In light of the reveal in The Unwanted Guest that cavâs souls bleed into their Lyctors, I canât stop thinking about the moment Mercymorn kills Jod. This woman tears apart the God of the Nine Houses, turns around, and immediately quotes JESUS ON THE CROSS. That is 100% pure Catholic Nun right there. The ever-burning soul of Cristabel Oct JUMPED out, undimmed despite ten thousand years of being a human battery. Incredible.
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Hey guys. You know how Ianthe says that she wouldn't have eaten Coronabeth to become a Lyctor. And you know how Palamedes says that it's because becoming a Lyctor by killing Corona would have defeated the purpose because somehow Ianthe's goal of Lyctorhood is related to Corona being alive. And you know how in htn Ianthe is fixated on learning how to keep an apple from decaying? To keep it in its perfect state indefinitely? And how currently she is immortal and her sister is mortal? And she was so interested in keeping the apple from changing?
It's always "you're cool" this or "you're pretty" that and never "You're the first flower of my house and the best cavalier we've ever produced, you're our triumph and the best of us all."
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Periodically, I remember how absolutely fucked up the necromancers in TLT are meant to look. Like, necromancy does an absolute number on people physically.
Harrow is "rather small and feeble".
Necromantic Ianthe is "the starved shadow" of her non-necromantic twin.
Our first description of Palamedes is "a rangy, underfed young man" who is "gaunt".
Silas is "knife-faced...He had a necromancer build."
Ianthe parodies make-over scenes in House novels with "if the heroâs a necromancer itâll be described like, âHis frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral'"
Jod acknowledges to Wake that even small children with aptitude would look odd to non-House eyes: "âI have access to any number of cute pictures of necromantic toddlers with their first bone. They donât make for fat-cheeked roly-poly babies, but theyâve got a certain something."
In As Yet Unsent, Judith brags about her previous physical fitness: "I could run a kilometre in ten minutes, which was among the fastest for my adept group in the junior reserves." Which is about double the time you might expect for a physically fit woman her age.
In non-necromancer-friendly New Rho, Harrow's body is mistaken for a child's and has to be explained as a result of starvation and trauma to seem plausible: "Pyrrha explained without missing a beat that what with everything Nona had gone through she had been ill and still didnât eat very much, which was why she was so knobbly and undergrown. The nice lady said that yes, many of the children had problems like that, but it was still hard to imagine Nona was anywhere over fourteen, wasnât it?"
Tamsyn Muir's descriptions of the Canaan House gang on Tumblr back this up: "Judith is somewhat less completely scrawny than other necromancers on the cast, though she should be less built than Marta is", Palamedes is "seriously underfed" and "bony", Harrow is "scrawny".
And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there's more.
Anyway, necromancers aren't slender in a conventionally attractive way, they're gaunt in a concerning way...and probably the only reason no one instantly clocked that Coronabeth wasn't a necromancer was because they all just thought it was par for the course that a Third House princess would have had a lot of plastic surgery flesh magic.
my most random tlt theory is that abigail doing something that should have been impossible (summoning nonius) out of sheer force of passion is foreshadowing for harrow being able to do something supposedly only god can do (resurrect someone) out of sheer force of passion (her love for gideon)
I love how some characters in The Locked Tomb have distinct genres. Like Gideon is in an action/adventure story, heavily tinged with Harrow's gothic horror, and vice versa for Harrow. Judith is in denial about being an escapee from an Edwardian romance novel. Camilla and Palamedes are detective fiction. And now Ianthe is apparently tragicomic theatre of the absurd
No one's committed to the bit the way ortus committed to the bit he summoned his dream man through his multi book epic poetry about him and THAT is the power of being Some Guy with a special interest and a gay crush
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John Gaius' commitment to a certain aesthetic for his space empire is...certainly something...
They are using fountain pens on spaceships. Fountain pens. To the extent that every vaguely intellectual character (other than Abigail Pent, who is repeatedly described as "neat" and "immaculate") is constantly described as having ink stains on their hands and even faces, and the smell of ink is referenced repeatedly.
And when they're not writing with fountain pens, they're using necromantically stabilised blood (this isn't just a Harrow quirk - the Sixth have special spikes on their clipboards for signing documents...).
Amongst the Lyctoral traces Abigail finds in the library at Cannan House are "a warped automatic pen with a thin inner cylinder of ink and a plex casing, rather more antiquated than one with an ink cartridge."
It also seems reasonable to assume that the "clockworks" they wear are analogue watches, as Nona scolds Cam for referring to her beeping digital watch as a "clockwork" on New Rho.
And besides the fountain pens, regency navy uniforms, swords, and general 20th century pulp literature culture, a few more things that characters specifically describe as antique or ancient include:
Sunglasses
Metal industrial shelving
Paper books with glossy pages
Black tie formal wear
Automatic doors
LED lights
Chrome kitchen fittings
Guns (to the extent that Abigail specifically says to the Sleeper "you come bearing ancient weapons")
And fine, these are all within the realms of things people are reasonably allowed to have a personal preference against...
But you know what else the Nine Houses don't have?
VACCINES.
What was the thought process by which Dr Science and Humanitarian Empathy decided to bring back routine childhood illnesses from the 1950s?
Speaking of the 1950s, why - in a society that appears to find permanently magically manipulating the bodies of living people trivial - does the standard of eyecare seem to also be from the early 20th century?
As a glasses wearer, I totally appreciate that there may simply be a social preference for glasses despite the existence of flesh magic. But Abigail Pent swapping between two pairs of glasses would seem to suggest that varifocals went the way of the mumps vaccine...
And our perspective on this is entirely from some of the most privileged people in the Dominicus system.
thinking more about Ianthe's refusal to justify why she wouldn't have eaten Coronabeth -- the fact that she wouldn't have eaten her is, IMO, not surprising, as Ianthe "donât suggest my sister is dead to me ever again" Tridentarius has always been posessive/protective/obsessive over the life of her sister. but what strikes me specifically is her refusal to justify it and, as Palamades points out, the hollowness of her attempted reasonings.
what I'm getting at is this: the soul, the graft, the meat. Naberius Tern adored Coronabeth. worshiped her. loved her in a distinctly different but no less obsessive way than Ianthe does. and now, I think Babs' affections for Corona are bleeding out and into Ianthe's own, influencing and changing them in subtle but (i'm betting) important ways. and I am wondering how this might consciously or subconsciously influence whatever grand scheme Ianthe is cooking up and whatever actions she will come to take in Alecto the Ninth
here's all the relevant info on cristabel i took note of during my tlt reread, in one place!
you can find the rest of the posts in this project here!
CRISTABEL OCT
titles:
Mercymornâs cavalier, first gen, founded the eighth (with Mercy)
name meaning: in latin the meaning of the name Cristabel is: beautiful christian/follower of christ
notes from harrow the ninth:
The reason Mercy is the Saint of Joy (htn. pg. 177)
Mercy won't talk about her to Harrow, even though John thinks she would, and that her name would upset Augustine (htn. pg. 177)
Augustine doesn't mind talking about her though, and says: "A total delight. Effervescent. Kind to animals and children. A master of the sword. Did not have the intellect you'd ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange, and was a sickening twerp into the bargain. The Eighth House will never see her like again." (htn. pg. 177)
ââYou know what I feel⌠you know I don't think she was the best influence on Alfred⌠you know I think they brought out the worst in each other, and I donât think you disagree.â God said, âThey were very similar people.â âNo,â said Augustine. âThey werenât, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot- yes, she was, Mercy- and he⌠was a man who regretted he wasn't. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.ââ - Augustine and John, discussing whatever happened between Cristabel and Alfred (double suicide, maybe?) (htn. pg. 274)
Augustine hated her for sure, but heâs ok with pretending he didnât for dios apate reasons (htn. pg. 279)
"Cristabel always said I was tidy." - Mercymorn (htn. pg. 410)
"you picked the wrong man to enter a suicide pact with. I hate 'em. Cristabel might have undone all my good work with Alfred, but here comes the reckoning." - Augustine (htn. pg. 487)
notes from nona the ninth:
"The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn't mind being trepanned on the regular."- Pyrrha, about her and G1deon's trial at Canaan house (ntn. pg. 84)
Was Mercy's nun best friend pre-resurrection (ntn. pg. 128)
"I was worried I was going to get the Antichrist bit from her too, but she was just like: stop doing this! Read your Bible! This was Christ's whole problem! I was like, What are you talking about, Jesus cured the lepers and everyone was all, Hooray, thanks man. M-'s nun was all, Are you kidding, Christ never said no and never asked anyone to pay and got everyone to pay way too much attention and brought the heat down on everybody, Christ didn't keep to office hours, she said. Don't do that." (ntn. pg. 190)
âMe in my bedroom with a nun and a migraine, her thinking that if she pushed me enough weâd instantiate the Trinity and weâd all be saved.â (ntn. pg. 399)
âEventually it was the nun who changed things. She knocked on my door and said very nicely, John, how are you doing? And I said, Not great, honestly. She said, John, how close are you to finding the soul? And I said, I canât, Sister, Itâs too big. I donât understand why itâs so huge. I canât find the soul inside the body, I donât know where to look. I donât know what Iâm doing. She prayed over me, and then she went away for the longest five minutes of my life. [...] Then the nun came back and knocked on my door and said, John, I think I have it. I know youâre very scared right now, but Iâm going to help you. Please let me in. He said: I let her in. Sheâd brought P-âs gun. [...] She just smiled at me. She said, John, donât misunderstand. I want to help you. I truly believe that in our most terrible hours we donât instinctively reach out to God; we push ourselves away from Him. Donât feel bad for not rising heroically to the occasion right now, Fear doesnât help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone. So concentrate, please. She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself.â (ntn. Pg. 404)
okay but like now we have to talk about paul, right. because whose idea was paul, originally? camâs? palâs? had they talked about it before?
or did palamedes suspect his soul was already bleeding with camillaâs- did he see the watercolor edge between them- and ask ianthe, do you believe in the permeability of the soul? and watch her carefully and know that he was right? did he think paul was a foregone conclusion?
ten thousand years and the lyctors are bled together so permanently with their cavaliers and not one of them noticed. a few months and palamedes did. he saw the half life of a soul, and he saw camillaâs beginning to change, and-
baking soda into a volcano. better to make it happen than to let it happen.
paul. what a great and terrible victory. what a beautiful and awful loss.
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