for those curious, this is joanne, a 15-year-old sumatran tiger currently living at phoenix zoo. it's very sweet to see her playing and tumbling around like this at her age -- she's got some people taking care of her if she still has this energy at that age.
i did see some users in the notes who were concerned about her looking 'scrawny', or wondering if she's maybe a juvenile -- far from it! at 15, joanne is very much considered a geriatric tiger; she's a grandma. she is, however, a sumatran tiger (panthera tigris sumatrae) -- sumatrans are the smallest extant subspecies of tiger, built more for the sweltering jungles of sumatra than the blistering cold of the amur river or the dense forests and mangrove swamps of south asia.
when you're used to seeing amur or amur-bengal hybrid ('generic') tigers on television or online, most of which are often overfed and overweight, a sumatran is going to look a bit weird, but joanne looks to be in wonderful shape -- look at those muscles flex and that coat shimmer when she moves! that's a healthy old lady for sure. props to joanne's keepers for taking such good care of her.
hello nobody asked but iām here to deliver. presenting: the cavs as dog breeds. photo sources and caveats after the cut.
Second House: Marta Dyas
UKC-registered German Shepherd, stock coat. A working breed characterized by its focus, confidence, and fearlessness; obedient to a fault. Strong intelligence, drive, and energy, but at manageable levels suited to all-purpose organizational use (unlike their more intense sibling breed, the Belgian Malinois). Dominates in Schutzhund (obedience & personal protection) trials.
Third House: Naberius Tern
UKC-registered Standard Poodle, red coat cut Continental. A breed with a reputation for wealth, beauty, and proud attitude, all of which distracts from its surprising intelligence and steady work ethic. A well-rounded gundog that, given the correct training and handler, dominates at both sporting and conformation events. Intolerant of rugged terrain (highland herding, search and rescue, etc.), though well suited to swimming.
Fourth House: Jeannemary Chatur
AKC-registered Belgian Malinois, mahogany coat. A legendarily intense and capable working breed, with high intelligence, drive, and fitness. With sufficient training to sate its drive for stimulation, becomes a fabulously impressive working dog. When fulfilled, will win obedience, Schutzhund, extreme vertical, and obstacle course competitions. Not well suited to scent work, diving, and herding, and lacks the patience for boring tasks like conformation. With insufficient stimulation or an unconfident handler, becomes a destructive, vocal, nervous wreck; can and will take its frustrations out on others. Benefits from the influence of living with calmer dogs. An AKC-recognized breed, but not UKC recognized; would be a source of strife with handlers that prefer UKC (ā¦ Third House).
Fifth House: Magnus Quinn
Show-line UKC-Registered Irish Setter, mahogany coat. The beautiful coat and regal bearing of this breed obfuscates its extremely goofy and friendly nature. Because of its beauty, playful attitude with children, and capability as a gundog, it is a sought-after breed of the wealthy. Working-line setters have higher stamina and intelligence for long days afield; show-line setters are suited to conformation and social settings, and are therefore wonderful family pets.
Sixth House: Camilla Hect
Unregistered Border Collie, lilac short coat. A breed with intense intelligence, focus, and drive; must be put to work constantly by its handler or will resort to self-destructive behaviors and be liable to develop strange obsessions. Movement at work is shockingly fast for its body size and build; does not speak while working, unlike other herding breeds, instead relying on glare-based intimidation. Well suited to rough terrain and independent problem solving. Lilac coat caused by rare recessive genes expressed thru inbreeding; causes grey brown eyes, as well.
Seventh House: Protesilaus Ebdoma
UKC-registered Afghan Hound, cream coat, unmarked. A lithe, long-legged athlete with regal bearing and a beautiful appearance. Independent, aloof, and generally indifferent to instruction, though loyal and affectionate with a single handler; will strongly resist a change in handlers. Whiplike tail.
Eighth House: Colum Asht
UKC-registered Great Pyrenees, white coat, slight tan markings. Unflappably calm; intelligent, but with a tendency towards indifference. A large, stalwart flock guardian that shrugs off being bloodied. Patient and careful with its flock and with children, but vicious against physical threats.
Ninth House: Ortus Nigenad
Black and Tan Coonhound. Large and strong, though without the cleverness of some other working breeds. Excels at scent-tracking over long hours. Highly vocal when bored (and, frankly, at all other times), with a booming voice. Handler focused, but can be very stubborn.
Ninth House: Gideon Nav
Australian Kelpie with red coat, or perhaps Red Heelerālineage is unclear; genetic testing may reveal dingo ancestry. A vigorous and hardworking herder, with high stamina in rough terrain and harsh weather. Stocky and solidly built. Always eager for a job to do. Not overly affectionate, even with long-term handlers, but intensely loyal. Infrequently vocal; tendency towards shyness and reactivity around strangers and new circumstances. May have light brown (amber) eyes.
GSD: Minthe Hartman on Facebook
Poodle: Bijou Poodles, breeder site
Mal: Breed standard website
Setter: Brittanica
BC: C Bar C Ranch, breeder site
Afghan: AKC
Pyr: Intuition Farm, breeder site
Black&Tan: Showsight Magazine
Kelpie: AKC
Heeler: Jane Dogs
Also, some caveats: obviously, I wanted to find an Aotearoa native dog for Gideon. Unfortunately, because of colonialism, all Polynesian dog breeds I could find records of on short notice are extinct due to genocidal violence against their peoples. The history of dog breeds and the pedigrees thereto is one that is, like all history, influenced by colonialism. Also, I am very familiar with a large variety of breeds, but only those primarily used in dog sports, competitions, and working professions in North America. My choices of breed reflect both of those biases.
So, I've been thinking obsessively about what daemons the characters in Gideon the Ninth would have and I'm about to make it everyone's problem
Marta and Judith's daemons below the read more: (slight spoilers, mostly for As Yet Unsent)
Marta Dyas: Bison
Marta settles during her time as a second lieutenant in the cohort, well before becoming a cavalier
In general, the nine houses know a lot less about animals since so many went extinct before and during the resurrection. So Marta doesn't really know about the buffalo's protective nature, resourcefulness, or competitive and heirarchical social groups
But she does appreciate having a large and formidable daemon form. Marta's daemon speaks little, letting his presence speak for itself
Judith Deuteros: Dwarf Caiman
Judith and her daemon are deeply proud of their settled form. Small for a crocodilian, the dwarf caiman is still an intimidating predator
Judith's daemon was more open with emotion when the two were young, he was the one who confessed to being in love with Marta and her daemon. He deeply internalized the shame of that 'overstep.' By the time of Gideon the Ninth he rarely speaks except to Marta and Coronabeth's daemons
(The second house follows the social protocol of humans speaking to other humans and daemons speaking to other daemons, even though this is considered very formal and stuffy by some of the other houses)
unpopular opinion probably but I actually like that ao3 doesnāt let people take back their kudos.
unlike social media platforms (which ao3 is not) where people unlike stuff whenever they think or find out the original postersā moral compass doesnāt perfectly align with their ownās or whatever, and ālikesā can be taken back at any time, ao3 treats kudos as something sacred. once you give it, itās the authorās to keep forever.
Best part is if someone deletes their account, the kudos remains, and it just gets swapped over to a guest kudos instead. The body is gone but the love remains.
Yeah I saw the lovecraftian horrors and didnāt succumb to madness. What- no Iām not a cultist, James. For Christās sake. What youāre forgetting my friend is that HP Lovecraft wasnāt a flexible man. His brain simply wasnāt stretchy enough to take it all in. I however, have short term memory issues. Flexibility is the name of the game when you canāt remember if you ate lunch or not. Whatās the size of the universe? Big. You knew that already, James. Come on now. You donāt need to witness the terrifying ocean at the base of the entirety of reality itself to know that. Pass the brandy.
During a Eldritch Horrors based tabletop RPG my character was a young dandy who wasn't particularly interested in all this monster mystery stuff but his father (my brother's character) was a researcher who WAS very into it, so Bertie went along to make sure the old man didn't get into too much trouble. It was your average Eldritch Horrors RPG in that you don't make your characters with the expectation that they will survive for very long, both the game itself and the genre are very intent on turning your characters inside out, driving them insane, and blowing them up in no particular order.
The thing was, everything in this nightmare hellscape just seemed to keep coming up Bertie because the man was too stupid to realize what genre he was in. Every time he had to roll for a sanity check whenever he saw something crazy, the dice treated him so well that he just... didn't get it. Gee that sure is a funny costume. There's something wrong with that dog. These mean guys in stupid hats are trying to hurt that young lady, we can't have that! I had not built him this way, his intelligence stats weren't even that bad, random chance just made it so that this man was living a scooby doo adventure while everyone else was being consumed by The Horrors.
The final straw was at the end of an adventure when Bertie escaped from the cultist headquarters by breaking out through the mansion's front window on a motorcycle with a hot rescued sacrificial maiden clinging to his back and leading the cultists on a merry chase through the hedge maze while the other adventurers escaped. His sanity score? HIGHER than when the adventure had begun. He had found the whole experience quite thrilling and felt very good about life in general!
Bertie retired from adventuring to marry the maiden he rescued and care for his aging father and delight and bemuse his friends at the gentleman's club with stories of his 'wacky' adventures. I didn't want to risk breaking his ridiculous lucky streak.
a funny thing about having conversations with people within institutions (academic in this case but also others) about gatekeeping, is that you end up having a conversation over and over in which you're like, "hey this alligator spike pit moat you have erected around your institution is keeping a lot of people out," and they're like, "well *I* navigated the alligator spike pit moat just fine," and you're like, "right. by dint of us having this conversation, you within the institution and me without, it is understood that you navigated the alligator spike pit moat. due to that being an inherent requirement of entering the institution," and they're like, "I don't think you understand the prestigious history of our alligator spike pit moat," and you're like, "is there a reason why there needs to be an alligator spike pit moat encircling the concept of higher education?" and they're like, "look, the alligator spike pit moat isn't for everyone. some people just aren't cut out for the alligator spike pit moat :)" and you're like, "right, yeah, like disabled people and people coming from poverty or unstable home environments or underserved communities or people dealing with difficult to navigate life events like pregnancy or abuse or prison or addiction or the death of a loved one, for example" and they're like, "how dare you imply that we are keeping those people out on purpose. it's their own problem if they can't wrestle the alligators and avoid the spikes while also disabled and/or poor and/or pregnant etc" and you're like, "well that seems evil," and they're like, "it sounds like maybe you're just bitter about the alligator spike pit moat because of your totally random individual experience with ONE bad alligator spike pit moat. have you considered therapy?" and you're like, "did you know that there's some patterns here in terms of how y'all are handling this stuff?" and they're like, "actually yes. we even have a department of alligator spike pit studies :)" and you're like, "that's great, how do I get access to and participate in those conversations?" and they're like, "well firstly you must cross the alligator spike pit moat"
if you can document that you have a medical condition that might make it challenging for you to navigate the alligator spike pit moat, they'll give you an extra 20 minutes to complete your navigation of the alligator spike pit moat
IMPORTANT: any injuries incurred as a result of navigating the alligator spike pit moat will be the sole responsibility of the injured parties. once you leave, the people who made you navigate the alligator spike pit moat and the institution that installed the alligator spike pit moat will never contact you again. except sometimes to ask you for more money.
A great many people who crossed the same alligator spike pit moats as me told me it's wasn't that bad, and then casually revealed they were gifted grandpa's spike-proof suit and had alligator-charming lessons starting in toddlerhood, and mom's map of the spike layout to study. They thought this was normal, and genuinely believed they had navigated the alligator spike pit moat without an unusual amount of assistance.
As a corollary, the alligator spike pit moat does not, in fact, weed out unserious and/or terminally mediocre individuals, because many of those people have been gifted alligator-grappling tools and spike-resistant boots. Alligators and spikes deter a great many enthusiastic, hardworking, and talented people who don't have a bunch of fancy protective gear and extensive training in alligator spike pit navigation.
As a second corollary, I am very grateful for the unusual amount of assistance I received in crossing the alligator spike pit moat.
A disturbing number of people did, in fact, acknowledge that the alligator spike pit moat was intended to keep people like me away from people like them and loudly expressed their displeasure that I was not eaten by alligators. One of them used the word 'besmirch'.
An equally disturbing number of people have attempted to use my successful navigation of the alligator spike pit moat as proof that my kind are not being kept out on purpose-- if I navigated it, everyone else is clearly just being lazy. Many of these people seemed to hope that my adventure in the alligator spike pit moat would make me see their point of view re: the alligator spike pit moat being necessary to ensure meritocracy bootstraps were happening in a meritorious and bootstrappy manner. It did the opposite.
TLdr: I have two STEM degrees from institutions known for the viciousness of the alligators and sharpness of the spikes in their alligator spike pit moats. This is not sour grapes. Fuck the alligator spike pit moat.
I like the idea in fantasy that humans are better at maintaining things long term because they set up societies or professions to do it whereas dwarves and elves and stuff are like ājust get bob to do it heās got a good few hundred years leftā and then bob doesnāt teach anyone else how to do it
Human: Wait thatās why thereās ruins of elven cities even though you live for so long? You just keep not asking people how to do things? How do you learn anything?
Elf: Thereās a lot of āyouāve got time to figure it out on your ownā attitudes floating around in our society that Iām starting to question somewhat.
Elf: Impossible! Those metalworking techniques were lost a hundred years ago!
Human: What do you mean lost? My great-grandmother learned to make these swords from an elven smith, then taught it to her kids.
Elf: That's ridiculous. No elf would give such secrets to a human.
Human: They didn't. Meemaw delivered the metal to the forge, and no one kicked her out when she stayed and watched. She always said they barely acknowledged her even when doing business with her, like she wasn't worth noticing.
Elf: Come to think of it, my great-uncle always was rather single-minded when he started working.
Human: So he wasn't ignoring her, he just forgot she was there?
Elf: Oh, he was definitely ignoring her, too. He was super racist.
I am not saying there isn't a huge really catholic influence on this series, there is so much of that.
But in the story, John is god. That (and the locked tomb/Alecto for the ninth) is who they are worshipping. Not the God from the bible.
Their sacred texts would not be the Bible but stories about John's resurrection but at the same time Harrow and Gideon both know the book of Ruth enough to quote it to each other. "It is finished" is literally said by Mercymorn, Pal quotes the book of Daniel in the unwanted Guest.
What is the religion in the locked tomb actually ?
I'm so sorry, OP, but you've just unlocked an unskippable cutscene...
What we can probably say about House religion:
Their overarching theology draws heavily on the Book of Revelation. Specifically, the first and second resurrections of Revelation 20. Housers are "the Children of the Resurrection", the only people (re)made in the image of God, Alecto is "the devil" locked away, whose release will herald the end.
John is God, but they don't seem to practice monotheism as classically understood: i.e. a single god that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnificent, etc. Abigail justifies her heresy by pointing out that John "never claimed omnipotence", Teacher prays that "nothing happen that [John] did not anticipate", and it's not clear whether "the Creator" referenced in the letter read at the muster is to be understood as John or as referencing some greater creation mythos.
They seem to believe in intercessory prayer, but also pray for the Emperor's needs in the same way Catholics pray for the Pope in the Ninth.
They have a concept of sin, and possibly a sacramental system.
There has been some theological development over the course of the empire: Harrow says "it has been thousands of years since anybody bothered to believe in the River Beyond" - House religion seems to have started out with something much more like the Catholic understanding of a tripartite afterlife, with hell, a purgatory that one moves through depending on one's degree of sinfullness, and a heaven. This belief now seems to be something that would get you in trouble with the authorities, and the orthodoxy is rather more like the classical underworld.
They have some kind of religious book, "the Tome". It's unclear whether this is a broader collection of scriptures (perhaps including elements from the Christian Bible) or whether it is solely a collection of religious law - the Eighth are "Keepers of the Tome" and enforce "the justice of the Tome". But it's hard to say whether any of the Bible quotes we get in the series are coming from in world scriptures or religious knowledge, whether they're appearing in the same liminal contexts as Shakespeare quotes do, or a secret third thing.
There is...possibly...some cruciform imagery in House religious iconography, depending on how you read the description of the Mithraeum chapel.
Interesting context to all this is that John was, as far as we can tell from what he tells us, educated in an Anglican school and baptised as a teenager at a non-denominational music festival (in a brief period of belief? A desire to fit in?). Some of his friends in the cow dome were nominally from various Commonwealth Protestantisms. But the only Catholic influence he definitively had was the nun, who seems to have been pushing a very specific metaphysical agenda and who John cautiously and ironically vindicates: "that finding it - the last link between what made someone alive and what made someone dead - would bring us closer to God. She was right, but I'm not sure she was right in the way she meant." The Houses are so very Catholic in part, I suspect, because there was a specifically Catholic context to John's traumatic apotheosis, and because death, resurrection, and memory wipe didn't seem to take the edge off Cristabel's enthusiasm...
But I desperately want more details about what Housers actually believe and what that looks like in peoples' lives.
(I've got further focused and unfocused thoughts on House religion here, if you're interested).
@katakaluptastrophy as someone dating an Anglican (#livedexperience) it is still a very catholic religion. my boyfriend describes it as the culturally English form of Catholicism---many regions had very distinct Catholicisms that the Roman Catholic tried to stamp down on over time with varying degrees of success (and many of these lasted far after the Protestant Reformation, though that was the impetus for many areas that already had poor relations with Rome to just hit da bricks). i was going to cite how long it took to establish celibacy in the english church as an example, but after some research it seems this was a fairly universal trend...i was mislead by St Dunstan. there are a lot of "anglican catholic" churches that follow roman catholic as well as anglican orthodoxy because they believe the anglican church IS still a part of the catholic church (in the original meaning of the universal catholic church in line with early christian belief, not as a shortened form of roman catholic...and its own can of worms). now that the archbishop of canterbury is a woman this is kind of an awkward position to take.
in my personal (and largely uninformed opinion) anglicanism shares a lot with roman catholicism in terms of structure (ordained priests who do it as their job, bishops, One Guy in Charge*), liturgy, and doctrine...sometimes, because Anglicanism allows a lot of variation in liturgy and a lot of disagreement about doctrine and its proper interpretation. ironically, the 39 articles of religion that set out the differences between catholicism and anglicanism were intentionally written ambiguously, which allows anglo-catholics to interpret them as in line with catholicism. anglicanism is sometimes understood as the "via media" or the middle path between protestantism and catholicism, and the Anglican church often describes itself as "catholic and reformed."
debate about whether/how much anglicanism is catholic(ism) aside, one of the more interesting differences for tlt purposes is that confession is practiced much more rarely, and nearly always face-to-face rather than through the lattice of the booth (a small amount of anglo-catholics being the exception). like catholicism, confessions are under a seal; whether it is a sacrament like catholicism depends on your definition of sacrament. additionally, the belief (i think) is that confession is to God directly, the priest is just your spiritual guide and advisor (which is why the "corporate confession" as a part of general prayer during the liturgy serves the same purpose as the "auricular confession" described above). the common phrase is "all may, some should, none must."
another big difference is saints, which the anglican church kind of has---they continue to honor martyrs, and consider pre-reformation saints saints, but intercessional prayer to them is rare, so the whole concept has a fairly different tenor. it also varies a lottt individually.
finally, the Book of Common Prayer/the foundational text of the liturgy has lotsss of approved variations, many of which are national---and one of, if not the, most theologically liberal and culturally ecumenical versions is the New Zealand Prayer Book/He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. this bears a lot of similarity to what i vaguely remember in gideon the ninth as the traditional ninth house prayers no one else remembers or does.
I enjoy a good discussion about Tract 90 and all that as much as the next Anglo-Catholic (hence the blog header š), but to avoid getting into an unwholesomely specific digression about Anglican ecclesiology, let's just say that I don't think there's any textual suggestion that particularly Catholic (as opposed to catholic) expressions of Anglicanism were influential in John's formation.
There's certainly an extent to which the ritualist movement hugely changed mainstream Anglican liturgical practice (candles on the altar are now an unremarkable mainstream practice, and not something resulting in riots and clerical jail time, for example), but as with having threefold orders of ministry and variable regional liturgies, that's true of just about any modern liturgical expression of Christianity.
So yes, John would have been familiar with NZ Prayer Book services, cassock and cotta on the altar party, candles, etc. But it's a big jump from there to having a full litany of titles and a space station full of bedazzled relics!
I mean i quite like my brain, iām really very fond of it i just think itās a design failure that i canāt pop it out of the ole skull basket every night and plug it in to recharge. travesty really
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
