Locking the Tomb

side blog for my TLT fixation

[thelockedtombstuff]

"Uhm…. Well… if you wake up in the morning and you say: ‘I need a mug… and a toy pig’… then yes! Yes, its a relly good place to go”

It really took me too long to finish this animation, but here is queen Ianthe being perfect again.

The audio clip is from the Locked Tomb Podcast, episode 22, where our voice acting goddess Moira Quirk explains where her take on Ianthe’s voice came from. As soon as I listened to it I just couldnt help myself, and had to animate the heck out of it.

Character design belongs to @catpotion

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand

[ninewheels]

#at least once a month I think about that one post about laminating a paper towel#and how that makes it immortal but also forever prevents it from fulfilling its true purpose#yes you will live. but at the cost of everything that makes you You

(courtesy of noknowshame)

[procrastinationaccount]

How Locked Tomb characters would put out a candle

Gideon: The classic method, blowing on it (something something your mom). Also very prone to whipping one finger back and forth through the flame

Harrow: One of these doodads (apparently called a snuffer).

Bonus: Harrow Nova uses her rapier every single time

Ianthe: Pinch the wick with her bare fingers

Corona: Put the lid back on (she exclusively uses the big scented ones, and doesn't care that this makes reuse harder, because she can always get fresh ones)

Cytherea: Wick dipper - she also likes to use big scented ones, and she enjoys the visual of drowning the flame in its own byproduct. Feels poetic, somehow.

Palamedes: Cup his hand around the flame before blowing it out

Camilla: Lower the wick and/or closing the chamber in her lamp. She's not using an open flame if she can help it

Nona: Douse it in water, because she's very proud she remembers the difference between these and grease fires

John: Watch it burn all the way down and wax nostalgic about his own long-lost mortality

[katakaluptastrophy]

I fear I've spotted some more relevant Bible in the TLT...

Here's chapter 2 of HTN, where John explains to Harrow about the cost of the Resurrection:

Here's Luke 14:28, in a section where Jesus warns of the cost of discipleship:

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?

And here's Harrow at the end of NTN, when she questions whether John is god and goes looking for answers:

Unafraid of John as he spouts platitudes, she walks out into the River to find god:

We learn from Varun that "they are coming out of their tower...there is a hole at the bottom of their tower" and that "he left them too long". Perhaps this refers to those concerningly misplaced resurrected...

Jesus ends the story about the man building the tower by describing the trouble that will be caused by its unfinished foundations, and segues right into a story about a king who does not properly consider the size of his forces before going to war.

Count the cost indeed...

[bioluminescently-unfolding]

There's something else here too...

Harrow is frustrated and upset that (only) John could resurrect the Ninth but he won't do it.

2. That Biblical passage is warning about the cost of discipleship. A disciple follows in their Teacher's footsteps. In the Bible, Christ's disciples were touched with flame and filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and they did things ordinary people couldn't (speaking in tongues). Three thousand people were said to have been baptised that day, and it's seen as the birthday of the Church. Pentecostal Christians don't see this as a one-off occurrence, but an ongoing thing.

"For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?"

Just what tower is Harrow desiring to build here? Because I get the distinct impression she might follow her questioning of the nature, motives and mathematics of God by trying to not just raise but resurrect these dead herself.

She's not just asking idle or academic questions; she's actively checking his arithmetic. She wants to know if she can do it, and what it will cost her if she does. She already knows what it will cost her if she doesn't.

Harrow was created in an experiment by her parents which John says in HtN is very like what he did in the Resurrection. They came closer to God-like power than should ever have been possible. What makes us so sure Harrow can't do what he did? I think she is starting to really question that here.

[katakaluptastrophy]

Oh, this raises a slightly terrifying possibility...

Because who else is interested in the cost of the Resurrection? Ianthe:

"my field has always been energy transferral...large-scale energy transferral. Resurrection theory. I studied what happened when the Lord our Kindly God took our dead and dying Houses and brought them back to life, all those years ago...what price he would have had to pay."

Tamsyn Muir has this cryptic reference in an interview:

Harrow is fundamentally hubristic, she is the living embodiment of 'rip to them but I’m different'. I think it’s right to call Harrow more of a deconstruction, because all the ends Harrow is inevitably making her way towards and all the lessons she is being gently taught actually end in her still saying No. Harrow’s being tempted – first by her upbringing, second by her psychopomps and guides. What will be the third temptation? (Imagine me winking as hard as anyone has ever winked.) (You actually won’t know until Alecto, really.)

Might Harrow's third temptation involve Ianthe and the prospect of continuing the cycle?

[justsomecrows]

Gideon Nav somehow has a 20 perception and a 6 insight and idk how she did that but God she notices everything and interprets it entirely wrong every time

[hedge-rambles]

She's observant! She's intelligent! She's got an extremely limited and weird set of life experiences through which to interpret any of it!

That's my girl, sees all, understands nothing.

[biracy]

What's cool about Gideon I think is that she's actually, in-universe non-conforming, rather than just being "butch" or "masc" to our sensibilities but relatively passé within the universe. We read Gideon as masculine, yes, but it's not like Gideon acts like Ortus, or Mortus, or Crux. Nor does she act like Aiglamene, for that matter. The Ninth to me presents a kind of monastic androgyny - everyone shaves their head, everyone wears baggy black robes, everyone paints their face. Gideon, with her "ridiculous" hair and aversion to skull paint, is therefore non-conforming to the gender of Ninth. She's also non-conforming to the gender of cavalier, it's not something she was raised in, it's something she struggles to "pass" as. Gideon is basically transcavalier. And I think that's cool! I've seen a lot of people posit basically "what would it even mean to be 'butch' in a post-gender society" and I think Gideon solves that equation nicely by being "butch" to us in the real world and being decidedly nonstandard for both Ninth cavalier and a cavalier in general within the text. You need to look beyond what we consider arbitrarily "masculine" and "feminine" in order to effectively analyze gender in tlt, and I for one think that's very interesting

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

“monastic androgyny” is great, that's pretty much my take on Ninth attire too—Pelleamena and Priamhark always looked very similar in my mind in terms of fashion, with little to mark any gender difference

[mercurymasc]

finally tried my hand at a twin cinema poem and yaowza !! took me a couple hours to figure it out but i'm very happy with this one and i wanted to share. you can read gideon and harrow's thoughts separately to see their perspectives on their own and each other's actions, and putting them together supposedly reveals the truth of the lengths they would go to but can't communicate to one another :3

i just think that a form where they are talking to one another without hearing any response and yet are intertwining so perfectly is deeply on theme and makes me ill

also sorry for image quality i formatted this on canva and idk how to put such a complex form into an image description so apologies </3

[aurvxina]

"Camilla Hect, yet another of devotion's casualties"

[keterkid]

my friend wanted more locked tomb content so I started a pinterest board where I save stuff (mostly tweets and tumblr posts) that have nothing to do with tlt but fit perfectly and it’s just for our amusement but it’s becoming a masterpiece

[locking-the-tomb]

Repeated words and phrases of The Locked Tomb: an ongoing list

Pommel.

There's a narrative reason for that one that starts to be revealed midway through HtN

... detailed accounts of eye color ...

There's a narrative reason for that, that we learn by the end of GtN but get more on through HtN

Continued

take a hammer to the oxygen sealant machine

I feel like I'm not remembering something about this from later in the series but I'm only halfway through my second read so that's ok.

liminal

definition: occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold ... I think this one has some great meanings to be applied to HtN

nacreous

related to mother of pearl ... I think of the clouds ... I think this is just a description she likes without an apparent second meaning

[locking-the-tomb]

omfg I'm such a doof. mother of pearl. it's the nacre excreted by the mollusk to protect itself/its shell. the same nacre that coats the intrusive debris from which the mollusk is protecting itself.

since, y'know, mollusks can't self-lobotomize.

[pencildragons]

cant decide if i want noodle to Instantly Know that alecto in all her 9ft avenging angel of god barbie form is nona, or if he follows harrow around for a while and harrow has to pretend that she's Not a dog person. both are wonderful tbh but also i cant get over the mental image of harrow scowling fiercely while noodle walks next to her, and then on closer inspection he's wearing a collar lovingly made out of ribs

[tiny-blackbird]

thinking about this again today

"She was nine, and she’d made a mistake. She was seventeen, and she’d made a mistake. Time had repeated itself. Harrow would be tripping over herself for her whole existence, a frictionless hoop of totally fucking up."

my heart just cracked idk

[thewardenshand]

best part of the locked tomb is if it was ANY other story naberius would be the number one guy. he’s a prince and somehow also a bodyguard and he’s a gifted fighter and devoted to the princesses and he has swoopy hair and dreamy eyes and no one gives a shit, because they’re all married/gay/focused on the actual plot. naberius is the lost love interest from a shitty ya fantasy novel that culminates in a love triangle between him, corona, and silas. this man is harry styles in a room full of lesbians

[oysters-aint-for-me]

i love how the narrators of the locked tomb series are like:

gideon: is not paying attention

harrowhark: has brain damage

nona: was born six months ago

we love variety in our unreliable narrators

[hetslop]

bro we’re literally in the end times rn i wouldnt even be surprised if i open the news and hear about some guy in new zealand starting a cult because his cryo project funding got cut atp 🙄

[fantasy-mixtapes]

The thing that really gets me about the start of Nona the Ninth is how - even though she didn’t end up being either one of them - Cam, Pal, and Pyrrha couldn’t figure out whether she was Harrow or Gideon because they knew how absolutely fucked up their childhoods must of been.

They knew that if they took away all of the horrible things that Gideon and Harrow went through they would be almost unrecognizable as people - how much of their personalities were shaped by what they were trained to do, or how they resented their training. Making them wonder that maybe if things were different Harrow or Gideon could have been the happy and loving little girl Nona is.

Could you imagine having the chance to reparent your friend, giving them the things you think they deserve, that they never got, and realizing they are nothing like the friend you knew?

And then realizing that either way, this must be better.

[nomomio]

I JUST HAD A TERRIBLE REALIZATION HOLY SHIT WHEN JOD TOLD HARROW "NO ONE HAS TO KNOW" IN RESPONSE TO THE CONFESSION OF THE 9TH HOUSE GENOPHAGE THAT BIRTHED HER, IT WASN'T OUT OF CARING EMPATHY TOWARDS AN EXTREMELY ABUSED CHILD, IT WAS BECAUSE HE HASN'T TOLD ANYONE HOW HE BECAME GOD HOLY FUCKING SHIT MY MAN PANICKED BECAUSE HARROW'S PARENTS NEARLY REPLICATED HIS CARDINAL SIN FROM 10,000 YEARS AGO AND IS TRYING TO HIDE THAT HE'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS AND SUBSEQUENT CONSUMPTION OF 8 BILLION HUMANS