July 2022

tweet from twitter user gale na @ poisonja. "NO ONE: [blank] bible from another world where verbs are translated slightly differently: jesus woop"

gideon nav

hey!! sorry to bother you but do you know why people think anastasia might be The Body?

yeah! so there were a series of posts about it and they are still online, but the OP is no longer a locked tomb blog and i believe wants privacy from fandom overall so out of respect i’m not gonna link them

the main overall points were:

i’m in the middle of rereading gtn, and just got done w the avulsion trial, and i was wondering your thoughts on this: Pal and Cam are p adamant that gideon should be dead from that trial, is she not dead bc she’s god’s daughter and apparently doesn’t die or rot?? and if that’s the case, why would the original lyctors make a trial that is destined to kill the cav, rather than teach the necro how to use the cav’s energy and shit?

yeah!! i think general consensus is that she isn’t dead because she’s god’s daughter. it is not clear if she couldnt die, or if she just didn’t stay dead, but she couldnt be kept down by poison gas, she survived the avulsion trial, and the only reason her corpse is empty is probably because her soul got sucked up by harrow.

and i was thinking about your second point because of how ianthe definitely completed it, with no noticible effect on naberius nor coronabeth. and neither of them are individually More Energy Having than gideon. basically, i think she was able to complete it by drawing on both of them, and i think that might be the trick of it – it might actually require collaboration, i.e. drawing energy from multiple sources instead of just one, thereby spreading out the damage and not killing or brain-damaging anyone.

OR, honestly, it might just be designed to kill the cav. mercy never seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of more lyctors. avulsion means tearing away. maybe mercy thought that having your cav die mid-lyctor-trial was better than your cav commiting suicide and you then eating them, cursing you to a myriad of regret.

thinking abt gideon’s corruption arc because for the longest time i didn’t believe that cytherea had killed issac&jeannemarie, because i didn’t understand why. killing dulcie&pro makes sense. killing abigail&magnus makes sense. but jeannemary? issac? it doesn’t make sense. they were kids, they didn’t even try the lyctor trials, and they absolutley would not have gone through with the process even if they had.

and THEN. in my most recent reread of GtN i realized that it was actually incredibly important for issac to die in front of jeannemarie and for gideon to fail in saving either of them, because this is the moment that gideon decided to die for harrow. right after issac gets skewered by like 500 bones, gideon has a personal epiphany that “nobody should have to see their necromancer die”.

i think that in a very big way the deaths of issac and jeannemarie were the tipping point for gideon’s corruption arc. the point of no return. other ppl have written about this more eloquently but the entire book, cytherea is shaping gideon into a Cavalier. because gideon isn’t initially. she’s pretending, and is not particularly skilled at it. during their time at canaan house cytherea basically instructs gideon in manners and servitude but what she really needs to teach gideon is sacrifice. what she needs to show gideon is what it does to a cavalier to see their necromancer die in front of them. what she needs gideon to see is a moment where a cavalier could have died to maybe save their necromancer, but didn’t. this is the moment where cytherea ties the noose. 

an illustration of ianthe tridentarius from the locked tomb series. she is shirtless, standing in front of a glowing yellow light, and her skin has a purple-green tinge to it. only one eye can be seen and it glows bright blue with brown flecks. her right arm is held up in front of her face. the right arm is defleshed, the bare yellow bones held together with ligaments. there is some amount of muscle showing in her shoulder, connecting to the humerus of her upper arm. in her forearm, there are two muscles connecting the radius and ulna. there is a wad of bright yellow fad at her palm, and there are long tendons on heach finger. blood vessels and nerves can be seen intertwined with the bone. she holds a golden rapier.
the same image as above but cropped to see the details on the bone arm. it is mostly anatomically correctm

EIGHTH SAINT TO SERVE THE KING UNDYING

a person with a ginger undercut, dark sunglasses, and a skull face mask stands holding a sword and a dumbell weight. Their T shirt has the sleeves rolled up amd says: I am a cavalier of the ninth house. i workout so that when my emotionally compromised (crossed out) necromancer achieves lyctorhood she might last longer than 9 seconds against the heralds of the ressurection beasts. the T shirt has a skull and a squiggly line drawn on it.
The same person as before sits on the floor.
*makes fun of you for being an out-of-shape necromantic shrimp* 
*immediately dies*

shoutout to @ru-debega and @ohlookitscazz for the incredibly specific gideon nav workout shirt!!!

i too am jumping on the “Crown Him With Many Crowns is Coronabeth” theory and like 1) that name’s boss, i desperately want to know the rest of it and 2) that name is absolutely a reference to Crown Him With Many Crowns, a hymn that is literally all about jesus conquering death and being the Eternal King. it’s very long and fairly repetative so I’m not gonna paste it all here but this is a taste:

Crown him the Lord of heaven,

Enthroned in worlds above;

Crown him the king, to whom is given

The wondrous name of Love,

Crown him with many crowns,

As thrones before him fall.

Crown him, ye kings, with many crowns,

For He is King of all.

and im absolutley fascinated with how Coronabeth could have gotten that name and how it could relate to what she’s been up to and what her goals are. im ESPECIALLY fascinated how this could interact with what Ianthe “went to see a man about a queen” The First is planning. all i’m saying is if anyone in the universe is gonna ever be able to actually defeat and usurp John Gaius, the King Undying, The Necrolord Prime, it would be our favorite BadTwin and LessBadTwin.

tumblr post by user locked-tomb-shenanigans. it reads: Visceral mental image of Griddlehark cuddling in bed about to fall asleep but then Gideon suddenly says “you know, toothpaste is just bone soap” and Harrow mutters very quietly “I want you to die” from where she’s nestled in her arms and does not move an inchALT
a cartoon drawing of gideon and harrow from the locked tomb series. Gideon is wearing a bright yellow tank top with a skull and crossbones on it. She reads from a magazine emblazoned with the word TITS!. She has her other arm around Harrow, who has her eyes closed. There is a black blanket covering up to their waists, and they are lying on two black pillows. The pillows both are covered with pillowcases that depict two skeleton hands making the peace sign hand gesture. Gideon is saying “you know, toothbrush is just bone soap” and harrow is saying “i want you to die”. ALT

Gideon: Babe we HAVE to get the peace sign pillowcases

Harrow: ….. ok

one underrated part of Gideon the Ninth is right before everything goes to shit Harrow says “Follow me”, and Gideon is internally thinking like: im SO done with Harrow. she sucks so bad. i have prepared the highest quality of verbal insults and i am going to publicly roast her so utterly that she will have to be taken away to be mercy-killed. but then Harrow whips out the “please 🥺” and Gideon is just like. fine. nevermind. and she never brings it up again. incredible moment.

Emperor John Gaius. always on that damn tablet.

Meme of two girls thinking about Gideon nav and harrowhark Nonagesimus. the girl on the left is smiling and looking up, the girl on the right is crying and frowning.ALT

this is how I feel abt Them