#Palamedes set her up for it

[mayasaura]

In canto ix (9) of dante's inferno (the same canto where we encounter alecto) an angel appears while Dante is loitering outside the City of Dis (whose gates were marred in the harrowing of hell) to swipe its holy clearance passto let Dante into the Sixth circle.

Which is to say: If Dulcinea appears to help Harrow out in the Harrow in Hell portion of alecto the ninth I am going to lose what few shits I still have

[theriverbeyond]

it is soooooo interesting to compare the way the Fifth and Sixth engage with the necrocav dynamic because like, on first look (and especially compared to Everyone Else) they both seen so devoid of Issues and Problems and Violence. Contrast them with, like, the Third and Eighth houses, which are two of the most explicitly exploitative but also (IMO) the most honest necrocav relationships in the entire series -- they're (literally) exploitative, (literally) consumptive, (literally) violent, built on unquestioning devotion that demands blood. Pal and Cam and Abigail and Magnus seem almost idyllic in comparison, and YET!! their relationships are no less shaped by the Empire's cult of violent and required devotion, they are just less honest about it.

Like, the micro-level dynamic between Abigail and Magnus is as sweet and simple as they come, but there's no extricating their intimate relationship from the setting of violence in which that relationship is trapped in i.e. the cavalier as meat, the cavalier as a battery and the human body as something to be consumed and exploited.

And both Houses KNOW their relationships are built on violence. Both the Fifth (and Palamedes) seem visibly uncomfortable with the power dynamic inherent to the necrocav existance! Abigail and Magnus address this by attempting to perceive their dynamic as a marriage first and necrocav second, but their rejection of the necrocav framework is almost wholly aesthetic. They exist within and directly benefit from the bloody gears of the Empire without complaint, and even Abigail's critiques of the God/Empire seem to be purely academic in nature, more curious intrigue than any kind of genuine dissatisfaction with the status quo. And Magnus is by his own admission not a duelist nor any kind of fighter, but as a cavalier he takes up the sword, follows Abigail to Canaan House, and they both die together in the laboratory.

Compare this to the Sixth house, where instead of rejecting the paradigm at all Pal and Cam seem to have taken the stance of "through the power of love we can make necrocav healthy, actually", but again this is dishonest -- no amount of romanticization of necrocav consumption allows their relationship to actually BE non-exploitative, and the lie of equality haunts them to its natural end point i.e. their ultimate surrender to the Lyctoral process via their mutual death in flame.

And their relationship is especially interesting because of how Cam has thrown herself into the position of "cavalier" with complete abandon, leaving Pal unwilling to truly extricate himself from the role he has been assigned despite his clear discomfort with that level of devotion. See: "I can't bear this, I'm eating your life", "I never had rights to [your soul]" -- but, you know, he didn't HAVE to become the Master Warden, he didn't HAVE to accept Cam's devotion, he didn't HAVE to choose her as his cavalier. He chose to bear this, and he chooses to accept her ceding rights to her soul. I mean he does explode himself to prevent her from throwing herself on a spike to force his ascension but like, that didn't really stick, did it? Pal wants to escape the societal hierarchy he was born into, Cam says "no", and he accepts that answer, again and again and again.

"There was no alternative" / "We had the choice to stop"

[castellankurze]

Here's the thing that interests me about the dueling scene in Gideon the Ninth. Yeah, the narrative phrasing Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star is peak and the line "Death first to the vultures and scavengers" is pure fire but why is she in that position to begin with?

The situation is thus: Camilla Hect has just won a duel against Marta Dyas attempting to claim the Sixth House's necromancy challenge keys, but she was wounded in so doing. Naberius Tern, backed by Ianthe Tridentarius, is pressing a dueling challenge against the injured Camilla in a flagrant bid to beat Camilla down and take the keys for the Third House while she's already recovering from one match. Gideon is standing by watching things unfold and, to her relief, Harrowhark steps up to put Gideon in the ring as a substitute for the injured Camilla and thus shut down Naberius' vulturing.

Except...why? You'd think that in anything like a polite societal dueling code (I know, I know, but go with it-) Camilla and Palamedes would have the option to demure, saying something like "the Sixth House cavalier just fought a duel and is wounded to boot, piss off for a day and we'll see then." But that's not even floated as an option. Palamedes isn't a dumb guy - far from it - and even if he were out of his element, you'd think someone else could just lean in and say 'dude tell them to shove it.' Judith Deuteros objects by saying "There are rules" and Ianthe shuts that down by pointing out she pressed Marta's duel on incredibly flimsy pretext, so that seems to be an objection on the grounds for presenting the challenge, rather than probing for an option to refuse. If Harrow and Gideon (or Jeannemary, jumping on the bandwagon) hadn't interceded, Camilla was about to fight her second duel back to back.

(Even in the first dueling challenge, the tone of onlookers seems to be that people want Palamedes to default and hand over his key to the Second House to spare Camilla the fight, because they assume the Sixth House is weak and don't know how good Camilla is.)

To sum up: the Sixth House seems to have no recourse but to either accept the repeated dueling challenges or default; with no way to decline except to give the Third House something they want (in this case, a Canaan House key).

That's insane.

And if that's deliberate, rather than an oversight on Tamsyn Muir's part, that suggests so much about the Nine Houses' dueling culture. It suggests that a challenge from a cavalier primary can't be refused; you have to either throw down or roll over as if they won. It speaks to a distinct lack of value placed on human lives, that the cavaliers are forced to accept a challenge on pain of their house losing face at best, something material at worst. The defending house can only negotiate to a degree that the attacking house is willing to let them. This is, depressingly, fully in keeping with the series' characters' treatment of the cavaliers. The subsequent books and short stories (especially The Unwanted Guest) really hammer this idea in, that the cavaliers are nominally viewed as a source of blades and shields in the hands of the necromancers, even if the laypeople of the setting don't know all the reasons behind the traditions.

In real life, formal dueling typically had customs and rules for negotiation and ceremony, with multiple exit points for parties to back out of a potential threat to life without losing face. Only truly aggrieved parties would press a suit to the point of confrontation. The Nine Houses say screw that, put up or shut up. They've more or less raised up the informal tradition of 'swords now motherfucker.'

To steal a phrase from another tumblrite, 'congrats god that's the worst anyone's ever done it.'

[harrowharkwife]

i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.

they're his.

palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.

and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.

but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.

they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.

the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)

palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.

(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)

(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)

remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.

in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.

the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.

we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."

they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.

but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.

palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.

harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.

nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.

[mercymornsimpathizer]

per request of (checks notes) two people….the premises of my interpretation of the plot of gideon the ninth vis a vis cytherea and john are as follows:

i. the actions taken by cytherea and john are not consistent with their stated motivations

ii. this is on purpose

iii. we can work backwards from these characters' actions to determine their real motivations

because i am a funny poster and because i love my followers i will explain further under a readmore. abandon all sanity ye who enter here etc.

why canaan house: john and john's motivations

while john does not appear "on screen" in gideon the ninth, his actions set the plot into motion and shape the conflicts the arise. (1)he sends letters to the scions of each house, requesting that they come to canaan house with their cavaliers and no one else. he does not request the leaders of each house, or the best necromancers of each house, or the most experienced. (2)he does not provide information of what the lyctorhood trials will entail, either in the initial letters or upon arrival at canaan house. (3)during the creation of the first lyctors, he did not inform anyone that the death of the cavalier is not necessary, and (4)he interfered in the ascension of anastasia/samael, (5) the pair who spent the longest studying the lyctorhood process and (6)who we can presume were closest to achieving "true lyctorhood," which we can presume is (7)more powerful than "normal lyctorhood" and (8)does not kill the cavalier.

(9)the stated purpose of the events at canaan house is to create new lyctors to replace those that have (really or apparently) died to the resurrection beasts. (10)john further states that he did not intend for any unwanted deaths; (11)that he intended for the necromancers and cavaliers to enter into lyctorhood willingly; and (12)that, if the necromancers and cavaliers decided not to enter into lyctorhood, he intended that they should have been allowed to leave peacefully. (13)we can presume he also intends that any new lyctors created would be loyal to him, or at least not a threat to him.

are these actions consistent for these motivations? in my correct opinion, they are not. the secrecy of what the lyctorhood trials entail and the choice of very young, competitive people as postulants do not lend themselves well to the postulants making wise, well-informed choices. if john wanted the postulants to enter into lyctorhood willingly, and leave peacefully if not, he could have informed them of what the trials and lyctorhood entail, encouraged cooperation between the houses, and stated explicitly that they could leave at any time.

one way to interpret this mismatch is that john was careless or negligent in how he set up the trials, which is possible but not consistent with his characterization otherwise. another interpretation is that john was not sincere in stated motivations 10-12, and that he rather set things up as he did to create uniquely easy to manipulate per 13, which both makes sense and is in character but is not consistent with his other actions.

why canaan house 2: cytherea and cytherea's motivations

while john shapes much of the plot of gideon the ninth, cytherea as the primary antagonist drives the plot more directly. (14)she kills dulcinea and adopts her identity to pose as a postulant in the lyctor trials, and she poorly reanimated protesilaus's corpse. (15)she presumably is responsible for disposing of the transports, stranding the postulants at canaan house.  (16)she kills first the fifth house and the fourth house. (17) she prompts the ninth to complete the avulsion trial. (18)she attacks gideon, harrow, and camilla after being confronted by palamedes, but (19)repeatedly offers to spare gideon. (20)throughout her murder spree, she writes on the walls, questioning or criticizing  john for the events of her own ascension. (21)she did not participate in dios apate and is not mentioned by mercymorn or augustine as being party to their conspiracy to kill john (i think...correct me if this is wrong!). (22) her identity is not revealed by teacher or the other constructs at canaan house, despite the fact that they presumably would recognize her. (23)she does not contact or encourage the other postulants to contact john or anyone else for help.

(24)cytherea states that her motivation is to sabotage the creation of new lyctors and (25)to draw john to the nine houses, putting himself and the nine house in danger from the resurrection beasts. (26)she strongly implies that this is in revenge for her cavalier or possibly all of the original cavaliers. (27)presumably, she also wants both to survive long enough to accomplish these aims, though (28)she does not seem to intend to survive for very long beyond the events at canaan house.

are these actions consistent with these motivations? again, in my correct opinion, they are not. she does not send a distress call to draw john to canaan house, and she does not encourage anyone else to do so. she kills jeannemary and magnus, even though killing isaac and abigail would prevent the fourth and fifth from ascending; while it could be argued that she would have had to kill magnus to protect her plan, but this isn't true of jeannemary's murder. she further lets other necro-cav pairs live, despite the fact this allows for the opportunity for them to ascend. her stated goals (24 and 25) could be well achieved by (a, for 25) killing (simply or gruesomely) all or most of the necromancers, while allowing the cavaliers to live, and/or (b, for 24) calling or encouraging someone else to call for help or otherwise alert someone that things have gone wrong; neither of these actions would contradict her other stated or implied motivations.

(as an aside: i think many people believe that cytherea killed the fifth first because she suspected they were likeliest to figure out her plan, which is possible but doesn't explain why she would kill the fourth next or why she wouldn't kill the sixth or third.)

one interpretation of this mismatch is that she planned sloppily or haphazardly. while this doesn't directly contradict anything we know about her, it doesn't make much sense to me -- i don't think anyone, let alone a very powerful and reasonably intelligent person, would half-ass a revenge/justice plot as their last hurrah, even if she did not have long to plan or if her plan changed upon realizing that gideon is john's daughter. another interpretation i've seen is that cytherea is simply sadistic and/or dramatic, and that her actions are motivated by a desire to make the postulants paranoid and afraid. i think this is on the right track, but doesn't itself explain everything she does (and the things she does not do).

why be perfect when you could be normal: the original lyctors and perfect lyctorhood

what is "perfect lyctorhood" and under what conditions does it occur? when i use the term "perfect lyctorhood," i'm referring to a situation where both the necromancer and the cavalier ascend to lyctorhood and share their newfound power; this is in contrast to what i'm calling "normal lyctorhood," wherein the necromancer kills and consumes the cavalier and uses them as a power source. in text, john and alecto are the only example we see of "true lyctorhood," while the other original lyctors (and ianthe) are "normal."

while the creation of the original lyctors is not thoroughly described in the text, we do know some details. it is strongly implied that (29)mercymorn and augustine, the first two lyctors, ascended under duress after their cavaliers forced their hands, presumably by killing themselves. much later, (30) anastasia and samael attempted to ascend after (5)spending a long time studying the process, but are (4)interrupted by john, who kills samael. (31)john states this he interfered because anastasia and samael had made a mistake. (32)at no point does john inform anyone that perfect lyctorhood is possible or that the cavaliers do not need to die.

i think it's reasonable to conclude that (33)very skilled necromancers, with strong bonds of mutual respect with their cavaliers, given the right resources (i.e. the trials at canaan house, or something equivalent, and sufficient time) could achieve perfect lyctorhood, or at least come close to it. (34)fear, pressure, and devaluation of the lives of cavaliers, on the other hand, push necromancers towards normal lyctorhood.

i think it's also reasonable to conclude that, in line with (13)his motivation to maintain power over the lyctors, john does not want perfect lyctors to be created, and that (4)his interference in the ascension of anastasia and samael was not because (31)they made a mistake but rather (35)to prevent them from achieving power that would rival his own.

connecting the red string

if john and cytherea's actions are not sufficiently explained by their stated motivations (or of them the motivations commonly attributed to them by fans), what motivations would explain their actions? because john (by asking for young people as postulants, and by being secretive about the lyctoral process, and by not stating that postulants could leave) and cytherea (by killing people, and by preventing people from leaving, and by generally encouraging competition and paranoia among the postulants) both created an environment of fear and pressure at canaan house, and because cytherea (by letting both necromancers and cavaliers live in other cases) john (by not providing a deadline, and by not forbidding or obscuring parts of the trials, and by not directly or indirectly supervising the trials) otherwise do nothing to prevent to an outcome that they does not want, i think we can draw the following conclusion: john and cytherea are both attempting to ensure that normal lyctors, and only normal lyctors, are created at canaan house.

in other words, i think john tasked cytherea with going to canaan house to put pressure on the postulants to ascend quickly and to prevent them from leaving alive if they were likely to not ascend. i think he did this because he did not want the postulants to become perfect lyctors, and because he did not want the secrets of lyctorhood to be known to the nine houses in general, and because he did not want to take responsibility for the deaths. i think cytherea likely did want revenge against john, and likely did not want to live beyond canaan house, but did not want to kill john; rather i think she wanted to be killed by john or by one of the new lyctors.

i think that tamsyn muir is a talented writer who has demonstrated an ability to create twisty, multi-layered plots where characters are often working on incorrect or incomplete information and where characters are often not forthcoming or are dishonest about their actions and motivations, and that therefore the mismatch between characters' actions and stated motivations are intentional. i think my conclusion sufficiently explains the actions taken (and not taken) by both cytherea and john in the gideon the ninth, and while it contradicts their stated motivations, i do not think it contradicts any of their actions or any of their demonstrated motivations. moreover i think it is consistent with their characterization in general: cytherea is dramatic and emotionally distraught over her own ascension, but she is not part of the plot against john, and she encourages gideon in her role as cavalier; john is very smart, and has few compunctions about doing horrible things to children (especially to maintain his own power), but does not want to be blamed for the things he does, and so often outsources the dirty work to his followers.

[liesmyth]

Anon with the friend who's reading tlt on the reverse order: Yes, he knows he's being a lab rat, he doesn't keep motes on the books because he's very much a casual reader (and thus perfect for the experiment) and so far we have only done Nona The Ninth and The Unwanted Guest, plus some chapters of HTN & Doctor Sex. There's the slight chance of osmosis corruption because I occasionally reblog modern au memes on my main blog, which I think is how he got Palamedes' whole deal.

There's not much he guessed, and even less he guessed correctly. He did call the fact Crown and Ianthe are related a pleasant plot twist, and he initially thought John was Varun.

The most interesting guess he had, which he arrived through flawed means, was Paul's existence, and the fact Pyrrha had some sort of connection to Gideon The Ninth — mostly because he guessed the average Lyctorhood to be Camilla and Palamedes', and with the reference of Gideon and G1deon as 1) permanently dead, in a setting where he's aware necromancy exists and he thought zombies to be actual resurrected people 2) connected to Pyrrha, and 3) the fact Pyrrha had "some weird vibes" (he refused to elaborate) led him to thinking Pyrrha was half Gideon, half someone else, and the reason Kiriona was vaguely off-putting to people was because she didn't have a full soul. Anyways he did think the same would happen to Palamedes and Camilla, which it did, and that Kiriona was pissed at Pyrrha because of an ambiguous degree of relationship

We have paused rn, as the labrat experiment is in return for me reading a webcomic per book

Oh yeah also im doing this because i either dreamt a post proposing it up or actually saw it, and honestly i wanted to see how much biases and previous narrative impacted the relationship of the reader with tlt characters, their relationships, and worldbuilding, as i absorbed tlt by osmosis as an agender aroace. so yeah giving a gay guy tlt without previous context in the reverse order to complete the trifecta (lesbian woman reading it in the correct order, aroace agender getting to know it by osmosis and figuring out the plot best I could before reading it, gay guy reading it in reverse)

ANON THANK YOU FOR COMING BACK! @mayasaura and everyone who wanted a follow-up to the first part.

"Thought John was Varun at first" is soooo big brained actually! I'm always thinking about John's more RB-like traits. I'm also very amused that he cast Pyrrha as the zombie puppeteer, I bet he's going to love tiny Harrow walking around her dead parent's bodies for a decade.

I also feel like the worldbuilding in NtN is veeery different from the general #vibe of the first two books — it feels like an "anime filler arc" kind of sidequest plot — and I'm very curious if going from NtN to HtN is going to make the settings vibe changes feel stronger or weaker than reading it normally would.

Anyway, I love that you decided to do this, and please let us know what he thinks about HtN! I hope you enjoy the webcomic :D

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 20

Oh god day 5 already. i really hope ‘the saddest girl in the whole entire world’ isn’t Nona, Nona does not deserve to be sad. also ‘Paul gets born’ … what. what the fuck does that mean is someone going to have a baby??

hello ominous portrait of Gideon’s mum, we meet again

i mean tbf Nona hasn’t had an awful lot of chances to tell them about Gideon being the one in her dream, more important stuff has been going on 

Nona loves magazines :( :( once again the mere mention of magazines is making me sad

oh Nona. something’s not just wrong with her health, she’s literally dying. that’s why she wanted a six month birthday so bad, this is going to make me cry

also, presuming this is 'The Secret’™ that Nona told Hot Sauce … i can imagine that only added to the betrayal, as Hot Sauce, after seeing Nona recover from getting shot, might have thought that Nona was lying to her about it

hmm Palamedes feels pretty certain that Nona is Gideon now, but i really don’t think its going to be that simple - maybe Nona isn’t one singular person but some kind of soul jumble of Harrow, Alecto and Gideon? 

‘the one who wasn’t startlingly handsome’ excuse you Palamedes Gideon is startlingly handsome. to me. 

i feel bad for Hot Sauce as well as Nona, she’s gone through some serious trauma and is only fourteen. that being said, i’m nowhere near as confident as Palamedes, who seems to have a very strong moral code, that Hot Sauce will regret shooting Nona 

ohhh god i desperately hope that Nona manages to survive in some shape or form. i’m so attached to her, i don’t think i can handle her dying 

We Suffer’s name is very apt given how insufferably cryptic she’s being right now 

oh no Corona’s going to Ianthe, isn’t she. i’m very worried about her motives, i’m not convinced that she is as on BoE’s side as she outwardly appears 

‘It was Camilla trying to be Palamedes’ this largely seems to be on purpose by Camilla to get We Suffer to do what she says, but given that Palamedes and Camilla have been body sharing for a good six months now, i wonder if some of their mannerisms and bits of personality are bleeding over unconsciously. also this bit is very reminiscent of Camilla-and-Palamedes together, which i feel like has to come back at some point given how it was set up in the beginning

ahaha Ianthe puppeting Naberius’s body is so fucked up 

Ianthe’s line about hoping the expert in puppeting bodies is ‘out there somewhere admiring my handiwork’ … if she’s referring to Harrow here, then she’s somehow discovered Harrow’s parents died and were being controlled by her. i can’t recall if thats something Harrow shared with her during HtN or not, but if it’s not then i’m concerned about where she got that info 

oh fuck me ngl i totally forgot about the ‘Pyrrha being missing’ part of the plot. i wonder how much Ianthe knows about Pyrrha’s real identity. she’s clearly pretending to be G1deon here (i think) but unless Pyrrha’s also wearing sunglasses rn, Ianthe’s got to know something’s up, surely. even then, she was with Gideon-in-Harrow and saw Pyrrha grabbing sunglasses to cover her eyes at the end of HtN, and i feel like its unlikely Ianthe didn’t notice that?

also i’m sorry is it John that she’s calling Poppa. nobody liked that 

and i think Pyrrha’s gotta be doing some kind of act/infiltration. it doesn’t really line up with her previous actions in HtN to be siding with Ianthe & John now, even if she’s not enthused about BoE

[shouldhavebeenpersephone]

In GTN chapter 36, Cytherea says “None of you have learned how to die gracefully. I learned over 10,000 years ago"

Do you know/have a theory as to how Cyth could have learned anything pre-resurrection? She was not one of the original lyctors present for the resurrection and it was only 10,000 years ago. It could be hyperbole but I am suspicious of the “over 10,000 years”.

Thank you so much for the ask! I wanted to take my time with it, I hope you didn't mind the wait.

I actually had been chewing on this with my most recent GtN reread. Bear with me as I cut and paste all the pieces that form my thoughts on this - hopefully it's somewhat coherent to read.

Could "over 10000 years" be a hyperbole? Maybe. A lot of characters tell the 'truth' as far as they believe it to be so even if it's factually incorrect. I don't think, however, that Tamsyn would make Cytherea say it in this specific way if it was a hyperbole. In GtN chapter 35 where Palamedes confronts Cytherea we get the following lines, which are what feed my intuition about this:

"Don't lie to me, please."

Dulcinea said, "I have never lied to any of you."

Cytherea has no reason to lie, especially not after being confronted by Palamedes. She tells him herself - she has been giving pieces of the truth and using those to manipulate the narrative. Because of this and because it's much more fun if it isn't a hyperbole I see no point to dismiss it as an emotional inaccuracy.

So let's say she is over 10,000 years old. How does that work?

First thing I went looking for while trying to figure this out was the question of Cytherea's birth. On the fandom wiki, it states that Cytherea was born into the established Seventh. I have been combing through the books, and I cannot find anything in canon that truly confirms this. What we do know of the timeline and her age is the following from HtN chapter 9:

"When they first brought her to Canaan House, I thought there'd been some mistake. - She was just shy of thirty then, I recall. -

-Was she the first gen, or second?"

"Second," said God. "Early second. We were still experimenting with getting the Sixth installation up and running. Some of the Houses were empty."

Mercymorn spoke up: "No. We had it running by then. Because Valancy was with us, and Anastasia."

-"Yes, you're right. We were all there to meet her. All sixteen of us -

'Some of the houses were empty' is the important line here, because in NtN John 5:4 Harrow describes how the resurrection happened:

-You resurrected some of them. You wake up fewer still. You start out with a few thousand, then, later, some hundred thousand, then millions, but never more than millions. You teach them how to live all over again. You teach yourself. -

The houses are named in order of resurrection. The Seventh, then, comes after the Sixth, which should make it obvious that by the time Cytherea arrived the Sixth was already established - or the Seventh wouldn't have existed. Yet, for some reason, for John this is not as obvious. I have found what could be an explanation in HtN chapter 2:

He said, "No. I haven't truly resurrected anyone in ten thousand years. But at that time... I set many aside, for safety... and I've often felt bad about just keeping them as insurance. They've been asleep all this myriad, Harrow, -

The difference wouldn't be as obvious to John, because he didn't resurrect the houses one by one. He resurrected a chunk of the earth's population, kept them dormant, and piece by piece woke them up to populate the houses. Beyond the fact that Cytherea is never said to have been born on the Seventh in canon (again, to my knowledge - please correct me if I missed it), the following from HtN chapter 2 really seals the deal in my eyes that she was not born on the Seventh but rather woken up for the Seventh.

The emperor said gently, "She needs to go home, Harrow."

"That was never her home," he said.

You did not look. "And will the Seventh House accept her?"

I also considered John might feel Cytherea belongs at home with the other Lyctors and therefore denies that the Seventh is her home, but then remembered the following from the same chapter:

He said, "No Lyctor has ever returned home, once we understood the reprecussions... no Lyctor except one, who knew I would come to intercept her for that very reason."

He is talking about how Harrow cannot go home to the Ninth, and referring to Cytherea going home by returning to Canaan house located on earth. John also talks about the kind of people he resurrected in NtN John 5:4:

-We'll get them all back... some of them, anyway... or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn't do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. -

Part of the same chapter I included above in combination with this one make me itchy almost. Harrow says 'You teach them how to live all over again.' That almost feels like it should be people who recently learned how to live. Like John only resurrected kids.

Think about it. He resurrects his loved ones and ones he can forgive. People who did not take part in the destruction of earth in his eyes. Who other than children could he really be talking about? Children, babies, who have no power to decide or influence to exert, who - even if they did have the power - do not have the capacity to understand the consequences of their actions. Whose memories will be easiest to erase because there is so little to begin with.

It then also makes sense why there were two generations of Lyctors. The population he woke up had to grow up into adults first. Why else would he have half a band of Lyctors trying to settle all of the Houses? If he was able to pick adults worthy of resurrection, he would have been able to pick adults capable of establishing his houses and becoming his hands and gestures.

One final point that drives this home is the following from the very beginning of GtN in chapter 7 when Teacher tells the Ninth about Dulcinea's condition:

"Dulcinea Septimus was not meant to live to twenty-five,"-

Dulcinea's hereditary disease is the same as Cytherea's. John did not know she was sick when she first was brought to Canaan house, which means that when he resurrected her, she must have been young enough to not be actively dying yet. Perhaps a toddler or a child who had been sick for some time - long enough to know what it feels like to slowly be dying.

So, all in all, my answer is that Cytherea was not born on the Seventh. I am not sure where the idea that the second generation was born on their planets of origin came from, but I honestly doubt any of them were born instead of woken. Cytherea claiming to have learned something 10,000 years ago would be a great way for Tamsyn to give us just enough to figure it out - this is, after all, the same author who gave us the big reveal of the second book in the first sentence of the first book of her series.

[eskildit]

the unwanted guest incoherent ramblings under read more so spoilers below:

did tamsyn muir enter my brain and ask "oh what would drive flora just absolutely insane" and then write that????? i have to WORK today!!!

i was literally just thinking about naberius and how different his relationships to ianthe and corona were. hes socially beneath both of them but ianthe and babs had more of a back and forth compared to the far more unbalanced dynamic between corona and babs.

and naberius' care for rules!!!! i was rereading the duel between gideon and naberius a bit ago and in addition to the obvious part of gideon breaking the rules, theres this tiny moment between naberius and magnus. naberius points out that hed be embarrassed to admit to losing to a fourteen year old, to which magnus makes a joke, gives babs a look, and naberius looks scolded. like for all his bitchy attitude he steps back into line when told to!

im forever gonna be rotating around in my mind the fact that babs was continuously cheated on. what a fascinating character detail. also my favorite line of the whole story was "I ruled him through fear and poison and he relaxed into it like a warm bath." woof.

AAAAAAAAA i am such a paldulcie girl so i dont even have interesting thoughts i just feel insane. i figured out around the third scene that the voice was dulcie and i had to take a lap around my apartment. them!!!! THEM!!!! other people smarter than me can unpack what the bible verse means but at a minimum hes saying shes like an angel. and the fact we never see her? that its this off stage revelation? i really think this story made great use of the stage play format but dulcie being a voice in the audience palamedes is speaking to is just. muah. perfection.

okay soul stuff!!! i had a prediction that this story was going to go into river or soul dynamics because like, its palamedes and ianthe. that sounds like what they would get up to. but im so intrigued by what this is now setting up! this certainly puts any remaining expectations of a true perfect lyctorhood to bed. it also presents a possible answer to why pyrrha was piloting g1deons body, that they had compartmentalized too much but her soul was still trying to graft on.

also have we officially proven abigail correct? that there is in fact something beyond the river? because thats what two shores would mean. one shore is the living crossing into the river, and the other shore crossing onto whatever lies past it. dulcie said she is out of the river, meaning she is at the shore beyond the river.

anyway, i love that ianthe is a liar who lies but also is just unwilling to accept facts that go against her worldview. queen of justification and denial <3

[lady-harrowhark]

Hello! I saw you mention that Pyrrha remembers pre-resurrection, and I totally missed that!! Do you have any theories as to why?

I have a few thoughts!

Just for context - because I didn't catch that on my first read either until I started going back through! - there are a few instances that seem to suggest Pyrrha remembers at least some of her life pre-Resurrection. Off the top of my head, I know there's one point where she refers to G1deon as G--, just like John does. Nona also says that Pyrrha calls her "Hairy Maclary", which is referring to a series of children's books by a New Zealand author. Here's a link to a picture and some info about Hairy Maclary... I can definitely understand why Pyrrha would call Nona that lol. This one's super interesting to me in that it's such a fantastic example of the way Tamsyn uses memes and references so skillfully! In the previous books, most of the references are fairly organic in that they're things that could conceivably be, you know, just things the characters say; the readers catch it (if they also know the reference! otherwise they're fairly unobtrusive) but the characters themselves aren't intentionally making a reference. This would be the things like "You can't just ask someone why they want to be a Lyctor" and "a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy," etc. The exception, though, is John. The "none Houses with left grief" particularly is SO fun from an exposition perspective (but if I start on that one I'll never stop), and then of course we have Commander Wake Me Up Inside. The implication here being that John remembers these specific things and is intentionally making those references within the context of the story. Pulling that same expository trick with Pyrrha sets them up as both remembering... at least to some degree. The hints that we get from Pyrrha are such that it's pretty unclear to what extent she remembers, leaving a lot of room for juicy speculation :)

I initially touched on it over on this post where I rambled about names, memory, and the Eightfold Word, but I'm copying over the Pyrrha-specific paragraph so that you don't have to dig for it:

When assisting with Harrow’s lobotomy, Ianthe tells her, “If you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over.” And in NtN, Pyrrha tells Palamedes, “You should be draining and replacing her fucking brain fluid... When Gideon and I designed that trial, I used to crack his skull and sieve it myself, just as a control variable... The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn’t mind being trepanned on the regular.” I don’t know exactly where the threshold is for pushing one’s brain too hard, but I suspect frequently draining and replacing one’s brain fluid is in that ballpark. Which is to say, it’s very possible that Mercy and Pyrrha (and potentially others) could have healed over from anything John had done to their brains.

Also, I don't know why this didn't occur to me as I was writing up that other post, but when Pyrrha's telling Palamedes about how dangerous their uhhhhh living arrangements are, and how they're risking brain damage... Pyrrha and G1deon were operating under somewhat similar circumstances for thousands of years. Cumulatively, it's possible that G1deon's brain was racking up damage that eventually eroded away whatever John had done. Another thought is that maybe the fact that G1deon died and Pyrrha didn't is at play here.

It could very well be less dramatic than that, though. We don't know much about how Lyctorhood impacts the brain, although to be completely fair, we also can't say for certain how a typical human brain would function after ten thousand years of runtime either. Our brains are constantly wiring new neural pathways and rewiring and revising old ones. After thousands of years, might we be reaching a Ship of Theseus situation with regard to the neural circuitry impacting pre-Res memories? Which is a fancy way of saying, "Maybe it wore off."

It could be all of the above, too. Assuming that Lyctor brains retain plasticity like we see in typical human brains (and I'm not letting myself think too hard on implications either way, because in sci-fi/fantasy make-believe land, neuroscience can be whatever you want it to be), we'd probably see that effect happening with the other Lyctors at roughly the same rate, but at least as far as we can tell (and that wording is intentional because I'm not taking anything off the table with this series), the others don't seem to remember. So that might be contributing, but not sufficient on its own. BUT perhaps ten thousand years of rewiring PLUS ten thousand years of cohabitation PLUS however long of being "trepanned on the regular" PLUS G1deon dying might override John's meddling.

We've still got so many open questions here regardless of what the specific mechanisms are. Like, I'd love to know when Pyrrha started to remember exactly. And did G1deon remember anything, then? It seems like he was Straight Up Not Having a Good Time so if he did remember, he might not have been relying on those memories much. Whatever's going on, I'm sure it's just as bonkers as the rest of the series!

[faerromagnetic]

Finished Gideon the Ninth! Some of my analysis were correct! Which was cool! There were things I didn't guess, but they felt properly set up, so I wasn't annoyed at all.

Spoilers below!

So, a Lyctor is basically a living Philisopher's Stone from FMA. Harrow is now basically van Hohenheim.

I honestly did not see that coming, cuz that was a hard, but not atypical way to become immortal. Again, Hohenheim from FMA. I guess it makes sense right? Especially with the whole "One Flesh, One End" thing. I had flashbacks to Steel Inquisitors in Mistborn.

My boyyyy Palamedes! God damn, what a nerd! What a Bad Ass! What a bloody mastermind of biology! He's my top character now, since my first 3 died first :(.

Also, I was right with the whole Dulcinea, Unrequited Love aspect! Just didn't expect it to be from Palamedes towards Dulcinea.

The moment Gideon and Harrow fused was some straight up anime stuff happening. I loved it.

I kinda expected the Emperor to look like, Nagash or idk Vecna from DnD. But he's just a Dude.

Some thoughts and theories:

They never said that the person being incorporated and the person that incorporates said person has to be willing. It just makes an incomplete, but still powerful lyctor. It also never said you can't do the ritual multiple times, heck, Corona almost said that Ianthe could have done that to her as well.

There's hints to mind reading already, so you could forcibly know a person through that, shove people into a lyctor to grow in power.

Also... weird thing to notice, but, there are no scythes. It's very clearly, a conscious omission to avoid scythes. When all the other typical symbols of Death are present. Skulls, Skeletons, Black Cloaks. So where are the Scythes?

[mayasaura]

one problem with a theatrical adaption of tlt is htn, where the reveal that Gideon lives on works because of the change of second person to first.

the only way i can think of it working is that the actor playing gideon works backstage, like the lights system (but is hidden from the audience aside from subtle hints)

the biggest hint is when when wake breaches pal's river bubble she 'breaks' the lighting system and the stage goes dark. harrow is ushered into the wings by pal so she doesn't see anything, but the lights flick back on just before the curtains drop for a scene change, and pal looks directly up at the light box in surprise and smiles. if the audience is quick to turn around they can see a flash of a black robe.

Oh boy my friend, have you come to the right place!!

So, fun fact about ninja. Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this. The image of a ninja covered head to toe in black, with a hood and mask, comes from Kabuki theatre. It was originally a stagehand uniform. Like stagehands in modern theatre, stagehands in Kabuki would wear all black to signify that they were not really there, and whatever effect they were causing (carrying a prop, creating a breeze, ect.) was to be taken as happening on its own. Basic stagehand stuff, a lot of productions in many styles around the world do it, especially if they don't have fancy rigging systems.

Someone (I don't remember who now, or in what play) had the idea to dress the ninja in a production up as a stagehand. In the convention of the theatre, this made them invisible. The audience was already so used to ignoring stagehands, they didn't know any more than the characters that the ninja was present, despite the actor being clearly visible on stage. Which meant when the ninja struck, it was as if out of nowhere. I can only imagine the uproar in the theatre the first time it happened. It worked so well as to become commonplace, and the rest is history. The popular image of a ninja is still a kabuki stagehand.

So, back to the stage play of Harrow the Ninth. I think you've hit almost exactly on how to incorporate the Gideon twist into a theatrical production. But not as a lighting tech. Gideon is a stage hand. Maybe there would be more than one stagehand, maybe she would be the only one, but she would operate in full view of the audience, literally setting the scenes. I think it works best if she's the only one, but if the production needs more, she should subtly stand out in some way. As the play went on, we would notice that this one stage hand... increasingly interacts with Harrow, though Harrow never acknowledges it. At first it might look like she's playing Harrow's necromancy, because that would be the main special effect she would need to help with. When Harrow is unconscious at the end of a scene, it's always the same stagehand carrying her out. But we all know she's not really there. Until Palamedes acknowledges her. Turns to look right at her, and speaks to her. I can see the scene clearly. He would look at her, stunned, until Gideon finally took off her mask. The line "Kill us twice, shame on God," would be addressed to Gideon, and then he would turn back to Harrow, kiss her on the forehead, and tell her to go. Gideon, always out of Harrow's line of sight, would guide Harrow away while Harrow looked back at Palamedes.

[nonagesiiiimus]

eden's tlt reread: a sidebar on names- palamedes (and cytherea)

i cannot stop thinking about the names of these characters and their many, many, many different references and deeper meanings. i haven't even finished my chapter two analysis because I am thinking about names so much. i know i've talked about it before. I am going to talk about it again. sue me. i want to talk about Palamedes and Cytherea's names. i will eventually get to chapter two. but for now...

Palamedes Diomedes:

Palamedes was originally going to be named Diomedes, who is also a figure in the Trojan War. Diomedes was the King of Argos, a friend of Odysseus, and a man admired by Athena. in the Iliad, Diomedes charges into battle and ends up wounding Aphrodite. additionally, in the battle, as he heads in, he is blessed with the protection of Athena:

"She set the man ablaze, his shield and helmet flaming with tireless fire like the star that flames at harvest, bathed in the Ocean, rising up to outshine all other stars." (Iliad, 5.4-6)

here’s why i think the characterization of Palamedes and Diomedes is important, even though Palamedes was not actually named after him in the final book. there are some clear parallels. Diomedes was smart, brave, and blessed by the goddess of wisdom and tact on the battlefield. Palamedes is the first of the house of the scholarly Sixth librarians and the living legacy of the incredibly tactful and brilliant Cassiopeia. i can’t help but feel that Athena setting him ablaze with bravery as he charged into Troy is akin to Palamedes charging into Dulcinea/Cytherea’s room and, after completing his mission to ring the truth out of her, bursting into flames. user u/onlymodestdreams on reddit also pointed out that the bursting into flames aspect also calls back to the Paul transformation in NTN, something i totally missed but absolutely think is relevant here.

Cytherea:

why mention Aphrodite before? so glad you asked. Cytherea is another name for Aphrodite, as recorded in Homer’s Hymn 5 and 10 to Aphrodite:

"Muse, tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite the Cyprian, who stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all that the sea: all these love the deeds of rich-crowned Cytherea." (Homer’s Hymn 5 to Aphrodite)

"Of Cytherea, born in Cyprus, I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it." (Homer’s Hymn 10 to Aphrodite)

Kythira, or Cythera, is a Greek island where the Phoenicians brought the worship of Aphrodite—hence, her secondary name as Cytherea. Cytherea/Aphrodite is a goddess of love and beauty, but also of war and violence and, across many stories, revenge. it’s quite familiar to how we see Cytherea portrayed in GTN: a goddess, beautiful and charming and enchanting, but full of rage and pain and vengeful angst. and of course, she was injured by Palamedes, just like how she was injured by Diomedes during the Trojan War! some people argue that Palamedes’ sacrifice did nothing to hinder Cytherea, but it’s pretty clearly laid out at the end of GTN that him going dynamite mode really injures Cytherea and affects her ability to heal on her own without siphoning from Ianthe:

"As Gideon watched, somewhere between horror and fascination, the earlier wounds—the ones Palamedes had inflicted when he blew up the sick room—began to reopen… 'What in the hell?' objected Gideon, more to relieve her feelings than in hope of an answer. 'She hadn't healed,' said Camilla weakly… 'She'd just skinned over the damage—a surface fix, hides the cracks.'" (p. 420).

Palamedes:

Palamedes is another Greek hero from the Iliad, one who outsmarted Odysseus and was betrayed by those he saw as allies. when Odysseus pretended to be insane instead of going to serve in the Trojan War, Palamedes understood Odysseus was trying to trick them. to prove this, he threatened Odysseus’ son's, forcing Odysseus to reveal he was not insane. by ensuring Odysseus entered the war, Palamedes played a big part in the Achaeans winning the war. Odysseus, still feeling betrayed by Palamedes getting him to come to the front lines, later framed Palamedes as a traitor by forging a letter from Priam, resulting in Palamedes being stoned to death by his supposed allies (Apollodorus Epitome E.3.7-9).

Palamedes was described by Dares Phygrius in his History of the Fall of Troy as "tall and slender, wise, magnanimous, and charming" (reference). he is also credited with many academic inventions: "Palamedes had a reputation for sagacity, and the ancients attributed a number of inventions to him, including the alphabet, numbers, weights and measures, coinage, board games, and the practice of eating at regular intervals" (Britannica).

Palamedes was clearly a super brilliant man—from his dealing with Odysseus to his prowess on the battlefield to his scholarly inventions. his hand in pushing Odysseus into the Trojan War- his ability to see through Odysseus' lies and disguise of insanity- was what led to his death by his allies, but also to the victory of the Achaeans. for Locked Tomb Palamedes, the parallel is quite clear. his intelligence and his physical appearance sound quite similar to historical Greek Palamedes. without Palamedes' ingenious discovery of Cytherea and his subsequent death because of her, someone he once trusted, Harrow would likely have never triumphed. instead, they all might have been defeated one by one by Cytherea. Palamedes’ sacrifice provided Harrow with the crucial impetus to confront the enemy directly and ultimately secure victory.

Palamedes is also an Arthurian hero. Palemedes in Arthurian tales is a Middle-Eastern knight, known for a couple key things. first, he is in love with a woman named Iseult. He loses the fight for Iseult's hand against another knight, leaving his love unrequited (but still there). he remains in love with her, despite not being able to be with her. he is also one of the knights said to have fought the Questing Beast, a mythical monster that represents all the core issues of the Arthurian time that eventually tear the society apart. to me, this too sounds like our TLT Palamedes: unrequited love, questing to destroy something that he sees as the root of evil. whether that's Jod, the lyctor process, or the resurrection beasts is hard to tell, but to be honest my vote is for the former two.

there's so much buried in a single name, that sets up some of the most complex and incredible characters in the series. this is the kind of shit we live for, and honestly why this series is so addictive. everything unspools into something bigger.

please note that i am not a classics scholar by any means, so there are errors in here i'm sure. please correct as you see fit!

[paradoxcase]

The Unwanted Guest

I wonder why this is formatted as a play. Because Palamedes is forced to play a role while in a space Ianthe has control over? I love that Ianthe has conjured up this whole elaborate setting with multiple servants that are also all Ianthe

I originally thought the seven coffins were for the seven OG Lyctors, or maybe there are seven because Dulcinea is here, but that's my best guess. There's a ton of Significant Numbers in this story, but I don't think Ianthe is associated with seven in any way. And I'm sure the changing orders and which ones were used as set pieces, etc. are all just a red herring, right?

It's in a higher register, which is naturally associated with upper class/rich people, and thus all the connotations you'd normally attach to things having to do with rich people. I don't think there's really anything more to it than that. There are high-register ways of being rude, but I don't think this is actually one of them. If you are immersed to a certain degree in this kind of upper class culture yourself, I think it probably wouldn't sound the way he's describing it here, which might be why Ianthe disagrees with this analysis

See, this is how you be rude in a high register

Ok, I'm not able to work out what the two non-yes/no questions would be here

I respect this story's commitment to portraying necrophilia as the typical variety of naughty sex

I mean, her whole life is lies, pretty much - the lies she engineered about Corona, originally, and now she's also lying about being loyal to John, and possibly about being friends with Gideon, and she wasn't genuine with Augustine either, etc. She just kind of runs on lies

Wondering again how Camilla survived this, and also why there is all this emphasis on sexual reproduction there when I think it's been established that they do everything artificially now?

It's honestly kind of a shit argument on both of their parts. I don't think he actually goes on to show that souls can be diminished, either - I think he proves that souls can be augmented and/or combined, but I don't think he shows that they can be diminished, or that the souls that Lyctor eats degrade over time. I could imagine a possibility where souls can be augmented or combined, but not diminished, or where souls can be diminished, but souls consumed by a Lyctor for some reason aren't. I don't think all of these things are necessarily tied together

Ok, but that actually sounds legitimately hilarious

Is this like an Ace Attorney reference or something

I mean, he wasn't loyal enough to go quietly when Ianthe wanted him to die, if we can take her initial inability to get his soul under control as any indication, although since both he and Corona were there to stop her I'm kind of curious how that went down, now? It's interesting that sewing and mixing drinks were part of his skillset, he already sounds more interesting than Ianthe is claiming, haha

Something tells me this is either a lie, or Ianthe is just wrong

Why is it not "safe" to choose an already qualified person to be the cavalier? Is it just that they won't have total control over them then?

I was going to ask how Palamedes knew that Ortus got blown up, but then I remembered that Gideon told him about this when she went to tell him about Protesilaus's head in Harrow's closet. But now I'm kind of curious what Harrow told Ianthe about Ortus - she obviously told her something, because Ianthe recognized his name when she started using it around her, but maybe she didn't tell her about the shuttle blowing up. Also, Ortus was also chosen to be Harrow's cavalier basically from birth, if we're to understand that he was chosen primarily because his father was Harrow's father's cavalier. So that's actually an example of when that system doesn't work

Yeah, that was pretty funny. But has Dulcinea ever actually met Babs? According to Judith, she was confined to the Seventh because she wasn't well enough to go elsewhere, and none of the other scions had met her in person. Even Palamedes and Camilla never met her in person. And Babs wasn't in Harrow's Canaan House River bubble, either, probably on account of his soul being inside/part of Ianthe at that point. So how does she know what he was like, to be making a joke like this?

This whole sequence where she fences with these attendants which are really all just her is a very playing chess with yourself sort of thing, especially since she just disqualifies most of them. But I guess that's part of sort of being Babs, right? Rigid adherence to dueling rules

I just want to point out that this is after she exchanged friendship bracelets with Gideon. I don't know if she is lying to Palamedes here, or was lying to Gideon, or maybe both? Or maybe she thinks Gideon has had a level-up as Kiriona but is fine with trash-talking original Gideon?

So, that's from Hamlet, and it basically means that if everyone got what they deserved, everyone would be punished, in response to Palamedes saying that Babs doesn't deserve all this monkeying around with his body. But how does Dulcinea know Shakespeare?

So she did die again in Harrow's River bubble, and then something full-of-awe happened, and now she is on the far side of the River. I guess to add to the other unanswered questions from the last post, we now have "what's on the other side of the RIver?" From my perspective, it sounds like the far side is probably heaven, and the River itself may be Gehenna, or maybe Purgatory, from a Christian perspective?

Who is "her" here? Is he referring to what Cytherea said to him at the end of Gideon the Ninth?

This is from the bible - I think a description of an angel, maybe? So again, how does Palamedes know this quote?

Oh please, Ianthe, by the time you became a Lyctor, five other people had died, and Protesilaus had turned out to be dead the whole time

You know that now, but there's no way you knew that at the time. Harrow certainly didn't know that, or else she would have realized that her plan to remove Gideon's soul wouldn't work because she still needed Gideon's sword abilities, and I don't think you are actually smarter than Harrow

Dude, you spent literal months on the Mithraeum training with Augustine to improve your fighting abilities

I think the answer is the latter, but I'm interested to see if that turns out to be true

So even if she'd said "No" he still would have lost. He'd have left voluntarily if she'd said "no I actually have no idea where Babs is". He was gambling on her not even knowing whether she knew or not

I'm not sure why this allowed him to win control of the body. Did Ianthe just have a revelation and check out for a bit? I think it maybe says interesting things about why she was so worried that the same thing that happened to G1deon and Pyrrha would happen to her if she died - maybe she thought that she would somehow become Babs after death because of this conversation she had with Palamedes? After Palamedes and Camilla combined into Paul, Paul told Ianthe that there was still hope for her and Babs - did they mean that Ianthe should completely merge with Babs' soul like they had just done? I don't feel like that would have been an attractive proposition to Ianthe at all. Or were they just sort of acknowledging that Babs was still there?

I think this really raises the question of how Pyrrha and G1deon were so separate, and had different experiences from each other - G1deon didn't know that Pyrrha was even still around, and he didn't remember anything that she did in his body. I can believe that Pyrrha having an affair with Wake probably caused G1deon to have an affair with Wake, but like, I would have expected him to have some idea of inkling of what Pyrrha had been up to and not just thinking that he had inexplicable gaps in his memory for some reason, if this is really how it works

I think it probably is significant that the last unopened coffin is #3

So what is actually going to happen next?

Alecto has returned to the Mithraeum with Harrow. Ianthe and Gideon will probably wind up back there, too, possibly with Corona and/or Judith in tow, since I'm guessing that Ianthe won't return without Corona and Corona won't go without Judith. Maybe Harrow and Gideon will have an actual social interaction again, which hasn't happened for almost 1000 pages of book now. The Sixth House oversight board and possibly Paul are probably going to join the Sixth House and may not be in the next book at all, although I'm not entirely sure that Paul can navigate the River on their own without Nona/Alecto. Presumably Aiglamene remains on the Ninth and likewise is not in the next book, I think the Ninth has exhausted all of its plot potential as a location at the point, maybe? God only knows where Pyrrha, Pash, Aim, and Noodle are going to wind up, I'm still not sure why Aim volunteered to come to the Ninth, exactly. If Pash somehow winds up on the Mithraeum, though, that has the potential to be hilarious

[celira]

1/5+1

Words had never been Camilla's main wield. She started walking at just shy of 8 months old and talking some time after she had passed age 3, by which point her sweating dads had long memorized every developmental timeline that Genetics had to offer for toddlers. Her sense of balance was, they joked nervously, just that exceptional - one milestone in the first percentile and one in the 99th in dramatic symmetry.

(This joke was, maybe, also her first and most formative encounter with standard deviations and long-term data collection.)

Palamedes, it turned out, was almost the equal and exact opposite – talking just about immediately and toddling just about nowhere, though having a captive audience suited his mother well enough until he absorbed enough for his return volleys to start vexing her; his father, fortunately, had patience enough for all three – and thus they were in this regard, too, a matched set.

Which made her current state of imbalance all the more intractable and all the more intolerable – she, the photo negative of a god-killing star, fumbling in an endlessly empty gravity well too deep for light to escape.

Or sound, for that matter – so while she figured out (because she had to) how to cross the horizon of an event she still couldn't think about, everything else met silence.

It wasn't, as she later told her dads, that she couldn't speak. They were understandably concerned that her head tilts and restless feet might belie limitations in cognitive development, other metrics for the Sixth to mark down, other disambiguations in her life path before she reached the fork that led to someone who could tell that those, too, were communication.

It wasn't, as she vaguely registered a nameless Blood of Eden medic shining a penlight into her eyes, that she couldn't reply when asked "how many fingers am I holding up?" – it's that some stars were still too bright to look at directly, and beyond that, sight didn't matter yet. Nothing else mattered yet, words least of all.

It's that she needed a reason to want to be deeply and urgently understood –

Her first words came in a complete sentence, spoken in the newly-encountered presence of one Palamedes Sextus and to the eternal surprise of their collective fathers.

Her last words to him were –

She couldn't remember.

"I said, how many fingers – ugh, this is pointless."

She didn't have the reason, and neither did any of them.

[arithmonym]

Been thinking about your ace cam fic where she initiates and is like hm yes i am good at being a scientist. And then is like YIKES WAIT NVM. Bc ive lived that experience several times lmao and you wrote it super well in a way that i feel like fits them. It Stuck with me.

Anyway Im reading this autostraddle article you reblogged and looking at the consent chart (screenshot included) and Im curious about where you feel she falls on that chart. I interpreted it as “willing consent (when i care about you even though i dont desire you right now)” but yeah im curious about your meta on it

(fic link, for context.)

that’s a difficult question!! i don’t think there’s a straightforward answer; and camilla is an unreliable narrator in this fic, so that confounds the issue.

the way she narrates the encounter prior to her withdrawal, i think “willing consent” is the closest approximation: she doesn’t desire palamedes, but she’s making the choice to have sex with him because she cares about him, and they’re both hurting in the wake of dulcinea’s rejection. she doesn’t expect to get anything out of it except the reassurance that she and palamedes are still bound tightly together, but she doesn’t expect to be harmed by it, either (…so long as she can stop herself from thinking about how it might affect their necro-cav dynamic, which she prioritizes more than any romantic or sexual relationship they could have).

from a meta perspective, the setting of chapter two is very intentional: it’s where camilla trained as a child (first for her own benefit, then for his), and it’s where she first started to internalize the societal messaging that her autonomy was less important than her his.

(i took gymnastics for a few years as a kid, and the rope climb made me cry sometimes. i could do the other skills fine, but i struggled with the coordination required—not to mention the attention of my peers as i failed. this is camilla, ashamed she wasn’t better (at a task that objectively means nothing vis-a-vis “being a good cavalier”), because she’s grown to a point where she bases her self-worth on being useful to him.)

(then, at the end, she’s lying on her back on the mat, staring up at the bell, exactly like she’s just fallen off the rope. again. introjected conditions of worth go brrrrrr.)

the paragraph under that chart clotheslined me, because whoops, been there, done that, and i think it rings truer to what’s actually happening with cam in this fic:

even as she refuses to acknowledge it, camilla knows that she’s making a mistake. she doesn’t want to desire palamedes. she doesn’t want this to become a part of their dynamic, she wants this to be a one-off that they never speak of again (because she doesn’t really want it to happen in the first place)—but she’s also terrified of losing him. her decision to initiate rather than pull away is 100% informed by the fact that dulcinea has just rejected palamedes, and cam perceives something as simple as prioritizing her own wants/needs as a rejection, on a day when that’s a very sensitive subject. this tips the scale more towards the “unwilling” side, IMO, but it’s a huge grey area (badum-tsss, sixth house pun).

TL;DR: i think consent gets tricky in the context of cavaliers and necromancers and how all-encompassing that relationship can be!! i love all interpretations of campal, but i thought this one was worth exploring (especially as this fic is also me processing that i’m on the ace spectrum, and it reflects the struggle to work out my own boundaries with sex).

bonus: screenshot from when i first brought this fic up with my friends.