#Nona the ninth

[rookthebird]

NOT ME BEING LIKE "wow this is such good art of nona, from the book nona the ninth, who is a small young woman with long dark hair worn in messy braids who wears casual clothing and walks dogs" but apparently this is not a nona??? whoops

[cutetanuki-chan]

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[fearless-seagull]

The eating peanuts line never leaves my head. John, there's people that are dying.

[notedchampagne]

an act of spiritual communion

[fizzylemonpie]

That's exactly how long it took me to read them

please someone help me, I've read so many fics

I finished all three Locked Tomb books within this past week so now I'm feral.

[mercyhaunt]

I’VE BLOWN APART MY LIFE FOR YOU (gideon nav/kiriona gaia)

[juneverkn0w]

guess what I've been reading (I'm crazy)

[mychemicalweevil]

for a semester of college I studied in NZ at one of the unis Jod says he went to. can confirm the labs there slayed but now imagine you see one of the guys who taught your bio or chem tutorial on youtube starting a cult… like what is John who got on me for using the bunsen burner wrong doing with those cows again???

[tomb-of-flora]

I truly to my core believe this is the case. She got to the space palace where god and his buddies hang out thinking she'd figure it out from there, and it was all just such a sad mess there wasn't much TO figure out so now she's just trying to cling onto SOME version of the fantasy that pushed her to become a Lyctor in the first place. And I don't imagine it's going well since no one she's trying to ally with likes her and there isn't really anywhere else to climb to.

She may have had a loose plan, but I like to imagine that was dashed on the rocks the moment the second book started.

“ianthe has a secret plan” ok yeah probably but it’s funnier for me to imagine she fulfilled all her dark machinations by becoming a lyctor, and is now just desperately scrambling from book to book trying to stop everyone from blowing up the solar system and ruining it for her

[sprainedankle15]

"just don't leave me alone wondering where you are" kiriona not knowing where harrow is oh im sick

[y-yyak]

you looked like you wanted to be kissed, that’s all

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

(After Nona, it's fun to keep this in mind and think about the Tower Princes… We also see it at play with Ur/New Rho.)

[leaning over the back of my chair at a mid-range burger chain] so anyway bestie john’s subsumption of his lyctors’ personal identities is empire writ small. think of harrow and ianthe offering each other the comfort of using each other’s surnames  — and knowing it’s a comfort

knowing how deeply harrow has always thought of herself as ninth, how much she sees herself as not just of her house but synonymous with it. knowing how ianthe shares a name with her sister—something rare and unique, as per the gt9 extra materials—around whom her life has always revolved. 

and john takes that away from them! unless they are talking to each other in private, they are no longer Nonagesiums and Tridentarius, but the First. he has taken away their association with others and replaced it with association to him.

for his other lyctors, it’s been like this long enough that their names are forgotten!

cytherea wanted to be called ‘cytherea loveday’, but john wouldn’t even let her have that memorial to the grief she suffered in his name. to him she could only be cytherea the first. it’s mercymorn who asks him to honour cytherea’s wishes, after her death:

there’s just something about how cytherea’s choice in name, harrow and ianthe’s given names. these things that memorialize love and community and culture and family, and john takes them away and redefines them in terms of their association to him

and the disdain is even more apparent when applied to his enemies. awake remembrace of these valiant dead is even more obviously than ‘nonagesimus’ or ‘tridentarius’ a name that very directly represents a link to an extinct culture (very possibly extinct because of john)

he at first refuses to say it, calls it “genuinely sad, bordering on very funny”, then abjectively mocks it! wake’s name is explicitly a connection to a long-dead, near-totally extinct cultural tradition, and he entertains himself stomping all over it!

not to mention alecto: alecto, a name john also denies, a name he refuses to even speak. it’s her “real name” but he “buried it with her”

he instead calls her ‘annabel lee’, a totally passive figure that exists to be loved and mourned with no agency in her own story. a name that quite literally renders her inanimate. ‘annie laurie’ is less egregious, but it’s a love ballad. he’s defining her not by what she did (or what he did to her) but by his own emotional attachment and pain. 

note that alecto was also the first one he called First. it comes full circle. he took her name and replaced it with her relation to him (“my Adam”) and now he’s done this to everyone around him

john devours everyone’s identity: he replaces them with his own, with how they are defined in relation to him, their opposition to him or subservience to him or his affection for them. harrow cannot be nonagesimus aboard the mithraeum because that would mean acknowledging that she is ninth more than she is john’s servant. cytherea cannot be loveday because that would acknowledge that the grief of what she did at his demand is greater and more powerful than her devotion. he must come first. he must always be at the center.

this is what empire does: it renders externalities internal. it creates new definitions of the periphery by erasing all meaning about it that doesn’t relate it directly back to the core. and john does all this too, only interpersonally, on a human level.

[i sip my milkshake for a weirdly long amount of time until im just making gross sucking sounds through a straw] so yeah fuck that guy

[waiting-foratrain]

incapable of doing anything in cosplay without justifying it thirty times over <3

[starberry-cupcake]

*doing a recap as I suffer listening to my football/soccer team go through it in another tab, I'd wait but I want to finish day one of nona today because Things are happening tomorrow*

previously, in nona del 9:

this happened

this is the general tag for those catching this recap loose in the wild

also, I don't wanna put this person out there like that, so I'm not sharing url, but I want to apologize personally to them for not starting these recaps from the beginning (I didn't know this was going to happen)

and also please don't let me deter you from reading these books if I'm unfunny, I can't live with that burden

please read them anyway

I was telling @lady-harrowhark how I feel I'm embarrassing her in front of fandom famous people and now I feel I'm embarrassing all of you, I'm so sorry

CHAPTER 6 (sixth house skull babeeeyyyyyy)

people are having trouble with the economy, employment and political strife

so, we're not doing a lot better in the future, is what I'm hearing

this is not the sci fi future I'd like to see, folks

some people are like "at least with the houses people knew who had to pay them"

I think we've all lived in situations where we had to hear someone say something like this

camilla asks nona if she would want to leave to the idyllic farming fairy tale pyrrha imagines they could run away into

(not that it doesn't sound nice, but that's so unlikely pyrrha, I mean, come on)

nona says she doesn't because she loves it there

which means nothing, because nona loves everything

the bar isn't super high here

after a bath and reading the advice column (?) nona asks camilla to tell her the story of how they met her

(kinda wild that this part coincided with penalty kicks in the game, not that I'm live blogging the match, just thought I'd take you on a full experience here)

(we won, but my blood pressure was put to the test and now I can come back to re capping properly)

(I'm still not used to the paperback thing and I'm live-reading rather than finishing a chapter and doing a recap as I used to)

(still haven't found my footing here)

so, there's a lot of info here but, at the same time, not enough info, you get me?

isn't that just the tlt experience, though???

isn't that what we love????

crafting theories and getting tangled with the red yarn???

we're all connected with the red thread of conspiracy

camilla and palmolive were trying to communicate and they knew "she" was in trouble

which refers to nona, but I assume it's not nona yet, I assume they're talking about...harrow??

camilla says that "she" disappeared but they found "her" and pyrrha and "she" was hurt

pyrrha helped them escape, but they lost ships and people and "something very important"

is that gideon's body?????? is that "something very important" gideon's body???????

DON'T LOSE GIDEON'S BODY, PLEASE!!!

WE NEED THAT!!!

WE'RE NOT DONE WITH THAT!!!

so, camolive and pyrrha asked to be able to keep "her" and we suffer interceded for them at that time

and then palmolive convinced "the Oversight Body" and the sixth house to evacuate

I don't know what the "oversight body" is

if they lost gideon's body, that's definitely an oversight

palmolive chose 16 people to talk to BOE

I'm sure one of them was his mom, she was cool, I liked her

I didn't realize that was his mom reading the story until someone pointed it out, though

I embarrassed myself there

ANYWAY

THEN nona woke up

after they lived together for a while, the light in the sky appeared and, according to camilla, BOE betrayed them

or wasn't able to protect them anymore

they're fucked, is the overall important thing to take from it

idk if this is why coronabeer and palmolive aren't in speaking terms right now

they mention the sixth house people being lost, or at least nona asks if she can help find them if she remembers who she is

also, awake me up inside seems to have been we suffer's boss

so she has beef with pyrrha

according to camilla, it's because pyrrha was best friends with the person who killed her

idk if camilla and/or we suffer know the whole thing about pyrrha and og!gideon being intimate with commander wakey wakey, though

also, incredibly important

this is essential information

kevin is good at origami

we love kevin

JOHN 5:20

we've established in the first one that these are bible verses

the previous one (20:8) was about the empty tomb

for the record, it was: "Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."

this one is: "For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed."

dr reverend emperor john asshat is still talking (to harrow???)

of course he's still talking, he loves the sound of his own voice

he's telling her about how he got where he got with his lyctor buddies

apparently, his cryogenics plan was cancelled in both senses of the word

it was stopped from continuing to run

and it got into the press, so people started panicking about the end of the world and everything was going to shit

important to note that C and N were dating, and I guess this is Cassiopeia and Nigella? because Cyrus is also a C but since Nigella is Cassiopeia's cav, I'm gonna go for that option

good for them, we love cassiopeia

she had ceramics and was sixth house

also, augustine is being dramatic, but what else is new

they also were collecting bodies to test on and weren't able to cremate them anymore because of the experiments made on them

for personal family and country history reasons, I'm not gonna make jokes about that one

but it was something to note from the conversation that seems to be important for later

now, here it gets complicated

because dr reverend emperor john keeps drop naming people

or drop letter-ing?

and naming planets in our system

pyrrha was a cop, apparently

very evident in her behavior

and then he says that, because of the press, he wasn't going to be allowed to work again

and also says: "I sure as hell wouldn't be allowed to work on anything else to do with you"

in the last one, he said "Harrowhark" when interacting, so I took it this could be harrow's soul or whatever

but that doesn't add up with this????

because then he starts talking about this "you" being sick and not telling them, so I'm starting to wonder if this is ice cube barbie aka annabell lee aka AL aka The Body

so, dr john goes on some breakthrough spree and mercygirl says he's probably on coke (among other things)

and he says "coke zero"

I'm a coke zero girlie and you're not welcome here, mr man

you're not like me

he has some bodies which are his "favorites"

and when the Powers That Be shut them down and cut the electricity from them

(because they were using 3% of the country's electricity)

(fuck them tbh)

all the bodies collapsed, except from the ones he had "touched" and "loved"

ALLEGEDLY

ALSO, he again calls her "Harrow"

which ??????????????????????????????????????????

how is this harrow and also whoever was sick back then, who I thought was ice cube barbie????????

what's happening????????????????????

the chapter ends with the word "incorrupti"

which is either a typo or something's going on there

could be either, could be both

AND THAT'S IT FOR DAY 1!!!! we're moving ahead!!!!

[cassiopeialake]

why is no one on tumblr talking about Hot Sauce i love her so much :((( all the gang but especially their extremely traumatized badass 14 year old leader