To say that The Locked Tomb series is stuffed with Homestuck references would be true, but also a bit unfair. It is also stuffed references to a hundred other fandoms and internet communities that I don’t know well enough to recognise (like Kingdom Hearts and Animorphs), and references of a high literary nature (including Lolita and Gormenghast and so much of the Bible.)
Still, there are tons of little details that are going to feel familiar to a HS fan. The oscillation between formal and very informal language. Highly religious juggalo face paint. The combination of aviator glasses and big swords. Characters going grimdark, teenage girls having breakdowns of a Lovecraftian persuasion. Characters going God Tier, becoming stronger in death, but often at a steep cost. People sitting around on a small space station, experiencing teenage drama and also terrible murders. Immortal child-killing space empires.
But the ending of Nona reminded me of a specific fic – not by Tamsyn Muir, but by someone close to her: it’s Scarlet and Bible Black. Now I already thought about Scarlet and Bible Black halfway through HtN, because something about the Palamedes&Harrow friendship reads like a platonic version of the Sollux/Rose dynamic in SaBB, what with two incredibly smart but emotionally and supernaturally compromised teenagers having fraught conversations in a dreamscape under siege, but Nona reminded me again.
SaBB very briefly introduces a system of magic, or more accurately, mind-war, a means of fighting a psychic intruder for control of your own self. The system is so poignantly simple that I immediately fell in love with it and spent the next eight years disappointed that it only existed in one medium-length one-shot fic. This is how you stand your ground in a mind-war: you create four mental constructs, and you solidify them by imagining them as tangible objects connected to your loved ones. In Homestuck, this means the four Alternian troll quadrants, I’ll try to give the closest human equivalent, it won’t be accurate, don’t at me.
The cloak hides and protects you from your enemy – it comes from your moirail, your best friend, platonic partner, the person who keeps you sane. The centre keeps you balanced and stable – it comes from your auspistice, a caretaker and peacekeeper, a mentor or a mom friend. The staff is your weapon, your means of attack – it comes from your kismesis, your rival or your frenemy. The crown gives you clarity of vision, allows you to aim – it comes from your matesprit, your lover or romantic interest. The full mind-war outfit inevitably looks ridiculous, but still carries immense power. I love the way these four objects from four people can represent a character’s social support or lack thereof, and visualise a normally invisible conflict. In fact I just remembered that some five years ago, I even put together my own mind-war outfit and wore it to some difficult appointments. (The cloak was a shirt borrowed from my sister, the centre a pair of shoes from my mother, and the crown a little pendant my boyfriend had made for me. I didn’t really have a staff, but maybe borrowing my best friend’s attitude counts.)
Nona’s ending gives us the perfect mind-war outfit for Harrowhark – but she can only put it on if she accepts the love that people give her, and also the love bequeathed her by Nona. Her cloak is the lavender handkerchief that Paul took from Ianthe and gave to her. Her centre is the T-shirt Pyrrha bought, the one that offers free moustache rides. Her crown is, of course, Gideon’s pair of aviator glasses, and her staff is Ianthe’s rapier.
areudirty
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
blakekathryn