#does nona have a last name

[itsalittlebitchilly]

Something something tlt narrators

(Template by foxpunk)

[wick3r]

i zapped locked tomb protagonists with my cartoonification beam

...There's a joke about head around here somewhere

[nomomio]

I finally started reading Nona the Ninth. I'm five chapters in and here are some key takeaways so far:

- As a trans feminine butch Pyrhha Dve having a completely normalized shaving scene, and Nona thinking it's beautiful is HEALING

- In addition to that, the teacher misgendering Pyrhha threw me through a loop cuz I completely forgot she's now permanently in Gideon the First's body.

- The fuck is the blue light??? Why does it hurt necromancers???

- Crown is Coronabeth (Corona, Crown, duh). Captain is Judith.

- This book is managing to be to uplifting and hopeful, yet makes me so incredibly sad in a way I can't begin to describe. As someone who has such a deep indescribable love of humanity as a whole, Nona and the kids especially are really hitting something deep within me.

- Pyrhha wanting to take Calamedes (name pending) and Nona away and live away on a farm is just. Mood girl, mood.

- Pyrhha sweety, why are you drinking bleach? Do you wanna talk?

- I want to scoop up Hot Sauce and give her a good home

- The rest of the kids too while we're at it

- Between the last book and now Cam/Palamedes, Tamsyn Muir has accidentally created quite possibly the most positive representation of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and disorders like it, that I have ever seen. Like I just wanna sit down with Muir and ask if that was intentional or not

- It's a bit out there but I think Nona is humanity? Or maybe a manifestation of Earth? Like it would take an It's Always Sunny conspiracy board meme level of explanation to get into how I got to that theory. But I think Nona is humanity, or at the very least, human connection incarnate

- That first chapter detailing Cam, Pyrhha, and Palamedes caring for Nona... I cried. As an autistic kid who both was forced to grow up too fast, and also was often patronized when loving innocence/naivety shown through the mask, seeing caregivers not only love Nona, but respect her and show her DIGNITY was something I didn't know I needed to see

[katakaluptastrophy]

So, it's the last days and a weird-looking guy called John is yelling about the end of the world.

AKA, it's Advent and we've reached the stage of Alectopause where I'm apparently writing Bible studies for the weird goth teens that hang out in graveyards... So let's talk about portentious guys called John and why a nun might have joined a necromancy cult.

Anyway, you know Advent, the cheerful and cozy time when we all think about cute baby Jesus as we get ready for Christmas, right?

WRONG

It's currently the second Sunday of Advent, and in lots of churches that follow the liturgical year, people will have been hearing about John the Baptist today (Me: "John". My phone: "Gaius?". Me: "John the-". My phone: "Necromancer?").

Without going into too much detail, John the Baptist is important because he's a prophet that points to the coming of Jesus. He first does this rather impressively in utero, but is probably best known for wandering the wilderness wearing camel hide and eating locusts, shouting about how the end is nigh and, hence the name, baptising people to cleanse them from their sins. People are pretty impressed by all this and start asking him if he is the promised messiah or one of the great prophets come again. He answers no, his job is to point towards one greater than him. He baptises Jesus, the heavens open, and not long afterwards John annoys the authorities and ends up with his head on an ornamental platter.

Now John the Baptist obviously isn't the main Biblical John evoked by John Gaius. That dubious honour probably goes to the beloved disciple John the Apostle, also known for The Gospel According To and The Apocalypse Of, aka the Book of Revelation, the Bible's account of the end of the world.

But John the Baptist (no, autocorrect, not "John the Necromancer") is relevant too, and not just because he's a guy called John, chosen by a higher power to lay the groundwork for better things to come and who falls afoul of the authorities with dramatic consequences.

Let's cycle back round to Advent for a moment. The reason Advent can both be aww cute little baby Jesus and also WHERE ARE YOU GOING WHEN YOU DIE?! is because in Christian theology, Jesus' birth and the end of the world are linked: the first and the second coming of Christ.

In Nona The Ninth, we learn that John and his friends are living in a world on the edge. Without some incredible plan - the cryo ships, the promise of FTL - everyone is going to die. Humanity has rendered the world uninhabitable. Although we get very few details of the broader geopolitical situation, we have to assume it's one rife with natural disasters and conflict.

In the Bible, Jesus talks about a world with famines and earthquakes, wars and rumours of wars, where to find yourself in those days with children would be a tragedy and to be pregnant even worse (maternity problem, anyone?). Specifically, this is when he talks about the signs of the end of the world and his second coming.

So what about M-'s nun? The first time we meet her is when she's advising John against his all-day Jesus Christ Superstar healing ministry.

And John's anxiety about meeting her is pretty apt. He says: "I was worried I was going to get the Antichrist bit from her too". Note the "too" - by this point, John has already been accused of being the Antichrist. Why? Because alongside those rumours of wars and earthquakes, Jesus gives another sign to watch out for: false prophets.

But M-'s nun saw John and his powers and - for reasons we never learn - believed they were miraculous, a gift from God. She appealed to the Vatican to investigate and recognise this. And her presence and this campaign apparently made a significant impact in reducing some of the issues they were facing. Somehow, she met awful, smarmy John and his corpse buddies and thought she was seeing the hand of God miraculously at work in the last days.

This bears repeating, because I've seen suggestions that she believed he was God, or was somehow converted to the cause of necromancy, but at least by John's narrative it's much simpler than that: right to the end she's praying for him in very Catholic terms to find clarity in his purpose.

This is the last we see of her:

She just smiled at me. She said, John, don’t misunderstand. I want to help you. I truly believe that in our most terrible hours we don’t instinctively reach out to God; we push ourselves away from Him. Don’t feel bad for not rising heroically to the occasion right now. Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone. So concentrate, please. She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself.

While obviously you are probably not walking a straightforwardly orthodox path if you're shooting yourself to help the leader of a self-proclaimed necromancy cult locate the soul, her language here is very focused on the Catholic understanding of sin and death. A "state of grace" refers to the condition of your soul when it's not burdened with serious sins. It's the state you're in after you're baptised or after you've been to confession. Being in a state of grace is one's soul being on a wavelength with God; it's the necessary state to enter heaven.

And the Hail Mary? Catholics believe that Mary has the power to intercede for them with God. And the most important moment at which she could intercede would be at the point of death where the state of your soul determines your eternal destination. This isn't a wacky necromancy cultist talking. I suspect she sees this less as a suicide (which the Catholic Church has historically not had the most nuanced views on...) than a fulfilment of Jesus' teaching to keep his commandments and that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.

We're not privy to exactly what she thought, and I don't think anyone's suggesting her approach was entirely orthodox, but if he's not the Second Coming, and he's not the Antichrist, and there are wars and rumours of wars and floods and earthquakes...did she see him as a prophet of the apocalypse? A sort of John the Baptist of the end times, who in demonstrating the reality of the soul would bring people to Christ before He came again?

Unfortunately for M-'s nun, John was not what she fervently believed him to be. And unlike John the Baptist, who said no when asked if he was something he was not, John used M-'s nun's death as a springboard to claim the trappings of both divinity and Catholicism for himself.

Unfortunately for John, judgement is coming in the form of an angry teenager Harrowing Hell and the very power he usurped, armed with a very big sword.

[familyabolisher]

Do you think any of the frameworks you've developed for analyzing love in TLT could be applied to Pyrrha's relationship to cam/pal? Since Nona doesn't understand it well, it's hard for me to get a handle on how those characters relate to each other, but I was wondering where it might stand on what the series considers "perfect love," what the significance of its presence/ambiguity is, etc.

I’m really locked on to this idea of illegibility, actually, and the kind of work that gets done in Nona to problematise efforts to easily name, define, & categorise a relationship or set of relationships. I’m thinking of what Muir said here:

It’s a very strange household. And they are a found family, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the last movement of the book Nona questions what that even means—their motives, what they all truly wanted out of each other, their pretenses: are they a family, or are they all just a psychosexual mess of roleplaying and bad meals? (The answer is yes.)

and like, her suggestion that ‘family’ can plausibly be collapsed into a ‘psychosexual mess of roleplaying’ and that the drive of Nona is less about asking whether Cam/Pal/Pyrrha/Nona ‘are’ a family as much as it’s about asking what it actually means to identify them as such; and particularly to identify them as such in a text which does very significant work elsewhere to identify ‘the family’ as a site of violence, a mechanism by which particular forms of violence can be enacted. I’m honing in on that ‘last movement of the book’ comment to say that, like—so, the two narratives in Nona (the ‘main’ narrative ie. Nona et al. on Lemuria, and the John narrative) are spliced together, right, so it makes sense to try and read them as though they’re in dialogue with one another, and the obvious entrypoint for doing so is the fact that they’re both working as an account of the ‘creation’ of Alecto; first through John literally creating her and then through Nona remembering his having done so and thus rebecoming what she had forgotten she was. What does it mean to ‘create’ Alecto?—what are the conditions that Alecto’s creation ushers in, what are the conditions that her creation does away with? The ‘last movement’ of the book is to ‘create’ Alecto for the second time—so, what does Alecto represent, and what about her ‘creation’ leads the text to ask what it means to describe something as a ‘family’ in the first place?

The reason I’m drawn to this reading of Cam/Pal/Pyrrha as like, ultimately illegible, incoherent in that we as audience cannot coherently put words to it and make sense of it in the language readily available to us, is because I think the text understands these processes of ordering, taxonomising, delineating, and categorising as tactics of fascism. This is a tension also at play in Lolita; Humbert ‘orders’ and constructs his narrative via the available tools of literary discourse and similarly constructs his ‘Lolita’ as a labyrinth of cultural references and taxonomies; but Dolores is a ‘Haze,’ Annabel Leigh is a ‘tangle of thorns,’ there exists a being who is able to remain indistinct and impenetrable in a narrative which enacts violence on her by trying to make taxonomical sense of her. Coherence and legibility are mechanisms of visibility; under fascism, to be easily made sense of can be dangerous. The first two books were all about coherence, legibility, interpellation, and the consequences of Living In A Society; what it means to ‘be’ or ‘become’ a cavalier, what the necromancer-cavalier relationship ‘means,’ what Lyctorhood ‘means,’ how these relations of hierarchised sexuality and the interpersonal relationships articulated within the normative language given to them exist to shore up conditions of imperialism. This question of ‘ordering’ goes right down to eg. enumeration (First, Second, Third, etc.) and pretty tightly contained and atomised cultural associations, and the fact that that enumeration can be traced back to Alecto—

D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children … There would be none of you, if not for her.

—which cribs this passage, from Lolita:

‘[…] for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l’âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad. In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure.

—very evenly ties together ideas of reproduction as imperial sustention figured in the language of sexual assault. The point is: as far as the empire is concerned, processes of ordering and taxonomising are equivocal to the mechanical maintenance of conditions of fascism.

Conversely, Nona is a text about when John’s precise demarcation of the world starts to fail and people have to make sense of themselves between the cracks; from Pyrrha as both failed cavalier and failed Lyctor to Cam and Palamedes and then Paul as if not ‘failed’ then at least a new ordering of necromancer/cavalier-ism to the Tower Princes as John’s kind of scrambling effort to rearticulate hegemony post-losing all but one of his Lyctors. Regarding how we are to read Cam/Pal/Pyrrha, I think it’s pretty clear that the text understands the obligations, normative assumptions and expectations, and material consequences of normative kinship relations identified as ‘family’ as part and parcel with the social ordering of a fascistic imperial hegemony; Kiriona, Alecto, and Harrow make up the three key points of contact for this reading, though it’s pretty diffuse across the whole work. We see kinship relations as structuring imperialist hierarchies and we understand the currency of those hierarchies to be death/abuse/sexual violence/totalised control, articulated most profoundly through Kiriona; we also see the destruction of social formations as part and parcel with conquest—

Palamedes said mildly, “You know we’re conversant with the concept of family in the Nine Houses, right?” Pash seemed genuinely surprised. “Why the hell would it matter to you? [...] You don’t give a fuck about families when you’re carving them up—”

—this of course being in keeping with the general conditions of mixed cultures, mixed languages, variances on kinship structures, refugees seemingly thrown together on Lemuria. The bolstering of the social articulations of the conquerors and denaturing of the social articulations of the conquered is rendered as a tactic of conquest; ‘family’ here is figured as a cudgel of imperialism.

Diegetically, as I said, Cam + Pal + Pyrrha + Nona’s social arrangement is not ‘normative,’ neither in the fact that others on Lemuria can make easy sense of it (and thus attempt to do so by referring to peripheralised and marginalised social relations ie. sex work) nor in the fact that they can coherently make sense of themselves via the imperial taxonomy (is Pyrrha a Lyctor greatest thread in the history of forums). Nor is it normative on our end; relative to the nuclear family structure, it’s the ‘wrong’ number of parents, the ‘wrong’ configurations of gender, the ‘wrong’ configurations of blood relation (Nona is a ‘child’ but not an ‘heir’ to anything and not a blood relation of either; Cam and Palamedes as ‘parents’ are blood-related), even the ‘wrong’ overall kinship relations—I put ‘child’ and ‘parents’ in quotations there precisely because I don’t think they’re conditions uncritically reified by the narrative as much as they’re discursive gestures made for the sake of being problematised. Is Nona their ‘child’ in a text where to be the ‘child’ of someone means to be what Kiriona is to John? Is this a ‘family’ when ‘family’ is the mechanic of imperial refortification? Again, like—what does it mean to call them a family at all?

‘Family’ is a label we deploy to give legibility to relations that we are otherwise struggling to make sense of. Setting aside Paul for the moment because I don’t quite know what to do with them and probably won’t have a Take that I can confidently commit to until after Alecto—I think the kind of difficulty that the text has in articulating exactly what Cam + Pal + Pyrrha ‘had’ between them that we see in that final scene is intentional, and I think it’s best understood left that way rather than wrangled into a taxonomy that the rest of the text is v determined to critically unpack. So to answer your question, I think the ambiguity is key—one overarching theme of the series is how people can love each other and articulate that love when the language available for them to do so carries obligations of disparate power, hierarchy, serves a particular purpose that we come to understand as ethically unconscionable; whether that love has to be made sense of within hierarchy, or contravene it, or try and stake a place outside of it. Cam + Palamedes + Pyrrha become the next stage of development in the unravelling of such a discourse; to try and make coherent sense of them could all too easily mean falling back on the language that the text works to identify as socially constructed and thus as limited, and thus imposing those limitations.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 13

given how John seems to have co-opted a lot of Christian imagery i have a feeling ‘Our Lady of the Passion’ would not be incredibly pleased to find out where her name comes from originally

they’re going to go visit a mysterious ‘her’ in a hospital room - perhaps it’s Gideon’s body, given that her corpse was in BoE possession last we saw it in As Yet Unsent. speaking of, given that Gideon apparently looks a lot like Wake with the hair and all (bar her eyes), i wonder if anyone in BoE is aware of/suspects at least half of her parentage at all

oh wow its Captain Deuteros!! i feel bad for Judith, i keep forgetting she exists. and she's being very badly affected by the RB, although to be fair there aren’t a lot of necromancers around to compare her behaviour to right now 

and Judith’s got some impressively opaque and confusing ranting going on right now. i feel like i’m in Harrow’s weird mindscape with the messages from Wake all over again 

oh Judith does not seem to be doing well at all, even bar the RB inducing madness, she’s clearly got a lot of grief going on 

‘the grey water’ what Judith is saying here is very interesting, this really makes me think of all the salt water references connected to Alecto. and there’s also a repetition of the colour green for some reason

‘It was all kind of weird, in my opinion’ me and you both Nona

even though Corona has joined BoE, she does still have some level of loyalty to Ianthe, even though they’re on two opposing sides of a war (which Ianthe is possibly not actually aware of?? unclear). although that is also assuming that Corona’s joining of BoE is genuine and not some kind of front 

it does kind of feel like there is some level of coercion from BoE to Corona? but even though there was obvious tension between them at the meeting, Corona’s actually remarkably high up & involved in BoE already for someone who is also royalty in the Houses 

and Corona’s talking about wanting Cam and Pal to forgive her for … something mysterious? something to do with how BoE betrayed them? there’s an awful lot being said under the surface here 

‘The Captain didn’t say anything when you came into the room. She only screamed’ well shit. that’s certainly something, and probably to do with how Nona has some kind of connection to the RB

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

Things that definitely just happened in Nona the Ninth

Harrow has a nice nap and remembers a time when she didn't meet God

Palamedes and Camilla make a lifelong commitment

Pyrrha tries boymoding, fooling almost no-one

God explains his last name*

Honesty tells the truth for once

Hot Sauce explains her name**

Ianthe and Gideon crash Nona's birthday party

They're friends now and have a secret handshake

The Angel does not sufficiently explain their name

The apocalypse finally begins

[abigail-pent]

So here's a question. What does it mean that the Message has two parts left?

When I first read this, my mind seized on "The name for this part of the message was 'Aim' when the message was passed to us through ny forebear Emma Sen." From this I inferred two things. One, the message is passed from generation to generation; a human chain, stretching back millennia, like Wake says about her name. I also am very convinced that the Message is meant to function like aboriginal Australian oral history, which has remained accurate for millennia. Two, that tazmuir is very funny ("Emma Sen"/MSN, get it, ha ha).

But if the Message is only carried by one person in a generation -- if there's only one Messenger -- then what does it mean that there are only two parts left? Does this mean the Message is only meant to last for one more generation? And if so, why is it that we are reaching the end of BOE's notion of history?

Alternatively, it could be that there used to be many keepers of the Message in any given generation, but now there are only a few. Specifically, now there are only two keepers, or two parts, at a time: the Messenger, and Noodle.

We have a lot of hints that Noodle is extremely important in his own right. In the dramatis personae, he is described as "king of dogs in secret". In chapter 20, We Suffer describes the Messenger by saying, "All you need to know is that they are the one with the little arboreal dog who is elderly" -- implying the Messenger is defined by the dog in some way. In chapter 18, the second Palamedes asks Aim about the implant, "Noodle had gotten up from the basket and the hair right at his flanks was standing up as though it had been electrocuted, and he was growling. Nona had never heard Noodle growl before." In this interview, tazmuir says Noodle is "the most important dog in the universe."

I don't think Aim is the next-to-last Messenger; I think Emma Sen passed a task related to the caretaking of Noodle, and Noodle's message, on to Aim, and they're currently the two remaining pieces of the Message. I think it's possible that the implant connects Aim and Noodle, rendering them "they," the last two parts of the Message.

[derseprinceoftbd]

I realized I should say this first before my actual thoughts on the book; Please send me your favorite fanworks! Music, art, anamatics, fics (especially those), you name it! I'm ready for everything and immune to spoilers, and I'm getting this way before uA! Hahahahahahahahahahahaahhaahahahahahahahahhaahahah!!!!!!!!

So: Nona.

Certainly the one with the biggest, most fundamental, and most annoying flaws; slow pacing, too many characters with too little personality, convoluted plot (I still understand nothing about the convoy). And yet the highs were not just the highest of the series, but *21st century literature*. Seriously, the moment Nona clicked felt like turning the page and seeing the imprint of Tamsyn Muir having ripped her heart out and pounded it, still beating, into the page. And may I remind you, *I'm* using the *audiobook*!

Man, I *really* disrespected this series. Like in hindsight without my lenses there is genuinely not one TLT character that accurately maps onto any one Homestuck character, and TSG has just fuckall to do with anything, but I'm a fucking jackass who wants to feel like she knows everything.

On a similar note, *not YA*. I am a moron and should not be listened to. This series is not appropriate if you are under sixteen. Certainly I don't really think you'll *get* it.

Interesting that John is, at once, environmental destruction, death, child predation, imperialism, and religion, but not really actually *patriarchy*, and *explicitly not* capitalism. I'm the kind of person to be grateful for that last bit, even if it does seem out of place with the whole ethos, but really, am I just missing a dimension or should there be more gender commentary? I guess maybe it's an AFAB thing I'm too non-passing to have any social understanding of what Muir's trying to say.

EDIT: REDDIT EXPLAINED EVERYTHING I WAS MISSING TO ME, VERY SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY, BECAUSE I'M GENUINELY A STUPID PERSON.

Anywho, I don't have great confidence in Alecto-that is to say, in the idea that it will come next. I'm almost certain, in fact, that what would once have been Act 2 of Alecto will *also* be spun into its own book, to be released no sooner than 2025 and no later than 2030, and that this will be a 5-book series; I know not whether 4 or 5 will be Alecto, but the other will definitely be Kiriona. I'm willing to put good money on this. I'm not really willing to make any predictions beyond this-I might honestly jinx it if I do.

(Also John was wrong and the rich folks were 100% going to take everyone in later waves.)

So, yeah. Thank you for everyone who read along with me; I'm going to do The Unwanted Guest next, and after that, I'm thinking either Lolita or the Torah and Gospels, then the other, then The Magician's Apprentice, then a reread.

Oh, and I can finally actually subscribe to the fucking tags! Wooooohooooo!

Let's hope none of the talented people have blocked me.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

2

I've just realised! We have new chapter intro pics. This one is a stylised Locked Tomb:

We also had the same one last chapter.

Let's dive in.

PYRRHA worked for Nona, Camilla looked after Nona, and Palamedes taught Nona, all on the understanding that she was not simply a person, but probably one of two people. Nona did not know either of her real possible names.

We're starting with a banger. A quick explanation. This is, someone in Harrow's body, and the three she lives with seem to assume she is either Gideon or Harrow. She hasn't seemed much like either so far.

Nona talked to herself in the mirror even now. When she had been earlier born, and less self-conscious, sometimes she would rest her face against the mirror’s face, and try to reach her reflection. Camilla had caught her kissing it once, and had written about six pages of notes on that, which was humiliating.

This is funny and sweet and sad. Nona clearly loves herself so much more than either Gideon or Harrow ever loved themselves.

I don't think she is Gideon or Harrow. She could be Alecto, having left her memories behind with Harrow in Alecto's body, coming into Harrow's body nearly newborn, completely innocent. She could be some random revenant clinging to Harrow's body.

I suppose she could still be Gideon - reeling from Harrow's soul not being in her body, and working with Harrow's brain damage that is specifically designed not to remember Gideon at all. Therefore, she is now stuck in Harrow's body, unable to remember herself.

I suppose if that's true, even just getting a bit of tenderness from Camilla and Palamedes and Pyrrha is enough to make her love herself?

I suppose we will find out.

If Camilla had six pages of notes on her kissing herself she had about twenty regarding eyes. Nona’s egg-yellow eyes belonged to the other person —the other girl; that was how all of their bodies worked, not only hers.

Lending more weight to the Nona is Gideon theory; the only time we've seen Harrow's body have Gideon's eyes is when Gideon took over, when the Resurrection Beast attacked the Mithraeum.

Also this:

“So someone’s inside me, then? I mean—I’m that somebody?” She always stumbled over this.

Stumbling over Gideon's mere existence indicates this could be Gideon still struggling with the effects of Harrow's lobotomy.

Or Nona isn't Gideon but struggling with the existence of Gideon, thanks to the lobotomy.

Oh Harrow, I mean we knew you fucked up your body big time, but man, this kinda sucks, huh?

(Makes for very compelling storytelling, though.)

“They wanted to see me naked,” said Nona. “It was a sex thing.” Camilla had made a sound, and then pretended it was a cough, and drank a whole glass of water. After the glass of water, she said, “How did you know?” “That’s just the way people look when they want to see you naked and it’s a sex thing,” said Nona. “I don’t really mind.”

This made me chuckle. And points towards Gideon, again, I think.

But Nona couldn’t shoot or fight or think. All she had was a good nature —that wasn’t true all the time, but Nona didn’t want it bruited about that she had a bad temper when she had only ever thrown two tantrums in her life and couldn’t remember either of them.

She can't remember her "tantrums"? Interesting! Interesting indeed. What were they about? At least one of them was about getting stuck in clothes.

Every day she held a sword until she seriously didn’t care about swords anymore, but she still couldn’t fight with one, no matter how big or thin it was. Camilla had wanted to teach her properly, but Pyrrha said not to, that they wouldn’t be able to tell if anything suddenly came back. Nona couldn’t do the forbidden bone tricks either, even though Palamedes did nearly the exact same thing with big grey lumps of bone as Camilla did with the sword.

But Nona is weak, and doesn't seem to have either Harrow or Gideon's skills. She does have a very, very sweet nature.

Nona was good at: 1. touching, 2. wiping dishes, 3. running her hand over the flat cork carpet in a way that got all the hair out of it, 4. sleeping in lots of different ways and positions, and 5. speaking any language that was spoken to her, in person, so she could see the person’s face and eyes and lips.

That's a pretty good skillset, tbh. I love the languages thing. How??? It's so cool. I'm jealous.

Nona understood everybody, and could speak back to them so that they understood her, and nobody ever said she had an accent. This confounded Palamedes. When she first said that she could speak back by watching them talk and making her lips look like theirs, it confounded him so much more that it gave Camilla a headache.

That is pretty confounding!! Very cool, very mysterious. This isn't anything Gideon or Harrow could do, to our knowledge, and honestly languages never have been mentioned very much so far, so it's certainly very strange.

Was this one of Alecto's skills?

Many people had lived through at least one bad resettlement already. Everyone was crammed on one of three planets now, and they all agreed that this planet was easily the worst, though this always made Nona feel a little bit offended on the planet’s part.

"Everyone"?? All of humanity, presumably minus the Nine Houses, who live at the Nine Houses, and the Cohort, who seem to mostly live on spaceships? Who is "Everyone" referring to here?

You were not allowed to say the words zombies, necromancers, or necromancy outside her house, or really inside it either.

Okay, okay, so these are not necromancers, nor do most of them see necromancy in a positive light. Random civilians, people caught up in Blood of Eden stuff, or both?

Interesting that Zombie is used to refer to necromancers.

Nona was so grateful to have had a whole six months of this. It was greedy to expect much longer.

:(

Another girl, another teenager who's expecting to die by the end of the book. Haven't we had enough dead kids around here?

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 29 of Nona the Ninth

There's a First skull on this chapter, but there's no one in it who's associated with the First, I guess unless you want to count Pyrrha and/or Kiriona, but neither of them have big speaking parts here

So Paul can do necromancy just fine, and doesn't seem to be affected by Varun the Eater at all. I guess this is because Camilla's body used to belong to a non-necromancer?

Honestly, why didn't John decide that the Lyctors should wind up in the cavalier's body instead of the necromancers? The pros are that their final body, that they'll have for all of eternity, is not made out wet noodles and can wield a sword that's not a rapier, and also they will be immune to the resurrection beasts' madness aura, and I don't think there are any cons, really. Ianthe could do necromancy from Babs' body just fine, so I don't think that would be an issue. It does mean that Ianthe would spend eternity looking like Babs, but that's ok, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Ianthe

I just realized that they totally abandoned Babs' body in the tunnels and it's probably going to get eaten by a Herald. Poor Babs, first Ianthe disrespected him by doing his hair wrong, and now he doesn't even get a funeral. He was kind of a dick, but I'm not sure he deserves all the desecration his body has been through

I guess because it seems like We Suffer is staying behind to hold off the Heralds and let the truck escape? This wasn't made super clear

So there is a messenger, and two parts of a message, and Aim is one of the parts. So is she three separate entities? She is sometimes saying "I" and sometimes saying "we" and the first "I" refers to the messenger, but Aim is the name of one of the messages. I don't know who "us" refers to in "when the message was passed to us" because previously the messenger was singular. And we have a new name Emma Sen, which doesn't seem to follow any of the naming conventions we've seen so far, though it does have some letters in common with "messenger". And I'm curious what it means for the message to be "too simple for human beings like us to understand". She hopes Nona will hear it, so maybe it is intended for planets? I guess this will probably get resolved in the next book, since there's not much time left in this one

Pash made a joke! I think she is learning how to be funny from Pyrrha. I think someone should write an AU where Pyrrha is married to Wake and is Pash's cool aunt, I think that would be fun. Maybe G1deon can be in there somewhere too

I wonder if she still thinks it would be super romantic for Harrow to eat her soul and is jealous of Paul now or something

Ok, but I'm pretty sure you're going to the Ninth to kill John and as we all know that will explode the sun and etc., etc., so I'm not sure that's actually true

I like how she talked to Juno Zeta for five minutes and she learned the names of all her family members and now is someone she has to say goodbye to

Interesting and sad that Paul refers to Palamedes and Camilla as "they" and not like, "we"

Gideon is just pissed that there isn't anyone she can call "Sex Pal" any longer. I wonder if they picked that name specifically because it would be hard for Gideon to come up with a funny variation of it

If We Suffer is staying behind, I wonder what Paul has planned here

Or do they just mean that she will die soon, and they will see her ghost in the River?

Since the next chapter is the last John chapter, I guess this means that Nona passes out after they enter the River

[queeoretician]

I'm dying to know more about Gideon/Kiriona's feelings about her names as of the end of Nona...

The last time we had access to her internal monologue, she had just found out that she was named (inadvertently) for the man who killed her mother, and (probably more importantly) had been determinedly attempting to kill Harrow for the past several months. She also found out that her mother didn't really give a fuck about her, and was a bit of an asshole in general, and her father didn't exactly make a great impression in their brief interaction.

Then we see her again in Nona, and find that she's been given a new name, and has been made into "the Emperor's construct," and generally seems to be having a shit time of things even before the emotional whiplash of being kissed by Harrow's body only to find out that it's not actually Harrow.

So clearly out girl has been through A Lot and it wouldn't be surprising if she felt super conflicted about all the associations of both her old name and her new one.

How does she feel about the name Gideon now? We know that she isn't opposed to people continuing to use it, but does she resent it now that she knows where it comes from? I can imagine her going either way on G1deon having killed Wake, but there's no way she looks kindly on his repeated attempts to impale her adept. And when it comes to Wake there must be a ton of emotional turmoil of having imagined a mother who would have cared for her all through the hardships of growing up in Drearburh, only to find that her actual mother saw her as a thing, a bomb, a human sacrifice - there's so much shit for Alecto to explore here.

And then there's Kiriona - how much agency did she have in being renamed? Did Jod basically say "OK, you've got a new name now, kiddo," or was it more of a mutual thing (or even her own idea)? I could see it go either way - she doesn't seem to actively reject the name, but she could equally well be conflicted, apathetic, or actively like it (but have that be muted because she's clearly in a bad place).

I'm particularly curious about how the connection to her Māori ancestry plays out - I assume that historical Earth cultures are pretty alien to anyone born in the last few millennia, but she might find personal significance in it depending on how she relates to Jod. I hope Alecto explores this! It's hard to imagine her taking an interest in ancient history in general terms, but then again I firmly believe that she's smarter (and nerdier) than first impressions would indicate.

Speaking of which, one of my biggest questions going into Alecto is about what kind of relationship she and her dad have - how much of her sorrow and jadedness in the final act of Nona are about her feeling disempowered by John's treatment of her, versus everything else going on? Her comments in the barracks scene hint at her not having a lot of say in her current condition (particularly "I am the Emperor's construct" and "Nobody locks me up anywhere"), and I think the most likely interpretation of this is that the whole super-soldier shtick and new name and everything were imposed on her.

But I also find it plausible that she was fully on board with being the heir to the Emperor, and an indestructible badass, and all that, but now that she has these cool things she finds her life dull and unfulfilling (particularly in the absence of a certain small dark necrosaint). In this case, it would give an added poignancy to her reaction after killing Crux - that scene would then be symbolic of her overall lack of catharsis and pleasure in getting the things that she wants in the absence of Harrow.

I really hope that Alecto brings her some measure of catharsis, and a reunion with Harrow that eventually gets them to a happy ending, but damn is there a lot for her to work through before we get there.

[invisibleraven]

Haunted Holidays

December 8: Fuzzy Socks <-AO3 link!

Set in my 'I am The Willies' Au!

Willie whistles as he puts the bread in the toaster-he is still amazed by the machine, whose sole function is to make bread warm and crispy. His species doesn’t have bread, or food really, but he has come to quite enjoy eating.

“Mmm Morning sweetie,” Reggie mumbles as he snuggles into Willie’s back, still half asleep.

“Good morning,” Willie hums as he stirs the eggs.

“See you and Petunia are getting along better,” Reggie says, his voice still sleep rough and with his lips brushing Willie’s neck, the whole effect makes him shiver.

“We’ve reached an understanding,” Willie replies, even if he’s still a little scared of the chicken, she at least now grudgingly lets him take her eggs without pecking his hands.

“You milk Daisy?” Reggie asks.

“And fed Ferdinand,” Willie says. “It’s been a year, I do know what chores need doing by now.”

“I know you do babe,” Reggie says, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Just wanted to see if I needed to let go.”

The toast pops at this moment, and Willie snorts as the sound makes Reggie dislodge anyways. “You can make the tea.”

They found out early on that coffee does not mix well with Willie’s alien physiology so he sticks to tea. Reggie likes both, so he’s fine switching over, and he gets the kettle going as Willie plates up breakfast.

They play footsie under the table as they eat, Willie talking about the new book he’s started while Reggie tells him about the tractor he has to get fixed today, and finishing the winter preparations.

Willie had loved winter last year, delighting in the snow, in the celebrations, the chance to wear the socks Reggie got him. He was looking forward to doing it again soon.

But this year, he’s determined to get Reggie a gift. He has money now-he has a gift for languages so he does translations through the computer that Reggie has, even if it was a bit tangly getting him a human identity at first. He is now officially Willie Shotton-the last name thing was super weird, and Reggie had explained he needed one. Finding out he wasn’t the only Willie in the world had almost given him a crisis.

“There may be a lot of Willie’s out there,” Reggie conceded, “but no one like you-you’re the best of all the Willies.”

So he had taken the last name of Reggie’s nona, which made him secretly wonder why he didn’t just share a name with Reggie, but he kept that question to himself.

Now though, how to get Reggie a gift? He knew how to buy things off the computer, Reggie had taught him how, after explaining money and the like. He had quite enjoyed shopping ‘online’ as it was called. Especially the skateboard he had gotten since he refused to learn to drive Reggie’s truck.

It wasn’t that he was scared of driving-it just wasn’t his favourite thing. The day they installed an auto pilot into his ship was one of Willie’s happiest-third to meeting Reggie, and discovering he could make a choice to stay with Reggie.

Willie knew he could buy Reggie something online, but you could never be sure of the quality, plus Reggie might open the package and spoil the surprise. Which meant going into town.

Willie had gotten used to town by now-he still didn’t love the crowds, but he had become friendly with a few of the locals. Who called him “Reggie’s young man” and delighted in showing him interesting books or knick knacks for the farm.

He bundled up-his human form doesn’t get cold quite as fast, but the humans look at him oddly when he shows up in a crop top and shorts in a blizzard. Grabs a few reusable bags, and heads out.

Skating into town, Willie hums to the music in his head, a tune from his homeworld-human music just doesn’t compare but he does enjoy some of the stuff Reggie plays. He stops at the little general store, strapping his board to his back, and begins to browse.

He picks up some chocolates, a rare treat they both enjoy but Willie tends to overindulge in when given the chance. A sensible pair of work gloves-Reggie’s were falling apart. A nice journal with a set of pens so Reggie could write down his poems, songs, and important notes.

Then he saw them- a huge display of fuzzy socks. All knitted by the older ladies in town, some with lining, some without, and all in a variety of patterns.

Willie wasn’t a fan of clothes, but socks he loved. So he might have picked out a pair or two for himself, both in vibrant colours. Reggie is a bit more monochrome, so he sticks to the more festive options, though he does giggle at the ones covered in knitted lights saying Get Lit on the bottom.

Having gathered his spoils, Willie then ensured he grabbed anything they needed around the house, plus a loaf of Old Lady Gibson’s raisin bread. That stuff was to die for.

He skated back home, a little slower as he was more weighed down now, but he still got home long before Reggie. It gave him time to hide the presents before putting away anything perishable.

Christmas morning dawned cold and grey, but Willie didn’t mind. He left his ship, tended to the animals who didn’t mind his natural form, then shifted and went inside the house to start the cinnamon rolls. He had taken to baking, so they were his latest experiment.

Reggie was always eager to be a guinea pig for anything Willie made-well once he learned measurements and temperatures were more a rule than a suggestion.

Reggie came down and greeted him with a kiss, starting the tea right away. There was no need to speak as they enjoyed breakfast, enjoying the quiet companionship as the fire in the old wood stove cracked and popped.

“Presents?” Reggie suggested. Willie nodded enthusiastically, and practically dragged Reggie to the couch. Then shoved the package into his hands.

Reggie beamed as he tore into it, delighting in each piece, laughing uproariously at the socks, even pulling on the Get Lit ones and grinning as he wiggled his toes. Willie was next, and he opened his bag-more chocolate and treats that he loved greeted him. A pack of stickers to decorate his board, a nice pair of gloves so he could make a snowman later.

And a pile of fuzzy socks-including a matching pair to the one Reggie was currently wearing. Willie laughed and pulled them on, tugging Reggie into a kiss until they were intertwined on the couch, their socked feet tangling together and indistinguishable from one another.

[nomomio]

I finally started reading Nona the Ninth. I'm five chapters in and here are some key takeaways so far:

- As a trans feminine butch Pyrhha Dve having a completely normalized shaving scene, and Nona thinking it's beautiful is HEALING

- In addition to that, the teacher misgendering Pyrhha threw me through a loop cuz I completely forgot she's now permanently in Gideon the First's body.

- The fuck is the blue light??? Why does it hurt necromancers???

- Crown is Coronabeth (Corona, Crown, duh). Captain is Judith.

- This book is managing to be to uplifting and hopeful, yet makes me so incredibly sad in a way I can't begin to describe. As someone who has such a deep indescribable love of humanity as a whole, Nona and the kids especially are really hitting something deep within me.

- Pyrhha wanting to take Calamedes (name pending) and Nona away and live away on a farm is just. Mood girl, mood.

- Pyrhha sweety, why are you drinking bleach? Do you wanna talk?

- I want to scoop up Hot Sauce and give her a good home

- The rest of the kids too while we're at it

- Between the last book and now Cam/Palamedes, Tamsyn Muir has accidentally created quite possibly the most positive representation of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and disorders like it, that I have ever seen. Like I just wanna sit down with Muir and ask if that was intentional or not

- It's a bit out there but I think Nona is humanity? Or maybe a manifestation of Earth? Like it would take an It's Always Sunny conspiracy board meme level of explanation to get into how I got to that theory. But I think Nona is humanity, or at the very least, human connection incarnate

- That first chapter detailing Cam, Pyrhha, and Palamedes caring for Nona... I cried. As an autistic kid who both was forced to grow up too fast, and also was often patronized when loving innocence/naivety shown through the mask, seeing caregivers not only love Nona, but respect her and show her DIGNITY was something I didn't know I needed to see

[pennysperfectpolls]

With one hour remaining

Here is the current list of submissions, remember having multiple submissions is a good thing here

If there’s a number after their name that’s how many times they’ve been submitted, np stands for no propaganda

1: Gregg Lee (night in the woods)

2: Liir Thropp (Wicked (Novel))

3: Arven (Pokémon) 3

4: Kyusaku Yumeno “Q” (Bungo Stray Dogs) 2

5: Kristen Applebees (Dimension 20: Fantasy High) np

6: The girl (fear and hunger)

7: Shane (Stardew Valley) np

8: Waluigi (super Mario)

9: Nahida (Genshin Impact)

10: Sachi Shinozaki (Corpse Party: Blood Drive)

11: Qiqi (genshin impact)

12: Rob (the amazing world of Gumball)

13: fred jones (scooby doo mystery incorporated) (that version specifically)

14: Shoto Todoroki (My Hero Academia)

15: Vivi Ornitier (Final Fantasy IX)

16: Harrowhark Nonagesimus (The Locked Tomb) 3

17: Essek Thelyss (critical role) np

18: Adrien Agreste (Miraculous Ladybug) np

19: Hunter (The Owl House) np

20: Mafuyu Asahina (Project SEKAI)

21: Mashirao Ojiro (My Hero Academia)

22: Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)

23: Hitori "Bocchi" Gotou (Bocchi the Rock!)

24: Freminet (Genshin Impact) 3

25: Shilo Bathroy (Just Roll With It)

26: Shijima Tsukishima (Shimeji Simulation)

27: Nona (The Locked Tomb) 2

28: Isaac Moriah (The Binding of Isaac)

29: Dimitri alexandre blaiddyd (Fire emblem) 2

30: Angela (Lobotomy Corporation/ Library Of Ruina)

31: Natural Harmonia Gropius “N” (Pokémon) 2

32: Charger (Voidpets)

33: Eunyung Baek (No Home)

34: Riven (Winx Club)

35: The Being (The Dragon Prince)

36: The Collector (the owl house)

37: victorian child (the “This would kill a Victorian child” meme)

38: Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)

39: Hypnos (Hades)

40: Marianne von Edmund (Fire Emblem)

41: Syaoran Li (Cardcaptor Sakura) np

42: Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura) np

43: Luke (Obey Me) np

44: Ortho Shroud (twisted wonderland) np

45: Tony Tony Chopper (One Piece) np

46: Child Emperor (One Punch Man) np

47: Kenzie Martin (Parahumans)

48: Kakashi Hatake (Naruto)

49: Mizuki Okiura (AI: the Somnium Files)

50: Cody Hackins (Ace Attorney)

51: Chazz Princeton (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX)

52: Martin Blackwood (The Magnus Archives)

53: Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)

54: Shin-Ah (Yona of the Dawn)

55: Kyoka Eden (Scarlet Nexus)

56: Kasane Randall (Scarlet Nexus)

57: Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb)

58: Emil Sinclair (Limbus Company)

59: Cove Holden (Our Life: Beginnings & Always)

60: Zuko (Avatar the Last Airbender)

61: Ashe Ubert (Fire Emblem 3 Houses)

62: Alphonse Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist) 2

63: Killua Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)

64: Zhang Chengling (Word of Honor)

65: Falst (Aurora Webcomic)

66: Venus (solarballs)

67: Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto)

68: Rui Ayaki (Demon Slayer)

69: Gyutaro (Demon Slayer)

70: Blackmore (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)

71: Gin Ibushi (Your Turn To Die)

72: Sirin (Honkai Impact 3rd)

73: Kai Satou (Your Turn To Die) np

74: Rio Ranger (Your Turn To Die) np

75: Hod (Lobotomy Corporation/ Library Of Ruina)

76: molly blyndeff (Epithet erased)

77: Mami Tomoe (madoka magica)

78: “Tails” miles prower (Sonic)

79: Pearl Fey (Ace Attorney) no

80: Lillie (Pokémon)

81: Jane Doe (Ride the cyclone)

82: Netzach (Lobotomy Corporation/Library Of Ruina) np

83: Chesed (Lobotomy Corporation/Library Of Ruina)

84: Gebura (Lobotomy Corporation/Library Of Ruina) np

85: Furina de Fontaine (Genshin Impact)

86: Natsuki Subaru (Re: Zero)

87: Sayo (I Need To Suck Blood Tonight)

88: Ciel Phantomhive (Black Butler)

89: Kokichi Oma (Daganronpa V3)

90: hal 9000 (2001 a space odyssey)

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 15

i am very concerned about everything going on with Hot Sauce right now. she knows something is up with Angel, she was at the burnings, she’s looking out of the window for something. i really hope she hasn’t gotten caught up in anything to do with BoE, or some other kind of conflict, i don’t think it will end well for her 

once again i adore the dynamics at play here with Hot Sauce’s little gang. and once again something that is written in a way that makes it initially funny but becomes very sad when you think about it, Honesty doesn’t take the painkillers for his black eye so that he can sell them

Angel is getting progressively more tired and less put together, and was dropped off by someone in a car - i wonder if this has anything to do with when she had mentioned being not quite a doctor, potentially she was some kind of medic in a military context? also i initially make short comments in physical handwriting on my copies before typing them up, and no joke it took me a good five minutes plus rereading all the descriptions of Angel so far to realise that i had written the word ‘doctor’ and not something unintelligible like ‘cleerr’ 

no-one coming to pick Nona up is somehow incredibly ominous, i have a very bad feeling about it given we last saw Camilla and Pyrrha tied up in a BoE van, with no guarantee they made it back 

oh and we have what is possibly an actual name for Angel, Aim. though Aim could still be a nickname for something else 

there’s a lot of mentions of food so far, and what Nona does/doesn’t want to eat. Nona only seems to hate eating actual food, and is fine with eating objects e.g., a pencil, which makes me wonder if thats somehow linked to chapter 7, where Nona mentions being hungry in the dream. and wayyy back in John 20:8 he talks about he and mysterious-Halecto-narrator being hungry ‘rarely’. 

huh, i wonder why Nona is so insistent that Hot Sauce shouldn’t use the term necromancers? ‘zombie’ i can understand, but even Gideon (and Harrow i think?) use the term necromancers and it doesn’t seem to be anything rude. unless it’s a slightly different term with different meanings in whatever language Hot Sauce/the whole city is speaking 

Nona and Hot Sauce are being very quiet and secretive talking about BoE, so it seems to be not quite as open a topic as i had thought. and given that Hot Sauce likely isn't involved with BoE given her apparent dislike of them, i hope she hasn't gotten involved with someone worse or more dangerous

and poor Hot Sauce, she’s seen an awful lot. i can understand why she hates necromancers so much, the description of how they used exploding bodies as lures is just horrifying 

not ‘The Secret’™. i wonder if its about the fact that she can hear the RB? but then Hot Sauce makes a comment about the ‘organ market’ … i’m guessing it has to do with the little mentions of how Nona is unhealthy in some way. and it’s not good that apparently she really doesn’t want to admit it to anyone else, not even Palamedes who could possibly help

Nona’s relationship with Hot Sauce is really very sweet, but given the reality of what/who Nona is vs how much Hot Sauce despises necromancy to the point of calling the BoE ‘zombie lovers’, i’m very worried about what’s going to happen to them in the future