#the way the houses do imperialism in as yet unsent is INSANE. lifetime contracts with the immortal emperor??

[liesmyth]

Why does everyone worships BOE? I mean sure the houses are bad.. but how does it makes BOE good? Have I missed something? Also I would argue that the Houses are not the colonial forces, after all they’ve all left Earth and colonized the space, and the houses at least are still operating within the solar system. Like we still don’t know shit about BOE - only that they are fanatics who speak strictly in hate speech and propaganda. Which is never a good sign. Like NEVER. They have culty names!!!!!!! Hello????

I think BoE are morally fucked and that’s very hot of them! I do think they’re slightly less morally fucked than the other side, ideologically. I think what the Houses are doing is very much imperialism, even though we don’t know enough to have the full details on the scope of it. We have John talking about ‘protectorates’, we have economic exploitation (but in a completely batshit way!) and forced relocation of refugees. BoE are also doing armed occupation of some New Rho segments but they don’t have a whole imperial infrastructure behind them.

I agree that we’re missing a lot of details re: House foreign policy & BoE - some more thoughts under the cut

We don’t know if the occupation is driven by a need for resources, or by pure militarism (revenge + perpetual war keeps the Houses under control) or by some other reason. We don’t know how many inhabited planets are out there and how many are occupied by the Houses and to which extent — the Houses can’t really expand beyond their home system because necromancy, so why are they occupying planets they don’t live in? Also, they ‘flip’ planets, making them inhabitable to native lifeforms, but also that seems to be on a much longer time scale than the human lifetime; can those be repurposed for habitation later on? We don’t know! It’s SO juicy and so much is missing.

We will probably get some information in Alecto. I don’t think we will get all information, mostly because I really don’t think the political background is THAT important to the story Tazmuir is trying to tell. She’s primarily telling a story about emotions, I think, not politics. But I think we’ll see more of where they came from.

Most of what we know so far points to BoE being an irredentist liberation group, but they also 100% do commit terrorist acts, like, on the page. They have the vague ultimate goal of getting rid of the Houses, but their day-to-day goal seems to be only to kill as many necromancers as possible, and they’re absolutely committed to getting there by doing shit like, burning people alive and shooting up public places without much care for civilians getting caught in the middle. Yea, Ianthe’s reasoning for calling BoE terrorism is coming from a place of moral fuckery, but MY reason for saying so is that they are committing crimines to foster a state of fear among the civilian population in the pursuit of political goals. They do that by burning people alive.

BoE also do have a cult-like attitude regarding everything Earth, but I’m not sure yet how we’re supposed to interpret it. There’s absolutely a benign angle to it (connection to a long lost homeland) but also I find it VERY juicy that after allegedly ten thousand years their culture is still mostly rooted on Earth. It doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the myth of their lost ancestral home; why are you still naming your kids after Shakespeare? Who has written the great tragedies in the last millenia? Their lack of cultural advancement (and technological!) is the main reason why I think there could be some time travel theories going on.

You’re right that we don’t know what their ultimate goal is, it could be more malicious than most of the fandom tends to assume, or it could be more benign. I’m very excited to find out but without ascribing any moral intention to who’s stanning who. I’m an equal side war criminal enjoyer, ALL women blowing shit up are hot to me <3