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flaetsbnort · 2 years ago

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It's past midnight of the Monday of the Carnaval holiday that lasts until Wednesday morning (I'll be on vacation by then) and I haven't been able to do much useful the last few days because of shoulder pains. So I'm not going to post a long analysis of the themes of a free story posted on the SCP Foundation site. Such is my life.

This post is about Rounderhouse's Redtape series. If you haven't read it, it won't make sense. I'll put the cut right now to spare your dashspace.

As I'm writing this, the last available story is Interregnum II, and I'm writing with some haste expecting that the next bit will drop soon and my theory will be proven wrong immediately.

So. I think that the Redtape series is, thematically, about oppression and intersectionality.

I'll be honest: I haven't read much of Rounderhouse's work outside of it, so I don't know if this would be a trivial or impossible conclusion. We fly Death of the Author here, baby.

I've also been away from the SCP site for a very long time, and never been a part of the community, and know very little about the Mekhane and Sarkic arcs, so my conclusions may end up way off mark, and I may end up attributing to him ideas that were estabilished elsewhere. So it goes.

Before I enter the meat of my theory, it's only fitting that I also make a small prologue. The series starts with is in the perspective of RAISA Director Maria Jones. She is mentioned later during the prelude to Jade, as while we've shown all the dirty shit 05-11 did, we're also shown he batted for her and demanded she be treated with the respect she was due. Other than that, though, she hasn't been very important to the story.

I believe the importance of her inclusion is primarily to guide the readers' attention to the theme of oppression, which is underlined during her mention in the 05-11 documents. It's important in a general way, but also with a very specific intent. In the modern world, prejudice against POC is one of the most widespread forms of oppression, and it'd be weird to create a work centered on that theme without mentioning it. But modern prejudice against POC was pretty much invented by the slave trade performed by European colonies in the Americas in the 16th to 19th centuries; it'd be anachronic in a story centered around events in ancient times, in a way that Bronze Age Mechs simply aren't. Her presence is meant to inform us that the author is aware that this prejudice exists, but can't be meaningfully present in the work.

Now for the theory proper, I believe the theme goes like this:

Each of the three ancient cities has an axis of oppression that is effectively missing due to cultural and societal reasons directly related to the supernatural effect that caused them to rise. I'm going to refer to this as the Faded Axis, which as a terrible name but I need a shorthand because I'll keep referring to it.

Each of the three ancient cities also has an axis of oppression that is greatly increased. Like the Faded Axis it's due to cultural and societal reasons, but unlike it it's only indirectly related to the supernatural effect. I'll call it the Harsh Axis, with the same apology as the Faded Axis.

Each story about a city discovery has a protagonist that would suffer oppression along that city's Faded Axis.

Each city finds a mirror of itself in its two enemies: one of them will have the city's Faded Axis as their Harsh Axis, and the other will have the Harsh Axis as their Faded Axis. So the three cities, in all, will only show three axes of oppression.

Easy peasy. What does that mean?

Let's start with Mamjul/Korar, because I started reading the story by its end, but also because it's the one where this dichotomy is most visible. Their Faded Axis - the axis of oppression they lack - is sexism, or oppression because of gender. They are the only matriarchy of the three cities, and in the proposal Rajmata explicitly states that they don't have a powerful concept of gender, since one's body is just a thing they use for a while before they ascend to the astral plane. The Harsh Axis, strenghtened in their society, is likewise very visible: they murder enslaved people like it was going out of fashion, also because they believe this will free their souls to join them as free folk in the Astral Plane (except there are still enslaved people in the Astral Plane so I don't think that holds up too well). I currently believe the axis represented here is classism, though it may be slightly different. Galanis is non-binary, therefore oppresed along the gender axis. A perfect fit! Almost like I came up with it after reading this bit. Does it still hold for the other city we've been shown?

With Amoni-Ram, we also have a very strong call for the Faded Axis, which is ableism. Since the people of the city considered prothesis to be superior, someone who lost a limb on an accident or was just born without one wouldn't be even distinguishable from someone who replaced a limb because it's cool. And Aram/Bumaro, being the main character oppressed along the Faded Axis, makes the case openly. The city is even easier to find amongst people lacking a limb.

The Harsh Axis is a bit harder to discover. But, if my theory holds water, it means that it should have an overlap with one of Korar's axes. It can't be that Amoni-Ram's Harsh Axis is Korar's Faded Axis, because we've just shown they're different, so it has to be the opposite: Amoni-Ram's harsh axis must be sexism.

At first, this doesn't track much. The stories don't show the city of Amoni-Ram being particularly harsh to women. But this is about themes, hence an element can be used in a more subtle way. The way Bumaro refers to Ludwig is written to very strongly represent a toxic, overbearing relationship - specially when one reads her email, then his reaction to it. Her reaction in the later Interregnum, after being released from his grip, brings very similar feelings. And other than his attempt to dominate 05-11, every instance in the story in which the Throne's power is used to dominate a single person, it is either Ludwig or the Preserver, both powerful and intelligent women kept under the hill of a literal patriarch. So I think it does track.

Let's open a big paretheses here because I'm about to go on a wild tangent. There is something else I thought of while going through this theory in my head last night. The story of the three cities involves one of the Gods falling to Earth and loaning their power to a human civilization (or, in the case of the Daeva, human-ish). But what if it wasn't given, what if it was stolen? The story about the OG Bumaro being made Mekhane's profit was told by the people he lorded over - it's his perspective. What if he stole her power, used it to call himself his prophet, and then left her to rot when she was no longer useful? The Maharaj of Mamjul also doesn't have much say in Korar, even though he's the one dreaming the whole place up. What if the power of the Gods wasn't freely given, but stolen? What if that was why the BLACKSTAR was tasked by the Black Moon to destroy these upstart empires - not as an act of random violence or revenge, but at the behest of the Black Moon to free its siblings?

This is less of a theory than a hunch - but, if I may step off the Death of the Author car for a moment, I remember Rounderhouse saying that the Gold Proposal was meant to be the centerpiece of the series, and the other works would be smaller, but then, well, Jade happened. If that's the case, then maybe this symmetry wasn't meant to be apparent when he wrote Gold. But, if this reveal is planned, then he surely knew that this happened as he wrote Gold, and would see the city as built in the back of sexism to an extent that's not immediately apparent to readers. But this is so far off that's more of a hunch than a theory, so let us close these parenthesis and resume.

Now we come to a dangerous place. Since I believe the three cities are mirrors of each other, we can actually predict what the axes of Additum will be. Which means this theory is falsifiable! Damn, I don't write literary analysis to be PROVEN WRONG, what the hell am I doing? But it's too late, the car is on the road again, let's see where it takes us.

In order for the cycle to be complete, Additum's Faded Axis must be Mamjul/Korar's Harsh Axis. This works immensely well, since we know Additum was founded by an enslaved man originally from Mamjul. It would make sense that, after taking over power, he would desire a society without slaves. If the axis truly is classism, as I believe, then it'd be a truly horizontal society, in which meritocracy works and everyone has as much power as they work for.

The second prediction suggests that Additum's Harsh Axis must be Amoni-Ram's Faded Axis, which is ableism. I believe this tracks with Additum's great power being something akin to necromancy. If after you die, your body is raised to fight for the city that held you in life, then it becomes much more important that your body is kept in pristine condition at the moment of your death... if you lose a limb, you are inconvenienced for the rest of your life, but it's much more important that the zombie you become after will die will be less effective, and that will last for much longer, and that will harm all the people of the great city and not just you! I don't doubt that this means that anyone who loses a limb would immediately be put to the sword - or worse, banned from civil life, unable to work anywhere, all to be encouraged to 'donate' their body to the zombie armies a bit sooner, so that if they don't give an entire body, at least they'll give a body that still has the strenght of youth.

Finally, this theory would mean that the main character in the Bone proposal will be someone oppressed along the class axis. There are too many ways this can go about for me to offer a confident prediction - but I think an interesting case will be that the Foundation lore has its own axis of class oppression, the D-class. Given that the situation in Amoni-Ram was an unmitigated failure and the situation in Korar is, while apparently better for the Foundation, at most a mitigated failure, I don't think it's an stretch that for the third people they'll send in the people with the least authority possible to run the site. As I've been away from the SCP site for quite a while, I'm not sure if the idea that D-class personnel are people scheduled for death sentences is still the dominant canon, but I think a more interesting approach would be someone who was 'demoted' to D-class due to terrible actions as a Foundation employee (which something else that I don't know how strongly remains in the Foundation's shared canon).

Anyway, I'm very excited by the prospect of Bone proposal having been published while I'm writing this and having already been proven wrong. This is what I write theories for!

#scp foundation #rounderhouse #redtape #gold proposal #jade proposal #bone proposal #this is how I chose to use God's gift of sentience this night

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