Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’

First music, then voice modifiers… Now this. Perfect.

so, timeline clarifiers, per htn subheadings. let's start easy. this is the earliest date given in htn in its entirety:

parados (act 1) is the chapter where Harrow talks to Ortus in River bubble Drearburh. it's the second (chronological, not linear) chapter we read in the book at all. it's set 13-12 weeks prior to leaving for Canaan House, per gtn timeline details. it is the first time Gideon's name is explicitly redacted (or as i like to call it, Ortuscorrected).

if we ignore the (upcoming) discrepancy's date, the next earliest subheading date following parados's is, conveniently:

epiparodos (act 5) is the chapter immediately preceding/following Harrow's lobotomy, as told from Ianthe's perspective. while the setting is not explicitly stated, per Harrow's narration from chapter 45 (act 5) and the Upon Coherence letter in chapter 4 (act 1), we can glean that Harrow lobotomised herself 3-4 days following Gideon's death on the First House, which would mean they are still on the Erebos (and would argue that the Heir's stay at Canaan House lasted roughly three weeks to a month before Cytherea was killed).

the next (linear) date subheading:

chapter 1 (act 1), nine months. in this chapter, Harrow is stated to be on the Erebos, in a hospital wing. she has been given Gideon's longsword and is battling the awful psychic powers Wake's revenant (inside the longsword) is using on her, likely as an attempt to kill her so she can follow the thanergetic link into Harrow's body and use it for her own means (killing John) (this is mostly conjecture, but i see no other reason for the sword to have this effect on her, bar her lobotomy sparking a vomiting response as opposed to an intercranial hemmorhage response to the memory of Gideon). in the few chapters following this, Harrow is told about Resurrection Beasts, hears the Body speak to her for the first time in eight (estimate) years, recieves the Upon Coherence letter from Ianthe, and is nearly smothered in her sleep (or so it seems). at this point in the narrative, the only OG lyctor she's met is Cytherea, who is dead. she meets Mercymorn as she's being rolled onto a shuttle bound for the Mithraeum. it is only once on the Mithraeum that she meets Augustine and G1deon. during G1deon's entrance, he informs them bluntly that Resurrection Beast #7 is "just under ten months" away.

the next subheading is both chronological and linear, even though the exact placement in the timeline is somewhat unclear:

chapter 12 (act 2), six months. at this point, Harrow, Ianthe, and John have been on the Mithraeum for an unspecified amount of time. Harrow has killed twelve planets. she and Ianthe have been being tutored by Augustine in swordsmanship and understanding the river. in chapter 13 (act 2) Ianthe makes a crack about Harrow making it to her room from the docking bay without being assassinated. Harrow spends the next four chapters giving basic biographies for Mercymorn, Augustine, and Ianthe, as well as speaking with the Body, and revealing the truth of her conception to John.

now comes the discrepancy. the next timeline clarifier, per chapter subheading, is chronological, but oddly not linear:

chapter 19 (act 2), ten months. TEN.

this would place chapter 19 (act 2) prior to Harrow's lobotomy (nine months and twenty-nine days before; per epiparodos, act 5), which doesn't make any sense, because chapter 19 is the chapter where G1deon's first attempt on Harrow's life is recounted. he attacks her in the kitchen on the Mithraeum, quite clearly stated to be only a few days after she arrived on board, and she only narrowly survives the attack because Mercymorn intervenes, to her apparent disgust.

now, could it be that the attack in the kitchen is not explicitly specified to be the initial attack in question? could it be a sleight of hand on Muir's part to say that the first atatck came before Harrow even arrived on board teh Mithraeum, and then recount a completely different one? could the first attempt on Harrow's life actually be the attempted suffocation on the Erebos from chapter 4 (act 1)? i don't believe so. the suffocation is a bookend to the Upon Coherence letter scene with Ianthe, and there isn't even any scene break in the chapter to indicate shifting time between Ianthe's exit and Harrow's subsequent discovery of the fingernails she embedded in the wall in her attempt to defend herself against her attacker, mid-suffocation.

every other timeline clarifier in htn (of which there are nine remaining) makes sense and follows the narrative both chronologically and linearly - apart from the subheading of chapter 45 (act 5):

chapter 45 (act 5) is the River bubble scene where Harrow and Ortus rehash their guilt to each other, and Abigail announces her intention to exorcise Wake's revenant from the bubble. the subheading is vague where no other heading has been, stating only "an amount of time", despite the chapter preceding this one linearly (chapter 43, act 5) having this subheading:

logically, there should be very little time passing between the scene where Harrow comes to fully inside the bubble and sees it for what it is, and reuniting with Ortus properly. the only connection I can see between chapter 19 and chapter 45's discrepancie's is that both chapters make use of the Second House crest, 19's in reference to G1deon being the one to attack Harrow, and 45's no doubt being in reference to Harrow's realisation of G1deon's real name and the as yet unconfirmed connection he has to Gideon herself.

Firstly, the skulls...I never paid them much mind but now I'm looking at them, it looks like they represent people living and dead. So Parodos is a split Ninth jawless skull, representing Ortus, who is Ninth and Dead. Ch. 1 is a whole Ninth skull, representing Harrow, who is Ninth and Alive. Epiparodos is a whole Third skull - Ianthe, Ch. 43 is a split Ninth skull with aviators, i.e. Gideon, who is super, mega dead.

Ch. 45 is a split Second skull, which I guess represents Marta, this being the chapter I think where we finally actually learn something about who she is and was.

And that brings us back to Ch. 19. A whole, Second skull. Jody is off with BoE at that time, Marta is dead as, so who was phone the living Second house this chapter is about? Well it's obviously G1deon, but...G1deon wasn't there, then, was he? He was not on the Erebos as far as we know, nor would he have had any reason to try and kill her before the lobotomy (seeing as the reason for it was an attempt to trigger her lyctatorial abilities that she fucked up with the DIY brain surgery).

I don't know. Fundamentally, I do not know. However, it wouldn't be the first bit of timeline fuckery in that book. I mean, of course, the question of when did Harrow first enter the tomb? I can't be arsed looking up the exact dates right now but one thing that always struck me is that Harrow's story of at what age she opened the tomb differs between when she tells Gideon and when she tells Jod. Which makes sense, Gideon was integral to her decision to enter the tomb, and her brain likely had to cludge together a shoddy story to work around that.

Harrow's internal timeline is fucked, because she's had to chop and change so much of her memory to work around Gideon, who was the biggest part of her entire life. And I think that date is tied to that. 10 months, one day prior to 9 months and 29 days, i.e. the date of the lobotomy. Because the lobotomy didn't just erase the memory of Gideon, it erased the memory of the lobotomy too as a vital part of that. Of all the holes in her memory, that has to be a big one in a way.

"For some reason."

Why... wouldn't Harrow know this? Babies are new life; they're more Thalergy than Thanergy because they're actively growing and they're growing quickly; they're not decaying, not as biologically mature adults are. It would make sense then that the void would larger if babies/infants in particular are killed; there's more Thalergy there to convert to Thanergy.

Increased cellular reproduction and multiplication = a higher Thanergy output when converted. They are directly related.

Here are the definitions as stated in the Glossary:

It's... a hole. Not in the magic system itself, but in Harrow's character, though I actually do believe this is very, very intentional and that it's probably not *just* Harrow who lacks these pieces.

The one topic we don't hear much about is the relationship between Thalergy and Thanergy. We know what they are individually and how they relate to one another, but we never see Thalergy in practice (Animancy); only Thanergy (Necromancy). It's to be expected though; all characters (aside from John, that we know of) hail from Thanergetic planets in a Thanergetic system, meaning everything is in active decay. The reason necromancers exist is directly due to Thanergy; it's the basis of the entire universe for these characters.

I can't blame them for not being able to fully grasp the concept of life energy when it's so scarce, and especially for a character like Harrow, who was the last born and the youngest of her house. She's never seen a baby. She's never witnessed a natural pregnancy either; of course she doesn't know what raw life energy looks like. Human reproduction is possibly the greatest source of Thalergy out there and even that is decaying. Between medical intervention and the increasingly clinical methods used to uphold the population, Thalergy in this form is dwindling.

We hear mention of 'Foetal Care Boxes' from Harrow's warped memories and Pyrrha's question to Camilla about Gravid Carry in the Sixth House. It's almost as if this source of Thalergy is being pushed to go so unnoticed that it's been nearly entirely disconnected from the population:

And y'know, if you think about it, John is a Thanergetic being who took the Thalergetic soul of a planet and preserved it rather than destroying it. Here, let him represent Death while Alecto would represent Life. There's no life without and death and no death without life, though if you kill one, the other dies as well. This balance is how Lyctorhood should have been, but he lied because it wasn't just a failsafe– it was insurance and collateral all wrapped into one.

It would make absolute sense why Thalergy; Animantic practice would be frowned upon, as seen here:

The fact that Thalergenic study has been made to be so foreign and so taboo is incredibly telling because if this was realized and accepted by all, it would bring the whole of Dominicus a huge step closer to learning of John's intentions to withhold power, knowledge, and understanding from them simply to protect himself and the truth of his actions.

It would bring his Lyctors a huge step closer to learning that the relationship between themselves and their Cavaliers ought to have been Thalergetic/Thanergetic, not Thanergetic/Thanergetic; that in having killed and eaten their Cavaliers' souls is a bastardization of the true Lyctor process and that they all could've lived in powerful, balanced harmony different than what John had them believe even when they did make the latter part of this connection.

The answer to Lyctorhood is right under everyone and yet they cannot see it because of how little exposure they get to the other half of the power they draw from and what they can see is written off so quickly as less important.

Life; Thalergy was locked away in a place designed to celebrate and embrace Death; Thanergy. It was hidden on purpose in a place so obvious nobody would think to look there.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Thanks, John.

Is any form of Lyctorhood something that should be done or is desirable?

Which is not to say that a form of Lyctorhood where both parties lived in companionable power wouldn't have been better than the murdered soul burning forever inside you variety, but if there were such a thing as an ideal situation, I'm not sure that it's a different configuration of Lyctorhood.

If there was anything that "ought" to have happened, perhaps it would have been John maintaining the balance of thanergy and thalergy in the powers that the earth gave him, and using it to truly save the planet. The solar system never dies. He does not create a fascist empire with immortal, super-powered enforcers, however many of them and however more ethically we could imagine their genesis.

“Annabel Lee” is the last poem E. A. Poe composed, and arguably one of his most famous ones. It is in many ways, typical of one would consider a Poe poem, featuring thematics such as the death of a beautiful young woman, love, and grief. Thematics and subjects that are ever-present in the tlt book series, and I will do my best to dissect in this post.

With a superficial read of the books, most would garner the rather obvious parallel between John Gaius and Alecto on the one hand, and the hero of the poem and Annabel Lee, on the other. John himself is not particularly mindful or discreet of the analogy he himself creates. And he has no need to, seeing as he is the only one that remembers the world from before. And I think it is terribly beautiful and utterly devastating, in a poetic irony sort of way, that a comparison so obvious as this, a hallmark of American poetry would go completely unnoticed in the new world that John has built in his image, for he is the only one who truly knows, the only one who remembers.

Another more subtle parallel, I feel could be drawn between Gideon and Harrow, and the poem’s heroes. Though, I must admit it is perhaps a bit of a stretch. I might make another post abt that. But for now, let’s dive in the magical world of Annabel Lee, and dissect the poem, bit by bit.

For all our literature geeks out there, I will just point out that the poem is a narrative poem, and it uses a few different rhyme schemes, and meters, with both anapests and iambs being present (Shout out to all the lovely people who are familiar with iambic fifteen-syllable lines and have been haunted by them).

I will now start with a general feeling of the poem before jumping into the details. From the start, Annabel Lee feels like a fairytale, with a hopeful start that alludes to the fairytale opening of Once upon a time… However, as the poem progresses this hopeful emotion slowly devolves to something eerie, ominous, and desperate. Something dark, cynical, and terrifying. And this is where we will draw our first parallel.

The Earth is dying. That much we can garner. There is however a man, that loves her more than anything else. That desperately, with his clumsy, human, imperfect, selfish way wants to save her. And thus, she bestows him with a gift, hoping that he would indeed help. It does make for a nice fairytale start of the story does it not? Unfortunately, however, this is not how it evolves, for John inevitably fails to do what he has been tasked with, despite all his love for her. And he kills her. She is now trapped in a human-like body of John’s design, a body that in its design is proof he could not escape the industrialism he so loathed, and she feels like a monstrosity. And the story only gets worse from then on, with her inevitable banishment in the Tomb for what seems to be an eternal sleep at the behest of John’s Lyctors.

Both takes I feel follow the same pattern of emotional development, regarding both their content of the text and the emotional rollercoaster they inspire in the reader.  

It was many and many a year ago

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

by the name of Annabel Lee

10.000 years ago, to be precise, in a water-filled planet called Earth. See that fairytale tone? Also, I would like to point out once more, that saltwater references. Salt water, the sea, Θάλασσα as a source of life and energy is a strong thematic that repeats itself multiple times in Muir’s books, and this is no exception. And the fact that Earth is a planet with a lot of saltwater, and in this instance serve both the kingdom and the personification of the maiden is an apt usage of the theme. Moreover, in these introductory lines, we are immediately presented with what will be the central figure of the poem, Annabel Lee, an alleged maiden. A noun that alludes to a young, beautiful woman. (Alecto is arguably in the form that John gives her, also a beautiful woman, despite the Lyctors finding her monstrous. I am of the opinion that what unsettled them was that Alecto was both too bizarre, too other, too immense to be fully understood and contained within so plain a physical vessel, and way too human to be clearly marked as different and other. One look at John’s creation and they would immediately see that alien strange cavalier, and their closest friends in her quirks and mannerisms, all at once.)

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to love and be loved by me

I was a child and she was a child

In this Kingdom by the Sea

I need not point out I feel the thematic of an impossibly powerful love that is introduced in these lines, the desperate love that John harbored for his dying home planet, and the equally desperate love Alecto harbors for the man she thought would save her. Even when he betrays her, one of the things she says to John immediately after he confines her in the human form is I love you. (“What else...” “I love you”, “…You said that too.”) And of course, the notion that they were both “children”, inexperienced with little idea of what they were doing in their despair– most certainly not untrue. A line that heavily points to one of Pyrrha’s most iconic lines in Nona the Ninth “We were children - playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water... Thinking it was space.” And they were children in comparison to what they are now. Inexperienced and stumbling through their first steps in the chaos that love is.

But we loved with a love that was more than love— 

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven  

Coveted her and me.

Now these lines tie a bit more loosely to tlt. The love that these children so to speak harbor is not any less real because of their youth and inexperience. On the contrary the aftereffects of Alecto’s and John’s love are very much real and rather disastrous for the solar system. And such love, apparently inspired jealously. In the poem in the usually benign and protective guardians that angels are, and in the books, in the Lyctors. And I think that it is at this point that the thematics might or might not deviate from the books. Because one might say, that the Lyctors, that I feel are in these lines represented by the angelical figures, could not possibly be jealous of Alecto, and her relationship with John, could they? They find her monstrous and wrong, a hindrance, so what could they be jealous about? A lot of things, I believe. For we do see in the books the extends of the affections that John harbors for Alecto, even though his little man not responsible for the consequences of his actions, behavior. In the beginning John explains everything to Alecto through his eyes, takes her everywhere, and does not part with her. He harbors this love and kinship for his strange cavalier, or the soul of the Earth that chose him to save her, that it seems to overshadow even the depth of emotion he feels for his Lyctors. For he cares for and loves Augustine and Mercy and Gideon and Cassiopeia, Ulesses and Titania, but I feel that the love he has for them is but a speck in the ocean of the emotional turmoil that Alecto inspires in him. So they cover them for a love they themselves cannot feel.

               And what would you do, how would you feel, if the man you gave everything up for, the man you uprooted your life for, the man you condemned the planet and the billions of lives on it for, barely had eyes for you? If despite all you had done for him and all you did on a daily basis to keep this impossible empire intact, all he ever did was parade his monstrous, weird, wrong, guard dog around? And no matter what you did you could never get rid of her, for she was everywhere, and she was his, and he never could care for you as his friend, as a companion, an advisor, a pillar of the empire, his hand and gesture and manifestation of his will with nearly as much love and devotion he showed her? What if you felt that she was a distraction keeping him from building the empire he was meant to build?  

And this was the reason that, long ago,    In this kingdom by the sea,  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling    My beautiful Annabel Lee;  So that her highborn kinsman came     And bore her away from me,  To shut her up in a sepulchre    In this kingdom by the sea.   The angels, not half so happy in heaven,    Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,   In this kingdom by the sea)  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,    Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

Given my ramble above I will not expand anymore on how the Lyctors would see Alecto at least as a hindrance to the empire, and at most would loathe her, for despite never having sacrificed as much as they had – in their eyes at least - she had John’s attention, devotion, respect and -frankly obsessive- love. What follows now, is an abrupt change of tone (gone are the fairytale notions) and an allusion to the Tomb, even though we know that John himself put her in there and not the other Lyctors. But we also know that the other Lyctors were on a surface level, the driving force of that decision. He sealed her away to appease them. And at least in John’s little man mentality he could insist that it was for them and their insistence that he sealed her away. And he feels the loss of Alecto, his Annabel Lee. Furthermore, Annabel Lee has been chilled, and while the interpretation in the poem can be a bit vague, we know that Alecto is held in a freezing ice coffin practically. Frozen in time in the subzero temperatures of the Ninth.

 But our love it was stronger by far than the love  

Of those who were older than we—  

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in heaven above, 

 Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

Lyctorhood ala John. Binding your soul to the soul of a planet, to the soul of Earth. It doesn’t get any stronger and up and personal than that. A love and bond that is stronger than all he knows I don’t think there is much of anything anyone can do to sever Alecto’s connection from John. It is presented as one of the big issues in the book. How to kill God when he has bound his life force to a bloody planet, who seems to be rather murderous on the best of days. I quite look forward to seeing how that moves forward. For the hero of our poem, don’t know about John I must admit, seems to be certain nothing can tear their souls apart from each other.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes  

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, 

 In her sepulchre there by the sea, 

 In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The first two lines are pretty familiar, aren’t they? They should be because they are featured in the books. And they point that our hero meets Annabel Lee in his dreams. Aka the whole premise of Nona the Ninth, where Nona dreams of Alecto’s memories. As for the second set of lines, it seems to be an allusion to both John’s original bright  golden eyes and the bottomless black pits of Alecto’s in which the stars never rise. As for the next line, my presumptive butt would like to take it as a bit of a foreshadowing. And a symbol. Yes, it does bring to mind John’s ascension in a sense with the lying on the ground theme, but the imagery here is much more serene, peaceful. So, I would like to believe it alludes to the end, where John will finally find peace and will lie besides Alecto for what could be their final rest. I do not remember if he lay beside her every night before, so correct me if I am wrong. But I would find it awfully poetic for them to do that as they set off Resurrection Vol2 or they reverse what they have done. And the last lines again allude to the Tomb and the sea. So, a random crazy idea is that they would both lie together in the Tomb and reset everything. And that the Tomb, their place of final rest or not, will be surrounded by water, so I have this crazy imagery that perhaps the Tomb containing Alecto’s and John’s lifeforce will be the center, the core, of the new planet that would resemble earth. And thus, an ocean shall rise surrounding the two, and they will eternally lay beside each other in the depths of a planet surrounded by saltwater.

All in all, both stories are stories of love in its all-consuming nature, that can be romantic and all encompassing, or take a darker turn and become obsessive and destructive. Of Love that can transcend the mortal realm and alter the laws of the world as we know it, inspiring dark feelings in what should be benevolent characters. And still that love transcends the obstacles that are set, for better or worse. Is it really as beautiful as it appears? The stories also are stories of grief and loss that defines the one that gets left behind, grief that attaches itself to the person and doesn’t let go, overpowering sense and sensibility. That becomes the past present and future of our hero. That has no outlet and suffocates its bearer. (We have seen John’s darker days, where he is drunk and barely functional.)

Okay it is probably way too late, and I am way too tired, but it makes sense in my head. Next part of this one we will be analyzing possible comparisons between this lovely poem and Gideon and Harrow’s relationship.  

hiii i joined the trend with our traumatized boys

Perhaps unrelatedly, here's a reference to Mount Ida in canto 14 of the Inferno:

Out in the sea there’s an island known as Crete, a kind of wasteland. When the world was innocent that island was ruled by a fair and just king. Mount Ida is on that island. It was like a paradise in those days, but now it’s deserted and wasted away. Rhea went there to protect her son, Jupiter. To disguise his cries, she’d have her servants scream loudly. But listen to this: inside that mountain is an immense statue of an old man. Standing tall, his shoulders are turned toward Egypt, but his head is turned toward Rome, as though it were his mirror. His head is made from the finest gold, and his chest, arms, and hands are from silver. The rest of his torso to where his legs spread is made of brass. And his legs are of iron, except his right foot that is made of terracotta. He stands more heavily on this foot than the other one. Every part of him, except his gold head, is cracked from his tears, which flow down to his feet. There they collect and seep down into the rocks below. Eventually, they drain down here into Hell, and become the three rivers you saw: the Acheron, the Styx, and the Phlegethon. Finally, the overflow pours out through this channel and it drains down to the very bottom, forming Cocytus. It goes no further. You’ll see it for yourself.

A gilded but cracked statue whose tears flow through liminal spaces to become the rivers of the underworld? In the part of hell inhabited by those who've committed sins against nature? Relating to the myth about how the infant Jupiter was able to grow up to overthrow his father Saturn, king of the gods? And referencing the Book of Daniel, which also appears in reference to Dulcinea's mysterious apparent transcendence of the River?