Tlt Meta - Blog Posts

rotating john gaius in my head and how he is both a coloniser and a victim of colonisation and how, when presented with the opportunity to rebuild all of society from the ground-up, chose not to model it after his own oppressed culture, but instead after an aesthetic VERY CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH WHITE SUPREMACY (neoclassicism), and how his daughter is the only thing in his entire, expansive empire that he named in his language in ten thousand years, and how he perpetuates the cycle he himself was a victim of. tearing my hair out tazmuir WHEN I GET YOU

hey do you guys know why harrow's name is written as "harrow nonagesimus" in the book sometimes? like i feel it only happens when she's being vulnerable or in a very intimate moment... is there an actual reason/deep meaning behind it or am i just crazy? i'd like to know y'all thoughts

some examples below the cut

from harrow the ninth (chapter 53):

gideon the ninth:

(chapter 19. "look at the key moron, not me" moment)

(chapter 20. harrow calls gideon by her name for the first time)

(chapter 24. gideon hugs harrow moment)

(chapter 25. when gideon needed harrow's help to keep jeannemary safe)

(chapter 26. when gideon wakes up from her nightmares)

(chapter 31. literally the pool scene)

Sudden brain blast over morning coffee:

John Gaius, necrolord whatever, cringiest man alive, refuses to let the earth die. And not just in the literal sense of locking the earth’s soul in a barbie on ice, in subtler ways too.

The most obvious is the memes, John constantly references memes that are dated even to us, but are in universe from a culture that died ten thousand years ago!

Slightly more subtle is the years. Why does everyone in the Houses measure in earth years? It’s been ten THOUSAND years since anyone lived on the earth! But John keeps them as a unit of measurement.

Even more subtle is the language. In sci-fi and fantasy we’re all used to the idea of the translation for the reader, people don’t speak english in lord of the rings, or dune, but the dialogue is in english for us, the readers. Not in The Locked Tomb. In this series, they ARE speaking english. Modern, bog standard english, to the point where two people born thousands of years apart speak similar enough dialects that one can pose as the other (dulcie/cytheria).

Now, this could possibly fall under that standard sci-fi trope, EXCEPT!!!! In Nona The Ninth, we see the non-house humans! And they speak dozens of languages, like you’d expect after TEN THOUSAND YEARS of linguistic drift!

John is trying SO HARD to keep the earth alive that he’s forced a language to stagnate for, say it with me now, Ten Thousand Years, to the point where even completely new things with no equivalent in our world don’t even have new words, just repurposed old ones (flimsy, sonic).

John Gaius, the first necromancer, could resurrect the planet itself, and millions of people, but he couldn’t resurrect the culture. So, John, cryogenics researcher, tried to put the culture on ice, to keep it as close to the one he remembers as possible. And he still failed.

one thing i find absolutely fascinating about the griddlehark dynamic and specifically gideon's relationship to her sacrifice/harrow's ascension

bc recall that at the end of gtn, the very last thing she says to harrow before fence time is

at this point, gideon seemingly understands that harrow doesn't actually want to become a lyctor *at the cost of gideon's life.* gideon fully understands that to harrow, losing gideon is the worst thing that could happen. the CRUELLEST thing in harrows life, when gideon is intimately familiar with the lifetime of cruelty that harrow has already endured. she's sacrificing herself so that harrow (and secondarily cam lol) can live, fully aware that this is something that she's doing TO harrow, not FOR her.

and yet we get to htn and gideon seemingly can't comprehend that harrow would try to reverse the lyctorhood process in service of saving her life. she thinks that harrow doesn't want to accept her sacrifice because she hates owing gideon anything. which is the opposite of what "the cruellest thing that anyone has ever done to you" implies.

i think the simplest answer is that gideon severely lacks emotional permanence. gideon and harrow got along for like a week at canaan house. it's been months and months since then, months where harrow isn't affirming her devotion to gideon because she literally doesn't remember that gideon exists. and i think that's another crucial piece - gideon wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, she wanted to matter to harrow for the rest of eternity, she wanted to be missed, because she has no conception of what a healthy interpersonal relationship looks like. can't wait to see whether gideon is ever going to understand harrows lobotomy the way that harrow experienced it - as the ultimate expression of love and devotion and grief.

the griddlehark reunion is going to make me ugly cry for days.