so, i know book is bringing up shan yu and the volcano analogy to posit an idea that that's why river was tortured, and i do feel that's mostly what it's about, but i also feel??? like there is more to it than that?? this may just be the part of my brain that likes overanalyzing simon and his relationships lmao.
but like. book's role on the ship is Often to be prodding people with these moral and philosophical questions and ideas, often mal, and sometimes with jayne, and it's Often when he is trying to get them to Consider something.
to my recollection this is really the only time i can think of that he Does This with simon. (for the record, i think we would have gotten a lot more Book As Figure Asking Moral Questions to various members of the crew on a person level if the show had continued. i wish i could've seen him try it with wash. it would have gone hilarious. )he is poking at simon to get a better sense of who he is here, albeit much less sadistically than niska is to the man he's torturing, lmao.
and i'm not convinced it's a coincidence that this exchange happens right after ariel. book wasn't around for it but has clearly heard about it from Someone (i don't think simon himself, based on this exchange). and he tries to play it cool at the end "ah, yes, i'd forgotten you were moonlighting as a criminal mastermind, got your next big heist planned?" but i'm not convinced he actually forgot.
like. idk. he looks at simon with such an Intense Discerning Gaze here
and i'm not totally sold on this, but the best i can make sense of it is that he is a little Concerned post-ariel that simon is becoming too 'hardened'/used to criminal life/willing to do some at least vaguely morally ambiguous things in the name of protecting river and this is (at least a little bit) his way of trying to read simon on that front. book doesn't get in the crew's way when it comes to crime, even helps with some of the less 'unsavory' parts (and fully leans in at the end of this ep lmao) and tries to be non-judgmental while still Morally Poking at the crew a bit. but the difference i think is that simon, by planning this heist, was becoming way more actively involved than he ever was before. the rest of the crew, when comitting crimes, is more or less behaving like book has always known them. it's subtle, but i do think simon is Changing quite a lot from when the crew first met him, and book agrees. so now he's poking at him a bit.
simon's Volcano Edge is river being in danger or hurt and that is Always Constantly Happening. even when it's not happening in acute moments, it's happening on the broader scale of they are always on the run from people trying to get her back and hurt her more. he's in a constant state, imo, of figuring out who exactly he is and what lengths he's willing and able to go to for river, and one of those things does turn out to be "yeah i'll help fucking rob a hospital why not." it makes sense to me that after ariel, book might be growing - concerned is too active of a word, but somewhere in that general area, that simon is growing too willing to do certain Not Great things in the name of helping and protecting river. (which, lmao, simon was already on that train in the pilot, but i don't think book is counting that on account of a big active crisis where everyone was making some desperate choices.)
this is not meant to suggest i think book genuinely thinks simon would like this volcano's edge idea - he's not a sadistic person and book knows that - but he's testing simon out a bit here because he Wants to understand him and, i think, wants simon to look at himself a little bit. not because i think book thinks he's Evil for planning a heist, that's not it, and as evil mastermind plans it was bold on a broad scale of context but pretty tame in terms of what they were actually trying to accomplish. but because book sees how something like this could be a Slippery Slope for the future. (and now i'm thinking about the dead or alive script again sjjssjs i'm gonna talk about it at some point.) so he wants to see what simon thinks about it.
and simon could not be less interested LMAO. i don't mean in the conversation itself, or book being there. he seems fine with book being there while he's working, even showing him river's scan more closely, and i don't think he Necessarily minds that book is talking to him about something Only Kind Of Related. but for simon's part, for all his "being proper" is emphasized in this show, when he thinks something is bullshit, he fucking says so lmao. "sadistic crap legitimized by florid prose. tell me you're not a fan."
and that is, as i said earlier, simon's very black-and-white way of thinking talking. i happen to agree with him, in this instance, or at least agree with his assessment, but that's still very much an "i find this thing is sadistic and therefore bad and therefore there is exactly zero value in examining it with any sort of nuance or consideration."
like, him asking "what if you don't live near a volcano?" isn't, to me, him genuinely taking it too literally - he's pointing out one of many holes HE can easily poke because he finds it ridiculous. (it's also hilarious, as is book smiling patiently at the snarking lmao. you gotta think he's constantly like "wow, i'm surrounded by children, actually.")
also, simon's response to me, makes it very clear that though he Has changed and will continue to do so, he has not strayed from the Core of who he is. (which is someone who is yes, thinking in very black and white terms, but also has a very strongly developed sense of justice. something i want to talk about more at some point but this post is already so goddamn long lmao.
what's interesting is though book is using this analogy to both make a theory and test simon out a bit, he himself, while he probably disagrees with the actual practice of 'holding someone over a volcano', so to speak, he seems to consider it a more genuine philosophical idea. simon sees it as a faulty and disingenuous justification for hurting others, book sees it as something that may actually be possible in the sense that pain can be revealing - but ultimately something that should not be done.
