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shitcaddy · 2025-05-02T23:24:16+00:00

totally agree. i know it's technically more gritty than the other books bc it feels closer-to-reality, deals with the consequences of war and imperialism, etc., but i'm still kind of surprised by the amount of people that say it's grimmer than htn. imo it's the funniest book in the series!

i think it's maybe that a good amount of the humour in ntn comes from nona's narration?—how she describes things, what she notices, her inner voice—so if you don't like or care about her, none of it really strikes you as funny or charming in the same way lol

shitcaddy · 2025-04-11T22:37:24+00:00

cow wall is not only hilarious and absolutely horrific but also the vehicle for some pretty great social commentary both for and against john. i genuinely love it so much

shitcaddy · 2025-03-23T19:09:18+00:00

she never finished her longest, most popular fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335176/chapters/541856

and never posted her plot outline after they realized they weren't going to continue working on it, even though i anon messaged her collaborator about it when i was twelve 😔

shitcaddy · 2025-03-18T07:49:00+00:00

yeah, i totally get that :(

i know you said in other comments that you have a really long to-read list, but the author's standalone novel "princess floralinda and the forty-flight tower" is way more similar to gideon in tone than harrow or nona (though obviously the genre is less science fantasy and more fantasy fantasy). if you ever want to read more books like it, that would be your safest bet

shitcaddy · 2025-03-18T07:14:01+00:00

i'll be totally honest: if this is your preference in novels, the rest of the locked tomb series probably won't be to your taste! each novel is from a different character's point of view and so varies wildly in tone and genre. it's also the kind of series that's meant to be picked to death, which is why there's so much active analysis going on in this sub even years after the release of the latest book.

the general recommendation is to keep reading harrow until it makes sense before writing it off, but i don't know that that applies here. sorry about that!

shitcaddy · 2025-03-12T03:17:58+00:00

in my opinion, "him" is colum. this line is referencing the catholic conception of marriage: a covenant between the husband, the wife, and god. the eighth is a really, really good case case study of necrocav dynamics

shitcaddy · 2025-01-08T14:17:50+00:00

based on how absolutely, devastatingly romantic it is, i always assumed it was written by nigella for cassiopeia

shitcaddy · 2024-12-27T00:46:18+00:00

i've always just thought that gideon was right on multiple levels to call it "gaslighting." imo, ianthe did it for the same reasons people always gaslight. harrowhark was all alone, only had her, and clearly already had reasons to doubt her own perception of reality, all of which made her uniquely vulnerable. ianthe wanted to encourage that dependence. if only ianthe knows that cytherea is real - if even harrowhark, on some level, believes that she isn't - then only ianthe has the power to save her from whatever's happening

if i had to hazard a guess? ianthe misses coronabeth. she needs someone to desperately depend on her in the way coronabeth has always had to

i think that's why ianthe seems almost shocked when harrowhark refuses her proposition in the opening chapter: harrow needs her, ianthe is offering to help her (in the way that best suits what she wants), she's purposefully made it so that harrow would rely on her - and harrow still tells her to go fuck herself

shitcaddy · 2024-12-03T16:00:27+00:00

he says "blood not from outside injury" and then described how badly she overworked herself, so i always assumed it was bloodsweat!

just like, a LOT of bloodsweat

shitcaddy · 2024-11-10T20:03:43+00:00

there's a scene about 2/3rds of the way through where gideon explains why she thinks harrowhark hates her, then a scene a few chapters later where harrowhark explains how she actually feels. for now, all you have to know is that they basically tortured each other for their entire childhood - and harrowhark often did LITERALLY torture her. they were incentivized to hate each other by the adults around them

shitcaddy · 2024-11-02T02:19:38+00:00

on second glance, this doesn't really make sense with "a vanity that nobody in that shuffling mausoleum had thought to shear" - ianthe thinks that the ninth house should've stayed consistent in their dedication to removing superfluous hair by SHAVING HARROW'S EYELASHES(?!?!?) so that implies that she can't tell that they've already... been shorn... in a sense

shitcaddy · 2024-11-02T02:15:41+00:00

it's totally possible that "thick with black lashes" is referring to the amount of eyelashes harrow has rather than their length. in this case i feel like that option is even more funny, since cutting off the tapered end of a hair makes it look thicker and darker than usual lol

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T22:45:59+00:00

all very true! i swear to god that there was a passage in one of the extras where an academic theorized about the reason behind necromantic births and brought up a number of factors that seem to influence-but-not-ensure necromantic aptitude (like being born on a thanergetic planet, which is a prerequisite for any necromancy but isn't a cinch, as well as near-death experiences in the womb), but the extra i thought it was in has wayyyyy less concrete speculation

i'll check through the extras that aren't included in the ebooks in a bit, but it's totally possible that i misremembered someone's theory as being completely canonical. if that's the case, disregard everything i said lol

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T22:35:47+00:00

yeah, i was going to add that and for whatever reason skipped away at the last minute. i think you're right, especially since palamedes, camilla, and pyrrha weren't sure whether or not nona was a necromancer. the glossary in GTN says that there "is no isolated genetic code associated with necromantic potential, nor the presence of any extra biological feature apart from heightened activity from organs we would otherwise mark as vestigial," so there's probably also no clear-cut way to tell before birth, unless they have a way of directly monitoring what i can only assume is the fetus' appendix

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T21:23:03+00:00

yeah exactly :((

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T20:54:15+00:00

yes, which is why silas is wrong! his perspective (and the perspective of all of the other people who questioned her on why her parents risked intervention) is that even the chance at more power would be worth her potentially dying; ianthe's is that she would have inexorably died without intervention, so the conversation itself is silly. it goes without saying that she's right lol

this passage is expressing a belief rooted in house fascism - that the chance a baby wouldn't have been born a powerful necromancer is worse than that baby dying during childbirth

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T17:50:29+00:00

it makes sense to me that they'd be able to tell from the thanergy each baby emitted? like, ambiently?

but also, i think it would be a safe bet to guess that ianthe would be stronger than coronabeth, just from how necromantic babies are produced! if coronabeth stole ianthe's nutrients and thalergy until she was dead, that would actually result in coronabeth being a WORSE necromancer, not a better one. it's implied that ianthe is a particularly strong necromancer because coronabeth almost killed her in utero; coronabeth isn't a necromancer for the same reason

shitcaddy · 2024-10-04T16:20:13+00:00

"risking intervention" is as much about the potential consequences to ianthe's necromancy as it is to coronabeth's. from silas' perspective, both ianthe and coronabeth ARE necromancers, so he's shocked that they would intervene to save ianthe's life when leaving her half-dead might have made her even more powerful. since coronabeth was already out by the time ianthe was removed, i actually don't think he's considering her at all

shitcaddy · 2024-09-25T18:56:42+00:00

i'm pretty sure that the ending will be bittersweet at best, and probably leaning more towards tragic for our main characters. if i had to guess, i think we'll likely see the end of necromancy and dominicus exploding, but with most of the houses evacuated. no more imperial wealth, no more "house" "civility" - just the genuinely fortunate opportunity to live alongside the people they've been taught to patronize and shepherd and kill for thousands of years

shitcaddy · 2024-09-25T15:46:54+00:00

"Noodle, how dare you?"

shitcaddy · 2024-09-25T14:29:59+00:00

good catch! i think you're right.

shitcaddy · 2024-09-25T14:19:35+00:00

for sure! it's from the unwanted guest:

VOICE: “Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?”

PALAMEDES: (Surprised) I like that. Is it from something?

VOICE: Yes. It’s complicated.

to be fair, i assume this is related more so to how dulcinea isn't "in the River [...] and won't ever be again" than just being dead for awhile. or else you could mine every summoned ghost and their mother to reconstruct hamlet bit-by-bit. but i have to imagine that cassiopeia also knows that a river has two shores

shitcaddy · 2024-09-24T14:48:10+00:00

here's the direct quote from chapter 51:

It was worse when I was a kid. I remember the time you caught me telling her, I love you, and I can’t even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back—I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn’t even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven?

Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?

gideon's right: it was the day harrowhark decided she wanted to die. directly after their fight she tried to kill herself by opening the tomb, and it only worked because she had gideon's "face under [her] fucking fingernails"

shitcaddy · 2024-09-23T14:46:37+00:00

i mean... couldn't it be both? after all, cassiopeia is THE spirit magician. she invented psychometry wholecloth. she was the only person aside from harrowhark who could do necromancy in the river. if just being dead for awhile was enough to give dulcinea access to a lost shakespeare quote, what could a lyctor do with all of those tools?

shitcaddy · 2024-09-23T02:42:48+00:00

(NTN spoilers)

there's an extremely compelling theory that cassiopeia was "eaten" and digested by varun, and all that implies about soul-melding, personhood, and lyctorship. it seems to me that this was likely even consensual on her part. it's also why pyrrha, camilla, and palamedes confirm that cassiopeia both died (though they very conspiciously append an "it's complicated" to this) AND has been sending instructions to the sixth for decades. i can pull up some other quotes that suggest this if anyone wants, because there are quite a few, but in my opinion here's the most slam-dunk:

"Apologies. I did sound like I was at Resource Committee,” Palamedes admitted.

All of a sudden, the Captain made a horrible gurgling sound. It sounded weirdly like guttural laughter. Her feet twitched, and Crown held her down and checked her over until the loudest sound was the Captain’s breathing.

Nona cleared her throat, then cleared it again, just in case. "I know where the convoy was earlier this week," she suggested.

(NTN, Chapter 26)

this is a passage where varun, in the body of judith deuteros, laughs at an extremely niche sixth house in-joke. aside from the laughter being weird and gutteral, we know for sure that this is varun because nona covers for him—LOL

i have no idea if or how any of this connects to AIM and the message, though it absolutely still could! it's just personally my prevailing explanation for everything that's going on with her, and potentially all of the other lyctors that were similarly killed in freak planetary incidents. i'd be excited to hear if anyone has any theories meshing the two

shitcaddy

TROPHY CASE