#tlt fanalysis

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

I REALLY don't like Kiriona she's like a pale shadow of Gideon. Like God's reconstruct of Gideon not ACTUALLY Gideon. Like I know Gideon is protective of Harrow but THAT seems a bit much.

You and me both, friend!

I've seen posts about how Kiriona is just... the Gideon the world sees. The Gideon that's not narrating the story. Gideon but Unsympathetic.

I think that's true, to a point. But she's not making lame jokes. She's harder, somehow. She's definitely been changed, she's hurting-- Nona herself noted that she's "the saddest person in the world". Now, Nona doesn't have the perspective to know what's really saddest in the whole universe, but Kiriona is undeniably SAD. She's not fighting desperately against her circumstances, but she's not happy that way either, so it's not because she WANTED them this way. Is she RESIGNED?

And also clearly longing so much that our resident mind-reader (/j) knew she wanted to be kissed. I think she wants to be loved. Which is Gideon Nav through and through, don't get me wrong, but I suspect this is a Gideon that has lost her whole world, and doesn't know what to do with herself.

I don't think we'll get The Old Gideon back, too much has happened, but I hope she doesn't stay this way, too.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

#thinking about the fact that corona WANTED ianthe to eat her (and that ianthe DIDN'T) with this perspective is INCREDIBLY interesting

(from @lady-harrowhark, peer reviewed because YOU'RE SO RIGHT)

Dying as a Skill Issue

I just made a post about Ianthe's "Dying is for suckers." quote and now I realized that "Dying as a skill issue/dying as failure" is actually an essential part of her character.

In the psychogram story The Unwanted Guest she talks about it even more. She presents several deaths of known characters to Palamedes and tells him why they have died in her opinion:

Ortus did not die because Crux was an asshole and killed him, but because he was too sad.

Abigail did not die because Cytherea murdered them, but because she brought her husband to Canaan House as her cav. (This point is especially random. As if Cytherea wouldn't have slaughtered Babs as well...)

(It's by the way interesting that she doesn't mention Jeannemary and Isaac here. Maybe even she knows that that would be hella tasteless. Ooorrrr she has a different reason.)

Dying is for suckers in her opinion and dead people died because of a lack of skill.

That even partly explains why she wants to become a Lyctor (and likely a God or even more than a God) so much: Dying would be a personal failure to her.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS?!?!?! THOSE TWO????

RIGHT?!

There's a part of me that wonders if it's either sarcastic (the way they laugh in the tomb without any real humor), or if maybe the friendship bracelets are... imbued with some kind of power, maybe? Like Harrow's "sewn tongue" needle literally ensorcelling Ianthe's jaw? What is a friendship bracelet at its roots but woven thread? We know Ianthe has the power of both mind and necromancy to reverse-engineer extremely complex processes...

But even if not, it's very What The Fuck Is Happening.

I feel like it's the latter. I don't think, knowing Tamsyn's writing style, that they'll be Actual Enchantments. I'm pretty sure Tamsyn's just trolling us, but like, with a purpose. Shock value and showing "a lot has changed for these two".

But it's still very "What the FUCK, Tamsyn!"

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

hey im adding to the locked tomb harkness test discourse: while alecto passes, does she have like, does she have barbie doll bits? (goals if so tbh) if so, does that make the harkness test irrelevant? do we need a new test?

uh. sorry to ask this.

It's okay! I am at least Mildly entertained by this and you in particular may know why.

I can't say I know for sure, I don't think canon touched on that part of Jod's body for her... but if she DOES have Barbie bits, it brings to mind a scene from Neal Shusterman's Star Shards trilogy.

tl;dr a character is hardcore canonically asexual, to the point where he literally physically cannot "get it up". (This is textual canon.) But he's romantically engaged with another character, and they essentially have sex without the actual genitals being involved. I think the narration goes something like, "she showed him how to make love without sex". It's a fade to black, but it does show a bit of massaging and "petting", and generally gives a good idea that they ARE still connecting physically, just not in That Specific Way.

(Fucking LOVE those books; reading about that character and actually finding Canonical Explicitly Asexual Character Representation shown in such a well-developed and tender, accepting way legitimately changed my life!)

So anyways. Alecto. If she DOES have Barbie bits, who says you can't still have a good time? I say the Harkness test is still relevant because one can very easily be attracted to someone (or someTHING?) without genital configuration being the reason. And I, for one, can think of Many Ways that a night spent with someone that has Barbie Bits can still be A Good Time. And would still be intimate, vulnerable, and personal enough to warrant Giving Consent First. If Nona is anything to go by, she DOES understand sex at least a little bit...

I'd say we can still use the Harkness test. Most monsters we apply it to probably don't have regular human-shaped genitals, either!

Tangential extrapolation: Maybe that's part of why the other Lyctors were so off-put by her. No Bits to take part in The Orgies, whether she wanted to or not. (...upon rereading that I'm not terribly sure if The Orgies happened before he "put her to sleep" or not... but the thought was half in jest, anyways.)

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Wait, wait, wait wait wait. John purged their ability to hear, know, and understand their names? I don't doubt I may have missed something, but what brought you to that conclusion?

John changing his homies' names and keeping those names secret is sooooo funny to me... remember how Mercymorn considered the (post-res) Lyctors' names to be sacred and secret and was really upset that John was just throwing her name around and he basically called her a silly billy and told her to get over it. All while he had erased the whole gang's original names via purging the ability to hear, know, or understand them

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

I have no idea what “palynostatic” means, so I looked it up, and...

Google found the one use of the word on the entire internet, probably.

Which is the story I was already reading.

So let’s get etymological!

Palynology is the study of pollen, and that didn’t make sense. (”Palynostatic” is used in the context of characters putting on “palynostatic” shoes so they don’t mix their energy signatures with the environment.)

But I eventually found out that “palyno-” as a pollen reference comes from the actual Greek meaning which is, essentially, “to strew about”.

“-static” in medical and scientific terminology generally means it’s containing or arresting something.

So shoes that are “palynostatic” would prevent stuff being strewn about?

I want to pick Tamsyn Muir’s brain about this specific invention in the TLT world, particularly how they prevent living peoples’ energies from scattering, and how those energies get scattered in the first place without them!

(Am I overanalyzing? Yes. But I live for the deep lore details of fandom!)

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

It’s pretty canon that Hot Sauce has PTSD, right?

- She “held a gun”. The way she seems to launch into Investigations and “I’ll take care of you, I know how.” She’s Done This Before. “Because of war.” She knows what that means, what to do, where to go. She’s Done This Before.

- The way she’s so matter-of-factly about it, like her emotions are in lockdown. Trauma doesn’t always lead to huge emotional explosions; in a lot of people it actually leads to distance from their emotions, especially when their brains recognize a situation as “unsafe”.

- Her brothers died fighting. That’s traumatic for a kid. (Hell, that can be traumatic for an adult!)

- The way Nona sees “her body and mind were ignoring each other”, that sounds a lot like dissociation to me. Also the way she seems in her own thoughts, not engaging with conversation as often, and mostly speaks when something involving The Issues in the World Around Them are brought up.

- The Intense Watchfulness, that’s hypervigilance.

- Her intense and ready hated of “zombies”, sure any 14-year-old raised with a ton of hate and propaganda can develop irrational levels of hatred and bias, but with her it feels so deep it must’ve come from experience.

The only conclusion I can draw is that Hot Sauce Definitely Has PTSD.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

You know what I haven’t seen mentioned yet?

Gideon/Kiriona isn’t just sad and grieving and lost and angry, she’s missing closure.

She literally ASKED Nona for closure. “Where is she?” And from her follow-up words and questions, she doesn’t just want to know Harrowhark’s okay, she wants to know what happened to her.

She Wants Closure.

But of course Nona can’t be the one to provide it.

I don’t know what will happen to Gideon and Harrowhark, but I hope that, at the very least, they get closure.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Tbh i think the problem of John we cannot try to solve atm. There are still way too many variables and questions open, mainly partaining to the Resurrection Beasts and his connection with Alecto, as well as his powers, even beyond the problem of the necro-star. Can he even be killed? Can he be killed without Alecto dying as well? With John dead and no experienced Lyctors around, what about the remaining Resurrection Beasts? Theres no guarantee they'll stop devouring the universe just because John is gone.

That must be where you and I differ! Knowing full well that we don't have all the answers to all the questions and variables, I still like Considering and Wondering about if/how it'll happen. TM's writing style with this series has always been batshit insane with dropping New Information on us constantly, but the body in the tomb did turn out to be Alecto after all, so there's still some lead-up and continuous threads.

Like I said earlier, Alecto was "put to sleep" and John remained in power. Why wouldn't the reverse be true if John was put to sleep? He doesn't necessarily have to die. (Another off-the-wall theory: What if they pull a Harrow the Ninth on him and make him unable to "recognize" Alecto somehow? Make him forget Everything, including Being God? It would be deliciously ironic, wouldn't it?)

The universe got along fine without a Jod and Lyctors before...

Huh, I thought it was pretty clear the Resurrection Beasts want John specifically. Especially after re-reading the way Number Seven talks to Nona. It very much reads to me like "I want vengeance on the one who killed me".

One thing I'm VERY not sure of, though, is whether this is even that kind of story, a story of "powerful evil guy gets defeated". I don't know how to quantify it, because it's mostly vibes (what the narrative pays attention to, what TM mentions she's doing in interviews, the way John is presented as ~problematic~ but not necessarily A Problem^tm).

This series is very character-driven and all the Big Universe-Trekking War Stuff seems to happen in the background. The primary conflict in Nona wasn't about confronting John about what he did, or Blood of Eden wanting him, or even the Sixth House hostages (prisoners of war?). The most recurring, consistent plot thread I can think of was "Who Is Nona?" and then, "Nona is Nona and wants to stay that way." Harrowhark's reaction to John's story wasn't "You're a murderer" so much as "I'm going to find my religion". Yes, the other stuff contributed to Important Plot Points, but I don't think they were themes the way Pyrrha/Cam/Pal/Nona's relationship was. The most developed parts of the book are the characters and their relationships, not the massive battlefront.

I won't claim to know where TM is going with all of this, but it's still fun to spitball and throw theoretical spaghetti.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Honestly at this point killing John would cause a lot more problems than it would solve. And all it would really do is perpetuate the cycle.

Who said anything about a cycle? John is a one-in-a-million blend of power, charisma, desperation, self-centeredness, and Chosen One Gone Wrong.

If I can do what I'm so good at doing with headcanons and pull a little bit from real-life Earthen history, any time in our history that there was a leader who became too powerful, too autocratic, they had to be taken down. This was never a clean one-and-done sort of affair; toppling the leader also topples their government, their structures. There had to be someone to take their place and lead people through the changes, and when you create a power vacuum for revolution, society requires a LOT of rebuilding from the ground up.

But human society EXCELS at building things from the ground up. It doesn't "perpetuate a cycle" when you're putting an END to something. To someone. To a corrupt leader.

Now, in the case of Dominicus, apparently killing John could snuff out the sun. I don't think he was bluffing when he said taking him out takes out the sun; Ianthe says they thought the Sixth had melted when Dominicus flared. They wouldn't have thought that if John's "death" hadn't actually done something to the sun. (Unless, of course, Jod was lying, again.)

But who's to say we can't find a way to use John to power Dominicus continually without him being, say, conscious, or having power over EVERYTHING still? John was perfectly powerful when Alecto was "asleep".

I mean, let's also remember that John put an entire resurrection beast into a human body. Wild shit happens in this universe. I don't think it's too crazy to say there's potentially another way to stabilize the system. With every book, we learn of more varied ways to achieve Lyctorhood, or some equivalent. We never have all the information; we never see all the cards in this series. The possibilities are as endless as they ever were.

What if Alecto gets put in charge of all this? A planetary soul seems like the most fitting ruler of a solar system to me. Not John; not a Lyctor; not any human. Certainly if a human can aggregate the power to keep a solar system alive, a RESURRECTION BEAST can do that too?

Personally, I'm hoping for the theory where the system stops using necromancy/thanergy entirely and starts using thalergy instead, but I hardly see evidence that it's heading that way. It's a lot of vague allusions and reaches and hopefulness, but thalergy heals, and if the solar system is to go on, that's the only way I can imagine it doing so for many generations to come.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Something I find interesting to think about: I saw a post about how Jons idea of how to do things and specifically to love and want are all about pure consumption, to the point where he can't even grow flowers without some of them gaining teeth. But there are things in the universe all about this too, without any of Jons involvement. Planet Wraiths eating other planets, the Gates to Hell are Open Mouths, Demons make their Hosts Eyes sprout Fangs. The Universe of the Locked Tomb was fucked and cannibalistic way before Jon ate the human race.

You make a very good point! See also, revenants that can act as parasites and the hunger of the ghost in the River.

To be fair, we don't know that the stomas and demons aren't also results of something John did. I mean, all we know about stomas is that they push the RBs into them. Were they there before the RBs, before John (presumably) fucked with the River? Were the "demons" a problem before John and his gang started blurring the lines between life and afterlife? Or are they more results of his tampering? This series has such dense worldbuilding, and yet there's still so much we don't know! I mean, there were ten thousand years between when John resurrected the solar system and the story we're seeing now, possibly more. That's a long time, even celestially speaking. The universe could have changed.

Especially when you consider that John doesn't just have the power to tether a soul back in a deceased body; he's damn-near omnikinetic, from what I can tell! He raises earth out of the sea. He grows flowers. He can make a corpse walk around even without a soul to pilot it. If his intentional actions (killing+eating the Earth's population, the planets, and the sun) had drastic unintentional results (the Resurrection Beasts), imagine what the results might be if he's meddling with things he doesn't understand.

I still say whatever Abigail meant by the River being "dammed" in HtN has something to do with John, and this business with "the tower" in the River feels like it has something to do with him, too.

I have to say, though: You're probably right. Any universe where a human being can be given the power to kill and consume an entire planet is probably fucked at conception.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Also consider: It seems like people not-from-the-Nine-Houses don't know much about how necromancers work, or what they can do, , or how they do it, or what can kill them. Granted, most of our non-House commentary on "zombies" came from the kids gang, so maybe adults know more, but kids often repeat what the adults around them are saying. Blood of Eden seems to have more information, but even the necromancers and Lyctors themselves don't know the ins and outs of every way to become a Lyctor, or every strategy and pitfall in the necromantic practice. Information is a rare commodity.

Not only is it psychologically and strategically horrifying, but as the Houses learn more and gain more understanding and find new ways to do things, it's an ever-evolving landscape.

The Nine Houses must be absolutely terrifying to fight.

And not just because their invasions start with a drop ship full of pimply 14 year olds inexplicably armed with zweihanders whose entire remit is to cause a mass casualty event for necromantic purposes...

We're mostly introduced to the schools of necromancy at the beginning of GTN, before we have broader context beyond "ooh, new magic system." But if you think about it in light of what we later learn about the Cohort:

Second House: they can literally drain your life force to power up their cavaliers. "It’s said they all die screaming"

Third House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're being used as a power up. Also, someone's just rearranged your face; your arse is on backwards.

Fourth House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're bombs now. And if you corner a Fourth House necro, they're a bomb too!

Fifth House: at best, they're the weird technicians for the Houses' horrifying blood and monolith based FTL system. At worst, it doesn't matter if you kill yourself to avoid capture or if you hold out under interrogation until you expire, they can still interrogate your ghost.

Sixth House: drop a cigarette or shed a hair on a clandestine operation? These guys now know your age, shoe size, and approximate location. They know what you had for breakfast. They know what you held in the last 12 hours.

Seventh House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're armed and marching on you now.

Eigth House: why is he glowing? WHY IS HE GLOWING?!

Ninth House: the guy next to you's bones just became an IED.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Has anyone pointed out that now all of John’s Lyctors are either dead or in Blood of Eden now?

Cytheria turned on him (or at least on his way of lyctorhood) by the time everyone went to Canaan.

Mercymorn and Augustine were secretly working against him, and Mercymorn at least was actually on Blood of Eden premises.

And now, I don’t comprehend Military Strategy talk very well and I was half dead when I read it, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I think we saw in the Nona excerpt, Pyrrha and Cam+Pal are on Blood of Eden’s side?

So that’s literally every single one of the Lyctors that were alive in the past ten years. Except Harrowhark, who didn’t get to witness all the shit that went down at the end of the Mithraeum. (Unless Nona turns out to be partially Harrow in more than just body, in which case it WILL be every single one of them.)

I’m wondering if TM wants to make some kind of commentary on what happens when someone discovers the underpinnings of corrupt power...

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Did I miss something major in the last book, or why do people now just assume perfect lyctorhood would put people on the same level as John? Last I checked he's the way he is because the earths soul granted him the power and he then ate a solar systems worth of peoples souls and also some of the earths soul. i dont think perfect lyctorhood would come even close to that, not to mention he has it as well.

It's from Harrow the Ninth, actually! Well, that, and a healthy dose of extrapolation.

The way I understand it, you're right: he didn't just eat ONE soul that became his battery, he had BILLIONS. And some planets for dessert. A dash of sun for some spice. You know. Standard SciFi dictator fare. /hj

I'm not one of those people who has pictures or scans from the books and I don't have page numbers memorized so I can't give you an exact quote, but the idea comes from a conversation Mercymorn and Augustine have with John in HtN. (And maybe Pyrrha too, I think? But it's mostly Mercymorn and Augustine.)

I'm pretty sure it was in Act 5, when they're talking after John interrogates Wake. They're the ones who call it "perfect Lyctorhood", and they sort of imply that it's not only perfect because His Cavalier Isn't Dead, but also that he CAN'T kill her because she's a source of his power.

I don't think they SAID anywhere in the text that the scope of his power comes from his cav being alive; the fandom just assumed, from this conversation, that the "perfect Lyctorhood" is where John got so much power. I think we assumed it because he was the only one with so much power, and he was the only one with Perfect Lyctorhood.

All that said, you might be seeing posts/thoughts from before Nona came out, because when it was just GtN and HtN, we didn't know Alecto was the whole soul of the Earth (well, some people figured it out, but not Everyone), and we didn't know he'd murdered and eaten the whole solar system.

(It does make me wonder, though: All the children that died to create Harrowhark, can they be leveraged in some way to power her up? Abigail said they each left a "stamp" on her soul...)

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Here's to hoping that what happened to Belos will happen to John, vis a vis payback for fucking over a supremely powerful entity.

Dear gods, yes!

I suspect Something like that will happen because, after all, the last TLT book is named after Alecto.

And much like the CATTs coven leaders were planning a mutiny under Belos' noses, we know So Many of Jod's Lyctors were either Working With or at least In Contact With BOE.

They couldn't even keep the people they once had an Iron Grip over on their side.

Hell, John clearly resurrected "M--" and "G--" and "A--" and presumably replaced their memories, and two of the three (and the last one's cavalier) still ended up working with BOE!

I smell a hubris-related downfall, is what I'm saying.

I can't wait to see Alecto's revenge.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

I don't know enough about New Zealand or Maori to corroborate or deny this, but I've seen claims that "Kiriona" is the Maori way of saying "Gideon".

The Gaia though, I'm pretty sure that's all him saying "This one's Mine". Or making her of The First House rather than the Ninth; "Gaia" being Earth and the First House, of course. Taking away her Ninth name and giving her a First one. Probably some metaphor about erasing her identity, especially after how hard she reclaimed it at the end of GtN. A tragedy through and through.

Ok I need someone smarter than me to be meta about why John changed Gideon’s name in the way he did. Not that he changed it at all, that one I can understand from his perspective, but specifically why he changed it to something with clear gender markers.

Gideon Nav is perfectly neutral bordering on traditionally masculine, but KirionA gaiA is clearly female. Gaia is literally the feminized version of Gaius according to Latin grammar. In a society of John’s own creation that is apparently past most of our current gender and sexuality norms, how and why would he choose that? Is this another way to show that he’s not as progressive as he thinks he is? Is it about him actually not understanding Gideon at all and forcing her into a weird box? Is there some kind of cultural or linguistic aspect I’m not seeing here? Is it nothing and I’m overthinking? What is going on?