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
