The Locked Tomb Death Spiral

it really says something that people in this fandom are consistently headcanoning the most deceptive and boundary-crossing characters in the series (ianthe and john) as transfem the most often out of any other characters over the years. and by "something" i mean y'all are transmisogynistic freaks

I’ve never personally encountered this head cannon about John, but in Ianthe’s case there’s potentially some textual support for a transfem reading of the character. I don’t have HtN handy, but John asks Harrow if she and Ianthe are being safe - maybe a bad dad joke, maybe implying that there’s a hypothetical pregnancy risk. I guess you could argue that the implication could just as easily be that Harrow is trans, but with the third house specializing in flesh magic, I think it makes a bit more sense for it to be Ianthe. Disclaimer, I’m not enough of an Ianthe enjoyer to have strongly held opinions, it’s just something I’ve seen pointed out on here that I think holds a little water. Transfem John seems like a strange choice since he’s a misogynistic prick.

I’ve seen the take on here a lot that Harrow was a secret Noniad fan girl, or hate read it or something. Since reading The Unwanted Guest, I’ve assumed that Harrow’s knowledge of the Noniad is an example of soul permeability from Ortus’s soul being in her river bubble and that she would not have otherwise known it. I don’t know of any examples of her quoting it during gtn. Are there instances of it prelobotomy that I’m not aware of? Is anyone else interpreting it as a soul permeability thing?

at a phase in my life where when i get the sense a book is trying to offer me Representation (TM) i hiss and scream and start kicking and ripping bricks out of the wall. this character's Coherent Identity And Articulation Of Their Issues had Better fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding (it won't)

meet my new oc blorbinia who introduces herself to other people in fantasyland with exacting microlabels based on her recurring visions of Social Media Identity Discourse from this world. it is her goal in life to establish as many other people's labels as possible because she believes if you die without knowledge of your Correct Terms then the gods don't know what Community you belong to and your soul roams the empty betweenspace of the afterlife forever.

I have to double reblog because it took me until this moment to realize that “those big poison desert cats” may in fact mean the cats that live in the poison desert and not the poisonous cats that live in the desert. In my defense I read Nona in a single sitting and it was a fever dream. Thank you for aiding my belated reading comprehension.

Oof, so many feelings about this. The vague suggestion of cannibalism that we have to guess at the exact shape of. Gideon referring to herself as a daughter of the ninth house.

palamedes is so funny to me because like if you aren't paying full attention to him he kind of just flies under the radar as The Smart Guy when in fact he is just. so incredibly aggro. i think he could suicide bait people on forums i think he has it in him

palamedes isn't the smart guy. he is the guy that gave an old woman turbo cancer then blew himself up in her face. the fact he is smart enough to know how to do that is incidental to the fact he would do that innit

Don't forget he and his unhealthily codependent cavalier relationship planned for the eventuality that he would blow himself to little bone pieces...

ok ok the fact that Wake's eye color is never ever explicitly mentioned despite her face being featured multiple times in a book series where everyone, even those w brown and black eyes, gets their irises waxed poetic about at least once, is either gonna end up being the biggest reveal or the silliest red herring in the whole series

Getting back on my soap box about Cytherea’s comment when she saw Gideon’s eyes. “Lipochrome, recessive” as in a trait that’s inherited from both parents. Do I know how it’s important? No. But do I suspect strongly that it is? Very much so.

I have a not well thought out enough to be called a theory so I guess we’ll go with thought about this! The entirety of the ninth house is a tomb. There’s that weird prison above the ninth that keeps getting mentioned and I refuse to take it at face value. What if it’s also a tomb and that’s where the cavs bodies are? Do I think this is actually extremely likely? Maybe not, but if it were true, we could make a quick stop on the prison at the beginning of Alecto and reunite Pyrrha with her own body, unlocking her full milfdilf power. And I’m choosing to live in a world where that’s a possibility until canon tells me it’s not.