#just like. this baby is a necromancer and this baby is a cavalier

[phalangemedes]

hello!! this is true but also the intense and fucked up pressure of being 'gifted kids' absolutely and irrevocably messed them up.

You can be loved and cherished and in a stable environment and still have too much expected of you as a literal child fill of underdeveloped skull jelly. They burdened these bumbling baby pre-teens with the knowledge they were about to be in charge of EVERYTHING they had ever known. Like it was the greatest honour to be bestowed on them. And they believed it BECAUSE THEY WERE KIDS.

Palamedes wasn't just an adroit necromancer he was also SMART, he was clever and caring and dedicated and he was pushed and pushed and pushed to become something so important so young. And he was told it was an accolade, something to be proud of, what he should have always been aiming for. ‘You are the best so be the best’. The only reason he wasn’t an egomaniac ( which isn't to say yer boy doesn't have an ego, he does, it's just because mostly he's been in an environment where he's been RIGHT alot) is because Cam didn’t let him. Their love language is argumentative, it’s why he thought Harrow was ready for tea parties and sleep overs even though she was still on ‘that is definitely a murderer, I can tell. For reasons.’ And it made him self sacrificial for the greater good, against his own good, it made him think not only SHOULD he help but that if he couldn't he was a failure.

Dulci is SUCH a good example of this, because he was A LITTLE TINY BABY and he heard of this woman and he thought his need to fix her was love. That's so sad??? And it obviously became love, because he loves very fully anyone he thinks even vaguely likes him back. But that must have been such a MINEFIELD for Dulcinea?? And she was the first 'adult' who was sweetly kind to him, who treated him like a kid, listened to him and talked to him, expected nothing more than a letter back. She didn’t tell him ‘yes I expect you to make me live’ she said ‘thank you’ when he made things to make her life better, but she never let him get close enough his everything was sucked into being her carer.

And Cam... Cam was a sword fighter on a planet of data analysts. A BIG, STRONG, taciturn girl who was fond of the (inevitable) future Master Warden. And she was never an Alexandrite, so she was never seen as TOP TIER, never trained as a consort, and that would have been expected for him. Her own ego is also… strange. She’s aware of her ability but she doesn’t think she’d good enough, not in a ‘I have weighed myself up against the world and found myself lacking’ way either in a ‘Well it’s okay because at least Sextus has a clue.’ Generally she would have been DROWNED in expectations of what her station was. Either was a 'you have to git gud' or a 'you wont ever be good enough'. I wonder how much of it was why she became his cavalier primary, better to be thought of as unworthy as his cav without the pressure to spread your ‘inferior’ genes right???

Also they are the most fucking neurodivergent little shits in the world?? and whilst their obsessions and dedication past the point of mental and physical wellness were seen as a good sense of duty, it was not, and no adults were telling them 'hey how about you eat and sleep and stuff!!' because it was seen as a virtue to be obsessed.

If you're on planet library and your special interest is Learn Everything you're getting A*'s. If your job is Book Boys Stab Fiend and you're good at stabbing? You will be encouraged past the point of failure to get better at being a Stab Fiend.

And I don't think there's any BETTER way this is expressed than with Paul's birth. That is an act of LOVE and an act of WAR. It's an act of kindness, it isn't a sacrifice of their individuality, it's the best they have. Pal doesn't have long in Babs, Camilla is a kebab without a necro to fix her. And their choice? is to become a demi god surrounded by the family that put them in that position and their enemies. They put them in a situation who's only out was failure. And they said naahh and chose their own failure, together, hand in hand.

It’s the wedding you have in secret when your family hates you and your partner, it’s going to a family function 10 years later wearing your rings with a ‘Oh yeah we got married’ because it was for you but holy fuck you want it to hurt them too.

Smothering is no less or more than neglect, just different.

what drives me insane is that most of the codependent pairs in tlt were set up to develop that kind of relationship in one way or another except for cam and pal. they weren’t the last two children on their planet! they don’t have the excuse of having been raised as a matched pair! they didn’t even keep each other company for ten thousand years! they were two friends growing up in a stable environment among people who cared about them and somehow they still managed to achieve levels of codependency unknown to god by like. age 13

[mayasaura]

so fucking funny to me when people talk about tlt setting like everyone in the whole society is sorted into being either a necromancer or a cavalier. like yes necromancy is an inborn trait. but cavalier? that's a wholeass job. that's a career. assigned butler at birth

[mercyisms]

incredibly me to not only be like 'i'd really love a succession/tlt au' and then to go 'also it's very important to me that frankgerrikarl be prominent in it.' incredibly me. incredibly, incredibly silly.

[drastrochris]

Ok, stick with me on this one:

Harrow is born, and Priamhark and Pelleamena are overjoyed. The Ninth is saved!

But there's this weird redhead baby who rudely didn't die. The horrible great-aunts don't like it, and over Aiglamene's objections, send the child up with Crux to the top of the shaft where he opens her protective suit and watches as she insolently continues to live. So he chucks her down the shaft, where she bounces a few times, cries for a bit, then eventually crawls over to a basket where she steals a leek to chew on.

A few years later, they give Harrowhark the bones, and she immediately can manipulate them, again saving the Ninth. They give some to Gideon too, and she uses them to drum on every surface, including Harrow's head. She's told "the Reverend Daughter is not a percussion instrument," before Aiglamene takes her away to start her proper Cavalier training.

"You can't die," Aiglamene informs her as she slides a sword through Gideon's stomach, "so you must do whatever you can to protect Harrowhark."

"This still hurts, you know," Gideon replies.

Instead of growing up hating each other, they're brought up as a team. They still go into the Tomb, of course, because they're kids, and have been told explicitly never to go into the Tomb.

Harrow can't understand why Gideon can't die, but as long as she agrees to sign off on delivery orders from the Cohort of "periodicals, misc" and "cookies, assorted," Gideon is perfectly happy to let her drain a bit of blood and feed her deadly poisons. Eventually, she's watched Gideon not-die from nearly everything she can think of, and picks up on a slight resonance that sings out when Gideon doesn't die.

The letter arrives, Ortus has no part in this story, and Harrow and Gideon arrive at Canaan House without incident.

Until they walk down the shuttle ramp and see everyone else staring at them. "It's like these people haven't seen an immortal hero before. Or maybe you're just too much of a butt-hurt nun for the other houses." Chaos erupts as the Seventh House cav and necromancer immediately attack them, but the body of Protesilaus falls apart quickly under Gideon's blade, and the Lady Dulcinea is subdued with only minor structural damage. Even when she screams out that she's Cytherea the First, and that she "will not be stopped by children," it's clear that she has been.

In the aftermath, Teacher is delighted. "May I call you Harrowhark the First, with your living cavalier, Gideon the First? The first perfect lyctor. No, the first lyctor of any kind to see these halls for a myriad?"

Palamedes is torn between "my beloved penpal is definitely dead" and "this angry scrungle rederived lyctorhood alone, on a planet with no resources, and with a cav who seems to be most interested in eating everyone's desserts."

Ianthe is furious, but can't quite identify why, other than she /hates/ Harrow the First's cav.

[starberry-cupcake]

This is a one chapter update because this chapter was 25 years long and I don't want my post to be also that long, even though you're all being super nice about it (thank you ♥).

previously, in harroweena the ninth:

this happened

now, chapter 6:

harrowbean wakes up and is taken somewhere in a wheelchair

we get no sleep in this ship

we get no face paint, no black robes, no sleep, no security from people who wanna suffocate you in your sleep, no explanations

lyctors need a union

as in unionization, not as in a combination of people, that they did when slurping their cavaliers

the person carrying her is very upset at everyone

turns out, she's a lyctor

her name is mercysomething

we have an ortus 2, a mercysomething and an augustine

harrow mentions eyes again and says that Lyctors "kept their own faces, but the eyes they stole from someone else. You had been lucky that your own transition was not as startling"

Lucky, you say...

I don't know about that

anyway, this mercysomething is supposed to be the saint of joy

I'm assuming lyctors are given their names through the ancient art of sarcasm

on that note

harrow: "if you had not of late become the Saint of Emesis"

me: wait, I gotta look something up real quick

me: yeah, that's funny

mercysomething is angry and in a hurry

a bunch of time is spent with mercysomething being angry and treating people like crap and being unpleasant

she's arguing with everyone she comes across and takes harrow to a hangar

yandere twin is sitting on a crate watching a necromancer make a ward with blood and bleeding to death in the process

harrow sits next to her and they are like sportscasters of blood-painted wards

according to the necrocasters, it's a ghost ward

yandere twin updates harrow on the fact that they're at war and they've been attacked and they're down to three Old Lyctors and two Baby Lyctors

it would explain why mercysomething is upset all the time

mercysomething wants to take the emperor somewhere else and the guy commanding the ship doesn't want to let him leave

emperor guy comes in and kind of does this to mercysomething

yandere twin and I are LIVING for all this pute/salseo/gossip/however you wanna call it

harrow isn't as interested

I complained in gideon because gideon wasn't interested in things I wanted to look into and now I'm gonna complain about harrow not being interested in Drama

emperor the fool says: "I know exactly who is behind this terrible blow, and they were fools to show their hand"

yandere twin and I

when emperor guy sees the necromancer bleeding out he goes "for fuck's sake"

it's a quote, not me being funny ha ha

remember when I said this guy is a mess?

that's becoming exponentially more evident

I want to punch him in the face at all times

I don't know how people can be respectful to this dude

the reason there isn't any face paint for harrow in this ship is that the emperor uses it every morning to paint on his clown face

they've been alive like 1000 years or whatnot and they're all a fucking group project going off the rails

so emperor guy, mercysomething, not!dulcinea (now in a coffin package), yandere twin and harrow get in a ship inside the ship

a smaller ship inside the big ship where the emperor has been for the past bunch of years

the small ship has the blood ward for the ghosts

but, before going in, emperor the fool fixes the necro that's bleeding to death

I honestly think she would have preferred to just die

which, same, if he was my boss

necros also need to unionize

cavaliers more than anyone tbh

if cavaliers unionized, idk if there would be any lyctors

emperor guy and mercysomething argue about people they know and we don't yet know

and mercysomething was telling harrow previously that the former ninth was prettier than her (anastasia, heart don't fail me now, courage don't desert me) and telling yandere twin the former third was prettier than her (cyrus? cyril? something like that)

which, absolutely juvenile behavior for someone who's like a 1000+ years of age or whatever

why would we care who she finds prettier????

ANYWAY, throughout this I was once again thinking

nobody here has G & P initials

it's been driving me mad this whole time

gideon and harrow found that former lyctor quarters

and it said "ONE FLESH, ONE END. G. & P."

that was before the note with gideon's name in it was read

and all this time I was thinking those were a set of necro-cav from the previous lyctors

but nobody here has those initials

the only P is the cavalier of Ortus 2 and there's no G

which is DRIVING ME MAD

if the G is the previous Gideon, the one not!dulcinea mentioned, it would explain why there was a note that mentioned a Gideon in the quarters

it would not, however, explain who the fuck that other gideon is, who P is and why they aren't in the list with the other combos

augustine is a former fifth because his cav's last name is quinque

mercysomething's from the eighth because her cav's last name is oct, and because she's annoying to be around

ortus 2 is from the second, because his cav's last name is dve

cyril cyrus whatev is from the third because the cav is trinit and mercysomething mentioned him to yandere twin, who is from the third

ulysses is from the fourth because the cav is tetra

not!dulcinea is seventh because the cav was heptane and because it was a very important thing in the previous book, as we've established

anastasia (dancing bears, painted wings) is from the ninth because the cav is novenary and she was mentioned to harrow

cassiopeia must be sixth, because it's what I have left, but I don't recognize the root of the last name to make a clear parallel from the top of my head

the emperor's guardian is A.L.

I'm taking note of an emperor's guardian who isn't around anymore

could it be ice cube barbie???? idk fam, she's looking at him a lot

giving me magic knight rayearth vibes again

this but with backstabbing instead of love

ANYWAY, all of this to point out that there's no G & P and it's driving me up the wall

now, to a very important thing

VERY IMPORTANT

for me, maybe it's just me

the enemies or whatever are called "remnants" and their leader apparently has been gone for "nearly 20 years"

this is me desperately making timelines with gideon's mom and gideon's birth and the 2 details I know about gideon's mom and her birth

you know what, I'm gonna quote, since I went to fetch it

"One day eighteen years ago, Gideon's mother had tumbled down the middle of the shaft in the drag chute and a battered hazard suit, like some moth drifting slowly down into the dark. The suit had been out of power for a couple of minutes. The woman landed brain-dead. All the battery power had been sucked away by a bio-container plugged into the suit, the kind you'd carry a transplant limb in, and inside that container was Gideon, only a day old."

I'm gonna just...put a pin on that that in the cork board

I don't know you guys, I'm just gonna

let me pin that

I'm probably being wrong a lot more than what I'm getting right but I'm just telling you what goes through my mind, if I'm making a fool of myself, it's too late to act like I'm not a fool

I am also putting my clown paint on like the emperor

MOVING ON

harrow thinks the emperor talks in plural about her at one point and idk if that's the case tbh

we then get emperor guy explaining how they need to go to their safe space base with a name I can't remember

a fancy name very lord-of-the-rings-y

let's call it emperor's mojo dojo casa house

and to get there as quick as they need to, they have to cut through the River

the one with the ghosties and ghoulies

that's what the ward was for

if they went through regular means, it'd take too long and, doing it this way, they could be there super fast, but they need to get in the River and come out the other way in the right spot

and intact

so it's this situation

so, in order to do that, they have to hold on to their souls and their cav souls and whatever they've got using the skills from the first test

I want to point out, once again, WHO PLANNED CANAAN HOUSE AS A TOOL TO GET LYCTORS TO LEARN THINGS?????

THEY WERE NOT DOING ALL THE TESTS

THEY WERE FIGHTING FOR THE KEYS

SOME DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THERE WERE TESTS TO BEGIN WITH

JUDITH WAS LIVING IN LAW AND ORDER

we didn't even get to all the tests, people started dropping like flies

because the emperor had one loose lyctor who thought she was in a telenovela

ANYWAY

the point is, if they drift too far while crossing the River, something else can come into their bodies

we did learn that, because it happened to duracell bunny nephew back in canaan house

but we learned it because mayonnaise uncle thought he was tough shit and ruined it, not because of the tests

harrow, doing her best, thinks "you felt alone in your head"

WHICH IS GREAT for our gideon notes

also, no camilla mention or appearance in this one

(I'm having a lizzie bennet theme going on for Reasons for the time being)

so, we're leaving harrow and yandere twin trying to learn for the first time how to not die by crossing the River because the emperor plans things terribly and mercysomething is too preoccupied being upset at everything all the time

[abigail-pent]

Thoughts on HTN Act Five on ??th reread:

- the joke about the Ninth knowing a thousand shades of off-white is absolutely a 50 Shades of Grey reference

- Ianthe wonders what Harrow's face "could have done to it" - ohhhhh yeah she is doing hella cosmetic "surgery" on Corona. this still isn't explicitly canon as far as I'm aware, but that line makes it pretty damn close

- Harrow Nonagesimus breaks into the Tomb and Harrow Nova breaks into the Anastasian. Baby girl is the same in every universe

- Harrow Nova is "the unfulfilled vow" and "the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull" AND THEN ALECTO KISSES HARROW NONAGESIMUS IN FULFILLMENT OF THE VOW AND SHE BLEEDS. I've connected these things, I've connected them

- ok if Harrow is pulling everyone who's dead into her River bubble, then doesn't that mean that in the BARI Star AU she is actually interacting with the actual spirit of Gideon Nav?

- I don't know if we talk enough about how Harrow actually becomes a full Lyctor after she's stabbed and remembers Gideon. It feels kind of weird that her body only gets Lyctoral healing once her soul is gone from it. The construct in her skull is still there, it stays there until Gideon talks to Mercy and hears her name.

I mean, the weirdest thing about it is it implies that John and Gideon the First were right that they could fix Harrow by killing her. And given that the sort of cav Gideon becomes is explicitly and canonically analogous to the sort of cav Pyrrha is - still conscious and able to pilot the body in the absence of the necromancer's soul - that makes me wonder if maybe this happened to Gideon the First too. Like maybe that's why he's described as such a zombie, and maybe that's why John seems to know that killing Harrow would "fix" her, and Gideon agrees.

- Abigail talks about the place over the River the way John talks about the place beyond the stoma - it's an undiscovered country he knows nothing of, where his power is meaningless.

- Mercy says if Gideon Nav were Alecto, she would have "gone for me already" - so yeah, Alecto wasn't just incredibly weird and creepy, she was directing violence at Mercymorn. Pyrrha later says Alecto wasn't so bad (but that absolutely doesn't preclude Alecto being super violent to Lyctors, Pyrrha would respect the shit out of that), and of course it seems like she and Anastasia loved each other. But: John says that anger was Alecto's sin; The Unwanted Guest implies that that anger may have been John's, but in a different body; and it seems like this anger got expressed at Mercymorn and probably other Lyctors too. When Gideon meets Augustine she says he looks at her eyes in Harrow's face like they were the last thing he'd ever see; which suggests she took her anger out on Augustine too. But why was she angry at them? Was it because they ascended?

- "I gave you one damn job, and instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back!" Harrow IS the Ninth House for real... (this is exactly the problem Silas has with the Ninth)

- in GTN, in the Cytherea fight, when Gideon looks back at Harrow right after she says "Then we're all dead, Nav, but let's bring hell first" 🤝 in HTN, in the Sleeper fight, when Ortus looks back at Harrow who has just followed his lead to recite the Noniad ... the way both of her cavaliers are a little surprised, but very impressed and comforted, by her loyalty to them and trust in them ... I am very fine and normal about this

- when Abigail summons Nonius: blazing like a flare from an alien blue sun! appearing to hold a book made of blue radiation in her hands! soaking wet! everything smells like water and brine and blood! she screams as though there are a multitude of voices in hers! time seems to slow way down! her eyes become dark and liquid and feral! this is both extremely fucking cool and probably meaningful. the smell and wetness are for the River, the many-voiced quality recalls Alecto and her many voices, the time slowing recalls John's ability to stop time, the eyes recall John's (so, Alecto's) as well. SHE IS ABIGAIL FOR HER MOTHERS AND PENT FOR HER PEOPLE AND I LOVE HER

- I love that Nonius canonically fought Gideon the First, and calls him "a rival and ally". I'm not much of a fic reader myself (heresy, I know) but I absolutely want to read a fic about "we met long ago, and I fought him."

- "Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny" legitimately could have been the tagline for this book

- Augustine says that if it's really Wake, then Gideon has proved "yet again" that he's unfit for any job besides making simple gruels and stews. Yet again??

- it's probably Augustine that Mercy tried to kill tbh

- I think Wake recognizes Pyrrha in Gideon's face when no one else does. That's why she looks at her like that.

- the way Gideon Nav has always yearned for her parents vs the way her bio-parents treat her... oof ohh oww... Pyrrha Dve is the only parent I will diplomatically recognize for Gideon Nav

- Alecto's eyes end up in John's genetic code - Lyctorhood doesn't only meld souls, it melds bodies as well.

- John says Mercy and Augustine killed Alecto because he told them the truth about her; and Augustine says he told them that because Alecto also knew the truth. But ... which truth was it? When we hear from Alecto, she seems to have a fuzzy memory.

Also, worth mentioning that this is a different account than what Teacher offers. Teacher says that the Lyctors asked John to kill Alecto after they ascended and "found out the price." If this account is correct - and why wouldn't it be, it comes from Augustine, who was a key player - then the "price" wasn't the death of the eight cavs, the "price" was something to do with the truth about Alecto. And whatever this truth is, it isn't that Alecto was John's cavalier, because Mercy and Augustine are only finding out about this now. I suspect the "price" is the price of creating necromancy - murdering the 10 billion - and then when Mercy and Augustine know that Alecto is the Resurrection Beast of Earth they ask John to kill her. So I was wrong, and he must have basically told them "lol we've been hanging out with an RB this whole time."

- when John reconstitutes himself, the light he emanates leaches all the color from the room and turns everyone into shades of gray. LIKE WHEN SILAS SIPHONS COLUM. It makes sense that he's taking thalergy from somewhere to build himself back up, but where exactly is it coming from? Alecto?

[cassiopeiathe1st]

so as a biology major, here's some things i've been chewing on after reading the unwanted guest. this post is brought to you by the part of my brain that saw the 7th's hereditary blood cancer and thought ok but what KIND of cancer is that.

the phrasing of "permeability of the soul" makes me think of semipermeable membranes and diffusion. diffusion is a passive process -- our molecules, when left to their own devices, want to be everywhere because entropy, but the semipermeable membranes that make up cells organelles etc make life possible by keeping things organized. this dividing & filtering process is required to keep things in place. with me so far?

to me, this concept of permeability emphasizes that souls are objects with boundaries. there's a line somewhere, however blurry (clearly very very blurry) or porous, that divides self & other, and! and!! that line only exists because it is somehow constructed, maintained, enforced. see: ianthe working so hard to convince herself/pal/the hypothetical audience of this play she's putting on that she's just ianthe with no babs mixed in. or john's ritual of retelling his story to alecto/harrow in NTN. something something being the unreliable narrator of your own identity.

palamedes calls the process that merges him and camilla to give us paul grand lysis vs. the "petty", incomplete lysis of eightfold word lyctorhood. lysis = the disintegration of a cell by rupture of the cell wall or membrane. the boundaries of their souls are sliced open so their contents can be poured out & mixed together to make someone new. but even in conventional lyctorhood, there's some kind of exchange of whatever material makes up the soul between cavalier & necromancer. as our boy tells ianthe at the end of the unwanted guest,

This is the real truth of Lyctorhood, Ianthe--it's not some bloodless swapping-out of batteries. It's grafting; transplantation. When you absorbed Naberius Tern's soul, you didn't swallow a diamond. You swallowed a piece of meat...and the longer you digest that meat, the more its proteins and lipids and molecules mix in with yours, until you can't tell them apart anymore.

idk where i'm even going with all of this, i'm just rotating it in my head, but:

tamsyn muir is so precise with her necromancy jargon & anatomical terms that i feel like there's definitely meaning to be found in the imagery here. there is poetry in biology, the universe is made of stories not of atoms, etc etc

it turns out lysis is also the title of a dialogue of plato on "the true nature of loving friendship," so if any classics enjoyers have thoughts on that connection i would love to hear them!

if lyctorhood is transplantation, is it possible for that transplant to be rejected? can the graft refuse to take?

souls are contained within their edges not unlike how a cell membrane contains its cytoplasm. or how a capri sun pouch contains its juice. and lyctors slurp that shit up and digest it baby

why choose to link the soul so closely with water? (the river, bubbles, currents & waves in the river, nona saying the water of the river "doesn't want to touch us.") contents of souls = liquid in the same way that the river is a liquid??? the river = spirit version of the primordial soup???

dulcinea refers to the river having two shores, not just a generic "shore", so it sounds like they're different in some meaningful way. but that may be conditional on what happens in alecto ("if this ends well you'll find that out")? is the point of the river the river itself, or is the point of the river to separate those two places?

[sainamoonshine]

Okay so I saw that @foxy-alien made art of a TLT house swap AU and it started me thinking about how I’d do a similar AU… I did that instead of sleeping last night btw.

So here’s what I have so far:

Ninth House: Ianthe, Corona and Babs. Once upon a time a woman and a baby fell on their planet. When they saw the woman’s red hair they thought “ugh what Third House bullshit is this” and while they kept the corpse, they sent the baby back. We don’t want this keep your trash. They have their own drama to deal with anyway; the tomb needs its keeper to be a necromancer. Corona, while officially the heir and Reverent Daughter, is not one. Ianthe and her started hiding her lack of talent before their parents explained the whole “unbroken chain of the tomb keeper’s necromantic bloodline” thing. So long as Ianthe is around, the twins expect that everything is still fine. Still, their house hovers on the edge of breaking a promise of ten thousand years once their parents die and Corona inherits the duties of the tomb… unless they find a way to make Corona a necromancer, either by turning her into a lyctor, by making Ianthe a lyctor and then Ianthe makes her necromantic (?), or they just straight up ask Jod for a boon.

Eight House: Abigail and Magnus. Everyone is surprised when they meet them, as they do not meet the traditional pattern of their house; especially when you know the fact that Abigail’s cavalier was supposed to be a cousin but was replaced by Magnus when he married Abigail — their blood type was, luckily (or unluckily?) compatible. Like, who the fuck would want to be an Eight House cavalier??? (Magnus would. He think going into the river is exciting. He also trusts his wife.) It’s usually only when Abigail starts actually doing necromancy that people remember she’s scary AF. Through her interest in ghosts, she has developed her own custom safeguards against Magnus getting possessed when she siphons him… or if he does get possessed, she is a quick and extremely brutal exorcist.

Seventh House: Palamedes and Camilla. Pal decided on his medicine focus due to his house’s propensity for weird necromantic cancer. He firmly believes that if he can just find a way to either stabilize or treat it, the inhabitants of the seventh house will live more comfortable lives. He is considered something of an heretic due to this, but house leadership is willing to ‘let him cook’ -> they’ll wait to see if a necromancer with a stable cancer is still powerful before they decide whether to censure his research or not.

Sixth House: Jeannemary and Isaac. They’re still young, but very good at getting into places they’re not supposed to be, particularly by breaking wards and then rebuilding them better. Both of them keep trying to apply into the cohort but the scholars of the Sixth see Isaac’s skills with wards and want him to pursue academia instead. When the summons to Canaan House came the council all looked at each other, remembered they still had to appoint a new master warden after the last one passed, figured that nobody wanted to abandon their current study/experiments to go participate to what would be sure to be a tedious dick measuring contest with the other house heirs, and decided to invoke an obscure emergency clause in a law book somewhere in order to appoint Isaac to the title. He and Jeannemary really were the only ones who actually wanted to go to Canaan.

Fifth House: Dulcinea and Protesilaus. It is a shame that her health is so poor, because she would otherwise have become a hell of an ruler. While she has an ease with history and academia, her true skill is diplomacy. Dulcinea can get a very accurate read on most people, and she knows how to use their own psychology against them to make them agree to her ideas. She looks nice and fragile, but she is cunning. Meanwhile, Protesilaus is surprisingly good at paperwork for a guy who looks like he eats skulls for breakfast.

Fourth House: Judith and Martha. This AU version of them is less cocksure, but just as proficient at gathering information, profiling people, and writing down ample notes. Their rank in the cohort is lower than in canon, and they often get assigned to the tasks nobody else wants. Such as: overseeing security on ships bringing prisoners to the Ninth House prison installation… and this is how Judith and Corona met.

Third House: Harrow and Gideon. Once upon a time, the Ninth House sent them an orphan they claimed was theirs. The King and Queen didn’t pay the mystery much mind and stuck the baby in an orphanage. They had their own troubles to deal with: the royal family had not been able to produce a necromantic heir yet, and the vassal families were closing in. They figured that they couldn’t let a lesser branch of the family inherit the Third; it had never been done, would discredit them in the eyes of the other Houses, and would cause political instability. So in order to ensure the necromantic potential of their latest vat baby experiment, the King and Queen sacrificed the children in one of the lesser orphanages. They claimed that an hull breach in the space station caused the poisonous air of the planet’s upper atmosphere to get inside the ventilation system… except there was one survivor. The King and Queen were weirded out by that seemingly unkillable toddler but public opinion was heavily positive towards the ‘miracle survivor’. Not to mention having at least one person survive the incident helps make the ‘it was an accident’ excuse sound more credible. So the King and Queen brought the child to the palace and decided to do some PR by giving her a place to live and an education, and eventually made her the Cavalier of their (powerful) new daughter.

Second House: Silas and Column. Duty-bound, fanatic, no fun allowed Silas is a bit young for military service, but that doesn’t stop him from climbing the ranks. Column is still used as a battery, even in this AU, except his role is to start killing people to produce the initial necromantic boom to give Silas something to work with when they deploy to new battlefields. He hates doing this btw.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - John 8:1 🐄

the message now reads: ‘THE/TOWER/HA’ . i’m sticking with the assumption that ‘tower’ is a full word and ‘ha’ is the beginning of the next until proven otherwise

okay and now it’s talking about falling asleep within the dream, which is confusing as all hell. whoever this narrator is, ‘her body was a mystery to her’, which is very reminiscent of the themes throughout of Nona wondering who she is. i really do think that this narrator has to be Alecto somehow or on some level, maybe because of Harrow falling asleep in the Tomb at the end of HtN?

also hammocks made of ‘baby-soft skin’. Ew. 

and an interesting point of reference, John’s eyes are explicitly black w/ white rings on them, so this dream is set after Alecto becomes his cavalier. although it might mean nothing, it’s also very interesting considering just how significant eye colour has been that the torchlight makes the white ring ‘a satiny gold’, given his eyes were originally gold - i wonder if it might have something to do with the type of shared Lyctorhood he and Alecto have going on?

honestly if someone came on the internet showing off that they could control dead bodies or whatever, i would think it was a deepfake or some other trolling as well. i love that apparently there are still Flat Earthers around despite having the tech to have some kind of space station on Mars existing

its ironic people calling him the Antichrist initially, given that he eventually adopts the exact opposite vibe of being a deity. and the whole religious/God/Christ associations aren’t even something that he solely adopted post-Resurrection himself either, even here people, and John’s group of friends, are explicitly comparing him to Jesus and using Christianity as a basis of what to do

and uh yeah, realistically someone broadcasting that they can raise the dead and heal everyone would probably be considered a cultist not just by the government, but by most people honestly 

and we’ve got A— Junior, (presumably) Alfred, joining the team as well, who apparently went from being a hedge fund manager in one life to swordfighting in the next. wild. 

‘she’d adored being a cop’ i like Pyrrha well enough so far, but yikes 

even though John’s still getting to grips with his powers, and can’t do proper resurrections yet, he still seems a lot more powerful than other necromancers later, given he’s able to build an entire wall out of perpetual bone, something which from what I remember Harrow treated as a massive achievement at the end of GtN 

what the actual fuck did those cows and sheep do to you man!!! is this why Canaan House has all that horned skull imagery, as like a weird little tribute to how cow murder contributed to him becoming Emperor. maybe the real cow murder was the friends that we made along the way

‘they treated us like we’d done some kind of huge crime’ MY DUDE.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

I've seen you post about The Locked Tomb. But you're also primarily a TMA poster. If there were a crossover how do you think that would work? Like crossover specific headcanons. Like what House would they belong to? Are they a necromancer? If they are a necromancer what is their specialty? Are they a cavalier? And if so what's their fighting style? Who would they ascend to Lyctorship with? Would they be capable of lyctoring with that person? Gimme TMA(GP) + TLT ideas and hcs pls

OOOHHO HO HOOOO... IM GONNA GO CRAZY ON THIS ONE OK HOLD ON

firstly and most importantly. tma characters are house, tmagp characters are non-house/blood of eden. i don't know why, but it makes sense in my head.

ok so.

first house - all the older avatars. i think their saint names would be fear-related, e.g. jonah the first, saint of beholding. i honestly don't know who would take god's role, for some reason i wanna say simon.

second house - necromancer basira hussain, cavalier daisy tonner

third house - i honestly don't know

fourth house - necromancer callum brodie

fifth house - necromancer sasha james, cavalier timothy stoker

sixth house - necromancer jonathan sims, cavalier martin blackwood

seventh house - necromancer agnes montageu, cavalier jude perry

eighth house - necromancer manuela dominguez

ninth house - necromancer oliver banks

ok so. turns out sorting these fuckers into houses is harder than i thought!!! but i HAD to make jon sixth, it just. makes way too much sense. same for ninth house oliver. agnes somehow reminds me of dulcinea a lot so i put her in seventh, and also cuz of the whole "beaty that blossoms and dies" thing being real desolation coded. the beaty inherent to destruction etc etc.

i think jon would 100% specialize in psychometry, like palamedes. oliver is probably fond of bones, but i actually think he'd be a spirit magician primarily. i don't think there's any flesh magicians among them, for obvious reasons.

ok now tmagp. since boe doesn't have a sorting system, i'm just gonna refer to the actual characters.

i am so incredibly fond of the idea of lena as commander wake. that entire (paraphrasing) "the only thing my civilization can learn from yours is that when our towers fall and our cities burn, we rarely become heroes." speech is so insanely her coded. hmmm gwen as pash, methinks. just because nepo-baby. alice could be angel/ame? no idea who nona is.

gaahhh thank you so much for the question!!!!! this was so fun to think about ahdjfkejfke

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

The River

Worldbuilding/Lore

<< Previous: Lyctorhood | Masterpost

-

So, okay, bear with me here. I think these people's brains are fundamentally different from ours. And I think their brains are spiritual matter, contained in a brain-shape and perhaps even anatomically so. There was talk of a temporal lobe, after all.

Mind you, memories don't just get stored in one place in the brain. The hippocampus is crucial for formation of memories and storing them short-term - for a few months, maybe. After that, I was told in my studies we don't quite know where they go - likely stored in different parts all over the brain, connected to associations.

One thing I do know, however, is that you can't physically see which parts of the brain relate to which memory. Knowing this from necromantic ability should be a skill even Mercymorn would struggle with. Harrow, a bone magician, knows she is not the best flesh magician, so she enlists Ianthe's help for her lobotomy. Ianthe, allegedly the best necromancer in her generation, is actually able to do an alright job, except for one part where Harrow does some herself. Have they found ways to look at memories through the brain? By all current available science, I would rate that fairly impossible. Either science has progressed wildly in this (possible, given the whole ass myriad and then some), or these brains are not the same.

I actually think brains in this are made from much the same matter that The River is. The River is clearly not of Alecto or John's invention. It was discovered somehow, and when they resurrected everyone, they basically found the revenants for the bodies, and just stuck them back in, literally; pockets - or bubbles - of River, containing the revenant exactly, replacing the goopy mess of dead brain in the body.

Now your brains are goopy messes of river, made to look like what you expect the brain to look like. Your perceptions, expectations and rules are important in the River - it makes sense that River/Revenant-brains would still be brain-shaped. It means the brain is more fluid than that, though; in the Lyctor's cases, one soul - one brain - "takes over".

(Doesn't really explain why Lyctors like God, Augustine and Mercymorn consistently have their cavalier's eyes - other than maybe it was just that that's what they were expecting.)

Ok, so I kinda think brains are parts of The River. Coherent as revenants, living in bodies. This would have been the case for the first people who were resurrected a myriad ago - so when they create babies, the baby's brain is also River water, for want of a better term? Therefore everyone's is? And Death, in this post-resurrection world, is just returning to the River proper?

It's a working theory.

The River is a physical place, and also kind of like sub-space. You can enter it, you can form pockets of meaning in there, you can hunt things in there and make wards. You can use it to travel quickly to destinations many lightyears away. It is a physical place, but also a spiritual one. It is, essentially, the brain matter of billions, jumbled together, increasing in entropy with depth, all the way down to the stoma, where you can enter full entropy and be reduced to particles, as I understand.

Did you know that some scientists use entropy to describe brain processes? Entropy increases in the brain as it responds to stimuli. The concept of entropy is necessary for explaining what goes on in the brain, an organ of trillions+ of possible configurations, changing moment by moment. And what happens physically in the brain is perceived by us through a range of associations and thoughts and feelings, which all look and feel very different to the electric charges zipping along nerve axons and synapses releasing chemicals to trigger a reaction in the next nerve along. Which is (a gross oversimplification of) what actually physically happens inside our brains, millionfold, every millisecond.

Hey wait a second though. The Central Nervous System also includes the spinal cord. Is this included in the RiverBrain package deal? What about peripheral nerves? Right, I'm gonna stop this here, it's already one hell of a rabbit hole.

So if I'm right, then brains are made of River, and River is made of Brains. Sub-space, physically traversible brains. If planets, if stars have a soul, the whole Universe has a soul. The River could a manifestation of the Universe's soul, its collective Brain, and it encompasses all once (and future?) living things. It's not in our plane of existence, but can be accessed physically and mentally.

The River might be the source of necromantic ability, and I think either John or Alecto figured out how to access it. I Just Don't Think You're Supposed To.

Ok, let's get into Characters next. Blorboposting incoming.

>> Next: Gideon Nav

[myths-tournaments]

Awful Characters Round 1 Part 2 (3/8)

Propaganda under the cut!

BEN LINUS

One of my fave characters of all time! Also a prolific liar. Almost every single thing this man says is a lie. He lies, manipulates, murders, and feels very little remorse, all in the name of “protecting” the magical Island where he and his people live. Ben is fueled almost exclusively by bitterness, stemming from an entire childhood’s worth of abuse from his alcoholic father, who blamed Ben for his mother’s death in childbirth (Ben did eventually kill his father, along with the whole community he grew up in). Additionally, Ben is desperate to have some great destiny or higher purpose, and his bitterness toward the fact that he’s just an “ordinary” man and jealousy toward the man who DOES have a higher purpose drives Ben to commit various acts of cruelty and murder. Ben does act as a villain for most of the story (save for the last season, in which he’s more of an anti-villain and eventually an anti-hero), but he has two redeeming qualities: his love for the Island and his love for his adopted daughter, Alex. The latter is complicated by the fact that he kidnapped Alex as a baby from her biological mother, a woman stranded alone on the Island. However, when forced to choose between protecting the Island and saving Alex’s life, Ben ultimately chooses the island and deeply regrets this decision for the rest of his life. He’s eventually forced to reckon with his many, many mistakes and undergoes something of a redemption arc, but he spends enough of the show establishing himself as a villain that I can easily see the good denizens of Twitter attacking his fans.

IANTHE TRIDENTARIUS

Her number one hobby is ruining every person's that she knows life. Her second hobby is being soooo slutty about it despite looking like a literal wet rat. Her third hobby is having an extremely unhealthy relationship with her twin. Her other hobbies include cannibalism, wearing a maid outfit, being extremely convinced she is the main character, the badboy sexy love interest and the villain. 'Why', you may ask. Well, the answer is, for shits and giggles #justgirlythings i, aswell as literally everybody else in the fandom have gone through the pipeline from hating her to desperately wanting to fuck her. expect for i still fucking hope she dies and doesn't come back for good. (that would literally solve all of everybody's problems) as god intended (EXPECT FOR. one of her hobbies literally is gaslighting god) She is fucking horrible i will love her until i die and even after that

parks and recs jean ralphio voice she's the woooorst!! The moment she learns she has to kill someone to become a Lyctor (aka a more special necromancer), she doesn't hesitate to kill and cannibalize the guy who has been her cavalier since childhood… cavalier who she also totally bullied as kids, she was allowed to choose one guest for her and her twin sister's birthday party each year, and she would always pick whoever she thought her cavalier didn't want to see there! While other characters are shown to regret the process of becoming a Lyctor (which involves someone close to them dying)/were forced into it because of circumstances, Ianthe has absolutely no regrets, she believes she did what she had to do

The author once said of Ianthe: "I don't think she's been nice to anyone, if she has I'll go back and change it." She killed and ate the soul of someone she has known all her life so that she could become a necromantic saint and tormented him plenty before that. General negging, ganging up against him, always inviting people he didn't like to their birthday parties. She doesn't regret killing him. I think she is repulsed by the idea that his digested soul is affecting hers. She helped her crush lobotomise herself so she would be in Ianthe's debt, and later lied and said she didn't see the corpse of a woman her crush killed under her bed (why did she do that? I do not know). She has a bone arm because her original arm was cut off, she hated the replacement so her crush cut THAT off and grew her a new one out of just bones. She had it gilded and only after that did she decide to help her crush deal with the person who had been repeatedly trying to kill her. She wants so badly to be the main character but people keep interrupting her villain monologues.

she has her own content warning tag pollrunner's note: this is the most compelling propaganda I've ever seen for a character, thank you for submitting

She's such a bitch to everyone all the time, she causes nothing but problems, she tries to do a villain speech but fumbles it because her tummy hurt, she is the awfulgirl of all time

[rogloptimist]

the gears are turning (bad)

okay. picture this for me. canaan house + project lyctorhood but i ruin it by adding rpf

dunno how it ends (or starts honestly because who am i gonna make god…) but uhh tadej and jonas consume each other and achieve partial lyctorhood and are existing in weird ass stasis in which parts of their souls are permanently embedded in the other

primoz:

9th house necromancer

he don’t got no cav because he’s super special

was born into the ninth as a non adept (non necro) when there were no necromancers left on the ninth except the reverend mother and father

raised with the sole purpose of becoming the 9th house cavalier with the expectation that a necromancer would be conceived due to his talents w rapier (this is the ski jumping btw)

in a last ditch effort to conceive a necro heir, rev. mother and father do The Ritual (they kill a bunch of babies to harness tre death energy to ensure that the child is conceived as a necromancer) with primoz as an anchor of sorts

do y’all remember how john killed everyone? picture that for me. primoz can feel the thanergy (death energy) bloom slipping away because the ritual starts going wrong, and in an act of desperation he grabs it and it basically radioactive spider’s him; the thanergy bloom turns him into a necro

HOWEVER he basically is being electrocuted with death-energy (thanergy) so he reaches out and accidentally puts the entirety of the 9th’s population’s souls in stasis by chucking them out somewhere unknown

freaks the fuck out and assumes position as reverend of the ninth and pretends everything is fine

brief detour he spends some time at the 6th (this is visma!!!) but the collectivist hivemind drives him insane and he wants out. now he’s alone seeking a necromantic solution to basically murdering his whole planet because he needs to prove that it was worth it (switching from ski jumping to cycling but not being able to quite touch the top, he didn’t do this all for nothing etc etc)

crazy crazy crazy relationship with god harrowhark style ! catholic guilt goes crazy

tadej:

8th house (i know it’s weird but trust) necromancer

adam is his cav- i will talk more about this later

specializes in soul siphoning, i.e. slurping up your cavalier’s soul out of their body and using the vacuum to generate power temporarily (cannibalism metaphors do you get ittt)

weird shit with consumption. he’s obsessed with transcending the limits of the flesh to become closer to god

first time he tried soul siphoning he actually killed the cav because he took it too far!

i also think it would be silly and fun if he consumed his own flesh ianthe/babs style while performing necromancy

sicko christian (everyone on the 8th thinks he’s a heretic, everyone else think’s he’s a nun, it’s actually a secret third thing somewhat adjacent to a communion kink)

controversial within his house for being too flashy (tl dr the 8th house is basically a cult with their interior design done by mr clean), ambitious and dangerous with his necromantic practices

rest of the necro’s don’t really know who he is? they all know he’s weird for an 8th, but not how or why. he’s also particularly intrigued by jonas

would be fun if he was god’s son like literally gideon style

jonas

6th house necromancer

cavalier is matteo (or wout? i’m conflicted. but also i want there to be a scene where matteo tells him you did everything that matters)

specializes in that thing where they read the bones and necromantic remains for death signatures. yeah rhat

born and raised on 6th, unusually high pool in his age group and didn’t show much promise for becoming a warden until recent years. was not expected to be heir to the 6th, people still haven’t gotten used to it (constant underdog narrative we stay winning)

people didn’t like him on 6th for supposed undercompetence, outside of the 6th they all think he’s a boring necro (too by the book)

he starts counting the doors first. just so you know

was friends with primoz while he spent his time on the sixth but grew apart after he went back to the ninth- still is unsure about tf is going on with him, also knew that he defo was not a necromancer before but keeps his mouth shut

tadej finds him particularly interesting, doesn’t buy the calculating librarian look that the 6th house puts forward. thinks he wants something more

remco:

4th house necromancer

from the second but family is fourth, was raised in the cohort

struggled with tight restrictions of the second, was hailed as a prodigy in combat as a child and wanted to serve first line w cohort but was sidelined in teens in command structure, returns to his father’s birthplace the fourth

there he learns the fourth specialty of using thanergy spikes to explode shit and gets really good at it very fast

climbs the ranks of the fourth and becomes heir, but is looked down upon by older cohort members for youth and hotheadedness

weird obsession with proving everyone wrong that needs to be studied in a lab

dunno who the cav is sorry 😔 i think it would be kind of hilarious if it was wout (viva la belgium) and he and jonas keep making eyes from across the room wishing to go back to their beehive days

mathieu/jasper

from 3rd house, jasper is necro and mathieu is cavalier

mathieu comes from a long ass line of cavaliers and was expected to become cavalier primary from basically birth. luckily he’s very very good with a sword but his dad is crazy!

jasper is a necro, born into 3rd royal family. is known for sheer power but also infamous for inconsistency

specializes in flesh magic, specifically loves working with muscle and tendons

mathieu+jasper raised together (is it brotherhood or are they just fucking. who knows. not them)

honestly very into bitch wife idiot husband why change the canon. keep jasper stupid 2024

adam not the one and only yates:

8th house cavalier

as per 8th practice was genetically engineered to be a match to a necromancies for soul siphoning

in this case, it was with his twin simon and i am totally so normal about the two of them !

however upon birth it was discovered that simon’s necromancy wasn’t perfectly compatible with adam��s- because he wasn’t heir material they didn’t care

but when tadej started as an adept and started sucking up people’s souls like a vacuum they needed someone capable of holding onto the shore of the river (wack ass spirit world) for longer and adam was found to be compatible

loyal to the end, but people all note that he looks faded when with tadej

will of steel or something

my various madman ramblings

[carica-ficus]

"Nona the Ninth"

14/07/2024

Reading progress: 274/477 (57%) Read through since last update: 158

Reading this book is such a joy. I keep surprising myself by how easy it is to read. I go through twenty pages without even realizing. it I missed reading such books. I missed being so immersed in a book. Man, it feels good! I decided to share some really CRAZY ideas in this post because my reading diary is meant as a brain dump. Don't take them too seriously. I just like thinking about all the possibilities. (I'm usually wrong, but it's fun to see by how much.)

So, notes:

I was so into these last two chapters that I didn't even remember to comment.

I love how Pyrrha calls Nona all these cutesy nicknames. And how sweet and gentle she is with her.

I audibly gasped when Palamedes needed to confess to Pyrrha that Cam sold her cigarettes. Literally 😮. Only for Pyrrha to take it as a champ. (She obviously took enough shit that day.)

So, blue dot in the sky. Earth or Uranus? Or Neptune? I'm guessing we're on some moon, but not sure which one. Considering they keep talking about how hot it is and that it's almost always day, they should be somewhere near the center of the solar system. Might as well be Venus considering how everything is VERY toxic and they need to wear gas masks outside. (Addition from future me: Bruh, I have no idea.)

Palamedes, my man. 🤝 This is a guy that knows what it's all about. (The nurse thing. I'm dating one, so yeah.)

Been thinking about Harrow and how she ruled on a dead planet and how John promised her new people when she succeeded with her task as a Lyctor. New people. New future. But where do all those bodies come from? So, my random thought of the day is that maybe she got promised some of the bodies transported in the Convoy? Speculating, speculating, I know. But I decided to write this down, so I can reflect on it later. (Future me: Still have no idea what the Convoy is for, but with everything happening, this idea really is a LONG SHOT.)

HAHAHAHAHHAA Palamedes calling Cam a hypocrite. Love it.

I keep forgetting to comment, and a lot's been happening. The "little" meeting Cam, Pyrrha, and Nona had with the Crown and the Comander was insightful, but difficult to follow. I got like? Half of it? But managed to understand the most important things - there's a craft in orbit and they have no idea what it is, there's some background for the first book and Cytherea's mission, then we see Judith and Crown realizes Cam is hiding Palamedes. Marvelous.

Millie? Lol, I'd be mad too. I have no idea why Palamedes didn't react. I certainly would.

Nona's the weapon. Cool. They're growing their own Lyctor. So, the body needs to be a necromancer that ingested the soul of a cavalier? Yeah, whatever, we'll see. My money's on The Body being Nona, but who even knows at this point. (Not me.)

But one thing I am excited for (after I finish Nona) is FINALLY going into the locked tomb tag without the fear of spoilers. Can't wait!

Fuck! That's true. Nona truly is Camilla's age. And Corona's. I keep imagining her younger because she is childlike, but I shouldn't. Granted, I think that's also the point of Muir writing her like that. Nona is constantly babied and talked down to because she doesn't understand the world as the rest of them do. She can't. At least not yet. Anyway, yeah, this sentence reminded me to adjust the way I imagine Nona. She definitely needs to be a little taller in my head. (Even though she is still shorter than Camilla.)

"Beef." 🙄

HAHAHAHAH crying again. Yeah, me too, John.

Yo. What the fuck.

Makes sense because Gideon has taken over Harrow's body, but still. Huh? (At least that's my guess. I don't know)

PYRRHA'S MISSING? NOOOO.

Oh yeah, ok. Are John and Harrow somewhere by the River like how Harrow's dreams were? Also, still guessing at this point, but I've been thinking about this ever since John's chapters started. (Primarily because their location is very surreal, very dreamlike.)

"I've carried you, Warden. And I've carried your memory... I'd rather carry you." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ok, so... If Hot Sauce didn't know Nona was a Lyctor, what was the secret Nona told her when they were lying next to each other at school?

Okay, wrapping off here because this post got a little long. I'll do my best to finish off this book quickly because I have a trip coming up next week and I won't have the time to read which will make me frustrated because I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. Anyway, I'm really, really loving Nona so far. It's very different and the pace was quite slow, but I love that about Muir's writing. Every book in this series has been a breath of fresh air, something so unique, but familiar at the same time. ❤

[paradoxcase]

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

'baby-soft skin hammocks'...from a necromancer..gives me the icks.

I mean, I don't think it's any more gross/weird than a lot of other stuff that has happened in the book so far. John already wears baby fingerbones in his hair for adornment

I find it fascinating that John says he could cure cancer....and yet we have Cytherea...

@turtletotem:

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess John could have cured Cytherea :) at any time :) instead of letting her suffer for 10,000 years :)))) no wonder she wanted him dead

Oh wow, I didn't make that connection, but yeah, he could have. But instead he really was just like, the only way for you to live is if you become a Lyctor and help me kill resurrection beasts while you suffer from cancer for 10,000 years. I can't imagine what he was thinking, but I also have no idea what he was thinking by just letting the other Lyctors think that the cavalier had to die to achieve Lyctorhood

@eye-lantern:

For the Jesus comparison the nurse gave: she isn't saying it was what made the Romans kill him. Jesus (in the texts) knew that he gave too much for his own good. And he knew the Romans would kill him and he knew Judas would betray him. But he did it anyway because he gave himself to others entirely, even if I meant it killed him. She is saying John needs take care of himself even if it meant refusing to help some people, or he would die wich doesn't help anyone.

Which makes an interesting parallel with the actual Jesus parallel that is Griddle, who died for someone on the iron fence instead of a wooden cross,for someone that would have preferred her to live even if it meant not receiving her help. Gideon spends the entire first book helping everyone, without asking for anything in return, and it litteraly kills her. Maybe twice if we consider avultion. John may have had the apostles but Gideon had the self-sacrificial drive

Oh, right, I guess the sort of canonical interpretation is that Jesus died in order to save everyone else, etc. That is an interesting parallel, I wonder, since presumably Gideon is getting brought back to life at some point, probably by John I would guess, if John is ever going to tell her this story and this particular piece of advice he received?

I don't know if Jod is dreaming with her. To me it could absolutely have happened and she is just dreaming of a memory. The narrator never says something out of place, except for calling him lord, and he only says Harrow. Everything else could be an actual event where names are "translated" to something that makes more sense to harrow, and the crossed-out names are not replaced because she has no idea what to replace it by

@racefortheironthrone:

My interpretation is that Harrow is semi-lucid dreaming Alecto's memories.

That's true, I guess, this could just all be Alecto's memory. But if John telling Alecto this story actually happened, I guess that means Alecto was not around to perceive it at all while it was happening?

@eye-lantern:

I do like that we can get a vague time frame and something more of John's religious background when says he went to Parachute when he was younger. So he's most likely a Millenial or Gen Xer (since it seems that festival was from the early 90s to 2014). Not sure that says anything deep about him, but I find it interesting.

Ahh, that part didn't mean anything to me, haha. That's interesting, though, I'd sort of expected this story to be happening further in the future than that, like the way he is describing people's thoughts about climate change don't really align with the way they are currently, I don't think, it feels like this is happening at a later date, and John isn't described as looking old in the story. Like, if John is Gen X, he'd be 40 at the absolute minimum right now, in 20 years from now he'd be 60+, and I had the impression that this had to be least like 20 years in the future

[7sage9]

the unwanted guest thoughts

OBSESSED with the format as a stage play... makes so so much sense for ianthe and the third house

funeral part is so cool and sexy and i wonder if thats insight into how funerals actually are on the third

palamedes' mask being shattered and glued together like his skull....

ianthe slaying in all her fits... wait this reminds me of a dream i had a while ago in which ianthe duelled someone and did a ton of costume changes... i literally predicted it

ianthe being the lady and the master of the house... unprecedented levels of gender

significance of 7 coffins?? bc of 7 original lyctors??

the VOICE!!! my first instinct was dulcie but how?? so i thought maybe babs or someone else?? but i was right!!

still unsure of significance of "did your tingue ever toungle" maybe shows ianthe not being in complete control??

not the playing strip poker with harrow...

fascinated by ianthe and pal's differing views of the job of the cavalier... to die for vs protect the necromancer

"because you never stop to check the price tag" FUCK

is palamedes actually shocked by the third house assigning cavaliers as babies or is he pretending to get ianthe to share more?

oh ortus... blown up for being sad

would love to read about one of ianthe and corona's insane birthday parties

should have seen earlier how much the gideon nav description was shaped by babs, it makes so much sense

something about ianthe disqualifying her opponents as a form of winning... she never plays fair

the more we get of her the more i LOVE DULCIE!!!

DYING to know what happened to dulcinea after harrow's river bubble collapsed

"I loved you. I love you still. I would have worked out how to love you better over time." "It would have been very beautiful. Camilla would have had to cook. But I didn't just want beautiful..." "This again? From you and her both? That merely by loving you, I added to your torments?" FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK IT REALLY ALL COMES BACK TO LOVE ALWAYS...... DYING

cant stop thinking about how ntn must have been such a cruel mirror to the domestic life they dreamed of with dulcie

"You two were my best friends, and that was real. I loved real, ugly, unfinished things. Gracelessly uncompleted things. There's freedom, too, in not ever being completed." FUCK DULCIE I LOVE YOU

its a river... there are two shores... still so curious about the river

"Was I cute?" "You're perfect." AAAAAAAAAAAAA <3 <3 <3

"would you have used your sister instead?" YES!!! THAT IS THE QUESTION!!!

"Or... Coronabeth herself is part of your goal. You can't spend her, because you'd invalidate the very thing you were trying to buy." WOAGHHH i am so so curious about ianthe's plan

THE FINAL QUESTION... THE FINAL REVEAL...

the implications of souls bleeding and mingling... first of all for the OG lyctors... how much of what we were seeing was alfred and cristabel and pyrrha (though its probably slightly different for them)?? how much of pyrrha is g1deon??

and this has SO MANY implications for the gideon harrow alecto nona situation... simultaneously makes things clearer and a lot more complicated, if there doesn't have to be an actual transfer of soul bits, but they just do it naturally when together

overall SO GOOD!!! so much analysis potential of course and also just gutwrenchingly, horribly beautiful, like everything she writes