#babylon's ashes

History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect. And what was true of nations and planets and vast corporate-state complexes also applied to the smaller fates of men and women. As above, so below.

I try to remain as optimistic as I can, but I totally feel this quotation at times:

Filip calling out Marco in front of everyone in Babylon's Ashes is such a good moment. It sucks how many people shit on Filip as a character. Yeah, he did some really, really bad things (or, at the very least, was extremely complicit in them), but he was still a CHILD who was manipulated from birth by a man he (almost literally) looked up to as a god. (Seriously - look closely at the language in Filip's early POV chapters when he talks about Marco. It's almost Old Testament.) He was given life-and-death responsibility that he lacked the maturity to really even comprehend at his age and was saddled with moral injury that lasted the rest of his life. Seriously, think about the dumb shit YOU said, did, and believed at fifteen, sixteen.

"They took the tube back to the dock, filling up almost half of a car just themselves, still a little tipsy, still talking too loud, laughting at nothing really. Alex's Mariner Valley drawl got thicker, and Bobbie mimicked it, egging him on until they sounded like parodies of themselves. Jim, least involved with the hilarity and still somehow central to it, sat back against the rattling wall of the car, his hands behind his head and his eyes half-closed. She didn't really understand what she and Jim and all the others were reacting to until they were at the ship. Seeing the Rocinante locked in the docking clamps was like falling into a familiar pair of arms. They were giddy because Jim was giddy. And Jim was giddy because, for once, he'd just avoided being responsible for the future of the whole human race.