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multifunctionalnitroglycerin · 4 months

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The Locked Tomb Series- Alecto Theory

Brace yourselves this is 3000 words of me connecting dots that aren't even there.

First things first, this post is an amalgam of various brilliant theories I have seen posted on Tumblr, so if anything feels familiar, that will be the main reason. I am just going to present my own take on this, and hopefully add something new to what we already have.

The subjects of today’s conspiracy theory are Alecto and Anastasia -and Cassiopeia in part, the vow to Anastasia’s bloodline and what could very possible be, Dios Apate MAJOR.

So let’s start with what we have from the books, and feel free to correct me or add sth I might have forgotten.

Anastasia and Samael are the only ones of the original Lyctor batch, that didn’t complete the Lyctorhood process, thanks to - in no small part – John, and/or possibly Alecto. (“I am sorry about Samael”). Which could mean that Alecto was somehow involved in the whole process going wrong, and thus she feels responsible for Samael’s death, or that she was close enough with Anastasia and Samael, that she herself felt Samael’s loss, or she felt for Anastasia’s grief. (I like to believe that they did have a tentative friendship even before the vow thing happened.)

Anastasia is also the only one of the Lyctors we know, so far, to have had children. Which is an important bit on its own, (Can full Lyctors, have children? If so, are they different from other children, necromantic or not? Is there a reason that in spite of biological capability- if it exists-the other Lyctors have chosen not to have children? Even with Augustine’s and Mercymorn’s plan we see that in the end Gideon is conceived with Wake’s material – John is a whole different story as far as Lyctorhood goes so he doesn’t count.)

Back to our discussion though, Anastasia’s bloodline was so important to the Ninth House that it has been preserved for 10.000 years. We do not really get a clear picture on whether the Reverend Family knows why the continuation of the bloodline is important, Harrow certainly doesn’t, but it was so deeply ingrained to them that Anastasia’s bloodline must remain intact, that they effectively committed genocide, dooming the House’s future, in order to produce one more direct descendant of the Saint that wasn’t.

We do get a hint, a rather big one, on why the preservation of Anastasia’s blood is so important, in Nona’s Epilogue. Alecto states that Harrow is “the blood of the tombkeeper” after kissing her and drawing blood. What did she taste on Harrow’s blood I wonder? And how did she recognize the taste, as the taste of Anastasia’s line? Did the vow she initially made to Anastasia herself involve them drawing blood? Did it bind them to one another, so deeply that they ingrained themselves into each other on a molecular level?

To add to this, young Harrow, young desolate Harrow, who had had enough with her life and was prepared to die, young Harrow who opened the Tomb for that express purpose, loves Alecto from sight. And decides to keep living for her. And there is something exceedingly weird to just how much Harrow loves Alecto. Alecto is probably the most attractive person Harow lay her eyes upon to that day, true, but this instant infatuation, and its persistence throughout the years has something more to it, don’t you think? As Gideon points out, both to herself and to Ianthe, Harrow’s heart belongs to the dead cold body in the Tomb. And said cold dead body in the Tomb, recognizes Harrow from sight when she wakes “Alecto recalled her, for it was a face once dreamed in Alecto’s dream.”

And this line begs the question. Could Alecto dream, in the tomb? If so, how? And what did she dream of? Did she dream of Harrow? Why did she dream of Harrow if that is the case? Or did she dream of Anastasia, and the resemblance is that great? On the other hand, if this refers to Harrow first opening the Tomb, and looking at Alecto, does that mean that she was in some form conscious throughout that stasis? Does this mean that she could have heard and felt Anastasia while they were both locked in the Tomb, for however long the other woman lived?

(The scene where Nona describes the feeling of Anastasia's hands in the water and feeling safe. I am going to cry.)

I do have an interesting theory about Alecto’s “dreams” but we’ll get there in a bit.

Something else that is fishy, is that the Ninth, is the House of the Sewn Tongue. It sounds a bit like too much flesh magic for a bone magic house to specialize in, right? The cure to the Sewn Tongue on the other hand? Removing the mandible and all that? That sounds like a Bone Magic solution to a flesh magic problem. And I wonder if the fact that the Ninth House’s emblem is the Jawless skull, insinuates that the Ninth is not so much a house where many secrets are kept – though this is undoubtedly true, as the Ninth is known as the House of secrets by the other houses – as much that in the Ninth, all secrets are revealed. Where the sewn tongue is healed, and the truth comes to light. And I’d like to point out that it sounds a bit like foreshadowing, and a promise. Anastasia has been betrayed by John and sworn to secrecy, and then locked in the Tomb to die and take his secrets with her. I feel like the jawless skull acts as a constant reminder, that even with the sewn tongue, all curses can be broken, and all secrets will eventually come to light. And it feels like a promise to John, that her House, the house of secrets and unspoken truths, will be the one to rid of the sewn tongue and bring the truth he so fears forward. And this aligns a tad too well with the Sixth’s mantra, Six for the truth, over solace in lies.

And you know what else fits here, in this concordance of the Sixth and Ninth Houses? Cassiopeia and Anastasia’s friendship. Their alliance if you will. We know they both worked closely together trying to figure out the perfect Lyctorhood process, and it is possible that Anastasia made her attempt a bit before Cassiopeia. The exact same attempt, that performed in perfect conditions ended in failure, with John ultimately killing Samael.

We also know that Cassiopeia left contingency plans in place, should the emperor become a hindrance to the empire. And from what we have seen of Cassiopeia in the books, it is safe to assume that she is driven, determined, exceedingly intelligent, perceptive, logical, and excellent at planning. She is also the one to point out John’s less than favorable qualities pre-Resurrection such as his interest in taking vengeance on those that wronged him being bigger in his interest to save lives.

So, we have, Cassiopeia and her logic driven, truth seeking brilliance, and Anastasia, the thorough, overly methodical researcher. We have them both working on perfect Lyctorhood, and we have them both, in one way or another, being betrayed by John. Chances are, that they were the first post Resurrection to notice John’s flaws, the first to concoct a plan against him. But contrary to Cytherea, Mercy and Augustine, they are more subtle than those cannonball attempts. No, I believe they planned. And they planned long term, and together. Cassiopeia left her House a note, left them instructions, she was preparing them for when John would become a liability. And then an aforementioned amount of time later, Anastasia is asked to design the tomb.

We do not really know anything about Alecto’s relationships with the other lyctors apart from the fact that most found her revolting, a “monster” in Mercy’s words. So here is a thought, perhaps Anastasia, the one of the original Eight to never ascend, perhaps the one whose failure Alecto was involved in – “I am sorry about Samael” – finds kinship in John’s unnerving pet, his undead “cavalier”, the one he betrayed first, the soul of earth. Perhaps they even became friends. Perhaps she and Cassiopeia realize the extend of what John has done and realize that Alecto is the key to undoing it. When John refuses to kill Alecto to appease the others, the plan fully forms.

So, they construct the tomb. And Cassiopeia is well-known for building mechanisms within houses, so maybe her and Anastasia create secret passages, and mechanisms with extra access to the tomb that would be independent of John sneaking in, or whatever he planned to do with that blood-ward. And hear me out, we know that Cassiopeia stayed 7 minutes in the river before being torn apart by the resurrection beast – at Mercymorn’s account at least, not sure how reliable of a narrator she is. But what happened during those seven minutes? Paul says he thinks he knows how to get to the Locked Tomb via the River. So, the river and the Tomb are connected. What did Cassiopeia do, I wonder? (Here I’d like to say that my other theory is that she did eventually die, or rather was consumed by Varun the eater, much like Judith Deuteros was. The RB burned through her in what, a couple months? How long would a Lyctor last? Perhaps that was the reason that Varun didn’t resurface until 100 years after Cassiopeia’s presumed death. She could have been alive and slowly wasting away, while still making failsafe within failsafe until she lost her sense of self and eventually wasted away)

To recap until now, the first part of my theory is that Anastasia and Cassiopeia dissatisfied with the world John had made and the truth he had served them, probably worked together to find the truth. And they worked together from the shadows, to create a plan, a long-term plan, with which they could bring John down if the need ever arose, and undo what he had done. And Anastasia’s bloodline and their secrets are really bloody important to that plan. (Also, some nice symbolism about the Ninth being about secrets revealed, rather than secrets kept, and that functioning as a bit of foreshadowing.)

Now into the second part of my theory. Anastasia’s bloodline is so important because she has bound her bloodline to Alecto. And I think this happened in the premise of the Vow Alecto has made to her, or they have made to each other. This might be part of the initial vow, of which we know nothing about, apart from the fact that Alecto pledged herself to Anastasia, and that it is important enough that she pledges herself to Harrow, or a failsafe within it. A failsafe to ensure that should Alecto wake after Anastasia has passed, she will not be fooled by any imposters, or anything else John might have planned. Or perhaps, a failsafe to ensure that even if John changes his mind and finds a way to rid of the body within the tomb, to “kill” Alecto, she will not be completely gone, she will keep existing within Anastasia’s line, thus ensuring that the plan for John’s demise can still be enacted and that the soul of the earth will not be dead.

That plays really hard in the Alecto is within Harrow from the beginning theory. And I will explain. I believe I saw something that looked like this in Twitter by lesbian_mothman, but I do not really remember so I apologize if all this has been said before.

In all the dream chapters with John, we relive memories from just before and after the resurrection, and John talks to Harrow as if she is Alecto “You always say that Harrowhark” as a response to “I still love you.” Or when Varun recognizes the Earth’s soul “green thing” within Nona in the car chase scene, or when Judith regaining consciousness asks “Harrowhark?” and Nona replies, “No, and I never was.” So that begs the question of how much of Harrow is Harrow, how much is Alecto and how much are the 200 souls within her? (And there was a crowd of dead children there. They were striving loudly against living children on the far-off shore of the tomb. CHILLS)

In Nona we learn that Palamedes and Camila on the one hand and Pyrrha on the other have two different theories about who Nona is. The Sixth believe that she is an amalgam of Gideon and Harrow, and Pyrrha believes she is Alecto, golden eyes and all. And I am more inclined to believe that it is indeed Alecto, or at least a part of her, that resides within Harrow, and took the wheel when both Harrow and Gideon were gone. Think abt it. Gideon is back in her body, and we have no idea what the hell happened to Harrow, only that she doesn’t have the wheel, and Nona acts nothing like Harrow or Gideon did. It’s like she is learning how to be human for the first time. She learns how to love and be loved for the first time. So with no soul to govern the body, the part of Alecto within Harrow takes the wheel.

And then there is the candle metaphor in NtN. Alecto’s soul is the candle passed from one necromantic heir of the Ninth to the other.

So long story short, part of the vow, if not all of it, is that part of Alecto will always live within Anastasia’s descendants, so long as they are necromancers. And here comes the part of Alecto’s dreams. Because if indeed she lives within the souls of Anastasia’s necromantic descendants, does she see through their eyes? Does she feel through their hearts? Does she dream of their lives, while locked in the Tomb, while a part of her lives in them? Is she conscious within them? Or does the whole thing act like a cavalier- lyctor sort of connection, where she cannot take the wheel unless the other soul in the body Is gone?

Part of her soul is bound to Anastasia’s line, and they are bound to her, and over the course of 10.000 years do they spill over? Alecto to Anastasia’s descendants and they to Alecto. Was this part of the plan to have a failsafe within Anastasia’s line in case something happened to the body in the Tomb? Was it a promise Anastasia made to Alecto, to give her a chance to live, to be human, through the lives of her own descendants?

All in all, I guess I could some it up in a few concise points.

Cassiopeia and Anastasia worked closely together, they were friends and allies and saw in John, the unfulfilled promises he made, and all the faults he tried to cover with rewriting his own version of history.

They decide to make a plan, a long term one, a detailed one, for when John is more a liability than it is worth. And thus, Cassiopeia creates the mechanisms in the Sixth and leaves the protocols for the rest to find. Truth over solace in lies.

Meanwhile Anastasia attempts to ascend, and John kills Samael. Alecto might be consciously or unconsciously involved and harbors guilt over Samael’s death.

Anastasia probably befriends Alecto or finds kinship with this strange being that is the soul of a planet that no longer is.

The planning continues and John after being asked to kill Alecto decides to lock her in the Tomb instead and has Anastasia design it. He later asks her to stay in the tomb and guard Alecto. (Antigone style)

Anastasia designs the tomb, probably with Cassiopeia’s help, probably with a few hidden mechanisms of its own and or a secret pathway through the river, an extra way out.

At some point, Anastasia sires a line, and she makes her vow with Alecto.

The vow probably is in regards of bounding Alecto to Anastasia’s line so long as there are necromantic heirs. A part of Alecto is constantly alive within each descendant of Anastasia’s.

It might work a bit like the lyctoral process, because Alecto only takes the wheel when there is no Harrow and no Gideon in Nona’s body, aka when there doesn’t seem to be another soul guiding it.

Alecto dreams. Whether she dreams of herself within the tomb and that’s how she recognizes Harrow on sight – from the memory of Harrow first unlocking the Tomb – or her dreams are glimpses of the lives Anastasia’s descendants lead I don’t know.

Alecto is thus bound to Anastasia’s line by blood. She recognizes Harrow by her blood, tasting either Anastasia, or the part of herself residing within it, when she kisses her. It also ensures that the line is intact the vow is intact and it’s not a pretender trying to fool her.

Anastasia and Cassiopeia planned to bring John down by opening the tomb when the time was right and leaving her to Alecto’s (and the RB’S???) mercy. There is still a lot left to be explored.

The tomb is to remain closed until the time has come God has to die. We can all see how that can be misinterpreted to > if the tomb opens God will die. And instead of a promise to be fulfilled it becomes a terrible terrible thing, that will spell everyone’s doom.

The freaking skull of the ninth is a threat, a foreshadow and a promise. The Ninth was a house that should have died with Anastasia in the tomb. But it didn’t. It continued existing its bloodline unbroken for 10.000 years. Nine for the tomb and all that was lost. The Ninth is predominantly I feel a house of mourning – the whole nuns, all black, and skull makeup thing. But it is also a house of secrets. It is a house represented by the cure to even the tightest secret held. So the Ninth, the house that should never have been the house that should have died with its secrets in the tomb of its inception, is the one that will break the sewn tongue, and reveal all the secrets, bringing the truth to light.

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nonasbirthday · 8 months

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so what order do all of these extra stories go in? I'm confused, I know there's others beside the unwanted guest

Yeah, it's a lot to sort out! (What a lovely problem - to have lots of bonus content!) If you have already read GTN, HTN, and NTN I wouldn't stress too much about the reading order; the short stories don't interface with each other as much as they interface with the novels. But if you were to line up the novels and the short stories chronologically, it would look something like this:

The Mysterious Study of Dr. Sex - takes place pre-GTN

Gideon the Ninth

As Yet Unsent - takes place between the end of GTN and the middle of HTN

Harrow the Ninth

Nona the Ninth

The Unwanted Guest - takes place during the latter part of NTN

And then of course there is some additional content at the end of the first two books which are not quite official short stories (I don't think) but have some valuable tidbits in them! Even the glossaries and pronunciation guides have me doing double-takes sometimes as I reread. GTN has "A Sermon on Cavaliers and Necromancers" and "Cohort Intelligence Files." HTN has a "Blood of Eden Memorandum for Record." I have the paperbacks of GTN and HTN so I am not sure if these are included in the hardcovers. (Edit: it seems the extra content is not included in the hardcovers or the audiobooks.) But in any case I would say these are best read exactly where they are at the end of each book.

I don't think I'm forgetting anything, but I hope folks will add on if I am!

#the locked tomb #the locked tomb reading order #anonymous #the locked tomb bonus content #the unwanted guest #tlt 101

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paradoxcase · 3 months

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Chapter 18 of Nona the Ninth

After 18 chapters, something genuinely exciting is finally happening. You know, it's funny, I got pulled in by Gideon the Ninth because starting with Act 2 there were interesting and exciting things and weird mysteries happening like every chapter. Harrow the Ninth wasn't exactly action-packed, but there were like, interesting reveals and general world information coming out in most chapters, and it was also building towards something because there was the upcoming fight with Number Seven looming in the background at all times. This isn't a bad book or anything like that, but so far it's been: Nona goes to school and there are kid antics, everything sucks, it's hot, Nona refuses to eat food, it's dangerous to go anywhere because of the high concentration of people with guns, necromancy witch hunts, dead body burning, here's John monologuing about climate change and streaming necromancy on twitch. We get a little bit of Corona and brief glimpse of Judith, maybe we'll get to see Gideon/Gideon's body and Ianthe at some point, but so far it's just been the broadcast, and the most interesting stuff was all stuff that Nona didn't understand. I was ready for something to happen

I was promised I would find out what animal Nona drew, but I still don't know what animal Nona drew. Her saying that it started out living in a river and then got "cold" so it had to get large must mean it's a reptile of some kind, but I can't think of any reptile that has visible ears and a mouth that you might not draw at all. What does she mean by "large" here? Did she draw a dinosaur? The Angel mentions archaeology talks, but archaeology is the wrong field for studying dinosaurs, or any animals at all, really, it's the study of physical evidence of humans. (I mean, unless the "animal" that Nona drew was a human and it's now being revealed that everyone is actually a strange-looking alien...) It's also really hard to study Earth via archaeology when you are not actually on Earth, if you can't actually go dig up and date real artifacts it's just regular anthropology at that point. Or are BOE secretly sending teams of archaeologists to Earth now? That doesn't seem like it would be a high priority for them, but who knows, they did immortalize Eminem lyrics in their commanders' names, and we know they've been to Earth on unauthorized missions before, namely to abduct all of the non-Lyctor survivors of the first book

Presumably "cradle creature" means that it lived on Earth before John's apocalypse

Ok, so, I thought "Aim" must be like a nickname for Amy or some spelling thereof, but I see now that it's actually the first word of a BOE name. So, this bit requires that there is a word which means "Angel" in some language which sounds like "Aim" in (presumably) English, which also means something to the kids. But I guess we're meant to assume that "Angel" here is also in modern English, which again, doesn't make sense, since modern English should be long gone at this point. But maybe it's a translation convention thing

I'm curious what the implant is, why Palamedes is in a big hurry to find out what it is, and why the Angel doesn't want Nona to hear about it? Of course, she doesn't know who Nona is yet at this point. I'm guessing it's some kind of anti-necromancy device, given that "my dead body is designed to deny you answers"

It's true, he can't really swear on his own life, since that ended two books ago now

So I gather once the Angel accepted that Palamedes was not a Lyctor, she somehow gave whatever order to Merv Wing to kill Camilla and Nona, since she knows that regular necromancers can be killed like normal people? BOE's MO for necromancers is a sniper headshot per the last book. But I don't know how Palamedes survived this, I feel like we're about to find out that he and Camilla are a Lyctor now, or possibly some new and "improved" version of a Lyctor

Was this something that happened on screen that I should remember?

Is that what Nona's building is? I'm not sure exactly what that means, or if that tells me anything more about the building that I didn't already know. It didn't seem like it was specifically a BOE building, since there were cops and militia living there, too

Well, there's something important about that implant

This seems like a counter-productive rule to have if they want Pash to be her bodyguard, though. At some later point there is a mention of "electrics" and implication that Merv Wing is not going to fire any guns as long as Aim/the Angel is in the room, so possibly some other types of weapons are involved here. Nona misses the entire battle, but there were gunfire sounds, so I guess someone disregarded whatever rules there are about not shooting guns around the Angel

I guess Pash subscribes to the theory that Hot Sauce mentioned that necromancers have to be killed in a very particular way to stay dead?

For the first part of this I was like, that sounds a lot like Pash, but hasn't Nona heard her voice before? But then I remembered that Nona has only heard her speak through the voice modulator

It's also hilarious how Nona thinks Pash is just so cool throughout this chapter

Are we then to understand that Pash was driving the car the previous day when the Angel rescued Nona and Hot Sauce?

They again. Still unknown if this is a gender thing or a plural thing, because who knows what is going on with the implant

This is honestly straining my suspension of disbelief here, that someone actually read Nona's lips from the top of a building a block away. If they thought it was a radio call, there are easy ways of intercepting those if you can guess what frequencies might be being used, you don't have to guess what someone is saying by reading their lips

Pash gets all the best lines

Oh, this is a fun one!

There's a weird thing here where we first get this:

But then in the next paragraph it says:

So it's not actually clear exactly how munted Nona thinks the classroom is?

Yeah, this was obviously going to happen at some point from the point where Hot Sauce was introduced in the first place. Honestly, I feel so bad for Hot Sauce, she's 14 and she's already been traumatized several times over before this book even began, I think, and then she saw Nona die in front of her and actually got successfully gaslighted into thinking she didn't for about five minutes and from her perspective Nona is definitely some kind of evil eldritch creature. But how many time does Nona have to get shot today? This would also be a lot more of a cliffhanger if Nona wasn't immortal

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

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mayasaura · 1 year

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I don't have the book at hand to quote, but what struck me when I was reading it was John going desperately from how he had to make them his hands and fingers!! to keep them!! he IMMEDIATELY segues into how he's so sad he had to feed the revenant beasts his fingers to keep them away :( it was so awful that they made him do that :( like he makes them possessions then having objectified them he justifies having to destroy his Things to keep himself safe. which I think is where he and Harrow are going to diverge. (noting that they've already taken very different tactics as far as the order of what gets kept safe)

It's the very next line! This quote picks up exactly where the last one left off:

That's definitely a legit way to read this passage, though it's not the way I prefer to. I mean. Hypocrisy found in God, fork found in kitchen. Come on. But yeah, that's an undeniably fucked up trajectory.

More seriously, I see John's chapters of Nona the Ninth as a confession, rather than as a justification. It's not meant to be coherent or consistant, just emotionally honest. He's expressing how he felt in the moments he made his decisions and asking to be understood, but he's not asking to be affirmed, or forgiven. "Just as there can be no forgiveness for me," and all.

The way in which his story does make sense—the way he's choosing to frame it—is fascinating for what it shows about John and what he's so deeply afraid of, in his heart of hearts. He loved them, and he sacrificed them, and then he sacrificed them again, but at least they didn't leave him.

And yet even in his confession there are still levels on which he seems to sincerely not understand what he's done wrong—mostly surrounding the autonomy and personhood of other people. Like you said, he objectifies people. He loves them as extensions of himself, because that is the only thing he understands as being real. He has no peers, as he is God. His closest friends are his fists and gestures, the fingers on his hand. As necessary to him as a limb, and losing them cripples him, but he doesn't understand them as people in their own right at all. And that lack of respect and understanding leads to him treating them horrifically.

It's kind of sad, in a way. Not to jump tracks completely, but the way John loves reminds me of this quote from episode 55 of Welcome to Night Vale:

It's presented in the context of a romantic couple, but it works more broadly. lt seems like the only way John knows how to love is by subsuming what he loves into himself, becoming one. Leaving him once again alone.

What's interesting is that he appears to know this about himself. Right in this quote, he directly compares himself to the Resurrection Beasts. Revenants that crack open worlds to eat their souls for sustenance, then pack the dead shells onto their exteriors to become part of themselves. As he sees it, the difference is that the Resurrection Beasts will eventually be satisfied. He won't be.

As for the parallels between John and Harrow, I don't think we need to look for where they're going to diverge. I think we can point to where they already have. And it's a fair comparison, to a time before John was God.

Look at John's reaction to his cult schisming, here:

He loves his friends, but he doesn't trust them. Deep down, he believes their love is conditional. If he fucks up, if he's caught slipping, if he admits he's wrong, he'll lose them. He's terrified of anyone finding out he's flawed, of the ugly parts of him being known, because he's certain anyone who sees that part of him will leave. He's gone ten thousand years like that, compounding lies to make them stay.

Harrow has a similarly harsh expectation of herself, but she's already taken her leap of faith, and let the mask drop. She's told the people she loves exactly who and what she is, with the full expectation they would punish or abandon her for it. With the full expectation Gideon would kill her for it, in the pool scene. And Gideon embraced her. She confronted Ortus with her failings in the River, and Ortus comforted her, and still chose to stay and risk his life to save her.

The people who loved John would have done the same for him. Did do the same for him. They stayed through his breakdown, they stayed by his side until it killed them, but John could never let his guard down enough to trust that they would have done it just for him. He couldn't submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

This is all, of course, working with the basic premise that the way John treats people is horrific, and he did have all the opportunites in the world to stop. He could have taken that plunge any time in the ten thousand and thirty-something years he's been alive, if he'd been strong enough to accept the consequences or believed in the rewards. It was all so fucking avoidable, but here we are. My favorite kind of tragedy.

#er. I realize I may have a different perspective on the whole god thing than many in the fandom and I don't mean offense!#it's just that gods are understood as being.... beings of pride I guess? they're disadvantaged by hubris #there are good reasons to worship them but their power obscures their ability to understand the true nature of reality #if siddhartha guatama had stayed a prince he would have been a great king but he would never have been the buddha y'know?#same principal #I think the main point of disagreement I have could be summed up as #I see John's account being presented as an explaination #not as an excuse #the locked tomb #emperor john gaius #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth #alexa play the saga of you confused destroyer of world lmao #hm. come to think of it john did have equivalents to the pool scene and the battle with the Sleeper and they fucking sucked #that's for another post

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griseldagimpel · 6 months

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The Antagonists of The Locked Tomb Series

I've been making posts arguing that John Gaius isn't the antagonist of The Locked Tomb series, so I thought I'd do a post breaking down the question: who are the antagonists of the series?

Alright, to start: the protagonist is the character the book is about. They may not be the same thing as the POV character. For example, Harrow the Ninth is told from the perspective of Gideon, but the protagonist - at least until the end - is Harrow. The antagonist is the character opposed to the protagonist. Neither of these are synonymous with "hero" or "villain".

The Protagonists of the Locked Tomb Series, by Book

Gideon the Ninth: Gideon Nav

Harrow the Ninth: Harrow, then Gideon at the end

Nona the Ninth: Nona for the New Rho portions, and John for the pre-Resurrection portions

Alright, so what do our protagonists want in those books?

Gideon the Ninth: Gideon wants to join the Cohort at the start. In the middle, she starts to get on board with the plan of Harrow becoming a Lyctor. As the bodies start to stack up, Gideon's goal is to Protect Everyone.

Harrow the Ninth: Harrow wants to achieve full Lyctorhood. She wants to not get killed by G1deon. And she wants to stop Commander Wake in the River Bubble portions.

Then Gideon wants Harrow to fully consume her and become a full Lyctor.

Nona the Ninth: Nona wants to have a birthday party. More broadly, she wants those she cares about to be happy.

John wants to save the world and then to stop the trillionaires from abandoning it.

Now, who's opposed to the protagonists' goals?

Gideon the Ninth: Harrow is opposed to Gideon joining the Cohort. Cytherea is opposed to Harrow becoming a Lyctor and to everyone not dying.

Harrow the Ninth: Harrow is opposed to Harrow becoming a full Lyctor, although due to the magical brain lesion, Harrow doesn't know this. Technically, G1deon isn't actually trying to kill Harrow; he's trying to force her into full Lyctorhood by attacking her. He's acting on John's orders, with John wanting Harrow to become a full Lyctor, which if she doesn't do, she's going to get eaten by Varun. Wake wants to kill everyone in the River Bubble.

Harrow is opposed to Harrow fully consuming Gideon.

Oh, also Mercymore and Augustine are trying to kill John, but that's, like, almost completely separate from Harrow and Gideon's goals. Mercymorn and Augustine agree to help Harrow kill G1deon because that'll deprive John of an important ally, and Gideon thinks that Ianthe should have let John be eaten by the Stoma, but our two protagonists just do not have an active role in what is ultimately the climax of the book.

Nona the Ninth: Nona is dying, so the main obstacle to her having a birthday celebration isn't an antagonist character. For her broader goals, Varun wanting to eat the planet will make her loved ones unhappy.

The trillionaires are implied to be responsible for the funding to John's project being cut, in that once they realized they could save themselves, they didn't have a motivation to trying to save everyone. And the trillionaires are opposed to John's goal of not letting them abandon the planet.

So where will things go with Alecto the Ninth?

Well, Alecto will presumably be the primary protagonist, although there's the possibility of the book having a secondary protagonist.

What will be Alecto's goals? Well, I don't think we have everything yet, but so far, she wants to serve Harrow and stab John. She also talks about John teaching her how to die, so "die" might be on her list of goals.

Who is opposed to those goals? Well, Gideon's opposed to Alecto serving Harrow. John responds to her stabbing him by bidding her good morning, so he doesn't seem particularly opposed to her goal of stabbing him.

What about dying? We're told that Alecto and John can only die if both of them die. Well, John told Gideon to kill Alecto because that would render him mortal, allowing him to die and Gideon to succeed him.

But Ianthe thinks that John is lying to Gideon there, and he didn't seem particularly surprised to find Alecto not dead (and stabbing him). There are some hints that what John actually wants is to do a big reset on the universe, wiping everyone's memories and starting anew.

I personally think that "the Earth dies and everyone in the solar system has to leave their home or die" would make for a very bleak ending. And, like, endings don't have to be happy to be satisfying, but if Muir goes that route, it'd give the series one hell of a downer ending, is all I'm saying.

Now, the protagonists have changed goals in the first three books, so it's quite possible that Alecto's goal of dying will be re-evaluated. It's possible that the Devils will be the primary antagonist of the books, or that the primary antagonist will be a character we haven't met yet.

#the locked tomb #meta #john gaius #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #alecto the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #nona palona #alecto the first

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lastflowerofyourhouse · 1 year

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ok so if we remember that tlt Official Reading Order post that was going around recently. i've made a slightly ammended list:

the iliad

the bible (yes, the whole thing)

the divine comedy

dracula

homestuck

gideon the ninth

just like the first series of unfortunate events book should do it

the mysterious study of doctor sex

paradise lost

lolita

harrow the ninth

harrow the ninth again

as yet unsent

the bible again but like just brush up on genesis and then sodom and gomorrah. you can leave the rest alone.

nona the ninth

(happy to elaborate on my changes)

so i suppose my question is...

#bear in mind this would involve becoming someone who's read homestuck in the year of our lord 2023 #the locked tomb series #tlt #my post #polls

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nav-ix · 2 years

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Queerness and Hierarchies of Power in The Locked Tomb

I wrote this essay for my sci-fi class and a few people expressed interest in reading it, so I’m posting it! Bear in mind the initial audience I wrote it for isn’t familiar with the series (I cut out some of the straight-up summarizing because if you’re here I’m assuming you’ve read the books, but if the tone seems weird or like its explaining things that are obvious, that’s why). I do use the term “queer” throughout the essay as an umbrella term for LGBTQ experiences, as well as to refer more broadly to non-normative interactions with gender/ gender-like hierarchies. Also, this has spoilers for Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth AND for the first chapter of Nona the Ninth, so watch out for that. Essay below the cut :)

Though there has been an increase in LGBTQ representation in popular sci-fi and fantasy, representation that ends at same-sex attraction fails to actually explore queerness as an experience or identity, or, most importantly, as a lens through which to see the world. Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series, however, is impossible to read without exploring that lens, and as such it is able to explore queerness on more than one level. I intend to analyze those explorations through the lens of queer theory and apply that analysis to how we imagine normative power hierarchies as a whole.

The queerness of the series is overt and unmistakable by the beginning of the first book. The protagonist, Gideon, is a butch lesbian. This is a characterization that makes this series distinct from many others of the genre; LGBTQ representation often takes the form of attraction and relationships between characters of the same gender, but does little to explore other nuances of queer identity and experience. From the beginning of Gideon the Ninth, however, Gideon’s queerness is clear by her personality alone, outside of any relationship. She is gender-nonconforming both as a woman and as a cavalier; she is muscular, her narration is blunt and often crass, she resents the elaborate sacramental face paint that she is required to wear, and her attraction to women is shameless and unmistakable. Swordsmanship is what she excels at, but rather than the delicate rapiers that cavaliers traditionally use, she prefers to fight with a huge two-handed sword. Even outside of Gideon, there is an overt queerness to the setting and many of its characters. Of the first book’s ten central female characters, at least six are attracted to other women in some capacity. Not only this, but their attraction to one another is framed as normal and assumed; there is no circumstance where anyone needs to come out.

In this setting, traditional and patriarchal gender roles take less precedence in the power dynamics between the characters. But that does not mean that other parallel or allegorical hierarchies are absent. Though the series has checked more than enough boxes for queer representation, it continues to explore queerness by a broader definition, by establishing new normative hierarchies of gender and power and exploring the ways in which they are subverted. In the absence of traditional patriarchal heterosexuality, the characters in the book exist within the dynamic of necromancer and cavalier. Initially, we will explore how Gideon and her necromancer exist within this dynamic, and the degree to which her treatment of the dynamic is non-normative.

Gideon was not trained as a cavalier, but when there is no one else to fill the role, she has to hastily learn those traditions and behaviors. Already, she is in the position that many queer people find themselves in—she must learn to successfully imitate conformity to a role she doesn’t identify with. In order to do this, she must learn to fight with the delicate rapier, as opposed to her heavy, military-grade two-hander. She has to learn to apply daily the sacramental face paint of the Ninth House, which it is made clear that she hates wearing. She pretends to have taken a vow of silence, as her crass jokes and mannerisms would make the ruse immediately obvious. All of this she does at the command of her necromancer, Harrowhark, who is the heir of the Ninth House, who conforms fully and perfectly to the standards of a necromancer, and whom Gideon hates. When Gideon does conform to these standards, she performs exaggerated caricatures of devotion to Harrowhark in ways that highlight her nonconformity, such as saying things like “I am your creature, gloom mistress, I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady…I am your sworn sword, night boss.” (GtN 151). She pairs exaggerated, ironic declarations of loyalty with nicknames that make fun of Harrowhark’s necromantic pretentiousness. This reaction is a familiar one—for many people forced to embody gender roles that they don’t identify with, irony is the most comfortable solution.

No power hierarchy, least of all a patriarchal hierarchy, is simple. Hierarchies that deal with both power and identity are at risk of being oversimplified into a win-or-lose model, but I think that that is a misrepresentation. To imagine patriarchy as a game in which men oppress women for their own gain assumes that men are the winners in the dynamic. In reality, I would argue that there is no winner. I think the most helpful way to imagine patriarchy is as a hierarchy, but not one with men at the top. In fact, I would argue that no one is at the top, except for, perhaps, patriarchy itself. In a patriarchal model, women are trapped as the objects of desire; their bodies exist to be exploited and consumed. The objective ideal of patriarchal femininity is characterized by smallness, by the ways in which women are available recipients of power or sexual desire. Men, however, are trapped too. They are trapped as the desirers, divorced from emotion and intimacy, except in those instances where they are desiring women or engaging in violence with other men. The objective ideal of patriarchal masculinity is characterized by the ways in which men exert physical and sexual power over both women and other men, with varying degrees of associated violence. Both men and women are rewarded for the ways in which they conform to these ideals and punished for the ways in which they fail. Critically, however, those objective ideals cannot be reached. Judith Butler, in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, describes gender as “a performance with clearly punitive consequences…” explaining that “those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished.” Butler continues, arguing that “there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact…” (Butler 552). There is no way to successfully embody normative masculinity in ways that will not cause oneself harm, just as there is no way to successfully embody normative femininity, because both of these standards exist somewhat divorced from the complexities of real personhood. Though queerness, by nature, defies definition, I am defining it in part as the instances in which people fail to conform to these hierarchies, and how, in doing so, they construct and embody non-normative models of gender.

In the power dynamic between necromancer and cavalier, even the most normative, conforming participants find themselves punished by the ways in which they have failed to conform perfectly, often by the inevitable incompatibility of that perfection/ideal and their personhood. The hatred between Harrowhark and Gideon is mutual and codependent, and is perhaps one of the only ways in which Harrowhark fails to conform to her role. This power dynamic continues to function as an allegory for patriarchy, in which Harrowhark benefits from the power she holds over Gideon, but nevertheless is both trapped and harmed by her role in it. Because Harrowhark’s existence as a necromancer depends on her exploiting people like Gideon, she is consumed by and beholden to the guilt of her position. She resents it, and because she has no one except for Gideon, she has hated her for her entire life. Likewise, men benefit from their position in a patriarchy, but nevertheless are trapped within it, and harmed by the roles they are asked to embody.

Even the first Lyctors, who worked alongside God since The Great Resurrection, who created the framework and thus should conform to it perfectly, are hurt endlessly by it. The first Lyctors are characterized as bitter and hateful in general and toward one another. Though many of the details of their history and origins are vague, we know that the love they had for their cavaliers has taken the form of ten-thousand-year-old grief, even as their necromantic power continues to feed on those souls. One of the Lyctors says, referring to another, “I never saw her cry except once…the day after…When she became a Lyctor. I said There was no alternative. She said…We had the choice to stop.” (HtN 121).

How else are these dynamics complicated in the other houses, and within Lyctorhood? We see several examples throughout both Gideon the Ninth and its sequel, Harrow the Ninth, but some stand out more than others. Putting Gideon and Harrowhark’s Lyctorhood aside (for they do, tragically, achieve it), there are several other characters that stand out and complicate our understanding of the dynamic. The characters that most clearly subvert the dynamic of necromancer and cavalier are the pair from the Sixth House: Palamedes and Camilla. Throughout the first book, they are depicted much more as equals than many of the other duos. They are lifelong friends, and though there is no romance between them, they are close and familiar in a way that makes Gideon uncomfortable to see, as her own necromancer-cavalier relationship is so fraught. In the first book, the characters face a series of tests which introduce many of the component parts of Lyctorhood. In several of these tests, the necromancer is not yet asked to kill their cavalier but is required to use their body or soul in some way, and the cavalier is required to submit to that process. Palamedes is one of the first necromancers to realize what Lyctorhood will eventually require, and refuses to engage with any test that has the potential to harm Camilla. When she does come to harm, he cares for her wounds. At the end of the first book, he sacrifices himself to save several of the other characters, Camilla among them. In all of these instances, he refuses to conform to a dynamic which would put him in a position to hurt her. Though neither of these characters are explicitly queer in the traditional sense, the way that they subvert the dynamic of Lyctorhood functions as a queer-ing of the normative hierarchy.

Their dynamic exists in contrast to that of the Third House. Long before it is necessary, the necromancer Ianthe uses the body of her cavalier, Naberius, as fuel for her necromancy. “At one point [Ianthe] beckoned Naberius forward and, in a feat that nearly brought up Gideon’s dinner…ate him: she bit off a hunk of his hair, she chewed off a nail, she brought her incisors down on the heel of his hand. He submitted to all this without noise.” (GtN 188). Ianthe is the only one of the necromancers who willingly and intentionally becomes a lyctor. Her relationship with her cavalier is antagonistic, but both of them know their roles; she treats him almost like an annoying pet—dismissing him, mocking him, nicknaming him “Babs”. This hardly matches the loyalty and devotion we see in the other pairs, but as a result, Ianthe is the perfect candidate for Lyctorhood. She was consuming her cavalier before she was even aware of what Lyctorhood would entail. However, though she is rewarded for conforming to and embodying that hierarchy, she does not escape the harm entirely. She has a twin sister, Coronabeth, who is neither necromancer nor cavalier, but who trained in the ways of a cavalier in the desperate hope that her sister would choose her instead of Naberius. When the others find that Ianthe has killed Naberius, they also find Coronabeth, “eyes swollen from crying,” sobbing and “utterly destroyed.” She tells them, “She took Babs,” seeming in every way as if she is mourning the death of Naberius. But then she continues, “And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.” (GtN 394). In the second book, Coronabeth offers her life again to a different necromancer, one who she has loved since childhood. She says, “Save me…bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?” (HtN 551). Again, she is refused because the necromancer in question loves her. Coronabeth is heartbroken by the refusal to take her life because, as someone in the position of a cavalier, the only way she knows how to love someone is through literal self-sacrifice. Ianthe loves her sister more than anything else, but she is divided from her by her refusal to kill her. Even Ianthe, who embodies the power hierarchy perfectly, is harmed by the structure of Lyctorhood and its incompatibility with the complex love she feels for her sister.

The Locked Tomb deals with two notions of queerness: the first is the representation of LGBTQ characters whose identities don’t conform to traditional, patriarchal ideas of gender, and the second is the subversions of the normative power hierarchies that are unique to the story’s setting. These two levels of exploration don’t occur completely separately, however. In fact, as the story develops, we begin to see the interaction between these two kinds of queerness literally embodied in certain characters. In the third book of the series, Nona the Ninth (I will reference only the first chapter, as the full text has yet to be released), there are at least two characters whose Lyctorhood has been performed incorrectly in some way. Palamedes, the Sixth House necromancer who sacrificed himself in the first book, used necromancy to prevent his soul from truly dying. When we encounter him again in Nona the Ninth, his soul is living in his cavalier’s body, alongside Camilla’s own. Again, in normal Lyctorhood, the cavalier’s body is killed, and their soul is consumed by the necromancer, effectively killing the cavalier outright. But in the instance of the Sixth House pair, it was the necromancer’s body that died, and both their souls live in the cavalier’s body, neither consumed by the other. In every way, this pair subverts and outright reverses the standard operation of Lyctorhood.

Likewise, there is another Lyctor who failed to completely consume the soul of his cavalier. When the soul of that necromancer was killed, his cavalier’s soul, named Pyrrha, surfaced and now lives in his body. Palamedes lives in the body of his cavalier, who is a woman, and Pyrrha lives in a body that previously belonged to her male necromancer. Pyrrha is very much a woman whose body would be traditionally thought of as male, and Muir doesn’t shy away from describing her as such. In the first chapter of Nona the Ninth, for example, she is described as “wearing pyjama pants and a string vest and no shirt, so the orange glow of the hot plate ring lit up all the scars on her wiry arms.” Later in that same scene, she shaves her face. In the case of Palamedes and especially Pyrrha, their subversion of the Lyctorhood dynamic results in bodies that embody gender in non-normative ways.

(note: that bit was kind of hellish to write, because my audience is unfamiliar with the series and I’m already cutting out so much of the convoluted plot, so I just did my best to leave out the fact that two essential characters have the exact same name lmao. In any case, that is why I did not name G1deon here.)

The phrase that repeats throughout the series is “one flesh, one end.” It refers to the bond between a cavalier and a necromancer, and it is the oath they make to each other. As Gideon sees cavaliers and necromancers who care for one another deeply and as equals, it is implied that this phrase refers to the epitome of devotion to one another, a dynamic in which the cavalier and the necromancer are equals. However, as the true process of Lyctorhood is revealed, the phrase’s meaning turns dark, referring instead to a process in which the necromancer’s body and power is both the flesh and the end. However, though Lyctorhood grimly recontextualizes this phrase, it doesn’t change the interactions that Gideon sees between many of the cavaliers and necromancers. At one point, the Fourth House cavalier asks Gideon if she and Harrowhark have been paired for a long time. Before she answers, Gideon sees Palamedes bandaging Camilla’s wounds, and sees the necromancer from the Fourth House braiding his cavalier’s hair, and she “contemplate[s] the sight of the growing braid, and the sight of Palamedes squeezing the noxious contents of a blue dropper into Camilla’s wound… [as] Harrowhark lurked next to them, pointedly not looking at Gideon…[Gideon] still didn’t understand what she was meant to do or think or say: what duty really meant, between a cavalier and a necromancer, between a necromancer and a cavalier.” (GtN 275-6). Though the dynamic between the two is modeled after a relationship built around harm and unequal power, the relationships that occur within that framework do not always emulate that harm or imbalance. This reflects a real phenomenon, in which the ways that we might define gender within a patriarchal framework are disproven by many of the people embodying those identities.

In some ways, the dynamics of gender do exist as a result of the framework of patriarchy; that the ways by which we define femininity or masculinity revolve around their roles within heterosexuality. As with any categorization of identity, however, there are always people whose performance and engagement with the category defy the bounds of its definition. Likewise, though the normative necromancer-cavalier relationship is epitomized by the self-sacrificial, grief-filled, exploitative model of Lyctorhood, there are versions of that dynamic that defy that definition, that subvert it or refuse the harm that is seemingly inherent to it. The pairs that seem to embody the initial understanding (and not the later, darker meaning) of “one flesh, one end” most strongly are pairs such as Palamedes and Camilla, who would refuse to ascend to Lyctorhood once they know the cost.

In deconstructing the patriarchal framework that defines femininity and masculinity, I often feel that the question is: what is salvageable here? Is anything? The Locked Tomb series argues, in part, that we are shaped by our broken cultures, and that to accept the rewards of such hierarchies is to inevitably hurt one another. There is a cynical way of looking at it, and that cynicism is characterized in Harrow the Ninth by a letter left by an enemy commander, a character who hates everything that the nine houses stand for. She says, “The only thing our civilization can ever learn from yours is that when our backs are to the wall and our towers are falling all around us and we are watching ourselves burn, we rarely become heroes.” (HtN 403). This commander, however, is characterized almost entirely by her hatred, and though her letter sums up this argument well, I believe that it is only half of what the series is saying. The Locked Tomb says that there are things here that are salvageable; even if we are shaped by our broken cultures, even with our backs against the wall, there are ways to reject that harm without leaving ourselves and our identities behind. It argues that the nature of humanness is that we, as people, will always love one another in ways that fail those hierarchies. Though the hierarchies of identity, gender, and power only ever give us options to love in ways that hurt one another, our personhood is complex in ways that makes queerness and queer love inevitable.

#ta da! there she is #like i said earlier lol we shall see if the events of Nona and Alecto render any of these points moot #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #gtn #htn #ntn #tlt #essay

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