I thought it was veeeery interesting that he started worrying about what Sebastien was doing and why he hadn’t seen him in so long.
“I wonder what she’s been doing with him” - my guy, you so quickly jumped to Sebastien being a gay cross dresser but you can’t imagine what a young woman and young man might be doing together?
Obviously, studying.
He might even go check on his wayward apprentice! I wonder if he found Sebastian’s address while doing his little background search?
Also, why wouldn’t Sebastien stay away over the holidays? It’s not like Lacer told Sebastien to come over for a study session when bored!
I think Lacer has ideas about masters and apprentices that he really hasn’t properly communicated to poor Sebastien…
Edit: I really would like to point out that there’s loads of possible explanations for why a guy might be running around in a shabby set of clothes with a dress that do not involve sex or kinks of any sort. Like working odd jobs for extra cash and not wanting to look rich and taking the dress to repair it / change colour etc.
Or if it was Sebastien wearing it then it could have been a disguise and the shabby clothes were the first to hand when the alarm went off.
Honestly, Thaddeus, you should really know better.
I am amazed at how this entire discussion is identical to criminal culpability discussions that I observed in law school.
It’s like this: When are you culpable for being forced to commit a crime? How much of a threat (or inducement, in the case of entrapment) must it be before the coercion is no longer matters?
This was the hypothetical that drove us nuts: Someone kidnaps a parent’s child, so what crimes would the parent be absolved of if acting on the direction of the kidnapper?
The policy at common law was NONE of them. The parent is responsible for their conduct, because if kidnapping worked as a defense, then kidnapping would be a common method of inducing people to crime.
On the other hand, since we have a policy against official inducement of people to crime, police entrapment is a defense. If you were not predisposed to the crime, police inducement will absolve you of it. Nevertheless, it is also nearly impossible to argue entrapment in a murder case - we presume that if you murder, no amount of inducement would be enough for you to violate that societal norm without the predisposition to murder.
So: What makes him culpable here? Voluntariness is not a great guide. We have to think about things like philosophy and morality. I think there are people for whom bodily autonomy is a life or death proposition. And that’s the problem here, isn’t it? Is Lacer going to go home and sleep just fine because he didn’t kill the Raven Queen, or is he going to regret this? That answer tells us how good Lacer seems.
But even goodness or evil doesn’t change the effect. I’d argue here that Lacer did a very evil thing, and being forced mitigates my view of him, but doesn’t change the fact that he ought to be liable to Siobhan at least for this crime against her.
Ye-es, I agree with you to a large extent, but if you swear an oath to what is seemingly a worthy institution to protect people and are then literally forced (we saw that his vow would not allow him to search for her inefficiently) then I’d argue it’s equivalent to someone being fed drugs and then given a gun.
Can you really hold them culpable for what happens when they’re not in their right mind?
At the very least there would be diminished responsibility.
In real life you can refuse to follow an illegal order, but how do you do that if your actions are literally not under your control?
He didn’t choose to attack her, no. But he chose how. I would be less mad at him if he had chosen to try and kill her. Obviously that couldn’t happen, or the story would end, or at the very least change rather dramatically. But I would have more respect for him, and I would be more inclined to forgive.
I am not saying he is at fault because he didn’t predict this specific turn of events. I am saying he is at fault because he swore an oath that requires him to occasionally attack people, potentially in the most invasive manner I can think of.
There may be mitigating circumstances surrounding that oath. It could be that the oath he swore was less obviously harmful to others, and it was twisted by his superiors into being what it is now. But I doubt it – Thaddeus is smart. It would take a lot to catch him off-guard like that.
Being coerced is not a defense. You aren’t allowed to commit a crime simply because someone is holding a gun to your head.
I think we are missing an important question
1- Thaddeus could have chosen not to answer. He could have redirected the conversation. He knows he is on a gease. Why the hell did he allow this conversation to even reach that point. The kill switch seems to be very specific. He couldnt have lied? He couldnt have stopped the convo?
2- Siobhan became too complacent with Thaddeus. In her raven queen body she still saw him as her mentor. Let alone the fact that fan girling over him is part of what drove her to the academy in the first place.
She forgot who she was dealing with. That he is not her mentor. That he has no reason to be benevolent to her and that she is playing with fire. And that nothing is free especially in the circles she is running in.
If I am not mistaken didnt she say at one point that as a kid she used to imagine him as her father?
Its the absolute domination/violation of attacking a person, paralyzing them, putting them in a coma, mind raping them and doing surgery on their brain then patting themselves on the back for it.
That is going into a philosophical direction. It really depends on what the red guard actually does and how the necessity of the oath was presented to him. Even if he knew it was shady maybe he was arrogant enough to think he could ignore the compulsion because he is, well, Lacer. Going back to the philosophical side. Blaming him for the oath is very much like the prospective crime in minority report. Are you really to blame for something before you do it?
I can’t quite agree with that. Minority Report targetted people who would have committed crimes of passion, and arrested them before they could do so, with the charge of the crime they would have committed, but didn’t get to – and what’s more, the entire system was morally bankrupt, because they weren’t guaranteed to do said crimes, even without interference; that’s the whole theme of the movie. Either way, it’s very different from a decision to take up an oath that could result in you doing harm to innocent people.
I completely agree here what he did was completely evil however because he was mind controlled to do it I don’t think he is as evil. Hopefully he can make it up to her and their relationship can recover after his oath is broken.
I definitely got that vibe, and in a few of his PoVs.
Sir, sir, you are THREE TIMES HER AGE. Simmer down, please.
Once again, I wonder if his desire for her to be his own age is because that would actually make it appropriate for him to pursue her (romantically, not like *gestures at the last five chapters *).
I don’t know if he could have refused to answer. It could well be that if he even suspects he has to take action. The follow up questions might have been to give her an out and a chance to weasel out of it. I think the question damned her, basically.
She knew his response was off but she kept digging the hole deeper.
She did tell Titus that she saw him as a father figure when she needed an excuse to explain away the freecasting in her family. I’m hoping she didn’t really see him as a father otherwise…yeah…
She just keeps getting betrayed by all the people she trusts
Haven’t we been getting that vibe off and on since book two? Doesn’t help that S thinks he’s cute and brilliant and spends 1/4 of her time staring intensely into his eyes. And thinking about his beard. (No, @AzaleaEllis, I’m not letting the beard thing go! )
Sir, sir, you are THREE TIMES HER AGE. Simmer down, please.
Once again, I wonder if his desire for her to be his own age is because that would actually make it appropriate for him to pursue her (romantically, not like *gestures at the last five chapters *).
BAHAHA. He doesn’t know how to simmer down.
Did you catch the part where he carried her in his arms from cottage when he for damn sure could have levitated her like he does for everyone else?
About the memory editing, remember this (chapter 140):
“Someone has tampered with the minds of Newton Moore’s family. Poorly. They now believe he was involved in some sort of blood magic, and that’s what caused his break. I worry the same might have been done to some of the students in his term. The ones who gave those statements about him.”
Professor Lacer leaned back. “Is that all?”
“Well…yes.” She rocked back on her heels. ‘Isn’t that enough?’
“I thought it would be something much more dramatic, with how anxious you were. Still, you did the right thing in making me aware. Sloppy work, to make it so obvious. I will send them back to do a better job.”
“Who?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“The Red Guard, of course. Sometimes memetic spells, when cast incorrectly, will start to fray and show their holes over time as the brain picks at their edges.”
Sebastien had gone cold inside. She felt suddenly, starkly unsafe.
He clearly doesn’t mind that it’s used, and I don’t see how she could ever forgive him.
Why do you think people don’t swear an oath to the President of the United States? Why would it be that US Attorneys resigned from the Nixon and Trump administrations, even though it ended their (sometimes quite long) Federal Gov’t careers? Because they held themselves accountable, even in the face of coercion. They are willing to suffer to do what their honor tells them they must.
More extreme coercion has historical precedent: there are people who died rather than hurt others, and people who hurt others rather than die.
I know which ones I consider heroes.
I like him well enough, and he’s a fantastic character, but Lacer’s not that. The compulsion doesn’t take over his body; he doesn’t black out and wake up having modified Siobhan’s memory. He has to participate. The alternative might very well be death, but as I said: we know deep down he’s not willing yet to really fight the compulsion. You might understand the Kapos, but that doesn’t make them heroes. You might not know the names of the German soldiers in both world wars that refused to obey orders they considered abhorrent, but those soldiers appear to have existed as well, and some of them were executed for it.
During the American Civil War, Col. William Peters refused an order to burn the homes of women and children at Chambersburg, and while he never suffered consequence because he was wounded and captured, he fully expected that he would suffer the consequence of disobeying orders. I don’t know that makes him particularly good, but there are people that have lines they won’t cross.
Maybe we just wish Lacer was one of them. But, he’s not. I am inclined not to be too hard on him; after all, Siobhan is an anti-hero lead. She’ll murder if it’s a choice between her freedom and capture too. She’d happily wipe Lacer’s memory if she’d had the skill.
Admittedly studying is a very wide reaching activity that can take many shapes!
Did S have her own place established before Lacer did that background check? I feel like she hasn’t had that set up for very long but I could be wrong.
Very much agree on Lacer’s communication about masters/apprentices - its almost like he can only properly communicate about magic - or maybe that’s the only one he truly bothers to explain as the consequences of mistakes can be dire.
I am not saying that Lacer is a good person, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m on record in previous chapters saying that his ethics are problematic.
But you are holding him to real world standards when he is living in a fantasy world.
There’s a lot of assumptions about him being actually able to retire from the Red Guard. If it’s so simple why are there defectors? Defections happen if you can’t go freely.
What if leaving the Red Guard requires further oaths? More restrictions? Possibly the alteration of his own memories - even the memory of having taken certain oaths so he wouldn’t know why he was being compelled to certain actions or be able to work around their restrictions?
In this world there have been people cursed so that they couldn’t stop exercising, couldn’t stop practicing magic, couldn’t sleep. It’s not a matter of “do this or die” it’s “I literally cannot stop.”
Why is it so far fetched to believe that if he stops trying to fulfill the oath in his own way that his body will be moved in accordance with the directive he was given and he gets no say in the outcome? We saw that there were consequences when he was inefficient - how much worse if he tries to stop?
I, for one, prefer Siobhan alive, even if her mind has been tampered with. Better to work within a restriction than resist in a futile manner and end up causing a much worse outcome.
Again, I don’t believe he’s a moral person, but I cannot fault him for working within his oaths for the best possible outcome he can achieve.
In any case, I’m not going to pass judgement on him until I know exactly what he’s labouring under.
Possibly the most moral thing he could have done would have been to slit his own throat the moment she asked the question - if the oath even allowed such an action intended to bypass it - but I can understand why he would be disinclined to suicide.
She did! She was actually cozily ensconced there - studying, naturally - while he was scouring the records at Harrow Hill.
She rented it not long after her confrontation with Oliver, which took place shortly after Ennis’s sentencing during the Sowing break and I believe several months went past between that and her confrontation with the Red Guard.
)