you see, there's the possibility that episode 4 is good (judging from the trailer, the chimera fight might actually be fun to watch), but there's also the possibility that they cut the train scene where annabeth talks about architecture and building something permanent for pacing purposes

Insomniac thoughts about consistency of characterisation pre- and post-Resurrection, surfacing mid-morning because I couldn’t cope with the post editor in the iOS app at a quarter to three… *ahem*

My impression is that Jod and most of his OG duplicitous sluts were in their thirties, up to fortyish, at the time it was all going down. Old enough for some of them to have multiple tertiary degrees and be leaders in their fields; not quite older adults yet. In HtN Augustine tells us Pyrrha (the “stone-cold fox”) was ten years his senior, so probably in her late forties or fiftyish. In NtN:

I didn't have to worry about the public or the media — we had a pet cop, P—. She'd made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD. Knew G— from way back, and G– and I were both hometown boys, so P– kept the heat down for us.

Later on Jod reiterates that he and G— grew up on the same street.

We also hear that P— “adored being a cop”.

This is of course off-putting for a lot of readers. But I understand that the New Zealand police, while by no means a squad of saints, are not abusive and murderous on the same level as the American kind we may be more familiar with (e.g. they don’t normally carry guns). So I’m fairly sure what we’ve got here is a character who might actually have been a good cop, in a country in which that concept is not implausible beyond belief — who then, crucially, turns her back on the law (and on her own successful career) to protect the kids from her neighbourhood. Because that was what it was about for her all along.

I don’t think the Dad Pyrrha we love to see is separable from Cop Pyrrha. I think in each life she lives her priority is to look after and protect her people, and she does that in specifically masculine-coded, paternal-coded ways. The Pyrrha we get in NtN is — as with the other Lyctors we know, charming Augustine becoming a man of plex, reproductive justice advocate Mercymorn stealing semen, dutiful Gideon obeying even the command to launch multiple violent murder attempts against a tiny traumatised teenager — someone whose best qualities have been worn out and warped by too many centuries of Jod’s unliving, undying empire. But, perhaps because Pyrrha was awake and aware for less time than the rest, that kind of love does palpably linger on in her.

Pyrrha practically stumbled away — she dropped to her knees before the chair and Palamedes — she reached out and took Palamedes's hand, and then Camilla's. Her face and hands showed only dumb despair. "I've loved you two," she said. "Not well. Not even wholesomely. I don't have it in me. But I've loved you — in a better world I'd be able to say, 'Like you were my own,' but I don't know what that would even mean anymore. You've been my agents ... you've been stand-ins for something I haven't had for longer than either of you can understand."

You can feel it every time she bribes Nona into eating, or carries her when her legs fail, or buys a birthday present and hides it away under the sink for the big day. (And when she looks at her lover's daughter with that mute hunger to have been a parent to her, too.) It’s a feature of the system Jod designed, that Lyctors don’t get much of a chance to love anyone but him. His hands, his gestures… raised by him, bound to him, renamed by him… God must be able to touch all of creation... He’s the epitome of the kind of parent who can’t imagine or allow their child to have an existence apart from their own, who’d rather stunt them than let them grow. He claimed Kiriona as his child, but he also made her his construct. And we know what he did to Alecto. But six months with Pyrrha (and the Sixth, likewise good at modeling love) and Nona just blossoms. The betrayed soul of a murdered planet has learnt anger management techniques — and now she’s learning to dance.

It seems as though at every step of Pyrrha’s story (and, just to confirm, I shall be going on a bloody rampage if we don't get the missing pieces in AtN) she knows she can’t save everyone and get everything right. Sometimes she can't save anyone at all. She has often been a casualty of her devotion. But she keeps on and on still trying, also like the Sixth, to make the best and kindest and truest choices she can in this myriadic shit sandwich. And she never stops loving the people she loves. Wouldn't know how to.

In conclusion… since I should probably conclude something… let's see. Whatever she thinks of herself, Pyrrha’s a good dad. Her accidental agents are lucky to have had those six months with her. It's not ‘playing’ house if the love there is real. And you can’t take ‘loved’ away.