#beautiful ruby

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Looking back, I don't think that's what's intented…

… but it's also not impossible. Nona is implied to have learnt that nickname from Hot Sauce. There's a small chance she unknowingly heard Hot Sauce use a different term, translated it when talking back, and Hot Sauce ran with that thinking it was like, new lore or something.

It's a viable theory, but nothing the book tries to suggest.

I finally found the part of Nona that makes me believe the gang has actual names but because Nona knows all languages she calls them the translation of their names

[fawntastic]

Can you maybe draw nona and her friends playing with noodle?

If you want to join the Noodel fan club it's three dollars, a dog treat and a zin

[vaunted-and-vilified]

⋆ Let's Take a Walk, Gang! ⋆

[hyumjim]

look at me!!!!!!!!!!

[derseprinceoftbd]

I think upon rereading, I can say that Nona isn't *structured* any different from Gideon or Harrow, which kind of had similarly frustrating stretches in the like 10%-45% through range (though when it starts varies, and I think slowly shifts earlier as less and less is introduced); it really is that the prose itself just *seems slower*. It's all in the POV-that, and to be completely honest, I could have used a few less characters. Maybe compress, I don't know, the three BoE people we really meet into two? At the very least one of the kids in the gang could have been ditched. If you can tell the difference between Honesty, Beautiful Ruby, and Born In The Morning, there's probably money in it for you somewhere.

Welp, that's my take. Great highs, some really good stuff in there-but the prose hurts the pacing bad, and the cast doesn't help much. Still, probably in the top 10 fiction books of this century so far, and I'm not exaggerating. The L***ta parallels go *hard*.

And now, I wait like the rest, dreaming, and wondering of Towers, and Devils, and distant Moons, and of who, damned by their own virtue, await in Hell, and of mangled bodies for wayward souls, and life and death, and Love.

Also I completely forget where the sunglasses came from and went beyond Gideon finds them>Harrow keeps them>Gideon in Harrow wears them so uh if anyone has like a Ben Stiller's Bogus Journey primer that would be great.

[kmichaelsdesigns]

https://www.etsy.com/shop/kmichaelsdesigns?ref=dashboard-header

[thinkfastchuccklenuts]

Sometimes a family is a nineteen year old girl who’s more importantly six months actually, a fourteen year old veteran, a twelve year old drug dealer, a boy with a bunch of dads and another boy makes enough noise for a whole classroom of kids and even Kevin and I think that’s beautiful.

[syeljojolion]

[iviarellereads]

Nona the Ninth, Day Four, Chapter 17

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Plant shoot icon)(1) In which the children and the adults make a plan.

WHERE IS PYRRHA?—THE GANG SWEARS AN OATH—THE ANGEL MAKES A CALL— HOT SAUCE DRAWS HER GUN—FORTY-EIGHT HOURS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.(2)

Nona wakes, confused about how she fell asleep in all her clothes.

The evening was awful, but Cam didn't ask any other questions once she learned Nona had waited at the school and been driven home by a teacher. She only asks if Nona heard about the broadcast. Nona is ready to tell her about the girl from her dream, but Cam doesn't press the issue, just went to ask Pal something. The last she remembers from the night was admitting she didn't contradict Crown about dating Cam to Pal, and then Pal trying to figure out where Pyrrha went, and realizing she probably went to steal the shuttle, just before Nona passed out.

In the morning, Cam has Nona recite her dream into the recorder alone, while Cam does the washing up that Pyrrha usually does. Nona feels adrift, wondering if the girl in the broadcast really was the girl from the dream or not. By the time she realizes she should start recording, she forgets which button to push, and hits them at random until something happens, and she starts hearing Cam's and Pal's messages to each other.

On the recordings they discuss why the BOE would want a Lyctor on tap, then commiserate about their shared loneliness without each other. Pal can't bear eating Cam's life like this, but Cam says she'd carry his memory anyway, she'd rather have any part of him for real.

Just as the recording moves on to a recorded session with Nona and her dreams, Nona in the present notices Cam standing in the doorway. Nona apologizes and says she didn't hear anything, but Cam just tells her to wash up before breakfast. Nona worries about Pyrrha, and who she'll tell ass jokes to.(2)

In this saintly, uplifted, and really quite terrified state of mind, Nona looked at herself and found that she was very grimy. In a welter of fearful bravery she sponged herself at the cold-water tap until she was free of smuts(3) and old blood and dust, and the water was so cold it made her skin purple and blotchy. She called out, “Camilla, can I borrow a shirt?” and was pleased to hear, “Sure,” so she picked out one that was only a little too big but smelled comfortingly of Camilla. She looked in the cracked mirror and decided her hair was probably all right. The braids were a bit fuzzy but still doable. Thus armed, she went into the kitchen to see about breakfast.

Nona eats more of her breakfast than usual without resisting, so much that Cam doesn't even encourage her to eat more. Nona asks if they're going to wait for Pyrrha, but Cam says, no, Pyrrha's been gone for almost a full day, and Cam's been stuck at home that whole time. She needs to see the broadcast and look for Pyrrha, whose guns are still here, indicating she didn't intend to be gone far or for long.

Cam says she and Nona will go to the spaceport. Nona is excited, but asks to stop in at the school first, to make sure her friends and teacher are safe. Cam agrees, as Pal had wanted to thank the teacher anyway, but… this may be the last time Nona can see her friends. Nona understands, has been expecting it any time now, and says she's loved her friends. Cam says "we" (she, Pal, probably Pyrrha) know it.(4)

Cam goes to get dressed and cleaned up, and Nona does something she never would have normally: she peels up the sniper blazing(5) and looks up at the blue sphere in the sky.

She so rarely got to look at it from here. It hung on the morning horizon, and as she watched the sphere made a low, voiceless moan—a wanting sound—but quiet, on the edge of hearing. A whispered vocalisation and nothing more. “Can you help me?” Nona whispered. “Can you do anything? Do you know where Pyrrha is?” But it only lowed sadly, like a cow.(6) “That’s all right,” whispered Nona. “Sorry for asking.” Then: “Don’t do anything weird, okay? I’m having enough trouble right now.”

Nona gets the blazing pressed back down just in time for Cam to come out. She dresses for outside, and they leave. They can hear voices and sounds like people moving boxes behind doors, and Cam takes the elevator to conserve energy for what's to come.(7) Nobody pays them any attention, but there's an electric tension in the air of the city, as though waiting for a big event.

Nona felt sorry for the city: it wasn’t its fault. It was as tall and tumbledown and snaggletoothed as always.

Nona buzzes into the schoolhouse, and Honesty opens the door. Nona's so glad to see him again. Beautiful Ruby almost gives away that Nona snuck off to the broadcast, with Cam unknowing right behind Nona, but this gives way to asking where Hot Sauce is and Nona explaining. Beautiful Ruby thought Nona would "get a massive hiding"(8), and says Nona's "pimp" scares him. Nona says Pyrrha hasn't come home since yesterday, and they can't tell anyone.

Beautiful Ruby said instantly and kindly, “Won’t tell. Don’t worry, Nona, pimping is long hours and you have to go all over,” and she turned on him and something in her eyes and face made him stop immediately and say, “It was a joke! It was a joke. Oh my God, don’t be crazy at me, stop it.”(9)

Instead of talking more about Pyrrha, Nona asks where Born in the Morning is, but silence answers her. Honesty says breezily that all his dads probably joined up. They're all silent until the door buzzes again, but it's only the Angel and Noodle and Hot Sauce.(10) Cam thanks the Angel, but she waves it off, and suggests they talk once the kids are settled. The other teacher won't be coming.

The Angel brings them all upstairs, and they all sit spread out across the room as usual. Cam takes a seat near the back, strangely meek. The Angel asks if everyone and their families are alright. Beautiful Ruby, calling his mother by her first name, says she said they should give in to the Houses. Hot Sauce says she's weak. The Angel says it can be hard to be strong for more people than yourself, and you should judge people by what they do, not what they say. Hot Sauce says, so if someone says they're a necromancer, you should wait until they do something before you shoot them? Nona risks a glance at Cam, who is listening so intently Nona doubts she's Cam anymore.

The Angel says if Hot Sauce sees a necromancer, she should run in the opposite direction. There's no point fighting them, is there? Honesty asks if the Angel is scared of Necromancers, and she replies that of course she is, she was born on Lemuria. Cam asks what happened there. The explanation seems to make it clear that it was a turned world, and inhabited right up until the moment the final switch occurred between thalergy and thanergy. The Houses won the confrontations in the upheaval of the flip, and twenty years later, here's the Angel.

Beautiful Ruby still thinks his mum is embarrassing him by wanting to give in. The Angel says it's not wrong to not want to fight, and if you think all in black and white, your mind can't be agile. She suggests Ruby try to understand his mum's point of view.

Nona asks if they'll have normal school. The Angel says she can't or doesn't want to teach most of the regular subjects, but she thought she could teach them how not to get into too much trouble in the coming conflict.

She takes out a huge waxed paper map of the city, and lays it on a table. Nona can't understand the map any more than any other writing,(11) but the group discusses where in the city is safe and not safe to go. At one point, when discussing whether one place is safe or not, the Angel says "What we know is that we don’t know anything." Nona likes that as a motto, and a summary of her life.

The Angel asks Honesty to find Southgate and colour it blue. Honesty says, only for her, and colours it.

The Angel said, “Southgate is a good place to go in an emergency. Why do you think that is?” Nona said mechanically, “Because it’s got access to the road out of town and there’s a water pump and the ground is stable and it’s not a priority target for any kind of orbital strike or bombardment.” Everyone looked at her. Then they looked at Camilla, sitting in the back. Camilla didn’t move. She had found some bit of paper and was writing on it furiously,(12) so Nona didn’t even get a “Well done, Nona,” which she deserved because Cam had taught her all that. “What’s bombardment?” asked Beautiful Ruby suspiciously. “No idea,” said Nona proudly. “An interesting group, your family,” said the Angel slowly, with an eye on Camilla. “I mean, you’re totally right—if you have to run away, run there and keep close to the road.”

She continues that they shouldn't wait for each other there, and they couldn't survive in the open desert, but they should make it a priority to find and fill water bottles. Any problem will be short-term. The Angel suggests Hot Sauce show them the building she picked, and Hot Sauce points to a watchtower she's hidden out in before. It's stable and has supplies. She threatens whoever tries to sell her stuff, but Honesty swears he's her best boy, and the Angel reinforces that action is likely to be short-term.

Beautiful Ruby says the necromancers can't do anything anyway, but the Angel points out that now there's a Lyctor involved. They shouldn't be able to do too much, with "the blue madness", but it's good to have a plan.

The lights go out, and the Angel says that will be it for school for now. She tacks the map up so Honesty and Hot Sauce can memorize it, and the rest are to clear out the fridge and take home what's in it so it won't go to waste. Cam is lost in her own world in the back of the classroom, so Nona gathers up the drawings they did yesterday. She can tell which is whose, and organizes them, then hands them to the Angel, who says it might be nice for the children to have a "reminder of normal times" at home. Nona asks if they're never coming back, and the Angel says the broadcast changed everything. Nona knows that much, and says so, sadly.

“I thought you were your own boss here,” said Nona. “I have a lot of bosses,” said the Angel. “How many?” “Millions,” said the Angel, with perfect truth in the set of her shoulders. “Don’t worry about that for now—I’m being unhelpful and unkind—it’s just that, Nona, there comes a time in your life when you have to separate the things you do because they make you feel good from the things that make you—” The Angel stopped so dead midsentence that Nona thought she had had a heart attack, that she had been hurt in a way Nona couldn’t understand. She was staring at the topmost drawing of the sheaf of papers. Nona peeked over, ready to apologise for another one of Honesty’s explicit anatomical sketches. “Oh—that one’s mine,” she said, wanting to break the spell, wanting to help. “It’s mine, don’t worry.” The Angel was speechless for a moment. Then she looked at the paper, then looked at Nona again, and looked at the paper. She said, “Sure,” as though everything were normal and she hadn’t acted like she had been knifed. She laid the drawing aside and said, “Give the rest out, why don’t you?” and smiled at Nona, but it was a weirdly awful smile, as though the Angel had forgotten how smiles worked.(13)

Nona passes the rest out, and the gang all gather in the cloak room. Hot Sauce says they can all come with their families, even Beautiful Ruby's traitor mum, and Hot Sauce can defend them. They pile their hands on like a sports team about to start.

“Doesn’t feel right without Born in the Morning,” muttered Honesty. “It’s for him too,” said Hot Sauce. Then she said— “We swear to protect each other and die for each other. We are loyal to each other forever. Any zombies we kill, we kill for each other, and we’ll say, ‘This is for the others.’ That’s it.”

Honesty, Nona, Beautiful Ruby, and Kevin all swear, and Hot Sauce, as the boss. They go to open the door and Born is there after all, having snuck away. They all swear again, and most of them take off. Nona and Hot Sauce go back upstairs, and Hot Sauce says they won't see Born again until most of his fathers die, they're just baggage holding him back from the gang.(14)

=====

(1) Another new icon. What could this one mean? There's nothing particularly plant-related here, is there? (2) Whomst among us hasn't had a weird day where our routine is thrown all the way off and had sad weird thoughts only loosely related to it? (3) The nearest common usage of "smut" near this context I can find is a class of fungi that typically infect plants (you may have heard of "corn smut" which is a delicacy known as huitlacoche in Mexico). It may also be used to mean soot. Alternately, since "smut" derives from an old Germanic word for "dirt", it could just mean dirt stains of unknown origin. (4) I feel this implies that Cam wouldn't ask Nona to say her goodbyes if she didn't have to. (5) I think it's been mentioned before, but I don't think I ever went into exactly what was… possibly because I can't quite be sure. Searches for "window blazing" all just return "window glazing", or how to make your Windows computer blazing fast. My assumption is that it's a layer of some sort of vinyl to obscure the positions of those inside and thus foil snipers. The blackout curtains are separate so I assume it's not an opaque black, it may just be like window frosting or it could be more complex. But, the peeling is what makes me think of window frosting, because I used some vinyl window frosting on nearly all my apartment's windows to prevent people seeing into the bathroom, bedrooms, or kitchen when I want curtains open for natural light but don't want to be Observed or Perceived in those spaces. (6) So, Pyrrha definitely wasn't the only one who could communicate with Varun. (7) Ominous. (8) It's interesting how common child abuse seems to be in this community. It's taken as a given. (9) Interesting for Nona to be scary to anyone. (10) Priorities, Nona has them. (11) She can parse drawings, even photos, but nothing meant to convey information? (12) Pal is absolutely taking notes on Nona's behaviour in a group. I'm frankly shocked neither of them thought of doing this sort of sit-in before. (13) What did Nona draw? An animal she's sure makes anatomical sense, from the chapter where she did it. But what could cause the Angel to react so? (14) Hot Sauce is one of the most interesting characters in a book, in a series, so chockablock with interesting characters you can't turn a page without seeing at least one.

[mymyarchives]

barefaced rubi my favv

[kpopsexymagic]

Jennie ❤️

[monod1cot]

why does it hurt to love you?

[addamii]

Apologies for the lack of art recently, I’ve been dedicating my entire life to this animatic. Here’s this frame of Nona and the gang :)

Going around the circle to the right starting from Nona there’s hot sauce, beautiful ruby, honesty, kevin, and born in the morning

[marshmallsy]

the acoc candy couture vol 2 zine is literally the most stunning thing i've ever seen (CHECK IT OUT AND ALL THE OTHER ZINES FROM THE D20 ZINE JAM) and i drew the rocks sisters like i was fucking possessed or smth

i did a bunch of research to make smth sort of historically accurate for my primsy design last year. this year i wanted to just go off and go for pure vibes only. also i actually saved my process!

i knew roughly 2 things i wanted for this piece: outrageous medieval-esque fashions (historical accuracy not required) and also twists for their licorice hair. i put together a pureref, found a pose reference, and played with several different color palettes really terribly until i found one i liked! the details made me wanna die but the end result was sooooo worth it

[derseprinceoftbd]

I hate this girl, I've decided. I signed up for insane teenage lesbians, not six year olds in their bodies. Everything so far from her POV could have been two fucking chapters. It's bad for Pyrrha, because Nona's POV is terrible for establishing characterization. The Sixth were always about *action*, have been since before Camila was created and that action was getting Fef in the Medium, so it feels wrong for them to bum around BOE trying to get Harrow to come back to her body for 6 months, the gang is too numerous to be really distinguished besides Hot Sauce, I just *don't like this*. Gideon's opening was fucking awesome and intriguing and a really great Worldbuilding piece. Nona's, 13% of the way through the book, I keep forgetting isn't set on a craphole modern Earth. BOE Planet #3 is uninteresting, and so is everyone there, except *maybe* Hot Sauce. I think these books have been declining in quality.

[lustfemmes]

— 𝖗𝖚𝖇𝖎 𝖗𝖔𝖘𝖊.