#wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Pash interacting with folks from the House is some of my favorite stuff in this book. I still love Corona's rejoinder of 'Boobs, and hair, AND a hell of a sword hand' to her. :-) As to the Fourth House skull, might it be because what amounts to child soldiers play a somewhat important role in the chapter, and the Fourth was known for child soldiers?

@forgetfulfish:

I feel like the skulls in Nona tie back to the poem at the start of the book. So four is for Fidelity.

All the ones that don't match a character make sense when matched to the poem but maybe I'm reaching

Ok, so:

Chapter 4: Seventh skull (Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies)

This was the chapter where Hot Sauce noticed someone watching the school and the Angel looked hung over. Hot Sauce also asked Nona to look out for people when she walked Noodle, but this wasn't the chapter where she pretends to radio Corona. Honesty also talked about getting his job to steal air conditioners. I'm not seeing it unless it's a reference to the Angel looking tired? Or maybe it's because Nona and the kids had a conversation about whether or not she was beautiful

Chapter 11: Fifth skull (Five for tradition and debts to the dead)

Nona acted out her pool dream with Camilla, Pyrrha told Nona she'd gone to the park (and killed the people in the cages, but Nona doesn't find this out until later) and seen Hot Sauce there, and BOE interrupted breakfast and took them to see We Suffer (which actually happens in the next chapter). Maybe the people who died at the park count as debts to the dead?

Chapter 15: Seventh skull again

The first appearance of the car with the grille, and Hot Sauce told everyone that the broadcast was happening. This was the day that Camilla failed to come get Nona, so she stayed and fell asleep and Hot Sauce told her about her past and Nona told Hot Sauce (presumably) that she was dying. I guess Nona herself is blossoming and dying here

Chapter 18: Eighth skull (Eight for salvation no matter the cost)

This was the chapter where Nona got shot in the head twice and Hot Sauce declared her out of the gang, and Pash killed a bunch of people and all that jazz. Nothing particularly religious seems to be going on here, and I'm not actually sure what "salvation" means in the context of John's necromancy religion, since it doesn't have a concept of someone dying for other people's sins and John doesn't believe there's anything on the other side of the River, so it can't mean getting there. I guess in the more practical sense of "salvation" of the lives of the characters who can still die, they had to take some risks to do that here?

Chapter 26: Fourth skull (Four for fidelity, facing ahead)

When Hot Sauce let Nona back into the gang again, so yeah, fidelity works here. Or child soldiers, although if I were picking a chapter to reference child soldiers, I would probably pick the one where Hot Sauce told Nona her backstory of being a child soldier (which had a Seventh skull)

Just looking at the chapter images and not reading ahead, it looks like all the other skulls are associated with characters who are actually in this book

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #forgetfulfish

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Spading is found in the always accurate Urban Dictionary as slang for sex. Probably a regional variation. :P But leave it to Gideon to make anything sound dirty.

@badcatcait:

A note on the spading thing! I think it’s slang in New Zealand specifically for flirting…but it’s also a Homestuck reference. It’s known at this point that TLT has its origins in Homestuck fandom which Muir was big in. The aliens in Homestuck have 4 types of romance based on card suits—spade/black romances are a kind of enemies-to-lovers situation where they stay enemies and hate each other but are romantically involved as well. Perfectly describes Pyrrha/Wake’s dynamic ♠️

Is there a source for it being NZ slang? Wiktionary usually lists major regional variations and slang for these sorts of things

I wouldn't put it past being a Homestuck reference, though, they did have that kind of relationship

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Theory is that one reason John didn't 'fix the holes' was that it might make his daughter more beholden to him. We know he could likely have done so. Instead he turned her into a construct. Also, a sort of callback: GtN: “Half a dozen tendrils came after her. They would have given her an interesting array of new airholes for speed.” And then from NtN: “Those are my speed holes. They help me go fast,” said Kiriona quickly.”

If John ever was trusting of the people around him, I guess he probably moved past that since the last book, haha

and this hits hard: Gideon talking about Harrow, in HtN: “You could always leave everything else behind, but you never got rid of being so absolutely fucking goddamn sad.” And Nona talking about Gideon, NtN: “Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life.”

No one in this story is having a good time at this point. Even the villains aren't having a good time

The audiobook narration of this chapter is fantastic. Moira Quirk uses her Gideon voice, but gives it a bit more meanness of sorts, more snappishness. It's so good.

Ooh, that sounds interesting!

Do you think, generally, that Gideon seems...meaner...now? A bit of the 'came back wrong' trope?

@dreanner95:

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess I personally would say that she seems meaner because we are watching her from Nona's POV. Nona doesn't like her because of how she talks to her family but the way Kiriona talks is not really that different to how she talked to people back in GtN. Now we just don't have her POV anymore to factcheck how she really feels.

I think part of it is that it's through Nona's POV and we aren't getting Gideon's perspective on things, but also I think she definitely is being meaner. Like compare how Palamedes was treating her and reacting to her in the first book versus this:

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #badcatcait #dreanner95

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

I THINK the theory is that John's closest friends became the Necros, and their companions/spouses/relatives became the cavs...and he would rather spend 10,000 years with the former than the latter...so THEY got to be Necros, with the power, and then Lyctors.

Oh, I don't mean that the cavaliers should have been the necromancers or anything like that, I mean that it would have worked out better if the necromancers had wound up in the cavaliers' bodies, they still would have been the same people, just in different bodies

Heh. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and Emma Sen (MSN Messenger). Also, I think Pash expected We Suffer to be executed by BoE, or a faction at least.

Oh, that's incredibly silly, I hope there's more to it than that. Anyway, AIM is the name of the messaging system, not the name of a message

I originally thought that was what Pash meant, but then We Suffer started saying goodbye to everyone like she wasn't going to see them again

Some speculation is that the message is 'too simple for typical humans to understand' is because it is a binary message of 1s and 0s, but I think that's a stretch.

@jods-duplicitous-sluts:

There are also theories about the message being incoded in RNA or DNA... so too simple [building block of life] but also unable for a human to understand without tech to decode it.

The DNA/RNA idea is pretty interesting. There's also the chip that Palamedes found that still hasn't been explained yet

Also Paul is planning on coming back for the 6th house. The actual station and all the population are still on the outskirts of the system. Hence the "see you soon"

But they're probably not going back into the tunnel under New Rho, though, right? Nona described all of the oversight board getting put back into the truck

@turtletotem:

Kind of the only way I can deal with Paul's existence is by thinking of them as Palamedes and Camilla's child. Maybe they think of themself that way, too, thus calling P & C "them" instead of "we."

Yeah, that sounds like a good way to think of it

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #jods-duplicitous-sluts #turtletotem

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

BoE is keeping the Oversight Board captive, not the station/House itself, which is what was moved

Ahh, I see

Aside: the ‘The Unwanted Guest’ short story takes place right at the end of this fight.

Oh, it's the account of whatever necromancy battle Ianthe and Palamedes had? That sounds fun

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

'baby-soft skin hammocks'...from a necromancer..gives me the icks.

I mean, I don't think it's any more gross/weird than a lot of other stuff that has happened in the book so far. John already wears baby fingerbones in his hair for adornment

I find it fascinating that John says he could cure cancer....and yet we have Cytherea...

@turtletotem:

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess John could have cured Cytherea :) at any time :) instead of letting her suffer for 10,000 years :)))) no wonder she wanted him dead

Oh wow, I didn't make that connection, but yeah, he could have. But instead he really was just like, the only way for you to live is if you become a Lyctor and help me kill resurrection beasts while you suffer from cancer for 10,000 years. I can't imagine what he was thinking, but I also have no idea what he was thinking by just letting the other Lyctors think that the cavalier had to die to achieve Lyctorhood

@eye-lantern:

For the Jesus comparison the nurse gave: she isn't saying it was what made the Romans kill him. Jesus (in the texts) knew that he gave too much for his own good. And he knew the Romans would kill him and he knew Judas would betray him. But he did it anyway because he gave himself to others entirely, even if I meant it killed him. She is saying John needs take care of himself even if it meant refusing to help some people, or he would die wich doesn't help anyone.

Which makes an interesting parallel with the actual Jesus parallel that is Griddle, who died for someone on the iron fence instead of a wooden cross,for someone that would have preferred her to live even if it meant not receiving her help. Gideon spends the entire first book helping everyone, without asking for anything in return, and it litteraly kills her. Maybe twice if we consider avultion. John may have had the apostles but Gideon had the self-sacrificial drive

Oh, right, I guess the sort of canonical interpretation is that Jesus died in order to save everyone else, etc. That is an interesting parallel, I wonder, since presumably Gideon is getting brought back to life at some point, probably by John I would guess, if John is ever going to tell her this story and this particular piece of advice he received?

I don't know if Jod is dreaming with her. To me it could absolutely have happened and she is just dreaming of a memory. The narrator never says something out of place, except for calling him lord, and he only says Harrow. Everything else could be an actual event where names are "translated" to something that makes more sense to harrow, and the crossed-out names are not replaced because she has no idea what to replace it by

@racefortheironthrone:

My interpretation is that Harrow is semi-lucid dreaming Alecto's memories.

That's true, I guess, this could just all be Alecto's memory. But if John telling Alecto this story actually happened, I guess that means Alecto was not around to perceive it at all while it was happening?

@eye-lantern:

I do like that we can get a vague time frame and something more of John's religious background when says he went to Parachute when he was younger. So he's most likely a Millenial or Gen Xer (since it seems that festival was from the early 90s to 2014). Not sure that says anything deep about him, but I find it interesting.

Ahh, that part didn't mean anything to me, haha. That's interesting, though, I'd sort of expected this story to be happening further in the future than that, like the way he is describing people's thoughts about climate change don't really align with the way they are currently, I don't think, it feels like this is happening at a later date, and John isn't described as looking old in the story. Like, if John is Gen X, he'd be 40 at the absolute minimum right now, in 20 years from now he'd be 60+, and I had the impression that this had to be least like 20 years in the future

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #turtletotem #eye-lantern #racefortheironthrone

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

The whole soup scene was also a callback to a line in the previous book, when Harrow threatened Gideon with crushing bone meal into her breakfast and punching her way out of her gut. There’s a lot of that sort of foreshadowing in these books I think.

You're right! I totally forgot about this, all the back from Chapter 5 of Gideon the Ninth:

This sort of implies that Harrow would habitually come with cool necromancy ways to kill people before the events of Gideon the Ninth (maybe just to generate realistic threats to make to Gideon as she is here) and fell back on something she'd already thought about to use when she hadn't slept for six days

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@turtletotem:

Pyrrha absolutely said G1deon's original name, which is proof that she remembers things from before the Resurrection. After all, the way John wiped their memories was through a physical change to their brains -- once Pyrrha died, she wouldn't be depending on a physical brain to hold her memories anymore, it's all just soul.

But why wouldn't Nona actually hear the name in that case? That's what doesn't make sense to me

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

I wonder, really, whether Pash realizes that Gideon/Kiriona is her cousin. And I hope we get the cousins together in Alecto. Gideon having a living relative that is very much like her in some ways could be interesting.

@eye-lantern:

I think this chapter does a lot to explain the aversion Pash has for the Body (fun how it used to mean Alecto the dead woman loved by Harrow and now means Gideon the... Oh), she sees the spitting image of her beloved hero and aunt, un rotting because of necromantic fuckery. Also I don't think she knows the reality of her conception so she may think her aunt had to bone Jod. Which, ew

I didn't really think about that, but it does make a lot of sense. Actually, I kind of wonder now when BOE realized who both of Gideon's parents were. I don't think anyone who was left alive at Canaan House after the end of Gideon the Ninth would have known that she was John's daughter. Pyrrha was there for that whole reveal, but she had never seen Gideon before, I guess except as a baby when she and/or G1deon pushed Wake out of the airlock. So I guess it must have been that Pyrrha recognized her as the John/Wake child she'd just heard about from John and the Lyctors, and told BOE about it then, or maybe after John got the body back? I don't know if it's actually been covered exactly how Pyrrha feels personally about the whole killing John plot. I can see why she might be for it, but she also seems kind of like she'd rather just hie off to somewhere with Palamedes and Camilla and Nona and not be involved in any of this stuff any longer

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

While integrated ok, the 8,000 line is actually an old tumblr meme (https://memearchives.tumblr.com/post/133103879052/hi-i-love-love-love-your-blog-it-always-cheers).

Oh, you know, I vaguely remember that whole thing, but I didn't realize it had become a meme

So I guess the question about that line then becomes: "why unjust bodies?" Number Seven does say some things about justice there, but I'm not sure what it means by that

so we have seen the things coming from the tower already...but not in this book...

Ok, looking back, it does look like Canaan House is consistently referred to as a tower (or a series of towers) in the first two books. So Ianthe and Gideon are "tower princes" because they went through the trial at Canaan House? And John is trying to do the same thing again, and create more Lyctors with another Lyctor trial there? Makes sense, I guess

So, I think the 'you called me for help and I am made a mockery' actually happened in this book...when Nona was 'copying' Judith to get Ianthe to stop asking her questions. Because it was after that that the heralds dropped...and Nona had likely accidently called Verun for help when she screamed in the language of the RBs.

Also, from earlier, before Nona and Cam leave the apartment to look for Pyrrha: “Can you help me?” Nona whispered. “Can you do anything? Do you know where Pyrrha is?” But it only lowed sadly, like a cow. “That’s all right,” whispered Nona. “Sorry for asking.” Then: “Don’t do anything weird, okay? I’m having enough trouble right now.”

Right! I completely forgot:

And:

I should have searched, since I do have text search here

#the locked tomb #turtletotem #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

It's been awhile...but I seem to remember a passage in one of the books about Harrow not really caring for flesh magic...but she could grow a pretty good heart... I have to think that could be foreshadowing...maybe...

Sort of. This is from the beginning of Harrow the Ninth, in her false history of growing up without Gideon:

So she was good at manipulating a very small valve in the heart to temporarily prevent people from dying of a heart attack until it was more convenient. That doesn't really look like foreshadowing that she's going to be growing Gideon a new heart or something like that

I couldn't find anything else like that in the whole first two books, but I did find this:

Maybe that's foreshadowing? I wouldn't put it past this story

@eye-lantern:

Oops, I meant banter in the second instance, with Kiriona, not on the first

Oh, ok, I wasn't sure, because I don't think Kiriona mentioned her heart or chest hole at all during the banter, other than in the "speed holes" line

@w1ld--c4rd:

"packed tight with a dry and dusty mould" invokes badly done taxidermy

Yeah, it does, kind of

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern #w1ld--c4rd

[paradoxcase]

@30to50feralcatgirls:

I love reading your commentary as you’re working through

I'm glad you're enjoying it, it's been fun for me, too!

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Pyrrha never told Ianthe what happened. Ianthe thought she was Gideon, and that Gideon was now just a broken Lyctor for some reason. It WILL be addressed later.

Oh, interesting, I wonder what she thinks happened. But I noticed she seemed to refuse to call Pyrrha "Gideon", that's why I thought she knew what had happened. But maybe that's just because the other Gideon was also there and it would have been confusing?

It's mentioned in passing by Judith in 'As yet Unsent' that the snippy voiced woman demanded to see the body that wouldn't decompose, so Mercy definitely saw it.

You're right!

But then, how did Pyrrha learn about that? It doesn't seem like Judith would have told her. Unless Judith perceived Pyrrha as a loyal Lyctor and tried to tell her about Mercy being a traitor the same way she tried to tell Harrow? But I would imagine that BOE wouldn't let Pyrrha alone with Judith for that reason, and I don't think any of the other characters would have been in a position to find out what Mercy was doing with them

Gideon/Kiriona coming back made me squeal in delight when I read this the first of many times. But then we will be reminded that Gideon has been with both Ianthe and John for 6 long months......

Yes! I've been waiting for this for a long time, actually, since one of the first things I thought I knew about this story was that Gideon dies and gets resurrected, so I've been waiting for her to come back. I think she still isn't quite resurrected, but she's still Gideon, so that's good enough. I never thought I would be so happy to hear her say "Sex Pal" again

#the locked tomb #30to50feralcatgirls #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@yumantimatter:

I interpret Paul as closer to a fusion a la Steven Universe ("and the names of [SU character's component characters] may as well be names for my right hand and my left") - the clearer line of influence is of course Homestuck's sprite^2 characters but I think the concepts are similar

I don't have any experience of Steven Universe, and when I think of the Homestuck sprite^2s I mostly think of Erisolsprite and Tavrissprite that were inherently unstable due to conflicting personalities, but I guess there were some that worked out better, like Davepetasprite. But I don't know, when I was reading Homestuck, Davepetasprite always just registered as another iteration of Dave that had some Nepeta characteristics for me, and not someone completely different. Like how Jade was still Jade even after combining with Bec

@longroadstonowhere:

with regards to AIM, it didn't quite hit the same level of using 'google' to mean 'search the internet', but i do feel like people were using 'AIM' to refer to the messages themselves at a certain point (i was just young enough to not be part of that myself, though, so i don't have strong memories of linguistic practices at that time)

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

@longroadstonowhere speaking as a Gen Xer...that's how I remember it, but that's just me.

Oh, you know, I have some vague memories of that now... but I never actually used AIM all that much, it just wasn't how I communicated with people online back then

Re: Lyctors in the cav bodies: wouldn't work for John, I think. He'd be looking at the cop instead of his best friend G, and the money guy instead of his buddy A...and have to remember too that they didn't know about the RBs coming back when they became Lyctors, so it didn't seem to be an issue.

I mean, John certainly knew about them, but I guess I can kind of see that

#the locked tomb #yumantimatter #longroadstonowhere #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

The 'she' is the one other person that mattered to Cam and Pal, though they never met in person. I look forward to your thoughts on The Unwanted Guest!

@eye-lantern:

"she" died before Gideon the ninth without ever meeting them. And now they melded their souls together, so Cam is wondering wether she would be able to recognize their melded soul

Oh, I see. Does Camilla think they are going to like run into Dulcinea in the River on the way to the Ninth House, or is this like an "after we're all dead" kind of wondering? That is an interesting question about what happens to the immortal soul that goes to the River after you've Lyctorized, like presumably G1deon and Pyrrha continue to be separate entities, but who knows what happens to Camilla and Palamedes. And for Lyctors like Ianthe, they are basically holding their cavalier's soul and drawing energy from it, right, so presumably Babs is not off in the River somewhere currently. If Ianthe dies, does he get released from bondage, or is he linked to her forever?

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

The glimpse we get of Alecto, in her rant to Pyrrha about keeping house, was brutal. Such clear anger and bitterness. And I think that's part of why Nona has 'forgotten'; trauma, anger, rage...she doesn't want to remember.

Yeah, it sounds like Alecto went through a lot of trauma even before John ate her. But correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like there's something about her occupation of Harrow's body that is allowing her to forget? Varun the Eater obviously didn't have that happen to them when they possessed Judith, but that seems to be more of a temporary measure that it uses to talk to Nona, whereas Alecto seems to be sort of stuck in Harrow's body and it's not clear where she'll go when she leaves

@samgemrus:

I guess I thought Pal was talking about G1deon, not Kiriona?

Well, G1doen has been dead for most of a book at this point, and hasn't come back yet to the best of my knowledge, and I also don't think he knows a lot about the layout of the Ninth House

@sirjuggles:

I'm so excited for you to read The Unwanted Guest.

Everyone keeps saying this, haha. Well, there are five more chapters and an epilogue, and after that the Unwanted Guest appears to be at the end of this ebook

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern #samgemrus #sirjuggles

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Fascinating to me that a nun commiting suicide TWICE drove two of the big background events: John identifying soul (when she puts a bullet in her brain) and the Lyctors being forced to take the final step in the process (when she talks Alfred into a suicide pact).

Yeah. Cristabel seems to have been a very strange person. I noticed there was also a mention of her and Alfred meditating together in this chapter, I guess he must also be pretty strange even for a hedge fund manager

John needed the suicidal nun too be able to identify the 'individual code' that identified separate souls within the larger 'program' of the 'world soul' I think. Once he did that he could get that specific about souls....I think.

Yeah, he was able to see the individual soul at that point, but it said he was still not able to do anything with it because Alecto was there

@eye-lantern:

For the nun, well. She is a nun, so the soul is more important than politics. She has found here second coming, but the idiot is raving about how the merchants in the temple are not funding his project instead of becoming closer to his Father. She has a few loose screws but a very clear sense of purpose

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

@eye-lantern This comment about the nun is really well said, in my view. She was a zealot, both before and after what happened, but she seemed to believe deeply in the 'holy' mission.

When you put it like that, I guess I can see it. I wonder what she is actually like on the other side, after they all come back and I guess have probably forgotten Christianity?

The reference to the shaman and the sun refers to a Maori legend about catching the sun in the sky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanuiter%C4%81)

Ahh, neat. But John envisioning himself as Maui (if I understand that right) now makes me think of him singing the "You're Welcome" song from Moana. It's interesting that Maui shows up in both Hawaiian and Maori mythology

@eye-lantern:

I agree that John's decision make little sense, and to me that's part of the message

He is a random dude who was given power over life and death in the most stressful situation of his life. He couldn't handle it better. Anyone in this situation would have their worst aspects exacerbated and for him it was his vindictivness. He misuses it immediately because he is hooked on directly to the absolute power of a screaming mad planet. A few days of lack of sleep can fuck up your reasoning so bad, and he was already at his lowest.

His behavior after becoming Jod is more logical, but informed by the fact that no one can ever harm him, and he can kill with a thought. Life has lost all human like stakes to him. It's nothing more than a game to play with his dolls/friends.

Oh, yeah, I get that he was stressed out and sleep deprived and made a bunch of bad decisions, but like for days up to this he keeps talking about how how it's so important that the trillionaires not be allowed to leave, and nobody tells him that that's not right. Well, I think Augustine maybe did once, when he was like "why don't you do some good wizard shit", and Cassipeia said so way too late, but when John was all like "we have to stop them!" at the beginning of the chapter, no one said anything. I feel like there were some sensible people in this group who should have said something sensible at that point? Mercy, Augustine, Pyrrha, Cassiopeia?

For the burnt thumb thing, when you hurt a finger a lot of instinctual reflexes are: aply pressure, get close to you, and for a burn, wet. So a lot of kids shove any hurt finger in their mouth. Also works for bleeding.

Sure, but I don't see how that relates to "it's human nature to take things" because you're not taking anything by doing that?

And my personal theory for the gift she gave him. She gave him an instinctual look in the working of a plane of the laws that regulate the world. Kinda like how humans and some species evolved to understand abstraction, that allowed them to use tools, and even make them. But when discovering a new concept it's easier to use it to hurt than to heal of build. If you give a sharp rock to someone, they'll understand how to make a weapon before using it to fray plants and create rope. John is a monkey given a toolbox and he realise the hammer breaks things, and did not go in depth with the mastic and spackle because it did not do anything interesting immediately. I think if he had not focused on death, the "easy" option of what he was given, he may have realised he had powers that could have saved humanity

I don't know. I mean, it seems like necromancers generally can work with organic material, but might not be so good at changing the climate or neutralizing pollution. Or do you think that John's powers are significantly different than necromancy, and the powers of regular necromancers don't ultimately come from Alecto, but are just a different thing caused by the thanergy radiation from the undead planets?

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

A couple things: Pash and Cam/Pal eliminated all the Merv Wing folks, so this is We Suffers branch. The security measures they put in place I think assumed ‘Sweet Simple Nona’ and not ‘Eldritch Monster Nona.’

I mean, I feel like they were expecting her to be an eldritch monster since they were still shooting her? Well, someone at some point said to disengage, but that was after they all lined up outside the room to shoot at her

There is definite debate over who is saying ‘Fool. You’re killing her.’ In this instance, I personally think the ‘her’ is Harrow (her body) and I think it’s said by some piece of Gideon still in there to the overarching Nona. But I am probably massively wrong.

Well, it makes me feel better that that question is never actually answered in the book, since I don't have any better idea, either

I think you are spot on about Nona’s tantrum reminds Pyrrha of. And if the body horror of the opening part of this chapter is any indication…oh my.

Yeah, back in Harrow the Ninth I wasn't sure what the Lyctors meant about Alecto being monstrous since by all accounts she seemed to have a regular human body and they seemed to think she was a regular human. But if she sometimes treated her body the way Nona treats her body here, I can see them saying that

‘Remembering her teeth’ simply means she’s about to start tearing flesh with them pretty soon, I think!

Oh, like since she's feeling like her body is foreign to her right now, she's only sometimes remembering what body parts she has that she can use to express her anger?

At its core, most folks think the cause of this third tantrum was Nona being chained/tied/zipped/locked up. And there are definitely a couple of characters who might reasonably be enraged about waking up tied to a chair or bed in a locked room. Interesting too that Nona holding the chair leg is described as holding it as if it were a broadsword if I recall correctly.

Hmm, it says she brandished it "like a sword", but I don't know if that's enough to indicate Gideon? I think Nona has said that she's familiar with Camilla's swords, right?

And yeah, I mean, I would probably freak out too, if someone ziptied me to some chairs. I can see why BOE maybe thought that was a smart idea since they tie them up when bringing them to the facility, too, but still.

@eye-lantern:

For the strength thing, to me it's like neural adaptation and hysteric strength. Our mind muscle connexion has a set strain that it can inflict on muscles and tendons to avoid us injuring ourselves. Powerlifters and athletes train to add muscle mass but also to make this limit adapt closer to their max strength, but it mostly stays below permanent damage. Some lifters clean break their tendons, tear muscle fibers by going to hard. After Eddy Hall lifted 500 p he fainted and had to be hospitalized. During that one biggest effort they deploy strength way beyond what a non lifter can exert per kg of muscle. Nona can go further, and absolutely destroy her body to create impossible proportional strength. Hitting a door with all you strength would do little because you hit under the strength you will shatter your bones at, but Nona's hits would render her unable to move. Because she has no instinct of preserving her own body.

Thanks, that's interesting! And Nona destroying her body this way still doesn't stop her because she has the Lyctor healing ability, so as long as she doesn't damage herself faster than her body can heal she can just keep going

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

yeah, I feel like we are really seeing a sort of mental breakdown of John here, at least a bit. Cassieopia was so right. You can save the world, or you can have revenge. You can't do both. John says he wants both, but I personally think he was so so so angry about the trillionaires that he couldn't think straight.

Yeah, it's making more and more sense that John is Gen Z - I feel like so many younger online spaces are sort of focused on people being angry and less on like, what can we do to help. Maybe that's just how it is when you're younger, but I don't remember being that angry when I was a teenager? And like, we had stuff to be angry about, that was back when Dubya was in office and doing the "War on Terror" because of the "WMDs" that turned out not to actually exist and so forth. But I feel like I see more irrational anger like this in some places now

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern

[paradoxcase]

@eye-lantern:

For the white eyes, the coloring doesn't only affect the iris, the entire eye goes white and cloudy, like an eye that was burnt of with advanced cataract. I don't think anyone manufactures cosmetic contacts in BoE, especially not contacts that obscures the vision with a white film. The dye here must have been used for camouflage against the Houses, maybe by disguising as corpses, and would needs to be removable by forceful blinking to avoid handicaping them

Ahh, I see. But I mean, Ianthe didn't seem to think that blinding yourself would work to protect you from Number Seven, so I wouldn't think the Houses were doing this regularly. It does seem like someone is doing it, because there were the white-eyed guys on the Convoy from earlier, so maybe it's related to that?

For the seeing the heralds stuff, Mercymorn looked at them using a telescope and dreamed for hours when the others were not affected. Jod says she should not have looked. They may have a fear aura that permeates but perceiving this "radiation" through the eyes is worse.

That's true, and I think I mentioned earlier that none of the Lyctors running around on the Mithraeum during the fight with Number Seven in Harrow the Ninth were as out of it as Judith is now

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

There may be other more personal reasons that Pash does not want to see or have anything to do with Gideon or Gideon's body, but I don't recall if that is clear yet or not.

I don't think anything like that's been mentioned yet

Palamades seems to me to be the type of person who will start from a positive place of friendship with you unless you give him a reason otherwise. Even in GTN, he showed a great deal of friendliness and respect to Harrow even as she at times tried to give him the cold shoulder, and of course the big hug in HTN.

Well, there were other people in that book he wasn't as friendly with, like Judith (when she proposed teaming up with him, not when she was challenging him for his keys). I'm trying to remember if he interacted with the Eighth House at all, since they seemed utterly impossible to be friendly with, but I don't remember him having any scenes with them, except for maybe objecting when Mayonnaise Uncle took the white key from Cytherea. I wonder if he for some reason felt some kind of kinship with the Ninth House specifically, similarly to how Cytherea told Gideon she'd liked to imagine herself dying romantically as Ninth House nun, except obviously not like that. It seems like Sixth and Ninth have some things in common like having small populations and being generally unassuming and politically insignificant

The fractured ninth house skull at the start of the chapter is I think because of Nona impersonating Harrow. And the previous chapter's fractured third house skull is because of Crown and Ianthe's reunion.

Well, Corona and Ianthe's reunion actually happened in Chapter 20, which has a non-broken First skull, presumably for Ianthe. The broken third skull chapter is where Corona and Pyrrha talk in range of Judith's hidden microphone

Looking back I see that Chapter 19 was the Tomb with the door open and the chain broken. There was a very different Tomb picture on the other chapters where it appears, where it has a stone over the entrance and the chain is unbroken. It looks like the only other broken skull is the broken Second skull on the chapter where Pyrrha makes Palamedes promise not to go rescue the people in the cages (after which she goes out herself to kill them), so yeah, I guess the broken skulls are for people being deceptive in this book? The other odd things that stands out to me are that there are Seventh skulls on two chapters that are primarily about the school, and an Eighth skull on the chapter where the Angel has Nona shot, which is odd, because as far as I'm aware right now there are no Seventh or Eighth House characters in this book at all. I wonder if the Angel or their implant is somehow associated with one or both of those Houses? There's also an image of a tower on the chapter where Nona and Hot Sauce watch the broadcast

#the locked tomb #eye-lantern #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

"I love Ianthe and could write a lot about Ianthe, but one central thing I am doing with Ianthe is playing around with a trope male characters often get to be, and one frequently found in slash but so little for the lesbians: Ianthe is in many ways my gay Draco In Leather Pants. (There’s a reason she calls Harrow Harry!) The Draco In Leather Pants trope—the hyper-privileged, drawling blonde with daddy issues who sulks erotically in a corner—is perpetually male. "

"Here, it’s Ianthe. And Ianthe blows—she’ll never be a true Draco In Leather Pants because although the DILP gets great sassy lines, very few of them are aimed at himself. Ianthe’s humanity—what there is of it—comes from having a sense of humour; it is why she is sympathetic and also why she is dangerous."--Tamsyn Muir on Ianthe

That's interesting. I never much cared about Draco, leather pants or otherwise, or felt the need to read any of the Draco in Leather Pants fanfics, but it's interesting. I think I might have been more interested in him if there had been more fics about how he was portrayed at the end of the series, as a child who was forced to be what he was and do what he did by the adults in his life. Ianthe doesn't really remind me of him, she seems to have more agency in choosing what kind of person she becomes and is much more interesting and less annoying. Maybe the Leather Pants edition of Draco was more like that too, though, like I said, I never read those fics, and disliked all the headcanons where Draco was actually competent or actually cool.

#the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius #draco malfoy #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Much of the population on this planet were placed there by the Nine Houses. It’s a refugee planet, and it was originally controlled by the Houses, since there is a Houses military base in the city.

That would make sense if the resettlements that people are talking about are the ones where the Nine Houses resettles people that had to move off of flipped planets, as opposed to people just leaving on their own as refugees, but it's a bit odd that none of the kids or adults are talking about there having been a recent regime change, if that was something they lived through here. Also, Pyrrha talked about the population makeup of the planet like it had been Wake's idea to put all of these people here, and if the Nine Houses did settle everyone here in recent history, I'm curious as to whether there were actually any plans to move them all again due to the resurrection beast. I'm also not at all clear on where exactly the barracks that's being referred to even is

@eye-lantern:

What pyrra is saying is not sarcasm, she would have an easier time pimping out Alfred and Augustin and Cam or Nona.

Oh, so she means more like, if I was going to be someone's pimp I would have preferred to be Augustine's pimp?

@jbm04:

I tried to look up the word “tippy” when reading a description of Harrow. I think it was “tippy all over”. I just had no idea what that meant.

No wait it was like, “high browned and tippy everywhere.”

From Gideon the Ninth:

I can't find a definition of "tippy" that makes sense here either:

but possibly it was just meant in the sense of "having a lot of tips" i.e. pointy, as previously indicated by "pointed little face"

I think it's been a bit since I posted, I've been having a war with my landlord who kept refusing to fix my heater and also a window that halfway falling off and letting in cold air, they finally fixed everything after like months of this, it turns out the magic words are "fix this by the end of the week or I am going to report you for a code violation". Everything is so much nicer when it's actually warm inside the house and I feel like I can actually get stuff done again

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern #jbm04