thanergetic-hyperlinks

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

It's astonishing just how perfect a gem Harrow the Ninth is.

Tamsyn Munir is just…so good man. After my reread of htn the one things that really stuck with me was that sense of frustrated helplessness I felt throughout the book. As a a reader you are basically just a passenger watching a character you have come to care so much about go through some of the hardest, most gruesome experiences of her life. Mentally and physically Harrow is being Put Through it, and while we are so close to her, exposed to her inner thoughts and how she is processing all of this, we’re still so far away. There’s nothing we can do to protect her in any way. We love her and there’s nothing we can do. This book is so good at making you feel desperate, like if you had one wish it would be to alter the rules of reality and pull Harrowhark Nonagesimus out of her own reality to provide her some relief for once in her life!!! But we can only watch everything unfold.

And then you realize…this is what it means to be Gideon Nav. Stuck in that alive/unalive, subconscious/unconscious state…feeling helpless right alongside Harrow, but not really alongside her…but also closer than you’ve ever been to her…sighhh

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

So. When we were fist introduced to the Blood of Eden, my first thought, of course, was of the Peter Gabriel song.

Now I don’t actually think the group is named after it. But I still thought it would be fun to take a look at the lyrics, and these are the parts that jumped out to me:

Well, that certainly reminds me of someone. Someone, perhaps, who started with very human flaws; someone who was vindictive, insecure, prone to tunnel vision, who could never own up to his mistakes. And the more powerful he became, the more cataclysmic his flaws.

Well.

Alecto is not technically a woman. But the imagery is very much there.

😳 Jokes aside, this, to me, calls to mind all of the series’ revenants. The souls in the river, hungry for blood. The billions of unresurrected souls pouring forth from wherever John stowed them, possessing and corrupting living bodies. The resurrection beasts’ paths of endless devouring. John, whom nothing can satisfy. Nothing.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

they got tired and took a nap

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

At some point we were normal people. Now we wake up sweating at 4 am with a new thought about the Locked Tomb series.

Oh Jod fucking dammit I am going to lose it. Do you wanna know what I just realized. Do you.

So all in all, Nona’s worth to the children was universally agreed to be minimal. She ranked very low among them, definitely below Honesty and Beautiful Ruby and only fractionally higher than Born in the Morning. The only person Born in the Morning outranked was the seven-year-old, who was just Kevin. Those were really all their names—even Kevin—but nobody ever told Nona why Hot Sauce was called Hot Sauce.

Nona loved to watch the moon tremble in front of the big broken hanging blueness in the sky, careless of it, while Honesty prised bullet casings out of holes in the walls and Kevin played with his dolls.

But Blood of Eden never cared if you had to go to school, or clean the whiteboards, or examine the psychodramas Kevin was playing out with two erasers that Born in the Morning had drawn faces on.

Nor had Pyrrha ever looked at her the way she now looked at the dead corpse with red hair—a kind of soft, guarded want; a hunger—a living desire to take the corpse in her arms like Kevin’s wanting desire with his dolls. To own, to squeeze, to cosset and destroy.

He paused and said: “But I was stressed, okay? I was insane. Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left … a handful of things that made me me … a couple scraps of id. It’s not fair to judge me, right? I didn’t do this thinking … I didn’t do it like art. When I was seven, you know, all Nana had to play with in her house was some of Mum’s old toys. And my favourite out of all of them…” He gave a long, shuddering sigh. “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures.”

If I had a nickel for every time this series presented a seven year old boy with a painfully boring common name who notably loved playing dolls, with or without actual dolls to play with...

The smallest baby in Nona's gang being a parallel for the Necrolord Prime, the absolute picture of both what John used to be and how he's become the enemy of everything he used to be, is actually going to destroy me. Goodbye good night.

Literally not a single side character wasted in this series, every single one of them important, even Kevin...

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

John kinda speedruns them.

The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second of rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Very honoured to reveal I'm writing a chapter for this colaborative fic version of Alecto the Ninth. Long live the Alectopause.

Announcing Alectopause the Ninth: A Collaborative Fic Project

Still waiting for news about Alecto the Ninth? Stop waiting! We're writing our own!

In honor of Alectopause Day 999, @carys-the-ninth and I are announcing our plans for a collaborative, fan-created version of "Alecto the Ninth," inspired by the game "exquisite corpse." This event will be an AO3 collection in which creators work from chapter prompts, and the whole is revealed to everyone at once. We plan to release the collection on Sep 13th, 2025, the third anniversary of the Alectopause.

You can sign up to be a part of the event here! The best way to stay updated is through our discord, but we will be announcing everything on tumblr as well, tagged "alectopause the ninth 2025." You can also view the prompts, rules and deadlines, and AO3 collection. @carys-the-ninth, @wifegideonnav and I will be the main mods, but we would be remiss not to thank @theriverbeyond and @arithmonym for their help in putting together this event! We hope to eventually release this "book" in a limited-run, non-profit zine format as well.

Happy Alectopause Day 999, everybody! Let's keep making things weirder and more incomprehensible from here ��️

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Something funny to me about the Soup Scene is that… it's literally that scene from Alien. For those of you who haven't seen this movie (and it's very good and you should watch it), the soup scene in Harrow is I'm sure a deliberate homage to the most iconic “sudden dinnertime death aboard a spaceship” scene ever.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

I was at the Centro Botín seeing an expo about Spanish artist Maruja Mallo, and this was the first painting…

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Man… the ending of Harrow the Ninth really is one of the breakups of all time.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

(There is a possibility that the point of expansion isn't just for “symbolic retribution” but that, if John has done something fucked up to the River, he needs to keep causing death and sending souls there to fuel necromancy itself? Dunno.)

Anyway—what amuses me the most is that, while both the Cohort and insurgents are not above killing innocents/civilians (one of Tamsyn's recurring themes, especially since The Deepwater Bride, and in her own words, is the idea that tragedy doesn't lead to people coming together, as Wake herself expresses with “we rarely become heroes”) the Empire does have the concepts of a war crime. And what constitutes a war crime in the eyes the Nine Houses? What's the one example we know?

Killing babies and children.

We know this because Harrowhark calls herself a war crime. And that's not just because killing kids is a war crime in our world—but because in the TLT universe it's established children have way more thalergy and their death liberates way more thanergy than adults, and therefore it would be so convenient for the Empire to prioritize killing kids when they invade a planet. But they're above that! Hey, they're not monsters! They'll wait until you're 15 or whatever to send you on the field where an adept can explode you as a thanergy bomb…

(Jod seems so touchy about babies in his conversation with Wake, too!)

One thing I wish I knew about The Locked Tomb: how much the warfare is meant to be handwaved.

The things we hear about war necromancy strongly imply the Nine Houses are fighting against infantry: corpse bombs, vampirically souped-up cavaliers, and, of course, sword-wielding soldiers who provide the original wave of death to let the necromancers work. These all assume you can access an enemy combatant in the flesh.

But they're fighting opponents who technologically should be able to produce tanks, bombers, and lots and lots and lots of drones. Necromancy and swords are not going to be militarily effective against an opponent who's inside a tank--much less one who's remotely piloting a drone.

If we're just setting all that aside, that's one thing.

But if we're not, then there's no way anyone's sending waves of infantry at these people.

Which leads to some truly nasty thoughts about who's the actual target of the Nine Houses' tactics. Who is that original wave of death? Who ends up on the wrong end of a front-line sword-swinger's blade?

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Which means Nona dreams over and over about a moment of forgiveness.

head in hands. Nona dreams of the pool scene bc she's in Harrow's body. and Harrow dreams of john explaining his rise to power to Alecto post-nukes pre-everything else bc she's in Alecto's body. they dream each other's most important memories.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Gideon growing up with her sole example of an act of love being her mother's rerouting of power from her own suit to the bio-container. Being raised by people who had their capacity to understand cruelty and brutality dried out of them, carrying this with her as something separating her and Harrow, using it as a cudgel when pushed - her parents loved her more than Harrow's parents ever loved her. Of course she took so quickly to being the battery of her heart. Of course she knew it was the cruellest thing she could do to her.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

I think many/several people are known as “the Xth” once they have a role important enough to represent their House to outsiders. Say, nobody is called The Sixth at the Sixth, they're referred to by their specific arythmonym (which are hinted to have meanings that refer to past figures within the House, giving information as to who you are much like a surname would but without any of the familial implications). But if you're important enough to speak on behalf of your House, you get to be formally referred to just by the number when you're amongst others. In GtN, where everyone is either the/a leader (Abigail, Palamedes… Dulcinea? Isaac? Silas?) or an heir and future leader (Judith, Coronabeth, officially Harrow), they're in a diplomatic mission and they refer to each others as if they embodied the whole House.

Question for all the Locked Tomb folks that has nothing to do with any sort of fanfiction I am writing: Is the 'the X' title reserved only for the Cavalier Primary or are all Cavaliers in a House afforded it?

For example, are other Sixth House Cavaliers besides Camila known as 'the Sixth'?

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

dude1818

Personally, I think TLT shipping is more like trying to find the most exciting train wreck

Yeah that's always fun. I'm just less enthused by the some of the perspectives I've seen on Harrow and Gideon that really gloss over that Harrow owned Gideon for a long period of time and treated her terribly. (Ofc I see a lot of people insisting that Crux was behind the terrible things that happened to Gideon. I think that removes some of the parallels between John and Harrow - they were both willing to do terrible things to people so that they couldn't leave them - but whatever.)

I think Muir is likely to engage with all of this, however Alecto ends up leaving their relationship, but some of the fan treatments of it are a bit flat for my tastes. But what else is new.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Turn 10,000 years old without being a fucking creep: impossible.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

“You smelled the reek of sweat and perfume: musk, rose, vetiver”…

In Harrow the Ninth these notes are mentioned as the composition of Ianthe’s perfume. Since I love fragrances, I swear I almost smelled it:

Musk,

 Rose, 

Vetiver.

Musk. This is commonly used as a base note. It brings balance, softens and fixates. Musk has this duality of alluring and repulsive (And that’s very Ianthe, if you ask me).

Rose and Vetiver. Rose is found in fragrances marketed towards women, vetiver in the men’s. (We know, we know, every fragrance is gender neutral if you’re not a coward, but let’s continue).

Vetiver oil comes from sun dried root from a plant with the same name. There different types of vetiver, but in general it’s earthy, balsamic, smoky and woody. It’s also a fixative and harmonizer. Some may find it aggressive and rough. An intriguing smell.

Vetiver balances well with… oh surprise, Rose.

Rose. Ah, Her majesty. The queen of flowers, symbolically passionate and romantic. Floral notes, obviously. Heavy, powdery, fresh. Elusive and shape shifting, the smell depends on which variant was use in the fragrance.

The three of them blend well, sounds like a classic perfume. I hope you’ve found this post interesting.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

hmmm