#before nona i didn't really get what kind of person cristabel had to be for mercy to mourn her for 9000 years

[ancientannoyance]

the eighth for salvation, no matter the cost

had some unexpected feelings last night about mercymorn building the eighth house as a monument to cristabel, and then never visiting it again

[abigail-pent]

John Gaiusposting, Nona spoilers below the cut

FUCK THIS GUY FUCK HIM SO MUCH

like when we got the preview with his POV/ him recounting the story to Harrow-as-Alecto in Harrow's dream, it actually seemed kind of reasonable for a minute for him to see himself as a hero type. Certainly the trillionaires are plausible and appropriate villains. But as it goes on and you realize over time that this is JUST ANOTHER INSTANCE OF JOHN GAIUS PAINTING HIMSELF IN THE BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT, I just want to throttle him

like after everything we see of him in HTN it's not surprising, not at all. But it is *interesting* to see him set the scene, set himself up to look reasonable actually, and then turn up the heat on that narrative until we the audience are the frog in the pot of boiling water. by the time we get to the nuclear option, it's too late for us, but looking back, can we really see exactly where everything started to turn?

and the way it's told, it's almost like EJG is implicitly asking Harrow/Alecto/the audience to believe that that's how *he* experienced it. As the frog in the boiling water. but ... that can't be true.

he had competent people around him! specifically he had Cassy, who asks him to choose one goal: destroying the trillionaires' project or saving Earth. he says they're the same thing and seems incredulous that anyone could believe otherwise. but that is so, so, SO obviously false. where was the rest of this conversation? surely our girl C -- would not just let him say that unchallenged.

nope: she had to have told him that's bullshit. maybe he didn't believe her. maybe he did, and didn't care. he had so many "yes" men around him (especially Gideon and Cristabel), and cared so little about anyone but himself, that he must have been far beyond reason at that point. absolute power will do that to you, I guess.

just like. the way he took off Gideon's arm. (ps: what happened to it? is this a Chekhov's gun for ATN? also why was that necessary?) the way he accepted Cristabel's suicide and used it *immediately* to destroy the whole world. the way he LITERALLY SACRIFICED ALL OF HUMANITY TO GET VENGEANCE ON A HANDFUL OF ELON MUSK TYPES. and tried to make it look like everything was their fault, when in actuality, yes they were awful, but John is the guy who threw the baby out with the bathwater. He could have just taken a few deep breaths and gotten on with the actual lifesaving work.

And he was so rigid in his idea of what the solution to a dying Earth should be! He could have tried his hand at fixing things before evacuation, like Augustine suggested, but he was too inflexible to even consider it. My advisor always says "good research is nimble" and this is the opposite of nimble. This is nothing but rank unchecked ego.

*maybe* this story is the way John honestly experienced it. *maybe* this is what the inside of your head looks like when you're desperate to try and save humanity and you throw yourself too hard into research and you make breakthroughs that change everything about what you think you know to be true and you get royally fucked over by funders who then smear you in the press. but even if that's actually how he experienced it: we know that the version of John who recounts this story is actively lying to Harrow-as-Alecto towards the end, about the order in which the nukes went off, and he gets mad when she points this out to him. *this* version of John is STILL ACTIVELY MANIPULATING HER, even *if* he's not purposely structuring the way he tells the story to make his audience think there's some hope and reason left in there.

Augustine was wrong, actually. Someone still does need to be punished for what happened to humanity. But that person is John Gaius himself.