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I think a lot about pre-Resurrection era, and I feel like we don't really talk about how weird John was before anything magical ever happened. Like, maybe he was tuning into the earth before there were any signs, but at bare minimum it would've been Different, and the energy is still so wild.

Man who'd gotten multiple tertiary degrees and taken a secret government job by his 30s, if not before. Was apparently working in such a way that they had funding for the project but weren't going to get paid well themselves until it was over, given the kill fee on the project. Who was living in the facility before the project ever got shut down. Who watched his partners cry in each other's arms like babies but didn't cry with them, only felt frustrated he couldn't do anything about it.

Who didn't worry before they got the news and didn't worry when they were all over the news, who just kept working obsessively even after the funding got cut. Not even frantically, but calmly. Sleeping like a baby and waking up to have six breakthroughs a day. "You're on amphetamines, you are on coke, you're on amphetamines and coke" and laughing at "Yeah, Coke Zero" was after the shutdown notice but before anything magic.

Guy who did object personification so hard he thought of the medical cadavers as friends. "I know it was weird having favourites, but let’s bloody face it, I’d gone weird."

Just... God... Idk.

Early John to me feels like some kind of TBH Creature Cryptid. Borderline feral not in an apeshit way but like a stray cat that wandered in. Honestly, basically Paul's vibes in terms of overwhelming curiosity and innovation and being utterly unphased by so much in the process. Just, "Interesting!" and continuing on. Getting bad news and going "Oh." And continuing on, too.

Honestly, given everything between how the investors had been ready to push the project forward if they'd been willing to compromise safety measures and at the same time how much trouble they were gonna have disposing of the bodies, it sounds like the mixture they were using was perfectly survivable but had severe side effects. Perhaps ones that could likely be recovered from over time after waking by a living person, or recovered Enough that if people consented to it it was deemed worth it for one generation to help ensure more would keep living, but would have done immediate damage burying a corpse freshly loaded up with such effects.

And I think about how the world panicked when word got out about the project, because it made it clear how bad things really were, and how John said as a result he'd never work in the industry again. People writing think pieces about the project. The specific wording choice of John saying he was "irradiated". And I'm like.... was he actually though. Is that part of why he's Like This now. And if they were doing something radioactive, something to try to save the planet longterm, the irony then with the bombs...

I think about the contrast between "I was sleeping like a baby" despite his obsessive focus at the beginning versus "I'd stopped sleeping, and I wasn't eating much" by the end.

I think about how A— and M— and G— presumably left wherever they'd been living to move in with him, how gradually more of them moved in. How so many people outside the inner circle left their homes to just camp out near him. How A— and M— fought constantly even back then but never about the other's relationship with John. How "G— always thought anything I said or did was fine. Not necessarily right, but fine."

And the only thing I can ever imagine is despite everything— despite his lack of much outward emotional expression, the flippancy and vindictiveness, the eccentricity, the constant lowkey dismissal of everyone around him in favor of focusing so intently on his work and goals— John for as long as G— had known him and up through the end times was always such a radiant shining light that people who recognized it couldn't help but be drawn to him. That his sheer passion for life and justice and dedicating his life to improving the world for future generations inspired people so much that whether or not they'd continue to follow him was never in question. That for all of how bad he was at showing the people around him, no one questioned how deeply he loved. He recognized that it was the corpses he'd loved most that stayed incorrupti, and Alecto herself agrees that's exactly why she chose him: "For John so loved the world."

And everything turns out Like This.

I am just gonna be unwell forever I think.

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Wrong: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because she was Lord Byron's daughter.

Right: Ada Lovelace invented computer science and immediately tried to use it to cheat at gambling because that was the closest you could get in 1850 to being a Super Mario 64 speedrunner.

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I very frequently quote C— telling John to pick a priority and his "It's both. How can it not be both?" and her telling him it can't, and the fact that it wasn't. But there's another line in that exchange I also think a lot about.

C— kept saying, Pick one. Are we more invested in proving this new plan is bullshit, or in saving you? I was like, It’s both, how can it not be both. C— was like, It can’t be both. Pick one and stick to it. Decide what you give a fuck about. He said, I found that the problem with being the death man is you stop giving much of a fuck.

Necromancy is stagnation, necromancy is the refusal of change, and John has always hated change, and falls back on systems because they're familiar, and all that is still true. But the backstory segments are also very much about how much he changes over that one year.

John who goes from barely reacting to the bad stuff happening to them, struggling to process and just continuing his work anyway, to loud angry outbursts. John who goes from sleeping like a baby and waking up to have six breakthroughs a day to no longer sleeping and barely eating and keeping his body running manually with magic.

John who saw their corpses as friends and was appalled by the idea of having to destroy the bodies to dispose of them, who went around to his favorites "not even saying goodbye, just saying it’ll be fine, hang on for me, kia kaha, kia māia." Be strong, be brave. John who Alecto chose "for John so loved the world."

Who then stops giving much of a fuck. Except he also doesn't. In ways he gives a lot more of a fuck.

"Not as long as there's still breath in my body" is giving a fuck. "I still have breath in my body. They're still out there" is very much giving a fuck. Way more than being unable to cry with A— and M— when they got shut down a year prior.

Diving after Harrow in the River— Harrow who he actively feared, Harrow who he didn't want dead but was willing to have killed if he couldn't find a way to fix/"save" her, Harrow who it would have been so easy to let die then and there and not one person including himself would have had to think it was remotely his fault— saving her anyway even when he's seemingly vulnerable in the River and at minimum risked outing himself to Mercy about it, is giving a fuck.

The ways he angsts and broods and laments. The ways he worries and ruminates and obsesses over plans and gets embarrassed when Harrow catches him still going over the BoE attack reports months after the fact.

"Augustine says thinking about it before we endure Number Seven is folly, but the way I see it, if I fail with Number Seven nothing matters; if we win, then this is the thing that matters most.” It was always I when God ideated failure, as though the rest of you were not accountable for anything.

"I will love you three until the end of time" and even "I didn't offer it to Mercy because Mercy really pissed me off." Immediately retaliating even when she'd fully offered to let him rewrite her memories instead was an emotional reaction; that's unfortunately very much giving a fuck. The mid-dismyriad crisis that follows, drowning his sorrows, etc, he has more feelings than he wants to.

But it's also undeniable the ways and degrees to which he gives a fuck change drastically. From "those are our friends, we need to treat them with respect" to playing dolls with his bodyguards to playing dolls with the whole universe.

And that's the big one, isn't it? He cares about humanity as an ideal, about the collective, but he becomes increasingly dismissive of individual people, and cares less and less about the value of life. Death stops seeming so bad. "I found the problem with being the death man is you stop giving much of a fuck."

I could take that alone and talk about the tragedy of how the power Alecto gave him to save people specifically contributed to him being less inclined to do so. I could talk about about how he never asked for this, didn't get instructions, started exploring from the starting point of the first act she showed him being preventing decay, how even if she couldn't communicate maybe if she'd shown him a different miracle first it would have influenced him to pursue the path differently (but why would she, when she was only afraid to die?).

But do you know who else simultaneously cares so much so deeply at all times and is also very detached and blurry about it?

Nona loved to watch the moon tremble in front of the big broken hanging blueness in the sky, careless of it, while Honesty prised bullet casings out of holes in the walls and Kevin played with his dolls.

The plants filtered out some of the clinging smoke, and Nona loved to look at the trees and the bristly, curving shapes of the shrubs and bushes.

“I love Crown,” Nona protested, giving the smallest bone a desultory grope. “Why do you love Crown?” Nona thought about it. “She has lovely hair. And when she hugs you she smells like cinnamon, and her breasts feel nice, and she’s so big and pretty.”

“And why do you love Camilla?” Nona struggled with this a little. It was like asking why you breathed air. “I love the way she moves,” she said pitifully.

“That’s okay. I love you. Tell Palamedes I love him too, don’t forget.”

But Nona loved the blue sphere as much as she loved everything else. She, and nobody else, could hear it sing. “Good night, Varun,” she said.

“I love you, Pyrrha, and I think you’re wonderful and very beautiful—” [...] “—but I don’t want to be married to you. You’d never act like you were married to me.”

This made her ears go up slightly with the smile, which Nona loved.

“No,” said Hot Sauce. And: “I’m here, Nona. I’ll look after you.” “I love you, Hot Sauce,” she said.

She said, “Thanks—I love you,” and then darted away into the elevator well as fast as she could, feeling red hot with embarrassment. She hadn’t meant to say it—it was like the time Born in the Morning had called the Angel Dad—only she did mean it. She did love the Angel, after today.

Nona, grief-stricken, hollered— “Not like this. I love this place.” “Do you love?” said the Captain’s mouth. Nona struggled. “Yes—no—yes,” she said, then: “I don’t know what it means. I say it, and I don’t know what it means … Did I ever know what it meant?”

The love is real and it's everywhere. It always has been. We can see it, we can feel it, in every breath. But has she ever understood it? Has John? I sincerely believe both that there's a reason out of everyone in the world, everyone who was also working to save her, everyone even in John's specific project, there's a reason she chose him; and that in doing so, she inadvertently but absolutely made him worse.

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1 am. im throwing rocks against gods window. she opens. I tell her “you fucked up with vampires. they should be real.” she politely reinverts every atom in my body, thusly undefining me and beginning anew with a fresh physical form. im a hamster now. my opinion does not change.

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Keep scrolling, there's nothing fishy going on here

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um................... can i help you

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tlt stuff

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One of the richest motifs in The Locked Tomb is relationships with uncomfortable overlaps.

Of course, in-universe, we've got all the weirdness about cavaliers and their necros: they shouldn't be married (but sometimes they are), they shouldn't be siblings (but sometimes they are). Cav/necro love is a different kind of love, and familial, romantic, or sexual love should be no part of it.

As readers who don't know any necros or cavs in real life, it's very easy to say: well, fuck that. Do what you want.

But the narrative doesn't stop at the necro/cav relationship. It says, okay, now here are all these Lyctors calling each other sister and brother on their way to sexy parties. Here is Nona with frank romantic interest in her parental figures (and roleplaying a very sensual embrace with Cam). Here is John simultaneously trying to be everyone's dad and teacher and commander and lover. Here is Aiglamene trying to filter parenting Gideon through the act of giving her military training. Here is Crux trying to be a loving father to the tiny dictator he serves. Here is Gideon saying she wants to marry a sword that has her mom in it.

And sometimes it's harmless, and sometimes it's harmful. And the narrative asks: what then? What if the beauty doesn't reduce the horror, and the horror doesn't reduce the beauty? How fucked up does a love have to be before you won't root for it anymore?

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Thesis: GtN is a love story.

Antithesis: GtN is a corruption arc.

Synthesis: "We have found the best and truest and kindest thing we can do in this moment."

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"you don't owe anyone anything" You are a tar pit. Speak for yourself. I personally owe the cafe employees my dishes put away and my friends a listening ear and small scared insects a cup and a gentle trip outside. Hyperindividualism is a rancid infection borne of capitalism and willfully misinterpreted therapyspeak and I will defy it by continuing to be kind regardless of whether or not it benefits me personally

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"women are always like—"

"men are always like—"

shut up shut up shut up shut up shutupshutupshutupsHUT UP 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄 gender essentialism-hating herd of cows running you over

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the teen titans powersets are so crazy because it’s like. girl whose father is the devil, from the bible. girl who can make the earth swallow you. alien princess with laser beams. boy who can do a backflip

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i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live 

most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person 

im not a pissbaby

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Happy Mother’s Day I’m thinkin about Abigail Pent and her children

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I don’t know why I’ve never zeroed in on this line before, but right after Gideon’s gotten Jeannemary out of the facility and is trying to figure out where to go?

“She had to get her to safety. She wanted her longsword and she wanted Harrow.”

I cannot get over how even in the middle of complete panic, when she needs safety her mind goes to her sword and to Harrow in the same breath.