something something chrollo steals nen abilities and morena grants nen abilities.
chrollo steals abilities to hoard while kurapika steals them to use once, or grants them to others.
kurapika teaches a class of 20+ people working for the upper class how to use nen in order to force a stalemate- in other words, stagnation. morena "teaches" (infects) 20+ lowerclass nobodies to wreak havoc, cause anarachy, and ultimatly bring about change.
kurapika's cause being a just one that happens to benefit a bunch of awful royals while morena's cause is objectively, profoundly malevolent while also inconviencing those same awful royals.
morena wanting societal change for the worse while halkenburg wants it for the better. kurapika wanting personal justice (arguably for the better) chrollo wanting personal justice (arguably for the worse).
halkenburg coming to terms with being willing to sacrifice the lives of his own (consenting) people for the betterment of society. morena being willing to do the same - for the opposite cause.
both chrollo (the spider) and kurapika struggle to justify doing the same. personal justice does not make their loss any easier to bear or grief any easier to withstand.
kurapika, chrollo, morena, and halkenburg all having their own sets of disciples.
all of them being attached to biblical imagery. all of them fighting for wildly different causes.
all of them completely willing to throw away their lives.
something something something it's a heavy cross to bear
i get the feeling there are a lot of people here who haven't read / don't remember the detailed account of the kurta massacre from kurapika's backstory in chapter zero.
Transcript: Several years prior to the 287th Hunter Exam, the Phantom Troupe approached the Kurta Clan for their valuable Scarlet Eyes and massacred all 128 villagers. It's reported that family members were made to face one another and stabbed multiple times, with their heads severed while they were still alive. Pure clan members had their eyes gouged out, while those who married into the clan had their eyes squashed and sustained more brutal wounds than the others. The adult males had the most wounds, but it's assumed that these were sustained during a struggle before they were captured. Those who were not related by blood to the clan were said to be mutilated in order to set an example. After this, the heads of those with Scarlet Eyes were all severed successively. Since the scarlet color is caused by anger and makes the eyes more valuable, it's reported that the Troupe members mutilated the children in front of their parents in order to intensify the scarlet color. Lastly, a message was left behind that read: "We'll accept anything you leave here, but don't ever take anything away from us."
This chapter is the foundation of various theories involving Sheila, the Phantom Troupe, Meteor City & The Bum Incident, the Kurta DC connection, etc. that get circulated but IMO are still not widely understood. Most of these theories (some more compelling than others) aim to prove that PT didn't really do it- perhaps they were manipulated by Sheila, or transmasc Pariston, or Tserriednich, or whoever- or that the Kurta secretly deserved it (ew. stop with that). I'm not against shedding more light on those events or adding some kind of Togashi twist to them, but I think it's necessary to understand the immense weight of the Phantom Troupe's crimes before we can talk about any form of redemption. Personally, I find the Troupe to be a fascinating, endearing, and sympathetic group of characters (some more than others... I love you forever Paku), but that doesn't mean I'm about to say outright that they must be innocent or redeemable.
I can understand the dissonance between the Troupe we've seen and the Troupe we've heard horrorstories about. But I think that dissonance is literally integral to their characters- you're supposed to find it hard to reconcile. The characters within the story find it hard to reconcile (the banality of evil, etc). Some fans will lean on that behavioral/moral inconsistency as proof of innocence, which kind of simplifies the whole thing in a way that does their story a disservice. Because sometimes people that do awful things can be affable and charming, have things that they care about and people they love. And, none of that stops them from getting up to evil shit; it's the paradoxical nature of human morality.
That's not to say that there can't be more to the story. However, I believe that if you're trying to show the dots not lining up, it's better to point out how the brutality & mechanics of the killings mimics that of Sarasa's (see chapter 395), and what that says about the original members willingness to partake in them, rather than relying on the "but they seem nice!" defense. Because again, even if someone like Tserriednich paid them off or manipulated them or whatever- those were very intentional killings. That was a meticulous fucking massacre. (So yeah, it's understandable why Kurapika was so fucking pissed when Uvogin said he didn't remember the Kurta at all, when he presumably spent hours torturing kids in front of their parents so that the boss could get the prettiest eyeballs possible.)
And I'm really truly not here to dunk on anyone who likes the bad guys (i once more profess my love for Pakunoda), IMO it's just important to get the full scope of things. If you're going to support Spider Rights, you should be able to acknowledge Spider Wrongs.
no cuz like. where are you getting your information on tserriednich's personality, ms. prudo.... it could be secondhand information, but keep in mind that tserriednich's uhh peculiar tastes are apparently not common knowledge (not common enough that kacho / kaiser apparently put a record of his misdeeds on her exposé letter). so if she got the source secondhand they must have at least been someone close to him. to me this doesn't come off as "i've heard he's like this': i'm inclined to say she's speaking firsthand.
if we're operating under that assumption, this could either mean that morena has had at least one conversation with him, probably around her inauguration as the heil-ly boss ( tserriednich knows her name, so it's not like she's been completely anonymous this whole time). OR it could mean that he's known her since before either of them boarded the black whale/ before she took over as head.
^this is all we've seen from tserriednich on morena (so far). all i can really note is that:
1) he's kind of pissed (are whoever's guts that are decorating his floor just a product of his "normal" nightly diversions, or did he just kill someone in reaction to the news about morena? if it's the latter then holy shit.)
2) he knows her name (addressed above, tserriednich doesn't seem the type to learn someone's name unless he actually has some investment in them)
3) she's not important enough / enough of a threat to distract him from his silly little nen shenanigans. this could imply that he doesn't view her as a threat at all, or that he's simply too wrapped up in what he's doing right now. we know the latter is very in character for tserriednich- he's a bit of an obsessive freak- but i do think it's interesting to note that he's also been putting theta on the backburner, despite her very obvious betrayal and emobdiment of the thing he hates most "lying women".... a category morena could coincidentally also fall under.... idk i just think it could be a cool parallel between morena and theta; two women who're trying to bring tserriednich down but he's incapable of viewing them as people, much less threats.
4) she has a butler?!?!?! this is actually the most definitive proof i have that they knew eachother- i don't think we've seen a butler amongst the heil-ly ranks. and tserriednich suspects him of hiding her- or, "helping camoflauge." this initially made me think of voconte, the man behind the translocation ability which connected the hideout to various rooms on the ship. but his former job was listed as "mercenary trasnporter," which is a pretty far cry from butler. idk, maybe the guy was moonlighting. besides that dead end, i can't think of anyone else that we know of that could be helping "camoflauge" morena.
regardless, the fact that tserriednich knows enough about morena and the people around her to put together a working theory as to what she's up to seals the deal for me. they had to have known eachother from before the ship. to what degree remains a mystery.
It occurs to me that a pandemic breaking out on the whale ship would be an interesting way to comment on current events. Who it affects, how they deal with it, and whose plans are completely derailed would be fun to see. Also it could bring Leorio more directly into the story since he is in the medical department. If it happens, remember some anon from tumblr called it.
i mean, we've already got Contagion as a metaphorical disease outbreak, so why not? it's not hard to imagine on a vessel crammed full of 200,000 people that some sort of epidemic starts to fester. regardless, i assure you the medical staff aboard the whale are about to have their hands full and leorio is going to have the worst residency imaginable :D
