#should really read htn now

[katakaluptastrophy]

"I’ve already pretty much revealed that Alecto begins with the descent of Christ into Hades." - Tamsyn Muir

That's right...it's time for more Bible study for fans of weird queer necromancers!

It's currently Holy Week, the week where Western liturgical Christians reenact the events of Jesus' death and resurrection in real time. And today, it's Holy Saturday. So Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday. He rises from the dead on Easter Sunday. But what happened in between? His body lay in the tomb...but his spirit was otherwise preoccupied. Because on Holy Saturday, Jesus went to Hell.

But why would Jesus go to Hell? Because the resurrection was not just about saving the people who came after it - it was a bit more...wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

To be a bit more specific, he didn't visit Hell Hell. The place Jesus visited isn't Hell in the sense of eternal punishment of the damned, but Hades or Sheol or the Underworld or Limbo - a place for those who were mostly good but lived before Jesus' resurrection had made salvation possible. So before his resurrection, Jesus went to make that salvation retroactive. Particularly, according to tradition, to major figures from the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve.

So Nona the Ninth ended with Harrow walking off into the River in search of theological truth. And Alecto the Ninth apparently begins with Harrow in Hell:

Alecto the Ninth, ACT ONE HARROW IN HELL CHAPTER 1 At a point in the slit she was carving through life, Harrowhark Nonagesimus woke to find herself lost in a dark wound. She had been walking when it had all gone black– any path ahead or behind was blotted out; now she was here.  - Tamsyn Muir reading at TorCon

This is riffing heavily on the beginning of Dante's Inferno:

"In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost." - Dante Alighieri, Inferno

But lots of people go to Hell. What's so special about Harrow going there? Because the traditional name in English for Jesus' chthonic salvation adventures on Holy Saturday is "the Harrowing of Hell." "Harrow" comes from an Old English word meaning to attack or despoil - a very martial way of expressing the idea of Jesus as the victor over sin and death.

Harrow ended NTN realising that she cannot trust John's account of metaphysics. That she needs to discover the reality for herself. The faith of the Nine Houses and John's own styling as god rests on the foundation of the Resurrection - John is the "ransomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death", his power is understood to be absolute: "Let the whole of everywhere entrust themselves to him. Let those across the river pledge beyond the tomb to the adept divine."

And yet even that prayer - "let those across the river..." - introduces doubt. Magnus jumps in to silence Abigail when she expresses her heretical belief in the River beyond, and Harrow herself scoffs that "it has been thousands of years since anybody bothered to believe in the River beyond." Abigail believes that John knows nothing about what exists beyond the River. And what about Hell? In HTN, Ulysses the First is described as "languishing in Hell" after his run-in with a Resurrection Beast. John himself describes the stoma as "the mouth to Hell", "a portal to a place I cannot touch - somewhere I don't fully comprehend, where my power and my authority are utterly meaningless."

In the Book of Revelation - the Bible's account of the end of the world - Jesus holds "the keys of death and Hell". John may have resurrected the dead, but he does not comprehend what is beyond it. Both the destination of the good, the River beyond to which the souls of little Isaac and Jean should have traveled lightly after their short and brutal lives, and the Hell that lies beneath the stoma are outside of his power. He is a few keys short of the full divine bunch. He can manipulate death, but he is not really its master.

And so Harrow walks off into the River to look for something or someone she can call god. Harrow, who shares a name with the defeat of death across time and space. Harrow, who is of the unbroken line of Anastasia. Anastasia was kind to Alecto, who like Eve is the mother of all and like Adam walked on the empty earth with god.

In Orthodox icons, the Harrowing of Hell is depicted with Jesus triumphant, leading Adam and Eve by the hand from their tombs. The traditional term for this image is an anastasis, the Greek term for resurrection. Adam and Eve, whose sin broke the intended shape of reality, are restored to wholeness with god.

How will Harrow answer her questions about god? What really is beyond the stoma and what would it mean to conquer it? What does it look like, metaphysically, to restore the world of The Locked Tomb to wholeness, and what will it cost?

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #harrowhark nonagesimus #john gaius #alecto the first #anastasia the first

[mayasaura]

sorry if this has been answered before or if there's a post about this, but I've been seeing a lot of posts labeling harrow as schizophrenic and/or having trouble recognizing reality, including the one you just made about crux as harrow's caretaker and reality-indicator.

I realize that these interpretations come from htn, but I'm curious as why people feel that it's always been a trait of harrow's instead of a side effect of the lobotomy?

I was under the impression that she created the reality problems as an excuse to cover the blocks in her memory, especially since we know that wake/the sleeper didn't possess her until after gtn and most of her confusion happens in the river bubble.

even the "hallucinations" of the body don't really impact her perception of reality, and it's actually alecto's soul not a real hallucination. the only questionable moment I can remember is when she sees cytheria under the bed and ianthe says there's nothing there, but we know ianthe is a duplicitous legend so I read it as ianthe lying to harrow lol

long story short, I was wondering if there was scenes in gtn, ntn, or post-realization htn that indicate harrow has had these reality problems pre-lobotomy? or if you know of a post analyzing it further? sorry to throw this at you, I just haven't seen any analysis of it but I saw your post so I was hoping you would have more info :) I really adore all of your tlt analysis posts!

Hi! Yeah, if you go into my '#harrow's schizophrenia' tag, I've made several posts about it, and other people have added on to a few of them with further elaboration.

But I don't think I've ever laid it out fully like a thesis. And I have several stressful things I should be doing right now, so I can't think of a better time to get into it.

When Harrow's brain is editing Gideon out, there's an effect a little like a record skip. Her memory snags on something, very briefly, and then quickly moves on. Or she'll make an assumption or say something that doesn't actually make sense without Gideon in the picture, but she won't notice. The most prominent example is the details in chapter 3 surrounding her opening of the Tomb:

Just ellipsis "found out" ellipsis to skim over the very large part Gideon had to play in those events. If she were to interrogate the memory, it would be strange that she doesn't remember how her parents found out, but doing so would make her brain bleed. She would black out, and most likely forget what she was trying to remember.

And an example from the same chapter of a statement that doesn't make sense, unless you know about Gideon:

Two things are important about these examples, the first being that they don't upset Harrow. She doesn't think they're strange, because she barely thinks about them, which was sort of the point of the lobotomy in the first place. The second is that they can be immediately explained by plugging Gideon into the Gideon-shaped hole in Harrow's memory. If you know about Gideon, and what Harrow's done, there's no mystery remaining.

In contrast, there are other details in chapter 3 about Harrow's childhood that Harrow did, and does, find strange and upsetting.

Gideon didn't attend services, and she most definitely didn't participate in chants. Putting Gideon back in the picture does nothing to explain the "weird, thuddering beat" Harrow finds disruptive. But it does sound an awful lot like an auditory hallucination, as does hearing doors open and close where no doors were opening and closing.

Maybe we could try to explain the doors by supposing she was hearing Gideon coming and going without remembering the source, but that doesn't really track with how we know her mind processes the missing pieces. If Harrow were papering Gideon over in her memory, it wouldn't be important who was or wasn't opening doors and where. The focus of her memory would quickly shift, just like it did when trying to remember how her parents found out about the Tomb, in order to avoid looking at what she's hidden from herself.

Then there's the next paragraph:

Again, plugging Gideon into this memory does nothing to explain it. Even if Gideon had been in the habit of sneaking up behind Harrow and attempting to choke her out—which, yikes—Harrow has already seamlessly blocked out the memory of one attempted strangulation. Then there are the phantom ropes she sees, her parents' method of suicide haunting her.

The forgetting where she was, losing time, and false memories do seem at first glance like they could be explained by the lobotomy, seeing as that is sort of the whole purpose and effect. But I'm pretty sure even these are real memories. Again, because of the focus of her attention. She's remembering having forgotten, while the lobotomy make her forget to remember.

Then there's Harrow's overall behavior. Her reactions to her hallucinations, especially in the River bubble, which imply that not all of this is new to her. She isn't shocked, or caught off-guard. She has coping mechanisms. She's figured out what evidence she can probably rely on to rule out hallucinations, and what's more likely to be suspect. A lobotomy, even a necromantic lobotomy, doesn't come with built-in tools for coping with its effects. Her memory of her past without Gideon in it is fractured and incomplete, not an entirely new life story with new life lessons.

Finally, from Nona the Ninth, some evidence that Harrow's problems with reality definitely predate the lobotomy:

Crux remembers them.

#the locked tomb #harrow nonagesimus #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow's schizophrenia #tlt meta #ntn spoilers #harrow the ninth #htn spoilers #long post #such a very long post sorry #op

[liesmyth]

has something from a tlt fic ever become headcanon to you? i ask because i find this happening to me all the damn time with this fandom but not others

OK SO, my tlt headcanons are like schrodinger's cat, they explicitly contradict each other sometimes and all of them exist at the same time in different quantum states of canon. So in that sense I've never read a fic and thought, okay, THIS is my canon from now on.

But I've read so so many fics that burst my third eye wide open and made me consider different perspectives on a character / dynamic, or helped me shape some I already had. A few favourites:

the soul that seeketh him by bittybelle — missing scene pre NtN ft. John and Kiriona. Wherein John Gaius meets his daughter, remembers the women he left behind, and deals poorly with being the male god of a universe in which the divine is essentially feminine.

AO3 user LesbianJesusLovesYou gave me Big Feelings about Gideon's childhood on the Ninth and her relationship with Harrow, Aiglamene, Ortus and Crux

believing in everything (and knowing nothing at all) — A series of childhood memories from the Ninth

when i call, will you come to me? — “My Lady,” Ortus wheezed, shifting uncomfortably. “I only thought you should know… Gideon Nav was flogged before the congregation.”

A few fics set right after NtN that really stayed with me:

never hear the sound of someone calling me home by @corpsesoldier — Kiriona Gaia returns to the House of the Ninth.

One More Son by captainpeggy — After Nona, Pyrrha Dve walks the Ninth.

two old broads split a cigarette by @forjodssake — Aiglamene/Pyrrha. “sometimes the girl you like becomes one person w her soulmate and you have to jack off about it”

Post HtN missing scenes:

Death in its season by @ancientannoyance — John holds Mercymorn's 24 minutes funeral

recognize them by their fruits by @ceruleanvulpine — John and Ianthe emerge out of the River

Other stuff that Stuck With Me

so I open the window to hear sounds of people by @sunderedstar — post NtN flashbacks. John and Alecto are the only two beings on earth, and he starts working on the Resurrection. This is harrowing and I'm absolutely obsessed with the implications in this fic of WHY John removed everyone's memory.

and they were roommates by @herenortherenearnorfar — pre Resurrection Mercy and Cristabel, from their first meeting onwards and it just really burrowed a hole in my brain and grew roots and sprouts and everything. Latin American nun Cristabel it's all I can see now, and YES they met working with climate refugees when M— was a bright eyed idealistic doctor. It also lines up great with the Asian Mercy headcanon that exist in my head (I have a whole elaborate backstory about M— aged 12 proclaiming to her Filipino Catholic family that she's an atheist now). Anyway, it's just a lovely, gorgeous fic. I think about it every day.

John 25:12 by @halfeatenmoon — pre-Resurrection, John and his friends escape the cow fortress to spend Christmas Day at the beach. With beer, salads, pavlova, and the corpses of a million fish killed by nuclear weapons testing. Ft. Southern hemisphere holidays in Mururoa Atol and 100% canon. To me.

Operation: The Most Honorable Man by @cadmean — Augustine has a proposal for the Saint of Duty (Dios Apate. That's the proposal)

lowkey cheating but I can't choose — absolutely anything AO3 user Raxheim has posted has been SOO up my alley. Every time I read one of their fics I feel like I'm enlightened by some never-before-considered detail. And mean ANYTHING, from Harrow Nova to Wake to Cytherea and the Lyctors to the Universe's #1 Sadgirl Gideon

#this accidentally turned into a rec list?? sorry #ask #anonymous #tlt fic #fic recs #tlt

[trambrosia]

By wiping everyone's memory before resurrecting them, the Necro-Lord Prime became the only person on his side of the conflict who fully knew what it was about.

I know where remembrance lives in the brain, and he won’t have any of it. You know that too, don’t you? It’s the easiest thing in the world … to forget.” She said, “To forget … everything?” “Yes,” he said, and more sharply— “Yes. It’s the only way.” “Teacher, why?” “They won’t forgive themselves,” he said. “They’ll spend the rest of their lives asking what-ifs. ‘What should we have done? How could we have done it differently? Did you need to do it?’ And—I did need to do it, Harrow. There was no other way.

Think of just how much he is taking on himself by isolation from everyone else's memory. There is nobody left with the standing to tell him "your revenge has been good enough" or "it's time to stop."

Think of how the rage and shame could burn like fuel and oxygen inside the man who is both the killer and the vengeance of ten billion people.

I've been reading a little about Māori practices of justice and forgiveness, and several of the people interviewed in a paper had things to say that seem very much on point to me. (italics are the words of the Māori interviewees, vs. those of the researcher)

Some of the participants suggested that disputes should be settled between groups, even when the conflict was a result of the actions of individuals. “If someone needed forgiveness from me for what occurred then I would like it done in a way that I had my family behind me to support me and vice versa.”

“In a group sense it’s probably, a little bit more easy. Primarily because if you get people into one room all talking about an issue, is that whilst you may come with a particular view, because you’re now hearing other people’s views, your view then becomes- starts to evolve and you start picking up all these other things […] whereas if it’s one on one, if it’s just me and you, and we’re just knocking heads with one another, we don’t have the ability to pick up other people’s perspectives.”

So yeah, just like the interviewees said, I think that isolating himself has made it impossible to make real progress, which we can see in the scene between Jod and Wake at the end of HtN. I'm really interested to see how Tamsyn Muir writes the end of the war, and whether it will be informed by the specific Aotearoa and Māori context.

I know very little and I'm hoping to learn more! There's a pdf link to this paper (Rata, Liu, and Hanke) in the overview post.

#the locked tomb #forgiveness #tlt

[the---hermit]

03|03|2023

Today was a very quiet day, I mostly read both for uni and for pleasure, and to be honest it was great. I was more productive in the morning, as usual, but it's fine. I was debating on whether I should start watching the recorded lectures of another class I had to take, but I wasn't sure I would have enough focus today, so I opted for some slow reading and highlighting. I am not loving this book I have to study, the concept of contrapposition of physical, digital and audio books is really interesting but the book is not what I was hoping for. At the moment I don't know if it's my perspective as a student reading this, but the tone feels very patronizing at times. It also wastes so much time repeating you will find information x in this chapter, and information y in that other chapter. I normally appreacite books that make sure to tell you where you can find similar information in the text, but here it's excessive at least for my liking. Thankfully it's a pretty quick read at the moment because there's so many tables, and statistics the text is very broken up. It does make the text heavier, but it's much quicker to find the important parts of the text.

Productivity:

continued reading How We Read Now by Naomi S. Baron (one of the books I have to study for my history of libraries and reading class): I finished the first section of the book, and started reading and highlighting the second section

wrote down some notes for the first section of said book

finished reading Harrow The Ninth (review coming very soon)

made the weekly spread on my bujo for next week

practiced Irish on duolingo

Self care:

I slept more than I had planned to and even though my instinctive response was to feel guilty because I was planning on studying earlier I took my time to do things as I would normally do, without rushing or giving up on the small things I like to do to start my day. If I slept more it means my body needed to rest a bit more, and that's fine.

read first thing in the morning

postponed studying in the afternoon of at least half an hour because I needed to finish reading htn, yes it counts as self care because I was so close to stop and go study for the sake of duty, but for once I did what I actually wanted to do and not what I had to

took a relaxing bath while listening to a bookish podcast

#studyblr #studyinspo #studying #student life #uniblr #university #book #bookblr #currently reading #notebook #notes #journal #desk #study space #productivity #productive day #self care #journaling #mine #the---hermit

[theriverbeyond]

16 & 23!

16. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

i really don't get kidfic or making ANY of the locked tomb characters (aside from. canonical bad parenting, Abigail & Magnus, and the Lyctors in a "wow! some official should be called about this!!" way) parents..... just not my thing. i don't get it/it doesn't make sense/ like these girls cannot even take care of themselves and you're giving them a CHILD???? ok. i am glad u are having fun 👍

23. ship you’ve unwillingly come around to

my fandom secret is that when i read these books for the first time i did not ship griddlehark until halfway through HtN......... ngl i have no excuse for this but I've since learned the error of my ways and now they live in my head rent free 24/7 365 days a year. i see two rocks on the side of the road now and im like oh... it's Them <3

choose violence ask game!

#diosapate #ask #ask games #hiiiii ty

[figonas]

Hey Kaitlyn!

A question... what's Nonna the Ninth about? I've been seeing you + one more person on my dash posting about it, and I am intrigued, but I also don't know anything about it...🤡

my time has come..

(**I am so sorry this is long it really got away from me and ate up a literal hour of my time on the clock at work**)

Okay so Nona the Ninth is book #3 in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb book series. It is preceded by Gideon the Ninth #1 and Harrow the Ninth #2

Trying to describe anything about this series without,

Giving away a spoiler

Making it sound completely batshit insane or

Making it sound like run of the mill sci-fi

is impossible but god damn I’m gonna try.

Gideon the Ninth is book #1 in the series. If I had to describe it in a way that would (I hope) convince everyone to read it, I would say:

A buff, ginger, goth-jock, lesbian disaster travels with her arch nemesis, a tiny, super goth, lesbian bone witch to explore a haunted laboratory in space. Shit pops off in a big way. Gideon has a terrible, horrible, not so good, very bad day on what should be a fun space vacation.

A more well rounded and informative explanation is listed under the cut.

GtN centers around Gideon Nav, an orphaned, indentured serf of the Ninth House, who absolutely hates the Ninth House and everyone in it. She wants nothing more than to get away from the Ninth and join the Cohort (aka the military). When her latest escape attempt is thwarted she is offered a deal, a real legitimate chance of escape. There’s one problem, if she wants off the Ninth she has to partner with her arch nemesis, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus Heir of the Ninth House finest necromancer of her generation. Harrow and the other house heirs have been called to Canaan House to serve the Emperor and become Lyctors (basically necromantic demi-gods). To escape her life on the Ninth, Gideon will have to act as Harrow’s sworn sword and protector while Harrow discovers the secrets to lyctorhood. However, as soon as the pair arrive at Canaan House things start to go awry and tensions rise between the heirs of the various houses.

Harrow the Ninth is book # 2. Trying to describe Harrow the Ninth in a similar, yet spoiler free fashion is like rolling down a grassy hill covered in land mines. So I will not even attempt other than to say;

Local lesbian discovers feelings, immediately represses them.

HtN follows up on the events of book 1 HOWEVER, this is intentionally the most confusing book you’ve ever read. You will spend the whole entire time going “what the fuck is going on” and wondering if you actually even read Gideon the Ninth or if you just dreamt you did. As I said this is intentional and it all comes together in Act 5 I promise. If you finish it and you’re still confused, good. Tamsyn Muir has said that Gideon & Harrow are the two books asking all the questions and Nona & Alecto are the two book’s answering the questions so you will still be confused at the end because you’re working with only 1/2 the information.

As far as Nona the Ninth….I’ve thought of nothing else for a calendar month. I feel like a literal representation of the Charlie Day conspiracy theory meme with all my theories and postulating about what’s going to happen in Alecto.

The Locked Tomb is a masterpiece. Not because Tamsyn Muir is an incredible writer (she is), or because the story is complex and intricately woven together (it is), but because the experience of reading The Locked Tomb is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.

Somehow the lines;

“The First House was no longer a beautiful and empty shell, buffeted by the erosion of time. Now it seemed more like the blocked-up labyrinths beneath the Ninth House, kept sealed in case something became restless.”

and

“Put it in the hole, Griddle.”

“That’s what she said,” said Gideon

exist cohesively, not just in the same book, but literally 1 paragraph away from each other. Muir has the ability to write beautifully and integrate a kind of humor you can only cultivate and enjoy with long years of internet exposure. There’s a homestuck reference, god makes a dad joke, none pizza with left beef makes an appearance, a blink and you’ll miss it mean girls reference.

tl:dr If you like complex interpersonal relationships, women with a dubious sense of morality, skull face paint, necromancy, characters with 1 brain cell, characters with no brain cells, an entire series with only 1 man who deserves respect, the aesthetic of Catholicism without any of the bigotry, repressed feelings, back alley surgery, enemies to co-workers who hate each other arcs, possession, or necrophelia (I’m joking ((mostly)), read The Locked Tomb. It’s truly wonderful and it will rip your entire heart and soul out of your body, use them for double dutch, then throw them off the nearest cliff.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #book recs #please read these books they’re amazing #nothing that I’ve described here does the series justice I promise you

[searchforthescars]

If this is out of line, please feel free to delete this ask :) I follow your Twitter and I read your Cam/Pal ☕️ post here, but now that Nona's been out for a whopping 48 hours, I was wondering how you're feeling about the fandom and the story about Cam and Pal and Paul [screams]

(First of all, I'm very sorry for this delayed reply - it started off as "Well, I want to make sure my self-imposed spoiler period is over" and then continued into "well I don't want to Step In It, fandom-wise." But I have thoughts and you asked, and I appreciate that :3).

The following content was written in mid-September and has been edited slightly for length and clarity. It's still long. Sorry lmao.

Nona the Ninth was, to (probably) the shock of no one who knows me, a gift to me specifically. I joke that this book was written for me because it has so many things I love: apocalyptic settings, examinations of all the hazards and casualties of love, and some EXPLANATIONS OF WHAT THE HELL JOHN DID.

There was also Cam/Pal. So much Cam/Pal. "I hope you know that I adore you, Scholar." SHUT THE FUCK UP?????? HELLO??????????? "LIFE IS TOO SHORT AND LOVE IS TOO LONG" OKAY GOODBYE

Now, I should also say that I've had a Nona ARC since the summer, so I've been sitting on this for a hot minute. My experience reading the book was equal parts "WOW I AM WINNING" and "wow the fandom is going to go nuclear." And while I haven't seen as much hate as I was expecting, I suspect some of that is because I got over my fear of blocking people and have blocked often and liberally if the situation calls for it.

To be clear, I never have an issue with people shipping things that I don't ship. I never have a problem with people actively disliking my ships. What I do have a problem with is people coming into my DMs, notes, askbox, etc., and calling me names, attacking me, and generally being vile in mine own house when they could just as easily scroll away.

That's what happened around Cam/Pal between HtN and NtN. I'm not going to dredge up the details for the sanity of myself and my friends, but it was real and it was bad. Real people were deeply hurt. I've been in fandom - including some really nuclear ones - for more than half my life, and it has never been this bad.

At this point, my stance is this: Nona the Ninth made a near-ironclad case for Cam/Pal being canonically romantically entwined. Nona the Ninth also established that the two of them have been in love for a long time. The scene where they became Paul is, in my opinion, akin to a marriage proposal - especially when you weave in the fact that the "three strands" verse Dulcie quotes about them in Harrow the Ninth is often quoted in weddings and also talks about two people being better than one, etc etc.

My stance is also: if you read them as platonic but vibe just fine with people who don't read it that way, and you filter your internet experience through tagging, blocking, and scrolling past what you don't vibe with - more power to you. You're doing great, and I have no quarrel with you at all.

If you, however, choose to make sweeping faux-pearl-clutching statements about the creeps who ship cousins, you can get the fuck out of my house. Block me, unfollow me, whatever, but this is not the place for you.

Because also, nine times of ten, it's not about the fact that they're SECOND cousins (which is vastly different from cousins). It's about people disliking that a female character is with a male character. The Venn diagram of people I've seen being loudly angry and faux-pearl-clutching about Cam/Pal as a romantic ship and the people who insist Camilla is something that isn't bi and say that anyone headcannoning her as bi is something-phobic is almost a circle.

Again. You don't have to think Cam is bi or ship Cam/Pal. But there is no reason you need to rain on the parade of those who do.

But, because so many people do, I chose to open my umbrella and shout over the noise with my properly-tagged fic and all my online shenanigans. Because that's what fandom is about, for me. And I - like I ask others to do - mitigate my own online experience.

I'm always going to be a little angry and bitter over what happened with the Cam/Pal discourse. I'm always going to grit my teeth when I recall the person who told me they felt sorry for my sister because I "shipped incest." (Ironically, this person ships the Tridentarii.) I'm always going to be twitchy about being a Cam/Pal gremlin on main (despite that fact that I am apparently now something of a Sixth House Expert on TikTok??? weird).

But overall, Nona's release day was one of the most entertaining, unhinged 24 hours I've ever had in fandom. It reminded me of why I love fandom so deeply and fiercely; it's supposed to be about community and celebration, both of the source material and about all the diversity that accompanies a myriad of reads of that same material. I truly hope (edit: as of the time this was posted, the following statement is true) that this is a sign of what is to come for the corners of the TLT fandom I'm in; I hope that we will continue to celebrate what Tamsyn gifted us while also going unhinged over the possibilities left for us in AtN.

#anonymous #the locked tomb

[sea-glass-and-fire]

okay i CANNOT stop thinking about Harrow the Ninth, so here's my latest thought:

John knows that Harrow hates the tea and the biscuits. He does not care. This is about neurodiversity.

So John definitely knows that Harrow can't handle his teatime, right? He eventually stops offering her the biscuits, and if he noticed she never ate those, he's surely noticed that she doesn't drink the tea. But he keeps offering it, knowing that she's going to force down a little bit. Why? Because he thinks she'll learn to like it.

In many ways, HtN is about the types of ugly brain malfunctions that people usually avoid mentioning in their aesthetic infographics about mental health issues. Harrow spends the book hallucinating, due to her lobotomy / the haunting / possibly some sort of lifelong madness? (idk, i'm a little unclear on this point. i thought this was just in the Bubble timeline, but then it was mentioned in Ntn?? anyways. ) Tamsyn Muir has alluded to these hallucinations / madness / psychosis being representation for an illness, not a just plot device. (this is why, for the sake of this discussion, we're going to talk about this as a representation of real-world psychosis, even though it might actually be ghosts or something). To me, this is especially apparent in other characters' reactions -- they ignore it outright.

Now, I don't have experience with psychosis, but I do have experience with autism and from what I can tell from hearing other people talk about psychosis, it seems like they have something in common: people do NOT Fucking Want To Talk About It. If you can hide it, please do, and then never bring it up again so they don't have to figure out what to do or say about it. When Ophelia (and her host of Mad Girls of Literature successors) go mad, the other characters gasp and gawk and mourn. They don't awkwardly offer tea while pretending that it isn't happening.

Harrow's aversion to the tea isn't really due to her hallucinations / hauntings / psychosis / lobotomy per se. (at least i don't think so -- again, i honestly have no idea what's going on with some of this. Gideon doesn't seem to have as much of a problem with food despite being theoretically raised on the same diet?? anyway!) However, they're both quite deep-rooted aspects of Harrow, vital to understanding her. And they don't fit in with what God wants the Mithraeum to be, so he pretends that they're NOT part of Harrow. and Harrow gets the message! She understands that she's meant to pretend she's not struggling and pretend she likes the tea, because God thinks that if she pretends long enough it will eventually become true!!

ugh i just always want to like Jod every time I read HtN, because he seems powerful enough to help harrow and friendly and safe, but it's just impossible to ignore that he IS powerful enough to help harrow and he IS friendly but he is definitely NOT safe and he's only ever going to offer her the help he thinks she should need.

#tlt #htn #John Gaius #harrow the ninth #ophelia speaks

[beholdingslut]

Here's my dilemma: just read Gideon for the first time and absolutely loved it (btw the audiobook version?? A most sacred treasure) Now I've started Harrow and.....am quickly losing steam with each chapter. The shifting perspective and No Gideon Voice is a hard adjustment. Please say there's hope!!

omg there’s hope… i think the main thing is u just have to keep pushing through. the au chapters threw me off so i don’t think i absorbed them as much as i could’ve and in the overall scheme of things, it’s enough that you just Recognise that they’re happening, but it’s more important to lock down the politics and dramatis personae of the mithraeum and get used to insane harrow. for me i actually am deeply interested in the necromancy of the world and so harrow’s voice was a bit of a relief because gideon did NOT care about necromancy (very slay of her) and with harrow i finally got to have some depth and engagement on the matter. but enough about me. back to conquering htn: i think the book really picks up about two fifths of the way in where harrow does something pretty cool and becomes a more active part of her narrative(s) so if you can make it to there, you can make it to events that should HOPEFULLY especially pique your interest at the end of the book….

#the locked tomb #ask

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Pre-Release Predictions

[This is the first part of a collected liveblog/analysis of Nona the Ninth! See here for the other parts.]

Let’s preface this endeavor with my expectations before I began reading…

Feeling Ambivalent, Bordering On Nervous

For most people, Nona is arriving with sky-high anticipation after an agonizingly long delay. But for me…

Well, the truth is, my pre-ordered copy of Nona actually arrived last Friday (9/16), and I spent the weekend procrastinating on reading it.

The first reason for this is very silly. I feel like I just joined this fandom and am nowhere near catching up on all the analysis! So I’m in a weird place where I wish Nona was delayed longer. As if I could say “wait, no, I’m not ready yet!” (Are any of us ready, really? :P)

But maybe it’s a good thing Nona is coming out now.

After all, my track record for jumping into franchises in-progress has been uh, kind of terrible? I tend to get into fandoms just as the next installment sets the fandom into a tailspin of disappointment, frustration, and ugly discourse between defenders and critics. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve literally got t-shirts I don’t want to wear anymore because of it.

So it’s entirely unwarranted - I loved GtN and HtN - but I find that I can’t help but brace for disappointment regardless.  

Anyway, the point is, I don’t actually have very high expectations for Nona? I just have my fingers crossed that it clears the low, low bar of not setting this lovely fandom on fire, please. If it does that, I’m out.

The Ten Billion Dollar Soul Question: Who is Nona?

I subscribe to the theory that Nona is Alecto in some form, possibly fused with Gideon in some way. It makes sense with what we last saw of her and Gideon (Alecto reaching for her in the River). And, of course, the book was originally the first act of Alecto the Ninth.

I also subscribe to the theory that Alecto is the Ninth Resurrection Beast, the revenant of Earth and the ten billion souls that died.

Meanwhile, I haven’t actually read the pre-released chapters, but I’ve seen people’s reactions to them. I’ve also read the news about the book, including Muir’s interviews. From these, I’ve gleaned that Nona seems to be a very carefree, loving, and above all, innocent character. She has no sense of shame, no filters on what she should or shouldn’t express.

All of which actually fits very well with the idea of Nona as “Earth.” Of Nona being essentially an anthropomorphization of “Mother Nature” - she’s all-loving, but don’t mess with her when she’s angry!

But these theories might be completely wrong, in which case, I can’t wait to see who she is!

Okay, But ACTUAL Predictions

All in all, my guess is that Nona is unlikely to change many headcanons or theories regarding Gideon or Harrow. Unfortunately this is because I suspect there just won’t be much Gideon and Harrow content in it. At the very least, we last saw Harrow settling in for a long and well-deserved nap in HtN. It would be only fair to give Gideon more time to shine on her own!

[Brief Alecto spoilers: Also, given that the “Alecto excerpt” had Harrow waking up exactly where we saw her last, it’s possible she might not feature in this book at all.]

If that’s the case, I’ll definitely miss Harrow, and Gideon as well if she’s absent. But on the upside, from the pre-released chapters it sounds like we’ll be getting a lot of Cam and Pal. (Cam and Pal as Perfect Lyctors??) And I did quite enjoy “The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex,” so that should be fun!

And then there’s Pyrrha. We could infer some things about her personality from her brief appearances in HtN, though details were quite scarce. But now, she’ll be playing a larger role, so hopefully we’ll get a much better sense of her character!

I’m also expecting to see at least some of Coronabeth and Judith, though I have no idea what they’ll be up to. (Taking over the Blood of Eden, perhaps?) Oh! And Ianthe, of course. I’ve read some great fics where she has to deal with John being depressed after the end of HtN, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how that goes in canon! Like, of course Ianthe is going to get worse, but in what way? :D

Last of all… this is a series that isn’t shy about killing off its important and beloved characters. So: will all of the aforementioned characters make it out of Nona in one piece? I’m about 50/50 on this.

Nona, of course, has an expiration date from the start. That’s right there in the book’s summary blurb, that Nona is afraid she’ll have to give her body back. By the end of the book, she’ll almost certainly be forced to - which could mean many different things, but all of those ways imply Nona-the-amnesiac will be gone.

If someone else also dies, then my top pick would be Pyrrha. For all their supposed powers, Lyctors have an even worse attrition rate than the House scions!

My second guess would be Cam and Pal. If Muir wants to go for the most painful gut punch, they’ll be the ones to go. Judith just wouldn’t have the same impact, not after she was basically assumed dead at the end of GtN. And the foreshadowing with Corona and Ianthe is that they both have ambitious, far-reaching plots, plots which I doubt will get resolved in Nona.

Really, the only thing that makes me think all these characters might still have a chance is that Nona was originally just the first act of a longer book. Even if these deaths do happen, they might be slated for later on!

And on that ominous note...

Next: Day One >>

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #ntn spoilers #tlt analysis #nona #alecto the first #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #pyrrha dve #my ramblings #my tlt stuff #read more #thoughts on ntn

[liesmyth]

do you have favorite jod fics you'd recommend? i love your tlt opinions and am also a filthy john understander, but totally new to the fandom's fic scene

HI. YES. This is the rec list I was born to make. My shitty little meow meow. My insufferable babygirl. I do have fics. They're good :)

Written for me (ME!):

(I sat on this ask for a couple days so that I could acknowledge the authors on these fics that just revealed today. They cater perfectly to my tastes and everyone should read them.)

and my mouth isn't filled with blood, it's victory wine by @widespindriftgaze; John/Ianthe, pre-NtN, rated E, gore

You like forcing yourself to do gross things. This is called having character. Ianthe gets haunted, makes a power play, and smokes a cigarette.

Sex Education by @theriverbeyond; John & Gideon, pre-NtN, rated T

In which God explains condoms, consent, and how babies are made, and Prince Kiriona Gaia considers the pros and cons of being jettisoned out into the vacuum of space

(John gives Kiriona "the talk")

Other faves!! These are John & Gideon:

A Mild Sort of Resurrection by sigaloenta; Bari Star AU, rated G

In all the extensive special briefings and all-hands bulletins and strict sets of orders preparatory to the Emperor Divine's inspection tour of the Avernus, no one had considered that God might desire to fetch Himself a coffee.

"Fuck it, I'm adopting her," said John Gaius, not knowing the paperwork wasn't necessary by @naamah-beherit; John & Gideon AU, rated T

Gideon, a highly distinguished Cohort lieutenant, saves the day—and the girl—and then gets stuck in the lift of The Erebos with a man feeding her peanuts as if they have all the time in the world. They don't, but if he doesn't mind, then why should she?

now that you're sleeping by elijah_was_a_prophet; John & Kiriona pre NtN, rated M for mega dead

After-hours blues

John + Alecto, after the end:

moving upon the face of the waters by bittybelle; Alecto/John, rated M

You kissed John like the animal you had become, and he responded with the fealty of a child, and then with the force of a god, and then with the passion of the abandoned.

so I open the window to hear sounds of people by @sunderedstar; Alecto & John, rated T

He misses the beach. The real beach. The current one is mostly soil with a lacy veneer of nuclear ash, clammy and streaky and hilariously radioactive, which is a real bummer when he thinks about it too hard.

Some gen fic!!

recognize them by their fruits by ceruleanVulpine; Ianthe & John post HtN, rated T

John and Ianthe deal with the fact that his only remaining Lyctor is the one he never liked much. Maybe they can bond over the fact that they're both egotistical manipulators who lie like breathing? No? Also, God sees ghosts. Ianthe doesn't help.

John 25:12 by @halfeatenmoon; Pre-resurrection gang, John & G1deon

John and his friends escape the cow fortress to spend Christmas Day at the beach. With beer, salads, pavlova, and the corpses of a million fish killed by nuclear weapons testing.

Assorted lyctor shipfic:

choking on your leash by @augustmourn cult era John/A- , rated E + dubcon

He wanted to fuck John because he cared about him, even if he couldn't say it out loud. He didn't want to fuck John as a convenient way for both of them to have a better orgasm, like they always had; he didn't want to fuck John to stop him from killing off another hundred cops. But he would do anything for John. He'd known that in his bones for a long, long time.

colder than empires, and deader too by cadmean; rated E, dubcon + some gore

Drenched in the blood of his oldest sister and staring death (God; but really, where is the difference?) in the face, Augustine makes a different choice.

nature/nurture by Marenke; John/Augustine pre NtN speculation about the memory wipe. Rated G

There’s a little movement Augustine does - a flick of his wrist when he lits up a cigarette - that, some days, feels like the only reminiscent of him before he died.

This War of Attrition by @seven-syntheseas; Augustine/John/Mercy longfic, rated E (30k, complete)

attrition (n.): 1. sorrow for one’s sins stemming from a motive other than that of the love of God; 2. friction.

Or, put simply: Dios Apate. Major.

Self promo corner! I'm not above self reccing, so here are my jodfics. (Surprisingly, they reflect my tastes perfectly.)

John & Kiriona + John & others, post-HtN fic about God's upcoming midlife crisis: towery city amongst the stars; rated T

John & Augustine with shippy vibes, pre-canon: dreams of the ones who came before us, rated T

John/G1deon, pre-canon: dead and old and always hungry, rated E

Alecto/John, after the nukes: sign my death with your teeth, rated E + gore

Primarily a Ianthe fic but John is in there and it was very fun to write: after me, the flood, rated E, horror elements, Ianthe/Augustine + Ianthe & John

Kind of an ensemble fic but John's in it (and he's the only one having a good time) HtN AU: Housing Crisis! at the Mithraeum, rated T

#Anonymous #fic recs #tlt fic #ejg #ask #tlt

[tetrahedrals]

hello hello i read the nona excerpt and promptly fell ass-backwards into the pit of locked tomb feelings. time for RAMPANT SPECULATION !!!!

(spoilers for GTN and HTN)

- I have no idea who Nona is, but she doesn’t seem much like Harrow or Gideon. It takes so little to make her happy. Its going to be Really sad if she turns out to be G/H, and its just some small lost piece of them relishing the experience of having a childhood (something they obviously never got at the Ninth House).

- Speaking of TRAUMA, I actually really hope Nona isn’t Gideon at all. At the end of HTN, Gideon has just had a metric fuckton of massively shitty revelations dropped on her: namely that she owes her existence to a conspiracy of dead assholes. Like out of the four (4!!) adults who had a hand in her conception, not a single one of them ever gave a solitary fuck about her wellbeing. (I feel like Gideon/Pyrrha might have if given a chance? but they also fully pushed that baby out an airlock so like, not exactly parent-of-the-year material there either.) John seems willing to at least try now that he knows about her, but given what she has just learned about him that’s probably not much of a consolation. At any rate, the narrative doesn’t really give her (or us) time to process any of it, because there’s some wild shit happening and she has to get out of the River. But all her dreams about her mom/origin, the whole narrative she’d built for herself that helped her survive the Ninth- gone! The person she sacrificed her life for- not only gone, but also erased her from her memory. The last thing she sees is the Body, who she explicitly describes as being there to save Harrow. Like from her POV, this is just yet another shitty dead person who doesn’t give a fuck about her. That’s bleak man!!! That’s some rough stuff to be dealing with!! 

So I don’t really want to see happy-amnesia-child-Gideon in NTN: I want see a Gideon who is finally coming to terms with exactly how fucked up her life has been and is fucking PISSED about it.

My main critique of GTN (and part of why I prefer HTN), is that Gideon as a narrator can come off as a bit flippant, especially in the early part of the book when she’s still at the Ninth. A lot of terrible stuff is happening to her- locked in a freezing cell w/ no food for days, abused and manipulated by pretty much everyone, surrounded by adults who don’t give a shit about her, not to even get in to what’s going on between her and Harrow (full disclosure: their relationship was kind of a hard sell for me in this book!). But she never seems scared or even particularly upset by any of it, and since she’s the Narrator, that means that I as the reader don’t know how seriously I should be taking it. Maybe it’s not a big deal that she’s been abused her whole life? She doesn’t seem to think so? Is all of this just set-dressing so the book can establish her as some kind of Snarky Badass, too tough and cool to be fazed by years and years of child abuse? That seems like a weird message to be pushing, but then you get to Canaan House and the whole tone changes: she does start taking things seriously, suddenly it matters to her what happens to these people. And because of that, at the end she makes this incredible, heroic sacrifice. Only to wake up and find that that sacrifice has been rejected.

I would love to see a Gideon in NTN who isn’t particularly heroic or selfless, who is allowed to have feelings about the specific ways in which the people in her life have repeatedly failed her, instead of just papering over that trauma with snarky humor and bad puns and her devotion to Harrow. 

#hot tomb summer #TLT #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #sort of #for the excerpt anyway #this went a bit off the rails #my bad

[vocalintel]

Huh, That's Neat: Locke & Key

I feel like my blog has become slightly impersonal lately, what with the onslaught of #aes posts and anime screencaps, so I am trying to remedy this by semi-regularly running little tidbits. This little tidbit, HTN, will be posted on Mondays, and I'll talk about books/graphic novels I've read while volunteering at the library. Or whatever else catches my fancy whenever I sit down to write. Yesterday I found out that Ray Bradbury wrote and narrated a Halloween cartoon while we were doing discard and I have a suspicious feeling I'll want to write about that after I watch it.

But today isn't about Ray Bradbury, it's about Joe Hill. He's rapidly become one of my favorite writers over the course of the summer, and so it follows that I have deigned to stick my toes into his graphic novel writing.

I had no idea that the ugly looking Netflix show was based on comics, and I had no idea the comics were by a guy I actually like. So I've been chunking them back.

In conclusion? I like the story; it's got all the weird Hill shit anyone could ever ask for (bizarre homoeroticism, political despair, fraught sibling relationships, ghosts). But the art... I struggle with. If you have followed me for any length of time you should know by now that I heavily prefer manga over graphic novels. The Locke & Key art was doomed in my eyes from the start. At least I know that the artist would probably think my art is ugly too. Clash of the aesthetic sensibilities. Life moves on.

I don't really think this is Hill at peak game, either, that said. I hope he continues doing comics but I'll stick to the novels/short stories for now.

#text

[sithisreadingcorner]

Hello I’m here for the November tarot reading 👁️🧿 A question I’d like to have some insights given is: How do things look like for me in the near future like what is coming for me? -HTN (22.12)

Thank you :)

Hello HTN and welcome! Let's see what the cards got for you.

LIGHTNING in a bottle™. king of cups reversed. eight of wands

I dont see any drastic changes in either direction for you at the moment, at least none that you don't already know about. However, I think in the next few months there will be a time that will feel like a flipped switch and you'll feel completely different. Maybe you will learn something new, a fuller truth. The things themselves will not change but the way you perceive them will.

The cards don't talk about this as a bad thing. I think you may find it shocking, but the way the cards phrase it, the truth will benefit you somehow, because you seem to be lost in some kind of deception or fantasy. The Lightning in a Bottle is about consumption and manufactured truths, on the throne of which the King of Cups currently sits, completely surrounded by it. If you were being deceived or mislead by one particular person on purpose, I would tell you that but the truth is a little bit more complex. Sometimes it takes a village to raise a lie, and people might do it basically on accident. This is giving... like a gossip escalating in a friend circle and you taking it at face value. This could be literal or metaphorical, I don't know. I think you believed it because it sounded way too plausible not to be true, but you will find that the truth is way different than what you thought. People don't always make sense.

I don't know if you have seen Hot Fuzz but (big spoiler alert if you haven't) this is giving me that plot point when the detective is digging in the archives and putting all these clippings together, connecting the dots and creating this complex web of crime activities that turns out to be entirely fictional... because what actually happened is way simpler, and is also kind of stupid.

I'm also under the impression that you're just waiting for something, likely for this situation to play out, but whatever it is, to be idle right now is really not a good idea. The eight of wands almost seems like an escape ladder to me. You gotta bail from this. Or if you have been putting off some kind of decision, then you should make that immediately, because the opportunity is not going to be around for much longer.

Your fortune cookie says: "You should think of yourself once in a while."

[pick up the poker chip] Y/N?

november readings (2 out of 5)

#tarot #alleymans tarot #other #fortune cookie #txt

[nyxqueenofshadows]

week 3! this one is for the unusual coming out prompt!

@thefebruaryfriday i know this isn't quite what you came to me with, but it's firmly set in that universe!

enjoy!

#fanfic #my fanfic #writerspridemonth2021 #the locked tomb #camilla hect #palamedes sextus #cats #platonic relationships #i hope gideon would be proud of that title #i had fun with this #should really read htn now #whoops #not queued #one day i'll remember to tag this shit