i might have said this before but ive come to believe that the locked tomb series mostly gets presented as “lesbian necromancers in space” NOT because people think that alone is a sufficient selling point (in the critique’s worst form, “all people care about is LGBT representation”) but because it’s hard to describe the plot of tlt in a way that successfully conveys its appeal.
“lesbian necromancers in space” is just tlt’s version of homestuck’s “four kids play a game” or 17776’s “what football will look like in the future” or everything everywhere all at once’s “a chinese-american woman struggles with her taxes”.
I’ve been doing a re-read of the Locked Tomb - although technically it’s a re-listen, because I like the audiobooks - and I stumbled across a particular passage that hadn’t stuck in my memory before that made me rethink my understanding of the origin of Blood of Eden. Ever since Harrow the Ninth and especially since Nona the Ninth, there’s been this common interpretation that the BOE are descendants of the trillionaires who abandoned Earth and that’s why John is at war with them. I’m not so sure that’s true any more.
Here’s why. In Nona, when the whole business with Crown/Corona infiltrating the barracks kicks off, there’s an interesting exchange between Camilla and We Suffer about the Oversight Committee that includes this statement:
“Hect, what you must understand about Blood of Eden is that we own things in common, we share responsibilities and resources in common. She could have moved these resources at will…but I must make one move at a time. And above all, I must place the safety of…Blood of Eden’s continuity…even above the mission.” (Emphasis mine.)
This took me aback somewhat, because the emphasis on militant communal ownership doesn’t really fit with the idea of “descendants of trillionaires.” I suppose one could say that it’s been ten thousand years, cultures change and drift over time…except that, as I’ll get into later, the BOE seems very very insistent on cultural preservation, so it would be a bit out-of-character if they changed that stance on this one particular issue.
And that’s what made me think: what if the BOE aren’t the descendants of the trillionaires? What if they’re the descendants of the non-trillionaires on the FTL ships?
[repost bc someone tried to get this post hidden for being “sexual” when it is literally just an anthro dog woman standing around in different outfits with no nudity or sexuality implied.]
I haven’t been around much because I’ve been digging into studies. There’s a lot of work that I’m not posting, but the work is getting easier (The first drawing only took 30-45 minutes, which is a huge improvement in speed for me). I’ve really been trying to deliberately exercise simplification as an artistic principle, and it’s lead to faster, easier, and more effective work, and more productive learning.
Doodling my fantasy characters in pinups is funny. Rumi’s some kind of fantasy polearm wielding ex-commando from the mountains, but she can do swimsuits too.
