#essek was a selfish bastard the point is m9 was also a bunch of selfish bastards

[edelgarfield]

there's a weird case of like. plot armor + narrative bias that I think most people don't realize when it comes to the way people talk about Essek vs. M9

the cast & fandom throw around the phrase "war criminal," which he IS, but not for the reasons they call him out for. Like it's the state-sponsored torture dungeon that makes him a war criminal, not the treason.

Essek is held responsible for the war for giving away the beacons, but M9 *also* stole a beacon and ran away with it for no real reason. Obviously, Essek understood the ramifications better than M9, but M9 knew this was an important item to the group of people that attacked Zadash, and they knew the Empire intended to keep it.

Sure, the drow soldier asked them to take it, but IMO, that's ultimately not why they did, and they never had any intention of returning it to the Dynasty. They took it because it looked cool and they wanted it, without considering the ramifications of an important item going missing after an attack like that. I don't think it would've ultimately stopped the war if they hadn't taken the beacon, but I'm fairly certain there were unnecessary skirmishes & loss of life as a result of the fact that it went missing. M9 is smart enough to understand that even if they don't fully see the big picture.

Essek gets a lot of criticism for having selfish motivations, but M9’s motivations were also primarily selfish. They never intended to give the beacon back, they only ended up doing it to save their own skin.

Obviously, their positions are different & there's a difference between the power both parties held & their understanding of the situation. To some extent, I think it's a bit of D&D plot armor; D&D parties often get a ton of leeway for doing ridiculous, nonsensical stuff simply because everyone understands the lack of IRL consequences is part of the appeal, and you never want to punish your players for interacting with the plot you placed in front of them. But at the same time, I do think there's a bit of narrative bias, because from the perspective of M9 we can handwave their actions with the beacon as "their intentions were neutral/good, they were in over their heads, they didn't understand what was going on" which all have a grain of truth.

I feel like M9 often gets a pass because they're seen as goofy, lovable, bumbling weirdos who stumbled into the middle of a political conflict. But they didn't stumble into the middle of the conflict, they put themselves in the middle of it by stealing the beacon, then actively chose to ignore any consequences of that decision. Like they could have put effort into understanding the political ramifications of what they'd done and then decided where to go from there, but instead just ignored it because that was easier/they didn't care about the larger political conflict. And as much as I love M9, imo, apathy isn't any more of an excuse for them than it is for Essek. Like M9 actively avoided the war & really didn't seem to care about it all that much until Matt literally forced them to care about it by attacking Veth's hometown.

like i said I don't think it's exactly equivalent or that Essek & M9 were in the same position. I think it's just interesting how M9's selfishness & unsavory actions get implicitly justified or ignored by the narrative/fandom, but other characters aren't given the same leeway.