Confused QUEER

This was years ago. She recently celebrated her 72nd birthday by dining with billionaire Clive Palmer. Hopefully she'll remember that (and all the money she's taking in donations before the political donation caps come into effect)

“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context

Carrying stuff is huge.

If you can put meat in a bag, you can carry more meat. If you can put something like nuts in a bag, then nuts abruptly become a food that you can bring back to the tribe or save for later and not a food that you're required to eat on the spot because they are tiresome and stupid to carry by hand. In both cases your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better.

If you can put your baby in a bag, you now have both your hands free to stick a spear into things, pick nuts, fish, dig tasty cicadas out of the ground, etc. Your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better, and so did your ability to defend yourself while you do it. (And let's face it, your babies were already getting downright ridiculous in terms of the time it takes them to be fully walking-ready, due to brain size and being essentially premature; inventing Multitasking With Baby is like, pure survival at this point, and your way to do that is to create a specialized bag.)

If you can put water in a bag (first water containers very well may have been animal bladders or stomachs, not pots) you can bring water to your sick tribe members and they have a much higher chance of recovering.

And then you have elaborations of the basic "thing that contains objects" idea. If you make an exceptionally loosely woven bag and put it in the water, you can on occasion finesse some fish into it. And then you have delicious fish. If you put yourself in a loose and flexible bag of animal skin, your tribe can operate in the cold better, which changes your entire migration pattern and opens up new environments to you. If you make a hard container and fill it with water and put it over your fire, you have invented a new type of cooking that unlocks whole new food types, such as vegetables that need softening in order for humans to eat them. (Of course at the same time your stomach is becoming steadily more dependent on being able to fuck with your food in this way, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the less energy you spend on digestion, the more energy you have to spend on other things, like brains. And big brains are good for unlocking whole new levels of communication, allowing for fantastic new levels of foraging cooperation, passing knowledge through generations, mate selection, and even various sorts of mental recreation where you imagine something that you don't see, and then convey that to your fellow beings.)

It might not seem that way to readers in their late teens and and early twenties, but when you live long enough you start to realize you have so much more potential to change and grow. The Fourth are the most obvious examples of this as they’re like 14, but the saddest losses in my eyes are Palamedes and Camilla because within the story, they’re the slightly older, slightly more mature ones. Gideon and Harrow treat them as very competent peers. Nona sees the two of them as trustworthy adults. But they’re only like 21.

I remember being 21 and feeling like such an adult. But I got to live long enough to understand that no, the 28 year old girl who proclaimed that at 21 I was just a baby was right. And John is a bastard for encouraging all those young people to unwittingly die and stagnate themselves so early.

2. They don’t have tomatoes. This is something they can never experience again

If you look at ancient Roman food there’s certain things we’d recognize as “Italian” like olive oil or fermented fish sauce or cheese but the flavor profile is completely different and pasta isn’t anywhere to be found. They also had herbs and spices that have since become unpopular or even gone extinct.

A lot of things we view as unmovable and unchanging about certain culture’s cuisines are incredibly recent developments. Modern Indian cuisine for example can be traced back to a singular guy in the 16th century. And these days lard is considered to be integral to making tamales but that wasn’t used until the Spanish brought over pigs and cows.

I'm not very good at explaining so I'll use headlines

Why Cytherea's body is stuck sick

From my understanding Jod led all the lyctors to do a butchered job. Like so that he wouldn't be left alone he stopped them from doing a perfect lyctorhood (like Paul).

Because of this butchered job, Cytherea's body got preserved as it was, which at the time was literally dying from sickness. So when the lyctorhood happens, her body gets the thanergy battery it needs to heal itself, but it's preserved as sick.

So like basically Cytherea is constantly healing herself so that shes not suffering, but her body is constantly trying to return to its level of cell decay.

How we know

Like the rest of the lyctors are preserved at like healthy enough places, so whenever they get hurt (like how Gideon was exploded with harrows soup) unless they're thanergy is disrupted, like when Cytherea's died, they'll just like Deadpool back to where they were

It's why Augustine can smoke so much, his lungs just naturally return to pre-cancer ridden

Harrows body can get manipulated to grow hair really fast because she's an incomplete lyctor, so Ianthe was able to alter her body before it got preserved

Implications

Based on how Cytherea was SO against more lyctors being made, it's assumed she found out how Jod had doomed her. It's why she's so giddy at Gideon (ha) existing . like before with wake and Mercymorn and Augustine, shes helping the rebellion because shes sick of the empire shit. Then she abandons her post when she figures out the truth of lyctorhood, and eventually she finds out about Jods invitation and fucks everyone up

Why Jod doesn't heal her

Jods intentions are still like up for debate, but it's pretty much assumed that after the whole ending the world stuff, he became desperate to stay with the lyctors. They were his friends before, and maybe they don't remember it, but he doesn't want them to leave, that's why he pushes them to become lyctors so that he's not abandoned, why the whole "take your time to understand what lyctorhood" stuff is, he wants people who are willing to sacrifice their loved one to be with him

Plus, Cythereas body falling apart all the time is pointed out to REALLY boost her necromancy, with the revenant beasts after Jod, it would be really useful to jod for her to be a glass canon to keep him safe. Plus if shes feeling weak all the time, why would she leave him when he provides resources for her to stay more comfortable. Like to me it's very implied that Jod probably knew or thought he could learn a way to heal her, but it's better for him if she stays dependent on him.

I feel like a lot of evidence suggests he didn't originally want Lyctors at all and was assuming it wouldn't be possible. Harrow with Alecto's memories says the disciples came to him with the idea, and he starts tripping over himself when trying to justify to her why it was definitely necessary (likely lying even to himself). Early research had 3-4 souls just to power a fancier skeleton, and hundreds for Teacher. Cris and Alfred killed themselves very unexpectedly to force Mercy and Augustine, so I suspect it was just too late to do anything by the time John got there. And then "I let them die because I thought that was easier" could be, like much he says, Technically True, just let the rest die because it was easier than explaining to A&M that he never wanted this and could have stopped it if he'd been paying closer attention, and hadn't lied to them in the first place about "needing to stay close to avoid straining his power".

Bonus with all the evidence Pyrrha might have originally been the necromancer, John never would have put his oldest and most loyal friend in the cav role if he'd intended cavs as breakfast. Also the disciples themselves invented cavaliers as a role, even. But yeah, lastly I just think it would go against everything about his character to have WANTED less friends who are also less reliant on him, harder to keep track of, and more capable of acting against him. Everything he's ever let go of had clawmarks on it, I doubt he went in expecting to throw half his friends away.

Sorry that explanation is so long but ALL THAT SAID, most the rest is solid!

Rapid cell renewal begins at the point of Lyctoral absorption, by default, and that's likely true even for John. Unlike others he doesn't have a thanergetic nervous system, necromancy is only one facet of his power, but he still looks like a "typical" necro. And, well, he sure hadn't slept in months and had been eating mostly non-food before becoming God. I don't think he can alter his own body either. But yeah, so Cytherea never could have healed herself. No normal necromancer could have, and by the time she was a Lyctor, she was stuck like that.

As for BEFORE... There's a fair bit we don't know about Cyth's origins. She was born in the early Seventh House, post-Resurrection, so she wasn't on the list of people he'd originally wanted to keep close. She joined later, like Cyrus and Valancy and Anastasia and Samael. But John mentions going to Rhodes "to see the miracle" but not meet the woman yet, and??? We have no idea what that refers to. Maybe Cyth had achieved something through her cancer-enhanced necromancy that got his attention, and that COULD have played into the decision?

But uh. One way or another the answer to "why couldn't John heal her" is he 100% could have and he didn't. Did it have to do with the miracle in question? Was it just the general idea that being in a state of actively dying could enhance necromancy and he just wanted to see what would happen? He's always been very driven by curiosity especially in the early days. Did he know something specific already to have made that choice firmly? Was he actively pausing her cancer "at least" (claiming that was all he could do smh) or was he letting it progress? Who knows. Either way it's really, really fucked. (Let no one say I defend him unconditionally lol.)

Like... He could cure cancer more or less instantly even as earth's vessel. For there to be any reason he couldn't have helped Cyth would have to mean there's some REALLY big secret that just hasn't come up at all. Like. If "the miracle" was her somehow communicating with a Resurrection Beast and carrying/channeling a facet of it, if her cancer was like Varun gorging on Judith's living marrow, if her name being an epithet for Aphrodite was meant to convey an association with Venus the planet. Which like, that last part gets my conspiracy brain firing slightly buuuuut the cancer being hereditary means that's proooobably not it lmao. Pal does note how he's able to mess with hers because it's so similar to Dulcie's that he's familiar with, though I guess he's only familiar via reports and not having actually touched it. But yeah. Not actually suggesting that, just saying that's the level of WILD the explanation would have to be for John to have had any trouble fixing it; it'd have to be from something on par with him.

For all the "how would you convinve her to lie," they didn't know what Alecto was, not fully. Mercy expresses doubt she ever had a genetic code, but if they knew, she'd know as a fact either Alecto didn't or any semblance of it was also John's code, being made partly from his own body.

They assume that Harrow's cavalier having Alecto's eyes—eyes so unnaturally gold that they could have belonged to no one else in the universe, to a point that Augustine's first thought was "fuck me backward, she woke up"—must mean they were actually John's eyes, but that isn't true either.

His eyes weren't gold until the earth started channeling power through him. His eyes were brown, and no one has his original eyes anymore. I've seen people argue she rewrote his genetic code, which, I guess isn't outside the realm of possibility? I just think the sun imagery used with John and Alecto is extremely strong so the fact that they look like a solar eclipse makes the possibility that his eyes are technically-still-sunlight-gold and being literally blocked out by Something Else significantly more likely. Either way:

Her body was made partly from his body. IF it has any human genetic code to speak of, it's his genetic code. If Mercy and Augustine knew what Alecto was, they wouldn't have jumped to "their eyes must have swapped, so she must be his cavalier." They would have thought "of course, we should have guessed his eyes used to be the same color as hers since her physical form came from him", which still would have led to "Harrow's cavalier must have been the child we created", but not "John lied to us about Lyctorhood."

And when he describes Anastasia and Samael, he sounds hungover and claims the secret was to do it slower, more methodical, which we later see couldn't have been less the case for him; she was just too big to eat.

We see part of the "she was too big" part in the above screenshot, "Fuck knows what would've happened if I tried to absorb you all the way; I probably would've burnt to death." It wasn't that he had a method to preserve her; it was that he COULDN'T fully eat her, despite trying. Just above that section says more:

And what he'd said about Samael was...

Here Augustine suggests Anastasia nearly cracked "the right way" of doing it (the way that doesn't exist), and John says yes but with those caveats about his tone.

One big thing people don't acknowledge enough about John is he's not even a good liar. The vast majority of the time, he's basically running on Fae Rules; he relies on Technical Truths, misleading truths, and lies of omission, and even with the latter he's about two seconds from spilling his guts at any given time and slips so much. ("If you knew the whole story, you might strike me full in the face instead", "ten thousand years since I've eaten human being and I really did not want an encore", answering honestly that nukes were involved in destroying the First, etc.) My favorite go-to example for a Technical Truth is telling Harrow that G1deon "made a pact with an authority I have no power to gainsay that he would protect me from any danger." Either you can't gainsay yourself or, sure, I can see him promising Pyrrha he'd make her death mean something, either works. "Now it has been put to him that you are that danger." It sure had! It sure had been put to him. By John. He just doesn't say that part but if you stop and think about it who else would have? He clearly doesn't listen to anyone but John. But yeah! Most stuff he says has some truth to it, which is what makes it really fun to pick apart and figure out what angle has the real truth.

But when he does just outright lie, there are patterns to it.

He'll do his best to omit/avoid anything that makes him sound especially Weak or Vulnerable, even if he might gloss over hints. (The racism he endured, the likely queerphobia, problems with the schools he rattled off, etc.)

He will go so far out of his way to avoid putting blame on anyone he cares about, to a point it loops around into being an ego thing, a la "stopping them was on me, you know?" (He informs us M— was at the head of pushing for more time to work out maternity and that the investors brought up maternity as one of the reasons for shutting it down, but he emphasizes they all stood with her and never, ever blames her. He talks about how much the sheer noise and overstimulation of everything was contributing to his breakdown at the end, how it was taking active effort to keep his power from killing everyone just to get some quiet, but shortly after when he touched earth's soul and dissociated about it for a while, he says she kept screaming, and Harrow-as-Alecto asks, "I was?" and he immediately assures her "It wasn't your fault." He always wants to deflect, never wants anything to be his fault, always wants you to know he had to do it, it was the circumstances you know, but he'll take blame before he'll put it on someone close to him. "There can be no forgiveness for those who walked away, just as there can be no forgiveness for me.")

"Guys as careful as me don't have accidents" IS the big lie in that chapter, and might be either or both of the above, either "c'mon, love, we both know I can't just say I wasn't strong enough" and/or refusing to put blame on the earth despite her very much shoving more power into him than he could control without any consent or instructions.

He'll lie if he's backed into enough of a corner about something he really, really doesn't want to admit, which I do think is part of what's going on with his HtN "confession", specifically not wanting to admit the truth about what Alecto was and his part in the end of the world.

Why would she say this if she already knew, if he'd already said his hand was forced, it was for the common good, everything he says In The Dream? It would have rankled, but it didn't, because he never told them.

And, of course, he'll lie when he's also lying to himself. ("What's the difference?" He's God! He shapes the universe and his word is law. If he says it enough, it's basically true, right? (Wrong.)) He tends to struggle or trip over himself when he does. When talking about Samael, he "sounded far-off and confused, like he was hung over." And

He did love Cristabel, so much that the universe is Space Catholic now specifically because of how much she influenced him. John went to an Anglican boarding school, and if G—'s religious-as-hell grandparents had any influence, they were Methodist (as per celebrating White Sunday). The nun was the one pushing for it being a miracle because John had been baptized, omitting that he'd only gone to the Christian music festival for the underage drinking. John didn't believe in the soul until he got desperate. Mercy didn't have to say anything before she did it, but she told him if he looked her in the eyes and she believed him, she'd forgive him, so I think she did believe him (and that hurt worse; he cared so much and let this happen anyway).

He did love them all, he's clung to them this long. And he's locked in by the end here, with the "love you three until the end of time" and all. But he is tripping over himself a bit, stammering. We see him do that elsewhere when he gets thrown off, not necessarily always lying but when he's distressed (and afraid of losing control of a situation or the narrative), like after telling Harrow he would've liked her as a daughter.

And when he talks about why he super definitely wanted Lyctors.

So here's what I was referencing in the other post too about it being the disciples who came up with the idea, and how John was negligent but he didn't lead them into bad results. He saw them pursuing the wrong leads and didn't stop them.

He gives an answer that doesn't line up with what she's saying, and then cuts her off when she tries to question it. There's the stammering here even for stuff that would otherwise flow fine, but also look at what he's saying. Why would you let someone go away, untouchable? But becoming Lyctors made them harder to see, harder to touch. "Needed them to be my hands, my fingers" draws an interesting parallel between the Lyctors and Heralds to an RB, which Augustine describes like fingers to a hand, so in that way, perhaps there's A connection, but it doesn't change that Lyctoral masking works even on him. That's why he didn't know about the lobotomy until he happened to touch Harrow's head very near the damage and then got really upset. And then he jumps from "I loved them too much" to reiterating his crimes against the earth. "I needed my loved ones to be something I could touch" but he could already touch them. He was already keeping them immortal by his own power (and had been lying to them that he needed them to stay close "to avoid straining his power"). He could already reach at least to the edge of the solar system from earth if not farther, could already set theorems and forget about them. And AGAIN she tries to protest/question and he cuts her off, specifically with this being where he openly admits "there can be no forgiveness for me." And he says "even though" he rips the fingers from his hands but, considering the analogy he just made, well. It feels a lot more like that's one of the reasons why: because he's a coward who let so many of his friends die and has been willing to lose more and more to the RBs over time.

So yeah, jumping back up to the third screenshot up:

"I let them die because I thought that was easier" could be, like much he says, Technically True, just 'let the rest die because it was easier than explaining to A&M that he never wanted this and could have stopped it if he'd been paying closer attention, and hadn't lied to them in the first place about "needing to stay close to avoid straining his power".'

And back on Anastasia and Samael, I agree with asafeplaceforus112 on that. John's absolutely lying about "the secret was to do it slower—more methodically", because that very much was not his secret or how he did it at all. He was under far more duress than Mercy or Augustine, even! But lying in some regard doesn't mean he can't also be doing a lot of the Technical Truth or giving truth-adjacent details. And we DO know of a better version of Lyctorhood, one that you might even call true Perfect Lyctorhood if you trust Paul's judgment that "we are the love that has been perfected by death," which would, in fact, have killed them both. If they were about to figure out the Paul method, John's intervention very much would have technically saved Anastasia.

Boris "professional idiot" Johnson wanted to build an island airport in the immediate area.

it's fucking visible

You weren't kidding they've been trying to get the masts off for 5 years and keep getting foiled because there's probably bombs leaking out of her

While we don't often do the typical watering down of characters you'll see elsewhere, I've realized that with TLT, a lot of the reads that bother me ultimately seem to boil down to people underestimating just how sad everyone is, or "knowing" it but not fully understanding just how deeply it affects them.

We'll talk about how part of the point of the series is that the price of love is invariably grief, but I feel like that grief isn't always given the weight it truly deserves.

And it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. I've almost never seen people downplaying what a sad wet cat Harrow is, but I do sometimes see her treated as a lot more... overconfident? elitist? than she really is? Those aren't the right words and she definitely IS very strongly those things, but I've seen people exaggerate that in a way that ignores some of her sadness and compassion, if that makes sense. Still, not "too" bad. And a few characters like Cam, yeah maybe people focus more on her badassery sometimes, but I don't really see anyone underselling the tragedy. And I'm glad!

But then there's the really big obvious one with Kiriona. The number of people who actively dislike her or straight up think she's not Gideon, who miss the moments of compassion that seep through even with abrasive as she's actively trying to be. As if it's not so similar to when she was like, nope! She's out! "Might as well leave [my stitches] in until I'm done getting people bumped off, am I right!" As if she hasn't been an asshole the whole time. But also, as if she hasn't spent the last six months coping with learning her mother only conceived her to kill her, and not knowing if Harrow is still alive or if she'll ever see her again, and having everything she ever wanted to earn just handed to her because of something she had no control over, denying her the chance to ever really prove herself in the process. As if she wasn't ALSO just baited into the first Griddlehark kiss only for it to not really be Harrow, and worse, to be Harrow's bullshit dead girlfriend wearing her body. Of course she's pissed, of course she's miserable.

And there's just Gideon, who does sometimes get watered down into the funny cocky half golden retriever half douchebag, and it's a fun vibe for sure, but at the end of the day, it's always been a mask. She does love swords and working out, but even working out became a comfort because it was something she had control over, could do completely on her own to make her feel like she was making any sort of progress toward getting away from this hellhole. You don't try to run away 87 times without being really miserable and desperate.

And like. Yeah anyone following me knows we'd be here all damn day if I got too started on John, but short version this is not a power-hungry asshole who enjoys lording over people, this is a guy who doesn't want power but is terrified of anyone else taking it if he doesn't, a guy who refuses to ever be powerless again, and most importantly, a guy driven almost entirely by fear and guilt and desparation to "fix" everything he's done. I absolutely believe to the depths of my soul that his crown is a mourning wreath and he wears those baby bones to force himself to literally bear the weight of his sins, so he'll never forget what he's done or be tempted to think he's allowed to let it go. He can't accept the "stains", he needs to make things "clean." There are multiple implications he doesn't intend to survive whatever he needs to do to Make Things Right. Kiriona is the saddest girl in the universe and she 10,000% gets it from her dad.

And then there's all the Lyctors, but very especially Mercymorn. And we're gonna really buckle in for this one.

Because man, I get it. She's so mean and angry and I am also swooning for those parts of her. But people will acknowledge she's a walking pile of grief and then treat that anger as her defining trait. No, she's miserable. Augustine is miserable. G1deon is miserable. Cytherea, for all her coy and silly moments and vengeful plans, was miserable. They're all exhausted; compelled to keep going, but actively dreaming of finally being allowed to die. And all of them, in spite of everything, still loved John to their deaths, and everything hurt so much more because they did. It isn't "betrayal" if you didn't trust the person who betrayed you.

And with Mercy in particular, she cares so much, about everything all the time, and really can't make it stop. She sees Harrow being attacked and gets exasperated at herself for stepping in even as she manipulates her body to replicate powerful pain meds. The entire Acid Jail speech is screaming that at the end of the day, what she often fantasizes about is John finally understanding everyone else's suffering enough to stop what he's been doing and get his shit together and thank her for helping him get there. She chooses the meanest way to say nearly everything but the patterns in what she's saying reveal so much.

Her anger is a wall, erected to keep everyone away, to isolate herself on purpose, because caring hurts too much; because getting attached means eventually losing someone else and she cannot bear any more grief; because if she allowed herself any real anchor other than her duty to stop John's madness, she might hesitate to kill herself once it's finally over, and she so deeply wants to die.

Her anger is a shelter and an anchor in itself. It's safe, in the same way Augustine is safe, hatred is safe. If she allowed herself any shred of Joy, wouldn't that be tantamount to moving on? To letting go? Wouldn't that be betraying Cristabel, to ever be happy again without her? No, she refuses. She made her House a monument to Cris's fascination with the soul, not her own unparalleled skill with flesh. She doesn't want to be here or anywhere without her, but at first, dying after Cris died to make her immortal would be making her death pointless, and later, she realized John needed to be stopped and had a duty to see that through. So anger helps her keep going. Anger is better than emptiness. When anger is the only fuel you have, the only thing that can still light a fire in you, you cling and cling and cling. You lean into it, you look for reasons to be pissed off on purpose. You erode your patience into nothing until every tiniest slight is reason to be on a warpath. Because you have a job to do, and you can't let yourself stop until you get it done, and if you ever let that fire go out, you're not sure you'd ever get it started again.

And even then, the quiet misery can't fully be masked. There's the total deflation, the full-bore unalloyed relief when Harrow says she's too young to be hers. There's her seeing Gideon like the picture in the dictionary next to unhappiness, like someone who'd just seen their true love kicked into a meat grinder and come out as a pile of sausages. There's her becoming a crumple of misery confronting John, and most of all, the distant almost dissociative calm when she thinks the deed is finally done. How much all that anger simply evaporates, how she barely has the energy left to protest when Augustine says she still has to keep going. This isn't a woman who was ever going to be satisfied by violence, or by anything at all, but one who cared too much for humanity to ever just leave it to die.

And then there's Alecto. Alecto who was switched off in the middle of "I still love y" and woke up with the "you" still on her lips. Alecto who had a piece of her experience a whole beautiful life full of love, and in that form lamented how hard it was being happy when everyone around her wasn't, yet who is constantly pushing down guilt and grief that she can't even place. Identifying the Sixth House committee as something wonderful in the tunnels, not being sad that Pal does necromancy, but also being sad that he can do it. Alecto who only ever wanted to be herself and hated playing pretend, Alecto who was only ever afraid to die. Alecto whose first thought when the dust settles is "you betrayed my trust", whose second thought is "you made me so unnatural and ugly", and whose third is "what have you done with the rest of my children." A being who thought twice first about herself, because just like Nona also shows, she is selfish, she is vain, and why the hell shouldn't she be? But that doesn't invalidate how right at the heels of that was her grief. She won't be satisfied by violence, either. She certainly wasn't before.

I could go on. The tragedy of Colum Asht and Naberius Tern, both bred to be used as tools. Silas's seeming lack of even an understanding of humor or joy because he's been raised to be this beacon of purity and reason and rules. Judith growing up with so much pressure on her and feeling like she's failed at every single thing she's ever done. Palamedes, overall a fucking beacon of shining hope compared to everyone else in this series, never truly meeting the woman he'd adored his whole life, the only time he ever directly touched her when he unknowingly fingered her ashes, carried by Camilla and feeling as though just existing in their lives has hurt every woman he's ever loved. Corona terrified of herself, begging Judith to bind her down and keep her from getting worse. Even Ianthe, crying herself to sleep every night for months, pining for a girl who refuses to let go of something she doesn't even remember, struggling to cope with having expectations she can't meet for the first time in her life and reaching a point of trying in vain to stab her own arm off.

Some might've gotten by a little better than others. Magnus and Abigail are a terrifying force not to be underestimated but even in death seem content enough with their lots. Dulcie for all her terrible circumstances, or maybe even because of them, might be one of the least sad characters in the series.