Watercolor, 2023. A gift for the incredible inkworm <3

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ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

The Saint of Joy and the Saint of Patience

Based on the Leyendecker painting of course

ok but PYRRHA remembers pre-resurrection G1deon so now I want an AU where Mercymorn and/or Augustine start dreaming of life before the pre-surrection. Snatches of memories of when they were two completely different people but still a matched set, a double act, determined to live and die together, and that’s where Augustine’s theory comes from. Can you imagine waking from dreams of the two of you in a completely different, unimaginable world? Dreaming of this over and over again for 10,000 years? At first the dreams appeal to Augustine because Alfred is alive in them, and then he realizes it’s before widespread necromancy, in the dreams it’s only John who has necromancy. He realizes it’s on the First House before it became First House. He sees Cristabel (have we all decided she’s the nun? I sometimes wonder if Anastasia is the nun...) is alive. He realizes the pink of Mercymorn’s hair is slightly off, slightly artificial, sometimes in the dreams he notices her dark roots growing in. But then one day he dreams of roses with teeth and he realizes these are not dreams. They’re memories.

Maybe that’s what unites Augustine & Mercymorn across enmity--maybe one night, after everyone else has gone to bed and Mercymorn is nursing a drink, Augustine lights a cigarette and tells her he’s been having dreams. And he knows she’ll listen because he tells her he’s been dreaming of Cristabel and Alfred. And these dreams--they’re dreams of life pre-resurrection. Almost as if they’re memories. And then, not letting himself feel the cold horror he’s lived with for thousands of years, he asks: is there part of the brain where memory can be wiped completely? Is it possible to erase the self without erasing scientific facts or knowledge that the self knew?

What can Mercymorn say? That memory isn’t stored just in one place? That the brain doesn’t work like that? She hates Augustine and she wants to rage at him for daring to say Cristabel’s name but if what Augustine is implying is true, if he’s right, then she’s lost Cristabel 3 times: once to the 8th fold path, once to the mass extinction, and once because John reached into her brain and took every single precious memory Mercymorn has ever had. How can you mourn a loss you didn’t even know you carried? Are you allowed to mourn this loss? Maybe not. Maybe your only option is to avenge it.

Triple quickie with God

DIOS APATE - PART 1

here's my tlt exchange art! I will post part 2 here once I make it safe for tumblr, otherwise go to my twt (@DMSR__) if u wanna see them sucking and fucking >:3

god, mercymorn, and augustine.

this was my piece intended for the charity zine, unfortunately it got cancelled for those who don't know, i don't have a print store or anything like that, so please kindly consider donating to the charities! <3 (if you're capable) : https://www.astraeafoundation.org and https://www.aucklandfoundation.org.nz/womens-fund

i have the strongest need ever to say that this drawing rlly took me 30 hrs plus and i am not exaggerating 😭😭 the most time i spent on a drawing before this one was like 8 hrs.... it was so fun tho.. once i manage to export the timelapse without my ipad crashing its over for yall 😼

M— & A— / Mercymorn & Augustine

I am a simple person; I see ’A– and M–’ mentioned together like that again and again in John’s dream story in NtN and I start to cry and cry and cry and cry because whatever the fuck they are to each other they were the first time around too, we’re together. we’ll go together, yes, again, this time too. but I also start to cackle hysterically between the tears because after the uh… ‘breakup’ John is despondently fucking his way through most of the cohort admiralty in perhaps the most pathetic case of midlife crisis I’ve ever seen and you can practically hear the ‘um… my lord?’/’*sigh* mercy and augustine used to call me that :’(’/’(yeah because it’s your fucking name but I can’t say that because you’re god and I don’t think there could be a celestial HR department big enough to tackle this one honestly’). Mercy and Augustine were the last loadbearing structures holding up whatever embarrassed tatters remained of John’s dignity and now it’s all coming down babey happy birthday

God’s OG duplicitous sluts, gone but never forgotten ❤️❤️❤️❤️ he’s making an absolute fool of himself without you two and I hope that gives you at least some satisfaction while you’re both burning in hell for your sins probably sorry I love you

Thoughts About the OG Lyctors

Introduction

For my money, one of the most satisfying elements in Nona the Ninth was that we finally got an account of everything leading up to the destruction of Earth - notably, Harrow cuts off the retelling before the Resurrection, the establishment of the Empire, and the lyctoral ascension at Canaan House - in no small part because we get some really comprehensive information about who the original lyctors were and what they were up to. 

So in this post, I want to talk about what we learned about the lyctor’s pre-Resurrection lives and what we can infer from them about their post-Resurrection lives. 

Keep reading

the fact that john was fucking LYING when he told augustine in HtN that his pre-resurrection self would have hated him for saying no one needed to be punished for what happened to humanity anymore. from john's own mouth, augustine back then was apparently working towards a solution of getting as many people from earth to safety as possible and then turning towards what they could do to help the planet heal once that was done -- prioritize helping people survive first, solve the underlying problem after that and tentatively they could maybe one day return, pretty logical and straightforward. he didn't care about stopping the trillionaires because he wanted to punish them for abandoning earth, but to force them to take on more people in cryo before they left, save more lives. he seems to have thought that was what john wanted too, because apparently his and mercy's enduring mistake is to think (hope?) that john is a better man than he is -- or even to think that he's not a monster. (big 'when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it, of course' vibes.) and john wiped his memory of everything that happened and lied to him about who he'd been for ten thousand years because in his heart of hearts john can't imagine anyone not agreeing with him deep down, not feeling what he feels -- I think he thinks that's what love is, someone subsuming themselves completely into his desires and needs without question. surely, if I show them all the state of the world without letting them have their preconceived ideas, they'll agree with me completely about what needs to be done, because they love me.

(john wants everything to love him. god must be able to touch all of creation.)

and when augustine inconveniently still turns out to be his own independent person with different views and priorities, even when john tried to control everything he got to know about himself, by the time the jig is well and truly up... he keeps lying to try to stop it from happening, to no avail. when they believe john is dead, augustine's plans and values seem pretty much consistent with those of his pre-resurrection self, if severely warped and dented from ten thousand years of, y'know, all that being effectively the second in command of a fascist death empire stuff. he still wants to save as many people as they can and doesn't give a fuck about getting retribution out of it. find our survivors, sue for peace, find them a new home, let necromancy die. his wildest dreams for what to do after have downgraded from 'and then maybe save the planet!' to 'and then mercy and I can hurl ourselves into a sun, probably squabbling the whole way, and get to be done and forgotten together', which is understandable under the circumstances lol, but to me this is still pretty clearly recognizably the same way of thinking, a consistent personality shining through -- not fundamentally in opposition to his old self at all. if his pre-resurrection self would have hated him for anything, it's probably for choking down his little brother's soul after not being able to save him, huh.

and the worst part is that john could only do this to them because they did love him. they loved him so much, and john wants their love so much he tries to eat them whole and make them parts of himself. he had what he wanted, and he corrupted it beyond all recognition until it was, to quote alecto, a hideousness, and now he's all alone. they held his hands when they died the first time, and he thought the way to deal with that was to try to make them his hands so they couldn't be taken from him again or leave him, couldn't be separated from him. “If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten”.

it's time to stop kidding yourself, john. no one else is fooled anymore.

augustine and mercymorn before the resurrection... worstie behaviour

[id: six excerpts from nona the ninth.

the first reads: 'He said after a pause: You know the worst part? She cried. She and A- both cried. In each other's arms, like babies. They were so fucking scared.'

the second reads: 'She just took notes, helped with all the trials I wanted to do, squabbled with A-. At least that made me feel normal. That was their usual double act.'

the third reads: 'He said, So of course, what do M- and A- do, they go raid a fucking graveyard.'

the fourth reads: 'A- and M- were making black jokes about taking volunteers from the crowd for the skeleton army.'

the fifth reads: 'M- and A- were a united front, and that was scary as fuck. It was always frightening when they stood together.'

the sixth reads: 'I remember A- and M-... they were alive... we all hid behind a kitchen table. I remember their hands in my hands... I remember A- telling me something and M- saying, We're together. We'll go together.' /end id]