#they also think harrow and gideon should get together and have been asking me if they ever see each other again

[trillgendermetaphor]

i’m working at a summer camp and have accidentally created a gideon the ninth fanclub of a dozen extremely passionate seven-to-ten-year-olds. they huddle around me and chant “story! story! story!” until i continue recounting what happens next.

[starberry-cupcake]

Welcome back!! I hope you're doing well and, if not, I hope my silly ramblings can make your day somewhat better, like the wildcats used to say: we're all in this together ♥

previously, in harrowcita del 9:

this happened

for those of you recently tuning in, this is the tag of all the ramblings

also, I'm officially in the sixth house now, palmolive can't stop me

CHAPTER 46

we're back inside the emperor's bolthole, which is infested

this is what happens when you have a lyctor orgy without the proper protection

gideon is doing her very best to fight the infestation of herald bees swarming and attacking her

she's in harrow's feeble small kitten baby body, so she's dying a lot

I'm gonna try to represent this visually

gideon keeps apologizing to harrow for getting her bits chewed off and her insides pouring out

and puts emphasis on things she wants harrow to remember

"I saw it eat your thumb—these details are important, so keep up with me—and your thumb was back in the next half minute"

"Child, that bee smashed you"

"I touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date"

me:

so, gideon takes off harrow's excess bones, which are no use to her, and goes further into the emperor's infested bolthole, where she finds mercygirl

mercygirl thinks gideon is harrow at first and, turns out, she was the one who stabbed her

these lyctors istg

can't trust any of them

mercygirl thinks harrow should be grateful that she stabbed her

and she was aware that harrow had "stuffed the soul of the cavalier in the back of her brain"

NOW WE'RE GONNA GET INTO SOME TERRITORY THAT MAKES ME GO ABSOLUTELY BERSERK, SO BEAR WITH ME

I NEED TO GET MY NOTES BACK FROM MY PREVIOUS RECAPS FOR THIS

she asks what happened with gideon's eyes and, as we have seen in the previous gideon-centric chapter, gideon's eyes are in harrow's face atm, if memory serves

"You're not her—she isn't driving you—but you have her eyes. Why? When they showed me your corpse I didn't think to check the eyes"

"I thought I knew what you were, though I didn't want to believe it..."

now listen, we're starting to tie some loose ends and some of those loose ends are linked very closely to my previous theories

I have been considering the Commander Wake is Gideon's Mom and Has a Personal Connection To Gideon The First and Is The One Connected With The Harrow Notes In Canaan AU for a while now

I need to link the specific recaps where I said this because I need to be transparent about where my brain was at

Evidence A, Evidence B, Evidence C, Evidence D

there's probably more but those are pretty clear

I swear to god if I was right about this I'm gonna screencap my own recap and put it here when the time comes

I've been marinating this one for months

I actually forgot how much of that I had written down in the recaps until I re-read them

mercygirl says that she thought the commander was a bad girl workaholic who put business before family, that she made her "the dolls" and she must have "played silly buggers with the emission" and that "gideon was on her tail"

"And then Gideon ruined everything. Then the commander ruined everything. Then you ruined everything. This could have been over eighteen years ago"

apparently gideon the first was "obsessed" with the commander, which accounts for some of the notes harrow read

I'LL GET BACK TO THAT WHEN WE GET TO THE SLEEPER, MY THEORIES CONTINUE

mercygirl starts calling gideon all sorts of names, including mutant, and keeps being bothered about her eyes

"Lipochrome. Recessive. You are the evidence. He lied to us...and you are all the proof I needed" "Cytherea would have known as soon as she looked at you"

is gideon the first gideon's dad??????? I mean, I always though he might have Something with the mom but my money was on gideon being made through science rather than Traditional Means

I mean, having lyctor genes in some way would account for gideon being a demigod, something I said with those words when I was reading gideon

also, remember when not!dulcinea told gideon she was prettier than the other gideon?? because I've never forgotten

mercygirl confirms that gideon the first was sent to kill gideon's mom

who, according to mercygirl, would have hated to be called a mom

mamá luchona intensifies

all of which aligns with my theory very nicely so far

she calls gideon more names, including "abomination, you heresy, you failed ambition nineteen years too late"

gideon reacts not wanting mercygirl to touch her instinctively

man, my theories are RIGHT THERE to be fully connected I'm BITING THE DESK

but there's no time for any more talk because mercygirl is trying to kill gideon in harrow's body

but she is stopped

she is shot

by not!dulcinea

but I don't think this is not!dulcinea, I previously mentioned her maybe being used by someone, not sure if it's possession or being used or what's going on but I don't think this is her

I thought about gideon the first being the one to do it but if he wanted harrow dead, I'm not sure he'd save gideon now

not!dulcinea says "with a tone that wasn't" hers: "goodbye"

gideon ends the chapter with "what the fuck is going on?"

CHAPTER 47

we're back at canaan au and it's time to perform an exorcism

harrow has a new note

I've been connecting those notes to gideon's mom possibly commander wake (as linked above)

the latest note continues to add to my theory

"end of the line. falling. oxygen can't last the distance and won't redirect power from the payload. instead I will make you watch every moment as I get the last privilege you cannot enjoy you bygone son of a bitch. I hope you're both as sorry as I am."

I still think this is gideon's mom because that's how she died, I mean, she got to the ninth in a suit without air and gideon still had some, allegedly

I've been thinking that one of the two people involved in the situationship triangle described in the notes was gideon the first, and that maybe the other was dr reverend emperor john

he's the most likely to be a bygone son of a bitch, so maybe I'm right

so, if harrow connects the notes with the spirit that's haunting her

and I'm connecting them to gideon's mom....

what if it's her that's haunting harrow?????

I mean, Waker

I NEED TO STOP GETTING INTO THEORY TANGENTS

anyway, all of the ghoulie ghostie friends are getting together for a sleepover exorcism

I didn't use this when I should have, back when the different aus were going by, but here it is

real!dulcinea says "Pal always said I'd be the death of him. And I was..."

he died being a weenie but he's not all the way dead, so it's fine

harrow questions why everyone wants to help her but everyone's totally fine with all this, for different reasons

real!dulcinea is "horny for revenge" (that's a tshirt for the seventh girlies right there)

protozoa is there because duty is his full personality

abby is really grateful to be asked to help (she also really likes tombs, very lara croft of her)

magnus loves his wife

ortus wants a redemption arc and now has a polycule

martita is behaving better than judith

abby asks harrow if there's anything she can remember from the slasher waker sleeper to try to pinpoint who tf it is

there's a suit, blood, a gun and gideon's sword, which is the only thing harrowcita recognizes and doesn't know where it comes from

my money is on gideon's mom, commander wake, probably also the woman in the shuttle poster that harrow saw but didn't recognize back when she met camilla

I'M PUTTING MORE CHIPS IN MY BETS EVEN IF I GET NO MORE INFO RN

harrow is very interested in how abby and magnus make it work as a married couple who are also a necro and a cav

I wonder why she's so interested

anyway, everything goes to shit on the exorcism

like, it goes really, really badly

group project off the rails bad

I mean, they didn't even have blood

apparently the spirit is also tethered to an object out there (the sword??????? possibly?????)

and she (she's a SHE) is pretty much invincible and shooting everyone and performing parkour while she's at it

harrow says camilla would be impressed, which is the highest praise

the sleeper waker slasher potentially gideon's mom (but not sure because it hasn't been confirmed yet) calls harrow by her name, but in a way that sounds like she's never said it before

she says it like a curse, which maybe means she knows, to some degree, how harrow was made????

she's basically doing whatever she wants over here, shooting ghosts, punching ghosts, throwing them around, regenerating, not bleeding, pulling guns out of thin air

I mean, ok, we got it, calm down lady

where was this energy when it was time to kill the emperor

she says there's "no magic" there and that "she's been doing this for years"

she wants harrow, so she can kill her and use her body to "finish it"

WHICH MAYBE MEANS KILLING THE EMPEROR???

OH MAN I DO WANT THAT TO HAPPEN

BUT NOT AT THE COST OF HARROW

also, mrs potentially gideon's mom, even if harrow dies, there's also gideon in the body right now so, it's a bit crowded atm

maybe find another way to kill the emperor

use not!dulcinea instead, if you can get the current tenant to leave

the chapter ends with: "ortus cleared his throat"

MAN, I HOPE HE DROPS SOME POETRY LINES, WE SURELY NEED THAT

and that's it for today!!!!!things are certainly heating up in the emperor's bolthole!!!! see you soon for the next installment, fingers crossed for my theories!!!

[apostleofgreed]

It's here, the finale - my friends thoughts throughout Nona the Ninth (it's a long one)

Right which one of these idiots is stuck in Nona's body

Signs point to both

I think more likely Harrow and shes just removed the massive stick up her ass

Most other signs thus far do point to Gideon though- lack of aforementioned stick, finds herself attractive, loves ass jokes, wants to pet dogs (Harrow seems like a don't work with animals or children type)

Also these other kids have names like they're gonna be running in the fucking grand national

Honestly what the fuck is going on with child conception in this series???

Someone has five dads, God was asking if Harrow and Ianthe were being 'safe' sexually and I'm just confused

Okay so I've only listened to half an hour today but if Crown isn't coronabeth I will eat my own arm

My theory is that neither of them are in Harrow's body and that she's being possessed by The Body

Maybe I should follow in Harrow's footsteps and ask you to fucking lobotomize me

No beta we die like Babs

"what do you think is sexy?" "Eating breakfast" Me too, Camilla, me too

Maybe someone needs to lobotomize Judith, has anyone thought of that?

Thing is I feel like I'm supposed to think John is really bad and is the villain here but I just don't

The worst thing he's done is lie to his friends for a few thousand years

Finally, the baddest bitch in all the nine houses (it's Ianthe)

What a power move honestly first she steals Babs' soul now she steals his body, absolutely inspired

She could literally kill another 200 babies to resurrect Harrow and I'd be like what a babe 😍 at this point

I'm bored of shooting can we go back to swords and doing weird things with your body please

I just think it would be great if Harrow could hop back into her body and have a full meltdown about how to function in this world

Erm Corona darling can you please try to stop them bombing your sister in the body of one of your lifelong pals pls and thanks

Y'all better sTOp

Fucking marry, kill, reanimate I can't hahahaha

"that's not actually crown's boyfriend Nona, it's her sister but I don't think anyone could blame you for getting confused" Fair hahahahah so very true

Don't know how they think this is gonna work seeing as though Harrow and Ianthe literally lived together for like over a year and had an interpersonal relationship but ok

Maybe it's because pash has the accent of a rudeboy from Oldham and suffer is weirdly French (on disliking We Suffer and Pash)

Palamades in Ianthe in Babs is sending me west

Abigail died too soon and really she did all the legwork in Harrow

Can't help but feel all of this drama could have been avoided if Harry had just done the job properly in the first place and just let Gideon die properly

All of this just because an 18 year old gave herself the brain scramblies

Cam has just burst into fire wtf

Can't believe Crux hasn't dropped dead tbh

I've got less than an hour left I feel like we're cutting it fine to get Harry back in her body here

Big flex to be waiting for everyone to arrive smoking a ciggie with your golden skeleton arm

Fucking friendship bracelets and a secret handshake hahahahah

Gideon needs to stop being such a bloody himbo

Who has shouted "get in line thou big slut!" Hahahahah

There we have it, the full series. Hope y'all have enjoyed this.

[paradoxcase]

@turtletotem:

Pyrrha absolutely said G1deon's original name, which is proof that she remembers things from before the Resurrection. After all, the way John wiped their memories was through a physical change to their brains -- once Pyrrha died, she wouldn't be depending on a physical brain to hold her memories anymore, it's all just soul.

But why wouldn't Nona actually hear the name in that case? That's what doesn't make sense to me

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

I wonder, really, whether Pash realizes that Gideon/Kiriona is her cousin. And I hope we get the cousins together in Alecto. Gideon having a living relative that is very much like her in some ways could be interesting.

@eye-lantern:

I think this chapter does a lot to explain the aversion Pash has for the Body (fun how it used to mean Alecto the dead woman loved by Harrow and now means Gideon the... Oh), she sees the spitting image of her beloved hero and aunt, un rotting because of necromantic fuckery. Also I don't think she knows the reality of her conception so she may think her aunt had to bone Jod. Which, ew

I didn't really think about that, but it does make a lot of sense. Actually, I kind of wonder now when BOE realized who both of Gideon's parents were. I don't think anyone who was left alive at Canaan House after the end of Gideon the Ninth would have known that she was John's daughter. Pyrrha was there for that whole reveal, but she had never seen Gideon before, I guess except as a baby when she and/or G1deon pushed Wake out of the airlock. So I guess it must have been that Pyrrha recognized her as the John/Wake child she'd just heard about from John and the Lyctors, and told BOE about it then, or maybe after John got the body back? I don't know if it's actually been covered exactly how Pyrrha feels personally about the whole killing John plot. I can see why she might be for it, but she also seems kind of like she'd rather just hie off to somewhere with Palamedes and Camilla and Nona and not be involved in any of this stuff any longer

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

While integrated ok, the 8,000 line is actually an old tumblr meme (https://memearchives.tumblr.com/post/133103879052/hi-i-love-love-love-your-blog-it-always-cheers).

Oh, you know, I vaguely remember that whole thing, but I didn't realize it had become a meme

So I guess the question about that line then becomes: "why unjust bodies?" Number Seven does say some things about justice there, but I'm not sure what it means by that

so we have seen the things coming from the tower already...but not in this book...

Ok, looking back, it does look like Canaan House is consistently referred to as a tower (or a series of towers) in the first two books. So Ianthe and Gideon are "tower princes" because they went through the trial at Canaan House? And John is trying to do the same thing again, and create more Lyctors with another Lyctor trial there? Makes sense, I guess

So, I think the 'you called me for help and I am made a mockery' actually happened in this book...when Nona was 'copying' Judith to get Ianthe to stop asking her questions. Because it was after that that the heralds dropped...and Nona had likely accidently called Verun for help when she screamed in the language of the RBs.

Also, from earlier, before Nona and Cam leave the apartment to look for Pyrrha: “Can you help me?” Nona whispered. “Can you do anything? Do you know where Pyrrha is?” But it only lowed sadly, like a cow. “That’s all right,” whispered Nona. “Sorry for asking.” Then: “Don’t do anything weird, okay? I’m having enough trouble right now.”

Right! I completely forgot:

And:

I should have searched, since I do have text search here

[hierarchyproblem]

1, 2, 19 for book asks

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

I don't really tend to reread books tbh. There's so many other books I wanna read that I'd get more out of than a second go at something I already remember, y'know? That said, I have read the bible cover-to-cover four times. Normal behaviour.

2. top 5 books of all time?

Aw fuck. I dunno. I'll assume "books" here means "novels" and I'll list five of my top books of all time:

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K Le Guin. I need not labour the piont here 'cause I know you've read it, so I'll simply say that Le Guin is possibly my favourite writer of all time, and this is her at her best.

Ubik, by Philip K Dick. This book gets weirder by the page. PKD loves poking at the nature of reality, and this is the exemplar. A lot of his output reads as surprisingly adventurous work to come from a 60s sci-fi guy, and this is among his most interesting. Several carefully-crafted "wait - oh, shit" moments in a deliberately-contradictory narrative. Head-spinning stuff.

The Fifth Season, by N K Jemisin. A lot of SFF is, like, fun, and that's cool; I like to read that stuff too. This is art, no two ways about it, and of a kind I'm not sure you could easily translate into a different genre or medium. Bold and nuanced exploration both of the apocalypse and of parenthood. Also rocks are magic, and magic is rocks. When people ask me to recommend a book, this is my go-to.

Version Control, by Dexter Palmer. This is pretty lit-ficcy compared with my usual intake (ie. genre fiction that wears it's genre-ness like a tiara). If an act 1 full of normies having brunch doesn't put you off - and it shouldn't, because the characters are extremely well-drawn - then it'll be very satisfying when all the little bits of wrong-ness come together. Also far more prescient as near-future spec-fic than any cyberpunk.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Unlike most in the tumblr-popular "SFF imperialism but with lesbians" genre, this one sketches out an imperialism that's mostly plausible and worth exploring. The worldbuilding is really very good. This is mostly a pretty light read, for all it deals in heavy themes. I basically don't believe that spoilers diminish one's enjoyment of a story, though that might just be me, so I still think it's worth reading despite your having looked up the ending on wikipedia. The rapid series of increasingly-punishing gut punches in the final few chapters is worth experiencing first-hand.

19. most disliked popular books?

I'm sure I've bitched about this to you before, but I thought Harrow the Ninth mostly sucked. I respect the ambition of the book's structure, but I felt that it fucked the pacing unbearably. Gideon is way more interesting to read about than anyone else in these books, and I might have felt better about being dragged through 400 pages of Harrow moping by having "you're gonna find out what happened with Gideon soon, I swear!" dangled in front of me like a carrot for a donkey, if the payoff was worth it. Unfortunately the denouement largely consisted of everybody standing there and stating out loud what their master plans were, I guess because the stupid B-plot where I'm somehow expected to care about Ortis at all(??) took up too much space so there was none left for a proper ending. There were some fantastic scenes, but in my opinion they couldn't save the book. I thought Gideon was truly excellent, so this was a bit of a let-down.

Also - if you'll allow me a brief tangential rant - I can only assume the publisher (correctly) decided that the meme references were highly marketable, because otherwise an editor that let that shit through should surely have been let go. It's baffling, because these books are frequently hilarious, but never when referencing Bone Hurting Juice or whatever the fuck. "Oh it's a worldbuilding thing, it shows that John-" no. It's stupid. Piss off.

Thanks for the questions!

[kabbal]

HERE I COME

I love to find secondary character that are objectively bad women with something wrong with them and making them worse by finding another horrible woman to ship them with

Starting with a very mainstream ship (for f/f at least) : Cait/Vi from the Arcane animated series :

The large class difference is what kind of drew me in, that and the brash and flirty/reserved and more prude dynamic. They've got a lot of fic about them as a main couple since their buddy cop duo is built off classic fandom tropes, with nicknames, saving each other asses and a "reluctant allies to lovers" progression. Season 2 is rumored to

Then we get to what I would call the mid mainstream level f/f with the Locked Tomb series, and I could talk about any combination of Ianthe, Harrow and Gideon but since I think they get talked about plenty already, I will talk about MY ship of two secondary characters : Coronabeth and Judith

(linking art here since I don't want to repost away from artists)

How do you get with your crush when you've always been a child soldier for a fascist empire and your crush is actively breaking every possible rule of said fascist empire including rebellion and a weird incesty-vibes relationship with her own sister? Can you do it without ending up dead, or a prisonner, or haunted by some ancient beast of destruction? That's a question Judith would like to ask. Will her repressed pining be cut short by tragic and gruesome death?

(I kind of want them to end tragically. For the horrible vibes. And the fix-it fics, of which there are a very appreciated number)

Then we go to a kind of niche f/f since it's built upon ONE character that me and some others who agree with me decided should be into women : Valeria from the 2022 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II game.

She's so very bad, guys. The ethics of the Call of Duty franchise are a fucking mess since the creators thought they could make a "apolitical" war game, but she's a nasty person. She's a mob boss who was okay risking the whole city of Chicago to be annoying. She fucks over the protagonists every time. So of course we wanted her to have a girlfriend. I'm seen a LOT of readerfic for this character since she seems to make people horny, and people (me included) have been creating OCs to ship her with and be the alpha female our hearts desire

Then I get into REALLY niche f/f since I have a femslash pairing in a tv show that has barely had an english sub and obviously no dub. The series Kaamelott is a staple of French culture for its witty wordplay, very quotable moments and tragic scenes, and i have inprinted on two of its secondary characters, Démétra and Aelis

They're two mistresses of the same king, which of course causes conflict. They're constantly trying to up one another in becoming the new queen, and also both failing. I am gnawing on their sexual tension like a bone. I have produced way too many art and fics for them and I pulled my friends into it for a ship between two characters that share maybe three episodes of a six season show, so IF THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A WAY.

anyway I've got more blorbettes (most of them rarepairs) that I ship together like Velma/Roxie from Chicago, Sandy/Rizzo from Grease, Tashigi/Reiju and Nami/Khalifa from One Piece, Alicent/Rhaenyra from House of the Dragon, and many more. Hope this opens some possibilities for people

Since we're on the subject of f/f: shippers, give me recs! What f/f are you passionate about? For me personally I prefer live action and women who aren't full face of makeup level femme, but really, just tell me who your blorbos are and why you're nuts about them.

--

[babylyctor]

can John actually control time or am i making things up? trying to reach a conclusion via tumblr posting

so as a theory this is 75% vibes. however there’s some things in the books that give me pause, and i wanted to put together all those bits and see if there’s something there. i’m not totally on board with this idea because it seems too complex to leave entirely to the last book, and i don’t know how it could fit with the rest of the narrative (or do i?) but in any case i keep thinking about it so here’s this way too long post. spoliers for everything

first, this fucking suspicious sentence that’s one of the first things John tells Harrow (Chapter 2, HtN)

"I would let you come back, bit by bit, until you felt entirely ready to wake up. I can’t. I mastered Death, Harrowhark; I wish I’d done the smarter thing and mastered Time. I have to ask you to get ready soon, and so I am going to show you something I hope might … trigger your readiness.”

so this sounds like a really dull complaint on this immortal god’s part but also i don’t trust a single thing out of this man’s mouth, and this would be the exact kind of private joke he would make if he had actually mastered Time (capitalized) too. Also the context in which it’s said, talking about Harrow coming back from her coma, regaigning consciousness, awakening... you get it, oddly relevant theme wise.

then there’s the whole Soup Moment (Chapter 25, HtN), in which John seems to actually stop time maybe? i have doubts about this so lets see what our narrator tells us;

And God said, “Stop.”

The world slowed down. Augustine and Mercymorn stopped, arrested in the act of half-rising from their seats. Ianthe stopped, left arm paused, outflung, to shield her face. You stopped, sitting upright in your chair: your bones somehow rigid and still, and your flesh chilly and rigid around those bones. The shrapnel spray from the Saint of Duty did not stop, [...] But what remained of him stopped too, half man, half rupture—his prurient details hot and white, naked insides clothed with the sinus-drying burst of the power of God.

so here John freezes all the lyctors in place, they’re still conscious, or at least Harrow is, but they have their range of movement almost totally restricted. this is not like Mercy pinching Harrow’s dorsal nerve to paralyze her, this is a completely different feeling, maybe John’s thalergetic powers? it would make sense, all the lyctors are living bodies, they have thalergy and Johs is able to manipulate that, presumably. the bits of Gideon OG cascading down the table don’t stop but that might be John selectively using his powers, or it might be that that’s no longer living flesh.

so we’re saying this could just be John’s super special thalergy magic and nothing else. the first problem though is that technically he shouldn’t be able to use it against his lyctors without touching them, thanks to lyctoral invisibility. in fact when he explodes Mercy’s chest (rip in peace queen) he expressely reaches out and touches her to do so, because presumably he needs to make contact with a body in order to use magic against it, same as Mercy. so that’s a caveat, then there are these descriptions from the same Soup Moment;

You stared down the table at him: at the blank, remote faces of your two nominal teachers—at the frozen ivory stillness of Ianthe, her hair now whitish pink—at space outside the window, where the asteroids themselves seemed to hang in tranquilized arrest.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses stood. The spell, whatever it had been, dropped like a white sun setting.

These seem to imply certain ambiguity. John’s God and all that but i don’t think thalergetic magic should be able to affect asteroids, lifeless space rocks. of course it says they “seem” to hang in tranquilized arrest, not that they are really unmoving, but i think it’s a suggestive sentence all the same, and i’m suspicious of every word Muir writes. The second quote, specifically the highlighted part, is also a bit frustrating. It seems to imply that John isn’t exactly doing magic as we know it, but something else. If it was Harrow narrating we could go further with it, but since it’s Gideon we could simply attribute it to her lack of knowledge and familiarity with magic. However, two sentences after that we don’t have that problem;

The construct gamely clamberign our of the Saint of Duty dwindled to a powder of pink dust. The shard you had been driving up the cervical vertebrae to the base of the spine [...] simply disappeared: destroyed or removed, you could not tell.

This is still Gideon narrating but in this case she’s specifically telling us that Harrow doesn’t understand what John just did, it’s not magic Harrow is familiar with. There’s also the contrast between what we know is a normal process of destroying a construct - reducing it to dust -  vs this mysterious disappearance, that doesn’t really fit into what we know so far about the way thanergy/thalergy work.

so far, nothing conclusive, we know John is really powerful, but we don’t know exactly how, where his power comes from or what it can do. Then there’s the moment he unexplodes himself (Chapter 52, HtN);

White light.

It bleached the insides of your nose and the back of your throat. It hurt coming out your ears. It bled out your eyeballs. It wasn’t a flash of light, more … a suddenness; when it was gone—as though it hadn’t even existed, but had been a luminous hallucination—time stopped.

That light took colour from the room—everyone was a slow-motion cavalcade of greys, of eyes caught widening, of mouths parting in stone-shaded articulations of shock.

It happened in an instant. It happened over a myriad. A wet red construct knitted itself back together, [...]

again that white light that has been associated with thalergy magic and again all these references to time slowing down, stopping or just behaving in strange ways in general. again lots of ambiguity, this could be a thalergy based power - the ability to hold living bodies in stasis, and therefore make everyone feel like time has slowed down - or it could be that John is actually affecting time, maybe even reversing it (?) since he literally un-exploded himself, after Mercy put all her millenia of expertise into atomizing him and reducing him to almost nothing.

is that even explicable with regular thanergy/thalergy based magic? i’m not sure, a regular necro could never do that, a lyctor couldn’t do that. So if John isn’t just an overpowered lyctor what’s the difference exactly? i mean, how do his powers manifest differently from those of every other necromancer we know?

the other person we’ve seen using powerful thalergy magic is Silas. Whenever he siphoned, Gideon describes a similar vacuum sensation to the one that John’s magic also provokes, as well as white light;

As he faded, the pale Silas incandesced. He glowed with an irradiated shimmer, iridescent white, and the air began to taste of thunder. (Chapter 17, GtN)

Gideon felt an internal tug, like a blanket being pulled off in the cold. (Chapter 17, GtN)

Silas clambered to his knees, clasped his fingers together, and the feeling of suction popped the pressure in both of Gideon’s ears. (Chapter 34, GtN)

Silas is nowhere near as powerful as John but siphoning - thalergy based magic, condemned by God - still causes that suction effect and is marked by white light and lightning, just like John’s magic. However, there’s no mention of a time altering effect, no slowing down, no freezing in place, and seeing how both kinds of magic are similarly coded otherwise i find this difference suspicious.

To end this somewhere, two quotes, first, this thing Harrow tells Ortus when they both discuss what it must be like to be a lyctor (Chapter 5, HtN);

“Nigenad, what would be the tragedy in living for a myriad? Ten thousand years to learn everything there is to know [...] What is the tragedy of time?”

honestly to me that sounds like Muir making Harrow say things she will regret later. of course it could be about any of the numerous tragedies in Harrow life but still, gave me pause, specially because it kinda echoes John’s earlier sentiment, wishing he had mastered Time.

finally, a quote that might be totally meaningless and completely off base in this theory or it could round it up perfectly, i haven’t decided yet;

[...] ; yet you prayed all the while knowing Ianthe’s facility for tergiversation would have given the whole universe pause. (Chapter 36, HtN)

we know Ianthe is a girlboss and gaslighting is her thing. However, isn’t this sentence a bit too dramatic to describe Ianthe? doesn’t it sound kinda ominous to you? it definitely does to me, and although it might totally be my Ianthe bias wanting her to play an important part, who is Ianthe hanging out with lately? exactly John God “Jod” the Emperor.

in conclusion, i haven’t reached any conclusion. but i still think there’s something off with John’s powers beyond what we’ve been told, which isn’t much really, and i think there’s something going on with Time within the narrative (that’s another whole post though), and i think these two things are most probably related. but i can’t say i’m 100% sure of any of it. this was fun though. if you made it here thank you so much you’re the best <3

[mayasaura]

I'm just about to start reading Harrow the Ninth and I want to put the pieces of my own megatheorum out into the universe before I know anything

So, Gideon. She’s dead. Or is she? She’s shown remarkable resilience against dying before, so I have my delusions doubts. There are at least three times I suspect she should have died in Gideon the Ninth that didn’t take, so maybe dying is more complicated for her. Obviously the Creche Flu Massacre when she was a baby, then again when Crux poisoned her for trying to escape and she “crapped blood for a month”, and again when Harrow took longer than she intended to in the Avulsion trial. There's something very weird going on with Gideon, I suspect we’re going to get some answers about what that is, and I suspect that it’s going to have something to do with the strange circumstances of her birth and the ten thousand year old scrap of flimsy with her name on it.

My first theory is that Gideon is the child of at least one Lyctor. Probably the Second’s Lyctor, since the book in the Second Lab was inscribed G&P and that's where they found the note that mentioned Gideon. If that’s the case, I think the Second’s Lyctor was her mother, and the Second’s cav was Gideon the First. Her mother’s soul hit the ground running as soon as it tasted death, almost like it had been tethered away from it for a very long time, and it screamed the name “Gideon” three times before vanishing. I’m assuming the cav part because, if you asked me, Harrow’s dead captured soul would probably also cry out for Gideon.

Second theory, Gideon’s conception and/or birth parallels Harrow’s in that it was aided by a powerful ritual, but it was a Thalergenic ritual as opposed to a Thanergenic one. Possibly having to do with the power behind the Resurrection. But possibly not; whatever the Resurrection was, it left a galaxy of undead planets radiating thanergy, and I'm deeply suspicious of it.

Third theory, not incompatible with the other two, is that Gideon is the Emperor’s daughter, and her mother took her to the Ninth House to hide her from His sight. The second part of that is obvious; if the Necrolord Prime isn’t to be trusted, and I’m sure he isn’t, hiding a Special Unkillable Baby from him makes sense. The Ninth is very remote and He would never turn his gaze there because of the Locked Tomb. But I think there’s something more to it, something very interesting that Harrow said, which I why I specifically think that Gideon is the Emperor’s daughter. The door of the Locked Tomb is sealed with a blood ward bypass that will only respond to the Necromancer Divine. There has been so much emphasis placed on Necromantic bloodline and the power that can hold, I have to wonder if that ward would also respond to the heir of the Necromancer Divine. Which leads me to

Fourth theory, Gideon Nav was born to be the key to the Locked Tomb. Maybe Harrowhark beat her there, or maybe it would take the two of them together to truly open the tomb and wake what sleeps there, I don’t know. But I am keeping a close eye on where Gideon’s flesh and blood might have ended up, if they’re not in the hands of the Emperor.

Finally, fifth theory building on the previous four, Cytherea knew who Gideon was. Possibly because Cytherea was involved in her creation. This is getting a little Arthurian, but Cytherea would make a wonderful Morgan le Fey. Cytherea and Gideon’s mother were both part of a conspiracy to undermine the Necrolord Prime and bring about His death, and part of that plan involved Gideon. Possibly killing Gideon as a sacrificial lamb. At least that’s what I make of

“Cry mercy, please. You don’t even know what you are to me ... You’re not going to die here, Gideon. And if you ask me to let you live you might not have to die at all.”

My reasoning for the conspiracy is that Cytherea seemed to be sincere in her grief over the world they’ve created, and she blames the Emperor for leading them to create it. And if she, the kindest and gentlest of the Lyctors, wants to murder him for his sins, why would she be the only one? Then from this quote, it’s obvious Gideon is special to Cytherea in ways Gideon has no way knowing, and she still might have to die but she’s not meant to die here. If the Emperor was telling the truth, and the missing survivors and bodies from Canaan House really are missing, I suspect they’re in the hands of Cytherea’s conspirators.

[terezis]

God and Lyctorhood: Why The Emperor Can’t Return to Dominicus

Obligatory disclaimer that a lot of this is just me stating the obvious, but listen. Listen. I have to establish the FACTS before I can get to the SPECULATION!!!

-

So in Gideon the Ninth Cytherea did go to Canaan House with intent to kill the Emperor for creating more Lyctors, mainly because the idea that he would encourage anyone to do that - to go through it - again was unconscionable.

- “Thank your lucky stars that none of you became Lyctor, Palamedes Sextus. It is neither life nor death—it’s something in between, and nobody should ever ask you to embrace it. Not even him. Especially not him.”

“I wouldn’t have done that to Camilla.”

“So you know how it happens. Clever boy! I knew you’d all work it out … eventually. I didn’t want to do it either … I didn’t want to do it at all … but I was dying. Loveday—she was my cavalier —she and I thought it could make me live. Instead I’ve just kept dying, all this time. No, you wouldn’t have done it, and you’re smart not to. You can’t do that to somebody’s soul."

- “The day after. When we put together the research. When she became a Lyctor. I said, There was no alternative. She said…” [...] The other Lyctor said nothing, for a moment. She cleared her throat: “She said, We had the choice to stop.”

But it’s more than that, I think? After all, Cytherea knew about the Ninth House mission.

Now, just so we’re all on the same page: the Ninth House mission was a plan between Commander Wake, Mercymorn, Augustine, and possibly also Cytherea, to open the Locked Tomb by killing a child of God and using its DNA - God’s DNA - and the resulting thanergic cascade to break the blood ward. (At one point Harrow did mention that babies’ deaths create big ones!) Jury’s out on whether Cytherea was actually a part of that plot or if she only knew about it - Mercymorn says at her funeral that the last time they spoke was twenty years ago, which would have been right after Wake died - but the distinction isn’t important.

Why did they want to get into the Tomb? Because if they had gotten in and found that Alecto wasn’t truly dead - that the Emperor had lied to them about her demise - it would have confirmed their suspicions that he was a Lyctor, and Alecto the cavalier he used to become one. That he'd lied to them about the true nature of Lyctorhood. That it was possible to achieve it without killing your cavalier and becoming their tomb.

That their cavs had died for nothing.

But they didn’t need to break into the Tomb to confirm any of this: they’d only needed to look at the baby’s eyes. Gold, like Alecto’s eyes, which was weird because it wasn’t her child, it was Wake’s... 

... and the Emperor’s. Which of course meant that genetically, the Emperor’s eyes should have been gold. But they weren’t: Alecto’s were.

“Ah. The eyes.”

“Yes, the eyes,” she said. “Your child … Alecto’s eyes. [...] Those are A.L.’s eyes, Lord … right there in your genetic code.”

What happens to Lyctor’s eyes when they complete the process again...? Oh, right.

So Mercymorn says in Harrow the Ninth that Cytherea would have known the truth the moment she set her eyes on Gideon:

When she spoke at last, she sounded frozen and numb. “I see. I understand. Lipochrome. Recessive. You are the evidence. He lied to us … and you are all the proof I needed. I don’t have to breach anything. I don’t have to go back.” She exhaled. 

“Good God … Cytherea would have known as soon as she looked at you.”

And Cytherea did:

“Oh, singular,” said [Cytherea] quietly, more to herself than to Gideon. “Lipochrome … recessive. I like looking at people’s eyes,” she explained suddenly, smiling now. “They tell you such a lot.”

But that confirmation didn’t change her path - it only strengthened her resolve.

On one of the sweetly painted frescoes, fresh paint marred the blossom-decked trees. Over them, on the wall, black words a foot high proclaimed:

YOU LIED TO US

Not only did the Emperor intend to create more Lyctors, whose existence she felt was wrong in its own right - but he intended to create more Lyctors by killing more cavaliers, knowing that the cavaliers didn’t need to die, because there was a better way to do it. Because he did it. Nobody ever had to die.

(Now, there’s a lot we don’t know: namely, why lie? The Emperor says it was because it was “easier,” but like... easier than what? )

They didn’t want to get into her tomb just to confirm their suspicions about Alecto’s relationship to the Emperor. See: when Mercymorn asks what God could possibly fear. I’m here to posit: the loss of power. Death. These are one and the same, I think. Alecto is, at least in part, the source of his power. And as for death...

It’s not that he couldn’t kill Alecto. It’s that he wouldn’t, because killing her would sever their link. At best I think it’d make him mortal, and at worst I believe it’d kill him, too. Evidence:

“But it’s not as simple as her getting it right, and me stopping her. She panicked midway through. She hadn’t got his soul inside her all the way—if she had, Samael dying would have killed her too … They were both in danger. I killed him for her benefit, and she knew that at the time.”

The older Lyctors were always planning on killing the Emperor if they’d been proven right about his lies.

“And when you swore that you’d help evacuate the Houses, you never meant that either, did you?”

-

“Dominicus will collapse in a few minutes, chick,” said the other Lyctor. “It’s going to form a black hole that nobody in that system will escape. The Nine Houses are over.” 

“The Nine Houses are gone,” echoed Mercy. “It is over … it is done. We always planned for a mass evacuation [...]”

They had planned for evacuations because his death would have also meant the death of the system, since he was the one sustaining it. 

But how were they planning on killing him? Was Mercy going to rip him apart on an atomic level like we saw her do in his rooms? I’m not so sure. Wouldn’t it be much easier to just kill Alecto instead and get him in the process? She’s “asleep.” It’s not like she’d be able to fight back. (They sent Commander Wake to her tomb; bloodthirsty, trigger happy, eager-to-kill-necromancers Wake. I’m sure they knew what her first course of action would have been when/ if she got inside.)

That’s why the Emperor locked her away, I think - for his own safety. If he didn’t “take care of it,” I’m sure one of the other Lyctors would have actually done the job, and he couldn’t have that. The prophecy that Harrow’s parents believed stated that opening up the Tomb would be his demise (and in turn cause the apocalypse.) In the first book Harrow says that 

“The Locked Tomb’s meant to house the one true enemy of the King Undying, Nav, something older than time, the cost of the Resurrection; the beast that he defeated once but can’t defeat twice. The abyss of the First. The death of the Lord.”

The thing he defeated once by becoming a Lyctor, but couldn’t overcome twice: his own mortality.

That’s why he can’t ever return to Dominicus. That’s why Cytherea wanted to lure him there. The Resurrection Beasts would follow. They’ve been looking for her, too; the Emperor’s other half.

“We said she was too dangerous … We knew the Beasts were coming, and we knew they were partly coming for her. She was going to get us all eaten alive.”

(Side note: do you think this is why number seven came to the Mithraeum early? Because Alecto’s soul has been following Harrowhark around?)

They can’t kill the Emperor; he says as much.

The Lyctor said, “The Resurrection Beasts—”

“Can’t kill me.”

“You acted afraid—”

“Acted is operative.”

But Alecto?

I suspect that they could kill Alecto... and if he leads them to Dominicus - to the Ninth House - to her - if she dies...

Well, that’s the ballgame. 

Why else would returning to Dominicus mean his Death, like Teacher explains the first book? The Beasts have been following him wherever he goes anyway, and if they can’t kill him... I mean, sure, it'd suck if they consumed the Nine Houses, just like, personally speaking, but the Emperor doesn't draw power from the system. Augustine says as much.

“You don’t get your power from Dominicus,” said Augustine. “It gets its power from you. There’s no exchange involved, no symbiosis. You draw nothing from the system. It relies on you entirely, as we all know.

The only way Cytherea’s plan would have worked is if there was something there that could kill him - like Alecto’s body.

-

Of course, it's also possible that I'm entirely wrong. I thought the Emperor was deflecting when he said that Alecto “isn’t the dying kind,” but I guess he could have meant it literally, especially if she isn’t actually (completely?) human...

And rereading that last conversation between the Emperor and his Lyctors, it does seem like when Mercymorn meant Alecto when she asked what God could fear. Like Alecto might kill him? But why would she do that? Anger for “switching her off”? Revenge? 

what is the truth dot jpeg!!!

[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.

[flowerflamestars]

not a fic ask but i absolutely have to know if you have any theories on lyctorhood??

I love you for asking this but truly, fair warning, the murderboard of locked tomb theories in my head is a MESS

In no particular order:

1) I think the main tenet that Harrow accepted as truth vis a vis you become a tomb/ ‘a soul consumed in eternal death’ is almost certainly wrong. That her lobotomy in an attempt to preserve Gideon wasn’t necessary.

For one thing, Pyrrha Dve. Whole enough to a) pilot her necro’s body...without his consent? and b)take over his body full when his soul is extinguished fighting the resurrection beast.

Further it sounds good, but doesn’t super make sense with what we know about necromantic power. Palamedes and Harrow have that whole ‘glass canon’ conversation- give them a death and they can go for a few more minutes but thanergy always dissipates? Why would the consumption of a soul be a battery? Why would it not, actually, matter that the bond preserved that moment of death, the energy bloom that powers everything?

If the cavaliers are still there, imperfect Lyctorhood preserves the soul, but perfect lyctorhood is true necromancy: the preservation of the cav’s body, brought back.

2) I think Anastasia was doing it right, and that’s why JohnGod killed Samael

3). Alecto. Murderwife my monster babe- I don’t think whatever bond ended up being the Lyctoral concept was on purpose. I hesitate to say this, but while JohnGod is clearly a very smart and dangerous as hell, I lean toward the off the walls idea that Alecto (or a part of who Alecto once was) is the source of necromancy. 

Those eyes- the visible death monster cue, that belonged to her. 

But also the two divergent stories of AL- the woman John loved. The woman, who according the Mercy, isn’t a woman at all, might not even have dna. A monster, piloting a human suit.

Whose eyes, John has worn, since August met him pre/during Great Resurrection. 

Let’s paint an off the walls picture: AL the first necromancer, power gained from the slow death of a world. John, the second necromancer. LOVE. AL dies- John, long before he’s God, brings her back. But he can’t do it right- he has yet to ascended on the insane blast of power that is million’s dying at once- BUT THEN THE WORLD DOES DIE- and John, failing, frantic, tries to remake her.

And you know what’s there to do it? Not her original necromancy, or soul, but the souls of thousands, right there to be shoved in a vessel. Perhaps, even more interestingly, the after echo of all that death, something John has no idea if can even be killed: the resurrection beast.

He brings back her body- he is tangled in her power, but the woman he loved? Gone. 

Alecto. John’s guardian. The Lyctors are all her children (as John SO CREEPILY SAYS) because the experiments, the impetus all along, was to reverse engineer what he did. Mercy says it herself- John wanted to fix Alecto, but accidentally made her worse instead. 

What is John’s favorite alt aspect? Kindly Prince? Man who Became God? Great Resurrector? Teacher. 

Who also has hella power we don’t understand the source of until it’s revealed to be souls? Teacher, on Canaan, an experimental melange.

Does he need powerful Hands? Sure. But is the real sacrifice always toward what John really wants? Yes

4)Speaking of John’s JohnGoding about with his interpretation of history, I think it was always, ALWAYS his plan to have more Lyctors.

(not just for Alecto reasons)

One flesh, one end? Not a coincidence in a society/religion John built, with his friends, on purpose. (There people call the Houses an experiment. A project. Mercy’s out here grumbling that John isn’t supposed to tell Inathe and Harrow her name because they’d all agreed the OG Lyctors names should be forgotten, sacred.)

My point is, they made up the cult aspects. And maybe for the Lyctoral faithful the continued cavalier tradition was almost a suited memorial, something to be cherished. But John? i would bet John always needed and wanted more.

Crack theory time: John, obviously, wants the Lyctors around for personal reasons. He loves them, as much as a normal dude who became (maybe by accident) an eldritch horror in a human body after watching his species implode, can still love.

But John needs the Lyctors for necromancy.

So, I’m deeply suspicious of his powers. Harrow, our born in death literal necromancy genius, says it’s nothing like any necromancy she’s ever felt. He can stop time. He can’t be killed. When Harrow tries to off Gideon with soup, John doesn’t heal Gideon- he stops time and then the injury reels back on itself to wholeness. He somehow pulls the same move on himself, when Mercymorn has her assassination.

Necromancy in the most basic term: the reversal of death

But the Lyctors are the ones out here flipping planets to make necromancy possible on them. When there were more of them, the led battles. John’s great miracle of necromancy is all on his word... I think he needs them to do the things he can’t- the not miracles, the other necromantic acts? Normal necros are glass canons, but John is a bomb.

Further weird proof at least that he always wanted more: every other Lyctor seems to have been against it always- but their labs are perfectly preserved? all their work? after they all fled Canaan? they made the trials as experiments...but the trials are all set up as, you know, trials. In Johns old house, the King who Became God, the God who became king.

5) which leads me to what has been bothering me since like, the second I opened Harrow and we get the whole- these three, the eldest Lyctors, are who is left now.

Anastasia, seems like the only Lyctor who actually became a Lyctor at Canaan House?

“In lab conditions” vs August’s literally under fire vs Lovegood’s heavily implied suicide for Cytherea.

In Cytherea’s telling the story is, we figured it out, I wasn’t going to do it, Lovegood forced my hand because she wanted me to live. 

It also works for the Canaan angle- but she’s the seventh saint, so are we supposed to believe that they all figured it out together, August went off the fight a war (probably with Mercymorn, because of their cavalier’s intertwined maybe love probable suicide pact) August ate his brother, Mercy more reluctantly (maybe because her cav was dying??) consumed Cristobel, AND THEN the other’s went yeah, that sounds good let’s do that?

At least one of the pairs- Cyrus and Valancy- are very heavily implied to have been in love.

We also know, it seems, that each pair did it a little differently- Gideon, who accidentally perfectly preserved Pyrrha so well she’s been piloting him so often he thinks his memory is fucked up. Anastasia, who whatever she did, was so close to right that John interfered. Honestly, whatever is going on with Inathe’s perpetual eye color changes like she ate a bit of Babs AND Coronabeth.

So...was every Lyctor moment like Ianthe, making it up in a vacuum? They all seemingly lived together, knew each other, loved each other- and then when murdertime came no one helped anyone? in this cavalcade of geniuses, gathered at the feet on the One True Necrolord. 

Reasonable theory: there’s something wrong about the story of Canaan House, and we’re going back to it. Those salty ocean’s the Ninth/Alecto signature. The way Harrow thought it was a Tomb as well. The timeline that has never, a for a second, added up that Palamedes wouldn’t stop talking about in the first book.

Crack theory: all that is true, but additionally- John fucks with memory. 

[kingofterrors]

I was tagged in this ask by @inktog - thank you!

I’m not great at tagging other folk, but if you see this and you fancy doing it, consider yourself tagged! Also, by the way, if anyone seeing this really likes being tagged in these kind of things, let me know! I will tag you in future!

This was hard. At first I was like, “I’m not sure I can even name ten relationships I ship”, and then had far too many as soon as I thought about it for more than ten seconds. So here we are. :)

First, list your top 10 ships without reading the questions below.

1.      Luz Noceda / Amity Blight – The Owl House

2.      Harrowhark Nonagesimus / Gideon Nav – The Locked Tomb Series

3.      Sabran / Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra – The Priory of the Orange Tree

4.      Caleb Widogast / Essek Theyless – Critical Role Campaign 2

5.      Beauregard Lionett / Jester Lavorre – Critical Role Campaign 2

6.      Harrowhark Nonagesimus / Ianthe Tridentarius – The Locked Tomb Series

7.      Kara Danvers / Lena Luthor – Supergirl

8.      Amity Blight / Boscha – The Owl House

9.      Korra / Asami – The Legend of Korra

10.  Percy / Vexahlia – Critical Role Campaign 1

Then answer the questions.

Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I’m going to be honest, it was from the very beginning of Harrow the Ninth – the Prologue, where we get that amazing moment of Ianthe kneeling down and taking Harrow by the chin. I’m going to quote, because this scene just marched up to my house, kicked my door down and stole my entire mind.

You were shocked into opening your eyes when you felt the girl opposite cup your chin in her hands – her fingers febrile compared to the chilly shock of her gilded metacarpal – and put her meat thumb at the corner of your jaw. For a moment you assumed that you were hallucinating, but that assumption was startled away by the cool nearness of her, of Ianthe Tridentarius on her knees before you in unmistakable supplication. Her pallid hair fell around her face like a veil, and her stolen eyes looked at you with half-beseeching, half-contemptuous despair: blue eyes with deep splotches of light brown, like agate.

Looking deep into the eyes of the cavalier she murdered, you realised, not for the first time, and not willingly, that Ianthe Tridenatrius was beautiful.

Dude.

Have you ever read a fic about 2?

Yup! More than one! I don’t generally seek out smut for my ships, for whatever reason, but I freely admit that I sought out smut for these two. And found it. Found it with quality in spades. Praise be. Is this a good spot for recs? If so:

Sleepless by pugoata

Like a Lullaby by SweetScentences

Has a picture of 4 ever been your screensaver/profile pic/tumblr?

Nope. I tend not to change my pics very much, and they tend to focus on single characters rather than ships, again for whatever reason.

If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

Yeah… Well of course they’re not together in canon. I ship supercorp foolishly, helplessly, knowing all the while that the chances of it becoming reality are vanishingly small. That said, we don’t ship purely for canon, do we? So if Kara and Lena were together and then were to break up I’d be disappointed, but I suspect they’d find their way back to each other. These two have a history of being separated, then rediscovering their love and coming back together. I give it a couple of weeks. :)

Why is 1 so important?

Man, I don’t know! It snuck up on me! I think there’s something here about firstly, the context for Lumity. Amity’s crush on Luz was just presented as normal, as something fine and good and natural, and that meant so much to me. There’s a softness here that I love so much. I also heavily empathise with Amity – the trying to live up to expectations and feeling that you have to hide yourself behind emotional walls – and the thought of her finding love with someone like Luz who is so open and emotionally giving does my heart good. I want Amity to find acceptance and openness with Luz. I want Luz to find herself seen and valued for exactly who she is by Amity. I want to see them finding strength and security in each other. I just love them, you guys.

There’s a bit in this wonderful YouTube video essay, which I recommend to the moon and back – watch it if you haven’t! (“The Owl House is Great and Here’s Why, by Film Freak”) Where the essayist concludes their section on Lumity by saying: “I don’t know if Disney will chicken out in the future with regards to Lumity or any other queer rep, but for now I’m cautiously optimistic. Maybe I just have rose-tinted goggles for how soft this ship is, but whatever, let me stan just once.”

And… yeah. That.

Which one has the strongest bond?

Wow, tough one. Probably Sabran and Ead. They’ve gone through everything together, and are prepared to wait for each other in the end. Their bond is strong enough to take that and more.

Which ship has lasted the longest?

For me or the ship itself? For me of all of these probably Korra / Asami. Shipped ‘em first time I saw LoK, and haven’t stopped.

How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up?

Have they ever gotten together? If they ever did get together they’d break up every couple of days. These two are a mess, and their relationship is a toxic trainwreck. Still ship ‘em though. Can’t help it. Sometimes ships are just fascinating. If this was real life I’d want them to not come within shouting distance of each other. In fiction I’m riveted.

If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive: 2 or 8?

Definitely Harrow and Gideon. Those two have fought through apocalyptic situations before, and my money would be on them to do it again. Plus they are the quintessential battle couple. Can you imagine Harrow’s bone magic and Gideon’s martial expertise being unleashed on zombies? Those two would save the whole damn world.

Amity and Boscha would put up a good fight, I think, but I can see them disagreeing on key decisions which might hurt their chances.

Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

Given that Kara is a whole secret identity, we could say they are continually hiding their relationship when Kara is out there as Supergirl? I could also see them hiding their relationship at Lena’s insistence to protect Kara from Lex before she realised Kara was actually Supergirl. She might even want to do that afterwards as well, on reflection. Lena is very protective of Kara, ironically enough. :)

Is 4 still together?

Right now? This is another non-canon ship. That said, this is one I’m genuinely hoping for a canon appearance from. Their relationship might be put under strain from the fact that they’re both mages, and mages tend to get selfish and power hungry (or at least these two claim that’s how it goes). I think they’d work through it though. These two talk big about their own selfishness a lot, and then in practice are very caring and protective of others. I can see that extending to each other. Just kiss already.

Is 10 canon?

Yup! My token het ship are still very much together, growing old and having babies.Good for them. :)

If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

This is an invitation to go into huge depth, but my initial feeling is that Harrow and Gideon would again have it hands down. Those two are world-endingly powerful. Although that said, Kara and Lena might give them a run for their money. Pure power ranking? Let’s see…

1.      Harrow / Gideon

2.      Kara / Lena

3.      Korra / Asami

4.      Beau / Jester

5.      Caleb / Essek

6.      Percy / Vex

7.      Harrow / Ianthe

8.      Sabran / Ead

9.      Amity / Luz (no shade, but these guys are literal children. Grown up they’d put up a better showing, I’d bet)

10.  Amity / Boscha

Has anyone ever tried to sabotage 5?

I mean… Fjord? I wonder sometimes what would have happened if Beau had genuinely put in a play for Jester, rather than stepping back to let Fjord make his move. She very obviously decided that Fjord should have a free shot, and I wonder how it would have worked if she actually decided to compete. Would Fjord have stepped back to let Beau make a try for Jester if he was aware of her feelings? I don’t know. A genuine competition would have been heartbreaking but oh so interesting to see.

Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr tag?

Not hours, but I have put some good time into finding fanart for these two. There is some good work out there!

If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all up, which ship would you SINK?

Amity / Boscha. Sorry you two! I wrote myself into shipping Amity and Boscha, when I fell in love with Boscha and decided she could actually be good for Amity in a snarky, take no shit kind of a way. I would still love to see more of them. (Halfway through that one-shot btw.) But if it was them or everyone else? Sorry guys. :(

[housewarningparty]

Thanks for recommending Gideon the Ninth! It was so good! Do you have a book rec tag I could check out? :)

honestly i should, huh? i’ve read more books than probably ever before this year and i’ve talked about ‘em intermittently, but not with a consistent tag. i’ll recommend some right now, though, with a healthy dose of recency bias!

sf/f

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon - a truly epic fantasy novel with one of the most beautiful, satisfying f/f romances i’ve ever read. the novel takes account nearly everything i hate about fantasy as a genre (overwhelmingly straight, white, and male centric, bland medieval European settings, tired tropes) and subverts them. incredible world-building, diverse fantasy cultures, really cool arthrurian legend influence. one of my favorite books i’ve ever read tbh.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir - which you’ve read, obviously, but for posterity’s sake i’m keeping it here! sci-fi + murder mystery + gothic horror. genuinely funny while still having a super strong emotional core and more than enough gnarly necromantic to satisfy the horror nerd in me. makes use of some of my favorite tropes in fiction, namely the slowburn childhood enemies to reluctant allies to friends to ??? progression between gideon and harrow. absolutely frothing at the mouth for a sequel.

the broken earth trilogy by nk jemisin - really the first book that helped me realize i don’t hate fantasy, i just hate the mainstream ‘medieval europe but with magic’ version of fantasy that dominates the genre. EXTREMELY cool worldbuilding. i’ve definitely described it as like, a GOOD version of what the mage-vs-templar conflict in dragon age could have been, with a storyline particularly reminiscent of “what if someone got Anders right?”

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone - i’m not usually big on epistolary novels, but this one really worked for me. spy vs spy but it’s gay and takes place between time traveling agents of two opposing sides of a war. the letter writing format really plays to el-mohtar’s strengths as a poet, the unfolding love story is weird and beautiful. it’s a really quick read, too, if you’re short on time or attention.

empress of forever  by max gladstone - i just finished this one this week! if you’re in the mood for a space opera, look no further. imagine if steve jobs was an asian lesbian and also like not a shitty person. this is where you start with vivian liao. you get the classic putting-the-band-together arc with beings from all across the universe, your romances and enemies-turned-friends and uneasy alliances all over the place. really satisfying character development and some extremely cool twists along the way. it’s just a fun good time.

the luminous dead by caitlin starling - this one rides the line of horror so it’s closest to that part of the list. it reminds me of the most inventive low budget horror/sci-fi films i’ve loved in the best way possible because it makes use of the barest narrative resources. it’s a book that takes place in one primary setting, featuring interactions between two characters that only meet each other face-to-face for the briefest period. the tension between the two characters is the most compelling part of the story, with competing and increasingly unreliable narratives and an eerie backdrop to ratchet things up even higher. the author described it as “queer trust kink” at one point which is, uh, super apt actually and totally my jam. the relationship at the center of the book is complicated to say the least, outright combative at points, but super compelling. plus there’s lost of gnarly sci-fi spelunking if you like stories about people wandering around in caves.

horror

the ballad of black tom by victor lavalle - we all agree that while lovecraft introduced/popularized some cool elements into horror and kind of defined what cosmic horror would come to mean, he was a racist sack of shit. which is why my favorite type of ‘lovecraftian horror’ is the type that openly challenges his abhorrent views. the ballad of black tom is a retelling of the horror at redhook that flips the narrative by centering the action around a black protagonist. 

lovecraft country by matt ruff - more of what i just described. again, lovecraftian themes centered around black protagonists. this one’s especially cool because it’s a series of interconnected short stories following related characters. it’s getting a tv adaptation i believe, but the book is definitely not to be missed

rolling in the deep / into the drowning deep by mira grant - mermaids are real and they’re the ultimate deep sea predators! that’s really the whole premise. if for some reason that’s not enough for you, let me add this: diverse cast, a romance between a bi woman who’s not afraid to use the word and an autistic lesbian, really cool speculative science tangents about mermaid biology and myth. 

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson - it’s halloween month so i’m thinking about hill house again. one of the greatest american ghost stories ever written. especially worth the read if you follow it up w the 1964 film adaptation (the haunting) and then the 2018 netflix series.

the hunger by alma katsu - i’ve always been fascinated by the donner party even though we now know the popular narrative is largely falsehoods. still, this highly fictionalized version of events scratched an itch for me and ended up surprising me with its resistance from the most expected and toxic racist tropes associated with donner party myth.

wounds / north american lake monsters by nathan ballingrud - nathan ballingrud is my favorite horror writer of all time. one of my favorite writers period regardless of genre. in ballingrud’s work the horror is right in front of you. you can look directly at it, it’s right there. but what permeates it, what draws your attention instead, what makes it hurt is the brutally honest emotional core of everything surrounding the horror. the human tragedy that’s’ reflected by the more fantastic horror elements is the heart of his work. it’s always deeply, profoundly moving for me. both of these collections are technically short stories, but they’re in the horror section of the recs because delineations are totally arbitrary and made solely at my discretion. 

short stories

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado - tbh i almost put this in w horror but there’s enough weird fiction here for me to be willing to straddle the line. it was really refreshing to read horror that centered queer women’s perspectives. the stories in this collection are really diverse and super powerful. there’s an incredible weird fiction piece that’s like prompt-based law and order svu micro fiction (go with me here) that ends up going to some incredible places. there’s the husband stitch, a story that devastated me in ways i’m still unraveling. the final story reminded me of a more contemporary haunting of hill house in the best way possible. machado is a writer i’m really excited about.

vampires in the lemon grove by karen russell - my friend zach recommended this to me when we were swapping book recs earlier this year and i went wild for it! mostly weird fiction, but i’m not really interested in getting hung up on genres. i don’t know what to say about this really other than i really loved it and it got me excited about reading in a way i haven’t been in a while. 

the tenth of december by george saunders - i really like saunders’ work and i feel like the tenth of december is a great place to start reading him. quirky without being cloying, weird without being unrelatable.

misc

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid - there’s something really compelling to me about the glamour of old hollywood. this story is framed as a young journalist interviewing a famously reclusive former starlet at the end of her life. the story of how evelyn hugo goes from being the dirt-poor daughter of cuban immigrants to one of the biggest names in hollywood to an old woman facing the end of her life alone is by turns beautiful, inspiring, infuriating and desperately sad. by far the heart of the book is in evelyn finally coming out as bisexual, detailing her decades-long on/off relationship with celia st. james, another actress. evelyn’s life was turbulent, fraught with abuse and the kind of exploitation you can expect from the hollywood machine, but the story is compelling and engaging and i loved reading it.

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty - a memoir by caitlin doughty, the woman behind the popular ‘ask a mortician’ youtube series. it was a super insightful look into the american death industry and its many flaws as well as an interesting, often moving look at the human relationship with death through the eyes of someone touched by it early and deeply.

love and rockets by los bros hernandez (jaime and gilbert and mario) - this was a big alt comic in the 80s with some series within running on and off through the present. i’m not current, but this book was so important for me as a kid. in particular the locas series, which centered around two queer latina girls coming up in the punk scene in a fictional california town. the beginning starts of a little sci-fi-ish but over time becomes more concerned with slice-of-life personal dramas. 

[useless-critter]

alright my friends i am officially in the stage of brainrot where i vigorously analyze song lyrics to connect to events in the locked tomb lets go babey

this is gonna be kinda half-assed because i have other shit i should be doing and idk how (haha) to really do these properly but whatever

You've got the devil on your shoulder

You better shut your mouth just like I told you

You've been controlling me through fiction

It's obvious, I've got to break you like a bad addiction

Totally reading this as old Harrow talking to Harrow the First, except for the whole "you've been controlling me through fiction" which is more harrow the first talking to old Harrow bc of the fucked up memories (and also the devil in question is totally Ianthe, no I will not take arguments. Unless you say its John and in that case you get a pass)

Oh, I can't say no

I'm losing control

Harrow getting confused over why her memories arent adding up and putting together why the hell she vomits and/or faints whenever she sees the sword or hears "Ortus" (aka Gideon)

I'm having bad dreams

And nothing you can do will keep the

Bad things away from me until I fall asleep

Bad dreams

Despite your good intentions

The girl is like an architect

And I am just a new invention

Bad dreams, bad "memories," yadda yadda you get the comparison. Bad dreams also mean the weird conversations she had with the Body in her dreamworld Drearburh cell (queue "Beloved, tell me, what were my eyes like?" "She asked me not to tell you"). The last three lines remind me of old Harrow thinking her absolute genius idea of lobotomizing herself and rebuilding/masking her memories to forget Gideon were good for her (I mean, morally? Probably not. But I'm still sitting here like yes go queen you'll get your gf back in the next book good job)

You've got to choose between your faces

Feels like you're running out of holy places

And now the room is getting quiet (Shh)

Oh, what a shame

Nobody taught you how to read and riot

mmmmm nothing really significant comes to mind with this. The second line could be like, since she's in the Mithraeum, theres really no other holy place to go. The last two lines make me think of a future Harrow (after John spilled the beans and Gideon tells her everything yk) saying "Damn kid you absolute idiot lmao God was an asshole why didnt you just let Cytherea kill him" but idk

It's a miracle I'm standing

You're dragging me back into having

(Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad)

Getting griddlehark vibes from this just bc Gideon took over her body to save her and after/during AtN when they TOTALLY GET BACK TO THEIR BODIES AND HAVE A HAPPY LIFE Harrow might see it as a warning sign to retreat or something in fear of losing her again, but again idk. I kinda got burnt out of this halfway through.

Anyways, I'm gonna find my Tumblr in like five years and go "what the fuck why were you so obsessed" but for now im having fun, so enjoy my word vomit. Go listen to the song, it's a banger. Feel free to add onto this if you want

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 35 through the end of Gideon the Ninth

So if I understand right, the last door was the Seventh House door, the one that Cytherea used when she originally became a Lyctor, and Palamedes was able to tell that she'd been in there 10,000 years ago because of the "YOU LIED TO US" message that she left on the wall, I guess probably when she realized that becoming a Lyctor wasn't actually going to cure her cancer. And Cytherea hid the key and stopped up the keyhole to prevent anyone from getting in there to find out who she was, I guess before she figured out how to kill everyone

I only found one of those two times:

But possibly the second time was something else, and not related to that chapter specifically. Harrow has a good memory, though, I didn't remember that line of dialog

Not sure how I feel about Palamedes' weird relationship with the real Dulcinea, and I think Camilla is with me there

I love how this whole scene at the beginning of Chapter 35 is just Harrow and Camilla figuring out that Cytherea is not Dulcinea and Gideon completely missing the point of everything they're saying in favor of going "oh my god I've been trying to steal Palamedes' girlfriend"

You know, I suspect that is not in fact the reason why Cytherea was flirting with you

Ok, but why is Gideon asking for her sword here? Like, I think she is still on the wavelength of "I have to apologize to Palamedes" right now, she doesn't yet get that Cytherea is not Dulcinea and also is evil

If Cytherea killed Dulcinea and Protesilaus en route to Canaan House, why were the remains in the furnace a month old? I don't think they've been there that long

And I guess she punched out Mayonnaise Uncle way back when because he could have figured out who she was due to him siphoning everyone in the room

And then there was an entire long chapter of fighting, involving multiple literally unkillable people. Yes, there was some interesting stuff in there, some of Harrow doing cool necromancy stuff and applying knowledge that she learned from the challenges, but reading this was honestly kind of exhausting, and then Gideon hurt her knee and there was a bunch of text describing knee pain and I guess maybe this just me getting old, but I didn't mind any of the other descriptions of injuries or gore or etc but the knee pain was hard to read

I think I said way back when that I don't particularly like long fight sequences? Yeah, that's still true. But I appreciate that from a story perspective we had to completely exhaust their ability to defeat Cytherea and put them in a position where there was only one choice left to not die. I appreciate that

I also appreciate Palamedes and Camilla's relationship, and I'm guessing this exchange means that we have (hopefully) not seen the last of Palamedes

Also, it was wild that Cytherea is still trying to flirt with Gideon while this fight is going on. She's not quitting. Like, I know Gideon turns out to be God's daughter, but what exactly does that mean to Cytherea that she is behaving this way? I gather the Gideon that Cytherea used to know is either another Lyctor, or one of cavaliers who got eaten by a Lyctor

And yeah, I got last chapter that Ianthe and Naberius had some serious difference of opinion on whether or not Ianthe should become a Lyctor, and this is kind of fucking her shit up. I guess Gideon was right when she said the whole trial is about how good of a pair the necromancer and the cavalier are, and I guess maybe the closer they are, the powerful the Lyctor is? Only it seems like the pairs that actually are that close, like Harrow and Gideon or Palamedes and Camilla, the necromancer would never sacrifice the cavalier to become a Lyctor, so this is kind of a self-defeating trial. Like, I have to wonder what kind of people the original Lyctors were that they all sat down together and said, hey, let's figure out a way to absorb our cavaliers' souls and become immortal. We know that Cytherea just wanted to not die, and her cavalier was willing to sacrifice herself to help her. But what about the others?

Also, I guess Ianthe's skeletal arm is actually going to be a prosthetic? This book introduced bone prosthetics at the very beginning, with Aiglamene, I don't know why I never considered the idea that Ianthe's skeletal arm was just a prosthetic

I don't think Harrow actually ever got the last theorem, though, the one behind the black key door. Or maybe Ianthe spelling it out earlier caused her to figure it out on her own?

It is Jesus O'Clock, isn't it?

Ok, yeah, that's the good stuff

The last chapter of Gideon, like, merging with Harrow, I guess, was so bittersweet, but I'm not sure if Gideon in this chapter is actually Gideon's ghost, or just Harrow's imagination, but either way

And I guess Harrow was able to easily defeat Cytherea as a Lyctor when Ianthe wasn't because she was stronger due to her bond with Gideon? And also because Harrow knew about what Palamedes had done to her. I am happy that Palamedes had a role in killing her.

You know, I had thought that maybe the way that Gideon was going to die was that Harrow was going to become a Lyctor, and then I was like, no, Harrow wouldn't do that and that's the bad ending. But I don't know what kind of good ending I was expecting given that I already knew that Gideon was going to die at the end of the book

I cannot take the epilogue at face value. I cannot buy the Emperor as just a tired guy fighting a war to survive. This is a universe where they kill people to generate power for the elite, I can't believe that their god is a good guy on the right side of history, even if I didn't know like two things about him and one of those things was that he forced Cytherea to die of cancer for 10,000 years and would probably happily have done the same to Dulcinea

So, I guess this is the list of people who survived this book other than Harrow and Ianthe? Interesting, I wouldn't have guessed that Judith would make it, but it's true, we did not see her die on screen. I guess Harrow was wrong, and she does live to find out the answer to who killed everyone. But I'm obviously much more interested in what's going to happen to Camilla and Corona, and how we're going to get Gideon and Palamedes back, especially since apparently even God isn't able to extract Gideon from Harrow anymore. And then there is whatever Harrow and Ianthe and the Emperor and the other, I guess, three Lyctors are going to get up to separately

I think at this point, everything I was spoiled for has come to pass, except for Gideon coming back, but I think that would be a given even if I didn't know it was going to happen ahead of time.

There's like 40 pages of back matter in this book, although it looks like at least some of that is an excerpt of Harrow the Ninth, which I will save for when I get the next book, and then I will go look for the Dr. Sex side story

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of July 31st, 2019

Best of this Week: Black Panther #14 (Legacy #186) - Ta-Nehisi Coates, Daniel Acuna and Joe Sabino

Since the beginning of this new series, we’ve been left wondering if this escaped slave, turned warrior, turned legend was the real King T’Challa. We’ve been introduced to an M’Baku, though M’Baku has been dead for years and a Nakia that isn’t an emaciated mess of a supervillain. There’s also a living N’Jadaka even though Killmonger too has been dead for a long time. We’ve gotten hints that maybe things aren’t as they seem, especially when Manifold shows up as a mind controlled slave. The last few issues had finally cleared things up and it’s official; the King i back.

The book begins with Manifold helping to evacuate the Teku-Maza, a group of alien warriors that have agreed to help the Rebel Maroons fight against the “King” N’Jadaka. In the middle of the evacuation, N’Jadaka’s forces appear from hyperspace and engage the Teku-Maza and the Maroon forces in battle. 

T’Challa, now with all of his memories back has finally contacted Wakanda Prime. Shuri, Storm and his mother all answer the call and tell T’Challa how the country has flourished despite his absence and that his request for aid in space might risk this newfound peace. Shuri even asks why should Wakanda Prime even be concerned with all of this and Nakia snaps back with the fact that N’Jadaka won’t just stop at the few galaxies that he has. Honestly, this should be a grave concern for them.

The Space Empire has managed to go unnoticed by the Black Panther and others for thousands of years. With the technology that N’Jadaka wields, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he could give Earth’s heroes a run for their money. Shuri’s dismissal of such things comes off as naive at best, but outright dangerous at worse. T’Challa is one of the smartest and most capable of Earth’s heroes and he too fell to the Empire.

The call is unfortunately cut short as the Teku-Maza’s planet of Agwe is under attack and only T’Challa and the rest of the Maroon Elite can stop the Empire. Under M’Baku’s command, T’Challa, Nakia and the Goddess Bast take the fight to the Empire.

I’ve been waiting for Acuna to come back for large scale battles such as this. His art style is absolutely perfect to capture the sense of scale, speed and harrowing nature of this kind of space fight. He also has the perfect Afro-Futurist feel to each scene with ship designs that feel, maybe West African in nature, as well as the M’Baku’s body modification and the design on his sash. The colors are heavy with striking reds, intense greens and screaming hot yellows. Some pages also have a bit of a holographic/3D effect in some panels that adds a little bit of a trippy factor, especially as Bast uses her powers.

The battle is harrowing with each side taking casualties. The Teku-Maza leader tells his men that no matter what happens, N’Jadaka must not escape and he has them arm a weapon called the “Core-Killer,” a weapon capable of destroying the planet it’s armed on as well as almost everything within close enough range. N’Jadaka tells his people to fire on the population centers of Agwe and the Teku-Maza leader tells the Maroons to retreat as the core killer has been activated. Bast chastises M’Baku as he resigns himself to ask his forces to retreat and the Maroons get away just as Agwe goes up in flames.

This war has cost so many lives and having to give up an entire planet of people is absolutely devastating. On the possible upside, a tyrant may have finally been destroyed, leaving his people able to find freedom much like the Maroons have. I think what I like best about this is the position it puts T’Challa in. He’s lost his people many times over, so either his heart is completely hardened to it, or he values absolutely every life lost that he himself was unable to save. I don’t know how he’s going to handle this stunning climax to the war, but I can’t wait to see. High Recommend.

---------------------------------------------------

Very rarely do we get to feel the cold of the hills of Cimmeria.

Runner Up: Conan the Barbarian #8 (Legacy #283) - Jason Aaron, Gerardo Zaffino, Garry Brown, Matthew Wilson and Travis Lanham

Conan doesn’t often return home as far as I know. He’s always off on an adventure in Zamora, Khitai, Stygia or any number of other places, not thinking of venturing back home. What makes this story so interesting is Conan’s sense of familiarity and how things are turned on their head when the people that he knew and trusted are suddenly against him. We see his normal rage and anger, but with a restraint that is almost never given to anyone else. It’s strange, but leave it to Gerardo Zaffino and Jason Aaron to give us another amazing tale.

The cold air wafts from Conan’s mouth, the warrior clad in a heavy pelt and a large rucksack on his back. He walks through the blizzard until he comes upon a collection of huts and a dog with piercing red eyes, the first sign that all is not as it seems. He is met by a man with two axes, likely the community butcher, named Ailill. Ailill prepares Conan some food while explaining a sickness that has infected the people of Conan’s clan and that the town shaman had run away. The sickness is one of the mind and as the panels go on, we slowly get a small twinge of dread until Ailill reveals that he himself and the rest of the villagers are infected, also with piercing red eyes.

Conan punches Ailill and tries to escape only to be cornered by the others and his Grandmother, who is drawn with a face almost as horrifying as Norton Sinclair’s from Gideon Falls. This is also one of the few times we see Conan truly afraid as he runs away into the forest to avoid killing his people. He is later found in the freezing cold, half dead, by the village Shaman. He nurses Conan back to a semblance of help and tells him that the curse upon his people was inflicted by a dark wizard by the name of Thoth-Amon, one of Conan’s arch-nemesis. The shaman asks Conan if he’s ready to kill everyone he loves and Conan replies that he had brought gifts for his people and that going South had saved him, so maybe it can do the same for them.

We see how Conan earns the name Conan the Cunning as he lays traps for his people using the gifts he had brought them. Sugar cubes for the dogs to keep them distracted, spices and grog to incapacitate some of the men and spiderweb rope from Zamora for others. Things look to be going surprisingly well until his Grandmother catches him off guard, allowing the others to catch up and corner Conan again. He fights hard, but also doesn’t want to kill them. 

Zaffino draws this scene expertly with flashes of Conan's rage juxtaposed against his feelings of live. He allows himself to be stabbed and battered while just trying to pummel strike or punch his friends. His lines are thick and he makes excellent use of hatching to shade everything. We get the sense of how strong everyone is because of their movements and how large they all are. Conan is the biggest, but his grandmother is still a wall of muscle and anger.

Faces are another thing of beauty as the madness in their eyes is clear. These people are without their faculties and act like simple hounds, hounds that can talk and use tools, but with the bloodlust of hungry animals. Thoth-Amon's hate of Conan reflects amazingly in them and their lack of restraint only makes things ever more brutal.

Garry Brown's colors also make things look so beautiful and desolate. Only a man as hard as Conan could come from a place that feels so cold and isolated. During the fight there are flashes of orange to indicate how dire the fight is becoming. There's also a deep red as Conan can see the snake coming out of the ear of the Dog Keeper, the first to be infected, showing who the true enemy is and true to form, green is a color of evil as the snake is the perfect shade of vile.

Conan's grandmother, able to break free of Thoth-Amon's control, cuts the head off of the dog keeper to keep him from hurting her boy. The rest of the villagers are saved and thank Conan for coming back to them, the good times don't last as the infected dogs return and all of the Cimmerians join together for another fight. 

I loved Jason Aaron's exploration of Conan's people. They're all the same breed of strong as Conan only they've never ventured out of their home. They're rugged, hardy and they'd have to be to survive in the wilderness as they do. It was also amazing to see Conan not kill people when usually a single swing of his sword is enough to begin a tear through armies. Truthfully, he would have done so here too if there were no other way, but he had faith that he could save them and it paid off.

Zaffino gets the most praise from me because of his art style. It rings back to the days of Marvel's 1970s-1980s Conan series with a sort of pulpy look combined with the expert techniques of the modern day. He conveys emotion, action and even tells a story through the art alone. He's got skills that makes me want to check out the other books he worked on.

Conan the Barbarian continues to excel as a fantastic story, not only through showcasing new and awesome adventures of the titular barbarian, but by continuing to remind us that by the end of all of this Conan will die. These happy times won't last and it's amazing that Aaron has managed to keep that thought looming in the back of our minds. Around every turn we get a new reminder and the dread comes right back. I can't wait for the next chapter in this story or the many others coming like Esad Ribic's story of Conan's youth. This book get another high recommend from me.