#Harrow the Ninth: day 8

[ezramire]

I think some often-overlooked context for gideon's sacrifice at the end of GTN is that, if gideon survives, harrow asked her to return to drearburh.

of course, harrow's plan of I'll-hold-the-lyctor-off-you-and-cam-jump-into-the-sea is dogshit, not going to work etc. of course gideon is a perpetual Good Girl, a butch in shining armor--she's a saint. she's jesus christ. I don’t mean at all to undermine her selflessness, but in her panic i can't help but think the threat of the ninth house made the choice much simpler.

let's go back to the beginning of GTN to the amalgam of everybody's worst hometown:

gideon the ninth, chapter 1

gideon's entire life has been a series of escape attempts. in canaan house her relationship to harrow undergoes a metamorphosis, but behind her is eighteen years of trying--relentlessly--to run from a cold dark place that she is beholden to. (whenever beholden comes up in this series at least 8 alarms go off in my head and i drop whatever i'm holding).

gideon the ninth, chapter 4

I think aiglamene understands drearburh is inherently soul-killing in a way that harrow does not. harrow genuinely loves her house (which, to her, is the Tomb). gideon was never allowed to love the ninth house--it rejected her at every opportunity. harrow, however, threw herself into it wholesale. she had nothing else.

skip to the pool scene. harrow receives absolution and a emotionally charged tender forehead kiss (top 10 lesbian baptisms of all time). they are finally on the same side, out from under drearburh's shadow. they can trust each other. then harrow, with her seventeen years of pining, obsession, and isolation, asks gideon something truly fucking awful:

gideon the ninth, chapter 35

in harrow's mind, the locked tomb (specifically) has served as her reprieve. it is The Thing For Which She Suffers It All, and so it must be good. harrow sees herself as the thing that poisoned gideon, because she IS the ninth house, and she hates herself. I genuinely don't think harrow understands the depth of cruelty in this ask at all. in harrow's mind she is saving gideon and protecting The Body.

and as cytherea bears down on them, harrow reminds her:

gideon the ninth, chapter 37

if harrow sacrifices herself, gideon owes her AND gets abandoned. gideon has to go back and protect the tomb, back to a life she could not bear long before she had ever seen the sea and the sky, before kind-hearted house scions and princesses with swords. the chains would be slapped on. gideon would not get out twice. not even in a box.

gideon can die neatly and heroically, like a protagonist in a comic book—she can save harrow, save camilla, get vengeance for lost friends, carry out the last wish of jeanmarry and isaac, who she so badly let down—or she can live and return to drearburh.

gideon the ninth, chapter 37

gideon the ninth, chapter 37 (final line before the epilogue in harrow's POV).

of course she chooses the fence.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth spoilers #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #tlt meta #signed a lesbian from a small dark town full of old people who was very afraid of dying there #i love you gideon nav #i love you harrow #your deepest issues are so fundamentally at odds with each other and the conflict that creates #is so compelling like what the fuck #if u can believe it i actually exercised restraint not adding 8 more text screenshots #especially from harrow the ninth #maybe ill ctrl-f the word beholden and toss them into a compilation post so i can look at it and weep #another day

[the-rat-eatery]

Reasons I NEED Alecto the Ninth right now, as in right this moment or all my teeth might fall out:

1) Gideon and Harrow reunion, right now

2) I need more Pyrrah Dve, she lost EVERYONE in one day and she is my favorite and I love her so much and I need her to be happy

3) Alecto revenge, it will be glorious

4) PAUL

5) Ianthe saint of wet rats

6) I just need them all to be okay at the end

7) THE WEDDING??? TF IS THAT???

8) Can someone please kiss and/or kill John?

9) Can someone please hug Gideon, dear god that girl has not had a good time- ever really but like especially in the past few months

10) Pyrrah Dve

11) What’s up with The Angel? What’s the message??

12) I need an update on the gang, Honesty, specifically, I love that man

13) Noodle!

14) The cavalier to the saint of Duty

15) Please just let them have a moment of rest

16) I have a feeling I will cry a lot and I like torturing myself

17) G1deon’s best friend, aka the best woman in fiction

18) Harrow, my darling girl, please kiss your girlfriend

Tamsyn Muir taken my sanity hostage and is feeding it bone marrow soup

#the locked tomb #tlt #harrowhark nonagesimus #the locked tomb series #gideon nav #pyrrah dve #Paul #palamades sextus #camilla hect #tlt ianthe #ianthe naberius #ianthe tridentarius #harrowhark the ninth #harrow the ninth #kiriona gaia #Jod #john gaius #ooooooh j get it now #Kiriona has his last name #that makes sense #god Gideon you have been through so much love

[gracerings]

trying to assign a social media platform of choice to tlt characters:

1. gideon: twitter. she livetweets everything she does, retweets every new meme, gains a following by making terrible jokes that routinely go viral. she gets a lot of dms (some of them horny)

2. harrow: tumblr. she has an aesthetic blog, a mix of gloomy/goth and religious imagery, she forgets to hide her likes and you can see she liked a bunch of self-insert fanfiction marked ‘y/n x ninth cavalier’

3. nona: tiktok. she makes funny videos with every dog she meets, but her real clout comes from the videos where she eats erasers or chews on some wood, people keep wondering if it’s some kind of trick or she really does eat them (she does)

4. ianthe & corona: instagram. they have a joint account and they post almost exclusively selfies where they’re shown wearing the same outfit. they get a lot of sponsorship offers but most of the big ones try to convince corona to ditch ianthe and make a solo account. corona blocks them

5. ortus: facebook. he has 3 friends: his mum, his late dad’s account handled by his mum because she refuses to delete it, and matthias nonius. he posts exclusively long verbose extracts of his poems and gets exactly 3 likes (his mum, his late dad, nonius, but nonius is the only one who actually reads them)

6. jod: twitch. obviously. heartbreaking: guy who claims to hate the internet is always online. livestreams for 8 hours a day every day

7. palamedes: linkedln. very professional account, curated of course by cam

8. camilla: absolutely zero social media presence of her own

#i could maybe try and do the others but feel free to add lol #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #griddlehark #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #ianthe tridentarius #tlt #coronabeth tridentarius #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #nona the ninth spoilers

[grigori77]

Once again, to celebrate this awesome day, I thought I'd give another shout-out to some more of those wonderful ladies that I alove and admire, both those who hve inspired me for a while now, and those that I just recently discovered ...

IMAN VELLANI. Oh my sweet girl! :3 Exploding onto the scene thanks to the recent acclaimed hit/fan favourite that was the Disney/Marvel Ms. Marvel streaming show, the most adorable geek girl in ALL THE WORLD really got a major, much deserved profile boost (regardless of the problems) thanks to her co-starring return to the role of super-popular young Marvel superhero Kamala Khan in The Marvels. She's a genuine absolute SWEETHEART and she deserves all the success that's surely coming to her.

GIDEON NAV & HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS. Yup, I have FINALLY gotten round to reading Tamsyn Muir's ridiculously popular sci-fi fntasy novel series The Locked Tomb! It's still early days, I'm only on Gideon the Ninth, but I am ALREADY falling head over heels in love with the story's central duo, the reluctant warrior Gideon, a snarky oversized golden retriever of a woman, and her "hated" charge, Harrow, the scheming, overly-ambitious scion to an ancient clan of intergalactic necromancers, who's a metaphorical vicious little soaked ferret. I love them, they're so adorably dysfunctional ...

AWKWAFINA. For me, one of the funniest people around, this musician, comedian and actress deserves every ounce of success she's earned for herself. I mostly know her for her acting, having been a fan ever since she was in Ocean's 8, since showing up in a raft of great roles in the likes of Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, Raya & the Last Dragon, Crazy Rich Asians and Swan Song, although she's REALLY hitting her stride now, showing up in REALLY BIG stuff like Renfield, Quiz L\ady and, now, the incoming (and long-awaited) Kung Fu Panda 4.

TATIANA SUAREZ. Perhaps the most incredible sportswoman I have come across in a good long while, this one is a TRUE INSPIRATION REVELATION. A strong up-and-coming contender for UFC World Champion, she's been through SO MUCH in her life to get where she is now, having had her teenage dreams of being an Olympic Gold Medal wrestler dashed after an accident during training led to the discovery of a burgeoning case of thyroid cancer. Fighting off the condition, she then fought her way back after embracing judo and then mixed martial arts, before AGAIN suffering a debilitating neck injury which NEARLY ended her sporting career again, forcing her to take another long-term hiatus to get back into fighting shape ... just as COVID hit. Now she's back again, fighting fit and better than ever, hungry for that next chance and looking like she's definitely gonna get it this time ...

SINEAD O'CONNOR. The last 13 months have been really tough, we've had to say goodbye to some truly wonderful people, but one in particular REALLY HURT. The music industry lost a true GEM with the passing of this genuine GODDESS, the Irish singer-songwriter best known for her INSANELY popular cover of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, although those in the know recognise that she was ONE HELL of a force nature in her own right, courting controversy throughout her career for her outspoken religious and political views. She NEVER backed down on what she believed, and earned my undying respect and admiration for it.

FLORENCE PUGH. A completely amazing young actress who's had a trily ASTOUNDING rise to fame in recent years, I've be a fan of Flo's ever since she broke out in a MASSIVE WAY in the twisted psychological drama Lady Macbeth. She's blown us all away since, lighting up the screen in the likes of midsommar, Don't Worry Darling, Oppenheimer and, now, Dune, Part Two, but now, for me she will ALWAYS be Yelena Belova, the true successor to the MCU's Black Widow mantle.

MIZU. One of my favourite female characters of the past year (although I'm sure she would balk at actually bringing up her gender), the titular lead protagonist of Netflix' wild runaway success new animated series Blue Eye Samurai is a genuinely fascinating and intoxivating character, who prompts profound debate about gender roles and personal identity while kicking arse in SPECTACULAR FASHION indeed in feudal Japan.

TEYONAH PARRIS. Definitely one of THE MOST AMAZING African American actresses coming up right now, this young lady is definitely earning her breakout star status. Having come up through sterling turns in the likes of Dear White People, Chi-Raq, If Beale Street Could Talk and Candyman, before finally making good on all that promise with high profile lead turns in THey Cloned Tyrone and her ongoing role as MCU superhero MOnica Rambeau/Photon in Wandavision and The Marvels.

BILLIE EILISH. What do I REALLY need to say about one of the most popular and astoundingly unique musical artists of the moment? Ever since her breakthrough at just THIRTEEN YEARS OLD with her wildly successful first single, Ocean Eyes, which became a massive runaway smash on Youtube, this incredibly talented young singer songwriter has consistently impressed with ever release, entirely deserving her immense success with an amazing debut EP and two subsequently BRILLIANT albums. She keeps going from strength to strength, and at just 22 years old is only just BEGINNING what's sure to be a MONSTER of a career ...

KITTY O'NEIL. A true legend in cinema, even though most of us have NEVER actually seen her face, this little lady was one of the GREATEST stuntwomen and racers of all time, and a MASSIVE inspiration throughout her life as well. Despite going deaf due to illness during childhood, Kitty still went on to become a record-breaking racing driver and professional stunt performer, probably best known for having doubled Linda Cart in Wonder Woman and Lyndsey Wagner in The Bionic Woman. It's a genuine mystery why Hollywood hasn't made a biopic about her yet ...

HOLGA KILGORE. Probably my ABSOLUTE favourite fictional female protagonist of 2023, the badass barbarian lady from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a pure, unapologetic JOY, thanks in no small part to a wonderfully game turn from Michelle Rodriguez. Holga's just an absolute sweetheart, fully capable of decimating a whole room full of big, dangerous men with her bare hands without ever losing her gentle kindness, simple, honest innocence and unswerving loyalty. TRULY the MVP warrior tank any adventuring party wants in their corner ...

SIOUXSIE SIOUX. Truly one of alternative rock's true, all time GOATs, the lead singer of one of goth's greatest and most important bands, Siouxsie & the Banshees, is a singular master of haunting, ethereal vocals and a genuine style ICON who lent her look and manner to a whole GENERATION of scary young women ...

SABINE WREN & SHIN HATI. While my favourite Star Wars offering of 2023, the opening season of the Ahsoka series, was, all round, just SO GREAT for me, there was one particular element that just stuck with me above ANYTHING ELSE - the season-long rivalry between Ahsoka's troubled Mndalorian apprentice Sabine and Dark Jedi student Shin. They raged, continuously tried to kill each other and endlessly traded smouldering looks of hate that bordered on OBSESSION ... all while genuinely SIMMERING with barely restrained sexual tension. They made the whole fandom FERAL, myself includced. #wolfwren indeed ...

BRODY DALLE. And last, but BY NO MEANS LEAST, a little more personal self-indulgience ith one of my greatest rock-fan super crushes, namely the awesome Aussie lead singer/guitarist of supercool punk bands the Distillers and Spinnerette. Still rocking her iconic status to this day, she remains a genuine inspiration ...

#international women's day #iman vellani #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon x harrow #griddlehark #awkwafina #tatiana suarez #sinead o'connor #florence pugh #mizu #mizu blue eye samurai #teyonah parris #billie eilish #kitty o'neil #holga kilgore #siouxsie sioux #sabine wren #shin hati #sabine x shin #wolfwren #brody dalle

[the-grey-hunt]

Nona the Ninth chapter icons

it's time. i have my paperback, and i have the will, and this post will contain very many spoilers if you have not yet read Nona the Ninth. As usual my chapter notes contain what I think is relevant and/or the cause of the choice in icon

(note: the John chapters do not have icons. therefore they will be skipped, but their presence is noted).

gideon - harrow

(john)

DAY ONE

1- The locked tomb icon. General introductions are made. I assume the locked tomb stands for us meeting Nona.

2 - still locked tomb icon. General Nona backstory. It is implied that Nona doesn't have much longer.

3 - A tree with a single apple on a branch. Potentially an apple-of-Eden icon, especially as this is the chapter where school (knowledge) is introduced. The Angel and Noodle are also introduced.

4 - Seventh house skull. This plagues me as much as the fourth house skull in Harrow the Ninth's chapters. Why the seventh house? "For beauty as it blossoms and dies". This chapter features the Angel being worried, and Hot Sauce watching.

5 - Ninth house skull. Palamedes and Nona practice necromancy and talk about the blue light.

6 - Sixth house skull. Camilla tells a story, which includes how the Sixth House escaped.

(john)

DAY TWO

7 - Second house skull. Pyrrha bribes someone for Site C.

8 - Third house skull. Nona pretends to make a radio call to Crown.

(john)

9 - Sixth house skull. Flashback to the last time Camilla took Nona swimming.

10 - Slashed Second house skull. Pyrrha gets caught in a riot. But why slashed? In Harrow the slashed skulls represented false memories/Harrow's bubbles, but what's false or not happening or in the River about the Second here?

(john)

DAY THREE

11 - Fifth house skull. They discuss what's sexy. Blood of Eden storms the apartment. (again, the skulls of house members not present in this book plagues me. Traditions and debts to the dead. does pyrrha's opinion of "landmine people" being sexy count as a debt to dead Wake, enough to invoke the Fifth's skull? Is it something to do with Augustine?)

12 - Apple tree again. The meeting with We Suffer.

13 - Third house skull. Crown/Corona takes them to see Judith Deuteros.

14 - Locked tomb icon. Crown claims to know "what" Nona is.

15 - Seventh house skull. They hear about the broadcast. Nona tells Hot Sauce that she's dying.

(john)

16 - Icon of a tower with a pointed roof and shallow projecting windows, and a base with three arches. Presumably, meant to indicate the Tower in the river. The shadows are drawn as if to indicate there is space inside the arches where they're being cast across a floor.

The broadcast happens. Ianthe refers to herself and Kiriona as the Tower Princes.

(john)

DAY FOUR

17 - Icon of a plant with a few shallow side leaves and one large front-facing round leaf at the top with a pointed tip. The Angel has the kids at school make emergency shelter plans. Nona draws an animal.

18 - Eighth house skull. Palamedes asks the Angel if she has a House implant. The Angel considers this a fuckup and tries to have him and Nona killed. Hot Sauce shoots Nona for being a zombie (okay, I can kind of see the "salvation no matter the cost" in this).

(john)

19 - Opened tomb icon (broken chains, unshaded/white interior). Nona has a tantrum.

(john)

DAY FIVE

20 - First house skull. Corona reunites with Ianthe.

21 - Slashed Third house skull. Corona has a secret wire and is maybe betraying Ianthe to Blood of Eden with it.

(john)

22 - Slashed Ninth house skull. Nona is disguised as Harrow.

23 - Sixth house skull. Palamedes fights Ianthe for Naberius's body and wins.

24 - Gideon's skull icon (crossed-out IX, sunglasses, open jaw). Kiriona is found and starts participating.

25 - Slashed Gideon skull. Kiriona "brags" about what John has done to her and makes some demands.

26 - Fourth house skull. (Fidelity? Kids?) Nona talks to Honesty and Hot Sauce about the Convoy. Hot Sauce permits her to remain in the gang.

27 - Second house skull. Pyrrha reminisces about Wake to Pash. Number Seven sends in the heralds.

(john)

28 - Slashed Sixth house skull. Paul.

29 - First house skull. They prepare to return to the Houses. We Suffer issues them Protocol One.

(john)

30 - The Tower. Nona drives through the River.

31 - Ninth house skull. Back on the Ninth House. The devils are here too.

32 - Opened Tomb. Nona returns to her body.

Epilogue - First house skull. Alecto seeks out John.

you know what i've noticed? the john chapters only occur when Nona is asleep, unconscious, or similarly incapacitated.

#the locked tomb #gtn #nona spoilers #nona #nona the ninth

[artbyblastweave]

Gideon the Ninth Liveread, Chapter 11

We are now on Day three at Canaan house. This work does interesting things with time. Sometimes you get a chapter like chapter 6 that’s basically the equivalent of a training montage taking place over months; sometimes you get a three or four chapter run covering like an hour; here you get a chapter that officially begins to stretch out and volumize the total amount of time that the cast have canonically spent at Canaan house without much happening. I’m harping on this because of my ongoing conspiracy theory that this was a book written to maximize opportunities for fandom engagement; around the ring distribution scene in chapter 8, when I realized that this was like a very weird boarding school plot, I developed the theory that Muir was going to do some time jumps, leaving broad holes in the timeline where canon-adjacent stuff can be crammed in. This isn’t as drastic as what I was thinking of, but it fills a similar role; the rest of this chapter shows that while Gideon was sequestering herself, the tertiary cast spent two days getting at least somewhat acquainted with each other. 

Also; as much as Gideon is ragging on Harrow for her chronic truancy (and I’ve read a couple of chapters ahead so I know her complaints are grounded) Gideon is, from the perspective of everyone else at Canaan house, exactly as opaque and inaccessible as Harrow.

“It was in this abandoned state....“ Okay, Gideon, as much as I ragged on Dulcinea for objectifying you in the last chapter, I assess your current state as more than slightly self-inflicted. Dulcinea wants you around. Harrow- the main functional constraint on your behavior, or at least the one you blame everything on- has no leverage here because she isn’t around. This whole dueling sequence indicates your ability to carve out a niche fairly easily. And really, you aren’t adequately questioning the idea that sticking like glue to Harrow’s charade is the only way out of your situation on the ninth. You could cheat! There are people around who might help you cheat! To the degree that you’re abandoned and without prospects, it’s because you’re hiding away! 

....As I write from my lightless bedroom. Hmm.

Okay, enter Coronabeth. Alright. Listen. Somebody must have at least floated the idea of a Canaan-house dating sim, right? I can’t be the only one whose mind went here at this point, with the knuckle-kissing.

Jokes aside, I get the impression that Gideon is astoundingly attracted to Coronabeth and extremely susceptible to her charisma, but it’s unclear to me if she actually likes Coronabeth. The descriptor “an expression like an artillery shell mid-flight” indicates a level of discomfort; Gideon feels less in love and more ensnared, off-balance, following Coronabeth because she succumbed to Coronabeth. Coronabeth is in general treated by the narration of having a gravity that makes everyone defer to her like this.

I’ve decided that I like Magnus, at least in part because Gideon clearly does. This sequence is full of a lot of little signifiers that he’s actually a decent guy; he’s the only person in the room actively friendly to Gideon when she walks in, he’s fiercely but deftly protective of the fourthlings when Naberius is being a dick, he’s humble, he’s a wife-guy, he’s a fun-uncle, he cracks puns and immediately endears himself to Gideon by doing so. I think I called the Hammerlock thing; he’s like the empty, goofy, sanitized signifier of Empire, the fun aesthetic parts, the nobility and sportsmanship, but at a distance from any of the genocidal sausage that goes hand-in-hand with the real-life version. He’s very pointedly not good at being a cavalier- a teen with three months of training thrashes a grown man who self-identifies as the boy toy of the competent person in his dyad. He’s never seen real combat. My read is that he’s either going to die ineffectually (thus removing a voice of reason from play) or be secretly evil, but in the increasingly unlikely scenario that this turns out to be a takedown of his archetype, I am gonna say that he feels believably likable in the way such a person would need to be to have the social power associated with the gentleman adventurer role.

Also, to briefly revisit the AU logic from earlier- I’ve got this guy pegged as the “cool teacher.”

“Three Moves, Magnus!“ I love these little assholes. I love how these little pesterings are structured as intrusive asides rather than as part of the ebb and flow of the dialogue.

Alright, if Gideon’s implicit.... thing with Dulcinea is rooted in an aesthetic fascination and acts of service, Gideon’s impending.... thing with Coronabeth is rooted in the fact that Coronabeth is apparently aroused by Gideon’s massive capacity for violence. Nobody on the rock is capable of desiring Gideon for hinged reasons or being at all normal about it. 

Can’t tell if Magnus’s “Am I getting old? Should Abigail and I divorce?” is a good-natured face-recoupment bit, or if the Fifth actually does have a “divorce your spouse if they’re inadequately martially competent” norm. Or if it is a joke, but a joke contextualized by that norm. And where is Abigail, anyway?

Also: Interesting that Gideon clearly has some residual affection and respect for Aiglamene. Heart growing fonder, et al, et al.

Okay, the whole Babs sequence adheres like glue to a lot of. A lot of high school and sports movie tropes. Scrappy underdog on the back foot until she breaks protocol, and then being lauded for being the more practical combatant even if her well-bred opponent is more skilled within the rules as defined. Preps vs… Goth-nerds? Gerds? Spiced up, however, by whatever deranged under-the-hood dynamics the thirds have going on. Is Naberius, like, a sibling to the twins, a boyfriend, an unholy fusion...? Also interesting is that Coronabeth seems interested in defusing Naberius rather than providing solidarity to him; her approach to the aftermath of the fight is definitely based around keeping in both Babs and Gideon’s good graces. 

Also; Naberius is suspicious of Gideon. He knows enough about the Ninth’s MO that Gideon actually being good at Cavaliering is not usually how the ninth plays things. And he’s right- Ortus, martially incompetent Bone Donkey, should be there in Gideon’s place. This is another example of the dynamic present his introductory scene in chapter 9; he’s vastly more insightful and observant than the elitist prep snob archetype normally is, but he deploys that insightfulness basically purely in service of playing his archetype to the hilt by being a classist, self-absorbed dick. 

And we leave off on the reveal that Harrow saw everything, after three chapters of total non-presence. Dollars to donuts that she’s gonna be pissy about Gideon doing things rather than politely tucking herself away like a piece of unused equipment while Harrow was AWOL. This is, incidentally, close to what I was predicting would happen as a result of Harrow siloing herself off from Gideon.

I should probably say something about the second cav, Dyas (first name unremembered) whose job in the story is basically to provide the above-validation that Gideon is the more practical fighter. I strongly suspect, given how little I’ve seen her name come up, and the fact her uniform is a literal red jacket, that she isn’t long for the narrative. I’ve seen chatter about the 2nd house necro, though. I wonder what she’s up to.

And, to round out, This chapter features the second or third time that Nonius, ninth-house founder, is referred to as some particularly-badass badass, anomalous in comparison to his descendants. I’m curious to see why said particularly badass badass set up his house in the middle of nowhere....

#gideon the ninth liveread #gideon the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #naberius tern #coronabeth tridentarius #magnus quinn #the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb liveread #thoughts #meta #blastweave livereads

[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

#harrowhawk #harrowhark nonasigmus #john gauis #tlt #the locked tomb #cct polls #tumblr tournament #tumblr bracket #tumblr polls #polls #r2sb

[mayasaura]

re: the jod dreams, they happen everytime nona is asleep, right?

but obviously nona didn't only start sleeping at the start of the book, so what else were john and Harrow talking about? bubble time is weird as hell (evidenced by pal thinking it had only been a week when it actually been like 8 months) so it could well have been just a really weird week for Harrow...

or were they looping the conversation :0?

Bubble time is weird as hell, but I'm not sure Nona sleeping actually has any effect on John and Harrow's conversation. That was a red herring playing on our expectations from Harrow the Ninth.

I think Harrow's whole conversation with John happened before the book even began.

The verse chapters are mostly placed when Nona falls asleep, but break with that pattern just before the corpse heist, when we cut to John 9:22 between chapters 21 and 22. Nona wasn't asleep in that time; she was being costumed and cramming for her final exam in Evil Bone Witch 101.

I suspect the formatting, the verse chapters coinciding with Nona's sleep patterns, was intentionally implying a causational connection that wasn't really there. It was meant to play on our expectations from the Canaan House chapters of Harrow the Ninth, in order to maintain ambiguity as to Nona's identity. So long as the dream sequences with Harrow coincided with Nona being asleep, we had to consider that it might be Nona's soul John was addressing as 'Harrowhark', and that Nona might be Harrow. John 9:22 breaking from that pattern right before we meet Kiriona throws us a wink that Nona isn't Harrow right before decidedly confirming she isn't Gideon either.

So when are John and Harrow talking, relative to the main timeline? Well, to tell the truth I'm not entirely sure. But I am sure they're not in synch with the main plot.

Harrow summons the Tower in John 5:4, which is placed in Day Five, but when Kiriona is explaining how she got to New Rho, she says "You haven't been in the River lately, have you?" Then, later, when everyone freaks about seeing the Tower in the River, she says, "Told you so."

She's already seen it. The Tower was already there when she and Ianthe arrived through the River on Day Three, well before we see Harrow summon it in Day Five. It could have been there for days, weeks, or months.

Which means there's an undetermined amount of time missing from Harrow's timeline between her entering the Tower and when she wakes up in her own body after Gideon and Crux open the Tomb.

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #ntn spoilers #tlt meta

[aflyingcontradiction]

13 books

Tagged by @nikita-not-nikola to answer 13 questions, and then tag 13 people. Thank you very much!

1) The last book I read:

Jasper Fforde's The Constant Rabbit - it's a very lampshadey sort of satire, quite witty, but by far not the best Jasper Fforde book I've read (that honour would go to the unfortunately named Shades of Grey)

2) A book I recommend:

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone - I've not seen a lot of chatter about the Craft Sequence around these parts, even though clever fantasy settings with unique worldbuilding and an ensemble cast of diverse characters (many of them queer) seem to be tumblr's jam. So I'll take this opportunity to go "That one! That's a good one!"

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

In a literal "read it cover to cover sense", I genuinely don't remember the last time that happened. Did that all the time as a kid, but I read in smaller chunks these days. In a "this was extremely captivating" sense, though, Harrow the Ninth was pretty riveting!

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

Recently, a lot of them! I've been decluttering my bookshelf so almost everything that's on there is getting a re-read. One of the many that truly deserved it, though, is China Miéville's Railsea.

5) A book on my TBR:

I've got my TBR down to only about 15-ish books, of which "Infect your Friends and Loved Ones" has been on there longest, but it seems a bit hard to find so it'll probably stay on there for a while.

6) A book I’ve put down:

I don't tend to put down books lightly. I usually struggle through them, then end up giving them a bad review :P The last DNF I remember was Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. But that wasn't the book's fault, I was expecting a historical overview of pain used deliberately in spirituality and it was more about the philosophy/psychology of pain (and extremely densely written at that)

7) A book on my wish list:

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

8) A favorite book from childhood:

Alright, let's try to NOT go for the obvious here... The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (if you've seen the movie you really, really ought to read the book. The movie ends before all the most interesting plotlines in the book even START).

9) A book you would give to a friend:

I mean, depends on the friend, doesn't it? So, semi-random pick from my recent re-reads: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own

Oooh, I got this really neat book of German poetry for Christmas - Deutsche Gedichte - 1500 Gedichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (does what it says on the tin, really).

11) A nonfiction book you own:

How To Invent Everything by Ryan North

12) What are you currently reading:

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

13) What are you planning on reading next?

I let a random number generator decide which book on my tbr pile I read next so no idea.

Alright, let's get to the tagging (no pressure, of course!): @lovethatcoat, @toasthaste, @autogeneity, @ante--meridiem, @soryualeksi, @bakomglaset, @deliciousghosts-unofficial, @shabbytigers, @octopuscato, @titaniumelemental and whoever else feels like doing this

#ask meme

[fellamarsh]

Nine People You Want to Know Better!

Thanks for the tag @serotoninshift :3 And for your patience as I take ages to get to it lol

Last song: Siamese Twins by The Cure. Halloween's a good day for goth music!

Last movie: Redline. The story wasn't revolutionary but the animation was great and I really appreciated the commitment to being goofy and also how it referenced like a million other anime. Including and especially revolutionary girl utena. It was a really fun watch!

Currently watching: Since OFMD is over (I won't talk about how disappointing episode 8 was) the only thing I'm keeping up with right now is Jujutsu Kaisen. The last episode with Choso was fun and they were really trying to do something cool animation wise but I feel like we're getting close to the point in a lot of shonen anime where uh. Things kind of fall apart, storytelling wise. Gojo's never making it out of that KFC... but at least Megumi and Yuuji got to hang out a bit this season!!

Currently reading: Blue Period and Chainsaw Man (both manga) and Harrow the Ninth. Which uh, for those of you watching closely, yes. This is the second time I've read HtN in like three months. I really enjoyed The Locked Tomb series. I need Alecto the Ninth to come out. Now.

Currently craving: Not really actively craving anything rn but some miso soup would be nice.

Last thing you searched for writing purposes: "Optical illusion face paint". Explanation: Linmiru, the MC in Taker of the Third Path (which I'm working on for Nano) is really into trick magic (despite being a guy who can do actual magic) and I've been sort of like. Working backwards to figure out a couple sleights of hand/illusion tricks I want him to do for foreshadowing purposes? And I think I figured them out today! So that was nice. But also I can't believe it's nano already aaaahhh uuggghhhh blurrrggghh it's fine. It'll be fine.

Anyway!!! I pass this note in class very discreetly to @j-hawthorn @authortango @writeblrfantasy @afoolandathief @btranwrites @rowanwriting @stjohnstarling @deciphered-narrator and @b-a-pigeon (who I admittedly know pretty well but we are sitting next to each other in this fake classroom scenario I have conjured so. He gets a tag too)

#thanks again for the tag! it is nice to be included :) #obviously everyone feel free to answer at your own pace or not at all! #if i didnt tag you and you see this post and want to do it. do it!! and tag me so i see it!! #anyway i think im gonna go eat a oeanut butter sandwich and pass tf out now

[the---hermit]

2023 wrap up 1/2

As I did last year I am posting a wrap up of all the books I have read during the year. I have linked all the individual book reviews I have posted during the year (I have not posted the reviews of some books for various reasons, but I still included the titles). I have gradually made this post during the year, so I hope past me didn't forget any of the books I read in 2023. This is the first half of my wrap up with all the books I read from January to June 2023

The House At Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

100 Hugs by Chris Riddell

Monsters by Christopher Dell

The Sandman volume 7 by Neil Gaiman

The Sandaman volume 8 by Neil Gaiman

Cain's Jawbone by Torquemada

Il Segreto Del Bosco Vecchio by Dino Buzzati

Hilda and The Troll by Luke Pearson

Geronimo Stilton and The Kingdom Of Fantasy 1 , book 2, book 3 and 4

The Tower Of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe by Dougles Adams

La Scuola Di Pizze In Faccia Del Professor Calcare by Zerocalcare

Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Scheletri by Zerocalcare

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata

How We Read Now by Naomi S. Baron

Niente Di Nuovo Sul Fronte Di Rebibbia by Zerocalcare

Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Deadendia Broken Halo by Hamish Steele

Kafka Diario Di Un Disperso by E.F. Benson

La Lettura by Maurizio Vivarelli

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

The Hugasaurus by Rachel Bright

The Golden Bug by Edgar Allan Poe

The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Room In The Tower by

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

What Lies In The Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Through The Woods by Emily Carroll

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

The Lottery and other stories by Shirley Jackson

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Mary Shelly L'Eterno Sogno by Alessandro Di Virgilio and Manuela Santoni

The Hobbits Of Tolkien by David Day

The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Creation Of Mythology by Marcel Detienne

The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Fangs by Sarah Andersen

We Are The Champions by Tuono Pettinato and Dario Moccia

Dimentica Il Mio Nome by Zerocalcare

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker Chan

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

Ogni Maledetto Lunedì Su Due by Zerocalcare

The House In The Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

L'Elenco Telefonico Degli Accolli by Zerocalcare

Macerie Prime and Macerie Prime Sei Mesi Dopo by Zerocalcare

#2023 books #2023 wrap up #books #book recs #book reviews #book recommendations #bookblr #booklr #reading #mine #the---hermit

[priestessamy]

Who wants to see what happens when a former theology student reads the Locked Tomb books?

Obviously, major spoilers ahead for Nona the Ninth.

I'm not kidding. This is a long one. I won't be offended if you put this one aside and wait until you've go the time necessary.

All of the dream sections with John and Harrow begin with “John X:X”. A friend pointed out that the numbers create a message through a basic 1=A code: The Tower has Reactivated. Which is very cool and awesome. But I couldn't help thinking there had to be more. There's always more with this woman.

So I did what any sane person would do and I started comparing the listed titles with their corresponding verses in the Gospel of John. Like, the bible one.

See, back in the day I actually went to theology school. I was gonna be a pastor. I literally took a full semester class on the Gospel of John. If anyone is equipped to puzzle this out, it's me.

I wanna kick off with something important here. I'm about to start throwing out some absolutely wild shit here, and I don't know how much of it was fully intentional. Tamsyn Muir has put so much work into this series and I'm willing to give her full credit. But I'm not claiming any sort of full knowledge of authorial intent. This is analysis and theorizing. Some of this will be interesting, some of it will be relevant, but all of it is just me going buckwild on a book that deserves to be gone wildly buck on.

So here's the verses we're working with, including their related page numbers. Below that, I've included some notes on the significance of the verse and connections between that chapter and the gospel itself, at least as far as I can glean. There will definitely be stuff I've missed, stuff I've read too much into, stuff I've straight up read wrong. Feel free to add in anything in the replies and whatnot.

John 20:8 (pg. 13)

Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

The major connection here is obvious. The inciting incident for the series of books is Harrow opening the Tomb, seeing the Body, falling in love, all that.

Paralleling this, Gideon is getting to look in on the ships, and Mercy is reporting to John Gaius that everything is going sideways. The disciples are witnessing and reporting back.

It also has to be noted that the narration points out that John Gaius in the dream is mostly talking as if this were meditation, just to hear himself talk. And the gospel of John leads with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was god” and yadda yadda. Gospel John (we'll call him Author for sake of ease) was all about this association between God/Jesus and speech.

It should also be noted that the Locked Tomb doesn't make anything easy because John Gaius is equal parts analogous for Jesus and God (not to mention Adam). And yes, I know that theologically speaking, that tracks, but narratively it makes things very difficult to talk about. So sue me. It's complicated.

Finally, I'm compelled to go on a quick diatribe about how the gospel of John was the only book to skip the details of Jesus' birth and early life. The Author didn't care about that. He cared about the miracles, he was fucking horny for the miracles. Which makes sense, because we're about to hear all the miraculous things John Gaius did. Oh, and the horrors. Can't forget the horrors.

John 5:20 (pg. 73)

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.

This is the first time John Gaius performs a miracle, and it's only the beginning. Pretty straightforward.

A small touch here I like is John Gaius in the dream calling Harrow his Beloved.

As John gets more into his mania, the people around him start worrying whether he's eating. It's an issue shared with Harrow and Nona. And it's actually something the disciples ask Jesus at one point in John 4. Granted, that's mostly so that Jesus can go into a lecture about being fed by the Spirit. But still, it's worth noting.

John refers to Gideon as his “voice in the wilderness” which is a direct reference to John the Baptist. Do you see the problem here? There's so many fucking Johns to talk about. Epithets aren't just helpful,they're a necessity. Anyway, this connection makes sense, because it's speculated that John the Baptist was close to Jesus because they were cousins. Much the same way that John Gaius and Gideon grew up together, thick as thieves.

There's another interesting quirk here that I really like. At the end of this section, John's speech cuts off suddenly. That doesn't happen anywhere else in the dream segments as far as I can recall. Now obviously in context, it's because Nona's being woken up suddenly in a new and jarring way. But it does make for some fun connections where the Gospel of John cuts things off without warning. More on that later.

(I really tried to figure out if there was any significance to the power being cut off at 6:01 but I'm drawing a blank thus far. Alas.)

John 15:23 (pg. 98)

Whoever hates me hates my Father as well.

Fewer links to the actual verse itself this time around. The closest I can figure is that some of John Gaius' friends are pretty weirded out by what he can do at first, which...y'know, fair enough. And maybe he takes that a little personally.

John Gaius in the dream naming all the detritus he sees, it has a little bit of an Adam feel to it. Naming all the animals. It's small but it's there.

It takes three days for everyone to believe. Three, big number, biblically. This is also the first time we see a developing link between one of John Gaius' friends and Jesus' disciples. Augustine is kind of his Andrew. He was one of the first to join up, one of the most loyal, and he brought his brother into the fold (just as Augustine later brings in his hedge fund manager brother). Not all of the other characters are as strongly linked to the disciples, but there's some interesting bits and pieces.

Oh! This is also the first time John Gaius cries openly. And the famous “Jesus wept,” comes from the gospel of John.

With the raising of Ulysses and Titania, we get two more interesting links. First, we've got our Lazarus moment. Granted, it's much more halting and complicated than the way Jesus did it, but we've got dead bodies moving. But what I find much more important is the massive clue in the form of their names. In each of the dream segments, we don't actually get full names for the major players. It's always X―, including whoever Ulysses and Titania were before he revived them. Which means that all of John Gaius' crew had different names before their resurrections. And Jesus definitely liked bestowing people with new names. One of the biggest examples? Simon Peter, who Jesus declared to be Cephas, his rock. Simon Peter, Andrew's brother. The hedge fund manager, Augustine's brother. His cavalier, his rock.

John 5:18 (pg. 127)

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Again, this one isn't directly tied to its particular section. But to the narrative as a whole, it lines up better. In this section, John Gaius is starting to really perform some crazy shit, and streaming it out for people to see. Word is spreading, some are doubting, others are getting hyped, and eventually world leaders start getting aggressive.

This is the first time where John Gaius mentions the absurdity of his company that will come up on occasion. This is another case where there's a tenuous link between his crew and the disciples, who were composed of fishermen, a tax collector, a religious/political zealot, a wealthy man, a poor/homeless man, and possibly a sex worker (depending on whether you subscribe to that interpretation).

John 8:1 (pg. 188)

but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives

Here's the first time where things get really interesting. The end of John 7 and the beginning of John 8 are weird because they don't show up in every single early manuscript. There's been debate for centuries about whether they should even be in there. And I'm glad it's still in there, because it's where we get Jesus defending a sex worker and his important “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” banger. Jesus gets a lot of bangers in this gospel.

Pyrrha gets a fascinating moment here when she betrays the police. It marks her as an inverted Judas figure. Even by the time of Harrow the Ninth, she swears herself to John Gaius when everything goes down toward the end. Granted, some of that shifts through this book.

John 19:18 (pg. 219)

There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Sadly this particular verse doesn't yield much. They can't all be winners.

John Gaius in the dream gets mad over the nature of souls (for obvious reasons later revealed) and storms around the yard three times. Big number, etc.

Some of the world leaders lie about sending out twelve ships with a guiding beacon. This one's obvious and I think that's on purpose. It's this noble image, a heroic crew of twelve, and it's all a big sham. There is no salvation, and I think that's a big theme here. Things are going to get worse, and having faith in the Twelve and the One isn't going to get you to safety.

We get a mention of cows in this chapter, John gets told cows watch sunsets. As near as I can tell, this is sort of an inversion (or maybe a send-up) of the way the bible talks about sheep, lambs, goats, etc. Whichever way you look at it, people are livestock. And John using livestock to make a defensive barrier for himself? It just proves he's willing to make big sacrifices, and foreshadows the much bigger destruction he'll be causing later.

John 5:1 (pg. 270)

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

On first blush, this one doesn't look like much. However, chapter 5 of John actually is pretty relevant. This is the scene where Jesus heals several disabled people, which just gets him in trouble with the local leaders.

It's a small thing, but the barbecue scene here does have a real Last Supper vibe to it. Low-key party while facing down a major crisis.

Here we see another connection to the biblical disciples, but with a big change. In the gospel of John, the disciples are often blank pages, and many of them aren't even explicitly named. They question Jesus, but only in the same way you expect someone to say “who's there” in a knock-knock joke. They're the set-up so you can speak on a subject. They're the novice asking the monk about the secret of the universe. John Gaius' crew? No fucking way. They stand their ground, they shout, they question him and push him and prod him. They call him out. And John doesn't have all the answers. They're all imperfect, and they're all screwed.

Someone uses the “cow defense” against John Gaius and his people again. There's a pattern here developing of excuses.

John 3:20 (pg. 279)

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

This is the section when John Gaius finally decides to embrace the necromancer vibe. He embraces the darkness in order to try and save the world. Pretty clear reversal here of the dark hero, taking on the shadow for the sake of true good. Also worth noting this comes shortly after the most famous line there is, John 3:16. For god so loved the world that he gave his only son etc. John Gaius so loved the world that he...does a lot of really fucked up shit.

Yet another cow fact. They recognize one another. The cows, man. Think about the cows.

John 9:22 (pg. 318)

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

In this chapter, Jesus heals a blind man who vouches for him, even though the people in control are like “Hey that dude's no good”. John Gaius is also finding out that it's no longer just him and his little family that are in trouble. Anyone trying to join up with him is also put on a wanted list. Things are getting more dire and a lot of people want him dead.

Granted, John Gaius ain't doing himself any favors by killing a lot of people.

“Guys as careful as me don't have accidents.” This one's interesting because another facet of the gospel of John is that the Author really leaned into Jesus being a divine figure. Other books tried to paint him as being human like the rest of us. But the Author was like “oh, no thank you, this guy was capital-G-God and he did a lot of crazy stuff and you just gotta deal with it.” Everything is in control, everything is preordained, and god don't make mistakes. God does exactly what god's gonna do.

John 1:20 (pg. 395)

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

This one's a little complicated, because the line is actually coming from John the Baptist. Who was indeed not the messiah. But it does pair well with Mercymorn chewing John Gaius out. “John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than about meting out punishment.”

To top it all off, as John Gaius is putting his final Hail Mary (haha) into play, he says “cows exhibit mourning behavior for other cows.” He's parroting their words right back at them to excuse his behavior.

He's not the messiah. He's a necromancer.

John 5:4 (pg. 432)

[No text, Some manuscripts include here, wholly or in part: paralyzed—and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.]

As you can see here, this is maybe the most interesting part. And it makes sense being the final verse. This is another section where the text doesn't appear in all of the manuscripts. Depending on which version of the gospel you're reading, this doesn't exist. And we're reading a dream. We're reading a story that does and doesn't exist.

And what's happening here? Harrow is finally realizing that even if she loves God (even if that's only because of her religious devotion) she can't keep worshiping blindly anymore. She's broken and she needs healing. So she steps into the water in search of a cure for her disease. And just maybe, in Alecto the Ninth, she'll find what she's looking for.

#nona the ninth #the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #seriously im spoiling so much here #long post #very long post #bible stuff #nerd stuff #bible nerd stuff

[goldenhourhimbo]

things I’m happy about this week:

-my mil’s dogs go home today (we’ve had them for 8 days, literally never again)

-the gocleanco fall challenge starts today! perfect timing after having a extra animals in our house and to do a big deep clean before bebe

-evenings are finally cool and it’s feeling like fall 🍁

-almost done my reread of Harrow the Ninth so I can start Nona!

-I’ve started crocheting again, I want to finish the blanket I’ve been working on this winter

tell me your good things!

[iviarellereads]

A guide to The Locked Tomb coverage on this blog

First, I am keeping this space as spoiler-free as I can for anything past the point of the post I'm writing. I'd appreciate it if replies and notes stayed respectful of that or tag considerately.

Second, this might go without saying, but it seems improbable that any one person could catch every meme, every reference, and every nuance of The Locked Tomb series, even on a third or more run at it, even having been on the internet as long as the author has been and run adjacent to the same spaces. I foresee this being a potential problem given how some people have learned to interact on the internet.

So, while I plan to make reference to all the things I catch as I read, I'm going to miss some! Think of this as a collaborative exercise in the replies ("Ooh, I happen to know that the line [text] is in reference to a particular Vine that went viral at one point, it can be found in [link to compilation with timestamp]") rather than a competitive one ("pfft, how could you miss [reference], how dare you leave out [thing]") so that we can all come together and make this a positive space where we accept that we are all mere humans and should strive to be our kindest selves, rather than attempting to attain impossibly perfect recall for the decade old references.

Third, and hopefully last, there will be an inevitable gap after the end of Nona the Ninth, until Alecto the Ninth's release and for some time afterward. My plan is to get and read Alecto as quickly as possible, finish whichever book I'm covering at that point, then cut in to finish Alecto either all in a row or every-other-day depending on if folks are still interested in what I'm covering then. We'll have to wait and see! But I think that's better than cutting something else off mid-thought, no matter how excited I am to deep dive on Alecto.

So with all that said, let's all just be excellent to each other and try to have fun that's not at anybody else's expense. There aren't a lot of resources like the ones I've been working to build in my spoiler-free notes and I don't want to alienate anyone who's not here to cause trouble.

Index

Gideon the Ninth Index

The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex (Single post)

Harrow the Ninth Index

Nona the Ninth Index

Full-Spoiler Reread Thoughts

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

#blog housekeeping #tlt #the locked tomb

[audiodramatist]

9 people you would like to know better

tagged by @rabbitmotifs ages ago but i just found it in my email inbox thanks holly <3

1. 3 ships: wrightworth, hardshine, uhhh suzabel

2. first ever ship: i remember being sad that fantine didnt live and raise cosette with jean valjean. i think that counts.

3. last song: the dripping tap king gizzard & the lizard wizard. although i was just singing human touch by bruce springsteen if we wanna count that instead

4. last movie: genuinely don't remember. maybe happy death day? that can't be right that was ages ago. quite possibly a documentary about filipino veterans of wwii edited by my sound prof (it was called A Long March it's gonna be on PBS soon, highly recommend)

5. currently reading: technically still in the middle of harrow the ninth by tamsyn muir

6. currently watching: jujitsu kaisen (very slowly) (it started stressing me out so i abandoned it for a bit), idk i watched chicago med with my moms recently

7. currently consuming: this is probably abt food but i AM actually listening to podcasts. so. naddpod c1 relisten + d20 burrow's end

8. currently craving: A BAGEL THE FUCKING EINSTEINS ON CAMPUS IS CLOSED SUNDAY AND I KEEP FORGETTING

9. tagging @jade-harley-lesbian @dapper-nahrwhale @collectoroflovelythings @commsroom @butchmechanism (IDK WHY THAT ONE ISNT WORKING I'LL DM U I GUESS) @baloooga @vonlipvig @whats-a-terrarium @skeletaltoad

#tag games #suddenly realizing how much of my media consumption has just been youtube video essays #im gonna read a book over break thats my new goal

[empty-pizza]

some closing thoughts i never got a chance to post about harrow the ninth

I can't help but feel a bit whelmed by this book. I liked it, I would give it an 8/10 maybe, but I also feel almost like... I enjoyed the book more for the reading experience I got from my personal engagement with it, moreso than I did from what the book actually did.

The #1 thing that kept me clocked into the book was the mysteries. And it is not every day that I put that much into trying to catch all the details and figure out what was really happening. That engagement is a result of the book doing great setup and being very intentional about the hints it gave; I couldn't do that with most other books if I tried. And I think my engagement with the mysteries helped me stay interested even when the characters and plot weren't fully engaging.

...except that's the thing, the characters and plot should have been good enough that I didn't need to focus on the mysteries. The book was absolutely full of great characterization and interesting plot beats, but I'm not sure it had enough momentum as a whole, and I think that's clear most of all in how Harrow kind of just doesn't have a character arc.

She has interesting moments, my favorite being not just her soup plan, but the sheer desperation and exhaustion seen in her character at the moment. But that's more of a thing she goes through than a personal arc of change.

Instead of a character arc, Harrow's progression is more about uncovering the mystery of what exactly is going on in her head. That has two problems. The first is that where she ends up, the answer to what's going on in her head, is just that she's in the exact same place she was in at the end of book one. We already knew that she'd do anything to get Gideon back; this just slightly reframed the level of dedication. My expectations might be a factor here; I loved the mystery of the letters she left for herself and her changed memories so much that I was hoping the answer was something huge; not just wanting to get Gideon back but some larger thing to accomplish, secrets she couldn't let God and the Lyctors know. Instead it was just the one thing, and while it's an interesting one thing, I kinda hoped for more.

The second problem is that it didn't feel to me like anything Harrow did throughout the book affected the outcome. I personally wanted to see Harrow actively engage with the mystery of what happened to her memories, to figure out why her past self left her the letters. I guess that just wasn't what this story was meant to be. But I also didn't feel like Harrow's experiences without Gideon in her memories actively affected her outlook once she got them back. It didn't feel like she had any new perspective because of everything she went through. It really did just feel like a reset back to before she lost her memories.

I do wonder if my perspective on this will change on a reread; I know that worldbuilding details and secrets become way more apparent the second time, but maybe there's also an aspect to Harrow's character that I missed throughout this book. But right now, I feel like my opinion on the book has gone down somewhat since I finished it. It was a really fun book to read in the moment, but in retrospect not every mystery I was excited about gave me something to satisfy me.

This is something that I think book one was stronger in. Even though circumstances caused me to be whelmed by Gideon and Harrow's personal resolution in that book, I think it did a great job of showing their relationship gradually growing and changing to justify what the ending was. Book 2's resolution just feels like it's a culmination of book 1 without being a culmination of book 2.

Anyway I'll try to get back to Nona soon. Went through some life stuff in the last few days that took away my energy to read but I'm definitely excited for where that book will go.

#pizza reads locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth