we can live forever if you’ve got the time

John Gaius tells us (well, Harrow) in Nona the Ninth that he always hated change, but even in Harrow the Ninth it’s clear—he and his lyctors are stagnating and have been for millennia. They’re constantly talking about how great things used to be (sexy parties, Cassiopeia’s cooking, etc.). They have no hope for the future. John has a spaceship full of bodies in cryosleep—literally frozen in time and undying but also unable to grow or live. He is the Emperor Undying.

The theme becomes more explicit in Nona the Ninth: we see John (and arguably BOE) stuck on this 10,000-year-old grudge and unable to move past it. He thought he could keep Alecto in stasis in a tomb what, forever? He makes Gideon into a non-living preserved version of herself.

Meanwhile the characters who are living and growing are changing, even when it’s sometimes awful, because it’s how they keep doing what needs to be done. Palamedes and Camilla say before they become Paul that it wasn’t inevitable, but it is the best thing they can do now: they will make this imperfect irreversible change because that’s how they keep living and protecting the people they love. On the trip to the Ninth, Nona considers it might be better to just die, instead of continue this uncertain journey forward, but ultimately accepts irrevocable, painful change because NOODLE. And because “You can’t take loved away”: change doesn’t destroy the past or invalidate the good that existed there. Living requires change, but change doesn’t require forgetting.

you think im petting you but actually i a,m takig you away

this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.

anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you: