I feel like the people who get mad about everyone in HNK getting turned into Lunarians or whatever, is missing the metatextual point of the story. The question is not “why did they have to become Lunarians?” it’s “if thousands of immortal people with an idyllic society want to die, is it worth it for one man to subtly manipulate (but not push, coerce, or force) one child into unimaginable suffering?” It’s the classic trolley problem!... KIND of...
One of the first dilemmas which caught my eye was with Padparadscha. If someone is receiving help they do not want, is it okay for them to turn down the help, knowing that this will lead to many of their peers being hurt? Padparadscha decides no, and can’t even consider the alternative. Telling Rutile to abandon them is unthinkable, because it would then almost certainly cause Rutile to abandon all doctoring duties. The gems would be pretty screwed while a new gem gradually learns doctoring from the ground up.
Later Phos makes the opposite decision for them, stealing Pads from Rutile and taking them to the moon. With the added wrinkle that Phos knows they have more advanced technology there which would almost certainly provide an actual cure. Which is does indeed! Twice!! There’s so many layers!!!
And of course this is about Cairngorm cause everything in my life is about Cairngorm now!!! Is it better to force someone into altruism, or give them the freedom to be selfish? Most of you fuckers are like NO YOU FORCE THEM, IF THEY EVER GET HAPPINESS THEY’RE THE WORST!!!
And the idea that Cairngorm’s ENTIRE personality on the moon is 100% pure grooming is absolute cope. Aechmea makes such a point of encouraging her to make her own choices, and treating her well, and she’s ACTUALLY HAPPY as a girl!!! And she shows literally no hesitation or fear in talking shit. She’s always telling him how creepy he is and how bad he is at gifts and stuff. But she also actively chooses to show him affection.
She obviously doesn’t trust him but she obviously CHOOSES to love him anyways. Basically the same as with the earth gems and Kongo! Except when Aechmea yells at her (one time and only ever once), he doesn’t shatter her body into a million pieces. Aechmea is objectively better to be emotionally close to than Kongo.
As someone who sees the stiff anger in Cairngorm’s body on earth, the uncertain frustration etched into her face until she meets Aechmea, and then the bright bubbly joy she expresses most of the time then on... I know how that journey feels. I’ve felt it. And let me tell you; it’s no coincidence that “no they’re not really a woman! They’ve just been groomed into acting like it, in ways that are entirely speculative and not even slightly evident,” sounds pretty horrifically familiar these days. (It’s the same conspiratorial thinking, applied on the same topic)
It honestly seems like most of the hostility Cairngorm and Cairnmea gets is because self-absorbed fans think the main character is the center of all morality. But for me, someone to whom Cairngorm’s emotional journey is delightfully familiar. To whom her success is absolutely dreamlike in its beauty. I just don’t see these invisible shadows of abuse. The real, perceptible abuse Cairngorm suffered from was all from Ghost and Phos.
