anyways PLEASE read my HARRYANTHE if you like harryanthe like I do
it's completed btw
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
here are some previews(?):
"I think you came up with that yourself, before."
"I did?"
"But you didn't use it in a specific trap, just sprinkled it on me."
"To track your whereabouts? Why would I do such a thing?"
"Probably because you care about me so much, sweetheart." She adorned a coquettish smirk that was in fact cold and slippery like a reptile. "And you thought I didn't notice. How could I not, with all my clothes smelling like you? So I just kept them that way."
-----
Her mind was nimble and reminded me of an acrobat or a rat, showing off improbable feats at times and scurrying through dirty loopholes at others. Her branches of knowledge expand far (though in either grotesque fields like flesh magic, or pointlessly obscure ones like energy transaction theory during the Resurrection) and wide (so wide that I had a hard time believing she was really twenty-two, but then she pointed out that I was only eighteen, and I corrected her that I was technically seventeen because I lost time, and she said yeah yeah you don't have to wave the fact that you'd gone mad since you were a baby in my face, been there, done that, and I spent an inappropriate amount of time turning it over my head measuring to what extent it was a joke).
-----
"What are your plans when we find the way into the River?"
"If." I ignored that, because she's only saying it to cause me annoyance. "Find Corona."
"Where is she?"
"If only I knew." She said idly. "Our pillow talk aways comes back to her, Harry; I thought you prefered bitches over bimbos."
hello locked tomblr! i was at the tamsyn muir event in oxford - here are my notes
i've tried to group them thematically rather than chronologically, and to point out spoilers when i can. there are some parts that i missed/didn't hear correctly - i would appreciate it if others at the event correct me :D
Key takeaways
Alecto is still being written! Muir was reluctant to say a year, so it will probably be more than that
Alecto won’t be written in a Biblical style, and there will be multiple POVs. It will mostly be told from Harrow’s POV (I hope I heard that right)
Muir loves the idea of a TLT videogame
Muir’s not yet done with Floralinda
Q&A: Alecto when?
(putting this first because I know you want to know!)
Alecto is not yet finished
Reason why:
Muir was already slated to write another book before Alecto (Floralinda, I think)
Floralinda took longer than expected
Muir also suffered from health issues
Muir was about to say Alecto would come out in a year, but was reluctant. It will be soon. It will be before she dies.
Once Alecto gets to the editor, it will be fast-tracked. There will be few advance reader copies
And Alecto will not be 2 books, do not fret!
Publishing journey for the Locked Tomb Series
TL;DR – Muir got published because she had good contacts
George R. R. Martin was Tamsyn Muir’s mentor at Clarion
Muir took what she described as the ‘traditional route’ into publishing
She spent around 3 years publishing short stories
Then she got contacted by an agent for a novel
Muir acknowledges that routes into publishing are not like that now
Sometimes, fanfiction writers are approached – Muir doesn’t approve as that ruins the hobby, it adds a financial incentive and makes people do it for a career rather than for fun.
Muir wouldn’t do anything differently
We joked a bit about an agent who remarked on the ‘sisterly relationship’ between characters in Muir’s manuscript
Advice for aspiring authors
Send stuff to an agent regardless of where you are
Work in the industry
There was a bit of discussion on self-publishing – it doesn’t suit Muir personally, but it’s a good route for someone with the energy to be their own editor, advertiser, etc.
Q&A: something about being a successful writer (sorry I forgot)
Basically, getting successful requires having good connections
Videogame Influence on Locked Tomb Series
Muir is a big fan of the emergent narrative that videogames afford
Muir worked for Disney and wrote videogame scripts before GtN. There’s an insane House of Mouse script archived somewhere, which Muir wrote.
Novel writing is very different from videogame writing.
In a videogame, you have to fully flesh out the in-game universe and provide enough choices and points of interest for players
This taught Muir to be in-depth when writing her novel universes…
…which particularly influenced her to write tonnes of AUs for the Locked Tomb series
There are two versions of Nona, for example: one which is what’s really happening, and one which is Nona’s POV
Q&A: did the videogame influence help Muir to write so confusingly in the Locked Tomb series?
Muir strongly cites Umineko as a key influence
This is a perfect example of a slow reveal, like in the Locked Tomb books
Muir doesn’t strictly plan her reveals (e.g., on the second reread, the reader finds this out), but she does love a slow reveal and works hard to make close reading rewarding for the reader
Tamsyn Muir would love for the Locked Tomb series to be adapted into a videogame!!
A funny story was told where Muir got approached by a gacha game company… which didn’t come to anything
POV voice shifts in the Locked Tomb series
A key reason for the books being so different is that Muir didn’t want to write the same thing again – she gets ‘easily bored’
She focussed on the sentence links of each character – Gideon’s sentence links are very different from Harrow’s
Vocabulary also played a key role (again, compare Gideon and Harrow)
The second person narrative in HtN was planned for a while, the tricky thing was convincing publishers to accept it
Muir has an HtN draft somewhere, 50% written, that’s in third person
POV in Alecto the Ninth: It will not be written in a biblical style
There will be different POVs
Q&A: Book inspiration for writing in the second person?
Muir notes that she didn’t write in perfect second person – it was actually first person
She will always turn to On a Winter’s Night a Traveller
And this is another videogame inspiration
She mentioned Homestuck then said don’t mention Homestuck so…
The theme of memory in the Locked Tomb series
Memory as a result of love, and memories which are a source of pain
This is a key theme in HtN – note how memory affected Harrow throughout the book
It’s also going to be a key theme in Alecto
Muir is using memory as horror
The horror of not being able to trust yourself and to know what is real
She’s drawing on her own experiences of being schizophrenic
Magic systems in the Locked Tomb series
Muir wasn’t actually a big fan of necromancy before writing TLT
She found it too passive in Dungeons & Dragons
She wanted an active magic system, something unintuitive that required hard work and study to learn
She also wanted a magic system to be gross!
TLT magic system was described as “telekinesis with meat”
Worldbuilding in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: what was Muir’s worldbuilding starting point/seed?
Muir struggled to find this out. There’s no magic formula
Creative writing can’t be taught, only practiced
For GtN, she wanted a story about duty, and duty vs freedom
She wanted the story to be about two young women
Gideon was originally a cop/fireman
For Muir, worldbuilding is there to serve the plot. She does not worldbuild for worldbuilding’s sake
Everything in Muir’s books is there to serve the plot
Would the TLT protagonists make a good DnD party?
Absolutely not!
Although Camilla and Palamedes would be fine
There was some joking around about how Muir and her friends tried to play as Gideon and Harrow in DnD and it didn’t work out
Genre merging in the Locked Tomb series
Muir identified her blend of comedy and horror as unique to Kiwi fiction
She used Peter Jackson’s early films before the Lord of the Rings as an example
For Muir, science fiction and fantasy are merged – it only really feels like science if you do hard sci-fi
Muir grew up with Star Wars, so it felt natural to set her fantasy world in space
The genre merging created publishing problems
Publishers want an easy comparison to other books to make it sell, but there was nothing like Gideon the Ninth
We joked a bit about TLT being compared with Dune
Q&A: now that TLT books are out, has Muir noticed any very similar books that GtN etc. are being compared to?
Not really.
Muir sees the most similarities with people who know her and have had similar influences
An example is A. K. Markwood
Another book that seemed very similar is ‘Dawn Hound by Necksy Strownack’ another New Zealand author (I did a quick google and I think this is the Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach?)
Comedy and Humour in the Locked Tomb series
Muir’s advice for aspiring writers is not to write humour to appeal to everyone, as you’ll please no one. Stay true to yourself.
Muir writes plenty of humour into her manuscripts, which are often cut away during editing
Q&A: memes that didn’t make it: (note: I struggled to catch what was being said under all the laughter and I am also woefully uncultured – many of these are me transcribing as best as I can. Do correct me if I’m wrong!)
Mr Bones’ Wild Ride
Emperish meme
Horse Plinko (this got referred to a lot!)
Harrow calling Ianthe the ‘God of Thot’ in HtN
And many more
Muir mused about whether she will dial back the humour in later work, or whether she will go full throttle as she doesn’t care anymore
Writing process for short stories vs books
Muir sees her short story days as mostly behind her, although she is getting one published soon (as we are aware!)
With short stories, you only have time for one thing, whilst with a novella, you have time for plot and subplot
Short stories are great to practise your technical writing skills
Muir personally would not turn her short stories into novels – she wants to do something new
Q&A: The planning process for the Locked Tomb series
Muir had already planned the whole story before writing GtN
GtN and HtN are the question arcs
NtN and AtN are the answering arcs
Muir really enjoyed writing a New Zealand story
Lesbians as epic heroes in the Locked Tomb series
Muir doesn’t see this as jarring – why can’t epics have lesbians in them?
All epics want you do to is die gloriously
You can do anything after that
Q&A: Epic influences on the Locked Tomb series
The Iliad. It all comes back to Homer, and the Iliad.
There was some insightful discussion on how the Locked Tomb world codifies its past. In a sense, it’s stuck in time. There’s no golden period to hark back to.
The discussion then turned to the idea of the hero, and what a hero should be.
This is heavily explored in Gideon the Ninth, which centres around Harrow failing to prevent Gideon from being the hero
Add lesbian to anything
Muir would love to see a lesbian Hunger Games
Floralinda vs Gideon and Harrow
“Floralinda blows” – Tamsyn Muir
Floralinda is a supervillain story about a ‘bad girl who gets worse’
Muir has written/is planning to write more on Floralinda
Q&A: Advice for writing characters who suck?
Just let them be shit, go hard first and don’t hold back
Take a sin, take a virtue
All of Muir’s characters, in some way, are a ‘fuck up’
Catholic imagery in the Locked Tomb series and Catholicism in general
Q&A: was it difficult to link lesbians with Catholicism in the Locked Tomb series?
It felt good for Muir, a lesbian Catholic
And also very fun!
Q&A: who’s the hottest saint?
In the TLT universe: Valancy!
In the real world: Saint Barbara
This sparked some light-hearted banter
Q&A: Meaningful names in the Locked Tomb series
Muir loves writing meaningful names that hide things in plain sight
Muir does not browse ‘Behind the Name’ lol
She has a ‘laundry list’ of names she likes which she’s accumulated throughout her life
Homer and ancient Greek influences played a key role
Also Biblical names
Changing names are highly important in the books, e.g., Gideon to Kiriona
Muir doesn’t mind if people sus out a character’s plot after immediately reading their names
Umineko inspiration
Lolita and the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: the audience member read Lolita at the same time as NtN. They were wondering if the similarities between the two were deliberate.
Muir loves Lolita and thinks that Nabokov is an expert in writing misery
Muir was open about being a child sexual abuse survivor. The influence of this is pervasive in her work.
There is a strong focus on relationships with authority people
Particularly in NtN, which contains sexual threats. This was hard for Muir to write.
Another example is the relationship between John and Alecto.
They are not a one on one comparison between Humbert and Lolita, but the theme of a man fashioning a girl into the perfect partner is there
Whether there is a sexual element in this will be answered in Alecto the Ninth
Muir explicitly does not want to include overt sexual violence in her work
Misogyny in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: In the worldbuilding of the Locked Tomb series, how do you balance the misogyny that still exists (which is particularly obvious when John talks to/about Mercymorn) and the outward appearance/initial impression people get of the houses having gender equality (e.g., Abigail as head of the fifth, Jeannemary as a knight)?
This question had Muir wriggling in delight
The answer to this is addressed in Alecto
Why is John fucking up in the creation of his utopia?
Muir encourages readers to question what you, the reader, perceive as misogyny, versus what the characters perceive as misogyny.
Q&A: Cannibalism in the Locked Tomb series
Cannibalism is a metaphor for toxic love
Cannibalism of the soul is much more severe than cannibalism of the flesh
Link to Lolita
It’s eating someone’s life and personhood. A central theme in TLT is exploring love as something taken violently
Can you love someone without taking something from them? This is one of Muir’s favourite ideas
And, it’s not necessarily negative
Example of Camilla and Palamedes (spoiler for NtN!!)
They had to eat each other
Grappling with the question: Is love weightless?
Q&A: How much of their old selves are preserved in the Lyctors?
HtN spoilers!!
John didn’t simply wipe and rewrite them – if not, why are they trying to kill him?
John wanted his friends, so he tried to bring his friends back
Interesting implications for the two people he didn’t know well and only saw as cowrokers
BUT then the Lyctors are changed by their immortality and John
Q&A: What was it like to write immortality?
Muir acknowledges that she doesn’t do a perfect job, and that it’s actually impossible to actually write immortality – it will be too alien for the reader
But this links back to the theme of memory – how much can the Lyctors retain?
The Lyctors are heavily weighed down by time, Mercymorn in particular
Q&A: How long would Muir last in the TLT universe?
0.5 seconds
Muir doesn’t see herself as a necromancer or cavalier
Nor is she particularly aligned with any House
Q&A: Books that Muir is reading right now that she would recommend
(again, my poor listening skills and lack of culture limit me here!)
Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
‘Payback for Malory Towers’
A.K. Markwood’s new book, the Seventh Banisher
Muir has advance access. AK is her friend.
Q&A: Books and media that influenced Muir as a child
She was a highly prolific reader as a child!
Obviously Animorphs
Weird Kiwi fantasy stories
Margaret Margey
She read a lot of David Eddings as a teenager and got annoyed at the role of women in the books
Gormandust was a key inspiration for TLT (I googled this and ‘Gormandust’ doesn’t exist, hopefully someone more in the know can help to translate my poor transcription!)
Grimmbolts was another influence (again, I probably didn’t hear this correctly)
Q&A: Warhammer inspiration
Muir didn’t get into Warhammer until after HtN. She loves it.
She has been approached to write for the Black Library but she had to decline as she had too much work
Q&A: What’s Muir going to do next?
Muir does not want to keep going back to TLT, she is happy to release it to the fanfiction writers once it’s done!
There are a couple more things in the TLT universe she may add
For example, there’s a big Harrow AU…
Muir wants to go back to videogames
But in her history, the projects she works on tend to fold
Muir is trying to write her own videogames and is slowly learning Python
A very good question about deconstruction was asked, but I missed it because I was too excited
Everyone was really lovely at the event! Cambridge folk, you have a lot to look forward to :))
after such a long time I finally finished reading all existing tlt content, which means I've officially entered Alectopause, we suffer and we suffer I guess
general thoughts: I loved reading this exactly as I thought I would. The sixth house is my favorite house in the system so I'm very glad to read more about how the facility runs, albeit the narration being confusing as always
On a side note, I just finished listening to the entire series’ audiobook, and belatedly realized that Pal, like Ianthe, was able to grasp the megatheorum by reverse engineering. He was reluctant to believe that to be the process to lyctorhood because he had already realized the sacrifice. His attention was much more focused on the scythe situation than the megatheorum by the time he was requesting Harrow’s help in opening lyctor studies.
Back to Dr sex, I guess I’ll start by saying yes I cried at the end, Tamsyn’s endings always pack a hard punch, but I actually started crying when they finally started laughing at Dr Sex’s numerical name. It’s a powerful scene, the teenage mirth being fueled by the joy of accomplishment and admiration for each other. One more point! One step closer to equal footing with Dulcie! That moment must be one of their fondest memories. When I was reading that scenes I couldn’t help thinking about the moment before they ascended, “will she recognize us in the river?” And how Camilla would look back on this moment clutching Pal’s bones.
Next up is stuff that I currently find unclear in the short story.
1. Who wrote the letter. I currently firmly stand by team Nigella. Anastasia makes sense, but I just feel like the tone gives me Nigella vibes. “Darling girl” just doesn’t sound like something anyone would call one of the first to be resurrected unless they are among them too. Also “follow” gives cavalier vibes. Also “want me” gives shady lesbian vibes. I could go on and on.
By the way, I can’t believe Cassie left the letter on the sixth instead of keeping it on her as instructed. Which leads me to the next question
2. What’s the deal with the puzzle box? How did he get his hands on it? Isn’t dr sex a scholar who studies resurrection energy theory?(may I add, same as ianthe. I think they and other occultists, as harrow puts it, are interested in either Joe’s ascension or “where he put all the people”) why would he be so desperate to open a puzzle box as his final act in life and death? Possibly because he believes the box to contain important evidence to his theory, his final project.
“It was post-Resurrection thalergyfluctuations, wasn’t it? Wasn’t his crackpot theory that there was greater thalergy and thanergy saturation right after the Resurrection?”
“He was doing archaeological forensic thalergy,” said someone else.“Destroying the Archeo budget grinding up paper.”
And another person said, “Lots of object requests.”
Based on this, I’d say a. He was onto the eightfold word and seeks written proof of it. If the letter is indeed from nigella to Cassie then it would actually be perfect proof if contents mention the process . b. He wants to do forensic thalergy on the letter, destroy it in the process of checking its thalergy signatures to investigate the earlier days closer to resurrection. Also explains why he won’t go all the way and open the box.
3. What is actually the ranking system on the sixth? What exactly is the oversight body? The committee rescued in Nona the Ninth?
4. Why was Camilla sort of hiding the fact that she’s the best swordsman of the generation?
Anyways, amazing story. It’s wonderful to read something new in the series. The befuddlement is nostalgic. I would say that The Unwanted Guest remains to be my favorite bonus content though.
I'm surprised not to have seen an abundance of the locked tomb OCs (I’ve spent a long time in the fandom and only seen very few fics and no artwork). the catagories of houses and necro/cavalier subcatagories is actually perfect for making OCs.
For necros there are bone/flesh/spirit magic and all that(though they do tend to depend on which house the adapt is from), and for cavs there are all kinds of sidearms to design. not to mention necro/cav pairs and relationships to explore.
The only reasons I can think of are 1. World building outside of the ninth, though rich, is still indirect and maybe limited because of that.
2. OG characters are so interesting that any OC would seem pale
why does Coronabeth even think she qualifies to be Judith's cavalier. she can't fight 😹
the WOKE LEFT are convincing our beautiful princesses that they can IDENTIFY as cavaliers when they should be learning to cope with their necrodysphoria by FUCKING THEIR SISTERS
i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:
"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"
Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.
there are even some earlier works in fan studies but that’s what i have ready to hand.
so I had to immediately go and pull this other amazing figure from the paper, which is "THE HEXAGON" a device with six rooms for fruit flies to have sex in and a central room for a fruit fly to observe six couples having sex at once
hello, thank you for asking, I was basically sitting over here vibrating hoping for the opportunity to infodump more
so the things about making decisions is that it takes a bunch of time and energy and brain power to gather and assess information, and it is evolutionarily advantageous to cheat and offload as much of the work as possible onto other people. thus, there is natural selection for observing other people's decisions and mimicking them.
in a lot of critters, this means it is advantageous to watch who someone else picks for sex so you can copy what they decided was sexy when you select your own partner
the simplest version of the fly sex panopticon is basically just a 2-chamber tube where scientists can orchestrate sex shows for fruit flies.
("watch a demonstration" is scientist code for watch anorthern pair of fruit flies have sex)
you can very quickly instill a preference: cover male fruit flies with pink or green fluorescent powder, and then let a female fly observe another female fly having sex with a pink male. the observer will conclude that pink is extremely sexy and be much more likely to select a hot pink male herself. by switching the colors and the learned preference to green, you can demonstrate that this is indeed learned behavior, and not some kind of pre-existing genetic preference.
the 6-way "sexagon" was invented for this paper to test how seeing different ratios of pink vs. green males being chosen would affect the development of preference.
the cool thing about this graph is it shows it didn't matter if there were only slightly more of the the females picking pink or green males, the observer would still develop a preference for whatever the majority were choosing.
the whole paper is very cool, and absolutely worth a read:
it argues (and supports experimentally) that since preferences can be learned and passed on, fruit flies have an actual culture that can vary among populations and be transmitted to youngsters across generations.
this is super cool, because most studies proposing or examining the existence of culture in animals have been focused on higher level stuff like monkeys. if something as simple as a fruit fly can have a culture, this suggests that animal culture could have had huge effects on evolution from the ground up.
so yes, animal culture! fruit fly culture! very cool
but also an excellent evolutionary argument for voyeurism
this line is amazing. shows how driven by rage John is(well, part of his soul is an RB) and induces thought on how Gideon would react after Harrow "turned her back" on her.
btw I always thought that Gideon being the saddest girl ever is because her soul is "fractured".
The series focuses on this, cases where two person are a whole and they could never be apart, and when they are apart they are as sad as Gideon. Or not because Gideon is double fractured.
Ianthe had tried to pull Gideon back when she walked out, but after hearing about the cavs she stepped out. She couldn't help it.
in the Unwanted Guest we see how important Babs' role is in her life. In As Yet Unsent(this name for the short story is very good btw) she uses her only invite spot to annoy Babs. she doesn't have any friends, she doesn't have a love life(“Ah, the romance I have been awaiting all my life,” she said pleasantly. “Babs always said it would come along … or at least, he once said I would go to hell and get fucked, which I took as a roundabout way of expressing the same thing.), she only has necromancy and Corona and Babs, and she was forced to choose between them.
Here:
Hate. that's what should have appeared on her face when she stepped out during the Emperor's murder. She was in denial the whole time.
but now she knows that there is a way, seen it herself, yet it's too late already. She'll never be truly one with Corona. Babs will always be there. Despair.
Also, I think it's safe to say that if met with a choice between Corona and Harrow, she'd just chose Corona again and kill Harrow like Babs.
Camilla took a couple of gasping breaths—it was obvious how much they hurt her—and then she said: “Warden—will she know who we are, in the River?”
“Oh, she’s not stupid,” said Palamedes lightly. “In the River—beyond the River—I truly believe we will see ourselves and each other as we really are. And I want them to see us.
He already knows at this point that Dulcie is beyond the River. Cam never had the chance to even talk to her. Pal didn't tell her yet. but they'll know when they're together.
re-read the unwanted guest too, why can't Dulcie tell Pal about the River? Who's not letting her explain?
that fucking short story hits harder and harder the more I read it. the dialogue and scenes are so good. during my first read I was confused and like, what? souls mix? that's so messy?? then... Ianthe never was Ianthe in HtN? I don't believe this.
now I'm like, *crying* souls mix, *crying* Mercymorn Cristabel is Mercymorn Cristabel *crying* Ianthe was never Ianthe in HtN and never will be Ianthe again *crying*
Cam, though probably not for long by the looks of it—Mumfucker Prime—Judith Deuteros for some reason, or, like, her corpse
is Judith dead???? will she be able to get her soul back? I think Jod would be able to manage it though
notes on As Yet Unsent: (broke it outta the panic box, now there's only Dr. Sex left)
The princess has by turns tried to charm Camilla, play with Camilla, flirt with Camilla, and cajole Camilla. Camilla is currently unmoved. This lack of response might have been dangerous except for the pouch around Camilla’s neck: the princess knows that she would have better luck flirting with the earthly remains of Palamedes Sextus. I asked Coronabeth bluntly if she had designs on Camilla, who at the end of the day, is an attractive human being at the peak of physical health, contemporary in age, and also unexpectedly knows the value of quiet. Oh no, she said, and she seemed surprised I would ask. She said, one half plus one half is only ever half.
aaaaaaaa one half plus one half is only ever half.
AAAAAAA CORONA COME ON CORONA YOU CRAZY BITCH AAAAAAAAA
Meeting in person did not, as it so often does, inoculate against hero worship. I found Dyas to exceed my impossible teenage standards. We found out that we liked the same books.
I said to Hect, I hadn’t actually read them as closely as I’d made out to the lieutenant, in that initial conversation. I had to go back and reread all of them in a hurry.
Hect said, That’s the first human thing you’ve ever told me about yourself.
This made me cry
She never took a seat when we were enduring a Fifth or Third ball. And she never let weakness master her. I said to Hect, The night after you and she fought the duel at Canaan House, when I took her upstairs and asked how she was, all Dyas said was: I need a drink.
Marta... I am weeping, Judith went through so much torture and she's still under the influence of Number Seven, I hope she gets better in Alecto
She didn’t have to tell me in so many words what we both knew, that the relationship between cavalier and necromancer could so easily curdle into codependency . . . a loss of self on both sides. An obsessive fusion of halves, not two complementary forces.
ok wow
I didn't expect As Yet Unsent would be the piece in the tlt series to touch upon the "horrors of" codependency the most. These three characters really are something else.
Every birthday we got to have one person we’d invite and our mother and father would get to invite the rest, and Ianthe always invited whoever Babs didn’t want to see at the time, and I always invited you.
ok now I'm laughing and crying at the same time
fuck the Tridentarii they're so amazing, seeing this I can't help thinking about the Unwanted Guest, and how Ianthe let go of Bab's corpse because she found out that she never could.
Jody, you can’t die on me. I’m so alone now.
At this point Ianthe's crying at night too.
I told her, Don’t cry over me, Coronabeth. You and I both know there’s no reason to.
She dried her eyes with her fists and said, Ianthe always said we were born cursed.
Mercy was at their camp? wtf I'm having a bit of trouble with the timeline
Lieutenant Dyas is dead. My own necromancer wouldn’t have me. Won’t you let me be your cavalier? Here, now, at the end of the world? Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?
She's so badass that she's scared of herself. I would be too.
It is not a confession of temptation. I wasn’t tempted by Coronabeth’s offer. There was never any possibility of it. I committed the understandable crime of desire for Lieutenant Marta Dyas, having joined my hand to hers with the best and most pure of intentions. Why would I ever knowingly take Coronabeth Tridentarius’s, having desired her already for twelve long, stupid, fruitless years?
And I said, Thank you for the offer, Your Highness, but not in this life or in any other.
At this point I'm just simply marveling at how Tamsyn writes people loving multiple people at the same time and make all the love so beautiful, she really knows her stuff.
