Bathorys Daughter wrote:I can't believe how much rationalization is being used here to justify murder. So she is allowed to kill anyone simply because she has had an especially bad day? She didn't kill a cow or bull, she killed another sentient being. That's not unlike the shoguns of old. It was immoral then and it is immoral now. Would you be so quick to excuse her actions had she killed a regular, like Kath, for example. She can be really blunt. What if she was talking to Phix and said the wrong thing and was disintegrated for it? I guess that would have been ok too. Who knows what is the wrong thing to say to Phix right now. Heck, she is supposed to be teaching restraint. And she has had thousands of years to prefect that ability yet she still does this? What hope does Shelly have? It wasn't "suicide" and she wasn't protecting anyone or the library. I can't believe I'm alone on this.
I also find this to be a disturbing new trend Paul is taking here.
If you are 20 years old or ten thousand years old, emotions are still hard to control, especially when it involves our children
No one is saying that Phix's actions are good, just understandable from the facts that Paul has always placed at our feet.
First off, we do not know that the Sphinx is dead. It is not human and human norms do not apply here (Also it could have been a projection of the Library or another being to give her a target other than her hand).
Second, Phix was in an agitated state at the time (She just learned that she was TRICKED into giving up her son and lying to her grand daughter by her (unknown at the time) daughter-in-law). In legal circles this can be considered a window of temporary insanity
Third, Phix and the other supernaturals have said from the start that none of them are domesticated and can turn on others at the tip of a hat.
Put all of this together and we see the pattern has been there from the start, Paul is just showing us that the consequences of these facts are more drastic than we are used to by the old examples of Bud in a tutu that used to be a WWII submarine.