Jordan turned on the charm for Fairy Godmother. “It’s so nice of you to let us drive this”—Jordan gestured toward the car—“lovely automobile.”
Fairy Godmother glanced back at her minivan and gave a wistful sigh. “It is lovely, isn’t it? The color is custom! Pumpkin orange! And it has eighteen cup holders! I call it the Bobbidi Buggy!”
“Well, it’s perfect,” Jordan said, giving Freddie a nudge.
“Wicked awesome,” Freddie added with a totally fake smile.
According to all known laws of existence, there is no way a live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, of course, stood by itself against its hills anyway, because houses don’t care what humans think is impossible.
Alfred is manning the trolley. The trolley is playing ‘All Star’ at an extremely loud volume. He is distracted. The trolley is moving at 65mph. There is very little time to react
Arthur has cloned himself. He and his clones have been super glued to the track by an unknown person.
Francis is standing by the lever. You can get his attention by screaming. You have ten seconds to convey that you want him to pull the lever….if you want him to. Otherwise, leave him be.
Feliciano will get up and move depending on which way the trolley goes. His death is inevitable.
What will you do
Now I’m going to answer this unironically, as if OP has a gun pointed at my head.
The thing that everyone forgets is that Alfred/America is the one on the trolley. This is key. We have no say in this. It’s his choice. This is not a moral dilemma. This is an exercise in character interpretation and hypothetical conjecture.
However, it’s actually impossible to tell if America at that very moment is in the “spite england ya’ll” or “haha you can’t die yet you owe me money” or “of course imma hero here to save you!” mood. Their relationship perpetually oscillates between these contradictory truths, and sometimes all three mindsets are at play at the same way. Canon America’s brain is fucking wild. Hell, I’d make the case that if he could run all of England’s clones over, killing them, and claim it wasn’t his fault (”the trolley was going too fast” “I couldn’t decide in time”) and get away with it, he absolutely would. But see, even ifhe decided instinctively to spare England, his vitriolic ally, there is the added complication of assuming that France would go along with it.
You see, France can just as easily feign not understanding America’s incomprehensible yelling as his voice is distorted from the wind caused by the trolley speeding at 65 mph, and therefore conveniently allowing his insignificant other, his pain in the ass rival, to perish without taking the blame for it. This is also a possibility that he’s in a non-bitchy mood and does not wish violence upon England, yet who could blame him if he couldn’t hear America over that obnoxious All Stars music that was playing “at an extremely loud volume”? This situation makes it almost impossible for England to survive, evenifthey both made a conscious decision to save him.
Italy’s role here is completely irrelevant. He dies either way and neither America or France have strong feelings of resentment towards poor Italy, unlike England whom they share a common disdain for, yet at the same time wouldn’t feel right to end in such a premature way.
My answer is, of course, that the trolley will continue to take its course, as the universe intended. RIP England.
Then again, this is all irrelevant because they’re all fucking immortal metaphysical representations of nationalism and England and/or Italy will simply re-spawn and come back to life eventually. Then maybe England can explain why he thought it’s be a good idea to clone himself and who is the ‘unknown person’ who tied him on the tracks. Then maybe Italy can explain to them why he was feeling suicidal that day. Yeah, maybe we ought to unpack that??? What America was doing on top of that thing and France standing around the lever being extra is completely in-canon, needs no explanation. I rest my case.
