#tlt meta

[liesmyth]

I'm always thinking about how G— was an engineer. A damn good one: the sole engineer of the cryo project, good enough that of all the ten billion, the FTL project chose him to inspect their work, back when the project was still a pipe dream. He was a man from an immigrant family in an underprivileged area who became arguably the world's best engineer, which is impressive in its own right, but it gets me thinking... Pre-Resurrection, John says they can't grow food on Mars (and for all John's unreliability, that's pretty believable, given that the high perchlorate concentration in Martian soil is one of the big obstacles to carrying out a sustained Mars mission), and as silly as this might sound, the engineer and scientist divide is real, and of all the nerds that John resurrected, I can't imagine it was the artist or the contract lawyer or the medical and chemistry experts that made the Mars installation viable. Gideon made a House out of it, and one that accepts recruits from across the Dominican system! "Saint of Duty" is said to fit him, evident in his loyalty and commitment to the Cohort and fighting the Resurrection Beasts, but I have to wonder, how much of that was his commitment to making shit work? I can't shake the image of a couple million people awaking to a ruined world, and someone had to get the other Houses settled, figure out spacecraft and space habitats using what little supplies they have left, and what better candidate for that than the man who canonically engineered spacecraft twice?

ANON I love this so much. You're SO right, and you put into words something about G1deon and John's shared background that I've tried to articulate for a while. In the very first chapter, John says, "It wasn’t that they didn’t have the money for a bigger team; we were simply the only ones capable of what they were asking."

This was an incredibly elite team. They were a brilliant bunch of hyperspecialised nerds. And, like, among John's squad, A- and M- and everyone else started out as colleagues — very smart people he probably met in academic circles, where being smart was kind of a prerequisite. It was their research that brought them together to begin with.

G1deon, though! He was John's friend growing up. John knew his grandparents. They spotted each other spare changes for snacks!! Then John went on to Dilworth, then to university and then overseas, and G1deon had his own (probably different) academic path, and maybe they only stayed vaguely in touch, but when it was time to look for an engineer that could help them build spaceships constructed to provide life support to the whole of humanity for centuries — and G1deon was the guy for that.

The fact that two boys from similar underprivileged backgrounds individually made huge breakthroughs in their chosen fields, and got to work together on a project that was meant to save the world... I bet at the time it felt like a miraculous coincidence. I think they thought, if they'd made it that far, that they could do anything.

(yet another layer to the tragedy of what happened etc etc. G1deon torn between John and P—. John stopping G1deon's heart)

Thank you so much for all your thoughts about the Mars space installation, also — I wonder how long there was between Mars becoming the Second House (founded by G1deon! he and Pyrrha did the bulk of the work!) and the institution of the Third House, which doesn't have a named founder and might very well have been a shared project built on the blueprint of what G1deon set up. "the man who canonically engineered spacecraft twice" — my god I love this so much. It's G1deon emo hours today

#this ask PUNCHED ME IN THE GUTS ty for my life #g1deon #gideon the first #tlt thoughts #ntn #ask #anonymous #tlt #tlt meta #ONE THING though is that I don't think we're meant to interpret G1deon as being from an immigrant family but rather native #it's not spelled out in the books so it's all headcanons #but pasifika G— is where I'm at personally

[mayasaura]

why do you think cytherea targeted the fourth the way she did? we know why she killed the fifth, and we know why she killed people generally, but the writing in blood and the chasing jeanne after killing isaac feels weirdly personal

It does seem personal, yeah. I'm sure it was intended to. I'm also sure it wasn't. I doubt Cytherea even noticed they were people enough to have beef with them.

Let's look at her goals:

She's using the heirs as bait to get John's attention, but doesn't want to make the real stakes apparent. So she kills them off, one by one, slasher movie style. She's playing with them, creating a narrative so that when the terrified survivors call for help, John is curious enough about whatever theory they've come up with to come take a looksee.

That's probably why she planted the idea of vengeful angry ghosts so early. She knows it's something that's bound to get John's attention without alarming him enough for him to be on the defensive. His old house is haunted by violently angry revenants? That doesn't sound right, but you never know with ghosts. Seems both interesting and a bit concerning, he'd better take a look.

The Fourth specifically were targeted because their investigation into Abigail and Magnus' murder posed a threat to her plan. They had found Dulcinea and Protesilaus' ashes in the incinerator and raised the alarm, which put them way too close to asking the right kinds of questions. Like: "Whose ashes are these?" and "Is this connected to the other murders?" They had to die, and they had to die in a way that drew attention away from their investigation and lent credence to Cytherea's angry ghost narrative, or the story they had to tell when they called John might be a little too close to the truth to get the intended effect.

So. Giant bone monster in the basement laboratory, a sleeping child skewered in a locked room, and ominous writing in the victim's blood. A tableau designed to be so horrifyingly personal it doesn't occur to anyone it might have been pragmatic.

#the locked tomb #cytherea loveday #tlt meta #gideon the ninth #gtn spoilers #jeannemary #jeannemary chatur #isaac tettares

[notedchampagne]

i really truly believe harrow will have an entire identity crisis in ATN. despite all 3 books shes the one thats changed the Least and i Do hope that the inescapable change around her + the piece of gideon lodged like a yolk in her soul will send her spiraling into considering herself as a reborn Unit instead of a chimera, a servant, or a force of achievement

#chat #harrowhark nonagesimus #the locked tomb #tlt meta

[fortruthoversolace]

Alecto's body was created from a memory of a Barbie that John used to play with that belonged to his mom. If John is an insufferable millennial, that means his mom probably had a Barbie in the 50s or 60s. This means that when Alecto grieves the "terrible arms and legs and the terrible middle part" and the "nose too short, the ears too brief," that's because John made her look like this:

Photo source: Barbie's Evolution from 1959 to 2016

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #alecto #tlt meta #alecto the ninth #john gaius #jail full of acid for john gaius #it took me a second to parse 'terrible middle part' correctly #(i will die on the hill that deep side parts almost always look cooler) #she is not a milennial who refuses to psrt her hair down the middle (i.e. me)

[brungeons-and-bragons]

Welcome to The Locked Tomb! Our books are told through the point of view of

-jock stuck at a renn faire murder mystery party

-schizophrenic malnourished teenager granted unspeakable power

-a baby. Like an actual 6 month old infant.

Good luck!

#tlt series #tlt memes #tlt meta #the locked tomb series #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #harrow the ninth #Gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #htn #ntn #gtn #1k #2k #3k #4k #5k #6k #7k #8k #9k

[katakaluptastrophy]

I think what's so interesting about Gideon as a narrator at the anniversary dinner is the fact that there's clearly tensions that she's just not picking up on because she's only there to eat a dessert.

But these people are all the immensely powerful leaders of the Houses and consider themselves to be in competition for literal godlike powers and the favour of the emperor.

There's so many little snippets that are potentially intriguing: why is Teacher trying to prime the Ninth to consider the Fifth a threat? Why are the Third and the Sixth "sizing each other up like prizefighters"? The Fifth absolutely knew what they were doing when they sat the teen heads of the opposing cults near each other.

Through Gideon's lens, Magnus' speech is a little awkward jokey thing. But...the seneschal of the House that is known to be actively trying to absorb another House is saying it's such a shame they're all so remote from each other and what do they all have in common (and it's so quiet you "could have heard a hair flutter to the floor") - that had to feel a bit different to people who aren't Gideon.

Palamedes' is dissecting the meaning of "Master Warden" and at one point compares it to a prison warden. 'Dulcinea' asking about whether Magnus and Abigail have children is perhaps less small talk and rather more pointedly political. Harrow's apparently stilted conversation with Protesilaus is clearly her actually probing his limitations like he's a bad Chat GPT-run chatbot.

And then 'Dulcinea' tells Gideon she liked the dinner because it was "useful". In her typical "I never lied to you" way, Cyth wasn't lying when she said Abigail had to die because of her hobby - Abigail Pent let loose on the Facility would have risked blowing Cyth's cover sky high. But what does a Canaan House look like where after the dinner party, the Fifth go down to the facility, get a key, and survive to continue their 'the Houses are going to get along or else' agenda? We've seen Fifth House soft power on a smaller scale in HTN: and it looks like inviting a teenager round for coffee, lulling her into a false sense of security with small talk, and then physically preventing her from leaving the room until she does what you want, while smiling the entire time. A series of little coffee chats could probably have led to a lot of cooperation in Canaan House, one way or another.

Gideon jokes about Silas marrying Ianthe because of their similar colour pallete, but it does raise the fact that there seems to be some tension around the Third, its succession, and the *point* of Ianthe. Why is Silas openly saying Ianthe should have died at birth? Combined with Judith's comments in the Cohort Intelligence Files about succession on the Third, it feels like there's something else being said here that Gideon isn't picking up on.

And of course, Harrow wasn't the only one desperate to become a Lyctor because her con was unsustainable. Presumably at some point Corona and Ianthe would be expected to marry, or at least take on more separate roles as Corona prepared to take over the throne and Ianthe was funneled off elsewhere. At some point, their package deal would have become unsustainable and Corona's cover would have been blown. But much as Harrow wants to become a Lyctor so she can reveal the state of the Ninth without repercussions, Ianthe is probably in part motivated to become a Lyctor for the same reason. Because otherwise, what would Ianthe's expected role have been? Amidst the suggestion of anxiety about the Idan succession, the dinner party also presents the fact that the reason Abigail and Magnus' infertility isn't a succession crisis for the ruling family of the Fifth is that Abigail's younger brother dutifully married in his early 20s and had kids. We know there are branch families in Ida - Babs is from one. He may be a prince, but he's not treated well, and you do get the sense that the stakes to stay in power in Ida are high.

We don't learn anything about the political situation in the Houses themselves during HTN or NTN, but in the wake of Canaan House, you have to suspect there are a number of tensions and concerns.

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #Is Ianthe's “going to see a man about a queen” seeing to the political situation back home in Ida? #Which must have been devastated by her ascension and Corona's apparent death?

[diosapate]

mercy killed john cleanly. he did not die in pain, she did not disrespect his body; she killed him quickly and efficiently and that was it. john killed her brutally!! he mutilated her and covered someone else with her gore and only then killed her with a tap to the back of the head. he ripped a dead woman’s cloak from her body and touched her corpse with his bare foot to prove a point!!

all this to say: necromancy is disrespect for the dead under the guise of reverence, and john isn’t even bullshitting respect for the dead anymore in Thee most obvious way. god’s mercy is finite and he has none left; i suspect that his “i’m just a little guy :)” act is at its end and we are about to see more of the man who claims that guys like him don’t make mistakes.

#just like. the way he treats her body is insane to me. shes a character that already lacks bodily autonomy so this is just so. #cannot fault augustine for trying to slam dunk him into hell thus dooming the universe Again tbh #shoutout to aster for the phrase ‘he blew mercy up in the microwave’ cant stop thinking about it #tlt meta #mercymorn the first #john gaius #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #aust.txt

[direquail]

I don’t think people give enough weight to the fact that Nona is chronically-to-terminally ill in NtN, either—the reason she needs help taking care of herself, by the end of the book, is because her soul is eating her body and her body is dying. Every time she has a “tantrum”, or accesses Alecto, she uses up Harrow’s body in huge gulps—that’s why she gets sick or passes out after them. She spends most of her time in the early book thinking wistfully about how lucky she is to just have what she has and how much she wants to be useful and it’s a meditation on her awareness of her own death. Like.

Yeah, of course she needs other people to help her take care of herself. She’s disabled and actively dying.

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #nona ntn #honestly ntn is fucking devastating on that level #but people would rather infantilize her i guess

[tato-potat]

okay, so, long story short, a friend asked if a person could appreciate Harrow the Ninth without first reading Gideon the Ninth, and i'm struggling to explain to her exactly why that's one of the funniest fucking questions i've ever heard

#the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth

[theriverbeyond]

Harrow the Ninth is really a book about what happens when you are the Best At Something your whole life and you sweat and bleed and sacrifice everything to earn your way to the place/position you've always dreamed of, but then when you do succeed it isn't as you expected. Not only does everyone you once admired turn out to be an awful person, but your abilities are no longer special. Your talent isn't enough. Your effort isn't enough. Your new peers have worked just as hard as you have and know just as much as you do, but more than that: they seem suddenly better, faster, more capable, all while you flounder in the shallow end of the pool as the abilities you spent your whole life honing abandon you in your time of need. Humiliation becomes your constant companion as you sweat and bleed and try anyway, but what once netted you endless success and acolades is now barely enough to survive.

And then, of course, there is The Skull

#tlt meta #trb.txt #harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth book that you are...... #book about burnout book about grief book about weird wet towel bitches who won't leave you alone

[liesmyth]

I saw these tags on a reblog by @bookofmac on a post that's broadly about NZ cultural markers & māori cultural practises (or lack thereof) in TLT (originally by @ignitesthestxrs). I read the essay and found it extremely enlightening and definitely relevant to TLT fandom at large. Throwing it in the tags. Give it a read! I also recommend the post too, in case you haven't seen it already

When we, as Australian (and colonial) creators, discuss a push-back against cultural cringe, we’re asking these questions: What pressures do we face as creators to conform to the homogenized, largely Americanized norms of Western culture? What are the specific elements of our country’s culture that make us unique? And finally, what compromises are we willing to make, and what are we willing to water down or straight-up remove, to make our work palatable to international audiences?

#media analysis #tlt #tlt meta

[celira]

she's a pill. she's ambidextrous. she can diagnose an intercranial hemorrhage with one look. she's like light moving across water. she would have worked in data. she fights like a grease fire. she's a mad dog. she was the best in her house at fifteen. she's the second strand. she can do a back handspring down the stairs. she can learn anything in a few tries but thinks she's got one thing. her smile makes the earth want to marry her. she blazed like a white candle. I didn't say her name, but she popped into your head anyway, didn't she?

#i am sad and so is camilla hect #the locked tomb #just squirreling away camilla hect brainrot until morale improves #camilla hect #camilla the sixth #tlt #the locked tomb meta #tlt meta #lira does a thing

[harrowing-of-hell]

i've been meaning to talk about the scene where cytherea's body shows up underneath harrow's bed, and the whole "is she actually there or not?" question, because many people seem convinced that ianthe was gaslighting harrow and i genuinely don't think she has any reason to do so. the scene itself is deliberately ambiguous for several reasons. the most obvious is that harrow hallucinates. she knows this. the audience knows this. this is precisely why she seeks out ianthe in the middle of the night, because harrow doesn't trust her own senses.

harrow also used bone to shackle cytherea's body to the floor— and yet her body somehow disappears from underneath the bed without breaking these shackles. initially, this would indicate cytherea's body is another hallucination.

however, we also know that there's something weird going on: for some unexplained reason, cytherea's body apparently doesn't trigger blood wards.

after cytherea's body goes missing, it also can't be detected by john or found anywhere on the mithraeum.

one possibility is that cytherea's body is negating magic somehow. her body is being necromantically preserved by john and thus her body is imbued with john's magic. that may be why wake can move around in it completely undetected by john himself, and also may be why she is able to bypass blood wards and other types of necromancy.

but again, no concrete answers are given, and any ideas or claims are just pure speculation. all we know is that cytherea's body has been able to do weird things and avoid detection, so it's not exactly unreasonable that, if she was underneath the bed, she may have been able to escape the the shackles somehow.

additionally, though i'm not at all inclined to believe this, we also can't rule out the possibility that both of these appearances of wake-in-cytherea's-body were hallucinations and the only time harrow really saw her was in the incinerator room when she was trying to kill g1deon.

at the end of HtN, gideon claims that cytherea's body was obviously there, but she isn't reliable because she only has access to harrow's memories. she would recall that situation as harrow did, meaning she would remember any hallucinations harrow was experiencing. unlike harrow herself, gideon doesn't doubt harrow's experiences, but harrow feels the need to confirm whether she's hallucinating when it's not already obvious to her that this is the case.

and then there's ianthe, who's behavior during this scene is weird:

ianthe says very little during this entire scene before leaving harrow's bedroom, and i think this is deliberate, only meant to make it more ambiguous as to whether the body under the bed is actually there or not.

but it's actually because of ianthe's behavior here that i believe that harrowhark seeing cytherea's body underneath the bed was an hallucination.

there are other times where ianthe comments on harrow's psychosis:

in both of these situations, she's not nice about it! in fact, ianthe takes the opportunity to insult harrow or question whether harrow's actually seeing the things that she's seeing.

importantly, her behavior in these two instances is very different from what she does when harrow tells her to look at cytherea's body underneath the bed and touch it. ianthe doesn't insult harrow at all or call her "crazycakes" or "mad", just asks if harrow's been sleeping, says good night, and walks away.

i think that this is because ianthe gets really uncomfortable whenever she's confronted with harrowhark being in undeniably vulnerable positions.

when she sees harrow bloody and naked after being attacked by g1deon, she brushes it off by essentially going "yikes", but the fact that she makes no attempt to help harrow recover from the attack and hastily walks away from the sight of harrow's maimed body is very telling.

her walking away is so unexpected that i've seen several people say that they're not sure why ianthe didn't take that as an opportunity to manipulate harrow (even harrow expected it to happen, and welcomed it). and yeah, from what we see of her character in HtN up until this scene, it does seem ooc for her to just walk away with nothing but a quippy comment.

but to understand her behavior i think it's important to note that ianthe does see harrow as an equal! at any given opportunity she brings up the similarities between herself and harrowhark. ianthe also does this because she's down bad, but regardless, she would never equivocate herself to someone who she thinks is lesser than her.

i also don't think she would do this if she didn't care about harrow— and she does care about harrow! she was genuinely happy to see harrow was alive before realizing that it wasn't harrow but gideon-in-harrow's-body. at the beginning of HtN she kneels before harrowhark in "unmistakable supplication" and looks at her with "half-beseeching, half-contemptuous despair" as she offers to help defend harrow's body once they go into the river to fight the RB.

ianthe has no reason to gaslight harrowhark for fun the night before the RB is supposed to attack. she incessantly taunts harrowhark with her impending death all throughout HtN, but she doesn't actually want harrowhark to die. gaslighting and destabilizing harrow further when harrow is already likely to die directly goes against this desire.

imo ianthe does enjoy having someone rely on her and is willing to be manipulative to achieve that, but i think she relied on harrow just as much as harrow relied on her. in HtN, harrow is very much filling the coronabeth shaped hole in ianthe's life and i don't think ianthe would risk losing that.

that's all to say, i think it's precisely because ianthe sees harrow as an equal and cares about her in her own fucked up way that, when faced with harrow's vulnerability, her immediate reaction is to brush it off and help harrow save face by walking away from the situation.

ianthe views vulnerability as a weakness and thus thinks she is doing harrow a favor by walking away from harrow in her times of weakness and making no further comment about it. it's like how many people react when they see a stranger crying it public; they would feel similarly embarrassed to be seen crying in a public space, so their way of helping that person is to ignore the fact that they're crying and prevent them from experiencing further embarrassement. she would want harrow to ignore her moments of weakness, and so in turn, she ignores harrow's moments of weakness.

in a way this is kinda how they show solidarity to each other in HtN; despite how they threaten each other with death, harrow defends ianthe when she's struggling to use her rapier arm, keeps ianthe's secrets, never explicitly mentions that ianthe cries at night to anyone (actually i think there are several scenes where harrow suspects ianthe has been crying, and she doesn't mention it aloud). in turn, ianthe thinks it best to not acknowledge or make it known that harrow experiences hallucinations. they know they're both in shit positions and aren't trying to deliberately make it worse for each other.

this is ultimately why i think ianthe wasn't lying when she said she didn't see cytherea's body; she not only has zero reason to do so outside of "for fun", but destabilizing harrowhark further would go against the fact that she wants harrow to survive the RB fight. ianthe's behavior when harrow asks her to look underneath the bed is also directly in line with the other occasion in which she has to interact with harrowhark in an extremely vulnerable moment: she seems incredibly dismissive of the situation, and then walks away.

#tlt meta #ianthe tridentarius #harrowhark nonagesimus #the locked tomb

[chekhovs-tantrum]

All of the kisses in the Locked Tomb series thus far, organized chronologically and described accurately

Inspired by @wifegideonnav's post on Tamsyn torturing us:

Suicidal ten-year-old makes out with corpse; gets possessed

^Same kid gets eyebrow kissy and baptism from hometown butch who she's definitely killed a few times

^Same kid sticks vomit-covered tongue into throat of vicious socialite immediately after lobotomy to forget dead girlfriend

Honorable mention because it happens offscreen: Dead Girlfriend's Mom (haunting same kid) (different haunting) vent-reminisces in memories about her unholy thruple-with-two-bodies

Socialite delivers averted cheek kiss with a womp womp womp

Sloppy bisexual thruple (different thruple) fuck God after lemon queen's ex-husband takes her cannibalized nun-wife's name in vain 

Dead planet baby feeling herself; kisses own reflection

DILF distributes daddy forehead smoochies

Dead planet baby perfectly mimics dead bestie's knuckle kiss to codependent bodysharing cousin

Honorable mention because there's plausible deniability: "horrifying noises" made by twins upon reunion 

Dead Girlfriend sees girl who owned/tortured her for years, stares longingly; dead planet baby rolls with it 

DILF gives real kisses to members of thruple (different thruple-in-two-bodies) before besties mutually explode in death-by-codependency

Dead planet back in second body. Bite. 

#this doesn't even count the armbone sex #also I might be missing some bc I can't control-F “kiss” in my paper copies of HtN and GtN; feel free to fill me in #after Alecto I want someone to run data #percent of kisses that are on the lips vs on forehead/hand/cheek #percent of kisses between threesomes vs twosomes #percent of kisses where at least one party is dead #tlt shitposting #locked tomb spoilers #tlt meta #harrow the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers

[thepotatofrog]

Nobody does “haunting the narrative” quite like Tamsyn Muir. Characters who died ten thousand years ago and still irreparably alter the fabric of the universe, who we’re still wondering about and obsessing over. Cristabel, Anastasia. Characters like Nigella, Loveday, Alfred, Samael - characters who we barely know a thing about, but who haunt the story in the things they left behind, the people they left behind, the people who knew them and loved them and hated them. They’ve got civilisations founded for them, a single word of their personality lives on in the names of the people they died for. Joy. Patience. “Love is a revenant” indeed. We watch our characters walk the empty rooms they once lived in, read the words they left to outlast them, dress in their clothes which are too big or too small.

Dulcinea Septimus, dead before we meet her, collateral damage in life and in death, sick of roses and horny for revenge. Ortus Nigenad is dead in act one, gone and unimportant, and then he changes the course of the second book. We only get to know him properly after his death, like Protesilaus, like Dulcie. Then there’s Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead, taking the haunting literally. (Not to mention Gideon and the Body)

It makes sense that a series about necromancy would have plenty of haunting but god it’s done well

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #tlt meta

[douche-canoe-regatta]

when you think about it, the Ninth (for all their ghoulish Ambiance) is remarkably less fucked up than the other houses? yeah they have spooky scary skeletons and dress like douchebags but when it comes to warfare they don't seem particularly interested in straight-up torturing people to death, which is unfortunately a fucking anomaly.

I mean, sure. being gangbanged to death by skeletons isn't a fantastic way to go but it's probably a lot better than whatever the Second is up to with their "die screaming 😇" power move or the Fourth's ingenious "throw exploding teenagers at it!!" gambit. I don't know exactly what tickles the Eighth's giblets but I imagine they explain mid-murder why it is Just and Right that you're being killed as they glow you to death, which is just insulting.

at least getting drafted into the skeleton army is probably more like your bones moving one way and your meat....staying still? then the meat gets turned into to soap or candles or whatever (so eco friendly!) and the bones garden shitty vegetables for a few hundred/thousand years. c'est la mort.

the Ninth aren't known to be cannibals or corpsefuckers. they don't seem interested in exploding teens (however awful they are) or slonking away at your spirit until you're a bag of wet skin filled with teeth demons or w/e. they ALSO don't expect anyone to follow their weird religion unless you really want to (but why would you though) and, after all, they only killed ONE itty bitty generation! just a couple hundred kids! so much less horrifying!!

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