out of may have been devoid of much life at all, let alone bees, but these guys very literally have all the time in the world to become acquainted with past ecology. (also Z-one is a NERD!!!! i KNOW he would have been preserving knowledge of things like animals. something something the repressed unspoken hope that things will get better, etc. etc.)

anyway, tl;dr I think Primo's more interested in what bees and their little dance symbolize in the grand scheme of what Iliaster is working towards than in the bugaboos themselves, and I think a combination of his active efforts building a particularly bee swarm-like robot army, his own personal belief system, and also the fact he's an android himself (with no doubt an inclination towards gathering data relevant to his God's command) just made him more inclined to pick up some Fun Bee Trivia and keep it fresh in his mind. 🐝