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nocreativityfornames · 2 months

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Everything we know about Diavolo so far, lore wise.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ALL SEASONS

➤ He's the prince and future king of the Devildom, and the founder of RAD — the Royal Academy of Diavolo — taking the position of Student Council President. (swd: 1-1)

➤ He created the exchange program as a first step towards his goal of strengthening the relationships between the three realms and forming an allyship between angels, demons and humans. (swd: 1-1)

➤ He has the ability to discern the truth from the lie. (swd: 4-1)

➤ He was the one to step in and save MC from being attacked by Lucifer in the underground tomb. (swd: 6-6)

➤ He hasn't seen his father in several centuries now and only knows that the Demon King is somewhere in the bottom of the Devildom. (swd: 7-10)

➤ Unlike Lucifer, he saw MC's pacts with the brothers as a good thing from the very beginning. To him, MC's pacts were proof that demons and humans could put aside their differences and actually form bonds together. And that made him happy, considering it was all he wanted with the exchange program. (swd: 8-19)

➤ Before, citizens of the Devildom were allowed to travel to the Human World whenever they wished through passages spread through the kingdom, but Diavolo changed that after taking over the throne. Now, those passages are blocked and the only way demons can use them is by getting permission from Diavolo, Lucifer, or Barbatos - the only demons apart from his father who are allowed to use them freely. (swd: 11-4)

➤ When the eight siblings were cast down to the Devildom and Lilith was in the verge of death from the battle, Lucifer begged Diavolo to save her and he did, having her reborn in the Human World with no memories of her previous life. This came with a cost, however, said cost being Lucifer's loyalty to the prince for the rest of time. (swd: 14-10 and 15-7)

➤ He ordered Barbatos to imprison Belphegor in the castle for plotting treason and put Lucifer under house arrest for protecting the youngest by locking him attic and not telling Diavolo about his plans. (swd: 13-14)

➤ He knew about Belphegor's situation from the beginning, and told this to Lucifer when he arrived in the castle with the others asking for him to free him. "...Truth be told, I knew. I knew you were hiding Belphegor, and I knew why. Your loyalty to me forced you to deceive your brothers, and I knew that was a source of guilt. I saw how you struggled with it - how hard it was being pulled in two directions at once. And it made me sad." (swd: 15-12)

➤ He refused to free Belphegor at first, but eventually made a deal with MC: to release him from prison if they went back in time with the help of Barbatos' powers and found out who had freed him in the first place. (swd: 15-14)

➤ He had Barbatos trace down MC's bloodline and found out that they were a descendant of Lilith because of it. (swd: 16-15)

➤ On his birthday he decided to not only celebrate himself but also MC, to give them a "late welcome party" and show appreciation for them after everything that had happened. (swd: 18-A)

➤ He was suspicious of Solomon for suddenly showing up in the Devildom with MC unannounced (swd: 21-4) but arranged things so they would be able to stay for a while. (swd: 22-19)

➤ When Lucifer and his siblings fell Diavolo found them in the colosseum, and every now and then he finds himself going there and pondering over his past decisions and wondering if they were the correct ones after all. (swd: 24-13)

➤ He was the first Solomon talked to about his suspicions that MC was connected to the natural disasters happening in ancient locations around the realms, and for a while only the two of them and Barbatos knew about it (swd: 37-4), since Diavolo decided to keep it a secret from everyone else until he had proof of MC's powers being harmful to the realms (swd: hard mode, 32-16).

➤ He had MC undergo the standard magic exams that demons students are given at RAD, and although he initially told MC it was to help them learn more about the powers demons possess and how to control them (swd: 29-5), it was actually a test to see if their magic was as powerful as Solomon suspected. The sorcerer was proven right when MC passed each of them. (swd: 37-4)

➤ His secrecy and unusual reliance on Solomon caused a strain on his relationship with Lucifer, as the eldest knew that Diavolo was hiding something but refused to tell him. They eventually had a conversation in the colosseum after RAD's exams week ended, where Lucifer directly enquired him about what was happening. Diavolo refused to tell him, saying it wasn't "the right time" for him to know yet, and when Lucifer asked if whatever secret he was keeping involved MC the prince replied that he wasn't certain yet, further concerning him. (swd: 28-C)

➤ He's "not fond" of Simeon because he finds him difficult to deal with it and told this to the angel's face while speaking to him. When Simeon asked Diavolo why he found him difficult to deal with, he answered saying that it's because angels never divulge anything about themselves or the Celestial Realm but are constantly inserting themselves into Devildom business, and he's specially not fond of Simeon because he hides his true intentions better than any angel Diavolo has ever met. (swd: hard mode, 31-16 )

➤ He's so not fond of and unsure of how to deal with Simeon that when he finally decided to let him in on the secret and make him aware of MC's powers being a threat to the three realms he asked Solomon to break the news instead of doing it himself. (swd: 32-16)

➤ He eventually decided to tell Lucifer about MC’s situation and through text apologized to the Avatar of Pride for leaving him in the dark for so long and asked him to meet him so he could finally let him in on what was happening (swd: hard mode, 36-16). Unfortunately that meeting never happened, since Lucifer ended up affected by MC’s powers and lost his memories before Diavolo could explain anything to him. (swd chat: the fantastic three, untitled)

➤ Finally breaking the news to everyone, he and Solomon told the others everything, from the moment the sorcerer started growing suspicions about MC's powers to the moment that their powers struck Lucifer and he lost his memories. They also presented their only solution(s): to sever MC's pacts with the Night Dagger in order to break their magical connections to the brothers and make them an avarage human again. There was another solution: to stabilize MC's magic with the Ring of Light - the counterpart to the Ring of Wisdom that once belonged to Lucifer - but it was discarded right away as the ring had been lost in the Great Celestial War and no one knew its whereabouts. (swd: 37-9)

➤ Once everyone knew the whole story, he apologized to MC for not finding another way to prevent their magic from causing massive destruction to the realms, since he knew neither MC or the brothers wanted to sever their pacts with the each other. (swd: 37-9)

➤ When all things ended well and MC was able to get their powers under control without using the Night Dagger thanks to the Ring of Light that Simeon found just in time, Diavolo organized a party to honor MC and celebrate the victory. (swd: 39-1)

➤ He showed no surprise when MC expressed wanting to stay in the Devildom instead of going back to the Human World but still refused the request. (swd: 39-10) Later, with everyone, he explained why he didn't want MC to live in the Devildom permanently. “...All of you... I want you to listen carefully to what I'm about to say. I don't want MC to be a demon...or an angel, for that matter. No, I want MC to be a human. A human who understands us, and who works together with Solomon to shepherd the human world toward a better future… Someday I'd like MC to work alongside me to bring harmony to the three worlds. Which is precisely why I won't allow you to be stuck here in the Devildom, MC. I want you to learn more about the three worlds and to understand each of them better... The human world, the Devildom, and the Celestial Realm.” (swd: 40-22)

➤ He couldn't accompany the brothers on their vacation to the Human World at first because of work and told MC he often found it hard to get things done with everything being so quiet since the others weren't in the Devildom with him. (swd: 42-18)

➤ When tasked with the over the kingdom in his father's absence, the first thing Diavolo did was to start conciliating with Celestial Realm to end the conflict between the two realms. For this, he started having meetings with high-ranking angels to explain his plans and hopefully reach and an agreement of peace between the realms. That was how he met Lucifer in the first place, when the angel came down the Devildom to hear what he had to say. (swd: 44-12, 44-15 and swd card: Lucifer, Glory Days)

➤ He's a majority shareholder of the Three-Legged Crow Group otherwise called Yatagarasu, the largest company in the Devildom that's been expanding business in the Human World with their technology devices. (swd: 47-11)

➤ He “went missing” to purposely lead everyone to the karaoke place owned by Yatagaeasu where the brothers and MC had to play a game and get a perfect singing score in order to get out and would vanish from the room if they failed. His reason for this as he told MC later was because had been missing everyone ever since being left in the Devildom while the others were in the Human World, saying that being alone with no one but Barbatos by his side had made him remember how things used to be before the brothers started living in the Devildom and that had made him terribly lonely. In that same conversation, Diavolo also admitted that he felt jealous of the brothers for being able to spend so much time MC. (swd: 48-12 and 48-15)

➤ Later on during an outing with Lucifer after being confronted with the fact that the karaoke ordeal had been orchestrated by him, Diavolo explained his reasons this time to Lucifer and opened up about feeling jealous of MC as well. “I wonder, when was it, exactly? When did you and your brothers become so very important to me? I thought I'd never be able to become ‘one of you.’ It seemed ridiculous to even try, because it was just obvious that I couldn't. But then MC did just that... Effortlessly fitting in with the seven of you to become just another one of the gang. More than that, actually. MC is part of your family now. And when I saw that, it may have made me a little jealous. And while I haven't wanted to admit it to myself up to now...the truth is, I think I was lonely.” (swd: hard mode, 50-16)

➤ His mother died shortly after giving birth to him and he was raised by his father who was very strict and gave him a sheltered childhood, so much so he rarely ever left the castle. (swd: 56-18)

➤ He met Barbatos for the first time when he was still a child and the older demon was the first person he met from outside the castle. The older demon amazed him with stories of the outside world, and little Diavolo begged him to stay with him, getting to the point of threatening not to assume his position of king in the future if Barbatos left him. (swd: 56-18)

➤ When the brothers at the farewell party asked if they could make MC “officially part of the family” by marrying them, Diavolo explained that demons and humans aren't able to marry yet but that he'll do everything he can so one day that'll be possible. “MC, you aren't aware of this, but some bad blood still exists between our three worlds. No matter how much all of you may want this to happen, it's not something I have the power to do on my own. [...] However, my ultimate goal is to eliminate these barriers someday. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens.” (swd: 60-15)

➤ A while after MC left Diavolo sent them a magic letter and asked them to come to the Devildom for a third time because he had something important to discuss with them. (swd: 61-4) And that something turned out to be a request for MC to participate in the exchange program for a second time and an invitation for them to be a new member of the student council. (swd: 62-17)

➤ The intentions for this second try of the exchange program was mostly the same but now with a different approach, as Diavolo explained to everyone in the meeting then: “Our last exchange program was meant to provide an opportunity for cultural exchange among the inhabitants of all three worlds. But nothing more than that. Think of it as merely a starting point on the path to mutual understanding. But this time, the goal of the program is to make a stronger case for mutual understanding. Directed at everyone both inside and outside of the Devildom.” (swd: 62-17)

➤ He's known Mephistopheles ever since they were children. (nb: 13-11)

➤ Initially, his father was the main reason why he was determined to be a good king and why he even rescued the brothers in the first place. He craved the king's approval, wanted to live up to his name, show himself worthy of the throne, and eventually surpass him. He was forced to face this truth when he was younger during his last trial of the Kingsblood Crucible - a traditional ritual that demons of royalty have to go through before they take the throne. (nb: 14-7)

➤ After MC was officially appointed as the 9th member of the Student Council and the short-term exchange program ended, he gave them an “entry permit” so they could travel from the Human World to the Devildom whenever they wanted. (swd: 80-22)

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dailyadventureprompts · 16 days

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I want a low level adventure for investigating an old abandoned (why) temple/jail? Why they have been asked to go in is the adventure but as a plot hook for a future adventure they will find a locked up vampire (how) who they can leave, attempt to kill or let go. The key thing is he will offer something if they do the latter pertainent to a later adventure.

Dungeon: The Bargain At Barrowfort

A grim history and rumours of haunting keep people away from the old fortress, Once the domain of a wicked count who was all too fond of brutality and torture as a means of keeping his power. Though it has been many years since a heroic rebellion ousted the count and his patrons from power, time has yet to banish the shadow that has come to dwell behind it's battlements.

Adventure Hooks:

Using the area's foreboding reputation to avoid detection, a band of outlaws has claimed the Barrowfort as their base, striking out at caravans and small settlements with weapons salvaged from it's old armouries. When the party eventually raids the crumbling fortress, the scent of ensuing death will awaken a long slumbering hunger; the Barrowfort's ghoulish final garrison, starved out by besieging rebels and driven to unspeakable acts that cursed them with undeath.

Local lore has it that the fortress was built on the burial mound of an ancient queen, who's tomb-curse doomed the original builders and all those who laid claim to the fort in subsequent generations. Due to a quirk of inheritance, an ailing relative of one of the PCs has left them a deed in their will, and the party best get to the root of the curse (and claim their sick new base) before it brings doom upon them.

In the dungeon's deepest vault resides the last victim of the Count's cruelty: Before his capture Ser Karagol was a ruby knight of Wee Jas, goddess of death, passion, and magic. Ser Karagol was a vampire, but he was also a dutiful and pious man, living his life according to a code that restrained his appetites and directed his long centuries of unlife to the goddess's service. The count hoped to force the vampire into sharing the "gift" of immortality, binding him with holy chains and starving him for months at a time in an attempt to break him down. Decades after being forgotten in the dungeons, Karagol is in a sorry state, slipping between lucidity and feral hunger as he struggles against his bindings. Deliberation and mercy in rehabbing the vamp can earn the party a powerful ally in both the knight and his church, but a slip of awareness might result in one of them becoming gravely hurt.

Repeated acts of cruelty and deprivation have stained the Barrowfort to it's very foundations, marking it for Yeenoghu: demon lord of insatiable hunger. Some time in the future, whether the party is holding a feast in their new hall, or when an ambitious occultist claims the ruins for their own, a portal will open and allow minions of the gnawing god to steal through.

Art

#dungeon #prompt postage #yeenoghu #wee-jas #undead #bandits #low level #mid level #player home #ruin #keep

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dirt-nerd · 8 months

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I'm reading The Locked Tomb series and even though going into it I already knew some of the major plot twists, no amount of spoilers could prepare me for just how jarring it was to learn that the ancient secret necromancy inventing laboratory is in the same town where I used to stop for coffee on the way to my thesis fieldwork. I mean fucking Greytown?!

Like oi John why don't you leave those cows alone and stop by the bakery for a delicious almond croissant? I promise things will be better after delicious almond croissant.

#i need those cows for MY research John #did you ever consider that eh!#(in all seriousness though Greytown actually does do a mean almond croissant)#(I highly recommend stopping by The French Baker if you are in the area)#the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers

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vickysaurus · 1 year

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I’m thinking of reading Gideon the Ninth, because you lot seem to be having fun with it. Here’s what I know about it based on tumblr osmosis:

Gideon the Ninth is the first book of the series, which is called The Locked Tomb. It is about lesbian necromancers in outer space.

Gideon the Ninth is the main character. She has some sort of cool skeleton look. I don’t know if it’s facepaint, a tattoo, or her actual bones showing through her skin (with the necromancy and all). However, other characters have the same thing going on, so I imagine it’s something necromancer-related and not just a personal choice.

She also wears dorky sunglasses. I think she thinks she’s a lot cooler than she is.

This is probably a spoiler, but her father is George Washington and her mother did 9/11. I think that’s a metaphor and not the literal case, but then again this series seems kind of bazonkers so maybe it is literally true.

One time, Gideon fit a huge Zweihänder into a suitcase, and it is not elaborated upon how she did this.

According to at least one of you there is ‘not enough fanart of Gideon’s tits’

Harrow or Harrowhark is another important character. She is bald and also has the skeleton thing going on. I get the impression she and Gideon have a rivals-to-lovers arc.

The first book is generally well beloved. I think it is about Gideon getting hired to raid a derelict spaceship of some sort. Maybe Harrow is there for the same reason and they have beef over it?

The second book is mostly written in second person and tries to gaslight you about the first book. It is considered a bit of a challenging read.

There is a new book called Nona the Ninth. I think it’s at least the third book in the series, but maybe there are more in between.

Everyone in this universe seems to have regnal numbers, but I don’t know why. I don’t think they are nobility. Maybe, given the necromancy, it is some sort of counter to keep track of how often they’ve come back from the dead. ‘The ninth’ seems to be particularly common though, which leads me to suspect it may in fact not be a numbering but a last name or clan name of some sort.

I have no clue about any of the actual plots, but apparently that’s pretty normal and people default to the ‘lesbian necromancers in space’ explanation because the plot is wild and impossible to summarise.

Whiny clownbabies have left some very silly one star reviews on it that are basically recommendations.

#gideon the ninth #the locked tomb

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rosemarydisaster · 1 month

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I know that all the names of The Locked Tomb Series have a lot of deep meaning but I just love the Seventh house. Like, the way you can figure out the plot twist just by reading the names. (Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth).

Dulcinea is named after Dulcinea del Toboso from El Quijote. The titular Quijote lives in a fantasy world due to reading too many books about Knights, so he starts imagining the world around him as the one from his books. He kinned too close to the sun. Dulcinea del Toboso is his lady love, the most perfect woman in existence. Obviously Don Quijote's "squire" Sancho Panza doesn't believe Dulcinea exists. She's part of Quijote's fantasy. So to try to snap him out of it he brings him a peasant woman named Aldonza Lorenzo, ugly and stinky, saying it's Dulcinea. Quijote assumes she must be under some curse and bows to free her (he never gets to). So obviously when I read Dulci's name in Gideon the Ninth and she turns out to be too perfect to be real...yeah, I figured out that wasn't the real necromancer from the seventh. Tbf, I'm from Spain so Dulcinea immediately triggers my second grade memories.

Protesilaus. This one's crazier and I didn't get it until the end of the book. You see the name sounded familiar and I was sure it was from some Greek myth or tragedy. Turns out in the Iliad the Oracle tells the Greeks that the first man to set foot on Troy would die. That's why Odysseus jumped on his shield to not "set foot on trojan soil". Protesilaus was the first one to actually disembark and, as such, was killed. Just like TLT protesilaus was the first one to die (protecting Dulci). Also in some versions of the story his wife, wracked with grief, asks the gods to see her beloved again. The gods take pity on her and allow her five minutes, after which they both die. This reminds me of how the real Protesilaus was brought back by Harrow's bubble, created by her grief for Gideon.

Cytherea is another name for Aphrodite and Gideon's very obvious lust aside, this tracks too. Not only is Cytherea described as really beautiful, she's a Lyctor which makes her godlike. It's also her love for her cavalier that makes her lose her head a bit. And even while she's Killing everyone in Canaan House she makes it a point to state that she still loves all of the contestants. She even admits to still loving John (much like Mercymorn). Also, the one that finds out she's not who she says she is is the man in love with the real Dulcinea.

Gotta love Tamsyn spoiling her book with names. This series is so fucking good.

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #gtn #gideon the ninth spoilers #cytherea the first #dulcinea septimus #protesilaus ebdoma #the seventh house #seventh house #7th house #tamsyn muir

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 4 months

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Muffin! It's ASP Inc, the conglomerate made up of the companies formerly known as Apple, Sony, and Pepsi-Co. Based on your credentials with prior projects, you've been conscripted again for another big budget Twilight media project! Probably the CEO is on drugs, but congrats on your $500m dollar budget.

Your task is to design a big-budget Twilight video game. "But I don't really play that many video games," you maybe say? Idk, the CEO doesn't seem to care and is maybe using this project for tax evasion, so your instructions are "Just make us a Twilight game with gameplay stolen from a popular thing like a Minecraft, Fortnight, Among Us, whatever the kids nowadays are playing. Maybe a Mario? Are Marios still a thing?? I played Oregon Trail on my mac once. Stick some story in it. Give it the Muffin treatment, kids like Muffins!"

Your project brief must include:

1) What non-story-based gameplay mechanic you're stealing ("It's like a Mario!") 2) What story set in the Twilight Universe (tm) you've decided is most game-able. 3) Where you're spending the big bucks.

Thank you and good luck! (I hope this is fun and not, you know, annoying)

That would be a very silly thing for them to do.

Caveat

Twilight already is a video game: it's a visual novel. You are Bella Swan, first person point of view, checking out hottie mchottie across the hall. You don't know it, but the wrong action you take, even if it's arriving in the parking lot late: you die.

It's up to you to find Bella's golden path to survival which is in fact the Twilight novels we know and love.

Ordinarily, I'm a big skeptic of medium jumps without much thought, especially to and from video games as they usually don't transition well. However, in this case, we're already there.

You don't even have to change that much of the narrative structure since it's all in first person and we have the visuals as we know exactly what everyone looks like down to what exact shade of red their hair is.

There's not much for me to do.

But That Will Never Fly/Isn't What You Asked For

It sounds like this merger corporation doesn't really understand Twilight or video games which is not surprising. So, I have to make a real person video game which is just like that thing the kiddos are playing.

And since I'm going to hell anyway: I'm making a Twilight game that's RDR/GTA styled and we're going wild.

You're Bella Swan going to high school but you can wander around the town of Forks/the world at large and do whatever the fuck you want. This often gets you killed horribly. You go to Mexico: you're eaten by vampires. You go to Alaska: you get fucked by vampires and have a wild time in their sauna. You go to Egypt: some guy named Amun locks you in a tomb where you hang out with Benjamin, Tia, and Amun's angry wife. You can take missions for the Volturi, which they never asked you to do, and every time you collect a bounty a Volturi member will give you a weird look and ask "what the fuck is wrong with you/why are you here?" but you'll earn in game rewards as they publicly shame you.

You can also get into affairs with your human friends and ruin Jessica's love life, go to Prom with five people, and so on and so forth.

You can also get involved in the La Push community where they stare at you for being this person who clearly doesn't belong and try to seduce Leah into a lesbian love affair with you. (This is a very difficult quest, Leah's not impressed and very confused and going through it with Sam right now). You get to hear all of people's drama that's going on in the side lines.

The actual plot is dating Edward, and somehow, he doesn't notice all your wild adventures because he can't read your mind and while he's been stalking you every time you leave the state he loses your scent.

Your missions are surprisingly difficult as you have to avoid death by Edward by saying the right things and avoid death by everything else in the universe by navigating Port Angeles correctly (shockingly hard as the rapists somehow corner you at every turn). You also get missions during the Hallucination Edward arc as you have to do increasingly difficult and dangerous things to get Hallucination Edward to appear at which point your player character gets sweet sweet endorphins.

In the online player mode, where you've probably become a vampire, you can engage in vampire warfare where the losing condition is you killed too many humans so the Volturi come to kill all of you.

And yes, of course, there is an honor system but you blow it yourself as Bella's honor plummets during New Moon when she has to endanger herself and others to see Edward.

The money's going into a) graphics b) the sheer open worldness allowed in the number of quests, the random events, and all that good points.

Conclusion

I imagine they ask me how I will market this game to Twilight's audience, who are presumably the only ones who will play this game, and I claim, "Young women love grand theft auto!"

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #meta #headcanon #opinion

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lengthy-artery · 10 months

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ok im going to swing a bat at a hornest's nest right now. what the fuck is the locked tomb actually about. what is it about and why is everyone on my dash obsessed with it AND YOU CAN'T JUST SAY 'IT'S GOT LESBIAN NECROMANCERS IN SPACE'. I KNOW THAT. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE PLOT IS HERE

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #idk what else to tag this with i'm just hoping that tlt fans can find it and tell me what the hell these books are actually about #bc let me tell you the goodreads summary is giving me NOTHING #i know gideon and harrow are the lesbians #and apparently god(?) is in it???? somehow??? but he's just a guy called john?????#no idea what the fuck is up with that #also this is a genuine question please explain because i am genuinely curious what these books are about and why everyone loves them #because everything i have seen so far makes zero sense to me out of context #(and from what i've gathered often it makes zero sense in context too)

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lemon-natalia · 10 days

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Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 50

thirty minutes before the Emperor’s murder and i still have no idea who’s gonna do it or why

Commander Wake. the commander who is Gideon's mother. who is Awake, the Sleeper. Who is in Cytherea’s dead body. Cytherea being the one Gideon had a crush on. WHO IS BEING POSSESSED BY GIDEON’S DEAD MOTHER. WHO IS THE BOE LEADER, COMMANDER WAKE. i’m fucking speechless what is this

also she’s calling the Emperor ‘Gaius’, do they fucking know each other??

omfg her full name includes ‘Snap me back to reality oops there goes Gravity’ wtf. weirdly i feel like thats such a Gideon (Nav) name to have, except she’s taking it so seriously

‘did the ten billion give you that too.’ ‘how many babies died in the bomb Gaius’ oh this guy really did cause the apocalypse somehow didn’t he, fuuuck

scratch the others, this is the most tense tea party there’s been so far

‘it’s all come out’ what in the world’s most dramatic intervention is this

COMMANDER WAKE ME UP INSIDE

both Mercymorn and Augustine were conspiring with the BoE?? i didn’t see that coming, especially not Mercymorn

the eggs from the first message weren’t a metaphor????? they were literal goddamn eggs wtf

she was gonna kill said baby in order to enter the Locked Tomb, and nicknamed it the ‘Bomb’. um wow. why is everyone’s immediate plan in these books to jump straight to the baby murder.

GIDEON (1.0) JUST KILLED HER?? again? can you even say you killed a ghost. what. what. i thought they were a thing what is going on. Gideon just saw her mother for the very first time in her life, talking about how she was planning to murder Gid as a baby, possessing the body of someone she had a crush on who also tried to kill her, get murdered. oh she’s gonna need so much counselling after this.

speaking of, how the fuck did the relationship between Gideon 1.0 and Wake start, that feels very complicated

and he thought the baby was his. key word being thought. not was. then who the fuck is the baby daddy. this whole shebang would make for a very entertaining episode of Dr Phil. or whatever tv shows it is that do dna tests, i don’t watch a lot of reality tv

i really didn’t think a conception story could get more fucked up than Harrow’s, but Gideon’s giving her a very strong run for her money

‘Hi, not fucking dead. I’m Dad’ YOU JUST FOUND OUT YOU HAVE A SECRET BABY WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS. its been about a minute and he’s already cracking dad jokes. is making bad puns genetic in the Locked Tomb world or something, because that would say a lot about Gideon quite frankly

i cannot believe the fact that these guys were in a threesome has been plot relevant two times over now

also Gideon is the fucking. daughter of the GOD of this world i guess. well there’s an explanation for why she’s so resistant to not dying then. if he wasn’t super dead, i think Silas’s reaction to this info would be so fucking funny

also. given Ianthe presumably doesn’t know about any of the details of Gideon’s birth, childhood, etc. she’s gotta be even more confused than Gideon right now

also also remember when i had that dream about the Locked Tomb? my subconscious is a prophet, apparently:

#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb #the locked tomb liveblog #harrow the ninth #if i had a nickel for everytime in a piece of media i’m obsessed with filled with existential & body horror a character named John caused #the apocalypse and also characters who have moved their souls to other bodies have their eye colour as the tell that happened #i’d have two nickels #which is not a lot but its weird that it’s happened twice.

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racefortheironthrone · 2 years

Text

The Walrus Was (Is) Pa(u)l

Introduction

Like a lot of you, I was pretty consumed by Nona the Ninth - I ended up reading the entire thing in one night/morning, because there would be an enormous twist every twenty pages and I had to know how the story ended - and, like a lot of you, one of the most affecting plot developments in the book was the culmination of Palamedes and Camilla’s arcs and the creation of Paul.

In reading people’s reactions, I noted a lot of people who were heartbroken that one or both of their favorite characters were now dead. I also noted a lot of people who were very confused about why the fusion of Palamedes and Camilla was called Paul, and what kind of Biblical allusion Tamsyn Muir is pointing to with that choice of name. I also noted a lot of people who thought that the reveal of Paul was a very fascinating gender moment.

In this post, I’m not going to talk about all of that: I’m not really qualified to talk about the Biblical stuff, as I’m neither Catholic nor Christian, and while I’ve read enough stuff to think that Muir is thinking about Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, I don’t really know that text well enough to talk about it. Likewise, I’m not really qualified to do a gender theory or trans reading of Paul, and I’m going to leave that to people who know what they’re talking about.

What I am going to talk about is the question of death and love and lyctorhood. Because while I’ve seen a lot of people say that Camilla and Pal are dead, I am not so sure. I think things are way more complicated than a simple binary of alive or dead.

The Dialectics of (True) Lyctorhood

One of the key mysteries in the whole Locked Tomb series is the nature of lyctorhood and especially True Lyctorhood, and this is especially true for Palamedes’ arc across all three books.

In Gideon the Ninth, Palamedes is the first (or second, depending on when Ianthe worked it out off-page) to theorize that Lyctorhood is the gestalt of eight theorems into one Megatheorem (what the OG Lyctors called the Eightfold Word). Unlike Ianthe, Palamedes comes to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with the theory, both in a scientific sense and a moral sense. We’ll learn that Palamedes is not the first person to come to this conclusion - Anastasia thought that the Eightfold Word was wrong and tried to perfect the process to something that wouldn’t kill Samael Novenary, but either got the execution wrong or (more likely) was prevented by John from completing her revised megatheorem. However, Palamedes doesn’t get an opportunity to act on his conclusions, because right after he gets an explanation of the full scope of the Eightfold Word from Ianthe, he unexpectedly solves the murder mystery and then blows himself up.

In Harrow the Ninth and As Yet Unsent, both Palamedes and Camilla are off-page for much of the book, but are still very much actively carrying out their Plan B (which they probably got the idea for from their solving the Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex). In the material world, Camilla moves heaven and earth to get Pal’s bones, keep them safe, get the bones to Harrow, and get Harrow to both make contact with Pal’s revenant and remake the bone shards into a suitable vessel. In the River, Pal undergoes an impossible endurance trial to keep his mind together...and when he isn’t keeping himself occupied with his new career in romance novels/erotica, he spends a lot of time thinking about the EIghtfold Word. Notably, when Harrow finds him in the bubble, he thinks that Harrow has cracked it, and then gets wrong-footed by how Harrow’s “work” has scrambled her memories...until he sees Gideon. Back in the material world, Harrow reshapes Pal’s bones into a suitable vessel for his spirit and confirms to Camilla that Pal is in the bones. Then at some point between then and the Epilogue, Pal is able to jump from the bones into Camilla’s body, and we see that they’ve undergone the eye color shift that betokens Lyctorhood.

In Nona the Ninth, we learn a lot more about how what I’ll call Plan C actually functions. In a mirror image to Gideon and Phyrra, Pal’s spirit is in Cam’s body but (at least at first) only one can be conscious at a time. Moreover, there’s a pretty strict time-limit to Pal’s control of the body, both to avoid hurting Camilla or falling prey to the blue madness. While they try to hide it and compensate as best they can with written notes and audio recordings, this is awful for the both of them - Cam is pretty depressed about not being able to touch Pal (hence the bit where she has to sit in the dark in the bathtub when Nona first does the hand kiss trick), and Pal is very anxious about whether he’s harming Camilla’s body or infringing on her selfhood.

As a model for Lyctorhood, then, the Sixth’s revised megatheorem seems less than ideal. Then all of the sudden, we learn that Camilla and Palamedes can be present in the body at the same time. This radical shift in the paradigm scares the shit out of Pyrrha, who describes it as “Synthesis” and is totally convinced that it is a “one way ticket” that will kill both Camilla and Palamedes. This is obviously concerning, because Pyrrha is the only one of the OG Lyctors left who remembers how the Eightfold Word was constructed, so presumably she knows what she’s talking about.

But both Camilla and Pal disagree. Leaving aside the massive power boost, Camilla clearly feels that the brief window of Synthesis is the moment at which they are truly alive - “it was good. We were happy.” (Keep an eye on that “we.”) As is his wont, Palamedes intellectualizes his disagreement with Pyrrha, and we see that this is what he’s been building to since GTN:

“I think a true Lyctorhood is a mutual death...a gravitational singularity creating something new. A true Grand Lysis, rather than the Petty Lysis of the megatheorem.”

In other words, Pal thinks Pyrrha is wrong about dialectics. In Hegelian philosophy, when Thesis meets Anti-Thesis and produces Synthesis, it’s not supposed to be destructive. Rather, it’s described as the resolution of tension, a peaceful overcoming, a unity of opposites. Notably, Pal uses the term “lysis” to describe his fully-worked-out version of True Lyctorhood - lysis is a biological term describing the breakdown of cell walls, so the metaphor is about the dissolving of barriers between cav and necro. More precisely, Pal argues his version of True Lyctorhood is better than the Eightfold Word because it is “mutual” - rather than a one-way sacrifice that eternalizes the hierarchical inequality of the necro/cav relationship, here necro and cav are equals engaged in a generative process.

Now to a lot of fans, that doesn’t sound much better than the Eightfold Word. After all, as a friend of mine put it, with traditional lyctorhood you’re only killing one person, and with this you’re killing two. However, I’m not convinced that Grand Lysis is the death of two to make three.

To be fair, there is evidence that runs counter to my argument: after Camilla and Palamedes do “the best and truest and kindest thing we can do in this moment,” Nona observes the result and concludes that this is “not Camilla’s, not Palamedes - that it struck Nona all at once: they were gone - they had left her - they were no longer there.” I would argue that the text of the novel is priming us to accept this verdict, because we’ve seen it established before that Nona looks at the world with eyes that see the truth of the body. (Nona observes similarly when they’re on the Ninth that Paul interacts with the world differently than either Camilla or Palamedes would have done.)

And yet, I’m still not convinced.

The Thematics: Love, Death, and Memory

My reason for this position has to do with how Tamsyn Muir writes about love, death, and memory.

Shortly before they carry out Grand Lysis, Palamedes gives a short speech where he characterizes his relationship to Camilla in a way that he hasn’t ever before, even after the duel with Ianthe: “Camilla, we did it right, didn’t we...we had something very nearly perfect...the perfect friendship, the perfect love.” I would argue that there is a thematic parallel being made between perfect (true) love and perfect (true) lyctorhood.

This produces a profound catharsis for Camilla, but before she commits to going through with this, she asks a critical question:

“Warden - will she know who we are, in the River?”

“Oh, she’s not stupid....In the River - beyond the River - I truly believe we will see ourselves and each other as we really are. And I want them to see us.”

This is a really significant exchange, because it points back to Abigail Pent’s belief in the River Beyond (something that I’m convinced is going to be the focus of Harrow’s descent into Hell and/or the Tower in the River in Alecto), and because it’s also referencing Dulcinea Septimus and whether her soul will recognize the souls of Pal and Cam. (What that exchange says about the Cam/Pal/Dulcie love triangle and/or throuple I will leave for others to debate.) Pal is taking a double leap of faith, both that Abigail is right about the existence of the River Beyond and that Grand Lysis won’t destroy Pal and Cam’s soul. (Speaking of faith, here is where I think Muir is really starting to dig into Corinthians, but again, I’m not going to discuss theology.)

(Also, keep an eye on that “we” and that “us.”)

That’s before; what about after? Well, once they die and are reborn, the as-yet-unnamed “new person” does something really unexpected - after briefly comforting Nona, they have a conversation with Ianthe. Ianthe - whose necromantic specialty and obsession is where the soul goes after death - concludes that “there was another way, Sextus, after all.” And the new person responds by reaching out:

“I know how hard it is for you to kick against the goad...but there are more worlds than this. Come with us. We are the love that is perfected by death - but even death will be no more; death can also die. There’s still time, Ianthe. Time for you, and for Naberius Tern.”

This is a wild exchange for a couple reasons. The first is that, even as a non-Christian with limited understanding of Corinthians, I can see what Muir is doing with the idea of love transcending death. Second, while it is characteristic for their first action to be one of radical compassion, it’s absolutely wild that their offer to Ianthe is one of transcendental love...with Babs. I don’t think Ianthe would consider it for a second, but the implication that it’s even possible after the Eightfold Word process has been completed is startling. Third, it is yet another instance in which the new person uses “we” and “us” to describe themselves. (This pronoun use isn’t entirely consistent - in some places, the new person uses “I” or “my” - but there’s certainly a trend.)

This brings us to the role of memory - and its relation to love and death. It’s most prominent in Harrow the Ninth and Harrow and Gideon’s arcs about remembering, forgetting, and the attempt to preserve love past death, but it’s also there in Pal and Cam’s arcs (”Palamedes remembers everything: That was his problem.I always remember him. That’s mine.”) - in the arcs of the OG Lyctors, and on and on.

Here’s the critical point: Paul remembers, and remembers Camilla and Palamedes separately and collectively. It’s a bit ambiguous at first; when Paul’s very first action as a new person is to remember Nona’s birthday, and it’s absolutely vital that it is a memory grounded in love, it’s not clear whose memory is being accessed. But later on, when Nona is confronting the existential annihilation of love and selfhood, Paul’s response is that “Camilla and Palamedes were loved by Nona...Pyrrha was loved by Nona. It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away. We loved you too. Palamedes and Camilla loved you.” Again, the intertwining of love, death, and memory, but critically Paul describes these memories separately - “Camilla and Palamedes...Palamedes and Camilla” - and collectively, with a return to the “we.”

On a more mundane level, when they get to the Ninth and encounter the corpse of a devil, Paul says “I’ve seen this before. My memory’s split.” Paul’s memory is split because only Camilla remembers seeing Colum Asht become possessed - Palamedes had left the room during the fight, so he never saw it happen. It’s a small detail that reveals much.

So here’s the TLDR:

Love transcends death through acts of memory.

Paul is not a tabula rasa, Paul remembers.

Paul is not purely a gestalt. Cam and Pal exist within Paul.

The Metaphysics: Grand Lysis and John Gaius

Here is where I might be getting a bit ahead of myself, but I couldn’t stop myself from drawing a comparison between the ritual Cam and Pal carry out in the main narrative and the secret ritual John did with/to Alecto that we learn about in the interstitial narrative. And to compare the two, I’m going to use a more metaphysical approach.

There are two metaphysical analogies that I see at work in John’s secret, original lyctorhood process. The first is Biblical, unsurprisingly. Tamsyn Muir quite clearly alludes both to the Book of Genesis - “I ripped half of my ribs from my body and made you from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone” - and the Book of John - “For she so loved the world that she had given them John.”

The other analogy, and this might be more controversial, is from the occult - specifically, Aleister Crowley’s concept of the Scarlet Woman. In Crowley’s occult theory, the Scarlet Woman is a living woman who becomes the avatar of an earth goddess (very much in the sense of a fertility goddess), so that a male magician (i.e, Crowley) can tap into the female side of the cosmos and attain enlightenment. Significantly, the Scarlet Woman is thought to be an entirely passive entity - Crowley writes “she cannot say no. Her decisions are devoid of authority.” - and is meant to be used and then discarded.

To tie it back to John Gaius, who is a very Aleister Crowley-like figure, we have a male magician who tries to unify with an earth goddess, but can’t manage it - “I took you into myself and we became one...I mean, I tried. There was so much of you...you didn’t fit....I realized you were too much for me.” So instead he builds a vessel to contain the goddess - “a house to put you in” - in the shape of a beautiful human woman. His connection to that vessel gives him godlike power...but it’s all for his benefit. Not only does John not save the world for Alecto, but he sticks her in a body that she hates and then shoves her in the Locked Tomb.

Cam and Pal could not be more different, in no small part because they’re borrowing from very different metaphysical analogies. Yes, there’s still the Biblical stuff going on that I’ve been diligently trying not to talk about, but I would also argue that there is a heaping helping of alchemical imagery at work. Let’s start from the way that Grand Lysis is described - Cam and Pal ingest a mysterious powder (some sort of holdout drug or poison - EDIT: as others have corrected me, this is probably Pal’s powdered bones), then they suddenly erupt into all-encompassing flames, then they emerge from the flames...like a phoenix. And to alchemists, the Phoenix represented transformation, the attainment of the Philosopher’s Stone, the accomplishment of the Magnum Opus.

Another key alchemical concept/symbol is that of the Rebis. Like the Phoenix, the Rebis is meant to symbolize the end result of the Magnum Opus - a union and reconciliation of opposites, both spirit and matter, moon and sun, and male and female. And, in a book that is also borrowing pretty heavily from the Tarot - hence the Tower in the River - the Rebis is also associated with the World card, the last of the Major Arcana. Both are depicted as hermaphroditic figures, both represent the union of the material and the spiritual, and both are the end result of a process of enlightenment.

Doesn’t that sound just like Paul?

Conclusion

Paul is love.

#nona the ninth spoilers #ntn spoilers #palamedes sextus #camilla hect #the locked tomb #nona the ninth #Youtube #the sixth house #paul tlt #campal #campaldulcie

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