N: Hi, I’m Nicole.

R: And I’m Robin, and this is Books That Burn, where today we are discussing “In Fury Born” by David Weber. If you have read the book “Path of the Fury”, also by David Weber, this book is a novel-length prequel for “Path of the Fury” plus a heavily edited and extended version of “Path of the Fury,” so, if you’ve only read “Path of the Fury,” read “In Fury Born.” You have twice as much book and it’s really great, uh, you might be able to follow our discussion anyway.

N: Oh, you definitely will, but also, just - just so everybody knows, “Path of the Fury” is much more, uh, relationship- and like story-based, for lack of a better phrase for that. “In Fury Born” is much more heavily military-, experience-, and specific-combat-based, and tactical- and strategy-based, so...

R: It is thirtieth - thirtieth century military in space and on planets.

N: Oh yeah, absolutely, it’s a sci-fi book in the future but just, as far as like - as far as like, emphasis is concerned, if your favorite thing isn't tactics and strategy, cool.

R: Maybe just read “Path of the Fury”.

N: Well, just be aware that “In Fury Born,” starts out with a lot of that.

R: I definitely liked the “Path of the Fury” half better than the first half. Yeah. Anyway, that digression aside, uh, let’s get into our factions. I guess it’s not really a digression, it’s an important thing. Getting into our factions, we have Alicia DeVries, also known as Alley. We have her family. We meet specifically her father and grandfather, but she also has a mom and some siblings. Then there is Tannis, who spends some time as Alley’s wing, this is a term from the book. Then there is Charlie Company in the Cadre. There’s Uncle Arthur, who is the second in command basically to Emperor Seamus II of the human empire, uh, across a bunch of planets. There is the Rish, which are definitely, technically-not-lizard-people.

N: Oh, they’re kind of like alien-elephant/dinosaur[s].

R: Well it’s like, they look like lizards, but they’re not like lizards and part of.

N: They’re not - yeah.

R: Yeah. The book is like, “These are not lizards, but people keep calling them the lizard people, and they should stop, but they won’t because i'm writing this book that I wrote that they didn’t.”

N: [laughs] This, yeah, like, this - this is these - this is a slur that humanity uses against this ra[ce] - this species, but just so you know - but just so you...

R: And they don’t like it but they also don’t actually exist.

N: Right, but just so you know, “I didn’t write a race of lizard people. I wrote a race that developed differently, and happens to look like reptilians on Earth.” Like...

R: ...Yep...

N: ...Ok.

R: Uh, and then various other military and intelligence officers and so many - so many branches of military. Uh.

N: It’s not so many branches, it’s like three. It’s less complicated than our military.

R: It - I don’t read military sci-fi.

N: It - you don’t have to read sci-fi, or fiction.

R: I don’t read military books. It was so many, it was so many.

N: Ok, I - I just want to put in here, for people who do know anything about our military, there are three. There is the - the - actually, no.

R: [laughs]

N: I think there’s just two. There is the regular Marine force that we hear a lot about. And then...

R: ... Oh you mean in the book right?

(5:27)

N: Yes. I’m not gonna detail the...

R: ...I thought you were describing the U.S...

N: ...U. S. military...

R: ...military.

N: No, that’s not helpful...

R: ...Ok...

N: ...to our discussion.

R: Ok.

N: Anyways, there’s the Marines that are the - you know the - the regular force, the military force in this scenario, and then there’s the Cadre, who are the select, elite, uh, better than our current equivalent of the Navy Seals, like they are literally augmented to be better than everybody else at what they do, not like they’re better than...

R: ...Mmhmm...

N: ...but like, you know.

R: More capable.

N: There we go, yeah.

R: Literally made to be more capable. They start out with people who are mentally and physically more capable, and then they modify them so much, uh.

N: Yeah, so, when Robin is overwhelmed by the amount of military branches, there are two. Recon and Raiders are specific assignments and specific like, um...

R: [laughs] I’m so glad you can keep track of this.

N: [laughs] Oh my god. Recon and Raiders are specific - are specific like, duty tours, for lack of a better word, they’re specific jobs. They're not even branches, they’re just certain jobs that are like, Recon goes in, gets the info, and then the Raiders come in and actually put in the heavy firepower, and you can be assigned to one or two at, like - one at a time, but you can go on a tour as a Recon or as a Raider, but you’re still a Marine. That’s it - that’s - that’s it. That’s all the structure that we’re - we’re given in the book, ok. Anyways, moving on.

R: I'm so glad you’re a co-host, because otherwise, if it were up to me...

N: ...It would just be so

R: ...our cast would be…

N: ...it would just be so many...

R: ...non…

N: ...military branches?

R: Well, this podcast would be nothing but uh, paranormal romance, urban fantasy books.

N: Oh god. I don’t even think we’ve had any of those yet.

R: [laughs] We haven’t had any of those yet.

N: Um, gotta get on that...

R: ...uh, but this - this is...

N: ...because I don’t know what we’re looking for.

R: This is why we are co-hosts with overlapping but distinct tastes. Anyway.

N: Anyways.

R: Uh, you can tell who wanted us to read this book.

N: [laughs] I love this book very much. It’s very good.

R: Anyway, uh, so, uh, our ma[in] - our minor character is uh, I wanted to talk about this because for me the dizzying array of characters where they get a bio that ranges from one paragraph to two pages, and then at the end of it, they get shot in the head and die, almost invariably, they occasionally die in other ways. Sometimes it’s lasers, sometimes it’s a bullet, sometimes it’s an explosion. They - there are so many, and it’s like, “Yeah, and he grew up on this planet, and loves this thing, and has like a partner, or whatever,” or like really, you know, “His mind is really set on this battle, and like looking and seeing how like their people are doing well,” and then they die. And it’s about fifty/fifty whether it’s someone in the group we’re rooting for, or not, uh, it might lean like seventy-five enemies, and twenty-five people we like, but still, it’s - it’s very abrupt and there are too many to name. There are almost too many to count. I did not go back through this 800 page book to count all the minor characters who are introduced and then killed off.

N: [laughs]

R: Did you have any thoughts? Because I know I suggested this topic.

N: Yeah, so here’s the funny thing about this topic. This wasn’t traumatic to me. In fact, this was just - I thought personally - and I thought this even when I was younger and read - and - and like, read “Path of the Fury” for the first time and “In Fury Born” didn’t even exist as a full thing, uh, it didn’t register to me as traumatic. In fact, I thought it was a great way, without spending like a million pages giving complex background details to people, I thought it was a great way to kind of humanize the faceless fighters on both sides. I thought it was great. I thought I could - it - it - and it’s - and it’s done in a way where you very much as a reader, or at least I very much as a reader, didn’t feel like Alicia was just and - and Charlie Company and everybody was just slaughtering the bad guys. Like no, everybody is a person, aliens included, and it - it sets that up really well, I thought, in a way where you totally could care about them even if they were a second ago just a faceless horde that was out to kill the character that you spent the whole book caring about. But like, I thought - I thought it was a really good way to do it, and it made sense to me, and it made everybody feel like a person, and it made it more understandable why they were there. They weren't just there to be the bad guy in a book. Like, no, they had motives and - and decisions, and opportunities and a goal, and it made them feel very real. And for Robin, it had almost the opposite effect.

R: Yeah, so, for me it made - so like I started playing a game of like, “Oo, how soon are they gonna die?”

N: Oh no!

R: Uh, so - no cause I would like - based on the first two sentences of their introduction, I would be like, “Ok, the style of this person I’ve never heard of before that is outside, not safe in a building, and not safe...

N: ...who’s in the death zone ...

R: …not thousands of miles away, uh, doing something remotely or at a com station in space, like if you’re not in space, and you’re not deep in a building talking to someone important in the hierarchy politically, then you’re going to die,” and I got so I was right, pretty much every time, about whether or not they were going to survive. The first couple I was like, “Oh, wait, but I thought this was a new person we were gonna like and - and they’re dead,” and that happened a couple of times, um, in a really particular battle in the early bit in - in the first part of the book, and then...

(11:33)

N: ...on her - on her recon tour...

R: ...yeah, on her recon tour, and uh...

N: ...I’m helping...

R: ...so glad you know when that is, and uh...

N: ...she never actually got to do - well - no I’m not gonna, it’s not...

R: ...Yeah...

N: ...part of this. It’s fine...

R: Nope, it’s not, it - it just - it just made me feel like numb and like I couldn’t get into caring about any of these minor characters, because it’s like, “I should, and - and they’re dead,” I mean also part of it is that I - both of us read very quickly, and so I am spending eight seconds getting to know these people, because of how fast I read.

N: [laughs]

R: And - that - there’s not time for this like, deep emotional arc when I am spending five to fifteen seconds getting to know everybody, um.

N: I would argue though, that the way it affected you, even if it was just ten seconds, it’s actually probably better...

R: ...No like...

N: ...than it...

R: ...It’s a...

N: ...that you didn’t have time to form a deep emotional attachment, because otherwise...

R: ...Yeah, like...

N: ...the trauma for you would be worse.

R: Like it’s good writing, but this is one that I wanted us to talk about...

N: ...Yeah...

R: ...because what it did to me as a reader was like - I mean, if you’re trying to get the reader to - in a, um, low trauma way get some of the feeling of like the numbing effect caused by all this war and death, like as someone who, where that is not part of my regular life, at all, like I went to my first funeral this summer, like, and I’m in my twenties, like that’s just not part of my life, at all. And anyway, and so having - having something that created this like, this build up and this numbing effect, in a way that isn't actually inflicting a trauma on me, I think is really good writing, it just meant that I was like, “We can’t pick any of these minor characters individually because it’s just a parade of them”, so.

R: Moving on to the Charlie Company massacre. This was - this is - this is like - this is the biggest battle with the most description, at least in the prequel section, I think in the whole book.

N: Yes..

R: Goes on for a long time, uh...

N: ...I mean it’s a very...

R: ...because...

N: ...lengthy...

R: ...Yeah, it’s very a lengthy section, and it is, um - they did a drop onto a planet for a rescue operation. They were trying to rescue I think 600 people, and get them out of what was supposed to be a lightly held um, group of terrorist thing, where it would be maybe 250 hostiles total.

N: So...

R: ...It ended up being 2,000 - they lost 96% of their people. Not trying to recap the plot...

N: ...Right...

R: ...just trying to frame...

N: I...

R: ...They - they lost 96% of them, and saved 97% of the civilians.

N: So, I just wanna, give a couple of framing pieces for this. They - and we’ll talk about this a little bit too, they - so there’s a couple of - of pieces here that really really kind of impact how big of - of a magnitude this was. This was in - this was while Alicia was in the Cadre, and they are the elite. They are the best of the best. They are the best because they skim the surface of the best of the people in the military, and pull them in for this assignment, and then, kind of like we stated already, they also use technology to augment them further to make them better fighters, better soldiers. So, the Cadre takes losses. That happens on most assignments anyway. But this is one where it was supposed to be - it was - it was more difficult, more, um, more risky of a mission, so they weren’t gonna send a different branch, it was just - it was just difficult enough that they sent the Cadre, but it was supposed to be easy for them.

R: Right.

N: They also - they also had things like there’s two configurations that the Cadre can go under. There’s the heavy and the light configuration. Heavy configuration is heavy fire power. Light configuration is - is light fire power and weapons that will wound or knock out or incapicitate instead of kill.

R: And uh, higher...

N: ...They were trying to...

R: ... mobility...

N: ...and, higher - yeah, and higher flexibility. They - they went - under light configuration, because they were trying not to kill civilians, and then they got shot out of the sky.

R: Yeah. Uh.

N: Like they - they literally were configured to go in almost under - almost stealth and the enemy knew where they were from the beginning. Like the - the trauma for them - the trauma for the survivors - the trauma for the people who made it to the ground, started with this - this thing where they should have been rela[tively] - like not safe, they are going literally into a - a hostile situation, they’re not safe, but relatively speaking, this was a safe mission.

R: And when we say the drop...

N: ...or should have been...

R: ...we mean the drop...

N: ...like a...

R: ...from a vehicle in the upper...

N: ...think of a parachute drop...

R: ...in the upper atmosphere. Yeah.

(17:05)

N: Yeah. Think...

R: ...They had things...

N: ...think parachute drop except future tech where you don’t actually have a chute. [laughs] Essentially.

R: You have a chute, but it’s not a parachute. Uh.

N: Right - they - right. But visually like, that’s what’s happening. So they’re literally dropping from the sky and - and they should have - if their intelligence had been correct, they should have just landed on the group and then had to go find the enemy and then slowly made their way in. And instead, the trauma for the people who even made it to the ground, which by the way was less than seventy, it was like sixty three?

R: It was sixty three, I just did the math. They lost 77% of their people just getting to the ground.

N: Yeah, so like the - the trauma for the survivors started right away because this was supposed to be a relatively safe mission, and then they just lost everybody almost immediately.

R: And because of future tech, they have um - they can see the dots for everybody in the company...

N: ...Mmhmm...

R: ...um...

N: ...Yeah...

R: ...so everybody...

N: ...they know as everybody dies as it happens.

R: Yeah. They didn’t like, get to the ground and then find out there were few of them. They - and - ah there’s this um, like this is a - a - slightly edging on a plot thing but it is just like, such um, emblematic of like the confusion, and um, just stress and - and everything caused by that. Um, the computer is trying to keep track of who is in charge in the chain of command, and as people are getting wiped out of the sky, the icon keeps like, switching from person to person to person then soon, sometimes before it can settle on the next person in the chain of command, that person gets killed. And Alicia was in charge of a squad, and ends up leading what’s left of a company.

N: Yeah.

R: Because everybody above her, all of the NCO’s, died.

N: And - and it’s - and the - the interesting part with this book and with this character, the trauma that we’re talking about is not actually the fighting, we’re specifically talking about the trauma of losing these people that she like, eats, breathes, sleeps, fights, hangs out, like even more I would almost - I would argue, than - like our like, realistic military situations in the - in our current real world, these are the only people that she does anything with. And it’s designed that way, it’s designed so that you're not just serving with them for however long. You’re not just in the same place as them, you're not just training with them. These, the people in the Cadre are supposed to - and especially your own wing, your own buddy, your partner, and your squad, uh, you’re supposed to know those people so well that you can almost just know what they would do in any given tactical situation with - almost without having to ask, especially as wing - as wings. And there - there - that’s highlighted in a - an interesting way, that actually kind of more highlights the trauma also. Alcia and her wing, are the only pair - they’re the only wing pair who make it - who survive. Everybody else loses their buddy, and there are multiple points in the - in the - in the raid where - in the infiltration where we - we get these snapshots of people who have lost their wing, being paired together as temporary wings. And I say temporary, because all the ones we know about die.

(20:34)

R: Yeah.

N: So like, yeah, there’s that.

R: See our - see our minor character spotlight for more information on that.

N: Right. But you - but there’s very much this - I think the author actually does a really good job of setting it up as “These are not the people who have been paired together for years. They don’t know each other that well, but they still, because of how closely they live and train, and work, and breathe, and function together, they still trust each other and are ok to be each other's wing. This - there’s no getting to know you.” And - and that is almost - and - and that really I think highlights how bad it is to lose all of these people, because these 600 people were our main character’s world.

R: 275, 600 was the hostages.

N: Oh, sorry. These less than 300 people, but it’s - it’s - it’s like - for her, it’s like losing extensions of herself. Especially as a squadron leader.

R: Yeah, and so like, specifically for everyone in her squad, and then generally for everybody in the company, and like the Cadre like, in these books like, you don’t leave.

N: No.

R: You can - you can be deactivated, but you can’t retire. You can never actually be done, um, that’s important for plot shenanigans...

N: ...Yes...

R: ...but as it relates to the trauma, it’s not like she’s gonna do some tours and have this like, super deep bond and then leave them. There - there’s not.

N: No, they’re buddies for life.

R: There’s not - by design there isn’t supposed to be a...

N: ...Right...

R: … “And then I’ll leave you.” Um, plot things mean she has that anyway, but it - it’s - it’s not meant to be something that you leave, and to lose everybody like that, it just - like they’re - it is handled so well, but like, there - I just - don’t have words for something that big, and that terrible. And, yeah, like the - the one thing I would say with this is like, it is so big, it is such - with how it’s treated in the story, and like, how we’re going through it and everything, with all the characters and the play-by-play, and all this attention to it, like attention in terms of like where the book has its attention not like drama, it um, it - there are other, bigger massacres, elsewhere in the book, but this is the one where she loses her people.

N: And this is the one that is the most described.

R: Just as a - a thing to mention because, we - we really, really hope that, uh, none of our listeners have been through something like this, but if you’re thinking of reading this book, I would like to mention another massacre that she goes through, which is her entire family being killed. In most books that would be the biggest trauma in the book, in this it’s not.

N: In this one it doesn't even rank, I think, top three.

R: It doesn't even make top three. I’m mentioning it because hopefully it is the biggest trauma possible that anyone listening to this might have been through, and if you’re thinking of reading the book, I wanted to give you that content warning, because hopefully you have not been in a 96% casualty situation, and if you are, uh, that - that really sucks. I have no idea whether or not this is a book you’ll like.

N: I will, on that note, as - as kind of stated in our minor character section, this is not Robin’s experiences, in any way, shape, or form.

R: No, like it’s - it’s not, I...

N: I enjoy this book because despite having not actually served in the military myself, it’s super relatable.

R: Yeah.

N: I - full disclosure, kind of, trying to keep it to our no real people stories, but also, I - I actually looked at serving in the military, because the military felt relatable.

R: Yeah.

N: So it is...

R: ...It felt like a place...

N: ...entirely...

R: ...you’d want to be.

N: It felt - it felt like it would be, just more of the same, felt familiar, and if - if you have gone through some things - I don’t actually know if this would be cathartic or just more.

R: Yeah...

N: ...um...

R: ...we...

N: ...but for me - for me this book is - is very good - it’s a good way to kind of work through things without it happening to me again, so we’re not - we’re not saying, “If you’ve gone through something like this, this book is inherently not a good one.” I’m saying, I’m just saying that “Your mileage may vary, and if it sounds like something that you would enjoy, this book is full of it.”

R: Our last topic is betrayal and broken bonds of loyalty for Alley.

N: Yeah, so this is - this one is building off of our topic two, so just in case somebody skipped that one, because of the inherent content, just a small recap without really talking about it. Our topic two is about a particular massacre of Alley’s - Alicia’s, uh, combat company, everybody she fights with, almost. So, the betrayal here is, that they were set up.

R: Yeah.

N: That’s all I’m saying about topic two, because if you skipped it for reasons, I understand. But...

R: ...Mmhmm...

N: ...these two are inherently linked and there’s no real way to, like, separate them, because you kind of have to know what we’re referencing.

R: Yep.

N: So, um, yeah. So here’s the thing, this is an ongoing - there - there’s several moments where she finds out or figures out different pieces of this betrayal, and different parts of its magnitude, but [sighs]. It’s a building, ongoing, over-time, trauma.

R: She starts out thinking it’s bad, and then keeps finding out that it’s worse.

N: Yeah.

R: And, this is the one thing like, again you know, 30th century, drugs, and coping and everything, but this is the thing where she has PTSD-like symptoms. I only say “PTSD-like”, because we are not diagnosing a fictional character. Um, but - where she has um...

N: Where she has anything to process later, that she - we see her process on screen.

R: Yeah, and, I mean, for her, you know, she feels like this betrayal is still happening, which I hesitate from describing as PS - PTSD because it is literally still happening.

N: Yeah.

R: So, I don’t know - if it - falls quite in that same category. We don’t have like “Twenty years on, she still thinks everyone’s lying to her.” Like we don't...

N: ...No. We don’t...

R: ...have...

N: ...we don’t get any of that.

R: We don’t have something like that to make it be like “Ok…”

N: ...Well, here is...

R: “...this is that.”

N: Here’s the thing that I...

R: ...What made you...

N: ...see as her...

R: ...say this is PTSD?

N: My - the reason I’m categorising it as that is because, even the people that she does trust, that she explicitly trusts and does not believe is part of the betrayal and part of the conspiracy, and part of any of this, she doesn't confide in...

R: ...Mmhmm...

N: ...because what if she’s wrong, and what if they’re the problem, and what if they betray her.

R: Yeah.

N: And the thing is she explicitly talks in the book about how she knows it isn’t them.

R: But it doesn’t matter.

N: It doesn't matter, because it’s still happening to her and she can't pull back and she can’t get allies - and the only - the only, even, “ally” that she ends up enlisting, she doesn't enlist. He basically says, “Hey. I’m helping you now.” And there's' this whole thing where he has to convince her to let him be a resource for her.

R: Yeah.

N: And he - and - and he drops in, saving her life, and that’s honestly probably the only reason that she even included him, because he could have let her die, and if he is part of the conspiracy, he would have.

(28:26)

R: Yeah.

N: But - like, there’s something there where we watch her say, “This is still happening, I can’t.” Even though, it’s explicitly not in that moment. And she even knows that it’s not, she says that it’s not, and she still reacts as though it is.

R: And like she refuses to speak to anyone from intelligence because...

N: ...Just point blank.

R: Yeah. Just...

N: ...Straight up...

R: … “I will not speak if they are in the room, I'm not saying anything else.”

N: Yeah, and also part of this - the - this broken bond of - of trust, it’s not just the betrayal of the company being set up. It’s not just - it’s not just the betrayal of - of her company dying and of - of the person going unpunished. It’s also the fact that, in the Cadre, their loyalty is to the Emperor, direct[ly] - they don’t - they’re above every other military branch and personnel. Their rank equivalents are two ranks higher, so a sergeant in the Cadre is two ranks higher, equivalent, than a sergeant anywhere else, like, they are explicitly the emperor's weapon, and they are the most heavily armored. They are the most heavily trained. They are the most, uh, heavily augmented. The - they have the most money spent on them. They have the most time, resources, the only thing they don’t have, uh, is that they are not uh, they are not the biggest unit, because their selection criteria is so - so specified, and so um, uh, so specified and so strict.

R: Mmhmm.

N: So in this case...

R: ...So selective.

N: So selective, yes. That would be the word. So, in - in this case, this betrayal is - is not just that somebody in the company did - or in the - in the military or in the political um, structure, betrayed them, but it’s that when she finds out who it is, the emperor himself says “We are not persecuting this person, because of these reasons.”

R: “Prosecuting”, we’re not prosecuting this person.

N: Yeah, that one. So there - there’s just this very - it - it’s...

R: It sets up this dyn[amic] ...

N: ...the - the betrayal - the betrayal is that the person that she quite - quite literally has pledged her life to, said that “The lives of everyone in your company and everyone who died for essentially no reason, they were set up, there was no - like that was it. That was the whole point...

R: ...Yeah...

N: ...Ah, keeping this person alive for these reasons, is worth more to me than everything that happened.”

(30:59)

R: And, he tried to do the...

N: ...That was the betrayal...

R: ...like, “I definitely value all of Charlie Company but also this comes first.” And at the end of the book, like it - it’s - it’s bad enough that at the end of the book he apologizes to her, and is like, “You’re right, I - I said that I was honoring Charlie Company, and I did not,” and, this just - just with how this is handled, I - I’m so glad that for a betrayal and revenge story, you have the people involved for - involved in making it worse, apologize for their part in making it worse. Because, a lot of revenge narratives will just have like everybody bad getting killed, and they’re like - have - having the people who should have done something admit that they should have done something different, I just - I think that it - it really makes it a much better story, and so well handled. Which, I know we’ll get to in the wrap up, but, I really like that for this depiction of this betrayal, it does come full circle. Yeah, uh, speaking of it being that her PTSD if she has it seems to be more from the betrayal - thought I had something, I don’t think I have something. Uh, I think - Oh! I wanted to say that I think she has tech that makes her body react when she’s in a war zone, while as far as I can...

(32:33)

N: ...In - in general, it makes her body react in general to threats.

R: Just - just in general, yeah - yeah, like you know, people - anyone doing a medical procedure on her needs specific things so that her - the tech in her body won’t kill her because it thinks she’s been captured. Like, that - like yeah. Um, and as best as I can tell, they have drugs that make her mind not get PTSD, like, ‘cause otherwise there’s no way that anybody could...

N: ...I think that is - I think that’s actually handwaved in the book, because, I think from at least the way I read it is that it’s not that the drugs stop them from getting PTSD...

R: …’Cause it’s definitely not like “Oh, Cadremen get counseling.”

N: No, but I - but I think - I think the implication, especially in the way it’s talked about, is that the selection criteria for who makes it into the Cadre is so - like I think that that’s one of the things that they try and gear toward and the implication is that, “In the future we will have the ability to tell who will be trauma[tized]…” like they pick people who enjoy the combat and don’t take damage mentally from it. They pick people who can - who, for a lack of a better word - can just handle that without needing to heal from it, and I think that's the - that was the implication thatI got was that they're just so selective, that you don’t get PTSD from the things that you do. Which I think honesty is part of why...

R: ...It’s definitely a handwave but...

N: ...It - it is definitely a handwave, but I think it’s also why we see Alley have more things that look like PTSD from that betrayal, because the combat part she’s cool with.

R: Right, but...

N: ...the things she has...

R: ...she wasn’t...

N: ...to do are fine. The training is things she enjoys, she has fun, it’s enjoyable.

R: She wasn’t selected for the Cadre based on her ability to have her confidence in everything that she’s built her life around shattered.

N: No, right, yeah, like - like that’s - like she wasn’t - she didn’t - she didn’t sign up to be betrayed. She did sign up to fight. She wasn’t selected for her ability to - resistance to - to human wounds, like emotional wounds. She was selected for her ability to be ok with the combat. I - I think that’s what it is. I - I don’t think that her - now, that being said, uh, it is much harder to - I’m sorry, much easier to take less damage from - from something if you are augmented so that you get instant healing and you get instant pain drugs, and you’re not taking physical effects from things in the moment because your “pharmascope” is - is handling it for you. Like that’s definitely a thing that probably contributes to this also, but yeah, I don’t - I dont think that it’s that they have magic, anti-PTSD drugs, I think it’s that.

R: Mmhmm.

N: They’re just set up and intentionally set up to give them the best shot possible, including just with who they chose.

R: That makes sense.

N: But also, I would like to point out, that unless the story is about PTSD...

R: ...Because it’s not...

N: ...most - most sci-fi combat books, don't have their characters show that off, um, that’s just kind of a - a thing.

R: Huh, yeah you’re more familiar with uh, war sci-fi...

N: ...Yeah, like they...

R: ...not - not my prefered genre.

N: Yeah they - that’s - that's just like a general like, they don’t - they don’t have people who just are fighting it, or whatever - like, they don’t - they don’t have people who have that, in general. And - and I don't actually know if that's just an easy plot device that authors just kind’ve are like, “Ah, I don’t want to write that in,” or if generally speaking ,they - it’s like “Well, it’s the future. We’ve solved that problem,” like I don’t actually know what the logic is there, I just know that it’s pretty consistent.

R: Or if they’re just not thinking of it...

N: ...That’s true...

R: ...because that’s not why...

N: ...that’s true...

R: ...they wrote the book.

N: That’s not the book they wanted to write. And - and also, there are a couple of authors who sidestep that particular thing, but as a general rule, you don’t see it discussed or talked about, or really demonstrated very well.