2022-02-09 2:20:23 ¶ ● ⬈

dingodad:

> not even at the very end does Eridan drop the supremacy “act”. in fact it’s his last conversation in Return to the Core that probably shows his hand at its most blatant, trying to appeal to Feferi on the grounds of sea dweller superiority:

> > ERIDAN: you and i are bein civvil by vvery vvirtue a the fact that wwere talkin noww
> > ERIDAN: wwere royalty you and i and wwe belong together
> > ERIDAN: evven if not in THAT WWAY wwhich i get that youre not into and thats fine
> > ERIDAN: but wwe belong together as the rulin class if nothin else
> > ERIDAN: so im gonna ask you this one last time and givve you the choice
> > ERIDAN: im about to go please come wwith me

> showing in no uncertain terms that the caste system is not something Eridan is saddled with against his will, but a weapon that he willingly uses to get his way; and maybe more damningly:

> > ERIDAN: i slaughtered enough angels to knoww my limits and wwhere i stand against the lord of all angels they prophecized
> > ERIDAN: of course im not gonna fight him i stand no chance in hell against that guy
> > ERIDAN: im goin to join him
> > […]
> > ERIDAN: only thing left to do is servve him and hope he spares us […] servvin under jack together wwell be unstoppable and our anemones wwill tremble before us wwhat do you say

> he tips his trump card, which is his tendency to make “exceptions” to his genocidal campaigns, not because it would “make him a bad friend” as he likes to pretend, but because he knows he can make better for himself by toadying up to an enemy who’s more powerful than he is. reading Derse as a planet of actors might tempt some to interpret Eridan’s murderous nature as an act, but the plain fact is that Eridan lies about his relationship with social norms to trick people, not the other way around. probably the best example of this comes with his infamous “moirail zone” comment, where he shows he only plays along with moirallegience as a way to get at what he really wants; but he does a similar thing in this Returniabound conversation:

> > FEFERI: -Eridan, please! I don’t want to see any more dueling.
> > FEFERI: Don’t try to provoke )(im. It’s not like I don’t know w)(at you’re doing! You keep trying to spark a rivalry wit)( )(im to get me to auspisticize between you two, and pull us out of our quadrant!
> > FEFERI: It is t)(e oldest and lamest trick in t)(e book. It didn’t work t)(en and it won’t work now!
> > ERIDAN: thats an astonishin accusation howw could you say that
> > ERIDAN: first as if this scum is evven wworthy of a rivvalry wwith me and second as if im not totally DONE wwith you like i havve TOLD you REPEATEDLY

> as shown above, he gives away almost immediately that he is not in fact “totally DONE” with feferi and is still intently interested in swaying her to his side (“evven if not in THAT WWAY”). so maybe he’s not trying to spark a romantic rivalry with the pair; but what he doesn’t deny is that he is still making a play. he’s fishing for a fight with Sollux, and as is quickly made clear, for an opportunity to kill him.

Eridan weaponising his social status reminded me that Ahab’s Crosshairs, the weapon used for hunting the “white whale”, has the captchalogue code FFFFFFWW; literally using whiteness as a weapon. Which I suppose is only made all the more obvious by his replacement of the rifle with a wand of “white science”…