#the mysterious study of doctor sex

[rosenkranz-does-things]

She had been hospitalised because an official said they wanted to take [Palamedes'] bones away and said that they would not serve in a cell where a necromancer`s minion was allowed to carry " wizard bones'' around. I was there when they tried to forcibly take the bones away and they were forced to shock her.

#camilla hect #palamedes sextus #the locked tomb #the mysterious study of doctor sex #cohort intelligence files #as yet unsent #gideon the ninth

[arithmonym]

i feel like we, as a fandom, gloss over the scene where palamedes brings “dulcinea” tea.

he knows the real dulcie dislikes it when people bring her tea!!! he’s judging cytherea’s response! he’s starting to figure things out before abigail and magnus are even killed!

an excerpt from dulcie’s letter in the mysterious study of doctor sex (which everyone should read, by the way):

in conclusion: WHAT A MAN

#the locked tomb #tlt #palamedes sextus #gideon the ninth #the mysterious study of doctor sex #m speaks #tlt meta

[repuffinery]

“See those distals? They always get more coats, because they’re fragile. What else do you notice about them?” The Warden loved to teach. Always did. I was an early experiment. I took the flashlight and braced myself against him so that I could lean down without touching the desk: He held my shoulders so that I could examine the distal fingertips.

The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex, Tamsyn Muir

my babies. my friends. my future parents. living in my mind rent free

#the mysterious study of doctor sex #the locked tomb #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #tlt #fanart #my stuff

[badcatcait]

Wonder if this is anything…

Augustine claims they were planning Dios Apate Major for 500 years.

Doctor Sex’s study was sealed 460 years ago when the Sixth were 13, so that would put the sealing about 467 years ago at the time of htn, or 448ish years before the birth of Gideon Nav.

Doctor Sex was known for his “impressive work on post resurrection psychometry”. He would’ve conceivably been doing that work for decades before his death caused the lab to be sealed, putting ~500 years ago well within his lifetime.

Did Dr. Sex make a discovery about the resurrection that shook the lyctors’ faith? Did it have to do with psychometrically dating that note in the puzzle box? Did they GIVE him that note to confirm their own theories at the time?

#the locked tomb #the mysterious study of doctor sex #augustine the first #mercymorn the first #john gaius #ejg #harrow the ninth #Dios Apate #tlt #tlt posting #what if the note is actually some pre-resurrection prop from John’s dnd games or some shit

[friendamedes]

doctor sex: doctor sex

#the locked tomb #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #the mysterious study of doctor sex #tumblr is EATING the quality here - i recommend opening the image if u can #if u tag this as romantic campal i am holding ur hand and we are skipping happily thru a field of dandelions together <3 lets be friends #alt in ID #campal #quinn png #gideon the ninth

[nonasbirthday]

2 types of cavaliers:

Camilla:

vs Gideon:

[image IDs in alt text]

#gideon’s like i got my sword and my biceps what else do you need. #i love the idea that harrow saw how cam and pal worked together and got some framework for ‘what cavs do’ from their interaction #cuz. u know. she hasn’t really seen a healthy necro-cav pair ever (if you can count campal as healthy) #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #the mysterious study of doctor sex #camilla hect #gideon nav #nonasbirthday #sticking this on the fridge

[nona-gay-simus]

Best parts about The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex:

- Canonical proof that Camilla is hot (and Gideon was too Harrow/Cyth focused to notice)

- 13yo Cam and Pal actually acting like 13yos and giggling at 'Doctor Sex'

- a they/them character

- the last line

#doctor sex #tlt #the locked tomb #palamedes sextus #the mysterious study of doctor sex #camilla hect

[greatandquestionablecontent]

Consanguinity tables get narrower year by year. I was born with four kids in my generation eligible to produce children with me. Palamedes had two.

- The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex, Tamsyn Muir

I hope someone out there has written an arranged marriage AU that takes into consideration this and the appallingly small marriage options for Harrow and Gideon (and Ortus) on the Ninth.

Like I’m not gonna write it but someone should.

#the locked tomb #the mysterious study of doctor sex #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #meta and rambles #gonna tag everyone #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon nav #gideon the ninth #ortus nigenad #oh god imagine a ortus x palamedes that sounds insufferable

[notedchampagne]

im crying about dr sex again okay. okay. when archivist zeta said "dont expire in a fit of hubris" taz you are a mastermind im going to bleed out to death tonight

#the mysterious study of doctor sex #TRUILY ITS SO. IVE REREAD IT SO MUCH #chat

[c0sm0butch]

Please somebody tell me I'm not crazy for this but I just reread The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex for the millionth time just to take another look at the "letter" and my heart almost stopped.

Every time I've read this before I was like oh god, a letter from a doomed cavalier to their necromancer before they're about to die the next day, how heartwrenching. But now I suddenly see this in a completely different light.

First of all, "darling girl" - so this is addressed either to Mercymorn, Cassiopeia or Cytherea. We know that the letter is stored in a wooden sphere as a keepsake, in the Sixth House, at the time of its opening locked away for at least 460 years at the time Pal and Cam solve it.

Now what are the odds that either Mercymorn or Cytherea, who are both truly PAINFULLY attached to their dead cavaliers would somehow lose or give away ANYTHING given to them by Cristabel or Loveday? None.

It makes sense that the letter addressed to the founder of the Sixth House somehow finds itself in the Sixth House after the alleged death of Cassiopeia, then. So upon the first several readings, I was like "oh Nigella wrote this to Cassiopeia" (especially because it's said that nobody could "get a look at" Nigella with Cassiopeia around, which I always thought pointed at the possibility of them being romantic).

However, when we look at the bits of information sprinkled through HtN, we learn that Cassiopeia worked closely with Anastasia to figure out the perfect Lyctorhood, that Anastasia "failed" because she had "researched it too much" which was apparently "classic Anastasia". The Ninth House also didn't exist before she founded it upon the Tomb, which also begs the question where she is originally from. My suspicion is that Anastasia and Samael were Sixth, just as Cassiopeia and Nigella, which is why they worked so methodically and closely together.

I always thought the phrase "when you are far away" was purely metaphorical, because a cavalier is merged with the necromancer in the lytoral process. Their soul doesn't even go the River, it is perpetually inside the lyctor, they become one, an integral part of one another. But what if this was meant literally? And the choice of words in the phrase "one thing that never stays entombed", as if they already know there's something that IS to be entombed and stay that way?

Anastasia is the one who can't follow where the lyctors go. She is the only one from the group left behind, who will literally be far away from them because she is sent to build the Tomb while the lyctors leave the system aboard the Mithraeum.

Is this a bloody love/farewell letter from Anastasia to Cassiopeia when she learns that she's leaving to build the Locked Tomb while the lyctors head to space? I'm going insane here.

#please tell me this isn't totally irrational #the mysterious study of doctor sex #gideon the ninth #tlt #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #cassiopeia the first #nigella shodash #anastasia the first #anastasia the ninth #samael novenary #sixth house #ninth house #tlt theories #the locked tomb theories #lyctors #Lyctorhood

[raven-curls]

Here's the link to book 0.5 and book 2.5 of The Locked Tombs by Tamsyn Muir - available for free on Tor.com

Book 0.5 The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex

Book 2.5 As Yet Unsent

P/s Book 1 - Gideon the Nineth - is not a Nineth, but a TEN (pun intended)

#tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #as yet unsent #the mysterious study of doctor sex #coronabeth tridentarius #judith deuteros #camillia hect #palamedes sextus #ravencurls reads #gideon the ninth

[lasersheith]

I'm finally reading the mysterious study of doctor sex and

Palamedes is a relatable king wow

#tlt #the locked tomb #palamedes #the mysterious study of doctor sex #i listened to the audiobooks so now I'm going back and finally reading the short stories lol

[arithmonym]

one of my favorite character details about palamedes is that, when he’s in his own body, he’s just as fidgety as camilla.

#the locked tomb #tlt #palamedes sextus #camilla hect #the mysterious study of doctor sex #tmsods

[mayasaura]

sorry if someone has asked this before, but is there a canon explanation on how Wake ended up revenant-bonded to Gideon's sword? and if not, do you have any theories? trying to figure this out after my reread of harrow

No one ever explains exactly how it worked in the books, or at least they haven't yet, but they do give us enough general information about revenants to come up with a theory.

Short version is that she probably first formed a connection to the sword while Gideon was visiting her bones, and was called to it by the blood offerings that naturally happen when an energetic child is first learning how to use and care for a blade.

Longer analysis of what we know about revenant theory and how it relates to Wake under the cut, because of who I am as a person.

So here's how I've pieced the events together:

When Wake died, the first thing the nuns of the Ninth did was call her spirit back to ask her "what the fuck?". In chapter one of Gideon the Ninth, Gideon says that the shade of her mother "could not be tempted back for fresh blood or old," and describes her soul as having been "too far gone" for conversation by the time the nuns "had tethered her by force". That's obviously what the nuns told Gideon, though knowing what we know now about Wake I'd guess it was more a refusal to participate than faded strength. Either way, they did manage to force her back, if only briefly.

It's established in the Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex that calling a spirit can be enough to create a revenant bond, even if the spirit doesn't make contact. The nuns briefly trapping Wake's soul is how she initially became a revenant.

Okay, cool. So that's how she stuck around on the Ninth, but how did she get from her bones to Gideon's sword?

To have a revenant bond, she needs to have first had a thanergetic connection. None of the specific examples Ianthe suggests in the lesson with Augustine apply to Wake and the sword. It's a standard-issue Cohort sword taken straight from the still-wrapped box eight years after Wake's death. It wasn't used to kill her, it wasn't buried with her, and she had no connection to it in life. So there's no ready-made explaination to find there.

The important thing from that lesson is the concept of how those connections form: all it takes is exposure to a strong source of the revenant's thanergy. Usually that's something to do with their death, or something buried with them, but it doesn't have to be. If the person was murdered, just having come in contact with the murder weapon could be enough to form a weak connection. Seeing as a revenant has a much stronger connection with its corpse than it does to its murder weapon, the same is probably true of something that has touched the bones of the deceased.

That might be enough on its own to explain how Wake got there, but I think it being specifically a sword she was connected to helped strengthen the connection. It's mentioned several times that ghosts are hungry, and that revenants feed. The first offering made to tempt their hunger is always fresh blood. The most reliable source of fresh blood on the dried-up Ninth was probably Gideon and her sword, while she learned how to use it. Fumbles while learning drills, a slipped hand while sharpening or cleaning, that kind of thing. With Wake already having a connection to the sword from exposure, fresh blood being regularly applied to the blade could have tempted her revenant to take up residence.

The funeral niches of the Ninth House aren't closed; Gideon just chucks a rusted sword into one to get rid of it in chapter four of GtN. The bones are just chilling on little stone shelves, out in the open-ish air of the catacombs. All it would have taken for Wake to form her initial connection would be for Gideon to lean the sword against the edge of Wake's niche so that it brushed against her bones. It could have happened accidentally. Kids also do weird stuff sometimes, especially when they're trying to process big shit like dead moms and neglect. Maybe Gideon laid the sword in the niche with Wake to share her prized possession with her mother.

I'm going to be a little more speculative here, going into the whys and hows of it all. Why blood? What is it that revenants eat, and how did Wake sustain herself for almost twenty years on the Ninth?

Augustine gives us part of the answer in his comparison of Resurrection Beasts to revenants:

Resurrection Beasts feed like revenants: they find thalergenic planets and guzzle them up wholesale, crack them open like clams, and take the soul for meat.

So revenants feed on thalergy, which is something living bodies produce and what living souls are made of. Feeding them blood does make sense, then, because blood contains thalergy. We learn that from Pyrrha, when she advises Harrow to use fresh blood wards on her room to keep herself safe from the Saint of Duty. He can drain thanergy, but not when it's mixed with the thalergy of fresh blood.

If revenants eat thalergy, that means Wake has most likely been subsisting on Gideon's thalergy, either from the blood she spills on her sword or through a direct connection with Gideon herself. Good thing Gideon's slightly immortal or that could have become a problem, depending on how much energy Wake needed. If Augustine is being entirely literal about revenants and resurrection beasts feeding in the same way, she may have even been snacking a bit on Gideon's soul.

And I don't really know if this means anything, but I noticed something interesting about the timeline.

Gideon started visiting Wake when she was seven, and Wake's skeleton was taken from its niche to be processed and added to the rotation when Gideon was eight. I'm guessing that's when Wake ditched the bones and changed her address of primary residence. The interesting part is that Gideon first started training with a sword around the same time: when she was eight years old.

But... the average height of an eight year old is 128 cm, a couple inches over four feet. The sword's six feet of steel would have been half again Gideon's height. There's no way she was being effectively taught how to fight with it at that age. I guess she could have had it anyway, to learn how to care for it and as a goal to aspire to while Aiglamene graduated her through more child-sized training weapons.

So Wake jumping directly from the bones to the sword only works if Gideon started training with a full-sized sword at the age of eight. That's not impossible, knowing Aiglamene. It's also not impossible that Harrow, who signed the order to give Gideon the sword, was already helping administer the House at the age of six or seven. Her parents don't seem to have ever imposed very firm oversight. Harrow may have had the legitimate power to do that, or maybe she started forging her mother's signature well before she died.

That's the most likely explanation, especially given how there's nothing in Harrow the Ninth to suggest that revenant can fully anchor itself to an occupied living body. Wake must have needed to possess something exterior to Gideon herself, or she wouldn't have had a reason to set up in the sword at all. But a revenant can haunt a person. It can create a link, and chill in the subconscious without anyone knowing it's there. I wonder if she did that with Gideon.

Edit 11/9/22: Changed some wording for clarity and added a bit on the sword's origin to the body of the post.

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #htn spoilers #harrow the ninth #awake remembrance of these valiant dead kia hua ko te pai snap back to reality oops there goes gravity #commander wake #gideon nav #tmsods spoilers #the mysterious study of doctor sex #doctor sex spoilers #tumblr do not nuke my post it's the man's damn name #anyway yeah Gideon would not have reached her adult height for a full six years or so after getting her sword #so there MUST have been blunt intermediary child-sized training weapons #maybe they were made of plastic like Ortus' sword! #then she would need the real blade to learn how to care for one

[badcatcait]

Rereading The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex, and Palamedes casually carrying sEnSoRy GeL in his pocket just seems like underutilized fanfic fodder.

#the locked tomb #palamades sextus #camilla hect #the mysterious study of doctor sex #the sixth house

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex" is available to read here

#short stories #short story #the mysterious study of doctor sex #tamsyn muir #21st century literature #english language literature #new zealand literature #new zealander literature #kiwi literature #have you read this short fiction? #book polls #completed polls #links to text