#there must be a lock

[piriie]

you were my first friend

[katakaluptastrophy]

I think what's so interesting about Gideon as a narrator at the anniversary dinner is the fact that there's clearly tensions that she's just not picking up on because she's only there to eat a dessert.

But these people are all the immensely powerful leaders of the Houses and consider themselves to be in competition for literal godlike powers and the favour of the emperor.

There's so many little snippets that are potentially intriguing: why is Teacher trying to prime the Ninth to consider the Fifth a threat? Why are the Third and the Sixth "sizing each other up like prizefighters"? The Fifth absolutely knew what they were doing when they sat the teen heads of the opposing cults near each other.

Through Gideon's lens, Magnus' speech is a little awkward jokey thing. But...the seneschal of the House that is known to be actively trying to absorb another House is saying it's such a shame they're all so remote from each other and what do they all have in common (and it's so quiet you "could have heard a hair flutter to the floor") - that had to feel a bit different to people who aren't Gideon.

Palamedes' is dissecting the meaning of "Master Warden" and at one point compares it to a prison warden. 'Dulcinea' asking about whether Magnus and Abigail have children is perhaps less small talk and rather more pointedly political. Harrow's apparently stilted conversation with Protesilaus is clearly her actually probing his limitations like he's a bad Chat GPT-run chatbot.

And then 'Dulcinea' tells Gideon she liked the dinner because it was "useful". In her typical "I never lied to you" way, Cyth wasn't lying when she said Abigail had to die because of her hobby - Abigail Pent let loose on the Facility would have risked blowing Cyth's cover sky high. But what does a Canaan House look like where after the dinner party, the Fifth go down to the facility, get a key, and survive to continue their 'the Houses are going to get along or else' agenda? We've seen Fifth House soft power on a smaller scale in HTN: and it looks like inviting a teenager round for coffee, lulling her into a false sense of security with small talk, and then physically preventing her from leaving the room until she does what you want, while smiling the entire time. A series of little coffee chats could probably have led to a lot of cooperation in Canaan House, one way or another.

Gideon jokes about Silas marrying Ianthe because of their similar colour pallete, but it does raise the fact that there seems to be some tension around the Third, its succession, and the *point* of Ianthe. Why is Silas openly saying Ianthe should have died at birth? Combined with Judith's comments in the Cohort Intelligence Files about succession on the Third, it feels like there's something else being said here that Gideon isn't picking up on.

And of course, Harrow wasn't the only one desperate to become a Lyctor because her con was unsustainable. Presumably at some point Corona and Ianthe would be expected to marry, or at least take on more separate roles as Corona prepared to take over the throne and Ianthe was funneled off elsewhere. At some point, their package deal would have become unsustainable and Corona's cover would have been blown. But much as Harrow wants to become a Lyctor so she can reveal the state of the Ninth without repercussions, Ianthe is probably in part motivated to become a Lyctor for the same reason. Because otherwise, what would Ianthe's expected role have been? Amidst the suggestion of anxiety about the Idan succession, the dinner party also presents the fact that the reason Abigail and Magnus' infertility isn't a succession crisis for the ruling family of the Fifth is that Abigail's younger brother dutifully married in his early 20s and had kids. We know there are branch families in Ida - Babs is from one. He may be a prince, but he's not treated well, and you do get the sense that the stakes to stay in power in Ida are high.

We don't learn anything about the political situation in the Houses themselves during HTN or NTN, but in the wake of Canaan House, you have to suspect there are a number of tensions and concerns.

[inktho]

back from a convenience store run

[explomb]

my favourite thing about bllk is that everyone is clinical and then there's just kurona. he's done nothing wrong. he's just here to vibe, be cute, say weird catchphrases like a side character in a mid-rate kid's show and play football. i genuinely do not think we've ever seen him angry. meanwhile kaiser is knee-deep in his 52nd mental breakdown, hiori is going by "ultrasadist" on main, ness is a bad day away from a homicide charge and isagi has ruined nearly as many men as ones he's made fall in love with him.

[meiioh]

GRWM 🖤 (griddlehark ver)

[neeshachar]

remembering this exchange and thinking about Gideon and Ortus's relationship;

Gideon is sympathetic to Ortus and Ortus smiles at her in return. thinking about how often does the "sad wet lump of Ortus" ever smile. thinking about how did Ortus treat Gideon who was under a similar debt of service to the ninth. did he see a little sister in her? they trained together under Aiglamene, did they have a friendship? a camaraderie like that of fellow soldiers?

The narration in GtN is elusive but Gideon must have mourned Ortus's death. And as we see in Harrow (not much) Ortus feels sorry for having failed Gideon.

Harrowhark and Gideon were the only children left in the Ninth house, but what of the teenager that was spared? Where did he come into the equation?

[beguilingcorpse]

marketing gideon the ninth as "lesbian necromancers in space! need i say more?" is so funny to me because like. that's TECHNICALLY an accurate description but it doesn't SAY anything. the reader is not prepared for the several murders. the reader is not prepared for gideon and harrow's Whole Thing. the reader is not prepared for ianthe tridentarius

[sylphoxide]

YOU LIED TO US

[taxinealkaloids]

horrible children who are. so so mean to each other

[winchestergifs]

STACKEDextras ➙ Is the Mark of Cain still affecting you?

10.9 The Things We Left Behind Written by Andrew Dabb Directed by Guy Norman Bee 11.9 O Brother Where Art Thou? Written by Eugenie Ross-Leming & Brad Buckner Directed by Robert Singer Original Air Dates: December 9, 2014 & 2015

[qosic]

I put all my 愛 for the game into this one, to everyone who has beared my shouting about this modern classic for the last 4 years, I thank you!!!

Commissioned by Greg Chun (eng voice of Kaname Date) He will be doing a signing session at a later date where you can get this as a print, go follow him for more info on that!

[bruharu]

My beloved Dulcie and 6th

[ooctlt]

Harrow, what religion/sect of Christianity (?) are you a part of, and would you mind telling us a little about it?

looks like youre going to have to deduce some things out of future observation

[kedreeva]

#we spoke of this a LOT at work after that one tech was murdered and hidden in a wall

hi!👋 hello! kedreeva! i’m going to need to ask you to explain this!!!!

So back in 2009, a lab student named Annie Le was murdered at Yale university. Cameras saw her going on into a building, but not out again and it was like, the eve of her wedding (or close to? I don't remember) so clearly she had places to be and people waiting for her so they immediately started looking and the next day (or so? Anyway on the day of her wedding) they found her body in a recess in a wall, down in the areas where the research animals were kept. It turns out, a tech had killed her, but since there were cameras like EVERYWHERE, he just, I guess, left her there. Well, hid the body where it was. I don't remember how they caught him, but they did. It was a horrifying story. It still is.

And it was a huge news story among the folks at my workplace because, at the time, I was working at a different university, as an animal husbandry technician. As you can imagine this was a kind of intense time to be in that situation. They started offering, like, I'm not gonna say counseling but it was "if you need to talk we would prefer you talk to us about something wrong rather than kill anyone about it" and as techs (even if we were not even the same kind of tech, the killer was a lab tech and we were husbandry techs but I think a lot of people assumed it had been a husbandry tech since she was in an animal area), we were kind of getting the side eye from lab people for weeks afterwards. Like they thought we were gonna go "wow that's a fantastic idea, you're next!" or something, idk. And I mean like, people would freeze when you were alone in a hallway, or turn and walk the other way, or duck into the nearest room and watch you walk past, and they were all being super nice/civil to us when they did have to interact. It was very atypical behavior for lab people. Like not all of them, some of them had always been nice and weren't worried, but some of the people who had been unbelievable dicks previously were walking on eggshells. And the people who had friends in other universities reported this was happening at their jobs, too.

And instead of talking to The Man (because all the higher ups were garbage at the time), we just. talked among ourselves. It was a lot of "I may say I feel like strangling lab people sometimes when they do things that drive me up a wall but I don't MEAN it you know that right" and it also led to group discussions of what would be a theoretical *better* solution to hiding a body than what happened, with clear disdain for doing things like hiding bodies in walls, which is a terrible idea and one we would never do (looking at the people who think we might have decided this was a great idea actually).

Which consequently led to a lot of supervisors and/or managers that happened to overhear us bringing us donuts or arranging pizza for lunch in like, some kind of bid to help us feel appreciated, I guess, so that we wouldn't murder anyone, even though none of us were going to do that anyway. But also none of us were in a position to turn down free donuts or pizza or whatever.

And then after a few weeks, maybe a month or so, people just kind of forgot and moved on and things went back to normal like fifty people hadn't spent every lunch hour for weeks talking quietly among themselves about how human bodies would definitely fit into a carcass disposal barrel or that you'd have to crush hip bones and/or skulls before incineration. Hypothetically.

Like I said, it was a VERY weird time to be at my job, and every time I remember it happening feels like a fever dream. I can't even imagine what it was like at Yale.

[rangertowerdefensesimulator]

or, alternatively. a doodle from the corner of my last canvas . i saw someone use an actual toddler leash recently . it amazed me . (and made me think that. yeah. 049 would use a toddler leash on 049-j.)

[notedchampagne]

sleepover

dont tag as romantic cam & pal its an instant block