The Locked Tomb Spoilers - Tumblr Posts
not the same event but I here's an old doodle from harrow the ninth's soup supper--
this post is making me want to draw the fifth's dinner as the last supper though tbh since that is a way better parallel
I just sat bolt upright in bed after realizing It’s the last supper. THE DINNER PARTY FOR THE FIFTH IS THE LAST SUPPER. Do you know how many fucking times I’ve read tlt and I just clocked this? I’m too stupid to live.
“Tell me how to do it, and I’ll do it.”
been having a grand old time puzzling out Nona the Ninth and rereading the whole Locked Tomb series. here’s some warm and cool color variants:
do you ever think about corona and gideon. how ianthe and harrow respectively refused to consume them. how they took it as a sign of rejection when it was a symbol of love. or are you normal.
Imagine you’re some little evil woman sitting in Hades’ throne room when Orpheus walks in to make a deal to get Eurydice back, and Hades is like “yeah ok, just don’t look back otherwise she has to stay here” then walks out of the room. Almost immediately after hearing the conditions, Orpheus breaks his own neck so that it is physically impossible for him to turn it, and then demands that you gouge out his eyes for good measure. Eurydice then gets really upset because she’s convinced this is a sign that Orpheus hates her and never wants to see her again, and Orpheus is completely convinced that this was a normal and logical thing to do.
You are literally the only person in the universe who recognizes this as an act of love. They both then insult you to your face for thinking this is anything other than very normal (Orpheus), or petty hatred (Eurydice).
You are Ianthe Tridentarius.
happy valentine's day who wants to throw themselves on a fence spike for me while reciting biblical wedding vows as your last words so i can consume your soul and gain immortality but after confronting god who says he cannot bring you back i become so overtaken with grief that i lobotomize myself to erase my ability to conceive of you in any capacity to prevent my body from absorbing and using you as an eternal battery after which i send myself to a purgatory dream state and you surface in control of my body and defend it from the alien bug soldiers of a murdered ghost planet that are trying to kill me for the sins of the emperor i worship and then i stay sleeping in hell while you end up back in your own body and then my body kisses your body but it's while being inhabited by the soul of the earth and eventually you try to sacrifice yourself for me again but you can't because you're dead now and then i wake up in my own body finally in the same room as you but i faint and get carried off by eldritch barbie before i can hear you assert your devotion to me by calling her a slut. either that or we could get coffee
Still thinking about none houses left grief, and while I understand where people are coming from, "it took me out of the world" is just... Really not a relevant criticism here. Like, that line is SUPPOSED to be jarring. It is supposed to be kind of darkly funny, but the point isnt for you to laugh. Its not trying to be a punchline. The point of that line IS to "take you out of the world" because the point is that *this world isn't what you thought it was.*
I think it would be funny in Alecto, if we spend more time on the Ninth, for the great aunts to, very affectedly, inform Harrow of her parents' passing during their silent practice to which Harrow barelly even manages to act either surprised or mournful (while Kiriona has a fit of laughter nearby).
"And that makes you, Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, our 311th Reverend Mother."
Freshly out of Hell and still dazed by whatever happend post tomb opening, Reverend Mother Harrowhark Nonagesimus, can urge no other reaction out of her but a slightly out of breath, shamefully informal "Ok."
Cue a pleathoa of mom jokes that everybody seems to get into.
"Reverend- forgive me Harrowhark, I cannot in good faith look at your face and call you-"
"Then please don't. Thank you, Paul."
"Oh, mother!" ejaculates Ianthe at her every movement.
"Oh, sorry mommy", Kiriona is already begging for it.
Worst things worst she is still, functionally, the last person ever born on the Ninth.
I could say more if I did a proper character analysis here but, for now, I’m just musing on how John Gaius absolutely captures a very specific kind of It’s Never My Fault guy.
And John is SMART and he’s good at talking and so he weaves it in so smoothly and like. His uninterrupted monologues in NtN absolutely make you want to be frustrated for him! That dude got put through the wringer!
And these parts are so Good to me because like, if you pay just a little bit of extra attention the patterns emerge. Everyone external to him and his group is an idiot, and can only be cast as such. And they’re stupid and scared and they Wrongly demonize John when he was only trying to help and wait John what was that part in the middle. Repeat that part in the middle. You did WHAT to the cops exactly.
HE never wants to be the Guy Who Says It. He wants to be liked too much. So he relies on people like P— and G— and A— and M— to say it for him. Negotiating for a nuclear warhead but HE John didn’t really wanna be a jerk about it you know? That was everyone else. The cows the cops the people who die on his compound are all brushed over or mocked. His sleepless mad actions, his raising of the dead, his setting off the nuke these are all just, actions. Unfortunate. Necessary. Of a guy who’s been having a REALLY hard time and has been victimized by EVERYONE and he really just wants to save the world, guys, if you’ll just LISTEN.
He’s gotta be the Funny Guy. Everything’s gotta be a Joke because, oh, was that bad? No, I was just joking, you’re taking it too seriously man chill out. He needs to be Liked he needs everyone to Like him and the biggest injustices he faces, in light of nuclear warfare and the eradication of humanity, is that people are being so mean to him.
And the closest he gets to letting flashes of his wrongdoing through are when it challenges his ego to deny it otherwise. Because he’s Smart and he’s Competent and you need to know and recognize and worship this. He didn’t kill all those cops by accident. “Come on, love. Guys as careful as me don’t have accidents.”
He’s just! He’s so! He’s entirely This Guy and he’s GOD. He’s bisexual he’s depressed he’s an obsessive Funnyman he’s blinded by his own ego he’s immortal he’s never to blame he’s more tormented than Jesus if you ask him and don’t ask the people he’s victimized in ways so much worse and he’s. LITERALLY. MADE HIMSELF GOD. I’m obsessed with him.
a friend is planning to read tlt and I need to resist the urge to say shit like “yeah idk Gideon’s relationship with Harrow is pretty fraught at the beginning and by the end of the first book she’s still kind of on the fence about it”