#GOD CAMILLA AND PALAMEDES YOU ARE EVERYTHING TO ME

[kingfredericks]

codependent friendship save me. codependent friendship. save me codependent friendship

#THIS WAS INSANE LIKE #ALSO PRRYHAS COMMENT BEFORE BASICALLY SAYING SHE SAW THEM AS FAMILY #GOD CAMILLA AND PALAMEDES YOU ARE EVERYTHING TO ME #im serious this is everything i want in a friendship #mutually assured self destruction #god #wow #cinema! #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #campal #nona the ninth #tlt #trash.txt

[greatshell-rider]

my favorite parts of nona. under a read more cuz long and i do some yelling

[image id: Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life. It made her nearly afraid to die. “Nobody locks me up anywhere,” said Kiriona. /end id]

@ everyone calling gideon a bitch/jerk/”oh no she’s mean now”/”apparently reading her through her own/harrow’s eyes made her look better” YEAH NO SHIT SHE’S MEAN. EVERYTHING THAT IS HER SELF HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM HER. NOT EVEN HER BODY IS HER OWN. FUCK OFF LET HER BE ANGRY SHE HAS BEEN IN HELL FOR 3-4 MONTHS SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW LONG. SHUT UP ! you bitches and your romanticzied mental illnesses don’t know what depression does to a bitch gAH

she is the saddest girl in the whole entire world let her have a MOMENT (while i writhe on the ground in throes of agony over my girl)

[image id: She reached out—she touched the side of the Prince’s face — they both recoiled. Kiriona Gaia recovered first. “You always said I’d come back in a box, Aiglamene,” she said lightly. “They killed you,” said Aiglamene. “Crime of opportunity,” said the corpse prince. And: “Don’t tell Crux — I absolutely, positively cannot give him the fucking satisfaction.” Aiglamene shoved her square in the chest, with the palm of one gloved hand; Kiriona tottered a little and wheezed, “Don’t — that’s where my heart used to be,” but the old soldier’s gaze had already fallen upon Nona. Nona cringed back in Pyrrha’s arms, because the expression was as bad as every single time Camilla had caught her putting a mouthful of chewed-up food in the potted plant or elsewhere. She could read this very old, very furious soldier like a book: the woman was angry, and blamed her. Kiriona Gaia could read her too, because she insinuated herself between them, and said coolly — “It’s not her, Captain — it’s only her body.” Over the Prince’s shoulder, Aiglamene looked at Nona, long and suspiciously, then she sighed, and wheeled around, and said: “Get inside. Now. Complete the gate,” she told a few of the other robed people. /end id]

THEY KILLED YOU. THAT’S WHERE MY HEART USED TO BE. (ianthe’s slap (a full lyctor’s slap) didn’t make gideon even flinch but aiglamene’s shove makes her wheeze) aiglamene knowing who to blame. her FURY. gideon putting her body between aiglamene and nona. THEY BOTH RECOILED (aiglamene from her cold corpse skin, gideon unable to bear her touch when she didn’t react even to nona kissing her)

[image id: “But maybe we shouldn’t,” she said, holding the eyelids to that little slit — watching the onscreen scribbles flash urgently on the truck glass, watching the widening white crack, watching the river water pound itself back into the place where it wanted to be even if the River itself didn’t. “If we end here, it’ll be just like . . . a bad dream, won’t it? And maybe we’ll wake up somewhere else. I know we won’t,” she explained, “but we don’t have to know that . . . maybe if we all go, it’ll be quick.” Paul looked at her, with those dark grey-brown pupils widening, slightly. “Nona,” they said, “Noodle’s in the back.” The middle thoughts surged. The slit widened all the way. “Oh my God,” she said, in a panic. “I forgot about Noodle.” The windshield cracked all the way across the middle. Paul leant their full weight on the accelerator. Nona drove the truck home. /end id]

what you can’t do for your people, friends and family, you can do for your little beast. yeah muir gets it

[image id: “Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we?” Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe. “We had something very nearly perfect . . . the perfect friendship, the perfect love. I cannot imagine reaching the end of this life and having any regrets, so long as I had been allowed to experience being your adept.” [/end id]

burst into fucking tears at this part so it’s a good thing none of my roommates were home lmao. THEY DID IT RIGHT. the sheer care and utter devotion. no regrets, as long as he got to be her adept. WEEPING

#fun fact i will simply never stop thinking about no one being as sad as nona saw gideon the line fucking gutted me #the desolation of her grief. the emptiness of it. the inability to mourn everything that has been taken from her. just hollow #[beats john with a lead pipe] #and yeah that first paragraph from palamedes is what got me. not the return of 'go loud' that was cute but damn that first paragraph #'we did it right' they sure did. they really did /sobs #the respect and honor palamedes shows camilla for all that she does for him im just- WEEPS #a romance could fucking never and THAT is facts #locked tomb #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #lmao my opinion of kiriona has shifted dramatically #at first i was just horrified at what john had done to gideon's body and thought kiriona wasn't really gideon? just a puppet yknow #fucking HATED her in first house attire the white is a fucking insult. disgusting #was not sure how i felt about whatever the fuck she and ianthe has going on sldkfjsl #but saw her reaction to returning to ninth house and reuniting with aiglamene and was like. ah. okay there's a piece of her soul in harrow's #body but yeah no kiriona's gideon. this is just her new self damaged and hurt as it may be #and THEN i finish the book and hop on tumblr and find out people have been throwing shade at her now that her snarky comments suddenly aren' #aren't so fun anymore and im. WELL. well NOW i support evil fucked up angsty mean bitch gideon 10000% yall can go to hell #i hope she spits in harrow's face fuck you #sure let her autonomy and dignity and fucking body be stolen and degraded and used as a tool but gods forbid she be upset about it #:p #heaven forbid she SHOW her upset dear fucking gods that's intolerable #symptoms????? of mental illness??????? that isn't????? palatable and consumable to the audience?????? >:OOOOO OUTRAGE #gideon is the character of all time yall don't deserve to fuckin look at her #not for you

[chooseruin]

The thing making me Feral about Judith Deuteros today is like. Her absolutely unfortunate attempt to declare martial law at Canaan House was the only thing she had to contribute. She is the ranking Cohort officer in this situation (she thinks) and like that's IT. In practical terms she's the weakest player there and she knows this; never mind the illest anime ill girl in the whole Seventh House and the three simultaneous greatest necromancers of their generation and Abigail Pent (at whom she is in any case strenuously not looking), Isaac could punt her through a wall. Silas is good enough at his terrible job that an actual Lyctor had to punch him out and then orchestrate that situation with the keys just to make ABSOLUTELY certain no one would ever listen to him. Judith is a competent melee support necromancer when in an actual melee. Judith can hold her own against Camilla Hect at ceiling chess even with a high fever, but Camilla and Palamedes and Ianthe are also there. Judith's cavalier is the glory of the Second House and their ability to work together is like... it's fine. It's professional. It's good. This is what peak performance looks like. It's fine. They're fine. Everything's fine. The hardware on her uniform is the only thing that's supposed to matter that she has and no one else does, that's ALL she has that she can imagine leveraging to get them out of here, and the way that works when your dad is the Fleet Admiral is that they give you everything you ask for and then you spend the rest of your life scrambling to earn it and she's not even very good at that. She has the charisma of drywall (affectionate/despairing) and all she can do to assert authority is fall back on the Cohort playbook and holy fuckballs did no one else in this bar actually care about that even BEFORE people started dying and all she does is completely discredit the actually pretty reasonable option of pulling together and trying to get out of this. And then Camilla Hect happens in front of everyone. And then the situation is REALLY losing cabin pressure and it's glorious last stand o'clock and her glorious last stand turns ugly and squalid and doesn't even help and she doesn't even get to die for it. She's the perfect product of ten thousand years of God needing cultural infrastructure for his genocide run against the rest of the universe, and she doesn't even get to Charge of the Light Brigade her way out. She doesn't get to die senselessly and prove to everyone that the rules don't matter anymore, because no one else ever really believed they did. She's so goddamn doomed by the narrative that it won't even let her die. Corona won't let her die. Blood of Eden won't let her die. MERCYMORN THE FIRST takes time out of a very packed schedule specifically to not let her die, not even long enough to come back wrong, how much more wrong could she get. She's the last kid left in Hamelin and she's opposite day Jackie Yellowjackets and she's a minor war poet and a virgin who can't drive and a wholeass Indelicates song and the most exhausted twenty-two-year-old in the universe and THAT'S ALL BEFORE NT9. Who is being happened to like her.

#the locked tomb #tltposting #judith deuteros #embodiment of “of course god doesn't hate you. he doesn't care enough about you for that.” #scrungliest dirt-jar kitten. bad-time girl. sad wwi military homoerotic girlflop.

[sassy-cass-16]

man. the locked tomb is so funny and so full of memes and so beautiful and sometimes it just hits me that it's also so fucking sad.

gideon and harrow spent their entire childhoods hating each other for no reason. they never had to hate each other. harrow had gideon's blood on her hands when she opened the tomb and lost her entire family and it was all for no reason. just because gideon had no one to stick up for her. and when they were both orphans they couldn't even talk to each other about it. because they hated each other.

gideon fell so in love with harrow that she died for her and then harrow spent an entire year pretending she didn't exist just so she wouldn't lose her forever. gideon literally tells harrow's story for her and takes such reverent care of her body for the short time she's in it. gideon first saw her own father through harrow's eyes and called him Lord.

and john. and john is terrible. and he is so human that he becomes terrible. he breaks down weeping because no one else in the entire universe will ever understand his jokes again. he lost everything and he is the only one who even remembers the thing that was lost. he is so completely ordinary that you almost feel like you can't blame him for everything he's done but he is terrible. he let his friends die over and over and over again and he wants to wipe everything clean and start over and he is a man who has gone so completely insane from loneliness that he's circled back around to seeming horribly normal.

he greets his daughter with a dad joke and names her as best he can and gives her a title and a body with speed holes that help her go fast. and he's not malicious. and he's not good. you can't even really call him a villain--what the hell else was he supposed to do? in any of these circumstances? but he is trying his best and his best is simply not good enough. the true horror of god is that he is just human.

all the lyctors. all the lyctors are a tragedy in their own rights. augustine and mercymorn are just the two examples that we know the most about, and their own god/father/brother/lover/beloved/teacher killed them both.

(admittedly, mercymorn struck first. admittedly, john was defending himself and his entire empire. admittedly, it was ianthe's choice to save john in the river that killed augustine. less than an hour before that, augustine was apologizing for raising his voice and john told him to have a cigarette and do you see what i mean about it being hard to blame john for anything?)

and the whole concept of the fourth house in general. we don't talk about that enough. that is almost an entire planet's worth of child soldiers, from what little information we have. what does it say about ulysses and titania that they were the ones to found that house? isaac was thirteen. jeannemary was fourteen. they were expected to become full lyctors before isaac's voice had even dropped. there was no way they could make it off canaan house alive. these kids were doomed.

protesilaus ebdoma had a wife and kids. his wife's name is mia and she probably has no idea what actually happened to him. same with abigail's brother and nephew. corona and ianthe's parents must be losing their shit--they think their eldest daughter is dead and their younger one is now a fucking Saint with a gold skeleton arm.

that's not even getting into alecto. or nona. or camilla and palamedes and paul. this series is so fucking sad even without getting into the revelation that all the lyctors are slowly merging with their cavaliers.

#tlt #tlt spoilers #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #john gaius #gtn spoilers #htn spoilers #ntn spoilers #tug spoilers #the unwanted guest #god why does this series require so many tags

[field-s-of-flowers]

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

So this post by @thing-with-wings gave me fic inspo and I banged this out in one (1) hour! I might post this on ao3 tomorrow but I have to got to bed now :) Title is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream :)

When Palamedes talks about his old body, it takes everything Pyrrha has to keep herself from asking what he used to look like.

She’s always judged by appearances. It’s a particularly ironic fault of hers, now that she looks like someone she so pointedly isn’t. It’s even more ironic, now that she thinks about it, how Gideon was always the one to remind her of it. He was good at it, too. He knew that his faith, once placed, was blind and unwavering, so he made sure to place it in the right people.

And Gideon’s faith never came back to bite him in the ass, of course.

Palamedes is like that. He has so much faith. He says he’s a realist, but that boy’s optimism is incurable. Maybe it comes from growing up on the Nine Houses, but it’s incredible to Pyrrha how he believes, after everything, that it’ll all turn out. His faith isn’t in a person, like Gideon’s was. It’s in fate.

Why shouldn’t it be? He blew himself into pieces, most of which are apparently in a coffin on the First House, and he’s walking around on New Rho a year later. As far as Palamedes should be concerned, he’s invincible.

It’s all Camilla’s doing. The only reason he’s walking around on New Rho is because she allows him. She’s letting him live rent-free in her soul.

Does Palamedes know? Can he know the full extent of what that girl has done for him? Does he give her credit for carrying him through a universe of death and pain and uncertainty, or for the prerequisite of devotion that that comes with? Or does he thank fate, like he does for everything else?

Or maybe he thanks fate for giving him Cam. He loves her so much, there’s no way for him to ignore her entirely.

Lucky boy. Lucky girl. It’s nice to wholeheartedly believe in someone that wholeheartedly believes in you.

She knows he used to wear glasses. Nobody who didn’t wear glasses would incessantly push nothing up their nose, or reach for nothing to cover when it rained. She knows he was taller than Cam, because he instinctively ducks when going through doorways that Camilla’s body fits through. And he was a necromancer. He’s a necromancer, but he used to have the body of one.

Tall and skinny, gaunt and bespectacled, and maybe twenty. College-age.

God, Pyrrha thinks, he must’ve been such a dork in school.

It might be bad, but she can’t help but picture Palamedes as Camilla, only with those modifications. Her face is boyish, and it’s so easy to imagine her with glasses. In her mind, they’re teenagers, running in the halls of the Sixth, books in hand. Late to class.

Camilla’s beautiful. She’s got a face like Nigella had, only not quite as dark. John would say she looks Middle Eastern, and he’d laugh when someone asked the middle of the East of what House, Lord?

Palamedes can’t have had that same face, that face that looks as if it were cut from paper. But Pyrrha doesn’t trust herself to come up with something right, so she relies on Camilla’s face to be his face as well.

Camilla’s easy to rely on. She never goes halfway, and if she loves you she’ll always be in your corner. Her faith is more like Gideon’s. She’d do anything in the name of devotion, but she covers her bases while doing it. She makes sure that everything will work out.

Maybe that’s why she and Palamedes fit so well. He trusts her with everything he has, and she loves him the same way. She’s his lifeline, and he’s her touchstone. A planet and its moon.

Pyrrha’s so fucking jealous. She’d kill to have something like that, but it’s out of the question. She’s no good at loving, and she’s worse at trusting. She was the cavalier, so those should’ve been her specialty, but Gideon took care of both.

She can manage just fine on her own. It’s another fault of hers.

#soph’s posts #Soph’s fics #The locked tomb #The locked tomb fic #the locked tomb fanfic #Tlt fic #tlt fanfic #pyrrha dve #palamedes sextus #camilla hect #gideon the first #nona the ninth #nona the ninth fic #Nona the ninth fanfic #For context Pyrrha doesn’t know Cam and Pal are cousins #Thank you so much OP of that post for giving me the fic bug!

[carica-ficus]

“Harrow the Ninth”

18/02/2024

Reading progress: 350/507 (69%) Read through since last update: 137

It's been a few days since my last update. I've been reading a lot, just wanted to make one comprehensive post instead of many small ones. Things have been heating up, but nothing's been going on at the same time. I don't really mind. I love slow paced books that take their time to unfold, and I'm really enjoying Harrow. Through and through!

So! Notes on this part:

Ortus, you horny devil! 😲

Ok, but for real. Am I surprised? Maybe. Was it really unexpecting? No.

Oh, she did him good.

AHAHAHA I love how Mercy keeps saying Harrow is younger and younger.

Aw, so glad that Harrow was sent to bed after everything. God knows she needed it. (Literally.)

I'm not sure whether or not the bond between Harrow and Ianthe is growing into something a little more than platonic, but I do like how they're such a weird and awkward pair. I love how Harrow needed to stay with Ianthe and she "took care of her". I love how they slept on the same bed, miles apart. I love how Harrow feels uncomfortable with all of it, but she still craves it.

There's so so much to Harrow's character that I love, mostly because it is very validating of my own anxieties.

Not gonna lie, that relationship between Ianthe and Augustine smells fishy to me. Feels yucky.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA John made a "your mother joke"

And of course Harrow instantly felt herself become a little more of an atheist.

AYOO

AYOOOOOOO

THE EMPEROR AS WELL????????????

MERCY TOO????

Ah, yes, Camilla. Good that she finally decided to appear.

Awwww Palamedes hugging Harrow is such a cute scene. 🥺

I'm smelling a doomed timeline here. Sue me, I don't care.

Oh, Harrow. You desperate, embarrassing and cringe little girl. I love you with all my heart. 🖤

Love how the Resurrection Beasts look sorta like the angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Bikkie...?

As in BISCUIT?????????

I love John and I hate him with a burning passion.

HAHAHAHAHAH NOOO he asked Harrow is she was being safe. 💀💀💀💀💀 I'd die on the spot.

"Did I sin, Lord? Did I kill two of my fathers that day?"

I am not the same person I was two sentences ago.

If everything goes well, I should finish the book by the end of this week. I am looking forward to it, but I'm dreading it at the same time. I never want this book to end, but I also need to find out what happens.

In any case, see y'all in a few days. <3

#harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #locked tomb #reading #book #quote #citat

[harrowharkwife]

ill go with sex pal :P but if that's already done, gideon :)

HIIIIII!!!!!!! hi friend!!!!!

favorite thing about them: PALAMEDESSSSSS my boy palamedes. my little guy. man, okay, what do i love about him. i love the way he loves. i am fascinated by his clumsy and imperfect and well-meaning but inherently flawed attempts/approaches to things like agency and ethics and fairness and respect. i love that he pays attention to everything. i love his drive. i love his gambling streak, his tendency to play the odds. i love that he's a boy who writes love letters™. i love how open he is about his affections and his feelings. i love his penchant for using terms of endearment. his love for teaching. his willingness to get up on a soapbox for things he believes in, even if he winds up stumbling sidelong into insufferable preachy condescension half the time. i love that he tries. i love that he sometimes fucks up and hurts the people around him. i love his boldness. i love his sweetness. i love his kindness. that boy could make friends with a brick wall if you gave him enough time. i love that he canonically writes weird erotica to cope. i love his taste in women. i love his gender. i just love him

least favorite thing about them: i mean, i could go on forever. he's deeply annoying sometimes, and as much as it's part of his charm, it also makes me want to thwap him upside the head from time to time, like. boy. shut UP!!! but the real answer is honestly his position as sixth house scion. master warden is an unspeakably rancid title in vibes alone and i sincerely hope we dig into the backstory behind that a little more in AtN. i find it fascinating, and troubling, and tragic, and frustrating, all the ways in which he talks the talk re: cavaliers and agency and free will, but when the rubber meets the road, do his actions really back that up? arguably, not always. and the guilt and complicity and codependent toxicity there re: camilla, is like catnip to me. he loves her, he respects her, she's his best friend, he's in awe of her and her abilities and her strength. and yet, time and time again, he puts her through harrowing things and thanks her each time she shoulders his burdens. it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, it makes me so sad, it's a snake eating its own tail, it is a mobius strip of toxic power imbalance codependent enmeshment and it is FASCINATING to think about. if i keep going we'll be here all night, but just. i think fandom has a tendency to write him as The Good Person™ (him and Camilla both) and, like, i love him as much as the next girl, but he's a head of state in an empire, with all the implications that brings with it.

favorite line: "how god takes, and takes, and takes." "fool us twice, shame on god." "thank god for that mad, stubborn, lovely girl." "it's not you, it's me wearing you." (moira quirk's inflection on that line is literally fucking haunting, btw.) "do you know, i miss harrowhark terribly." "and, most personally, this is for dulcinea septimus." god. i just love him

brOTP: harrow, and also gideon.

OTP: im shy <3

nOTP: im struggling to think of a pal pairing that i Couldn't find compelling or at least interesting, if written the right way, in the right light. he's just my interesting little guy. he's a barbie and im making him scissor all the other barbies. who said that

random headcanon: glasses chain. earrings. palamedes can have she/her pronouns, every now and then, as a treat. contrary to the initial assumption of everyone he's ever met, he's actually Not autistic. (cam is; he's just got wicked bad adhd.) jewamedes is also fun

unpopular opinion: i mean i guess just what i said up top re: people sometimes acting like he's never done anything wrong in his life? i love him but i love him Because he is an interesting and deeply morally gray (ha) character.

song i associate with them: what you can't look up by walk the moon, tiny moves by bleachers, to someone from a warm climate by hozier, chateau lobby #4 in c for two virgins by father john misty, shiver shiver by walk the moon, star by mitski, hopedrunk everasking by caroline polachek, GAMBLER'S PRAYER BY CAROLINE POLACHEK my ultimate palamedes song

favorite picture of them: ive tattooed every single piece of palamedes art ive ever seen on the inside of my eyelids. except white palamedes fanart which is always such a jumpscare

[liesmyth]

the locked tomb holiday exchange rec list (part 1)

Some favourites from a first partial skim of works posted for @tlt-holiday-exchange. Find the entire collection HERE

art fills

alecto the first!. Alecto. And she is DONE

Creation. Art of John 1:20, the man who became god and the soul who became a body.

Deities. Alecto, Gideon and Harrow in a life-and-death cycle

Dios Apate. “artwork of jod and his duplicitous sluts (in varying states of sluttery 😳)” Exactly what the summary says but HOTTER.

Hotshot. Gideon raised in Blood of Eden & cousin Pash. Two kids born into a insurgency group ought to know how to shoot a gun, right?

no John what r u drawin of ur friends!!. john is a streamer on twitch, he draws shitty smut of his friends sometimes. there are cows.

Rake In The Lake. The Untitled Goose Game crossover this fandom needed, ft. We Suffer/Juno Zeta and Mercymorn

The Eightfold. Mercymorn/Cristabel, Mercymorn’s ascension to lyctorhood

fic fills

A sucker for suicide bombers. Camilla/Pyrrha/Palamedes, NtN era. Pyrrha finds herself at a different end in another bodysharing throuple. (Rated E)

bodies. Pyrrha folds her arms. “You don’t like it,” she says. “People thinking you’re a working girl.” She laughs, a dark sound. “It’s not that different from being a cav, at the end of the day.” Or: Camilla/Pyrrha in New Rho, rated E.

each note's own appointed ghost. Corona / Ianthe; Ianthe and Coronabeth try out necromancer-cavalier roleplay in bed. Everything you’d expect from the summary and more (wink wink)

Giggle. A day before the disaster a nun spends a day taking care of the children in the Ninth House's daycare. Including one troublesome toddler. (It’s baby Gideon Nav and she’s adorable)

leftovers. Corona POV on Camilla/Palamedes, GtN era. “Coronabeth Tridentarius observes, waits, and wants what she can't have.“ (ft. implied Corona/Ianthe)

Schroedinger's Pussy. Gideon/Harrow, GtN AU. Or: in which Harrow wouldn’t recognize a sex thing if it smacked her in the pussy. Yes, it’s the pussy spanking fic

Super Secret File DO NOT OPEN. Mercymorn and Augustine rob a graveyard, but it's a RPG that John is playing. This fic is high on seven different layers of #meta, and it’s hilarious. What this fandom deserves.

telling dreams apart. Cytherea as Dulcinea seduces Gideon in Canaan House. Rated E ft. the inherent dubcon of identity issues, Cytherea pushes boundaries and has lots of fun! Gideon less so.

THE CORRUPTION OF SILAS OCTAKISERON. Silas/Mercymorn, crack pairing played completely straight. This fic is a delight, Mercymorn is ON POINT, and it frankly changed me as a person.

The Sixth's Temporary Housing Shortage. Camilla/Palamedes, getting each other off while sharing the same body. Or: The real reason Camilla won't let Palamedes peddle mediocre erotica is because he writes it about her.

Vol. 805, No. 4. Juno Zeta / Abigail / Magnus. Academic rivarly! Conference hookups! Witty POV voice! A delightful read

we both go down together. Mercy/John/Augustine immediately post Resurrection. E-rated fic that is NOT afraid to ask: Does it count as consent if it's God? ft. sexy cult shit, horny vibes, unsettling narration, stunning prose. Author... call me

we kill the flame. Palamedes/Cytherea. An alternate take on the confrontation at the end of GtN, ft. hate sex and Palamedes with a beard

[recs part 2] [exchange wrap post]

#tlt fic #fic recs #long post #trust me these are Good #tlt holiday ex 2022 #the locked tomb #tlt

[nepenthean-sleep]

griddlehark fic recs

what's up i'm tumblr user nepenthean-sleep and the locked tomb books psychologically destroyed me so i read griddlehark fic to cope. here's a list of some of my favorite fics. tumblr usernames added if i could find them (sorry for the notification!). part 2 here.

Kiss Me, Idiot T - Antipode oneshot. post pool scene, canon-compliant, just generally cute (understatement).

do what you can with me, and do it quietly T - cobrakids / @funsizedshark oneshot. college AU. this one is BRAND NEW but its so good. the author has gideon and harrow's voices down 100%. i really hope it becomes a whole AU or a multi-chapter fic!

for the gleam of a jewel, or a smile T - cristabeloct / @gothicenjoyer long multi-chapter. third house murder mystery featuring all the heirs and cavs from canaan house! i will admit i have not yet finished this fic but everything about it so far is incredible. i love how fleshed out (heh, flesh magic joke) the third house feels in this fic. it reminds me a lot of the mysterious study of doctor sex in that it's very interesting to see the inner workings of another house.

for better, for worse T - mutterandmumble oneshot. college AU. oh my god this one is hilarious i was crying laughing. two absolutely insufferable lesbians argue in a wendy's drive-through at 2am. one of my favorite fics of all time.

The Long Defeat G - pipistrelle oneshot. harrow's letter #24 of 24 from htn. this one hurts, lmao! absolutely wonderful, great job.

at arm's length T - mutterandmumble oneshot. college AU. harrow has to call gideon to pick up a drunk pal from her apartment. this whole fic is very funny. i am a big fan of unnervingly out-of-character drunk palamedes.

i will learn to love the shears T - corpsesoldier / @corpsesoldier oneshot. set after the avulsion trial. gideon helps harrow cut her hair. very introspective and i think it made one of my friends cry.

you kissed me (you heathen) T - its_alenatic oneshot. the kiss from ntn from gideon's perspective! this fic made me want to throw my laptop out a window!

Safe Words T - zoicite short multi-chapter. set post-pool scene when gideon and harrow talk about random things. gideon tells a very funny story about camilla handcuffing harrow that reveals more about gideon's own psyche than she probably intended.

How It Happened T - YeeHawmura oneshot. pool scene with a htn twist. also made me want to throw my laptop out a window!

#gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #griddlehark #the locked tomb #fic recs #neph.txt #neph tltposting

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 35 through the end of Gideon the Ninth

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

I only found one of those two times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, yeah, that's the good stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth

[42eyeballs]

i think the thing with paul explicitly being "just paul" is a disidentification with their house, fairly standard as far as weve seen - we have ianthe the first (being called tridenrarius in private), harrow the first, crown him with many crowns ("[tridentarius is] not my name anymore") - but while others are still aligned with some faction (the first, boe), paul isnt. paul functionally couldve been The Sixth (in that pal was the sixth house and cam with the sixth) but chose not to, chose to be something new and something siding not with the houses or with boe.

which falls in line with refusing to be measured against cam and pal - im thing of the mustache rides and how you cant map pauls answer on a scale of how much of camilla or how much of palamedes it is given the answers we know (the ambiguity of their opinion of the price of mustache rides remains) - paul isnt palamedes, and paul isnt camilla. paul is both of them just as much as neither ("we are the love that is perfected by death" "they had a lot of rainy-day backup plans" (also the ability to distance oneself from the pain cam&pal went through while still being able to be their love makes me scuttle up walls)). paul knows both the houses and of the colonies and boe and isnt aligning themself with either. theres a recognition of the faults of the systems.

in the creation of paul, camilla erupts into white flames ("camilla burst into flames. she blazed like a white candle ") which directly references palamedes death ("the sickroom exploded into white fire... as palamedes sextus made everything burn") where immediately after we get "the mechanisms of this feeble shitty machine crumbling as Palamedes Sextus became a god-killing star." first of all, god-killling - hey we know that guy - but also the mechanisms of the machine. canaan house but more generally the first, the (system of the) houses even. in this essay-

#sorry! still insane! #paul my beloved <3 #tlt #the locked tomb

[arithmonym]

a reticent spectre

[read on AO3]

After Nona tumbled forward onto the icy dead breast of the Body — after the child’s game ended with the family dissolved — Paul faced the woman who was left behind. They said, “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”

“I knew this was happening months ago,” said Pyrrha, addressing her remark somewhere to their side. She didn’t know whether Paul’s words were an apology or an expression of their condolences, and frankly, she didn’t care. Neither would change a damned thing.

She avoided their gaze out of an exhausted sense of self-preservation. Pyrrha was no stranger to grief, but she was unwilling to confront the curious mixture of their eyes: the clear grey irises, the cool grey-brown pupils. Even now, she struggled to reconcile that the original shades belonged to Sextus and Hect, respectively, rather than the other way around.

Such was the hand she’d been dealt: Pyrrha only knew the Sixth as imperfect Lyctors. They only knew her as the former cavalier whom the Lyctoral well had chewed up and spat back out. Now, she didn’t know them at all. Just when she carved out an understanding of the world, it changed; but at least this was typical. Pyrrha was used to being left behind.

“You said that before,” Paul noted. “Months, plural?”

Pyrrha wouldn’t elaborate on the timeline if they weren’t smart enough to figure it out for themselves. Even as a newly-minted Lyctor — louder than God’s revolver and twice as shiny, so to speak — Paul could never know everything. Better they learned that now, before their ego got them in trouble.

She hadn’t realized that Camilla and Palamedes heard her mumbling, though, in the deep tunnel before the creation of Paul. She narrowed her eyes, more curious than upset. “How did you know that?”

Paul shrugged, and the line of their shoulders was all wrong. “They were keeping an eye on you still. Both of them could read lips.” Almost apologetically: “When the circle closed around them, they lost sight of you and Nona by the truck.”

Pyrrha laughed humorlessly. It was only the second year of the new myriad, but it didn’t feel presumptive to call this the understatement of the century.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Pyrrha. “Sextus and Hect were given the opportunity to kill themselves — to merge into one being in the most flagrant display of enmeshment I’ve ever seen — and they lost sight of everything else in the universe. No offense.”

Paul tilted their head, conceding the point. If Pyrrha thought this would dispel their flat demeanor — would pierce through their strangely-distant shell to reveal there were soft, chewy bits beneath — she would be disappointed. Luckily, Pyrrha had never been an optimist.

“No offense taken,” said Paul easily. “I mentioned their rainy-day back up plans. This was the best option, given their circumstances. I’ll only apologize that it was unpleasant to watch.”

The worst thing was, they sounded like they meant it.

“Again with the understatement,” said Pyrrha before she could stop herself. “It was gruesome. It was terrible. It was goddamned ghastly.”

Paul countered: “So is traditional childbirth.”

Pyrrha gestured to the mint green walls of the Anastasian, which were still dimly illuminated by the glowing beetles. “Some ninety-odd centuries ago, this was a nursery. I painted the walls. I helped deliver the baby. Gravid carry is out of fashion on the Sixth, but let me assure you: I didn’t smell Anastasia’s burning flesh when the first Reverend Daughter was born.”

Unconsciously, Paul’s hand drifted to their head, to the charred inch of hair that still remained. “That came earlier, didn’t it? When Anastasia and her cavalier attempted Grand Lysis?”

“Samael,” said Pyrrha distantly. “I called him Sam.” Then: “I wasn’t there. They only invited John as their witness.”

“But?” Paul prompted.

For the first time, they sounded expectant. Engaged. Their eyes bored into hers before Pyrrha even registered that she’d turned to look at them directly. A low coil of dread was rising in her stomach.

“There’s no way you could have known that,” she said.

Paul grimaced. “I see why she described this explanation as ‘complicated,’” they said, mostly to themselves. Then, louder: “If we consider that the River has two shores—”

They faltered. Entirely by accident, Paul had stumbled upon the crack in their own shell. They halted in their tracks, and as Pyrrha watched, their expression flooded with despair.

“Oh, God,” they breathed, looking perfectly wretched. “Dulcinea.”

They sank to the ground as if their legs could no longer support their weight. Paul’s hands rose to Camilla’s charred hair again, but this time, they tugged. Hard.

Paul was neither Camilla nor Palamedes, but Pyrrha, damn her, had a soft spot for them still. She sank to the floor beside them. She said: “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Those strange new eyes were bright with tears, but Paul’s gaze was as piercing as ever when they asked: “Pyrrha, did they ever tell you about Dulcie?”

Pyrrha shook her head, even though Paul’s tone indicated they already knew the answer. She’d allowed the Sixth to keep their secrets as they floored it towards self-destruction. Too many secrets, maybe.

Paul screwed their eyes shut. They drew their knees to their chest and hid their face, rocking ever so slightly. It was the most emblematic gesture of Camilla or Palamedes, singular, that she had seen since their fusion. Pyrrha almost wanted to look away, to give them their privacy — but if she wasn’t there for them now, who knew when they’d next open up.

“Right,” Paul said eventually. “To answer your question, I need to tell you about Dulcinea Septimus, the first woman that Camilla and Palamedes loved.”

Pyrrha listened silently as Paul laid themselves bare. They detailed the years of letters. The misguided marriage proposal. The rejection they felt at Canaan House when Dulcinea treated them like strangers.

Despite herself, she could see how it all culminated in Palamedes’s radical thanergeric fission, even as Paul shuddered and fell silent when they reached that part. The wound was still raw, even with the new composition of their soul, and she didn’t think that was solely Hect’s influence.

It didn’t surprise Pyrrha that the Sixth had fallen in single-minded love with the same woman. She would be a hypocrite, otherwise.

Even now, Pyrrha would struggle to characterize the relationship between Camilla and Palamedes. They were necromancer and cavalier, of course; but a love like theirs eclipsed the ordinary bounds of the term. Typical categorizations of ‘romantic’ and ‘platonic’ no longer applied.

In the end, she thought a Pre-Resurrection poet said it best: Love, to them, was like a religion. It was terrifying.

And then there was all the grief that Camilla and Palamedes shared. Pyrrha was privy to it, but she’d been blinded by the tragedy in front of her. She’d assumed that all of their mourning was for their other half, unaware of the other loss preceding it.

Pyrrha wrapped an arm around Paul’s shoulders. They shuddered but allowed the gesture. Their eyes were very far away.

“Dulcinea sounded like one hell of a woman,” said Pyrrha eventually. “I’m surprised they never mentioned her.”

Even as she spoke the last sentence, it rang false. It wasn’t that Pyrrha was naïve; she knew Camilla and Palamedes had lived a life before New Rho. But whenever they were together, the three of them skirted around its edges in furtive little stops and starts. Hell, a week ago, Pyrrha hadn’t known that Camilla had a sister.

Paul didn’t comment on her misstep. Their voice was low and dull when they said: “We failed her.”

Pyrrha didn’t think much of the pronoun. In the scant few hours that she’d known Paul, she’d known them to switch between I, we, and they near-interchangeably.

“There was nothing you could’ve done,” she said gently. “You said it yourself, Dulcinea was dead before Cytherea got to Canaan House.”

Paul shook their head. “No, Dve. You don’t understand. I failed Dulcinea, just by virtue of my existence. Palamedes met her when he was battling for the soul of Naberius Tern.”

This should’ve been impossible, but Pyrrha stayed silent. Neither Camilla nor Palamedes were liars, and Paul’s shoulders were shaking beneath her arm.

Their face was stony and emotionless, but again, their cheeks were wet with silent tears. Paul reached out for Pyrrha’s hands, taking one between their own.

“Dulcinea isn’t in the River anymore, and she won’t be ever again,” they whispered. “Palamedes promised to find her on the shore, but I am Palamedes now, and Camilla, too. I’m the sum of their souls — I’m the sum of their love — and I can submerge myself in the River but never cross. Merely by loving her, I added to her torments. Indelibly and irrevocably.”

What the hell could she say to a statement like that? Words wouldn’t suffice, not really; so Pyrrha made a terrible decision instead. She tilted up their chin with her free hand, allowing Paul to keep the other.

Paul’s eyes were wide, but they nodded, granting their permission. Pyrrha lightly touched her forehead to theirs, and they closed their eyes.

“Welcome to the horrors of love, kid,” said Pyrrha, not unkindly, and she kissed them on the mouth.

#the locked tomb #tlt #pyrrha dve #paul tlt #paulpyrrha #pyrpaul #campaldulcie #m speaks #i like to crosspost my shorter fics to tumblr for when ao3 goes down. enjoy!

[mercyisms]

Niche Nona Liveblogging: Day Five - Ch. 26

All right, baby. It’s time. It’s time to unhinge the whole mind. Rip those hinges right off. Let the brain flap in the wind. Et ceterea. Spoilers until the very end of Nona the Ninth. Previous and future liveblogs are here. Apologies for unedited typos and mis-transcriptions are right here, at your feet, take them. Some comments will be in vaguely chronological liveblogged spurts, but I think I’ll group certain other observations together under their coalescencing themes and my baby thoughts about them. Just kidding, this felt too long already, so we’ll put thematic observations in the next and final post?? This liveblog now goes until Chapter 26 or page 375 in the hardcover. Also. I’ve stopped climbing the walls. I’m on the ceiling now. I’m never coming down. 

“as though others were more deserving than Nona, the most deserving person on the planet” and she’s right! “But I don’t want to be redheaded. I do not think of myself as redheaded.” “She was probably quite a bit older than Pyrrha, with strongly marked features and an aristocratic, slightly hooked nose, and her face was marked with lines that showed even beneath a light layer of powder and make-up” + “She was starting to perk up, by We Suffer standards, which meant her eyes had narrowed a bit.” Sorry to be me, but We Suffer confirmed h*t. I knew it. I knew it. Hooked nose! I knew it. “meeting up with the Messenger, whom you call the Angel… we may actually survive it” fascinated by this but also as the Angel becomes a confirmed Blood of Eden / Merv wing agent, I am once again tapping the NGE mech asking if it’s ready to go… “The Angel is Blood of Eden.” (294) “Corona can’t lie to her.” (296) cf. Crown/Corona’s belief, as disclosed to Nona anyway, that she can. It is very clear which Tridentarii Camilla, anyway, thinks is ascendant. We’re also noting that “Violabeth” is such a name. (Also matriarchal lineage on the Third or…?) You know, I twigged, of course I twigged at the “very obviously dead person with fashion hair” – but I really did not piece together, until the reveal, that Ianthe was puppeting Babs’ dead body and self-styling him as a vessel for princedom. In-cred-i-ble. Everything happening here is off the charts and I would expect nothing less from the Tridentarii, evil kings and princes and girls that I love. Also unhinged and again I am obsessed that Nona mistakes Ianthe-in-Babs for Crown/Corona’s boyfriend and Palamedes is like “yeah, well. Honest mistake.” “You think we’re fighting you on Antioch.” Not our first mention of Antioch, but the first that there’s a different threat. I’m putting my chin in my hands, I’m twirling my hair, I’m asking Ianthe to tell me pretty please. “Get the fishhook out of the fish.” At which point I went, ah yes, code word, and immediately had to flip back.

“[Blood of Eden owns] things in common, we share responsibilities and resources in common. [Wake] could’ve moved those resources at will.” Good tie-in to As Yet Unsent and Judith being mystified over their slightly more lateral chain of command. “It even scared A--. He was all, Matter doesn’t play by these rules! You’re doing bone parthenogenesis! I told him his mum did bone parthenogenesis. A—told me he’d kill me one day.”  No commentary. “M—‘s nun of all people was convinced that [the soul] was the element I was missing, and that finding it… would bring us closer to God.” Sweeps Cristabel Oct crumbs into my hand and kisses them all goodnight. I cannot believe I was hoodwinked into being obsessed with a nun. “He never knew how to pick between me and P—” G1deooooon. Gideon, Gideon, Gideon. I’m gratified for each any every bit of characterization, which I think goes a long way in giving G1deon a slight degree more of agency post-HTN. “Absorption through the eyes is worse than the brain.” Cf. Augustine’s something to the effect of “That dolt. [Mercymorn] knows not to look at [RB7] directly.” Neither of which confirms whether Mercymorn actually looked at it or just knew to fake she looked at it. I’m sure she did just look at it. Even HTN is not that complex, but I remain stuck on that scene, huh? “Do you know, I miss Harrow terribly.” Nerds (bullying emoji). Nerds who are friends (teary emoji). “I have very often not had to shoot myself.” Once again, We Suffer is hot. ALSO, for that matter, so is Pash and her blue hair. Icon. Angry legend. We love them all. “Crack the sky, Troia cell.” Back in the days of 8tracks, I had a mildly successful Lin Beifong themed fanmix called break the sky, which was named after the Hush Sound song of the same name. These are just some of the fun, personal facts about me you get from sticking around. (All cops? Terrible. But I’m making allowances both Nepotism Chief Beifong and Necrotism Chief Pyrrha Dve. Unfortunately.) “[Crown] had her big beautiful hair down around her shoulders in a profusion of smoothed, rippling curls, and she was wearing a lovely pale yellow slip that left her golden shoulders and throat bare. The dress was slit all the up to the thigh and she wore soft black leather trousers beneath it…” Slit-skirt over trousers, Coronabeth is single-handedly bring back to 00’s. But also we can note the gender and Corona skewing more traditionally feminine again, now in the presence of Ianthe. Throughout, Ianthe makes several comments about Coronabeth’s hair, a fixation that seems in-line with Ianthe’s force-growing of Harrow’s hair / attempts to cast Harrow as more traditionally feminine than Harrow seems personally inclined. Now is, maybe, a good moment to also reflect on Harrow’s gender presentation versus Nona’s. Again, the hair. The hair. And Nona’s attachment to her long hair. (Which… given what John tells us later… but we’ll get to that!!!) “Teacher assumes [the Sixth] melted as result of a little domestic drama, which sets him off wallowing again.” Getting over a polycule murder-break-up is hard. “This is the last thing he needs. If he hears that yet another of his duplicitous sluts betrayed him.” I am kissing each of the duplicitous sluts on the head. I love them. I love them all. I love the broken polycule. “Cassiopeia the First left us instructions years ago… We left for a Lyctor.” At which point we were, as they say, hooting and hollering. I think it was a well-documented theory that Mercymorn’s account of Cassiopeia’s death did not feel complete and left room for doubt but yes, give me another hyper-competent mean lady. Give me the lawyer-librarian. I am rubbing my little hands together. I am desperate to learn her Homestuck typing quirk. What will be her punctuation of choice, I beg of you. Also Tamsyn, you cannot tell me the guy named Ulysses (WHERE did his soul come from?? Who IS he???) is not also returning. So like. Yum. Delicious. I want to collect two new duplicitous sluts in Alecto, pretty please. “But we’re closer to the goal than ever before.” When Ianthe DOES reveal her endgame, I am going to be absolutely wild. “Every single dead soldier’s fingers twitched.” Someone call Santa Claus from Chainsaw Man bc Ianthe’s about to crush them to the ground in a PVP puppeteering fight. “Oh, darling, you’re always everyone else’s girl.” !!!!! “It was like the scream was made of her insides” Again, filing the scream away for future purposes (338). I would very much like Nona to get into heavy metal. I think that would be nice. “and maybe [Judith’s father will] stop moaning about supply lines” again, simply attentive to who is doing what portions of the day to day management of the war efforts and general empire-running. “You challenged the Sixth for its keys” – At which point I screamed for the callback. Also, God. It was only “over a year ago”? Death comes at you fast. “… between Naberius and me, there are no more weaknesses. I took those away… and now he is perfect.” (342) Frankly, did not expect this book to be a big win for the Babsheads, but I’m really happy for them. Ianthe’s ideas of perfection and perfect lyctorhood are emergent here and relevant in contrast to Palamedes’, but we’ll touch on that later. “As poor old Augustine used to say, It’s impossible, and what’s more, it’s improbable.” (342) At which point my mind began to gurgle, but God we note the poor old Augustine mirrors Augustine’s own constant refrain of poor little Cyth. There’s an intriguing way in which Ianthe is mimicking Augustine here and through actually taking up smoking later (I wonder if we can do a certain gender thing here). But I admit my first thought was really wow, Saint of Patience completely bodied. She truly felt nothing for him, she thought he was small and old, and I cannot believe Augustine thought Ianthe would side with him over God. I know I tweet this like five times a year but truly every time I remember Augustine is canonically blonde, it really does feel like an injustice to me personally. ALSO that he’s like, what, canonically 40ish and not played by Jeremy Irons?? Ridiculous. CW // Suicide mention in the next section // “’I wouldn’t get hurt. I’d just die,’ said Crown, her bronzed throat working against the barrel. ‘You’re not all-powerful here. All you have are wards and puppets. I shoot, the bullet goes through my palate and into the brain, and then you’re the Crown Princess of Ida… like you never wanted.” (343) A fascinating threat of sovereignty and !!! “’I’m going to shoot myself and you’re going to watch,’ said Crown, with deep satisfaction. ‘Like when we were teens, but this time I’m really going to tie the rope… really going to drink the poison…’” Corona’s history of suicidal thoughts adds a riveting new dimension to her expectation/desire that Ianthe would eat her (“My heart’s own… my necromancer” !!). Mmmm Tridentarii and their psychodramas. I’m leaning forward in my side. // End CW “You’ve been training with someone who knew what they were doing.” Augustine or Gideon? Both? I cannot believe Palamedes had to pilot Naberius’ body and I would pay money for that Freaky Friday AU. “Personally? She’s the last thing I have left of a woman I tried to trick into loving me, and got played myself.” I cannot believe this is the off-screen romance. God. God! I am eating the ceiling tiles. Pyrrha/Wake Spy Vs Spy asshole edition. Pyrrha/Wake idk Mr. and Mrs. Smith only I think maybe in reverse? I haven’t seen that movie since I was a child. (ft. “Let’s not get too cute about it, though. My best friend and I punched her out an airlock. Apart from that, I was ready to commit.”)   Also the incredibly me note that “Well, you’ll probably start visiting clubs and trying to hit on the dancers, and going from relationship to relationship not really being able to commit” (357) that this in did make my soul long for a single, single Augustine/Pyrrha interaction. God. What that must have been. “Talk about being the mother’s daughter… She’s him in the eyes and brows… amazed Mercymorn didn’t see it. But she wasn’t looking for it, I guess.” (361) Mercy, you beautiful fool. Also very crucial Gideon food, truly.

We’re filing away all comments on Gideon, and Gideon’s body, and where we find her for the end but god “a big purple bloodless puncture wound, with white teeth peeking out coyly from within” (366). Explain the teeth! Please explain the teeth! Why does necromancy lead to teeth!!!! What is up with the stoma!!! “I’ve never much seen the allure of an evil cougar.” (368) Your loss, Sextus. Cytherea ): Gone but never forgotten ): ): ):

“Judith Deuteros for some reason” is a great laugh line. “Those are my speed holes. They help me go fast,” is an abomination.

Gideon. Last stretch will be here soon. I am still on the ceiling.

#nona the ninth #ntnspoilers #nona spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb #m: nona liveblogging

[iviarellereads]

Nona the Ninth, Chapter 29

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one!)

(First House icon) In which oh yeah, that WAS in the day's events preview, wasn't it?

Everyone makes to get into the big truck, and Nona thinks longingly of her home. Pyrrha sits Nona in the chair Cam no longer needs. The new person herds everyone, stopping and healing all the worn-down people. The Angel and Pash show up, with Noodle as well. Nona asks if they're coming with, and Pash says not to get her started. She goes where Aim goes, and Aim is going with the crew, to the Nine Houses. Aim says they are a liability, and the commander will get some breathing room once they're safe.

Nona said: “Who are you?” Then she explained, “Everyone asks me the same question, so—I feel like it’s my turn.” “You don’t get to ask,” said Pash roughly; which Nona thought was a wonderful and very cool answer she wished she had come up with herself. But the Angel leant down and looked at Nona. There was something settled in her face: a calmness that had not existed there before—a kind of immovable, fixed-concrete resolve. [...] She suddenly reached up and grasped the Angel’s hand, and the Angel grasped hers, and the Angel looked at her. “I’m the Messenger,” said the Angel simply. “We are the Message … the message has two parts left, and you are looking at one of those parts. The name for this part of the message was ‘Aim’ when the message was passed to us through my forebear Emma Sen.(1) The message is too simple for human beings like us to understand. What do you think the message is?”(2) Nona couldn’t guess. “I hope you hear it one day,” said Aim. She reached out—she ruffled Nona’s hair—she smiled. Then she said, “Noodle, let’s go,” and she stepped resolutely up the ramp and into the truck.

Pash makes a joke about having to shoot Nona now,(3) waits a beat, then says it really was only a joke, and goes up the ramp. Pyrrha picks Nona out of the chair and remarks that she's been very calm. Nona says there's not long left, and asks if they're going to find her. Pyrrha says yes, it might be time to wake her up.

Pyrrha brings her to a huge cockpit with massive wraparound windows. Kiriona is already there, strapped into a seat.

She did not speak to them, even when Pyrrha said, “Hey, kid.” She had not said much of anything since Camilla and Palamedes had become Camilla-and-Palamedes—seemed withdrawn and lost in thought, unwilling to look at anyone or anything.(4)

The new person enters, with We Suffer, and Crown supporting Judith. The new person takes the biggest seat at the front.

“Mind showing me how this thing starts?” they said to the commander. “Oh, dear God,”(5) said the commander. “For what I am about to do, I will go down as history’s greatest monster.”

Nevertheless, she leans down and gives instructions. Pyrrha asks to be allowed to drive instead.

“No chance,” said Palamedes-and-Camilla comfortably. And: “Commander … thank you. Leave everything to me.” “I do—I have,” said We Suffer. And— “Every single hope of Eden(6) now rests within this clapped-out vehicle.” “Same for the Nine Houses,” said Palamedes-and-Camilla. “You know what I want,” said We Suffer. She turned to address the rest of the driver’s cockpit. “To complete what she started. Troia, listen to me. Every so often there is invoked a Blood of Eden mission protocol—we call it Protocol One. It is used in times of either terrible joy or the worst possible outcomes. Protocol One means there are no more formal orders—if given in the field of battle, often it is understood as ‘Scatter. Retreat. Disunite,’ but it is not quite that. There is a different protocol that is simply used for retreat, protocol that means ‘Save yourselves.’ I received the order to save myself when I was young … and I saved myself, which is why you hear me now, starting this terrible truck, putting my life’s work in the hands of my enemies and of strangers I do not understand. But now I give you Protocol One … and Protocol One is ‘Live.’”(7)

Crown and Pyrrha salute WS, and the new person asks what mission protocol she'll give the local forces. WS replies, basically the standard, "Fight like hell and do not shoot any civilians." She starts wishing them luck in turn, Crown, Nona, even Pyrrha, but when she comes to the new person…

We Suffer paused. Camilla-and-Palamedes cocked their burnt head to one side. “Paul,” they suggested.(8) “Paul. Good luck, Paul,” said We Suffer. “Now … you have my coat, which you can keep, but my wallet is in the breast pocket, so hand it over.”

Paul obediently hands over the wallet, and WS leaves to give final orders to those not in the room. Pyrrha asks how long they'd been planning the conversion, and Paul says "They had a lot of rainy-day backup plans."

“Yeah, but—Paul?” “Just Paul,” said Paul. Crown suggested, “Paul … Hect?” “Just Paul,” said Paul. “U Lap,” said the corpse prince, from the back of the cabin.(9) “Thanks for your contribution,” said Paul. “Aulp,” said the corpse prince. “No,” said Paul.

There's a final burst of radio comm with WS, wishing luck and such, and then Paul starts up the truck. Nona feels so strange, insulated from the mechanical movement feelings by being in Pyrrha's lap, with her body feeling so numb. Pyrrha asks, what now, and Paul releases a lever allowing the truck to lurch forward. The cabin grows cold. An automated fan starts whirring to clear the condensation from everyone's breaths, and a heater melts it into water that pools, then starts to run up into the windshield.

Paul leant forward on the accelerator, and then—

=====

(1) The Messenger. I think I already alluded to AOL Instant Messenger in a previous chapter. This just confirms it. Emma Sen, MSN messenger. I can't tell if I think this was just an incredibly elaborate setup for a joke, or if I think Muir is going to pull something out of this reference in Alecto. Both, really, I suppose. (2) What do you think the message is? Why are there two parts? Who, or what, is the other? The message is too simple, but they didn't say the message, they said codewords that imply a message. I can't wait to see if this comes back, honestly. (3) The classic "you know too much" beat from spy movies. Is it really a meme or reference, in the modern senses, or just… universal language of storytelling, at this point? (4) Wondering what it would be like to have fused with Harrow so thoroughly. Wondering if there's still a chance they could. Wondering if it's better not to know the insides of Harrow's thoughts so intimately after all. Thoughts wandering (intentionally confusing usage) onward down through all the questions she still has about and for Harrow. I see you, Kiriona. (5) Very likely, a very different God from the one most of the Nine Houses characters have invoked. Though, maybe the same one as John. (6) Every hope of Eden. What does We Suffer hope for Eden? There's so much symbology in the choice of the name of the organization, after all. We just saw in John's recounting the way that the ancestors of the modern non-House civilization cast themselves out of Eden, out of the origin world, out of the safety of the garden of home. How much has the Blood of Eden mission changed in ten thousand years? How far have they warped? What do they even want anymore, besides… no, not besides, what do they want after elimination of the Nine Houses empire? Do they even know? Do they have the faintest idea? (7) I can't find a good specific reference for this, it's so vague as to be unsearchable, but it's a beautiful backup mission statement to have at the ready.

(8) This one word, this one line, is quite honestly what made me want to do this whole project. It's been percolating in my brain for the entire 10 months since I first read the book. Honestly I don't even think I have space for my entire yell about it, so the shortest version is "go look up some articles about Paul the Apostle, and yell with me." The next shortest version is that Paul was born Saul (which calls back to the longish ah sound that Muir said in the GtN bonus materials tied Palamedes and Camilla's names together as a matched pair) and was an enemy of Jesus, before he had a revelation, and converted. As many as fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are sometimes attributed to his writing, though only seven can be undoubtedly verified. Contrary to common belief, Paul wasn't exactly a name given on his conversion. It was fairly typical to have a Hebrew name and a Greco-Roman name at the time, and the names are used somewhat interchangeably in some contexts within gospel. Using "Paul" would put a lot of his converts more at ease than using "Saul" in the same era. At any rate, Paul was one of the biggest names in the early Church, big on conversion this guy. And I think the symbolism of all that, rolled up into this new unfaithful Lyctor who started faithful to John and now is faithful to their own ideal… it's just very interesting. Especially since Kiriona the actual son (daughter) of God has shown up just as the final stages of conversion were underway. (There may or may not be an even longer version of this essay but it's better done by someone with more professional biblical scholarship and possibly as a degree thesis.) (9) Sorry, Kiriona, but Paul is a lot less anagram-able than Sex Pal.

#the locked tomb #tlt #nona the ninth #ntn #nona the ninth spoilers #ntn spoilers #nona #paul (ntn) #pyrrha dve #we suffer #the angel (ntn) #our lady of the passion

[empty-pizza]

eve told me i should read the mr. sex story so now i'm doing that before nona the ninth

or, as it's technically called, The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex

I was born with four kids in my generation eligible to produce children with me. Palamedes had two.

oh it's one of those societies

yeah i understand why palamedes sent letters to a far off beauty, then

Attractive and competent? You got put in the Alexandrites. They got Cohort recommendations for out-of-system deployment. Competent? Epeids, and general referral. Just attractive? The Nireids, who always got offworld reserves. There’s a lot of waiting around in the reserves.

i bet the sixth house has a system for objectively judging a person's attractiveness like one of those insane youtube channels

tfw an authority figure invites two students to go to Dr. Sex's study

god

palamedes is such a fucking nerd

ok ngl this story was kind of boring

Camilla is one of the most fun characters in the story, but she works best when people bounce off of her, and when we're in another character's perspective such that we can appreciate her quiet, reserved nature, where everything she does say is worthwhile. She barely had much interaction in this story, and her voice didn't feel very distinct or interesting. Judith, a much less interesting character, got a lot more out of having a story about her because her voice is so distinct, but it kinda just feels like Camilla didn't need this.

that said, dr. sex, lmao

#pizza reads locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb

[nitewrighter]

Tag 9 people you want to get to know better

I was tagged by @yourlocalrandombisexual

Three Ships: 

1. Whatever the hell Cam + Pal/Paul have going on-- I need to stress that this isn't a romantic ship. Camilla carried Palamedes' soul inside her even as it corroded her and now they've both given themselves up to make a new person because neither could stand to lose the other. The notebook. The tape recorder. "Life is too short and love is too long." "Go loud."

2. Gency-- Girlboss and Malewife with hearty helpings of whump and fluff, as well as discussions about personal growth. I've written entirely too much fic about them not to include them. Also it's nice seeing all the little references to their shippy stuff with the Valentine's event going on :)

3. Fitzcrozier-- What if our ships were stranded in ice trying to find the northwest passage and we were slowly being picked off one by one by a polar bear monster with a semi-human face and we were all slowly dying of lead poisoning from tainted food and we initially couldn't stand each other but we're gradually gaining a profound respect and affection towards each other as it becomes increasingly clear we won't make it back home... and we're both men?

First Ever Ship: I'd say the first ship that really felt like ~my~ ship was Saya and Hagi from Blood+. That ship had everything: Vampires, bodyguard dynamics, devotion, asymmetrical character development over an absurdly long period of time, weird almost insect-like biological imperatives influencing said devotion, a death pact... It's honestly shocking to me that Blood+ didn't have that much of an impact because it was everything to me.

Last Song: Delta by C2C

Last Movie: Oh god it was this really underwhelming super macho drama/thriller thing directed by Russell Crowe--Poker Face. Not nearly as good as the TV show Poker Face. You know what I'm just going to say "Tampopo" instead because that one was way better.

Currently Reading: Oh gosh a whole bunch of stuff. "How to Invent Everything" by Ryan North, "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt, this steampunk short story anthology, "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do" by Bruce Lee....The worst part about working at a library is you get Book WIP syndrome and the only thing that really forces you to try and finish books in a timely manner is the waiting list.

Currently Watching: The Last of Us on HBO, The Lost Kitchen, cooking videos on youtube.

Currently consuming: Black tea with cream and sugar and toasted Irish brown bread with looooads of butter!

Currently craving: A Geisha's kiss Sushirrito and to ride a train for at least 4 hours, if not take a 5-day long train journey. I need to be on a train like Ishmael needs to be at sea or else we'll both start knocking people's hats off.

Tagging:

@parker-of-loxley, @obicoconobi, @stealingpotatoes, @words-to-accomplish-something, @grainypicofthemoon, @macko-99, @the-legion, @callmeshei, @little-miss-mash

#tag games #about me