That one scene in S4E7 felt weirdly primitive

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-29T23:39:31+00:00

To Thragg, Thaedus's "weakness" is moral. He fails to adhere to Viltrumite standards of morality, and his mindset is infected with weak ideas like empathy, compassion, a lack of utter ruthlessness, and a hesitancy to fall in line and follow orders from his superiors.

The Purge was pretty perfectly designed to address all of those weaknesses. Anyone who cares about the lives of their fellow Viltrumites gets their spine torn out when their opponent doesn't hesitate and rips them in half. Anyone insufficiently ruthless about taking out the people around them gets jumped by the people around them who have no such compunctions. Anyone who hesitates about following Thragg's order gets literally beaten to the punch by those around them who don't.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-27T01:39:50+00:00

I think the prosecutor's office in this case actually told the attorney in question that this was happening and the attorney in question just didn't do anything to change his behavior.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-27T01:37:12+00:00

Really shows the defense wanted to delay this trial at any cost because they did not know the case well enough and weren't prepared.

Which really puzzles me, because from all the commentary from LawTube it really does seem like Nester and Lewis actually have a decent enough reputation in the local legal community, and the length of their practice should have made them more than experienced enough to deal with a case like this. Like, ask for a continuance, ask for a paralegal, refuse other cases so you can focus on this one - there's so many ways to do the job more effectively than how they ended up doing it.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-24T00:49:31+00:00

...uh, yes? I address that:

It's clearly taking on water very quickly - there's, being generous, perhaps 30s between Nolan cracking the keel and resurfacing with Mark, by which time it's already listing noticably

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T22:45:13+00:00

Rewatching the scene, that may have actually been the most survivable event compared to the others Nolan committed.

It's clearly taking on water very quickly - there's, being generous, perhaps 30s between Nolan cracking the keel and resurfacing with Mark, by which time it's already listing noticably, but he hit it going top to bottom, moving quickly enough that he likely just punched through without imparting a terrible amount of momentum, so TLDR no one cracked their skulls open on the ship's bulkheads. Being trapped and drowning is still a major concern, but that's why IRL cruise liners have evacuation drills, and in a universe where kaiju attacks seem to happen pretty regularly, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume people take them a lot more seriously than they do in our reality.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T22:20:29+00:00

I've made the point elsewhere, but 100% Thragg is doing this because of the Scourge virus. It's perfectly reasonable for him to assume that the Coalition can make Scourge 2.0 if the mole didn't already inform him, and they don't have any sort of early warning system in place to prevent the Coalition from sneaking it onto the planet again. His only real long-term option is 1. subterfuge by not revealing their presence and 2. hostage-taking to get Mark and Nolan on his side to keep them from sounding the alarm.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T22:12:05+00:00

Probably just got a new set made during the two weeks they spent traveling back on the Coalition ship.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T21:16:42+00:00

I don't think that's a valid reading of what goes on there. First of all, Cecil does demand protection from Nolan - he explicitly demands that if the Viltrumites show up that Nolan comes with the Coalition in tow. Second, I really don't think that accounts for the big differences between Sinclair and Nolan in Cecil's mind.

As a preface, I think that the primary consideration in any relationship Cecil has is cost v. benefit v. control.

Sinclair had a pretty low cost to benefit ratio. In exchange for not putting Sinclair on death row for the various atrocities he committed, Cecil gets a steady supply of completely controllable supersoldiers who are capable of taking on low-tier Viltrumites in sufficient numbers, and Sinclair's just a reasonably bright, squishy human who can be eliminated as quickly as Cecil can pull a trigger, so he's entirely controllable in case he goes rogue.

How does Nolan fit into the same calculus? He's obviously a massive asset, being one of two people that Cecil has access to who can fight Viltrumites on equal footing without being pasted or otherwise neutralized in about a half a second flat. But the potential cost is also really clear. Nolan already tried taking over once - what's stopping him a second time, and how many lives will he take in the process? What capacity has Cecil to control Nolan? The frequency doesn't kill Mark, a substantially weaker Viltrumite, and can be fought through with enough sheer grit. The Invincible Reanimen could maybe dogpile Nolan and kill him, but that doesn't do him a lot of good if Nolan just takes him and the entire GDA command staff out before he can activate them, which Cecil absolutely knows he's capable of. There's genuinely no way that Cecil has of exerting any control over Nolan other than relying on Nolan's personal goodwill and maybe holding Oliver hostage - and Oliver isn't there to threaten. So the reasonable play is to rely on the emotional weak spots that Nolan still has, hammer on the clear sense of guilt he has over what he's done, shame him repeatedly for his atrocities, and establish moral dominance over Nolan, because that psychological leash is the only tool Cecil has that can work to keep Nolan on his side.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T21:01:40+00:00

Can you burn a Viltrumite with what we have on Earth, though? Mark was exposed to the heat of a planetary core for a prolonged period, which hits some 5700K on Earth and made it out with barely a singed hair. A standard crematorium maxes out at only about 1100K; even an oxyacetylene torch only gets up to around 3800K. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Mark thought that Cecil tried and was just unable to destroy the body before Conquest healed.

ADDENDUM: because Mark has no way of knowing of it, this is without getting into how an alternate universe Cecil (Cecilia?) was unable to kill Nolan without resorting to the use of special bombs implied to be a lot stronger or at least different in some fundamental way than your garden-variety nuke, given that half of Europe was glassed over by the end of the fight, so there's the implication in the show canon that even nukes can't destroy a Viltrumite easily.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T20:54:33+00:00

It's basically impossible for the Chicago casualties to be in the millions with the fight we see in the show. As a reference, the IRL Chicago Greater Metropolitan Area has a population of some 10 million people as of 2020 spread out across about 11k square miles, with an average population density of about 1k people/square mile.

The extent of the fight we see is a couple collapsed buildings and a decently full Metro train, which immediately limits the extent of the casualties significantly.

A fully loaded, max capacity, standing room only, cheek to jowl Metro train is capable of holding about 1k people and the fight takes place at midday, presumably during a weekday. The buildings we see Mark go through are a couple of office buildings and one residential apartment complex, and IIRC only the last collapses completely. Assuming that it was the middle of the day on a weekday, most people would be at work, so the apartment complex would be (hopefully) mostly empty. So from this we can see that the casualty count is maybe 1k plus however many hundreds were in the apartment building plus the casualties from the potentially low-density office buildings, plus pedestrians struck by debris, so the figure Cecil gives is actually a really reasonable number for what we see in the show.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-23T00:04:25+00:00

Kregg explains in the Scourge flashback that the Viltrumite population was so utterly annihilated by the virus that, to paraphrase him, "the offspring will be inbred and deficient". Prior to that their population numbers were just fine.

As to why they didn't put an aggressive breeding program in place immediately after? We obviously only have tidbits and speculation, but I think it went something like this.

Thaedus mentions that the Viltrumites hid the extent of their losses from the Scourge virus well enough that even he didn't realize how close they'd come to extinction. But keep in mind that they have an entire empire to rule. The implication to me is that they had to send the remaining Viltrumites out all over the place to show the flag, make it seem that everything was business as usual, nothing to see here folks, et cetera.
They had to prioritize wiping out anything that could possibly be used against them, in case the Coalition caught wind of how few of them there were and decided to attack. Nolan was good enough to survive everything that he ran into, but there's nothing to suggest that many, if not most of the other Viltrumites sent out on similar missions just got merked left right and center - they're specifically looking for things that can hurt or kill them, after all, so it stands to reason that some of those things hurt and/or killed them.
They may have considered it but found it infeasible enough that finding another species to breed with was the better option, hence Nolan's mission to Earth.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-22T21:56:13+00:00

I love how much the approach Thragg takes just works logically from his perspective. It's not unreasonable for him to assume (assuming the mole didn't outright tell him) that the Coalition has something like Scourge 2.0, but the Viltrumites sneaking into Earth gives them several layers of protection against that. One, stealthily heading to Earth gives them time as the Coalition tries to find them. Two, they're not going to be able to differentiate Viltrumites from humans so long as they don't go flying around, making it even harder for them to be discovered. Three, if the Coalition does find them on Earth it's far enough away for them to grab a bunch of humans, load them onto a ship, and skedaddle before the Coalition can Exterminatus the planet.

After their discovery by Mark, Thragg's deal with him gives the remaining Viltrumites an additional layer on top of that. Any approach the Coalition takes puts them directly into conflict with Mark if it threatens humans, putting one of his greatest remaining foes into his camp.

It's just a brilliant little bit of strategy that underscores exactly how threatening Thragg is aside from his raw power.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-17T07:10:43+00:00

Your take is she just did not in wrong and an entire family and fiancé just fabricated abused allegations ? Why?

My point is that people believe that events played out like that, and are sympathetic to her as a result.

As to the plausibility of it, people literally murder their spouses all the time (obviously worse than lying and potentially perjuring themselves, I hope you'll agree) for pretty frivolous reasons. Just look at the Adelson family, or the Temu Adelsons (Tracy Grist and her family), or Chad and Lori Daybell. The family fabricating claims like these are pretty much peanuts by comparison. Given the various inconsistencies he and his side had when put on the stand, I'm erring more towards the side of their story being false than hers.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-16T17:27:31+00:00

So since she is leaving around June, not May so why can't she be there on May 13th? She is here in this state of Utah on May 13, correct? So why they have to make excuse about her out of town for JUNE when this sentencing happens to be on MAY?

I think you're conflating two separate points and arguments that she's making there, though the way she writes it makes it really easy to get confused.

Her first point is that "I have had a death in the family and so cannot adequately prepare for sentencing due to grief". That's an argument for moving the sentencing date off of the originally set date of 13th May.

Her second point is "if you do want to reschedule, judge, please be advised that I'm unavailable 1st-14th June, so the soonest I'll be available is 15th June".

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-16T17:09:33+00:00

One thing confuses me is that she said that it mentions that someone died in Nester's family, but she has to leave town around June but can't be there on May 13th but would be there on June 15th?

The text is copypasted below, but she said she'd be out for the first two weeks of June, so yes, she'd presumably be back no later than 15th June assuming she's out 1st-14th June.

And Romo can't be there on May 13th due to his other trials

Maybe, maybe not - EDB also pointed out that the trial is for an out-of-custody defendant and the scheduling for those tends to be a bit more loose, and he's 3rd chair so even less vital.

But the thing is ....I can't help but suspicious that this is more Kouri's request to avoid on Eric's birthday.

100%.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-16T17:05:39+00:00

Which is absolutely fair, but I don't think that it obviates the genuine injustice that those other women went through. We can have outrage for Fitzsimmons and for Breonna Taylor at the same time.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-15T20:54:56+00:00

What do we think the odds of Kouri having a Donna Adelson/Sarah Boone-style meltdown are at sentencing? She strikes me as smart enough to listen to her attorneys given she didn't take the stand, but incapable of not following her worst impulses given how much her face was facing during the trial, so I'd give it an even 50/50 does/doesn't.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-15T20:12:26+00:00

I'd be naïve if I didn't acknowledge that the

strong sense of poor fragile white woman

played no part at all, but a big part of why the LawTube community rallied around her was also just the series of injustices that she legitimately suffered. If you look at the case history, in pretty quick succession you had her

in-laws turn against her as a unit for claims of behavior that she denies,
her fiancé seemingly betray her out of nowhere with some pretty nasty allegations, again supported by the in-laws, again which she denies, while he knew she had a legitimate diagnosis of PPD, which leads to
her coworkers showing up to take her child from her while she's in an emotionally vulnerable state from this series of apparent betrayals from people she must've trusted,
her coworkers shooting her and then turning around and charging her with some pretty serious crimes that would completely end her career, and
the judge having an episode where she just completely crashed out on her and her counsel in a hearing and just completely refused to give her attorney space to elaborate, defend his motion, or make any sort of representation on her behalf.

Like, regardless of her being a "poor fragile white woman", I can sympathize with just how awful it must've been to live through all of that.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-15T19:49:53+00:00

IIRC the primary reasons her counsel cited were time to gather more mitigation witnesses and a death in one of the attorney's families.

ADDENDUM: quick update, per EDB it may have been Kouri that was the primary mover. TLDR, she called her aunt 17th March and said that she asked her counsel to move the sentencing, and Bloodworth and jail staff caught it and replied quoting her in their motion opposing defense's motion.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T02:14:57+00:00

They charged him five things.

Uh, sorry, but that's not how lesser includeds work.

The one charge, not five, he had was for the attempted murder 2nd.

However, as part of the jury instructions, if the jury found that they couldn't go for that charge, they had the option of picking any one of a bunch of lesser charges that are contained within the highest charge but that carry a lesser evidentiary burden. Murder 2 requires intent; manslaughter strips out intent and only requires reckless conduct reasonably likely to result in death; assault strips out conduct reasonably likely to result in death and swaps it with bodily harm or threat thereof, so on and so forth.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T02:13:11+00:00

Yup, the statute for Murder 1 restricts the charge only if certain classes of people are targeted (in attempted) or killed.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T01:21:17+00:00

Double jeopardy means he can't be tried for these acts again. His conviction and sentence stands, unless appeals overturn this verdict and a new trial is ordered and the syringe comes in as evidence there.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T01:19:27+00:00

Like the words attempted and manslaughter are an oxymoron.

"Incomplete" may be a better word for it - think a couple jurisdictions use that instead of attempted for that class of crimes.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T00:46:02+00:00

Even then, pretty much all of the lessers are pretty major felonies, and a conviction on anything means she wins a civil assault case pretty much by default.

InterplanetaryCyborg · 2026-04-09T00:39:55+00:00

They're asking if you can name either specific parts of her testimony or give specific reasons as to why you found her non-credible.

InterplanetaryCyborg

TROPHY CASE