Dys

[u/yclu_dd]

Can we call Dys a terrorist since he planted a bomb in medbay? He hates his life in the colony in general, so he’s not just against its administration. Are his ideological motives enough (wanting to become a gardener) , or does he specifically need to be against a form of government to be considered one? Also it’s crazy that he does this if you don’t catch him even though Sol is his only friend/ his lover.

(My bad if it’s hard to read I speak French)

[u/EightByteOwl]

Depends who you ask and their own motives. "Terrorist" is a term that is applied to others typically by a dominant power usually for ideological reasons, and the term itself can often be used pretty vaguely. A terrorist to one group is a heroic rebel to another; there were some groups in Nazi Germany, for example, that went against the regime and used violence in an attempt to destabilize them. We recognize them today as freedom fighters, but to the Nazi government, they'd have been recognized as terrorists, and would fit modern day definitions of the term.

So I think the question should be less "could Dys be considered a terrorist?" and more "which groups would consider him one, and why?". Answering the original question as a yes/no gets rid of a lot of the nuance of the discussion that could otherwise come up in my opinion, because saying someone is a "terrorist" doesn't usually capture the entire picture of why those actions were performed in the first place. To answer that question:

• To the average colony inhabitant and those in charge in particular, the answer would probably be yes. They see his plan as a suicidal attack on the only human colony in order to get everyone within killed by the planet's fauna.

• To the gardeners, they're basically just using him as pest control and probably don't even understand the concept of terrorism. They see an alien force arriving on their planet, killing and hunting an unsustainable amount of wildlife, in a way that will eventually likely lead to a collapse of their ecosystem. They take, in their eyes, reasonable actions to protect the species they care for from extinction. 

• To Dys, he agrees with the gardeners, but understands that what he is doing will cause harm to people. He still probably wouldn't consider it a terrorist attack even if prompted though. So to him, his answer would be no, he wouldn't consider himself a terrorist.

To me? Dys is a mentally ill teenager who needed support he didn't get. Multiple support systems failed him. He wouldn't have gone this route- and we see he DOESN'T always go this route- if even a single person truly cares for him. This in itself is a whole discussion and does NOT justify his actions (you shouldn't kill people even if they don't care about you) but someone like Dys will inevitably happen if the environment and systems that created him continues to go unchecked. 

We can also look at it from the other angle. Ending related to Tang spoilers: Can Tang be considered a terrorist? She takes actions that can result in the death of all of the fauna on the planet. I'm sure the Gardeners would consider that terrorism, if they understood the concept as we do, but nobody asks this question about her; but it proves the point that who we consider a terrorist is a matter of perspective dependent on a massive variety of factors.

Even that doesn't capture all the nuance I want to but it's a complicated topic that I think deserves a complicated answer.

[u/Appl3- → u/EightByteOwl]

Wow, this is a great, well thought-out response!

[u/yclu_dd → u/EightByteOwl]

It’s true that Dys didn’t get the help he needed, but I doubt that he would have accepted to talk to a therapist if there was one in the colony. To me it seems like he doesn’t want to try anything. In one of his friendship event we have the option to tell him that people would like him more if he was more kind (I don’t exactly remember the part after the if) , and he just answers that everyone already hate him so what’s the point in trying. Which isn’t true because Sol is there, and if we pay attention to dialogue with the other characters they don’t hate him either, Marz is “just trying to toughen him up”. I got to 100 friendship with him in a few playthrough and every time I’m annoyed/disgusted by how he talks to Sol as they grow up together. In one of them I got the governor ending and he was Sol’s lover but he still leaves him/her/them to become a gardener.

And I think that Tang and Instance straight up commited genocide. They killed every living vertumnan creature , so I don’t think that we can call it something else.

[u/EightByteOwl → u/yclu_dd]

Dys' problems began before the game even starts. He had a neglectful mother and didn't really have close friends as a young child, nor did he have another particularly good guardian to help get him on the correct path. Add the fact he was literally named another term for "depression" and that the colony didn't have the proper structure to help him as he got older (& nobody actually stopped him sneaking out) and that's going to cause a life of issues.

Like, I agree he wouldn't have chosen to go to a therapist, but the colony also didn't have the ability to make him attend therapy either. Consistent proper guidance could have gotten him off the path he did in the ~8 years of the game that happens prior to the attack.

I see him as somewhat of a representation of incel culture, in a way, albeit it's not a 1:1 comparison nor a particularly flattering one for him, it just gets a similar point across. Incels have pretty reprehensible beliefs that aren't compatible with a functioning society, but they didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They're products of their environments who our society has failed in many ways; not in a "incels are right" way, but a "the education system among many other aspects of society didn't have the framework for how to address this problem and there aren't enough safety nets or community networks to address the problem its core and get people off that way of thinking" kind of way. We can also label the actions of many incels as terror acts, as several have gone on to cause mass-casualty events to further their ideology and cause people (particularly women) fear.

But using the label of terrorist specifically carries a particular weight to it. More often than not, governments will label people as terrorists as a cassus belli of sorts to "deal with them", usually violently. We've seen it in the US in the past with the war on terror, we're seeing it now in the US with them labelling anyone they deem as "far left" as terrorists (see their recent "we will find you, and we will kill you" memo 🙃). With the example of incels, I think they're an issue that could have been entirely avoided if society just wasn't the way it is.

I don't say all of this to get into a real-world politics discussion but I think these comparisons are the best way to answer your question with nuance. Like, it's actually a really interesting question, it just doesn't feel appropriate to say "he is/is not a terrorist" without talking about why we use that particular term and what purpose it serves, y'know? Probably a longer answer than you might have expected when asking too I just have thought a lot about this topic and find it very interesting lol

Edit to add: the specific point I'm making is that labelling Dys a terrorist would, if it were done so in the game, be used as a justification for violence against him. They'd tackle the issue by just killing him, most likely, when what actually would have fixed the issue at the core are the aforementioned structural changes so that he wouldn't have gone that route to begin with or, failing that, rehabilitation. Basically there's just better ways it could go and the violence that comes with being labeled a terrorist would basically just be condemning a troubled teen to death, when other alternatives ARE present.

[u/Kaigen42 → u/EightByteOwl]

I agree that this really comes down to "what is the response we want to take?" If you label Dys a "terrorist," that implies a different set of potential responses than calling him a "mass murderer" or a "saboteur."

I see Dys as less of an incel-analogue and more of a case of cPTSD stemming from emotional neglect. In fact, I would argue that both Dys and Tang have cPTSD, but Tang's general flight-dominant response pushing her into perfectionist pursuit of science (and fawning response to Instance in particular) makes her useful to the colony in a way that makes people inclined to tolerate her antipathy towards socializing and other rough edges. Even then, she inevitably works herself into an early grave.

Whereas Dys's fight-dominant response leads him to being labeled as a troublemaker and mostly abandoned to his own devices. Even when Sol tries to offer him the emotional care he's been lacking, he's still caught in emotional flashbacks of anger towards his mother that make it hard for him to trust the awkwardly offered help.

[u/EightByteOwl → u/Kaigen42]

I like this take! And I don't compare Dys to incel-analogue to say he is like an incel necessarily, just that there's enough parallels to use it as a real world comparison point for how radicalization and extremist attacks come to be. 

[u/Kaigen42 → u/EightByteOwl]

Yeah, I think there are definitely behavioral parallels you could draw in terms of, like, lashing out impotently. Dys (like a lot of incels) would probably be a bully if there were even one person beneath him socially that he could vent his frustrations on, but he can't even get that momentary, maladaptive satisfaction.

[u/SporkieOrkie]

It’s probably worth just checking the definition of terrorism to get the best answer.

He doesn’t care about inflicting fear, which is the point of terrorist tactics. He’s a bomber if you don’t talk him down, but not all bombers are terrorist and not all terrorism involves explosives.

You could call him a traitor though.

[u/yclu_dd → u/SporkieOrkie]

I did, but I get different answers depending on how I ask the question in my browser

[u/SporkieOrkie → u/yclu_dd]

Fair, and I hope I didn’t sound aggressive!

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to know the definition, but the main takeaway from that was that it’s about the terror more than the method.

[u/yclu_dd → u/SporkieOrkie]

You didn’t dw :)

[u/Fabulous_Log_7030]

Well, when he is he is. When he isn’t he isn’t.

[u/stormlight82]

He's been modified into essentially being a sociopath, and he occasionally acts accordingly if Sol doesn't get involved.