gun nun

The Locked Tomb sideblog | Rav (she/her)

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupidest things that someone could say,” says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the book More Everything Forever, which outlines the messianic, sci-fi fantasies of the tech oligarchs. “There are so many reasons why it’s such a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”

What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us

[wire-smith]

I really like sci-fi stories where people have to go off and terraform a planet, or figure out how to rebuild civilization after some disaster, or ideally both. "The last ark-ship leaving Earth right before it becomes uninhabitable" sort of deal. But lately I've been coming around to this same idea, that it will always be more practical to try to save Earth than to try to start over elsewhere.

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

And this is really true of any futuristic apocalypse scenario. If you can terraform Mars to have a thick oxygen atmosphere, why not just do that to Earth? Even if you smash an ice comet into Earth and destroy basically everything, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars! It'll still have roughly the right atmospheric pressure, and magnetic field, and heat balance, and it'll still have whatever life the comet didn't kill... Same with a starshade to cool Venus. Same with excavating asteroids into city-stations. Same with abandoning Sol System entirely and heading to another star. If an ark-ship arrived in a new star system and found Earth-but-choked-by-climate-change, the crew would be ecstatic. They would never have thought to get that lucky. So why bother with the trip? Just stay and fix the damn Earth.

[cherishedboxart]

Another terrible party at the Mithraeum

[glintblade]

nun pussy probably isn't even that good

[glintblade]

[purplelilies]

"that’s not actually Crown’s boyfriend, Nona, it’s her sister, but I don’t think anyone could blame you for getting confused" is a wild line and it's describes their whole t h i n g with terrifying accuracy but the best part is how everything becomes even worse after

[loveridden1999]

in a way i am my own dead wife

[runasulienadanika]

[katakaluptastrophy]

how do you think abigail's relationship with her brother & niblings was?

Abigail is one of the few characters who not only talks about her family, but does so positively! She seems to be part of a fairly close, loving family.

Unfortunately, she also lives in — and is a significant cog within — a fascist theocratic empire that instrumentalises marriage and reproduction, particularly for its feudal aristocracy...

From the few details we get, Abigail seems to have always had a good relationship with her brother, given that she reminisces about their childhood, commends him as a future leader, and clearly thinks he's someone who would be able to both find and make use of her heretical notes. You get the sense they must be somewhat alike.

From what Judith says in CIF, it seems like she has several niblings, at least one of whom is not an adept (and can thus be married off to an extramural necromancer). If we assume you need to be an adept to rule, then there are at least two further niblings who are adepts and could thus be de facto heirs. Abigail may have spent a decade in grad school before marrying someone perhaps controversially of her choosing at 26 or so, but the fact that her younger brother has a son of an age with 13 year-old Isaac suggests he followed a rather more typical path for an aristocratic Houser, and was likely married and having children in his very early 20s (a context, perhaps, for 23 year old Babs' "should have stayed home and gotten married" comment).

Perhaps the fact that her brother toed such an acceptable line and produced the next generation took some of the pressure off Abigail — indeed, Judith seems to think that the possibility of her brother taking over the title was why Abigail was allowed to marry Magnus at all! You feel there must be a fairly complex history there, as they both navigated expectations about their roles as adepts in one of the ruling feudal families of the empire. Have they always been in cahoots, or has there ever been a tension with him simultaneously being in her shadow and picking up the pieces of the succession puzzle that she would not, or sadly could not, fulfil?

This all seems like a lot of detail to get about the family of a relatively minor character, which does make me wonder if we're going to see more of the denizens of Koniortos Court in ATN. (Did he find her notes? Did she tell them they owed Nonius blood? Just where did the Sixth get all those stele (apparently only made by Fifth House adepts)? Why did Kester Cinque leave Koniortos?)

We know less about the niblings, though there's Judith's comment that "it is already suggested that her nephew will be affianced to [Isaac] once they are of age". It's not quite clear who's suggesting this, or just how official this is, but there's certainly something uncomfortable in the idea that Abigail might in some way be pre-engaging teenagers for political gain, especially in light of the controversial romantic freedoms she has enjoyed in her own life.

Judith's information could, of course, be wrong. But it would seem to fit with what we know about House politics and practices. Abigail clearly cares deeply about Isaac, to the point that she seems to have ended up on some kind of watchlist for her efforts to keep him away from the front lines, and seems to have a knack for arranging outcomes that benefit the Fifth while also aligning with what she wants. A marriage between Isaac and the brother of the future scion of the Fifth would bring him into the family, would make his children Abigail's blood relations - perhaps it might nod to affections that already exist between the boys, or reflect a hope that they might show more interest in each other in the future. It might even allow her to engineer conditions that would pull him away from danger. But even if the worst happens, it places a member of the Fifth's ruling family in the heart of Tisis, further entrenching their hegemonic designs over the Fourth House...

Which is to say, I don't doubt that Abigail loves both Isaac and her nephew a great deal. But she is part of a system where part of being loving; part of being a good aunt, a good feudal lady fulfilling her responsibility towards the 'orphaned' heir of another House placed into her care, necessarily entails instrumentalising them for the good of her House.

[ihave2-5childreninmywalls]

I don’t think Gideon would be able to bench press Harrow. Not because Gideon isn’t strong or anything but because Harrow would start scratching like a wet cat if she was held horizontally mid air.

[butchloser]

thinking about ianthe and harrow sacreligiously indulging each other by using last names, sinning and scrambling for scraps of the pre-canonized selves neither of them thought they would miss. the selves that were tied down by something as ephemeral and ridiculous as filial piety and blood. it’s over and done and we can’t go back and don’t tell god but please just say my name out loud

[clubnich]

a heavy burden

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

people are always saying “they have should be at the club” about characters who would immediately have a panic attack if even put in the general vicinity of one

[baejax-the-great]

How I feel about this entire website at times

[elldritch-horror]

I find it very telling that Tamsyn Muir, who came up through this hellsite, wrote books where the evil emperor starts out as a basically okay leftist millennial tumblr user.

What makes the villain the villain (inasmuch as it's useful to examine TLT characters through that kind of simplistic lens) is that when the chips are down and he has to choose, his priority is punishing the wicked, not saving the people left behind.

I would invite anyone whose engagement with their cause consists of finding the 'correct' group of people to hate, to consider whether 'evil emperor' is the next career move you see yourself taking, and if it isn't, to gently suggest disembarking from the hate train.

Because no one wants their God King to be a tumblrina called John.

[griddles-bone-soup]

If I could directly implant this understanding into the brain of every TLT fan, by jod I would

[vividciggy]

I love when people draw harrow like this

[arithmonym]

at least camilla hect never had to answer emails

[arithmonym]

she probably proofread palamedes’s love letters, though. which might have been worse

[harrirats]

haunted

[astronicht]

Galileo (1564-1642 CE) discovered that the planets are spheres -> comically inaccurate, misses the point of one of the main observational fallacies actually identified by Galileo, still quoted by STEM folks who like to insist that scientists can do perfectly good work without history of science

Cicero (106-43 BCE) knew that the planets were spheres but he thought that planets were conscious spheres capable of thought and motion, leading Macrobius (ca. 400s CE) to conclude that all perfect spheres are conscious beings, including the soul -> accurate and way more fucked up

[astronicht]

wait im sorry, my man Macrobius specifically said that the human head counted in this case as a sphere so that's why it can think. just like a planet can. dont worry about it kitten.