#jindosh renaissance starts with angry posts in his tag

[grandinventor]

Honestly the hypocrisy regarding Sokolov and Jindosh has always made me go ???? Because “Jindosh assisted the coup, he’s made terrible inventions.” K…what exactly did Sokolov do that was so different?? He EXPERIMENTED on people.

Right! Like yes, Jindosh is bad and Sokolov is old enough to start having regrets and trying to correct himself (but he is ~20 years older than Jindosh) but he was also...bad. (I have to put it under the cut it got Long)

For the record Sokolov: - experimented on people (for the Plague sure, but that's what we know of and he wasn't exactly nice about it, he had them locked behind a wall of light) - did some kind of vague disgusting rituals to summon the Outsider - Delilah did not like the implied sexual relationship she had with him when she was 20 or so years younger and had no way to climb from her bad life but being his "apprentice". - drove Roseburrow to suicide after he turned his benign inventions that brought prosperity to the Empire into military grade weapons that were used to oppress the people. - those include the guns and weapons, walls of light, arc pylons, arc mines and tallboys. - invented an electric chair used to torture the workers at Rothwild Slaughterhouse so they won't form a union (and said electric chair is lethal too). - invented a machine to electrify the whales and keep them alive for long so their whale oil can be harvested (this whole whale thing is very much implied to be Bad for the overall world state in the first game). - is a master at whale vivisection, you know cutting them open alive. - did assist Hiram and sided with him until we literally had to threaten and bribe him to help us did everyone forget this? - did invent a lot of the useful whale oil systems that did help the Isles go into the new era of technology but the majority of those can be attributed to Roseburrow himself. - found the cure for the Plague with Piero.

And speaking of Natural Philosophers, there is also Piero who has a far smaller list of shit but he: - was generally a creep and was creeping and peeping on Callista who is like 20 years younger than him (not that her being older would make it better). - has this very interesting and not at all concerning and fucked up audiograph:

- found the cure for the Plague with Sokolov - made Corvo's mask and the Heart for what's worth.

On the other hand Jindosh has a very similar list because he:

- tried to do or did some experiment on his peers that almost landed him in jail. - uses prisoners the Duke gives him to test his Clockwork Soldiers. - has used his electroshock machine on some baker (can't defend you here king). - has let people die in his house, by his house but in his defense he does tell you at the door that you shouldn't go in or you will die, which goes for most houses of nobles and important people anyway. - has dissected those that have died or were nearly dead in his house. - killed a cat when he was a kid so he can dissect it (people are so touchy on this one, all Natural Philosophers dissect animals, it's not the serial killer material y'all thought it is but you tried). - did not invent any weapons but the Clockwork Soldiers, however improved Sokolov's military designs to give Karnaca and Serkonos their own walls of light, arc pylons, audiographs and other devices so they won't have to import from Gristol. - invented a lot of harmless and GOOD stuff like the silvergraph (he was gonna make movies! and just having photography available to everyone is such an improvement to society), the carriage system in Karnaca and also he uses hydraulic systems as in hydropower to power his house instead of whale oil which is pretty nice given the shortage and the cruel methods of producing it. Also I think his company makes a lot of heating/cooling and ventilation systems too. - has made a replica of the Heart at the Academy. - made a machine that drank sea water and made sounds that drove people to tears (in high chaos it's a toy made of cat bones that worked on whale oil but it drove a girl to madness). - was expelled from the Academy for undisclosed reasons that are described as "a little accident" in "The Return of Daud."

And also to add, dissection is like a perfectly normal thing at the Academy, at least in the first game. I don't know why dissection and animal dissection was made such a big deal in the world of Dishonored, like yeah its morbid for us, but we don't operate on the same in-world morality.

So like in conclusion from all I listed, Jindosh was just as bad as Sokolov, or rather Sokolov was just as bad as Jindosh. Piero is also a shithead but he decided to die so he isn't my problem now, but both are just...bad scientist men trope. They both suck. The only difference is that Dishonored 2 decided to go with the spin that old Sokolov realized he was bad and tried to run away from it and make up for his sins while Jindosh is the dangerous, mentally ill coded """psychopath""" who loves killing and will never change or become good just so Sokolov can get the moral high ground. And after making sure they drive the point home that Jindosh is mentally ill crazy and mad inventor with no empathy who will kill for fun, they then had us lobotomize him. And then despite the people working on his level asking for a 3rd option where we don't harm him, creative direction said no and they realized his non-lethal was just a bunch of shock value crap, so they made his "canonical" fate to die. And like...all of this could be avoided if they didn't use Jindosh as a leverage to try and retcon or sugarcoat Sokolov's crimes and acknowledged both suck but they are fun characters.

I am sorry this got long, I am very passionate on the subject because Jindosh's non-lethal is one of the few things in fiction that upset me and this is coming from someone who love Jindosh AND also likes Sokolov a lot as a character despite all of his flaws. So it's not just me hating on Sokolov, I wish this arc was written better between them because the potential was there. Jindosh had so much potential as a character and they just threw all that good voice acting and amazing level design for nothing.