00:11
I'm about to make a conjecture and you tell me what you think because it's just all coming so
what did what did we decide um level was i think it was lawful neutral lawful slash neutral evil
yeah okay i was going to go out on a limb and say that sort of as a result of this i didn't
originally think this but as a result of being raised by level he was also raised by mrs piper
which i think is probably what helps him from really leaning say evil but i think he comes out
as a very lawful person because he doesn't really want to break any rules but he we'll get to how
one of the first things he does is you know break a rule right but like right right right but when
he arrived to oxford he's lawful yeah he's lawful and i don't think he's good because i don't think
he understands necessarily like the idea of either benefiting others or his own benefit is
not really there at most he's trying to make sure that others see him as something right like i
don't remember if it was useful or like belonging right but like that's the goal and it's not really
bigger than that so it doesn't go evil but i wouldn't necessarily say it's good it's just
if anything it leans good because other people think it's good um right yeah okay and so this
i'm saying it comes from there with level maybe saved a little bit by mrs piper because i would
probably give her like a a general good status whatever yeah like she she doesn't know she's
she seemed to be the only like person who gave any form of yeah unreciprocated like
unconditional love to robin yep so uh but then right so then essentially if we're watching this
three by three you know grid and he's sort of lawful good ish which is very similar to what
like anthony rubin is you then get chaotic possibly evil right griffin showing up and
this sort of wavy hesitancy suddenly snaps for a moment and goes yeah complete chaotic right like
just not necessarily good or evil because he has no context but he just goes chaotic and
you realize goes rogue oh you're like you're acting the role of lawful but something in you
wants to wants to be chaos right like there's another thing okay i see where you're going yes
yes yes so um so you know you can you can carry that further towards the end which you know spoiler
03:00
yeah uh he blows himself up and the whole building of babel quite literally quite literally um
which is like i mean it is chaos at that point right you could maybe argue he's like adhering
to this like benefiting society as a whole but he's no longer working to continue benefiting
society he wants he's just like i'm gonna go out with this bang in this moment and be done
with all of it and that is definitely a not necessarily for better or for worse but it's a
very individual focused piece to act out the sort of social message he wanted to send
yes yes yes and that puts him so lawful good for anthony chaotic evil for i don't want to call him
evil but like if in the case he is positioned opposite of anthony maybe chaotic evil he's still
chaotic neutrally range i think but yeah yeah professor level lawful neutral so he's on the
other side of griffin there which makes sense they're they're diametrically opposed they are
and so robin gets sort of swung thinks he's going lawful maybe lawful good whipped towards chaotic
question mark and then by the end has kind of taken his own control so he's definitely
chaotic at this point he's reacting he's he's doing what just whatever he thinks right is
the way to do it even outside of like societal norms he's ripping up those he'll just take the
whole system down right like there's no there's no there's no hesitancy for that um and i think
at that point he also shifts away from the good and is yanked back down towards like the neutral
and perhaps even into evil but it just depends on what you want to i don't know how how we feel
about that yes yes yes um yeah i think what he did and and this is just my opinion tell me what
you think about it but i think the way he went is an ultimately a very selfish act that
was definitely chaotic no doubt about it but i think it was very selfish like his at that point
of course there might have been some overlap between his selfish desire and you know what
he hopes to bring to the society afterwards but like basically he just wanted out like none of
the people he loved at that point were in the world i mean only victor maybe and victor just
had way more will to live than robin who was like well this is the only way which i think
06:00
i think he chose because he wanted to be free from the guilt of letting griffin die letting remy
die letting anthony die in some other ways right like he it's not him per se but like he
couldn't help yeah and yeah at this point he's so loaded with all the guilt of
of not acting not being good enough not being able to do it yeah quote unquote good enough right
and whatever good meant he didn't do what anthony did he didn't do what griffin did he has not done
any good um at least in his eyes and this is the only chance that he can be good yeah at least in
his mind and and and that's a very selfish intent i think and holds zero responsibility
for what would happen to the world after yeah um he's just like i'm out bye yep i that is i think
a great way to put it i i think the the naming of it being selfish i want to pair that with
kind of removing what might be an immediate negative response to hearing the word selfish
from people not that not that you necessarily had it but the i don't know if it's selfish in
what people might assume is a bad way because i don't know if the moral judgment is fair or
reasonable there yeah yeah yeah and and you you picked up my very neutral tone yeah the use of
selfish right but others might not yeah um so when i say selfish i don't know what's a better word
but like it was serving his interest first and foremost selfish is the word right it's just that
people have attached it and i some of that conversation has switched where you know
there are things that you should be selfish on right in order to survive thrive and then to
also care for others right um but i i just wanted to note that there and because you identified it
though you named it right is this sort of selfish yeah that falls more in like a character value
category or like a like the the sort of goals and things that they wish to achieve or are struggling
with i can't let go of like their regrets and their so these features and i i don't have any
good examples of the the systems that do this which is regrettable um maybe if i can think of
some maybe we can share them in the show notes or something but there are systems that have you
instead of like an alignment you set what your like connections with other characters are or you
09:06
set your values and your regrets or your the things that inform your character in a way
that changes their actions but doesn't their primary motivator yeah yeah exactly it doesn't
it doesn't put a label on them as good and now like you have to which i think is a good thought
exercise but to to think about and struggle with what what is meant by good right versus evil and
what is lawful versus chaos because you can get really nodded in that you can remove that by
looking at it and we say look at robin and say well what what are your values you know what do
you value well it turned out that you actually really started to value this sense of like family
and belongingness and that was ripped from you yeah right so what do you do right like like that
is a fair struggle you don't there isn't necessarily a right answer there's no rightness to it it's just
yeah yeah yeah what you can do if we are to adhere to this definition of you know
which would you rather hurting others for your own benefit or hurting yourself for others benefit
in this kind of simplified spectrum i think he falls into taking like hurting others for
his own benefit yeah this which matches up with the whole sort of i think matrix here of yeah level
lawful neutral yeah you know neutrally and griffin sometimes swinging like chaotic into evil
by definition instead of him being able to go towards uh anthony right on this on this
the lawful alignmentness right yeah we see that anthony just dies um and and we see that the
others don't necessarily i mean griffin then also dies in like a hail of gunfire
but uh that was such a that was such a while like the way anthony went is like so much less
on no so much more unceremonious yes and the way oh yeah yeah griffin went out with a bang but in
like yeah the most stylistic thing anthony was like when when the dust settled he was dead like
yeah yeah and it was like wow what an absolutely anyway um yes i do i think it takes his like if
we say the good evil track it brings that away from good in the sense of like trying to benefit
others and it becomes much more self-interested because i think i think that's always been the
case for robin like yeah he always chose what um benefited him in and and this is not to blame again
12:06
like like this is not to sound like i'm blaming him on anything i think it's purely survival instinct
right like he had never felt safe the entire time he was alive yeah and um the um only way
he would ensure his survival is to you know um appease others in order again to ensure your
survival other characters who didn't have to ensure their own safety that hard probably had
other choices but robin i think um always had to act um and and he never really kind of grew out
of that phase right like some characters like not not not specifically about baba but like some
fictional characters do frequently like the character arc of going from only caring about
you and your immediate family to like caring about the whole like nation right it's like a typical
fictional character hero act yeah but he didn't go that way no i think he was he he started to
see differently he grew up in different ways but at the end of the day he was always about how
to resolve his own internal conflict rather than about others yeah his his internal conflict was
the source for the direction of his decision right yeah i think so yeah i think the growth
bit and this would you know maybe require more reading but i think it was it was a change in
control he had control of this decision right like he was doing it you know for you know perhaps
himself it was selfish as an act but the growth arc is is control from him his agency to make the
decision we managed to talk for like nearly an hour about this again i was going to say at the
end well i'm glad we got to talk about babel for another hour but it was all part of my plan from
i managed to convince three people to buy babel oh really okay i have recommended it i haven't
heard if anybody's picked it up yet but that's pretty impressive two of them is uh nai-chan
and maki-san from okay all right they both bought the book they said that they haven't started or
like completed yet uh but they bought the book i convinced one other person to buy the book i don't
know if she had actually finished it um but we'll see nice all right i'm that's exciting so we'll
we'll see if we can spread this uh true truly still like a fantastic read right really i mean
15:05
like i mean we can talk about for quite literally in our like hours and we didn't even i i feel
guilty about this we did not even get to the women cast um yeah yeah i mean i well i admit part of my
brain did consider the women cast and i think i would actually adhere more to your assessment of
the character development on these ones um but i don't know do you do should we should we go into
at least i mean yeah well we're here right i mean we quickly said mrs piper was a wonderful lady
that was about all that's it for the show today thanks for listening and find us on
x at egode science that is e-i-g-o-d-e-s-c-i-e-n-c-e see you next time
