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paradoxcase · 16 hours

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Not to worry, I'm totally Jewish and not culturally or religiously Christian in the slightest. I just said Old Testament God here because I find that the Christian majority sometimes gets confused if I just say "God" or "the Bible" when referring to the OT so I've just gotten used to specifying if I'm posting something without a whole lot of context

Old Testament God: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

Old Testament God: Oh no. That was the wrong thing to do. I'm so sorry. I promise I will never do that ever again, no matter how many bad people there are, here is a rainbow that seals this binding pact I am signing with you about that

John Gaius: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

John Gaius: That was perfect. Exactly what needed to happen. So satisfying, like a powerwashing commercial. My only regret is that I didn't quite destroy everyone, and some people managed to escape. Some day I hope I will be able to destroy them too. This one goes out to the Old Testament God, who taught me everything I know about how to be a God

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paradoxcase · 3 days

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@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

One thing to note, re: the monsters from the Tower. Varun actually tells Nona that it can get rid of them for her, so it is likely that there is some connection. I fear I don't have the book in front of me for the passage, and maybe I interpreted it/recalled it wrong.

When was that? And are they from the tower? I don't think that's been established

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

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paradoxcase · 3 days

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@eye-lantern:

I think the scream making Pyrrah flinch is not because of any magical property. But when traversing the deadliest place in the cosmos, when your only lifeline is a dying baby behind the wheel, tension at its highest, you suddenly hear the sedated comatose patient scream loud enough to shatter vocal cords... Yeah I would jump too. If only because of the nerves, maybe because of the possibility of possession by a ghost

Well, Pyrrha reacted the same way when Nona screamed inside the Barracks and said it was due to having a necromantic body, and Paul had blood coming out their ears, while Corona seemed completely unaffected

I don't actually know what the tower is, but I shouldn't be Canaan's house, because Pyrrah seemed to not even know what it was. She didn't say "what is it doing here" , or "how did it get here" , but "what is it".

Yeah, good point. I mainly thought it might be because someone else said it had appeared in the book before and that was the only thing I could find that had ever been referred to as a tower

@jods-duplicitous-sluts:

The Gideon/Pyrrah river conversation is Chapter 25 for me its page 371:

“Can’t be,” said Pyrrha, who was watching the Prince narrowly. “Not anymore. You’ve got a soul attached to you, kid … or part of one, at least. John would have had to go with you to stop it being stripped bare.” The corpse prince tilted her head to one side, like a curious bird. “You haven’t been in the River lately, have you?” she said. “What’s that meant to mean?” “Guess you’ll find out at some point,” said the Prince.

Ahh, I misremembered that as being Ianthe that said that. So it's not about the tower at all, I guess, unless it's the tower that's driving the ghosts away

#the locked tomb #eye-lantern #jods-duplicitous-sluts

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paradoxcase · 3 days

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Chapter 31 of Nona the Ninth

I feel like it's kind of significant that this is the second to last chapter of this book and I'm still doing these posts one chapter at a time. At this point in the other books I think I wound up doing the last few chapters all in one post, because I didn't want to wait to find out what was going to happen in them. This book is definitely much lower energy

This has to be confirmation that Nona is telepathic, doesn't it? Palamedes said earlier that he got the layout of the Ninth from Gideon/Kiriona, but Nona never saw that, she was asleep when that happened. It doesn't matter how accurate she is at driving the truck through the River if she doesn't know the layout of the place or where they're intending to wind up. The only way she could know this is if she read Paul's and/or Gideon's mind

I know they probably mean that Noodle will be moral support, but after everything else that happened in this story so far I momentarily thought Paul was saying that the necromancers were going to kill Noodle and use the resulting thanergy to heal people

The Ninth seems much darker and more dreary in this chapter than it did back at the beginning of Gideon the Ninth, but I don't know how much of that is because it is legitimately darker and more dreary now that it's being overrun by monsters and how much if it is just that it's Nona's POV

I went back and looked, and there is in fact this description in Gideon the Ninth:

This thing possessed Colum supposedly because Mayonnaise Uncle had siphoned him and his own soul was currently absent. Teacher told them there were monsters at Canaan House that could do this, but it was never explained why they were there. I don't know how accurate we can trust Teacher to be given that he was a construct and he didn't even tell anyone who Cytherea was, but I'm going to guess that these are not naturally occurring and probably resulted from necromancy experiments that were being done at Canaan House and I guess also at Antioch, and for some reason now on the Ninth. It doesn't sound like Gideon is realizing that Colum was possessed by one for the first time, so she already knew there was at least one place other than Antioch where they were present, right? And it doesn't sound like they are restricted only to possessing people who are being siphoned, if this is happening all over the Ninth right now, unless they are just possessing already dead bodies or something. Gideon said they were waiting for Crux to die so they could possess him more easily, right?

So three or four months ago supposedly not even John had seen one of these, and yet there was at least one just chilling at Canaan House this whole 10,000 years or so. Or maybe they just didn't come out in numbers at Canaan House due to a lack of dead/vacant bodies to possess? Although there certainly weren't a lack of dead bodies by the end of the book, and it sounds like they might be possessing living people on the Ninth. It sounds like they are saying that they need to wound people to infect them, so maybe to infect living people they need to do that and only Colum was vulnerable at Canaan House because his soul was temporarily MIA and there weren't any just wandering around in bodies and capable of wounding people?

I have to note that no one did this to Colum's body at Canaan House. Ianthe "killed" it by removing his head, but no one burned anything. And Colum's body was presumably sent back to the Eighth House... and it was also alone in John's morgue with the frozen bodies of the people John sent back to repopulate the Ninth... maybe that was the infection vector? Only I think all those bodies went back to the Eighth and Ninth like a year ago, and according to Crux this has only been going on for a day

The fact that Canace and Davith are gone certainly doesn't bode well

I guess if she told Aiglamene that she killed herself to save Harrow Aiglamene wouldn't believe her and might be even more pissed at Harrow, haha. It's interesting that Aiglamene doesn't seem to question or wonder about how she is still walking around while dead

Gideon was angry at Nona for being in Harrow's body without being Harrow and telling her to shut up and calling her a baby and stuff when they first met, but now she is protecting her from Aiglamene. And it's interesting that she said "don't be mad at her because she's not Harrow" instead of "don't be mad at her because Harrow did nothing wrong". I'm sure she's still mad that Harrow didn't want to consume her soul, but she knows quite well that Harrow had nothing to do with her death and could have told Aiglamene that, which would probably be a useful thing for her to know in the probable event that Harrow regains occupancy of her body at some point in the last chapter of this book

Well, I mean, there's Paul

So I guess Pyrrha is banking on Alecto bailing them all out once she gets back into her right body (or at any rate, the body that John originally made for her). At the end of the chapter, Nona tells her that she probably won't care about them anymore once that happens. I guess we'll find out who's right pretty shortly

I don't think Harrow ever mentioned believing she was someone else? I almost wonder if Alecto actually took over her body sometimes? But I don't think Harrow ever mentioned forgetting things that happened, the way that G1deon thought he just forgot things that he did because Pyrrha was actually using his body at the time

I mean, yeah, you can't take that away, but if Alecto turns out to really not care about fixing any of their problems next chapter, there's still some practical issues they'll have

It's interesting that G1deon liked Alecto, given that Mercy and Augustine both said that they hated her and asked John to kill her, so I have to wonder what kind of interactions Pyrrha and G1deon had with her

...I've seen pictures of this T-shirt on tumblr, and was like "what does this have to do with the Locked Tomb?"

Also, how on earth did Palamedes and Camilla combine into a person who approves of this T-shirt

I'm imagining the last chapter, now: Alecto and Harrow swap souls again, Pyrrha is like, Alecto can you please get rid of all the zombies, Alecto is like, just a sec I have to go get something, ten minutes later she is back wearing the free mustache rides shirt that she went all the way back to New Rho to get from under the sink

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

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paradoxcase · 4 days

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Chapter 30 of Nona the Ninth

The tower has returned as the image for the chapter

I'm not exactly sure what Paul was trying to do by putting the truck in a bubble, or why Nona and Pyrrha don't think it will work. I guess maybe he thought the bubble would protect them from the ghosts, but Nona and Pyrrha want to be able to see where they're going and don't think Paul can navigate well enough from inside the bubble?

In my first draft of that paragraph I wrote "Palamedes" instead of "Paul". FFS

Back at the beginning of Harrow the Ninth, it wasn't just the ghosts that were the problem with going physically through the River, John also claimed that non-Lyctors would have their souls leave their bodies if they tried that, but Kiriona and Corona seem fine here. Paul probably qualifies as some kind of Lyctor at this point, and Pyrrha might have some special dispensation due to once being part of a Lyctor and Nona is fucking Elder God and it's not clear whether Judith is actually ok or not. There's also a lot of other people in the truck who aren't Lyctors in any way

The ghosts abandoned the River earlier because Number Seven was nearby, and it does speak through Judith again later in the scene, is it protecting them from the ghosts as a favor to Nona? Or is there something else going on with the River as hinted at by Ianthe?

This sounds like maybe the truck is being treated specially here because there is one, maybe two, resurrection beasts on board

Did this telling actually happen on screen at some point, or was it during one of the periods where Nona was unconscious? Presumably Kiriona does know about the tower in the River, since she traveled through the River to New Rho not too terribly long ago, but I don't think she's mentioned it on screen yet

Lmao, of course there's a reference to losing the game in this book

Oddly, that is actually an effective way of communicating what's going on with her, that there are things she doesn't want to remember and she doesn't want to think about how she doesn't want to remember them because then she risks remembering them. She recognizes this tower, so I guess it might be Canaan House, or it might be something related to the Ninth, since that's where they're trying to get to? Harrow did wind up in part of the River that seemed to look like the Tomb the last time we saw her. But Pyrrha must have traveled to the Ninth via the River when she went there to kill Wake, and she doesn't recognize this

I guess Harrow technically did build a version of Canaan House inside a River bubble during the last book, but at the end of that book it was coming apart at the seams. But this might be something else that Harrow built in the River in a more permanent capacity, and maybe it resembles some real place that Alecto remembers

So on the second readthrough, it's definitely sounding like their safe passage through here is because of Number Seven. I don't know what it's talking about, though

Ok, but earlier, Pyrrha said that it was people with "necromantic bodies" that had this reaction to the resurrection beasts' speech, and Paul doesn't have a necromantic body. Also, Palamedes using Camilla's body didn't have any reaction to Number Seven speaking through Judith the first time that happened. This seems kind of inconsistent

That's like kind of weirdly sweet, she doesn't care about dying, and she doesn't care enough about the people she's with to save them, but she cares enough about saving Noodle that she'll save everyone else so that Noodle doesn't have to die. Just your average eldritch monster that only cares about its favorite dog

It's interesting to contrast the Nona parts of this story where Nona is talking about not being afraid of death and wishing she could just die because she is tired of trying to stay in her body and Harrow saying in the last John chapter that Alecto was afraid of dying

That's also an interesting use of the word "home", does Nona consider the Ninth House to be "home" in some way? Because Alecto's body is locked in the Tomb? Because she has residual memories of being Harrow?

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

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paradoxcase · 4 days

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#tbf he was killing trillionaires at that point . hes completely right SKSJSJSJ

Legit cannot tell if you're serious or not, but it might be time to take a break from tumblr if you're really justifying a supervillain murdering ten billion people because some of them were rich

Old Testament God: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

Old Testament God: Oh no. That was the wrong thing to do. I'm so sorry. I promise I will never do that ever again, no matter how many bad people there are, here is a rainbow that seals this binding pact I am signing with you about that

John Gaius: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

John Gaius: That was perfect. Exactly what needed to happen. So satisfying, like a powerwashing commercial. My only regret is that I didn't quite destroy everyone, and some people managed to escape. Some day I hope I will be able to destroy them too. This one goes out to the Old Testament God, who taught me everything I know about how to be a God

#the locked tomb

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paradoxcase · 5 days

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I'm curious what you mean by "that's how the rest of the world sees the US"? The only thing that's stated about the country is that it has nuclear weapons and is a major world country. That description matches at least Russia, China, and the UK in addition to the US. Do you mean that the rest of world somehow sees the US as the kind of country that would cover up the death of their president? That's kind of odd

That is a good point about the unliklihood of John knowing Russian or Chinese, though, since he is speaking for the guy

Parachute ran until 2014, so John could have been born as late as 1998 (making him Gen Z) and would be in his 30s in the 2030s. I don't think anyone now uses "trillionaire" just to mean a rich person, and as firefox keeps reminding me whenever I post about them, it's currently not considered a word by most spell checkers. I think it's unlikely that anyone would be referring to people as trillionaires unless they actually were trillionaires. It's also established that John inherited Hollywood Hair Barbie from his mom. I believe when I looked it up I saw that that barbie came out in 1992, if John is born in 1998 and his mom was (say) 25 when he was born, she would have gotten that barbie when she was 19 years old, which is actually pretty old for buying barbies to play with as opposed to collect, and if had been part of a collection I don't think John would have gotten to play with it. So the Hollywood Hair Barbie timeline actually indicates that John is likely to have been born after 1998 unless his mom was more like 20 when he was born, although that's probably not possible given the Parachute timeline

Since this doesn't appear to have been specified in Nona the Ninth, I'm making a poll:

The main requirement for this is that it has to be a country with nuclear weapons, and since that's a very short list, I've just included all of them as poll options. (Data from here.) The book also says that it was a "major country" which probably makes some of these unlikely, but I decided to include them anyway for those of you who wanted a vanilla extract option (or who knows, maybe North Korea is somehow considered a "major country" by this time this story happens). Keep in mind that the number of nukes has decreased a lot since the Cold War and may continue to decrease in the future rather than increase depending on the political situation, etc.

#the locked tomb

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paradoxcase · 5 days

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#IT'S OBVIOUSLY BLATANTLY MEANT TO BE THE UNITED STATES like. come ON.#GIVE ME ZOMBIE JOE BIDEN OR GIVE ME DEATH

Oh, I don't know. The people who hired John claimed that the head of state dying would cause political instability, and the US has a defined line of succession specifically so that there won't be political instability if a president dies in office (and that's actually happened in the past and there wasn't a big issue as far as I know). Also, this story can't take place until the 2030s at least due to a general lack of trillionaires, there's no way Biden is still president at that time

Since this doesn't appear to have been specified in Nona the Ninth, I'm making a poll:

The main requirement for this is that it has to be a country with nuclear weapons, and since that's a very short list, I've just included all of them as poll options. (Data from here.) The book also says that it was a "major country" which probably makes some of these unlikely, but I decided to include them anyway for those of you who wanted a vanilla extract option (or who knows, maybe North Korea is somehow considered a "major country" by this time this story happens). Keep in mind that the number of nukes has decreased a lot since the Cold War and may continue to decrease in the future rather than increase depending on the political situation, etc.

#the locked tomb

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paradoxcase · 5 days

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Since this doesn't appear to have been specified in Nona the Ninth, I'm making a poll:

The main requirement for this is that it has to be a country with nuclear weapons, and since that's a very short list, I've just included all of them as poll options. (Data from here.) The book also says that it was a "major country" which probably makes some of these unlikely, but I decided to include them anyway for those of you who wanted a vanilla extract option (or who knows, maybe North Korea is somehow considered a "major country" by this time this story happens). Keep in mind that the number of nukes has decreased a lot since the Cold War and may continue to decrease in the future rather than increase depending on the political situation, etc.

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #john gaius #polls

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paradoxcase · 5 days

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@dreanner:

Harrow doesn't say that they knew what John and Alecto were. We know from the first book that they experimented a lot in the facility until they found out a way to become immortal so that they didn't need to stay close to John to not die. These experiments lead to them discovering Lyctorhood. But they thought the only way was to kill the cavalier. John didn't correct them.

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Yeah. They wanted to be able to live away from John, like Alecto could. He had to keep them close to keep them alive, so I believe that’s what they were seeking.

Oh, it just sounded like from what Harrow said that they specifically asked how to do what John did with Alecto, and Alecto just didn't understand it. I guess if they discovered the same process independently then this must really be the only way to be immortal in this universe, then? Otherwise it would be a funny coincidence if they discovered the same thing John did

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

So interesting change: the original ARC version of Nona had the ‘code’ come out to something like ‘the towers want John Gaius’ rather than ‘the towers have reactivated’. Not sure the reason for the change but it’s interesting to me..as is the existence of The Tower Princes

Oh, so there were multiple towers originally? I don't think this really helps me figure out what the tower is supposed to be, though

@bantambookeater:

I *think* that only a few of the planets were populated, and that they've mostly sprawled further since then. What the other planets had at the time was the installations, like the one that's now a prison above the Ninth. Rhodes is one (7th), I *think* there might have been one above the sixth? But Mercy talks about setting up other planets over time (I think)

Ahh, was this something that I missed from Harrow the Ninth, or does Mercy somehow reappear in the very last bit of this book? I remember it saying that Mercy and Augustine set up their own Houses, but beyond that I don't remember

#the locked tomb #dreanner #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #bantambookeater

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paradoxcase · 6 days

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I checked it out in my spreadsheet, and Dance Monkey is indeed the winner in terms of highest overall percent of No / Heard before votes, but in terms of highest number of No / Heard before votes, the winner is actually Carry on Wayward Son with 3063 votes for that option. Carry on Wayward Son also had over 8 times as many total votes as Dance Monkey, and an 89.1% overall approval rating though

What's the song with the highest amount of "yes, I know it, no I don't like it" votes?

i'm fairly sure that it's "Dance Monkey". I don't recall the third option ever winning a poll before that one.

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paradoxcase · 7 days

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Old Testament God: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

Old Testament God: Oh no. That was the wrong thing to do. I'm so sorry. I promise I will never do that ever again, no matter how many bad people there are, here is a rainbow that seals this binding pact I am signing with you about that

John Gaius: *destroys the world because there were some bad people in it*

John Gaius: That was perfect. Exactly what needed to happen. So satisfying, like a powerwashing commercial. My only regret is that I didn't quite destroy everyone, and some people managed to escape. Some day I hope I will be able to destroy them too. This one goes out to the Old Testament God, who taught me everything I know about how to be a God

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #john gaius

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paradoxcase · 7 days

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@yumantimatter:

I interpret Paul as closer to a fusion a la Steven Universe ("and the names of [SU character's component characters] may as well be names for my right hand and my left") - the clearer line of influence is of course Homestuck's sprite^2 characters but I think the concepts are similar

I don't have any experience of Steven Universe, and when I think of the Homestuck sprite^2s I mostly think of Erisolsprite and Tavrissprite that were inherently unstable due to conflicting personalities, but I guess there were some that worked out better, like Davepetasprite. But I don't know, when I was reading Homestuck, Davepetasprite always just registered as another iteration of Dave that had some Nepeta characteristics for me, and not someone completely different. Like how Jade was still Jade even after combining with Bec

@longroadstonowhere:

with regards to AIM, it didn't quite hit the same level of using 'google' to mean 'search the internet', but i do feel like people were using 'AIM' to refer to the messages themselves at a certain point (i was just young enough to not be part of that myself, though, so i don't have strong memories of linguistic practices at that time)

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

@longroadstonowhere speaking as a Gen Xer...that's how I remember it, but that's just me.

Oh, you know, I have some vague memories of that now... but I never actually used AIM all that much, it just wasn't how I communicated with people online back then

Re: Lyctors in the cav bodies: wouldn't work for John, I think. He'd be looking at the cop instead of his best friend G, and the money guy instead of his buddy A...and have to remember too that they didn't know about the RBs coming back when they became Lyctors, so it didn't seem to be an issue.

I mean, John certainly knew about them, but I guess I can kind of see that

#the locked tomb #yumantimatter #longroadstonowhere #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

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paradoxcase · 7 days

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John 5:4

THE TOWER HAS BEEN REACTIVATED

So I guess that is for "Earth" and then "Alecto" and then "Harrow". It's interesting that this little secondary story does not actually tell us anything about where the name "Alecto" came from. Was it a name that John gave to her? Or one that she gave herself? Given John's obsession with the name Gaia, I would have thought he'd pick that

You've proven over and over again that no one should trust you with anything, dude

Harrow mentions "waking up" as being a separate thing from resurrection again later, but it's not clear what this means at either point

Are you telling me that John made them forget everything just by doing something physical to their brains and Mercy the anatomy expert who definitely figured out what Harrow did to her brain after only a few months never figured this out in 10,000 years? I cannot believe that

This makes it sound like the other planets were already populated before John destroyed everything. So how did those people die? Did just killing the planets cause that to happen? Did John kill all the people on the planets in addition to the planets? I figured that at least the technology to make the other planets habitable had come from after the start of the 10,000 years, but apparently not even that was invented during John's regime, the whole society has just been completely static the whole time. This is straining suspension of disbelief here

There's no way they decided they wanted to do whatever John did with Alecto, because until the end of Harrow the Ninth, all of the Lyctors thought Alecto was just someone that John resurrected who came back wrong, they didn't realize she was Earth, and they definitely didn't realize she was John's cavalier, that was the whole point of the reveal at the end of the last book

So confirmed that John only created the Lyctors so that they would be roped into fighting the resurrection beasts for him. And then he talks about ripping his fingers from his hands and throwing them to the resurrection beasts, but what he really means is sacrificing his friends so that he can continue on

Oh my god, I don't think I've ever been this mad about someone misinterpreting a bible story before. The whole point of the flood story was that God said, oh, no, this was a terrible mistake, I'm so sorry, I promise I will never destroy the world again no matter how bad it gets. The point was not that the world was evil and needed a "fresh start", the point of the story was that destroying the world just because there are some evil people there is wrong. And like, this isn't a one-time lesson in the OT, either, it comes back again in the Sodom and Gomorrah story when God wants to destroy the cities because there are some bad people there and Abraham has a big argument with him and argues him down to agreeing to spare the cities if there is even one good person there other than Lot and his family. This was like, character development for God, he went from someone who destroyed the whole world because of some bad people and he is learning and relenting and getting some perspective from Abraham. And then later you have the story of Jonah, where now it's Jonah who wants the city destroyed, and God is lecturing him about why that's not right. Like, to the extent that the OT, which was written by like four or five different people with very different ideas of who God was and then frankensteined together by an editor hundreds of years later actually has a coherent narrative and consistent themes, this is pretty consistent. How does someone who grows up with these stories fail at understanding them so badly? How is it possible for someone who probably has advanced degrees to have such shit reading comprehension? This is the most infuriating thing John has ever said in these entire last two books

So this is what she meant by "where did you put the people" at the end of the last John chapter. I would guess the answer is either that he actually consumed all of their souls for power somehow, or that their souls are somewhere generating power in some way. I guess this probably won't be answered until the fourth book

The "tower" that's been menitoned... but it doesn't seem like this is meant to be Canaan House, as people have indicated on previous posts, and at least in this case it seems to be something that's in the River, or maybe she is just travelling through the River to get there?

Also, since this is the last John chapter, I have to ask, for poll-making purposes: Is it ever clarified in this book or elsewhere which country was the one that hired John to puppet around their dead head of state?

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

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paradoxcase · 8 days

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@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

I THINK the theory is that John's closest friends became the Necros, and their companions/spouses/relatives became the cavs...and he would rather spend 10,000 years with the former than the latter...so THEY got to be Necros, with the power, and then Lyctors.

Oh, I don't mean that the cavaliers should have been the necromancers or anything like that, I mean that it would have worked out better if the necromancers had wound up in the cavaliers' bodies, they still would have been the same people, just in different bodies

Heh. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and Emma Sen (MSN Messenger). Also, I think Pash expected We Suffer to be executed by BoE, or a faction at least.

Oh, that's incredibly silly, I hope there's more to it than that. Anyway, AIM is the name of the messaging system, not the name of a message

I originally thought that was what Pash meant, but then We Suffer started saying goodbye to everyone like she wasn't going to see them again

Some speculation is that the message is 'too simple for typical humans to understand' is because it is a binary message of 1s and 0s, but I think that's a stretch.

@jods-duplicitous-sluts:

There are also theories about the message being incoded in RNA or DNA... so too simple [building block of life] but also unable for a human to understand without tech to decode it.

The DNA/RNA idea is pretty interesting. There's also the chip that Palamedes found that still hasn't been explained yet

Also Paul is planning on coming back for the 6th house. The actual station and all the population are still on the outskirts of the system. Hence the "see you soon"

But they're probably not going back into the tunnel under New Rho, though, right? Nona described all of the oversight board getting put back into the truck

@turtletotem:

Kind of the only way I can deal with Paul's existence is by thinking of them as Palamedes and Camilla's child. Maybe they think of themself that way, too, thus calling P & C "them" instead of "we."

Yeah, that sounds like a good way to think of it

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #jods-duplicitous-sluts #turtletotem

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paradoxcase · 8 days

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Chapter 29 of Nona the Ninth

There's a First skull on this chapter, but there's no one in it who's associated with the First, I guess unless you want to count Pyrrha and/or Kiriona, but neither of them have big speaking parts here

So Paul can do necromancy just fine, and doesn't seem to be affected by Varun the Eater at all. I guess this is because Camilla's body used to belong to a non-necromancer?

Honestly, why didn't John decide that the Lyctors should wind up in the cavalier's body instead of the necromancers? The pros are that their final body, that they'll have for all of eternity, is not made out wet noodles and can wield a sword that's not a rapier, and also they will be immune to the resurrection beasts' madness aura, and I don't think there are any cons, really. Ianthe could do necromancy from Babs' body just fine, so I don't think that would be an issue. It does mean that Ianthe would spend eternity looking like Babs, but that's ok, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Ianthe

I just realized that they totally abandoned Babs' body in the tunnels and it's probably going to get eaten by a Herald. Poor Babs, first Ianthe disrespected him by doing his hair wrong, and now he doesn't even get a funeral. He was kind of a dick, but I'm not sure he deserves all the desecration his body has been through

I guess because it seems like We Suffer is staying behind to hold off the Heralds and let the truck escape? This wasn't made super clear

So there is a messenger, and two parts of a message, and Aim is one of the parts. So is she three separate entities? She is sometimes saying "I" and sometimes saying "we" and the first "I" refers to the messenger, but Aim is the name of one of the messages. I don't know who "us" refers to in "when the message was passed to us" because previously the messenger was singular. And we have a new name Emma Sen, which doesn't seem to follow any of the naming conventions we've seen so far, though it does have some letters in common with "messenger". And I'm curious what it means for the message to be "too simple for human beings like us to understand". She hopes Nona will hear it, so maybe it is intended for planets? I guess this will probably get resolved in the next book, since there's not much time left in this one

Pash made a joke! I think she is learning how to be funny from Pyrrha. I think someone should write an AU where Pyrrha is married to Wake and is Pash's cool aunt, I think that would be fun. Maybe G1deon can be in there somewhere too

I wonder if she still thinks it would be super romantic for Harrow to eat her soul and is jealous of Paul now or something

Ok, but I'm pretty sure you're going to the Ninth to kill John and as we all know that will explode the sun and etc., etc., so I'm not sure that's actually true

I like how she talked to Juno Zeta for five minutes and she learned the names of all her family members and now is someone she has to say goodbye to

Interesting and sad that Paul refers to Palamedes and Camilla as "they" and not like, "we"

Gideon is just pissed that there isn't anyone she can call "Sex Pal" any longer. I wonder if they picked that name specifically because it would be hard for Gideon to come up with a funny variation of it

If We Suffer is staying behind, I wonder what Paul has planned here

Or do they just mean that she will die soon, and they will see her ghost in the River?

Since the next chapter is the last John chapter, I guess this means that Nona passes out after they enter the River

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

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paradoxcase · 9 days

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@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

The 'she' is the one other person that mattered to Cam and Pal, though they never met in person. I look forward to your thoughts on The Unwanted Guest!

@eye-lantern:

"she" died before Gideon the ninth without ever meeting them. And now they melded their souls together, so Cam is wondering wether she would be able to recognize their melded soul

Oh, I see. Does Camilla think they are going to like run into Dulcinea in the River on the way to the Ninth House, or is this like an "after we're all dead" kind of wondering? That is an interesting question about what happens to the immortal soul that goes to the River after you've Lyctorized, like presumably G1deon and Pyrrha continue to be separate entities, but who knows what happens to Camilla and Palamedes. And for Lyctors like Ianthe, they are basically holding their cavalier's soul and drawing energy from it, right, so presumably Babs is not off in the River somewhere currently. If Ianthe dies, does he get released from bondage, or is he linked to her forever?

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

The glimpse we get of Alecto, in her rant to Pyrrha about keeping house, was brutal. Such clear anger and bitterness. And I think that's part of why Nona has 'forgotten'; trauma, anger, rage...she doesn't want to remember.

Yeah, it sounds like Alecto went through a lot of trauma even before John ate her. But correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like there's something about her occupation of Harrow's body that is allowing her to forget? Varun the Eater obviously didn't have that happen to them when they possessed Judith, but that seems to be more of a temporary measure that it uses to talk to Nona, whereas Alecto seems to be sort of stuck in Harrow's body and it's not clear where she'll go when she leaves

@samgemrus:

I guess I thought Pal was talking about G1deon, not Kiriona?

Well, G1doen has been dead for most of a book at this point, and hasn't come back yet to the best of my knowledge, and I also don't think he knows a lot about the layout of the Ninth House

@sirjuggles:

I'm so excited for you to read The Unwanted Guest.

Everyone keeps saying this, haha. Well, there are five more chapters and an epilogue, and after that the Unwanted Guest appears to be at the end of this ebook

#the locked tomb #wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess #eye-lantern #samgemrus #sirjuggles

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