The ethics of Bolaire's parasitism is so fascinating to me, and especially fan reactions to it. Because unless any of the other characters are vegetarian, which they don't appear to be, they consume other living beings far more often than Bolaire does. He seems to choose a new body every once in a while, whereas the other characters might be consuming parts of a body every day.
No one in the audience commented on the life of the sheep eaten in the shepherd's pie. It's purpose in this world was to die so that omnivore humanoids may live. But Bolaire yoinking the body of a murderous thief relishing in the cruelty of his work is met with revulsion. When really in the grand scheme of life in the world, why is one more moral than the other. The sheep probably didn't even hurt anyone. It really just desired to eat grass, get some good rest, be safe and warm, socialize, and mate.
And I say this as a thoughtful omnivore. I do try to consider the lives of the plants, animals, and fungus I devour, and the lives of those who grew and procured them for me. My partner is mainly vegetarian, occasionally pescatarian, and lived with vegans for years so we eat that way a lot, too. I feel octopus are too intelligent to want to eat, but for completely arbitrary cultural reasons feel differently about pigs. I stopped eating quinoa when I learned about the horrors of the food systems that put it on my table in the Pacific Northwest instead of its indigenous lands. I keep a painting near my kitchen that merges the imagery of a human heart and a sprouting bean and reads "Con Respecto y Gratitud para los campesinos que nos proporcionan todas las fruias y verduras." [With Respect and Gratitude for the farmers who provide us with all the fruits and vegetables.] It reminds me daily of the human hands that even my plants passed through. Bolaire harvests his own food.
On a zoomed out utilitarian level, it seems like a magical artifact parasitical theater mask with a vigilante code of ethics about his food is probably overall better for the state of life on the planet than everything it took to raise industrial chickens, grind up the unwanted bits, and dehydrate them into the deliciously horrible noodle soup packet I'm currently enjoying. Besides the chicken, how many other humans suffered dire hardships in that process? Our revulsion is mainly rooted in the fear of the apex predator that something may want to eat us the way we eat others.
And then there's the whole child actor angle of the way that acting industries devour actors for their own ends. Sometimes the roles subsume the people who play them, or even their off-camera public persona becomes more real than their own private self. A puppet for the role that The Public needs of them in the great play of culture. Especially to highlight and change the systems as they are.
As Ursula K. Le Guin put it, "Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality."
A few people remember who she was in everyday life, alive in her own body. Most of us will remember the public mask of the part she played in shaping speculative fiction and the whole publishing industry to be open to more than just the imaginations of comfortable cishet white men. A woman fascinated by the draw to utopian ideals and also who is sacrificed to that dream. Her outlook very shaped by the Tao Te Ching and the mask of the author Lao Tzu passed down into legend long after the myth ate the man. Legacy in its own way a form of cultural parasitism that feeds on those it needs to sustain its ongoing existence.
Absolutely fascinating and captivating stuff.
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