thelockedasshole - Tumblr blog

[thelockedasshole]

Drew this little griddlehark comic while going through something and I thought I’d share it:)

[thelockedasshole]

Locked tomb modern AU where everything is different but where 200 other children were still killed for Harrow's survival for some reason

[thelockedasshole]

Tbh I hate any interpretation of Paul TLT that views their fusion as unhealthy outside of the lens of the text specifically.

Like, what TaMuir is saying about it? Sure. What the narrative is saying about it? Absolutely.

But as a system who has a complex relationship with both temporary and permanent fusion, acting as if two people becoming one is inherently unhealthy and codependent and just... bad - well, it honestly kinda sucks. Also let's be clear moralizing and valorizing health, especially as defined by our current psychiatric system OR cultural/subcultural norms separate from that is not a guarantee of moral rightness or "purity".

(To be very clear, unless it is entirely by choice and absent of pressure or coercion to the fullest extent possible, we are against final fusion, and we're happiest when our system is overall expanding. But smaller fusions in a literal infinite system? A non-issue, that's the individual member's choice.)

Idk it's just like. Why can't the creation of Paul be something to grieve AND celebrate? Why can't Camilla and Palamedes becoming one be about how love is destructive and that's part of its beauty?

For that matter, are we sure that TaMuir or the narrative she's constructed is unequivocally, diagetically or otherwise, condemning the act as unhealthy, destructive, or wrong? Hasn't a recurrent theme of these books been that love at its best intentioned and most balanced is still something that takes? While so much of this is explicitly about hierarchical power structures and colonialism/imperialism, what about the way people change each other indelibly no matter how they try not to, what about you can't take loved away, what about showing how a (found) family can be inherently broken and unhealthy and still be worth it?

What about the complexity of the way the power imbalance between necro and cav essentially gets swapped while Camilla carries Palamedes in her body, where he didn't have much say in being pulled back and kept tethered, where she used them being unable to be present at the same time to lie to him and try to manipulate his actions?

What about that all of this is complex, and the locked tomb constantly looks at the erotic in the profane, treats horror and arousal as two sides of the same kind, takes "romantic" both is the classical and current cultural sense, says "love is erosion and maybe the canyon left by it is not all pure and perfect but maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe it's okay and maybe it's not and maybe it's both."

Anyway back to my original point if I'm being honest a lot of things in tlt read as plural and I have some personal issues with how a LOT of that is handled but. My flawed and biased interpretations of the text aside I wish we could at LEAST keep discusssions moralization of fusion and other plural-analogues in tlt to examinations of textual/narrative and authorial intent.

[thelockedasshole]

hi locked tomb fandom.

so, the other day i was thinking that i really need to reread the whole series, and that i need to pay attention to detail in the text bc there is So Much in there.

you know how there's those exercises for bible reading? where you take a passage/chapter and read it, contemplate it, reread it, reflect on it, pick out specific sentences etc? well, what's more biblical than the book of our savior gideon the ninth??

anyway i thought i could make a discord server where we do these slow, detailed readings together. it'll be pretty slow and encourage ppl to go at their own pace. and since it's for RE-reading, spoilers for all of tlt will be allowed through the whole thing.

this is an interest check to see if roughly anyone would want this. if you want to be tagged in the case of the server happening, please rb and tell me in tags so i know who to tag!

[thelockedasshole]

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

[thelockedasshole]

rip john gaius you wouldve loved blackout poetry

[thelockedasshole]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Neil Josten- All for the Game by Nora Sakavic

Gideon Nav- The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

[thelockedasshole]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Wei Wuxian- Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Harrowhark Nonagesimus- The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

Andrew Minyard- All for the Game by Nora Sakavic

[thelockedasshole]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Ballister Blackheart- Nimona by N.D. Stevenson

Gideon Nav- The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

[thelockedasshole]

I was writing about something else but then this came to mind:

John mentions that he couldn't see the soul clearly to understand resurrection because the soul of the planet was to "noisy".

When Palamedes tries to examine Kiriona's injury on her chest he has a violent reaction and can't do it. Pyrrah describes John's necromancy like being punched on the nose or something, because there is too much. But we know it is the Earth's soul in him.

During the Transference/Winnowing trial Harrow mentions a similar thing about trying to get inside Gideon's mind to access her vision, it being too noisy and even painful. Gideon has to bite her tongue until it squirts blood, to help Harrow focus. What is weird is that later she does the same thing to Palamedes to get the shape of the key to the lyctor room, but doesn't complain about the pain and he doesn't need to hurt himself to distract any interference.

What I'm getting at is that, there is this theory that a part of Alecto's soul lived in Harrow. But instead I think it was actually Gideon that Alecto was anchored to. Harrow felt like she was the one hunted by the Body but since the two always lived together it could be any of them. It could also explain how Gideon was able to survive the nerve gas. We think it was because she's John's  kid, but forget that his power comes from Earth. Alecto could've recognized Gideon as Jod's child because she's able to track the genetic lineage of someone, like she does with Harrow, so Gideon would be a suitable host like he was.

The dialog in my mind when I'm coming up with these theories:

[thelockedasshole]

Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship

Overthinking House religion:

What do the Houses believe about death?

Was M's nun a Franciscan?

Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures

Ritual scarification

Sacraments and sacramentals

What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?

In defense of Silas

There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship

Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice

Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion

A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice

Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'

The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent

Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?

Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships

Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN

Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:

Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world

The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre

The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake

John Gaius and John the Baptist

[thelockedasshole]

the fact that the harrow nova universe implies that gideon is now the necromancer makes me crave a true role reversal au. like, one where everyone's roles are reversed.

just imagine. ianthe and coronabeth as cavaliers. babs as a necromancer. palamedes as a cavalier. camilla as a necromancer.

fuck it. go even further;

lock john in the tomb.

idea: alecto locked him in the tomb when she realized he had too many powers for one human to have, and had become an active threat.

now, this leaves us in a universe where....alecto is the emperor. and to be completely fair, her overall personality and demeanor fit the role of god much better than john's. which leaves us with two very different versions of mercymorn and augustine. a mercymorn and augustine who are, for one, absolutely terrified of the emperor of the nine houses, and a mercymorn and augustine who know they can't threesome their way into a betrayal. and maybe, just maybe, they're not too fond of the whole "locked our friend in a tomb on pluto for 10 000 years" thing.

as for john himself, idk man. maybe some time in the tomb would do him some good. a few thousand years to, like, y'know. think about the whole "destroyed the universe" thing. also, i just like the idea of him, at the end of the nova universe's version of ntn, walking out of the tomb and saying something stupid like "what year is it?" "10008" "damn it. my alarm didn't go off."

oh, also, pyrrha in control of g1deon for the entirety of htn, only for g1deon to emerge at the end. haven't given this idea that much thought, but i'm sure there are g1deon enthusiasts who could do it justice.

[thelockedasshole]

I think what bothers me most about how John is talked about in the fandom is the implication that a different (implied: better) person would've done things differently and somehow more right than he did.

When the text goes to lengths to explore how suddenly coming into an incredible amount of power in a fatally constrained situation cannot lead to a good outcome.

If you're putting John in dialogue with the concept of the "magical girl", which Muir has said he is (a little tongue in cheek, but)--these are young, often profoundly unready people, who often get taken advantage of by the people who give them their powers. And like, yes, John is not a teenager, but I think that's part of the point, is that at no point is a person really prepared to become as powerful as he did--even before he merged with Alecto. Even when he was fully in control of his powers, even when they were given with honest intent and trust, even when he used them with the best of intentions and tried to do the right thing, there was no way for him to be prepared, especially given the situation he was in.

And it's funny to talk about how bad John must be in bed, but also, this isn't a scenario where John is some self-deluding Elon Musk-like villain or loser. He is genuinely trying to do the right thing, in terms of rescuing the Earth's population, rescuing the Earth Herself, and doing it ethically (see: M--'s insistence that they perfect the cryo containers until they could transport pregnant women).

I really do think this is something people are blocking out, because it is one of the uncomfortable parts of Muir's message with the series. But ESPECIALLY because the people "critiquing" him as an embodiment of patriarchy and empire are failing to see that part of Muir's critique is of human vulnerability to power: That is, that power corrupts.

And this even has echoes with Gideon & Harrow's story! Harrow begins the series in a deeply unequal dynamic with Gideon! And she does horrible things, not just because she is traumatized, but because she is traumatized and has the power to act her desires out on Gideon. She might have the motive (trauma), but that's not enough without the means (power).

And, yeah, I do have a semi-salty angle on this because people are frequently loath to think critically not just about axes of oppression but individual relationships of power when it applies to them and to people they like. ESPECIALLY when there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that is enthusiastically pro-harassment. It's very convenient to villainize John and actively dis-identify with him, because otherwise, you'd have to face the question of whether you'd do any better in his place. But the thing is, the mission of revenge he embarks on is a lot closer to many peoples' hearts than they'd like to consider.

That's the whole point.

[thelockedasshole]

apologies if this has already been shared on here but uhhh hey tlt fans how are we doing—

[thelockedasshole]

harrowhark getting her lobotomy done at claire's

(ps: merry christmas eve! you can't see but we just hit 10k on here... my christmas gift from the world, thank you dearly)

[thelockedasshole]

Anyone else up thinking about the implications of thanergy and thalergy in tlt with respect to their names ….. like thanergy is obvious, it comes from the Greek θανατος, which means death, and yeah ofc that tracks, it’s death energy. But thalergy is the opposite and is used to mean living energy/life energy, but.. as near as I can tell it comes from the Greek θαλασσα (in Homeric, or θαλαττα in attic) which DOESNT mean life, it means OCEAN ……… what does it MEEAAANNNNN………. Why did she do that ..

[thelockedasshole]

We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing