After reading some NtN discourse, which is all about Jod, like I get it but someone start discourse about the Angel or something so we have variety.
But anyway, there’s a context I feel is missing for the Jod discourse, and it’s, 1.There is a centuries long history of Māori healers who suddenly found themselves gifted with miraculous powers to heal. 2.New Zealand has a history of sending police and government forces to kill Māori healers.
Americans when they think of police raiding ‘cult’ compound are probably imagining Jonestown or those US full of guns fortified cults from TV and that is how Jod’s healing and the raids that lead to the meatwall and dead cops are being framed but from the Prophets of the 19th century, the invasion of Parihaka or the hunt for Te Kooti all the way to the Tūhoe Raids of 2007, NZ police when they surround and raid are there for colonial purpose. And the way the healing part of John’s story is explained, word spreading and travellers amassing, it could have come out of a textbook of Rātana or Te Māiharoa. In NZ, police being massed to raid a ‘cult’ lead by a Māori miracle healer, has different bagage from the US police surrounding a fundie cult in gun country.
one thing about palamedes is despite his unassuming appearance as a scrawny bookish bone nerd he has such a fucking flair for the dramatic but he is never going to let it show until he is absolutely certain it is earned. “cam. go loud.” “you fought camilla because you thought you could win, and you didn’t even watch her first, you just assumed you could take her. and i can’t stand people who assume.” “you’ve been in a terrific amount of pain for the last myriad. i hope that pain is nothing to what your own body’s about to do to you, lyctor. you’re going to die spewing your own lungs out of your nostrils, having failed at the finish line because you couldn’t help but prattle about why you killed innocent people, as though your reasons were interesting.” “match to the sixth.” he is always going to bring the panache the flair the fucking cuntservery!
It’s endlessly funny to me, that so many people read Nona the Ninth - a book where a group of indigenous people from a small nation in the southern hemisphere spend years trying to build a communal plan, begging anyone to take collective action, reaching out again and again for as many people to get on board as possible, only to be stymied again and again by the individually and structurally powerful, who simply didn’t care (and couldn’t care due to the incentive structures imposed by power) and just wanted to preserve their own power/lives at the expense of everyone else, only for one of their number to be singled out and given immense universe-altering power by a magical entity, which of course led to disaster and the collapse of their original goals because, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely and will magnify even the most minor human foibles - and came away thinking ah yes, the point is that John as an individual is ontologically evil.
abigail pent has massive jewish energy because she is the only character in the series so far to be like “i mean, god said death works like this, but i don’t know, i feel like i could figure something better out” and then went to go do that
