kenzicraw
kenzicraw
Mostly Supergirl, but generally just geeky stuff I love. Sometimes I write things on Ao3 under kenzcraw
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I can't stop thinking about how the Avatar state was constantly talked about/explained in a destructive way during Kyoshi novels (Kuruk destroying Yangchen's place when he first got his avatar state, Kyoshi herself activating it out of anger for Jianzhu, and another time to kill Xu Ping An), and every time it's something so brutal, so powerful, so scary
and yet the book finishes with Kyoshi activating it out of love, out of desperation for her true love, fearing she'd lost Rangi forever if not for a miracle, be it from herself or any past life—and she says it might be treated in the future as "the most useless way someone used the Avatar state", but it was for love, her soul was fearing what she'd become without Rangi by her side, she needed that to work
in her oh-so-destructive-and-never-ending-battle of a life, Rangi truly was her humanity, her heart, what still held her sanity in life and reminded her of what she truly was
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can't stop thinking about tamsyn muir's choice to present her deep, morally and politically complex science fantasy world with a central web of magic, secrets and lies reaching back ten thousand years through the eyes of three characters who:
1. tune out and start thinking about hot women whenever the magic system or worldbuilding are being explained
2. experience hallucinations on a daily basis, have brain damage and are being deceived and misled by their peers, authority figures, themselves and God
3. don't know who they are, have spent their entire life in one place and are, on all levels but physical, six months old
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The Locked Tomb Definitive Reading Order
Gideon the Ninth
Harrow the Ninth
Gideon the Ninth
Nona the Ninth
Harrow the Ninth
Gideon the Ninth
Nona the Ninth
Hope this helps!
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something i've been thinking about is pyrrha's herald bullet.
pyrrha has one herald bullet, stolen from wake. and there is a moment where she points it at ianthe and tells her that it isn't meant for her. a real jack sparrow moment. move aside, neither of us wants this particular bullet to end up in you.
and then she uses it anyway. she uses it on ianthe to get past her into the tomb. and i can't stop thinking about that.
it was for john, right? pyrrha had one bullet and she can only have been saving it to, at a crucial moment, incapacitate john.
and pyrrha picked nona. like, yeah, you could argue that opening the tomb is more useful to killing john in the long run, but is it really? that "death of the emperor" stuff is mostly a lie. pyrrha knows that. pyrrha of all people knows it's not as simple as "open the tomb, the emperor dies."
and yet she wastes the bullet on ianthe, with no fanfare. fuck it, fuck john, fuck revenge, fuck any plans she might've had. she's gotta save nona. and if that pasty bitch is gonna stand between her and her nono's best shot at survival, then there's no question about it. no hesitation.
and isn't that what all this is about, in the end? pyrrha - jaded, angry, cynical pyrrha - forfeits personal revenge because nona needs help, and she can't waste time.
i'm having feelings about it.
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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...
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you know the anecdotal thing about how Christian kids who really love the gospel and grow up extremely devout are the ones who are most likely to leave the church, because they're the ones who will actually study and try to understand and realize the contradictions between their theology and the culture of their congregation, rather than just following tradition because it's what they're told?
this is a post about Harrowhark Nonagesimus and heresy
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Harrow actually just being a scared teenager who lost her only friend...
When you start HtN, Harrow's mysterious plan seems so intricate and elaborate - 22 letters, and all those guidelines and rules -the favor of the chain, the sewn tongue.
But then when you get to the end, the whole thing boils down to just...
Step 1. Hit Pause on the Absorption Process
Steps 2a-2v Hide the Remote and kill anyone who approaches the hiding spot so no one can ever accidentally hit play.
And that's fucking it.
There's no Step 3 where she works out a way to remove Gideon and see/free her. And I mean, there's not even an instruction to come up with some kind of step 3 eventually. She knows her life will be myriads, but can't even imagine anything beyond "don't absorb her" should even exist.
Abigail & Magnus are spot on when they say she made herself a Mausoleum.
Because in spite of her aptitude and scholarship and obsessive paranoia, she's actually just a traumatized, grief-stricken teenager. Her plan was impulsive and emotional. She saw the looming threat of Griddle's soul being destroyed, and the pain that would crush her when the shock wore off, so she slammed the brakes and ran off.
#she makes me so sad#please someone love her#please someone tell her it wasn’t her fault#harrowhark nonagesimus
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I’m stuck thinking about palamedes figuring out that the souls of lyctored cavs rub off on their necros and what that means for jod and alecto and why they're like that
john, who as just a man, a man who loved. he loved the earth, he loved humanity, he loved his devotees. he loved and he loved and he loved and he was equally as obsessed as he was devoted and desperate as he was reckless and angry and selfish and egotistical. he doubtless still had his worst traits but he loved
and alecto, who was the earth, the earth who raged. she raged and gifted john somehow a way to survive and save her, to save them all. she was angry and near uncontrollable, who became monstrous in her grief and her agony and her betrayal from john. the earth, alecto, she raged.
and then. and then their souls merged and swirled and part of her lives in him and part of him lives in her. and john, he became angrier. he ruthlessly seemingly without reason continued to hunt down those he saw as wronging the earth for the myriads. he still was a man who loved but he was a man who's love was fueled with rage. he became monstrous he became the vengeance the Earth sought but took it too far
but alecto. the earth who became woman who became monster. she, sleeping in her tomb, in her dream, when a small child kissed her because she seemed so lovely. her soul learned to love. and then and then! she awoke not knowing who she was but she loved so hard. she loved everyone and everything she loved people the way john did she loved the planet and nature and the animals she loved the things that were akin to what she used to be. she loved and loved and loved. she still had rage, she had her meltdowns, but her rage was fueled by loved and she became human.
and - and how beautiful that these people so far removed from the earth met nona, alecto, earth, and they learned to care for her and they loved her and put it all on the line for her and in turn when it was time she returned to herself and sure she still had her rage but even more so she had all that love
#I so hope she remembers it all as Alecto#I hope she clings to it#that she was so so loved as Nona#and is still loved because you can’t take loves away#I cry#the locked tomb
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crucial elements of my vision for a locked tomb animated series:
First season starts with Gideon falling to her death—freeze frame, Gideon voiceover: “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this fucking mess.”
We rewind all the way to Gideon choking Harrow out as children. Gideon says “Well, now that’s just too far.” The running joke of the season is that this memory REALLY wants to play out, but Gideon refuses to get into it. That way, we get a lot of tension building up to the full scene and, more importantly, the imagery of the blood in Harrow’s nails really sticks with the audience.
Regular jumps between the present day and flashbacks so that they’re baked into the format and the river scenes in HtN don’t feel out of place.
Gideon pauses scenes literally all the time for asides and narration, a la The Emperor’s New Groove. (I feel her voice is crucial to the story and must be preserved as much as possible in a visual adaptation. The goofiness inherent to this device is also, in my opinion, completely necessary.)
When we finally get to the season finale, and Gideon dies, she KEEPS cutting in for asides, except now she’s talking directly to Harrow, who is responding, and it’s not really funny anymore.
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one of the best gideon moments hands down is when, post battle with new lyctor ianthe, she finds out that dulcinea and palamedes are sort of exes and she LIES DOWN ON THE GROUND ABOUT IT AND GROANS FOR FIVE WHOLE MINUTES. everyone is like “gideon get up” “gideon it’s not a big deal” and she is like literally i’m going to end it all. this is so embarrassing for me and palamedes must hate me (cam has told her four times this is Not True) i must go make things right with him immediately. babygirl there’s a feral infant proto-god who just consumed the soul of her 1950s greaser chewtoy sprinting around canaan house you HAVE to change your priorities. and yet she won’t and she doesn’t. i love her so bad
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They stand tall and so proud omg
via @thesassyducks instagram
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I redrew this goofy looking she-ra from 2020 lmao
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Y’know an awful lot of Terry Pratchett’s books are concerned with how powerful women are when they get angry and how important anger is as a driving force to defend what is right and to tackle injustice.
A lot of his most interesting and most deeply moral characters are angry ones. Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, Tiffany Aching. All are to a large extent driven to do good by anger.
And that honestly means a lot to me.
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