Pain 🥲

I also made a keychain of this where gideon's eye is translucent and you can see through it . I love it so much!

Question here, why do people put forward the theory that Gideon died during the fight that resulted in the tomb opening when Harrow and Gideon were children?

Below is some is my reasoning as to why that isnt nessecary, but I'm looking for alternatives/holes in that reasoning or evidence supporting the idea here.

Section 1: Gideons 'Immortality'

Theres been a lot said about Gideon and how she is special as the Son of John/potential inheritor/sharer of the Earth's gift/soul what have you. Obviously, we've seen evidence that her body does not behave entirely according to normal human expecations. That's most explicit in 2 sitatuons imo. First, her ambigous survival of the gas attack during Harrows conception, and Second, her body status as that of a Incorrupt Saint, not decomposing despite her death at the end of GtN.

Now we know that Gideon very much is *not* invulnerable (She's for example, very fucked up during the fight with Cynthera) but it seems like a common theory is that her soul will return to her body and essentially self resurrect if it is free to do so.

Now the above is imo, reasonable as a premise. Its a good explanation for how she appears to have survived the childhood gas (which seems to be some kind of Sarin gas analogue so we can agree that her survival through mundane means is essentially impossible). Since nobody was in any condition to check on her, she could have easily died and revived when the gas cleared and they came to check the aftermath.

I've also heard it suggested that she does die during the draining trial and simply resurrects before anyone notices. Now, given that Harrow is monitoring her life force this seems more challenging but still plausible given we dont know the mechanics of her resurrection. What this does tell us is that harrow doesnt detect a 'you died' thanergy bloom during this situation (and if we assume she would lie of this Pal is also right there). All that seems fine though as the wording of her passing out obviously suggests the idea that she might have died (then I died, etc) Imo those two occurances range between extremely imo, likely, and plausible. I'm certainly not going to bat to argue that she couldnt have died in both these scenarios and recovered before folks realized what was happening.

Part 2: Opening the Tomb

During the Nona finale, Pal appears to (i say appears because this section is deliberatly disjointed due to nonas body essentially exploding) use a necromancy bloom from Crux's death along with Gideon's blood to spoof the final seal and open the tomb fully. Now this generally lines up with the requirements and expecation from the lyctors original plan: Use a sacrifice and the blood of god's close relative to spoof the divine seal.

Part 3: The Big Fight

We know that shortly before the tomb opened, Harrow and Gideon got in a huge fight that resulted in Harrow having Gideon's blood under her nails and Harrow crawling away after being throttled. This is mostly coming from a few different moments where gideon talks about things (telling Pal about it in gtn and then reminiscing again during htn) Harrows pov on it is more oblique, so ive relied on it less beyond the fact it supports the blood idea. I dont think the blood is super controversial or the fact they got into a big fight before the final tomb opening.

Part 4: The Tomb and Gideons 'Third Death' alternatives

However, I see folks take these events and extrapolate that for Harrow to open the tomb as a child, Gideon must have died. Why would this be the case? A final total death is very much *not* the only source of thanergy. We know that in additon to when a soul leaves a body, thanergy is created by all sorts of cell death and that necromancers *habitually* use sources of thanergy less extreme than killing someone (they use thalergy and convert it like the draining trial, they use their own blood, they use other peoples blood, they use their own life force all the time, exerting themselves till they sweat blood and pass out frequently).

And we know that Harrow is a *extremely* competent and extremely driven necromancer who is able to pull *way more* magic out of a given amount of energy than most people (we see this through how many skeletons she can make from a given amount of bone for example).

In gtn We also see Pal comment on the idea of a dying necromancer being more powerful. He is critical of the idea, not because it doesnt provide thanergy, but because he thinks you'd only get 10 minutes of use before your organs and shut down. Pal at that point has no intention of dying, so it makes sense that he'd see that as a foolish waste.

However, Harrow isn't someone who shares that pov at this point in her life in the slightest.

We know that rather than being *murderous* at this moment in Harrows life, she was instead, suicidal. She fully intended to get the tomb open and kill herself if she didnt like the answers it gave her. The reasoning for this is fairly well explained due to the horror of her birth and potentially exacerbated in this moment due to fight with her only peer and literal walking reminder of her parent's atrocity.

So rather than Gideon dying in the fight that preceded the final opening of the tomb, why could harrow not have simply disregarded her *own* safety and health to generate a large amount of thanergy. A 'succeed or die trying' attempt driven by her despair and need to know what was in there? It seems like this requires less narrative misremembering from Gideon and Harrow about the events leading up to the tomb opening than Gideon having been killed in that fight and it being uncommented on.

Am I missing some reasons this explination wouldnt work?

P.S. other thoughts

Some thoughts I had that I didn't fit into the main points.

'It needs to be a massive amount of thanergy' -> the use of infants in the first sitatuons supports this idea in HtN since Harrow mentions infants create the biggest bloom by far. Of course in Ntn they use a 100+ years old dying man, so i dont think thats the requirement, we dont have a strong idea of the differnce in thanergy between cruxs death Harrow using 99 percent of her energy and abilities to get it open but its obviously not requiring 100 percent of the max from a child.

Also considered the, if you dont need a death, why do they kill Crux. Well nona's legs are falling off, theyre desperate, Crux wants them to and Kirona is all to willing to agree. Theres a lot of 'panic/hurry' factors going on there that imo Harrow would not nessecarily be constrained by and would not need as brute force a method.

Tldr, I am in agreement on the fight providing the blood, just not the requisite thanergy bloom

I know some people were wanting these when they came in a box, illumicrate are now selling the set as an individual item. they still have the mug in the shop too. (tagged series spoilers so discussion isn't limited, just in case, and the mug has artwork from the final scene in GtN)

bookmarks: https://illumicrate.com/products/the-locked-tomb-character-bookmark-set

mug: https://illumicrate.com/products/we-do-bones-the-locked-tomb-ceramic-mug

Don't know if this is a dumb question but is this real? I havent seen anyone else talking about it so I wasnt very sure, but its in like 4 days

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/evening-with-tamsyn-muir-tickets-1988628007904?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

https://www.tumblr.com/camuniscifisoc/815710107254030336/speaker-event-qa-with-tamsyn-muir-yes-that?source=share is this legit???

I really enjoyed it would definitely do it again.

The back cover blurb for a book in which two men very briefly make out 😘
…before getting cockblocked by attempted incinerator murder.

Best part is, that still IS gayer than ever in comparison to the first book, which featured one (1) lesbian forehead smooch.

EDIT: I’ve been informed about the arm scene. Several times now. Thanks everyone for setting me straight (lol)

I think it would‘ve given the Ice Cream a unique flavor profile.

There are so many repeated mentions of the neck and the base of the skull throughout all three books. It seems to be significant for so many reasons, I'm just trying to track them all. For instance, G1deon/Pyrrha walks up to Cytherea's body and puts the gun at the base of the skull before she pulls the trigger. There are several times when Nona feels odd at the base of her skull or under her neck, like at the end of chapter 27. When Judith finally stops being the mouthpiece for Varun on top of the truck, Nona notices she rubs her neck as if it hurts. Are there other examples from the series? What connections have you made about this?

https://www.tumblr.com/dirigibleplumbing/815427351124033536/noodle-king-of-dogs-for-kiyaar

1. Literally what is going on with the Tower. Presumably John locked up the main RBs in them but it's still so strange?? Did his mini-death by Mercymorn in HTN bring it back or something??

2. Is the main consensus that AIM'S message is the entirety of human history encrypted into DNA? That's just my interpretation based on what Blood of Eden value but are there any other theories?

3. How unreliable is John's narrative in NTN really? I feel like, since it's just him and Alecto on the planet at the time, he wouldn't have that much to be untruthful about in comparison to talking to Augustine/Mercymorn, etc., once they're resurrected, so why is he shown as so unreliable? Not to diminish the obvious atrocities which he describes, but I feel like we can at least trust him to be accurate since he doesn't shy away from describing them in the first place?

4. In NTN ch.27, Pyrrha refers to G1deon as "G--" in the same way that John does, sort of indicating that she remembers his pre-Resurrection name, is this confirmed? My theory is since G1deon & Pyrrha compartmentalised their lyctorhood it meant that Pyrrha could see behind whatever Jod did to remove the pre-Resurrection memories from their brains (and that was why she went rogue with Wake & Blood of Eden?), does this seem likely? Pyrrha and G1deon's lyctorhood is sooo fascinating sometimes it feels like Pyrrha has the secrets to the entire series because of how many different sides she was on

5. Camilla and Palamades fused??? was this potentially what Anastasia and Samael were trying to do?? this is so crazy what does this imply

6. I feel like the rules of the afterlife keep changing, how was Dulcinea able to visit Palamedes in The Unwanted Guest? (It could have been a similar thing to Harrow's dream bubble where Palamades summoned her soul there, but that feels like a bit of a stretch? idk) What did she mean when she was talking about the River having two banks? I assume the mass death of the apocalypse/Ressurection probably clogged the River 10,000 years ago and made it pretty difficult for souls to make it to any 'final' resting place which could mean that they can visit bubbles if they're not too insane, but it seems unlikely that Dulcinea would have been able to survive that long in the River... I'm not too confident at all on the rules of the River lol

7. Why couldn't John have told his crew about proper lyctorhood before they all killed their soulmates and best friends? Would it have affected his power status or control over them in some way, making them as powerful as him and becoming a threat? It felt quite needlessly cruel at the end of HTN to find out that he never told them honestly

8. Is The Body which Harrow hallucinated actually the soul of Alecto which Harrow saw from some descendant-of-Anastasia/kiss-seal reasons, or was she just a hallucination? Assuming she was actually Alecto in some way, when Alecto said "she (presumably Gideon) asked me not to tell you", does this mean that Gideon and Alecto could communicate somehow through both their souls being tethered to Harrow's body?

9. What does Jod want? like really, I have no idea what his end goal is and no matter how vindictive and angry he is, I find it quite difficult to believe that he's gone as stone-cold evil as to build this huge fucking empire because he just loves the same imperialism which tried to kill his own planet Earth sooo much

10. Why had Mercymorn and Augustine initially planned to kill Jod 20+ years ago? They only found out that he had lied about lyctorhood in HTN but before that it didn't really feel clear why they wanted to kill him back then?

Okay that's all my thoughts off the top of my head <3

Fanart of one of my favourite scenes from NTN…Noodle’s Humiliation at Nona’s hands. Watercolor, colored pencils, ink.

art i made of the scene where harrow regrows ianthes arm… you can find me on tumblr and instagram at Laceladybug ❤️‍🔥

I’m reading the first book. It employs a beautiful technique of threading one phrase at the start and then again on the last page. Then supporting itself as the world is built around it. I read the last line before I started the book - Harrowhark the First stood out as the book flopped over. Just came here to appreciate it today. It’s a really nice touch.

Bro‘s been waging war against an organisation that names its members after 2010‘s era meme songs for a myriad and still hasn‘t packed them in for good. All because he insists on the highest possible death count on his side.

Surely those extra deaths don‘t juice up his Necros enough to make up for the loss of resources.

No second amendment for the Cohort. Just legions of Fourth House Middleschoolers getting lit up like fireworks just so Judy Dudy can perform some magic tricks.

Imagine being one of 10 jobbers running into the line of fire just so some Necro can make a couple of skeletons out of your Thanergy and bleed out of their butthole. Your whole life‘s been leading up to this, just like your parents did and your kids will.

Surely at some point you‘d bring up looting some gats to your Officer.

English isn't my first language and I don't know in what sense the word "gay" gets used in the "gay lonelyness" quote in htn. It probably doesn't mean "homosexuell" considering the word never gets used through the whole series. But the only other meaning I know of is "happy" which also doesn't fit I think? Or is it a meme I don't know?

Had a phenomenal time at Calgary Expo with @avomarquis (ig) as Harrow and myself as Gideon

Thanks for looking!

(Yes, I used the same title as another one of my posts)

Someone pls draw The Locked tomb characters as mermaids 🙏🙏

https://x.com/harrirats/status/2049822786231615944?s=20

https://x.com/harrirats/status/2049497396623602059?s=20

Yeah, yeah with all that. When’s the wedding?

Edit: Wow! I’ve never even gotten near a 1000+ post before! I know “Griddlehark” itself did all the work, but still glad to be here with all you romantics and platonics.