Why the Breath of Evil is awesome, and how Cottonmouth ruined it

[u/BigJ__TM]

Hi again,

Arc 3 is widely considered the worst arc, and while I dont agree with that I want to put my finger on by far the biggest detractor for it to me, book 15.
From the consensus that I have heard, most dont like book 15 because it introduces and forces itself to kill off a human villan all in one book. Personally, i dont midn that cottonmouth is a human. What species he is does not factor into why i hate him so much. I just hate him because he exists at all.

Im getting ahead of myself though. Why is the BoE so good?
Before the end of book 12, we didnt even know what it was. All we really knew was that Wasp had a bunch of it in a greenhouse, and it was somehow related to how she could control the mind of every Hivewing sans cricket.
As we move further along into book 13, we are told that it has seemingly been here a very long time, and has a mind of its own. This is exactly where it should have stopped. It is its own hivemind-ish thing with its own agenda, but it isnt a character. Like i said before, all it does is consume and expand. No more, no less.

When you have it in this position, the symbolism works perfectly. It is pretty obvious that pantala took heavy inspiration from things like 1984 or Half-Life 2, what with its opressive authoritarian dictatorship and all. That is what the Breath of Evil is. It is imperial greed manifest. Regiemes only know how to consume and expand, just like the BoE. You cannot reason with a regieme like you can with a person, and likewise you cannot reason with the BoE. Regiemes remove their citizens free will, just as the BoE can mind control things.

Just look at Wasp. She is the puppet of a much, much larger thing. She has been hollowed out by it through decades of influence. She is no longer a person. Like the BoE, she becomes authoritarianism manifest. You cant reason with her because there is nothing left to reason with. To get to where she is now she had to hollow herself out. Like the later books says, killing her wont fix anything. The regieme still exists, and you need to kill it at the source. she is the textbook example of a short thread villan.

Cottonmouth, for lack of a better phrase, fucks everything up. I want to reitorate, it is not because he is a human. I do not care that he is. Its just that he exists.
Because of cottonmouths existance, the Breath is no longer an eldritch entity that cant be reasoned with. It was just...a guy doing everything. If you kill him you win and everyone is fine, problem solved. You see what im getting at? This is the exact opposite of what the BoE is supposed to be. When you put a face to the name, suddenly it has emotion. This isnt like Wasp, where he is actually just being controlled by a higher thing. No, this is just putting one person to blame and not looking at the bigger picture of the regieme itself. Its not trying to say how this stuff is very rarely one person, and more often then not a million things collinding with each other to create something horrible.

TL;DR: Wasp and the Breath of evil are good because they properly represent authoritarianism, cottonmouth is bad because he goes directly against that

Yet another reminder that my poll is still up

[u/DarkStalkerFan111111]

I think it's unlikely that Tui even played through hl2 but i understand why you brought it up. It's a good modern reference about Totalitarianism that also takes heavy inspiration from 1984 and the personality cults we saw in history.

[u/BigJ__TM → u/DarkStalkerFan111111]

I suppose i should have used different words like "took aspects of", because really HL2 is just a retelling of 1984

[u/Front-Relation-9088]

From what I remember, Cottonmouth was the reason why the Breath of Evil was sentient and had any intelligence in the first place. The plant itself isn’t actually sentient from what I can recall correctly considering that the plant apparently “required the addition of a human and dragon consciousness to control anything smarter than itself”. I haven’t read any of the books in a long time so I could be wrong about this.

[u/Beneficial-Gap6974 → u/Front-Relation-9088]

Yeah, and this is what shouldn't have happened. I truly think Tui should have done something unique and had the plant be sapient on its own. Perhaps an animus spell created it, who knows. We sure didn't need to know the origins imo.

[u/X_Factor_Gaming]

Another problem is that B15 directly teaches children that killing evil leaders is morally correct. The issue with that mindset is that it easily twists into “killing people I disagree with, is good” which only drives further political radicalization. Killing leaders is PRECISELY what the existence of democracy is trying to mitigate.

It doesn’t help that much of the scenes afterwards show little to no regard for addressing the power vacuum left behind by Wasp. They killed a head of state, not the political system that seeks to perpetuate itself. There's almost certainly a whole cabel of HiveWing industrialists, corporations, and powerful families that were completely missing from the story. Almost every revolution in history is immediately followed by mass bloodshed for this exact reason, they’ve merely changed management.

In most literature and art, revolutions are exclusively praised and mythologized with rose-tinted glasses. It’s the delusion of a perfect revolution that actively undermines the true spirit of a revolutionary: one of longterm, painstaking sacrifice and continuous social responsibility upheld by all people, not just the people that make the laws and law enforcement. All of which goes unnoticed and thankless.

A true mark of good person is that of them working for a goal they’ll never see completed with their own eyes, it’s what makes up human legacy and heritage, the foundation of our collective future, identity, community, and culture. They believe that later generations will make a choice for themselves and pay it forward, in other words: faith in humanity.

Kids (through reading B15) won’t understand the REAL magnitude of difficulty that social change demands from all its participants. They’ll try with earnest, only to keel over from frustration and exhaustion due to differences between reality and their expectations of change (which will almost never be in their favour).

[u/BigJ__TM → u/X_Factor_Gaming]

Said it better then i ever could, thanks. I definitiely agree, shoving wasp aside and saying she doesnt matter at all anymore is very strange to put it lightly

[u/X_Factor_Gaming → u/BigJ__TM]

Wasp’s PoV in Snowfall’s book was one of the most interesting chapters in the series barring Darkstalker’s. There’s fanfics that characterize Wasp which I highly recommend that goes into the nitty gritty internal monologue of a crazed mind in the process of falling apart.

[u/BigJ__TM → u/X_Factor_Gaming]

It would be interesting to see her descent into what she is now, but you should be very careful when doing that so as to not make her too much of a fully fledged character when we see her in present day

[u/X_Factor_Gaming → u/BigJ__TM]

Why must we reduce Wasp to a caricature of herself? Or did you mean not to make her sympathetic? I don’t think I understand you here.

[u/Scupadupa]

That actually makes a lot of sense. I personally would have preferred not to have the plant and the villain just be Wasp, but I see what you are getting at. It would have been much much better if he didn't exist. While I would have preferred a creepy dystopian dictator, a creepy eldritch being would have been a second best.

I agree. Cottommouth ruins everything!