March 2023

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lololopo64:

Nona learns how to use a camera

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iphisesque:

she’s the saddest boydyke in the world. she died so her lover could eat her but she in turn refused to. she had a tense confrontation with her dead mother who wanted to slaughter her on an altar to the antichrist and who was haunting the corpse of a woman she’d fucked. she was resurrected by her deadbeat father god. she used to daydream and pray for glory and a family and now that she’s got it she hates it. her only friend is the pathetic codependent washed out sister of a girl she’d wanted to fuck. i didn’t say her name but she popped right into your head didn’t she

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alectology-archive:

When everyone we loved has gone or fled, That’s morning. Empty’s just another word for clean. Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed.ALT
“Maybe that’s for the best,” said Pyrrha. Then she opened her mouth and said quietly— “A…” “Don’t,” Nona found herself saying. “Don’t. Don’t call me that or anything like that … don’t make me remember. I don’t want to … You won’t like it. Don’t. Don’t make me do it.”ALT
“This isn’t how it happens,” said the Body. Which gave Harrow a curious strength.ALT
“Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?” asked Augustine. “What is the difference?” said God.ALT
“I will forgive you,” she said bravely, and she swallowed three times in quick succession. Augustine looked at her with an expression of growing bewilderment. “There’s one thing left—one last chance. If you can do this for me … if you make me believe you … I’ll forgive everything. Rinse my memory, if you want to. That idiot infant Harrowhark did it. I’ll work out how you can do it to me. I’ll let you rip out my brain if you want to. But I will forgive you, if you do just—one—thing.”ALT
"... None of them will have to remember anything. I know where remembrance lives in the brain, and he won’t have any of it. You know that too, don’t you? It’s the easiest thing in the world … to forget.” She said, “To forget … everything?” “Yes,” he said, and more sharply— “Yes. It’s the only way.”ALT
“Thankfully, Pent was quicker on the uptake. “You didn’t remove the memories of your cavalier, Harrowhark. I think that would have been beyond even the powers of a Lyctor. You falsified them. You skinned them over with something that looked good.” What a waste of a woman, to have ended her life at the bottom of a ladder.”ALT
"Her filthiness is on her feet,” he murmured. “She has not remembered her end.” “For God’s sake, raise your hands, Octakiseron,” she said. “Or make me strike down an unarmed man.” And Silas said, “Is this how it happens, then?”ALT
I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOUALT
This time will be the time we get it right: Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long; Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true.ALT
“Augustine the First,” said the man who was God, and the God who was man. “My first saint. My first hand, and fist, and gesture. Will you swear your loyalty to me again, clean slate, fresh start? Or not?” He murmured, “You said there was no forgiveness.” “‘I pardon him, as God shall pardon me,’” said the Emperor. “Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.”ALT
“Augustine, you promised me that after we did it we would go somewhere and drop into the nearest sun—” “That was when this was a fantasy,” he said. ALT
“The bullet went into your head,” said Hot Sauce. Nona tried to remember everything Honesty had ever told her about lying, lies, porkies, and untruths. “You think it did,” she said cunningly, “but it didn’t.”ALT
“Yes,” he said, as though halfway dreaming. He stuck his finger in the sand and made a hole so deep that water glimmered at the bottom. Hypnotized, he did it again. “Yes. Once we’ve rested. No, we’ll do it before you’ve rested. You can rest afterward … resurrection is different from waking up. We’ll get them all back … some of them, anyway … or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. And my loved ones … The ones I left, I’ll bring back. I know I can."ALT
“But why make so many changes? Why is this narrative so different? This isn’t how it happened at all. I understand that … that Gideon had to be—absent, but why…” “This isn’t a picture you’re drawing, Harrow,” said Pent. “It’s a play you’re directing. You set up a stage in the River, you pulled in ghosts as your actors, and you enforced certain rules to keep your cast on-script."ALT
Five for tradition and debts to the dead; Six for the truth over solace in lies; Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies; Eight for salvation no matter the cost; Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.ALT

Harrow the Ninth & Nona the Ninth + rewriting narratives

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🩸🩸🩸💀💀💀

[image id: two versions of a drawing of gideon nav and harrowhark nonagesimus from the locked tomb book series. harrowhark, about a head shorter than the other girl, is standing besides gideon, looking angrily to her left. gideon is looking down at her. harrowhark has brown skin, almost black brown eyes, and black hair. she wears several pieces of bone earrings and piercings. she has on a black undershirt adorned with her ribcage chest piece, teeth necklaces, and a spiked collar made of bone. she wears a darker black cloak with bone adorning the rim of its hood and a bone clasp. her hand is just barely poking into the frame, showing her fiddling with a bone rosary. behind her, gideon has on a similarly colored black cloak lacking harrow’s bone adornments but with a similar bone clasp. underneath the cloak she wears a lighter black sleeveless shirt and jeans with a studded belt. on her wrist she wears a bone spiked gauntlet, the beginning of it visible in frame. gideon’s skin tone is a slightly lightered and warmer brown tone than harrows. her hair is red, and she has a pair of black sunglasses on that obscure her golden eyes. the background is red, with a yellow-white shadow of the girls’ figures framing their left backside. behind that shadow there are line drawings of bones of the same color. the only difference between the two images is the skull face paint; the first image shows both girls with it on, the second without it. end id]

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w1w1ster1a:

nun procession <:

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w1w1ster1a:

a rare peaceful moment at the ninth house! c:

somehow i find these two hanging out as kiddos cute lol

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nose-coffee:

you know what i DO want to talk about? that scene on top of the truck where nona’s arguing w varun, and varun asks “do you love?” and nona says, “yes - no yes. i don’t know what it means. i say it, but i dont know what it means. did i ever know what it meant?” which is truly heartbreaking to hear from a character who’s spent the entire book up until now loving most everything she lays her eyes on with nearly reckless abandon.

and fifty pages later - after paul’s birth (pyrrha saying, “it’s not love, what you’re about to do. it’s a mistake.” being almost immediately replied to with, “the perfect friendship, the perfect love.”/”life is too short, and love is too long.”), and kiriona’s interrogation (”okay. different question – do you love her?”), a near constant barrage of “what does love really mean?” and “what is love?” and “what would love make you do?” “what lengths would you go to for love?” when she’s already struggling with the idea of knowing if she’s felt love at all - she very nearly gives in to that despair, the lack of certainty that she knows what her feelings mean and that she’s allowed to feel them. she’s mourning, and she’s not able to reach pyrrha through her grief, and everyone else she’s with is more broken than she’s ever seen them before. but then paul reminds her of noodle. and nona, in a moment of lurching panic, decides to live, if only just to save noodle.

to me, that’s a devastating moment of raw, human love. it’s like that moment in alien (1979) where ripley’s about to abandon ship, and then goes back when she realises jones (the ship cat) is still on board. nona was ready to let them all die, hopless and lost and sad, every one of them– but noodle, a sweet yet unimportant pet, is what brings her back.

and i think that’s what make’s paul’s statement of, “it’s done, it’s finished. you can’t take loved away.” hit as hard as it does. she’s just had this crisis of faith in her own personal belief system of loving-things-for-the-sake-of-loving-them, only to have it reaffirmed, and is now facing the abyss of personhood, facing returning to a self who was hurt and was deeply angry, going so far as to say, “i’ll be different…and palamedes – i won’t love him…i won’t love anything, i won’t know how.”

paul says, “don’t worry,” (even though she just explained why she was worried), “we loved you too,” because maybe nona’s right and she won’t know how to love anymore, but she needs to know that she did. she did love, and she was loved, and there was never a doubt in anyone elses mind that she loved them fully and completely and genuinely. maybe she thought she was faking it, maybe she thought she was just making it up, but it was real, and now it’s done, and no one can take it away. no one.

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madivandoren:

Rereading Harrow the Ninth :)

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pygmypouter:

I WANNA MAKE THE EARTH SMILE :-D

I WANNA MAKE THE EARTH DANCE !

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jjelliacee:

the saddest girl in the whole entire world

[Image description: A drawing of Kiriona Gaia from The Locked Tomb. She is in profile, facing right with a hand on her chest. She has a chest wound with bone fragments in it and a cut on her throat. She wears a bone crown and a white unbuttoned coat. End description]