#he made his lyctors kill the people they considered their world

[riverashes]

Not me realizing the reason John's name is John Gaius is because he also kept to Mercymorn's "silly" tradition of taking the name of the thing they killed

[whimsicallywiddershins]

So we found out from Palamedes and the Unwanted Guest that lyctorhood is not perfect and leaves a mark on the necromancer. The necromancer devours the cavalier's soul, and unintentionally gains something from it, mostly emotions or new urges or something like that. Like Ianthe getting Babs' hatred/distaste of Gideon.

John devoured Alecto. For a little while, John and Alecto were one, two souls intermingling like two pieces of flesh bleeding together. Then John created her a body and poured her soul back in, unintentionally creating a perfect lyctorhood.

John didn't really know what he was doing. He was running on guesswork and instinct. So I think he and Alecto shared and gained something from eachother.

Alecto is always described as angry. Which makes sense, considering the circumstances. But when John killed and devoured the earth, he was furious. He was raging. He hated.

What if Alecto got most of her anger and hatred and rage from John? Some of it was hers, yes. But hatred? A never ending anger? What if Alecto got what John was feeling when he ate her, made her?

And John. What did he get?

The thing is, we don't know what Alecto's personality was like. She was a planet, not exactly a person with feelings.

But we do know what Resurrection Beasts are like. They are relentless. They hunt and hunt and hunt John. Angry, yes. But mostly unstoppable and stuck in a never ending cycle of hunting John no matter the cost.

John won't forgive the Trillionaires. He doesnt even seem that angry anymore. But he won't stop hunting them, not for anything. Augestine begged him to stop. John doesn't let his lyctors tell him to stop. John doesn't care how many worlds he kills, how many people he displaced. He doesn't care about the cost to the Houses. He is relentless. He hunts and hunts and hunts.

John acts like a Resurrection Beast. And Alecto acts like John.

[adolin]

do you have favorite jod fics you'd recommend? i love your tlt opinions and am also a filthy john understander, but totally new to the fandom's fic scene

HI. YES. This is the rec list I was born to make. My shitty little meow meow. My insufferable babygirl. I do have fics. They're good :)

Written for me (ME!):

(I sat on this ask for a couple days so that I could acknowledge the authors on these fics that just revealed today. They cater perfectly to my tastes and everyone should read them.)

and my mouth isn't filled with blood, it's victory wine by @widespindriftgaze; John/Ianthe, pre-NtN, rated E, gore

You like forcing yourself to do gross things. This is called having character. Ianthe gets haunted, makes a power play, and smokes a cigarette.

Sex Education by @theriverbeyond; John & Gideon, pre-NtN, rated T

In which God explains condoms, consent, and how babies are made, and Prince Kiriona Gaia considers the pros and cons of being jettisoned out into the vacuum of space

(John gives Kiriona "the talk")

Other faves!! These are John & Gideon:

A Mild Sort of Resurrection by sigaloenta; Bari Star AU, rated G

In all the extensive special briefings and all-hands bulletins and strict sets of orders preparatory to the Emperor Divine's inspection tour of the Avernus, no one had considered that God might desire to fetch Himself a coffee.

"Fuck it, I'm adopting her," said John Gaius, not knowing the paperwork wasn't necessary by @naamah-beherit; John & Gideon AU, rated T

Gideon, a highly distinguished Cohort lieutenant, saves the day—and the girl—and then gets stuck in the lift of The Erebos with a man feeding her peanuts as if they have all the time in the world. They don't, but if he doesn't mind, then why should she?

now that you're sleeping by elijah_was_a_prophet; John & Kiriona pre NtN, rated M for mega dead

After-hours blues

John + Alecto, after the end:

moving upon the face of the waters by bittybelle; Alecto/John, rated M

You kissed John like the animal you had become, and he responded with the fealty of a child, and then with the force of a god, and then with the passion of the abandoned.

so I open the window to hear sounds of people by @sunderedstar; Alecto & John, rated T

He misses the beach. The real beach. The current one is mostly soil with a lacy veneer of nuclear ash, clammy and streaky and hilariously radioactive, which is a real bummer when he thinks about it too hard.

Some gen fic!!

recognize them by their fruits by ceruleanVulpine; Ianthe & John post HtN, rated T

John and Ianthe deal with the fact that his only remaining Lyctor is the one he never liked much. Maybe they can bond over the fact that they're both egotistical manipulators who lie like breathing? No? Also, God sees ghosts. Ianthe doesn't help.

John 25:12 by @halfeatenmoon; Pre-resurrection gang, John & G1deon

John and his friends escape the cow fortress to spend Christmas Day at the beach. With beer, salads, pavlova, and the corpses of a million fish killed by nuclear weapons testing.

Assorted lyctor shipfic:

choking on your leash by @augustmourn cult era John/A- , rated E + dubcon

He wanted to fuck John because he cared about him, even if he couldn't say it out loud. He didn't want to fuck John as a convenient way for both of them to have a better orgasm, like they always had; he didn't want to fuck John to stop him from killing off another hundred cops. But he would do anything for John. He'd known that in his bones for a long, long time.

colder than empires, and deader too by cadmean; rated E, dubcon + some gore

Drenched in the blood of his oldest sister and staring death (God; but really, where is the difference?) in the face, Augustine makes a different choice.

nature/nurture by Marenke; John/Augustine pre NtN speculation about the memory wipe. Rated G

There’s a little movement Augustine does - a flick of his wrist when he lits up a cigarette - that, some days, feels like the only reminiscent of him before he died.

This War of Attrition by @seven-syntheseas; Augustine/John/Mercy longfic, rated E (30k, complete)

attrition (n.): 1. sorrow for one’s sins stemming from a motive other than that of the love of God; 2. friction.

Or, put simply: Dios Apate. Major.

Self promo corner! I'm not above self reccing, so here are my jodfics. (Surprisingly, they reflect my tastes perfectly.)

John & Kiriona + John & others, post-HtN fic about God's upcoming midlife crisis: towery city amongst the stars; rated T

John & Augustine with shippy vibes, pre-canon: dreams of the ones who came before us, rated T

John/G1deon, pre-canon: dead and old and always hungry, rated E

Alecto/John, after the nukes: sign my death with your teeth, rated E + gore

Primarily a Ianthe fic but John is in there and it was very fun to write: after me, the flood, rated E, horror elements, Ianthe/Augustine + Ianthe & John

Kind of an ensemble fic but John's in it (and he's the only one having a good time) HtN AU: Housing Crisis! at the Mithraeum, rated T

[demethinkstoomuch]

Cytherea and John have a lot in common in terms of goals and motives and techniques, when you adjust for scale: they acted out of betrayal and hurt and anger and the vengeance of love -- and those feelings were entirely right, entirely fair. So, they pursued those as their top priorities, regardless -- because of -- the body count.

And, in choosing the vindication of those feelings above all else, they destroyed more or less the “all else” part of things. Cytherea was lied to, Cytherea was abandoned to her pain by people who made sympathetic noises and maybe believed those noises (but not enough). Cytherea killed innocent people, because she decided that, more than, say, confronting John directly, or any other recourse, she wanted to smash everything that had been made in his image. She didn’t actually accomplish the goal of her anger, she just did some murders. John Gaius was lied to. John Gaius was abandoned to the world’s pain by people who made sympathetic noises about cows and maybe believed those noises (but probably not, and definitely not enough). John Gaius...You see how this goes?

Furthermore, we then get to the how, to the justification, the predatory interest in people who could have reminded them of something they’d lost, one of the driving forces of that anger -- even though, push comes to shove, they’ve already decided what the most important thing in the world is, and it’s not the people they’re making feel important. And how that plays against the self-assurances that they aren’t exactly lying -- see the way Cytherea insists she was only giving hypotheticals, and compare it to John’s “What’s the difference [between the truth and the story you tell yourself]?” And I think that shared balancing act, the one between their interest in those reminders, that need to not be lying, and their vengeance, is kind of what allows for them both to have that slightly self-aware air, occasionally a little apologetic, like ‘Oh, it’s reasonable that you would be hurt, all things considered’ vibe that you see throughout HtN’s climax and a bit during Palamedes’ parlor room scene at the end of GtN. They’ve picked their number 1 priority (VENGEANCE), and they know the thing they are prioritizing is true and valid (that is, they’re angry and they have every right to be angry), so they don’t need to necessarily defend themselves against every sling and arrow along the way. They can be nice, or funny, or kind, without it ever chnging the bottom line.

That similarity is...Interesting. She is the only OG lyctor we meet who was born post-resurrection, in the world and Empire John was forming. Besides just giving her a motive, I think this says something about his world, and the ways in which it’s not new. After all, John was made by our world, and he’s done the same thing -- including the same things as it would have done, if with some specific modifications. There’s a sort of intergenerational trauma happening there, where each round makes some changes in scope or technique compared to the previous round, who did such awful things, but keep doing some of the same awful things, just a little differently.

Cytherea is John’s creation, and her story is John’s story, writ very small. A prelude, in a way, to certain concepts about anger and forgiveness and trauma and priorities that are still unfolding throughout the series. 

But now I won’t be able to think about the John bits of Nona without thinking of Palamedes saying, scathingly, “You couldn’t help but prattle about why you killed innocent people, as though your reasons were interesting.” Which, honestly, yes, they are. I would not be here if they weren’t. But also, yeah, you tell ‘em about their horrific priorities, king. 

[ghostmartyr]

/clears throat/ so, Immi, I hear you like the locked tomb, which is fantastic! from one person also escaping the snk series into TLT to another, what did you think of the characters and plot in HtN? are there any things you're most excited to see when Alecto comes out in 2022?

-pats lifeboat- This baby can fit so much trauma.

SPOILERS, naturally.

With another paragraph informing the curious that unspoiled is the way to go into HtN, since if you aren’t lost and confused, are you really reading Harrow the Ninth?

I read it all in one day, and that was a choice. It does mean my memory and understanding of what all went on is slightly dependent on someone else on the internet exploding over a particular set of paragraphs and explaining their significance to me, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

HtN disappointed me on one front in that I was hoping seeing more of Harrow 1.0 would help out any future fic endeavors. On everything else, like the first one, being told the story is such a good time that I’m willing to wait on a full comprehension of where it’s going.

I also really like second person.

What I loved most about HtN is how even without Gideon mentioned until very, very late in the book, you can feel her absence everywhere. In the wrong bubble flashbacks you’re commanded to examine the strangeness, but even in Harrow going about her day, the isolation and the wrongness of it decorate her every action. She’s alone, and she shouldn’t be, and the loss she’s unaware of bleeds into a constant echo of grief.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated absence as a narrative tool so much. Obviously griddlehark hours go hard once they start in HtN, but even before then, there is so much power to their connection that looking into a world where it never exists still manages to punch you in the heart with how much each one inhabits everything the other is.

The whole series is amping me up with a few thoughts on loneliness, honestly. Gideon and Harrow grow up alone on the Ninth, save for each other. It takes leaving for that to be any kind of good thing. The first book is tag team Among Us with everyone in their little clusters, slowly learning what other people are about as they all drop dead.

The second book has a different vibe and different plot things going on, but it’s similar in that the protagonist gets thrown into a world they don’t fit and have to put on a show. Only now there are even fewer people to familiarize with, with that number correlating directly to how they all killed the person closest to keeping them from being alone.

Lyctorhood is taking the person dearest to your heart and trapping them there forever while they’re stripped of everything that made them who they are.

...Also Ianthe is there.

Gideon, Mercy, and Augustine are the last Lyctors standing after 10,000 years. There were only seven, starting out. Sixteen acolytes who came to the First. The only pair who didn’t succeed in condensing themselves is separated from the pack and sent to live away from their peers on a tiny planet that no one has anything good to say about.

Alecto is John’s -- who even knows, past A Lot, and he puts her to sleep and locks her in a prison no one but he can get past.

God has seven friends. More if you want to count the people in the Cohort, but realistically, he has seven friends. Then they keep dying.

Harrow spends HtN in a spaceship with five people.

One is trying to kill her.

One ordered that one to try to kill her.

Two could not care less about the useless baby Lyctor.

One is Ianthe.

There is no real endgame. There is surviving life, and life has become a game of running as far away as possible so you don’t share your ruin upon your inevitable death.

It’s bleak and sad.

Harrow’s healthiest relationships are with dead people, and some of them she didn’t know at all in life.

Reiterating it, the most plot significant bit of the world is finding someone else in the world, swearing yourself to them, and smashing your souls together until you’ve lost the connection entirely.

My brain’s not in the best place so I can’t do more than gesture loudly at it, but a few people have mentioned that the series’ thesis is a counter to Ianthe’s statement that love is acquisitive.

Harrow tightens her hold around Gideon until Gideon would rather she just strangle her and get it over with, all things considered. It fucks them both up, and when they start working to get past it, circumstance wraps a chain around both their throats.

The necromancers who become imperfect Lyctors have all acquired their cavaliers, and besides the cav, it kills that bond.

Harrow’s rejection of that is why Gideon’s soul is still in the world of the living (and John blood).

She has spent her entire life eating pieces of Gideon to keep herself a horrid imitation of whole, and when she is finally offered that, she refuses.

Grief and how Harrow just can’t are active elements of the book, and Magnus gives her more therapy in five minutes talking about it than she has ever had in her life, but the reason why that isn’t the end of Gideon is because, unlike all the other Lyctors, Harrow turns the offer down.

With the exception of Babs and Ianthe, the relationship between cavaliers and necros about to do the Lyctor thing is cavaliers promising to burn for an eternity while their necromancer lives off the fumes.

Fuck that is Harrow’s response.

Cytherea says, in the aftermath, that they had the choice to stop.

Harrow stops.

A lifetime of doing exactly what Gideon is telling her to do with her death, and Harrow chooses to stop.

Harrow remembers Ortus’ poetry. She regularly sees her congregation off to their deaths. She keeps Gideon’s glasses. She views Palamedes, head exploded and all, as an infinitely better person than she is because of the quality of his exemplary character. She pulls Gideon the First from the incinerator on the night she plans to kill him.

Kiddo has so many fucking issues, but somewhere, she has learned to respect people for being people. That’s why she and Gideon are the heroes of the story, ultimately, and Ortus saying that they’re heroes worthy of the Ninth doesn’t fall flat. They’re actually trying.

Where that puts us for Alecto, I don’t pretend to know.

Since the first book is the temptation of an end to isolation, only to have it snatched away, the second book is the continuation of isolation with a few promising sparks of human connection that pave the way for hope...

That leaves the third book to shed the isolation and allow the connections to thrive.

With Gideon and Harrow MIA.

I know that the books kick things up into high gear in the final acts each time, but if they’re both gone for the majority of the book, no matter how much fun it is, I’m going to miss them. They’re the core leads, and I don’t want to be without them in the final part.

The 2022 release date has aged my soul. I deliberately planned my GtN read to land a month before HtN came out, then suffered when that was delayed. When really that was nothing at all. I hate waiting.

(Insert note that I’m very glad they aren’t forcing Muir to rush anything out. It’s been a rough time, but also, just in general authors should have the opportunity to create the best versions of their art they can, so the extra time hurts, but it’s obviously for the best.)

What I’m most excited for is probably the cover art. The first two have been awesome, and the artist said he’d likely do print sales for all three when the third’s revealed. My wallet cries but my heart does not.

What I dare not be excited for is the potential for Gideon and Harrow meeting again and perhaps hugging. In their own bodies.

I’d take other bodies, but ideally, y’know.

Also I would love for Harrow to finally meet her popsicle girlfriend.

I doubt it would be a wholly positive experience, but by golly I want it. Maybe they could hug too. It would probably kill Harrow again, but who doesn’t expect several people to die again in the third book?

However it plays out, I’m expecting to enjoy AtN. The writing’s the sort that I’ll happily follow wherever it goes. For everything else, there’s fanfic. The only real worry I have is the whole book will be narrated by Ianthe, and while I mentally groan at that, I actually find Ianthe’s commentary delightful, so even in the worst case scenario I’m having a good time.

Thank you so much for the ask.

[arlingtonpark]

Harrow the Ninth Act I Thoughts

This is all your fault, @ghostmartyr. If you hadn’t reblogged what seemed like heavy metal boy band fanart, I wouldn’t be in this hole. And for that, I hate you.

So.

When I first encountered the Locked Tomb online, I couldn’t tell if it was a story about edgy, neogothic, teenaged angst, or something better than that.

Turns out, it’s both.

But in a good way.

I love it. It’s great.

It’s unabashed, it’s thoughtful, it’s entertaining, it’s suspenseful.

Gideon the Ninth is finished, and after starting Harrow the Ninth, I decided to blog about it as I go.

I’ll be doing one post for every act of the book. I hope.

Let’s start with our new main character, Harrow. Newly reborn as a god and one of the only survivors of the last book.

So….

Right now, Harrow’s…

Um.

She’s uh…

-gestures at everything-

She’s fucked.

Fucked, broken, in the shit, started godhood on the wrong side of the bed.

200 babies were killed in the name of birthing her. Her parents died in front of her because of what she did. Death has always seemed to follow her, and she carries the burden of all that death.

Harrow despises her existence and wishes she were dead because of the circumstances of her birth, and yet for that very reason she is committed to living, because if she dies, all those sacrifices would be null.

She takes up the duties of governing the Ninth, she applies herself rigorously to mastering necromancy, and when the opportunity arises to become a lyctor, she jumps at it.

Harrow does this because it’s why all those people had to die. She was birthed to carry the Ninth’s legacy; its traditions and obligations and to some extent its very existence.

The twisted nature of the Ninth and her parents is inseparable from that legacy, so in a sense it was that legacy that led to her infanticidal birth, but regardless, this legacy is all she has. It’s all she was ever meant to have. And so she devoted herself to it.  

Now that she’s a lyctor and her house’s future will be guaranteed, but to do it, she had to sacrifice Gideon, whom she loved.

It’s more of the same shit from her perspective: more people dying for her sake. 200 babies die to grant her obscene necromantic talent, her girlfriend dies so she can gain even more power. Harrow doesn’t mean to step on innocent people to get what she wants…but that’s always how it’s turned out for her.

But to add insult to injury, even after all she’s sacrificed, she still didn’t get exactly what she wanted.

Her house will have a future, but she can never return to it. She’s essentially divorced from the only thing that gave her life meaning.

She can never return to her old life; to the extent she saw that as desirable, she can’t have that. Her old life is gone forever.

Something also went wrong with her ascension to godhood. She’s violently sick, mentally unstable, and the powers she should have are…half baked, for lack of a better word.

Nobody said you could get hungover from ascending to godhood. Harrow should sue.

It’s like going in to surgery to remove a tumor and coming out lobotomized.

Is she even immortal?

It all stings of pointlessness. All that effort for nothing.

Worse than that; She lost everything. Her home, her love, her pride and dignity.

Her only purpose in life now is to fight these hell beasts that she’s never heard of before. Happy days ahead, surely.

Oh, and one of the people she’ll have to work with is named Gideon.

Does God hate her?

And then there’s God.

This guy is sus as hell.

He’s gracious and humble. Perpetually calm and soft spoken. Empathetic and understanding. That’s what He’s like in person.

But He’s…maybe the villain? I guess.

God works in mysterious ways, and I have no damn clue what His are, but it’s probably ugly.

Yes, He’s a cordial Dude…but he’s still the God-emperor of a galactic undead empire.

Dude wears a crown made from the bones of dead babies FFS.

Not to be accusatory, but this guy definitely has skeletons in his closet.

-bu-dum-tish-

One of the things that really got my attention while reading this series is how the magic system in this world is depicted. Usually, in fantasy stories, the magic system is depicted as being morally neutral. Good guys use it, bad guys it, but the magic itself just is.

The Locked Tomb Trilogy isn’t like that.

Necromancy is bad. Perverse, even.

All the necromancers are frail and sickly. Practicing it is deleterious on the body. Doing too much too fast with it causes even more pronounced harm. As in, bleeding from your sweat glands.

Necromancy works by manipulating the life force of living beings and, primarily, the death force those being give off when they die.

The forces of nature that necromancy utilizes are (apparently) fundamental to the universe, akin to the laws of nature, but the use of those forces in this way are clearly a perversion.

It’s sort of like a bad tv show, like Sword Art Online. Sure, the things that went into making the show are natural parts of the world, but you just can’t put those things together like that.

John and his empire epitomize that.

All known beings in the universe are fundamentally thalergetic in nature. They are beings who radiate life energy. Except for the planets of the empire. Those planets and the star they orbit are thanergetic in nature.

They literally radiate death. And they are apparently one of a kind in that regard.

John is the first necromancer. John used his newly harnessed powers to “resurrect” multiple planets that had died.

Except he didn’t really resurrect anything, he turned them into an entirely new form of being using his entirely new form of science that uses some kind of mechanism that doesn’t occur naturally.

What I’m getting at here is that everything about John, his power, and his empire is artificial. Man-made. Perhaps even John-made.

We don’t actually know what happened during the Resurrection. What killed off the planets, how John attained his God-like powers, and what life John lived before it.

Oh, yeah, and every planet the empire conquers is systematically killed over generations to fuel their necromancer’s powers.

Every planet God touches literally dies.

One thing I appreciate about this series is how layered the story is.

The Locked Tomb series is a fun, irreverent romp. It’s about allowing the past to rest in peace. It’s also surprisingly political.

The metaphor is pretty blunt: it’s about capitalism. What’s more, the metaphor seems to be from a progressive or maybe even socialist perspective.

Ok, so hear me out on this. This is less fan theory than speculation about the author’s intentions.

The empire is a society built on a system that requires them to move from planet to planet, gradually killing those planets until they have to evacuate and move to a new one.

This process of gradual death takes generations to play out, so apparently they don’t even consider it to be an event that happens.

The heart of this system is necromancy, a perverse science that is ultimately derived from natural phenomena.

This system places the most powerful necromancer atop a literal throne and worships them as God.

God’s disciples are the lyctors, second only to Him in power. They attained that power by a very special process.

The lyctoral process is exploitative. It requires the necromancer to use their cavalier as a sacrifice and to turn their soul into a power source.

The lyctoral process is built around domination. The necromancer, in sacrificing their cavalier, subsumes the cavalier’s soul into their being to gain power.

The lyctoral process is dehumanizing. The cavalier is degraded from a person to a mere battery, but the necromancer is degraded in a way as well. The necromancer can never return to their house, or any of the other houses for that matter. Instead they must fight and die for God in his battle against the Revenant Beasts.

If you’re progressive, this may sound familiar to you.

Relationships of exploitation, domination, and dehumanization. A society built around perversions. That rewards people with talent in those perversions with idolatry. That cold-heartedly and shortsightedly extracts every drop of usable resources from a planet until it is dead, then moves on to the next one.

To a socialist, this may sound a lot like capitalism.

Saying that is already bold enough for me, so I won’t try to argue that it’s a one to one allegory. Necromancy equals the profit motive, lyctors represent the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (So I guess that means the non-lyctor necromancers are the petit bourgeoisie) and the empire is humanity.

You could make a case for it, but the hot takes in this post are already pretty spicy, so…

OMG Mercymorn. XD

Mercymorn is my favorite out of the new characters. She’s a bitch.

Snide, rude, assertive, bitchy, and standoffish. No, it’s not that I want her to step on me, I just can’t get enough of her interactions.

I guess in real life she wouldn’t be fun to be around, but as a character in a book, she steals every scene. Her arrogant and bitchy remarks always make me laugh.

My one wish heading in to Act II: that Mercymorn is in charge of Ianthe’s training.

Just so she can kick her ass for not measuring up to her standards.