#lyctorhood

Yeah you're not wrong!

Many unexplored possibilities re: secondary Lyctorhood. I would be surprised if it doesn't come up in some way shape or form in AtN. Discussion question: which of our remaining Lyctors should Lyct again? And Whom ought they to Consume?

and on the flip side, the cavaliers' choice to sacrifice themselves for lyctorhood seems overwhelmingly selfless - they are literally giving their lives for their friends, for something greater. but even that is bull! regardless of intent, they trap the people they love in hellish eternity. loveday's death made cytherea sick forever; cristabel's fanatic devotion permanently disillusioned mercymorn. gideon escapes a life on the ninth by doing the worst thing anybody has ever done to harrow in her whole life - and she knows it!

i would argue harrow's decision is the most surface-level selfless; i really think she was just trying to keep gideon's soul from escaping to where she couldn't bring it back. clearly she doesn't care about lyctorhood or even repopulating the ninth if gideon is dead. she’s the only one who we know to have actively valued her cavalier’s soul above her own.

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.