Seek Knowledge - Reduce Suffering

@beccastareyes @i-need-a-tlt-outlet @the-boring-distopia @oh-jod-dammit and others have added a LOT of great info in different posts, so the SciFi over Fantasy Megatheorum continues! In this section, we'll cover:

If Radiation is the powerhouse of necromancy (thereby allowing us to label it Thanergy), what is Thalergy?

and,

Birth of an Insufferable Witch

Thalergy first! I'm honestly ashamed I didn't think of it first BUT let’s talk about Mitochondria.

In The Locked Tomb there are a TON of references to blood and lineage being especially important, and blood (generally) means Mitochondrial DNA. It's a known meme fact: Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. This is true! Not only do mitochondria produce cellular energy, they are also involved in the process of cell death.

On mitochondria and radiation:

“The effects of radiation on nuclear and mitochondrial structures are not independent; they interact through bidirectional signaling pathways to affect cellular radioresistance.” (says one of my many tabs)

So there's absolutely a chance that Thalergy is produced by living energy, which tracks with our theory.

One of mDNA's biggest selling points is that it accumulates mutations over time, allowing us to effectively track people's lineages over millenia. It's very interesting that the first thing Alecto does after coherence is take a big ol’ chomp of Harrow. Is she performing a blood/mDNA test? "The line of Anastasia remains unbroken." Alecto isn't stupid; she's not just biting for funsies. This is reconnaissance.

Back to Harrow. Oh, Harrow. Why was her creation so very important? Sure, the Ninth is dying, can't let anyone know, must keep up appearances, yadda yadda. Except no one else gives a bone-dry fuck about the Ninth. I'm not buying that excuse for genocide, thanks.

The Reverend Parents murdered an entire generation to get Harrow. They absolutely could have waited to see if any of the 201 children were budding necros, adopt them, and make them the heir. Who would know? Who would care? Harrow Nova's AU shows this could even be possible, as far as she's aware.

But blood DOES matter. Heredity IS important. The Ninth didn't need any old necro; the leader of the Ninth House requires a necromancer of Anastasia's bloodline. It's the only way Alecto can be assured of the Ninth's fidelity. or some shit.

Here's where the REAL red string comes out: I think the Reverend Parents were holding information back from Harrow, possibly until she reached a specific age (like 17/18). This info became unnecessary after Harrow opened the Tomb, so the Entire Point became null and void.

Remember, Mercy met the teenage Reverend Daughter of the Ninth and PANICKED. Maybe she thought Harrow already knew something like, “Your blood is just as important for keeping the Tomb shut/open as Jod and also you Gotta have an heir,” which would be Very Bad for John to know, especially if Mercy was in on it. So The Body demanded she present younger, at which point Mercy relaxed.

This is all important because there's very little reason for Mercy to look at Harrow and think she might be the result of Dios Apate Major. She's a textbook description of a Ninth necro, looks nothing like her or John, and the Lyctors definitely see a strong resemblance to Anastasia (which is pretty nuts after 10,000 years…. unless you have an unbroken lineage). I don't know why Mercy keeps reducing her age when frustrated, but it interests me. (complete sidenote: 86 generations is waaaay too few for 10,000 years, so either the Ninth is a lot younger than we thought, or there's time-fuckery going on.)

Do you remember Harrow's description of the Tomb's antechamber? It's HEAVILY guarded with skelebone necromancy. It took her years to get through, and she claims she's the only osseous necro who ever could. This tells me that Anastasia was just as concerned with the safety of the Tomb as John was: only her true heir could prove the Ninth's allegiance. Only they could fit the other key in that lock.

*Not limited to mammals

I can’t find it on tumblr and IT CHRISMAS GOD DAMMIT.

Fortunately for him, it is a very important communication signal, especially given what he's going through right now. It says, "This is, in some way, unsatisfactory." Unfortunately, it's not very specific and he doesn't understand much about how to deploy it.

You have to understand, the stomach ache that he has right now is the worst stomach ache in the universe, because as far as he's concerned, the universe is maybe a month old and there's been a limited number of stomach aches in it. Or, the loneliness and anguish he felt when he couldn't see you was the most terrifying isolation in the universe, akin to being adrift in the Boötes Void, for the very same reason. He does not have guidelines to cope with these things. He has barely accumulated enough of a dataset to start evaluating things like, "Most times, when people I know go away, they will reappear eventually," or, "that particular stomach ache will go away if I eat something." He doesn't even know which particular problems can be cured and which can't. He just knows that "technique: scream like fucking banshee" does have some sort of a success rate.

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

✨🍂🎃october won't be a shit storm🎃🍂✨

harrow the ninth strips him down. he’s not just a god anymore. he’s a cool god. he makes shitty jokes. he eats peanuts. he fucks his friends on the dining room table. he tells our main character that he sees her as a daughter figure. he shows emotion; he makes mistakes; there are things that he cannot do. if gideon the ninth introduces him as the wizard of oz’s huge and intimidating head, then harrow the ninth is john pulling back his own curtain to show the man behind it. see! he’s kind of pathetic! he’s Just Like You!

and both of these images of john ultimately serve the same purpose, because they both play to his favor. whether you fear him or you woobify him, you have fallen into the trap he has set for you. because nona shows us an even truer john, a john who doomed the world and fucked it all up, a john convinced he was in the right even as his friends killed themselves in front of him. if harrow pulls back the curtain, nona peels off his face.

it does make me wonder whether there is a secret, smaller, fourth john gaius that will be explored in alecto the ninth. alecto is the only being in the universe who really and truly knows him. she knows what he’s done and why he did it. she chose him for a reason. beneath the god and beneath the god pretending to be a man and beneath the man pretending to be a god - is there truly just a man? is there anything left?

Okay, here's my criticism of this post I keep seeing -- and no, it's not what you think. I know, my longtime followers who know the kinds of things I post about a lot are probably thinking, "Oh, I know what their objection is going to be. It's going to be that 18-19 year olds are adults who can date older partners if they choose to." But no, that's not it this time! Yes, I do believe it's fine for young adults to date older adults if they choose to (and am accordingly rolling my eyes at all the "This should go up to 25!" comments in the notes), but. That's not my issue here. In fact, precisely because I believe that young adults dating older adults is morally neutral, I'm not at all concerned about the efficacy of the messaging against it. My concern is that underage minors being in sexual/romantic relationships with adults is actually harmful and dangerous, and therefore young people actually should be warned against it, and this is not an effective warning.

Fellow old people, do y'all remember being 14? At all? Would you have found this warning effective and compelling at that age?

I for sure would not! I did not! Quite the opposite!

Put yourself in the young person's position here. You have no rights. You're treated as someone with no agency. Your parents, teachers, government, and society as a whole treats you as some combination of "nuisance," "ticking time bomb," and "unthinking blob." Developmentally, you're at a phase of life when you should be transitioning to a more adult role, but everyone around you demonizes you for that desire. All your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are dismissed as the inconsequential ravings of Just A Dumb Kid Who Doesn't Know Any Better. You meet someone who treats you with basic human politeness, tells you that he likes you and that you're mature, actually treats you like you have two brain cells to rub together. Of course you're going to be drawn to him. And then when other adults warn you that obviously of course he doesn't really like you, that's impossible, of course you're not really mature, no one could possibly see you that way; actually you're naive and incapable of making your own decisions, and the way your parents/teachers/society treat you is completely justified. Are you going to heed those warnings?

Why are adults absolutely constitutionally incapable of giving good, necessary advice to teenagers without fucking insulting them in the process? Of course teenagers don't listen to it! Why would anyone??

"Oh, well, of course teenagers don't listen, because they're stubborn, and immature, and biologically determined to make bad decisions, which is all the more reason they need to be controlled," say adults, completely oblivious to the actual problem.

When I was a teenager, the big moral panic at the time was teen pregnancy, and we were all inundated with the least effective cautionary tales in the world: "If you get pregnant as a teen, you'll have to leave your parents' care and function as an adult!" Which left every girl who'd intentionally gotten pregnant for the explicit purpose of escaping her abusive parents saying "Yeah, that was the goal." And every girl who was looking for a way of escaping her abusive parents to think "What a great idea!" Today the big moral panic is older partners, but if the appeal of an older partner is that he treats you like someone capable of making your own decisions, why would you be persuaded by a counterargument of "Don't listen to him, of course you're not capable of making your own decisions!"?

Again. I'm saying this because I agree that adults dating minors is a bad thing and that minors should be warned against it. EFFECTIVELY.

"Someone older than you -- and therefore, inherently, legally, more powerful than you -- should not be trying to extract things from you. Money, sex, unpaid labor, anything of value."

When I was small, my ǧáǧṃ́p (grandfather) would set about the serious business of food gathering with my cousins and me in the late spring. Everyone in the family had a role in our food harvests and backyard cannery, and the children’s role came early in the salmon season. As children, we believed the whole success of the harvest, not only of berries but also of the salmon that soon followed, depended on our performance. Our ǧáǧṃ́p would furnish us with buckets, hammer nails into the ends of long, split cedar sticks, and gravely send us off on a mission to find ǧúláli (salmonberries). We’d seek out the best bushes around the village where we live, searching for the raspberry-like berries that thrive, as we do, in the bright and salty transition spaces between Pacific Ocean spray and coastal temperate rainforest. […]

My favorite moment came in the years when my ǧáǧṃ́p would nod to himself and make the official pronouncement: “It’s going to be a good year for salmon.” In that moment, we felt like little harbingers of hope. […] We learn about this nourishing interrelationship early in our lives and it goes on to pattern our worldview. […]

Salmonberry ecology aligns beautifully with the spaces that my ancestors loved to be in. The plant thrives in cool, moist coastal forests and along the lush banks of streams and rivers that pulse like deep, green arteries through our homelands. If you find a place where salmonberries, salmon, and clear, fresh water overlap, you will also find culturally modified trees – usually western red cedar, carrying the marks from planks or cedar bark strips harvested without harming the living tree – and other love notes from our ancestors left on the land for us.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, “all flourishing is mutual.” And here in Haíɫzaqv territory, all these elements—people, place, salmon, and salmonberries – can be found surviving or thriving only through our mutual care: we observe the bloom and abundance of flowers and berries as we await the coming salmon, then we Haíɫzaqv, and other mammals of the territory, fertilize those salmonberry bushes with salmon remains […].

In my mind, salmonberries have always embodied community: their flowers nurture pollinators and their berries feed creatures of every size, winged and limbed. Salmon, laid at their feet, attract teeming insects to nestle into the soil and among the fallen leaves in the undergrowth. […] In their ecology, their poetry, and their lessons about reciprocity, wild salmonberry thickets, and the salmonberry gardens we actively tend, are home to diversity and abundance […].

Western science is a curious little sister on this coast, mapping ideas and observations in spaces where Indigenous science has been foundational to kinship-building and ecological balance for millennia. As Indigenous stewards and scientists, we have much we can teach this little sister. […]

A recent paper published in Ecosphere, on research conducted in Haíɫzaqv territory and citing Haíɫzaqv knowledge holders, investigates how salmon and the nutrient subsidies they bring into riparian systems impact the reproductive output of plants, focusing on salmonberries in particular. […]

One variable missing from the paper is the role human beings have historically played in helping salmon and salmonberries to thrive. Prior to European contact, Haíɫzaqv people lived in more than 50 villages spread across more than 35,000 square kilometers of homelands on the outer central coast of British Columbia. […] Haíɫzaqv people loved systems into abundance: salmon were tended through ceremony and careful sustainable fisheries through weirs in the rivers and stone fish traps at the river mouths, while berry orchards, including salmonberry thickets, were fertilized with kelp and wood ash, crushed shells, and the blood and guts of the salmon that fed us.

As colonization decimated our populations and decades of racist laws and policies regulated us away from our homelands and ancestral practices, our ability to care for our territory was threatened. […]

Western science, as a practice, is not insular and unassailable. It is inherently human, a practice conducted by people who bring values and biases as a framework to everything they do. Indigenous science has its frameworks, too; though our peoples are often trivialized or romanticized as “the original environmentalists,” the truth is that proper stewardship requires constant reaffirmation through the choices we make about what knowledge becomes part of our systems, how it is passed down, and how it is actualized through kincentric community-building and deep care for the lands and waters. […]

There is a lot that science, any iteration of science, can learn from salmon and salmonberries […]. Salmonberries patiently amplify that richness into whole thriving systems. There are patterns and stories waiting to be read and interpreted […].

And beyond the science, salmon forests and salmonberry gardens – and our plant and animal kin within them – teach us critical lessons about mutual aid and community care. […] My children will be watching for the pink blossoms to unfurl […]. The stewardship pathways they are building with salmon, salmonberries, and our other nonhuman kin open them to lessons about reciprocity and interdependence that I know will inspire patience and careful observation.

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