Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
Not to mention that everyone from Dominicus seems to have surnames that match linguistically with the corresponding number of their houses. Jod literally named everyone 2-9 lol
I think often about the heavy irony of John laughing at Wake's name and mocking BOE's naming systems. BOE are trying to preserve lost Earth culture, but clueless of context, their fragmented merging of high and low culture comes across as silly to John (and us. But it's a noble attempt to preserve everything, even the stuff that wouldn't necessarily seem 'worth' saving. But what does John rename his friends? Pyrrha and Cassiopeia and Ulysses and Augustine. He also names almost everything after Earth culture, but it's literary/religious/historical 'high' culture. BOE is scrabbling to save everything possible, but John has the privilege of context and memory, and so he picks and chooses what's 'worthy' of being used or shared. Low culture is reserved for his little jokes with himself— though honestly, a lot of his references to earth culture full stop seem to be inside jokes at the expense of others. I doubt Cassiopeia knew she was named after the infamously vain ancient queen, for example. John also quotes things at people without explaining what he means, like when he quotes Shakespeare and Hans Christian Andersen at Harrow; he's not really sharing it, he's mostly using it to isolate the other person in the conversation, or make himself seem unknowable and superior. It's honestly very telling that when given the choice John will name most things biblically or classically. It does partially feel like he's desperately scraping to preserve something of his childhood and the home he destroyed (especially with the renaming of Gideon to the Māori translation Kiriona, but... well, he literally renamed her and made her into a walking corpse teenage soldier so :/), but when you look at how he deploys earth culture on the whole, it usually becomes weird and imperialistic and weaponised. He's not really preserving lost art, he's selectively using it for his own agenda, and he's often using the two biggest things that were ever co-opted by conservatives and imperialists, the classical world and biblical convention.
For me a lot of the horror lies primarily in the fact that the culture, traditions, and tactics of the nine houses stem almost entirely from the mind of one eccentric depressed nerd with a (literal) vengeful god complex.
Like, John lives in a space station where the walls are coated floor to ceiling in the corpses of people who have died serving him over the span of 10,000 years, one of his houses is a literal army of cloned child soldiers sent to the frontlines like a slaughterhouse conveyer belt, and the entire toxic necro/cav dynamic is based entirely around him being unable to trust his closest friends to stay by his side without emotional manipulation.
This entire universe is built on the hypothetical what-if of what would happen if someone was allowed to reshape the universe to their liking at the expense of everyone else, and that someone happened to be terminally online.
It’s like when authors jokingly say they’re terrible people for what they put their characters through but in this case, John’s fanfic is real. It’s like if Paul Atreides had a Tumblr account.
For me, I guess, the locked tomb is really superficially a good story and has lots of aspects that are good in isolation and appeal to a wide variety of queer readers but I think this series would have been better and more satisfying if Ms Muir had leaned more into the gothic and away from the internet humor. In my mind there’s no reason why each House wouldn’t be entrenched so deeply in things we consider taboo and repulsive that it’s unpalatable to most readers. Instead it’s like if Homestuck 2 was good
John Gaius shortly before eating the solar system to kill some useless bastard billionaires, creating the creatures that would hunt him and his friends down for the next 10000 years and also the Barbie that will (hopefully) lead to his downfall in the process.
sometimes i wonder what it's like to he mentally stable. anyway *resets the universe* this time it's gonna work out for sure
Amen
character with HUGE LIAR written in his forehead: waughh i am so sad...nobody like me
audience: waaaugh he is so sad...nobody likes him :(
I remember when I was starting to read htn I hated mercymorn because she was mean to my bb girl and I liked god more but now that I’m almost done htn I hate him I hate him I hate him and now I love mercy (I still can’t forgive her for trying to kill my baby and being rude to her ) but I want John to become dust and disappear forever and go bye bye