The Locked Tomb Death Spiral

I have a lot of feelings about The Locked Tomb and I needed somewhere to put them - you're welcome to accompany my descent into madness.

[nepenthean-sleep]

it really says something that people in this fandom are consistently headcanoning the most deceptive and boundary-crossing characters in the series (ianthe and john) as transfem the most often out of any other characters over the years. and by "something" i mean y'all are transmisogynistic freaks

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I’ve never personally encountered this head cannon about John, but in Ianthe’s case there’s potentially some textual support for a transfem reading of the character. I don’t have HtN handy, but John asks Harrow if she and Ianthe are being safe - maybe a bad dad joke, maybe implying that there’s a hypothetical pregnancy risk. I guess you could argue that the implication could just as easily be that Harrow is trans, but with the third house specializing in flesh magic, I think it makes a bit more sense for it to be Ianthe. Disclaimer, I’m not enough of an Ianthe enjoyer to have strongly held opinions, it’s just something I’ve seen pointed out on here that I think holds a little water. Transfem John seems like a strange choice since he’s a misogynistic prick.

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I’ve seen the take on here a lot that Harrow was a secret Noniad fan girl, or hate read it or something. Since reading The Unwanted Guest, I’ve assumed that Harrow’s knowledge of the Noniad is an example of soul permeability from Ortus’s soul being in her river bubble and that she would not have otherwise known it. I don’t know of any examples of her quoting it during gtn. Are there instances of it prelobotomy that I’m not aware of? Is anyone else interpreting it as a soul permeability thing?

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

Adding textual support for the hypothesis:

“You found yourself murmuring, almost more surprised with yourself than with her: “Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister.” - htn ch 29.

And later that chapter:

“You were lucky that the memory of your own cavalier did not hurt you—except sometimes in the form of a sick headache in your temples, or in words stuck on repeat in your head."

It's framed as something Harrow doesn't mean to say / an intrusive thought. Which seems more like soul permeability to me, but also who ever knows what's going on in these books.

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I’ve seen the take on here a lot that Harrow was a secret Noniad fan girl, or hate read it or something. Since reading The Unwanted Guest, I’ve assumed that Harrow’s knowledge of the Noniad is an example of soul permeability from Ortus’s soul being in her river bubble and that she would not have otherwise known it. I don’t know of any examples of her quoting it during gtn. Are there instances of it prelobotomy that I’m not aware of? Is anyone else interpreting it as a soul permeability thing?

[helicalsymmetry]

at a phase in my life where when i get the sense a book is trying to offer me Representation (TM) i hiss and scream and start kicking and ripping bricks out of the wall. this character's Coherent Identity And Articulation Of Their Issues had Better fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding (it won't)

[helicalsymmetry]

meet my new oc blorbinia who introduces herself to other people in fantasyland with exacting microlabels based on her recurring visions of Social Media Identity Discourse from this world. it is her goal in life to establish as many other people's labels as possible because she believes if you die without knowledge of your Correct Terms then the gods don't know what Community you belong to and your soul roams the empty betweenspace of the afterlife forever.

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I’ve never seen it discussed on here, but is everyone operating under the assumption that the Tridentarii twins were conjoined at birth?

When they get to Canaan house, Teacher says something like “born at the exact same time” about the third house. At Magnus and Abigail’s anniversary dinner, Ianthe talks about having cut off her mother’s oxygen supply and then being surgically removed so we can rule out that they were gestated in a vat womb and any weirdness or uncertainty in whether that would make it feasible for non-conjoined twins to be born simultaneously.

The third are flesh magicians and would have had no issue remedying their condition. But more than anything else the most compelling evidence is that they’re Like That.

This interpretation has interesting implications in the context of Corona saying to Nona “I know what you are… I envy you.” I think that Corona thinks that Nona is what Paul is. She presumably wants to complete grand lysis with Ianthe. Is Ianthe and Corona’s entire motivation to share a body again?

And tangentially - in the split; did Corona somehow end up with both their shares of thalergy while Ianthe got the thanergy?

[kangaruthi]

“She had a decided chin and a nose that… put [Nona] in mind of those big poison desert cats” - Nona the Ninth page 359

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I have to double reblog because it took me until this moment to realize that “those big poison desert cats” may in fact mean the cats that live in the poison desert and not the poisonous cats that live in the desert. In my defense I read Nona in a single sitting and it was a fever dream. Thank you for aiding my belated reading comprehension.

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

Camilla sifting through the debris at Canaan house to collect Palamedes shards and then laboriously piecing them all back together: “rest in peace to all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, but I’m different.”

[addictedtowords16]

"Suck it down," said Gideon. "You're already two hundred dead daughters and sons of our House. What's one more?”

Gideon the Ninth

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

Oof, so many feelings about this. The vague suggestion of cannibalism that we have to guess at the exact shape of. Gideon referring to herself as a daughter of the ninth house.

[kangaruthi]

“She had a decided chin and a nose that… put [Nona] in mind of those big poison desert cats” - Nona the Ninth page 359

[babybutchianthe]

palamedes is so funny to me because like if you aren't paying full attention to him he kind of just flies under the radar as The Smart Guy when in fact he is just. so incredibly aggro. i think he could suicide bait people on forums i think he has it in him

[babybutchianthe]

pov you are judith after watching your cavalier eat shit on a dinner table at the hands of camilla the sixth trying to justify the fact you're going after someone who has the exact same keys as you

[babybutchianthe]

palamedes isn't the smart guy. he is the guy that gave an old woman turbo cancer then blew himself up in her face. the fact he is smart enough to know how to do that is incidental to the fact he would do that innit

[jennyandvastraflint]

Don't forget he and his unhealthily codependent cavalier relationship planned for the eventuality that he would blow himself to little bone pieces...

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I just stumbled across an E. A. Poe poem I wasn’t familiar with. It’s titled The Sleeper???? As in Wake’s river bubble pseudonym. I would be willing to write it off as a coincidence if it wasn't for Alecto also having a Poe poem as an alias in Annabel Lee. And let me tell you, this poem is fascinating if you read in a tlt context with the presupposition that Tamsyn is unhinged enough to weave allusions to external media into her works as a form of foreshadowing. (spoiler: I am fairly certain she is)

Some highlights of The Sleeper include:

“I pray to God that she may lie 

For ever with unopened eye,”

Which reminds me an awful lot of  a certain ninth prayer: “I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain.”

“Looking like Lethe, see! the lake”

A reference to a river in Hades

“For her may some tall vault unfold- 

Some vault that oft has flung its black 

And winged panels fluttering back, 

Triumphant, o'er the crested palls, 

Of her grand family funerals- “

A description of a tomb being opened

“Some sepulchre, remote, alone, 

Against whose portal she hath thrown, 

In childhood, many an idle stone- “

A description of someone throwing stones against the door of a mausoleum - which to me feels really reminiscent of Wake futilely “throwing” baby gideon against the door of the tomb

Followed by:

“It was the dead who groaned within.” (within the tomb)

Which could refer to Alecto, but I actually lean toward Anastasia

Anyway, I made this post to beg you to go read “The Sleeper” and tell me what you think its implications might be because I am going a little crazy over here.

The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation

At midnight, in the month of June,

[theriverbeyond]

ok ok the fact that Wake's eye color is never ever explicitly mentioned despite her face being featured multiple times in a book series where everyone, even those w brown and black eyes, gets their irises waxed poetic about at least once, is either gonna end up being the biggest reveal or the silliest red herring in the whole series

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

Getting back on my soap box about Cytherea’s comment when she saw Gideon’s eyes. “Lipochrome, recessive” as in a trait that’s inherited from both parents. Do I know how it’s important? No. But do I suspect strongly that it is? Very much so.

[rain-44]

Since I crucified her and then impaled her heart in the last drawings she gets to hug Harrow as a little treat

Also I needed it coz I was this close to cry again while thinking about the second book. And I didn’t want to explain to my little brother why his sister was weeping at midnight.🤡🤡

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

What if The Glasses were G1deon/Pyrrha’s and they ended up on the ninth because Wake ripped them off as she was kicked out of the airlock so she could look into the eyes of her killer and know which of her lovers betrayed her?

[totallyfluxd]

what I can't help but wonder is where are the lyctor's cavs bodies? like what did they do with them? it'll probably never come up in canon but.... idk it feels kind of important? eight people who were so loved by their adepts but there's just no mention of what happened to their bones

are they somewhere under canaan house, or on the mithraeum (though surely the lyctors would visit them if they were)? someone picked up babs and brought him back for ianthe but somehow he's the only one we ever find out what became of him after his death. seems Weird tbh

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

I have a not well thought out enough to be called a theory so I guess we’ll go with thought about this! The entirety of the ninth house is a tomb. There’s that weird prison above the ninth that keeps getting mentioned and I refuse to take it at face value. What if it’s also a tomb and that’s where the cavs bodies are? Do I think this is actually extremely likely? Maybe not, but if it were true, we could make a quick stop on the prison at the beginning of Alecto and reunite Pyrrha with her own body, unlocking her full milfdilf power. And I’m choosing to live in a world where that’s a possibility until canon tells me it’s not.

[firstfloweroftheninthhouse]

The scene in ntn where Nona does such a spot on impression of Palamedes kissing Camilla's hand that Camilla has to dissociate about it in the tub has me wondering about the first gen lyctors' relationship with Alecto. Do you think that they were afraid of her because she wasn't human enough or because she was too human?Do you think that she worried her lip like Cristabel? Do you think she walked with Alfred's walk and laughed Pyrrha's laugh? Do you think they saw in her flawless imitation a mockery of their dearest friends and of their greatest sins? Do you think they said to John "it is a monstrosity, it is unbearable, send it away from us, Lord. We cannot look at it." Do you think he looked into the golden eyes of his own greatest sin and said "You are right, we should put it to bed."

[asthedeathoflight]

Hey, so, in Nona the Ninth Pyrrha says that during the time they were developing the telepathy trial, they kept replacing Gideon 1s spinal fluid, which, gross, but okay. But THEN Pyrrha says that the only other team they had come check the trial were Mercymorn and Cristabel because "Cristabel was the only one who didn't mind getting trepanned on the regular."

It's unclear whether the necromancer or the cavalier is the one with the compromised brain in the current context, because Cam and Pal share a brain, but it makes sense for it to be the cavalier. The cavalier, after all, is the one whose brain is being necromantically affected. Which raises the question: why were they draining GIDEONS brain??? I'd assumed that John called it Pyrrha's trial because she designed the bone monster (it seems like something she'd do) but this implies that, actually, SHE was the one reading Gideon's mind.

To put it lightly: what. Was Pyrrha also a necromancer? Is that why she survived Lyctorhood when the other cavs didn't? It does kind of make sense, because the Necro/cav dynamic hadn't really been invented yet, and the odds of the Lyctoral pairs being perfectly Necro/non-necro when we now know a lot of the pairings came from the pre-resurrection era do seem a little slim.

The problem with this, of course, is that obviously NOW Pyrrha can't do necromancy, but was that somehow a consequence of the Lyctoral process? Did Gideon 1 eat her necromancy? What the fuck is going on?