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I actually think that the difficulty in reading The Locked Tomb is that we're used to having things "confirmed" for real at the end of the book. When a character watches the sky be cut up by flaming swords, usually someone else points out there was a meteor shower. TLT does this sometimes, but other times it leaves you to fit the pieces together. It doesn't tell you "congrats, the final image is a red balloon", you put the pieces of the puzzle together and then observe the image on your own.

You're meant to do the work on your own, and if you're not paying attention you're fucked. You might miss pieces because they didn't seem important, you might try to fit things that don't go together. When you have all the pieces and you have the final image it's really easy to solve it. Tamsyn doesn't necessarily give you the final picture for a lot of things and that's fine. You have the pieces, trust in your intelligence to put them together. It's okay if you forgot about something and you need to read the wiki.

These books are not the easiest read if you only have time for a chapter or two each day. It's hard to remember everything, you may lose some pieces along the way and now you can't solve it. That's not the book's fault though, they were written to be like that.

If Tamsyn gave you the picture at the end of every mystery there would be no incentive to put the pieces together on your own. Does it suck for the people that can't finish the book in one sitting? Yeah! But that doesn't make it impossible to understand. Tamsyn didn't make an upsie, it's a key feature of her writing.

You need to fully engage with the text. They're not a casual read, and it's okay if you're not in the headspace for that or if you prefer to just look at the wiki at the end. I simply want people to understand that just because a book doesn't feed you the answers it doesn't mean it was badly written. If it's not for you, that's fine. You're allowed to dislike things even if they're not bad! Something can be perfectly correct and not be your cup of tea/not come easy to you.

Authors don't need to over explain themselves over the fear of readers "not getting it", especially not now with wikis and podcasts. Let authors do weird shit.

[the-crepuscular-queen]

Universe's worst polycule

[the-crepuscular-queen]

where does your heart truly lie?

gideon the ninth / harrow the ninth / nona the ninth

[the-crepuscular-queen]

Think about Harrow's AU Bubbles

Thinking about Harrow's AU bubbles, not as fanfic references, but as expressions of her subconscious fears and desires, is so fascinating.

The Harrow Nova one is pretty obvious. Harrow's parents were obsessed with her being a necromancer, were willing to kill for it. It's only natural she'd wonder, "What if I hadn't been?"

And the answer Harrow gives herself is: Your parents and everyone would reject you (except, wildly, for Crux). Also they'd be alive cuz you'd never opened the tomb, and you'd be an unpopular orphan they'd abuse (Just Like Gideon). And you'd still be just as devoted to serving the Ninth with a blade. There's a lot there. But the other really telling bit is her relationship with Gideon. Harrow Nova professes to hate the reverend daughter even as she seeks to (re) create the necro-cav bond with her. But that hatred doesn't seem to be mutual. And the bit about the daughter intervening when Harrow was whipped…

That's Harrow's subconscious saying if their roles had been reversed, "Gideon would have treated me better than I treated her. Gideon would have protected me."

The Ball AU also seems like a reasonable extension of Gideon's childhood query: "What if my other parent is the most important guy in the universe?" Answer: Emperor Dad would throw a big party.

But also… it's a bride-finding ball! That's so very telling. It could have been anything, but Harrow invents another scenario where she's fighting, competing to get to Gideon, to be awarded the role of her sworn partner (first cav, now bride), while outwardly claiming not to want it.

Now The BARI Star AU often gets described as a "coffee shop" one, but it's actually set in a cohort cafeteria. And normally I wouldn't split hairs over that, but I think the cohort setting is actually really significant. The Cohort was Gideon's dream, and also Harrow's rival for Gideon's attention. It's what she kept trying to leave Harrow for.

So now Harrow dreams that she's left Drearburh to join the cohort and will meet Gideon there. Not fight or compete for a role where they're bound to each other, but just meet her there. That feels like yielding. Like compromise. It makes me think Harrow's subconscious has matured past trying to keep Gideon with her always and is instead looking for ways that SHE can be with Gideon. Meet Gideon where she is.

(Also this may be a stretch, but I always find it low-key funny that Harrow imagines Gideon in the cafeteria… I like to think her brain is skimming lists of hypothetical military jobs like... what sees the least action... ah, coffee-adept, she'll be perfectly safe there...)

[the-crepuscular-queen]

[the-crepuscular-queen]

"You sent me out there to kill a baby and open those doors. Whose baby didn’t matter on my end. Do you know, I gave that thing a nickname, my whole pregnancy? I used to call it Bomb.”

Wake: me!

Photo: @wyyrdplayy w/ fog machine assist by @cassylvan

[the-crepuscular-queen]

Pyrrha, you're a genius

[the-crepuscular-queen]

You know when you're at a dinner party with God and things start to get...weird...? It's Maundy Thursday, and it's time for more Bible study for fans of weird queer necromancers!

It's currently Holy Week, the week where liturgical Christians reenact the events of Jesus' death and resurrection in real time. And today, it's Maundy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, where Jesus ate with his friends before he was crucified.

Before we get to the Locked Tomb, what's so special about the Last Supper?

There are actually a few significant things that happen during the Last Supper, but this is where Jesus introduces the concept of communion:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood. - Matthew 26:26-28

This isn't actually the first time Jesus has told his followers they will need to literally eat him:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. - John 6:53-56

If you're thinking that sounds a bit intense, you're not alone - the Bible says that "many" of his disciples left after being told that they were apparently going to have to eat Jesus to be saved and resurrected.

While many Protestant denominations take this symbolically, Catholicism teaches transubstantiation: that when the priest prays over the bread and wine at mass, they really do become Jesus' body and blood.

With this in mind, let's circle back to necromancers:

"Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.)"

This is probably Corpus Christi College, Oxford (named after the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where the church celebrates the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist). The symbol of the college is a pelican - there's even a fabulously gilded pelican atop the sundial in their main quad.

What do pelicans have to do with the eucharist? Quite a lot, actually... The pelican is a really old symbol for Jesus, because it was believed to feed its young on its own flesh and blood in times of famine. The pelican on the Corpus Christi sundial is pecking at its own chest.

The pelican, like Jesus, was believed to give its own body to save those it loved.

Okay, so we've talked about Jesus, and weird cannibal birds, but why is this relevant to necromancers?

Specifically, the necromancer, the Necrolord Prime. John Gaius styles himself as "the god who became man", echoing Jesus as "the word became flesh". His entire pastiche of divinity is a sort of bootleg Catholicism. But while Catholicism posits Jesus' offering of his own body as foundational to the salvation and resurrection of humanity to eternal life, John's godhood relies the exploitation of other's bodies as the foundation of an empire of eternal death.

I've mentioned before in discussing Lyctorhood, how vampires have been understood to represent a sort of inversion of the eucharist because instead of consuming Christ's blood to receive eternal life in heaven, they consume other people's blood for an cursed eternal life on earth. John, and the Lyctors who followed him, gained power and eternal life from the consumption, body and soul, of another person.

In Catholic theology, Jesus offered his own body to degradation and death for the eternal salvation of humankind, but John forcibly consumes someone else's in service of his own apotheosis and immortality, dooming humanity in the process. He wants to be a Catholic flavoured god, but without the suffering that entails. But he's perfectly willing to outsource that suffering to others.

There's something just achingly awful about Alecto liking the feel of the word "corpus" - "body" - when she so hates the body that John constructed for her. John describing Alecto as "in a very real way" the mother of humanity and the mother pelican on the Corpus sundial rending her own flesh for her children. John forcing the earth into a personification of femininity and playing Jesus on another's sacrifice. His daughter, unwillingly trapped in her own corpse walking around with the wounds of her significant self-sacrifice like the resurrected Christ but yet again another body exploited by John in support of his performance of godhood. It brings to mind a very different fantastical engagement with Catholicism, where in the Lord of the Rings Tolkien - riffing on St Augustine - suggested that evil cannot create, it can only mock and corrupt. The ethics of The Locked Tomb may be messier than that, but there's something indicative in how John shies away from his creative powers - his abilities to grow plants, and manipulate earth and water - in favour of his dominion over death.

The metaphysical world of The Locked Tomb is clearly not intended to be the same as that of Catholicism. But with hindsight, perhaps John was onto something when he was surprised that he didn't "get the Antichrist bit" from the nun too.

John isn't the Antichrist. But he is, thematically, anti-Christ.

If we're talking about John and Jesus, there's also, of course, the question of Resurrection. But we've got to go through Hell and back before we get there on Sunday...

[the-crepuscular-queen]

There is so much I could put here like anyone else, but I think about how quotable these books are and how I slip the quotes and references themselves into my daily life and get away with it.

"Should we hold hands in girlish solidarity"

"Ask me no questions, I shall tell you no lies"

"I hate you all! I've hated you for a millennia!" (Said, of course jokingly)

"I don't care if you (insert something here) I care that you do it BADLY"

"Cows exhibit mourning behavior for other cows" (said upon seeing cows)

"I can not conceive of a world without you in it"

"Death to vultures and scavangers"

"Well, jail for mother!" (Does this one count?)

"Touching each other's intestines is what? Third base?"

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.

[the-crepuscular-queen]

Sometimes, you have to imagine Gideon exploring Canaan house with the same music that Coraline Jones had when she explored the Pink Palace. It's good for the soul (it also makes no sense, but it's funny to me)

[the-crepuscular-queen]

the way that romantic killer started with “watch this gamer girl get her life turned upside down in the name of love 😍😘😜” and ended with “no character is just a love interest or supportive friend. they all have their own personalities, their own pasts, their own depth and meaning. love is not something that can be forced or formulated; it’s conceived through mutual trust and understanding, through respecting each other and what we want. never underestimate the value of kindness, sincerity, and communication, and never forget the importance of platonic love and friendship”

[the-crepuscular-queen]

thinking about the iconic Gideon-line "I'd died knowing you'd hate me for dying" and how at the same time Harrow is screaming "she died because I let her, you don't understand" Harrow doesn't hate Gideon for dying; she hates herself for letting Gideon die

[the-crepuscular-queen]

i don't know jack or shit about the locked tomb series here's my impressions of the only five characters i can name. pictures were taken off the wiki pages, which i didn't read. godbless

[the-crepuscular-queen]

“Kiss Me Son of God” by They Might be Giants + John Gaius

(I have altered with the punctuation in the last line in the name of art)

[the-crepuscular-queen]

gideon nav 😎

[the-crepuscular-queen]

The Locked Tomb is Romantic not romance and I will die on my little hill. Romanticism is my favorite. I spit this out while trying to explain my thoughts over on Twitter. I've been saying this since I finished reading Harrow the Ninth. I just thought the doodle was funny and wanted to share it.

[the-crepuscular-queen]

gideon and evil stick