​​Transcript of Episode 2: Chapters 3&4 “A Bad Bone Saint”

​​Episode 2: Chapters 3&4 “A Bad Bone Saint”

 

This podcast contains bones, blood, smut, and swear words. 

 

Act I. Welcome, Penitents.

 

Marie: Hello and welcome to the Frontline Fifth, a Locked Tomb podcast where brand spanking new novitiates explore the Locked Tomb series for the first time, while a couple of dried out bone witches cackle over how little they really know. We're currently reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, and this week we are dissecting out that sweet, sweet marrow from Chapters 3 and 4. 

Before we start clacking away at our knuckle bones, we are going to do a quick Frontline Fifth census, so please allow me to introduce my fellow pilgrims. I'm Marie, Marshal of the Frontline Fifth, and I'm joined today by my Captain of the Military Friars, Hannah.

Hannah, how many push-ups can you do on just one tube of nutrient paste a day?

 

Hannah: It's an easy answer, Marie. The answer is zero. That is also the answer on any amount of nutrient paste on any day.

 

Marie: Also joining us today are the youngest nuns of our little order, Brooke and John. Brooke, given a broken heart and some nutrient paste, how many sit-ups a day would you say you are doing? 

 

Brooke: I'm not doing any sit-ups. I'm going to be sitting my ass down and curling up in the fetal position with some escapist reading.

 

Hannah: Respect. 

 

Marie: We're not doing great. So, you, John, what is your broken heart exercise regimen? 

 

John: Absolutely zero exercise. In fact, there will be no sit-ups for me as well. I think we, as a group, are averaging zero sit-ups from broken heart exercise. And honestly, my heart would be broken even more if I just have nutrient paste and I can't, I don't know, eat all the food I would be eating if my heart was broken.

 

Marie: You know, I think we have even more sympathy for Gideon, so we'll move on to it. But before we get into the details, what is your initial gut reaction to Chapters 3 and 4? 

 

John: Honestly, it's just there's no breaks. This is like… what is it? All killer, no filler. Basically, we're just running full speed ahead into the wall and it's just more world building and more stuff has happened. And, it's just a throwaway sentence here or there and you’re just like, “Wait, what the hell? What was that? Why did that happen? Wait, that seems like it should be a throwaway… it's phrased like it's a throwaway line, but that's really important.”

Also R.I.P. the parents. They killed themselves… like R.I.P. 

And also, I caught, at least for the first time, my first old internet meme and then also an anime reference, which I was kind of prepared for. And now I'm just permanently on the lookout for.

 

Hannah: Y’all are going to have to like clue me into these things because I've never been on the internet. Not a once. 

 

Marie: We'll get there. This is, this is first impressions. This is first impressions. Brooke.

 

Brooke: As chapter three was starting, I just started feeling really more and more pity for Harrow. I did not expect that coming out of chapter two, exactly. But she's just utterly tied down to this incredibly dreary and decrepit dungeon of a home. And she's clearly made for so much more chaos and destruction than this kind of place could ever provide her. 

And so when there's this whole opportunity to leave, it's super gratifying. And I'm super stoked. I say we unleash the Harrow. 

 

John: Hashtag unleash Harrow.

 

Marie: Yeah. Hannah.

 

Hannah: It's partially just my favorite moment, but also my vibes of chapter three, is that moment when you're trying to make a big, important, dramatic reveal. And everyone's literally just, you know, keeling over from a heart attack and screaming and interrupting you. And you're like, “Can we just please like suit this aesthetic? Like, would it be so hard?”

 

Marie: Just let me get through the letter!

 

Hannah: I'm just seeing Harrow up there, just long suffering, like “For the love of God!”

 

Marie: Yeah. And on a reread, I really didn't think about it. I was so focused on the letter and everybody keeling over from a heart attack and Gideon's response to it that I just didn't notice how much bioluminescent dust is just falling down from the roof of the cave and sprinkling everybody. 

 

Hannah: The amount cannot be good for your lungs.

 

Brooke: Super spooky.

 

Hannah: I also love Harrow with her blood and it's just sticking to it. 

 

Brooke: Yeah. Her black and white face paint is spotted with bloody nostrils.

 

Marie: Well, color me with bioluminescent powder and call me a great aunt. Let's get into Episode 2: A Bad Bone Saint. 

 

Act II. This Plan Is Doomed.

 

This part of Frontline Fifth is safe for anyone who hasn't read past chapter four.

 

**Let's recap:

 

Chapter 3: Gideon goes down to Drearburgh; Harrowhark announces a letter from the Emperor; Ortus and his mother have a bad time; Gideon is bereft. 

 

Chapter 4: Harrow and Gideon go to the catacombs; Aiglamene tries to find a sword; and Gideon gets a new job.**

 

Marie: I think that a great place to start here is honestly, John, as our resident internet native, would you please explain all of the memes that you found? 

 

John: All right. So, I found one meme, which is actually…I'm really hoping I didn't miss any, and I'm sure our non-existent audience at this point will let me know that I've missed others, because I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of all internet memes ever. 

But the one that I did catch was, “Study the Blade,” which, oh my God, that made me laugh. I had to put the book down because I was just laughing. I was like, “is that really that?” Yes, it is. Oh my God. That's hilarious.

Um, anyway. So, for those unfamiliar, it's basically from, I guess probably like the mid 2000’s early internet. I'm sure there's a know-your-meme page about it, but it was always a picture of like… “When you were losing your virginity, I was studying the blade.” And it's a picture of a Chad, basically the prom queen and King. And then there'd be an outrageously skinny guy that couldn't ever actually lift the sword for more than five minutes. And he would be standing in his bedroom, face down, staring at the floor with blades crossed in front of him, like Deadpool.

But it'd be like, “When you were playing football, I studied the blade.” “When you were doing this other Chad stuff, I was studying dark magic.” And it was just like, yes, this is for incels before we knew what incels were.

 

Brooke: I don't think it counts when you're a teenager. 

 

John: And then the other one was an anime reference. I have even less knowledge of anime than I do of Internet memes, but the whole, “She could fight with swords in her hand and a sword in her mouth,” I think is a One Piece reference. I know nothing about One Piece, but I'm pretty sure one of the characters there fights with a sword held in their mouth. They dual wield swords and then they have a third sword like—

 

Brooke: Zoro! Is that his name? 

 

Marie: It's something like that, I forget… but yeah, there's a character who has two  swords and then he has a sword in his mouth too. 

 

Hannah: Wait, I need clarification. I need clarification on this. Because to me, I feel like two swords in your hands and a knife in your mouth for if you drop a sword and then you can take it out. That makes sense to me. 

 

Brooke: No, no, no, you're guiding that blade with your mouth. 

 

Hannah: You're cutting people in real time with your mouth sword.

 

Brooke: Yes. Parrying. 

 

Hannah: Parrying with your mouth sword *makes sword sounds* ching, ching. 

 

John: He literally holds the handle of the sword in his mouth and he—

 

Hannah: Oh, I was thinking about this all wrong. I thought it was a… you know what? We don't need to know what I thought.

 

John: Anyway, that was the one meme and the one anime reference I got. I'm sure I missed some. 

 

Brooke: Wait, where is where is this three sword thing? I completely glossed over it.

 

JohnL: It's actually right near when she says, “Oh, she's a genius with the proper motivation. Griddle could wield two swords in each hand and one in her mouth.” And then it's like literally like very close to the other one. 

 

Marie: It's right before the studying the blade. Yeah.

OK, so, we have identified that there are memes galore. 

So maybe we should talk about the first revelation, right? That first revelation is, Gideon's dragged down, unconscious into the cathedral, which could double, as Brooke pointed out in our show notes, as a walk-in freezer apparently. 

 

Hannah: Oh my God, that made me laugh so hard.

 

Brooke: They're like A Christmas Story, tongue on the frozen pole situation. 

 

Hannah: Actually, I love that, because I feel like there's a religious world where you would kiss, you know, some sort of object in there, and just physically get stuck and have to like rip your lips away. 

 

Brooke: Yeah, the pew was so cold, her skin stuck to it. Kiss that pew. 

 

Hannah: Incredible.

 

Marie: So, she gets dragged down there for Muster. Everybody's there. And she looks up at everybody kind of arrayed around Harrowhark and drops the bomb that Lord and Lady have been dead, “mega-dead,” to quote Gideon, since Harrow and Gideon were 10/11. And Harrow has been puppeting them since then. 

 

Brooke: I think I've read too many vampire books. I did not see that coming, even though this is a necromancy book. 

 

Hannah: Completely wild. And I am sitting there also just wildly impressed. I think Gideon says this, too, like how did no one notice? Which either speaks to Harrow's incredible skill or how near-dead normal people in the Ninth are, that this is basically just par for the course. 

 

Brooke: Nobody's raising any concerns. 

 

John: A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, I think, right? It's the Princess Bride where it's like, “oh, he's just only mostly dead, which means he's somewhat alive.”

 

*cackling*

 

John: And that's how I picture everything. It's like, yeah, they're like on their way there, but there’s still enough there.

 

Marie: And also the slavish religiousness… didn't she give them like a vow of silence so that nobody questions… like, of course, they're not talking, they have a vow of silence!

 

Hannah: It is a brilliant move, honestly. 

 

Marie: It's religious shit! It's fine!

 

Hannah: And everyone must be so impressed at their intense piety that they have managed to just be silent for like seven years. 

 

Brooke: That's why they're Lord and Lady. 

 

Marie: Yeah, and it's the house of the sewn tongue. So, this is a normal thing that you would do. 

 

Hannah: I just want to mention a small thing that I love, which is the idea of praying on these knuckle bone prayer beads. The idea that like a good portion of the prayers are silent, so it's just the clickety clack of bone on bone. Ah, deep aesthetic. 

 

Marie: Also, and I feel like this isn't spoilers to say that all throughout this book, and we've seen it already, very weird Roman aesthetics and weird, super-duper Catholic aesthetics.

 

Brooke: Oh, my God. The number of terms I had to look up on Google Images to understand what they were talking about. I guess I'm giving myself away as not having gone any further than baptism in the Catholic Church.

 

Hannah: What did you look up, Brooke? 

 

Brooke: I had to look up all the parts because she's very specific and descriptive about where people are sitting. She says...

 

John: While you're going through it, the only reason I knew half of that was because I had just gotten back from Italy and I did a tour of the Vatican and gone through like a thousand churches. So, I kind of had an idea of what they were talking about. But yeah, again, similar to Brooke, I'm, I guess, partially culturally Catholic.

 

Brooke: I wasn't even aware of the fact that these chapels were frequently in a cross shape. So, we have the transept, which is basically the short leg of the cross. We have radiating chapels. That's kind of like, I don't know, a cute little headpiece on the cross. Had to look up what the apse is and I don't remember anymore. But wow. Learning something every day. 

 

Hannah: I just love that you're the kind of person who looks it up. I look at the word and I'm like, “uh, it's probably a part of the church.”

 

Brooke: Guys, I don't know the last time I had to look up so many words in a book. There is so much that I've had to look up. Tamsyn Muir is really pulling on a thesaurus here.

 

Marie: She's, um, she's amazing. And, that's part of why I like these books, because everything has a reason. And I love that you do get kind of immediate payoff. Because again, it's like how John pointed out last time that you got immediate payoff of why Gideon was kicking through things on the landing field. And now you get immediate payoff of why Gideon was like, “I know shit that I could like really spoil everything.” 

And you're like, “Oh.” You know what Gideon knows now.

 

Hannah: It's also… I think it's super interesting. She mentions that whatever crazy theorem Harrow used to kind of reanimate and puppet her parents is from some horribly forbidden book in a library of horribly forbidden books. And the rest of the houses would have a collective aneurysm if they found out.

And I think that's super interesting, right? 

 

Marie: Which means there’s taboo.

 

Hannah: Right?! 

 

Marie: There’s taboos within necromancy.

 

Hannah: Yeah. We are in a world of necromancy, but some of it is okay, and some of it is NO, like, absolutely not. 

 

Brooke: Morals around resurrecting the dead. 

 

Hannah: Interesting lines to draw. Cause clearly they have no problem with skeletons. Skeletons be everywhere. 

 

Marie: Skeletons are okay to raise and reanimate. Bodies? No, no, no, no, no. 

So, okay. There's the line apparently.

So, we're here to read the letter that Harrow has gotten from the Emperor Undying, who is also God. And the letter essentially says that he wants Harrow and her cavalier to come to the first house, where nobody lives and nobody has gone for almost 10,000 years, and become a Lyctor.

And we're not totally sure what Lyctors are, other than they're saints and they serve God, and it seems like this is a big deal.

 

Brooke: I'm trying to figure out whether the 10,000 years is literal or not. 

 

Marie: It is literal. 

 

Brooke: That's a long time. What, what happened? 10,000 years is the expiration date? There's a lot of flowery language in this letter, but there's a lot of questions being raised. Why, why after 10,000 years, do we need new ones? 

 

John: The plot, the plot demands that we need new ones is, is how that works.

 

Marie: Yeah. I mean, does he even really say why he needs new ones? 

 

Brooke: He says that they are tired.

 

Hannah: “Many of them now lie waiting for the rivers to rise on the day they wake to their King. Those lonely guard remaining petition for their numbers to be renewed.”

 

Marie: So something has happened to some of them…

 

Hannah: And the rest of them want more.

 

Marie: And the rest of them want help.

 

Brooke: So, they're basically having eight Houses, send eight people…plus their cavaliers, so 16 total, but presumably not all eight positions are open.

 

Marie: Or maybe they are.

 

Brooke: Or maybe they are. Up to eight. Up to eight positions open. He is also willing to let people go, he says, which would convolute the getting eight new ones. It's definitely, definitely some mysteries here. 

 

Marie: Uh, yeah. And then everybody's literally so excited that somebody has a heart attack and it still always cracks me up that people are literally so happy for this person. They're like, “Yay! You made it out. You're finally done. You died.”

 

Brooke: Yeah. Death is someone's “sacred good fortune.”

 

Hannah: And also Harrow just sitting there, like, “I just read this beautiful thing and you're going to fucking ruin it by just keeling over” and everyone's running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

 

Brooke: This is my dramatic thing, not your dramatic thing!

 

Marie: And then, Glaurica, who is Ortus’ mother (Ortus would be the cavalier who's supposed to go with Harrow) is just freaking out and is saying, “No, don't take my baby. He's too young to die. And he's like 35. And Harrow's like 17.”

 

Hannah: I want to be sympathetic to mothers worrying over their children, but yeah, 1) I love that they always describe Ortus as a youngster and he's like 35. 

 

Brooke: A youngster of 35.

 

Hannah: Right. But also on top of that, how does she go straight the fuck to death? The letter basically says “eight we hope we'll meditate and ascend.” It sounds like a fucking spa retreat. I don't know why she's so worried. 

 

Brooke: Interesting.

 

John: I mean, I feel like this whole universe, you should worry about everything. I don't know what a necromancer spa looks like, but I don't want to go there. Like, do they massage your bones? I don't really want to deal with that.

 

Brooke: Massage your bones. 

 

Marie: Fair point. Fair point. You know? So, in any case, because Glaurica is making such a scene, Crux kicks them out and they immediately go and steal Gideon's shuttle, which was waiting. 

 

Hannah: It’s so cold.

 

Marie: And, it kind of makes you wonder if Harrow just really knew that this was what was going to happen. She knew she was never going to have to give up Gideon.

 

Hannah: What was her plan? Because she can't have, presumably she can't have known. 

 

Brooke: No, they do imply it's a plan, right? Cause Gideon at the end, she's like, “I know your nasty trick.” And she's like, “Really? You figured that out?” 

 

Hannah: It's just so crazy that she would expect Glaurica and Ortus to freak out. Once they have started freaking out, it makes sense to me that she would come up with a plan immediately to be like, “Hey Crux, why don't you tell them that there's a shuttle?”

 

Brooke: I don't know. They mentioned that Glaurica is pretty overbearing and overprotective. The second her son's going to get shipped away to another planet without her, without her help, right? He's helpless without her.

 

Marie: It does not matter what Gideon does. It does not matter how well Gideon plans. Harrow is always 10 steps ahead. 

 

Hannah: Harrow is unbelievably smart, actually. I feel like that is a consistent thing throughout all of these books. Harrow is truly a genius. 

 

Marie: So, Gideon goes into depression, which again, Gideon's version of depression is not my version of depression, where she does a lot of sit-ups and pull-ups and push-ups in her room. And eventually Harrow comes to get her and is like, “Your best chance…” both Harrow and Aiglamene basically browbeat Gideon into acting as Harrow's cavalier, saying, “This is your only chance off this planet.” Aiglamene basically tells Gideon, “I think you damn well know if you don't get out now, you don't even get out in a box.”

So, Gideon's like, okay. She trusts Aiglamene’s perspective.

 

Brooke: Why is that? Why is that the assumption? It's not obvious to me that she couldn't do another escape attempt.

 

Marie: I think it's just kind of like, you've done it 86 times. You got this fucking close. Harrow only figured out about the shuttle because the letter came.

 

Brooke: And knew there was a shuttle scheduled.

 

Marie: So, it was like, you got this close. You're never going to get this close again. 

 

Hannah: There is something interesting also though. Gideon ostensibly hates Harrow. And so wouldn't Gideon be happy to stay on the Ninth now that Harrow is going to be literally physically somewhere else? 

 

Brooke: Oh God, no. What does the Ninth have to provide her? 

 

Hannah: Right. Well, so that's the thing, is Gideon, her only source of focus aside from the Cohort and dirty magazines is Harrow. I feel like she was never going to say no, because there's something about her that's tied to Harrow in a really meaningful way.

 

Brooke: Well, they grew up together. She's the only one that actually interacts with her, I guess, outside of Aiglamene.

 

Marie: That is the only person you grew up with. 

 

John: That's still alive, right? There were other people, but they all died. 

 

Marie: Everybody else literally died before you even started forming memories. You know that they existed, but they never existed to you. 

 

Hannah: And also it is a free ticket out. Gideon's going to get out.

 

Marie: This is where we get into all of the meme-iness. It's actually kind of funny that Harrow and Aiglamene actually pay Gideon compliments in the most backhanded, weird way possible. Harrow's like, “Oh, nonsense. She's a, she's a genius.” And says like, “She could fight with a sword in each hand and one in her mouth.”

 

Brooke: Oh, they totally baited her into this. It was, it was a masterclass in baiting someone.

 

John: Yeah. It was just reel them in, just reel them in. But yeah, they're so backhanded. It was like, “oh, she's great resource, but she's a moron.” “Oh, how are we going to pull this off? She could maybe learn to fight, but she's an idiot.”

 

Hannah: It's like direct out of that dating concept where you have to like…

 

Marie: They negged her into being a cavalier! 

Well, that about does it for chapters three and four. But before we all disappear off to do a cavalier training montage, let's take a break and play this week's game!

 

Intersitial: Lo! A Destructed Ass!

 

Marie: Well, dearest penitents of the Locked Tomb. You made it through the meat of the chapter, and as a reward, you get this week's game! 

This week it’s a Second House favorite, “Whose Weapon Is It This Time?”

We will be assigning each of our hosts a weapon. Obviously, we are all entirely proficient with the rapier, but we are going to take this opportunity to assign our future cavs an offhand.

Let's start with John. Okay, Brooke, what offhand are you going to give John? 

 

Brooke: I think that John would do well with something that has pretty good all-around stats. So, I'm definitely feeling either a spear or a long sword. One of those things that really kind of straightforwardly gets the job done and is used in pretty much any application. 

 

Hannah: I was feeling like John could like wield a mace in one hand and also have like a rapier in the other. So, you've got a little bit of the quick finesse of the rapier and then also just fucking pounding away with a big spiky ball with the other. What do you got, Marie? 

 

Marie: And see I was going to go with the same vibes, but just a little more finesse, just a little more, not so obvious that that's what he's going to do with it. And I was going to give him a buckler because you could really do some damage and just smash someone.

 

Brooke: Bucklers are like shields or something?

 

Marie: Yeah. It's just like a little half shield thing on the other arm. But you could bash someone with it. 

 

Brooke: Oh, they must be…they've got some material weight. 

 

Hannah: They're thick, they're heavy. Just like me. 

 

John: I appreciate that. I appreciate that Hannah and Brooke think so highly of me that they're like, “Yes, he could dual wield weapons proficiently.” And for me, I was just like, “no, I'm definitely taking the buckler.”

I was described this week by one of…I was playing volleyball and one of my teammates said that I'm the most athletic unathletic person he's ever met. Because I will trip over my own feet sometimes, but also be able to do something that's silly with setting a ball. And so, I feel like trying to swing both weapons, I'm going to hit myself or something horrible is going to happen. So, my picture of myself was a buckler and then maybe a trident because I like tridents.Tridents are awesome. 

 

Marie: Well, I'm glad to know that I nailed it. Okay. So, what are we going to assign a Brooke? I'm going to let you go first, John. 

 

John: So, I think for Brooke, I kind of like giving her the…how big is the scythe? I like the scythe for Brooke. I feel like that would be really interesting. 

 

Marie: I mean, you can scale it any scale you want.

 

Brooke: A tiny scythe?! What am I going to do??! Decapitate rats?!?! 

 

John: I liked the scythe for her. Or the other option is, if she can use the bones, then probably giving her the… Oh God. See, I can't pronounce anything, so panniers?

 

Marie: *French pronunciation* panniers.

 

John: Panniers. 

 

Brooke: How French.

 

John: Give her the bag of bones too.

 

Hannah: I really liked the scissors for Brooke. Partially because I think it would be… Brooke is one of these people who is unbelievably beautiful and put together and thoughtful and smart… and deep inside has a little bit of sass and bite, but you don't get to see it 99.9% of the time.

And I like the idea of Brooke with her rapier, just looking normal and then out of nowhere, pulling something as fucking ridiculous and outlandish as scissors and just stabbing someone with scissors. 

 

Brooke: You are so close, Hannah. I'm going to let Marie go before I'm going to tell you what I actually would want. But totally. I think you're close to it.

 

Marie: Let's see. And I was going off of what I know about Brooke and her balletic background and the kind of a grace and coordination that I know that she has. I was going to go with something like a cape or a net or a lasso where she could just, really out of nowhere, just grab onto you and just *stab sound* stab you, you know?

 

Hannah: Big fan. 

 

Brooke: You were all right on this, on the stabby part. But I'm staying as far away from people as possible. Okay. This is not on the list of options that any of you guys were even looking at to consider, but what I want, I want those hair pins that are like stabby needles and I will just throw them. Take somebody’s eye out. 

 

Hannah: Throwing knives and throwing things, I feel like that's totally legit. 

 

Brooke: But they're absolutely hairpins. Like you said, nobody knows it's there until you lose sight in one eye. 

 

Marie: This is insightful. 

 

Hannah: This is fun. Who knew that the games were going to be so psych dependent. 

 

Marie: Now we're going to choose for Hannah. Brooke, you get to go first on this one. 

 

Brooke: I wanted to give Hannah the scythe, but full size scythe because Hannah needs some…Hannah is so sharp. She needs the sharpest blade that you possibly can get because she knows how to cut to the core of an issue. So cleanly, so neatly, so immediately that nothing except something that takes heads off without issue is appropriate. 

 

Hannah: I'm going to go cry in a corner. I feel so loved. 

 

John: Yeah. I was going to say either a powder or a cape. I think it's mostly because of the circus and the talk earlier, but I just figured like, “Powder!” *throwing powder noise* or the cape is just dramatic and honestly, I'm assuming that's what the powder is. 

 

Hannah: Hold on, hold on, what is the powder? 

 

John: I'm assuming it's just like, you know…

 

Marie: Like throwing sand in your eyes is what I’m assuming.

 

Hannah: We're all assuming it's pocket sand!

 

John: Yeah, exactly. 

 

Marie: And I think it's so hilarious that Harrow seems to be obsessed with it.

 

quietly in the background… 

 

Hannah: pocket sand!

 

John: *pocket sand noise*

 

Hannah: I apologize, John, cause I cut you off. So, tell me more about how good I would look in a cape?

 

John: Yeah, I think the cape's awesome. You can flourish, right? It's like *distraction* with the cape and then stab. So yeah, I think that's what I would pick: either cape or powder, depending on what it is, but I'm basically picturing pocket sand. 

 

Brooke: Magician Hannah.

 

Marie: And I was taking the tack of none of this kind of bouncing around with a rapier; just go two short swords. You know, if you're going to have two weapons, you just have two short swords and you just do the damn thing. 

 

Hannah: Y'all are hitting this really hard. I am a person who loves multiple things. And so these all sound perfect for me. I definitely am wearing a cape, but I'm not using it. And actually, I think Marie is exactly right, but it is sort of for the reason that Brooke said. I just kind of want to put both my short swords around someone's neck and go opposite directions. 

 

Brooke: Fuck yeah!

 

John: You’re going Anakin Skywalker? 

 

Hannah: Yesss, see? The dream. Okay.

 

Brooke: Marie! We have to choose for Marie! Hannah, you go first.

 

Hannah: I have to go first? Oh man. I think Marie is a hard one. I'm thinking trident, which is, I feel like unexpected and multi-use. Either you can use it to block, to twist, to get someone’s sword out of the way, or you can use it as a stab or a hit, or, you know, to call sea creatures to you. 

 

Brooke: I was on the same train of whatever Marie had needed to have a lot of different purposes. 

 

Hannah: Yes. It's a Swiss army knife. 

 

Marie: Are we commenting on my undiagnosed ADHD? 

 

Brooke: I don't know. I, I, I, I was thinking daggers because well, partly people who wield daggers tend to be like a little bit unstable, but in like usually a good way.

But then the other point is that after you use your dagger, you wipe the blood off, then you use it to trim the loose threads of your cross stitch project. 

 

John: Yes. “Nothing personal kid,” and then just, “Gotta make dinner.”

 

Marie: Where are you going with this, John? 

 

John: I went in the complete opposite direction. I was going to give you knuckle knives just because those sound sweet. And also, I just feel like you would really like knuckle knives.

 

Marie: I don't want to have to worry about actually learning how to parry. The same way as the reason that they give knuckle knives to Gideon; they're like, “you're not going to learn this.”

 

John: Plus they just sound sweet. 

 

Marie: The thing that I actually would have given myself was powder. 

 

*general cackling*

 

Brooke: Bam, and I'm gone!

 

Marie: Exactly. Poof!

 

Hannah: I also like the idea of you having it on your hand and blowing it off like fairy dust, where it's just like whoosh. 

 

Brooke: None of you are taking these fights seriously!

 

Marie: I am. I'm going to run. 

 

John: Just so we're clear, I picked the buckler for myself because I was worried about tripping and falling on my own weapon. So, I think I took this fairly seriously. 

 

Marie: Well, now, now that we're all geared up, we better get lunging and thrusting. But, before Brooke and John go off to practice, it's time for RAMPANT SPECULATION. 

 

Act III: Mega-dead

 

Marie: Before we let Brooke and John sign off, we've asked them to give us some conspiracy theories. So, little Ninth House cloisterites, what the fuck is happening? 

 

Brooke: I mean, based off of what we have to work with here, my eyes are on the Tomb that is apparently very important to keep closed. On top of the fact that there's these huge changes in the whole Lyctor lineup after literally 10 millennia. 

And so, while I think that, you know, Harrow, in particular, would be super well-suited to a book of court intrigue and political manipulation, we see a lot more swords and bones and allusions to far off warfronts in these chapters.

And also, our protagonist is Gideon, and not Harrow in this book. So, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more physical action in this book going forward.

 

Marie: I can't tell you if you're right or wrong. How about you, John? 

 

John: So, my conspiracy theory is that all the houses are collapsing, like in a similar way to the Ninth. And so they're all going to do what Harrow is planning on doing, which is showing up like, “Yeah, everything's cool. My parents are totally still alive. Everything's still chill.” Same thing with Houses Two through…and they're all going to show up and be like, “yeah, we're doing cool.” But maybe our parents are also dead or, you know, it's going to be like superhero origin stories. Like some of the parents are dead, they were abandoned as a child…

There’s just going to be like all hell has broken loose on all the other Houses and they're all going to be like, “it's totally cool.” And then we're going to get some version of the Hunger Games, but everyone's Hungry.

So, that's my conspiracy theory. 

 

Marie: And with those final thoughts, it's a time to stop puppeting our dear friends, John and Brooke. So, take care of your girlish and vulnerable hearts until we see you next week for our discussion of Gideon the Ninth chapters five and six.

 

If you, dear listener, are like Brooke and John and reading along for the first time, make sure you find our reading calendar on our website, frontline fifth.podbean.com or follow us on Instagram or TikToK, which are both linked in the show notes. If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends and give us a five-star rating anywhere you can. And if you didn't like it, feel free to lie.

 

Now let's head off to sleep, my fellow baby necros, because mommy Marie and daddy Hannah have some deep spoilers to discuss. 

 

Hannah: Get in losers, we're going speculating. 

 

This portion of the podcast is 98% spoilers and like 2% snickering. Seriously, we will spoil anything and everything in the series up through Nona the ninth. If that's not what you want, turn back now.

 

**everything in the spoiler section is in white font-- to see it, you simply need to highlight**

 

Act IV: Harrowhark Nonagesimus’ Fascist Rise to Power

 

Hannah: I wanted to talk a little bit about what the letter implies for what a Lyctor is… because that letter routinely mentions cavaliers, mentions “the both of you.” You start with 16 and then you end with 8. So that's immediately there, that there is going to be a transition to just eight. But there are all of these intimations and we'll get this later too: Teacher will say, “if one of you fails, the other one does,” but Harrow just fucking erases cavaliers from her entire existence.

 

Marie:  Well, and like when Brooke started doing the math, I was like, *nervous noise*

 

Hannah: You’re like, be careful! You're like eight spots left. I guess that could be true...

 

Marie: She's like 16 get there, but there's only eight spots. And I'm like, uh-huh, mmhmm, uh-huh.

 

Hannah: No comment. No comment. No comment. Man, actually, there was another one of those for me today where John mentioned his theory that maybe all the houses are falling apart. And I'm just trying so hard to keep a straight face because it's fully fucking true. Like shit is going to hell.

These guys are so worried. They're so worried in these chapters and in the next episode we'll do, about whether or not Gideon is going to be a good enough cavalier to look like a cavalier. And in fact, once she gets there, Gideon is basically going to be the best swordswoman in the entire fucking house. 

 

Marie: Right. Right. But there's no way to know. 

That's another thing that I always find so weird about the Houses is how little they know about each other. Like there's some of them that are very, very close. And then there's some of them that just have nothing to do with each other. And it's not like you can't get there, because we learn eventually, when travel happens, that you can get across the solar system in like an hour.

Yeah. So, if you could travel, why aren't they? 

 

Hannah: There's a huge disconnect between the technology and the vibes. 

 

Marie: So then, technology and vibes, why are there no guns? 

 

Hannah: I am obsessed with this. I have no fucking idea. I've been thinking about this literally all week. Cause I just finished Nona and Blood of Eden is happy to use guns. So, it's not like there's something in the world or the physics where guns don't work. It's just that the houses are obsessed with swords and I don't know why. 

 

Marie: Yeah. I can't understand. Like it does make sense if you're just going to go with swords, it makes sense why the cavalier has to use a rapier.

 

Hannah: Right. Sad little Necro wrist muscles. 

 

Marie: That absolutely makes sense, but it makes no sense why there aren't guns.

 

Hannah: It's completely baffling to me. And the implication is also…It's not even just about Lyctors, right? Cause it also would be a different thing if Lyctors and cavaliers always have rapiers, but even the Cohort… like Gideon's two-hander sword is standard infantry issue.

Even when they go off and fight in a completely non-necromantic way, they're ostensibly fighting with swords.

 

Marie: Which makes me wonder how could they… the only way that they can be even possibly sort of effective is that…Maybe that's what it is, is it's just too material intensive to make ammunitions? 

 

Hannah: That's fair.

 

Marie: Like that you, with the weird necromancy magic, you can eat a planet. You can eat people and churn them into the battery to do what you need to do. And part of what you're doing when the Cohort goes out is… it's not just the Cohort soldiers, right? There are necromancers going there as well. Right? You have the Cohort soldiers to get the first bloom of thanergy and it's like, okay, is that first bloom of thanergy them dying or is that them killing? 

 

Hannah: Well, but it doesn't matter, because you win either way. As a necromancer of the Second, end game is: someone dies and that's useful to you. And that actually is kind of my pet theory, which I think is quite cynical, is that the reason to arm them with swords is to make them easy targets. It’s so that they're easy to mow down with guns, which automatically triggers this thanergetic bloom that then the Cohort necromancers can use in a much more visceral and long distance way.

 

Marie: Oh, that's fucked. 

 

Hannah: The implications of especially the Fourth House for me, they really just seem like cannon fodder. It's like, it's a pretty fucked up structure. Sorry, there are a lot of things about the Nine Houses that are pretty tragic. 

And I wonder… 10,000 years is a long time for culture to evolve. And I like thinking sometimes about how much of this is intentionally structured that Jod put together, and how much of this is something that just grew over time? Like to what degree is the insane religious shit that you get in the Eighth and Ninth something that just happens when you have a small group of people focused on one object forever and ever, and ever, as opposed to something where it was already handed down as a religious item of faith. 

 

Marie: It's like when Wake asks Jod to say her full name and says, “How did that make you feel?” And he was like, “Kind of sad bordering on very funny,” right? Because she obviously holds her name as this very sacred, powerful thing, but also the end of it is an Eminem song. And you're like, that's pretty fucking funny. 

 

Hannah: Oh yeah, it is. It's fucking hysterical and confusing and bizarre.

And there is something really interesting about the way we revere things and whether or not those things have inherent meaning. Of course they don't. We're imbuing them with meaning, that's always true, but it's hard to see it when you are doing it personally. It’s a lot easier to see it in other people. 

I want to talk about just a couple things also in these chapters. Obviously, we know— you and I know— that Harrow is the necromantic product of at least 200 babies, right? But still, it's constantly implied that she is that smart and that talented.

And I don't know how much of that is hard work and how much of that is just being the product of 200 babies.

 

Marie: I don't think that you can ever— and I think it's always implied in the book that you can never— unentangle those. Because she started being told that she was the product of 200 babies at three years old or something like that. 

 

Hannah: She's always trying to live up to it. Always.

 

Marie: So, she would never not be working as hard as she possibly could. So, you would never know how much of it is natural talent and how much of it is just an insane work ethic.

 

Hannah: I'm really interested in Harrow. I think she's a genuinely interesting person. She also is a bitch and we should allow that to be true because more than one thing can be true.

 

Marie: Oh, 100%

 

Hannah: But it's kind of interesting seeing some of this stuff from Gideon's perspective because Gideon's always talking about how she's simpering or how Harrow will say, “No one loves their house like I do.” And Gideon's like, “yeah, right.” Except Harrow does. 

 

Marie: Harrow means it!

 

Hannah: Yeah, exactly.

 

Marie: I think the funniest thing, on a reread, the funniest thing to me is Harrow's obsession with the powder as an offhand. And you're like, what is it with the powder? And she's like, “No, I think the powder. Don't you think the powder? I really think the powder.” And you're like, what the fuck is the powder and why? And you know she must have read, the one time that she actually read a book for fun, you just know she read some romantic novel where the hero or like the romantic lead had powder as an offhand. And if you actually found this book, then they were an actual insufferable dweeb. 

 

Hannah: That actually sounds exactly right. That she had one secret book that she kept under her bed hidden because it had kissing in it. 

 

Marie: But it had to be before she turned 10.

 

Hannah: Oh, a hundred percent. Literally everything since after that has been The Sorrow of Harrow Part Two. 

I don't want to beat this absolutely to death, but Gideon and Harrow's relationship is just so fascinating and tragic.I think I mentioned it, but Gideon sort of ostensibly is like, “I'm definitely not going. I've patently not agreed to this.” She's saying it over and over, but we know from the get-go, and I think Brooke and John knew from the get-go, that she was all in.

 

Marie: She's like, “Okay. Yeah. I'll go swing a sword, I guess.”

 

Hannah: And she was trying to show off for the captain in some of that. She's like, “Is this how you hold it captain?” But I think a lot of it is permanently trying to show off for Harrow, which is all sorts of sad. 

 

Marie: Also this is such classic, and I think all of the books are such classic, unreliable narrators. Like that is the theme of every single book so far is your narrator is inherently unreliable. And the thing that Gideon is unreliable about is her own self and her own emotions and how people feel about her. She truly does not know herself. She truly does not know other people. 

And after I read it for like the 90 millionth time, like I can't even, I truly don't know how many times I've read Gideon. And it was probably like the third time through where I finally was like, “Oh.” Cause I remember once I read it, I would see all this stuff about people saying that this was an enemies-to-lovers kind of arc. And I was like, “How?” Because I was very much like, “They’re roommates.” And then as you read it, you're like, “Oh my God.”

It is so patently obvious how in each other's pockets, how desperately the only opinion that Gideon cares about is Harrow's. And it's the only opinion she has ever cared about. And there's like a line later on that she even says that it was more important for Harrow to hate her than anybody else to love her, because all she ever wants is Harrow's complete attention, which is also why the worst thing that Harrow can ever say to her is I don't even think about you think about you. And Harrow knows it. Harrow knows it.

 

Hannah: Of course. She's using it. I, we were texting earlier this week, and I think this is just the core of it is that all of these books are sort of meditations on love, right? Meditations on what it means to love someone. And that love is sometimes sexual and sometimes not at all sexual. And sometimes it's what you thought was hate. Sometimes it's need. Sometimes it's about attention, about being seen. Sometimes it’s about complementarity. 

It's often about gifts that we give one another, giving of yourself and then accepting those gifts, because I think that's incredibly hard to accept when someone gives themselves to you. It feels like too much of a burden.

And it's something that Harrow sucks at. Harrow's always worried that she's never going to live up to those 200 kids that she didn't make a choice about. And I think she similarly, in Harrow the Ninth, is always trying to live up to the sacrifice that Gideon made, even not even knowing that Gideon made it. She's trying to cut it out of herself so that she doesn't have to accept that gift. And it's a, it's a complicated thing. It's a, I don't know. It's all very beautiful. It's deeply sad.

 

Marie: Some things that are kind of funny that you're like, “Oh.” You get so caught up on the things that they say to each other that you kind of forget the actions that they have around each other. When you open these chapters, Harrow is out of her robes, which is her basically as close to being in her pajamas as you're going to see, right? Harrow was out of her robes, lying on a couch in the library. And Gideon is trying to do something that she is going to be doing badly in front of her, which is painting her face.

And also in that, Harrow touches her, right? Gideon bites her, but Harrow has no qualms about grabbing Gideon's face to go to start painting her. Like it isn't a tender thing. 

 

Hannah: It’s oddly intimate.

 

Marie: It's super, super intimate. It's not tender. It's not lovely. It's not romantic, but it is incredibly intimate.

 

Hannah: That's exactly right. And you're right that they both start in positions of weakness in front of one another and without worry about it. Because Harrow out of robes, Harrow out of anything… she would never in front of someone.

And you can either read that as she just doesn't count Gideon as a person or she counts Gideon as so much almost just herself that it's irrelevant. It's basically her alone in her room, you know, because Gideon is just the other half of her. 

And they're both people who kind of fight with themselves anyway. So I feel like it works really well there. 

 

Marie: Well, that's another interesting point, too, is how would they actually have a nice, romantic, happy, lovely relationship loving someone. They don't even like themselves.

 

Hannah: Yes, not even a little bit. They both have serious, serious problems with themselves. And even as Gideon is like, “Yes, hot, gorgeous,” she likes herself physically. But that's partially because she works on herself physically. And I don't know, she thinks she's funny, but she just thinks she's worthless in the eyes of absolutely everyone.

 

Marie: Yeah. And so does Harrow, which is another thing: if you think you're worthless, then you cannot accept that anybody else would find you interesting or you know... Which is another reason why, when we get to Canaan House, Gideon immediately is just clay in Dulcinea's hands. 

 

Hannah: 100%. Like immediately, Dulcinea looks at her and she's like, “Oh, my God, a person looked at me for the first time in my entire life. Eyes. Must love.”

 

Marie: Right. And Magnus is an immediate parent figure because he talks to her. That's literally all it takes. It takes the barest crumb of attention, and Gideon is yours. 

 

Hannah: Yeah. OK, before I forget, I want to add one more thing. You talk about these as unreliable narrators, but it's this weird combo of everything that happens, everything they say happens, every like piece of dialogue is something that actually happened, but their interpretation is shit. 

 

Marie: Yes. Right.

 

Hannah: They are unreliable. They are reporting facts, but the way they interpret those facts is so far off that if you believe their interpretations, then you end up well outside of the realm of what is really happening. So, you're right that it has to be about what actually happens as opposed to like what they think. 

 

Marie: Yep. Yeah. Oh, oh, boy. Well. If you want to follow along with us, our reading calendar is available on our website at FrontlineFifth.Podbean.com and you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok, which are linked in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends and give us a five star rating anywhere you can. And of course, if you didn't enjoy the podcast, feel free to lie! Finally, if you have any fun theories you want to share with us, feel free to email us at FrontlineFifth at gmail.com. And with that, I'll just remind you not to unlock any tombs or enter any doors without permission because, you know, ghosts. Byeeeee. 

 

Frontline Fifth is a locked tomb podcast starring Marie Adomako, Hannah Grunwald, Brooke Anderson and John Ryan. Our cover art was designed and created by Marie Adomako, who also edited this episode. Our fabulous music was composed and recorded by Blake Anderson. The Locked Tomb series is a completely dope ass book series by Tamsin Muir, who does not know we exist and is in no way affiliated with this podcast.