Yes, It’s The Dress

Dyas I’ve matched at multiple tournaments. She’s perfectly capable with the rapier, if a touch predictable in her technique—but that’s the way of Cohort cavs, naturally. So many of them, the lieutenant included, would make for wonderful duelists if they simply devoted more of their training to the art of the blade, rather than, you know, crass warfare. A waste, if you ask me. That said, would be a right treat to see her fight while thalergetically enhanced, Second style. Bet she’s magnificent.

The Fourth—look. The Fourth is a child. The mere suggestion that a fourteen-year-old is anywhere on the level of the rest of us is a rank insult. I, for one, ain’t here for kiddie games. Apparently, though, I’m alone on this. Whatever.

As for the Fifth, well, he’s very Fifth, see. He’s an academic playing cav dress-up, as far as I’m concerned. He seems to think his deficit of swordsmanship quirky and amusing. Makes him an even more embarrassing inclusion than the Fourth. At least Chatur has ambition.

The Sixth? Can’t rightly say. She’s never in the training room. Ain’t seen her fight yet. Ain’t seen much of her or her necro at all, actually. One tends to forget the Sixth House is even here.

The Seventh has excellent rep as a duelist. He retired from the tournament scene before I ever had a chance to match him myself, but, God, I’ve heard such splendid accounts from cavs who did! Doesn’t seem much like those stories in person, though, and I’ve yet to see him train, either. Wonder if he’s ill or something.

The Eighth…I mean, the greatsword and targe is certainly a choice. Would love to see him fight, though. See how he uses it. Would naturally require a different style than what I’m accustomed to. But one can’t deny the appeal of novelty…

sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.

ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.

ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.

there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being rude, instead of asking why the world doesn’t revolve around your personal comfort, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.

it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.

also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.

if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.

Some things we do know about Corona:

she is not above abusing people she has power over

she has quite a bit of experience pulling off a con

if she's loyal to anybody, she's loyal to Ianthe -- but I don't think we can actually say for sure she's loyal to Ianthe, so, in effect, she's loyal to nobody

she has plans of some form involving Judith Deuteros

(This is a trait often associated with BPD, which in this context unavoidably reminds me of that meme that goes “yes i have bpd. beautiful princess disorder.”)

She's aware of this! As Yet Unsent, while filtered through Judith (who is at least trying not to be “discursive”), contains some very interesting nuggets:

“Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?”

There's a recurring idea she brings up—that she was meant to rule, and that she's afraid of “what throne” she will mount.

“She said she had groomed herself for something and all it had done was make her unfit for the purpose. What purpose?”

And then, closer to the end:

I said I was just an administrator; she was a princess. A king. She said there was no king but the Emperor. I said her problem was a lack of job opportunities. She laughed a little and said, Too right.

She has been groomed for one thing, and that is leadership. She always seeks others that she can contrast with herself to develop as a person, but she is also incapable of not trying to get power over them, which surely leads to decreased stability?

At the same time, she's derided by both Judith and Ianthe for caring about other people and being easily moved by greater notions of ethics—she wants thinks to be better, and she wants to be in charge of that. She has a rich relationship with leading and following, and couples with cavalier standards she probably envisions herself as leading in a “servant to the people” way (whereas Ianthe just wants the boot, and she wouldn't have the charisma to pull off anything else).

Her main conflict is that she lacks the strength to pursue that path on her own so long as Ianthe is there, and she seems to be troubled by her own capability for evil.

I fully expected her arc to go somewhere like making her a big BoE leader tbh. After all, she's already risen in their ranks from hostage to double-agent and leader of Troia cell, which is a subsection of Ctesiphon wing, which after the events of NtN will be the faction of BoE that succesfully carried out Wake's plan to open the Tomb. BoE could do with another very impassioned, charismatic leader.

Given Ianthe has been telling us since GtN that she's been looking into the Resurrection, many of us believe her intention is to replace God. Ianthe presumably wanted to discover lyctorhood for the both of them—and then she spends HtN trying to figure out other ways to induce stasis and keep tissue immortal. In NtN, they're “closer to the goal than ever before” and Ianthe says “I fully intend for us to be us, together, now… but I have the framework for it.” And Ianthe has been looking at the use of planetary souls…

Tamsyn said she has one “magnificently shitty” thing left to do in Alecto:

“Ianthe will be awful. Ianthe will reach new heights of being absolutely goddamn dreadful. […] I was thinking about one specific magnificently shitty thing Ianthe does in Alecto, just, the dumbest and pettiest thing I am setting her up to do, and although she is still bad in Nona — spoiler: you do get to spend some time with Ianthe in Nona — I would say her badness, although grim, is within expected parameters of Ianthe.”

(Here's also a bunch of useful posts @lady-harrowhark collected about Ianthe probably being half-dead and how Corona staying alive might have been necessary for her to stay alive too?)

Back to As Yet Unsent,

“I’m still fighting myself. Wait and see who wins.” As though it were a duel.

Ultimately, I think the big question for Corona is—will she dare to abandon Ianthe? Cain betrayed Abel. Will Ianthe have devoted her entire life to their plan, and given up her own sense of self, only to be rejected at the finish line? Or will Coronabeth betray Blood of Eden and everyone in the universe to stay with Ianthe?

The one other person Coronabeth consistently cares about, too, is Judith. If Judith has survived her last brush with Varun and figures in Alecto, I suspect she might play an important role here. Between Ianthe, Blood of Eden, and Judith, who will Corona betray?

When she looked at Palamedes, Nona was suddenly struck by the idea that Crown wasn’t happy at all, or grateful—and yet she obviously was, hungrily and thirstily grateful; she put Nona in mind of Noodle, suddenly, wanting to go out but wanting to stay in the basket, wanting to run around outside but wanting to come back.

And this is further emphasized with another much subtler point that's very interesting once you see it:

Corona has thus far arbitrated every single duel in the series. She's someone who wants the final say, is confident asserting her authority over others, and ALSO someone who is constantly on the fence, rather than on either side. Marta says arbitrating for Babs would be a conflict of interest and Corona ignores it, but she does judge it fairly. She's always the diplomat and always someone torn between conflicting wants.

And then there's...

“If Camilla hears you said that, she’ll be furious.” “That’s probably why I said it,” admitted Crown, with genuine contrition. “I have a ripple of evil running through my soul—I know I do. But it wasn’t that bad a lie, was it, Nona? Don’t you think it’ll raise Cam’s status? Don’t you think I’ve done her a favour?”

She believes herself to be "evil" on some level, which damn sure lines up with "What throne will I mount if you don't bind me down?" Yet Nona, who can read intentions so well, also sees genuine remorse here. And yet, she still did say it in part to bother Cam, and then she turns around and wants to justify it, wants Nona to tell her it was okay and absolve her of fault.

Which... Yeah. Man... It's not even just all the constant "king" (much more than "queen") imagery around Corona or the implications Ianthe wants to make her a new God. She and John just have loads of parallels in general. Association with the sun, but not truly: Corona more accurately the moon (one of her first descriptions being Ianthe's "illuminated reflection"), John having stolen his light as well. They both sincerely want to do good and want to care about other people, but are egocentric by nature and struggle to get outside of their own head, so often assume their way is best, struggle to follow any plan they didn't help come up with or take anyone's advice if it pushes against what they wanted. I could go on, and could of course list a lot of differences too, they're far from the same character. But as many parallels and foils as their are all over this series, it's sometimes useful to compare and contrast a different character's traits and struggles to help frame things, so figured that was worth offering.

(I've also rambled before about my read of the twins through a mental health lens, in which. Disclaimers first: (1) I'm in no way claiming it's a definitive diagnosis or even that I think it was necessarily intended, but find it to be a useful lens to examine them through. And (2) there is no such thing as Magically Makes You Evil Disease and I'll fight anyone who treats anything that way, especially NPD and ASPD which tend to get the worst of the worst stigmatization, which isn't to say other "Scary Disorders" don't also get it fucking bad. But yeah, all that said, I do personally read both the twins with NPD. And I really love them both as sympathetic and nuanced characters who are capable of being very toxic, still also capable of good, clearly struggling with the traits you can read as symptoms, and have a lot they need to work on but have room to improve a lot if they ever did. Like will either of them ever? I'm not holding my breath lmao. But I appreciate that they have all those complex facets and are still likeable as characters even now. 🙂‍↕️)

But yeah. Yeah.

It's so hard to say what the hell Corona might do because she so genuinely has no idea what she wants herself.

Or rather, she wants a lot of things. But does she? She wants to be close to Ianthe. She wants Ianthe out of her life. She wants Judith to love her. She's exclusively interested in people who don't want her. She wants Camilla to look at her the way Cam looks at Nona. She absolutely can't stand being told what to do or treated like a child. She wants to be the ruler of everything. She doesn't want to take sides. She doesn't want to hurt anyone and she's also incredibly comfortable using Babs as a literal chew toy and also probably was the one to put the rapier through his heart.

some people really don’t realize how privileged they are that they get fanfics for free. imagine having access to something for free because someone is kind enough to share it with you… and then being rude, entitled and an ungrateful pos to that person who was kind enough to share their creation with you for free

“almost 1 year is a lil too much for me” fuck off. fanfic writers don’t owe you anything. one of my favorite fics was updated after 13 years, and what I did is that I thanked the author for choosing to continue the work, I didn’t act like a spoiled toddler by asking why they didn’t update sooner. and even if a writer chooses to abandon their fic permanently with no explanation, that is their choice, their hobby, their decision. they don’t owe your entitled ass anything.

she can't be god's favourite even tho she's the only loyal Lyctor, because he has a daughter and that daughter is her crush's situationship, who she always looked down on because she thought Gideon was stupid, but now she gets all the good stuff for nothing?? she found her sister but apparently Corona became an enemy of the empire and she sided with the Sixth House of all people?? and then she gets outplayed by Palamedes Sextus, someone she always disdained and he proves to her that she's slowly becoming more and more like Babs. and then she watches Camilla and Palamedes perform the grand lysis and she realises that they weren't stupid for rejecting traditional lyctorhood and that she could've had something like this with Corona but now it's too late.