A trip down memory lane! Though the tower seems to have changed…
Celestial tower! Built during the direct aftermath of the Founding Unovan Civil War, it remains a cultural landmark in memory of those lost in the fire and storm.
Time has dulled the scars left behind by the twin dragons. Today, the tower is primarily used as a mausoleum (the preferred method of burial are urns) and, well, a tourism site. Legend says if you climb to the top of the tower and ring the bell, you can lay your ghosts to rest. But mostly? You can ring a GIANT bell.
We came to a young world. We came to a world of raw, elemental wonder. Of chaos and exultant passion. Of energy vaster, and more potent than anything we beheld in the cosmos... It doesn’t seem like it’s random or chaos. It just seemed like potential.
"I definitely feel like it was an honor to be able to put that out so publicly in an even bigger way than I ever have."
— havana on her character, isabel, sxsw 2023
The opposite of Thanergy (AKA “Death Energy”) in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir.
So you say, “ok so it’s just life energy?” to which you are mostly correct. Thalergy is exactly that but what’s interesting about this to me (and soon to you all as well I imagine) is the etymology of thalergy!
The etymology?
The Etymology.
Thanergy as death energy derives its name from Thanatos, the greek god of death (technically the personified spirit of non-violent death but modern perception of the name is usually edgier than that lol). So it would be normal for those unfamiliar with the myriad of divinities within the Hellenistic pantheon to justly assume the ‘thal–’ in ‘thalergy’ comes from an opposite divinity of Thanatos that was a personified spirit of life. Except that doesn’t exist. Reading the first two books I knew that thalergy as a word wasn’t derived from any greek or roman words meaning “life” but I didn’t really dig any deeper on where it did come from because I didn’t think it was overly important. I Was Incorrect.
Because you see, the context for me to really connect the dots had gone over my head up until I had read Nona the Ninth. (I recall some meta posts pointing out that the Themes™ had in fact been present in the previous books just less obvious.)
What Themes? And Who The Fuck Is Thalergy Named For??
Thalassa.
Primordial Goddess Of The Motherfucking SEA!!!!
So yeah! Remember all those posts talking about the importance of all the themes regarding the sea/ocean in the Locked Tomb series? Yeah so here’s more fuel for that lmao
Edit 11/20/2022: also many people have brought up other examples like Thalia (the muse of Festivity whose name also means blooming) as another more direct connection to life and @adurna0 who actually speaks Greek has pointed out that thaleros is in fact a word that means "lively" so even if the Thalassa connection is a thing it is more likely a double meaning than the lone one.
What was the point of Scrooge's trip with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? On a structural level, it makes sense--three is the fairy tale number, and you can't visit the past and present without also including the future--but on a character level, it doesn't quite seem necessary. Showing a man that he'll die alone, unloved, and unmourned seems like the strategy you take as the last-ditch effort to convince a guy that he needs to change his ways. But that situation doesn't apply to Scrooge. He started softening immediately after he first arrived in his past. By the time he finished with the Ghost of Christmas Present, he was fully onboard with the need to reform, so the Ghost's vision of his future seems like unnecessary cruelty. Why show him all this when he was already planning to change his ways?
A few things come to mind. One is that this vision of the future wouldn't have affected Scrooge unless he had already changed his ways. A cold, hard businessman could have seen his lonely death as just the way of the world, might have viewed the people who stole the clothes from his corpse as just people doing what's practical in this world. He needed to relearn the value of the intangibles--human connection, respect for others--to see the true horror of the lonely death and the vultures who defiled the dead man.
But why the horror? Can't he reform without being threatened with doom? It's possible--but it's also possible such a reform would be temporary. After all, Scrooge started as a friendly, loving young man, but retreated into himself and his business out of fear of poverty and fear of the way the world looks down upon poor people. Even if a reformed Scrooge started on a course of Christmas charity, there was always a chance that the enthusiasm would fade, and the worldly fears would start creeping back in. The only way to beat those fears is to give him something to fear that's even worse than poverty. He needs to see the horrible end that his selfish ways would lead to, so he won't be tempted to slide back into them.
There's also the fact that seeing his death makes him ecstatically happy to find that he's alive after the Ghost is gone. Had Scrooge been spared the vision of his future, he might have been happy to find himself on Christmas Day, but his joy would have been nowhere near the manic glee he experiences after coming back from the future. Now, he doesn't just get a new start--he gets a second chance. Coming back from his own grave makes him mindful of his death, but it also makes him hyperaware of the fact that he's still alive. He isn't in the ground yet. He still has time to do good and make connections with others so he doesn't die alone.
Seeing the past reminded him of the innocence he'd lost. Seeing the present reminded him of the people whose lives he was missing out on. Seeing the future reminded him that death is waiting, so it's important to live virtuously while we can. All three are important because all three brought him outside of himself and taught him to value the wider world, just in time to live through another Christmas Day.
'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
Danny calling John Constantine a “discount, hyped-up voldemort wannabe” and complaining that “at least voldemort didn’t make that much paperwork for the ministry”
A list of why the insult is legit, maybe written by a spite fueled Danny, the soul tax collector, helped by Clockwork who wrote the file he’s getting his info from probably:
British
Magic
Manipulate, Mansplain, Manwhore
Bad habits
Soul splitting (!!!)
Involved in some weird shit
His house could kill you
Tax evasion
Mother dies and father resents him for reasons (in some version, or an orphan at some early point, either way)
Magical, special lineage connected to cunning
Dark arts knowledge
Met a lot of Ghosts but most don’t like him
Dies?
But not really
Many contacts and connections everywhere
Killed people
People die around him (Different things)
Problems with the Government (mood but also >:( )
Grave robbing (implied? it has to have happened, i can’t believe otherwise)
...
You know what, a lot of crime in general, what the heck?
Asshole (should’ve been higher on the list honestly)
Gets a blood transfusion from an enemy and becomes stronger
Protected from mind control (Lucky)
Probably called you-know-who by someone at least once