#where's that post about gideon being the antichrist

[nonasbirthday]

I'm sure others have already said this better, but as someone who enjoys holding every TLT character up against the Christ Figure template to look at where things line up and where they don't –

Jesus is meant to have put an end to death, conquered it, brought us all into eternal life.

If ATN goes where I suspect it will go, Gideon and Harrow have been set up to reinstate the natural cycle of death, and put an end to The Resurrection.

Just think it's an interesting (possible) inversion of the Christ figure role for these two!

[traeumenvonbuechern]

If you like The Locked Tomb, listen to these podcasts!

Where The Stars Fell:

Dr. Edison Tucker is having a very weird life. Not being able to die tends to color things that way. Lucille Kensington is the literary scene’s biggest enigma. That’s just the way she likes it. When the pair find themselves sharing a cabin in the strangest town in America— Jerusalem, OR— they’re prepared for a housemate situation from hell. What they’re not expecting is tidings of a stranger sort: Ed is the antichrist, Lucy her guardian angel, and if they can’t find a way to work together soon, the rapture is set to take first the town, then the world… but neither of them know that yet. Welcome to Jerusalem, OR, where what doesn’t kill you is just another mystery.

The creators have a whole post on why WTSF is perfect for The Locked Tomb and Griddlehark fans!

Malevolent:

Arkham Private Investigator Arthur Lester wakes up with no memory of who he is or what has happened, only a nameless, eerie voice guiding him through the darkness. Blind, terrified, and confused, his journey will lead him towards a series of mysteries in the hopes of understanding the truth of what has transpired. As cosmic horrors seep into the world around, Arthur must ask himself whether this entity truly seeks to help him, or are its intentions more… malevolent?

Dathen says it perfectly here: "The relationship between the investigator and the voice is by far the #1 sell of this story. It’s messy and ugly and beautiful and complicated and terribly, wonderfully intimate. It ended up overlapping a lot of my feelings about Harrow and Gideon, and lyctorhood in general."

Hello From The Hallowoods:

Come walk between the black pines! In this award-winning queer fiction podcast, a cosmic narrator follows the increasingly connected residents of the forest at the end of the world. It's a bittersweet story that explores queer identity, horror genre tropes, and finding hope in humanity's last moments.

If you like Gideon Nav, you will love Riot Maidstone. Just look at this fanart!

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 2 - Side B

John Gaius art cred @exmakina

Propaganda below ⬇️

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

John

book quote from the chapters where he's relating how he got necromantic powers and people freaked out!! this is pre-apocalypse and resurrection so it's implied he took a lot of inspiration from this incident . He said, Then we took off. Thread after thread on message board after message board. People wanting proof. People asking what the fuck it meant. People talking about the LUCIFER telescope and saying we were aliens. People calling me the Antichrist, which was a trip. People writing up these long posts on how the trick was done, how I got the meat into the pie. Was I fake? Was I real? If I was real, what did it mean? Suddenly there were hundreds of people, all there at our front door. They came in caravans, they were sleeping in their cars or putting up tents. A hell of a lot of them had flown out internationally. He said, Some of them wanted to see the miracle. Some of them wanted my help, like, Oh, you’re the magical death man, can you do something about my body? Can you fix my fibromyalgia? Thing was, I could. That surprised me. I could take out their tumours. I could fix their macular degeneration. Big damage was easy, unless they’d actually lost the limb or whatever. Couldn’t grow those back. But I spent hours and hours a day playing Jesus. That was nice, those were some of the nicest hours I got to spend. He said, But when you’re doing the whole Go, my child, your knee cartilage is fixed, you’re going to get a lot of visitors. I had to turn people away because I had to eat, I had to sleep, even though I didn’t want to. M— had brought in her best friend, the nun, and I was worried I was going to get the Antichrist bit from her too, but she was just like: stop doing this! Read your Bible! This was Christ’s whole problem! I was like, What are you talking about, Jesus cured the lepers and everyone was all, Hooray, thanks man. M—’s nun was all, Are you kidding, Christ never said no and never asked anyone to pay and got way too much attention and brought the heat down on everybody. Christ didn’t keep to office hours, she said. Don’t do that. He said, So we limited Jesus stuff to one hour a day, and I always had to eat breakfast. But by then the whole world was on our doorstep.

look this is kind of weird but he is the only survivor after nuclear bombs destroy the earth and he has weird necromancy powers so he revives his friends and a few other people to be his subjects and basically makes himself a god to them. there's a lot of layers since he's literally the only character in the entire series who remembers the world before and has a concept of the religion he's copying for his own. he treats the other characters like toys he can push around for his own amusement and everything is a joke but he does this world-weary act that somehow gets the reader to kind of feel for him even when he's being atrocious. and he's the only one who remembers memes. which is a torture all of its own.

I said "yes" but to be more clear: he was canonically Catholic when he was still mortal, but that was 10,000 years ago and he kind of killed everybody on the planet. Just slightly. Some of them got better. Now he's the Emperor Undying and his empire is very Catholic-coded.

OP note: I got some replies saying he's not actually canonically catholic and this is "as Catholic" as he gets

[lollytea]

I see you reblog and post a lot of stuff about "locked tomb" and "six of crows". I'm not sure if these are the same or different things, but also feel if I looked them up on google I'd get a very generic response about what they are that would almost certainly leave me uninterested in pursuing them. So what are these things? Do you have feelings/reasons on why people should read(?) them?

OH OH OH OH OH OH OK OK OK OK OK OK OK it’s not what you asked but I always wanted somebody to ask about the books I love so I need to explain what they are about. I need to explain things. I love to explain things. Ok ok ok so

The locked tomb is a series. There’s currently two books (with a third coming out this year) the genre is gothic lesbian post apocalyptic paranormal sci-fi fantasy with heavy religious undertones. Which is as batshit as it sounds. So it’s set 10,000 after the end of the world and a guy with mysterious necromantic powers somehow managed to resurrect humanity and rebuilt a new world in space and he is now an immortal “God” who rules over the solar system. Each planet is a different society with different cultures and the only thing that all the planets (or “houses” as they call them) have in common is the practice of necromancy.

Gideon and Harrow are two teenage girls who live on the Ninth House, a cold barren miserable place whose population is on the verge of extinction. The locked tomb that the series refers to is the tomb that the Ninth House is tasked with guarding, where the dead body of God’s enemy is kept. (So the antichrist basically.) as a result of the morbidity of their purpose, the Ninth house is basically an extremely religious cult with a lot of emphasis on bones and skeletons.

Harrow’s parents are the current heads of that cult, making Harrow “The Reverend Daughter” Shes a nun but the Ninth House treats her like their beloved goth nun princess. She is also an insanely talented bone necromancer. Gideon, meanwhile, is just some orphan beefcake with a sword who nobody likes. She and Harrow happen to be the only people on the ninth house under the age of fifty, (Terrible plague wiped out the younger generation) so the two girls absolutely detest eachother, have spent their whole lives arguing, fighting, basically beating the unholy shit out of eachother BUT they are the only ones of a similar age so, as awful as their relationship is, it is also deeply co-dependent. Messy terrible but very very interesting dynamic have Harrow and Gideon. I highly recommend to read just to see that shit play out.

So Harrow is propositioned with the offer to train to become a lyctor to their God. (Which is basically an offer to ascend to Sainthood. She would become immortal and live her life serving by God’s side) but but BUT in order to attend her training, she is told that she requires a cavalier. (Which is a devoted bodyguard) Unfortunately Harrow doesn’t currently have a cavalier so she has no other option than to bring Gideon along (the only young healthy person on the planet who can wield a sword.) So Harrow is basically like “okay you stupid fucking idiot come along with me to my lyctor training. Surely nothing homoerotic will occur”

So then they reach their training location, a big beautiful yet crumbling house, full of other necromancers and cavaliers hoping to become lyctors. It begins as a series of trials that require teamwork and trust to solve so Gideon and Harrow have to reluctantly co-operate and learn to look out for the other. Then weird shit starts happening and things get spooky and people are getting picked off one by one and the plot basically devolves into a wild ass murder mystery in a haunted house. While all this is happening, Gideon and Harrow are being gay little bitches. It’s fantastic stuff.

Gideon is the POV character of the first book and thank god for that. She has a brilliant sense of humor so everything that happens is told from such a snarky perspective. Gideon is amazing, there is no way not to love Gideon

The second book goes in a wildly different direction than the first but I cannot talk about it without spoiling. But anyway basically the locked tomb books are fantastic, an absolute rollercoaster but they are extremely wordy and complicated and definitely not something to dive into if you just want something light and fun.

Ok ok ok and the Six of Crows duology ok. Six of Crows is YA so it’s not nearly as heavy as locked tomb but I also really really REALLY enjoyed the books. I think I would definitely recommend them to a wider range of people than I would locked tomb. Theyre just easier to get into. Ok ok so lemme explain.

So the setting is a fictionalized fantasy world, heavily based on the cultures of real life countries in the 17th century. The only difference in this world is the existence of Grisha (people born with magical abilities) whose existence are a huge political topic in universe. (In some countries, they’re normalized, in some they’re considered abominations etc.)

The story focuses on The Crows, a team of six kids between the ages of 16-18. All of these kids have vastly different backgrounds and personalities but they all have one thing in common: the world they live in has failed them in some way, leaving them deeply traumatized but motivated to do things against their own morals just so they can survive the dangerous slums where they live.

These circumstances make them the perfect candidates for a job so dangerous it’s borderline suicidal but the reward would make them rich beyond their imaginations. They are willing to do anything to get that reward. They are tasked with breaking into the Ice Court, the most heavily guarded military stronghold in the world and retrieving a prisoner with valuable information.

Ok so we have Kaz, a criminal prodigy, gang leader and all around diabolical evil genius who just so happens to be the protagonist. He’s the leader of the crows, the one who makes the plans and pretty much everything would fall apart without him. Can’t talk about his background too much without spoiling but basically he was vulnerable once, was eaten alive by the vicious city so he retaliated by becoming the most dangerous creature to inhabit it. He’s overall a delightfully shitty violent little bitch. I like him :)

Next we have Inej. They call her The Wraith, due to her affinity for deathly silence, making her the perfect spy. She also carries like seven knives on her body at all times and is not the kind of person you want to fuck around with. Inej was a victim of human trafficking so, like Kaz, she has sworn to become something feared. And yet in spite of all this, she manages to be a funny patient kind hearted girl who has managed to make Kaz believe that there is magic in this world.

Jesper!!! Originally a student who the slums destroyed by getting him addicted to gambling. Now he’s a dropout, being crushed by debt and has taken on the job as one of Kaz’s gang members. He’s an excellent sharpshooter and not bad in a fight either. Jesper is funny as hell, managing to find the humor in even the most dire situation. But like all the funniest people in this world he is deeply insecure. There are aspects of himself that he has had to spend his entire life hiding and for all his boundless energy, in a way, he is extremely worn down.

Nina my beloved. A grisha whose magical speciality is the human body. She can stop someone’s heart with just the wave of her hand, a truly lethal opponent. Nina is a former child soldier and is currently slumming it with Kaz’s gang as she works to right a wrong she recently committed, something she is deeply ashamed of. Like Jesper, Nina has a big personality. She’s confident, witty, cheerful and incorrigibly flirty. Of course this makes her incredibly useful when it comes to charming information out of people.

Matthias is our resident white able bodied cishet man (affectionate.) A former member of the Druskelle, a religious order/military troop that is groomed on intolerance and is trained to hunt grisha. Despite being brainwashed by this cult when he was young, Matthias has an honest honorable heart so his character arc is all about reprogramming himself to see the humanity in grisha. He comes to see it in Nina, who he has become quite fond of. There’s a whole enemies to lovers thing going on with those two, it’s very messy but anyway. Matthias was brought along for the ice court heist because he used to be stationed there and he knows the layout but he wants absolutely nothing to do with this job or these people. He hates Kaz, he hates Nina, he hates all of them but he’s bullied into participating. It’s very fun.

And lastly Wylan. Lovely Wylan. A former rich kid who ran away from home. The crows originally think of him as a huge idiot who was stupid enough to leave a happy comfortable life behind to rough it in the criminal underbelly, but he has his own reasons, reasons he would prefer not to disclose for now. Wylan is a sweet and shy but surprisingly courageous kid who has only been with the crows for a month now so he’s completely out of his depth and utterly terrified. Plus Jesper keeps flirting with him and his poor goddamn heart cannot take that kind of shit. But in spite of how fucking scared and confused he is, he’s got a knack for demolitions and carries around a satchel full of bombs so it’s probably in your best interest not to cross him either. I think Wylan has become my favourite character since I did my reread.

Ok so yeah anyway. The story itself of six of crows is pretty good but the main draw is definitely the characters, they’re all so much fun and I feel like there’s a crow for everybody. I couldn’t even pick a favourite my first time reading cuz I was so attached to all of them. They’re also a very diverse bunch. We got POC (Inej and Jesper) LGBTQ (Jesper, Nina and Wylan) Neurodiversity (Jesper and Wylan) Fat Characters (Nina) along with plenty of disabilities, physical and mental (Kaz, Inej, Wylan) and it’s like. Yay diversity win for this gang of murderous criminals! Except I’m not being sarcastic I’m entirely serious I love my diverse gang of murderous criminals.

Anyway I would absolutely recommend six of crows to everything. I think it kicks ass. That’s all I have to say I know I have talked to much but I love to explain things. Goodbye.

[phoebehalliwell]

I cannot wait to read the stories you write for Sheridan and Warren & Dency! I can feel the love you put into them. They feel for realistic and I wish they were canon!! 😭 how do you think Dency would be if she ever got to meet the bros? (As they’re like the best non-canon characters ever?) Also, Dency has only one friend in magic school? Poor Dency :( For some reason, when I read your little Dency holiday headcanons I could totally see he being a teacher at magic school?? ✨✨

i think a dency/warren/sheridan team up would easily be one of The most chaotic things to ever rock the magical community both are the first borns of their respective generations so both are pretty power loaded But one of them is really knowledgeable in the magical and how it all works and all that and the others were raised by a guy who has frosted tips. i my writings warren and sheridan were not like raised with really any magic they were given a spell to unbind their powers but everything else was just a sorta figure it out of your own thing i think with their active power it was really just like a figuring out what works at what doesn’t like that was p self explanatory and when it comes to like everything else. they just fuckin. try things. see what sticks. as i think i’ve mentioned before sheridan’s in a band that’s his thing and the lead singer / his friend is like a witch practitioner who does not know magic is actually real in fact okay so the majority of people in the band are witches that’s their shtick sheridan pretends not to be bc well they’re all practitioners he doesn’t want to do anything they do but then have you know actual magic happen so he’s like yeah hahaha i don’t believe in magic / i don’t wanna practice magic but basically every single spell they know they’ve learned from sheridan’s friend or alternately warren looking it up on youtube or like indie witch blogs and they work that’s undeniable but they are kinda hack jobs and like they’ll make their own potions and stuff using the knowledge they have but like. like they’ll microwave potions. they have no access to magical ingredients. they’re definitely not operating at full potential. that being said i do think a large part of magic is the intent behind it so like they’re no good at spells or writing them nor do they have the power of three but they’re still p powerful witches and everything they do they do with their chest so like it works. dency on the other hand is a magic whiz so i think in that team up like when it’s time to make a potion they’d be making it either at dency’s apartment or in magic school and i think the twins would like socks: knocked off like they had no idea how powerful magic could be and just how powerful they are like in general. i also think they’d both be pretty hyped to be related to the antichrist bc like that’s kinda cool as hell (they also definitely have no the source is/was who cole was they’re not even aware of the charmed ones so dency does her best to explain in layman’s terms the antichrist part was about the only piece of information they retained). i also think like dency grew up with the charmed ones she also grew up hearing stories of her namesake and also being raised by a cupid like she really feels and understands all the love in between the halliwells so i think she’d really be like the one to introduce w&s to you know their magical side like bust out a photo album of prue and tell them the stories she knows of her both warren and sheridan have premonition i think like very limited occasional retrocognition but i think like when you know learning about their mom and seeing all their personal items of her they would get a flashback maybe even like a prue highlight reel and uhh they don’t cry often they’re too glib for that but um yowch :’) i also think dency would help them start their own book of shadows i think dency has one of her own that she made with her roommate it’s leather bound but probably has like witchcraft for sexy bitches!!!! embossed on the cover bc it’s not meant to be an heirloom it’s just something for the two of them that dency will later add to the halliwell book of shadows. (a note on dency’s roommate bc idk if i’ve mentioned her before her name is dove she’s an only child and she comes from like a really rich family who lives in marin county right across the bridge she’s probably from like ross or something and she has no active powers. she can scry she can make potions she can cast spells she was the standard mediumship but she has absolutely no active powers. her parents also have no magic and presumably neither does her grandparents in fact there seems to be zero magic in her bloodline at all and yet here she is, a witch. and everyone sorta thought she was a late bloomer at first and dove like really really wanted to have an active power like she tried So Hard and yet nothing. so i think her andy dency both sorta bonded from being the outcasts in magic school and that’s why they became homies i think they both received the nicknames of dud and devil initially to bully them but they ended up just calling each other that people also stopped calling them mean names after someone called dency devil in the third grade and dove bit them and the whole thing develoved into a lord of the flies magical battle to the death between eight year olds. both dove and dency got suspended for a month, in that month the charmed ones still trained dency from home and dency begged them to bring over dove and train her too bc she only got suspended bc she was defending dency so that really solidified their relationship. the book that they share is really more of dove’s creation tho bc dency is very dyslexic and cannot spell and dove’s a bit of a control freak. the book also does not look like the halliwell BoS bc dove really tries to make the text as legible as possible so dency can read it when she’s not around. their book definitely looks like a bujo.) but that’s not the point the point is dency like helps warren & sheridan build their own book of shadows they were vaguely aware of the concept as the lead singer friend has a bos that she made in like a moleskine notebook however these guys tend to just keep all the information they need in their notes app. but yeah i think these guys would also just really love having someone to Talk To about magic especially someone who they can just like Ask Questions without having to dodge any language or make things seem less specific i do think they also know dency’s probably more powerful that them maybe not by raw power but she’s definitely a more skilled witch than them And Yet In Spite Of That they’re still two years older that her and do sorta shift into big brother mode (a setting they didn’t even know they had!) whenever it seems like dency’s gonna do something really dangerous like these guys were born in 2000 and dency’s in 2002 and it’s really barely a split but like still!! watch out!!!! which dency finds hilarious and tbh they find pretty funny too bc they’re not like great role models (well, sheridan isn’t, warren is studying to be a teacher for like elementary school (or he’s studying hotel management bc i think that’s be funny) so warren does seem more professional/responsible he has less tattoos than is brother but that’s definitely a con bc he is just a stupid and reckless as his twin) but yeah they like really try to fill their Responsible Shoes and be Big Brothers to dency. and then i guess since i’ve brought up teaching here i will answer your final part about dency and teaching i think the halliwells really run magic school i have said in a post many moons back lemme see if i can find it yeah no i can’t okay so i think in ye olden days the elders decided that they need to make magical schools to bring in young witches and train them in powers of good so like every elder at the time picked a location like a source of power and made their own school and the majority of them are named after their founders however i think the elder who made magic school was the captain holt of the elders which is why magic school is entirely beige and called “magic school”. i think he didn’t believe in naming the schools after the elders bc the point is not to glorify the elders to point is to uphold and train good magic. anyways that mentality faded i do think gideon ran magic school for a good chunk of time but did not exceed the amount of time the founder ran it so it was never like His magic school but i think once the charmed ones came along they really started making changes and making it practical something gideon did not do bc he’s an idiot (i’ll tell you what i will link the funniest ask i’ve ever received) and i think you know paige starts recruiting witches especially those without connection to magic to come and learn at magic school and since the charmed ones frequent it so much i do think a lot of witches who might have gone somewhere else or to a more local magic school do try to get into magic school and i think in the magical community is does end up getting dubbed like halliwell academy or even charm school where like almost no one calls in magic school anymore and if they were to get school hoodies it would say like halliwell academy on it. i think piper finds it all embarrassing i think grams does not shut up about it. so yeah i think magic school really is a part of the warren line at this point i think i could definitely see gen2 take up the mantle out of everyone i think most likely to be a professor would be henry jr. i think wyatt would guest lecture i think peyton also has a high potential in regards to dency specifically i’ll tell you what i’d love to see is okay. demons warlocks darklighters they don’t play by the same rules as light magic like “forbidden love” all that fuck that everything’s forbidden what’s an outside relationship to them and we’ve seen in the show like with the manticore baby and even in s1 i’m like 90% sure that darklighter goal was just to knock up daisy the point i’m getting at is a i think there are a lot of kids born of dark magic who just have no clue who or what they are especially if they are raised away from their magical parent and people like paige can’t find them bc they don’t get whitelighters bc they’re not witches but i think having dency find them and like bring you know the children of dark magic to learn i think that’d be a really cool thing i think it’d be a major controversy bc a lot of families would be extremely hesitant like opening up their vast wealth of knowledge to y’know evil beings and yeah i think it’s be fuckin weird if you were born half-demon and find a vanquishing potion for yourself in your textbook like ouch! but i think it’d be really interesting to do. that being said i think i’d slate that for later in life for dency where i have her at now she’s an investigative journalist (also elise is her godmother fun fact) and i think i’d really want to give her a lot of growth and knowledge before she does that But i think it’s be really cool to do