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sunderedandundone · 2 years

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Possibly unpopular fan opinion, Dark Crystal (SkekSil and SkekTek edition)

I'm not gonna say SkekTek had it coming, because nobody has something like THAT coming, but SkekSil's reaction to SkekTek's tattling was not actually--that disproportionate. NOW HEAR ME OUT before you call me a supervillain apologist. ^^ Reason #1 is because NOBODY ACTUALLY NEEDED TO LOSE AN EYE, BECAUSE NOBODY HAD TO SNITCH ON ANYBODY THERE AT ALL.

It would, in fact, have been better for all concerned, except maybe SkekZok and SkekSo, if SkekTek had just kept their slightly-shimmery beak SHUT. They probably could both have gotten off scot-free, at least long enough for nobody to really care about it anymore -- especially after the war was already on (General -_- ) and even more especially after SkekSil and SkekTek were both witnessed as having provided the Skeksis with the Garthim. ...I mean, again, yes, 'better for all concerned' except SkekZok, but you can consider them the asterisk on pretty much all this. For one thing, is it EASY to transport and raise Peeper Beetles? Dear me, no!! You barely breathe on the larvae and they die! ;-)

And here's the nub of it. Nobody besides Tek and Sil knew they'd ever even had a chance to catch Rian. Noooooobody. (Well, except Gurjin, but I tackle him below. ^^ ) And none of the other Skeksis had succeeded in finding the little bugger, either. So they could have both 100% skated on that.

As for Mira's vial, it'd already been established--and grudgingly accepted by the Emperor--that it was 'a paltry amount' for the Scientist's study purposes. Nobody would have known that SkekTek hadn't just used it for exactly that! Because tragically, as much as the species' survival always depends on poor SkekTek, SkekSil sure seems to be the one and only Skeksis who ever bothers to help them or even check if things are going okay...and THEY sure as hell wouldn't have squealed. (Sorry So, but visiting to commit pet abuse and demand more production against scientific advice doesn't really count as responsible leaderly concern, much less benevolence. :-P ) So again--who'd have ever known? Why couldn't they both just skate and call it good?

Aha, you say: but Rian and Gurjin certainly knew the circumstances of the getaway, and what if it got told and dreamfasted it to Gelfling/Podlings/Arathim far and wide? Then, you further point out, Barbra Streisand effect might have kicked in, and things might have ended up even worse for both Skeksis in the final sum. That often happens with cover-ups.

***

[ETA: It did occur to me later that there is an in-between sequence to be managed (or not), which is what happened with Gurjin immediately after his capture. We know SkekSil had physical hands on the boy, so they had the most immediate control over that. Then the next time we see Gurjin is in the lab with SkekSil, the day after SkekTek's had their eye chewed out.

[So what most likely happened that Tek & Sil immediately locked Gurjin up, since that's the only alternative to letting him run too (which WOULD be one way to avoid having Gurjin there as living evidence of a cockup, but I don't think either birb would consider that a smart path to that goal ^^). Or I guess there's also murdering him right then and there, which TBH might have been the wise choice, but I can see reasons why they'd choose not to. In any case, they must have locked him up together, and then sometime very soon after that, Tek went totally off-message and ran blabbering to the throne.

[Now: it'd be really weird if Sil HADN'T at least sort-of brought up the subject of what the hell to say about Gurjin whilst they and Tek were locking him up. Or more likely, immediately after (you prooobably don't have this convo in front of the boy unless you're having it in Skeksis tongue)? If for no other reason, just for purposes of getting the two birbs' story to the other Skeksis straight and consistent.

[Not because Gurjin being manacled in a cell is a problem for anybody involved, mind you ::snerk!::...but because telling the truth about why Gurjin's in manacles, IF anyone bothers to ask, would mean revealing that Rian had gotten away. (Sadly, I PERSONALLY doubt anyone would ever have asked or even realized the boy was there, seeing how again, only SkekSil ever bothers to visit the lab. But this isn't something you leave to chance when you can easily work out an alibi in advance just in case, so SkekSil probably did.)

[And luckily, there are some damn easy alibis available. Chief of which is just shutting TF up and seeing if anyone even notices. If I were Sil, I'd also suggest that if by some wild hairy chance someone did notice and ask, Gurjin came to be in the lab the same way Mira did. I.e., 'sneaking somewhere he wasn't supposed to be' and thus volunteering as a lab subject. Should you want to hew a bit closer to truth for some dumbass reason, you could even claim you caught him looking for Rian. ...Though that might make someone else want to actually interrogate him, so best not. ^^

[Or hell, why don't we just say Tek decided he needed a subject for {insert technobabble here}, and snatched some random Gelfling to run tests on? Because seriously. Nobody cares if SkekTek gelfnaps someone as long as it was unobserved--any more than they cared about Tek snatching Mira in the first place! In fact, you can use the whole already-accepted Rian-as-killer narrative to cover Gurjin being dead, OR vanished OR in chains as a confessed accomplice--regardless of where Gurjin actually even is! How would the Gelfling find out different? In any case, that's the kind of story I'd cook up and TRY to sell to Tek, if I were Sil.

[Alas, however, it could well be that Tek was just too wary of using Sil's story or anything like it, because it probably mentioned only ONE birb name: their own. ^^ --And I mean sure, if you really sit down to work out all the eventualities, cooperating with Sil's plan does still sum out to being the rational best choice. Scientist. BUT even if Tek thought that through, which they probably didn't, all that logic would still be in conflict with another very rational principle (and Elemental Truth) of don't trust shit that Chamberlain proposes, especially if it gives them an obvious pass.

[So I think it's MOST likely that Sil suggested some alibi to Tek while they were locking Gurjin up--but either in such an indirect hinting way that Tek didn't catch it ::head shake::, or in a totally direct way that Tek just...understandably...didn't trust. So Tek nodded back something like 'yeah yeah, whatever birb,' aaaaand then ran straight to the throne to snitch. ::Hermione voice:: Like. An. Idiot. @_@]

***

So that's Gurjin sorted. But once again, there probably wouldn't even have been a need for that alibi, because once again, how would the Skeksis have ever found out? Because once again, again: the likelihood of anybody seeing Gurjin and realizing him to be anything more than a random lab subject is miniscule.

Now. There is a fair chance the Empire will eventually manage to seed some spies into the Resistance. And such spies could perhaps hear the tale of Rian's daring escape, and could maybe, conceivably report it back in. Sure, that could happen. Or it might not. Any canny imperial Gelfling/Podling spy might soon intuit that it's not exactly ideal for their own longevity to piss off any of the Lords against each other! (Seriously, if you're going to snitch on one Skeksis to another, dude, please make it to your closest Skeksis patron, who's not going to bring out that information to the rest of the court unless there's an actual need, because that's exactly the sort of stuff you quietly file away for blackmail contingencies. Besides...the odds of that patron not literally being the Chamberlain are kinda low?)

And even if the Emperor did eventually end up hearing about it all that way, it'd probably be so long after the fact that--despite how eagerly they admittedly jump on any chance to be sadistic--the rush of aggressive drive from the adrenaline, fear, etc over Rian's escape and that ONE vial is going to be much diluted. It'll be so extremely moot by that point. If anything disciplinary happens on account of this offense at all, the supposed 'cause' will really have become more of an excuse, somewhere more on the order of oh say, failing to talk with your mouth full at table. ^^

So yeah, there might still be torture, there might still be PTSD, but an actual maiming becomes way less likely as time goes on. So the longer it can be kept quiet, the better, Streisand effect in this case be damned.

(Really, that maiming was a boob-stupid call on So's part anyway...again, given how vital SkekTek's ability to churn always is to Skeksis...and is only explainable by the murderbirds' high-gear emotionality, poor impulse control, Darkness poisoning, and hair-trigger mob dynamics overwhelming their ever-more-senile intellects. Oh, also the fact that essence seems to be literally intoxicating, so they're going to be permanently pissed->hung over for like the next several trine.)

Now to be 'fair' to SkekTek, we have seen them make some strikingly bad social/survival decisions for a supergenius. Which is not out of line with their clearly being a social outcast, and thus probably rather rusty on any people skills they once had. And it sadly isn't remotely out of line with being a science genius either. :-/

Maybe most astonishingly, they are legit a terrible liar. By which I mean, not a liar at all. O_o Fact, they often get in trouble for speaking inconvenient truth, poor thing. But that's not a super good excuse for snitching from a logical standpoint, and definitely wouldn't be a good enough excuse from SkekSil's understandably invested POV.

Crystal's fire, even if one of those dead dodos suddenly remembered amid all the panic that they'd seen SkekTek put the vial in their cabinet without locking it up, and try to gin up some trouble over that, Tek could still quite truthfully protest that au contraire, they'd put a nice feisty locksnake right on it. But obviously, the filthy Gelfling got past it somehow. Or else...::gasp:: some other Skeksis snuck in and stole it!

Well, good heavens. Who could that have been? Well okay, some suspects ARE way more plausible than others [::koff::SkekSil::koff::]. But nobody can claim that any other Skeksis (except, of course, for Their Flawless Magnificence, the Emperor) wouldn't have just as good a motive or opportunity for the crime as SkekSil or SkekTek. The lab itself is clearly left unlocked all the time. Everyone potentially saw where the vial had been put. Everyone was hot for essence. At that point you're on a dice throw for who gets the blame.

SO.

Given alllllll of the above, why in everloving Thra did SkekTek rat on the Chamberlain, an unwise act in any weather? Reasoning shows it was most likely fully voluntary on their part. Most likely nobody would have ever asked them. So they actually ran and told the Emperor entirely on their own steam. O_O

Well, again in service of being 'fair' to Sciencebirb--it could possibly be that Tek wasn't really even thinking about punishment for anybody. Or okay, they must've realized there'd probably be punishment, or else they wouldn't have rushed to get to SkekSo first so they could blame SkekSil for all of it! But they might not have quite realized how severe the punishment could be, because they're (as already noted) weirdly on the naive side for a Skeksis. To them, the price [for Skeksil] to pay may not have seemed all that terrible compared to the need to report what the Scientist, in their distress, might sincerely have considered a high Emergency.

But...c'mon, SkekTek. You're supposed to be a genius here. You want that designation, you gotta live up to it. This is not that. And let's be real: you're definitely enough of a Skeksis that you sure as Grot weren't going to share the blame, were you? Chamberlain def wasn't in your good graces at that particular instant, were they? Nope. So the odds of there being NO personal vengefulness involved here--as with a lot of other odds around here--seem low. :-P And from most people's perspective, very much including SkekSil's, it's going to be kinda hard to buy that you had no idea how bad the penalty might get. Even if you weren't thinking about it, you SHOULD have been. The audience would certainly agree, having now observed the Emperor for more than 15 minutes.

So then, moving over to SkekSil's end of it now--in that moment when they were suddenly, no heads-up put on the spot, they really would have no rational choice but to conclude (very quickly indeed, but that's 100% in character and well within their own genius) that SkekTek just flat WANTED to see them suffer horribly. For no other reason but that they still had a mad on about that whole, now really rather meaningless kerfuffle!

I mean, what else would they realistically think??

The Chamberlain also wouldn't have been way out of line in seeing this as a singular betrayal, given how they'd freely and without even asking credit given Tek the idea for extracting essence in the first place and then advocated for people to give Tek's presentation a chance. Oh, and then there's the saving-the-Scientist's-very-life part of things too! Did we forget that? Where was the thank-you for that even? Honestly. THE INGRATITUDE.

...I mean yeah okay, granted, they also totally tried to steal the vial. But really? And besides, come on: Tek straight-up pulled a shiv on a fellow Lord (...okay, a scalpel) and threatened them with mutilation. And SkekSil hadn't snitched to anybody about that, had they?

And now it wasn't just a matter of paying Tek back for that betrayal. Or even for impressing on them the evidently needed wisdom of Don't narc on SkekSil, man--it ain't worth it! Because the dynamic duo were now in a position where either SkekSil or SkekTek was going to undergo something unspeakable. Period. There was no third option. There HAD been, Thradammit, but then the Scientist had to go and be a foot-shooting fool...AGAIN. And for what? Pure suns-cursed pettiness! Sheesh.

So from that standpoint, what could Sil really do anymore but lie like a cheap rug and turn it right around on SkekTek? They may even be correct that at that point, the Peeper Beetle was the least bad of all possible results for anyone--indeed, the Emperor explicitly declared that a more "permanent discipline" was required. So a maiming of some kind was obviously on the menu for somebody, no matter what.

And at that point, at least given my own HC opinions on Sil's character and motivation, they'd probably have been looking for the option that best preserved Tek's ability to work and work quickly. Not out of their great compassion ::pfft!:: but just out of the concern they alone seem to have had the common sense left to possess...that the Scientist's 'survival-level necessary' labor must succeed.

So like, very long story short, WTAF SkekTek? You could be plausibly be argued to have done that to your own self! Or rather, to have tried to do it to SkekSil only to have it boomerang, because SERIOUSLY WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT.

I mean I DO still have to personally feel for birb, because I've certainly gotten my ass in trouble for failing to lie at a moment when it would have been smart ("Technically" IS SIMPLY NOT CLOSE ENOUGH TO A LIE, my studious friend). I think I'm probably more of a Tek than a Sil, alas. And it's certainly true that once Sil decides something cruel is their best play they won't hesitate for a microsecond to go balls-out for it, so I have like a microsecond of genuine sympathy for Sil on their end of things and then, nah.

But still, dude, WTF. ^^

#tdcaor #dark crystal #age of resistance #skeksis #murderbirds #dumb birbs #scientist #chamberlain #emperor #skeksil #skektek #skekso #skekzok #thinky thoughts #fan theory #HC #allHCarevalid #fridge moments

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