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This is actually some of the most hilarious stuff I’ve seen in ages

The holy trinity of outsiders finding out stuff about TMA

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Another win for the queer community

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fun fact (not fun at all fact actually) :

aromanticism and asexuality are still treated as issues to be fixed in most therapy settings, at least in the western psychiatric institution. i cannot fucking mention my aromanticism or asexuality to a therapist or it’ll immediately become their primary concern and goal to fix. whether or not i have a partner/am trying to have a partner is actively being used as an indicator of my wellness, regardless of if i WANT one. i cannot have access to needed mental health ressources because of fear of conversion therapy. aro and/or ace conversion therapy is the norm in most psychiatric institutions and we are getting told by the rest of the queer community that our oppression isnt real and that there is no link between our struggles and theirs.

more thoughts on the medicalization of asexuality and/or aromanticism

answers to common notes

aplatonic perspective

ressources

background information

tips to avoid aro and/or ace conversion therapy

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Can we talk about Juno Zeta?

You're living the dream, Master Archivist of the Sixth House. The Archaeology department hates you. The secretaries love you. Your son has risen to the very top of the absolutely unproblematic meritocracy of the House to become Master Warden. Sure, you treated him as a colleague when he was 7 too, but this is much more intellectually satisfying and much better for your publication record (suck it, Archeo). You sit on the Oversight Body, making decisions for the 3 million strong House of the Sixth.

Then the Master Warden gets summoned by god to become a Lyctor. (No civilian has seen a Lyctor for thousands of years. But the information you do have speaks of astonishing power. Are you intrigued? Do you regard it as an even more stellar opportunity for the Master Warden? Do Lyctors have access to interesting material for the archives? Does the possibility of your son becoming an immortal finger and gesture of god ever feel strange?)

A few months later, some fragments come back in a box. There's nothing left of Camilla at all. No one will tell you anything. Every House but the Third and the Ninth has lost its head or heir (the poor girl your son loved is dead. You're never going to get another overly-formal letter from the Fifth begging for Lyctoral documents from your archive.)

Then the Master Warden makes contact from beyond the grave to tell you that the saintly founder of your House left a plan in place in case it ever became necessary to betray god. He tells you why god should be betrayed.

Suddenly, the Oversight Body has to make a decision. To take your home and 3 million people away from the Dominicus System (away from its thanergetic soil, no more necromancers will ever be born). To break the contract of tenderness made on the day of the Resurrection. Do you have time to call back your soldiers in the Cohort? Do you have to leave them behind? Has the Oversight Body ever felt unanimously about something before? And how frank can you be with the House? You have visiting scholars from almost every House, and who knows where the Bureau have eyes and ears.

There are calculations to make. How to transport a whole House? How do you work out that it takes five hundred and thirty-two obselisks? That there are deleterious effects past five hundred and sixty? How do you find a stele that would anchor such a big thanergy transition? (Only the Fifth make stele. Do you try to do it yourselves? Who do you trust on the Fifth to help with that? Is that why Kester Cinque left Koniortos?)

The Master Warden, who is dead, lives inside the body of Camilla, who is not. He picks you - in your capacity as Master Archivist - to be one of the negotiators. How do you integrate 3 million people into a completely alien society with whom your people have been at war for millennia? How does negotiating with terrorists feel compared to academic committees?

What happens then? One day you just...lose it? The sun rises too bright and too blue and you are in agony, unconnected from yourself, screaming and writhing. And when the thing in the sky is at its furthest orbit from you, in some exhausted moment of clarity, you nearly kill yourself using necromancy to restore your sanity. You blind yourself. Do you think beyond that moment? As someone who deals in documents and artefacts and forms in triplicate, do you mourn your sight alongside everything else you have lost? Your son, your home, your god, your sanity...

And now you are a hostage. Sixteen of you in the back of a sweltering truck, held at gunpoint, always moving. The only thing keeping you alive is the possibility of selling you back to the empire that you've betrayed. Your captors have signed a 'no torture' clause, and perhaps they do stick to that. You're needed for providing proof of life and are probably better off than most. But it's too hot, there's not enough water, you can't see, and the only way out is either that the Master Warden gives Blood of Eden a Lyctor or being released to the mercies of the Kindly Prince. You sit in the dark and do mental maths with each other to stay sane.

Somehow, the Master Warden has done it. Without a Lyctor, he's turned his own cell commander against her fellows and you have been released. Most of the Oversight Body can't even walk out of the truck without help. But you're free, and the Master Warden - now in the stolen body of a Lyctor's cavalier - has the sort of mad scheme only he could come up with. Those mental maths will come in handy. The cell commander isn't bad either...

You can't see your son die again (the last time he speaks to you, from that borrowed body, he calls you 'mum' instead of 'Master Archivist'). But you can smell Camilla’s flesh burn. Perhaps the Commander, holding your arm, describes it to you. You follow this new person, your child, now something else, back into the truck where you were held captive and watch as they drive it into the River.

The Tomb is open. Your child is part of a being of strange and unimaginable power. The House Formerly Known as Sixth is on the other side of the universe. You are on the Ninth with a dead cavalier in the body of her necromancer, the Emperor’s construct, legions of demons, and a very mysterious dog...

Anyway, I'm very excited to see what havoc Juno gets to cause in ATN. She's there to be snarky, do psychometry, and be a romanceable MILF. Let her yell at god. And for goodness sake, let her get some peace at the end.

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I just finished Nona the ninth from the locked tomb series and I finished harrow not long before that. To be perfectly honest, I hate John giaus, from the flashback chapters it’s clear the man’s a bloody sociopath, he’s also one of those irritating sociopaths who can’t accept when they’ve messed up and blames everyone else. He’s so stupid as well pre-resurrection. Dude, don’t threaten nuclear devastation to get your way, then you murder your last living friend once the sh!t hits the fan, triggering the nuclear devastation. Then he kills the entire solar system during a big ol’ tantrum. Piss off. Alecto gave him his powers so that he would help her, save her from humanities screw ups and then he makes the biggest screw up possible and murders the entire planet with nukes and necromancy. ALSO HOW THE F#CK DID YOU THINK CREATING AN ACTUAL CULT FULL OF GUN TOTING LOONEYS WAS GONNA GO!!!

I hate him more for what he did to his Lyctors too. He murdered Mercymorn in a moment and then he let Augustine into the stoma, he drove Cytherea mad, then she killed all the people in Canaan house (I am so mad that lady Abigail Pent died, she seemed lovely and I wish she was still alive, the fourth kids just didn’t deserve their fate and Magnus was lovely, he was the best of them all and he got murdered so violently. Also Dulcinea seemed lovely, which made her death more upsetting.) why the hell did he let them murder their best friends and siblings, knowing that there was a perfect form of Lyctorship? Why keep it from them? They surely wouldn’t be stronger than him, it would be an exchange of human souls, which probably wouldn’t have the same impact as John having the soul of an overpopulated planet in him.

Also screw the colonist, imperialist bastard whose going round murdering planets willy nilly. What’s the end goal for him?

He’s so awful. I hate him. Keep your damn hands off Gideon.

#tlt #nona the ninth #harrow the ninth #john gaius #spoilers #the locked tomb #BASTARD #hate rant #I do admit this is a very simplistic view of a very complex character #but sometimes you gotta flatten a total character to their most basic attributes for good old petty post #he’s still awful tho

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The Ornamentalist

In the depths of the forest there is a trickster clad in black and red. They are bejewelled with crimson gems and golden adornments, a wolfish smile forever etched onto their youthful face.

Their grove is a place that glints and glitters, holding their dozens of collections, the brutal ones hidden under the jewels and roots. Many who travel within the forest search for them. they know the forest better than most. though all should be wary of their words.

Be warned travellers, vanity and greed is their king. They will offer aide, they will offer trades, but their purpose is to take away all of you and that you have that hold value. Daintily they hide behind their golden fan, demurely they ask you their question, mercilessly do they guide you to your fate.

Fae, Demon, God. they have many names, many faces, many terrible secrets. a monster hidden behind a pleasing form.

Beware.

#ornamentalist #creative writing #a thing I've decide to throw into the void #the mercury woods #the forest of violent dreams

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I bought some prints from this lady at ComicCon. I lost her business card and I can’t find her anywhere. WHO IS SHE???

#who is this person #comicon #october 2023