YMMV / Alien Abduction Role Play

• Accidental Aesop: The idea that carnivores are biased towards new species is quite demonstrable from what we've seen in the series, and a very valid concern, and not even Eravin is willing to completely dismiss it. In-universe, it's often dismissed as a conspiracy theory, rooted in bigotry against carnivores. Evianporial is so desperate to make his point that he's willing to murder Tori to set Ackt off and have her murder the rest of the crew in a feeding frensy, and it's implied that such attempted hoaxes are rather common. Crime hoaxes, especially the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, are also perpetuated in real life, and do nothing but make people less inclined to take real concerns about social injustices seriously. It's clear Evianporial is not motivated by genuine love and concern for primitive-yet-sapient creatures, but by hatred for carnivores, thus any good point he or other cultists might have had falls on deaf ears, and the status quo goes unchallenged.
• Adorkable: Ackt counts as this when Subject 50499-A goes as far as to give her permission to put their head in her mouth again, even rationalizing that it'll help her feel less nervous/jittery. Also again in part 14 when she attempts a "start over" with Subject 50499-A, after the temporary breakup in part 12.
  • Hiboritch is the new guy, and frequently stumbles through his tasks, including a translator mishap.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Many found it difficult to get into this story until it concluded. Mainly because the two main characters were seemingly doomed to be Star-Crossed Lovers. The sluggish pacing of the series also lead many audience members to prematurely judge the alien society to be more myopic and hypocritical than it really was.
• Complete Monster:
  • Evianporial is a colleague of Acktreal "Ackt" Domma, and an incredibly hateful speciest who goes to any length possible to ruin Ackt's life. Evianporial at first hopes that Ackt eats her human test subjects before they are approved for consumption, only to find out later, to his disgust, that she fell in love with one of them instead. Instead of reporting her, Evianporial continues to wait, hoping that she succumbs to Chemically-Induced Insanity from being around the humans for too long. When that fails, and when humanity is given full legal protection, Evianporial murders Victoria and spreads her blood and organs all over the holding bay in the hopes that the scent would drive Ackt insane and kill all the crew members on board, including the one surviving human test subject, the POV character. Despite his plot failing, he is presumably never caught or punished for his actions, forcing Ackt to take comfort in the fact that he cannot show his face in respectable society ever again.
  • Thi-Karje is an incredibly smug, despicable Space Pirate who not only hijacks R9 shuttles to steal test subjects or specimens to sell on the presumably illegal "blood market", she also goes a step further and admits to being perfectly OK with trafficking sapient creatures as well, including humans. This admission is so shocking, this prompts the normally Gentle Giant Hiboritch to kill her and her partner by proxy by slicing open Subject 50499-A's arm and ordering the human to throw their blood on both pirates, causing Ackt to go feral again and devour them.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tori is rather rude to every alien on the ship, including Zedjichs who tries to comfort her in the aftermath of Acktreal's first feral episode. It's quite understandable, as they are all responsible for taking her away from her home, and putting her in a very strange (and potentially dangerous) environment, with a carnivorous alien who they admittingly had no idea would go feral. Acktreal also mentions that brain scans detected markers for bipolar disorder, which would further exacerbate her emotional state.
  • Acktreal Domma would have also fit this description, except that she has dropped the "jerk" part long before it becomes obvious that she is The Woobie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Evianporial crossed this when he admitted to his intentions to sabotage Acktreal. He failed to report Acktreal's earlier rulebreaking, he (illegally) surgically removed her venom glands while she was passed out to ensure that she would be more likely to go feral, sabotaged the communications to prevent the crew from calling for help, murdered Tori and smeared her blood all over the holding bay to induce a feeding frensy from Acktreal, and abandoned the rest of the crew to be eaten.
  • Sosoren and Thi-Karje pass this when they state their intention to take Subject 50499-A for themselves and sell them on a "blood market." No one feels sorry for them when Hiboritch slices open Subject 50499-A's arm to intentionally trigger a third feral episode from Ackt and gets them messily devoured.
  • Acktreal herself passes the moral event horizon in the non-canon bad ending.
• Narm Charm: Acktreal screaming, "Don't leave me, I love you! I'm going to eat your every organ and your bones..." sounds like something an over-the-top parody of a Yandere would say, but in the context she says it in, it is both chilling and pretty tragic.
• Strawman Has a Point: Even though it's clear that Evianporial is more interested in ruining Ackt than in humanity's well being (and even murders a human just to accomplish this goal), there's hardly a single carnivorous alien in this series that isn't excessively biased against newly discovered species, including Ackt. You'd be hard pressed to disagree with the point that actively discriminating against carnivores in this field, even something as basic as a psychological analysis to weed out anyone overly biased against new species, wouldn't improve things drastically. When Tori implies that Ackt shouldn't have had her job in the first place, Zedjichs isn't able to provide any rebuttal other than, "Discrimination is wrong."
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While it's not hard to feel bad for Ackt when she is subjected to Evianporial's cruelty, and when she describes how miserable her childhood was due to anti-carnivore prejudice, the fact remains that there doesn't seem to be a single carnivore species that isn't heavily biased against newly discovered species, and even the herbivores seem somewhat aware of the fact that the standards for sapience are unreasonably high, just to satisfy their obsession with obtaining more meat to eat. Regardless of how monstrous Evianporial was, these sentiments seem perfectly reasonable in the face of carnivores who would gladly eat sapient creatures were they not kept in check by their society. It seems less like bigotry and more like a combination of self-preservation and a desire to save their fellow citizens from themselves.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Both Ackt and Subject 50499-A:
  • A possible reason for the prequel getting retconned was the fact that Ackt displayed a rather disturbing lack of regard for lesser species, humanity in particular, even before she came into contact with the pheromones in their blood, and Evianporial is very quick to call her out on it. This only made Evianporial's and Tori's point that Ackt was mentally unfit to be an R9 researcher. Virtually the only two reasons why Evianporial was in the wrong was his membership in a hate group whose mission was to screw carnivores over no matter what, and his murder of Tori. Even so, Evianporial's cruelty towards Ackt comes across as karma for her own supremacist views, regardless of the fact that his status as a Complete Monster is well earned.
  • Regardless of Ackt's abusive behavior before part 3, that doesn't justify Subject 50499-A's actions when he pressured Ackt to engage in risky mouth-play with her. It's clear that he took advantage of her guilt, her desire to make things up to him, and Ackt rightly calls him out on it in part 11.
• The Woobie: As the series progresses, you realize that Ackt is as much (if not more) of a victim as anyone else on the ship, including Victoria and Subject 50499-A. She is normally a mild-mannered scientist who gets along reasonably well with her colleagues and doesn't put her test subjects through more pain or suffering than necessary, and only recently started experiencing Sanity Slippage while in the presence of the two human test subjects. In her weakest moments, she finds herself taste-testing the two humans, putting Victoria especially through considerable distress, which completely destroys any possibility of reconciliation with her. Even after she changes her mind about wanting to eat the humans, and is able to look at humanity with an unbiased perspective, her troubles are far from over, and the impulses remain, causing her to burn through her food supplies due to an increased appetite. After coming out of sedation, she realizes her venom glands are missing, and realizes that a crew member is out to sabotage her, which turns out to be Evian. Evian reveals that he was well aware of Ackt's Sanity Slippage, and failed to report it because he wanted it to really blow up in her face and ruin her life. To further add insult to injury, Victoria is murdered and her guts and blood are used as bait to further drive Ackt insane, and she ends up devouring her childhood friend, Kyra, along with Tori's corpse. When Ackt is finally calm enough to strap herself down inside of Subject 50499-A's former medical cell, neither Subject 50499-A nor Oovoo can bear to tell her the truth about Kyra's death.