Am I the only one who didn't feel betrayed by Kiriona? I see a lot of stuff about how people expected Gideon but felt like Kiriona's antagonism was a slap in the face, or they realized that their loyalty had shifted away from her, and I just...didn't? My first thought with her was, "oh honey, you need a hug."

Maybe it's my own brand of mental illness, but I understand the whole, no you're not suicidal but you don't really want to be alive either and you don't see any way out and it's all just so hopeless and meaningless so sometimes you lash out just to feel something. That's depression, y'all. Our girl is hanging on by a thread and that thread is finding Harrow.

She's not an imperial stooge any more than she was a nun. She just literally can't say no or they'll turn her off. You think she didn't learn anything from her 84 escape attempts? I know it has kind of become fanon that she's dumb, but she's really, really not. She can't find Harrow if she's turned off (heh).

She gave it away when she she told Nona that she didn't care where Harrow was, she just needed to know.

Our girl is still in there, she's just been through some shit. Tonally, I think the end of HtN when she's piloting Harrow's body is the perfect bridge between Gideon at the end of GtN and Kiriona.

To me her character arc so far is the most transparent and relatable. Like, I will never understand how Camilla got to the point of thinking Paul was a good idea. That's just not how I tick. But Kiriona? Damn do I get it.

I think the final proof is that she still sees herself as Harrow's cavalier (which I think is going to spark a serious convo with Harrow at some point bc Harrow knows that cavs are meant to die so obviously Harrow won't want that). She is fucking ready to throw down with Alecto to offer herself (again) to Harrow. "Get in line, thou big slut" indeed.

I bet Kiriona smashes those BoE portraits of her mom. Remember how Pyrrha refers to Wake as We Suffer’s “God” (capitalized and everything)

I'm on a midnight locked tomb posting rampage sooooo I'd just like to point out that the Gideon in the bible is a Judge of Israel who is most famous for destroying the altars of false gods 👀

have I ever said that I think the mithraeum is the moon. if not, I think the mithraeum is the moon

Empty’s just another word for clean.

We are in the naberius tern renaissance

emperor june gaius. does this mean anything

I should not be allowed around online stores. I do stupid things like biy all my mutuals Tumblr crabs.

I feel like I’ve been given access to a spell to put in my spell book

not the peer review I wanted, but perhaps the peer review the world needed

What do you think tazmuir is implying about Augustine

Fratricide :(

something about the things john tries to do out of love growing teeth. The flowers he grew for his best friends’ wedding, the wound that fatally killed his daughter sprouting teeth he brought her back. meat can’t love meat if its’ only got gums. you need teeth to break through the skin.

Don’t think any of us are appreciating the horror of Crux being left in charge of the Ninth at its time of replenishment, when it is being filled with hundreds of new penitents aged 17-40 who are completely unpenitent just because they do not know who or what the locked tomb is.

All those ‘imagine being killed in a nuclear fission chain reaction and then waking up on a goth catholic cult on pluto where the only allowed hobbies are devotion, violence, and suffering. would that suck or what.’ joke posts were very funny but also now that that is actual canon. I am thinking about that sullen teenage girl with the spear from Nona, and how many times Crux tried to murder Gideon, how he really DID murder Ortus; I am thinking about these things and I am filled with the spiritual craving to be able to call space Child Protective Services

While it's horribly possible, I do have to wonder if one factor is that John can't let things go. He can't comprehend that the situation has changed dramatically. That even historical Augustine (who is the same man, just with a different set of trauma) would probably react differently because Two Different Situations.

It's one situation to shoot someone in a moment of rage - impulse acts of violence are how most murders happen (jury is out on if Augustine is the type of person who would kill his brother in a fit of anger.).

But that's not what's happening anymore - the extermination campaign against BOE, isn't an increasingly heated argument when the wound of betrayal is still raw, and the people responsible are still here. It's an genocide campaign against innocent people who have done literally nothing to them except be related to someone who did something evil 10k years ago.

Or John is still wrong even if he's technically right.

I keep trying and failing to write an answer to this bc it keeps devolving into a psychoanalysis on John. But after much reflection I’ve concluded that driving fallacy behind John, and maybe tlt as a whole, is that John doesn’t believe in changing as a person unless it’s for the worse, and thru practical application, has made this The Entire Universe’s problem.

So yes I think you are Absolutely Right; John can’t let things go, and that means he’s committed to the decision he made a myriad ago to be a horrible person and refuses to consider he could just,, stop doing that. change his mind. acknowledge maybe the atrocities were bad and he doesn’t need to commit any more. So obvi it’s a huge betrayal when Augustine does exactly that.

What do you think tazmuir is implying about Augustine

Fratricide :(

Please dear jod. Let ms. tazmuir not be implying what I think she’s implying here. Amen

Wow it’s so fun and quirky that G1deon has very troubling memory problems the extent of which we don’t fully know, and Pyrrha, who lives in the exact same body with the same exact same brain remembers the name God tried to take away from G1deon

Something something how John refers to those that would become necromancers’ as ‘his’ and by name but those that would become cavaliers are called things like ‘M-‘s nun’ and ‘C-‘s artist’. Trickle down economics for messed-up power dynamics’ or something

The corpses John loved didn’t decay; Gideon loved her hypothetical dead mom before she even saw her skeleton and Wake stuck around as a revenant for 20 years

She’s a ten but she thinks cannibalism is how meat loves meat