#first HtN re-read

[shiroikabocha]

So, like, for The Necromancer’s Marriage Season to be inside the dream bubble river bubble with Palamades, and for him to be able to read it all, that means the contents of the book must have already been in his brain. The bubble is an expression of what he could perceive about the room in his last moments, which would include the book’s cover, but not its contents.

Two possibilities exist:

1. Palamades had already read The Necromancer’s Marriage Season before he died, possibly to make fun of it with Cam and Dulcie.

2. Palamades placed a copy of a book called The Necromancer’s Marriage Season in his dream bubble because there was a book with that title in the room where he died, but he did not know what was in it. In a fit of bored, semi-subconscious creativity, he filled in the void with what he felt the plot of a book called “The Necromancer’s Marriage Season” would be. In this case, Palamades Sextus himself is the author of The Necromancer’s Marriage Season. I think I like this one better!

Also, somebody else must have noticed this, but the heroine of tNMS has the same name that Ianthe was originally supposed to have—Abella—and she’s a too-skinny third house adept with amazing flesh necromancy skills and nobody appreciates her enough… wait, maybe Ianthe wrote tNMS and Abella is her painfully transparent self-insert MC??? Secret 3rd option!!

[near-dareis-mai]

harrow naming mercymorn's specialization as "anatomist" in harrow the ninth is so funny in retrospect. like, she is an atomist alright, she turned john into atoms

[dykedivorce]

how does tazmuir do it...... just finished the unwanted guest and I have to re-read it right now immediately and probably a third time after that

[deus3xmachinablog]

i just had a thought: GtN ends with Gideon dying. HtN ends with Harrow dying. NtN ends with Nona dying.

what's... going to happen... to Alecto???

[queenie-ofthe-void]

Falling in love with characters who die is one of the best parts of experiencing a story. It's visceral. You care because they matter.

What is so much worse is falling in love with characters who don't die-- but change, fundamentally. The ghost of the character you love haunts the narrative, but it's not them, and it never will be again.

[nbbjiang]

i finally have the time to read nona the ninth !!!!! i bought it as soon as it came out but w uni and shit i hadn't had the time but finally finally i have time

[dve]

going off of this post and its incredible insights about gideon and the fandom filtration and shitty treatment she gets as a butch woman of color i think there's also major critiques to be made re: the way people talk about pyrrha, especially pyrrha dve as a trans woman living in the body of g1deon who can be textually read as Black and is at the very least (because i know some of you will go tamsyn doesn't specify him as being Black the way you always do when non-white characters are not explicitly pointed out to be Black, despite fandom-wide portrayals of gideon and pyrrha both as Black!) a dark-skinned man of color.

some people in fandom are really happy to buy into the descriptions that augustine and mercymorn attribute to him when they're upset with him, animal-like, no better than a guard dog, and too incompetent to handle anything more than "simple soups and stews" without giving him the proper nuance and depth that they afford more or less every other character in the series — it really doesn't sit right with me that they will give every other character generous, layered interpretations and analysis but stop at gideon the first.

but as soon as it's pyrrha in gideon's body, she becomes someone who can be fetishized, desired, and used — features that are ostensibly exactly the same as gideon's become desirable and sexy, especially in fic, often with a focus on pyrrha's sexuality and her body rather than any attention to who she is as a person. it's especially noticeable in the way that people struggle to discuss pyrrha without reducing her to a sexy domme mommy / milf / great with the strap etc. etc. — and i'm not saying that pyrrha can't be hot or sexy or whatever, because that's not the point i'm trying to make, but you'll be racist about gideon the first and unable to think critically about him and how he's portrayed in htn in one breath and in the next talking about how bad you want pyrrha to dick you down.

it's the frequent issue we see on tumblr and in other spaces where trans women are thirsted after openly, their bodies sexualized and fetishized, and this is somehow considered to be a form of acceptance because if you say you want to have sex with trans women then that's good enough, and you shouldn't have to examine the way you treat trans women any more than that, especially trans women of color.

[katakaluptastrophy]

Hi! I really love your metas and they’ve cleared up a lot of what I missed when I read the books. I was wondering if I could ask you a question. (Totally fine if not!)

So we know that John killed the entire Solar System because he was angry the trillionaires got to escape a dying Earth and leave of the rest of its inhabitants behind. He details killing Earth, the Sun, the other planets. My question is, what happened to the moons? Did he overlook them? Did the Lyctors get to them later?

I ask because I’m wondering if the moons have anything to do with the Resurrection Beasts and/or their Heralds. Frankly, I’m just curious about what happened to them.

I get that killing a planet and everyone and everything on it would create a Resurrection Beast. But I’m wondering if size matters. Pluto is a dwarf planet. I’m sure there are moons that are larger. I’m not sure whether life-supporting environments mattered either. I can’t recall if any of the planets had stations that could maintain human life before the Resurrection.

John mentioned killing the Sun and later resurrecting it into Dominicus. I thought that was interesting because there is no way humans could have lived near or on the surface of the Sun, so its thalergenic potential would be incredibly limited if not zero, right? But it is now a thanergetic celestial body. Dominicus is remarked upon in the books and seems to have some significance because it is tied to John’s life. (Or was that a lie he told the Lyctors? I don’t remember.)

In comparison, moons get almost no mention. I’m wondering if that’s a choice or if there are just some thalergenic moons in the Dominican System. That seems unlikely to me and I’m wondering at the significance.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it lol. What are your thoughts?

I'm honestly so confused about moons.

There's only two references to moons that I can think of:

Mercymorn says to Harrow "I'm going to go do the moonlet next door. It'll be covered in reflected thalergy." But what is a moonlet, and is this a real phenomenon, or just one she made up as an excuse for Harrow to encounter the BoE crew?

And of course, there's Pyrra's "half-flipped moon", which is again rather confusing - what does it mean to be 'half-flipped'?

John doesn't mention them in his Very Hungry Caterpillar adventures, and there's no direct references to moons from any of the other Housers we meet - with the exception of Gideon using 'moonspeak' to mean something like technobabble or nonsense. There's no specifically moon-based pre-res stations mentioned that I can recall - there's some kind of city on Mars, the Kuiper Platform (perhaps near Neptune), and the shell being built around Uranus. So we can't assume RBs for Jupiter and Saturn came solely from humans living near them.

The Glossary in GTN goes out of its way to specify that "planets and gaseous bodies in space usually produce thalergenic radiation." It further says, "thalergy is produced by cellular growth and reproduction. Most planets, even ones without a biological mass of life, are thalergenic." So that's clear... The waters are further muddied by the explanation we get in HTN, where Harrow says thalergy "comes from the accumulation of microbial life" and John talks about how this produces a "communal soul". From the way John describes it, a revenant seems to the result from any swift planetary murder.

So thalergy is caused by an accumulation of microbial life which creates a communal planetary soul...but gaseous bodies also radiate thalergy?

I think there's two possibilities here.

The first is that we try to treat this as a properly sci fi endeavour to create a fantastical yet scientifically cohesive system, and we assume that perhaps that radiated thalergy Mercymorn describes relates to the idea that anything within the planet's gravitational orbit is part of its communal self. Perhaps the gas giants draw their thalergy from as-yet-undiscovered microbial life on their moons? Perhaps the sun is the sum of the solar system in some way?

The second is to assume that while this story is fiction that portrays scientific understandings in its fictional world, it is fundamentally a story about metaphysics. So the value of a moon is not determined by having a particular amount of microbial life or a specific relationship with another planet, but some mythological or metaphysical purpose - for the most part, moons aren't symbolically important to the story as it's being told.

So perhaps the moons of the solar system are part and parcel with the RBs of their planets.

[familyabolisher]

haphazard assortment of thoughts on the unwanted guest:

firstly, it really does have to be said—crazy good, probably my favourite of all the tlt short pieces, and i say that as someone who lost my mind over as yet unsent for like a week. excellent conceit and excellent execution, just a really gorgeous piece of writing. the play format of course reminds me of what abigail says to harrow in htn—that the river bubble is a ‘play [she’s] directing’—the inside of one’s head as a stage in which other actors can intervene & whereby mileage can be gotten out of Symbolism as immediately “real,” tangible presences that the kind of realist baggage that a more quotidian prose form would usher in would probably falter in accomplishing. it’s a lot!! i think even if i wasn’t already a tazmuir writing style defender (contra the insistence that she’s yknow homestuck fanfiction serial numbers filed off hack) then this would have had me floored anyway. 

the play format also works in the way that muir’s general dexterity in form and willingness to really make use of craft as a technical space where discourse can be generated always works—i’m talking about the ‘fanfictiony’ voice in gtn which manages to say something both about fanfiction and about the text itself, the use of the dramatis personae as a space where atmosphere can be established and plot points hinted towards (thus blurring the lines between what is and is not diegesis), the drastic shifts in style between different close thirds, the shifting from third- to second- to epistolary first-person, the use of poetry both diegetic and not (the noniad, the epigraph poems…), the mimicry of the ‘voice’ of the king james bible in the nona epilogue—she never stays in one place for too long and she never seems to stick to one central style or form, and it really works in her favour. insofar as tlt as a whole is a very ‘patchwork’ kind of work, building itself up from its big big index of references and intertexts and memes with hugely variant levels of ‘prestige’ or legitimacy attached to them, the ‘patchwork’ use of form really works in muir’s favour. however i am also fuming because i was right in the middle of writing a tlt fic which jumps into a play format two-thirds of the way through and now my idea doesn’t look ORIGINAL but ANYWAY—

& i really do need to flag my good friend vee’s mercy/augustine fic, which makes use of a similar conceit and pulls it off masterfully—i am deeply jealous of vee’s talent and i think the unwanted guest makes this piece (from 2021!) shine even more, if anything.

i am DYING to see where muir is going with the use of hamlet, of all things—dulcie quoting it to palamedes immediately catapulted my mind back to abigail’s reference to ‘that undiscovered country’ in htn. obviously muir likes to drop contemporary (or contemporarily canonical) references and turns of phrase all over the place, but the attention drawn to the quote as diegetically referential (“I like that. Is it from something?” / “Yes. It’s complicated.”) has me wondering about a) the survival of ‘pre-res’ literatures ~over the river and like WHY and b) what a thematic interlocking of tlt and hamlet can do, here…….real aveheads remember cytherea ophelia theory where i tried to use ophelia as a point of reference for teasing out some arguments about cytherea and death and aesthetics and white femininity and whatnot. all of which is to say i need to sit with this hamlet reading a lot more but i love it, i am so here for it.

of course ‘kissing or feeding, we can’t be sure’ calls to mind ‘how meat loves meat,’ alecto biting harrow’s mouth by way of a kiss…and the general thematic throughline of, you know, certain practices of love as practices of consumption, naberius later being figured as the ‘meat’ in question contains echoes of this eroticism which ofc guides the contours of the necromancer/cavalier dynamic, eroticism as a currency of power, we know all of this stuff because it’s all over the text but i am just thumbs-upping it from the sidelines

the coffins had me thinking of utena’s black rose arc, which is a fun link to make considering the equivalent moment in the main body of nona is also referencing utena, ie. with the ‘rules’ of the duel being that cam has to get the handkerchief out of ianthe’s pocket as kind of an equivalent to skewering the rose. i feel like the tlt/utena overlap is pretty self-explanatory but it’s just fun to see the fingerprints all over lol

i think a lot of this was treading old ground thematically (erotics of consumption, dog motifs, we’ve seen it already!) but i will say that i did Yell Out Loud over ‘who's she got dawdling behind her but that creature—tugging visibly at her leash like an overeager dog.’ reminded of the other memorable use of ‘leash’—’even the devil bent for god to put a leash around her neck’—and, of course, the endless parade of commonalities between gideon & alecto. anyway there’s not really anything in this line that we didn’t already know about gid as a character, thematically speaking, but i point it out because it inflicted +100 psychic damage when i read it. gideon as a ‘creature’ is particularly slimy, & sort of puts me in mind of ianthe's tendency to talk about what appears to us as 'butch masculinity' (as opposed to the more effete masculinity of augustine or even babs) with a notably derogatory slant (the 'hurtful threats of sexual violence' line comes to mind); i don't know that i have much to say about it here specifically but it's an interesting one that i think informs the kirianthe dynamic pretty heavily (especially when held up against, like, harrianthe ... ianthe has a kind of respect for whatever harrow's gay and stupid gender is Doing (at least insofar as she can mould it to her own desires; i'm thinking of the dios apate forcefemme scene lol) in ways that i don't think she has for kiriona? but this is v off-topic, lol).

i have never been especially taken by dulcie as a character but i think this may finally have forced me to fold and admit that she’s great. her haters!!! her agonies!!! camilla would have to cook!! the balance between levity and sincerity was really well-managed. & i love the double meaning of “unwanted guest” as both palamedes intruding on ianthe’s mind palace and naberius setting up shop inside of her.

i need a week to sit with where this idea of the consumed soul as being literally ‘digested’ such that it can begin to ‘inhabit,’ however immaterially, the host body, or like to alter the characteristics of the host body such that to carry out such a consumption is to kind of kill yourself as well, slots in with lolita theory. or like, i need alecto right now. i am however reminded of chew, a short story that muir wrote in 2013, which also plays with these ideas of sexual assault as a forcing of a part of yourself meaningfully ‘into’ another person, and cannibalism as the reenactment of such a process, figured in the story as kind of a reclamation or at least an assertion of permanence—“I was always going to be in the ground with him in me,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure.”—which the unwanted guest seems to kind of, play with in reverse? i don’t know, but i’m interested—as ever—in where muir wants to take these ideas of rape and consumption and absorption that she’s got in her hands.

i keep returning to…i hesitate to say ‘parallels’ because i think that imposes a narrative onus that i’m not actually that convinced by, but these, like, commonalities between babs and gideon. gideon is played off against so many people (cristabel, loveday, alecto being the big ones) that it feels kind of inane to add another person to the pile, but like…they’re the two who get got in canaan house, they’re both ironically ‘false’ cavaliers and expressions of the ‘truest’ or most paradigmatic form that cavalierhood ‘can’/’should’ take, they both have unconventionally gendered names (‘babs’ is a shortened form of ‘barbara,’ it is a typically feminine name imo) and (by our standards) somewhat unconventional genders (gideon is butch, babs effete)—and of course the unwanted guest places a lot of emphasis on the coercive ‘making’ of cavalierhood (the reference to babs being ‘fixed’ were he to have a disability! ianthe’s glib ‘society really is to blame’ comment—ironic, obviously, but not wholly untrue) not dissimilar to the emphasis that gtn puts on cytherea moulding gideon into the state she comes to be in at the end. babs and gideon as the two possessed corpses in nona, obviously. two wildly diverse but ultimately converging trajectories! a dialectical tension between their fundamental ‘opposition’ (as by-the-book cavalier vs whatever gideon is doing) and their fundamental ‘sameness’ whereby the dialectic is resolved in their mutual deaths. also just, of course, continuing the throughline that muir has had going for a while now, of gender/gendering as a set of coercive enforcements loyal to a hegemonic structuring of the world.

that’s all i’ve got, i think. just. really good everyone say thank you tazmuir

[shiroikabocha]

Wait, why did Cyrus bring all of Valancy’s clothes to the Mithraeum?

If they left Caanan House after everyone became lyctors, then Valancy herself never set foot on the Mithraeum

and yet, all her clothes are there

… did Cyrus and Valancy happen to have similar enough body types that all her clothes fit him too or… ???

[shouldhavebeenpersephone]

So I was re-reading Nona. And. Have we talked about this yet? Have we gone through the implications of this section?

NtN John 5:4. Analysis under the cut.

I always assumed the tower was a part of the Ninth because right after this chapter Nona sees the tower in the River and after that drives the truck everyone is in to the Ninth. But nowhere does it say that the tower is the Ninth.

I mean, looking at the description it certainly sounds like it - all grey and death, which is why I assumed it was. The Ninth is tall even if embedded inside of a planet, one could argue shafts are towers. But why would a tower of the Ninth be in the River?

First things first; the tower in Tarot stands for sudden change, confusion and awakening - I don't feel this needs further explanation on why it's relevant (I might, however, someday do a Tarot Locked Tomb analysis because there is A LOT there). It also refers to the Tower of Babel, which was destroyed by God along with the uniform language of Earth so that people would not come so close to Him again, so that they stayed vincible. Sound familiar?

John did make a uniform language technically, but he also separated the population to different planets, rendering them unable to unite and overcome him not only due to instilled nationalism but also due to the faults in the Houses. We know that the Sixth is struggling to keep up their lineages and population number - we know the Fourth die too young to really leave anything behind - we know the Second is too busy fighting wars.

This leads me to believe that whatever the tower represents will be the end of the world as they know it - maybe through a new God and an end to the Houses, maybe the end of Godhood and Lyctorhood in general. Either way, something is piercing through the River - something that has the power to change it all.

NtN Chapter 30. Nona's mind knew what it was "above" and "below". Does this refer to Harrow and Alecto?

Now let's go back to that first passage from John 5:4. The parts that stand out to me are 'speared-through and mute', 'a tower that soared, impossible and deadly grey', and 'lurching out of the River as though gasping for air.' All of this sounds like Gideon.

GtN Chapter 37. Very much speared-through and mute.

NtN Chapter 16. Ramrod posture? Soaring, impossible and deadly grey.

NtN Chapter 25. And Gideon knows what's in the River. Chances are that the tower is a construct created by John for whatever purposes. Gideon is also a construct created by John - at least Kiriona is.

I obviously don't know how accurate this connection my brain jumped on is, but it honestly makes a lot of sense to me. There is something below the River, just like how 'reality' is above the river. Especially when considering Nona referred to a thought above and below that knew what the tower was, it appears to me like the below is a plane much like reality and the River where things exist and can continue to exist. I have not yet sat with or developed an opinion on what exactly might be there, but there is something there. I think it might be the cavaliers.

So what if Gideon ended up there? What if, when she ended up in the River at the end of HtN, Gideon ended up in the below once Alecto was forced into Harrow's body? What if John knew all along how to reach there and he finally decided this was the time to bring something - no - someone back?

But you can't really reach the other plane without the River, can you? We have seen it with the Resurrection Beasts - they travel through the River and exist in it while simultaneously being above it. And, if we look at Palamedes, one who has passed and is part of the River needs a container of sorts to be above. Perhaps, then, one can sink while tethered higher in the three layers, but one cannot soar from below without a container to carry them up. An integrated cavalier is forced down, not reaching up - they are buried in the below.

So let's say John brought Gideon back. Her corpse would obviously be the container for her above. The tower, then, could be her container for the River. Ianthe could be using Gideon's aberration in the River as a means to anchor herself as well. That could be why they are the Tower Princes.

Alecto would know the tower was a gateway of sorts. She would understand, like presumably any other Resurrection Beast would understand. But Harrow. Harrow.

GtN Chapter 36. I cannot let go of this passage in relation to the tower. "Instead, she was Drearburh." "She took the whole putrid, quiet, filth-strewn madness of the place, and she opened her doors to it."

Cavaliers' tethers are shown through the eyes, through altering the look of that which binds them to above - so, maybe through being Gideon the tower became Drearburh. Maybe Harrow saw it, and felt it, and she saw Gideon, and she saw home. So she walked, and she walked, and she knew that it would lead back to her.

The tower - Gideon, then, will be the changer of things in the end. Maybe Gideon and Harrow, but definitely Gideon.

[tomomiisasleep]

notes on Ianthe

just casually re-reading GtN Ianthe moments

here she kinda bested Palamedes and Harrow in picking out information out of bone fragments, which is very impressive considering the specialities of the 69 necros.

it seems that when it comes to necromantic "theory", she really is the best of the generation, this deduced from her grand feat of figuring out the Eightfold all on her own.

here Babs kinda jabs at her for being jealous of Corona's ability to gain attention. hmm. I have mixed feelings about this. I mean Babs knows her pretty well and I would believe that she actually does care about whether or not she could show off, which is ugggghhhhhh PAIN I don't wanna think about the fact that it may have hurt her entire life to co-exist with Corona and let her draw in all the attention but she does it anyway because Corona is the only person that really loves her and knows her, aaaaaaa and she started at six. SIX. WHAT does that mean. Did she even give it much thought at first? or were they still in the same twin us vs. world mindset at the time?

anyways I always thought that their layered relationship is delicious(in a bad way but in a good bad way)

1. Ianthe seems to be only good at theorems while Corona is the perfect heir, thus Corona holds power over Ianthe.

2. Corona is not actually a necro and depends entirely on Ianthe to put on the act, thus Ianthe holds power over Corona.

3. Corona is the main and often sole source of recognition Ianthe receives, likely causing her to value Corona more and others less over time, thus Corona holds power over Ianthe. (This may be the reason Tamsyn deems Corona the "worse" because she is skilled in manipulation, not necessary with malign intent)

4.(Not entirely sure about this but probably) Giving Corona power is Ianthe's "goal" in life(I've seen this in other posts) which she deems highest priority and worth any cost(as expressed in The Unwanted Guest). She may measure her self-worth by Corona's success, which like, means that their relationship is not "one controls the other" but "-I need you. -I need you."

BUT! That last one depends on which of them decides on what "Corona's success" entails. The one who has the final say in what their goal is, is the twin who controls the other. And. There are a few pieces of evidence I've gathered that Corona is in charge. HOWEVER there is the evidence that Corona wants Ianthe to eat her. and she refused. ugh maybe they'd be better off becoming a merged soul. Maybe that's the real reason Pal bested her in The Unwanted Guest. She is overtaken by regret that they missed the chance to become one. Now they'd never be truly the two of them together, because even if they merge there'd always be Babs in there third-wheeling

but I understand that despite all that, Ianthe does want to be recognized outside of being "one of the twins". It's natural. and she does have a very hard to ignore crush on Harrow.

And maybe I'll scratch all the stuff above later when I read their interactions(plus the Corona side-story! I've been saving that for when I get mental from alectopause) because I'm just speaking from memory and memory deceives.

ok I'll shut up about Tridentarii stuff now, what I actually wanted to say that Ianthe gives off different vibes in GtN and HtN. In GtN she's just this huge evil nerd, and in HtN she's gross-hot sexy-bitch. And it's funny how different she is from Gideon's and Harrow's pov, like all the fanfic I read in which she parties a lot and plays with girls a lot are all mostly drawing from Harrow's pov, and Harrow is a repressed nun who has only ever met 1 girl her age in her life and has a bone fetish(especially for Ianthe) and is obsessed with her scent. Though I enjoy reading all fan-interpretations of her, I think her canon lifestyle might actually be closer to how Gideon sees her(in GtN. in NtN they become bros which I love btw tower princes 4ever), which is wall-flowering in the corners and reading trashy romance novels while Corona deals with the socializing.(I kinda believe that people can be categoriesed into "reads about dating" and "dates" and Ianthe belongs to the first because she gets excited over a sexy makeover

she also spends a horrifying amount of time studying (because she's as good with theory as Pal who "made his life into a war" for Dulcie, and Harrow who studies with the weight of 200 dead kids on her consciousness.

ok Ianthe's such a hot nerd I'm gonna faint I have become obsessed with her aaaaaaaaa she's like everything that drives me crazy in a hot tall glass of skank(a skank for knowledge

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Gideon Nav

Characters

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I don't have thaaaat many questions left with regards to Gideon, which is why she is first, and this post will be fairly short. (I love her though. Her bits in HtN are just so lush. Looooove Gideon.)

During re-reading, I sometimes questioned whether Gideon was really Wake's baby. It's made clear by Wake that she was. She could have been lying, but their physical similarity is stated, so I'll believe it.

For a moment though, I was gung-ho on the idea that she might have been Alecto's genetically, that somehow BoE/Lyctors had gotten a hold of Alecto's eggs. It would explain... some things.

But the red hair. Is Alecto's hair colour ever mentioned?

But the fact that she's frozen forever and only Harrow ever opened the tomb, as far as we know. Though they could have had eggs extracted and preserved somehow - before Alecto went into the tomb? She's immortal; God's sperm was immortal; if there were eggs, they would easily survive a myriad years. Still kiiiinda a theory, just one I find very unlikely at this point.

Gideon's body doesn't rot, ostensibly, cus she's part God. Though I have found myself wondering if God's perfect-preservation power is John's, or Alecto's? We'll get to that.

I was also wondering if a part of Gideon died, back when she was nerve gassed with the other kids. A part which would have gone on to live in and as Harrow. Perhaps this explains Harrow's unwillingness to ever die.

I have a feeling that Gideon's soul and body will stay relevant, even though I don't know exactly how.

>> Next: Wake

[llovelyclouds]

notes on alfred quinque

here's all the information i found about alfred in my tlt re-read, in one place!

you can find links to the other posts in this project here!

ALFRED QUINQUE

titles:

Augustine’s cavalier, first gen, founded the fifth (with Augustine)

(from the harrow the ninth pronunciation guide) "NOTE: Yes, Alfred and Augustine share an arithmonym: the implications of this so early in the timeline of the Nine Houses aren’t so developed as they would be later on, but are still present."

notes from harrow the ninth:

Augustine's brother (htn. pg. 165)

The reason that Augustine is the Saint of Patience (htn. pg. 177)

“‘You know what I feel… you know I don't think she was the best influence on Alfred… you know I think they brought out the worst in each other, and I don’t think you disagree.’God said, “They were very similar people.’  ‘No,’ said Augustine. ‘They weren’t, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot- yes, she was, Mercy- and he… was a man who regretted he wasn't. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.’” - Augustine and John, discussing whatever happened between Cristabel and Alfred (double suicide, maybe?) (htn. pg. 274)

“‘Nobody could lead him where he didn't want to go,’ said God, and his patience took a solemn edge. ‘You know that.’” -John, about Alfred (htn. pg. 274)

"You picked the wrong man to enter a suicide pact with. I hate 'em. Cristabel might have undone all my good work with Alfred, but here comes the reckoning." - Augustine (htn. pg. 487)

notes from nona the ninth:

"A- brought in his little brother who was a hedge fund manager. A- Junior was useless but he was a darling, I couldn't fault A- for adding him to the mix." (ntn. pg. 191)

"It was A-'s little brother who said, Well, you have to understand money is one big shared hallucination, but I'm not sure they could have hallucinated this much, none of this is even in crypto." (ntn. pg. 273)

"Apparently A-'s little brother and her nun had been obsessing over bank movements and assets. Going crazy checking manifests." (ntn. pg. 396) 

“The nun and A- 's hedge-fund-manager brother had teamed up to try to mediate, which as per usual made everyone pissed off at them instead.” (ntn. pg. 401)

“A-’s little brother was there… dead in the middle… shot from both sides. Nobody likes a peacemaker.” (ntn. Pg. 406)

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

mercy for the character ask game 💖

Mercymorn my best friend Mercymorn!!!

favorite thing about them: she contains many contradictory multitudes! I’m so intrigued by her genuine devotion to John— she’s so fervent I can only assume it’s true— next to her commitment to wanting to kill him. She loves him, she has no *moral* qualms with him. but the grief over Cristabel’s death is just so great that knowing that it could have all been avoided is like the single thing she could never look past

and she’s also very uneasy in the beginning of HTN, I wonder if she was having second thoughts? that’s the only way I can read her first conversation with Augustine

least favorite thing about them: I would’ve liked her to interact more with Harrow just because it would be interesting. I really like her dynamic and her seeming to despise Harrow for both seeing herself in her and presumably that Harrow managed to preserve her cavalier

favorite line: obviously acid jail is an all timer. from a character perspective the entire segment dinner segment before dios apate minor is FASCINATING. this bit:

“You’re wrong, Augustine. You still hate Cristabel … you hated my cavalier long before what she did.” […]

“Do I, Mercy? God help me, I don’t think I do.”

She said, “Look me in the eyes and say that.” […]

“Joy, what’s done is done. They’re dead. The crime is punished. I don’t hate Cristabel.”

Her face was savage and smooth and implacable. “Say it again,” she said

absolutely deranged choice of fake conversation to have before pivoting to having sex on the dinner table directly after. she also later yells at him for being the one to bring up Cristabel when he most certainly did not lol it was all on her!

brOTP: I don’t really have one, I feel like all the OG lyctors are fucking so it’s not much of a bro situation lol and the newbies she just doesn’t have much of a dynamic with? it is really funny seeing her yell at the Blood of Eden people tho

OTP: oh you know!!! (Mercystine)

nOTP: I don’t really have one tbh. there are plenty of potential ship dynamics I don’t care about but nothing that I actively hate

random headcanon: I do actually agree with the literal pink hair fanon. she’s the sort of person who says “hiss” out loud she was clearly super fucking online and I could see her dyeing her hair pink pre res and then just keeping it that way. like Mercymorn definitely had a tumblr and she remembers nyan cat and carmeldansen even tho both memes are probably really old by her era. she probably had an ugly pink gamer girl set up at home

unpopular opinion: Mercybel is rather boring? I prefer what that death means for Mercy rather than caring much about it as like a dynamic

favorite picture of them: I don’t have a link on hand but the Mercystine stairwell Leyendecker study is soooo good

[gideonisms]

okay okay so. i’m re-reading TLT on the clock and something occurred to me for the first time. in HtN, in the list of lyctors, everyone has “x saint to serve the king undying” EXCEPT Anastasia. Cytherea is #7, then it’s Ianthe at #8 and Harrow at #9. now, everything we learn about the original lyctors makes it clear that they weren’t as faithful as we believed at the beginning of GtN, but Anastasia seems to be particularly complicated. even more so considering the reveal in HtN that Jod killed Samael “to save them both.” and then in NtN, in the tomb, Nona sees “Anastasia, all bones. Not really Anastasia. But Anastasia’s body without the meat on it… She remembered Anastasia.” and even as Nona is becoming Alecto, dying or w/e, there’s a passage/memory that says “she had said, There are almost no beautiful things left. Where is Anastasia? Let me talk to Anastasia.” ik it’s not super cohesive but i just feel like we’re missing something re: Anastasia that’s going to change things in a big way

Yeah! Wish I could have more coherent thoughts on this but I'm pretty wiped out atm. Love to read on the clock. I think Anastasia and alecto kissed. maybe she knew about alecto being earth's rb too! Who could say