#Muir talking

[n1ightw1ng]

there is something to Jason's obsessive organization...the everything being just-so, that speaks to control issues so deeply rooted in immense anxiety...so very suited to a guy who has experienced death, who tried to take a situation by the horns as a kid and ended up tied up & betrayed & dead. he can't rely on others the same way ever again. he can't rely on that childish sense of immortality ever again & we see him actively throw himself into situations he intends to be fatal over and over again. (He's not even allowed to choose how he dies.)

he can't live and he can't die and he can't control shit when it comes down to it. but look at that sick knife display cabinet 👍

[squigg-les]

someone talk about the Nona grief with me. Someone talk to me about the grief.

[specialagentartemis]

Reading (listening to, as Homer intended) the Iliad making me go oh. Ohhh. I should have done this before I read Gideon the Ninth. I get it now.

Particularly thinking now about the tidbit that in early drafts, our beloved gray-eyed Necromancer Warden of the Sixth House was named Diomedes Sextus. For Diomedes, king of Argos, young, brave, noble, heroic. Favorite fighter of Athena, bestest friend of Odysseus. And, notably, fought gods and—well he didn’t win exactly. But he got them good.

And specifically, he fought and wounded Aphrodite; Aphrodite, who is also called Cytherea.

And then of course Tamsyn Muir said she decided to change his name so she could make the Sex Pal joke.

Palamedes is a less heroic, less fondly remembered character in the Trojan War, but according to Plato, he unrelatedly invented both number and the alphabet, so you keep that connection to scholarship even if that’s not the first association with him. More interestingly, imo, there’s also an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table named Palamedes, best known for his unrequited love for Isolde (and his apparent ultimately gracious acceptance of her choosing Tristan).

I think this is actually a super interesting shift in thematic naming focus: from favored-of-Athena, fought-gods-and-wounded-them to unrequited heterosexual love, but didn’t act like a dick about it.

Also y’know. Sex Pal

[n1ightw1ng]

hi hi <3333

Last song: dreams by Fleetwood Mac…the truck I drive doesn’t have bluetooth so old people radio it is (I love Fleetwood Mac)

Currently watching: I’m super bad at watching series, but I just finished the last season of the umbrella academy a couple weeks ago?

Last movie I watched: deadpool/wolverine also…………….

Sweet/spicy/savory: sweet! i love spicy and savory both but im ngl i have a problematically massive sweet tooth and just cracked open a can of sweetened condensed milk for my coffee today

Relationship status: my characters have really fascinating romantic lives I think we should talk about that

Current obsession: (gestures to ao3 library) DC…robins…heavy sigh…also angels/bird people/found family tropes <3

Last thing I googled: ‘Fleetwood Mac hits’ because I didn’t know what “Dreams” was called lmfao. 

No pressure tagging — @stabthroughme @red-handed-tamarin

Tag game!

tagged by @bi-bats thank u bestie ily

Last song: Vienna by Billy Joel. whenever i'm stressing about life i know my man billy's got me 😚✌️

Currently watching: cries. i don't really Watch Things. i think i watched like 15 minutes of the first episode of X-Men '97 a couple weeks ago, does that count??

Last movie I watched: Deadpool and Wolverine! it was fun :)

Sweet/spicy/savory: spicy food! love me some spice. i'm currently drinking hot cocoa that i heavily cayenne peppered :)

Relationship status: currently crushing on the mind of Dr. Emily Wilson, classicist and first woman translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey from their original Ancient Greek. I am reading her translation of The Iliad right now and the way she talks about her work and the care and thought she put into it in the 80+ pages of introductory information before the actual epic itself has me swooning

Current obsession: Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. I have been *flying* through these books! another thank you to misha for the rec, haha. also Fields of Mistria <3

Last thing I Googled: "1892 bronze venus de milo" bc theres one at an antique store near me that i keep thinking about but shes $450 and that's A Lot so i was looking to see if there were comparable but lower prices that i could haggle for

tagging with no pressure: @ladytauria, @must-be-mythtaken, @n1ightw1ng

[thesleepyfable]

There's two ways to talk to your infected co-workers...

[castellankurze]

Here's the thing that interests me about the dueling scene in Gideon the Ninth. Yeah, the narrative phrasing Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star is peak and the line "Death first to the vultures and scavengers" is pure fire but why is she in that position to begin with?

The situation is thus: Camilla Hect has just won a duel against Marta Dyas attempting to claim the Sixth House's necromancy challenge keys, but she was wounded in so doing. Naberius Tern, backed by Ianthe Tridentarius, is pressing a dueling challenge against the injured Camilla in a flagrant bid to beat Camilla down and take the keys for the Third House while she's already recovering from one match. Gideon is standing by watching things unfold and, to her relief, Harrowhark steps up to put Gideon in the ring as a substitute for the injured Camilla and thus shut down Naberius' vulturing.

Except...why? You'd think that in anything like a polite societal dueling code (I know, I know, but go with it-) Camilla and Palamedes would have the option to demure, saying something like "the Sixth House cavalier just fought a duel and is wounded to boot, piss off for a day and we'll see then." But that's not even floated as an option. Palamedes isn't a dumb guy - far from it - and even if he were out of his element, you'd think someone else could just lean in and say 'dude tell them to shove it.' Judith Deuteros objects by saying "There are rules" and Ianthe shuts that down by pointing out she pressed Marta's duel on incredibly flimsy pretext, so that seems to be an objection on the grounds for presenting the challenge, rather than probing for an option to refuse. If Harrow and Gideon (or Jeannemary, jumping on the bandwagon) hadn't interceded, Camilla was about to fight her second duel back to back.

(Even in the first dueling challenge, the tone of onlookers seems to be that people want Palamedes to default and hand over his key to the Second House to spare Camilla the fight, because they assume the Sixth House is weak and don't know how good Camilla is.)

To sum up: the Sixth House seems to have no recourse but to either accept the repeated dueling challenges or default; with no way to decline except to give the Third House something they want (in this case, a Canaan House key).

That's insane.

And if that's deliberate, rather than an oversight on Tamsyn Muir's part, that suggests so much about the Nine Houses' dueling culture. It suggests that a challenge from a cavalier primary can't be refused; you have to either throw down or roll over as if they won. It speaks to a distinct lack of value placed on human lives, that the cavaliers are forced to accept a challenge on pain of their house losing face at best, something material at worst. The defending house can only negotiate to a degree that the attacking house is willing to let them. This is, depressingly, fully in keeping with the series' characters' treatment of the cavaliers. The subsequent books and short stories (especially The Unwanted Guest) really hammer this idea in, that the cavaliers are nominally viewed as a source of blades and shields in the hands of the necromancers, even if the laypeople of the setting don't know all the reasons behind the traditions.

In real life, formal dueling typically had customs and rules for negotiation and ceremony, with multiple exit points for parties to back out of a potential threat to life without losing face. Only truly aggrieved parties would press a suit to the point of confrontation. The Nine Houses say screw that, put up or shut up. They've more or less raised up the informal tradition of 'swords now motherfucker.'

To steal a phrase from another tumblrite, 'congrats god that's the worst anyone's ever done it.'

[viisforvalentine]

theres something that grips me so about the fact that the Shape lures people in and sort of keeps them calm so it can latch on by giving them memories/hallucinations of the people they love. For instance:

Caz gets visions and audible hallucinations of his wife.

Finlay hears her son singing.

O'Connor thinks about this Mary person and asks to see her.

Gibbo asks for his mom.

But Muir asks for Innes, literally theres like 4 lines in his infected lines where hes asking for Innes, saying he just needs to find Innes and get help, like,,,,,, holy shit yall, holy shit

[direquail]

One of the many things I find funny and irritating is the slant of a lot of interpretations of Alecto's name (that it's about feminine rage)--on this here wlw internet in the year of our lord 2024, it's easily made to figure as rage against God, or rage against patriarchy, or religious oppression, and therefore an allusion to the idea that she's going to get her vengeance on John for betraying and oppressing her somehow, but like

John is the one who named her Alecto. He's the one who named her that. So, naming her "Alecto" is alluding to the embodiment of John's rage--their rage, since they are joined inseparably (John even explicitly says that when he first perceives her: "You wouldn't stop screaming. You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad").

He says of Alecto to Harrow, "In a very real way, you are [Alecto's] children". At a very surface level, Alecto is (depending on the text or tradition), one of the Furies--famously, in several surviving Greek tragedies, who punish Orestes for the crime of killing his mother. In fact, in Aeschylus' Oresteia, they declare that they are specifically bound to avenge matricide.

So the name "Alecto" alludes to the nature of John's mission and how he sees it.

It also implies that his divine rage, the rage that gives him power, the power that makes him divine, that he either represents or wants to represent, is feminine rage. He was chosen by Earth (which, Furies are sometimes the daughters of Gaia); he is her champion, however he's managed to fuck that up. Once the truth of that comes out, it becomes clear that all of his power comes from her.

And that's why you get statements from Tamsyn Muir like:

“[T]he God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to. Even he identifies himself as the God who became man and the man who became God. But the divine in the Locked Tomb is essentially feminine on multiple axes – I think Nona will illuminate that a little bit more."

So yes, he plays the role of Emperor and God and Teacher, with all of the things that implies. And I don't think it should be discounted. But he also is (and partly sees himself as) the chosen champion of a goddess, or what is for all intents & purposes for a human like him a goddess. He is her avenger, and while she sleeps, her avatar.

And I don't think we're meant to read him purely as a parasite who's taking advantage of her to gain power for himself, either. Or an oppressive, Kronos-like figure. Especially if you consider Palamedes' theory of the Grand Lysis, even if he was purely motivated by desire for power before (which I really doubt), there are parts of each in the other, now. What was clear and separate before is uncertain and interpenetrated. Is his rage his own, or hers? Is his mission of revenge his, or hers? If he wants power, is that his own selfishness, or her desire to survive?

And does it matter?

[seekstrivefind]

i was sent to boarding school at six years old.

i lived in an old victorian manor house on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. there were teachers and house mistresses, but mostly there were other children. i saw my family very little, and even when i did see them, they were strangers who knew practically nothing about me. they might as well not have existed.

aside from my school lessons, i learned everything from these other, isolated children. what was good and bad, cool and uncool, what was important and what was a supposedly proportional response to any of these ideas being challenged. it was, as you'd expect, a feral little echo chamber.

and amongst it all were the expectations (academic, mostly). we were special, we were better than other children that we nebulously understood went to school elsewhere and lived differently somehow (i didn't meet any non boarding school kids until I was 12 or 13, and then only saw them in the summer).

when expectations are put on you like that, when you're so steeped in then that you know nothing else, you convince yourself that they happen to align with your own desires. they push you, but you push yourself harder. later, as an adult, you'll look back and wonder why you threw yourself so rabidly into something you never really wanted. when you're in it, you can't think of doing anything else, because you learn all your shame there, too.

so there you are, a cohort of young people who fiercely believe that you are independently chasing something that matters more than anything else in the world. and when adults look at you pityingly and dare to suggest you are being fed into a big, pointless machine that will chew you up and spit you out into adulthood with nothing to show for it, you get angry. because they don't understand, they couldn't possibly understand. you throw yourself willingly into the machine. it chews you up like meat (the adults were right all along, of course).

and that's why I'm so emotional about the fourth house, because tamsyn muir fucking nailed boarding school trauma.

[junewild]

“if i could have dinner with anyone living or dead i’d pick—“ wrong. tamsyn muir. i want to study her brain with a magnifying glass

[antigonick]

So, I miss The Locked Tomb and I'm nearing the end of my easy-to-read reading pile, so I looked for an interview where Tamsyn Muir recommends some books because, if you can't read the real thing, maybe the author's taste will scratch an itch, right? And then it's always fun to dig up the influences. Anyway, here's the answer if anyone's interested:

Do you have any books you’d recommend to your readers and aspiring writers? Picking three books off my bookshelf in a frenzy of spontaneity: Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate is a masterclass in building a very large amount of tension about a very small thing that doesn’t actually matter much. Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is probably my favourite example of how to do spec-fic without accidentally becoming an RPG sourcebook. And Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is my go-to for writing a book where everyone is basically a huge pill at all times and yet also intensely believable and sympathetic. I will spend my whole life trying to produce a paragraph worthy of touching the hem of Austen’s garment.

Okay, so I don't know the first two, and I'll look into it, and yes, she's right, of course Jane Austen is incredible, and actually the way Muir handles the unsaid romantic tension between Gideon and Harrow, and to some extent between Palamedes and Camilla (though just "romantic" is unsuitable and in either case doing those relationships a disservice) is a testament to both a certain Austenian influence AND a successful effort at wrenching Austen's literary lessons into a diametrically different setting, BUT. BUT. MANSFIELD PARK MAN? MANSFIELD PARK? How dare you. Now I can't trust your recommendations EVER. How dare you recommend the worst character cast ever written and a novel structure so boring the author herself got tired of it and the most insufferable protagonist who wasn't a man to ever wah-wah-whine in front of my eyes, oh my god. I had forgotten how much I HATE Mansfield Park and Fanny Price and ugh, I just remembered Edmund, augh, eughhhg. Tamsyn how could you do this to me personnally

[n1ightw1ng]

thinking about how Jason's apartments are shown to be serial killer pristine but Dick keeps house like an emancipated sixteen year old. if they lived together they would kill each other

[sumamitt]

things just keeping getting worse for gideon. watching tamsyn marinate her.

[liesmyth]

Chew is my favourite TazMuir short story (5000 words) and you should all give it a go if you want some bite-sized horror

[space-spring-art]

I just think they'd be really really funny about it

[portraitofadeadgirl]

The Locked Tomb has absolutely ruined my vocabulary. Do you know how often I quote 'massive slam on [thing] out of nowhere?' Do you know how often I work 'I hate you all, I have hated you all for milennia' into polite conversation? The other day I slipped 'you can't take loved away' into earnest advice. I can't live like this. I should be entitled to compensation.