B-but they don't HAVE to kill the roba? They can just keep them as pets and have a plant farm. Please don't make Ordo see his baby roba die. 🥺
First of all, thank you for sending this ask <3
Second of all, anything can happen that you want, honestly! It's Fantasy Space Land, and if you don't want the roba to die, they don't have to die. Simple as that. Ordo can be #1 Roba Dad in our hearts and strike fear into the country side with his Fierce Roba Ad Army. I would personally love for Ordo to get to have a pet he loves and have nothing bad happen to them, ever, you know? I’m less sure if I really think of Ordo as a pet person, but I’m all for letting Ordo have good things. I would absolutely pick that scenario if that’s what I needed from my fiction at the moment, and if that’s what you want to see in yours, by all means. Go wild!
Personally, though (and just personally), I prefer this scenario in the way I understand it best, which is that Ordo is going to have to make peace with the necessity of it, and I really like the idea of a narrative that has him having to get there. I appreciate it best when I think that he’s someone people wouldn’t expect to have these problems, but that he might get attached despite himself, that it might take him under the ribs anyway, and how he and everyone else has to deal with that. And killing an animal you’ve taken care of all its life is a hard thing when you haven’t been raised to it! That’s true for people in general, and the clones have all been bred and trained for the ability to attach, too, and humans have never been limited to other human-shaped creatures in that regard. I just like when a plot-point continues to apply even in situations where it’s inconvenient, you know? (So the Nulls especially being prone to getting overly attached to the stock animals is something you will need to pry out of my cold dead hands.) I appreciate the idea that the people around him will be gentle with him while he adapts, even if he’s maybe not gentle with himself, and definitely if he’s not expecting gentleness, and I appreciate that Ordo probably wouldn’t ever lose his own gentle compassion for his animals, even as he learns how to care for them and then let them go. I want to see him learn where that balance is. His family needs to eat, and that matters to Ordo in particular quite a bit, I think. He’s a caretaker. It’s what he does. He’s not going to ever enjoy or look forward to killing his animals, but I can see him learning to treat it with an air of respect, compassion, and gratefulness, and that matters to me.
(He can have three space pigs, though. As a treat. Fi dubs them the Squad. Ordo doesn’t realize that includes him.)
