#palamedes haunts the narrative

[celira]

day 31(!!!!!!!!!!)

Camilla stares at the wall. She’s probably memorized its contours at this point, if she’s actually been looking at it all the times she’s been looking at it, but it’s just as likely that she’s been seeing through it. Pyrrha hasn’t clocked the difference between her one, five, and thousand-yard stares yet.

Pyrrha eyes it briefly, herself. Standard-issue shitty drywall. The splotch at the top right looks like a shuttle, kind of, and looks like water damage, definitely, and either way, this is a waste of time.

“Hect.” 

Camilla doesn't flinch, exactly, but she gives the barest impression of a start, and the cold-earth eyes slant toward her.

"Take it easy. It can't hurt you."

The joke lands about as well as she'd expected and worse than she'd hoped, but it had been worth a shot. Camilla looks unimpressed – still, that's an improvement over the leashed misery broadcasting from behind an almost convincing layer of holding it together.

Almost. It's hard to convince someone who's had thousands of years to perfect what this kid has been working on for months at best. Pyrrha can't even bother pretending she doesn't feel an affinity for the untethered cavalier who she's been unlikely roommates with for a week.

She decides to deploy her second favorite tactic, which is to recommend that people do as she says and not as she does. "You're going to snap if you keep whatever you're chewing on bottled in, you know. It's not going to leave you better off – it just means you'll have less control of when and how it comes out."

Camilla says nothing for a long moment, and just when Pyrrha starts to wonder how stubbornly the younger woman can wait her out, she says, “I thought that I was getting better.”

Pyrrha doesn't ask what she's getting better about. She's seen the roughspun canvas pouch, has enough necromantic familiarity kicking around – doesn't even strictly need necromantic familiarity – to know that some kind of unfinished business around her and her necro is looming over her. She knows that feeling all too well, too.

"Well," Pyrrha says, "it can take more time. What do you need to get better for? Is it a problem I've got intel on?"

Camilla's eyes fix on her more firmly, and she gives her a measuring glance in the truest sense. Pyrrha can all but feel it, smothers her surprise at its intensity; if this is what it feels like to have Camilla Hect's full attention, after all, that means she hasn't truly had it before this moment, and she wonders again what kind of necro she had, to warrant such laser focus. 

Apparently she's found adequate, and Camilla squares her shoulders with the affect of a person making a decision, and upends Pyrrha's day with her next question. "What can you tell me," she says, "about the River?"

What in-fucking-deed. Pyrrha has a familiar feeling – the swoop of adrenaline that feels like her stomach sinking and her spirits lifting at the same time; the tone of voice with which some people say interesting, when it sure isn't healthy but it'll sure be a trip.

"Well. What are you trying to do?"

"Bring back someone who kept himself from going in."

Pyrrha thinks cold eyes, thinks landmines, and squares her own shoulders. Sooner or later, there's going to be an impact. 

For now, she dives.

(a/n: holy shit! this is my first time participating in and completing a month-long fanworks prompt exercise. thanks to those of you who have read along for any part of it! now, onto endless editing November...)

[cindthia]

Whumptober Day 3

The first two times it happened, Camilla had been sure it was real. She reached into the pouch with her fingers in the dark and ran them over the smooth surfaces and jagged edges, searching. Time passed. There was no way of knowing how much; no lights brightening and dimming in time with her natural circadian rhythms, no shine of Dominicus or any other star. No movements of anyone else, no sound, no sight. There was just herself and the darkness and the pieces of her heart. But eventually, she heard him whisper.

I’m here, my love.

You’re protecting me so well. Holding me in the palm of your hands.

We will endure this together.

Then the door slammed open, flooding her cell with blinding light, and he went away. She fought. But she tucked him away inside her shirt. They’d banished him, but they hadn’t taken him.

It wasn’t until her third confinement that she realized it wasn’t real. In the absence of any other stimulus her brain had drifted into a hallucination. She let herself indulge. 

She was moved. Her new room let light in under the crack of the door. She laid all the pieces out on a handkerchief–easy to snatch up quickly–and counted them. She arranged them by size and shape. She fit them together like the pieces of a puzzle. It took him longer to speak to her like that, with the light, but after enough time passed he did again.

Just a little longer. We’ll be together again.

The next time she was moved, she was thrown into her new cell with a fat lip and a black eye and a couple of broken ribs. She pulled the largest bone out and pressed it to her frontal sinus for comfort. He was in there, she knew he was. She pressed it to her lips.

That was how she learned her new room had a camera.

[ancientannoyance]

finally finishes the colour wheel meme a whole year after everybody else

[thebestnewmctournament]

The Best New Main Character Tournament (Round 4/Quarterfinal Poll)

Note: I recommend reading this blog's pinned post that explains what this tournament is about before voting

The four most voted for characters on this poll will proceed to the semifinal round; the two least voted for will be knocked out of the competition.

PROPAGANDA:

Palamedes Sextus- You'd have Palamedes and Camilla solving the mysteries of Canaan House and tracking down the murderer, you've got his emotional turmoil at being rejected by the love of his life, you have his sheer bafflement at his good friend Protesilaus taking up a vow of silence and repeatedly attacking this other huge, silent weirdo who showed up. It would also be the best detective novel ending, in that he'd give his solution speech about who the culprit was and how they did it, then immediately explodes. Book over.

Descole- He's the antagonist of the prequel trilogy of games and often helps add to the mysteries to solve. I would love to see his perspective of all he did throughout those games.

Garrus Vakarian- None submitted

Eli 'Weevil' Navarro- Francis Capra is a fantastic and immensely underrated actor and he deserves his own show. Weevil is truly the best character and the under-utilised potential of the parts of his life that should have been relevant and weren't will haunt me until I die (worse because he was a major character/series regular). Please, I am begging you, force Rob Thomas to put his money where his mouth is in actually reckoning with the class (+race) inequality the show is always nominally condemning and then reinforcing every time they give racist millionaire characters a giant narrative spotlight and a seventeenth chance instead of paying attention to their POC regulars with so much more potential

Vee- There is just so much potential! It could be a cute cartoon about an awkward little shapeshifter trying to behave like a human. From time to time, a backstory episode about her past as a basilisk and her escape out of the Boiling Isles. Their closest friend is Masha, who slowly discovers their secret, and becomes their confident, like MoringMark Comics from 2022-10-20. (And of course, romance). With the return of Luz in the the human realm, it could be more psychological, exploring complex feeling toward her (envy, but also affection). But yeah, imagine a cute slice-of-life cartoon with the cutest character of the show! Completely in the mood found family, "weirdos staying together" and "being understood"!

Kim Kitsuragi- None submitted

[soapdish290]

Harrow the Ninth may be one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Under the cut for some of the questions I need the answers to, as well as me mulling some implications / potential theories.

Harrow the Ninth is horrifically, horrifically dense, and is the first book I’ve ever read that made me take actual honest to god notes on first reading, but my entire GOD is it worth while.

I’ve never ready anything with a form / point of view quite so immensely complicated whilst still adding to and complimenting the narrative. Absolutely masterful shit.

I’m going to go hog wild with spoilers under the cut.

Edited in a probably fruitless attempt to make the formatting not The Worst on Mobile

IT WAS NEVER IN SECOND PERSON OEFHAUIOFNBaufbhAPIhbaip

It was always Gideon. I kind of jokingly wondered if it was back when I first heard it was going to be written partially in second person, but I didn’t BELIEVE it!

Things we should have known

1. There are so many clues that Harrow has inexpertly switched her cognition of the very word ‘Gideon’. I mean we know she’s wiped HER Gideon out of her head way back in Chapter 2 when John talks about Harrow’s Cav, name drops Ortus, and Harrow notices “As he spoke, his mouth looked strange.” Well yes, hearing something out of sync with what’s actually spoken will do that!

But we can actually see that it’s MORE than that way back in the Dramatis Personae. Everyone has their name, written out grammatically and normally, and then we have ORTUS. All in caps.

Obviously the real tell however is the codenames in Chapter 36. We know from Cytheria’s funeral that the Lyctors are naming themselves [Necro first name] [Cav first name]. The codename’s reflect this - apart from ‘Ortus’s’, which is G.P. P for Phyrra, G for Gideon. That’s when I got it.

What I MISSED, is that this tells us, right there and then, that he was very involved with our Gideon, who is named for her mother’s last word. Her mother whose last word was for OG Gideon.

2. Palamedes knew there was a perfect Lyctorhood and outright told us way back in chapter 33. “Tell me you [became a Lyctor] correctly. [...]Tell me you finished the work. You out of everyone could have worked out the end to the beginning I was starting to explicate”. I had to stop and stare at a wall for a bit with the implications of this one, at the time.

Things we now know

1. The thing for me, the real thing, is how goddamned casually the answer to one of the biggest mysteries is dropped. It’s an afterthought. Chapter 51:

“You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn’t even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven?

Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?”

Gideon is trying to work something out. She’s trying to parse together how Harrow opened the locked tomb. The entire opening part of this chapter is Gideon’s brain, whirling, working, following the reveal that the Necrolord Undying’s “unbreakable ward” was a blood ward. Rightfully, a ‘cell’ ward. And that Gideon is God’s blood.

So what have we learned?

In order:

We've learned that only John could open the ward. That Harrow couldn't possibly. That the latter half of her life has been a tragedy based, as is oft the case, on a misapprehension.

Then we learn that God is wrong, because he doesn't understand blood wards as well as he thinks he does.

We learn at the same time, through implication, that the locked tomb is blood warded (and think back to Gideon Prime's advice to Harrow RE warding).

Then we learn that our Gideon was birthed to be a weapon used to open the locked tomb. She is the blood of God.

And here, casually, that when Harrow decided to commit suicide by ward, she did so with our Gideon's fresh blood underneath her fingernails.The locked tomb has been open for 8 years.

(as an aside this is ‘casual’ because Gideon’s entire goddamn existence has just been torn asunder by learning her parentage and hearing what might become known, in the literary canon, as The Dad Joke Undying. It’s casual and seemingly disconnected because Gideon is dissociating to FUCK and Muir is a damn MASTER of linguistic form echoing narrative function).

2. “Alecto had your eyes from the moment any of us first saw her.” Harrow, who is in love the the body in the tomb, would have seen this, too. A 10,000 year old body with the same exact eyes as Gideon Nav. Nothing specific to add here. Just... worth noting. There are potential implications.

3. Oh yeah, Wake’s spirit was in the sword as well as Cytheria sometimes. OG Gideon probably knew this when he was macking on the corpse, seeing as both he and his Cav were fucking her. Although she ALSO very much tried to kill OG Gideon, so go figure. Wake was haunting Harrow and trying to steal her body. Apparently people were having trouble with this.

Things we do not know, but would like to.

1. ‘“Augustine”, he said, “if the man you were - the man you were before you died, before the Resurrection - could hear what you just said to me, he’d tear your throat out.” Augustine said, “Thanks for confirming that.” And then he was silent.’

So, this has some pretty legit implications right? Augustine has just told John to give up on his ‘invasion force’. So either Augustine has changed over 10,000 years and John hasn’t, or else Augustine was LITERALLY someone else before the resurrection. This leads in to the next thing that I Would Very Much Like to Know:

2. What the BALLS caused the Resurrection. What WAS the resurrection. Why was it necessary. Why does John need an invasion force? What, succinctly, the fuck is going on?

3. John says that he will forgive OG Gideon for failing to “fix or put down” Harrow. A scant page later he says that he “was trying to save her”. Save her. By ‘putting her down’. That’s not the language you use for someone you’re trying to save. That’s the language you use to minimise what you’re doing. What the fuck was John doing. Who was he manipulating. He told Harrow he wished she was his daughter. He asked OG Gideon to try and kill her. Why. What the fuck my dude.

3. The Stoma at the bottom opened for John. They’re only supposed to open for the Resurrection Beasts. “some kind of heinous underworld that only opened for the undead souls of monstrous planets”. What the fuck IS John, at this point? I can’t help remember that he had bodies and souls left from the Resurrection - he used them at the start of the book to rejuvenate the Ninth House and ‘buy’ Harrow. I’m reminded of Teacher from Gideon, who was 50 men. Of Harrow herself, who is 200 children. How many is John? Cytheria said she was doing her work on behalf of the 10 billion. The population of earth in the presents near future? of the solar system? Going back around to an earlier point, WHAT DID JOHN DO.

4. Gideon-in-Harrow is saved by the body. By Alecto, who speaks “with the wrong voice twice removed”. Whose voice? Why is it wrong? Who is she talking to when she asks for chest compressions? I assume she’s with Blood of Eden? With the Sixth and Coronabeth?

5. The Harrow who wrote the letters still knows more than we do. She knew that Camilla was around, that Corona was, that Judith was. She knew enough to know that Judith would need to be muted instantly.

6. The Epilogue. To me the implication is that they have Harrow’s body, but do not know who is driving. They give the bones and the sword, and look for a reaction.

7. Gideon’s body. Where is it. The assumption is that Blood of Eden have it. Why.

8. Oh, Gideon outright states that Ianthe was playing games with Harrow, up to and including lying about seeing Cytheria’s body under her bed (fucking nightmare fuel right there by the by). Not surprising, but oddly specific if just doing it for shits and giggles. Could just be that Ianthe assumed Harrow was doing all the made shite on her own and just egging her along, could be something else. Doubt we’ll find this one out, I’m probs overthinking.

I’m definitely missing a lot. I could also list the fucking effortlessly cool shit that keeps happening in this book, but this is long enough.

[celira]

day 30

“Not long now,” he said, and it sounded like a promise. He made you lots of promises, and he didn’t always keep them, and I know you didn’t always believe him, but then, you didn’t need to. You trusted him anyway, proving over and over again that following him was an act you chose, not an act of blind faith, and I still don’t know if that was any better.

Dad & Father wouldn’t understand, it’s true, and I know: you were doing them a kindness as much as you were trying to avoid the inevitable conflict. This might have been unbearably hard on them, a finishing blow after the months we’ve all had. As for me? You probably knew: watching you go up in flames isn’t the hardest thing I’ve had to watch you do, really. In some bizarre, surreal way, it’s a logical conclusion to following the thread of your relationship to its one end.

Maybe I’m just desensitized to the bullshit that adepts of our House pull. 

No, the hardest thing might have been watching you two start that thread in the first place, when you two took your oaths to one another and you stopped walking next to him. It might have been when the Cohort sent the coffin back devoid of either remains or answers. It might–

“Clothes, please?” someone wearing your face asks, with an echo of his polite entitlement, and yet not actually with the affect he would have used.

I take that back. This might be harder.

All I can do is give the person standing in your stead my trousers. This, too, is following the thread of our relationship to its end.

(coda:

When the Blood of Eden officer decries the spectacle as huge nonsense, off-screen, Kiana can be seen nodding vigorously.)

[celira]

day 27

He used to trace constellations out of her scars, making up myths and names and shapes as he went; none of them were particularly circular, or star-shaped, but that didn't keep him from determinedly connecting them with his finger or, sometimes, his tongue. 

She couldn't retrace those paths without wanting to go sit in the bathtub, though, so she didn't. She didn't look at her scars when she dressed, and she didn't bother noting the new ones.

Nona did, though. “Let me see,” she said, craning her neck like an awkward bird come to roost on the edge of the bed, as Camilla peeled the covering from a mostly-healed laceration. 

“Boundaries,” said Camilla, and Nona tilted her head to one side. 

“Why are you sad, Cam?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not only sad.”

“That’s not an answer, though!”

“I’ll answer if you go back out and finish your breakfast.”

“That’s not playing fair.”

[celira]

day 20

She could feel an odd quaking at the edges of her vision, foreign and unusual, and it wasn't until the first drop rolled down her cheek that Camilla realized she was shaking.

A gentle hand reached toward her cheek, and she shook harder. "Darling, what's this?"

"Don't call me that," she said, and the words tumbled out far more roughly than she'd intended. 

The hand withdrew slowly, and if she kept focusing on extremities, appendages, limbs, maybe she wouldn't have to think about who they were attached to. But she knew that hand too well, knew it across years and iterations, knew it small and unmarked and long and agile and deft and worn by lab work – and he filled her field of vision in a rush, impossible to hold at bay, architect of her dams.

She hated it with a vicious abruptness that had been waiting in the wings for years. She hated that she knew that he would once have rushed to wipe her tears. 

Once, she would have let him. 

"She's changed you," she said, souring on the words as soon as they left her mouth. She loved her, too, in a way, and maybe if she were a more generous person, more boundlessly giving, that would be enough to counterbalance the ways in which she found her relegation to the wings increasingly grating. Maybe, in another world, one where nothing mattered but his ends, and her flesh was his to use and she would set herself aflame given the slightest provocation, she would be able to keep the home fires burning on his motivations alone.

How outrageously cliché. Get healthier, grow boundaries, get thrown over. 

"People don't change people. Time does," he said, and the fatigue in his voice was a better propellant for her than anything they'd passed between the two of them in the past hour. 

Dizzy, beyond reason, she launched herself to her feet.

"Cam?"

"Then I need time," she said. She whirled around, unseeing.

"Camilla, darling–"

"Don't call me that," she gritted, and she ran. 

With each hit of sole to pavement, with each additional meter between her and that park bench, the knot in her chest lurched, and grew, and she knew it was going to burn her more before it got better.

[thebestnewmctournament]

Who would make the best new main character? (Round 5/Semifinal Poll)

Note: I recommend reading this blog's pinned post that explains what this tournament is about before voting

PROPAGANDA:

Palamedes Sextus- You'd have Palamedes and Camilla solving the mysteries of Canaan House and tracking down the murderer, you've got his emotional turmoil at being rejected by the love of his life, you have his sheer bafflement at his good friend Protesilaus taking up a vow of silence and repeatedly attacking this other huge, silent weirdo who showed up. It would also be the best detective novel ending, in that he'd give his solution speech about who the culprit was and how they did it, then immediately explodes. Book over.

Eli 'Weevil' Navarro- Francis Capra is a fantastic and immensely underrated actor and he deserves his own show. Weevil is truly the best character and the under-utilised potential of the parts of his life that should have been relevant and weren't will haunt me until I die (worse because he was a major character/series regular). Please, I am begging you, force Rob Thomas to put his money where his mouth is in actually reckoning with the class (+race) inequality the show is always nominally condemning and then reinforcing every time they give racist millionaire characters a giant narrative spotlight and a seventeenth chance instead of paying attention to their POC regulars with so much more potential