look at my cats

He said, She just smiled at me. She said, John, don’t misunderstand. I want to help you. I truly believe that in our most terrible hours we don’t instinctively reach out to God; we push ourselves away from Him. Don’t feel bad for not rising heroically to the occasion right now. Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone. So concentrate, please.

She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself.

"When Gideon and I designed that trial, I used to crack his skull and sieve [his brain fluid] myself, just as a control variable. ... The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn't mind being trepanned on the regular."

mercymorn, shrill, critical, unlikeable pink haired mercymorn rattles my brain because female rage can sometimes work like a bargain. scraps and empties, bruses and falsehoods, anything to placate, to pacify, to pin that rage in place for a little while longer. was there really no other way? was our mission truly worth it? did you love cristabel?

and there was another way, and the mission was not worth it. and god never liked cristabel. the second time she died, mercymorn was there to pick up the pieces, but the first time god left her body and soul alone, bloody and shattered on the cold floor. did that mercymorn, - not mercymorn the first, but the first mercymorn - find cristabel? did she go into that room where he'd left her because she checked for her everywhere? did she go on to die herself for john with ignorance or radical acceptance?

the unloveable mercymorn dooming all the nine planets because she was an atheist in love with a nun; someone who loved god well enough to die for him twice, and did not love mercymorn well enough to live for her once.

and god did not even like her.

to commit suicide because of a belief in someone wielding power that could save others.

Cristabel fulfilled the purpose she wanted and John saved nothing.

Gideon fails in her purpose and Harrow saves who she can.

If you are dead you no longer exist as an individual person with agency and an internal world; so the image that living people have of you will be superimposed over the person you actually were. You are no longer yourself, you have been made into what other people think you were or want you to have been.

And of course this is particularly relevant when it comes to the cavs. Someone consumes and destroys you, and then they commit a final act of violence and control by replacing you with the idealised or demonised picture that they have of you in their head. The narrative itself participates in this violence by erasing you and prioritising your consumer - they appear in the story as a character, whereas the readers know you only through their descriptions and memories.

We also see the memory-as-control thing pretty explicitly with Nonius. He shows up speaking differently than he did in life because that fits with Ortus's image of him as an idealised epic hero. It's not clear how much of his ghost is actually him as he was, versus the version of him created by Ortus and the Ninth after his death.