#cytherea the first

[sermna]

"My name is Cytherea the First," she said. "Lyctor of the Great Ressurection, the seventh saint to serve the King Undying. I am a necromancer and I am a cavalier. I am the vengeance of the ten billion. I have come back home to kill the Emperor and burn his Houses. And Gideon the Ninth..." She walked toward Gideon, and she raised her sword. She smiled. "This begins with you."

I did my best and that's what matters here folks

[hatepotion]

iii / vi / vii / ix

[pierogish]

Exploring

[midnightcrows]

The Emperor Undying and His Saints.

Inprnt store here!

[nortess]

birth of venus except it sucks!

[elle-arts]

Here's my take on a Last Supper-style editorial shoot for @tltfashionzine ! This one was challenging to put together but I had a lot of fun with it.

Shout out to @the-widows-of-culloden for their excellent McQueen archive.

[foxy-alien]

Evil cougar 🫣

[eggpngg]

"Stand up for me," said Dulcinea. "Indulge me. Lots of people do... but I want you to."

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

i looove cytherea as a "nicest* person here was secretly the villain the whole time" reveal cause like. my problem with those is usually that they do a complete 180 in terms of personality and suddenly they're a totally different person. they absolutely do not give a shit about these people they just spent so much time cohabitating with. they developed absolutely no empathy or compassion or remorse for the people who worked with them, trusted them, confided in them, tried to help them. it just never seemed realistic to me. i always end up wishing for more nuance. it feels like the authors tend to go for shock value over the actual substance of the character, unless they're angling for a redemption arc.

cytherea, though.

cytherea is 10,000 years old and she's been inches from death the entire time. these people's lives mean something fundamentally different to her than they do to them. she kills jeannemary in a shocking and brutal and unnecessarily dramatic fashion, and then she offers gideon genuine compassion and comfort in the aftermath, and both of those things are true and authentic and both of them are motivated by the fact that lyctorhood is fucking terrible.

the way she was interacting with gideon was always a little weird and the fact that she does genuinely understand never goes away. she's fucking old and weird and bored and in pain and she will gore a 14 year old in front of you and then she will hold your hand and give you well-meaning advice while you process the trauma. she will tell you how terrible it is that people are taking advantage of you, she will cradle you and pet your hair and tell you that you're worth more than this, and then she will kill you like she killed all the rest of them. and it really is a shame that you don't understand how that's a mercy, too.

cytherea is scary because the kindness was never fake. and that's why i love her.

[artac13]

Welcome to Canaan House! Come meet the crew! We have:

A bone-obsessed goth nun

A jock forced to dress up as a bone-obsessed goth nun

An autistic nerd

An autistic nerd whose special interest is knives and what they can do to human flesh

A valley girl

An evil valley girl

Douche-y Elvis with a sword

An awkward scene kid

An awkward scene kid who's definitely listened to Angel With a Shotgun an unhealthy amount of times

An evil cancer patient

The end result of that laser grid from the Resident Evil movie

The dad you wish you had

The mom you wish you had

An ROTC kid

A worse-adjusted ROTC kid

The bleached leader of the Spanish Inqusition In Space

The actually-very-nice older nephew of the leader of the Spanish Inquisition In Space

And last but not least, the souls of the damned, eternally trapped in torturous servitude!

[griddleharkbrainrot]

Diversity Win! The evil 10,000 yr old woman who murdered your girlfriend and all your friends is a disabled lesbian

[mercymcrn]

something something isn’t it significant that the first thing augustine does in htn is criticise mercy? isn’t it so upsetting that she is so aware of how resented she is? isn’t it horrible that one of the last things she says is “this is the chance for unlovable mercymorn—critical mercymorn—to show she is the most capable of her name… every time you’ve said i did not understand the human heart, that i was unfeeling, that i only knew worship without adoration […]”?

the fact her house, the eighth, is the most devoted to the emperor, and yet john still degrades her so publicly and casually.

mercymorn died one of the only few victims of 21st century misogyny after living 10,000 years with it.

[cemetegee]

Ahem

No, of course not

[noctilia]

[asthedeathoflight]

It's very funny when people reading Gideon the ninth for the first time comment in confusion about how little people talk about "Dulcinea" but like. Actually we DONT talk about Cytherea enough.

Cytherea - who was dying for 10,000 years! Cytherea the miracle worker who was brought before God and he LIED to her and he told her and her friends they were doing the right thing and he WATCHED as they killed each other and he is DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Cytherea who is trying to get God's attention but who is also trying in her own monstrous way to be kind. They all have to die because /the only other option is to become what she is./ Of course Jeannemary and Isaac have to die. Isaac has to die because she can't let him kill Jeannemary. Jeannemary has to die because she watched Isaac die and Cytherea knows there's no coming back from that. Dulcinea HAS to die because the only other option is to suffocate slowly in her own cancer for 10,000 years and Cytherea /can't let her do that./ The fifth and the fourth and the sixth and the ninth - they ALL have to die because if she could go back that's what she would have wanted. They don't know it yet, but in 10,000 years, they'd want it too. She didn't take her chance to die when she had it. They don't know how lucky they are.

And Cytherea who put on airs of being petty and selfish meanwhile she gave herself away until there was nothing left. Cytherea who hated God because he took everything she had without blinking twice. Cytherea who said over and over "me, I will" and whose sisters and brothers died around her and who wouldn't let them forget about Loveday - who loved Loveday when they all hated her.

Cytherea who held Gideon in her arms while she was dying during the siphoning trial and told her "remember this feeling. Remember how much it hurts. And if anyone ever asks this of you, you have to remember and say no." Gideon, who reminded Cytherea so much of Loveday. Cytherea, who /asked that of Loveday./ And Gideon, who went out and /did it anyway./

Cytherea, at the end of everything, who NEEDS to kill Gideon and Harrow because they love each other and she can't let them get it wrong like she and Loveday did, who sees the skull they're hiding in open and sees Gideon's body and sees Harrow pick up that sword and has lost despite everything, and who finally gives up and lets them kill her.

[dangerouslyhungryprocrastiner]

I really really hope that if there ever is tlt tv show made, that it will spawn a good amount of newcomers that will ship Gideon and "Dulcinea" just so i can watch them fight with the newcomer griddleharks for weeks until the final episode of season 1 would drop, and both teams would be left in shambles in the end.

....i often think about this