#locked tomb meta

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Supposed himbo Gideon: Wields a devastating variety of multisyllabic nicknames for the purpose of irritating Harrow. She envisions a new glorious nickname every scene. Merriam-Webster is envious, awed, inspired. Dickens wishes he could be reanimated to shake her hand.

Supposed genius Harrow: couldn't pronounce "Gi-de-on" when she was three and hasn't come up with anything since then

#crepuscular? penumbral? I'd kiss her immediately #locked tomb #locked tomb meta #locked tomb shitposting #griddlehark #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth

[harrowharkwife]

thinking thoughts about how nona was so obsessed with crown, and crown specifically- not coronabeth. crown, with her boots and her cargo pants and her guns and her hair tied back, with all her charm and strength, all her rage and determination.

was that really just nona? or, walk with me here- is there a chance that that was actually alecto, too, bleeding through and rising to the surface?

alecto, seeing a kind of kinship in crown- in this big, tall, strong blonde with a sword strapped to her back, hot and lovely and kind and awful and powerful and perfect. this woman who refuses to give up- on her sister, on saving jody, on BOE's resistance. who's unafraid to throw one hell of a tantrum, if it means being listened to, for once. crown, who everyone thinks of as dumb, who everyone underestimates, who no one ever takes as seriously as they should, even though she's clearly capable of plenty of atrocities in her own right. this woman who's been described over and over again as someone who positively radiates life, and energy, and vitality, and strength. this woman who wanted nothing more than the chance to be herself, to be free, to serve as cavalier and guardian and protector, but was instead sentenced at birth to a life of being a princess and wearing dresses and looking pretty and loving less and staying out of the way and keeping her mouth shut and playing second fiddle to a necromancer obsessed with power and glory. familiar, no? this woman who was betrayed, left behind, left alone, and left utterly in the dark by the one person who's supposed to love her the most- only to then be told that being abandoned was in her best interest, really, for her own safety.

thinking about all the times we've seen ianthe insult crown's intelligence and praise her beauty in the same breath. you big dumb bimbo, what can you do? of all the times we've seen ianthe fussing over crown's appearance. thinking of the sister-lyctor makeover-montage ahead of dios apate minor, and how harrow hated every second of it, and how ianthe treated it like nostalgic second nature. thinking about the third house: fucked-up planet gossip-girl with all its betrayal and espionage and flesh magic and debauchery, three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile. thinking about the pressure that must have come with keeping up the double-necromancer ruse, about ianthe having successfully played the part of two necromancers from the age of six. exactly how much practice must that have taken? thinking about the casual, automatic, possessive, offhanded, violating nature of ianthe playing god and giving harrow a full head of fast-growing hair without asking, without even telling her, just to make harrow prettier, just to piss her off, just because she could. how she did it so easily, and without hesitation, almost as though she's maybe done that sort of thing before.

thinking about preservation. about a perfect body frozen in ice for a myriad, about ianthe spending all her downtime on the mithraeum figuring out how long she can keep an apple core in perfect stasis before the rot sets in.

thinking about corpse puppeting: a deceased world leader here, a trusted cavalier and friend you've known from the cradle there. about i picked you to change, and this is how you repay me? about she took babs. and who even cares about babs? babs! she could have taken me!

thinking about alecto, and hollywood hair barbie, and you have made me a hideousness.

thinking about crown, who's by her own admission boobs and hair and talk and a hell of a swordhand.

thinking about something as simple as stud earrings, and about how much grief ianthe gave her for daring to wear them.

nona loved crown.

something tells me that alecto might, too.

#the locked tomb #alecto the ninth #alecto #coronabeth tridentarius #crown him with many crowns #ianthe tridentarius #locked tomb meta #am i tagging this right? idk #nona the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth spoilers #to be PERFECTLY clear i love ianthe. and i still think it's ENTIRELY possible that corona will turn out to be Badtwin in the end #but truly who's to say. women's wrongs and whatnot #also ik nona WAS alecto but like. she was also her own person. To Me. a study in 'would i be a different person without all the baggage' et #tridentarii #what a fascinating fucked up little dynamic with those two

[centrumlumina]

Here is my Hot Tridentarii take: Babs is not Ianthe’s cavalier. Coronabeth is, and always has been, Ianthe’s cavalier. The reason Ianthe ate Babs had nothing to do with who he was, and everything to do with him not being Corona.

Ianthe and Coronabeth represent a model of the Lyctor/cav relationship to parallel Harrow & Gideon, just like Pal & Cam do. But where Pal & Cam loved each other so much they became one person, Ianthe’s choice was that she loved Coronabeth so much that she could not stand to consume her, and as a result pushed her away.

...which is exactly what Harrow did to Gideon with her home-grown lobotomy in HtN. I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.

#the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #htn spoilers #nona the ninth #harrow the ninth #ianthe tridentarius #coronabeth tridentarius #tridentarii #griddlehark #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #naberius tern #anyway this is why i tag ianthe tridentarius instead of using naberius or the first for her #my thoughts #locked tomb meta

[incorrect-house-of-nine]

Hey folks, I apologise but I am feral about Pyrrha's moral code. NONA SPOILERS AHEAD. When Cam asks to be trained how to kill, Pyrrha says. "If you want to learn how to kill, you'll need my necromancer for that?" That's because though Pyrrha more than likely has killed but she is not a killer. You might ask how can she be one but not the other? And it all boils down to a tiny moral distinction between the two. Before the Resurrection, Pyrrha was a cop, possibly an undercover cop, the folks who are supposed to catch murderers. Later, she creates the Cohort. She's specifically a spy. No matter what you've seen in the movies, a huge part of spy craft is to remain hidden, get the information you covert, leave no trace and be as unmemorable as possible. If you are detected, protecting yourself and the mission is paramount. The enemy might get killed achieving that. Yes, its killing but its killing out of necessity, self defence/survival. Then there is Gideon Prime. He is an attack dog left off the leash. He is a killer in the correct sense here because he does not kill out of necessity, he kills because he is told to. Pre Res he willingly nuked a city, murdering thousands of innocent people, because John told him to. He makes multiple brutal attempts on a scared innocent teenager's life because John tells him to.

(There's also the question of how many times Gideon has had to spill blood on John's orders and the possibility that Augustine and Mercy never knew. With regard to him attempting to murder Harrow, Augustine tells Ianthe and Harrow that the Saint of Duty gets his weird obsessions suggesting Augustine has witnessed this behaviour before; Im looking at the Commander Wake diabolical. We are later told, though Gideon finds it a hard responsibility to bare, it is not merely an obsession but a direct order. We are also told that Gideon once fought a city and the city lost. As the Saint's Pre Res memories have been tampered with, this mustn't be Melbourne but a different altogether meaning that's more innocents murdered by Gideon Prime's blade on the orders of John.) Pyrrha kills the necros in the cages as an act of mercy. Pyrrha was prolly more than likely fully ready to kill Wake when they were going toe to toe, in a bid to survive the game of ''its either her or me''.

Its a hair breathe of a distinction but it is an important distinction. And dancing on that gossamer thin knife's edge makes all the difference to Pyrrha. Pyrrha is not a murderer, and if she sees herself as one, she is not willing to give Camilla the tools to become one as well.

#tlt #the locked tomb #locked tomb meta #pyrrha dve #gideon prime #nona the ninth #nona spoilers

[twink-with-an-agenda]

Honestly I think that one of the main reasons for the animosity between Mercymorn and Augustine, aside from what happened with Cristabel and Alfred and simply not having the most compatible personalities, is the radically different ways they handle their grief, their emotions generally and their immortality. Augustine is all carefully cultivated charm, hollow humour, a genteel mask of nonchalance and elegance. Very fifth. And as Harrow points out, its all farce!! This man is an empty shell!! He avoids any earnest emotion, any genuine affect, like the plague. Now, Mercy is the stark opposite - she's all affect, all earnest emotion. She looses her composure, she says what she thinks. She's almost painfully blunt.

And I think they absolutely hate each other for how the other handles their grief, general emotions and life situation. I think Augustine is repulsed by how terribly earnest Mercy is - she carries her bitterness, her immeasurable grief, her fury and hate, on her sleeve. No filter, no mask. Mercy who yells at John, Mercy who flies into a rage at the mention of Cristabel, Mercy who never even attempts a personable, charming facade. Augustine cannot stand this - perhaps he resents her for how cathartic her approach seems to be, compared to his. She can be a fine enough actress, he knows, so why can't she put any effort into suppressing her emotions like him a normal person? Now, Mercy!!! She explicitly reacts upset at Augustines carefully crafted compartmentalisation, his fake cool composure. She's irate that he has gone through the same pain and grief as she has and yet plays at being so cool and unaffected over it. How dare he! How dare he casually talk about their cavaliers so calmly and jovially! Mercy is done masking her grief, her anger and frustration, done with making herself likeable and palatable. And yet Augustine made exactly that his whole personality, and it seems to work, at least on John. She is repulsed by his cooler-than-you attitude, which makes her seem emotional and unrefined next to him.

I have way too many thoughts about these old bastards

#honestly i JUST NOW had this epiphany #and yall probably already picked up on this #so many thoughts about the dios apate trio today................. #tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #augustine the first #mercymorn the first #tlt meta #locked tomb meta #dios apate

[jalules]

from a purely aesthetic point i appreciate all the fan art of ianthe and kiriona in gold for their tower prince getups because yeah it Looks Good, but ohhhhhh i long to see the white and silver.... the symbol of john's control over them, the proof that he is dressing them up like dolls in the colors he prefers, despite the way the silver clashes with kiriona's eyes and ianthe's golden arm... the way it's the wrong color for both of them but they're an extension of him so they have to match just like the lyctors in their gaudy pearlescent robes, everyone has to to be to his liking regardless of personal preference..........

i think of this often

#the locked tomb #the tower princes #kiriona gaia #ianthe the first #locked tomb meta

[abigail-pent]

My friend read Torah this morning, and it was the portion with Cain and Abel, and we were talking about it just now. And of course since I've got TLT brainrot, I'm thinking about Cain and Abel in the context of Cainabeth and Abella/Ianthe and Coronabeth. Some thoughts:

Cain was the one who had the idea to make a sacrifice; but the implication of the text (per my friend) is that the sacrifice he made wasn't "good enough," because he wasn't sacrificing the best of the land.

Abel, by contrast, does sacrifice the best of his portion (the animals) and this is why his sacrifice is accepted.

Cain is essentially told "better luck next time," at which point he kills his brother and hides this. G-d asks him "where is your brother, his blood cries out to me" and Cain says "am I my brother's keeper?" and he is forever cursed because of the blood he sheds.

Since I'm hearing this story again with Ianthe and Corona in mind, my read on the Cain and Abel story has now become: when G-d tells Cain to do better next time, to make sacrifices that are worthy, and specifically to sacrifice the best of what he has, Cain asks himself, "what's the best of what I have?" and the answer is "my brother, Abel." this is of course a deeply misguided Lyctor-ish kind of thought, and like the Lyctors in TLT, this act fucks up his sense of self -- so he hides, but cannot escape the curse that this murder puts on him.

Interestingly, in the text it isn't clear that it's G-d who curses Cain. G-d tells Cain that he shall be more cursed than the ground, and Cain blames G-d for putting this curse on him. The curse is that he won't be able to use his gift anymore -- he was a tiller of the soil and the curse is that he won't be good at that anymore. So he has to wander the earth. And in the text, when G-d puts a mark on Cain it's so people will know not to kill Cain. I hadn't paid this much attention to the text before but it's actually pretty easy to see a read in which the mark of Cain is not a curse, but an amulet protecting him from the consequences of his actions.

So... who is who, in TLT? On the one hand, seems clear to say Cainabeth -> Coronabeth and Abella -> Ianthe. Ianthe makes a sacrifice (Babs) which is accepted, so she can ascend. Corona makes a kind of sacrifice (pretending to be a necromancer all her life even though what she wants is to be a cavalier; asking her sister to "take [her]" instead of Babs) and it is not accepted; she doesn't become the furnace of her sister's Lyctorhood. And if that's the read, then if this parallel is actually going to play out in its entirety, Corona will kill Ianthe. But is she her sister's keeper? Ianthe is definitely Corona's keeper; we see that over and over again. We see it in Harrow's letters; we see it in the way she has been covering for Corona for her whole life; we see it in the fact that Ianthe says in Nona that she has a plan for "us to be us" again. Corona is not exactly Ianthe's keeper; she's definitely submissive where Ianthe is dominant; she does betray Ianthe to Blood of Eden, but she's so grateful to Palamedes for not hurting Ianthe, and just over and over we see that she doesn't want harm to come to her sister. Her values and actions are in conflict with the empire that Ianthe has come to symbolize, but it isn't at all clear that Ianthe isn't trying to subvert the empire from within, so they may not be working at cross purposes at all. Corona is not not Ianthe's keeper, and she does feel responsibility towards her.

On the other hand, the order of the names in the GTN end matter suggests Cainabeth -> Ianthe and Abella -> Corona. After all, of the two, it feels clear to me that Ianthe has to be the "worse twin." I just don't know if there's scope for Ianthe to kill Corona. As spectacularly awful as she is, Corona is the one person who's consistently important to her. G-d is not (she didn't say the prayer, her motivation to ascend is ultimate power and pictures of her face). But at the same time -- her sacrifice of Babs is certainly not her sacrificing the cavalier that's most important to her. Really, Ianthe's sacrifice is a lot more like Cain's sacrifice than it is Abel's. She refused to give up the best of what she had, instead giving up Babs -- nobody cares about Babs -- whereas Corona absolutely does give up the best of what she has. She literally gave Ianthe her whole life, and Ianthe didn't even want it. (ooh bonus Corona/Gideon parallel, I've got chills.) Corona's sacrifice is worthy in the way Abel's sacrifice was worthy; it hasn't been accepted yet, but who's to say that it won't be? What throne will she mount? Will someone bind her down?

A lot of this question -- who is Cain and who is Abel -- comes down to asking, who is G-d in the Locked Tomb? John claims the title, but he has all of his power because Alecto chose him; so isn't Alecto actually G-d here? Isn't Alecto the figure who could accept or reject a sacrifice in this tale? Or put a mark on someone to protect them from being killed? (Is the Lyctoral eye-switch a form of the mark of Cain? I think so.)

Also a lot of this question could be answered if you just assume that what we're looking at is a subversion of the Cain and Abel story and not a straight retelling. And I think we're more likely to be dealing with a subversion; in which case probably neither twin will kill the other.

I do think everything that follows after the murder feels extremely Locked Tomb. Being cursed to wander the earth, or the universe (Blood of Eden); having to give up the skill that made you you (HTN I'm looking directly at you); G-d putting a mark on you that makes you unkillable (Kiriona Gaia hello). The elements are extremely there.

so... not clear I've come any closer to unraveling the mysteries. but it's been fun anyway. good Shabbos, hope you enjoyed this little drash.

#tlt #tlt meta #cw ianthe tridentarius #coronabeth tridentarius #ntn spoilers #tlt spoilers #the locked tomb #locked tomb meta

[chaos-has-theories]

Do you remember this post? Have you perhaps always wanted to put it into a well-intentioned "read later" list where you could comfortably ignore it? Well it's on Ao3 now!

(alright it's just part 1 for now. I will be editing and posting the rest as I go, and adding my post-nona pennies)

Chapters: 1/4 Fandom: The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir, Ancient Egyptian Religion Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Analysis, non-fiction, Meta, Essays, Ancient Egyptian Literature & Mythology Series: Part 1 of The Egypt Agenda Summary:

Did you know that the Locked Tomb books can be mapped almost perfectly onto ancient Egyptian mythology? TL,DR: John is Ra, Alecto is both the primordial flood and the „Eye of Ra“, and the OG Lyctors are the Great Ennead. Griddlehark get to play the role of Horus.

The events leading up to the Resurrection can be compared to the Myth of the Heavenly Cow, also the known as “The Destruction of Mankind”; the Resurrection itself to the Helipolitan creation myth; the battle at the end of GtN with the fight between Horus and Seth, and John and the Lyctors on the Mithrtheaeum with the Journey of Ra.

In this essay I WILL-

#chaos has theories #chaos writes #locked tomb meta #locked tomb theories #the locked tomb #nona the ninth #<- because there WILL be thoughts about Nona as the Distant Goddess. and by thoughts I mean screaming

[nibblinerasers]

sometimes I wonder how literal the timing of things in the locked tomb series is. specifically 10,000 years - assuming they’re counting in earth years (which is another conversation altogether) that is a long ass time that seems kinda unlikely for the nine houses’ cultures and languages to still be as homogenous as they are. why that number? where did it come from? how correct is it?

because it occurred to me that it’s entirely possible someone early on asked Jod how many years it had been since the resurrection and that internet-poisoned lil shit unthinkingly spat out “over 9000!” and never corrected it and it’s all happening a lot sooner after the resurrection than we think.

#this is mostly a shitpost and I haven’t really thought out more evidence or implications of this #but I do think about the timing a lot #and let’s be real john would do this #although #there was also that post going around about it being 100000 years since the bombs #and that there had actually been multiple resurrections #and with THAT theory #I think this one might work #over 9000 years but not really but only since the most recent resurrection? #idk these books just keep on giving #something new to chew on on every reread #the locked tomb #the locked tomb shitpost #tlt #locked tomb meta #meme culture

[inklingofadream]

I Am Once Again Thinking About The Locked Tomb And Language

This was brought on by my realization rereading HtN with context from Nona that if Jod was a New Zealander that is the accent he has, but mostly is unrelated to that. It just makes me read his stuff in Harrow slightly differently. Spoilers ahead, don’t care to differentiate where they come from specifically, assume all the way through. Also it gets a cut bc it got very long.

It’s been 10,000 years. There is GOING to be linguistic drift- arguably enough that Blood of Eden, who split from the Empire right at the beginning, should not speak remotely the same language as them, but we’ll set that aside both for fictional convenience and under the assumption that they were monitoring their enemies and kept up on the language that way. Still think they should have more of their own weird slang tho- but how MUCH drift to you get when you have a very present example of where you started.

Either the first group of Resurrected, Alecto, etc spoke the same language as Jod or they retained their original language from before their deaths. The latter seems like it would’ve been a problem and complicated the entire Empire speaking one language- Nona speaks all the languages, but Cohort is singled out as its own thing which not everyone speaks, or speaks well, and there are a multitude of other languages among the refugees. Presumably the linguistic descendants of the more varied languages that BoE started with. So the first few generations all share an accent, most slang and jargon, and so on.

But In 250 some odd years with an ocean between them the American and British accents have diverged significantly. The Houses are split out onto different PLANETS and it’s been TEN THOUSAND years. Without the Empire tying them together at this point I would expect them to be as mutually intelligible as any 8 randomly selected Indo-European languages. English, Sanskrit, Russian, and French may have had a common ancestor waaaayyyy back when, but it’s not enough to understand more than a handful of words in any of the others. On that basis, it would be reasonable a) for the Houses each to have developed their own accents and b) for them to still have drift from each other in minor ways- stuff like torch vs flashlight in British and American English.

BUT. We do not have any of our Proto-Indo-European ancestors here. We don’t have audio recordings of anyone’s voice going back very far at all. Accents and dialects that are rare or gone in modern usage that DO exist in recording aren’t generally imitated, but there also isn’t much of a reputational motivation to do so. There’s no prestige to it. You get people mimicking the 1940s rapid fire nasally sort of voice for comedy sometimes, some people do the Jackie O Midatlantic accent but it’s mostly queer people being camp, etc. However, I would posit that if there were prestige attached to it then more people would do this. Especially if that prestige was attached to a still-living individual.

What I’m saying is, if we had so much as a recording of George Washington then that accent would be taught in elocution classes and become a weird “My family’s rich and has been in politics for ages” sort of status symbol among US Senators. I posit that Jod would be treated the same way.

We can assume that Jod, Mercy, Augustine, and I think Gideon the First (? Don’t remember if he’s one of the first class who were Jod’s buddies pre-annihilation, pretty sure Pyrrha was though so we’re going to infer that he is too) all maintain that original accent. The closer you are to the Emperor and Lyctors, the more of a chance you have to match it. After the crew of the Erebos is sent to the front, they might be distinguishable from other cavaliers and adepts by their distinctly Godly diction.

I would also assume that all of the Houses have their own fairly distinct accents (or group of accents; we don’t know how much of each planet is livable space vs stuff like the Ninth’s drillshaft. More space = more linguistic drift between communities).

Sidenote: Harrow thinks several times about not wanting to come off as “provincial,” uninformed, various other things that can translate to “backcountry hick.” Please briefly imagine that the Ninth House accent is a cowboy accent. “We do bones, yeehaw!” It wouldn’t be, but like. Very serious goth Harrow, desperate to come off as impressive and intimidating. Skull face paint, bone corset, etc. Uses “y’all”

So occasionally Cohort soldiers DO get to retire home. They seem to have pretty high deathrates, but sometimes. Folks on the Erebos moreso, since for 80 years it’s kinda just where Jod drifts around and chills. So sometimes they’d come home with the knowledge to match Jod’s accent.

Some of them wouldn’t care. I have a hard time picturing the Fifth or Fourth caring much about that sort of flexing on each other, and the Sixth would mostly care in an academic sense. But the Eighth? seems like they’d care. The Third? ABSOLUTELY would care. They’d probably care the most, meaning that under this theory I would assume Ianthe and Corona have the closest accents to Jod and the Lyctors (probably causing Corona problems when she joins BoE?). The Ninth, which doesn’t seem to have anyone who was in the Cohort left on planet save Aiglamene and probably hasn’t in a long time even back when Harrow’s parents were young, probably does have one of the most drifted accents.

I also feel like it would make Jod so uncomfortable- for all he gave himself all the titles and set himself up as God he doesn’t seem to enjoy the genuflection and worship that comes with the gig. He mostly seems somewhere on a spectrum between awkward and annoyed. Having a portion of the people who work with you slowly come closer and closer to matching your accent to a greater degree than seems likely just from the way some people’s voices do unconsciously shift toward matching those they spend time around would feel so uncanny valley. But it’s not like he can call them out on it? That would be so weird? He doesn’t KNOW that that’s what they’re doing. So he just. Has to live with it. And I’m always up for giving Jod some petty suffering.

#the locked tomb #tlt #john gaius #meta #locked tomb meta #language #this is mostly spitballing without great organization but whatever. it's mostly an idea i like to rotate in my head a lot #ink meta #ink post

[liesmyth]

The Book of John: list of Bible verses referenced in Nona The Ninth

Here are all the verses from the gospel of John (the Apostle) referenced in the titles of the chapters about John (our kindly Prince of Death, the King Undying, etc.) in Nona The Ninth. Spoilers for the book.

John 20:8

Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.

From The Resurrection Of Jesus - or: the very first chapter, were we find out that Harrow is still around.

John 5:20

The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.

John 5 (referenced multiple times in the book) is Jesus Heals on the Sabbath. John... no healing yet, but he tries. “Most of the bodies [were] damaged beyond repair. But, Harrow … all the ones I touched, all the ones I loved … they stayed incorrupti.”

John 15:23

Whoever hates me hates my Father also.   

From Jesus the True Vine. The verse reference is interesting - this is the chapter where John starts experimenting with his powers, and A- and M- are with him all the way.

John 5:18

For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. 

Local Nerd Guy Starts Streaming Cadavers

John 8:1

While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

This is the one with the cows. You know the one.

John 19:18

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. 

John 19 is The Crucifixion Of Jesus. This is the chapter where past John & Co. find out where their initial project funding went, and present Jod says fuck eleven times.

John 5:1

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

The White House, that’s it.

John 3:20

For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 

Pretty transparent. This is the chapter where John & co. attempt to have the FTL project investigated. Ends with John publicly announcing he’s a necromancer to drum up attention.

John 9:22

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

John 9:22 is The Pharisees Investigate the Healing. This is the chapter where the army intervenes and John reiterates. Or “Guys as careful as you shouldn’t have accidents”.

John 1:20

He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”

From the Testimony of John the Baptist. The attack on the compound, the bombs, Alecto.

John 5:4

Sometimes an angel of the Lord came down to the pool and stirred up the water. After the angel did this, the first person to go into the pool was healed from any sickness he had.

John talks about resurrection, and memory manipulation while he’s at it.

Fun fact! This verse is from the New Century Version, as it was absent from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition that I used for all the others. I looked it up, and it was present in some older copies of the text and not in others - probably why it’s omitted from the NRSVCE (although it’s present in a footnote of Catholic editions of the gospel in my native language. Yes, I checked)

#tlt meta #locked tomb meta #tamsyn's gothic catholicism #tlt #ntn #nona read #* #ejg

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Thinking about how in the first chapter of GtN all we wanted for our hot funny charismatic orphan swordslady was for her to get out of that shithole cult with the two-faced no-good lying goth shrimp bitch. maybe find her parents.

and now all we want is like I HOPE HER DAD DIES and WIFE UP THE SHRIMP BITCH and JUSTICE FOR THE SOUL OF THE MURDERED EARTH

#wife her up and down #wife her diagonally #Gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #Gideon nav #gtn spoilers #htn spoilers #locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #ntn spoilers #alecto #locked tomb meta #tlt meta

[iridescentoracle]

bad wizards and shimmering rainbow-white robes

Someone else has probably already made this point—I'm late to the Locked Tomb party, I know—but I've been reading a whole lot of Locked Tomb posts (in between re-reading bits of the Locked Tomb books and thinking about The Lord of the Rings) recently, and if anyone else has made this point I haven't seen it yet, so, spoilers through Nona the Ninth:

Your gazes met. The other nascent Lyctor—the Third House saint, the Emperor’s bones and the Emperor’s joints, the Emperor’s fists and gestures—was clothed in a beautiful nacreous robe that glimmered all the colours of the rainbow: gauzy, iridescent white stuff that changed violently in the light.

(Chapter 4, Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

A mass of fabric whispered past you—you could not feel it on your body, but you felt the air upon your cheek—and then a person knelt in front of your chair. A shining, shimmering billow of pale fabric came into your field of vision, a rainbow-hued whiteness that ran through shades beneath the hot tungsten light, like the reflection of coloured glass on ice, the same stuff that now was draped around you. Then, awfully, your vision was lifted. Someone had pressed a finger lightly beneath your chin, and they were tilting it up so that you could see their face. You looked at the Lyctor. The Lyctor looked at you.

(Chapter 6, Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

‘“Radagast the Brown!” laughed Saruman, and he no longer concealed his scorn. “Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool! Yet he had just the wit to play the part that I set him. For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message. And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!” ‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

(“The Council of Elrond,” The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien)

I told them, This is it. We were put here to save the planet. We’re going to save the planet. We’re not going to let them run away. We’re going to fix this. And they were all, Yeah, John, because they were my friends and they loved me. But because they were also dicks and most of them had multiple tertiary degrees, they were also like, How though. We know you can do X and Y and Z. That’s still not A or B or C. We love the bone magic, but how are you going to pull this off? And it was P— of all people who said, First things first. If they’re going to let us fix the world, you’ve got to make them take us seriously. Get some leverage. If they want to make you into a bad wizard, be a bad wizard. We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard. Or at least an okay wizard. They’re not going to listen because we talk nicely, they’re going to listen because we scare the shit out of them.

(“John 5:1,” Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

Ironically, of course, John himself doesn’t wear the shimmering rainbow-hued robes of the Lyctors—but his crown of infant fingerbones is first described as “a wreath of ribbon and pearlescent leaves in his dark hair, rustling prismatically in the windless docking bay" (Chapter 6, Harrow the Ninth), and frankly I think rainbow pearlescent leaves each “intertwined with a match-sized infant fingerbone” sounds significantly more evil than Saruman bothered looking, so eat your heart out Curunír I guess.

Of course, there's lots of irony about John adopting the trappings of that particular evil wizard, but I think the most ironic part might be the extent to which he really should've taken notes on the rest of the passage in question:

‘“I liked white better,” I said. ‘“White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.” ‘“In which case it is no longer white,” said I. “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #locked tomb meta #the lord of the rings #lotr #fotr #character: saruman #character: john gaius

[softness-and-shattering]

Unpopular Locked Tomb opinion?

Harrow Nova is fantastic. Thats not the unpopular part. The unpopular part is that necromancers are all skinny and sickly and waifish. Harrow is small and malnourished so even as Nova she's gonna be small, albeit better muscled. But.

Necro Gideon should not be super buff.

Judith Deuteros is super athletic for a necromancer and she's well, not.

And like, draw whatever the fuck you think is hottest. Please.

I just also want some tall paler waifish Gideons alongside buff-Harrow-wielding-Samael's-pelvis. Yknow, for variety.

#locked tomb #locked tomb meta #tlt #htn spoilers #harrow the ninth

[incorrect-house-of-nine]

Some Locked Tomb Meta on this Fine Saturday Morning.

Somethings been bugging since the back half of Gideon the Ninth and throughout Harrow the Ninth.  Like, if we think about it... John seemingly knows a lot more about the houses than he's letting on. And he decides now is the time to call for reinforcements of Lyctors, when he could have damn well asked at any point in the last myriad? But he waits until the Ninth is in its last legs? It's curious as to Why?

Bear with me on this.. (its percolating in my brain.)

None of the Lyctors have kids right? (It’s suggests by Mercy’s eggs dying that they might struggle to carry to term or just plain not be able to.)   Surely, he must know that if he takes the heirs of the houses... hes taking the heirs of the houses! 

Which is neither here nor there of importance to the Sixth (gain that title by examination) , the Fourth (always with contingency aware of them potentially dying in youth), the Fifth (siblings), the Seventh (always willing to attempt to eugenics cancer into their bloodline), the Second (occupational hazard) the Eight (paladins of his religion) but the Ninth???

The Ninth, potentially the most important house given what they are guarding, he calls their only heir, from a house with no conceivable way of continuing as they have no technology out side of doing it the old fashioned horizontal tango?

If the heir to the house was a boy, well he could sow his wild oats and get any number of girls pregnant, possibly without anyone's knowledge. But the heir is a hopelessly devout girl on the cusp of adulthood!

Why now, John? The call to Canaan House heads off at the pass any potential marriage alliances. (If her devoutness and chastity doesn't doom them first, but best to not take any chances, am I right?)

Once he got his hands on her, and tells her she can't go home. (Mercy and Cytherea both hint He’s dying to get his hands on her, and at this juncture he has no freaking idea she’s a mini resurrection on the molecular level or any idea about Gideon Nav.) Of course he can renew Harrow’s house.. Cause as far as he’s concerned at that point, her bloodline has been successfully broken!! He wasn’t counting on her being a mini resurrection --- that her cav would be his daughter, or that Harrow had already bypassed the tomb -- this throws doubt into the mix. Doubt that he knows what she is, doubt that he knows what she is capable of as a Lyctor. He rightfully gets the shits put up him when it comes to light he’s dealing with a god damn genius. (who begins to incorporate all knowledge she has gleaned from all the others houses and their personal applications of their house’s brand of necromancy. <-- a different post at some point) He straight up goes to full on assassination to ‘’put her down or fix her’.’ What are you afraid of John Gaius?

(I dunno what I'm trying to say her.. Its on the foggy on the edge of my brain, just out of reach. )

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon nav #mild nona the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth #the locked tomb meta #locked tomb meta

[alectothinker]

thinking about mercy and harrow both being the unwanted/unnecessary lyctors and a source of embarrassment for the mithraeum crew -> mercy dismissing harrow in the same way everyone else does, maybe even with a tad more trademark mercymorn disgust, but also being the only one to show her a bit of genuine pity

#thinking about them #also uhhhhh does anyone have any takes about mercy regressing harrow into infanthood as the book goes on #she went from 15 to a whole 2 year old #like what was that about lol #the locked tomb #tlt #locked tomb meta #locked tomb #tlt meta #mercymorn the first #harrow the ninth #htn #harrowhark nonagesimus