#locked tomb theory asks

[incorrect-house-of-nine]

So we all know there's like a million parallels between John and Palamedes and I have never been more convinced and more terrified that Pal is going to have to make a big decision like John obviously did when the rich left everyone else on a dying Earth and he did whatever he did to create necromancy and become God. My only solace is that I trust in Palamedes to figure out a solution that is good for everyone and isn't, as John put it, "a damned thing". (I'm also now extremely convinced that Alecto is the soul of Earth aka a resurrection beast.)

The Pal line of thinking hadn't even occurred to me. I love it! It's juicy as all hell. If this indeed the direction in which things are heading, we must trust in our best boi Pal the way Camilla Hect does, that he will find the most humane and kindest way. I'm inclined to agree with you on the Alecto line of thought. But it begs the question, if she is piloting Harrowbod, how did Alecto remain intact and human shaped, when all other RB's are described as Eldritch/Cthulhu-esque monstrosities?

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #palamedes sextus #john gaius #alecto the ninth #locked tomb theory asks

[nakdraws]

nona cow theory

before i read nona the ninth, i saw spoilers that convinced me nona was the soul of the cows john killed. reading the book only further confirmed this

#nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt fanart #nona spoilers #my art #i will die defending nona cow theory #note - original ask is from my old blog cause i just moved here lmao #m

[ancientannoyance]

there’s a post floating around with the girl from the ring next to margo robbie from barbie that says ‘the alecto we thought we were getting vs the alecto we got’. when i sent it to my best friend (i infected her with the tlt brain rot a while ago) she had an epiphany that i haven’t seen any one else talking about yet.

In Harrow, we get multiple descriptions of who Harrow calls The Body, and they sound like the girl from the ring. What if when Harrow went into the tomb, Anastasia, who we now know was also locked inside, was the one who bound herself to Harrow all revenant like and haunted her for all that time?

haven’t done a reread since this started percolating in my brain so it’s more than possible there’s something in the books somewhere that unequivocally disproves this theory, but what do you think? Is Harrows haunting actually Anastasia?

Firstly, the below answer contains spoilers for Nona the Ninth, so please don't read on if you haven't read that yet!

Before I answer this, I should point out that, at a certain point in the fandom (circa early 2021, iirc) this theory by tumblr user ac-ld - which postulates that John switched the bodies of Alecto and Anastasia in the ninth tomb, and that The Body that Harrow sees is actually Anastasia and that Alecto is actually buried in the First House - was the most popular theory in the TLT fandom hands down. I think it still probably holds the crown of most popular TLT theory, despite being disproved as of Nona the Ninth's publication.

If you read the above theory I linked, I think that your friend is thinking along similar, but not exactly the same, lines? Sorry if I'm wrong and misunderstood!

Full disclosure, before Nona the Ninth came out, I really thought this theory - that The Body is actually Anastasia- had a high chance of being correct, but (in my personal opinion!) I think Nona the Ninth has pretty much cemented in my head that the Body was Alecto. My reasons are:

If we look at the descriptions of The Body, Harrow - and Gideon when she sees the Body too - literally describes The Body as perfect ("Each limb was a carved representation of a perfect limb, each bloodless foot the lifeless and high-arched simulacrum of the perfect foot", etc). It thematically makes sense for this to describe Alecto, an unreal being who was literally created to resemble a Barbie doll by John, than for it to describe Anastasia, who was a real human and therefore inherently flawed. Plus, Gideon's description of The Body ("with a face so beautiful it almost went out the other side and became repellent") specifically jives with how Augustine described Alecto looking inhuman, whereas if Anastasia was so unnaturally beautifully as to be repellent, I think Augustine would have mentioned it, since he specifically mentions at one point that Harrow is "Anastasia come again."

Gideon describes The Body as "a woman with my eyes, dimmed dark yellow in death", while Harrow's POV mentions of her hair that "that long hair hanging wetly over her shoulders, that resinous colour that in death might have been brown or might have been gold or might have been anything" and of her eyes "in your youth her eyes had often been black, like yours were, but that ever since you had writhed in Lyctoral agony her eyes had turned a yellow that made you dizzy to behold" and of her voice "the voice—low, husky, musical—or its dry and uncanny echo of other voices you had known: your mother’s, Crux’s". So The Body had a certain unnaturally beautiful look but it's hair colour was not pinned down, and when it came to eye colour and voice it seemed to take on characteristics of other humans whom... Harrow had known? Who had died for Harrow? Thematically, it just makes sense to me that Alecto - the soul of Earth, the font of all the humans that were later reborn in the Ninth House and other houses - would be able to embody all the souls that Harrow ... loved? mourned? Instinctively, it makes sense to me why Alecto can embody all these souls that ultimately once came from her, while Anastasia - who was ultimately just a human - can't. While I'm here, Anastasia was most likely black-eyed and black-haired, as that is described by Harrow to be the overwhelming Ninth House look.

On a meta level, if you read Tamsyn Muir's other works such as the Deepwater Bride and Floralinda, you'll see that there are certain narrative themes she visits over and over again, but also certain aesthetic things, and one of the aesthetic things she visits again and again is of a very unnaturally beautiful golden-haired girl who turns out to actually be a "monster" (neutral). So, after reading her other works, I'm convinced on a meta as well as a narrative/thematic level that The Body and Alecto are the same.

Even if all the above weren't true, I think Nona the Ninth pretty much confirmed beyond doubt that The Body is Alecto. In NTN, Harrow looks upon Alecto and calls her "corse of the Locked Tomb" (corse being an archaic word for corpse). We know that The Body is the same as the corpse in the tomb because that is confirmed in Harrow the Ninth (HTN Act One Ch. 3), so if we put that together with the above quote, then there is no doubt that "the corse of the Locked Tomb" = "The Body" = "Alecto". Harrow also says in Nona the Ninth, looking upon Alecto's face "I have loved thee all my life, with mine whole soul, and with mine whole strength." To me, it wouldn't make sense for Harrow to say this looking upon Alecto's face, if Anastasia was The Body?

Therefore, given all the reasons above, I think Nona the Ninth has pretty much proven that The Body that Harrow is haunted by is Alecto, who somehow takes on the characteristics of other people that Harrow loves/mourns.

That being said, all of the above is just my personal opinion and observation! I'm not saying I'm right, and I fully welcome everything I said above being proved wrong in Alecto the Ninth!

#thank you for such an interesting ask... it was fun revisiting an old theory #asks #replies #blackmelange #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #ntn spoilers #tlt spoilers #alecto the first #harrowhark nonagesimus #htn spoilers

[liesmyth]

Been thinking about things we still don’t know in the series and there seems like there might be a screaming whirlpool of nearly ten billion souls stashed in the basement of canaan house (teachers warning speeches + an apparent discrepancy in the number of souls involved in the resurrection and souls not going in the river and not otherwise being accounted for + the houses being super tiny implying that most of the souls weren’t put back into anyone), any thoughts on what’s up with that?

the soul stash!! I'm mildly obsessed with it. I want to shake John until all the missing souls drop from his body. And there are a lot of souls unaccounted for. The numbers of the resurrection don't add up at all, but also many of the early-days Canaan House experiments used souls as literal building blocks, so they must have had plenty to spare.

The first time John brings up the resurrection is in HtN, chapter 2 (text in ALT)

We know the resurrection was a one-time event. We also know that the resurrections were “staggered” (as per Augustine). It makes sense, logistically, to bring back people in groups rather than everyone at once, especially when you’re setting up a civilization out of space stations and planetary installations, with much more limited resources than living on earth.

The 500 John gives to the Ninth have been woken up after ten thousand years, but I’ll bet that in the early days (pre-Lyctorhood) resurrections were a lot more frequent as the Houses grew bigger. These are the ones “set aside for safety”, he resurrected and stashed them somewhere (a very dark spin on his original cryo project ngl). We’re talking bodies in stasis, not souls.

Whatever that “somewhere” was, it’s relatively close at hand. It could be Canaan House  — it would be logistically complicated for John to retrieve them after GtN, but not impossible — or it could be somewhere else on Earth, a station outside Houses space, or a River pocket dimension. I think River pocket is more likely. (But fwiw, I believe Canaan House is where the bodies of the original Lyctor cavs are interred.

Now the souls! In NtN, John 5:4 (text in ALT)

He flat out says he "brought back” a very small part of the population, most likely less than a billion. John knew from the start that he wasn't going to wake up everyone, so. Did he bother at all to bring back the ones he thought had wronged them? I think he didn’t. He just yeeted them somewhere.

It could be Canaan House! Column was possessed in Canaan House. In GtN, Teacher was pretty scared of Silas siphoning Colum, and he was really scared that he was doing it in the basement. There’s something underfoot in that basement (sorry).

Also. Canaan House was a mad science lab. They were doing shit with souls. I think it would be logistically convenient to do experiments with souls if 1) you had them handy and 2) you had been reassured by God that they were souls that, like, sort of deserved it. Cytherea for sure doesn’t seem to think very highly of Teacher and definitely doesn’t see the priests as people. If they were the result of wacky experiments on the souls of the damned, I can see why she wouldn’t gaf.

Another great theory: @monstrousgourmandizingcats​ makes a very compelling case that John just threw the ones he didn’t like in the stoma. Besides the literary references in meta I linked (which is cool and pretty convincing) there’s the fact that the stoma is linked to the Eight House (Augustine scolds Mercy about it) and the Eight House and soul syphoning are definitely related to whatever’s going on with the River ghosts and the devils at Antioch. I believe we’re going to see Silas in AtN (or at the very least a lot of Eight House content) and whatever the Eight do with the stoma is going to come into play.

I... don’t know exactly how these two are connected. But they are connected IMO, if only through my mindmap of “wtf is going on with the Eight”. The stoma ties to siphoning in some way, Canaan House is a ‘syphoning is danger’ area. Maybe John didn’t throw his rejected souls into the stoma on purpose, but they ended there anyway.

#tlt theories #tlt thoughts #canaan house #eight house #ask #anonymous #long post #the locked tomb #tlt

[rubensmuse]

i just read your tags on a post from a few days ago and?? do you think the tridentarii aren’t identical twins?

My instinctual answer to this question is "You think the Tridentarii aren't fraternal twins?" Because making the snap judgement that they must be identical is just not as intuitive as this ask is implying it is. They're two different builds and color palettes, and Coronabeth has a different hair texture, so it really surprises me that them being "identical twins" is the assumption to which everyone defaults.

The thing that muddies this discussion for me is that, when people on the internet ask whether or not the Tridentarii are "identical", I have no idea if they mean "they look the same!" or "I headcanon that they are the result of a single zygote splitting into two embryos and developed identical genes!" Because those are two different things, and they involve making two different arguments. I get the sense that when people assume the Tridentarii are "identical", they are saying 1) they are monozygotic twins, but also 2) they would have the same phenotype and be indistinguishable if Ianthe didn't have necromancy eating her titties and muscles or whatever. (Which is also a silly thing to assume, because necromancy doesn't eat your pigmentation, but whatever.) Admittedly, Macaroni and Cheese being different shades of blonde is what made me assume they were fraternal, and that isn't a safe assumption for me to have made because genetics just aren't that simple (see this example of monozygotic twins being born with two dramatically different levels of melanin). The other factor here is, y'know, Ianthe being a necromancer, something hazily theorized in-universe to be genetic (something which, to be fair, we don't know for sure, see this fan theory), and if that is true, boom, there you go, fraternal.

But the other thing we have to consider is that the Tridentarii aren't, like, real. We are talking about fictional characters, so where you or I come down re: their genetic similarities will only matter insofar as it changes the meaning of the narrative. If Ianthe and Coronabeth are "identical" in the genetic sense, what does that mean for their story? Does it make any difference? Is there a purpose to me writing this dumb multiparagraph essay in response to a two-line ask on tumblr, other than to be contrarian and jerk myself off??

I mean, I think so. I think Ianthe's and Coronabeth's story is defined by them not being like the other. They are the two faulty halves of a theoretical complete heir; the platonic ideal of the Princess of Ida, with charisma and likeability and necromancy, too. Their parents "wanted a matched set", but they didn't get one. Them trying to correct this discrepancy with lies and secrecy that isolates them from everyone but each other fits in perfectly with all the other frictions of being a fraternal twin. Like, what's the point of you both? Why'd your mother go through all that trouble to get a pair of shitty normal siblings? And it's easy to internalize that, too, that expectation of unity contrasted with that reality of duality. We are one unit, but you are not like me. If we got here at the same time, why can you do things I can't. Well, fine, then, you have your Thing, I'll have my Thing, too; we're better than a matched set, we complete each other. Hang on, why does your Thing let you do something I can't? Where are you going. Take me with you.

Ianthe and Coronabeth are a set trying to be a match, and they can't make it happen, and it drives them so crazy that Corona would rather be killed and eaten than have Ianthe go do something she can't participate in.

TL;DR: Ianthe and Coronabeth are not literally identical (they are not physically indistinguishable). We don't know if they're genetically identical (monozygotic twins as opposed to dizygotic), and the distinction has not become relevant in any of the books thus far. AND I think considering them to be genetically identical makes their story thematically weaker when compared to the alternative. Therefore, I consider them functionally fraternal until Tamsyn Muir herself says that they aren't, and I furthermore remain flabbergasted that anyone in the fandom would consider that a weird interpretation.

#the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius #ianthe naberius #coronabeth tridentarius #crown him with many crowns #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #''but mads! why do you care so much!'' #WELL I THINK THERE SHOULD BE MORE SAME-GENDERED FRATERNAL TWINS IN MEDIA. #YES EVEN IF THEY'RE FUCKED UP AND INCESTUOUS. GIMME #thank you for your inquiry! nobody else better insist to me that they're identical ever again after this #this is my headcanon this is my hill to die on i won't be accepting alternative theories #also i take it back. if tamsyn wants to argue with me she's wrong #giddynine #harrynine #nonnynine #just squirrelly things #asks

[todd-queen]

more tlt/hannibal brain rot

I can't stop imagining a scene in ATN of Alecto stringing John up like this scene:

"Judas had the decency to hang himself in shame at his betrayal.

But I thought you needed some help."

(Hannibal 2.05)

#john gaius #alecto #alecto the first #alecto theories #the locked tomb #tamsyn please #i know we're not that fucked up in tlt but aren't we #nbc hannibal #hannibal spoilers #i just want to see the character who compares himself to god strung up like a heathen. is it too much to ask

[thunderon]

remember when everyone thought that harrow was going to rip ianthes heart out bc foreshadowing. what do we think of that now

not sure if it was an ‘everyone’ thing, i know i posted about it but i dunno if it ever caught on as a theory. i’d like to think there’s plenty of room left in the series for a nice harrianthe exploding chest scene but who knows. i think i should get half points for harrow metaphorically ripping ianthe’s heart out in ntn with the “then perish” comment. i just know homegirl went home and cried about that one. ianthe has been rejected by harrow like 3 times now so you gotta admire the perseverance at least

#asks #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #nona spoilers #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers #did that theory catch on? i dunno

[theriverbeyond]

hey!! sorry to bother you but do you know why people think anastasia might be The Body?

yeah! so there were a series of posts about it and they are still online, but the OP is no longer a locked tomb blog and i believe wants privacy from fandom overall so out of respect i'm not gonna link them

the main overall points were:

physical apperance: the Body is described as looking like harrow, and the houses are in general fairly consistant/distinct in their looks. so the body looks like someone from the ninth.

the eyes: harrow notes specifically that before she became a lyctor, when she saw the Body, the Body's eyes were mostly black in color. they turned gold afterwards. tamsym muir makes a big point of noting that most drearbough eyes were the same lightness black

the tomb: the tomb on the ninth could be a red herring, with the real tomb housing alecto being on the First House. the logic being that if you were to hide your one true enemy, the creature you defeated once but can never defeat again, broadcasting that tomb's location is..... not strategic, and john is very strategic. but there IS a body in the tomb on the 9th, even if it might not be alecto. therefore, anastasia

#i think we will find out the body's identity in Nona and i am increasinly thinking that maybe she is just alecto #but this is still an extreamly fun theory #ask #anon #the locked tomb #the body

[camplease]

wrt the twincest post, i think the issue comes not from the possible natures of the relationship itself, but the way people in general can boil complex relationships down to Purely being about one thing? like i don’t think adding a weird psychosexual layer to analysis of a relationship inherently makes it less interesting, but i do think dumbing a relationship down to Just Weird Psychosexual Things does it a disservice, if that makes sense? i wouldn’t say i Ship the tridentarii in like a cute normal way (that does squick me out personally) but like they have some weird shit going on and i think it can be interesting to poke at all the different possible angles, some of which include weird psychosexual energy. anyways sorry for rambling in ur inbox and i hope this didn’t come off as like aggressive in any way

hey anon! sorry this took me a few days. thank you for the thoughtful ask - you’ve nothing at all to apologize for! i actually appreciate being able to participate in this kind of nuanced discussion about the characters i’m insane about and thinking about on my own constantly anyway. their sisterhood is genuinely one of the top 5 things that fucking wreck me about this series and i just have so many feeling about them and. well. prepare yourself this is about to be wayyyy too long and i am so sorry lmao

one thing i wanna start with even though i’m sure it was a minor point is, i get you about not shipping them in a cutesy romantic way or anything. i haven’t personally seen that at all actually (not to say it doesn’t exist, but if it does, it seems to be much more on the fringes), so that’s not my issue at all

but moving on to the broader points you made, i agree with a lot of what you’re saying. i fully agree that complex relationships (honestly just relationships period) are very rarely purely one thing. i appreciate you pointing that out since i realize i didn’t say that in my post

i understand the distinction you’re making between their relationship being viewed as purely a weird psychosexual thing vs that just being an element of it, and i think that’s a valid take. but for me personally, i do find it less interesting, even if it’s just an element of it, bc i feel like fiction media, especially fantasy since the 00s, has leaned Far too heavily on using that as a shortcut to make things Extra weird and creepy and fucked up and i just wanna see a lot more things that aren’t that and to the exclusion of that tbh. like it just feels cliche to me at this point, and i feel like even in cases where it doesn’t exist to the exclusion of other elements of the characters’ dynamic, it can overshadow those other elements

in my observation, that’s what’s been happening within the tlt fandom. so much of their unhealthiness and genuinely really fascinating codependent toxic dynamic doesn’t get talked about or explored in depth and instead it just seems to keep getting boiled down to the spectacle of They’re Twin Sisters And They’re Definitely Fucking. which isn’t shade to anyone who just wants to talk about that! i’m so worried any of my commentary will come across that way bc i genuinely do not feel that way

at the end of the day, i’m honestly not holding anything against the people who view their relationship that way, or those who feel that’s what’s being portrayed in the text, or even those who are most fixated on that, and i honestly feel excited that others are as invested in these 2 freaks as i am. i feel like a lot of the differing perspectives and interpretations about what exactly is going on with them are understandable to some extent. the main thing that bothers me are the posts that are like “oh if you don’t see that this is obviously canonical as of nona you’re delusional” bc it’s very much open to interpretation still, and i know there are others, aside from myself, who didn’t even consider that there was incestuous stuff happening before we saw people saying that in the fandom

and don’t get me wrong, if this turns out to be confirmed as canon in alecto, i will certainly not hate the series or think any less of it or muir’s writing or stop finding the tridentarii compelling!

#tridentarii #ianthe tridentarius #coronabeth tridentarius #tridentarii twincest #cw ianthe #tlt #the locked tomb #alecto the ninth #nona the ninth #ntn spoilers #tlt theories #ask #†

[chaos-has-theories]

Is the Ninth actually on the Moon?

ok so I've been chewing this one over for literal months. There's this post by @giraffesonjupiter that I just stumbled over again. Somebody (I think it was @urcrookedneighbor ?) tagged posts about A.L. as "Alecto Luna" to mirror John Gaius, which, big brain. Then there's all of John's sun symbolism, and Alecto as his counterpart.... and then I saw somebody mention that the trip Harrow and Gideon take at the beginning of GtN is awfully short considering they'd have to cross half the solar system. It makes a lot of sense! Pluto could be a red herring!

So I put on my research goggles and pulled out GtN. From chapter 1:

This late in the equinox no light would make it here for months, in any case; you could tell the season by how hard the heating vents were creaking.

Right, it's cold and dark on the Ninth. Specifically, more so than on the First, so does that make sense?

"Dark side of the moon" my brain helpfully suggests, but no, I find out immediately; that's a misnomer. The moon has the same day/night cycle as the earth.

Then came the long hike up twenty-two flights the back way, not one light relieving the greasy dark...

But right, most of Drearburh is underground. Maybe that's how it could still work?

Kind of, yes. Turns out there's craters that (if they're deep and close to the poles enough) never see sunlight.

Out here you had an unimpeded view up to a pocket of Ninth sky. It was soupy white where the atmosphere was pumped in thickest, and thin and navy where it wasn't.

Fair enough, neither Pluto nor the moon have an atmosphere...

The bright bead of Dominicus winked benignly down from the mouth of the long vertical tunnel.

...Oh.

That doesn't sound like the moon.

TL,DR: No.

#I just really needed to write this out so I can FINALLY close those tabs on my phone #though I would like to ask #first it says that during this season there's no light. then it says the sun is shining (however far away) #so what other light do they get?? #and second what the fuck does 'this late in the equinox' mean #the equinox is a moment in time not a stretch... and googling it verbatim only gives me GtN results #in conclusion Tamsyn Muir is brilliant and her books incredibly well thought out #but she is maybe not an astronomer (and that's okay) #but neither am I so if anyone wants to correct me I would be delighted #the locked tomb #the locked tomb meta #theory time #chaos has theories #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth

[ghostlygraphist]

i haven't worked out all the house/planet pairings yet but the 6th definitely orbits mercury and that puts 'mercury in retrograde' in a whole new light

#tlt #the locked tomb #tombposting #ask me about my theories #the nine houses #the sixth house #sixth house #mercury

[incorrect-house-of-nine]

Commander Wake wasn't an only child. Gideon Nav has cousins. Lots of them.

Somewhere, in the far off future.

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #gideon nav #commander wake #locked tomb theory asks #locked tomb headcanon asks

[inadequate-nefelibata]

what's a good show / other type of media that has a good and satisfying queer slowburn romance?

#asking for a fren #i guess i have paper girls #and the locked tomb books and she-ra #but ... i need new stuff #also i'm starting a new show and i'm not going to lie #with all the st drama over ships #i'm feeling just a tad bitter over all the m/f ships i can see are going to be canon #with just a few hints #i want that you know? #i want that subtle build up but it rarely happens #even if it becomes super popular in fandom circles there's always going to be this #almost... conspiracy theory aura around queer ships #people on both sides get so intense #that makes everything too complicated #i''m dreading the end of the show either way #anyway but that's unrelated

[figonas]

I’m sorry but you all aren’t listening, lyctorhood itself is not the “indelible sin” and you can pry this theory from my cold dead hands, honestly, maybe not even then. TazMuir herself could not dissuade me until she explicitly tells me otherwise. My proof for this you ask? Pyrrha’s conversation with Varun in NtN chapter 9.

But let’s backtrack for a second. John has stated that the resurrection beasts are after him and the lyctors for committing the indelible sin of lyctorhood, and as such the lyctors can never return to the Dominican System for fear of drawing the RBs back to the Nine Houses. I’ve never believed this was true given the fact that John is always the greatest common denominator when it comes to the presence of an RB and there’s no mention of an RB going after a lone lyctor. Sure, lyctors have been killed fighting resurrection beasts but there’s a huge difference between being caught in the crossfire and starting a firefight. For me, Nona the Ninth only reinforced that what we’ve been told is the “indelible sin” is either John misunderstanding the RBs (doubtful) or lying for his own purposes (more likely).

In chapter 9 of NtN, Nona recounts the story of her disastrous beach trip and towards the end of this recitation Nona says that Pyrrha;

“…crossed to the taped-up window, bottle and glass in hand. To Nona’s awe, she twitched the blackout curtains aside—stood bathed in the hyper-blue light from the sky as Nona held her breath—and she said to the window, “Here’s to Camilla Hect, yet another of devotion’s casualties,” and knocked back the glass. Then she said to the light, quite gently, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.”

Pyrrha stands in front of Nona, bathed in the light of Varun the Eater, and proceeds to have a conversation with it. We only get one side but based on the context of the last line, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.” Varun seemingly apologizes to Pyrrha for killing G1deon. It’s proven later on in the book that Varun can speak to Nona, and while it could be argued that since G1deon is dead and his soul is gone the “indelible sin” has been undone this still begs the question; why would the punisher apologize to the sinner?

If Varun and the other RBs are hunting the lyctors to dole out justice for their sins why would they apologize for doing the very thing they sought to do unless that wasn’t their true intent. The “indelible sin” is not the consumption of another soul, it is the consumption of a specific soul. It is John taking Alecto into himself, not being able to house all of her and instead making an exchange. Housing a piece of her in him, and a piece of him in her. Splintering the soul of a great and terrible force into manageable parts. Which explains Varun’s ominous presence hanging over the planet in the first place.

If RBs are hunting Lyctors there are no lyctors on this planet. Palamedes has not consumed Camilla’s soul, G1deon is gone, Harrow is in the River, Gideon is thumbtacked to her dead body, the only soul of any significance to Varun is Nona. Later on in chapter 13 Varun, by way of Judith, says to Nona;

“…what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill—we see you still—we seek you still—we murdered—we who murder—you inadvertent tool—you misused green thing—come back to us—take vengeance for us—we saw you—we see you—I see you.”

And in chapter 27,

“….what did he do to you, to make you this way.”

What did HE do to you!!! what did HE do to YOU!! To give John credit he doesn’t deserve he may not realize it himself but the RBs have been looking for Alecto this whole time. They don’t want the lyctors, they want what John stole, they want the piece of Alecto inside of him. Want to make her whole again, their misused green thing. She’s almost there. She has her piece back from harrow’s body, united with the piece of her hidden in the locked tomb. She only has 1 piece left to collect. And god knows what will happen when the green and breathing thing is whole once again.

#the locked tomb #Nona the ninth #john gaius #alecto the first #tlt #tlt theories #this has been rattling around in my brain since Gideon the Ninth #John’s explanation of the RBs just doesn’t add up #and you know he has to be lying about it because he straight up lies to Harrow about the number of RBs in HtN

[folfar]

all i do rn is think about the locked tomb! thinking about john and the scope of his powers:

pre-apocalypse, john marries nigella and cassiopeia, and he makes roses grow for them. and yes! some of the roses have teeth, but it does seem in the narrative that this is the first time he'd tried it. but only some. some of the roses therefore are normal roses.

john can use his powers to grow things, and he didn't even try before literally his last day on earth! or everyone else's last day on earth, more correctly.

at the beginning of the dream narration in ntn, he raises the mountain from the waters and says the only hard thing about it is remembering he can do it in the first place. so there's all this evidence in ntn that his powers aren't limited to necromancy - that's just seems to be what he stumbled across first. he was working with dead people, so dead people are what he noticed.

when alecto gave john his power, i think she never intended* for them to be 'death' powers. i think they presented that way because the source of the power was dying - think about the seventh and their theory that they can harness the thanergy being shed by a dying person. the power looked like death-power because it came from a dying source. but it's just power, in the end, it's just soul.

but john assumed. he was so caught up in his own grief, so overwhelmed, that he doesn't even consider being 'a good wizard,' as pyrrha puts it (pre-apocalypse). his friends ask him to try to stabilise the north american glacier, reference other ecological disasters - and he doesn't try! he's assumed he's there for vengeance and stuck with it. and then we see in the book that he could have. like, it's entirely possible that john could have let the trillionaires go - and then saved the planet. practiced until the roses grew normally. raised the soil above the waters, calmed the seas.

but he can't let go of his wants, his desires! and yes, he's not as powerful before he consumes part of a's soul, but his necromancy got stronger and stronger anyway - maybe his power over the roses could have too.

anyway just imagine alecto, giving someone that loves her this unimaginable power, and hoping for a nurse, a gardener - and getting a taxidermist instead. a puppeteer.

*intended is a weird word to use for alecto pre-barbification, but i couldn't think of another way to put it

#jod #alecto #ntn spoilers #tlt #the locked tomb #john gaius #meta #obligatory i am rotating him in my mind 24/7

[meggettes]

update on my sister reading the locked tomb

she is DEEP into htn, and i asked her to let me know once Harrow makes soup, and she got there

She also has some big theories she’s developing as she goes (which makes me super happy that she’s all in reading these), but they are SPOILERS so below the cut they go.

The one thing I had a helluva time keeping to myself was my CamPal obsession, but she got to them finally

And then she went on with her theories, some of which never occurred to me on my first read and are pretty badass

👀

Cannot wait to catch up with her about it, especially as she’s heading into some showdowns and big revelations

#catty reads tlt #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #live reaction