captaimas

[captaimas]

Adobe is going to spy on your projects. This is insane.

[captaimas]

let me preface this Locked Tomb meta attempt with the posibility that i may be crazy or this may have already been said.

that said i would like to talk about teacher in Harrow the Ninth chapter 35.

Nona the ninth spoilers below the cut

At the beginning of the chapter, Caanan house (which we now know is a bubble in the river) has begun to freeze over and become hostile. Harrow narrates:

 “the rainbow girdled constructs had kept fishing in the still moving salt sea. but teacher had taken one look at their catch and refused to have it cooked, or to let anyone else even see it”. 

What did teacher see? That depends on if the catch was pulled from the river or from harrows brain. In the first case, it could be any number of the river’s abominations and thus teacher was simply trying to protect the inhabitants of caanan house. For the sake of interest, I would like to consider option two: that the skeletons fished out something from within harrows brain.

Now, who resides in Harrow’s brain and is repeatedly described as a “salt water creature”?  Let me direct your attention to teacher’s “mad” ramblings later in the chapter:

“but when the work was done, when i was finished, and so were they, and the new lyctors found out the price, they had him kill the salt water creature before she could do them harm.”

In the very same scene, he is drinking thistle shrub, which he assures Harrow is not alcoholic, but that he attempts to use to get drunk. 

I posit that the constructs pulled Alectos body from the river, and teacher, horrified, tossed her back, refused to let anyone see her. By his own confession he is “terrified” of her. He attempts to get drunk on whatever he has on hand and holds in his panic until the smallest trigger sets him off. He is haunted (not literally) (i don’t think) by Alecto. 

But why wouldn’t teacher kill alecto. He is horrified of her.

I don’t know what teacher is but he indicates some sort of sympathy or at least comraderie for what Alecto went through. He says “oh but it is a tragedy to be put in a box and laid to wait for the rest of time. it happened to me but i was only a man, or perhaps fifty men.” (who are the fifty men). It’s possible he even feels some sort of kinship with what she is. 

And Alecto loves the sea. 

“Salt water had always relieved her: salt water made her feel as though, if there was someone in there with her, she would suddenly know the words to tell them everything.” NTN, chapter 9

I have no conclusion to this, but it is interesting to consider and I hope we get some more information about teacher in Alecto the Ninth.

(Separate wormhole: the drink Teacher is drinking in this scene is thistle shrub. thistles have the appearance of one flower but are actually a combination of many flowers put together. it’s just. interesting.)  

[captaimas]

Going into Alecto, I think it's important to expect that the series won't conclude with a clear lesson. Either about morality—what makes a good person, evil getting their just desserts, ect—or a thesis on decolonization. It's not that kind of story.

Deep down, this series is two drunk girls bearing their souls in a dark corner of the bar. An hours-long conversation that wheels wildly through pop culture, past trauma, theoretical physics, dreams and aspirations, global warming, hairstyling, friends, family, gender, personal insecurities, world history, favorite foods. It has a lot to say, and a lot of it profound, but it's not trying to teach anything. At the end of the night, the point was how fucking cool that girl was, and the potent electric potential for something lgbt to happen

[captaimas]

oh you just find this hilarious dont you

[captaimas]

rereading htn and palamedes invented a breathing tube for dulcinea that greatly improved her quality of life. he is obviously lovely and the achievement is impressive but it sticks out to me that breathing tubes existed before the resurrection. breathing tubes existed and were helping people over 10,000 YEARS AGO. but so much technology from before the resurrection was forgotten erased. it was the burning of the library at alexandria and the sole survivor was the one that lit the match. sure the houses have necromancy but we know it cannot do anything for dulcinea. but “modern” medicine could have! but surreeee John, go see the pity that is the miracle at rhodes. how tragic but you must commit to ur aesthetic. dick. 

[captaimas]

rereading gideon the ninth 😵‍💫 had to sketch so rapidly whilst at work i felt feverish rereading

(spoilers ahead btw but its just me screamingcrying abt the seventh very vaguely)

palamedes wordlessly putting his bathrobe over cyth!dulcinea’s shoulders while the necros are truecrime investigating the 5ths deaths….. cyth!dulcinea being described as only wearing a shirt thats too small for her and pants too big. AUUGHHH

[captaimas]

Much has been made of the Palamedes and Harrow friendship (and rightfully so!) but i do think the Palamedes and Gideon friendship is so wonderful and underrated.

Palamedes, who's loved Dulcinea since childhood, who's "made a war of his whole life in order to prosecute his desire to marry this woman", sees Dulcinea flirting with hot butch Gideon and his reaction is not some nice guy bullshit or to shun Gideon or Dulcinea but instead to be as polite and helpful as he's ever been to both of them. It must be killing him inside to see "Dulcinea" act like she doesn't even know him while openly flirting with Gideon, and his only response is to watch over Gideon when Harrow asks him to, and to even send his own cavalier away from him to tend to Gideon, despite a murderer being on the loose.

Gideon, who's grown up on the Ninth House and doesn't know what real friendship or open communication is, finds one (1) woman who's kind to her and pays her attention and yet her response the moment she realizes Palamedes likes her too is to step aside and take steps (ALBEIT AWKWARD STEPS) to communicate to Palamedes via Camilla that she'll 100% step aside for him and even introduce him to Dulcinea if that's what he wants. When she finds out they've known each other since his childhood, she's out here wailing about being a homewrecker and even when she's dashing off to what she's aware might be her death, she makes sure to leave a message with Camilla telling Palamedes how sorry she is.

Just... their friendship is so awkward and precious and wonderful and I'm devastated they didn't get a proper re-meet before Paul happened.

[captaimas]

All sympathy for Palamedes tho bc having met Dulcie, a hunky mysterious death cultist swooping in to catch her like a romance novel protagonist is exactly the sort of excitement that would have distracted her for weeks. The thing with Gideon wasn't all that out of character if you couldn't hear their conversations

[captaimas]

pov gideon during canaan house

[captaimas]

no particular coherent analysis but ohhhughhghh. thinking about the implications of teacher being fully totally aware throughout the events of gtn, of what he was leading them all to do. AND that he was absolutely aware of cytherea's identity!!!!

idk... when u first experience the story (and in general i guess) teacher comes off as maybe a little mysterious, but mostly silly! refreshing, even, to see someone with such a positive outlook!! but when he's greeting all the cavs, gossiping, etc. he is doing so knowing theyre being led to die- and not ONLY that- he knows exactly who it is thats killing everyone off before theyre SUPPOSED to die.

AND with the consideration of him essentially being The Soul Experiment this is interesting- can he not defy any of the lyctors even if its against gods wishes? Is that why he doesn't speak up abt cytherea?

his characterization as well as johns is so interesting in this way i think... ur kinda lulled into a false sense of security. lots 2 consider...

[captaimas]

On the topic of Palamedes and Camilla also having messed up lives: while Paldulcie doesn't fit into a lot of folks' conventional ideas of queer romance in sci-fi, their whole love for each other circles back to Muir's point that you can't have shit in Empire and that love will often chafe against form and functioning Empire no matter what. The act of writing letters and attempting to make life better for Dulcie was revolutionary of Palamedes.

It went against planetary politics that demanded house necromancers compete and remain compartmentalized. It was an act that wanted to humanize a woman who was effectively bred to be an art piece of slow death and coddling.

Not to mention the continuous times in the series that Muir makes it seem like the Sixth house maintain some form of lesser place in the empire's hierarchy: like they're running out of genetic material, in Harrow's Marriage AU she mentions how they're often painted in a corner like her house is, The Second House went after their keys because they believed them the easiest to over-power, Palamedes and Camilla had no clue what formal dueling practices were.

Palamedes trying to marry the Duchess of Rhodes screams of the taboo and forbidden that Muir explores in Locked Tomb. I need y'all to wake up and see the sixth house as more than the funky librarians helping out the funky lesbians. They are definitely doing that, but they are so fundamentally crucial to this series.

[captaimas]

Been thinking about this scene from The Unwanted Guest:

Palamedes is quoting here a description of an angel. And maybe it's just me missing some cultural queues here, but... There's something melancholy about the whole exchange. It's alien, especially for a description of the face of a woman he loves.

Dulcinea admitted earlier in the play that she didn't want Palamedes to see her face, even if he had come to her funeral. She implied she's since been to the other side of the River, that she died a second time, and that "something awful"* happened to her that she's "not allowed" to explain. And there may be precedent in the devils of Antioch for souls to appear something other than human after experiencing changes in the River.

(*adjective, archaic: Filled with or inspiring awe)

Palamedes calls her perfect, when she loved imperfect unfinished things. Not very much later, Paul—who is no longer Palamedes, and never will be again—echoes that perfection in their description of themself.

So.... What did Dulcinea look like when Palamedes saw her? Was it anything like the Dulcinea who died before Palamedes met her?

[captaimas]

reading the Locked Tomb series again because i want to feel something and I noticed something that made me think about the whole Palamedes-Camilla-Dulcie situation. specifically, about their relationships with each other.

in the Unwanted Guest, Palamedes has this conversation with a disembodied voice that we soon learn to be Dulcie. he asks her: “That merely by loving you, I added to your torments?” to this, Dulcie responds that: “yes, and also my agonies.”

as heartbreaking as that is, it contrasts a different conversation between Camilla and Palamedes in Nona the Ninth: “Simply by being in your life, I have added indelibly to its weight?” “Yes.”

i am NOT emotionally stable enough to analyze what this means. but just knowing this — i am hurting. i am in pain. and tamsyn muir definitely knew what she was doing when she wrote this.

sometimes, i think that this series has done me enough harm. but it goes out of its way to show that yes! it can hurt me more!

[captaimas]

So in Ntn Camilla asks: “Warden—will she know who we are, in the River?” And I am obsessed with what this line says about Camilla. Cam is loving (see her interactions with Nona and Pyrrah, her ferocious search for her sister) and kind (she takes the knives from Jeannemary and Isaac, she shares her food with Gideon) but she is also stubborn and singleminded and even brusque to the point of being quite abrasive. When Harrow tells her Palamedes can’t have lasted this long she simply reiterates that he has. When Pyrrah tells her to stop, she ignores her. When she thinks her fathers won’t get Paul, she simply doesn’t invite them to her death/ascencion. 

The ONLY hesitation she shows (in the entire series, not just about Paul), the only concern she expresses, is for Dulcinea, “will she know who we are, in the river?” To me this shows so much love and care and even vulnerability. She wants to see Dulcinea. She plans on meeting her someday after death. She does not fear the disappearance of herself unless it means Dulcinea won’t know her. Sometimes the Dulcinea relationship get portrayed as ‘Palamedes was in love with her and Camilla was on the side/a third wheel/possibly even annoyed or left out” but to me this line obliterates that. Cam is not a gushy person, but she must love Dulcie so much. Hers is the only concern she acknowledges. 

Long story short, Cam may not be expressive, but never let it be said she doesn’t love Dulcinea Septimus. 

[captaimas]

oh gideon, i was just starting to dream the silliest and softest of dreams

another homage to my favourite book scene ever

[captaimas]

incomplete list of moments in "the mysterious study of doctor sex" that made me go mildly bananas. in no particular order

cam's inability to take a compliment

shared brainwaves. autism4autism

no but cam really doesn't know what to do with compliments

picturing teenaged camilla with a gay little utility belt now

just the whole notion of a "treat allowance"

intricate rituals etc. etc.

really recontextualizes palamedes constantly taking his glasses on and off in gtn as some kind of peacock ass mating ritual designed to impress cam. to me

[captaimas]

The thing about Locked Tomb gender roles too is that you can see in NtN how hard Ianthe is attempting to do Augustine and yet never can because she's a woman. She had to suck up to Augustine in this specifically feminine, ingratiating way to get close to him at all, and now that he's dead she's trying to step into his shoes as the cool, aloof, well-if-needs-truly-must new Lyctor. And yet she's still in charge of managing John's feelings, making sure Daddy's happy, doing his bidding as a Lyctor while simultaneously running emotional triage on her depressed alcoholic fatherboss. Augustine didn't have to do that shit! Augustine wasn't expected to tend to John's every need and be personally responsible for his happiness! That's a job that John specifically delegates to women in his life ⁠— he did it to Alecto, he did it to Mercy, and now he's doing it to Ianthe. And as the third in this illustrious line of corpses, Ianthe knows what awaits her if John gets tired of her insufferable habit of having a personhood that exists outside of him.