3sAreGreen

And like yeah, obviously there's more to it than that. They're a team, a Grace alone would have probably died trying to get the samples from Adrian. Or, tbh, might have never got out of his original Mental Breakdown phase and just gone fully crazy.

But from Rocky's perspective, this has to feel insane. Like we talk a lot about Grace feeling inferior to Rocky, but there's no way that Rocky wouldn't have a similar (or worse) complex about Grace.

And this isn't getting into the fact that (from Rocky's perspective) the moment he leaves Grace, everything goes to hell again. Goes to hell again because, as he later finds out, Grace bred the taumoeba in xenonite breeder tanks that Rocky designed.

Do we think he wondered, on the way back to Erid, whether things would have been fixed 46 years ago if it had been one of the Blip-A scientists who survived, and he'd just succumbed to the radiation?

Do we think Grace had to reassure him, over and over, that it was if anything Grace's fault for not foreseeing that the taumoeba would adapt to the xenonite, and that there was no way that Rocky could have designed the tanks better?

This interaction between Nona(Alecto) and Pyrrha Dve has me screaming into the void. It lives rent free in my brain.

Did you think this was a game, Pyrrha? Did you have fun? Have you played pretend too well?

This scene really DOES make me go FERAL though because, based on how Pyrrha reacts;

-by the point, Pyrrha definitely knows it's Alecto in there: but has she known for longer? Is this the first Alecto-outbreak she's seen from Nona?

-regardless of whether it's a Nona or an Alecto outburst, Pyrrha knows how to handle it

-the way Pyrrha reacts (i.e. DOESN'T react, at least not externally) suggests she was used to this kind of thing from Alecto Before

-we know that Pyrrha/G1deon and Alecto had a different (much more amicable) relationship than Alecto did with the others

- Mercy calls it “Pyrrha’s trial”

- Pyrrha says that she cracked open Gideon’s skull and sieved his brain fluid after he did the trial. And that the only other pair who tried it were Mercy and Cristabel, because only Christabel would put up with being trepanned in the regular.

- as they’re breaking into the tomb, Pyrrha says that she and Mercy and Cass worked with cell thanergy.

- Unlike any other cavalier, Pyrrha seems to prefer guns to swords.

- G1deon is a thanergy void, which isn’t something we hear about anywhere else.

- Aside from going into the river and draining thanergy, I don’t think we hear about G1deon doing any other necromancy?

- When G1deon is introduced, he’s explicitly described as not having the necromantic build of the other two lyctors.

- Pyrrha tells Gideon that “more got taken from me than from you”, but in Nona Pyrrha certainly seems like a complete person. G1deon seems more like the one who might be lacking something.

- Pyrrha calls him G—— once

- Pyrrha describes the tower princes’ uniforms as “disco”. Maybe just an oversight, but seems unlikely that Muir would forget that none of them should remember disco, she’s usually so precise.)

- Jod kept G—-‘s arm after he died, and “had plans for that arm”.

Thoughts:

- It seems pretty clear that at Canan House, Pyrrha was acting like a necromancer and Gideon was acting like a cavalier. Whether that means she was actually the one with aptitude, or that he had the aptitude but they were just interested in the work of the other role, I don’t know. Cracking open skulls and sieving brain fluid does seem like a necromantic thing to do, though. And Lyctor!G1deon doesn’t seem to do much normal necromancy.

- Pyrrha remembers something from before the resurrection.

-P tells Cam and Pal that she would need G1deon to teach Cam how to be a killer (and she would teach Pal how to be an asset); shouldn't it be the other way around?

-G often seems so lifeless, without much personality or free will of his own; especially compared with P. What else was taken from him during the eightfold word?

-P had her own plans to kill Jod (with the herald bullet she stole from Wake), and says she would have helped with Wake's plan if she'd been asked

-we've seen that a non-necromantic body is still capable of doing necromancy, when a necromancer's soul is in charge, so it seems possible that G would be somewhat necromantic with P's soul in him

I think Jod's plans for G1deon's arm are Important. A possible theory:

Pyrrha WAS the necromancer, but as they did the eightfold word, Jod intervened to ensure G1deon's body would be the one left behind- because he could control G1deon so much easier. This messed-up process might account for his strange necromancy, and also his strange...deadness?

Lyctorhood is a process in which the cavalier (woman) sacrifices themself for the necromancer (man).

Among the original seven Lyctors, there were four men and three women; among the disciple necromancers, four of each. If we account for the stong implications that Pyrrha was originally the necromancer, it may have once been five women and three men, even, which is incidentally the same spread as John's original inner circle pre-Resurrection. (And he's always been more comfortable with women. Barbie is the best but Ken is a creep. Mercy can scream constantly but Augustine raises his voice one (1) time and immediately apologizes.) AND YET.

Most of the original cavaliers are also women. And okay, "maybe" the whole group "just" had more women total. Except women are allowed to die for both women and men, and Alfred is allowed to die for Augustine, but the only instance where a man would have sacrificed himself for a woman back then is stopped. John does still kill Samael and save/spare Anastasia, but there's still something to be said there. And man that angle gets so much worse if Pyrrha was originally the necromancer...

Fast forward to the modern day and numbers are more spread out. The traits associated with each role are mix-and-matched. Necromancers are the ones seen as frail and in need of protection, cavs as strong stalwart protectors, etc. Yet there's still a lot of old bullshit. A lot of subtle assumptions toward women. High standards and critical judgment toward the performance of certain kinds of feminity. And then, while women are no longer required to conform to that feminine mold, they can be hella butch or androgynous and no one bats an eye, and gender is something people can freely choose or change ... IF you're choosing to be a man you'd better not be even slightly feminine in any way. Traditional rigid standards of masculinity are upheld there.

And the best example of all the nuance Muir puts into this through all that is in Naberius Tern. The only cavalier in history who was in no way willing about becoming a Lyctor's battery; Cristabel and Alfred and Gideon Nav all forced their necros, and the other disciples resigned themselves to it. (Possibly Pyrrha as one other exception but I'm sure we'll find out if so.) But Naberius was just property, a tool to be used.

He's someone who worked very hard to achieve the image of A Perfect Cavalier. (According to Ianthe, he had to be perfect, so he became perfect.) Perfect swordsmanship, perfectly sculpted body (which Gideon sees as "whipped within an inch of its life"), perfectly sculpted hair. And then Gideon turns around and judges how much effort he's putting into presentation, looks derisively at him using lip balm.

And Corona constantly dismisses him with things like "Go fix your hair," "You're getting hangry," even "The Third showed its stuff, Babs, that's all I care about." She basically goes "oh sweetie, the thing you've spent your whole life forced to perfect is just a silly little game, it's not important" and dismisses him being upset about it. Later, when she's upset and he's the one trying to get her to settle down, she uses him as a literal chew toy and he just submits to it. He quietly submits when Ianthe eats bits to fuel her necromancy, too.

He's the most glaring victim we directly see of the Misogyny 2.0 present in necro-cav dynamics, and it's really driven home by his nickname. Babs is such a stretch from Naberius, but irl it's usually short for Barbara. As in Barbie. Because they treat him more like a doll than a person.

And I think it's really interesting and important that Muir chose to put that narrative role on a snobby annoying man who you would absolutely want to punch in real life. Because the context changes everything. The twins insulting him isn't taking him down a peg, it's 'putting him in his place' and unambiguously punching down.

It removes the direct connection to gender (without entirely removing traditional sexism elsewhere, in the classic Muir move of having her cake and eating it too) to force the audience to stop and ask WHY these behaviors are bad, if they'd ever be acceptable from anyone toward anyone (no). It emphasizes that the problem isn't who's on top of the hierarchy, but having such hierarchies at all. The OG Lyctors display the roots this came from while Babs' everything expands it even more.

At the Oxford event, she encouraged readers to think about what we consider misogyny versus what the characters do, and I feel like this shift in context is a big part of that. John's genuinely tried and done well in some ways, and in others he's fucked it up beyond comprehension. Failing to understand that changing the parameters doesn't make it any less the exact same bullshit feels like a huge part of everything, here and in so many other ways he's just reinvented old shitty systems.

... 😭 But then, the whole marriage angle also absolutely sets up for stuff like this post, courtesy of @elevenbenevolentmammoths

little did we know what this means is that she not only attacks toes but if she sees you with your ankles or bare arms out for example, there is a high chance she will slap you. she will literally just come up to you and slap you where your skin is showing unless its your face. she doesnt hiss or growl or anything she will just give you a disapproving slap or two i assume to voice her disagreement with how you present yourself