#wake/g1deon/Pyrrha is just so

[winepresswrath]

g1deon has more game than anyone else in that universe. he's got Pyrrha leaving the cops for a deranged necromancer he's got Wake fucking a deranged necromancer (him) he's got Pyrrha proxy fucking Wake because she's only ever known two people that insane and it gets her down horrendous. the man is ugly & according to Jod he mostly doesn't fuck. Wake thinks he deserves a quick death. Pyrrha loved him on sight and asked him to kiss her before she died. what is going on with this man.

[feverdreamdrifting]

what if Harrow thinks that g1deon the first is Gideon’s father. i mean is that not the most logical conclusion based on what she currently knows (or what we currently know she knows). idk maybe she’s actually omniscient and knows all but I think this would be funnier

[vaguely-concerned]

I always feel somehow insulted on the guy's behalf when people ascribe every single sign of personality g1deon ever exhibits to pyrrha peeking through. he is a fairly inscrutable character seen through harrow's eyes (she is also, understandably, distracted by the fact that he keeps trying to murder her lol), but credit him with at least a little bit of interiority and depth of character, huh. there must have been something there for pyrrha to have loved and trusted him so much. him saluting harrow for almost turning him inside out at dinner makes perfect sense seen in context with the way he hilariously and casually is like 'sorry about this whole thing btw, this wasn't my idea' the last time he tries to kill her, and it being pyrrha instead only opens questions of how augustine at least wouldn't have noticed the changing eye colour (HUGE risk for pyrrha to take for no good reason, if so). g1deon clearly has a kind of deep respect for a worthy opponent, as we also see with wake, and there are several times when the dios apate disaster trio are being. well, themselves, where it's noted that g1deon looks at harrow as if in quiet solidarity (even if it just freaks her out fhdssdfa). this poor guy has been sure he's losing his mind for ten thousand years and when he found out he'd apparently been fucking The one person he shouldn't during his blackouts he just. he just went with it? for a while??? it seems????? listen I'm saying this guy has got layers and he provably has Weird ideas about the capacity for coexistence between cameraderie, respect and attempted murder

idk. he's not the most charismatic presence in the books, I know, but I feel bad about the idea of denying him basic humanity and depth. and if nothing else will convince people, HOW could you disrespect pyrrha like this by assuming she was once upon a time ready to give her whole soul to a guy who's genuinely thoroughly boring and swagless

[tanoraqui]

you’ve heard of Her Divine Highness Gideon the First, First Daughter of the House of God, and all the compelling, often Fake Dating-laced AUs that might follow. But have you considered...Gideon Jr. Dve, favored daughter of the First, heir of Gideon the First, Saint of Duty?

the timeline diverges at 2 points:

Gideon (ours) inherits her mother’s perfectly normal dark brown eyes

Gideon (lyctor) follows the escape pod to Ninth House, arrives to find Wake’s corpse and living baby, to the bemusement of all the locals is like, “yes, that’s mine” and takes said baby back to the Mithraeum to confess his sins and beg forgiveness

the conversation that follows goes like this:

Gideon 1: I am so sorry, John, I don’t know what came over me, Wake was just...really hot. She’s dead now. But, um, this is our daughter, and I feel duty-bound to raise her, or at least see that she’s raised well - but it’s your call, of course (again, I’m sorry for sleeping with the enemy for over a decade)

JohnGod, vibrating at a frequency known only to necromantic immortals who maybe swallowed a sun or something: N I E C E ? !

Augustine, Mercy, and maybe Cytherea, exchanging frantic eye contact behind the other two’s heads: Is that the baby? / I don’t know! I thought you were keeping track of it! / I don’t know! Can’t you tell!? / Are they keeping it? / What the fuck are we going to do about this?!

So, Gideon (Jr.) grows up in the Mithraeum, which needless to say is a fucking weird place to grow up. 

this au is dependent on the assumption that none of these millennia-old necromancers can identify the thanergic/thalergic weirdness of the biological daughter of God on slight, so, just accept that. Maybe children of lyctors (I refuse to believe there haven’t been any before) are a little Like That anyway? The Conspirators do learn the truth pretty fast, DNA test or something, but they quickly decide that stealing the baby and running for the Ninth is a terrible plan, and G1deon and God have to let her out from underfoot eventually. They’ll wait.

the Ninth had already named her Gideon. Gideon 1 tries to change this, but alas, his terrible immortal friends all think it’s hilarious and call her Gideon Jr, or “Junior” or “Giddy” for short.

Cytherea is undoubtably the Cool Aunt, and also Giddy’s first crush

(neither Mercy nor Augustine want to touch children on account of potential stickiness, ruling them firmly out)

JohnGod makes so many Godfather jokes in a terrible Italian mobster accent, which Giddy then imitates with equal inability to mimic an accent, which either produces something completely unrecognizable as old-Earth Italian mobster OR somehow loops back around to being a perfect impression of Don Corleone

Pyrrha tries to resist the urge to check in, but fails, particularly around bedtime (usually a private father/daughter tucking-in ritual). Giddy, with the uncomfortable insight for a toddler, quickly grasps that Sunglasses Dad is a different persona than Normal Dad. Sunglasses Dad swears her to utmost secrecy about this, and she keeps the oath...almost entirely

she does let it slip to Normal Dad, who...

listen, G1deon has been concealing his mysterious lapses in awareness from God and his fellow lyctors for centuries; he’s not going to stop now. And he MUST have had suspicions about what caused them; he’s not an idiot. But he would, I think, be a responsible father. 

So when 7yo Gideon Jr. lets slip about her interactions with Sunglasses Dad - which she definitely doesn’t realize is a whole different person; she probably thinks it’s a weird character her dad acts as sometimes, like how Uncle God will play pretend as a mobster, pirate, horse, etc. When Gideon Jr. lets slip, Gideon Sr. sits her down with his daughter, gets her to tell him about Sunglasses Dad, and admits that, uh, yeah, sure, it’s a fun game they play together, and still very secret from everyone else...and if ‘Sunglasses Dad’ ever makes her feel scared, or god forbid hurts her, she should run away and find Uncle God and tell him everything immediately. 

(Because he has suspicions, he must have suspicions, especially at this point...but just in case he’s wrong, he’ll confess to this centuries-old secret rather than let any harm befall his daughter. It’s the only right thing to do.)

Some Actual Plot Maybe, IDK?:

when Gideon Jr. is 13, her father finally agrees to enroll her in the Cohort Academy for Gifted Officers-To-Be, or whatever its called. Gideon Sr. has a quiet word with the current head of Second House and Gideon Jr. enrolls incognito, and rolls up to this place with

- sword skills trained since birth with fucking lyctors

- an uncanny ability to survive should-be-deadly wounds

- the social skills of someone who has never spoken with anyone under the age of several millennia

- probably slightly more respect for, like, the concept of authority/order/duty/not being a smartass 24/7 than the canon Gideon we know and love...BUT she has also literally never suffered a consequence in her life, and...you know how Miles Vorkosigan’s insubordination habits are based partly in that for the first 18 years of his life, his commanding officers, essentially, were 2 of the most competent people on Barrayar? God Himself used to give Gideon horsey rides. Gideon might try, politely, to be impressed by the commander-instructor glaring at her personally, but she is...not.

- gay

[insert a full YA novel’s worth of coming-of-age shenanigans here, absolutely ft. Judith Deuteros and Marta Dyas as soon-friends]

AND THEN ONE DAY, JOD SENDS OUT AN INVITATION to the heir of the Nine Houses inviting them to the First...

now, Gideon does not have a single drop of necromantic ability. She never has. So she wants to be a cavalier so bad...

but even Gideon, sword bimbo that she is, couldn’t grow up with The lyctors and not notice that... Well, no one really talks about their cavaliers, except when Mercy and Augustine fight about them. There is a grieving, sucking wound where every lyctoral cavalier should be.

she still tried so hard to be one. Judith very nearly agreed to have her even over <3Marta<3 (whom they were both madly crushing on). Then Gideon had one of her rare meetings with her father (he’d swing by the Cohort Academy sometimes and they’d get lunch), and told him about it all excitedly, and he flatly forbade it. And then he went over her head and flatly forbade it to the Cohort. 

so there’s something Weird going on there, or at least there’s something being unfairly forbidden to Gideon like birds are forbidden to the indoor cat staring out the window, eagerly lashing its tail. 

so she hatches a Plan:

- 1. Stow away on Judith & Marta’s ship to Dominicus - 2. ??? - 3. Profit!

when she sees Cytherea there, she thinks, Oh shit, I’m busted.

fortunately, she’d waited until everyone else had disembarked and gone inside before she snuck off the ship, so Cytherea doesn’t see her. So now it’s up to Gideon to sneak around, make friends with the heirs of the Houses, and recruit them into helping her not get caught by her aunt! Who she assumes is here specifically to catch her out...or maybe to covertly oversee the trials...? Hey what is up with this place anyway?

(It’s fortunate because as soon as Cytherea sees Gideon, she’s going to change her plan to “kill everyone immediately, except Giddy, whom I take to the Ninth and exsanguinate to open that damn tomb.”)

(Unfortunately, once like 5 people have died, Gideon is likely to honorably reveal herself in order to ask Cytherea for help, because CLEARLY something has gone terribly wrong. This can’t really be part of the trials, right? Uncle God wouldn’t do that.)

[theriverbeyond]

some meandering thoughts on Lyctoral reproduction, contraception, and why I DON'T think Pyrrha hit it raw

this was originally a reblog of another post but it became SO LONG i am just posting it by itself. anyway cracks knuckles:

I think from a reproductive health standpoint the Lyctors are, despite having been exposed to extreme pre-ressurection levels of radiation, not sterile per say, but homeostatically fixed at the point of ascension with any changes made to themselves after that being a concious theorem. See: Cytherea is frozen as sick as she was when she ascended, but when she wanted to fight she could walk around fine, and Harrow when cold, can pad her fat reserves. So they CAN change their bodies, but it's still a Thing They Have To Do vs. a truly autonomous bolidy process.

Also, we know Lyctoral Healing is a thing dependant on nerve fibers -- why a severed limb (Nona/Gideon-in-Harrow aside) is not supposed to automatically regrow (but can be intentionally regrown, with thought and effort), and why in order to imbue Ianthe's bone arm with regenerative power Harrow had to make sure it was properly innervated

(The reason I believe they are not inherently sterile despite having been exposed to massive amounts of radiation is simply because that radiation does not discriminate and would have destroyed the rest of their physical bodies as well. basically, I think any radiation induced infertility would have been fixed in the Ressurection Process, same as the radiation induced. death.)

At the same time, the biological changes a human body must undergo to fertilize an egg and then bring a pregnancy to term are many (on a physical and physiologic level) and all must happen in the correct sequence at the correct time. the adult unaltered, non-Lyctoral body (most of the time) naturally knows how to follow this path, but in order for a Lyctoral Body to bring a pregnancy to term all those minute changes would have to be done manually, lest the Lyctoral Body revert to its homeostatically frozen state.

Therefore, my thoughts are: a Lyctor wouldn't really be able to become pregnant on accident to begin with, much less carry a pregnancy to term unwillingly. Every minute step or shift or change in hormone levels, uterine stretch, etc would have to be manually preformed and then monitored 24/7 which just seems incredibly exausting if not annoying. Then, of course, you have the reality that the Lyctor is going to outlive their child by thousands of years if not forever, and after the catastrophic grief they all carry for their cavaliers I cannot imagine any of them willingly putting themselves in that situation.

why, then, did Pyrrha think Gideon was her child?

WELL! the above theoretical process is specific to a Lyctor becoming pregnant, either from Lyctor or non-Lyctor. For Pyrrha/G1deon, the person who may have become pregnant from their encounters was WAKE, a (as far as we know) physiologically normal human, whose body would be able to like. in the presense of viable sperm, get pregnant the usual way without need for necromantic initiation and maintenence. Not only that, but at the time, Wake could NOT have been taking any sort of continuous contraceptive, as the planning/execution/impregnation of Dios Apate Major/Project Bomb was happening at the same time as Wake was fucking Pyrrha and G1deon. Like I know Mercy gave her the dolls but like Wake was able to turkey baster herself pretty quickly after their failure which means there was an open window of time where Wake was fucking PyrrhaG1deon and definitely fertile.

I could see G1deon as being able to tie off his ductus deferens, or whatever, while he is having sex to prevent physical ejaculation but as we know from Gideon-in-Harrow and Pyrrha-in-G1deon and Cam-when-Pal-Was-Inside, the cavalier's soul cannot preform necromancy whilst in the driver's seat. SO, following that, Pyrrha would be unable to necromantically prevent herself from ejaculating whilst doing the deed.

and finally, we have come to the part where I explain why I do NOT believe Pyrrha was having unprotected sex. as funny it is to imagine them all hitting it raw with a huge breeding kink, given Pyrrha and not to mention WAKE'S general competency (and also like if Wake is trying to get pregnant with the key to the Emperor's Tomb, being already pregnant would have been really inconvinient!!! considering again that the impregnation of ProjectBomb happened at the same time as she was fucking PyrrhaG1deon, Wake HAS to have been taking steps to prevent an unwanted, competing pregnancy), I have to take the controversial position that the condom broke.

Imagine you are a soul fragment, 10,000 years old, and you are betraying your God and Emperor AND your other half, by fucking a rebel comander (using your other half's body) while both of them are unaware. and then the condom breaks. wyd

[angryshortstacks]

So the Unwanted guest has given me Pyrrha thoughts that makes me so so emo. If souls are permeable and the lyctor takes from the cavalier over time until parts of them eventually can’t be separated, then that means the person G1deon became was because of Pyrrha. He became Gods attack dog because of what he absorbed from Pyrrha!!

In the John chapters in NtN G1deon feels very different, still loyal to a fault but, he seems less hardened a little more squishy. The same could be said about Pyrrha. Pre-resurrection she was a cop and almost every example of her behaviour she’s yelling at someone, calling them out, telling them they need to toughen up and get thicker skin. Pyrrha also said in HtN that G1deon absorbed more of her than Harrowhark did Gideon.

So this means G1deon took the hardest parts of Pyrrha, the parts that were ruthless and determined. The stuff that made her the perfect soldier. Than when he dies at the end of HtN Pyrrha is left alone, in a body she didn’t want, as the softest version of herself. She felt so much harder for Wake, Nona, Palamedes and Cam, and those feelings of love scared her so bad. And I’m Ntn she’s trying so hard to be that old person and hold it all together, and she feels like she’s failing, but really she’s just succeeding at loving and taking care of people as best she can. Pyrrha is the loving person we know her as because G1deon took the worst parts of her and left her at her best and I’m going to scream.

[rat-studio]

I’d do anything for twenty bucks I’d sell my sour soul ‘Cause lemonade is bitter ‘till you Sweeten up the bowl

ITS MY FAVORITE GIRL!! PYRRHA!! I LOVE YOU!!

I think this half of the chorus is verrryyy Pyrrha coded-- she's so desperate for love, for any scrap of anything, and she's SO DUMB about it. But it isn't only about Pyrrha!! Wake!! My love-- also desperate af, this fucking sputtering fire of a woman who will blow up her own kid to win.

Part 1 (+explanation of premise)

More thoughts, version without lyrics, and timelapse below cut. Verse 3 Chorus 2/2 Song: Unsweetened Lemonade by Amélie Farren. oh and it’s pretty obvious what the next one’s gonna be if you look at the lyrics…

Ok so honestly I had no idea what to draw for this part going into it, if you watch the timelapse you definitely will get that. But I am very happy with what I settled on. Basically, this is an AU of what could have happened in Pyrrha (not G1deon) had caught up to Wake just as she was going into labour. I think it's really interesting to think of Pyrrha's own relationship to John, to Wake, and to this child that she really has no responsibility for but feels beholden to anyway. John is this symbol of everything G1deon admired, of everything all of them left behind in order to pursue a 'better world', and Wake is the antithesis of all of that: she's likely the descendant of the same billionares that escaped Earth leaving everyone behind, and she is furiously and vengefully mad at all of it. Pyrrha in love with these three people, she hates all three of them in some capacity, she wants to do what's right and she has no idea what that is in almost every situation.

And then there's this kid that's innocent and also tied up in all of it, and there's no guarantee that it isn't actually hers. And she wants to do the right thing-- is that the right thing for millions? A barely thought though plan that could very easily (and does) go astray? Or is that right thing to save this baby? idk, you decide.

I don't know what perfectly cannon compliant Pyrrha would do in this situation, I've read the books three times and I still don't really know, though I'm leaning towards her saving baby Gideon and running off to raise her somewhere (honestly a pretty intriguing story on its own), but for the sake of the AU and the story I am trying to tell: Pyrrha lets Wake go. The mission still fails, the rest of Gtn and Htn and even Ntn continue on as normal, but there is that undercurrent of deeper responsibility that Pyrrha has to Gideon, something that, though I think is present and will be explored further in cannon, isn't incredibly important. I'm a sucker for dad Pyrrha, sue me.

ALSO!! I wrote a fic for this!! Link to it here!

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 28

‘golden eyes like a dead animal’s’ you are sick and twisted Tamsyn Muir, sick and twisted (affectionate). also that is an interesting description of Kiriona's eyes. of course part of it is that she is quite literally in a dead body, but these are also the eyes that John got after he gained his necromantic powers

ohhhh my god. i don’t think my heart can take Kiriona asking after Harrow. she gave up her life for her, did the best she could to take care of Harrow’s body, and now she doesn’t even know if Harrow’s alive or not

oof both Pyrrha and Nona clearly know that she’s Alecto, but Nona really doesn’t want to remember. i wonder how long exactly Pyrrha knew who Nona was, even if she was hoping she was Gideon, i feel like part of her must have suspected since the beginning

hmm i wonder if there’s something significant about Alecto’s name? not in terms of its Doylist meaning i.e. being named after one of the Furies, but in universe. here Nona doesn’t want Pyrrha to say her name because it will make her remember, John (from what i recall) only ever used nicknames like A.L. and Annabel Lee etc. when talking to Harrow, and both he and the other Lyctors had a remarkably strong reaction to Mercy using it at the end of HtN:

'A ripple of ice over the face. A hardening of the mouth. He said quietly, “Don’t call her-” “Alecto! Alecto! Alecto!” repeated Mercy shrilly. The other Lyctors flinched each time she said it, as though it were an aural stab’

oh wow, Alecto’s consciousness (voice?) rising up to speak from Nona is very disturbing. once again, Alecto doesn’t seem like the nicest person. which makes sense i suppose given she is in actuality a Resurrection Beast herself and seemingly very pissed off about the whole ‘killing humanity and putting her in a human form’ thing

‘astonishingly, Pash, helping an extremely feeble and aged person’ i mean good on Pash for helping the elderly, i guess?

it’s gotta be so strange for Palamedes’ mother and the other people in the Sixth to be dealing with the ‘i’m dead and in Naberius Tern’s also dead body’ thing. it can hardly be what they imagined when he and Camilla went off to the First in GtN. speaking of, i do still wonder how everyone’s family members, the Cohort etc. reacted to the news of basically everyone dying after going off to try and be Lyctors

‘Palamedes was acting as though he were a tiny at show-and-tell’ is that not how Palamedes always acts about everything

Pyrrha Dve queen of ill-advised romantic relationships. poor her, she’s lost basically everyone she cared about before (G1deon, Wake, and now Pal and Cam, Nona is dying) now as a result of Lyctorhood to some degree

oh why does everything they’re saying here feel like a goddamn funeral, i categorically don’t like this

'something white and grey and powdery [...] Camilla [...] - to Nona's horror - ate it' i’m assuming that’s Palamedes’ skull goop making a reappearance. ew

ohhh wow this is a lot worse than i thought it was going to be, they’ve actually just straight up merged themselves into a single person. i suspected the whole Camilla-and-Palamedes thing was going to come back but not like this. it’s not like they had a lot of choices, and i mean i guess it’s better on an emotional level than one of them dying and the other having to live with it, but still, yikes

wdym i am categorically not crying about the fact that Kiriona is apparently totally disinterested in this whole situation, but her first instinct is still to want to hand over her jacket to … Cam/Pal. (Pam?)

listen i get what Palamedes is trying to do here, encouraging Ianthe to accept Lyctorhood as a mutual loss & rebirth rather than a sole sacrifice of the cavalier, but quite frankly i think poor Naberius would like being merged into a single person with Ianthe even less than being murdered

[adolin]

Okay but can you imagine if G1deon was the one who found Wake's body? G1deon "Thought it was my kid" just thinking Alecto possessed the baby or something. Just trying to raise her in secret, not living with John but everytime John visits or makes an unexpected phone call G1deon is aggressively hiding baby toys in the closet or cradling this baby hoping it doesn't start crying during the call It's not until Kiriona is like, 5 that G1deon is like "I don't think my baby is possessed by Alecto, and I'm starting to have some questions for my boss"

I HAVE IMAGINED IT, I think it would be

1) frankly cute. G1deon gives me vibes of someone who needs SOMETHING to latch himself to, and it's usually killing people and/or John but I think if he decided "I'm going to look after this baby" he WILL look after the baby. He will look after that baby so hard

2) Hilarious? That baby is the culmination of a plan 500 years in the making. A chubby-faced Destroyer of Gods. Key to the Tomb of the Apocalypse. And G1deon has 0 idea about it and he just thinks she's the product of a hatesex affair he wants to keep under wraps because his colleagues can't be trusted around babies and John will never let the Wake thing go.

Then when G1deon decides he has Questions for John it turns into one of those slapstick comedies where 2 single guys accidentally acquire a baby except it's the galaxy's deadliest killer, a pathetic god with abandonment issues, and Pyrrha who shows up every once in a while and nobody knows she's there except for the toddler

[nonasemporium]

character meme 2 electric boogaloo: awake remembrance of these valiant dead!!!

send me a character [Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity] and i’ll list:

favorite thing about them: I love her rage, I love her justice, I love her determination, I love that she forces John to say her full name, that she rejects everyone's attempts to twist her. I love her passion, her meanass laugh, her fucking commitment. If something's gonna get done, she's gonna do it.

least favorite thing about them: I get why she was doing what she was doing, but smashing a baby into the wall is very battle of Troy of her lmao. Same with teaching Pash to be a child soldier. I get it though, she's living in a horror where the alternative is worse.

favorite line: When she demands John say her name, when she says G1deon deserves that at least, the line about her nose, the line about her meanass laugh, the fact she called Gideon "Bomb", crying about all of it.

brOTP: Love her proud auntie vibes at Pash, but actual brOTP is probably with We Suffer, lmao. Idk it just seems like the kind of history that fits both of them.

OTP: G1deon/Wake/Pyrrha <33333 Literally OT3 of TLT for me, I love it so much. Pyrrha being bold enough to kiss her but apologizing, Wake not letting that go, not taking the bait to just kill her, nah, she's going to let her live with that, they're going to be something so explosive.... Then her realizing the ways G1deon and Pyrrha are separate, loving them both, perhaps even learning to love G1deon through conversations with Pyrrha over him as well, the way it must ache for Pyrrha so so deeply, punishment and relief. The way Wake talked about them till the end. The trust but also the knowledge that it only goes so far. The way she knew what G1deon was and she knew what Pyrrha was and ugh.

nOTP: Keep John the fuck away from her unless she's killing him, thanks. Love she got the last laugh, may she get more.

random headcanon: That she has a toothgap, that she has freckles, that she has two laughs--one where her teeth are bared like a threat and one where instead her cheeks fold up her eyes cutely. I also think that despite everything, she did have a fondness for Gideon in her own way, for "Bomb." There's something in naming a thing, there's something in the fact Gideon was initially a sacrifice for her but also meant to be a sacrifice for everyone. That she carried her under her heart for all those months ready to sacrifice her for the literal world, putting her body on the line but also like. She's actually a very loving person. Her rage is the rage of someone who despises injustice, her rage is the rage of someone who has plenty to lose, her rage is the rage of someone who has a people that need her. And this horrible little thing she grew in her despite not having the plans for it--she had to think about what made it worth it and you know what made it worth it? That this baby was meant to end the suffering of THEIR people, that this baby would be the key to kill the father, that this baby was where all their hope was placed, that this baby had to carry all the "sins" of both sides of this war, do you think she ever had a moment wondering if the baby, if this little Bomb, this little flesh of her flesh and blood of his blood, would forgive any of them for it? I think also of her trapped body and trapped soul, of her in that sword, how that sword in Harrow's hands was furious, was rejecting, but how in Gideon's was a weird comfort. How Gideon went to her bones, forced to labor under these people she fucking despised, do you think she heard Gideon? Do you think she heard Gideon speak to her bones, do you think she felt Gideon's prayers for a mother, do you think that fury she had was also the fury that this weird thing that she had never intended to have was being twisted to serve the empire she was going to be sacrificed to destroy? He deserved that at least, she said about G1deon. He deserved that at least, so what does Gideon deserve? The language was dehumanizing but not without fondness. Wake just seems so much the type of person, the kind of resolute and almost-humorous who might accidentally get a spot, soft and tender deep in--she said she carried Gideon under her heart. Under her heart. She didn't say in her gut, she said under her heart. And under her heart, I really think there's a tiny part of her still there for Gideon, for Bomb, for the thing that maybe in another life could've just been her and G1deon's weird little explosive tyke. In another life, that could've been the shitty love child of her goofy ass situationship and that little thing could've held Pash's machete and learned to build bombs to take down the Houses, or in another life outside of that, in a life without Jod at all, maybe that thing could've just been a gap-toothed kid with a meanass laugh and no need to carry the fate of humanity. I think of how Wake is Mary. How Gideon is the Jesus she has to give up for humanity, that she was fully prepared to give up, but I also think of how Wake gave herself up as well. Pregnancy is incredibly difficult, and in the end she was killed--not necessarily by her actual pregnancy, but. I just have a lot of emotions. When she was preparing herself to sacrifice Gideon, to sacrifice "Bomb," do you think a fondness grew specifically to how this baby was meant to save them? Do you think she thought "at least if this kid is going to have my dna, it's going to use that to take this fucker down finally," do you think coming so close made that little bit of potential pride slip in? And then she's her sword and her bones are on those fields and not only is her body made slave, her soul made bound, but all that fucking hope is chained down alongside her, stripped from any knowledge, any fucking purpose, molded instead for the very thing she carried it to destroy. Emotions.

unpopular opinion: Apparently that I see her as Black, lmao, it was from the description of her hair and nose, which doesn't have to mean Black, but it's how I see her.

song i associate with them: Okay well obviously fucking 'Lose Yourself' by Eminem, boo, tomato tomato, but another one that maybe isn't as often tied to her is 'Wygd' by Empara Mi. For funsies, I also do literally always associate her with 'Are You That Somebody' by Aaliyah. Darlin, I know you wanna light me up~

favorite picture of them: I'll post my sketch here because I do like showing part of how I see her, even if I may never clean up or do more with the sketch, but also I love this and this (sobbing about baby Bomb).

[nollypolly]

currently thinking about names in tlt. names are very much a subject that is constantly touched on in the universe- names typically follow which house one belongs to. the most explicit of this is the Tridentati, but that extends to pretty much everyone we meet in book 1. when gideon fully adopts the role of harrowhark's caviler at the end, it's repeated for the second time that nav is a niner name.

and then we find out john changed his lyctor's names post loved-one-slaying. their pre-resurrection names are forgotten, revered as holy even within the private og lyctors. he takes their names, a symbol of where they're from and the earth they failed, and strips them to the bone. he tacks on their cavalier's name on the end as an afterthought, a tribute to the graveyard he turned his friends into. even then, the cavaliers names are lost. he replaces them with what he thinks represents them, despite there being very little chance he was close enough to them to come up with something more than an incredibly shallow understanding of who they are. pyrrha becomes Duty. christabel becomes Joy. we don't know cytherea's saint name, but considering how even john wasnt a fan of loveday, it would make sense why she wouldn't want to use an alias for the most important person in her life. even less so one created by the man who not only lead her to her death, but never even liked her. hell, john doesn't even bother using most of the cavalier's names censored in ntn.

and then we're brought to gideon's first name. she is (unwittingly by the ninth house, in their defense) named after g1. after all, wake's ghost's last words come from right after he pushes her out of the airlock. we know that gideon dies in htn and pyrrha takes over the meatsuit. we know from ianthe's blowup in ntn that john is in active grief. so, now imagine, you just lost every last person you loved, and this sad little girl gets brought to you and she's apparently your long lost totally dead daughter. cool, fine, whatever- you're god, so really death is nothing but some annoying hoops you have to jump through to get what you want. he turns her corpse into a construct, tethers her soul to it, and gives her a bedroom with those glow-in-the-dark ceiling stars and all. luckily there are a lot of newly vacant rooms, haha! and then, as he did with everyone his holy hands have touched, john renames her.

kiriona is pronounced closer to gideon than siri-ona in te reo māori. in typical john fashion, he strips her of her name representing where she is from, blessing her with a new one made in his image. and, once again, he turns her into a tribute for what he lost. g1deon is dead. john honors him by naming his daughter after his best friend, in a dead language, both of which john had a hand in murdering.

she can't be called gideon bc it's a memory of how John failed the person who was most loyal to him. she has to be called something similar as tribute. kiriona isnt his daughter, isn't a person, but instead is a vessel for all of his pain and regret. exactly like the ninth house, kiriona has been transformed into a tomb for her father's grief, and her renaming only cements that.

[lockedtombtheories]

Thanks! I think the biggest thing currently bugging me about HtN is why every surviving lyctor, with 1 single exception, was plotting to kill Jod? My understanding is that it was only when they saw cav!Gideon's eyes on the Mithraeum that they realized Jod lied about the existence of perfect lyctorhood. So why had they spent decades plotting with BoE to open the tomb and murder God? Only explanation I've read is "because he made them kill their cavs," which seems weak.

The short answer is: They at least suspected that he lied about it even before meeting Gideon. She was just the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. Plus, he did make them kill their cavs! Their siblings, their lovers, their closest friends! They dealt with that truth for far more than a lifetime, but they just so happens that they had a lot of time to dwell on it. It’s not really a surprise that it eventually got ugly.

Long answer under the cut, because I love my followers and don’t want them to suffer.

First off: it isn't just the surviving lyctors who betrayed God. Mercymorn, Augustine, Cytherea, yes; but even G1deon was willing to share a bed with the enemy. Either he or Pyrrha told Wake about the RB's and what they do to necromancers, thereby handing her an effective weapon against lyctors. 

And then there's Anastasia, who's implied to have gone against John's orders by even founding the Ninth House. Cassie, who contacted BoE *6 000 years ago*. So who really knows what Cyrus and Ulysses were up to, or would have been if they'd survived for long enough. 

As for why? We get two pieces of explanation in the text. 

YOU LIED TO US

Could this refer to the proof in Gideon's eyes? Sure.  But I'm not convinced that it wasn't the message Cyth always wanted to send. 

Checking in with the other duplicitous sluts:

“You’ve offered us explanations for everything over the years. But—some of them didn’t hold up on examination … It was the power I could never get my head around, you know? I follow power back to its source, John. It’s the skill you asked me to perfect. And the longer I looked at yours, the less things added up.”  “This has been troubling you for a very long time, then,” God said finally. [...] “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. You’re God, John. But—as the Edenites are fond of pointing out—you were once a man. So whither that transition? Where does your power come from? Even if the Resurrection had been the greatest thanergy bloom ever triggered, it would drain away over time. And then Mercy said to me—in a moment of true Mercy vileness—she said, What is God afraid of? [...] I never wanted to believe it when she said, What if he didn’t really put down A.L.? And then—What if he couldn’t put down A.L.?” (HtN, ch. 51)

So: they knew that John didn’t have a tangible power source; and lyctorhood was the only kind of internal furnace they know about. Ergo: yes, they suspected that John had lied about perfect Lyctorhood. He made them kill their cavs. 10 000 years of guilt, literally chasing them across the universe, and for what? For whom?

What kind of God demands such a sacrifice? I think that's one of the central questions of these books. What kind of God demands it? (compare the Binding of Isaac - John) But also: What kind of God punishes it? (compare the Mark of Cain - the Resurrection Beasts) 

But - 

“Why would one of the Emperor’s Lyctors hate him?” “Hate him?” The voice of the girl whom Gideon had known as Dulcinea rose, high and intent. “Hate him? I have loved that man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.” (GtN, ch. 35)

They are Believers losing their Faith. They’re questioning the entire foundation of his divinity. Augustine and Mercy are still asking, still hoping that they're wrong - “All that effort to break open the Locked Tomb,” said Augustine, “only to have the answer we wanted wander up in the form of one dead teenager flaunting your genes." - but crucially, they are also lovers going through a messy divorce. You know, when people who once loved each other and were presumably capable of communication are suddenly throwing plates at each other? “Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.” 

Possibly what Tazmuir is saying is, they're the same picture. But that might be conjecture. 

(edited to add in links to other theory posts. call it the director's cut)

[angstbabyjae]

Nona The Ninth Epilogue Analysis and Interpretation

I just finished rereading Nona the Ninth of the Locked Tomb Series with my dad and of course he was majorly confused at the epilogue, so here is my interpretation of what happens in it. For things said by the characters in old-timely English I’ve replaced them with my interpretations of what is actually being said, with the exception of lines that I think were said verbatim. Even though I think Alecto is actually talking in Shakespearean English during this scene I’m still going to write down my modern English interpretation of what she says, though keep in mind she is likely actually talking the way she does in the epilogue. There’s also a line down the road of Alecto’s that I keep as written because I don’t entirely understand it. Here we go!

Alecto wakes up after her and Harrow’s souls switch back to their bodies. She finishes her sentence from before John put her to sleep and breaks out of the chains, breaking her bones. She cries “ah, ah, ah!” and Ianthe shows up, having recovered from the Herald Bullet Pyrrha shot her with and goes to attack Alecto. Harrow, still injured and still laying on the alter begs Ianthe not to kill Alecto saying something along the lines of

Harrow: What you doing, Tridentarius? Touch her and our vow is void and I’ll kill you where you stand.

Ianthe: You’re gonna fight me? You’re half-dead.

Harrow: I’m half-dead, but you would be two-halves dead, bitch.

This one is nearly word for word what Harrow says. It sounds a bit more like something Gideon would say, not Harrow, but it’s definitely Harrow that says it. I think it’s further proof of Harrow and Gideon’s souls having an effect on each other after lyctorhood (even though they’re no longer lyctorally bound). Then Ianthe says

Ianthe: I’ll die only of longing for you, my sweet.

Harrow: Then perish.

Harsh as fuck, I love it. A reminder that Ianthe is still in love with (or at least has her romantic sights on) Harrow. Then Alecto gets up from the alter and backhands Ianthe into the water surrounding the tomb. I’m not sure if it’s hitting Ianthe into the water that triggers this or Alecto summoning them, or what, but what appear to be pre-programmed skeletons emerge from the to tomb’s wall. I thought that maybe Alecto didn’t summon them and raises her sword to scare them away, which works but I’ve also seen people say that she sends them to attack Pyrrha, Gideon, Paul, and Aiglamene on the shore, as she probably thinks they’re here to kill her.

As Alecto starts walking, the bones she broke when tearing out of her chains start to mend. Her current weakness is probably why she wasn’t instantly healing like we know she can, as she describes her body as “not fully awake” as she stumbles on the steps crying for John. Next she mentions the “crowd of dead children” on the tombs shore fighting with “living children”. Either the skeletons on the wall are the ones fighting them or the possessed corpses of the ninth broke into the tomb and attacked. All we know is that Pyrrha, Paul, Gideon, and Aiglamene are fighting dead people. They’re all competent fighters so I assume they’ll be alright fighting them. Alecto doesn’t understand why this is happening, so she likely, and unfortunately, doesn’t retain any memories from being Nona (at the moment at least).

Pyrrha shouts for Alecto from the shore and Alecto remembers her from before her imprisonment. It says “she was mightily dashed in the memory of Alecto, so that all their sleep was perished with noise” which I’m having some difficulty interpreting. She calls back to Pyrrha and tries to tell her about how John imprisoned her to appease the lyctors and that Pyrrha was “fed” to them by John to appease them as well (when G1deon became a lyctor). But he never did appease Alecto and only taught her how to die. Pyrrha can’t hear her over the noise.

Alecto remembers some vow she made before she was imprisoned. This vow confuses me, as she doesn’t seem to be referring to her vow to Anastasia, as this is before she realizes Harrow is Anastasia’s descendant. Strange and confusing is this chapter’s middle name, but I love a good puzzle so I’ll have to sit with this one for a bit. Alecto then turns to Harrow and raises her sword to attack her because she thinks she’s going to try to kill her like Ianthe did, but then recognizes her as someone she saw in a dream and stops.

Harrow: Oh corpse of the Locked Tomb, I have loved you all my life with my whole soul and strength. I hope to God that I find grace in your eyes, but you can kill me if that’s what you want because I love you.

This makes Alecto mad. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe she doesn’t like Harrow treating her own life so lightly. Or putting her life in Alecto’s hands. Maybe it’s because John (and her vow to Anastasia) puts her in the position of someone who serves others, not as someone who should be served. She then kisses her and bites down on her mouth because she doesn’t know how kissing is done. You’d think that Harrow would be all into this, but according to Alecto she is not “appeased” by this kiss, which confuses Alecto. It seems like Harrow is perhaps already becoming disillusioned with Alecto to me. She can taste through Harrow’s blood that she’s a descendant of Anastasia, which calms her down.

Alecto: You are a descendent of the tomb-keeper?

Harrow: Yes.

Alecto: Anastasia’s bloodline is unbroken?

Harrow: Through sin and iniquity, yes.

Alecto: I am very sorry about Samael.

This is referring to how John killed Samael to make Anastasia mortal again after she got the proper lyctoral process right. I don’t think Harrow knows about this so she doesn’t say anything.

Alecto: I remember my vows. As I swore to Anastasia I swear to you. I am in your service until you bid me the favor, and whatsoever you appoint I shall perform, and consider the vow rendered. This is what I promised, until such a time as you deal with me as you see fit.

This one was pretty hard to interpret so I just left the whole quote from the book in there. The last two sentences of this passage are what makes this passage so difficult. It’s undeniable that Alecto is saying she will serve Harrow, but she refers to the favor as something that’ll END her servitude to Harrow. She uses the word “rendered” to refer to what serving Harrow will make of the vow and I’m not entirely sure what that means. Whatever it means, it scares Harrow, who likely expected to become Alecto’s servant, not the other way around.

Harrow: My hands are too stained, and I am too lowly.

Alecto then places her sword in Harrow’s hands by the blade, which cuts her. Curiously, it seems this is not what causes Harrow to faint. The cuts on her hands “made the child exceedingly faint, but it did not swoon of weariness”. So she got dizzy, but not because she was tired. Which I could take to mean that her dizziness was from something to do with sword not because of her injuries or the fact she was cut. At this point we must assume Harrow’s limbs aren’t still sloughing off and that she was healed of at least her fatal wounds when her body swapped with Alecto. The “strength” she takes to not pass out pleases Alecto. Maybe the sword is supposed to make you pass out and for some reason it doesn’t work on Harrow? I dont know.

Alecto: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service.

Gideon, shouting from the shore: Get in line, you big slut!

Iconic. Clearly this sounds like a cavaliership pledge to Gideon, which she is pissed about. Despite Gideon being on the shore she seems close enough to hear Alecto and Harrow’s conversation, which Pyrrha wasn’t. So Gideon seems to have gotten away from or concluded the combat on the shore to make her way towards them and says this upon hearing them. We then get a time skip, with the only thing we know being that the next paragraph is “afterward”.

We know that Harrow ends up accepting Alecto’s blade and “thereupon” fainted, which means that the acceptance of the blade happened separately from when she placed the blade in Harrow’s hands. Harrow “did not swoon” when that happened and must have been awake when Gideon yelled at Alecto. I can only speculate on what happens after that, but if I had to guess I think Gideon probably charged at Alecto. She shouts “a very great shout” of anger when she calls her a slut, which knowing Gideon means she must have attacked right after. A confrontation between Harrow and Gideon is achingly missing from this epilogue, but to me I think it must have happened between the time skip. I don’t think Alecto immediately takes her and Harrow through the river when Gideon charges because Harrow is still awake and hasn’t “accepted the blade” yet, unless accepting to Alecto simply means having it in her hands. I’m thinking that maybe when Gideon charges Harrow stops her, which leads to a very emotional conversation between them which ends in Harrow accepting Alecto’s servitude and sword to the heartbreak of Gideon. I think Harrow will inevitably regret this. Harrow passes out, Alecto takes Harrow in her arms and into the river to what was once the Erebos and stabs John, yada yada yada. “Annabel, good morning” and all that jazz.

It’s very like Tamsyn to keep a Harrow and Gideon reunion from us until the next book. According to the excerpt of the first chapter of Alecto The Ninth that Tamsyn Muir read at TorCon last year, the next book will start with Harrow waking up from the same position she was left in in Harrow the Ninth: Laying in the tomb in Alecto’s place with the sword and skin mag on top of her. I don’t believe this to be the same scene as her actually waking up in her own body at the end of NTN. I think this is a flashback to her point of view in the river bubble/mindscape/dream (I really don’t know what it actually is) of Alecto’s memories with John. How she got from seeing what she did at the end of HTN (the tomb and the magazine) to what she does in NTN (Alecto’s memories of wandering the dead planet with John post-apocalypse, which somehow had John’s actual consciousness in it?? Who recognizes Harrow??? I don’t know, man). Since ATN will start with filling in gaps from before, I’m pretty confident we will also get this missing conversation between Harrow and Gideon.

About the vow between Alecto and Anastasia, this seems to have been made on Alecto’s part as a thank you to Anastasia for staying in the tomb with her despite it meaning her death. I suspect this is the case because in the previous chapter, after Alecto parts the salt water and walks to the tomb, she sees Anastasia’s bones in the curve of the rock. When it comes to Anastasia, the timeline seems to be that she starts building the tomb for Alecto on the ninth before everyone became lyctors. She has her child(ren?), maybe with Samael, on the Ninth, Pyrrha helps with the birth and paints the nursery. The disciples “discovering” the botched version of the eight-fold word John led them to happens after the tomb begins construction but before Alecto was actually sealed there, so it must have taken a long time. It’s so sucky to think about the disciples that told John to do this (which definitely includes Mercymorn) keeping this from Alecto at Canaan House while her tomb is being built so far away. Did Pyrrha know at the time? Did she find out afterwards while sharing G1deon’s body? Who knows. Then imperfect lyctorhood happens, Anastasia gets it right, John kills Samael, the tomb is completed, and a mortal Anastasia shuts herself in the tomb with Alecto to die watching over her. Fucked up.

That’s all I have for this post, I have another shorter one I’ll be posting after this going over a few key moments in the chapter prior to the epilogue. Hope you’ve enjoyed this analysis and I hope it helps people understand the epilogue more.

[onthecrescentofthehill]

g1deon and pyrrha + gideon and harrow throughlines scattered in all of tlt continue to drive me insane.

the initial investigation scenes post the 5th deaths where the 2nd house tries to pull cohort rank control of the situation, gideon & harrow immediately sneak away to learn that the winnowing trial was developed by the second house and cohort founders, g1deon & pyrrha. winnowing as incorporating the other, refusing distractions for the sake of true control, loyalty and duty.

gideon is wearing his sunglasses, rifling through their things. she doesn’t see it as a real place someone would live in, only a stop along the way to somewhere else, more whole.

she sees a gun on the wall that her mother's ghost will use the river memory of to try and kill harrow in the dream of cannan house:

It took Gideon a long time to realise that she was looking at something goddamn ancient: it was a blowback carbine gun. She’d only ever seen pictures. ….. The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck had risen when the lights came on, and they hadn’t gone back down, as if her intrusion might well tempt time back to claim its grave goods. GTN chapter 19

Carbine rifle, read the key. For a moment she pitied Judith Deuteros’s last seconds. To be killed with this ancient piece of grave goods! It would have been like being set upon by a ghost out of time. HTN chapter 18

gideon reads "one flesh, one end" for the first time. she tells harrow these people were living in each others pockets, the same phrase she'll later use to describe the two of them. pyrrha spent nearly 10,000 years locked in a drawer in gideon the first’s mind bc he couldn't bear to let her go. gideon tells harrow how they feel like strangers despite growing up together.

harrow cant stand the thought and in less than a month harrow will lock gideon in a drawer and gideon the first will relentlessly try to kill harrow in her waking hours to spare her the agony he'll never learn is closely parallel to his, and when she fails to hear his real name her brain starts bleeding:

And he had said: “Ortus, have pity.”

“This is my pity, Lord,” said the Saint of Duty. HTN chapter 20

g1deon was john’s oldest friend, he carried that suitcase in his loyalty to him. then he becomes an amnesiac, immortal thanergy void, absorbing and nullifying the echoes of that catastrophe. founding the cohort that flips planets in the exact mirror to the ecological tragedy they all sacrificed everything to spare earth from. over and over again.

He didn’t even ask me to explain. That was the kind of guy he was. He and I had grown up on the same street. I’d spotted him for mince pies all the time as kids, so stands to reason he let me cut off his arm and carried a nuke for me. John 1:20

in g+p’s room harrow says that theyre all the ninth house has ( = you’re all that i have). gideon firmly says shes "NO ONE'S son or daughter"

but in less than a year gideon’s mother, sitting opposite her father, will recognize pyrrha with a sense of profound relief before her revenant is unceremoniously killed. gideon will watch through harrows eyes, in hiding:

Harrow, I will never forget the look on her face as long as I live, or as long as I die. (…) It was the smile for your old cellmate who’d just landed back in prison, the one that told them at least you were in it together—or more correctly, the smile of someone stepping out of jail after serving a very long sentence, having seen someone there waiting for her. Someone whose presence meant total reprieve, someone she hadn’t expected. It was a little bit mocking. It was deeply relieved. HTN chapter 50

i don’t have a conclusion to this rn i’m just……much to think abt. the displacement of grief, the loyalty through control, how it just happens over and over and over again and they just bear witness as tools or trapped souls or revenants, clinging to anything they can even if they don’t remember it.

[fortjester]

an angle that i can't remember anybody pointing out abt Gideon re: christ allegory is the idea of Wake as Mary conscious of what her role entails. Mary conscious of and accepting of the sacrifice her child will be used for.

she's visited by one of god's lyctor's – directly contacted by Mercymorn with an opportunity – and outside her interactions w G1deon, she's the only one of them Wake ever meets. in the bible, the angel who visits Mary is the same angel that directs the wise men to seek Mary and Jesus out in Jerusalem, which adds a more sinister parallel to Mercy being the one to direct G1deon to Wake's location over the Ninth.

Wake has no direct interaction with John/God until after she’s already dead, and therefore Gideon’s conception is, like Mary’s conception of Jesus, almost completely separate from God at all, except that the resulting child will be his biologically (or spiritually in Jesus’ case).

she takes a literal journey while heavily pregnant to reach the Ninth, and has to give birth in less than ideal conditions and surroundings. and the story diverges further from there, because instead of being visited and given gifts for her child’s birth, she’s attacked, betrayed, and murdered before she can complete the mission she did any of this for.

(one could argue that G1deon and Pyrrha’s role in this allegory is both that of the wise men (keeping up three separate identities = three wise men right? g1deon, pyrrha, and the Saint of Duty all visited on her in one form. much to think on) – but also of Joseph (especially given Pyrrha tells John in HTN that she didn't tell him abt Wake's pregnancy because she assumed the child was hers, and upon finding out Gideon isn't hers, she's obviously conflicted abt it, but inevitably settles on wanting to be a parent/parental figure to her despite the truth and the complexities of Wake's actions) but that’s just a whole Can of Worms, because we know very little of what actually went down during their interaction leading up to the airlock, so we’ll just let the concept lie there for the moment.)

Wake conceives, carries, and gives birth to Gideon, the distanced but biological child of God, knowing she’ll be used as a sacrifice, knowing through trial and error that the only viable method for this plan to work is through carrying the child herself. she does it all under the faith that if she does it all correctly, if she works hard enough, toughs it out, it will all be worth it. arguably, she never sees the Tomb fully opened, but she sees it breached.

another fun tidbit from this train of thought is the idea that her niece is named Our Lady of the Passion, a tangential name for the Virgin Mary in some sects of catholicism. beyond death, Wake’s belief in her mission to rid the universe of John and the Houses, her passion, as it were, is once again present in Pash, who is not exactly present when the Tomb is opened, but is around and conscious enough of her connections and roles to realise her dang cousin is also hanging around on the same planet her aunt died on. excited to see whatever dynamic she and Gideon develop in atn, Muir willing.