#about Camilla or Palamedes or Paul

[unaduessa]

Getting this tattooed wouldn’t be enough, I need it carved into my soul

“Go Loud”

[automatonwithautonomy]

paul is like - so they're an abombination, right? a monstrosity, imperfect because there is no way lyctorhood can be anything other than a deep perversion. but, they're a success. a big fuck you to john, a unison of two people who only ever wanted to be together anyway and went loud. you can't ever seperate cam and pal now. they're a last-ditch effort, the only available choice to make in a sea of shitty options, the only choice they could ever make, the best and worst thing two people can do, they're a meticulous and thought-out procedure and a mistake and a terrible thing made of love and a perfect person born out of viscera and desperation. they are a contradiction because of fucking course they are. what else could they be?? they are two people so wrapped up in each other they're one and it's - a beautiful tragedy, and a horrible triumph.

[moncharrow]

i always underestimate palamedes' freak. nurse costumes. writing smut for money but only not doing so out of respect for his qpr. and then camilla matched his freak by being his polar opposite in this regard. i love them.

[no-man-no-woman]

Okay, I'm going to be very direct and I'm sorry if I come off as mean, but I just have to say it: I hate people who consider NtN a bad book and Nona a bad and/or childish narrator.

First of all: Nona is six months old and dying, it makes sense that she's a "childish" narrator, of course her point of view is strange and slightly useless at some points; she's treated like a child! She thinks a bit like a child!

Nobody says anything to her. I think that's also something to keep in mind: Gideon and Harrow were told things, even if they were half-lies [or just lies] at times, Nona is purposely kept in the dark (even if it's with good intentions for the most part).

And yes, the setting is different, but also (in my opinion) quite more grim than GtN and HtN because it's basically set in a big refugee camp, New Rho is an active war zone (the bombed out buildings where Nona and the gang spend their afternoons, the way the kids at school talk about violence...) but both Nona and her environment are highly desensitized to it. The BoE people are pretty much the dictionary description of guerrilla fighters. Hot Sauce is a radicalised child. Kevin, from the way he is described, seems to have suffered a severe catatonic shock. And Nona doesn't know that.

New Rho is all she's ever known, but the horror, for homely it feels at times, is the basis of it all. Children so used to mass ejecutions that they thalk about them while eating, gas mask that have to be kept on whenever you are outside, a teacher so used to child prostitution that was her first thought upon meting Nona's family, Hot Sauce not thinking twice before shoting her friend's brains out, Honesty being a drug dealer…

Also: I think the underlying body horror of this book is a fucking gift. Phyrra living in her dead best friend corpse, Phyrra drinking bleach because she was bored, Palamedes and Camilla fusing along the way (even before Paul), Nona not remebering how to move correctly at times, Judith sharing a body with a planet's soul, Nona's tantrums destroying her body over and over again, Aim not being allowed to be just herself and having to be the Mensager.

[fruitdaze]

still consumed by the cam and pal and paul emotions. thinking about how this wasn’t the ending that camilla and palamedes would have chosen for themselves at the start of things, but it was the kindest ending for them in those circumstances and it was an ending that they both chose willingly and wholeheartedly. thinking about codependency through multiple lenses and the degrees to which they did not, physically or emotionally, know how to survive without the other. thinking about how they never moved more than an arm’s length apart for the longest time after palamedes got a body back. thinking about camilla crying before the grand lysis just because she was so relieved. they loved each other so much that they fused their souls forever and now they’re never going to be apart again but they’re also never going to be together again. paul is a rebirth but also a death, a triumph that still can’t be separated from deep loss and grief

[countywasted]

Did Palamedes pack for the First after writing to Dulcinea that they were excited to see her there?

Do you think he imagined them both reaching Lyctorhood, having a myriad to make up for the lost time?

Do you think he told Camilla about how nervous he was to see her?

Do you think he cried to Camilla after that first night, when she didn’t seem to look twice at him?

[procrastinationaccount]

There is no way of softening this. Coronabeth Tridentarius has already been radicalised.

Camilla Hect's opinion is that the whole Tridentarii stratagem was the initiative of Ianthe Tridentarius. Though I was taken in by the twins' swindle I am not taken in by this. Coronabeth Tridentarius has never been party to anything she did not want to do, and never successfully carried out a plan she didn't think up first.

"In point of fact that's not actually Crown's boyfriend, Nona, it's her sister, but I don't think anyone could blame you for getting confused."

All four pairs of their eyes belonged to other people. Pyrrha's deep brown eyes really came from her dead best friend, and Camilla's clear grey eyes should have really been Palamedes's, and vice versa with his wintertime irises ... "You see," Palamedes had said to her, "the eyes are a dead giveaway. When you give yourself to someone else, their soul shows in yours by the eye colour; that's why you'll never see me looking out of Camilla's face with my own eyes again."

"He's going to know, Hect. You're killing each other."

"It's our choice."

"He's going to ask."

"Do what you're good at," said Camilla. "Lie."

"Hect, you're not listening. It's killing him too - ."

"It was good," said Camilla, and her eyes closed. "It was good. We were happy."

"I don't let go," said Camilla. "It's my one thing."

Thinking about the Lyctors and their cavs.

[6th-for-truth]

Oh look, yet more TLT decals for my very nerdy vehicle. I have no regrets.

Available here on my Etsy - check out the whole decal section here for more of my nerd stickers. 

[imjustcryinginthecorner]

“Arguing with the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review”, The Mountain Goats // Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

[harrowing-of-hell]

I still firmly believe that there is no such thing as perfect lyctorhood.

If we're viewing lyctorhood (and by extension, the whole necro/cav pairings) as a metaphorical framework for human relationships, we have so far been given examples of co-dependent and/or abusive relationships.

And when you think about it, perfect lyctorhood is kinda the epitome of co-dependency. With John and Alecto, neither can die so long as the other lives. Their very existence depends on the existence of another.

When the framework you're working within is inherently faulty like this, how can it ever be "perfected"? You could argue that the closest to perfect we get is Camilla and Palamedes, but even their achievement of lyctorhood relies on the destruction of the self and their identities as individuals.

It's not destructive in same way as imperfect lyctorhood like the Saints, but it is still ultimately a destructive act of love and could hardly be described as a healthy relationship. It still falls within the same co-dependent and destructive framework that lyctorhood is, despite how Camilla and Palamedes have tried to subvert it.

I do think if Harrow and Gideon are gonna achieve "perfect lyctorhood" it'll either be very much bittersweet in the way the creation of Paul was (where it's not exactly what anyone wanted, but it's the best they could do with what they had), or it'll be so far from what we know lyctorhood to be it could hardly be called lyctorhood at all.

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

I appreciate how nona the ninth deals with loss and grief and change so much. in the moment when pyrrah is comforting nona, she doesn’t try and tell nona that no, she will be okay, nothing will change and we will stay a family and nona will remember and she will still love all of them. because it’s not true. nona will be changed and she will be different. and that is okay. and yes, she may not love them anymore, but that’s also okay. it doesn’t changed the fact that she loved them, and that love being in the past doesn’t change it’s importance.

i had a best friend in middle and high school. i loved her. my family loved her. she came on vacations with us, family events, and practically lived at my house during the summer. then, first year of college, we stopped being friends. she broke things off, and it was sad and awful and it hurt. we started talking again, and things aren’t quite the same. i don’t love her anymore. we are friendly with each other, but we are different people. the love that was there is gone. but it still happened. we did love each other, even if it was in the past. it happened. we have changed, and things will never go back to how they were, but that doesn’t diminish the time we did have together. it’s still important. it’s still valuable, even if it’s gone. people change, people move on, people drift apart, but that’s okay.

[nevermoor-batty]

alright, was someone going to tell me that palamedes and Camilla are second cousins or was I just going to have to read that on Tamsyn Muir’s tumblr blog by myself??

[automatonwithautonomy]

the entirety of the cavalier and necromancer dynamic is built on the cavalier being consumed. cam and pal circumvent this by creating a sort of ouroburos where their both eating each other, together, forever; therefore creating a singular entity. because love.

[reflection-s-of-stars]

Palamedes is such a liminal spaces kinda dude. River bubble Canaan House. Cam’s body when she’s in control. Ianthe’s mind palace. Man seriously cannot catch a break

[avvidstarion]

I am not saying this was our inevitable end...I am saying that we have found the best and truest and kindest thing we can do in this moment

[friendoffrogss]

Giving love is like giving a smile, you can’t take it back. You can stop smiling but you’ve already smiled. It will always be there no matter what. You can stop loving but the love you gave will always be there.

“You can’t take loved away”