#and she doesn't want all the space anymore since she has significantly less stuff

[helenofblackthorns]

I may be getting new bookshelves (they were my dead grandfather's)

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 19 of Gideon the Ninth

I mean, of course the Locked Tomb exists to ward society from some sort of eldritch undead monster, that's just like, the vibe, but I'm dying to know "what Harrow had done", here. Unless Gideon just means Harrow reanimating her parents, but I didn't get the feeling that Gideon was actually afraid of them

So we do have guns, they're just very old and no one uses them anymore. I did see the post about why it's dumb to have guns in space, but like, I have a lot of doubt that there would be no context in this universe where guns are useful anymore. Supposedly we have the Cohort going around killing people on planets they invade in order to generate thanergy, logically there must be people or aliens or something living on those planets in the first place to be killed, so they probably have somewhat reasonable atmospheres where guns are, in fact, useful and probably more effective than swords at killing stuff, not to mention that gunpowder-propelled projectiles probably have other uses besides killing people, as well. And as for the argument of "this is dangerous, so they wouldn't do it", well, history is full of humans doing incredibly dangerous stuff even though they knew full well it was dangerous, like I mean, we just had tin can submarine implosion happen, just for example, and I really do not see us getting significantly smarter about this, as a species, even after 10,000 years. Also, the goal of this is to kill people, and from what I'm hearing from comments here, it doesn't actually matter that much if the people who are killed are the aliens or the Cohort members

More body-sharing? Is this like the endgame of becoming a Lyctor, the necromancer and the cavalier just sort of fuse into a single person?

Gideon seems very vulnerable to people being nice to her, probably because most people have been shitty to her most of her life, and even Aiglamene's praise was a very grumpy sort of praise. So she warms up very quickly to people like Magnus and Dulcinea without doing a lot of critical thinking, and kind of bluescreened back when Harrow was praising her earlier. Meanwhile, Harrow seems to just not trust anyone at all for any reason, even or especially if they are being nice, which seems like a reaction to a slightly different kind of abuse. I thought originally that this might just be a result of the whole space feudalism thing, but like, Abigail isn't like this, and the other necromancers don't seem to be quite as paranoid as Harrow

Sometime between the end of the bone construct fight and now, Harrow has gone from "you are great at fighting but I still hate you" to "I don't hate you and we have to work together", it has been, I think maybe 24 hours at this point, given that Harrow thinks it will be the morning again after they sleep for eight and a half hours. Possibly this is to do with the dire implications that she was talking about at the end of the last chapter (she even mentions Magnus's death here), now she is now serious about doing this the right way, with Gideon helping, and unlocking all of the doors the proper way, and not hating each other with the fire of 1000 suns, and being able to trust each other, and not running off to go solve the puzzles on her own. She's not even like, qualifying it anymore, and saying stuff like "I still hate you by the way, I just really want to become a Lyctor"

I feel like these two paragraphs are backwards. Is it just me? At first I thought the second one must be talking about them going back to the room they found the next morning, since it logically should come after the first one, but no, it appears to be them going back to their rooms to sleep. I feel like this would make more sense, be less confusing, and also be more effective if the first of these paragraphs came second and ended this section

So, as expected, "Gideon" does in fact refer to someone else. Is this Gideon one of the original Lyctors? Is this Gideon the person denoted as "G." earlier?

[synonymroll648]

I mean. if you're willing to share....then yes I am all ears on that sokeefitz angst fic...just saying *eyes*. I put this in a separate ask to give you a space to talk about it, but only if you want! Also no clue what I would want if I was sick, it's genuinely been so long I don't. I don't know what my sick safe foods are? life is so so so hard for people with strong immune systems i'm suffering so much /s

also hi hope you're feeling better! or that if you're still sick that it packs its bags and kicks its own ass to the curb soon <3

i'll answer the other stuff in the og chain; this one's juuuuust gonna be the sokeefitz angst fic lol.

basically: au (that's technically canon compliant, esp since the series isn't over? idk man don't ask) where like the shadowflux echoes in (fanon) fitz's knee, the echoes in his heart end up developing into a chronic condition. but the heart echoes are a significantly bigger threat to his health, like in canon (we don't ever see him get wiped out from the pain in his knee, but we do see him get wiped out from his heart echoes going haywire. there's examples throughout flashback of what i'm talking about). a year or two after canon ends (i'm approximating fitz'll be 18 or 19), livvy and elwin sit him down and tell him that from what they can see, they doubt he'll be able to live past 100.

they tell him that they'll do everything they can to make that statement false, but it falls on ringing ears.

from there, the premise would mainly be exploring how fitz would learn to manage his emotions to keep his heart echoes in check as best as he can - particularly anxiety and anger - plus him learning to accept that he's gone from having a shot at being a famous ancient to bring pride to the vacker family, to an elf that's become the closest to mortality that one can get. and ableism in the lost cities too, because i think realizing that a lot of the people he looked up to when he was younger valued him less as a disabled person would be a good motivator to break away from the golden boy mold and become who he actually wants to be, whoever that is.

and then there's also learning to accept almost-mortality through sophie's unique perspective on it, and helping her accept almost-immortality. slowburn exes to lovers on that front, through the power of - as keefe dubbed it in the books - cognate rawr. i'm also thinking this would be set in level 7 for fitz, so he could be roommates w/ keefe and have an '(unofficial) ex (childhood) best friends to lovers' arc.

sokeefe would be established already in this, but have a conversation fairly early on the fic where they're like 'ummm so i actually haven't moved on from fitz and it's freaking me out-' 'omg SAME' and then help each other figure out they're bi and polyam (that would be a side plot of its own, because, like. you can't do that in one scene lmao). and then once they'd reached that conclusion they'd be like 'hey so you wanna see if we can flirt our way into getting fitz to join our relationship?' 'worth a shot, sounds better than endless pining'.

ofc fitz is super dense though so he doesn't see keefe's advances as flirting until the obliviousness starts getting ridiculous, and he makes up ten million platonic excuses for sophie's actions because we broke up, there's no way she still sees me like that anymore - not when she has keefe the way she does. because as an aro i would do that in his situation and i have decided he's aro-spec <3 but they all get it together eventually. and get a cottage somewhere and fitz gets to be a baker and they just. have their happily ever after.

uuuuuuuuntil fitz is on the cusp of turning 100 and dies. because i'm evil. and i want to explore how much worse keefe's oh my god please don't leave me please please please i'd do anything to make you stay complex would get if he lost a lover and the situation was out of his control. and how much it would differ from sophie's acceptance. and how sophie's acceptance could turn into world-crushing anger and stuff after she stops feeling the need to stay strong for keefe.

and then maybe how much worse the whole please don't leave me alone please i'll do ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING JUST STAY STAY STAY would get if sophie died centuries after fitz from some mission and keefe was truly on his own. just after he started feeling solid about having her in his life for a long time after the present. if i'm feeling particularly cruel by the end.

(there's a lot of scenes that made go OWOWOWOW that my brain conjured up, but. those stay in my brain until i write them. no spoilers :) also ik i'd need to do a lot of research on heart conditions to make fitz's arc more accurate to real life because even if shannon doesn't care about medical accuracy, i do lol.)