Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2020
- Messages
- 1,220
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 keep the show going please
Please Bully Me, Miss Villainess! - Vol. 6 Ch. 82 - I'm Sorry, My Lady
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
Active member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2023
- Messages
- 32
BETRAYAL! Yes yes shut up I know she is doing it for Evie's sake.
BETRAYALLLL! HOW COULD YOU!
Ahem... Hyped for next chapter.
BETRAYALLLL! HOW COULD YOU!
Ahem... Hyped for next chapter.
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2021
- Messages
- 239
Nope. The part I actually cared about was reading comments about the chapter I just read. Instead what I saw was 80% placeholder comments and the other 20% were 4 words or less, or didn't really say anything. And if you think what I said there is being an asshole, your skin is too thin to be on the internet.
ummm . . . . Isn't Linda, like, a 300+ year old elf? With a whole lot of power in her own right, as well as enormous experience that even Yvonne with her game-lore can't match?
Sure, she's decided to sign up as a loyal support for Yvonne (and her mother before that), but does that mean she has to forfeit her right to make decisions for herself, based on her own experience and judgement? Particularly when she's serving someone who (as far as she knows) is what, 6 years old? A remarkably mature, intelligent, well informed and sensible 6 year old, but still a child.
I'm really not sure why this is so controversial . . . Changing your mind about something after considering it for a bit longer seems like it should always be allowed, particularly when it's something as significant and life threatening as this.
And don't forget that this is happening /after/ Elsa made a decent case that she might be able to handle the curse better than Yvonne. Given that, why on earth is it so horrible and terrible that Linda decided to change her mind?
Member
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2023
- Messages
- 15
fire linda immediately for listening to this pink haired twerp and directly disobeying an order
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2023
- Messages
- 2,022
It is not her place to decide on anything. This is not a freelence social support gig. She has a job to serve and protect which requires a lot of trust from her LONG time employer. She throws all that out the window the moment she swayed by the words of an outsider. If all your workers start to do what they think is right, you and your plans will be fucked in short order.
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2018
- Messages
- 993
First, in what comes to changing her mind: it would've been non-controversial if she were, say, a friend of the family just staying over. But she is not, she is an employee under direct and clear orders by her superiour - and it matters not if said superiour is 6 or 96, as long as they're recognized as capable of giving orders.
Employees following the orders of their superiours is expected even today, but it holds even more true for a noble house's servants in a roughly medieval setting.
Sure, she's a trusted servant, and these get to bend the rules a bit - but she's not acting on her own capacity, or reinterpreting the vague orders given to her, or anything of the sort, she is acting in direct violation of what she was told just seconds prior.
That's what comes to legal obligations.
As for moral obligations: she is quite literally complicit in a poisoning of her mistress. Being a part of a household presupposes a certain degree of trust, and looking out for other members of the household when threatened like this is a given part of said trust. Thus, this trust is betrayed by her (even if we suppose that it's a poisoning with an absolutely safe magical sedative that doesn't have a significant risk of the victim not ever waking up, as is the case in real life).
In any remotely realistic setting, Linda would be losing her position in the blink of an eye, and likely either face criminal prosecution, or be hunted by the noble house she betrayed.
If it's such a good case, why not bring it before Yvonne, instead of betraying her?
Active member
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2019
- Messages
- 62
Honestly I wish someone put a sleeping drug on me as a "Betrayal" because I'm gonna do something dumb. But nah, no one poison me like that. Why I want that? Because sometimes Human think with their emotion first and not their brain so sometimes other people need to force me to stop. So I will say this is not "Betrayal" just something annoying.
Well that's too bad, because those two are separate statements with different purposes, and I was asking for your subjective opinion. In my subjective opinion, a lie does not turn into a betrayal if it under a certain threshold of consequences (and some other factors). If any lie and deception is betrayal, then there's no point in having separate words for concepts of "lie" and "deception", since "betrayal" would fully cover their meaning.
If Linda decides to use this situation to sell the duchess' comatose body to old geezers from the tower for a million gold coins, would that be betrayal fuller stop? Or would that be a betrayal of the same severity as the one she's committed now?
If betrayal is binary, i.e. it is either not a betrayal, or it is a betrayal "full stop", then that would mean that any betrayal should warrant the same kind of reaction and response
A digression from the topic, and I guess we'll know once the next chapter comes out, but does she? Or would she be like, "That is my miscalculation. I incorrectly gauged the authority I have over Linda and the authority she has over me, but I appreciate her taking care of me and preventing me from commiting self-harm"?
I kinda conceded that it is a betrayal of a certain kind and severity when I said that it is a "betrayal of trust", and I am not talking about somebody else's potential feelings when experiencing betrayal, that's like totally not the point I am making. "Without any other qualifiers" is an important part of what I am talking about - later in your post you describe how not every betrayal needs to be seen in negative light and that there's nuance to the betrayal of this particular situation. If you were to reduce this situation to just "betrayal", you would lose every bit of context that would allow you to make a proper judgement
@danvolodar 's position is that "Linda and Elsa betrayed Yvonne, and since they weren't known for betraying Yvonne before, the manhua's writing is inconsistent and bad". You see what kind of polemic you can create if you were to reduce everything down to a single loaded word?
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
- Messages
- 93
both of these involve a child with Elsa being the younger meaning you you are saying she should just ignore the child because they are a child and she is an adult (fair), but then say its completely fine for her to turn around and just decide this other child who is less mature, less informed, and less capable of doing anything right now is completely in the right and is the only option which makes no sense by your own logic
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2023
- Messages
- 93
Neither your nor my subjective opinion means anything when we're talking about an objective fact. Your subjectively not liking something doesn't suddenly make it untrue or invalid. Your question was
to which you even admit yes that is the case
since your own words say betrayal does not always have to be something with massive weight behind it. Something you are now arguing against by saying
something you said did happen by admitting
to me showing you the definition of betrayal is to violate trust with you clearly stating in your own words this was not an inconsequential violation and as such as heavy weight behind it
You just proved you have no idea what you are talking about here given you just gave the definition of a synonym
Even synonym itself has synonyms. Every language, English included, has synonyms and antoynms and english has loads of them with lie and deception simply being two of betrayal, and while I won't sit here listing every synonym in english just to prove my point on how what you said makes no sense I will say "betrayal" has over a dozen synonyms that are not even lie or deception including "to stab in the back", "double-crossing", and "disloyalty" all of which mean to betray but I will specifically show disloyal to prove my point of Linda
It says right there being disloyal is betrayal. Full stop. There is no arguing "well I don't agree in my subjective opinion" since at that point I can simply say I subjectively don't agree with your opinion being right and think its wrong which is equally valid by that same logic hence why we don't use that in arguments of objectivity.
Nice strawman. We both know betrayal has levels severity so by making up a false premise, attaching it to me, and trying to tear it down as ridiculous is a strawman through and through and is called a logical fallacy for a good reason. If you're going to argue something, at least make it make sense
This not only has zero evidence to even suggest this is the case, but is also arguing "et tu Brute?" when Julius Caeser was stabbed to death shouldn't be a betrayal either where he only responded famously with "and you, Brutus?" since she literally says
Which is a direct mirror of "Et tu Brute?" and looking at her face she is anything but forgiving right now. And why would she? For all she knows Linda is about to put her lover through torment via a curse that will not even allow her death reprieve by her own confession. There is no reason right now Yvonne would have any reason to forgive Linda ever in this moment or in the future without Elsa doing some massive convincing and even that is not a guarentee given Elsa is part of said betrayal. To even suggest she should be thankful to Linda for making her lover suffer an unjust fate both Linda and Yvonne were forced to witness the misstress slowly wither from knowing what would happen is beyond the point of reasonability and just pure contrarian for the sake of it even when there is nothing to support it and everything to oppose it.
This is just admission of everything you have and continued to argue against I will just say
Yes you are.
Plenty of qualifiers have been shown in express detail, you just subjectively don't like them since they go against your point of "Linda did nothing wrong even when I admit she actually did" so disregard them and then ask for more qualifiers when you mean qualfiers that prove your argument which don't exist as what Linda did was objectively bad. We explained why it's terrible from every possible angle and you refuse to accept that the qualifiers when applied actually make it worse, not better, for Linda instead.
As I just pointed out, no one but you is being reductive to point of making it so that "betrayal = treacheous scumbag". I personally gave her every possible good faith argument I could give and, as you say here, am the one who said betrayal is nuanced with context mattering to why they betrayed someone. That doesn't mean its not magically betrayal just because they had nuance. It still is betrayal.
There is a concept in writing called the anti-villain which is the mirror to the anti-hero. Where a anti-hero does good things for terrible reasons, the anti-villain is their foil being someone who does terrible things for the greater good even if it means they will be hated. That has nuance but that doesn't mean an anti-villain is no longer a villain. If I kill 1 000 people to save 100 000 people that does make me a hero or a saint. It makes me a mass murderer who did what I believed was the best for the greater good and suffer the consequences of my actions knowing what I did was the difference between 101 000 people dying due to inaction and only 1 000 dying instead.
What Linda is doing here is following this concept. What she is doing will potentially save two people (the misstress and Yvonne), but at the cost of someone's life (Elsa) or in other words trading the lives of one for two instead. That doesn't make what she does any less criminal or abhorrent in Yvonne's eyes by any means. It just gives context and nuance to her actions as well as showing us her actions are likely from a place of cherishing her employers' lives. So she betrays them and rips Yvonne's heart out doing it to make her suffer the greatest pain she can imagine just to say she protected her at the end of the day.
This is why I didn't join in on the arguing perspective as objective since that is what I am showing here. From Yvonne's PoV this is a heinous act that can never be forgiven no matter what happens, yet we see from Linda's this is likely an act of desperation to save those she cherishes. It doesn't make her actions right, but how the picture is painted is different from two angles hence why I keep showing how objectively what Linda did had good intentions but was fucked up in how it was executed and is absolutely betrayal even if added nuance simply gives us better understanding of why she did it.
You are doing the exact same thing by reducing betrayal to a single word, removing all context and nuance from said word, and then complaining no one is taking her actions in context to understand the nuance while dismissing when people do as it goes against your argument. I even explained that betrayal isn't a loaded word in reality. Its a neutral one. We only think of it as loaded since we often see it in loaded contexts, like this one, but it can even be used as simple as "I betrayed my own ideals" in which it is not loaded at all. You can make a polemic of anything by refusing to listen to a word anyone has to say, making up logical fallacies like strawmans, and then resorting to just making things up in disgression.
I told you I don't want to join your perspective as objective nonsense argument as I clearly showed above why it is a fool's errand
Objective fact about subjective definitions, sure. Several people in this thread say they don't consider what Linda and Elsa did a betrayal, does this mean they are objectively wrong according to your objective unsourced definition, or would that mean that there's no universally accepted boundaries of what constitutes a betrayal, and that the topic is inherently subjective?
Do I? The sentence quoted does not even have the word "lie" in it.
My hair is blonde
I just told you a lie. Is that a betrayal?
Do I need to draw a diagram to stop you from inventing new meanings to my words? By my own words, that something should have some weight to it for it to be considered a betrayal
Do you though? "Betrayal full stop" tells me that there's no middle ground to interpreting betrayal. But I am glad that my "strawman" was helpful in convincing you otherwise.
I would like to note that Thesaurus does not list "lie" and "betrayal" as synonymous to each other.
Keeping her safe and staying loyal to her mother's wishes? Does not sound like "nothing to support it" to me
Now I know you're being disingenious. My point from the very begining is that "there's nothing to suggest that Linda's actions are inconsistent with what we were shown of her prior to this point". To put things into perspective, my knee jerk reaction after reading the chapter was "the bitch should be fired and exiled", and only mid-discussion, after considering the fact that Yvonne is a bloody toddler, and that Linda is subordinated to Yvonne's mother first and foremost, did I start thinking that maybe there's a merit to what she's done. But, once again, my personal feelings about Linda's actions have nothing to do with whether they are consistent within the manhua's writing.
Is a figure of speech, with "betrayed" used for dramatic effect, to make it sound more loaded and accentuate negative feelings about doing something not in line with one's beliefs.
Said word is eight symbols long so there's not much information you can fit in it by itself, and intrinsically has significant weight and negative connotation (it is not a neutral word) unless supplied with clarifying context. Meanwhile the situation in the manhua involves urgency and severity (there are souls at stake, maybe the whole dukedom, or worst case scenario, the whole kingdom, and there's not much time left to make a decision), different levels of authority (we do not know what kind of contract Linda has with the duchy, what orders was she given by the duchess and how much free agency she has), their motivations, their personal feelings towards one another, their personalities, and then there's the act of betrayal. If you were to condense all that into a single word, you will lose most of the information conveyed, and the single word chosen was "betrayal", which is by far not the most important part of the situation.
Besides, @danvolodar makes nuance of his use of the word perfectly clear, and he is entitled to see this act of betrayal as negatively as he wants. It is when the betrayal made into the sole aspect of the situation, with everything else discarded, and examples of past betrayals being made into the only acceptable proof of writing being consistent, that is where I have disagreements.
Story of my life man, nobody listens to a word I say, resorting to instead inventing whatever the hell they want from anything I write
Like that one time when my position was made into "Linda did nothing wrong"
But you did anyway, unless you joined because you wanted to take some cheap shots at "Linda did nothing wrong"
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2020
- Messages
- 1,108
Thanks for the translation!
Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2023
- Messages
- 17
Ok I’m too mad and that stuff but like.. there is one thing that is really bothering me
Linda disobeyed Evie because.. there is someone else that is willing to bear the curse, so she did that to Evie..
But like.. isn’t Evie already WILLING to be the one bearing it..?!
Like.. this isn’t about “having someone willing to do that for her” it’s more about Linda’s own desire to protect her (which’s would be understandable if Evie got really mad after that)
Linda disobeyed Evie because.. there is someone else that is willing to bear the curse, so she did that to Evie..
But like.. isn’t Evie already WILLING to be the one bearing it..?!
Like.. this isn’t about “having someone willing to do that for her” it’s more about Linda’s own desire to protect her (which’s would be understandable if Evie got really mad after that)
Wow - I mean, maybe it's just me, maybe it's just the culture I was brought up in (apparently Australians make lousy servants?), or maybe it's just, you know, the whole arc of the last several hundred years of Western philosophy, but this idea that as an employee she needs to just do what she's told regardless is just ridiculous. It'd be laughable, only it's actually pretty scary to think that people would argue like that in this day and age.
It doesn't matter what role she's playing, what kind of contracts or agreements she's made, none of that removes her right to self determination. The fact that she's an employee doesn't mean the only ethically acceptable option for her is to be subservient to her employer. And don't try and wave around things like legal obligations - no modern legal framework anywhere would support that kind of argument, it's literally not legally possible to sign away your basic rights, any contract that attempted to do that would be nullified as soon as one party decided to challenge it.
Of course, this isn't actually a modern setting, but it's also clearly not an attempt to portray anything like a coherent historically representative "medieval-ish" setting - you can't just insist that everything in this story has to be interpreted through the lens of medieval ethics and morality (or rather, your idea of what medieval ethics and morality might be). This is explicitly a setting based on a modern game, targeted at a modern audience; it's also explicitly a setting with magic, demons, spirits that possess young girls and turn them into horny cat girls . . . and, of course, powerful, long lived and inscrutable elves.
Which is where Linda being the character she is comes in: sure, right now she's acting as a servant in a human household, but she's doing that by her own choice, and for her own reasons. As soon as her own priorities come into conflict with what her employers want it seems entirely reasonable for her, in character, to basically go "okay, I guess this was fun for a while but I'm going to do my own thing now, thanks." And who are these pesky humans to say otherwise?
At this point no one aside from the author has any idea what's going through Linda's mind, and why she's making the decisions she is. Maybe she has really well founded reasons for taking this course of action - maybe she has secret knowledge that lets her know that Elsa will be perfectly safe, and she /will/ actually be able to destroy the curse once and for all. Or maybe she's going to use this as a chance to get Evie somewhere safe before revealing to Elsa that she's actually not going to help /either/ of them try to kill themselves, because what the hell kind of stupid idea is that?
And what the hell kind of idiot would think it was a bad thing for someone like that to change her mind if she thought it was the right thing to do?
Now, all that said, if/when her actions right now come to light I'd be surprised if Evie's family still wanted to keep her on as a servant. Her actions may even be criminal (by whatever legal standard applies in this game-derived world). So far I don't think they would be - using sleeping pills on an unruly child in an attempt to keep her safe would be pretty borderline in the modern world, but whether it'd end up with criminal charges being laid would depend on both the outcome, and the level of risk involved (from the sleeping pills /and/ from letting her go through with what she was planning to do). When you're doing stuff like this there are consequences, and there's always a risk those consequences might be dire.
But frankly, all this talk of betrayal is like . . . whatever. Someone said they'd do one thing, and then changed their mind - the person who was relying on them is now sad and disappointed, or angry and frustrated, or whatever. Betrayal? Maybe. Does it matter that much? I don't think so. What matters is why she changed her mind, and the impact of her actions. Maybe one of those impacts is that Evie never trusts her again - so be it. Maybe as a consequence of all this Elsa ends up cursed and ultimately dead - welp, sometimes that's how things go when you're making decisions about life or death matters. Much sad, many tragedy.
What does all this betrayal and stuff matter compared to that? Why on /earth/ is everyone getting so hung up on something that's ultimately so trivial? And why on earth are so many people hanging their little hissy fits about it on the "fact" that Linda doesn't have a right to do these things?
I mean, obviously a good story can lead to heated discussions, but heated arguments over /this/?
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2018
- Messages
- 993
Following orders of your employers is now "signing away your basic rights"?
Sorry, I don't think there's even a need to argue with that line of reasoning, much less the generalizations like "the whole arc of the last several hundred years of Western philosophy is that you aren't obliged to do what you are contractually and morally obligated to do" it relies on.
There are two broad lines of argument being made in this discussion: zOMG betrayal!, and zOMG disloyalty/disobeying orders/being a very naughty servant! Both of those lines of argument got very heated very quickly, going well beyond "oh, this is a sad/distressing/frustrating thing to see happening in this story".Following orders of your employers is now "signing away your basic rights"?
Sorry, I don't think there's even a need to argue with that line of reasoning, much less the generalizations like "the whole arc of the last several hundred years of Western philosophy is that you aren't obliged to do what you are contractually and morally obligated to do" it relies on.
I really don't care abut the betrayal stuff, because it's so completely subjective that it's impossible to argue about. It's all about how each person feels about the events from their perspective, and it's also completely subject to reinterpretation in light of further events (I'm pretty sure Evie would feel betrayed as soon as she woke up, betrayed by both Linda /and/ Elsa; if she then finds out that Linda was going along with Elsa to protect Evie but then stopped Elsa from doing anything dangerous she'll feel pretty bad about thinking Linda betrayed her). So yeah, betrayal probably happened, who was betrayed and how badly they were betrayed is completely subjective and thus not really worth arguing about.
The whole disloyalty/disobeying orders thing really annoys the hell out of me, though.
It should be obvious that in certain (very common) contexts there are legitimate hierarchies of authority and responsibility, and in those contexts it's reasonable to expect people to carry out the instructions of someone who is in a position of authority over them. Those hierarchies are often (but not always) embedded in legal frameworks; any time you talk about an employer/employee relationship, that can only exist in a legal framework of some sort - that framework should define the structure and extent of the responsibilities of both parties.
This is true going back basically as far into history as we have records discussing these kinds of things, and even looking at medieval legal systems you can see that the responsibilities go both ways, and they're constrained by what was considered socially and ethically acceptable at the time. For example, even in something like a master/apprentice relationship (one of the least constrained contexts, since the master was effectively taking on the role of a parent for their apprentices) the master can't order the apprentice to do something that the master knows will get them killed. So even in that kind of scenario disobeying orders is accepted, both socially and legally, if the circumstances warrant it; in a more regular employment relationship the bar deciding whether it would be acceptable to disobey orders is a lot lower.
Linda is a servant, not a slave - she's an employee of Evie's family. We don't have any details about the exact nature of her employment contract, but I think we have to assume that legally speaking she's in the same position as any of the other people employed in the household. There is added complexity from the implication that she's doing it out of obligation to Evie's mother rather than because she just needs a job - I don't recall any details beyond the implication, though. So, she can be expected to follow reasonable orders, and for her employment to be terminated if she doesn't; depending on the details, there might be some legal consequences (either criminal or civil) on top of her employment being terminated.
Because of the sense of obligation she seems to feel, she may be willing to go beyond what might normally be considered reasonable for someone employed as a household servant - I think that's pretty clearly what's underpinning her actions earlier on in this arc, with the way she was helping Evie with various kind of odd things. I suspect this is also feeding into her actions right now, since she seems to be prioritising Evie's safety over Elsa's - we need to see what happens next before we can properly assess that, though.
But Linda has her own agency. She has her own personal desires and goals, and her own set of priorities. Most of the time her role as an employee of Evie's family is probably pretty much neutral in relation to her own priorities, and sometimes it's clearly aligned with them - I strongly suspect her more recent actions, helping Evie go /way/ beyond what you'd expect of a normal 6 year old are a result of that.
And then, sometimes, her role as an employee is antagonistic to her own priorities, and I think that's what we're seeing here - Linda is no longer acting as a servant, she's acting as Linda the 300 year old elf with her own ideas about what should be happening right now.
What's making me seriously irritated by so much of the discussion here about disloyalty and disobeying orders and so forth is that underneath almost all of it is an implicit assumption that Linda, as a servant of Evie's family, simply doesn't have the right to decide which orders she follows, which orders she ignores, and where she draws that line. It's an implicit assumption, and I don't think the people making it have really thought it through - if you asked them about an employee's right to refuse orders in a more familiar context they'd probably see it as perfectly reasonable (most people are probably at least vaguely aware of the Nuremberg defence and that it wasn't accepted with the Nazis, even if the actual legal details are muddy as hell). Some of this assumption is probably driven by the fact that she's a /servant/ - it's not a job modern people are very familiar with, so they're probably assuming it comes with less rights than it historically did; some people are probably even conflating it with indentured servitude or slavery. But regardless of how they're getting to that assumption, /it's not reasonable/, not in any way shape or form.
So, most of my comments here have been an attempt to get people to step back for a moment and think about that assumption they're making.
Note that I'm not saying that Linda should face no consequences for her decisions and actions, nor am I saying she's made the /right/ decisions or taken the right actions, nor am I saying that all the people around her (or even all the readers) should agree with her decisions and applaud her actions. I'm saying that she has the right to make those decisions, and that her actions should be judged in their own right, without any automatic assumption that they're invalid because they're not what she was ordered to do.
And yes, I've been a bit hyperbolic at times, but hyperbola is a rhetorical device that's perfectly acceptable if used appropriately. Maybe you're trying to call me out on that here? If so then perhaps you should /also/ have addressed the non-hyperbolic parts of my argument, rather than saying that the rhetorical device used to get your attention clearly invalidated /everything/ I had to say . . .
We don't really know why Linda has helped Elsa with this plan, not yet - all we can do is make assumptions based on very limited evidence, evidence that was obviously presented in a way that would heighten the dramatic tension.
From a storytelling perspective, the exchange between Elsa and Linda about how Elsa might be able to destroy the curse once and for all was being used to set up a frame through which we'd see their actions here: the author wants us to see this as Linda and Elsa trying to protect Evie from the curse. And they're doing so in a way that on the face of it is pretty ethically questionable, lulling her into a false sense of security and drugging her tea - in fact, the way that Chekhov's Teapot was set up was /so/ blatant and obvious that it felt almost meta, like there was another layer of meaning being set up for somewhere down the line; the way this story is written, I wouldn't actually be surprised by that.
But that's also part of the frame the author has set up for us - /we/ know that Evie has an adult mind inside the 6 year old body, with knowledge of the future thanks to her time travel, and knowledge of the broader context of the whole place thanks to the isekai setting, but neither Linda nor Elsa have any idea of any of that. From their perspective, and particularly from Linda's perspective, this is about a six year old who's trying to kill herself slowly and painfully in order to save her mother's life.
Elsa is in love with Evie, so obviously she's going to want to stop that. Linda cares about Evie's mother, and that care has been somewhat transferred to Evie (though it's not clear how much that's motivating her actions); she also knows that doing nothing will result in both of them dying /anyway/. Given all that, drugging her in order to get her out of the way of whatever they're planning to do is probably reasonable - ethically questionable, perhaps a bit risky (though I don't think Linda would use this method if there was risk of harm to Evie), but reasonable. Particularly given Evie is in fact a fairly powerful magician, even at that age - she could put up a pretty good fight if she had a chance, drugging her ensures that she doesn't have that chance.
But still, the drugging has been framed (so far) entirely from Evie's perspective, which has very much presented it as being a bad unfair no good thing - all the heated arguments about betrayal show that very neatly. And because almost all of the story's action is presented from Evie's perspective we as readers are now left with a cliffhanger, and the expectation that we'll pick up the story when and where Evie wakes up, with no knowledge of what happened immediately afterwards. And because we have so very little understanding of what makes /Linda/ tick, we as readers are experiencing /very/ heightened tension about what might come next.
What interests me is that a lot of this tension is because of the way that the author has framed Linda as a character. We know she's an elf, we know she's powerful (though we only have a very nebulous idea of what that means), and we know she's in her current position because she feels some kind of obligation towards Evie's mother (and I /think/ there's an implication of affection, as well, though I'd need to re-read the whole arc to say for sure - given this is yuri it's easy to read that implication where it's not really intended). But we don't know /anything/ about her background, really, nor what her broader priorities are, or even her specific priorities right now - is she trying to save Evie? Is she trying to destroy the curse? Is she aiming for something completely different? We just don't know.
This lack of knowledge is a specific choice by the author - Linda has had /some/ character exposition, enough that we actually know more about her than about any of the other characters from this timeline other than Evie's mother. And Linda has had a big enough role in all of Evie's shenanigans that she could easily have had more exposition . . . but instead she's mostly served (from a storytelling perspective) as a way to gently nudge the reader away from asking how on earth a six year old could be doing all these things, including ostensibly acting as an agent for her family. Linda has been there in the background, occasionally being referred to by the adults that Evie is interacting with, the rest of the time being a visible symbol of Evie's nobility and importance, and playing a kind of silent watchdog.
So Linda has been set up like she should play a bigger role than she has, and now it feels like she may be moving to take on that bigger role. From our perspective as readers that helps to resolve a bit of a loose thread; at the same time, though, it brings along new tensions, because of our carefully constructed ignorance about Linda as a character.
I've seen a lot of people commenting about how the writing has gone downhill with this time travel arc, but I don't think that's true. This is a tightly plotted story, even things that seem kind of offside serve a real purpose, often multiple purposes - even the much-maligned cat girl episode served to show Evie is uniquely vulnerable to that kind of thing, helped clarify Elsa's feelings about Evie, helped encourage Elsa to be more forward in their relationship, and even gave us (comedic) insight about some of the other characters.
All of that boils down to this: I'm inclined to trust that the author knows what they're doing, has a good reason to do these things, and that we'll eventually find out what that reason is. In this case, I think we're going to finally figure out the underlying point of having Linda as a character. Or rather, I hope . . .
Similar threads
