#Ortus will get to have some control over his life but not yet

[katakaluptastrophy]

Ok, so I need to know something about the BARIstar AU, Tamsyn.

In all the other AUs, Ortus, Abigail, and Magnus turn up in thematically appropriate roles and costumes.

But there's no detail about them in the BARIstar AU. From the way the conceit is described, they must have all been there, but I need to know if by that point Harrow was just so laser focused on Gideon that she sort of forgot to include them in the story and they were just standing there bemused in their civvies? Or did they have roles we're not party to? Was Ortus wearily manning the blender behind the coffee bar? Did Abigail suddenly find herself incongruously an admiral?

[babylyctor]

can John actually control time or am i making things up? trying to reach a conclusion via tumblr posting

so as a theory this is 75% vibes. however there’s some things in the books that give me pause, and i wanted to put together all those bits and see if there’s something there. i’m not totally on board with this idea because it seems too complex to leave entirely to the last book, and i don’t know how it could fit with the rest of the narrative (or do i?) but in any case i keep thinking about it so here’s this way too long post. spoliers for everything

first, this fucking suspicious sentence that’s one of the first things John tells Harrow (Chapter 2, HtN)

"I would let you come back, bit by bit, until you felt entirely ready to wake up. I can’t. I mastered Death, Harrowhark; I wish I’d done the smarter thing and mastered Time. I have to ask you to get ready soon, and so I am going to show you something I hope might … trigger your readiness.”

so this sounds like a really dull complaint on this immortal god’s part but also i don’t trust a single thing out of this man’s mouth, and this would be the exact kind of private joke he would make if he had actually mastered Time (capitalized) too. Also the context in which it’s said, talking about Harrow coming back from her coma, regaigning consciousness, awakening... you get it, oddly relevant theme wise.

then there’s the whole Soup Moment (Chapter 25, HtN), in which John seems to actually stop time maybe? i have doubts about this so lets see what our narrator tells us;

And God said, “Stop.”

The world slowed down. Augustine and Mercymorn stopped, arrested in the act of half-rising from their seats. Ianthe stopped, left arm paused, outflung, to shield her face. You stopped, sitting upright in your chair: your bones somehow rigid and still, and your flesh chilly and rigid around those bones. The shrapnel spray from the Saint of Duty did not stop, [...] But what remained of him stopped too, half man, half rupture—his prurient details hot and white, naked insides clothed with the sinus-drying burst of the power of God.

so here John freezes all the lyctors in place, they’re still conscious, or at least Harrow is, but they have their range of movement almost totally restricted. this is not like Mercy pinching Harrow’s dorsal nerve to paralyze her, this is a completely different feeling, maybe John’s thalergetic powers? it would make sense, all the lyctors are living bodies, they have thalergy and Johs is able to manipulate that, presumably. the bits of Gideon OG cascading down the table don’t stop but that might be John selectively using his powers, or it might be that that’s no longer living flesh.

so we’re saying this could just be John’s super special thalergy magic and nothing else. the first problem though is that technically he shouldn’t be able to use it against his lyctors without touching them, thanks to lyctoral invisibility. in fact when he explodes Mercy’s chest (rip in peace queen) he expressely reaches out and touches her to do so, because presumably he needs to make contact with a body in order to use magic against it, same as Mercy. so that’s a caveat, then there are these descriptions from the same Soup Moment;

You stared down the table at him: at the blank, remote faces of your two nominal teachers—at the frozen ivory stillness of Ianthe, her hair now whitish pink—at space outside the window, where the asteroids themselves seemed to hang in tranquilized arrest.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses stood. The spell, whatever it had been, dropped like a white sun setting.

These seem to imply certain ambiguity. John’s God and all that but i don’t think thalergetic magic should be able to affect asteroids, lifeless space rocks. of course it says they “seem” to hang in tranquilized arrest, not that they are really unmoving, but i think it’s a suggestive sentence all the same, and i’m suspicious of every word Muir writes. The second quote, specifically the highlighted part, is also a bit frustrating. It seems to imply that John isn’t exactly doing magic as we know it, but something else. If it was Harrow narrating we could go further with it, but since it’s Gideon we could simply attribute it to her lack of knowledge and familiarity with magic. However, two sentences after that we don’t have that problem;

The construct gamely clamberign our of the Saint of Duty dwindled to a powder of pink dust. The shard you had been driving up the cervical vertebrae to the base of the spine [...] simply disappeared: destroyed or removed, you could not tell.

This is still Gideon narrating but in this case she’s specifically telling us that Harrow doesn’t understand what John just did, it’s not magic Harrow is familiar with. There’s also the contrast between what we know is a normal process of destroying a construct - reducing it to dust -  vs this mysterious disappearance, that doesn’t really fit into what we know so far about the way thanergy/thalergy work.

so far, nothing conclusive, we know John is really powerful, but we don’t know exactly how, where his power comes from or what it can do. Then there’s the moment he unexplodes himself (Chapter 52, HtN);

White light.

It bleached the insides of your nose and the back of your throat. It hurt coming out your ears. It bled out your eyeballs. It wasn’t a flash of light, more … a suddenness; when it was gone—as though it hadn’t even existed, but had been a luminous hallucination—time stopped.

That light took colour from the room—everyone was a slow-motion cavalcade of greys, of eyes caught widening, of mouths parting in stone-shaded articulations of shock.

It happened in an instant. It happened over a myriad. A wet red construct knitted itself back together, [...]

again that white light that has been associated with thalergy magic and again all these references to time slowing down, stopping or just behaving in strange ways in general. again lots of ambiguity, this could be a thalergy based power - the ability to hold living bodies in stasis, and therefore make everyone feel like time has slowed down - or it could be that John is actually affecting time, maybe even reversing it (?) since he literally un-exploded himself, after Mercy put all her millenia of expertise into atomizing him and reducing him to almost nothing.

is that even explicable with regular thanergy/thalergy based magic? i’m not sure, a regular necro could never do that, a lyctor couldn’t do that. So if John isn’t just an overpowered lyctor what’s the difference exactly? i mean, how do his powers manifest differently from those of every other necromancer we know?

the other person we’ve seen using powerful thalergy magic is Silas. Whenever he siphoned, Gideon describes a similar vacuum sensation to the one that John’s magic also provokes, as well as white light;

As he faded, the pale Silas incandesced. He glowed with an irradiated shimmer, iridescent white, and the air began to taste of thunder. (Chapter 17, GtN)

Gideon felt an internal tug, like a blanket being pulled off in the cold. (Chapter 17, GtN)

Silas clambered to his knees, clasped his fingers together, and the feeling of suction popped the pressure in both of Gideon’s ears. (Chapter 34, GtN)

Silas is nowhere near as powerful as John but siphoning - thalergy based magic, condemned by God - still causes that suction effect and is marked by white light and lightning, just like John’s magic. However, there’s no mention of a time altering effect, no slowing down, no freezing in place, and seeing how both kinds of magic are similarly coded otherwise i find this difference suspicious.

To end this somewhere, two quotes, first, this thing Harrow tells Ortus when they both discuss what it must be like to be a lyctor (Chapter 5, HtN);

“Nigenad, what would be the tragedy in living for a myriad? Ten thousand years to learn everything there is to know [...] What is the tragedy of time?”

honestly to me that sounds like Muir making Harrow say things she will regret later. of course it could be about any of the numerous tragedies in Harrow life but still, gave me pause, specially because it kinda echoes John’s earlier sentiment, wishing he had mastered Time.

finally, a quote that might be totally meaningless and completely off base in this theory or it could round it up perfectly, i haven’t decided yet;

[...] ; yet you prayed all the while knowing Ianthe’s facility for tergiversation would have given the whole universe pause. (Chapter 36, HtN)

we know Ianthe is a girlboss and gaslighting is her thing. However, isn’t this sentence a bit too dramatic to describe Ianthe? doesn’t it sound kinda ominous to you? it definitely does to me, and although it might totally be my Ianthe bias wanting her to play an important part, who is Ianthe hanging out with lately? exactly John God “Jod” the Emperor.

in conclusion, i haven’t reached any conclusion. but i still think there’s something off with John’s powers beyond what we’ve been told, which isn’t much really, and i think there’s something going on with Time within the narrative (that’s another whole post though), and i think these two things are most probably related. but i can’t say i’m 100% sure of any of it. this was fun though. if you made it here thank you so much you’re the best <3