#lock and chain

[fitbearcatcher]

Daddy with a lock

[mypastnow]

[s4dpngs]

[kat3xists]

harrow and the body.

haha yes girl see those mourning hallucinations by the body you’re haunted by!

[vintrage]

fire cannot kill a dragon BITCH

[katabay]

THERE AIN'T NO ATLAS, KID. NEVER WAS.

if you peel him back far enough, there's nothing but a pile of theater masks

like, it's really fun how fontaine starts spiralling out the closer jack gets to him in the final arc of the game and returns to appropriating the image of family (the fake family in the beginning, the flawed father position later) to try and appeal to jack in some way but it's like. buddy. baby. you already took off your mask. anything you try and put on after this is going to come across as cheap and desperate. the magic is gone! and personally? I'm hooting and hollering

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta

[domibomz]

Yeah please make a post about Necro Gideon & Nova's relationship... I just can't get enough of these aus

gideon tried courting nova in the only way she knew how to show affection: Being aggressive and annoying, and Nova said No Thanks <3, and gideons lowkey been bitter about it ever since </3 also my wife @ghostsessioned still has her nova design locked up in the wip vault so this harrow nova is subject to change in the future dont get attached to this design bonus content: gideon using her neck bones for evil (that's all she uses them for actually)

[lanadelreyscokewhor3]

chris evans is looking too fine recently i’m physically ill

[doctorsiren]

If you make miles edgeworth cry I’ll be veeeeery happy :3

okay

[thingsjusthappensometimes]

[wifegideonnav]

i love talking about the references and allusions in tlt and what it is influenced by and how. however i do think that sometimes the discussion in the fandom tends to get overly focused on how tlt is like other things and we can lose sight of the fact that it’s not just a conglomeration of influences. and of course putting a work in its context is a crucial part of literary analysis, and we can and should be examining the work for its influences, both for fun and in a serious way. but i think we should also make it a point to more frequently call out and celebrate specific ways that the characters and series are creative and original!!

so i propose that everyone reblog this and add your favorite element/s of tlt, big or small, that are pure tamsyn. your favorite line, a piece of characterization, a worldbuilding element, a joke, a cool moment, a bit that made you think differently about something, a thematic thread, whatever. im currently thinking about the way i went nuts my first time reading gtn and its revealed that harrow spent all night burying bone shards in the dirt because it so clearly sets up how insane about each other they are, and how hard i laughed at “but she’s only nine years old!” in htn.

[lady-harrowhark]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Gideon’s blood and the Tomb. I’ve got two points here that dovetail somewhat…

Let’s review some key events. I realize these probably seem a bit all over the place, but I do believe they come together. I’ve tried to put these in roughly chronological order.

John attempts to consume the soul of the Earth, and then creates a physical body for Alecto: “I ripped half my ribs from my body and made you from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.”

Ten thousand years later, Gideon and Harrow duke it out. The initial recollection of the fight says that “Harrow had scratched until she’d had half of Gideon’s face beneath her fingernails.” The more candid HtN version has Gideon telling us, “You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails.”

Harrow opens the Tomb with Gideon’s (read: John’s) blood on her hands.

Harrow sees Alecto, falls in love with her, and decides to live. 

At some point while in the Tomb, Harrow apparently kisses Alecto: “She hadn’t come on purpose; the scrap of black-eyed meat had asked for it—the chain of a kiss: the ice that burnt the flesh of the mouth that had stuck to the mouth that was frozen.”

At Canaan House, Ianthe ascends and tells the others that step six of the process is to “consume the flesh. Not the whole thing, a drop of blood will do to ground you.”

Harrow’s letter tells her she owes Ianthe “the favour of the chain”, which extends “into the House, but NOT into the Tomb.” The agreement takes precedence over any oaths sworn to others, including John, except for the Holy Corpse.

Harrow kisses Ianthe to inspect her jaw and re-swears the oath.

Harrow’s Nova AU has her retrieving the chain of Samael from the Anastasian. This is considered a sin severe enough that the Reverend Father whips her, but she is allowed to keep the chain. Denied the role of Reverend Daughter, Harrow tells Ortus that she is “the unfulfilled vow and the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull.”

Alecto kisses Harrow, bites her, and recognizes her by her blood - the blood of Anastasia’s line. Alecto tells Harrow that she is very sorry about Samael, and she vows the favour she had promised to Anastasia to Harrow.

We see over and over this theme of consuming another life, whether body or soul: we get two sides of this coin when we compare Gideon’s “All I ever wanted you to do was eat me” to John’s statement that “it’s the human instinct, to take.” Consuming the flesh is, per Ianthe, one of the steps to taking in a cavalier’s soul and becoming a Lyctor, directly paralleling John consuming the Earth, both physically when he eats dirt and spiritually when he takes in her soul. Thus far, though, we don’t know how or if Harrow consumed Gideon’s flesh in the interim between chapters 36 and 37 of GtN. 

But here’s what I’ve been wondering: assuming Ianthe is correct (and telling the truth) about the steps to becoming a Lyctor, to what extent does the order and timing actually matter? I think there’s a distinct possibility that Harrow had consumed Gideon’s flesh years before they even came to Canaan House.

Because Harrow had Gideon’s face under her fingernails. And Harrow bites her nails.

HtN, chapter four:

You held your left hand up before your face, before the light, the even white light with its hot tungsten filaments. The thumbnail was whole and even. Too even? Were you wont to chew your fingernails still, that unattractive tic of your girlhood?

And again in chapter twenty-one:

She took off her gloves, and with the edges of her fingernails - bitten to the quick, and never much help - she started to prise open one wrinkled corner.

If the steps do not have to be completed strictly in order, Harrow may very well have already checked off step six if she were biting her nails with Gideon’s flesh and blood still clinging to them.

The other thing going on here is that we get these repeated connections between chains and favours and kisses. I don’t feel like we have quite all the pieces yet to draw any definitive conclusions, but it seems that the favour of the chain may have something to do with the Reverend Family’s vow to protect the Tomb. Particularly, Harrow describing herself, sans Reverend Daughter title, as “the unfulfilled vow” as she wields the chain of Samael lends itself to this interpretation. I also find it very interesting that this unfulfilled vow is paired with “the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull” given that upon waking, Alecto kisses Harrow, bites her, and draws blood which then allows her to recognize Harrow as one of Anastasia’s descendants.

Before that kiss, though, there was another. Alecto describes being called back by Harrow’s kiss, presumably when she broke into the Tomb as a child. I have to wonder if blood was playing a role here too. Alecto says that Harrow’s flesh stuck on her frozen lips, that the ice burned her. If this kiss also drew blood, it could be that the blood of Anastasia’s line was the key to calling her back. However, there may have been someone else’s blood on Alecto’s lips that day. If Harrow had been biting her nails, which she’d earlier used to claw Gideon’s face, she very well may have had Gideon’s blood in her mouth as well. As John’s daughter, her blood was able to open the Tomb. Was it able to call Alecto as well? Could “the chain of a kiss” be referring to Harrow transferring John’s blood between Gideon and Alecto?

Overall, it seems like we’re circling something akin to a blood oath or living blood ward. The thalergetic nature of blood certainly aligns with the symbolism of life and light that we see connected to the Earth and Alecto, in contrast to the thanergy that John cultivates. Alecto’s physical form is derived from John’s blood, and his power is derived from her soul. If indeed a kiss and a few drops of John’s blood, shepherded into the Tomb by Gideon and Harrow, are enough to call Alecto, I cannot even imagine the pyrotechnics show that we’re in for now that he’s had a run-in with the business end of her sword.

[dwangbuis1]

[aleydraws]

And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again

I can still hear you saying we would never break the chain

-

I know everyone and their second cousin has drawn locked tomb art based on this pose but if the shoe fits

[lavernius]

Bunch of old Locpez WIPs/doodles I had sitting around.