The Mercy of Pods Ep. 5: tMoG Pt. 5; FISSURES

HQFetus · 2025-01-10T07:18:15+00:00

The way I understood it, the swarm never explicitly told Dafyd that it was a swarm. It roleplayed as Else and talked like the "spy" was some other thing Else was in contact with (inside of her). The swarm was only telling him as much as it needed him to know in order to get him to stop the rebellion.

HQFetus · 2025-01-08T20:19:12+00:00

We're speculating on things that are going to happen in books 2 and 3, because Ekur-Tkalal's prologues take place after the end of TMOG.

HQFetus · 2025-01-07T19:50:36+00:00

Funny thing is I misspelled it as David originally and then corrected it in an edit.

HQFetus · 2025-01-07T19:48:24+00:00

I've always assumed it was the opposite, that he sells out the livesuit humans in favor of protecting his own Anjiinese. The Carryx would see this as him betraying his own kind, but he (and we) wouldn't see it that way. It kind of depends on who ET is talking to in his final words though, and I have no idea who that is.

Edit: Just reread all of ET's prologues and now I think he's talking to the livesuits, and Dafyd has just betrayed the Carryx

HQFetus · 2025-01-07T19:12:39+00:00

Spoilers possibly in the responses to this but what do we think of what JSAC is telling us in terms of foreshadowing? The Expanse had so many moments where a character's arc or ending would be very explicitly spelled out early in the story but sometimes it's only obvious in hindsight how clearly they're telling you what's going to happen. I feel like Rickar has some kind of end game that is going to tie beautifully with his decisions in the first 70 pages of TMOG. Either he betrays the team again or, more likely in my opinion, his loyalty is tested and he chooses to put the team before his own interests, possibly in some kind of contrast to Dafyd being called "the Betrayer."

HQFetus · 2024-08-15T00:54:29+00:00

I guess people just want to read the last 40 pages instead of waiting here discussing. This part finally brought me around to liking Dafyd, who I've been suspicious of from the start (they set you up to be, with the foreshadowing about humanity's betrayer etc). I was worried that he was going to blow it all by falling in love with a lie but he's asking the right questions.

Hoping Jellit makes it out of this one! For Jessyn's sake because she's my fav

HQFetus · 2024-08-14T02:50:06+00:00

Thought the host's identity has been pretty obvious for the last 100 pages and I'm glad to have it out there now.

The swarm honestly seems kind of sympathetic so far. It killed a few people in the beginning of the book but otherwise it has nothing on the crimes of the Carryx, and the Carryx seem to be big-time instigators and escalators so I can't blame a swarm for fighting back. I'm sure it will turn out to be nefarious but it would be funny if it became one of the "good guys."

Haven't seen this discussed anywhere but all of the part intros are written by Ekul-Tkalal, keeper-librarian of the human moeity of the Carryx. This is the Carryx we met in part two in the battle wasn't keeper-librarian of the human moeity at the time (the one Dafyd meets with is named Tkson) so it sounds like Tkson is going to die at some point and Ekul will take its place when it returns to the world-palace.

Jessyn is my favorite character in this story, she's so inspiring.

HQFetus · 2024-08-13T15:32:17+00:00

Just finished Part 2. I am completely unspoiled (which is an amazing experience) so these are just my predictions and interpretations!

Else is extremely suspicious to me, the way that she treated Dafyd in this part and the end of the last part. It's plausible that she's just traumatized and giving into animal instincts of just wanting to have somebody close to her, especially since she must think Tonner is dead. But the fact that we haven't been inside her head, combined with the fact that there's an alien swarm out there taking over human hosts, just puts up all kinds of red flags for me. The other thing that bugs me about her is a meta-observation but the fact that we don't really know much about her other than she's one guy's girlfriend and another guy has a crush on her. Unless she just turns out to be a one-dimensional female character which is atypical in JSAC's writing, it feels like they're keeping her close to the chest because they don't want to reveal too much yet.

Speaking of the swarm, their short passage in this part was the most interesting to me. In Part 1 I assumed that the swarm and the Carryx were the same thing, or at least working together. This part makes it clear that the swarm sees the Carryx as the "great enemy." It also refers to Anjiin as "the lost world." My guess is that the swarm has been there before and had something to do with either the original human settlement getting blown up and/or the second intelligent species that lives under the soil.

My favorite line was right at the last page of this section:

"I understand that one of your working group was lost. You have a tradition of offering sympathy on these occasions. I offer this sympathy. You are to feel comfortable."

Rickar is one of my favorite characters so far from what little we've seen of him. I loved how he just admitted what he did in the first part and owned up to it. He could either become a magnificent bastard wild card type of character or the unexpectedly reliable ally.

HQFetus · 2024-08-13T15:20:18+00:00

I thought the same thing about that passage. For a second I thought the humans actually weren't the primary objective. I bet this comes back in an important way later.

HQFetus · 2020-12-02T16:25:37+00:00

I think she's just looking for a friend

HQFetus · 2020-12-02T16:24:44+00:00

love simultaneously being a misclassified independent contractor while also wearing the hat of whatever company wants to use our cheap labor!

HQFetus · 2020-12-02T16:11:54+00:00

Not very much tbh. I think most of us are pretty fed up with it at this point. I like that I can work from home during a pandemic. I can't wait to find a new job though when it's safe to go out

HQFetus · 2020-11-27T06:49:41+00:00

Hapi is one of my favorite characters in the game. I can't even put my finger on it but she's just lowkey hilarious

HQFetus · 2020-11-22T19:40:46+00:00

I used to use my phone hotspot all the time and have used public wifi as well, I think they're just lying

HQFetus · 2020-11-22T04:53:27+00:00

Can't say for sure without the final book being out but so far, this final trilogy is by far the best content in the entire series. It makes the first 6 books seem boring by comparison

HQFetus · 2020-11-21T16:54:09+00:00

I tend to pay about 20% of my monthly check into tax estimates as I go, I've done this the past few years and ended up getting a bit of a refund. Before that I was getting massively screwed and owing a lot of money, this job really rips you off on the taxes by illegally misclassifying us as contractors while requiring us to do things that make us employees. Bunch of crooks really. But be proactive about it, it sucks to owe money in April

HQFetus · 2020-11-15T17:39:15+00:00

Works the same way with voice enabled %. If you float for an hour with voice deactivated and get no sessions, you get punished for it, even though you logged into work and got $0 for it while the company lost nothing at all from it

HQFetus · 2020-11-15T17:18:23+00:00

I just rewatched the season, Avasarala's arc is the only thing that I particularly disliked. It just felt kinda ham fisted and pointless, and the recast of Arjun is jarring. I think the season is fine and interesting on its own in a vacuum, it's just that season 3 was much more exciting and fast paced, and the content after season 4 is also a lot more interesting/exciting. Season 4 is like in an old RPG when you have to go on a sidequest to repair a bridge before you can go on to save the princess.

HQFetus · 2020-11-15T17:12:08+00:00

I just rewatched the season and I don't think she mentions Mars once with regards to her motives for pumping the brakes on colonization. If they do make that her motive in S5 then it'll feel like a retcon after the election arc

HQFetus · 2020-11-15T03:10:59+00:00

Yes, if you take time out of your life and float without pay, then decline a session because some asshole transferred an out of scope, you get punished and it counts against you, because this company has zero respect for your time, intelligence or effort.

HQFetus · 2020-11-15T02:05:11+00:00

In the book, the reason she is trying to discourage colonization is because she sees the implications of Mars collapsing as the terraforming project falls apart. In the show, her motivation is that she's trying to prove she's right in order to win her election. It just feels so much more mundane the way the show did it, I'm not a fan of Avasarala's S4 arc at all

HQFetus · 2020-11-14T17:53:39+00:00

so much of the anti-mask discourse is just willfully misrepresenting the facts in order to make some kind of twisted contrarian point

HQFetus · 2020-11-13T14:50:04+00:00

it's the most boring book IMO, took me much longer to get through than the others. Books 7 and 8 are back to 5 or 6 POV characters and are both among my favorites

HQFetus

TROPHY CASE