#He has chemistry with Wray of all people. He wants to kill her and shes a lesbian but the chemistry is fantastic

[bagheerita]

In some ways, I feel like SGU is a Disney-live-action-remake "we saw you noticed a thing so we've fixed it" level response to SG1 and SGA.

Oh you think Jack and Sam should hook up? Well here's a Colonel that slept with his blonde subordinate and ruined her life. Enjoy.

Oh you think Sheppard isn't straight? Please let us introduce our new young white male military character Lt. Scott and this time we will present you with graphic, onscreen evidence that he has slept with at least 3 women, despite the fact that his best onscreen chemistry is with Greer, his male colleague.

[rosalind-of-arden]

Sword and Pen Reread, chapter 11

Oh shit it’s the Annis chapter. There will be tears.

For the ephemera, we have a letter from the Archivist of the Library of Pergamum to the Archivist of the Great Library. They consider each other rivals. This fits with real history, it looks like. What does it not fit with? The story Jess tells in Ash and Quill. In Jess’s story, the Library of Pergamum was a rival to the Great Library “in the early days”, but by the time the Romans came along to try and loot it, Pergamum was a Serapeum of the Great Library. Here’s another of those little inconsistencies suggesting that what we know of Library history is very heavy on the propaganda.

Eskander can sense Obscurists leaving the Iron Tower even if they aren’t wearing collars. Most stuff Obscurists can do, at least very powerful ones. 

Annis hates her collar but also feels uncomfortable without it. Probably a very common feeling among Obscurists.

“Don’t tell her I said she wasn’t fluent.” There’s just... so much relationship in this line, and I am incredibly sad that canon does not allow for Eskander/Annis to become a thing.

Language stuff: There is a text essential to understanding Heron’s Poseidon automaton that is written in Assyrian. Why not Greek?

Annis is literate in Assyrian. I feel like knowledge of obscure languages would be a popular thing in the Iron Tower. WTF else is there to do but learn languages to read more stuff?

Now, Eskander just said he’d know if Annis left the Iron Tower... but he can’t locate her. Is it that locating a person that precisely is impossible? Or is this our first hint that she’s dead? Obscurist powers work with life energy, so a dead person might be impossible to find. Eskander is exhausted and busy, and when he can’t detect Annis right away, he decides it isn’t worth the trouble when Morgan can just go look. It’s probably hard to pick one person out of a tower full of people. The guilt he must feel after this. That irritability might even be covering a bit of denial: he should be able to track her, he can’t, that’s not good, but he’ll assume it’s just that he’s tired and it’s difficult.

“He’d spent too many years a hermit to gladly bear regular interruptions.” Eskander trauma effects here.

Like Khalila, Eskander has set up in an old storeroom.

Obscurists Magni. Must remember this is the plural.

ANNIS! *cries* @eli-wray had some good thoughts on the narrative value of this death in their excellent reread post that I am failing at finding on this hellsite. I’ll just add that Caine didn’t kill many (named) characters in this book. Instead, she made a small number of deaths really count. Annis was one of the few remaining side characters who was genuinely likable, and it hurts to see her die.

Obscurist power can change doors into walls. Morgan can feel this happening. It takes “expert manipulation of quintessence, and prewritten formulae” to do this. Must eventually try to work out differences in what can and can’t be done without writing out formulae.

Morgan is just so shaken in this scene. She’s struggling to accept the reality of what’s happened, and she isn’t thinking effectively. If Annis is tied to a post and dead, what are the chances she still has her knife, Morgan? That’s how hard Morgan’s brain is fighting against acceptance.

Morgan can immediately sense when a Codex has been tampered with. Because she’s made her own untraceable, too.

The ex-Archivist had distinctively “eccentric” loops in his handwriting. Also, Gregory apparently used to wave orders from the Archivist around a lot when threatening Morgan - good to know for canon gap fic.

More Eskander trauma effects: he doesn’t always answer his Codex. Why would he? He isn’t used to people talking to him and might even have some anxiety about answering.

And that gets me thinking. Who else doesn’t always answer his Codex? Thomas. Who also only very recently got out of solitary confinement.

Magic ring can transmute a gun into its component parts and put up a protective field around Morgan. It can throw people back hard enough to knock them out. But Gargi only will do this when Morgan can’t handle the fight on her own.

Evil Obscurists used silencing spells to stay hidden.

Canon gap fic I want to see: Annis investigating the ex-Archivist’s conspirators in the tower. Even knowing it ends badly, it would be nice to see Annis have her badass spy moment.

Eskander’s Translation is loud. I don’t think Translation is described as loud anywhere else. He was able to Translate in right in front of Morgan, which means he could locate her.

Eskander is better at undoing other Obscurists’ work than Morgan. She can’t even figure out how he gets the silencing effect off.

More magic ring powers: altering air density to block bullets.

Ring pulls power “from the walls of the Iron Tower, from the generations of powerful Obscurists who had been born, lived, worked, and died here.” Confirmation that the Tower is drawing energy from the Obscurists, sounds like.

Eskander has had worse injuries than this gunshot in his youth.

Eskander-Santi parallels: guilt because they trusted someone for an important job and were betrayed, resulting in the death of an important person. Eskander assigned one of the traitors to investigate the tampering with the automata.

Morgan-Khalila parallels: as adults are injured/killed or turn out to be untrustworthy, they keep stepping up to higher positions of authority.

Morgan directs people to get Eskander to a Medica. Morgan is used to taking care of her adopted family and knows they will be dumbasses and not take care of themselves.

Iron Tower layout: 4th floor is for automata control. Staffed by 50, “working constantly on monitoring and rewriting commands.” Always this busy? Or is it because this is a crisis?

Sergeant Mwangi - Morgan’s new guard, someone to bring back post canon?

Chowdry and Salk. Obscurists Morgan trusts enough to work with her on the automata. How does she know them? Met during canon gaps in Smoke and Iron? Annis’s friends/partners?

Things a mirrored book can do, at least for an Obscurist: rearrange information according to requested criteria, overlay text for comparison, flag items with a verification code.

Signs that Morgan is not ok: mentally, she’s so absorbed in working on the automata that she can’t even parse the sound of screaming.

Multiple companies are responding to the Iron Tower attack. That’s how important it is.

Mwangi makes the critical mistake of telling Morgan not to do something. We all know how Morgan reacts to that sort of thing.

More shit Morgan can do: rearrange the chemistry of Greek fire to make it harmless. 

Oh look, the ex-Archivist plots to burn something important to the Library and Morgan risks herself to stop things from burning. Hello foreshadowing.

Iron Tower has a central open space.

Artifex forges are enhanced with scripts to make fire burn hotter.

Vanya Nikolin, the ringleader of the traitor Obscurists, used to do favors for Gregory. He was someone both Morgan and Eskander trusted. Probably acts like just an all around nice guy? Really, did either of them have enough experience with the other Obscurists to know who to trust? Annis might have been able to help them a bit in that area, but still.

Vanya has removed his collar and bugged out, heading for the Tomb of Heron.

What I didn’t see in this chapter? Energy vampire Morgan. Either the ring has fixed her, Eskander fixed her again, or she’s just gotten so damned used to the gnawing need for power that she barely notices it anymore. She’s exhausted, she’s having trouble focusing and processing information, but she’s not fighting compulsions to drain people.