If the Harrow/Gideon relationship is the heart of this
series, then the Ortus&Harrow bond is its kidneys or something. It’s so
important to me, and it’s so hard to say why! Basically, Ortus and Harrow don’t
like each other. They also don’t hate each other. Their relationship isn’t like
the overwhelmingly emotional bond between Harrow and Gideon, Ortus and Harrow
genuinely don’t care all that much about one another. But they still spent most
of their lives side by side, each immersed in their own separate obsession,
both suffocated by the solitude of the Ninth House.
And that brings with it the horrible intimacy of knowing someone very deeply despite
not really wanting or trying to know them at all. The bond with the-other-person-who-was-there-when-the-thing-happened,
the person who can restore your sanity and equilibrium just by acknowledging
that the things that happened, happened. In this, Ortus&Harrow very much
reminds me of a relationship between siblings, possibly estranged siblings. Ortus
knows how much Harrow suffered, and he knows he could have reached out but did
not, and he apologises, and that too little too late gesture is far more healing
and far more truthful than anything Harrow could have ever gotten from another
adult, including God. And Harrow in turn, despite mocking Ortus’s poetry, turns
out to know quite a lot of it by heart. You don’t have to love something to
know it way too well.
so funny to me how augustine and mercymorn were like “don’t worry guys. we have a plan to distract god. just wait for the signal, you’ll know it when you see it.” and the signal was to just start having a threesome with god on the dinner table right in front of harrow and ianthe
For my money, one of the most satisfying elements in Nona the Ninth was that we finally got an account of everything leading up to the destruction of Earth - notably, Harrow cuts off the retelling before the Resurrection, the establishment of the Empire, and the lyctoral ascension at Canaan House - in no small part because we get some really comprehensive information about who the original lyctors were and what they were up to.
So in this post, I want to talk about what we learned about the lyctor’s pre-Resurrection lives and what we can infer from them about their post-Resurrection lives.
shoutout to judith deuteros for, in a series full of people simply not having a good time of it right now, being in probably the top five people consistently simply not having a good time of it right now. again I cannot exaggerate how stiff the competition she’s up against is, but for three books now nothing good has ever happened to judith deuteros and no one but corona seems to worry overmuch about it
locked tomb modern day au where palamedes writes those 99 cent erotica novels on amazon
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
Camilla edits them mostly to preserve what vestiges of Palamedes’ modesty she can still preserve. He uses the pen name Sex Pal and signs off all his messages and every tweet with “Forever your, SEX PAL”
He calls his fans his Sex Pals and when he hears Camilla say “I wish you wouldn’t call them that” out of the blue it’s a sign that she’s reading his tweets.
anyway now that Nona’s been out for 48 hours I feel comfortable sharing my personal favorite joke of the entire thing, which was Camilla valiantly trying to deflect Nona’s curiosity and defend Palamedes’ honor by insisting that he’s a respectable nerd whose sexual interests center academic achievement only for Palamedes to out himself as having a nurse kink with 0 hesitation the second he got control of the body