#Alectopause

[psyche-reads]

John Gaius core

[sableeira]

2025 sounds like the perfect year for the release of a fourth and final book in a sci-fi fantasy tetralogy with lesbian necromancers in space and a beautiful, strong, and angry barbie titular character

[claudiatherelentless]

Unreliable Narrator: Not Paying Attention

Unreliable Narrator: Actively Hallucinating

Unreliable Narrator: Six month old Infant

Coming soon in the Unreliable narrator series! Ancient Rage Barbie!

[athunderstryke]

them as this:

[pyrrhadves-hole]

Nice theory! It made me think of what Alecto asks John after he resurrects her. She says "Where did you put the people? Where did they go?" And I'm thinking Tazmuir was clueing us in by having Alecto ask John, specifically, where he put them. And I think the answer is in the river.

I don't have any insights on how necromancy occurs, but I think that John is able to resurrect people because their souls are in the river. I think John created the river on accident, or maybe it already existed and John clogged it up. He killed the world and he needed somewhere to put the souls so they couldn't get way. He put them in the river.

I feel like someone has said before that the Earth didn't give John death magic, it gave him life magic, power to heal and restore. John made it into death magic. Pre-Resurrection, John restores Ulysses and Titania's bodies, that's how he realizes he has the power iirc. But he can't bring them back to life because their souls are gone.

They died before John had figured out souls. He wasn't able to do something to store their souls for safe-keeping. I think he puts souls in them eventually, but not their original ones. That's my theory.

He figures out souls when the Nun kills herself in front of him. And the below passages make me think that it was in that moment that John figured out how to keep souls, because of how the scene is worded.

One moment he wants desperately to save her, and the next, he's leaving her dead on the floor? I think he left her there because he'd saved her soul.

I do wonder what he pinned her soul to. Maybe he tried to do it with everyone's souls when he killed the world. And because he was so hopped up on energy from the thanergetic burst, he accidentally created the river or clogged it up.

Maybe it's a bubble? Like maybe the river already existed as a liminal space and John created one big bubble to store all the souls to stop them from going beyond the river, where he can't touch them. Now I'm getting carried away lol.

Thinking about how necromancy occurs. (I’m tired so this is half baked but it’s been nagging me all week).

So like, we know that necromancy wasn’t a thing for anybody but John pre-resurrection. We also know that several people who were not necromancers pre-resurrection were made necromancers by John after the fact. We know that there is something special about the 10 billion killed/resurrected souls that enables them (and their descendants) to do necromancy. (And also a lot of those 10 billion are currently unaccounted for)

The descendants of those who escaped John’s massacre and have not been to the Houses seem removed from any type of resurrection shenanigans. The devils have not yet targeted non-house places. There are no necromancers randomly born amongst the population of New Rho. Necromancy is impossible on any planet that hasn’t been “flipped” (killed) without a bunch of death happening.

We know necromancy isn’t purely genetic, because Ianthe and Corona are identical twins other than the fact that one is a necromancer (and I would posit that any dissimilarities between them physically is the result of one being a necromancer). This is also shown in the fact that Harrows parents had to kill 200 children to ensure she was a necromancer, and this had to occur on a necromantic planet.

But it also can’t purely be about the soul. I’m not putting it past John to alter billions of souls, but like, I don’t think he would alter every potential soul ever just to perpetuate necromancy? (Also this idea, like, does not answer the question of when souls are made or when they enter the body or if souls getting recycled is a thing in this universe) also, Palamedes can’t do necromancy in Camilla’s body, so there’s got to be something physical as a component.

I don’t know. This is mostly me fishing for ideas from other people. My current crackpot theory is that every necromancer is multiple/or a single broken soul that got fucked up in the river and that death energy is part of what gives them an initial necromantic kick or something, and then they cannibalize their own life energy which is why they’re all so physically fucked. Which is also based on my assumption that souls are not supposed to be hanging out in the river, and that this is just the place John chose to fence them in. And it also ties into my other tinfoil hat idea that the trindentarii twins were actually supposed to be triplets and Ianthe ate one of them in the womb, bc if the third were gonna go for flesh magic hubris, why not go for the drama of triplets?

[foxy-alien]

Alecto the terror and the sublime

[malwirevt]

Have another TLT WIP.

What if Alecto adored her reflection as the descendent of Anastasia?

“When she had been earlier born, and less self-conscious, sometimes she would rest her face against the mirror's face, and try to reach her reflec-tion. Camilla had caught her kissing it once, and had written about six pages of notes on that, which was humiliating.” —Nona the Ninth

[unreachedgalaxy]

some anastasia the first for your tl today. i have always thought anastasia's was the first tongue to be sewn and her jaw-only facepaint is why the ninth house skull is jawless. anyway can't wait for alecto the ninth to release and prove me wildly incorrect

[beguilingcorpse]

i understand the urge to want to wait until all of the locked tomb books are out to read them but like. alectopause is so fun. i promise there is no badness here. we are definitely not all slowly going insane. join us. join us. join us join us joij us join us join us join us join s joun us join us joun us join us join us joun us joun us jouns ys sjoun usgs joujs uusv joiun usgs sjiujbsusys

[lifetooshortlovetoolong]

Nona as a character is so fascinating to me when you consider her as a foil to Alecto’s history. Because, when you get down to it, Alecto was Nona all those thousands of years ago.

Consider Alecto, who rose from the shattered remains of the Earth, whose body was new and massive and unwieldy, who only existed because of her creator’s cosmic overindulgence and still knew love. Love!! Knew it so well that she chose it, even to her detriment, every single time. In response, the world around her —the Lyctors especially— rejected her for it because they saw her devotion as stupidity. And Jod, who claims to love her, locked her away, entombing her because he saw his love as a weapon to be used against him. And from what we see of Alecto when she’s awake in the Locked Tomb (especially when she bites Harrow) she’s grown sharper and crueler because of these rejections.

Similarly, Nona, having been slammed into a body that was not hers, with no memory and no faculties ALSO chooses unyielding love. But where Jod and his disciples rejected such “foolishness,” Cam, Pal, Pyhrra, and Nona’s Gang all accept it with open arms. They plan a birthday party for her and make silly jokes and check in on her and always say “I love you” back. They spend every day nurturing her the best they can.

Even in Nona’s final moments, these people tell her, “we love you. We will always love and remember you. That’s what matters.” And that’s what gives Nona the strength to make it to the Body, to do an act so terrible it will erase her. She does it because she is loved.

And now Alecto lives, ancient, undying, and so unloved.

[inkdragon1900]

Based on what Tamsyn Muir said about Alecto “hopefully” being the last book. I wish I could tell her directly “Do it. If the story needs to be longer do it. Hell make an entire book about the Harrow Nova au cause it ties into some later arc. Take up space. Dominate the genre.So many male writers make 5-8 books about some fantasy/Sci-fi world cause they feel like they have the audience’s attention to do so. And to be completely honest Tamsyn Muir has my attention like no other. Like yes girl make me read 3 more books consisting of 500-600 pages. I am sat.

[wifegideonnav]

sealing a tomb with wards that only respond to the emperors dna call that a johnlock

[griddleharkbrainrot]

I’m currently thinking about how John and Co. refused to call Alecto by her name. They named her fury and vengeance but could not acknowledge what made her thus. They call her Annie Laurie, reducing her to her looks, those so inhuman and frightening yet beautiful all the same. John gave her the name Annabel Lee, naming her existence as a tragedy in that she was his love lost. In both instances the literary references reduce the woman mentioned to nothing but set dressing for the man of the story and it truly betrays John’s thoughts on Alecto for as much as he claimed to love her, he sees her only as the stepping stone for his own story. “For John so loved her that he had made her she. For John had loved the world.” And that is the crux of the matter, John had loved the world but she is not the world, she is its fury. John wanted her to be calm beaches and lapping waves, he wanted a wife, sister, mother, and daughter all in one, but instead, he got 7 million silenced voices crying out in agony, furious at the injustice done to them. I think subconsciously he understood that when he named her Alecto, fury of wrath from Greek Mythology. But even if he had called her Gaia she would still be furious, for was it not Gaia who gave her children the scythe to kill her husband? Was it not Gaia who roared and shrieked to the depths of Tartarus when her children were torn from her arms? The first bearer of prophecy was forged from the grief and rage of an anguished mother; the earth has always been furious. John’s fatal flaw was that he could not comprehend that the rage was for him. He who promised love and safety but cut and stripped her soul stole her children and butchered her corpse. John could never truly comprehend that what he deemed his perfect creation could resent him the way she did. He took her away and reforged her into something she could never be. John denies the resentment Alecto feels for him and we can see this reflected in how he refers to her. John is the sort of man who thinks that if he sees a woman as nothing but her looks, he can make her lesser. To him, she is Annie Laurie of beautiful bust and a personality nonexistent; To him, she is Annabel Lee, a woman so pure and lovely that the angels stole her away from him. Subconsciously, the lyctors have adopted this as well, calling her these names out of fear and not realizing the implications of what they are doing. Even in writing, she is A.L. to them because somewhere deep down they know that to name her wrath is to invite it and invoke it. John believed that if he could compress the Earth into a beautiful shell then he could control it. The Earth has been around for far longer than he could ever truly comprehend, and she is furious.

For @commanderbabygirl thoughts?

I did not realize just how many opinions I had on this until I started typing

[kafkaesquetwink]

something i really appreciate about the locked tomb is that there are so many little details that make it clear tamsyn muir wanted you to have even more fun every time you re-read it. like throwaway lines or descriptions that become tragic or funny or foreboding only after you’ve read them before.

[addamii]

Me day one of Alectopause: oh gee I can’t wait for the next book!

Me now, rocking back and forth covered in sweat and blood probably: I think we’re all sleeping on the fact that Honesty’s name could be Frank

[yuck-pfaugh]

Tagged by @carys-the-ninth for the "9 books I would like to read in 2025" meme that's going round. Tagging anyone/everyone who would like to do it but hasn't been tagged yet. :)