#between that and the Locked Tomb goddamn

[syl-stormblessed]

So I have been having some. ahem. thoughts and feelings about Anastasia and Samael since Nona came out, and I’ve been thinking a lot about why John killed Samael. I think that after obsessing over this I may??have connected some major dots. please correct me if i’m wrong on anything, but I am currently convinced I’ve figured something out. also please forgive me if it’s incomprehensible. but this is the locked tomb nothing can make too much sense

Nona spoilers ahead

short TLDR, in case you don’t want to read the whole thing: Anastasia & Samael would have merged their souls together and become a being like Paul. John killed Samael because he thought of the synthesis like Nona did at first, believing that they would both die, rather than create a new life made up of 2 souls, and he would rather lose one of them than both.

After finishing Nona the Ninth, I’ve been thinking a lot about Anastasia. Specifically, the fact that Anastasia never achieved Lyctorhood. From Harrow the Ninth, we know that Anastasia did extensive research on Lyctorhood, and the only person allowed to watch her attempt was John. And John kills Samael, resulting in Anastasia never becoming a Lyctor. However, Nona the Ninth revealed that John and Alecto’s Perfect Lyctorhood only worked because Alecto was Earth’s Resurrection Beast, and John couldn’t completely exchange their souls. Alecto held too much power, so even after John had consumed a massive amount of her soul, there was enough left of Alecto that she could still live. This implies that Perfect Lyctorhood, at least as we perceived it before Nona, isn’t possible with two normal people who have two normal souls. Alecto was simply made up of billions of souls. This means that what Anastasia and Samael almost did couldn’t have been Perfect Lyctorhood. Meaning that John didn’t kill Samael to cover up the fact that he lied about Perfect Lyctorhood. Because he didn’t lie about that, specifically. So the question remains: Why, exactly, did John kill Samael?

In Harrow the Ninth, John says, “She panicked midway through. She hadn’t got his soul inside her all the way—if she had, Samael dying would have killed her too…They were both in danger.” This is immediately questioned by Augustine, and for good reason: It’s total bullshit. We already know that panic and other intense emotions don't cause a failure of the Lyctoral process. At the end of Gideon the Ninth, Harrow flat out rejects the Lyctoral process after Gideon falls on the fence. During that scene, Harrow gave us the iconic “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it,” because she was already so consumed by her grief. She actively tried not to become a Lyctor, yet she still did. She even begged John for Gideon’s life back. And we know that Harrow did do the process correctly. When she tells John she misapprehended the process, John says “I don’t believe you did, Harrowhark.” We know that it was actually her homebrew lobotomy that messed with her consuming Gideon’s soul, not her own feelings of distress and panic. We also have Augustine’s story. While talking about Anastasia in Act V, he says “It didn’t make sense that I became a Lyctor under scrambling pressure and did it right, and that Anastasia screwed up in laboratory conditions.” Just from knowing about Harrow & Gideon and Augustine & Alfred, we know that John was full of shit when he said that Anastasia’s panic was why he had to kill Samael. Intense emotions and “scrambling pressure” aren’t enough to fail the Lyctoral process. So we know that John didn’t kill him because of Anastasia’s panic, like he said.

So why did he kill Samael, then? That’s where Paul comes in. During that same conversation in Act V of Harrow, John says “[Anastasia] learned the trick was to do the Eightfold slower—more methodically...” And now that Nona has been released, we have an example of the Eightfold being executed slower and more methodically—the creation of Paul. Let’s go back to Gideon for a second. When Gideon fell on the fence, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision brought on by necessity. They both would have died if she hadn’t sacrificed herself and forced Harrow to consume her soul. It was not a premeditated decision, they had never considered actually going through the process. There was no viable option other than the Eightfold. It happened in a split second, and Harrow consumed Gideon quickly, resulting in regular Lyctorhood. Now back to Nona. When Camilla and Palamedes merge their souls together, they are both entirely confident in their decision. Palamedes offers Camilla a chance to say no, and instead she says “My whole life, yes. Yes, forever, yes.” Their decision is in a much more controlled environment, and both of them are entirely sure of what they are doing. And then they actually begin the process, which is much slower and more methodical. Every action seems to have a purpose, whereas Harrow & Gideon scrambled and panicked. Nona observes that “Nothing particularly interesting happened, until Camilla burst into flames.” For Nona to have noted that nothing of interest happened, it’s safe to assume that at least five to ten seconds passed before Camilla combusted, meaning it was a much slower process than that of Harrow & Gideon. Even without Nona’s observation, the process was much slower and well thought out. And the result of the slower process? A fusion, or synthesis, between Camilla & Palamedes—what I’m going to call “True Lyctorhood.” And if Anastasia realized the secret to Lyctorhood was to do the Eightfold slowly, she would have had the same results with Samael as Camilla & Palamedes. Their souls should have combined, and they should have achieved True Lyctorhood. This is where John’s words start to have a little tiny sliver of truth. When he says that Anastasia & Samael would have both died, he wasn’t entirely lying, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. Nona struggles with seeing Paul as both Cam & Pal because she thinks of them as dead. She’ll never see either of them again, but she has a harder time realizing that they both still live on in Paul. I think that John was able to see that Anastasia & Samael would have merged their souls had they continued, and he could only view it as the death of them both, rather than a new life made up of two souls. So he chose the option that looked most favorable to him, and he killed only one of them, rather than lose them both.

Now, you may be asking, how do we know that Camilla & Palamedes did the same thing as Anastasia & Samael? That’s where Cassiopeia comes in (and some speculation). Again, in Act V of Harrow, Augustine says “I knew [Anastasia] was working closely with Cassiopeia.” Cassiopeia was helping Anastasia research Lyctorhood, so she would have had access to all Anastasia’s notes and research. And the Sixth House are scholars, Cassy would never get rid of information as big as an alternate form of Lyctorhood. Cassiopeia would have stored her information somewhere, and if she didn’t make it accessible to the house as a whole, she could have put it in the instructions she left. Either way, her and Anastasia’s research would not have been lost, and it would have had a clear tie with the Sixth House. And as Warden and Cavalier Primary of the Sixth, Camilla & Palamedes would have had some sort of access to this research, and would have known that such a thing was possible.

So where does that leave Anastasia & Samael? It means that they, had John not intervened, would have achieved True Lyctorhood and completely merged their souls. We know that John was full of shit, Anastasia’s panic couldn’t have been his reason. We have already seen successful executions of the Eightfold while both people are under extreme stress—or even actively trying not to become a Lyctor. We know the process executed by Camilla & Palamedes was similar to, if not exactly the same as, the process that Anastasia attempted. And we know that they would have had some kind of access to the research done by her and Cassiopeia. So. John saw that Anastasia and Samael would have merged and achieved True Lyctorhood, and he killed Samael because he would rather lose one of them than both of them, even though, had they continued, neither of them would have actually died.

Anyways. I have so many thoughts about Anastasia and Samael. why is this relevant to the locked tomb going forward? if I’m being totally honest, I have no idea. it’s important to me though. if you even care.

#yes this is the essay i promised like the week after nona came out #don’t even get me started on the implied codependency between anastasia and samael #i could write another goddamn essay all about codependency but make it specifically only about anastasia and samael #i have. a problem i think. #vin speaks #the locked tomb #tlt #nona the ninth #ntn #harrow the ninth #htn #gideon the ninth #gtn #tamsyn muir

[sixth-light]

*slides you money* I heard you were three seconds from a treatise on David Lange and Mururoa and the Rainbow Warrior?

BY POPULAR DEMAND (ok you and like three other people asked)...

The core fact that you gotta know if you want to talk about New Zealand and nuclear weapons is that campaigning for nuclear disarmament and maintaining a legal nuclear-free zone in our territorial waters has been the core of our independent foreign policy as a country for nearly forty years, since the mid-1980s. This developed over the 60s and 70s from a popular groundswell of anti-nuclear sentiment focused around continued atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific by France as well as visits from nuclear-powered (and potentially nuclear-armed) American warships. It evolved into government action; left-wing governments took France to court to demand an end to testing and sent naval frigates to the nuclear test area to protest with Government ministers on board.

This was crystallised in 1985 when a photographer was killed in the state-sponsored terrorist bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship conducting protests at the French nuclear test site of Mururoa. The bombing was carried out by French spies who were decorated when they returned to France (after France promised they would be jailed) and led to a prolonged diplomatic rift between New Zealand and France. The subsequent passing of nuclear-free legislation in 1987, banning nuclear-powered or armed ships visiting our waters, led to New Zealand's suspension from the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, and the United States) military alliance. David Lange, the Prime Minister at the time, opined famously that "The only thing worse than being incinerated by your enemies, is being incinerated by your friends." The ban still has such wide bipartisan support that it's simply not on the table now for even our right-wing parties; infamously, in the early 2000s one Leader of the Opposition told an American congressional delegation that the ban would be 'gone by lunchtime' if he became Prime Minister. This wasn't the DIRECT cause of his eventual toppling but it certainly didn't help. Nobody else has gone near it since.

I am, however, excrutiatingly aware that while our nuclear-free stance is viewed internally by New Zealanders as central to our national identity - there's a well-known song and it was even controversially used this year in a beer ad as a signifier of national pride - nobody else remembers. Particularly the Americans and the French. Seared into my brain is Scott Brown (yes that one) arriving here as the new US Ambassador in 2016 and going on the radio to talk earnestly about how Kiwis didn't realise that nuclear fallout wasn't restricted by national borders, c.f. North Korea, as if anti-nuclear campaigning wasn't...well...see all of the above. READ YOUR GODDAMN BRIEFING PACKETS ON THE PLANE, SCOTT, IT'S A FOURTEEN-HOUR FLIGHT.

So what does that mean for the Locked Tomb books?

As the linked article about the beer ad notes, anti-nuclear protesting has been a site not only of national identity formation but specifically Indigenous protest in the Pacific. It is Pasifika peoples who have borne the brunt of nuclear testing and much of the early anti-nuclear movement in Aotearoa was led by Māori and Pasifika, and closely tied to the anti-apartheid movement which focused on the removal or restriction of Māori and Pasifika rugby players on tours to apartheid South Africa.

In Nona the Ninth, it becomes clear that John (a Māori man) and G- (whose ethnicity is not specified but 'reads' as most likely Māori or Pasifika in context), as well as their friends, blackmailed the US government for a suitcase nuke and eventually used it to bomb Melbourne, with John then causing nuclear armageddon around the world. This is, uh, emphatically not the same thing as "Twitch streamers [John & co] nuking New Zealand", as chill as I generally am with the eliding of detail for joke posts. This is a Māori man from and in New Zealand nuking first Australia and then the rest of the world.

This is, obviously, if you're coming from the historical context, hugely transgressive in a way I can only describe as a...horror of agency? The horror of saying, what if we were willing to do the thing that we identify ourselves as a nation as being against under all circumstances? What if instead of standing nobly against nuclear weapons, for reasons of moral indefensibility, we were the ones to pull the trigger? What if our culture and our people survived the apocalypse because one of us started it, instead of us surviving by virtue of being so small, so on the edge of the world, so carelessly left off world maps?

And as to why it matters that it's Melbourne - New Zealand has a...complicated relationship with Australia that's hard to directly parallel to anywhere else (it's sort of like Canada and the US but also not like Canada and the US in any way that Canadians or Americans ever interpret that statement in my experience). In particular, there is huge anxiety in Australia about New Zealand as a source of non-white (and specifically Māori and Pasifika) emigration to Australia. Australian immigration policy, while technically retaining free movement between the two nations, has grown more and more restrictive over the last twenty years. Right now the central point of conflict is a policy of deporting mostly Māori and Pasifika New Zealand-born prisoners back to New Zealand on completion of their sentences, regardless of how old they were when they came to Australia, resulting in a large body of traumatised people with zero community ties being dumped back here and - no surprises! - frequently turning to crime. There's A Lot Going On There. Added to which the Christchurch mosque shooter deliberately travelled here from Australia to carry out his terrorism. And yet also, hundreds of thousands of us live there and many more have relatives and friends there.

And Melbourne? Melbourne is like....the cool Australian city, if you're a New Zealander. Sydney is too big (the same population as our whole country!) and too...everything, Brisbane and the Gold Coast are tropical and so kinda weird, Adelaide and Perth? we don't know them, but Melbourne is aspirational. Melbourne is the kind of city Wellington and Auckland would like to be when they grow up, maybe. They have laneways and culture and a working tram system. But it's also a very...white kind of cool. The kind enjoyed by rich Pākehā who can afford to go on weekend shopping holidays there.

So yeah. John and G- and the crew nuke Melbourne and it's a nexus of all these tensions old and new, of who we think we are as people and as a nation, of how we relate to Australia which is our friend and nearest neighbour and our rival and our scapegoat (because they're the really racist ones, aren't they? If we say that loud enough, does it drown out the sounds of our own sins?)

It's a fantasy of power and a horror of it at the same time. I hope someone right now is writing a monograph on this, there's so much to dig into. But it deserves to be framed as what it is, as a response from a Kiwi author to our own history and identity. It deserves to be understood in context.

#the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #new zealand #history #nuclear disarmament

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

Between the Locked Tomb and Chainsaw Man posts, I think I *do* approve of this new trend of people getting all hot and bothered for the worst women you’ve ever seen in your life. Fuck yeah, you’re all thirsting and lusting after a woman who hasn’t showered in a year. Absolutely goddamn horny for a woman who would hiss at people if she had more time. Excellent. Make more of these types of women and roll out more of the scrunkliest rule 34 this side of the internet.

#tabby says something

[talenlee]

Can a Bird Love A Falcon

Since last year’s Locked Tomb readings got me nostalgic and retrospective, it was only a matter of time before I retreated back to earliest media of my post-cult life, the stuff that stands tall in my mind as some of my first lessons in how to be normal. So I picked the thing with a bunch of PTSD and existential horror.

Let’s talk about the Rachel/Tobias ship.

Spoiler Warning: If you’re ever planning on reading the Animorphs story, this article is going to spoil some events that happen in the last half of it. And since this is about Animorphs I guess Content Warning for war death trauma body integrity horror uh mind control uh cannibalism uh what’s the term for beating someone to death with one of your own severed limbs, that.

That.

Animorphs is a lot.

There’s not a lot of romantic material in Animorphs, but it’s there. It’s almost expertly defined in negative space – the way that actual teenagers consider and tease at the idea of boyfriend-girlfriend-joyfriend stuff without saying it, without any of it being explicit. Like nobody sits down and makes a list of reasons to want to date someone, it’s often just about emotional reactions to momentary stimuli, things that imprint on the brain and are being tested out bit by bit. It’s hard to grapple with for me to get in the right mind space, but remembering the Animorphs characters are, like, fourteen and not Anime-Fourteen but fourteen fourteen is pretty big in explaining how and why they react to things.

In that space, though, there’s the sorta-maybe-hey-thinking-about-it-do-they-kiss romance of Rachel and Tobias. Rachel is a girl repeatedly described as being hot, by her cousin, a tall, blonde girl who also is hiding the instincts of a violent warrior, a girl thrown into a war and commanded to be an adult, and she actually takes to it well. Like, in a different framing device, Rachel is the antagonist of a teen serial killer story. Tobias, by contrast, is what you might these days consider something of a droopy sadboy – floppy hair, skinny, no friends, unappreciated, bounced between abusive carers that aren’t properly parents, and then at the end of the very first story he turns into a hawk, never* to turn back again.

Oh and he’s also secretly an alien prince, but don’t worry, nobody ever tells him that.

It’s not even like it’s a complicated ship, in a lot of ways. As a loser of a boy, it was really just the shape of the most standard fantasy possible: What if there was the hottest girl in the world, who for reasons beyond both your control, had reason to hang out with you, become emotionally invested in you, and then from there, ha ha, you got ’em! You’re basically married at that point as long as no circumstances change the status quo where you get to hang around her regularly!

And then, thanks to you trying too hard and being too awesome, you have to leave your old life behind, embracing a new life, a new reality where none of your responsibilities persisted, your bad family were gone, and you have a reason to be socially connected with four extremely cool people who were probably not really your friends to start with. Oh and one of them is really hot and can kill everyone who bothers you. I mean beats up everyone. I mean she can protect you with her big, strong arms that are also fuzzy because she is a bear, and when she’s not a bear she’s basically Genius Barbie.

From her perspective, she can pick who she likes but instead of a boy who has Conventional Interests and connects to her life, she gets a boyfriend who is a secret. Also, he’s paradoxically, dangerous and very safe; they’re not sexually compatible in terms of their bodies, it’s very hard to argue that Tobias is interested in her because of her body and how their bodies relate. As a romantic partner, Tobias has to be interested in her for herself. At the same time, he’s a goddamn hawk, and hawks are really cool and badass and scary, and she can have him cruising around on her shoulder like she’s a pirate.

I obviously liked this ship as a kid because both of the halves were hot. It wasn’t just that Rachel was gorgeous but also that Tobias looked really good for kissing, and that meant they’d both have a fun time kissing, right? Obviously? This is a very straight way to consider ships, especially ships where I both wanted to be and kiss Tobias. Because again, he was hot. Right?

The canon of Animorphs actually deep-sixes the ship, early and late. There’s a middle period where the ship can happen, but there’s an after and a before, and the before is ‘when Tobias and Rachel barely know each other.’ They do eventually get a chance to do more conventional ship stuff – like holding hands and kissing – but that’s See, and I know you might not remember this: Rachel dies. Her last book is her relating her story, in her dying moments, to a god-figure, and there we get one of the enduring quotes of the series:

“You were brave, you were strong, you were good. You mattered.”

And before that quote, Rachel, reflecting on that moment, says that Tobias would not have let her get into the position where she was dying. He wouldn’t, because he loved her. And that’s some nice ship material but it would be nicer if it wasn’t happening as a character is dying.

Now you might think, hang on, this is a het ship. That’s not what I normally talk about around here! And you might be surprised, but consider this. This is a woman, and the lover who she cannot touch, who she cannot embrace, because there is a wrongness to it. The body of that lover does not properly align with their identity. The girl is positioned forever stand at a love that expresses itself through mostly, not expressing itself.

An eagle and a girl, is that not, itself, yuri?

Okay, I know it’s not. Personally, I have very little patience for ‘ah, two unrelated things is yuri’ jokes because it’s a wheelie everyone pops but also because, like, yeah, maybe it’s great to capture all the metaphorical ways we’ve suppressed women’s relatoinships but also maybe you could have them like hold hands and say they’re interested in one another. Like, that’s an option. Imagine if more yuri felt they could do that, even. What a world.

But anyway, thing is, Tobias, as a character, is a figure Important To The 90s Trans community, along with other such icons as Bugs Bunny and Ranma Saotome. There’s a fairly common thread through Tobias’ narrated books where he reflects on a determined tragedy (who he has been told he has to be) and the freedom of change (as being able to freely choose an identity and presentation through morphing). Applegate has been pretty clear that whatever vision of the characters’ sexuality and gender relationships work for you are effectively canon – they’re characters shared through the experience of reading and all that.

I’m not saying every nonbinary or trans kid from the 90s will respond to ‘Thermals’ and ‘Cinnabunzzzzz’ but a bunch will and it’s a trend worth noting.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Animorphs #Media

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

*NOTES; Harrowhark propaganda below John Gaius's due to post length! Additionally, tie sweeps require a 0.2% margin and one stated similarity between both characters.

John Gaius Propaganda:

MOTHERFUCKER YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID (kill literally the entire population of Earth, resurrect your friends but rewrite their memories, lie to them for 10,000 years).

lies every other sentence. pretends not to know things just so he can act shocked and appalled to discover them. literally calls himself god. is horrible to all his friends and is surprised when they turn on him because he's been so good to them. the third book of the series is intercut with little sequences where he's explaining how he didn't mean to cause the nuclear explosion that ended the world, honest, even if he was the one who detonated the bomb, and he's so good at making excuses you feel for him and think he's funny even while he's talking about the atrocities he's committed

Harrowhark Propaganda:

She gave herself a lobotomy and gives completely incorrect flashbacks to the previous book. Things that straight up did not happen. Gaslight gatekeep girlboss.

She’s schizophrenic (confirmed by the author) and also lives in a world with necromancy and ghostly revenants. She’s not just an unreliable narrator for readers, she’s an unreliable narrator of her own internal experience. She knows this and has to work with people around her to compensate for it. Descent into spoilerville below. Seriously Do Not Read if you want to read these books. There’s also the little matter about how she is *not actually the narrator* of a huge chunk of the story that we are initially led to believe is being told from her perspective.

(Spoilers) Holy shit she is THE most unreliable narrator. This gremlin gave herself a lobotomy so that she could forget about Gideon Nav, the most important person in her life (for magic soul-preserving reasons) so half of the second book in the series is spent gaslighting the reader about a book they just read. She comes up with an entire alternate version of the events of the first book in the series to carefully exclude any mentions of Gideon, and any time someone says ‘Gideon’ in front of her she LITERALLY has a stroke and/or an intercranial hemorrhage as her brain overwrites the word with someone else’s name. God occasionally intentionally triggers her memory revision to get out of difficult conversations. She also hallucinates ALL the time (unrelated to the lobotomy). She shows up at her frenemy’s room in the middle of the night (think little kid stumbling to their parents’ room and saying “I frew up”) to ask her to come check underneath her bed for the corpse that’s been wandering the space station. When frenemy checks underneath the bed, frenemy claims not to see anything, and Harrow is such an unbelievably unreliable narrator that it’s an open question in the fandom as to whether frenemy genuinely didn’t see the corpse or if frenemy was just yanking Harrow’s chain. Harrow is also haunted by a literal ghost that fucks up her already fucked up alternate history. Girlie will pick up a piece of paper and read from it the most violent and haunting piece of prose ever composed, when in reality all that’s written on the paper is the elementary school Superman S*. I am NOT joking that is a real goddamn scene. Harrow was created to win this poll. TLDR; she has brain damage and memory loss, she hallucinates, and is also haunted. * https://twitter.com/vestenet/status/1301012651145859072

Girl is so unreliable, she unreliably tells me events I was there for!!! She's retelling the previous book and I'm like "girlie, this is absolutely not how it happened". Also, she gave herself a DIY lobotomy, it has to impact your memory center I guess

She literally had a lobotomy, how can she be reliable

Rest of Propaganda under cut!

Harrowhark is simply the unreliable narrator of all time. Can’t remember shit because of a lifetime of trauma? Check. Maybe lying to yourself and those around you a bit? Most definitely. Being gaslit by the survivors you depend on to orient you to reality? For sure. How about a little bit of canon schizophrenia? She’s got it all. Ghosts? Or something? Spirits that are attached in some way to your body and are not perceivable by others? Sure, sure! But how about spirits that are attached in some way to your body and are gonna use you to hijack others’ bodies and maybe kill God, too? Absolutely. Wee bit of DIY brain surgery? If it would make you an unreliable narrator, friends, then Harrowhark Nonagesimus has been there, been subjected to that!

Okay I don't know that much about this series since I haven't convinced myself to read all of the first book, but this is my blorbo in law so I'd feel bad not spreading propaganda (all of what I'm saying is something I've read, as to prevent myself from straight up submitting misinformation). So all of Harrow's unreliable narration takes place in the second book, Harrow the Ninth. Basically, without her even seemingto acknowledge it, Harrow's brain is very fucked up during this book, to the point where even she's not sure how reliable her narrative is. There's many questions left unclear as a result of her fucked up little brain, like what's real, what's fake, whether we can trust her judgement, whether even she can trust her own judgement, whether her original cavalier is dead or not (Harrow is convinced she is), etc. Let me tell you, I adore unreliable narrators who aren't even that sure if they're reliable. I have yet to eat that trope up here in this circumstance, but this poll might not run again by the time I do, so for now, here's my messed up blorbo in law.

OKAY SO REMEMBER MY GIDEON SUBMISSION? HARROW DOESN’T! SPOILERS AHEAD BECAUSE SHE LOBOTOMIZED HERSELF TO FORGET GIDEON BECAUSE THAT’S A HEALTHY WAY TO GRIEVE AND THEN IN THE ONLY PARTS OF HER BOOK THAT SHE NARRATES (THE REVISED CANAAN HOUSE PARTS) IT’S LITERALLY A ROOM FULL OF GHOSTS HER BRAIN SUMMONED TO DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT SHE CUT HER BRAIN IN HALF TO FORGET GIDEON. she also is a) haunted and b) psychotic, experiencing hallucinations her entire life of both the ghosts haunting her and less supernatural hallucinations- bells tolling, bones rattling, her parents (some of the only dead people NOT haunting her), etc! in the revised history of canaan house that her brainghosts invent, she brings along someone who knows about her psychosis to help reality check her when she tells him go! her caregiver as a child and support when she got older, crux, is a horrible man- but at one point, when someone other than harrow is in harrow’s body and tells him “i am not harrowhark, i am sorry,” his response is simply “aye, you’ve said that before too. who are you then, if not my lady harrowhark?” showing his familiarity with her psychosis and his love for the child he wouldn’t dare see as a daughter. but enough about that lets talk about her unreliable narration! she lies about her feelings of course but she also simply hides the truth from everyone, all the time, compulsively. also literally the entire section of her book that she narrates is a lie she’s telling US about a lie she’s telling HERSELF and no one understands even a little bit of the truth until like the last act of the book. queen.

#unreliable narrator battle #unreliable narrators #polls #side c #john gaius #the locked tomb #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrowhark

[vacantgodling]

I'd love to hear about cult of the pale moon messiah (and also gender if you wanna share) ~ @void-botanist

thank youuuuu!!

so gender is a playlist of songs that are just gender to me. i haven’t updated it in a BIT so idk how accurate some of them still are 🤔 it’s less of how i currently experience gender and more like the gender i Want to be. just something about the sounds and vibes of these songs are if i could snap my fingers and have any body and style etc i want it’d be this: (also sorry not sorry it’s all kpop)

N E WAY. cult of the pale moon messiah is a very… underdeveloped wip. it actually (surprisingly for me) came from a dream i had after reading that one writing prompts post talking about being imprisoned for 400 years or smthn and you actually live to see the full sentence. so. here’s just what i wrote down from that dream:

after being caught and tried for murder, a criminal has been sentenced to 111 years in prison. the criminal (a vampire, to which they don’t knows accepts this sentence but requests that he be provided a coffin to sleep in, and that no one provide him with food or water or anything to sustain himself and that no one check his cell for 111 years. the judge agrees, humored, and orders that a building ordinance be put up that no one shall check that cell for 111 years and the building cannot be torn down until this prisoner’s time.

the vampire enters his solitary confinement cell and is locked in the room. the vampire gets into the coffin and lulls itself to sleep.

111 years later, the town is being renovated and workers finally come down to this tomb. they have heard about the ordinance and are darkly amused to see the bones of the fool who would’ve died a horrible starving death for naught. they open the crypt and they pry open the coffin and find the vampire still fully flesh and blood laying there. the first man (older) dies of fright and the other (younger) is devoured by the now awake vampire. then, the vampire escapes.

news quickly spreads of this and though many are concerned at what the FUCK still many others flock to him and begin to worship him as a god. which is how the cult of the pale moon messiah is born.

(they still don’t know he’s a vampire btw🧍‍♂️)

basically those who tend to flock to this “messiah” are fed the lie that they will be able to become immortal by becoming one with him—so it becomes a sex cult but also a blood bag drive because basically they’re lead to believe that if they’re chosen to be drained by the messiah that they are being sent to their second life and will be reborn. a mass hysteria and frenzy over this new religion crops up and starts sending their small land into just sheer goddamn pandemonium (this story takes place in paramour’s universe btw right here

and yeah it’s very. castlevania (netflix) meets interview with a vampire’s homoeroticism because the Tension between the vampire and the mc man who comes to put a stop to this shit (him btw)

is kind of insane.

no one has names yet and it’s very just uHHHHH vibes. i’ll figure it out eventually.

there’s only 2 songs on the playlist tho bc i’m look for like. very specific blend of operatic metal like the first song or very heavy handed religious allegory but take me to church but also rocky-poppy like the second im just very picky.

#about renjamin #s: cult of the pale moon messiah #basically i want to have the body of a fuck boy do you understand

[lesbrarians]

Nona the Ninth: A Spoiler-Free Review

Disclaimer: I'm a librarian who received an Uncorrected Advance Reader Copy of Nona the Ninth. Thank you to TOR for providing me with this ARC.This review is my own and is not influenced in any way by the privilege of receiving this ARC. I swore on the Tomb not speak its secrets, and as promised, this review will contain no spoilers.

---

The only negative thing I have to say about my experience of reading this book was simply that I could not sit down and read it all in one sitting. Unfortunately, I needed to do such stupid human things as go to work, eat, and sleep. Which was most unfortunate, because Nona was the most engrossing book I've read in a long time, and I would've rather read it than do, you know, any of those things.

I've been waffling about where Nona ranks in my personal ranking of the Locked Tomb books. Because like, I didn't think it was possible to like a book more than GtN, but tbfh? NtN is a strong contender to replace it.

This is not to say that NtN is similar in tone to GtN, though! One of the things I admire most about this series is how uniquely different each of the Locked Tomb books has been in terms of its narrative voice. And look, I'll be the first to say that I struggled when I read HtN at first. My brain had a really difficult time getting over the mental roadblock with the switch to second-person tense. Of course, the emotional payoff was worth it in the end! But it was a challenge for me to get into at first.

I didn't have that kind of mental roadblock with NtN. Nona immediately sucked me in. Her narrative voice is so different than the narrative voices found in Gideon or Harrow, and it is truly such a delight to read. It wasn't as meme-y as the first one or even the second one. I think I only caught like two legit memes? The humor was still on-point (when I tell you that there was one moment towards the end where I went from quiet blubbering to actual hooting with laughter, the emotional whiplash killed me and I loved every second of it), but it took the side seat next to the worldbuilding. God, the lore encased in NtN... I need a reread to really digest it all.

And Nona herself? Being inside her head is just... it's charming. Nona as a character absolutely charmed me. The little cover blurb of "You will love Nona, and Nona loves you"? Accurate in every respect. I would die for Nona. I was so sad to finish the novel and honestly wanted to flip back to the start to go on Nona's whole journey all over again. (Because goddamn, what a journey it was.)

Also, every other character in this, not just Nona, was amazing. I loved reading about every character on the Dramatis Personae, especially the "you three." Well, except for the dogs listed. There sadly wasn't enough of the dogs. Asides from Noodle. There was a satisfactory amount of Noodle, whomst I adored.

Let's talk (not really, because No Spoilers) about twists. I went into Nona with a starting theory, and as I read, my theories changed as we learned new pieces of information. There were a few twists where I picked up on the breadcrumbs that Tamsyn was laying and called it before it actually happened, which I must say is tremendously satisfying. And then there were a few twists that absolutely sucker-punched me right in the gut because I was not expecting them at all. And then I had one theory that I was convinced was gonna be true and... I mean, it wasn't confirmed. I suppose it wasn't also denied, though? I'll sit on it.

And now that I've finished writing this review... there's some research I need to do. A few things I've written down that I must look up. A few comparisons to make between my notes and the text.

And so much thinking I must do.

And after I do all that.... then I need to decide: do I immediately reread Nona, or do I go back and reread Harrow and Gideon first? Decisions, decisions.

---

TL;DR Absolutely incredible. Thought-provoking, insane, amazing. As with Gideon and Harrow before them, I am so, so excited for the world at large to read Nona. It is worth the wait.

#will crosspost on GR! #nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb

[yvesdot]

While we're at it, a comparison list between the Locked Tomb series and KAY RAINIER.

Similarities first.

butch unwilling bodyguard figure to a mysterious repressed carefully-put-together futch

belligerent sexual tension

belligerent implications of race, class, power, and gender

unexpected POV decisions in the second book reveal that the futch has actually not been keeping anything together and is, at best, insane

somebody's father did a very bad job

somebody's father did a very bad job, and is dead

author clearly influenced by experiences with fanfiction and specifically the fanfiction approach to character, dialogue, and relationships; continues to interpolate various favorite texts throughout

dressing peculiarly as an expression of (lesbian) gender

goths

general morbidity of the futch (<- would like this on a t-shirt)

cast is mostly women, but don't worry, there is a white guy to make repeated fun of as he suffers

women who died before the narrative began are constantly affecting it nonetheless

also being dead is not necessarily the permanent condition you thought it was? no not in that way. not in that way either. you're going to have to think outside the box for this one.

female characters whose very identities are spoilers

newflash, asshole! author was talking about their personal culture and heritage the entire goddamn time!

due to unforeseen circumstances, character from main pairing in first book ends up tongueing a completely different character in the second, but don't worry, it was all thanks to their devotion to their original partner

sorry to the innocent people who died because the protagonist was not doing their job. there was a woman with breasts nearby

serious injury to side character's right arm

blade (phallic)

And some differences.

Locked Tomb is complex, eloquent, and often intentionally confusing; KAY is about as straightforward as it gets

KAY has numerous explicit lesbian sex scenes

Locked Tomb gives worldbuilding big sloppy kisses; KAY spits on worldbuilding and punches it several times before stabbing it and throwing it off a cliff

gender in the Locked Tomb is weird in a "not sure whose body that is or what gender the soul inside it was" way; gender in KAY is weird in a "he/him butch will not be clarifying gender further" way

Hope this clears things up. Thanks to Locked Tomb people following me only to see my own blorbos! Thanks to regular followers confused at the Locked Tomb fannage! Have this commission of Kay/Atlas gay sex allegations as a treat.

...and consider joining me to talk KAY RAINIER as I outline both books at 9:00 PM PST this Saturday, 9/24/22!

#txt #the locked tomb #<- this is for my own tagging system good luck gang. #the one and only universe of kay rainier

[iviarellereads]

Harrow the Ninth, Chapter 44

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one!)

(Herald icon) In which an old friend is back... sort of.(1)

THAT SAME NIGHT BEFORE THE EMPEROR'S MURDER

There's some description, in second-person, of the stabbing inflicted upon her in the prologue.

You'd been stabbed from behind, and you'd collapsed backward onto the rapier's hilt. Its foible(2) pointed upward where it protruded from your torso. And you'd gone and left me behind.

Our unnamed but obviously identified(3) body-animation algorithm pushes the rapier back out of Harrow's body, and she plans to make whoever stabbed Harrow sorry for the act. Her hands can't quite grip the rapier the way she wants to, because her hands aren't her hands, they're Harrow's. Gideon swears vengeance on whoever stabbed her Harrow, in the corridor so hot the air is shimmering.

Pool of blood: check. Air so hot: check. Surrounded by big and illicit bones: check. Looking at your hand to keep this tally--what hand there was, beneath the blood, and your fingers, and your small palms, and their absolute lack of thenar(4) muscle--reality went through me. Kind of like a big iron railing, now that I think about it.(5) You were gone. You'd left me behind.(6) Inside you. "Fuck," I said. It wasn't my voice. "Fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, fucking hell. Help. Yuck. Aaaargh."

Gideon encounters a herald in the corridor, and several paragraphs are spent describing its horror.

I lined up your front foot with your back ankle, thumb wrapped low around the hilt of your sword, which proves that you can put the swordfighter into the necromancer but you can't, wait, hang on.(7) And I said, "Goddamn it, I told you to lift weights."

After an encounter that goes badly for Gideon and Harrow's body, she manages to squeeze past it and into Harrow's bedroom.

I burst into the nearest room. The bedroom. I kind of knew the layout, but I'd never really been able to use your eyes. Living inside you--if I start I'll never stop,(8) so we have to move on--was like living in a well, and every time I bobbed to the surface I kind of got clotheslined(9) back down to the bottom. I'm not complaining, I just want you to know.

There, she retrieves her old two-hander. Looking at it, she gets cranky at Harrow for not understanding how to care for a sword.(10) Then she gets cranky at Harrow for doing her own brain surgery rather than be beholden to anyone, for taking Gideon's sacrifice and throwing it away. Then she gets cranky at Harrow AGAIN for not doing a single fucking squat or star jump(11) in ten months.

As I stood with that sword grasped between your hands, the hilt of the two-hander bit our(12) skin, but not fatally. There were a couple of callouses now on those soft necromancer's palms, and I was proud of you.(13)

Gideon engages the Herald, and some sort of healing process is definitely happening for her in a way it never did for Harrow, "probably because [Gideon is] a good girl and [Harrow is] an evil nun".(14)

She takes out the Herald, and catches a glance at herself in the mirror, seeing Harrow's face, with her own golden eyes so foreign to it. She tries different facial expressions, but they don't feel right in Harrow's musculature. It's Harrow's body, "but it was all filled up with me."

I said hoarsely: "Get back here. Get back here right now, or I'll make you say the worst shit I can think of. Just mean and gross. Beneath even me, is what I'm saying." No response. "Oooooh, Palamedes. I am measurably less intelligent than you. Put your tongue in my mouth, and I'll flop my tongue against it." Nothing. "I think bones are mediocre." Maybe you were dead. "Ohhhhhrr, Gideon, I was so dumb to think a tub of ancient freezer meat was my girlfriend. Please show me how to do a press-up. Also, I'm very obviously attracted to y--no, damn it, this is just sad.(15) This is garbage." My temper was going. Maybe your temper was going. "Come back. I hate this. Eat me, and let's go full Lyctor. I didn't fall on a fence for this, Nonagesimus."

More Heralds start to show up. Gideon realizes that she now has access to Harrow's memories, though she has to actively look for something to know it, as she realizes more were always going to come. She hopes and wants and practically prays for Harrow to return, but no luck.

"Whenever you're ready," I said. "Don't worry, honey. I'll keep the home fires burning."(16)

=====

(1) In this, the first chapter in Harrow the Ninth in which Harrow does not appear! I keep my tags for the book in a pinned entry in my Windows clipboard and it was so strange to have to delete #Harrowhark Nonagesimus from the tags after pasting, and then type #Gideon Nav (2) Foible - in fencing, the part of the sword between the middle of the blade and the tip, one of the weakest points in the sword. (3) Gideon! (4) The thenar muscles are the ones that make up the meat below your thumb, on your palm. (5) Gideon, you cheeky lass. You remembered! (6) Somehow Gideon has been witness to everything that's happened to Harrow, and still believes that Harrow doesn't want her. She can't read Harrow's thoughts, she can only see through her senses, just like Harrow couldn't read Gideon's thoughts in the Lyctor chamber at Canaan House. She can't see the motivation, and she has eighteen years, a lifetime's worth, of memories that say Harrow opposite-of-cares about her. The last few weeks of connection doesn't quite overpower the things Gideon still believes about herself, thanks to a lifetime of traumatic conditioning. (7) Ah, a classic phrase. For real though, I don't think there's a single origin, but more or less, you can take the thing out of its element but you can't make it change its nature. See examples like "you can take the mathematician out of the classroom but you can't make them stop calculating the golden ratio in the garden flowers" (not a thing I've ever heard before but given how many videos and essays there are about the golden ratio in nature, it felt appropriate). Not to be mistaken for "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink", which is more about not being able to force someone to do something they're uncomfortable with even when it would be good for them. (8) Laughing, crying, making jokes? All of the above? (9) It's kind of a wrestling move. Someone's running at you, you stick out an arm, run toward them, catch them in the neck, and bowl them backward with your and their combined momentum. Do not attempt at home without professional wrestling trainer supervision! (10) You never actually told her, and even if someone tried to teach her, she'd just have started throwing up and bleeding from her brain at the thought of caring for the sword that she thought hated her. (11) Jumping jacks, for those of us in the sort of North American region. (12) The jump back and forth between "your" and "our", between Harrow as an individual and Gideon as a part of her… My heart can't take it. (13) And this. Gideon believes that Harrow has abandoned her intentionally, but she's still proud of her. I just. MY EMOTIONS! (14) Or perhaps Gideon's return means that the Lyctoral process continues, making Harrow a full Lyctor, and the healing factor is what she was supposed to have had all along but had to actively fake. (See: when Ianthe stabbed herself and then Harrow at the beginning of the book.) (15) Gideon can't even let herself believe that Harrow cared about her. Never mind that Harrow put Gideon on what she thought was the easy mission (walking the Fourth kids through the facility) so that Harrow took the dangerous one (possibly confronting Palamedes and "Dulcinea" about being the killers) at Canaan House. Never mind all the other things. Again, a lifetime of conditioning compared to a few weeks of honesty and connection. (16) And even believing that Harrow has abandoned her, has wasted her gift and sacrifice, and outright doesn't care about her wellbeing... Gideon still does this. She still makes flirty, too-emotionally-revealing statements like this. She still loves Harrow so much.

#the locked tomb #tlt #harrow the ninth #htn #harrow the ninth spoilers #htn spoilers #gideon nav

[veilchenjaeger]

In the time it took me to recover from reading The Locked Tomb, I finally watched the second season of Good Omens (had to wait for my parents to be able to watch it with me), and I want to do a quick post of my first impressions bc I like writing these. (No, I'm not over The Locked Tomb enough to write one for that yet. Maybe soon. Or maybe for Alecto.)

The short version is that I loved it, especially the ending. Season 1 is probably one of my favourite shows ever made; it's so obvious how much love and care went into every second of it, and I'm still impressed by how it manages to both be accurate to the book and modernise and alter the story a little to fit a TV show made decades after the book came out. The pacing, the amount of creativity and very different characters it introduces, the Cold War themes that somehow still work in the 2018 version, all the stuff that just keeps happening - it's just very good. Season 2 is very different from that, regarding the pacing especially. There's a lot less going on. Its focus is a lot more narrow. It's a lot slower, and a lot of it feels like filler, up until the last two episodes re-introduce the Shit Is Happening Left And Right pacing. Ultimately, it's a bridge between the first season and the next one (fingers fucking crossed that it gets made; I'm ready to just start cannibalising Amazon executives), it very much feels like one, and I think that's what it has to be seen as. Neil Gaiman confirmed that that's what it is a long time ago. So, no, it's not as gorgeously done as season 1 - but I went into it expecting a bridge, and I did get an incredibly enjoyable and very heartbreaking bridge that I'm 100% satisfied with. I wanted to see Aziraphale and Crowley and I saw them a lot, the plot is solid, and the last episode really came in with the fucking steel chair and knocked me the fuck out. My mind is rotting in 20 different ways rn. I did not need this after Nona the Ninth.

Anyways, in case there's anyone here who's on the fence about watching season 2 (or about Good Omens!), go watch it. Be at peace. Get your heart broken. (And, like, watch Good Omens, it's so good.)

Spoilery thoughts under the cut.

Starting off with a minor intriguing thing - I was SO on the fence about Crowley and Aziraphale having met before the Fall when I first watched their first meeting, but y'know what? I like it. There really isn't anything that says that they didn't know each other already in their Eden conversation. (I think that in the book, it does read like they know each other.) And I like all the little hints we're suddenly getting at who Crowley used to be before the fall. He was a Throne or a Dominion or above??? HELLO??? If the "Crowley was Raphael" theory ends up being real, I'm gonna start walking up the walls. Anyways, it's cool, these little reminders that Crowley does know Heaven fit very well with the overall theme of criticising Heaven as an institution, and I really hope that this is all build-up for a reveal of what sauntering vaguely downwards entailed for Crowley. Aziraphale's character arc is very much a metaphor for religious trauma and being in a cult, and season 2 puts Crowley in the role of the one who got out of the cult even more explicitly than season 1 did, which... is very appropriate, considering how it all ends.

Next up, I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE that they made Gabriel/Beelzebub canon. Are you KIDDING me. I went through all five stages of grief watching this with my parents right next to me, who had never heard of this ship before and were just sitting there, happily watching things proceed while my entire goddamn brain melted. What the FUCK. The audacity to do this and make it work, at that. I didn't even ship this, ever, and I'm still losing my entire mind about it. Is that what Homestuck readers felt like when Davekat went canon? Absolutely bonkers emotion, 10/10 would experience again. How dare they make me like Gabriel, also. Anyways, it fucking worked, and that's what upsets me the most. This was a genuinely sweet, romantic little story. The thing with the fly? OOF. Adorable. Extremely romantic. I, too, would leave everything I ever knew to go to Alpha Centauri with someone who made me the first gift of my life, saved my memory and sense of self with said gift, and then called it perfect to my face. Crowley is taking notes for wooing his own angel as we speak.

And it's all a big Aziraphale-and-Crowley parallel, of course. It's so fun that there were two of those - I had a chat with my dad about that, and we took note of some very interesting things. Like, it's very obvious that Nina and Maggie are Aziraphale and Crowley's mirror, but it only really hit me afterwards that narratively speaking, Nina is Aziraphale. She gets all the Crowley traits, of course - she's the sceptic, she's the grumpy one, she even calls Maggie "angel" (Cute!!!), and Maggie with her outdated lifestyle and her nerves and her cheerfulness is obviously meant to read as an Aziraphale parallel at first glance. But Maggie is the one who's waiting. She's the one who doesn't quite dare to confess, but tries to get close to Nina nonetheless. And Nina is the one who's in a toxic relationship and who, in the end, says that she needs some more time to get over that, hoping that Maggie will still be there when she's ready. And Maggie of course will be there! Like Crowley has been there for thousands of years and presumably will still be there once Aziraphale finally gets out of the cult for good. I want to believe its foreshadowing - it's certainly a direct parallel to the heartbreak scene in the end, and I want to believe that Beelzebub and Gabriel getting their happy ending is foreshadowing as well. It does drive me slightly insane that every single bit of this season was at least part of a big narrative parallel for Aziraphale and Crowley. It was all about love. I'm sobbing. It's all about LOVE, and hasn't it always been? (And, well, it's not like Anathema and Newt and Madame Tracy and Shadwell weren't Aziraphale and Crowley as well.)

On that note: The emotion I felt when they kissed? Unparalleled. We're explicitly and fully undeniably in the queer main characters zone, bitches. I legitimately almost cried. Of course the love story was pretty much explicit in season 1 already, but in a show that is not a Queer Show(tm) from the get-go, that never was marketed as such, a kiss still means so much, even if it's a sad goodbye kiss.

And speaking of that, finally - I avoided spoilers as much as I could, but I did pick up on the general, uh, unrest in fandom regarding the ending. Like, people apparently hated it and were very vocal about it, to the point where I couldn't even avoid it when I went out of my way to not look at anything Good Omens-related. Fandom annoys me more and more by the day - this is definitely one more thing for the pile of annoyances - and I try not to let that ruin my enjoyment of things, but I was prepared to be let down by the ending. Which is very interesting, because the ending was hands down my favourite part of the season. What the FUCK, people, can we not complain about the episode where we get an onscreen kiss? Anyways, I'm SO intrigued by this ending and the story it begins to tell. Aziraphale as an archangel is a wild status quo, first of all, but mostly, I really like what they did with the characters here. Again, Aziraphale is metaphorically in a cult, and the fact that he cannot let go of the idea that Heaven is supposed to be good, that what Heaven does must ultimately be good, fits that very well imo. He's at the point where he has realised that angels make mistakes and some decisions made in Heaven are wrong, which makes him determined to change things once he's in a position of power, but he's still not out of his cult mindset yet. Being an angel is still an inherently good thing in his mind, so of course he's fucking ecstatic when he thinks that he's able to bring Crowley to Heaven. Only that Crowley is really not about to re-join the fundamentalist cult he already got out of once, thank you very much. So, yeah, this works, and it's heartbreaking. Poor Crowley deserves none of this.

(All of this is also very, very queer - there's the obvious cult metaphor, but Aziraphale is also absolutely a metaphor for internalised homophobia. He gets the opportunity to be with Crowley and be straight, metaphorically, to have their relationship be a socially accepted, good, not sinful one! There's also some of the "Your soul can be saved if you stop being a demon gay" thing in there. I want to give Aziraphale twenty hugs.)

Ultimately, "Come to Heaven with me" vs. "It could just be us" complete with a desperate, heartbreaking, overwhelming goodbye kiss broke my entire goddamn heart. I'm very glad that Neil Gaiman already promised to tell the rest of the story no matter what, even if Amazon doesn't play along. That's not something that can stay unfinished. Anyways, TL;DR: Loved it, will watch again once I know how everything ends and don't have to cry about the ending anymore. Will go look at kiss gifs now.

#/the real issue here is that i'm going to have to dodge conversations with my flatmate about this season #/i know what those would be about and i am not here for it. anyone want to get me another flat so i can move out real quick #[talk less smile more]

[pridepages]

Unbury Your Gays: Harrow the Ninth

I just finished Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I have some thoughts.

Here there be spoilers!

The plot of Harrow the Ninth is a labyrinth of insanity both literal and figurative. I think the best way to sum it up would be simply to borrow a misquotation: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

It’s an irreverent and brilliant twist on the trope. For ages “bury your gays” has haunted modern media. It basically is formulated as: your character is allowed to come out and confess their love, but then they must be promptly killed. It’s like the sacrifice atones for the queer. 

For those of us left devastated by the events of volume one, Harrow the Ninth is here to remind us that you can’t keep a good space lesbian necromancer down! By making her lesbians literally able to defy the laws of death, Tamsyn Muir has given her gays the power to flip the script: put us in a tomb and we’ll backflip right out and flip you off for good measure. 

As auditors to Harrow’s grief at the end of volume one, we know that Harrow loves Gideon. Harrow loves Gideon desperately enough that she refuses to accept the reality of Gideon’s death. Harrow has chosen to self-inflict brain damage in the hopes that it will prevent her from destroying Gideon’s soul to ‘go full lyctor.’ There is such a terrible kind of hopefulness in this act: because Harrow cannot remember Gideon, there was every chance that she could never find a solution to their predicament. But she wanted to hold onto even the slimmest chance that Gideon could somehow be preserved...or even brought back.

Unfortunately, this means Gideon must remain an observer, watching the world through Harrow’s eyes. Too bad it doesn’t seem to give her better insight into Harrow’s heart. All Gideon can focus on is this freaky little twist: Harrow’s first crush, and the last point on the love triangle, is an actual corpse. The corpse of A.L., “Alecto,” the Emperor’s cavalier and a reputed monster. Harrow once confessed this crush to Gideon, and Gideon never forgot it: “She’s in love with the refrigerated museum piece in the Locked Tomb. You should’ve seen the look she had on when she told me about this ice-lolly bimbo. I knew the moment I saw it. I never made her look like that...She can’t love me, even if I’d wanted her to.”

It begs the question how Gideon cannot see love in Harrow’s sacrifice for her. But that mystery is solved by the fact that Gideon shows love through acts of service and believes she gave Harrow the ultimate one with the sacrifice of her life. Therefore, she reads Harrow’s refusal to accept that sacrifice as spitting on the gift: “You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.”

On the contrary. Harrow wants Gideon’s life very desperately. Her very first words upon regaining her full memories are from the oath they swore: “‘If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten. Add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.’ And then, unsteadily, ‘Griddle.’” 

But not for nothing is Harrowhark the greatest necromancer of her generation. As she prepares to re-enter her body, unsure what will become of either of their souls this time, Harrow observes “There’s a difference between keeping a shred of a dance card and saving the last dance.” Harrow has never been haunted by fear, regret, or any other ghost of Gideon’s death. Harrow has been quietly kindling hope, through her actions making and keeping the same oath that Gideon pledges to her: “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll keep the home fires burning.”

Tamsyn Muir is nothing if not unpredictable. It is impossible to know where the winding road beyond the grave is going to take us with the upcoming installment Nona the Ninth. But I do say a fervent Ninth House prayer that the stone on their tomb be rolled away, unburying these gays for good!

#harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt #lgbt reads #queer lit #sapphic #lesbian #wlw #tamsyn muir

[adagaium]

big shoutout to the ffbe sprite website for saving me.

POKEMON VERSE, as promised! made to work with generation 9 (scarlet + violet), and per usual tied into the lore i have on every goddamn pokemon blog i've run, ever.

a king of light who ruled over an ancient civilization called solheim, mithra was hailed by his people as a savior capable of subduing monsters made of the remnants of the darkest day. he is thought to be the father of the immortal king adaliz of the vale and high king yvon of galia. however, legends of mithra are few and far between, as the surviving ruins of the kingdom of solheim date back to before 4000 BCE. historians believe the kingdom of solheim fell to ruin in a single catastrophic night.

multiple surviving accounts exist of a king of light, somnus, who ruled over a kingdom of light, blessed by the gods; the kingdom was called lucis- and somnus was best known in legend for slaying the dark legendary god adagium, believed to be the harbinger of the darkest day. per surviving records, somnus sealed adagium in a tomb that was left undisturbed (and then forgotten) for thousands of years. eventually, the kingdom of lucis also crumbled, giving way to modern nations.

ardyn izunia is a peculiar trainer, mostly because he is the trusted companion of a valean dragon called bahamut. his other pokemon are titan, ifrit, shiva, leviathan, and ramuh- all of ardyn's pokemon seem to have godlike power, and no one knows why. ardyn says it's because they have strong bonds, which isn't WRONG. in truth, these pokemon have been with ardyn for thousands of years- the six in a deep slumber while ardyn was locked away...

powerful and charismatic, he enjoys traveling the regions to learn about their history- or so he claims. despite having a powerful team, it seems he is rather uninterested in pursuing champion titles. he strangely enjoys politics, but even more than that, he enjoys fine wines, cars, and naps. many suspect that he has ties to many powerful political figures, and beyond that, he is suspected of pulling strings for his own gain. not that he'd ever admit to it if he was!

he has no connection to the relics of ruin, although people sure like to associate adagium with those, and he is not the harbinger of the darkest day. he is, however, a harbinger of destruction, which is similar but not as specific.

notes

this verse literally is me board with strings meme with my lore across various blogs. adaliz (az) and yvon are the stand ins for arsalaan and yuhan (see im smart a + y names). lore here also ties in with @mallaacht and @kingsthunder (the latter is my own goddamn blog). there is a lot to unpack, but these are the basics. feel free to ask me questions about things because my god i know this looks scattered.

#› pkmn

[seadeepy]

10 fandoms, 10 characters, 10 tags

Finally, a tag game I'm going to absolutely ace, pun intended!!

tagged by: @queerofthedagger (and I think @schitthappens, a while ago)

rules: List ten of your fandoms and your favorite character from each!

BBC Merlin — Merlin

Schitt's Creek — Alexis Rose

The Locked Tomb Series — Palamedes Sextus

Star Trek — Spock

House MD — James Wilson

Star Wars — Obi-Wan Kenobi

Mob Psycho 100 — Mob

The Sandman — Dream of the Endless

Leverage — Eliot Spencer

ATLA — Toph Beifong

tagging: @unconventionalcat @st4rm41d @blackandwhiteandrose @vanillahigh00 @januarium @paintedpigeon1 @zaharya @schweetheart @thewildmother @sspaz1000 (do my SC friends even have 10 fandoms? time to find out :P)

More yelling about my choices under the cut, which isn't required but I'm psychologically compelled to do it:

Merlin — I almost put Gwaine, but the thing about Merlin is... he's so kind despite his loneliness. He's so brave despite his grief. And his devotion to Arthur is beautiful, even when it's also heartbreaking. I love how much he cries, but also how much he cries and kicks ass anyway, which is something fic writers seem to miss a lot of the time. He's emotional but he's also very capable.

Alexis — haha, surprise!!! I love D/P as a ship so goddamn much, but Alexis' character growth is fucking unparalleled. Annie Murphy's acting choices are phenomenal — just watch KCFH to see how much of Alexis' persona was carefully manufactured as character-building, not Annie's actual mannerisms. And to go from a vapid socialite to a boss-ass businesswoman who is nonetheless very fashion-forward and still, at times, incredibly silly? I love that. I love her. More women like her on TV, please.

Palamedes — Another hard choice between him and Gideon, but my brain is locked in Sixth House mode right now. I relate way too much to Pal, and I also love him. A certified nerd who's deeply compassionate. His deep love for Camilla and his protectiveness over her, which is kind of hilarious considering his noodle arms and her terrifying competence. The fact that he looked at the Ninth House and decided they were friend material, when they didn't know it themselves and were actively hostile to the entire idea. He worked out the secret to Lyctorhood before anybody else did, and decided it just wasn't for him, thanks? Because he didn't want to do that to Cam? And (spoilers for later books!!!!) the way he's so fucking badass that he and Cam worked out another way that even Jod hadn't figured out??? Goddamn. Just call me Archivist Juno Zeta, because that nerd boy is my SON.

Spock — TOS most specifically. I hardly need to explain my love for maybe THE most iconic Star Trek character of all time, but I will anyway. Autistic and gay icon, hilarious dry wit, shining devotion to his captain. (If you're noticing a pattern with my favorite characters, no you aren't.) Science-y boy who doesn't fit in anywhere, but has people who love him. Also I love his banter with Bones.

Wilson — He's a bit like Aziraphale, where he's just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing. His relationship with House is so fucked up but at the same time he's a doormat to everybody and House lets him be MEAN and that's actually really important? Ppl look at their relationship on the surface and don't get it because they think Wilson is so kind and sweet and he is but he's also kind of a dick. Idk I just contracted COVID so I'm suspecting the rest of this post is going to start making less and less sense.

Obi-Wan Kenobi — I'm a sucker for characters like him. Kind and compassionate and selfless, but also hilariously sarcastic sometimes. Licherally the perfect Jedi, and loves Anakin so much but couldn't be everything he needed in the end. I blame the war tbh. I also love reading books from his perspective because releasing your feelings into the Force is some excellent mindfulness shit that we could all use some more practice in.

Mob — Mob is awesome because he's already the most powerful psychic. Like, that's never a question. The question is what will trigger him using his powers, what emotions he's feeling, and his own moral questions about obliterating other people with his super-powerful psychic abilities. And I think that's awesome! He's a lot like Merlin, really. Compassionate and really doesn't want to wipe the floor with you, but he will if he's forced into it.

Dream — hehe he's just so angsty all the time and I love that. Plus, galaxy eyes. I read the comics a looooong time ago, but I just bought one of the new collections and I'm gonna re-read them all.

Eliot — Okay Eliot is just. He's so. His thing about "I only use violence as an appropriate response" followed by immediately decking Sterling kinda sums him up. I love that he's so grumpy and "hostile" to the team but it's literally all bark and no bite because physically he would never, ever hurt them. But he will absolutely show up and beat the shit out of anyone else threatening them. Tiny angry man with fabulous hair. My beloved.

Toph — Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaa! I don't really need to explain why Toph rocks, but I love that she's a tiny feral gremlin girl. Like, a VERY angry ten-year-old who's out here inventing forms of earthbending that have never been seen before. She rocks, pun intended. And I refuse to believe she would become a cop. That chaos demon of a girl??? Nooooo

#tagged

[barikiwi]

I posted 2,527 times in 2022

That's 1,430 more posts than 2021!

13 posts created (1%)

2,514 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mystrothedefender

@thalia-amongst-the-thorns

@strideerandflashlightgirl

@sunshine-tattoo

@lesbiansagainsttheatre

I tagged 387 of my posts in 2022

#are queue with me - 77 posts

#warrior nun - 19 posts

#the locked tomb - 18 posts

#cats - 13 posts

#ofmd - 7 posts

#our flag means death - 7 posts

#avatrice - 7 posts

#nona the ninth - 7 posts

#ava silva - 6 posts

#gideon the ninth - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 130 characters

#i can’t ever remember the order but i can orient myself in space as long as i’ve seen either the sun or the stars in said location

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Finished Nona the Ninth.. y’all… y’all ain’t ready

9 notes - Posted July 27, 2022

#4

I’m going to be trying to get my grubby little hands on the Nona The Ninth ARC this weekend.. they are only giving away 50 copies. Oh in the name of the emperor undying pls keep my efforts in ur thoughts I will cry if I get it.

13 notes - Posted July 21, 2022

#3

Not John giving his lyctors epithets based on their cavalier and Ianthe’s epithet is the Saint of Awe. she’s gonna try to make her lyctorhood with Coronabeth instead of Babs. I don’t know if it will be a perfect one. I hope it will be.

I just have so many.. feelings about this.

23 notes - Posted February 6, 2022

#2

If any of y’all care about queer representation in media, you need to watch warrior nun ASAP. Second season just dropped, we need views to get a S3.

Badass Nuns who fight demons?? A queer love story that feels ~real~ and authentic?? Everyone is hot?? If any of those things strike ur fancy, Warrior Nun is the show for YOU.

Someone described it as the tone of killing eve, but the vibe of Wynonna Earp and Buffy. This is entirely correct. It’s got just the right amount of playing it seriously when the concept itself is very camp. The cinematography and fight choreography is nuts. The pacing in S2 is much better than s1, but both are very good. It’s heartbreaking and fulfilling all in one.

And on top of everything else, the team behind the show listened to the fans who wanted queer rep. The show runner said “bet” when the fans picked up on the chemistry between Ava (the warrior nun) and Beatrice (a sister warrior), and he sped run every goddamn fanfic trope you can think of in S2 to make it happen. There was only one bed, jealousy, running away with each other, one fell first but the other fell harder, just to name a few. There is even straightbaiting.

All in all, please watch this show, we need you. Netflix likes to cancel shows with queer women at the forefront, and we cannot afford to lose one of the best queer love stories on TV to their homophobia. And there was a slight cliffhanger and I desperately need to see how it plays out.

41 notes - Posted November 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

My brain since finishing OFMD:

Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and Olu and Jim and

43 notes - Posted March 29, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[lockedtombmemes]

#reading This Is How You Lose the Time War #between that and the Locked Tomb goddamn #just go on a date to Chili's or something #alecto the ninth #nona the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #locked tomb series #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon nav #griddlehark #this is how you lose the time war

[thunderon]

I just finished Harrow the Ninth and Im confused what happened to Harrow at the end is she dead

aw jeez. first let me say: the entire ending of htn (including harrow’s end) is intentionally ambiguous and an ongoing point of speculation. there’s no real right or wrong answer right now.

currently my favored theory (if not necessarily the most probable theory) is that harrow made herself a revenant. ill eventually do a big fat analysis post but in the meantime enjoy these quotes that i think has implications of harrow becoming a revenant along with some very surface level analysis:

note: i typed this entire thing up in less than 15 minutes so apologies for typos and if it’s incoherent.

onto business, no foreplay, first quote i have is from a convo with harrow and god back in like chapter 4

“The difference between dying of illness and dying from murder. An enormous shock, the immediate expulsion of the soul. And just as when a soul is ripped untimely from a human being—“

“A revenant,” you said.

“Always a revenant,” he said. “Every single time, a goddamned revenant.

so. harrow was obviously murdered in the end of htn via mercymorn literally stabbing her in the back. okay, check. next quote i got: convo between augustine and ianthe:

“The card up the sleeve of the revenant... is that it can inhabit anything it’s got a connection to. Anything thanergetically connected with their death.”

Ianthe suggested, in what you saw as a low-value suck-up play: “Burial implements. Grave goods. Any possession that they kept over time, that was exposed to their thalergy and thanergy. If they were murdered, the murder weapon.”

harrow literally has all of those possibilities

“burial implements/grave goods” - enough said with harrow climbing inside the coffin.

“any possession kept overtime exposed to their thalergy and thanergy”- ... like you mean how harrow carried gideons two-hander for literally the entirety of htn? and we’ve already seen that it could be used to become a revenant via wake (who was chilling on top of the two hander in the coffin first)

“murder weapon” - harrow gets stabbed with a rapier that she was forced by god to carry around so it could arguably meet the earlier criteria.

next big hints: being a revenant and passion. we get hammered to death in Act V about the connection between revenants and passion. observe:

abigail, quote 1

“I find myself in the astonishing position of having created a revenant link through—well—sheer passion.”

in addition to magnus making his whole “you made yourself her mausoleum” speech, ianthe’s quote comes in here. now i know ianthe is being metaphorical... but we all know how tamsyn loves to play around with words

“Love is a revenant, Gideon Nav, and it accumulates love-stuff to itself, because it is homeless otherwise.”

tell me that it doesn’t match up so well with what abigail and magnus say in the bubble, and with what we see in harrows final resting place. speaking of! here’s a small little quote of harrows resting place:

Within that bed of ice and glass, on the stone-shaped pillow to prop the head, that final resting place of Harrowhark’s one true love, lay a sword.

okay, a sword. along with the broken chains from the body and the infamous Frontline Titties of the Fifth. this is important. okay now im getting ahead of myself. let’s back it up. how did harrow even get there and why is it important? first let’s look at why harrow ended up there (which i think helps us understand the how). okay, abigail, quote 2:

“Is there nothing I can do before entering the River that might mean I stay put?”

“No,” said Abigail. “It’s the River. It moves. You’d have to pick the revenant’s path and travel along a thanergetic link,”

“Is there nothing I can do before entering the River that might mean I stay put?”

now here’s where im starting to see it as the revenants path. so we see a few times harrow talking about standing in a long dark corridor, the second of those times was when harrow was visiting palamedes in his river bubble. the third and final long black corridor quote comes here:

The water sprayed through white holes, rushing in with a pounding roar: that brackish, bloodied water that only existed within the River. She was buoyed up by a spray of ice water and filth—but she wasn’t; she seemed to be walking down her long black corridor again— Then Harrow was back drowning in salt water. Gideon’s arms were around her... Harrow’s head broke the water... Above her head the rocky cathedral of the cave shone with a dismal heaven of luminescent worms, blinking softly on and off. They were all undead: revenant creatures and watchers, shifting restlessly forever on the rock of the Locked Tomb. Harrow was home.

sounds like she’s not in the river or creating a river bubble anymore imho. sounds to me like she’s traveled along a thanergetic link, which keep in mind she was able to travel through the river to find sextus (who made himself a revenant) so we know it’s possible. and she could honestly be tied to any number of items.

now here’s just one (offhand and unlikely) theory. theoretically, if gideon was rescued by BOE and is indeed the narrator in the epilogue, her sword could be with her. which could explain how harrowhark is both “home” in the Tomb and simultaneously “faraway in a land she never travelled” which is certainly a puzzling paradox. anyways this is just me completely talking out the ass of one possible theory. im not sold on my own theory so i doubt anyone else will be either, but it does offer some striking implications, doesnt it? if anybody has any thoughts or anything for me/anon feel free to share!

#asks #sweetie i am so unhinged and wrong and now it’s in the tag #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb