starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.
I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.
There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:
- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them
-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies
- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone
- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists
-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such
- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people
- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.
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There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.