TRANSCRIPT — 19. She Could Have Taken Me

Hosts: Baily and Kabriya

Transcript by Katie

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

00:00:16 BAILY: Hello, fellow boneheads! Welcome to One Flesh, One End, a Locked Tomb re-read podcast. We’ll be combing through the series by Tamsyn Muir for all the context and clues we missed on our first read. I’m Baily,

00:00:29 KABRIYA: And I’m Kabriya, and we’re so excited to take a look through all the theories we can’t stop obsessing over.

00:00:34 B: Thanks for joining us on this journey through ten thousand years of history! We can't wait to spend more time with the characters putting the romance in necromancy.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music continues)

00:00:43 B: So, in this episode we’ll be covering Chapter Thirty-Four, where the survivors of Canaan House find Ianthe and the Third House, Silas sentences Ianthe to death, and… it doesn’t go well!

00:00:58 K: Then we’re gonna do a fun quiz, and have a discussion about Ianthe and Corona, and the idea – the theory – that Corona may have been Ianthe’s true cavalier. So, first off, just hello to everyone. We are very excited to be back with another episode

00:01:13 B: Since we last spoke, I have successfully disrupted the lives of roughly fifty Australian native mammals. [both laugh]

00:01:21 K: As one does.

00:01:22 B: If you see a brushtail possum running around Tasmania with a little bit of sharpie on its ear, that was probably me, which means that this episode has been a long time coming, but it’s very good to be back.

Chapter Thirty-Four starts with the Ninth, the Sixth, and the Eighth making their way to the Seventh House Lyctor lab, the room that the Third House found the key to, which had been in Abigail’s body but then had been taken out. So, they’ve left Judith, and Marta, and Teacher in their sad tableau, and speaking of that, softness-and-shattering mentioned us in a post about Marta and Judith and that whole death scene on Tumblr. They said, “Marta’s death scene is not that spectacular first time round with everything happening around it, but when you know what Judith feels for her and their whole history, and then Judith has to keep living after seeing her die so awfully after achieving basically nothing at Canaan House, it’s heartbreaking!”. And then incorrect-house-of-nine replied, “I’m almost certain Corona goes to Judith and bullies her into living while Ianthe and everyone else is royal rumbling Cytherea.” [laughs]

First of all, we love it when you talk to us on social media. But also, this is very possible. I never thought about it. It’s like, part of the lost Canaan House time skip before B.O.E. and the Emperor arrive that I had never really considered before.

00:02:37 K: Yeah, I feel like we spent a lot of time thinking about what happened with Harrow and Gideon’s body in that time skip moment, or even Cam and Pal, and I think that– yeah, I never considered Corona going to Judith, and I think that’s such a neat idea too, and I want all of the backstory of exactly what happened for them in those moments.

00:02:57 B: Well also, Ianthe was still around, right? She was slightly incapacitated, but she could definitely have been up to things.

00:03:03 K: Yeah. That’s true, so many things to get up to in that one bit of time we know nothing about!

So, going back to Chapter 34, they follow Harrow’s map back to the hallway of the stopped-up Lyctor door, which still has some of the regenerating bone that they had to try to get out. And they stand in front of the– it says, “The stark painting of the waterless canyon had been taken away, and now all three necromancers stood silently before the great black pillars and bizarre carvings above.”

00:03:31 B: Yeah, I found this a bit confusing, because it seems to be a description of the door of the Sixth House Lyctor lab that they already opened with the regenerating bone. Shouldn’t it be a new door that they haven’t found yet? Question mark?

00:03:42 K: Yeah, because when they go inside, it’s very clearly a new lab – as we’re about to read – that they haven’t been in before.

00:03:47 B: Yeah.

00:03:50 K: So, I’m also slightly confused on that, and I wonder if we’re just taking so long with our re-read that we’re missing what’s happening. [both laughing]

00:03:56 B: No, yeah, I don’t know. I feel like this could very easily be a copyediting mistake or something like that, or maybe we’re just wrong. I’d be curious to hear other people weigh in on this, because where there was the image of the canyon and the regenerating bone that they removed, that was the Sixth House Lyctor lab that they went into.

00:04:10 K: Yeah.

00:04:11 B: So, maybe this one looks identical and Gideon’s just confused, or something, or maybe it is just an error.

00:04:18 K: Silas says that he doesn’t feel any wards here and Harrow obviously thinks this is some kind of trap. [Baily laughs] Or carelessness, Pal suggests. “‘Or they just didn’t give a shit, guys,’ said Gideon, ‘given that the key is still inside the lock.’” [Baily laughs] And here it says, “It was the third door that day that they had opened with absolutely no knowledge of what would lie within.” So again, clearly, this is a new door and they have not been inside this lab yet. And when they do get inside, Gideon’s first thought compares how the other labs that they’ve visited so far have been very “practical places to work, sleep, train and eat, homely at best, cheerless at worst, laboratories in the real sense of the word,” whereas this room they’ve just come into is something else. It says, “It had been light and airy, once. The floors were made of varnished wood, and the walls were great whitewashed panels. The panels had been painted lovingly, a long time ago, with a sprawling expanse of fanciful things.”

00:05:04 B: Aw. So nice.

00:05:07 K: But, this is– [laughs] very nice, but this is the most important thing, because three things do catch her attention immediately. First, “on one of the sweetly painted frescoes, fresh paint marred the blossom-decked trees.” It says, “black words a foot high proclaimed: YOU LIED TO US.” [Baily laughs] So, slightly interrupts the beautiful scene they’ve just walked into.

00:05:28 B: Yeah, we talked about this a bit in our episode discussing Cytherea, but again I’m struck here by how sad it is to see these beautiful murals decorating this space and making it a nice place to be in, probably a sign of Loveday taking care of Cytherea and them making this art together. And then, here it’s plastered across with Cytherea’s message of ten thousand years of built-up anger and vengeance.

And then, there were some really funny Tumblr posts I wanted to share. Mayasaura says, “Best scene we never saw in Gideon the Ninth was when Ianthe broke into the final laboratory to find the last secret of the Lyctoral process, saw ‘YOU LIED TO US’ painted in giant red fresh letters all across the wall, and went ‘Mm, well that's none of my business’ and turned around to cannibalize Babs anyway.”

00:06:09 K: It’s hilarious. Yeah, again, Gideon immediately notices these things and then obviously Ianthe would have as well but clearly just did not think twice, did not have a care in the world about it.

00:06:19 B: Chaos-has-theories notes in response to this post that it’s not blood, it’s fresh black paint, which may or may not be super new. They say, “So Cytherea actually went in there just to set up a suitably dramatic backdrop for the Emperor to find. Kind of fitting that that's where Ianthe decided to do her villain monologue. Huh. Anyway yeah, that particular line hanging literally above their heads while Ianthe lists out the steps to Lyctorhood is. Girl. Ianthe ‘I was always cleverer than all of you’ Tridentarius: I’m sure this doesn’t concern me!”

00:06:50 K: Yeah, literally. I think it is so good that this is where they end up having their final conflict and the difference that – or their conflict with Ianthe, and that she’s not the one who’s left the message, but it’s the perfect kind of ironic backdrop for her ascent to Lyctorhood and this thing that she thinks is what they’re all meant to do right now and this great thing that she’s accomplished, and you have Cytherea’s message right there of what a lie this whole thing was.

00:07:12 B: Yeah.

00:07:13 K: It’s so good. It’s so dramatic. [Baily laughs] It’s lovely.

So the second thing that Gideon notices after this ominous message is that someone is crying, “in the slow, dull way of a person who had been crying for hours already and didn’t know how to stop.” And then the third thing she notices is that Ianthe is there, “sat in the centre of the room, waiting. She had taken up position on an ancient and sagging cushion, reclining on it like a queen.” [Baily laughs] Which, again, you just absolutely have to love the drama of this whole scene.

00:07:38 B: And the little tableau!

00:07:39 K: Ianthe reclining like a queen in the center of the room, “YOU LIED TO US” splashed across the wall, someone is crying, like, what have we just walked into.

00:07:46 B: Oh my god.

00:07:48 K: It says, “Joining a growing trend, her pale golden robes were spattered with blood, and her pallid yellow hair was spattered with more. She was trembling so hard that she was vibrating, and her pupils were so dilated you could have flown a shuttle through them.” Great description there. [Baily laughs] Love that, Tamsyn.

00:08:01 B: “‘Hello, friends,’ she said.” Oh my god, it’s so good! [Baily laughs]

00:08:02 K: “‘Hello, friends.’” It’s so good! I love her so much. The perfect setting, the perfect position, just waiting for them. “‘Hello.’” Oh, my god.

00:08:12 B: They notice that the source of the crying is Corona. It goes, “Next to the marble slab, Coronabeth was huddled, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked backward and forward. Next to her on the ground— ‘Yes,’ said Ianthe. ‘My cavalier is dead, and I killed him. Please don’t misunderstand, this isn’t a confession.’” I wanted to quote appsa’s post on Tumblr here. She says, “Judith: ‘Nobody should have to watch their cavalier die.’ Spongebob meme: ‘A few moments later…’. Ianthe: ‘Yes, my cavalier is dead, and I killed him.’” [Both laugh]

00:08:46 K: Oh my god.

00:08:47 B: [laughing] The juxtaposition!

00:08:48 K: And poor Babs, there he is, he’s dead. It says, “His expression was that of a man who had suffered the surprise of his life. There was something too white about his eyeballs, but otherwise he looked perfectly real, perfectly alive, perfectly coiffed. His lips were still a little parted, as if he were going to crossly demand an explanation any minute now.” [Baily laughs] Oh, I love this so much. I love “crossly demand an explanation.” What has happened here! How dare they! I definitely felt basically nothing about this on my first read, other than surprise, but now I love Babs.

00:09:16 B: Yeah, I was shocked.

00:09:19 K: Yeah, but now I love Babs and I’m deeply sad about it. RIP, beautiful idiot prince in the wrong story. I mean, actually, on my first read I think shock was the biggest thing, because I do think that there is something to be said for how much on the re-read, obviously you’re picking up all these hints of what Ianthe is up to and Harrow noticing things, but I was exactly like Gideon. I was way more focused on Corona, Ianthe was kind of also there, sure. [Baily laughs] And then all of the sudden you walk into this room and like, she’s killed Babs? She’s figured everything out? Where is this coming from? [Baily laughs] It’s so good. I feel like it does really hit you over the head in such a delicious way.

00:10:00 B: Pal goes to check on Babs and confirms that he’s dead and shuts Babs’s eyes. You know, very responsible of him. Colum draws his sword, and Ianthe laughs. [Kabriya laughs] She says, “‘Eighth! Sword away,’ she said. ‘Oh, Eighth. I’m not going to hurt you.’ Ianthe suddenly tucked her knees into her chest and moaned: it was the low, querulous moan of someone with a stomach pain, almost comical.” [laughs] And I wrote, “Mood.”

“‘This is not how I had envisioned this,’ she said afterward, teeth chattering. ‘I am merely telling you. I won.’” [laughs]

00:10:33 K: Yeah. I love that too, the very matter-of-fact way that she’s about this. Like, “I killed him, but this isn’t a confession,” you know. “I’m just telling you, I won, I did it all.”

00:10:44 B: [laughs] “I’m better than all of you.”

00:10:45 K: “This is the point here. Let’s focus on what matters,” you know?

00:10:48 B: “Me.” [laughs]

00:10:49 K: “It’s not that Babs is dead, it’s not the scene right now, it’s that I won, I was smarter than you all, I figured it out, let’s please focus on that right now.”

00:10:57 B: She’s visibly suffering to absorb Babs. Probably just, I don’t know, an hour post-Lyctorhood. Babs is obviously fighting her, he forces her to bite her own tongue. This is all context that we don’t have on the first read. It just seems like she’s acting kind of weird and possessed.

00:11:14 K: Yeah, it’s very much, like, “What is going on with Ianthe right now?” [Baily laughs] “‘I admit it, this smarts,’ she said, broodingly. ‘I had my speech all planned out—I was going to brag somewhat, you understand. Because I didn’t need any of your keys, and I didn’t need any of your secrets. I was always better than all of you—and none of you noticed—nobody ever notices, which is both my virtue and my downfall. How I hate being so good at my job … You noticed, didn’t you, you horrible little Ninth goblin? Just a bit?’” [laughs]

00:11:39 B: Oh, she did. [laughs]

00:11:41 K: She did, a bit!

00:11:43 B: “How I hate being so good at my job” is so relatable. [both laugh]

Harrow, during this little speech, goes to look at the theorem plate. [Baily laughs]

00:11:52 K: She’s focused!

00:11:53 B: It’s so much more important than anything anyone is saying.

00:11:56 K: Yeah. She’s not here for the villain monologue. She is here for the facts, she is here for the answers.

00:12:00 B: Yeah! She says, “‘You knew about the beguiling corpse,’ Harrow said. ‘You knew how impossible it was.’ ‘Yee-ee-s. I knew the energy transferral didn’t add up. None of the thanergy signatures in this building added up … until I realised what we were all being led to. What the Lyctors of old were trying to tell us.’” And she goes on, she explains that her field has always been “large scale energy transferral” or resurrection theory. She studies what happened when the Emperor brought the Houses back to life, as she puts it, “What price he would have had to pay. What displacement, the soul of a planet? What happens when a planet dies?” [laughs] Which is very fascinating. This is origin-of-the-River stuff. Having now read Nona, all the weird shit going on with the Tower, the Tower and the River, Ianthe being a Tower Prince. But of course, on your first read of Gideon the Ninth, you’re like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” [laughs]

00:12:53 K: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting to be reminded of this, that this is what she’s been interested in all along, and then seeing how relevant this ends up becoming.

And so Pal says, “‘You’re an occultist,” said Palamedes. “You’re a liminal magician. I thought you were an animaphiliac.’” [Baily laughs] However that is pronounced. “‘That’s just for show,’ said Ianthe. ‘I’m interested in the place between death and life … the place between release and disappearance. The place over the river. The displacement … where the soul goes when we knock it about … where the things are that eat us.’”

00:13:24 B: Ooh! Ghost emoji. [Baily laughs]

00:13:25 K: I love that so much.

00:13:29 B: I’m sure this won’t become important later.

Harrow and Ianthe have a little bicker. Harrow says, “‘You make it sound a lot more interesting than it really is.’ ‘Stop being such a bone adept,’ said Ianthe.” [Baily laughs]

00:13:43 K: I mean, she is making it sound pretty interesting, in a spooky, mysterious, unknown sort of way. I’m intrigued. I want to know more about this.

00:13:48 B: It has nothing to do with bones, Kabriya. Oh my god, eye roll, yawn.

00:13:53 K: [laughs] Why focus on bones when you can focus on the place between life and death? My March Madness bracket will be themed around Ianthe’s resurrection theory instead of bone magic.

00:14:03 B: Which weird creature from the River is the most sexy? Is it the two hundred drowned toddlers? Is it the horrible thing that possesses Colum Asht?

00:14:11 K: The tongues in the eyes or the tongues in the mouth?

00:14:14 B: Mmmm, nom nom nom nom nom.

00:14:17 K: Anyway, so Ianthe closes her eyes and lets her head loll suddenly downward. It says, “When she opened them again the pupil and the iris were gone, leaving the terrible white of the eyeball,” which is a pretty horrifying visual. Don’t love that. Then she opens them again a moment later. It says, “Neither of her eyes were their original colour. Both the pupil and the iris were intermingled shades of brown, purple, and blue.” She closes her a third time, and then when she opens them again, her eyes have returned, both, to the “insipid amethyst,” it says. [Baily laughs] But, ah, I love this! All the changing eye colors, the eyes disappearing! Again, on the first read, it’s nothing but just vibes, weird shit is going on, and then getting through the second book and understanding where the significance is of eye color in the process of Lyctorhood and cavaliers and necros and all that transference. It’s very funny to see it happening here and how bizarre it all looks.

00:15:05 B: Well and also, her eyes are normally purple, and Babs’s eyes were described as kind of blotchy brown and blue, which is kind of interesting, that we see blotchiness of eyes later on being described here as the consumed cavalier fighting the Lyctor. I saw somebody theorize – I don’t remember who this was, this is very tangential – somebody theorize that cannibalistic consumption on the Third can transfer bodily properties or muscle memories or something like that, so maybe Babs ate his fencing instructor or something like that, which is a very cool theory. [Kabriya laughs] I mean, it is notable that his eyes are already described as an amalgam before we even hear about Lyctorhood. But anyway, total tangent.

00:15:52 K: Interesting. I had not stumbled on that theory of Babs’s cannibalistic backstory. Interesting.

00:15:58 B: Well, I didn’t take it too seriously until I did my re-read, and then I was like, yeah, it is weird that his eyes are very pointedly described as being this splotchy combo of blue and brown, which I don’t think is super common in real people’s eyes.

00:16:10 K: Maybe not, but I do wonder if it’s also just to make that a distinct thing as well, when you have this process with Ianthe, so that you can tell it’s not just this one color, it’s very distinctly this thing that is associated with Babs, maybe?

00:16:23 B: Right, so that in this scene the reader would understand that’s obviously Babs’s eye color coming through, not just Ianthe’s eyes being weird.

00:16:30 K: Yeah, Ianthe’s eyes going through a rainbow of different colors or whatever, it’s specifically associated with Babs, maybe.

00:16:36 B: Well, especially because blue, the color blue, has been associated with siphoning in the past, so maybe somebody thought that that would be confusing?

00:16:42 K: Yeah, if it was just, “Oh she’s having her siphoning moment now.” Just that blue magic vibes going on.

00:16:48 B: Much to consider.

00:16:50 K: Much to consider.

00:16:51 B: At this point, Pal moves over to the wall with the message on it, quote, “as if to flank Ianthe,” and she doesn’t react. The letters of “YOU LIED TO US” are described as “stretching out behind him,” so that’s his position in the room. Gideon thinks he’s making some kind of clever move to get behind Ianthe, but this kind of bleeds into him investigating the letters more later.

00:17:15 K: Yeah, it's set up very nicely here, just sort of moving into place a little bit while you’re more focused on the villain monologuing that’s going on. And then after he’s going and moved there–

00:17:25 B: I wanted to talk about, apparently it’s a huge fad among teens to be playing chess. I was just thinking about this in terms of, you know, Tamsyn moving her chess pieces into place. [Kabriya laughs] And I was just reading the funniest post talking about how kids are playing chess in class instead of paying attention to their teachers and stuff like that. Imagine if that had been while we were in school.

00:17:47 K: Really? That’s wild. I know there was that whole thing where The Queen’s Gambit was so big a few years ago that everyone started playing chess again, and chess sets became this really popular Christmas gift.

00:17:51 B: Yeah! Maybe that’s where it came from.

00:17:57 K: Is that just, the spiraling continued? We have Anya Taylor-Joy to thank for you playing chess, maybe? [Baily laughs]

00:18:00 B: Thank you, Anya.

00:18:01 K: Maybe? She made it cool and sexy?

00:18:04 B: Well, I saw this hilarious post that was like, someone’s student had developed something he called the Evil Advisor Gambit, where he recruited a third person to give bad advice to both sides, trying to kind of fool the other person into either taking the bad advice or double-faking him into thinking the first person was taking the bad advice. Anyway, it made me laugh out loud. [both laugh] The Evil Advisor Gambit, I mean, come on.

00:18:25 K: Oh, my god. Well anyway, these chess pieces are maneuvering themselves into place. Pal is going to inspect the wall while no one is really paying him attention, Ianthe is doing her little villain monologue, and now starts to list out the steps of the Lyctorhood process as she figured it all out. We went over these in the last episode, I think it was. We’re not going to go through them all again, but she lists it out for everyone. And then Harrow says very quietly, “‘Oh, fuck. The megatheorem.’”

00:18:50 B: The megatheorem!! Pal’s megatheorem that he hated and rejected. Harrow thought it was something else entirely, about an energy source, so this, coming from Harrow, suggests that she’s conceding that Palamedes was right all along, but I think it is possible, I think we’ve discussed this in the past as well, that Harrow may also still have been right about her energy source theory.

00:19:11 K: Yeah, it definitely seems like there are things that have been pointing in this story to there being some sort of energy source in Canaan House that we are as yet to discover.

00:19:20 B: [laughs] Ianthe explains how she did it. She says, “‘I am very, very good, and moreover I’ve got common sense. If you face the challenge rooms, you don’t need the study notes—not if you’re the best necromancer the Third House ever produced. Aren’t I, Corona? Baby, stop crying, you’re going to get such a headache.’”

00:19:39 K: God, there’s just something so delightful about this to me after she’s literally just murdered someone, who at this point, we still think Corona is crying over.

00:19:47 B: Yeah! [laughs]

00:19:48 K: We obviously see more, but the assumption at this point is that Corona is crying over Babs, and Ianthe is just like, “Oh. baby, stop crying over our friend I just murdered. You’re gonna get a headache.” [Baily laughs] My god, she was born to be the dramatic villain monologuing bitch. I just love this for her so much.

00:20:05 B: [laughs] So good. Pal says he came to the same conclusion, you know, his megatheorem, but he “‘discarded it as ghastly. Ghastly, and obvious.’ ‘Ghastly and obvious are my middle names,’ said the pale twin. [both laugh] ‘Sextus, you sweet Sixth prude. Use that big, muscular brain of yours. I’m not talking about the deep calculus. Ten thousand years ago there were sixteen acolytes of the King Undying, and then there were eight. Who were the cavaliers to the Lyctor faithful? Where did they go?’” [laughs]

00:20:38 K: Ooh, I do so distinctly remember reading this and having the satisfying click-into-place moment of– because I had noticed the eight and sixteen thing earlier in the established lore that we have so far.

00:20:49 B: Yeah.

00:20:50 K: It mentions these sixteen people coming and then it mentions these eight Lyctors, and that doesn’t really add up. But I think at that point, there’s so much that you don’t know yet about that backstory and the world that you kind of are able to chalk it up to, you know, we don’t know everything, there’s lots of people, lots of names, lots of backstory, we don’t know exactly what happened yet. And then Ianthe says this and you’re like, oh, no! That actually did matter. It was actually very intentional and important and it’s a key part of what we’re about to discover about the horrifying way that this Lyctorhood process works. I just personally love a reveal so much that relies on something that you did notice in the text as a reader but didn’t fully put into place. I think that’s so much more satisfying than when there’s a twist out of nowhere where it’s just like, “Actually, this whole other thing that we’ve never mentioned has been going on!” or something like that, and it’s like, okay, I’m surprised, but I had no way that I could have put this together and it doesn’t mean anything to me as a reader. I think this is a really tough balance to strike, and I think Tamsyn does such a good job with this. I also think Leigh Bardugo is very good at this. I think Six of Crows is one of my favorite examples of this. RIP, hate what they did to you in the second season of Shadow and Bone, but if you love a reveal based on in-text information, it’s another book that’s great for this kind of thing.

00:22:02 B: I think also Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers do a really good job with this, too. It’s such a hallmark of the golden age murder mystery, of like, them describing things in the plot– and yes, some of them are red herrings, some of it is irrelevant information, but the important things are always going to be things that, when Hercule Poirot explains the mystery, or Peter Wimsey explains the solution of the mystery, you do remember them cropping up, and you’re like, “Oh my god, I could’ve put it together all along!”

00:22:30 K: Yeah, absolutely, to tie it back to the And Then There Were None element of this as well, going back to the Agatha Christie roots we’ve talked about with Gideon the Ninth before, I think it is really important, again, to me.

00:22:39 B: [laughs] And then there were eight!

00:22:41 [laughs] Yeah, and then there were eight. Oh, my god. But, yeah, it is really important to me that this reveal hinges so much on information that was in text, and it’s so much more enjoyable as a reader.

00:22:51 B: Okay, I can’t actually cast my mind back to when I figured it out, but it made so much sense to me as a reader, just because there is such a common thread in fairytale stories and fantasy stories of power coming at a great price. Right, if you want to be immortal and powerful, there has to be a sacrifice involved. So I think subconsciously as you’re reading, it all makes perfect sense to you once this reveal happens.

00:23:19 K: Exactly, yeah. There’s this feeling that clearly something happened to the eight, you know, they just didn’t become Lyctors and lived out the rest of their lives, or they died, that was sad, blah, blah, blah. [Baily laughs] But having it revealed in this perfect way as we see Ianthe’s just killed Babs and realizing the cannibalistic element, as you would say, I think it’s so good.

00:23:42 B: Yeah. Right after this, the text gives, “Palamedes opened his mouth as though to answer this question,” about where did they go, “but he had bumped against something on the back wall, and had gone still. Gideon had never known him to be still. … One of his thumbs was tracing the edge of a black-painted letter, but the rest of his body was rigid.” This is actually perfect timing, because he bumps into the letters, he presumably feels Cytherea’s psychometric signature on the letters, and he’s like, “Who is this? How has the person that he knows as Dulcinea been into this locked lab?”, and the juxtaposition of this with Ianthe asking where did the eight cavaliers go is so good, because that’s what the letters are about, and that’s so tied into what Pal is about to figure out.

00:24:29 K: It’s all clicking into place!

00:24:31 B: Oh, my god! Then Silas says, “‘None of this explains why you have killed Naberius Tern.’ Ianthe cocked her head to one side, drunkenly, to take him in. The violet of her eyes was dried-up flowers; her mouth was the colour and softness of rocks. ‘Then you weren’t listening. I haven’t killed Naberius Tern. I ate Naberius Tern.’” [both laugh] Such an important distinction.

00:24:53 K: Yeah, what another great step. “This isn’t a confession, I’m just telling you what happened. I didn’t kill him, I ate him!” [both laugh] God, I love her so much.

00:25:01 B: “‘I’ve robbed Death itself … I have drunk up the substance of his immortal soul. And now I will burn him and burn him and burn him, and he will never really die. I have absorbed Naberius Tern … I am more than the sum of his half, and mine.’” It’s the best crank monologue ever.

00:25:22 K: God, I love that too, this perception of Lyctorhood as she’s painting it here is “more than the sum of his half and mine,” like we’re gonna see shortly the sort of muscle memory and qualities of Babs that she’s absorbed in this process of absorbing him. But it’s interesting to frame it this way as though, clearly, the state that they’ve ascended to is not just necromancer plus cavalier, it’s something more and higher than that entirely.

And Pal says, “though he sounded as though he were ten thousand years away, ‘Princess, whatever you think you’ve done, you haven’t done it.’”

00:25:54 B: And he is ten thousand years away, literally in a sense, because he’s probably noticing that Cytherea’s psychometric signature from this fresh paint matches with the signatures in the rest of this room, because Cytherea painted this room, presumably. She lived here for centuries. Oh, my god. He’s putting it all together, and on a first read, you don’t have a freaking clue.

00:26:18 K: No, and that’s such a clever little line in there, “as though he were ten thousand years away.” I love that so much, once you do realize what he’s actually doing and realizing right now.

00:26:25 B: Yeah. But also, there’s really good foreshadowing for Paul here. Pal has probably studied all the theorems and put them together differently, or begun the process of putting them together differently, possibly even reverse-engineered what John and Alecto did where the cavalier doesn't have to die, but obviously he isn’t able to put it into practice later because he has no body. RIP.

00:26:45 K: Yeah, so that’s him seeing what Ianthe’s done and acknowledging that maybe that isn’t how it had to be, or isn’t what she thinks she’s accomplished here. It’s not the perfect Lyctorhood that there could exist.

So Ianthe continues her villain monologuing. She’s saying, “‘God, it makes so much sense. Even the rapiers—light swords, light enough to be held by an amateur … a necromancer. Each challenge—fusing, controlling, binding, utilising—utilising whom? Did you notice that none of those challenges could be completed by yourself? No, you didn’t, and yet that was the biggest red flag. I had to reverse-engineer the whole thing, just from looking at it … all alone.’”

00:27:17 B: But it’s a bit funny because of course everyone who has completed a challenge has realized that you can’t do it by yourself. She’s being a bit egotistical here.

I wanted to quote this very funny post from unlikely-course on Tumblr, who says, “I feel like when you’re first reading through Gideon the Ninth, the comedy of Ianthe’s reveal gets overshadowed by everything else that’s going on, and suffers from a lack of context that you might have on post-Harrow the Ninth rereads. Like, everyone knew that Ianthe was competent. Her assumed specialty is very different compared to what we know about her true interests. She might as well be saying ‘you thought I was a fashion designer but newsflash, asshole, I’ve been a theoretical physicist the whole time, and here is my completed wormhole machine!’ [both laugh]

00:27:59 K: Yeah, exactly. And also the way she starts to stress how much she’s been doing this all alone is leading really nicely into the reveal that we’re gonna get about Corona not being a necromancer, whereas right now, obviously, it just comes across as her being, again, very full of herself, that she thinks she’s the only one who’s figured out any of this and did it all by herself with no help whatsoever. [Baily laughs]

And it’s at this moment that Silas asks Corona, who’s described as “monotonously crying”, just as white noise in the background while this is also going on, which is also kind of funny to me. He says, “‘Is she speaking the truth? And did you, at any point, attempt to stop her, or know as a necromancer what act she was committing?’ ‘Poor Corona!” said Ianthe. “Don’t get on her case, you little white excuse for a human being. What could she have done? Don’t you know my sister has a bad, sad secret? Everyone looks at her and sees what they want to see … beauty and power. Incredible hair. The perfect child of an indomitable House.’” And then we get the big reveal.

00:28:51 B: Oh my god, the big reveal!

00:28:54 K: “‘Everyone’s blind. Corona? A born necromancer? She was as necromantic as Babs. But Dad wanted a matched set. And we didn’t want anything to separate us—so we started the lie. I’ve had to be two necromancers since I was six. It sharpens your focus, I tell you what. No … Corona couldn’t’ve stopped me becoming a Lyctor.’”

00:29:10 B: Oh my god, it’s such a good reveal!

00:29:12 K: Such a good reveal.

00:29:13 B: And it kind of, if you’ve been paying a lot of attention to Corona like Gideon has in her narration, some things click into place, like she was hesitant looking at the ashes when Jeannemary brought them all to look at the furnace and all that stuff.

00:29:29 K: And her wanting to practice dueling and that instead. We’ll talk more about that in the discussion, but also just how it clicks into focus and explains that Corona was not exactly maybe like the other necromancers, or never as involved in the necromancy aspect of things, and yet there was so much focus on her from Gideon that her slights and things that she was lacking aren’t really under the microscope as much to the reader. I think that’s, again, delivered really well here, this reveal upon reveal upon reveal.

Sophelstien on Tumblr says, “I’m always thinking about how quick Ianthe outs Coronabeth. Like, the moment she can, she does. The thing is that the entire arrangement makes Ianthe look fucking terrible, it makes her look physically weak (like how Gideon comments on how differently the twins’ bodies are reacting to “doing necromancy”), and also makes her look–”

00:30:12 B: “Doing necromancy.” [laughs]

00:30:14 K: Yeah, quote, unquote, “doing necromancy.” “And it also makes her look…kind of useless? Coronabeth is such a leader and is reaching other standards besides, and it makes Ianthe look like all she is doing is, like, standing next to her. The second she becomes all-powerful and subsequently divorced from Third politics, she lets everyone know how hard she has been working to do the work of two necromancers.” [Baily laughs] And yeah, I do really love that it’s this ruse that they’ve been keeping up for such a large part of their lives that it draws everyone’s attention to Coronabeth. She looks great, she looks in charge. Ianthe constantly looks like the secondary one, the lesser twin, the shadow of her sister. We see her described this way over and over again by Gideon throughout the book, and then the second that she ascends to this higher state than everyone else and gets this amount of power, she immediately is like, “Yeah, fuck it, it’s been me the whole time, and I’m sick of being assumed in the back seat.”

00:31:02 B: Yeah.

00:31:03 K: And I do think that’s such an important moment of characterization for her, especially as we’re just starting to realize who she is and who she’s been this whole time.

00:31:11 B: Yeah! Well, originally our discussion was gonna be an in-depth character discussion of Ianthe, and I had so many notes for that, and we cut quite a lot of it for time. [laughs]

00:31:20 K: Yeah, we’ll just tease that Ianthe discussion coming later.

00:31:23 B: Yeah! Lengthy Ianthe discussion. One of the things that I had in there was her description by Judith in the Cohort files, the extras from Gideon the Ninth, where Judith basically says that it seems like Ianthe is a shit necromancer because she can’t make herself look good like all the other Third House necromancers. [both laugh]

00:31:43 K: Corona can do all this magic and make herself look amazing. Ianthe is struggling to keep up. Look at the state of her hair. [both laugh]

00:31:51 B: Yeah, and when you think about it realistically knowing the toll that necromancy takes on your body – like, Judith takes ten minutes to walk a mile – Ianthe has twice the necromantic wasting as everyone else as well.

00:32:02 K: Yeah, exactly. It completely reframes them when you get this realization. It’s pretty fair that Ianthe feels like it’s her moment to let everyone know what she’s been doing this whole time.

00:32:13 B: Back to the action, Palamedes has still been studying the letters on the wall, and it goes, “Palamedes said, vaguely, ‘This can’t be right.’” Ianthe, “‘Of course it’s right, goosey, the Emperor himself helped come up with it.’” I find this exchange really interesting because Ianthe of course assumes that Pal is talking to her because she thinks she’s always the center of attention, but I don’t think he’s talking to Ianthe. I think he’s talking to himself about the letters, like how the signature matches the rest of the lab which is ten thousand years old, so yeah, it can’t be right. [laughs]

00:32:45 K: Yeah. I totally agree. Definitely one of those things you catch reading it again. Also though, love that we get the chance to have Ianthe calling Pal “goosey.” [both laugh]

00:32:52 B: “Goosey”!

00:32:57 K: So, and then, Silas, kind of observing this all, says, “‘So that is Lyctorhood. … To walk with the dead forever … enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice … to make yourself a tomb.’”

00:33:06 B: Duh duh duhhhh.

00:33:08 K: Just hammering home the tomb imagery and metaphors of this series. The idea of Lyctorhood as a tomb is a very on-the-nose but quite apt description here, the idea that you're literally carrying around this dead cavalier, this dead person who was supposedly so close and important to you and that, for the rest of your ten thousand years of life, or however long you live, it’s a pretty gruesome thought that way.

00:33:35 B: Yeah. I guess it also gives another layer of meaning to that line where Harrow, at the beginning of Gideon the Ninth, describes the Earth as a grave, with the extra layer meaning of Lyctorhood as well. I don’t know if that was intended at the time, but it is interesting. I was just thinking about that just now.

00:33:54 K: Yeah.

00:33:55 B: Anyway, in response to this, Ianthe’s kind of just like, “Yeah, fuck off. I did do that and I have no remorse.” And, “Colum closed his eyes and was still.” [laughs]

00:34:06 K: Oh my god, yeah, literally as soon as Silas spells out, “Oh, okay, that is Lyctorhood, you eat your cavalier and make yourself a tomb,” the fact that Colum immediately is like “Well, guess you’re gonna eat me now.” [Baily laughs] Not even another thought about it. Again, these are characters who were at the very bottom of who I cared about or was interested in, especially on my first read, but I do think that there’s something that says everything about the dynamic right there that he just immediately assumes that. There’s something very tragic about that for him as a character, I think.

00:34:38 B: Oh my god, because when you wrote that in the notes, I didn’t realize that was what you meant. I thought Colum was resigning himself to having Silas make him fight Ianthe, which is also kind of a hopeless proposition, but I totally agree with you. Yeah, he assumes that Silas is going to want to be a Lyctor.

00:34:54 K: Yeah, this whole thing has been about ascending to Lyctorhood, Lyctorhood bringing you closer to God. It is exactly what this most religious of the Houses should be striving to attain, and this holy ritual in terms of how it’s been presented so far, and so why wouldn’t Silas? But Silas then goes on and instead says, “‘I understand fallibility … and fallibility is a terrible thing to understand. I understand that if the Emperor and King Undying came to me now and asked me why I was not a Lyctor, I would fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness, that any of us had ever failed this test. May I be burnt one atom at a time in the most silent hole in the most lightless part of space, Lord—Kindly Prince—should I ever contemplate betraying the compact you appointed between him, and you, and me.’”

00:35:35 B: Woohoo, quite the speech!

0035:38 K: I know! Just kind of gives that all out there. And so, Colum opens his eyes then and starts to say “Silas,” and he interrupts and just says, “‘“I will forgive you eventually, Colum, for assuming I would have been prey to this temptation. Do you believe me?’ ‘I want to,’ said his nephew fervently, with a thousand-yard stare and his missing finger twitching around his shield. ‘God help me, I want to.’” So again, so much packed into this one exchange here that Silas sees in Colum immediately this assumption that, “Yes, you are going to eat me, you are going to burn me up and become a Lyctor in that too,” and the way that he says that if God were to come to him now and beg forgiveness for not ascending to that, but also– I don’t know, this really struck me, for whatever reason, a lot more than I was expecting on this re-read, I just love this conversation so much.

00:36:26 B: I think it’s interesting how Silas seems to assume here that it’s some kind of test that Ianthe has obviously failed. For all his priggishness, he does have quite a black-and-white sense of morals, and it seems strange that within the book where Lyctorhood is a holy thing, something associated so closely with God, that this character, his sense of morality puts him in opposition to that.

00:36:56 K: Yeah, and that he sees it as, there is also a certain holiness or importance to the relationship that has been agreed between himself and Colum as necromancer and cavalier, and that in service to the King Undying, and that it would be a betrayal of those vows that they’ve made to each other were he to do something like that, and I think it’s really interesting that that is how he immediately interprets it, this test that Ianthe has failed, this transgression on her part, because obviously you have to hold up this bond between necromancer and cavalier, and this can’t possibly be the end of how it should be expressed.

00:37:31 B: Yeah.

00:37:32 K: I think it’s very black-and-white but interesting that he so quickly sees it that way and refuses to think that it could be anything else, even though Colum has accepted and assumed that, well, this must be it.

00:37:42 B: Yeah.

00:37:43 K: Yeah, I think what I enjoyed about this on the re-read is just how, even the worst, most dull pair of characters of all the Houses get this really big moment here. I know it’s one thing that I think you see a lot in people who struggled getting into Gideon the Ninth, or some of the one-star Goodreads reviews or whatever, where they complain about how there are so many characters, and how do you keep up and blah, blah, blah. But I actually think that Tamsyn does a really good job at giving all of them their important moments, or big moments, or moments to shine, or moments that really illustrate what makes their dynamic unique from the others in such a way. Even though they are all cavalier-necromancer pairings which have all these entrenched traditions attached to what those roles should mean for all of them, they all have very, very different relationships between these pairs of characters, and there are moments that really illustrate that through the book that maybe you are able to appreciate more on a re-read when you’ve learned a little bit more about them or gotten to the end of the book already, but it’s quite impressive, I think, that we do get all of that depth for these many different pairings.

00:38:47 B: Yeah, and also, presumably because– I’m assuming that when Tamsyn came up with this idea, she was like, “Okay, we’ll have nine Houses because there are nine planets,” and then she had to work from there to give every House something interesting to do that felt natural within the narrative. I’m sure if our solar system only had seven planets, the Eighth House would not exist, but [laughs] it does, so she made it work.

00:39:11 K: It does! She came up with something neat for them.

00:39:14 B: To continue with this narrative, Ianthe is unmoved. She says, “‘Come off it. You’d drain him dry if you thought it would keep your virtue intact. This is the same thing, just more humane.’” And Silas says, “‘I brand you heretic, Ianthe Tridentarius. I sentence you to death. As your cavalier is no more, you must stand in for him: make your peace with your House and your Emperor, because I swear to the King Undying you will find no more peace in this life, anywhere, in any world you care to travel to.’” And Harrow says, “‘Octakiseron, stop it. This is not the time.’” [laughs] What’s it the time for, Harrow?

00:39:51 K: Yeah, like, cease your dramatics, we’re trying to figure out what’s happened here and how she did it..

00:39:58 B: We’re on the cusp of figuring out Lyctorhood! Silas continues, “‘I will cleanse everything here, Ninth, to stop the Houses from finding out how we have debased ourselves.’”

00:40:10 K: Yeah, so again, he sees this as very much not the correct path that should’ve been taken, and very much not godly and correct. He calls her a heretic for it.

00:40:20 B: Yeah, I wanted to bring up two Tumblr posts that touch on the same topic that we were discussing earlier. Exigencelost says, “A thing I find fun about Muir’s worldbuilding is how deeply intertwined ‘sacred’ and ‘heretical’ are. Like, Silas Octakiseron calls the Lyctoral theorem heresy without pausing over the fact that this is literally sanctioned by his God as the path to sainthood.” Or, just to interject here, he just refuses to even believe that it could be sanctioned by God. And, “Harrow worships God and the beast she believes was made to kill God with a deeply interrelated fervor. God is worshiped first and foremost for resurrecting the solar system but resurrection is always referred to as a terrible sin. It’s all very ‘I am a dyke and I have not resolved my issues with the Catholic church, pull up a chair.’” [both laugh]

00:41:06 K: Yeah, strong vibes. Strong vibes.

00:41:09 B: And thunderon echoes this, and says, “I think it was a very interesting choice by Muir that, out of all our protagonists and characters, the only two people who tried to stop the lyctor trials in Gideon the Ninth were Silas Octakiseron and Judith Deuteros, the two most devout characters! And both characters’ opposition to the trials that were explicitly sanctioned by God and designed by the Lyctors stemmed from their devotion to the laws and practices that developed from their empire and God. Silas attacks Ianthe, a now saint, and brands her a heretic for becoming exactly what God wanted them all to become.” So kind of echoing the same thoughts, but also pointing out that Judith has pretty much exactly the same reaction. Although, I would say that Judith knows a bit less about what’s actually going on.

00:41:51 K: I think there’s something interesting here in the perception of this ascent to Lyctorhood, which is sanctioned by God, encouraged by God, the whole point of why they’re there at this House to become his Saints, the way that Silas immediately sees it as something wrong, something unholy, heretical, et cetera, and then how, because of the whole belief system that’s been established, and the relationship between necromancers and cavaliers, and how this can’t possibly be the correct way forward, and then how that parallels or matches up with the realization in Harrow the Ninth that it didn’t have to be like that, that there was another way, and so there is something intrinsically, fundamentally wrong in this thing, even though the same God who would tell you that this is wrong is also the one pushing you forward to take this horrible path. It really gets to the inherent hypocrisy, that does get exposed in the next book, of John Gaius. It’s interesting how that really underlines it here.

00:42:51 B: It cracks the nut a little bit. It opens the shell. [Baily laughs]

00:42:55 K: Yeah. Just a little bit. Just a little bit.

00:42:58 B: Ianthe says, “‘Somebody stop him. Sixth. Ninth. I don’t intend for anyone’s blood to be spilled. Well, you know. Any more.’” [both laugh]

00:43:07 K: She’s still just getting her little quips in there.

00:43:11 B: “Any more.”

00:43:12 K: We all do know that I just ate Babs, but you know. [Baily laughs] Harrow then starts to say, “‘Octakiseron, you fool, can’t you see—’”.

00:43:21 B: Yeah, this line, I found curious on the re-read, because what is she seeing? Just that Ianthe’s a Lyctor and maybe is unbeatable? But then why would that make it, quote, “not the time,” which is what she said before? Is there something Harrow’s seeing here and we’re not? Or does she just mean, “Oh, Ianthe’s achieved what we came here to do,” and they should be trying to study it? I’m kind of inclined to think that it’s linked with whatever she gets up to between Gideon dying and the lobotomy. There’s something going on here that we don’t know yet.

00:43:58 K: Yeah, or, also perhaps, Harrow having not come to the same immediate conclusion as Silas that this must be wrong, this must be a test, whereas Harrow, who has discussed the possibility of a megatheorem already, has been analyzing these trials and what it could mean, she’s put it together as, “No, this clearly is the way forward, whether it’s what we want to do or not.” Maybe she is just seeing it differently than him that this does have to be the logical conclusion of what they’ve been brought here to do. I wonder if there’s that kind of element to it as well.

00:44:29 B: Yeah, I don’t know. Because I guess, I’d be reluctant to think that Harrow instantly sees this and thinks, “Oh yeah, I’m on board, this seems good.” You know what I mean? [laughs]

00:44:39 K: Well, no, not that she approves of it, necessarily. I don’t think that she does at all. But just the sense that whereas Silas is like, “This must be wrong in some way,” maybe her realization is more of, trying to cope with the fact that this is where it was leading, and what does that mean if so. I don’t know.

00:44:56 B: Yeah.

00:44:59 K: But then Colum attacks Ianthe anyway, so, so much for that. [Baily laughs] But it’s interesting here. So, it says, “He was terrifically fast for such a big, ragged-looking man, and he hit her with such kinetic force that she should have been flung back to splatter on the wall like a discarded sandwich. His arm was true and steady; there was no hesitation in his hand or in his blade. Neither was there any hesitation in Ianthe’s. Gideon had seen the exquisite sword of the Third House lying in a smear of blood next to the body of its cavalier: now it was suddenly in the hand of its necromantic princess.” So, Ianthe deflects the blow, it says, “as if she were not a head shorter and a third of his weight,” and when she eases back “into perfect, surefooted position,” Gideon realizes that it’s Babs’s movements that she’s recognizing in Ianthe. It says, “It was Naberius Tern’s movement that tucked Ianthe’s arm behind her back, and Naberius Tern’s perfect, precise footwork. It was profoundly weird to see Naberius Tern’s moves restrung in Ianthe Tridentarius’s body— but there they were, recreated right down to the way she held her head.” And that’s when it sort of clicks for Gideon what Ianthe has actually done by consuming Babs, by ascending to Lyctorhood.

00:45:55 B: Yes!

00:45:56 K: It says, “The bizarre sight of a necromancer holding a sword—a ghost fighting inside the meat suit of his adept—made it real that Naberius was dead, but that he was dead inside Ianthe. It was not that he had taught her how to fight: it was him fighting. There was Naberius’s instant counterstrike; there was Naberius’s gorgeous deflection.” So it’s this muscle memory that she’s inherently absorbed through him, and Gideon is only able to comprehend that when she actually sees it in action.

00:46:20 B: Yeah, and I think this is a really good way of illustrating to the reader through Gudeon’s point of view exactly what has happened. Because Tamsyn’s never gonna write out a necromantic theorem on the page. [laughs]

00:46:33 K: Yeah, exactly. You get it through Gideon’s eyes. And it also makes sense for Gideon as a character that it’s this swordplay interaction where we saw how much she– you know, she dueled with Babs, she watched closely and saw how he moved and that, and we got that really emphasized earlier in the book, and it really comes into play here where she’s able to recognize that movement in Ianthe.

00:46:56 B: Yeah, it’s so perfect that she has dueled Babs, and it wasn’t just some random other cavalier. [laughs] But yeah, Babs’s muscle memory doesn’t totally account for Ianthe’s arms still being physically weaker, and Colum takes an advantage. He kicks her sword away. And then we get this truly gross sequence where Colum raises his sword, and it goes, “Ianthe raised her hand to her mouth, gored a chunk of flesh from the heel of her palm, and spat it at him like a missile. Ianthe disappeared beneath a greasy, billowing tent—cellular, fleshy, coated all over with neon-yellow bubbles and thin pink film. Colum bounced off this thing as though he had hit a brick wall. He went ass-over-teakettle and rolled over and over, only at the last skidding back up to stand, locking himself into position, panting. Where there had been a necromancer, there was instead a semitransparent dome of skin and subcutaneous fat, baffling to the eye.” [laughs] I hate this!

00:47:43 K: So unpleasant.

00:47:44 B: It’s so gross.

00:47:45 K: So unpleasant.

00:47:46 B: I guess it’s kind of the equivalent of Harrow’s bone cocoon, but a flesh cocoon is so much more disgusting.

00:47:53 K: It’s so much more– yeah, in general, I think the flesh magic trumps the bone magic for disgusting output. [both laugh]

00:48:02 B: Yeah, and I think it is interesting that Tamsyn chooses to have Ianthe make this cocoon, because that’s one of the first things that we saw Palamedes remark about Harrow creating her bone cocoon, which he was so impressed by. This is almost the echo of it intending to evoke the same reaction of, “Oh, so she’s a real master of her craft,” or whatever.

00:48:22 K: Oh, this whole part is so gross in such a kind of delightful, but kind of horrible way. It says Colum tries to slash through this bubble, but it’s “rubbery” and bounces back.” It says it “tore and bled, but did not give.” [Baily laughs] Lovely visual right there.

00:48:40 B: Ew!

00:48:44: K: Bouncing, rubbery flesh cocoon.

00:48:45 B: Oh, disgusting.

00:48:48 K: And so Gideon sees this happening and puts her gauntlet on, prepares to draw her sword and go jump into the fray, but Harrow wraps her hand around Gideon’s wrist and says, “‘Don’t go near them. Don’t touch her. Don’t think about touching her.’”

00:49:00 B: Presumably because, yeah, it’s horribly dangerous. Gideon looks around for the Sixth House to see what they’re doing. Maybe hoping for backup to fight Ianthe, and sees Camilla standing with her swords sheathed, so presumably following Pal’s lead, and Pal, I think, is still investigating the wall. I’m not sure Pal is even really checked in to the fight that’s happening at all. [both laugh]

00:49:24 K: Pal is ten thousand years away examining this new, old paint job.

00:49:29 B: Yeah. Silas says, “‘The necromancer must fight the necromancer.’” And Colum retreats and grits his teeth because he knows he’s about to be siphoned, and Gideon recognizes the sensation of siphoning, she knows that that’s what’s happening. She can, quote, “see the haze in the air and feel the chilly suction” as Silas begins to siphon. And Colum puts up a brief fight. He says, “‘Don’t do it. Don’t put me under. Not this time,’” but Silas forces him to obey, and then he walks forward, quote, “crackles of electricity arcing over his skin and his hands,” and he lays his palm on this gross flesh shield. [laughs]

00:50:10 K: And I do want to note here–

00:50:11 B: And then something even more horrible happens. Oh, sorry, go ahead. [laughs]

00:50:14 K: And I do want to note here, I think it’s interesting that we just saw Colum very willing for Silas, or accepting that Silas might go ahead and consume him in ascent to Lyctorhood, but then he does put up a fight now when he’s gonna be siphoned. I think the sense that I get from this is of wanting to still keep fighting Ianthe himself, and that he should be the one to do this, he is the cavalier, he is meant to be fighting his, and instead he has to accept this other thing, which is– I don’t know, it’s interesting to me that accepts the one thing just a few pages earlier, and then starts to put up a fight here, of “Don’t do this to me right now. I’m hacking away,” you know?

00:50:55 B: [laughs] The text goes, “The wall sucked his hands inward, ripping and bristling with canine teeth.”

00:51:00 K: Gross. Gross!

00:51:02 B: “The shield bit down savagely, and there was blood at Silas’s wrists. … The shield went pop, like a pimple or an eyeball–” [laughs] Ew, why!

00:51:11 K: Hate this so much.

00:51:13 B: “–and fell to the floor in ragged strips and jiggling globs.” And it reveals Ianthe. She looks up from where the shield was around her. Her eyes are all white again. And it says, “She screamed in a voice that required many more vocal cords than she possessed.”

00:51:31 K: Just lots of body horror, horrible things going on right now.

00:51:33 B: I know!

00:51:36 K: Then we get this absolutely wild bit where she ducks past Silas, and it says that she “flung herself down onto one of the still-bubbling sheets that had made up her shield. She sunk down into the skin with a splash, peppering the wooden floor with hot yellow fat. The skin blistered and crinkled up on itself like it had been burnt, and then it deliquesced into a viscous puddle, leaving no trace of Ianthe.” Okay.

00:51:58 B: Yeah. She just has a teleportation power now? It just comes out of nowhere. I guess we saw her teleporting in Nona, but that was probably using the River, right? I don’t know what the hell this is.

00:52:12 K: Well, this is almost like, it seems to me like a sort of absorption of her body into other flesh that she has created, and it’s sort of more of a transmutation of flesh into other forms of flesh in this really gross way, was kind of how I read it.

00:52:32 B: [laughs] That makes sense. Oh, horrible. A puddle, a viscous puddle.

00:52:38 K: You hate to see it.

00:52:40 B: It goes on, “Silas knelt by the puddle, and—silver chain starting to warp and buckle on his perfect white tunic—thrust his hand into it. Colum made a noise as though he had been punched in the gut. A bloodied hand emerged from the puddle, seized Silas by the shoulder, and jerked him in.” [laughs] Such a classic horror image, the hand coming up.

00:52:56 K: Yeah, absolutely. But I think that’s also why I imagine it as just Ianthe merging into this pile of flesh but she’s somehow still there, and there’s this and, and there’s this– oh, it’s horrible.

00:53:08 B: “The ceiling broke apart like a thundercloud, and a torrent of bloody, fatty rain sluiced down on them all.” [laughs] That seems, just, really nice.

00:53:18 K: The word “fatty” in there is really doing so much that I didn’t need it to do, personally.

00:53:24 B: Ianthe and Silas reappear and fall from the ceiling in this horrible rain. And we get our first glimpse of Lyctoral healing here. It says, “There was a faint red mark like a slap on Ianthe’s face; she touched her cheek, and it paled into nothing.”

00:53:38 K: So, Silas is obviously siphoning Colum in order to attack Ianthe as he’s been doing, and then it says, “She gave a disbelieving laugh. She was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. ‘Octakiseron,’ Ianthe said, ‘you can’t take it faster than I can make it.’”

00:53:51 B: She has this eternal battery. And Harrow explains this to the reader. She is, quote, “spellbound” by this: “‘He’s trying to drain her, but he’s splitting his focus—he needs to bring Colum back, or—’”. And Colum is, quote, “drunk and numb,” but goes for Ianthe with his sword and shield. Ianthe rights herself, she seems totally fine, and when Colum thrusts his sword at her, she just raises her hand and wraps it around the edge of the blade, quote, “like it was nothing. Her hand was bloody, but the blood itself pushed back gracefully, quietly repelling the blade like it was all just so many more fingers.” [laughs]

00:54:30 K: “So many more fingers”! God, there are just so many incredible descriptions in this one chapter that are so gross and so visceral and horrible. Tamsyn’s having so much fun with this, and I love it.

00:54:44 B: It’s a lot like the description of her trying to hack her arm off in the bone arm scene. Like, the blood is trying to zip everything back together.

00:54:52 K: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

00:54:55 B: It goes on, “Her eyes were that awful, blank white, and she was holding her head and shaking it as though to reposition her brain. ‘Stop doing this to me!’ she was hissing. ‘Stop it! … Listen,’ she was saying, ‘Babs, listen.’” So, you know, she’s still fighting Babs for control at this juncture. [laughs]

00:55:14 K: Then Silas goes and slams his fists on the ground and Ianthe stops, frozen. It says her eyes were “bulging in surprise.” Blood rises from the floor in a “pale smoke,” blood sweat dripping out of Silas’s nose and ears. Truly, just so much blood going on here. [Baily laughs] We’ve had it raining from the ceiling fat, we’ve had it wrapping around the sword, we’ve had all different textures and consistencies of blood, now it’s a smoke rising everywhere. There is just so much blood in this room, on everyone.

00:55:40 B: Oh, my god. “Gideon felt Harrow flinch— Ianthe’s pallid purple irises had returned, and so had the pupils, though perhaps all a little paler than before. She was ageing before their eyes. Her skin sloughed off in papery threads. But she was not staring at Silas, who held her as firmly as though he had her clasped in his hands. She was staring, disbelieving, at Colum the Eighth. ‘Well, now you’re fucked,’ she announced.” [both laugh] Oh, boy!

00:56:08 K: That’s so good! Oh, my god.

00:56:10 B: We’ve been having foreshadowing for this moment since Chapter Six.

00:56:14 K: Yeah. Yeah, and now here it is, we get it. This absolutely terrifying sequence goes, “Colum the Eighth’s eyes were as liquid black as, before, Ianthe’s had been liquid white. He had stopped moving as a human being did,” which, I love that line. I think that’s good in the kind of eeriness it calls up of no longer being this human thing. Like, what has happened to him? It goes, “The warrior’s economy of movement; the long and lovely lines of someone who had trained with the sword his whole life; the swift-footedness was gone. He now moved like there were six people inside him, and none of those six people had ever been inside a human being before. He sniffed. He craned his head around— and kept craning. With an awful crack, his head turned one hundred and eighty degrees to look impassively at the room behind him.” Ahhh!

00:56:55 B: It’s so good!

00:56:56 K: It’s just the juxtaposition of this looking like there are six different people moving his body inside him, turning his head around this crack, but also that he’s looking impassively at the room, that he just has this normal expression on his face, like,”This is fine,” you know?

00:57:12 B: “One of the lightbulbs screamed, exploded, died in a shower of sparks. The air was very cold.” So we have this very similar atmospheric description to the first time Silas siphoned Colum down in the basement facility while he was trying to call Abigail back, and that’s exactly when Teacher told them it was dangerous and they need to stop. So, finally, we’re seeing the monsters that are there down in the facility. Harrow throws some bones on the floor at Colum’s feet, and they erupt in spikes around him, locking him in, so this is kind of her first entry into this fight, really just trying to contain whatever’s inside Colum. It goes, “ There were lights beneath Colum the Eighth’s skin: things pushed and slithered along his muscles as he walked.”

00:57:55 K: Oh, my god.

00:57:56 B: Oh, I hate it. He advances on Silas, and Silas tries to use the same wording he did when he siphoned Colum in the lab to call Abigail. He’s like, “‘I bid you return. I bid you return. I bid, I bid,” et cetera. And then we get, “The thing that lived in Colum raised Colum’s sword, and drove the point through Silas Octakiseron’s throat.” Didn’t work that time!

00:58:17 K: No, it didn’t work that time! Yeah, there’s something sort of–

00:58:22 B: Oh, boy.

00:58:23 K: Yeah, we’ll continue on this, and then have many thoughts on them and how this goes here. But Gideon, when this happened, immediately moves and attacks Colum. She hears Harrow shout a warning, but just can’t help jumping in and getting involved in the fight at this point with this horrible monster thing that has just stabbed Silas. It says, “She threw herself at the grey thing wearing a person skin. It was not a cavalier: it did not meet the arc of her sword with a parry. It just clouted her with Colum’s shield with a strength no human being ever had.”

00:58:52 B: I find this interesting because we know Ianthe bears a grudge against Camilla for not killing Cytherea before she took Ianthe’s arms off. And I feel like in the same way, she probably remembers Gideon stepping in during this fight. I’m wondering if that’s part of their rapprochement as Tower Princes, something like that. I don’t know, I’d be curious to see that missing scene.

00:59:13 K: Yeah, if this is a significant or remembered moment for Ianthe that Gideon does just rush in with that natural instinct of hers. Ooh, and then we get this horrible visual. It says, “The thing opened its mouth and opened its eyes, right up in her face. Its eyeballs were gone— Colum’s eyeballs were gone—and now the sockets were mouths ringed with teeth, with little tongues slithering out of them. The tongue in his original mouth extended out, down, wrapping itself around her neck.” [Baily laughs] Oh, that’s horrible. That feels unnecessarily horrible.

00:59:43 B: Oh, my god. So this is very much like the Antioch demons are described that we see in Nona but don’t really get any info about.

00:59:52 K: Yeah, exactly. Kind of a really early hint here of what’s to come.

00:59:56 B: It continues, “‘Enough,’ said Ianthe. She appeared behind the grey-thing-that-had-been-Colum. She took its twisted neck in her hands as calmly and easily as though it were an animal, and she tilted it. The neck snapped.” So, this is interesting because obviously she doesn’t need to use much force, because she’s a Lyctor now. “Her fingertips dipped inside the skin; the eye-mouths shrilled, and the tongue around Gideon’s neck flopped away, and both those mouths dissolved into brackish fluid. The body dropped to the floor— and it was Colum again, face disfigured, neck on the wrong way, sprawled over the pierced shell of his young dead uncle.” So, that’s horribly tragic and sad, but it did get my brain absolutely whirring, because Colum’s eye-mouths turn into “brackish fluid,” which is actually how the River is described. Yeah. I mean, the only other time we find the word “brackish” in the trilogy is in reference to the River, so whatever was inside Colum came from the River.

1:00:56 K: Yeah.

1:00:57 B: Abigail-pent on Tumblr notes that Colum’s eyes seem to be mini stoma, and they open for Gideon, just like how at the end of Harrow the big stoma opens for John. [laughs] But even with all the same tongue imagery, like there are tongues reaching for John in that sequence. So, she emphasizes that this parallel probably has something to do with the genetic connection between Gideon and John. You know, she’s his daughter. “Whatever makes the stoma open for John has to have been passed down to Gideon,” which I find fascinating because I always thought it was because John has Alecto, the Earth-slash-Resurrection-Beast-of-the-Earth as his cavalier, but since the mouths go for Gideon and the tongue goes for Gideon– I wish it had attacked someone else in this scene so we could see if that was on purpose or not.

1:01:45 K: Feels very similar. Yeah, is it just sort of blindly attacking whoever’s going at it, or is there a significance to that parallel with them. Yeah, I think that’s really, really interesting to consider. So then after Ianthe has stepped in and taken care of Colum, “There was no solace in that big, beat-up body, clutched around his necromancer’s in morbid imitation of the whole of their lives,” which again, just–

1:02:06 B: Oh, sad!

1:02:08 K: It is such a tragedy for these two characters who, up until this point, really haven’t been likable in any way, shape, or form whatsoever, but it’s still just very inherently tragic how they die, and how you have this moment of Silas not thinking that he needs to absorb Colum to ascend to Lyctorhood and that moment that passes between them, and then how quickly that turns into Colum stabbing him through the throat as he’s possessed, and how their corpses are described in sort of this imitation of their whole lives. Because, really, we’ve talked about how there are different dynamics between the different necromancer and cavalier pairings, but I feel like Silas and Colum are an example where they’re both just so entrenched in their roles and in what that meant and in terms of service to each other, and it’s kind of horribly fitting and tragic to see it echoed in this really ghastly way here with their bodies.

01:03:03 B: Ianthe takes in this horrible tableau, then “slaps herself very lightly. … ‘Get it together. You nearly lost that.’” And she goes on to address the rest of the room, and says, “‘There are worse things than myself in this building. Have that one for free.’ [both laugh] Then she stepped backward, into the puddled spray of Silas’s blood, and disappeared.” [laughs]

01:03:25 K: Ooh, okay! So drama.

01:03:30 B: Oh, my god. The drama! It’s just so good. “They were left alone in the room, with the quiet, stretched-out corpses of Silas Octakiseron, Colum Asht, and Naberius Tern; and the low, dreary breathing of Coronabeth Tridentarius, looking like chopped-up jewellery.”

01:03:47 K: Great line. Love that.

01:03:48 B: So good.

01:03:50 K: So Gideon at this point lurches towards Corona, who’s really just been crying there the whole time.

01:03:54 B: Literally just doing nothing, sitting and crying.

01:03:57 K: And “looks up at her with tears on her beautiful lashes and eyes swollen from crying. She threw herself into Gideon’s arms, and she sobbed, silently now, utterly destroyed. Gideon was soothed by the fact that someone in this madhouse was still human enough to cry. ‘Are you okay—I mean, are you all right,’ said Gideon. ‘She took Babs,’ she said, which seemed fair enough. But then Corona started crying again, big tears leaking out of her eyes, her voice thick with misery and self-pity. [Baily laughs] ‘And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.’” [both laugh] Oh, my god!

01:04:27 B: Oh, my god!

01:04:28 The twist of this anguish is such a mind-fuck in the best way. I’m obsessed with this, I’m obsessed with the twist. I’m obsessed with how much is said in this one line here, and we just had this complete reversal of our understanding of their dynamic. They’re not both necromancers as we thought, Corona’s not been the one in charge this whole time, and then it’s just underlined in this so heavily with immediately then that turning into her sobbing about how Ianthe should’ve taken her, should’ve eaten her. Everything has been turned on its head when it comes to the both of them, and it’s so immediately interesting.

01:05:08 B: God, after this whole chapter of body horror, it’s suddenly psychological horror as well, which I’m obsessed with.

01:05:14 K: Yeah, exactly! Just… nothing as you thought.

01:05:18 B: I wanted to cite some insightful Tumblr posts about this. We have the-lyctor-prince, who is talking about the reveal that Corona is weeping because Ianthe doesn’t kill her, and says, “Raw. Instantly iconic. Completely recontextualizes their relationship and adds like six fucked up layers.” [laughs] Which is so true.

01:05:37 K: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

01:05:39 B: And appsa goes on to note that then, later, Gideon is mad at Harrow for not eating her, so this whole thing doubles on itself, appsa says, “grotesquely.” Gideon runs to comfort Corona because she thinks Corona is the only one reacting normally, only to find this reaction, and then later finds herself doing the exact same thing. [laughs]

01:05:59 K: God. Yeah, I do love that it’s immediately preceded by Gideon being like, “Thank God one person in this house is feeling normal about things right now,” and then being like, “Oh no. Oh no, she’s not at all.” [both laugh] Yeah.

01:06:15 B: Yeah. But then, the fact that she herself [Gideon] has the exact same emotion throughout Harrow the Ninth, oh, it’s so good and so bad.

01:06:26 K: And then, one last Tumblr post on this from chekov’s-tantrum, who says, “This is also my favorite, and seven layers of horror, because it is way more brutal for Corona to realize in a haze of abandonment that her love for her sister is very lopsided. Imagine your twin, your other half, the sister who lied for you and fought for you and let her reputation as a necromancer go to hell for you – she knew she was going to live for centuries, and she decided to do it without you. She could have taken a piece of you with her, but you weren't good enough, and now she will attend your funeral someday. Corona sees that Ianthe took Babs and her immediate reaction is, oh my god, I can't live without my sister but she can and will live without me.” [Baily laughs] Which I just feel completely insane about, and it’s so true. It’s the abandonment of Ianthe having left her, essentially, because she’s now achieved this thing that Corona cannot and will not, and the distinction of their necromancy has never been put into such relief, it’s never been more further apart.

01:07:15 B: Yeah.

01:07:16 K: The ruse of their whole lives is officially up, the ruse which they kept up in order to be together and be the same thing and be sort of falsely equivalent has just been completely shattered in front of Corona in this really tragic way, and the thing that she is clinging to or most affected by is that separation, is this sense that now Ianthe has gone somewhere that takes her away from me, and, she didn’t take me with her. If that’s what it was gonna be. I would have rather been consumed by her in that way rather than now have to live the rest of my life separate from her and never able to be the same again.

01:07:54 B: Yeah, and I mean, I really think that Ianthe’s apple experiments in Harrow are leading to Ianthe trying to figure out a way to let Corona live forever with her, but obviously this has not been communicated to Corona, because when we next meet her in Nona, she doesn’t know anything. [laughs]

01:08:09 K: No, exactly. Yeah. Oh, it’s just one of the best chapter endings for sure. Definitely.

01:08:17 B: God, I can’t wait till we get to talk about them in a future discussion because I have so much to say. So much to unpack. [both laugh]

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

01:08:30 B: For today’s B segment, we are doing another fun sorting quiz for The Locked Tomb. This one is by summerskeletons on Uquiz.com. It is called, “Which of the Nine Houses would you be from?” The introduction goes, “I’ve literally taken so many Uquizzes I’ve decided it's time for me to make this niche quiz for no one to take.” Joke’s on you, summerskeletons, we are now taking it. [both laugh]

01:08:54 K: We’re gonna take it on our podcast and encourage everyone else to go take it too, so there you go.

01:08:59 B: They continue, “Enjoy. Assume that any answer you get also makes you gay.” [laughs]

01:09:04 K: Nice. I can’t wait to try to get Third House, slash cheat if I don’t.

01:09:08 B: No cheating!

01:09:10 K: No, I can’t cheat. This actually stresses me out so much when we do the quizzes live on the podcast, because half the time when Baily texts me quizzes, if I don’t like my answer I will frequently cheat.

01:09:20 B: Boo!

01:09:21 K: Well, I think I’ve gotten better. I’ve gotten better. I don’t do it as much as I used to. I used to cheat way more on quizzes. And now I’m like, when I do it live, obviously, this is real. This is the real, honest truth that we’re about to get, and I don’t like that.

01:09:36 B: The “Trending Now” page is “Which Pedro Pascal Character Are You?” [both laugh]

01:09:41 K: Of course. That feels right. So, question one of this quiz is nice and simple: “What hot lady from The Locked Tomb do you simp for?” The options are Mercymorn, Coronabeth, Ianthe, Camilla, Gideon, Harrow, Wake, Dulcinea, and Abigail.

01:09:56 B: [laughs] Good question. Sorry, I can’t get over the “Trending Now” quizzes. “What Kind of Chair Are You?” “Would I Divorce You if We Were Married?” Alright, what is your answer?

01:10:06 K: “Pick just one.” I mean, I feel like– [Baily laughs] I do feel like I have to default to Ianthe for this. I feel like Corona’s very up there. Mercymorn’s also very up there, I love her. But at the end of the day, it is Ianthe for me. And that feels appropriate for this episode and our discussion so far.

01:10:22 B: I think for me it has to be– well, Camilla was my official result from the other Uquiz, “Which Lady from The Locked Tomb Do You Simp For?” so I feel like I have to go with Camilla. My backup answer would be Abigail?

01:10:34 K: Yeah.

01:10:35 B: We may– I don’t think we’ve done that quiz on this podcast. We may do it on this podcast later on.

01:10:38 K: No. I was gonna say, I don’t actually remember a quiz telling me which lady I simp for.

01:10:42 B: Well, well, well.

01:10:43 K: That would’ve made this question a whole lot easier if I already knew. [Baily laughs] No, I feel like this is Ianthe’s episode, this is her villain monologuing moment, and I love her always, so yeah. She’s going there.

01:10:54 B: Question two: “Which Locked Tomb meme made you have to put the book down and take a walk?” Oh, good question. Jail for mother; the funky “S” from middle school; none house with left grief; choke me daddy; my body is ready; Commander Wake Me Up Inside; hi Not-Fucking-Dead, I’m Dad; a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy, which is a meme too old for me to actually recognize it when I read it; and finally, I studied the blade.

01:11:18 K: There are so many good horrible answers here, but the one that actually did make say out loud, “Oh my fucking god,” and I’m sure I was reading the e-book and just put my phone down for a second, was, “Hi Not-Fucking-Dead, I’m Dad.”

01:11:31 B: “Hi Not-Fucking-Dead, I’m Dad,” yeah.

01:11:32 K: That one, absolutely, I did need to take a moment to be like, “Jesus Christ.” [both laugh]

01:11:37 B: Okay, Tamsyn. [laughs] You’re lucky you’re such a good writer.

01:11:42 K: The third question is “Homestuck?”, and then, all in caps, in brackets, it says, “(BE HONEST)”. And I will admit, I read these answers and was like, “Have we done this quiz before?”, because the options are, yes; yes, with a smiley face; yes, with a sort of diagonal, not happy face; “No!!! Get that fucking trash away from me”; “Huh?”; and lastly, “I’m too pretty to know what that is,” which is definitely an answer about Homestuck that I have picked in another Locked Tomb quiz on this pod.

01:12:10 B: Yeah!

01:12:11 K: And I’m gonna stick with it! I’m sorry to Homestuck fans. No offense to Homestuck fans.

01:12:14 B: I have selected it again.

01:12:15 K: I don’t know anything about Homestuck, and I’m too pretty to know what that is.

01:12:19 B: I just learned that Homestuck is over one million words long. Like, that’s a commitment.

01:12:24 K: What?

01:12:25 B: Yeah, that’s so long.

01:12:26 K: That is a huge commitment. God, every day – well, not every day, but every time I think about these books and someone mentions something about Homestuck, it’s so constantly in my awareness that it is this huge gaping hole of references and knowledge about this series that I manage to know so much and so little about. I feel like I manage to know more than I need to but also nowhere near as much as I need to. [both laugh] One of these days, we’ll do a Homestuck episode and learn things.

01:12:52 B: Yeah, we’ll pick a Homestuck expert and talk to them. But someone cool. [both laugh]

01:13:00 K: Yeah. We need to stop talking about Homestuck before we’re just being mean to Homestuck fans.

01:13:03 B: Yeah, sorry, okay, question four: “Pick an indie girl.” Halsey, Marina, Lana del Rey, Billie Eilish, Lorde, Mitski, Zella Day, Rina Sawayama, or I don’t listen to any of these. I don’t know who Zella Day is. I think I’m gonna have to go with Rina Sawayama?

01:13:14 K: I know who Zella Day is. I saw her at Firefly Festival.

01:13:17 B: Oh, no way!

01:13:18 K: I haven’t thought of her since. She had like one song that I liked that summer, conveniently, and then I saw her, and it was great. Her song that I like, I only knew it because it was in an episode of The Vampire Diaries as well, so that’s very niche.

01:13:26 B: Wow. Oh my god, what a throwback.

01:13:29 K: Not even good-era Vampire Diaries though, like a later season that I randomly watched.

01:13:32 Oh, boo.

01:13:34 K: Anyway.

01:13:35 B: This is such a weird combo of artists who were really internet famous in 2012 and artists who are really internet famous now.

01:13:42 K: I know, it really spans the eras. I mean, Lorde is my gut feeling on this even though I didn’t really love her most recent album that much. I have been listening to a lot of the new Lana del Rey and I do kind of love her always. [Baily laughs] Who are you picking? Who’s your indie girl?

01:13:57 B: Rina! It’s gotta be my girl Rina. I love her. She’s such a good singer.

01:14:00 K: Rina’s yours? Okay. I’m sticking with Lorde and hoping for better things for album four.

01:14:05 B: [laughs] I’ve just started re-listening to “Fallen Fruit,” which is actually quite a good song off her album. I mean, it doesn’t really sound like a Lorde song, but it is quite good. Recommend re-listening. Just that one song, though. The others are shit. Sorry, Lorde. [laughs]

01:14:16 K: Yeah. I liked “Mood Ring,” actually. That was the one that I listened to a lot, and then the rest of the album was kind of horrible.

01:14:20 B: Oh, “Mood Ring” was good, yes. “Mood Ring” was good.

01:14:22 K: “Mood Ring” is fun. Ooh, okay: Pick a Taylor Swift era.

01:14:26 B: Oh!

01:14:27 K: This is fun. An era. So not even an album.

01:14:29 B: Oh my god, did I tell you, when Holly visited me in Tasmania, we listened to a huge– we were driving around a whole bunch to different highlights of the state, and we put on while driving– poor Holly, by the way, we had to drive a standard, and she can drive a standard, but it’s not her favorite thing. And we put on this giant playlist of all Taylor Swift’s songs, and we played a game where we had to guess within the first thirty seconds of the song what album it was from. Surprisingly easy game.

0:15:00 K: Ooh! Doable, I was gonna say. That reminds me, I actually went to a Taylor Swift-themed pub quiz last month or something, and I was really nervous because I was going with someone who was a massive Taylor Swift fan, there was nothing that I’m gonna be able to bring to this quiz that you don’t already know. But it was this weird thing where ninety-five percent of the questions were actually so easy.

01:15:22 B: Oh! Who wrote this quiz? [laughs]

01:15:23 K: And you’re in a room full of people who are here because they like Taylor Swift, like, these are all things that any average fan of Taylor Swift would know. Like, “Recognize this song,” and we’re gonna play forty-five seconds of it including the chorus, or something like that.

01:15:34 B: No! Oh my god, no! It should be questions like, what hidden number did Taylor Swift hide in her Tweet on this date to reveal to reveal one-quarter of her album cover, or what the fuck ever. The stuff that hardcore fans like.

01:15:42 K: Literally. And it went on and got a little bit harder and there were a few at the end that were quite niche, but the whole time, I was just a little bit like, actually, there are people out there who do those TikTok things where they need one second of the song to get it. That’s the level that we should be on at a quiz like this. So, step it up to London’s Taylor Swift quiz makers. That’s my advice. [Baily laughs] Anyway. Taylor Swift era. I’m gonna go 1989.

00:16:09 B: Wait, I just wanted to say one more thing about— [laughs]

00:16:11 K: Ope! [laughs]

00:16:13 B: I wanted to say one more thing about the Taylor Swift guessing game. folklore and evermore are absolutely impossible to tell apart. Surprisingly, Midnights and reputation are hard to tell apart. There are a couple of secret bangers on reputation. I really didn’t like that album, but there are some good songs on it.

00:16:27 K: Yeah. I feel the same about reputation and Midnights, both albums were like, a few songs, maybe I’ll go back to, and the rest not so much, but I can definitely see the similarities. Yeah, folklore and evermore, for me–

00:16:39 B: Impossible.

00:16:40 K: I do like a handful of songs from both, but I also am so bad to this day at remembering which songs come from which of those albums. I can be like, “Oh yeah, love ‘champagne problems,’ love ‘mirrorball,’ love ‘‘tis the damn season,’ love ‘the 1.’ Which albums are these from? I have no idea.” In my head they exist as a melange of two albums.

01:16:57 B: I don’t think I’ve listened to evermore since it came out, honestly.

01:17:01 K: Oh, really?

01:17:02 It’s such a forgettable album for me.

01:17:03 No, I think there are definitely some from that that I did like, but it’s so mixed up for me. I think after it came out. I probably made a playlist of folklore and evermore songs, and was like, “This is the perfect album!” It could’ve been just one album with all the songs I like the most, and so, to me, that is the folk-, slash, evermore album.

01:17:18 B: Folkmore.

01:17:19 K: Anyway. As I think I did say, I’m picking 1989 because I love that album.

01:17:23 B: I’m a Red girlie. Take me back to 2012.

01:17:26 K: That is the other choice. [Baily laughs] For me, those are– it’s one of those two, absolutely, but I’m gonna stick with 1989.

01:17:33 B: 1989 is definitely my second choice.

01:17:35 K: Yeah.

01:17:36 B: There’s also an option for “I don’t know Taylor Swift.” [laughs] Amazingly enough.

01:17:40 K: Yeah, exactly. We didn’t read these options, but it’s all her albums or you don’t know Taylor Swift. [Baily laughs] And we clearly knew.

01:17:47 B: We should insert a little thing that’s like, “If you hate Taylor Swift, skip the next four minutes of this podcast.” [both laugh]

01:17:53 K: No, sorry you just had to suffer with us there.

01:17:56 B: Question six: “Pick a social media.” Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or Facebook.

01:18:03 K: Oh, this is Twitter for me. As it literally goes down right now, and I’m going down with it, it’s Twitter for sure.

01:18:09 B: I know. I think–

01:18:11 K: It’s broken my brain in so many ways, but it is my home.

01:18:15 B: I really like Tumblr, but I don’t have any friends on there, I’m just on there to see cool Locked Tomb theories and interact with people who like F1. [laughs]

01:18:23 K: Yeah.

01:18:24 B: So I have to say Twitter for me.

01:18:25 K: That’s how I feel about Tumblr, too. I technically still have a Tumblr account. I will go on every now and then, and it’s funny to see what’s there. I think there’s still a very fun vibe from people who are still on Tumblr, I actually do enjoy it quite a lot, but I’m definitely not engaged there or relying on it as much as I am with Twitter.

01:18:44 B: [laughs] Yeah. Although, to be fair, I have gotten a lot of more recent events, news, on Tumblr, because on Twitter I have so many words muted. I have “Trump” muted, I have “COVID” muted, I have “Republicans” muted, blah, blah, blah, so I didn’t know that Trump had been indicted until I went on Tumblr for the day and I saw that Destiel meme. [both laugh]

01:19:01 K: Amazing. Oh my god, for me right now, I think I still just have a hundred words related to Shadow and Bone muted on Twitter because I couldn’t watch the new season fast enough, and now I’m just too lazy to go unmute them all. So, if anything more interesting has happened there, I actually don’t know.

01:19:17 B: [laughs] Oh my god, this question.

01:19:19 K: Alright. Question seven. What a question. “Which ship were you queerbaited by?” The options are, Destiel (rip); Johnlock (rip); Sterek; Stucky; “whatever was going on in Voltron”: “that Merlin one”; “I love myself and only watch canon queer rep”– yeah, okay, whatever.

01:19:35 B: Get over yourself.

01:19:36 K: “Ew, you guys are gay?”

01:19:37 B: When were you born, 2002? [laughs]

01:19:38 K: Yeah, some of us didn’t have that, okay! [Baily laughs] Not to age ourselves, but you had to be queerbaited. It was the only way. Back in the glory days of Tumblr.

01:19:49 B: Yeah.

01:19:50 K: Then we have, “Ew, you guys are gay?”

01:19:51 B: Great option.

01:19:52 K: “I don’t pay enough”– question mark. “I don’t pay enough attention to men for this.” Fair. And, “The one I ship isn’t on here.” Alright. What are you going with, Baily?

01:20:01 B: So, despite the fact that I watched Supernatural for six seasons, and legit was into it, I never read any Supernatural fanfiction, was not really in the fandom. I just liked the action sequences. [both laugh]

01:20:14 K: The monster of the week.

01:20:15 B: Actually, I think the ship that I was queerbaited by, and this has been experiencing a resurgence lately, was House and Wilson from House M.D. [laughs]

01:20:24 K: Oh my god! That is not what I was expecting you to say, but also have been seeing the resurgence as well. Why is everyone watching House M.D. again right now?

01:20:29 B: Why is this big now? Why are people watching House?

01:20:34 K: Oh, my god. I don’t think that I was aware of, as a shipper, in that way at all when I originally watched it in high school, but I definitely was really into that for a while. [Baily laughs] I remember watching it with you.

01:20:43 B: I think I was subliminally into it, and then when the show ended, I was like, “Oh my god. There’s a whole treasure trove here.” [both laugh]

01:20:52 K: I don’t think I ever watched the ending. I was so into it for ages, and then I just really tapped out at season six or something and never finished it.

01:20:59 B: Well, maybe now that it’s–

01:21:00 K: So, I to this day have managed not to be spoiled. I don’t know what happens.

01:21:01 B: –in the House renaissance, we should go back and see.

01:21:05 Maybe, maybe. So, I guess yours is not on here, then.

01:21:08 B: Nope.

01:21:09 K: Mine is that Merlin one.

01:21:11 B: Oh, really? [laughs]

01:21:12 K: I had a big BBC Merlin phase. I remember binging the first three seasons with my sister in one summer week, and it was just– did that thing of doing the deep dive on YouTube, it was the only thing we wanted to talk about, it drove our parents insane. And then just progressively losing my mind as the last season or two as things got so much worse, and I was so angry about that show for such a long time. But it was a lot. It was a lot. I had so many emotions about it. Katie McGrath was there as well. Just, what a time.

01:21:46 B: I remember you asked me to watch it, and I watched the whole first season, and I was like, “I don’t really… find any of these people attractive.” [both laugh] Except for Katie, obviously, but everyone else in the cast, I was like “Eh.”

01:21:56 K: Except for Katie, obviously!

01:21:58: B: And that’s what I really need in order to watch media. [laughs]

01:22:01 K: Yeah, no, that’s fair. I don’t think I was ever super into either of the two male actors, but it was just– it was one of those shows where you had to really be into the characters and the dynamic to watch it, because it looked so ridiculous.

01:22:13 B: Yeah.

01:22:14 K: It was such a small budget BBC show with all of these horrible-looking monsters.

01:22:19 B: They would have a dragon, right, and they would only show the dragon’s feet. [laughs]

01:22:23 K: Yeah. [both laugh] They were like, “We can’t afford the rest of the dragon.”

01:22:25 B: “We can’t afford the rest of the dragon.” [laughs] Oh my god, this episode’s gonna be like forty-five hours long.

01:22: K:29 But, it was just so constantly, the tension of, one of them’s magic, the other one doesn’t know he’s magic, he’s constantly trying to save his life, “They’re two sides of the same coin.” I loved it. I was so into it. That’s my answer.

01:22:41 B: Actually, wait. You know what I will say. I might get canceled for this. I think the real, formative, obviously non-canon ship for me: Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. [laughs]

01:22:55 K: Oh, I do remember that era. I do remember that era very clearly. I love how this is all, “Here are some couples from popular media that were big on Tumblr,” and Baily’s like, “Well, if we want to talk about RPF…”

01:23:07 B: Yeah. That was like— I was never a TV girlie. That was not my realm.

01:23:13 K: Oh, my god. Yeah. I think my era of that moment if we’re going there would’ve been The Social Network when that was really big in 2011. I think that’s the one I’ll absolutely never get over for the rest of my life.

01:23:25 B: Oh, my god!

01:23:27 K: [laughs] That press tour.

01:23:29 B: Oh, classic!

01:23:30 K: There was an article last year that someone wrote of, “You don’t understand what it was like to live through the 2011 Social Network press tour when Andrew Garfield was just out there talking about how completely in love he fell with Jesse Eisenberg in every single interview that he gave about that movie.”

01:23:42 B: Literally.

01:23:43 K: It was insane. It was insane, and we just had to live through it. Anyway.

01:23:46 B: How did it lose the Oscar to The King’s Speech?

01:23:49 K: Never over it.

01:23:50 B: No one’s even gay in The King’s Speech. It’s a fucking disgrace.

01:23:51 K: I never watched The King’s Speech– I’ve never watched The King’s Speech and I never will purely out of spite, but I’m still convinced a hundred percent in my heart that it did not deserve that Oscar.

01:24:00 B: Not at all. Garbage. Garbage film. [laughs] We’re on question eight of eleven.

01:24:05 K: Okay. Back to the quiz.

01:24:07 B: “Which actual non-Locked Tomb canon queer ship made you lose your fucking marbles the most?” Catradora, heart emoji. No. Brittana. [laughs] From Glee.

01:24:19 K: No. [laughs]

01:24:20 B: Dani and Jamie from Bly Manor, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, anything from The L Word, Ronan and Adam from The Raven Cycle, Achilles/Patroclus (“I just assigned this canon even though it’s from Ancient Greece.”) [laughs] That’s very funny, quiz maker. Yorkie/Kelly from San Junipero, again, “Ew, you guys are gay?”, “I don’t like any of these”, or, the final option, “Destiel is canon”. [laughs]

01:24:45 K: Live your truth. Live your truth.

01:24:47 B: Only for Spanish speakers. [laughs]

01:24:51 K: I’m gonna go– for me, the two that jump out here– well, the three that jump out here– I did love Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but I wouldn’t say that the way I felt about it was– it’s like, you watch a movie, you have incredible emotions that ruin your life about it for a few hours. It’s not the same as a ship that you’re following for a period of time, I would say.

01:25:07 B: Yeah.

01:25:08 K: And I would say similarly about Achilles/Patroclus. Destroyed me when I read that book, obviously had a million emotions of it, would not say it was an ongoing moment for me. [Baily laughs] So, I’m gonna say Ronan and Adam from The Raven Cycle, because that was such a choice and experience reading that. And I think you were the one that got me to read that, obviously, but that was one where I actually experienced reading the first three books, seeing the relationship develop, waiting until the fourth book came out, and then having that moment of getting it all there.

01:25:29 B: Oh. such a good book. Yeah!

01:25:33 K: So it was like the journey was fulfilled.

01:25:36 B: Yeah! I think I’m gonna have to go with that answer too. I loved San Junipero, but it’s forty minutes of television.

01:25:43 K: Yeah.

01:25:45 B: It didn’t really change my life. I think actually, if we could do write-in answers, I would pick Clarke and Lexa from The 100–

01:25:51 K: Oh, absolutely!

01:25:52 B: –because I was– you know, we were die-hard The 100 fans for a little while there. That was absolutely brutal!

01:25:57 K: Yeah, that actually broke me. That actually– I remember being so upset about that. I think I literally was so upset when she died. And I mean, there’s all the context of it too.

01:26:09 B: Yeah

01:26:10 K: The showrunners – I’ll hold a grudge against them forever. It was horribly handled. But I was so upset when she died that I think I literally didn’t sleep that entire night and then called in sick to work the next day, because I was just so miserable. It was awful. Yeah, that would be the one for me if we could insert ones. I was kind of waiting to see it on this list, but I guess they have not stood the test of time.

01:26:31 B: They didn’t live through it. The quiz-maker is too young to have experienced that particular trauma.

01:26:37 K: [laughs] Well, I don’t know. They’re throwing back to Brittana from Glee.

01:26:40 B: That’s true.

01:26:41 K: Are people really still talking about Glee? Maybe?

Question nine: “Which one are you: Oldest sister (gender neutral), middle child”– again, that kind of slanted, not so happy face [Baily laughs] – “or youngest sibling,” and it’s the smiling face with, like, eyebrows. I don’t know how to describe it.

01:26:57 B: Like the demon emoticon.

01:26:59 K: Or only child. You could be one of those. Yeah, very demonic younger sibling energy. I mean, I suppose you could choose which one you are in spirit, in your heart, but me and Baily are both oldest sisters, so I think that’s my answer. [both laugh]

01:27:14 B: Question ten! Oh, it’s a lyrics question. [laughs] So many lyrics! Okay, maybe just let’s pick the ones that we’re actually picking to read, because otherwise, this question will take ten minutes to read.

01:27:26 K: Okay.

01:27:27 B: “Pick a Hozier lyric that I'm positive is about The Locked Tomb (you didn't think you were getting away with not having to read lyrics, did you).”

01:27:34 K: Oh, my God. Okay, so we’ll just say the ones that we’re picking because there are so many lyrics to pick here.

01:27:37 B: Yes. Okay, there are two that I really like. I have to admit, I’m not a huge lyrics person when I listen to music. I played the violin for many years, so I’m kind of more interested in melodies and harmonies and stuff like that, but you know, can’t deny Hozier has some good lyrics.

01:27:54 Yeah.

01:27:55 B: I like the lyrics from “Shrike” a lot, but I’m gonna pick the lyrics from “Wasteland, Baby!”–

01:28:01 K: Oh, I like that one.

01:28:02 B: –that are like, “And that day that we'll watch the death of the sun / ... / And you'll gaze unafraid as they sob from the city roofs.”

01:28:07 K: Nice. I do like that one. There’s a lot here that are– I like the Locked Tomb, what’s the word–

01:28:15 B: The vibes!

01:28:16 K: I like the Locked Tomb vibes that are being evoked here, this is really great. I think I’m gonna pick the lyrics from “Talk,” which are, “I’d be the voice that urged Orpheus / When her body was found. / … / Imagine being loved by me.”

01:28:25 B: Ohhh!

01:28:27 K: We love a Locked Tomb-Orpheus crossover. [laughs] Okay, last question. Simply: “Which house are you hoping to get?” Answers: “Ninth House. I am so goth and emo”; “Third House. I am hot”; “Sixth House, because mmm, Camilla”; “I don’t care as long as it’s not Eighth”; [Baily laughs] or, “Wait, I thought you were going to assign this to me.” All right, Baily, what are you going?

01:28:52 B: Well, I guess I’ll pick the Sixth House option, but I think “I don’t care as long as it’s not Eighth” is also a very funny and valid answer. [laughs]

01:28:59 K: Also very valid. I am choosing “Third House, I am hot,”I better get that as my answer.

01:29:04 B: [laughs] What did you get? What did you get? What did you get?

01:29:07 K: Eh, there it is! I got Third House. “You are literally so sexy, but it’s like, what is that sexiness hiding underneath? You are ambitious and dangerous to be around, but everyone wants to be around you. Ultimately you are hiding some real insecurities. ONline shopping isn’t therapy.” Ooh, thank you, thank you. [Baily laughs] Love that for me.

01:29:26 B: I actually got Fifth House.

01:29:28 K: Ooh!

01:29:29 B: My description is, “You are actually cool. No question, you are the mom friend.” I don’t know if that’s true. [laughs]

01:29:36 K: You’re very organized.

01:29:37 B: “You love deeply and proudly, and you’re passionate about the stuff you do. You might be a little too self-sacrificing for your own good. Remember your story matters too.” This is funny because I wouldn’t describe myself as self-sacrificing whatsoever. [laughs]

01:29:48 K: I was gonna say, is there a nice way to say that doesn’t sound like you at all? [laughs] Lovingly. Affectionate.

01:29:53 B: But I don’t object to this.

01:29:55 K: Yeah.

01:29:56 B: But fair enough. And I think Fifth House was my second option for the Tamsyn quiz as well.

01:30:03 K: I think, yeah, Fifth or Sixth are the two for you that I would come back to or highlight as ones that both make sense for you.

01:30:10 B: Only two percent of quiz-takers get Eighth House.

01:30:14 K: Oh, my god. Only ten percent get Third House. Well now I wish it was even less common.

01:30:18 B: Ooh, so unique!

01:30:21 K: Well, no, because it’s not as unique as First or Seventh or Eighth. But then again, who really wants to be them. First House is interesting as an option. I want to know all the answers now. No, I’m fine, I don’t care as long as I got what I wanted.

01:30:32 B: Just one of those things we’ll never know. [both laugh] All right.

01:30:37 K: All right, well that was fun.

01:30:39 B: Good quiz. Thank you, quiz-maker.

01:30:40 K: Good quiz.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

01:30:49 B: Today’s discussion is about the theory that Corona was Ianthe’s secret cavalier. I originally had many more things to put in this discussion, but we simply did not have time to say it all. [both laugh] So we’re saving that for later. I also find it a bit funny that we did some discussions about a couple of the Houses, and now we’re re-discussing Ianthe and Corona before we get to other Houses, but we will eventually get through them all. [laughs]

01:31:16 K: We would never have faves. We would never let the Third House hog all the attention and spotlight. I would never.

01:31:26 B: [laughs] So yeah, we’re just going to be covering this specific theory that I’ve seen from quite a few people that Corona and Ianthe considered Corona to be Ianthe’s true cavalier. There are kind of two camps or two perspectives. First, that the two of them both privately considered themselves to be necro and cav and to have that bond, or that Corona wanted that role because it was one of the only ways she could fit herself into an accepted societal role and have Ianthe need her, but Ianthe never really accepted her as a cavalier. So, the first perspective, that it was a mutual bond, that they maybe even took the vow, I’ve seen discussed by a couple people on Tumblr who we will link in the show notes: thunderon, centrumlumina, coronabeth, thelockedtomb. So, thelockedtomb has a post where, in response to someone suggesting this theory, they say, “Despite being more charismatic than her sister, I’d bet you hard cash that Corona felt as fraudulent as Ianthe felt overshadowed. Her entire life was constructed on a lie to hide her disappointing inadequacy, and Corona wanted to be valued for something she felt like she’d really earned. If she couldn’t be a necromancer, she’d prove herself as the vital counterpart. She’d finally be the perfect “matched set” with her sister, but on her own terms with her own abilities and efforts.” Which I find really encapsulates something about Corona’s character that doesn’t really come up much in Gideon the Ninth, but becomes kind of clear on a re-read, like, since Corona is living this lie, since she doesn’t have the one thing that Nine Houses society values so much – necromancy – there is only one way for her, in her own mind, to be a true equal with her sister.

01:33:11 K: Yeah, and I think that wanting to be valued for her own ability and skill and that which she is able to bring to the table despite not being a necromancer, I mean, I think there is a hint of that when Gideon sees her practicing dueling even though that’s not something you would expect a necromancer to be doing, that she clearly wants to have those skills, wants to have some skills that she genuinely is capable of. And I think also, as far as in Gideon the Ninth, I do think that it kind of comes through in her general personality and demeanor as well that this is someone who frequently takes charge when they’re in a group together, who frequently is moderating over everyone, whether it’s moderating the duels, whether it’s trying to get people together and on the same page, and kind of steps into this leadership position a lot. And I think that having the understood backstory of not really being a necromancer and that too, it does also make sense to me that she would want to assert herself and add what she can to these group situations and dynamics with what she does have to offer as a persona and as a leader and that.

01:34:15 B: Yeah, if only sort of privately, thinking about herself in her own head. Thunderon also argues that they thought of each other as necro and cav whether or not it was official, because, sort of centered on this quote from Ianthe in Harrow the Ninth where she says, “‘One does care about one’s cavalier. It can’t be helped.’” And thunderon says, “Really?? I didn’t really get the idea that Ianthe held any special love for Naberius, and that would be a real 180 from what she said earlier: “‘Babs? I don’t care about Babs. Just don’t suggest my sister is dead to me ever again,’” unless she was never talking about Babs.” [laughs]

01:34:51 K: Yeah, that’s a very clear distinction that’s made there between, “I don’t care about Babs. I do very much care about my sister, or I’m not willing to hear you talk about my sister,” and then, for her to then later say that one does care about one’s cavalier; those two lines together, I think are quite telling.

01:35:10 B: Yeah. They also note that Corona trains with a rapier, and trains with Babs. They’re both swimming together, they’re both shedding layers in the sparring room. When Gideon has her brief duel with Corona, Corona uses, quote, “a beautiful disengage,” and it’s “only a hasty parry on Gideon’s part that kept the princess at bay.” So she does have some skill. And in Harrow the Ninth, Harrow compares Corona’s stance with a rapier to Ianthe, so to Babs by proxy, which also supports this idea that she trained in parallel with Babs like a cavalier.

01:35:41 K: Tumblr user coronabeth builds on this and argues that if Corona was Ianthe’s true cavalier and Babs was more there to keep up appearances and ensures both the necromancer and cavalier bloodlines of the Third House stayed in place, that gives Ianthe even more power over Corona as her necromancer. They say, “It makes Coronabeth caving to her so often and so easily make much more sense. Ianthe’s not just exhibiting her power over Coronabeth as her sister whom she needs to keep up a ruse, she’s exhibiting her power over Coronabeth as her necromancer.” So, when Ianthe overrules her when the Second challenges the Sixth House. They also point to the end of As Yet Unsent, where Corona says, “‘My own necromancer wouldn’t have me.’”

01:36:16 B: Yeah, so this, to me, definitely suggests at least that Corona saw them that way as a necro-cav pair. There are just all these little suggestions in the text.

01:36:26 K: Yeah. I think it really depends whether you want to read that line – “‘My own necromancer wouldn’t have me’” – as indicating that Ianthe rejected the idea of them as a necro-cav pair, that this was something only Corona wanted that she trained for, that she tried to assert herself for, that Ianthe potentially never was on the same page as, or if Corona is just highlighting the fact that when it came down to it in the moment of ascending to Lyctorhood, Ianthe rejected her and her eyes by not consume her as she should’ve if she was her cavalier. So I think that Ianthe’s position on this or how much she agreed is maybe a little bit more up for grabs, but I think it’s very clear that Corona, at least, saw herself that way, and desired to be that role.

01:37:09 B: Yeah, exactly, and that kind of leads into the second perspective, which we’ll talk about in a sec, but I did just want to highlight this one post from appsa, which absolutely struck me when I read it. They say, “Fucked up that Coronabeth shares her last name with Ianthe. Literally always cursed to be one half of a whole, but never a half enough to become Coronabeth the Third. Everyone has different last names and cavaliers forfeit theirs when they become cavs right. Corona has no personhood of her own either way.” Which is so wild, because, yeah, they’re a set in every way, socially, that they can be, but not in any true way. It’s all kind of a facade, if that makes sense. “Never half enough to become Coronabeth the Third.” Oh, it’s so good! Poor Corona!

01:37:53 K: Oh, yeah. Exactly. The one way that you would be most recognized as a pair and set in this very entrenched, in-tradition way is the one thing that you can’t actually reach in a formal, public way. She can’t be her cavalier, she can’t be recognized in that way, even though even if she did achieve it, it would also subsume her out of her identity. Yeah.

01:38:16 B: Yeah.

01:38:17 K: Much to munch on there.

01:38:18 B: And then this leads into the second perspective, where potentially only Corona thought of herself as Ianthe’s cavalier, and Ianthe never wanted to take Corona as her cavalier. Centrumlumina kind of argues along these same lines, saying that Ianthe couldn’t stand to consume Corona because she loved her, just the same as Harrow with Gideon, and thunderon echoes this. So I think it’s just so ambiguous. There’s no– I don’t know if there’s any definite way to read it. I do lean more towards the second interpretation, and we’ll just get into a bit more of people’s thoughts and evidence.

01:38:52 K: Yeah, so that second perspective being that only Corona thought of herself as Ianthe’s cavalier, but Ianthe never wanted to take her as the cavalier. So that’s sort of the other way to read their potential cavalier-necromancer dynamic. Theriverbeyond says on Tumblr, “I’m sure Coronabeth offered to be Ianthe’s cavalier. I’m sure she begged Ianthe for it, in secret, and I'm sure Ianthe refused. Corona (and Gideon!) want to be consumed, it’s the ideal kind of love that has been modeled to them by society, that’s what they offer to the person they care about most in the world, and that is exactly what is denied to them by those same people.”

01:39:22 B: I like this, because I think it does make sense with the parallels that are drawn in this series between Corona and Gideon and between Harrow and Ianthe, to have both Corona and Gideon want to sacrifice themselves in this way, and have it be denied.

01:39:34 K: Urban-sith agrees that Ianthe has protected Corona their whole lives, and essentially given Corona her position in society purely through her own hard work: “If she loses her now, it's all been wasted. What was it all for, if Corona becomes the fuel for her Lyctorhood? Wasted. Corona is proof of Ianthe's power, but she's also (and maybe it's partly because of this) all the love Ianthe has to give. Corona can't die.” And yeah, I do think that–

01:39:55 B: I definitely agree.

01:39:56 K: I agree with that too, that Ianthe has been keeping up with this ruse that, as we talked about in our recap this episode, it really didn’t benefit her, in some ways, it really made her look weaker, it sapped her of her strength, and all for them to be on the same page, be recognized the same way, to still be a set and that too, and what is the point of devoting your entire life to doing that for someone just to consume them in this way that would ultimately mean that you lose them?

01:40:24 B: A related argument that I also wanted to point out: godkingsanointed suggests that within the Third House dynamic, Corona might have been the cavalier secondary behind Babs, trained as a cavalier, knows all the duel terminology. And they also suggest that Corona was the one who killed Babs to take the place of the cavalier primary. Now, I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this given that all Corona’s doing in this scene is shocked crying.

01:40:49 K: Yeah.

01:40:50 B: But it is kind of cool. So, they point out that in the Harrow Nova alternate universe that we get in Harrow the Ninth, we learn that if a non-necromancer wants to become a cavalier primary, they have to kill the cavalier primary and be accepted as the new one. And so, godkingsanointed says, “By taking Babs’s place and making that ultimate sacrifice exclusive to cavs she can finally do something to give back after relying on her sister in a way that is truly her own skill with no one to stop it.” So, I had not put the pieces together in the Harrow Nova AU that that could actually be something significant within the Third House dynamic. Again, I’m not sure I totally buy this, but it is interesting that that’s a detail that Tamsyn has put in the text.

01:41:36 K: Yeah, the supporting points they point out are that we know that Corona was skilled with the sword, not Ianthe, and to take out Babs with a sword would presumably require training. Depends how surprised he was, I would maybe say. [laughs]

01:41:48 B: Yeah. Because Ianthe is a necromancer to be fair, she does have magical powers. [laughs]

01:41:54 K: Yeah. And I would say the description of Babs as if, frozen in death, as if about to make a complaint, or kind of shocked, it does seem like this was not a fight or a duel that ensued. He was not expecting this to happen, which I think could be said for it being either of the twins, really. But yeah, I do think it’s interesting.

01:42:16 B: They point out that Ianthe is the only one described in the scene to have blood spattered on her and not Corona, and they posit that this is because Ianthe might have been standing in front of Babs, in the direction of the blood spray when Corona stabbed him from behind. So, Ianthe has this specific description of being spattered with blood, and for Babs it says the blade had come through his back, and there’s no description of blood on Corona. I do find that kind of interesting. Like, how did Ianthe stab Babs through the back and then also end up getting spattered from blood? I mean, I guess maybe the blood could have bounced off? [laughs]

01:42:51 K: Blood was everywhere in that room, I suppose.

01:42:52 B: I don’t know, I’m not a forensic analyst.

01:42:54 K: Yeah.

01:42:55 B: Ianthe does say in this scene, “‘My cavalier is dead, and I killed him,’” but also, Ianthe’s a liar, and we can’t always take her words at face value, right. This is her villain monologue; she’s trying to shock and awe. She's more careful with her wording later when Silas asks again, “‘None of this explains why you have killed Naberius Tern.’ ‘Then you weren’t listening. I haven’t killed Naberius Tern. I ate Naberius Tern. I put a sword through his heart to pin his soul in place.’” So, was the sword to kill him, or was it to pin his soul?

01:43:26 K: Yeah, it’s one of those theories that there’s enough about it that sort of catches in my head as like, that’s a really interesting interpretation, and I wouldn’t put it past Tamsyn to be leaving these little hints and making very significant choices of language like this that could suggest that, and I could see it being in character. I guess I just get a little bit stuck on imagining… how does the scene play out then? Like, Ianthe reveals what she’s going to do, Corona kills Babs before Ianthe can? [Baily laughs] Does Corona not realize that that’s still helping Ianthe in a way if Ianthe can then just consume his soul?

01:44:04 B: Yeah.

01:44:05 K: I’m a little bit confused on what the dynamic and interaction between the three of them would have to be, because Corona’s not cooperating with Ianthe by doing so if she’s trying to take Babs’s place, and then it clearly doesn’t work out for her, so I don’t know why she would assume that killing Babs would immediately lead to Ianthe consuming her. She seems pretty torn up at the end about Ianthe’s choice, which to me doesn’t speak to someone who had made such a decisive move, personally.

01:44:30 B: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think if anything, if Corona had truly understood what Ianthe was about to do with Babs, I feel like she couldn’t possibly have known, because she might have threatened to kill herself, the same way that the first Lyctors ascended, if she had truly understood and also wanted Ianthe to be the one to eat her.

01:44:49 K: Yeah, exactly. Exactly! That seems more like the desperate sort of move that you would make in that position.

01:44:56 B: So, regardless of your take on this theory that Corona killed Babs, godkingsanointed echoes other people we’ve quoted in saying that Ianthe could never hurt Corona and take her as her cavalier when she became a Lyctor. They also argue that if Corona did kill Babs, Ianthe has been protecting Corona and her reputation her whole life, she’s fine with being the villain to benefit her sister. So, I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure. I’m leaning on, it was just Ianthe that killed Babs, but there you go.

01:45:29 K: Yeah, I agree that I think probably it was just Ianthe that killed Babs, but I do also agree that if Corona was the one who killed Babs, I have no problem believing that Ianthe would just say that she did to protect Corona and to be the villain, like, that is not part of the theory that I am stuck on. I think that totally makes sense.

01:45:46 B: Exactly. And just to shake things up a bit, I wanted to quote sophelstien (second link), who disagrees with this perspective that Corona was Ianthe’s true cavalier. She argues that Coronabeth’s character is centered on challenging the necro-cav dynamic and all the engrained social roles, and claiming that Corona is Ianthe’s “true” cavalier is kind of at odds with this idea of challenging the status quo. She says, “Coronabeth has a very shaky sense of self because she's been forced into boxes all her life that are at odds with her actual identity. Saying Coronabeth is Ianthe’s true cavalier is kind of the same idea. She didn’t fit into one box, so now she must fit in the other. She lives in a world with strict dichotomies based on a biological difference, and so she maybe sees cavalierhood as her only option since she’s not a necromancer. She’s absolutely desperate for it, because she believes it’s the only way she can fit into her society.” So in this way, maybe it’s what Corona wants, but it’s not necessarily how we should think about Corona.

01:46:48 K: Yeah, I think that’s a very important distinction, actually, because when I think about this theory of Corona being Ianthe’s, quote, unquote, “real” cavalier, or “secret” cavalier, to me, it’s much more about Corona wanting to inhabit that role, that they’re presenting themselves both as necromancers, but she’s not, this is the role that she thought she could fit into. She wanted to be her cavalier because that is the sort of relationship that she sees everywhere and can imagine herself inhabiting with Ianthe.

01:47:13 B: Yeah.

01:47:14 K: Like, we are two parts of the same whole, we are two parts of a set, the way that we can be that to each other is as necromancer and cavalier.

01:47:21 B: Yeah.

01:47:22 K: I think that I would definitely, for these reasons as well, be hesitant to say that that means that she was her “true” or “real” cavalier in any sort of objective way. I think that that fails to accept the fact that so much of what we’re seeing in this series is this sort of deconstruction of the necro-cav relationship as this sort of ideal dichotomy between two people, so I think I completely agree that that’s a really important distinction to make.

01:47:50 B: Yeah, I thought all of her posts were really insightful. She also points out that the line, “‘One does care about their cavalier. It can’t be helped,” could even be about Babs, because Ianthe’s not really ever coy, she doesn’t even really hide that she loves Corona, but the vague language that she uses there could be referring to Babs in a more detached, professional way. Yeah. So maybe she is grieving Babs.

01:48:17 K: Yeah. She would see it more as like, “Even though Babs is sort of nothing to me in a way that Corona obviously isn't, and Corona I will acknowledge, yeah, sure, you can’t really help– you can’t totally help caring about him a little bit,” sort of thing. [Baily laughs] I could see that interpretation of it as well. A little bit more loosely.

01:48:34 B: Yeah. But it’s such a vague line. I feel like it’s vague on purpose.

01:48:38 K: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

01:48:40 B: Oh, I don’t know. Sophelstien goes on to say, “The argument that Corona was Ianthe’s true cavalier ignores a huge aspect of the cavalier’s role, which is that, despite being enmeshed in their necromancers’ lives, they are entirely disposable. It’s part of their oppression. When the audience disposes of Naberius, and believes the lies that Ianthe tells Harrow and herself, I think it shows a lack of understanding of the axis of oppression that underpins House society and is the central focus of this series.” Now, I don’t know if I would go that far, [laughs] but I do think it is important to note that we shouldn’t buy into what the Empire has built up to be this perfect relationship, because ultimately, it’s totally not something that is aspirational whatsoever. It’s clearly really horrible for the cav, and honestly not that much better for the necromancer despite the power that they have in this society.

01:49:29 K: Yeah, and I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind in terms of Ianthe’s potential rejection of this necromancer-cavalier relationship with Corona, the idea that if you’re gonna go with the theory that it wasn’t an equal thing that they were both in on, and that this was something that Corona wanted and Ianthe didn’t, then it’s valuable to remember that this is a relationship where you’re cavalier, even though it’s this exalted sort of relationship, it is one where the cavalier is very disposable, as they say.

01:49:58 B: Yeah.

01:49:59 K: And why would Ianthe want that for Corona? They’re both kind of seeing the dynamic very differently.

01:50:03 B: Yeah! Exactly. And I think, building off all of this, I wanted to quote gothicenjoyer’s cavalier gender essay, which is sadly now deleted, but we did have permission to save it. [laughs] They say, “Corona is someone with a messy, heavily destabilized position within the system of necromancy and cavalierhood” as social classes or genders, as they argue. “Corona, as we receive her in Gideon the Ninth, has a thorny, somewhat ambiguous position within this binary, at once expected to perform the role of necromancer while not, in fact, being one, and desiring cavalierhood.” And they seem to agree with us, because they say, “as far as we can tell, achieving it as Ianthe’s cavalier.” So, regardless of how you feel about that, they continue, “while being kept from its full realization in the manner that the surrounding cultural framework permits,” so she can’t really ever be Ianthe’s acknowledged cavalier because of this lie that they’ve built up. They conclude, “Corona negotiates both the ambiguities and contradictions present within the system, and acts as proxy for the gestures the narrative begins to make towards what we might imagine beyond it,” which I really like, especially given Corona’s character arc throughout the rest of the series.

01:51:15 K: Yeah. I think– I mean, this is a very un-tapped-into thought right now [Baily laughs] that I’m sure you can take much further than this, but in the same way that the gender model that gothicenjoyer presents in this essay and looking at the necromancer and cavalier relationship as a sort of gender dynamic, or representing gender in this society in the same way, I do think there’s something to be said for the way that, in the way that Corona isn’t a necromancer, can’t fit into that box, tries to fit herself into the cavalier box but can’t quite be recognized in that way either. And then also, we do also have different goings-on with her in Nona the Ninth, where her– in Nona the Ninth, when she has a name that has “him” in it, she has the male gender title where she refers to becoming a king, and we see that gender play with her constantly of her presenting herself in this masculine way and with masculine-associated words, and how that, maybe, has something in parallel with this inability to fit into the cav-necro roles as well, and how gender is at play there too.

01:52:18 B: Yeah.

01:52:20 K: I think there’s clearly something very distinct there that I’m fumbling around, trying to get at right now.

01:52:24 B: No, I totally agree. This series is absolutely fraught with gender. I feel like that’s a discussion we should have during one of our Nona episodes, because there’s so much going on there.

01:52:33 K: Oh, absolutely. Full of gender! [Baily laughs] So much gender in this.

01:52:37 B: What was it that Tamsyn said? Like, “Sticky and greasy with gender and Bible?” [laughs]

01:52:42 K: Yeah, absolutely.

01:52:44 B: But yeah, in the aftermath of all of this, regardless of whether you think Corona was Ianthe’s cavalier, whether it was just something she wanted, whether that’s something we should reject as readers, Corona is rejected as a cavalier sacrifice by Ianthe. She’s also rejected as a cavalier by Judith. And then she ends up with Blood of Eden as a full-blown Blood of Eden member in Nona.

01:53:08 K: Yeah, there’s this series of rejections that kind of leads her there, into trying to fit into a role where she has skills and abilities that will be valued and put to use in some way. Olreid points out on Tumblr that “Coronabeth’s despair at Babs being chosen to give his life despair at Babs being chosen to give his life for Ianthe's Lyctorhood over her … obviously an element of spurned affection, i.e. did I not devote myself enough to you such that you would receive my sacrifice well, but there’s also anger here at not being allowed to self-actualize as a cavalier through death; … it doesn't feel like an expression of love to them because as a result she’s forced to become a failed or partial cavalier, with all the social stigma that entails.”

01:53:42 B: Ooh!

01:53:43 K: And yeah, I think that the rejection element is so huge here that you see that she’s trying to give herself to Ianthe, she’s trying to give herself to Judith. That is the only way that she can conceptualize, “if I am not a necromancer, then I will be a cavalier. If I’m a cavalier, I must perform the role of cavalier in this sacrificial sort of way, and if you won’t accept that from me, then I’m not being allowed to realize myself in any of the pathways that are put out in front of me.”

01:54:10 B: Yeah, and coronabeth on Tumblr very eloquently describes basically how shit this is. They say, “On top of being forced to lie her whole life, the way Corona is groomed to behave towards the person closest to her is to obey her every whim. … This behavior within her immediate family warps and takes control of her whole life, especially the way you would exhibit love towards another person. Coronabeth offers her servitude to Judith and it’s basically a goddamn love confession, because Coronabeth doesn’t know how to do anything else. She wants to love Judith, so she begs to be taken advantage of the same way she has been her whole life.”

01:54:44 K: Yes! Oh my god. Oh, I feel absolutely wild about this. Ianthe being the person that she’s loved most her whole life, and is so close with or whatever, and it being such an uneven dynamic, where Ianthe held this power over her, where Ianthe kept up this ruse for her, was the one person who could’ve undone it all at any moment, and Corona had to be okay with that dynamic with the person she loved most and count on that.

01:55:10 B: Yeah.

01:55:11 K: And so of course that’s what she would offer to Judith, and the only way that she would know how to have another bond with another person. Yeah.

01:55:18 B: Yeah.

01:55:19 K: Oh, my god.

01:55:20 B: Ah, it’s so painful! [laughs]

01:55:22 K: I know! Poor Corona.

01:55:25 B: Then thelockedtomb gets into the whole thing about how Ianthe was nearly named Abella, Corona was nearly named Cainabeth, after the first sons of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. This info comes from the glossary in the Gideon the Ninth paperback. And they draw a parallel with the Biblical story, which I found very cool because I had forgotten all about the Bible story. [laughs] So, Cain and Abel both make a sacrifice to God, and Abel’s is accepted. So, Ianthe’s sacrifice of Babs is accepted, she becomes a Lyctor, but Cain’s was rejected in the same way that Coronabeth’s offer of sacrifice was rejected. Cain then kills Abel and is banished and condemned to a life of wandering. So, yeah, Ianthe’s sacrifice is accepted, she becomes a Lyctor, she joins God, and Corona becomes a fugitive with Blood of Eden.

01:56:13 K: I very much agree. Thunderon argues that Corona is somewhat of a tragic figure, because she seems to have it all. She’s the Crown Princess, but her claim and power are illegitimate because she’s not a necromancer. All she’s ever expressed wanting to be is a cavalier. She’s failed at being a necromantic heir, and she’s been rejected as a cavalier, by Ianthe possibly, and by Judith definitely, so what good is she? “And then along comes Blood of Eden.” And exactly! I think she’s a hugely tragic figure. She’s this beautiful princess who we think has it all, but clearly has been rejected in so many ways, and cannot foresee a way that she fits into this society that she is supposed to be a princess and most exalted member of. She actually is so adrift in that way, and doesn’t fit in.

01:56:51 B: Yeah! It’s exactly her position within society that makes the fact that she’s not a necromancer so punishing to her throughout her whole life. She has to maintain this ruse, otherwise her life comes crashing around her, but she’s not really allowed or permitted by anyone in her life to fit into the other societal box of cavalier. And so, we can, in a way, see Blood of Eden as a liberating force in this way. She’s allowed to escape from beyond the strictures of the necro and cav boxes. Not to try to argue that Blood of Eden is some kind of perfect entity, but they do offer a glimpse of what life is like outside of the Empire’s roles.

01:57:32 K: Yeah, exactly. And I think it says so much that she embraces wholeheartedly this role with this organization that is so entirely both separate from and opposed– and against the society where she did not have any avenue available to her to fit into any sort of role or box.

01:57:50 B: Exactly. And while all that’s happening to Corona, Ianthe gets “cav indigestion.” [laughs] A phrase that I love from a post by bandydear on Tumblr, who says, “Ianthe couldn’t stand to eat Coronabeth and has been trying to reverse engineer immortality to prevent Corona from ever aging or dying, and suffered from cav rejection or indigestion because she cheated and didn’t have that devotion with Babs.” So I just noted here that based on the thematic parallels with Augustine and Alfred being siblings and Ianthe being Augustine’s protégé, it seems as though Ianthe, quote, unquote “should” have chosen Corona as her cavalier narratively, if we believe that the sacrifice of someone you truly care about is required to be a good Lyctor. And kyraneko on Tumblr echoes this sentiment, saying that Ianthe ate Babs, who she didn’t care about. The one who would have been her proper cavalier was Corona, mimicking Augustine and Alfred. And they point out that the “sacrifice a life for power” situation usually only works in fairytales if you actually love the person you sacrifice, and that’s what all the OG Lyctors did. They did kill someone they loved, or eat the soul of someone they loved, but Ianthe has “rules-lawyered the situation, … or missed something that’s going to turn out to be very important later on.”

01:59:09 K: Yeah. The entire Lyctoral setup, as we’ve talked about, too, in terms of the original Lyctors all living together at Canaan House and living in routine and in such close proximity with your cavalier, it does seem very designed to create a system where the person who you have to consume is intended to be the person closest to you. That does seem very baked into what Lyctorhood is supposed to be, and Ianthe has definitely circumvented that, in a way.

01:59:29 B: Yeah, and obviously the ways in which she struggles to absorb Babs throughout Harrow the Ninth are never explicitly said to be because it’s Babs who she ate and not Corona. It’s completely subtext, and this is just what we’re extrapolating from it, but it does seem to fit narratively that that’s why she’s struggling.

01:59:50 K: Yeah, and there’s a really great post by abigail-pent on Tumblr as well pointing out that “it would be completely in keeping with Ianthe’s characterization to have missed an essential and important piece of Lyctorhood, because after all, she arrives at Lyctorhood only by reverse engineering all the theorems based on the trials, not by actually studying the trials. She is fundamentally very skilled at cutting corners, and very used to cutting corners, but the thing about cutting corners is that you will be bitten in the ass by all the fine print you missed, especially in academic/scientific settings.” [Baily laughs] And yeah, I completely agree with that as well. It makes sense that Ianthe has come about this entirely not the way that she was supposed to, and so it completely checks out if there’s some fundamental part that was missed or some flaw in the system that we’re seeing in why she’s having these “indigestion” problems as a new Lyctor.

02:00:34 B: Although, I think those posts literalize the struggles that Ianthe has. I do wonder if what Tamsyn was going for was more of just, on a narrative level, like– I don’t know, I’m not sure there’s some actual necromantic, mathematical formula that means that you have to love the person you kill. I do wonder if it’s just supposed to be on the level of thematic resonance. You know what I mean?

02:01:01 K: Yeah, I would say thematic resonance, or even maybe just on a personal level, perhaps where it’s not something that’s scientifically wrong, but just that you’re going through this weird process, and you’re supposed to be so in sync with this person, you’re supposed to have absorbed them and be able to take them into your body and your muscle memory, and if it’s someone that you’re not as in sync or as close with or don’t have that kind of connection, I could see there being some sort of– not necessarily medical or scientific, but just that would make the process different or more challenging as a necromancer if you’re not in tune with this cavalier.

02:01:40 B: Yeah. Exactly. And gothicenjoyer in the same essay about cavalierhood as a gender rephrases this in a way that I think is really interesting. So, they say that Ianthe sees Lyctorhood as aspirational. Quote, “We see this through the sycophantism and desire to imitate that she develops around Augustine in particular. She’s trapped, imitative, inadequate, limited. What prohibits her from realizing Lyctorhood in full for the first half of Harrow the Ninth is her failure to do Lyctorhood properly, i.e., her failure to consume Coronabeth. She can’t fully become Augustine because Augustine ate his brother, but Ianthe failed to eat her sister.” [laughs] And I think, yeah, that is just the basis of all my thoughts around Ianthe’s, quote, “cav indigestion” in Harrow the Ninth, and at the end of Gideon the Ninth as well.

02:02:27 K: Yeah, I think definitely putting it in parallel with Augustine does feel very deliberate in this way. There’s this– however you want to perceive whether Corona was Ianthe’s secret cavalier, unwanted cavalier, real cavalier, there is this suggestion being made that it was something that Corona wanted, and then she’s immediately paralleled with someone whose cavalier was his sibling, and who did follow through and consume, and I think that’s–

02:02:49 B: Well, and Alfred was also desperate to be Augustine’s cavalier. He was filled with that religious fervor along with Cristabel.

02:02:57 K: Yeah, exactly. God, yeah. [Baily laughs] It’s just so good. I’m just so very interested in this dynamic and where it possibly leads for them going forward.

02:03:10 B: Oh, my god. There’s so much to say about them, I don’t even know how we’re gonna fit it into our whole podcast. [both laugh]

02:03:17 K: We’ll just keep teasing all these future discussions we’re gonna continue having about Corona and Ianthe–

02:03:21 B: It’s gonna be like eight parts.

02:03:22 K: –before we ever get around to talking about– you know what, we talked about the Eighth House quite a bit this episode.

02:03:27 B: We did, we did.

02:03:28 K: Yes, they’re probably at the bottom of our list to get a full discussion, but we talked about them in the recap a lot, and we’ll get through them all one day.

02:03:36 B: Exactly. It’ll be like, “Corona and Ianthe: Part Fifteen,” and then we’ll have an episode about the Eighth House, and then we’ll go back to “Gideon and Harrow: Part Twenty-Nine.” [both laugh]

02:03:45 K: Exactly. Sounds completely fair to me.

02:03:48 B: Look forward to it, folks.

(Upbeat, driving electronic music)

02:03:57 B: It’s time for Bone of the Week!

02:03:59 K: Bone of the week!

02:04:00 B: All right, for this bone, you have to tell me where you think it is, which is not gonna be a problem for this one, and then rank it by sexiness.

02:04:08 K: Nice.

02:04:09 B: So, shout out to the Twitter user who reminded me that teeth are not bones. I always lump them together because they’re the diagnostic features [of mammal skulls] that I learned about in school. [laughs]

02:04:22 K: It’s all right. Honorary bones.

02:04:23 B: But, you know. To be fair, not technically bones. But, if we called this “Sexy Bones and Teeth of the Week,” it wouldn’t be very good, would it?

02:04:29 K: No.

02:04:30 B: Your bone of the week is the canine tooth.

02:04:33 K: Ooh! Okay wait, are your canines just your lower sharp teeth? Or are they–

02:04:39 B: They’re all four of the sharp teeth.

02:04:41 K: All four of the sharp ones? Okay. I mean–

02:04:44 B: In fact, let me give you the technical description.

02:04:46 K: Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the canines, now that we’ve identified them. [Baily laughs]

02:04:50 B: Wikipedia notes that they’re also known as “cuspids, dogteeth, fangs, or vampire teeth.” [laughs]

02:04:56 K: There we go, baby.

02:04:58 B: “They are any of the pointed, usually single-rooted teeth adapted for tearing food and occurring beside the incisors, or front teeth.”

02:05:06 K: Nice. Oh, my god. So many thoughts on this. [Baily laughs] I think I was the one who ranked the molars when they came up, and I do believe I specifically said in that Bone of the Week that the problem with the molars is that, if we’re thinking about teeth in a sexy way, for me, that’s like thinking about vampires, and molars are not the teeth that are gonna be involved in that, and that’s why they got such a low score. I am very much a vampire girlie. [Baily laughs] I feel like this is a very formative influence in my adolescent years. I love a vampire story. I think vampires are very sexy. I just think these are very sexy teeth, I don’t know what to say. [Baily laughs] What I’m hedging against right now is I’m very aware that I’m the only one of us that has given a ten out of ten before, to the clavicle, and I’m like, do I want to be– do I want to give another ten out of ten? Do I want it to be from Kabriya before Baily’s ever awarded a bone such a high honor?

02:06:02 B: True.

02:06:03 K: But, like, these are the vampire teeth–

02:06:04 B: Well, you just have to wait till you get to, like, scapula. I’ll happily give those a ten out of ten, they just haven’t occurred. [both laugh] They haven’t come up.

02:06:10 K: Alright, I’ll search for them. I mean, I just think, if teeth are sexy, if teeth can be sexy, these are the teeth that are going to be sexy. It brings to mind vampires, there’s carnivores, there’s I don’t know, just biting with your teeth. If you’re into that, this is the teeth for you.

02:06:35 B: Yep.

02:06:37 K: I’m grasping for things to say, but at the end of the day, vampires are sexy, fangs are sexy. [Baily laughs] Ten out of ten Bone of the Week! It’s very objective to me. There’s no other correct answer.

02:06:49 B: So true. Ten out of ten. I love it.

(Slow, groovy rock music)

02:06:52 K: Well, thanks for joining us this episode for a truly gruesome body horror, horrible monster, dramatic villain monologue, exciting chapter. That was so much fun. Obviously, love any opportunity to talk about my Third House faves. [Baily laughs] If you have more thoughts on this chapter or Ianthe and Corona and all the cavalier theories out there, or anything else you want to talk about, you can, as always, find us at @onefleshonepod on Twitter, TikTok, and Tumblr, or send us an email at onefleshonepod@gmail.com. We’ll be back next episode looking at Chapter 35!

02:07:30 B: And we’ll see you next time on “One Flesh, One End.”

(Slow, groovy rock music continues)

02:07:40 B: Thank you so much to all of our supporters on Patreon, especially to Aaron Storm, Adrian J., Amber, Bridget Lowery, Dudley, Eli Swihart, Esther Wright, George, Grace, Katelynne S., Keisha, Ludwinas, Persephone, Relmin, Simon H., Sonya, Spookybean, Timothy Bennett, Trans Rights are Human Rights (so true), Truth in Advertising, Turtle on Mars, Vulcan Charm, Will Matchett, and Zach.

(Slow, groovy rock music fades out)