FOREIGNER: Discussion Post #6, Spoiler Edition

[krait]

If you have discussion points for Chapters 9-13 you wish to bring up but which include spoilers, please post them here. Then link your comment in the general post, so those who want to avoid being spoiled can do so!

Comments

[cheyinka]

I feel Bren is being too hard on himself regarding his human relationships. (A convenient target for his self-anger to vent upon, perhaps?) With the power of spoiler!foresight, I have to say: aside from Toby, maybe, none of Bren's human "relationships" are anything I'd want to die thinking about. D: All of them seem to be really good reasons to take up skiing on really remote mountains and a job as far away as possible.

Sure, but is it impossible he could have had, I don't know, friends in the department or something? He has a strained relationship with Toby because their mother preferred Bren, an emotionally-abusive relationship with his mother because she prefers him and he's rarely on Mospheira, and a not-even-friends with very-infrequent-benefits relationship with Barb, & sure, I probably wouldn't want to die thinking about folks like that, either. But I think when I realized, hours later, that my dying thoughts had been of Anything But Them, I'd have gone the route of "and I didn't even have thoughts of humans to console me, because all the humans I'm close to suck" or even "and I screwed up all my human relationships so badly I couldn't even comfort myself with them", not "and I didn't even think of people, because all I want is to be alone in the cold" :(