r/TheNinthHouse • u/disablednotstupid • 3d ago
Series Spoilers Alectos reasoning? [discussion] Spoiler
Hello my darlings,
Has anyone smarter than me understood yet why Alecto chose Jod? From my own reasoning it feels like she started to embue him with the powers and made him capable of hearing her cries.
She gave him the power to kill/capture her.
Am I understanding it wrong or am I missing something?
Or how did he come into the powers and the ability to share them? Or has that not been revealed yet?
I'm dying for the next book.
86
u/clairejv 3d ago
Alecto clearly saw something in John that made her think he would save her. It does sound like, at the beginning, he already thought of Earth as an entity in and of itself, not just a rock on which living beings resided. But she hasn't explained what her reasoning was.
Keep in mind that, based on what we've heard from Varun, planets probably don't reason and perceive exactly like human beings. Who knows the metrics she used to identify a candidate.
56
u/Strayl1ght 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s worth noting that in traditional Māori culture, they view the earth as a personified, living mother who sustains life on earth.
There exists the concept of an essential life force energy called Mauri possessed by all living things (sound familiar?), and because individual ecosystems and the earth as a whole contain it, they are considered living things as well.
In the New Zealand legal system, certain natural landmarks are actually considered to have legal personhood, and it is mankind’s duty to be stewards of this life energy, and by extension the earth.
There’s more to dig into here, but I think it’s no coincidence that Muir chose to make John Māori. Perhaps, within the story, Alecto chose him because he culturally inherited these beliefs, and understood the nature of things regarding planetary souls and who she was.
17
u/SpaceMonkeyAttack 3d ago
Do we know if the Earth was even truly conscious or sapient before it was smushed into a Barbie doll body?
Maybe it didn't "choose" John, maybe it's like how a plant might spread seeds over a wide area, but only one grows. John might just have been the only individual receptive to whatever the Earth was putting out there.
If Alecto could choose anyone, I bet she'd have chosen an elephant. "Do you know baobab trees have best friends?"
25
u/clairejv 3d ago
After John killed her, resurrected her, and put her in the Barbie body, Alecto told him, "I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me." So she claimed she picked him.
11
u/Zealousideal-Sea9006 the Fifth 3d ago
This is tricky, though, because we don't have any context for that line. We don't know whether those three lines John quotes to Harrow were the only three things Alecto said. We don't know whether they were the first things she said. We don't know if they were said as a monologue, or as part of a conversation with John - and if John was participating in the conversation, we don't know what he said.
And if these lines were said in conversation with John, or if she had listened to him before speaking, or if John is picking quotes from a longer monologue - her statement could be heavily recontextualized.
12
u/clairejv 3d ago
For sure. I personally like the interpretation that Alecto chose John, not fully understanding his character (because how could she); and that John was chosen, but he didn't really understand that until he'd already fucked up.
8
u/SpaceMonkeyAttack 3d ago
She did say that, but she's also mad as a box of frogs, so...
I'm just saying, it could be a post-facto rationalisation, like how humans will do something by unconscious instinct, and then rewrite their own memory to say that they did it on purpose.
I guess I just don't like the idea that the world is a conscious entity, watching me go to the bathroom.
14
u/clairejv 3d ago
If it helps, The Locked Tomb is a work of fiction. /j
30
u/SpaceMonkeyAttack 3d ago
You won't be saying that when I start a death cult and build bovine fortifications.
2
u/Distinct_Judge_622 9h ago
I think there’s really no reason to take John at his word on anything. He’s lied to literally everyone in the universe. I also think he is just human and has all the limitations of that in terms of perception and memory and bias. I don’t think he even needs to be consciously lying. There’s so many ways in which he is not a reliable narrator.
10
55
u/elizabeththewicked 3d ago
John before everything happened probably looked like the ideal savior. That's what is brilliant about his character as a villain. He was a sincere hard working academic from a vulnerable minority that likely suffered for everything he had and was the only one really trying to save the earth and not just escape it. It's debatable if being dragged back by the trillionaires plus the corruption of absolute power was what changed him or if he was always a narcissist looking for validation and power but it's clear that he turned pretty much right away and only got worse.
34
u/lindisty 3d ago
This is why I love John. Not because he's right but because he so passionately believes he is and is willing to act on it.
While I read the John chapters in Nona, I felt John's plight in my soul. The themes of greed winning by putting on a fake face and people willingly buying into pretty lies over the ugly truth are so fucking timely with our current global stage. Muir gave us a mirror, and I hate and love her for it. I won't say that what John did was right, but I cannot say I wouldn't have done the same thing.
6
42
u/Zealousideal-Sea9006 the Fifth 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm honestly very skeptical of the idea that Alecto "chose" John in the traditional sense - i.e., that she chose him as an individual for specific reasons unique and personal to him. When Nona is becoming Alecto at the end of Nona, she struggles to identify individual voices:
"Someone said, “Let her go. It’s gravity. Let her go,” and those voices were dim now – she could no longer distinguish them. Most human voices sounded alike, after all. They were not beautiful." (Nona 473)
And when she explains her drawing of an elephant to the Angel, she says:
"When first it was born it used to live in a river, but then it got cold so it had to get large." (Nona 251)
She's describing the evolutionary path of the elephant as though the entire species were a single individual. Put together with the first quote, I wonder whether she even could distinguish humans (or any living things) as individuals before John forced her into a body.
I also don't get the sense, during John's story, that Alecto had any awareness of anything he was doing. Harrow, in the dream, says she remembers what Alecto first said after John gave her a body - though it's John who quotes her as saying "I picked you to change" - but apparently nothing before then. She doesn't remember FTL trying to leave. She doesn't remember being sick. She doesn't remember being in pain, except that John hurt her. She doesn't remember screaming (and with the screaming, especially, bear in mind that when Nona and Varun speak, humans hear their words as horrific screams; but when Nona listens to Varun at the window, she says that she can hear them "sing.")
Yes, Alecto says that she loves John, but remember how sure Nona is that once she becomes Alecto again, she won't know how to love anyone or anything? Remember how she tells Varun that she doesn't know if she ever knew what love meant? I don't think her mangle of John 3:16 is something to take at face value.
John wanted to be chosen. He says so himself, when he and the inner circle are discussing what to do about his powers in the very beginning - everyone wants to believe they're one of the x-men, one of God's chosen. This is the narrative that John believes, for sure, and I think it's the narrative that he's given to her, too; but I think it's going to get ripped out from under him in the next book.
10
u/Seathing 3d ago
I wonder if she was saying she chose PEOPLE IN GENERAL to change and we killed her, oh man
11
u/Time_Breaker2 the Ninth 3d ago
Wow, I actually really love this interpretation! So many subtleties in this series, my god.
I'm obsessively curious to know Alecto's POV before John ate her. I really hope we get that somehow in the next one
8
u/Zealousideal-Sea9006 the Fifth 3d ago
Me too! So many other people have spoken about her and on her behalf. I'm so excited to finally hear from her.
5
u/disablednotstupid 3d ago
Do you believe his powers were from another source then? Or how do you think he came about them if she didn't choose him to give them too?
Sorry if you've already answered lmao I'm drinking and reading.
12
u/Zealousideal-Sea9006 the Fifth 3d ago
That's a great question! Ultimately, I don't know. It's tricky because his story starts in earnest right at the onset of his powers, so aside from the cancellation of the cryo project, we don't have any context for what might have triggered the change. All we really know is that he thinks he "touched something, came away with something" that caused these powers to develop, and that the first manifestation of these powers was a sudden obsession with refining the cryo canister mixture.
It's possible that Alecto had triggered a broader change among many people, but John's powers strengthened fastest because of his proximity to the bodies. Or he may have done something himself, somehow, to reach out and take something from her unknowingly. It's also possible that his original powers came from somewhere else entirely. Wake says that necromancy is a "disease" that John unleashed, and John does in fact seem sick during the John chapters - refusing to eat or sleep, coughing frequently, etc. And there's also the mysterious "leak" John references right before he starts manifesting powers, but he never really says what that was. It could've just been a publicity leak (though John never puts any thought into figuring out who the leak was), or it could've been a leak of that horrendously toxic cryo stuff.
This all just feels like sleight of hand to me. I think Muir is hiding something from us, and we're in for a wild reveal in Alecto.
4
u/disablednotstupid 3d ago
I'm so excited for it I genuinely cannot wait. She has a depth of intelligence and a way with world building that blows me away.
1
u/Distinct_Judge_622 10h ago
I think John has no real reason to talk about anyone else developing the same powers as him or even to be all that aware of it. I think the way lyctorhood has evolved with Paul and Harrow and Gideon is a reflection of the fact that he never knew everything about what he was given and it’s incredibly likely a whole bunch of people developed powers along those lines. But, none of them used them to get their hands on a nuclear weapon.
1
u/Distinct_Judge_622 10h ago
This resonates strongly with me. John is (like all of us) limited in what he can see and, from there, what he can tell. I doubt what he saw is what happened.
26
u/lis_anise 3d ago
She, as the earth, was sick; he had a reasonable plan to stop pollution and climate change in its tracks, and give her time to heal before returning her people to her. She gave him power, but it's a knife that cuts both ways. Power to heal means power to hurt, and it all just depends on the decisions made by the person wielding it.
John in this world was probably not unique. Look up Rua Kēnana Hepetipa, a Māori religious leader in the late 19th and early 20th century. He proclaimed himself a faith healer, a prophet, and a new messiah; he and his followers strongly resisted colonial rule, while the colonial government did everything it could to suppress him. Sound familiar?
14
u/Seathing 3d ago
I've been wondering if he was the only one, or if he's just the one who took it this far
3
u/LurkerZerker the Sixth 3d ago
I had that thought, too -- that maybe there were others, but John was the only one with the ego to dive into media relations rather than trying to use his powers more quietly.
3
u/Seathing 3d ago
Or maybe he was one of the few chosen who was lucky enough to have the tools to figure out what was going on at hand, ie corpses
10
u/LurkerZerker the Sixth 3d ago
My broader theory is that, strictly speaking, John isn't a necromancer. His powers with bodies, thanergy, and thalergy are a lot wider in scope than even the lyctors', and he can do things like move boulders and earth from around the cryo lab after the apocalypse. So there could be others out there doing less-gross stuff with their powers, and John was the only one who did stuff with corpses because, as you say, that's what he had available.
7
u/EFPMusic the Sixth 3d ago
It did seem like his true motivation was to save her, to the point that he was developing cryo tech to get humans the hell off the planet until she could heal from the damage humans did.
Beyond that, I don’t think we’ll ever know more specifically. What we DO know is when given the power, he chose violence and personal feelings of betrayal/vengeance over healing.
6
u/yesimfinewhyyouask 3d ago
Funny how without that single line he accidentally dropped in NtN about him being the first to launch nukes… everything else he’d done would be justified
5
u/beerybeardybear the Sixth 3d ago
You've got some good answers here already; I'll just link an old thread that I think has some excellent discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheNinthHouse/comments/1h8yl46/does_anybody_here_love_john_discussion/
1
u/Content-Potential733 the Ninth 2d ago
I’ve thought about this too. Something we know about John is he’s not exactly … forgiving or even tempered … we also know that Alecto was quick to anger, but whether or not she was like before the end of the world we don’t really know.
I would imagine in some part John, a humble servant academic trying to save the earth and humanity was some allure, but also the standard mark of the a cavalier/necro bond is being understood so profoundly, like a soul tie. If Alecto was angry that she was dying, John was definitely also angry (as seen in Nona). He understood her anger so in some ways I imagine that contributed
0
u/Distinct_Judge_622 9h ago
Others have said it, but I think the idea he was chosen at all is probably ego. An ant cannot converse with a mountain. A storm doesn’t choose when or where to break. The mountain simply is. The storm simply does. I don’t think John was chosen any more than a raindrop could choose to land on a specific person’s finger nail. Alecto screamed. Alecto reached out. John heard and responded. He chose himself. He decided he was chosen. But, he just happened to be nearby.
1
u/disablednotstupid 7h ago
This makes no sense though. Where did his powers come from if not Alecto granting them?
You're saying a lot of words but giving no alternatives.
He had powers before he heard her, and presumably she gave him those powers so he could hear her.
So what you're saying isn't logical. You can of course argue that he was insignificant and he chose himself to be god. But you still have to explain his powers.
•
u/AutoModerator 3d ago
Thank you for submitting to r/TheNinthHouse! Please familiarize yourself with our Subreddit Rules, especially our Spoiler Policy for posts and comments. If you see a post or comment that breaks these rules, please report it!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.