2022-09-24 15:01:07 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her:

> I know I’ve already made a post about my interpretation of John, but I feel like I need to come up with a shorter way to summarize it because I keep seeing other takes on him that consistently miss one important dimension or another. It’s not that John was evil and manipulative from the beginning and everything he said was a lie, AND it’s not that he started off perfectly innocent and is a completely tragic victim of circumstance. It’s that he was just some guy, with normal human flaws. I have known so many John Gaius’s, so many people who are funny and driven and compassionate but also annoyingly willing to weasel out of any culpability they might feel or have put on them whenever they make a mistake. I’ve known so many people whose company I enjoy and whose opinion I value who I know will always put their own comfort and well-being over mine. They’re just human foibles, no better or worse than the kind of flaws that everyone carries. What makes John Gaius into a genocidal cult leader is not being an inherently bad person, it’s being handed nearly unlimited power and placed in a pressure cooker of stress and rage and desperation and then - and this is key - when everything has settled and he has a moment to reckon with what he’s done and the mistakes he’s made, choosing to double down rather than do the hard thing and try to make amends.

> Until further notice, that is my definitive take on Jod.