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oneinterests · 6 months ago

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Hi! i really wanted to make a post describing all of my favorite books (especially since i just reorganized my bookshelf to get one whole shelf for all of my all time favorites) They’re all technically in order from “least” favorite to absolute favorites :D

8: The Golden Compass- This was one of my favorite books/movies as a kid. I wanted my own alethiometer so bad and from what i remember i actually tried making my own with paper. Rereading it again now that i’m older made me feel very nostalgic, and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart :) also the scene where Lyra eats a seal kidney raw is burned into my mind 10/10 i love the weird gory moments in this book.

7: The Subtle Knife- i never knew that The Golden compass had a sequel until a classmate asked me my favorite book- and when i said The Golden Compass he asked me if i liked the other two books. I was so shocked and for some reason never thought they would have a second book out. I really enjoyed this one, and the deaths physically made me put down the book. I 100% need to reread this one again.

6: Bluebird- From what i can remember, this was recommended to me as a Gardians of the Galaxy type adventure with a lesbian main character fighting against oppressive governments. I really enjoyed the story and the characters developments throughout it, and i should really reread it again :)

5: The Salt Grows Heavy- I finished this one in about two hours? it’s a quick and gory read that’s basically about characters from a very fucked up horror fairytale. A mermaid traveling after destroying her now deceased husbands kingdom, and a frankensteins monster like creature being haunted by their past. i love the descriptions of the two main characters and the horror is so so good. if you don’t like flowery writing (i think that’s what it’s called lol) you probably won’t like this one. i love complicated writing, especially if it’s in a novella.

4: This is How You Lose the Time War- Speaking of flowery writing, this one is basically poetry with how in depth the authors go into their writing. Two agents named Red and Blue fight on opposing sides of The Time War. This book really just throws you right into the deep end and it’s really a sink or swim type of read. I love books that make you think or ones you have to reread multiple times to appreciate everything fully :)

3: The Spirit Bates its Teeth- How do i even explain how much i love this one. It’s so horrifying but so hopeful at the same time? Meeting Daphne for the first time made me cry, she’s one of my favorite characters in the book. So many trigger warnings for this one, i thought i was ready but i had to take a break part way through reading it. So worth it though.

2: The Entire Murderbot Series (Seven books so far, and i literally cant rank them)- Quite literally one of two of my most favorite series of all time. It’s very Sci-Fi, with a self proclaimed Murderbot grudgingly saving its humans and figuring out what it wants to do after breaking free of its governor module. All of the characters are LGBTQ+, and there’s multiple polyam characters :D The only downfall is how expensive the books are, and 90% of them are novellas. I believe when i bought the first book it was $15? But i personally think it makes up for the price since i have reread them all at least four times now :)

1. The locked tomb series. (1-Nona, 2-Gideon, 3-Harrow to be specific) :D

I physically can’t describe how much i love this book series. I’m planning on getting a tattoo of one of the quotes in GTN after Alecto drops. They’re absolutely insane books, with random meme references sprinkled in. (“None Houses with left grief.” fucking threw me for a loop when i first read it) They are absolutely books you have to read multiple times to understand- the first pages in GTN took me three months to get through because i didn’t understand half of what was going on. But as soon as it clicked i flew through it and finished the book in under a week. Nona is my absolute favorite, and i annotated the shit out of my paperback copy. (Which i might make a separate post about… because i have literally no one to talk about these books with lol)

(Also yes. I do have two copies of each book… i bought the first two as paperbacks first, and the third one only had the hardcover available. I wanted a full set of matching books after reading them all, especially because i wanted to make a mini shrine for them on my shelf. i can’t wait for Alecto to come out.)

and that’s all of them so far!! i still have 39 books on my TBR shelf, so i might update this list whenever i add to it! :)

#the locked tomb #tlt #the murderbot diaries #tmbd #i’m just going to tag those two for now lol #books #onesbooklist #booktalk #onerambles

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docholligay · 1 year ago

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She Who Became The Sun

I want to thank @amhrancas for commissioning me to read a book I have been so so curious about, and I hope y'all will thank her too! She's also letting me, next month, talk about a movie I FUCKING LOVE.

nonspoilery: A plot-driven book that takes place over a long period of time in China during the time oof the Khans. There’s a lot to like in it, and i think a lot of people would really connect with this storyline, but there’s something slightly off about it that didn’t quite make it with me, that I pin down to a certain lack of character depth. It’s a pretty decent book overall, with some great description though, and the character thing is in no way jarring--it took me a bit to figure out what made the book not quite hit for me.

SPOILERS BELOW:

I really wanted to like this book, and I still want to like this book, and I don’t NOT like this book, but I was prepared to love it. I don’t. I wish I did.

And this isn’t me trying to satisfy the people I know love this book, or hedge about my feelings: I know how many of y’all loved GtN, and my response was essentially, “Hey, quick question, what the fuck is wrong with you?” (affectionate) so it’s not that I’m afraid to come out as not liking something well received by my peers. It’s just, I felt so close to really liking the book, and just could not get myself there.

We’ll come back to that, but it’s one of the less-relevant bits of the review, so we’ll move on from it for now. So this is a historical fiction novel: KINDA. I admit that I know nothing about larger Chinese history, I never studied it, so I actually was not even aware that this was about a real person except for my commissioner telling me so when asking me questions to consider for the book. Some of the back of the book comments are calling it a historical fantasy, and aside from, I guess, the ghosts, the only reason I can see for this is that this is not at all representing the historical person Zhu Yuanzhang (I didn’t let myself look him up until after I had finished the book) so I would, personally, actually call this an alt-history, but I understand tht has some baggage with it the author may not have wanted to engage in.

I was asked about the idea of narratively reworking a historic figure to be totally different from who they were. I have no problem with it! I feel like as long as we’re all HONEST about it--and I feel like this book is pretty honest about it, though, what choice does it have--it’s fun to sometimes have a historical blorbo and make them do what you want. I think that real people do not have symbolism and foreshadowing and motifs, and so, as a Lit major, I think it can somehow make people more REAL, by making them fictional.

Also, as a History major, I kind of do not like it, for reasons that have nothing to do with the ACT of it, and more with the idea that so many people do not ever venture beyond the fictional work and so have completely incorrect notions of historical figures, and they feel ways about these human beings based on the very much fictional avatars presented. This tends to lead to a thing I LOATHE, where we do bad history because we need these people we admire to have been ‘like us’ or to hold values we hold or feel like we could have been friends with them, ignoring the reality of their personality, their social and temporal position, the fullness of who they were as a person, etc. I see a lot of bad fucking history based on this idea, and that is not new, this has been going on for a million years, but I have never liked it. Fictional accounts can convince people of things that aren’t necessarily the factual kind of true.

That complicated feeling of mine goes on beyond this book, and, frankly, this takes it to such an extreme that I doubt very sincerely I’m going to see scholarship done about a great emperor of China being a woman secretly. So, I feel complex ways about it, but with a smart audience that realizes it’s fiction, I don’t have a problem with it, though in the same way I tend to prefer Not!Europes or Not!New Yorks, I tend to prefer, for example Not!Billy the Kids or what have you. But it didn’t affect my feelings about the book at all, this is a common thing in literature and the multitudes I contain today I will still contain tomorrow.

Let’s talk about our main characters.

Zhu. I think this is where the book didn’t lose me, but failed to engage me. I want to like Zhu so bad, but I just don’t, and I don’t mean I dislike her, I just mean I don’t…care much. I feel like I have no idea of the interiority of who she is other than trying to hide being a woman. I don’t get a grasp of her personality otherwise. I know she does what it takes to survive, I know she sees ghosts, and I know she becomes ruthless in a way that I found a bit shocking not in a “oh my god! Twist! Way but in a way where I felt like there wasn’t a clear enough path for people named Doc, who are me, from “I can kill a bad man” to “I can murder a child” or maybe there was, i don’t know, I just felt like there was a wall kept up between me and Zhu*. She murders a child, and Ma is all, “You said you wanted me for my kindness but you don’t care about it” and then Ma is at her side anyhow, so I guess it didn’t actually matter to Ma that much either, close of business, and I am just sitting there going, ‘Okay the book is over now, right?”

Ouyang. Probably my favorite character in the whole book, and yet, I mean I don’t like him in an “Ouyang is an innocent meow meow.” Ouyang is a bitter, hateful person who has intentionally forced himself not to feel joy or comfort or love because he made himself into a weapon and a weapon alone. Like Zhu, he took the steel he was given, but he bent it to his will. I love him as a character, I think his approach to everything is fascinating, and, inevitable, and I frankly find him much better written than Zhu. I was not at all surprised when he killed Esen. I saw it coming very early on, not in a ‘predictable trope’ way but in a ‘I hear the howl from far off and don’t get shocked when the wolves come in” way. He did it, and the way that was written was so great, and I was sitting there going, “You are going to blow up every good thing, the only good thing, that you have, out of a love for people you don’t even remember and a culture that is only yours in the way a shadow is you.” He looks straight at me and goes, “And what of it?” Extremely taken with him.

Revenge is a huge thing in this book, and the necessity of it, almost. Is there redemption in revenge, what does it mean to find redemption, and is there value in holding onto an old pain for so long? Ouyang waits til near the end of the book for his revenge, but does he feel satisfaction from it? He carries his need to kill Esen like a bag of bricks, but he never for one moment imagines that he can set it down. I think there’s something to be said for a lack of flexibility in that. What does revenge bring him? What did his revenge against Zhu bring him? He suffers so much at the end, when he kills Esen, in what is very likely my favorite scene from the whole book, the absolute perfect ending to their story, and even then he cannot imagine a different way. He takes this idea of revenge as his way of being man, his fucking fixation on manhood and being a son, and what he is and what he is not, and he lets it eat him alive, and it brings him NOTHING. At the end of the day, it brings him only suffering and pain, and instead of having one dead family, he has two.

Though I suppose it could be said that Esen suffers for his near-inability to be capable of revenge. Not that he’s a weak man, he isn’t, and not a cruel one either, though often a thoughtless one. (And maybe this is, after it all, why Ouyang can kill him. He was always kind to Ouyang in every way Esen could think of, but he never thought about Ouyang, from Ouyang’s view.) But he doesn’t have the sense of revenge that other people in his life do, he doesn’t have the instinct. Not even what i would call full on revenge, he can hardly make the people he cares about pay for the things they do.

Maybe the way to live is between them, I don’t know.

So, obviously, at the end I absolutely salivating over everything that is happening with Esen and Ouyang, but find myself very much left cold by whatever the hell Zhu is doing. This is a problem as a reader! This isn’t even me saying, “Oh nooooo Zhu turns ruthless and naughty” I actually think that’s a great middle point for a story, but for the end to be like, “So then Zhu murders a child, and is now king. The end.” I was sitting there going, “so what…am I supposed to take from this, exactly?” A good story has a moral, not always a good moral, and maybe moral isn’t even the right word, but stories teach us things, and with the B-track story of Esen and Ouyang I feel like I got that, but with Zhu’s story I came away utterly plussed about the whole thing. Diversity win! The warrior-king who ruthlessly grasps for power is a gender noncomforming woman! Ahaha I mean I’m oversimplifying obviously, but it feels in many ways unfinished to me.

I really did like the descriptions and vocabulary in the book, though, and I think this is part of what broke my heart about not loving it. PLEASE use words like palimpsest and internecine and facile. PLEASE describe things as being “like froth on a dead man’s mouth” and “ held on as if it were a slipping deck at sea” and “the particular combination of awe and pity one gets from seeing fragile pear blossoms in the rain” my god. WHAT. I was fucking SPOILED by the language of the piece. To a degree that was almost frustrating.

The experience of this book was the experience of an ex where it should have worked, where it should have been everything and more, and it wasn’t even BAD, it just did not reach what it should have. I feel an echoing ache that I could not really ever LOVE this book despite wanting to so badly. It feels frustrating, ina way that hating a book doesn’t. I do think people who are interested in this book should read it for themselves and make a judgment call, as I’m sure and know that there are plenty of people who enjoy this book exactly as it is. I’m not chomping at the bit to read the sequel but not opposed to it, either, and maybe in that shrug is the harshest condemnation I can realistically offer. It’s not a bad book. It’s even a pretty good book. But it does not give me passion for its main character.

*It might be that this book is so so fast-paced. It is slamming from year to year with military movements and the Mongol court and the Red Turbans and betrayals and successes and there are few breaths taken in between. Some people will love that, but I felt it robbed me of a bit of knowing the people I’m reading about.

#doc reads #commission review

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selchwife · 2 years ago

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i need to finish reading gtn but i also REALLY want to reread his dark materials now. insanely frustrating that i had a full compilation of all the trilogy and now I don’t remember where it is…..if i got rid of it moving or something i’ll go back in time and kick my own ass

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fortjester · 1 year ago

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please say more about up the wolves on the playlist i beg

anon i am down on my knees asking you to marry me, of COURSE i will say more about up the wolves

while i feel up the wolves is probably more of a kiriona gaia song at this point, i hesitate to phase it out of the gideon playlist because the roots of it are in in gideon in the first place. here's a poignant quote abt the song before we kick off.

"...when people talk about triumph over adversity, adversity sounds like sort of a faceless sort of a thing that you don't need to triumph over so much as get around. This is a song about triumph over the adversary." - John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats), at the Newport Folk Festival, 2013

first verse is pretty easy, because that's for sure gideon's inner monologue during htn act 5.

she's been trapped inside of harrow's brain for nine months, not really alive, not really dead, being systematiclaly drowned by harrow's brain, and yes she forgave harrow for her past behaviour, but it's clear by the time we see her again in ntn that she's letting anger take the wheel atm - and who could blame her? so gideon is the "ghost" in this case, but she is also the person finding it hard to forgive. dichotomous.

now, second verse is, to me, the first few chapters of gtn. the Ninth's closest neighbour is the Eighth, so that makes the first lines match up quite neatly. observe:

pg. 26 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

but, ya know, obviously when the Eighth did catch wind of Ninth mischief, they ended up caring more abt gideon's mysterious dead mother than they did about her. additionally, as the song continues, we get these lines:

once again, reiterating that the truth of gideon's treatment isn't important even if they know, to which i gesture broadly at the following snippets:

pg. 19 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

pg. 21 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

so, it's a pointless endeavour, but as gideon later justifies it, says even with no ultimate gain she'd do it, because, "I completely fucking hate you, because you are a hideous witch from hell. No offence." (pg. 27) what a lady. spite really can fuel you to do anything. furthermore, the next line is a sweet little mic drop on the moment to me:

pg. 19 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

up the wolves is one of the Mountain Goats' many "anti-revenge songs", this theme of useless rebellion and spite really intertwines nicely with gideon's early character arc. i also snagged this quote abt the song off the genius lyric page because it sums up my early thoughts really nicely abt why this fits gideon.

like, does that not scream "gideon" to everyone? am i alone here? hello? is it just me and mr. darnielle and gnav?

to finish up, here's some nice comparatives/parallels from the chorus:

pg. 23 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

this (of course) refers to the story of romulus and remus (the former of whom would later found rome) being abandoned to die of exposure by their mother. gideon wasn't so much abandoned as put on a backburner, as wake was briefly inconvenienced from her main goal by dying. nonetheless, gideon's mother exists only as a story to her, and she grows up almost completely alone, like romulus and remus.

pg. 456 & 457 (paperback), Nona the Ninth

the "party" referred to here in the story of romulus and remus is actually the murder of their father (who ordered them to be killed so that he might avoid them ever inheriting his throne) and the reinstatement of their grandfather to the throne. romulus then went on to murder remus over a disgreement over where to build their own city (rome). in gideon's case, the murder is of crux, but could also extend to whatever's going on w her and john both before the events of ntn and whatever's gonna happen in atn. in either case of where the party of her coming home is, it's a bitter return, and i don't think she enjoyed herself, which sucks.

last one, i swear

pg. 20 (paperback), Gideon the Ninth

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belugabear · 2 years ago

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I found your tags in the locked tomb reading order post and they are hilarious. How do you even finish that book without context? what was it even like?

And also do you think it makes less or more sense (before the end) to read it without having read gtn?

Omg hi.

So, in my slight defense, when I first got into the series I was working a baking job, so I was waking up early and listening to the audio books on my shift. I like to tell myself that if I'd been looking at the physical copies every time I might have noticed some sort of "sequel of" or the like. It's a nice little bit of hope I keep for my own sanity.

For most of my first time through HtN, I legitimately thought that Muir was just very anti-hand holding. I read a lot of dense SFF through my undergrad and it seemed plausible enough that an author would just dump you in and have you figure out wide scale things like the entirety of the cavalier system. The entirety of Harrow's amnesia also made sense to me as an entry point like "ah we're discovering this along with her".

It doesn't help that I struggle with audio processing and a short attention span (typically why I go for physical copies or multiple listen throughs) so I was also writing off a lot of my confusion to just assuming that I had forgotten names or glazed over plot points.

The last third or so was when I really started to think something was up. I'd tried really hard up to that point to avoid spoilers but at that point I broke and started looking things up on the wiki so I could try to make some sense of it. That was when I found out my mistake, but I was so drawn in at that point that I couldn't NOT finish it so I just buckled down and did my best listening, and dove IMMEDIATELY into GtN when I finished.

I honestly think the first part of the book might have made a little more sense with my blind read, just because I had absolutely no context for who Harrow was, and I wasn't filled with the burning anxiety and fear of "oh God what happened to Gideon" that inevitably would have followed the proper reading order. That being said, the emotional impact was WAY more rewarding with the proper context.

Long story short, I have now learned that when consuming audiobooks I need to be triple extra sure that I'm doing it in the right order.

#gtn #htn #htn spoilers #gtn spoilers #sorta but just wanna be safe #thanks for the ask!

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mjulianwrites · 2 years ago

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credit to @yvesdot for this template!

happy almost new year! 2022 was the first year in a very long time that i consistently wrote every month, so i'm excited to look back on it! my writing this year was dominated by my latest wip, next day after dawn, including both canonverse content and a lot of stupid au bullshit <3

details under the cut!

january

in january i was still very much in dearer than a friend mode after finishing the first draft in november, but with no progress to make on the book itself i ended up writing some speculative post-canon (and very non-canon) nonsense involving preston getting into a terrible terrible relationship with another man. this one was a collab with @inkgel for which we definitely wrote a sane and normal amount of content

It’s not that he intended for this to happen. But the truth has been bubbling up for so long now, and eroding him a little more each time it does, wearing away at whatever remains of his willpower, his sense of himself, his belief that he has anything left to lose. And he’s already damned. He knows that deep down. He could repent, he supposes. Maybe God would forgive him. But Val won’t. He doesn’t really see the point. And it’s because of that too. Because he’s alone now, in a way he never has been, never could have been for the past eleven years of his life, because he always had someone who was supposed to be his. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to forget it when it feels like a piece of him has been ripped out, leaving a gaping wound that throbs and bleeds and refuses even to begin to heal. So he has to find someone to fill it, even if they don’t fit quite right.

february

in february i was mostly focused on my classes, but that did involve reading paradise lost and briefly getting very fixated on eve. i wrote less than two pages of this, but i was having fun with some dialogue between eve and satan. it was interesting to try to figure out what the pov of someone so ignorant of the world might look like

“Are you an angel?” I ask. That creature that he is talking to as I am talking to you. I do not really know what an angel is. He would not let me listen with him so it could be explained to me. But I know that an angel is something greater than me, and you are greater than me, but you are not Him, so I think maybe that is right. “I was an angel,” you say. “Was?” “I don’t know if I can explain it to you.” I feel something when you say that, something that I have no name for, but I know it is something that is bad to feel. Frustration, I think. I am good at naming things. I am as good as him. Sometimes I wish that He had left some of the animals for me to name too, but that is something that is bad to wish.

march

in march i decided i needed to get out of endlessly spinning dtaf mode. i also read gtn and remembered how much i love ensemble casts. and lo and behold, next day after dawn was born. this was one of the very first scenes i wrote, between mona and her mother austra when mona is (spoilers) experiencing life threatening illness moments. their mother/daughter dynamic is everything to me

“Don’t lie,” she said, and tried not to think about the fact that she sounded more than a little like she was begging. “Don’t—Selene can’t lie for shit, and she told me everything was fine, but she probably just wanted to avoid a difficult conversation, probably thought it was for the best, because she’s an idiot, but if you lie—” The room felt suffocating, stuffy and overly hot. She was suddenly viscerally aware of the sticky dampness of sweat beneath her shirt, and that, somehow, was more overwhelming than the pain that spiderwebbed from her pounding head all the way down her back. Her mother was silent, her face still very nearly impassive, but there was something in the slight furrowing of her brows that Mona thought looked terribly sad. “Don’t you dare,” Mona said furiously. Her eyes were burning. She blinked hard to clear the definitely-not-tears forming there. “Don’t you dare act like I’m going to die.”

april

more ndad snippets! this was from the first full scene i finished, which ended up being prince cyrus' pov of the first night after the coup. he is so mentally ill

Cyrus thought that was a nice enough idea on paper, given the circumstances. But when it became clear that it involved putting on his least comfortable court clothes and shuffling into a musty, overly crowded hall where three scuffed tables and a dozen mismatched chairs had been pushed together in some imitation of a royal banquet, he very quickly began to have second thoughts. Cassandane tried to motion for him to sit at the head of the table when they came in. He sat just to the right of it instead, as he would have if he really had been at court. If the king had been here. But the fact that he wasn’t didn’t make it feel any more right to take his place. So Cyrus didn’t. No one else did either. The chair sat untouched at the front of the room, a ghost in an empty seat. Not a ghost, Cyrus tried to remind himself. Just not here. He would be back soon. They would all be back soon. He couldn’t handle thinking anything else.

may

ndad strikes again! this is going to be most of this. here we have the first darcy pov i wrote, featuring them being sent to woo princess cassandane for prince cyrus and falling head over heels in love with her themself. (take a shot every time someone in ndad has a line about being or not being their father's son)

“I am not a real princess,” she told them after a long moment. “But I am interested in becoming a queen.” She looked one already, Darcy thought. Her eyes were diamond hard, her jaw and cheekbones carved from marble. She could have knocked her father’s statue to the ground and stood on the pedestal in its place and put it to shame. She could have told them to do anything for her, and it wouldn’t have crossed their mind not to obey. She was all that a queen should be. And Darcy was what they should have been. They were not truly the King’s ambassador, nor the Prince’s surrogate. Their loyalty went only as far as their self-interest. They were not their father’s son. But they were, if nothing else, an excellent liar, which was why they could never fully explain the sudden urge they felt to tell her the truth.

june

in june i wrote a short story for a shakespeare-themed horror anthology! it did not get in, but this was my first shot at horror, so i had a ton of fun anyway. i'll probably post this one on ao3 soon -- it's fun little examination of the inherent freakiness of the ending of all's well that ends with, this time with 100% more black magic

Here’s my confession: I don’t love my wife. Confession’s probably the wrong word though. Cause it’s not like I can tell anyone. Everyone around here thinks we got our perfect miracle of a storybook ending, so maybe I’m the one who’s wrong for not wanting it. Maybe I deserve this. My happily ever after. I don’t know how they believe it. Well, they believe it because I said it, I said I love Helen, and the lie came out smoother than it should have, given the circumstances, because God knows I’ve had too much practice. Maybe I sounded like I meant it. What I actually said was that I’d love her forever. I never said I was smart.

july

we're back in ndad land, and oh boy, this was a month. july was the first time i've ever beaten nanowrimo, fully unintentionally, simply because @wren-is-writing and i went fucking insane with the au fanfiction. but the piece that started it all was renan's backstory, aka renan's spiral into destroying every part of himself over his love for a terrible little boyboss war criminal (hi king cyrus). this is the first time the two of them meet, when cyrus is still in his rakish misbehaving prince era. brainworms are found in the gay old men

The others are already drinking deep again, eager to accept another newcomer into their circle for the night, but your mouth has gone dry. It’s almost hard to look at him. It’s harder to look anywhere else. He notices you staring. When he catches your eye, it makes your heart jump into your throat. “What?” he asks. “Something in my teeth?” You’re barely breathing. “Your Highness,” you manage, and you can’t read the look that crosses his face. Hebes slaps his hand down on the table so hard it makes your glass rattle, and lets out an incredulous, booming laugh. “Stars above, Renan, is that Prince Cyrus?” The boy next to you winks and flashes another incandescent grin. “Just call me Cy.”

august

and here we come to just a small selection of the insane au fanfiction wren and i engaged in. not ALL of it was about cyrenan, just most of it. here's some darcy and cassandane in the criminally extensive college au. darcy's pining, what else is new

It would happen, though, they told themself. It would happen eventually. Because she loved them, they were sure, even if neither of them had phrased it that way exactly. They’d as good as told each other more times than they could count. They had always worked that way, reading between the lines but knowing they were on the same page. “You’re brilliant, you know,” they murmured, dropping their voice so low they were sure only she could hear it. Just one more way of telling her. They knew she’d understand. “At dancing or in general?” “Both.” “I do know,” Cass replied. Her slow, curving smile made them flush too much to hide. “I want to do this more often,” they whispered. They risked stroking their thumb lightly across her shoulder, a gesture they hoped was too small to catch. “I want to do this all the time.” Forever wasn’t a word they would pull out in public regardless of how softly they were speaking, but they were sure she got that too.

september

we're back to canonverse ndad, thank god. more backstories! this one chronicles austra's girlbossification, and this moment specifically is right after her daughter mona is born

She’s not going to make it. That’s the first thing the doctors tell you. It’s the first thing the Church proclaims on the matter too. You’re still confined to your hospital room. You can’t witness it pronounced in a chapel or read it in a star chart. You have to hear it from your husband’s mouth instead. His eyes are red. He’s been crying. You haven’t been. You’ll break down when there’s nothing left to fight for, not a moment sooner than that. Your daughter needs surgeries that haven’t been performed in a century. Your daughter has long brown eyelashes that flutter when you kiss her while she sleeps. Your husband tells you that her doom is written in the stars, and he says it like he thinks it’s true.

october

and i actually followed austra's backstory up with castor's, because apparently i spent some of this year being semi productive. castor's terrible little psyche revolves around the fact that his brother (everyone's favourite son) died when he was a teenager and he thinks it's his fault for not being a hardened soldier at 17. here he is trying to be a hardened soldier (it's not going well)

You’re not a natural. You’re not even a hard-won talent. Even when you’re not half sleepwalking, you’re slow, clumsy, unsure. Your sword arm grows sore after barely an hour. The straps of your armour chafe against the skin of your neck and leave it raw. You’ve tried your best, memorized a hundred manoeuvres in sparring sessions, but somehow you still freeze in the field. The first time an enemy makes a swipe for you, you run like a coward. By the fiftieth time, you’ve learned to stand your ground, but you don’t know if your allies feel the difference. At night, every comrade you couldn’t save has your brother’s face. He had scars when he—when you saw him the last time. A barely-there line through his eyebrow, another tiny one on his chin. Your father has the gouged-out pit in his left cheek, the mark that proves he is and isn’t invulnerable. Every time a blade flashes in your face, you wonder if you’ll end up with a matching one. It never happens, probably because you’re too quick to flinch back from the strikes that might get close enough. Your skin remains despicably pristine.

november

wow, a new wip? well maybe. this one is still in very early stages, but i got seized by brainworms consisting of "what if richard and bolingbroke from shakespeare's richard ii were lesbians (and not cousins) and fucking hated each other." also it's the 80s, i think. rielle is our larger than life femme richard who's never met an emotion she couldn't turn into a performance, and the narrator here is jack, butch bolingbroke, who has a lot of daddy issues and hates rielle so fucking much.

Don’t get me wrong. My dad was an asshole. He was a dyed-in-the-wool red-blooded homo-hating bigot and I didn’t shed a tear at his funeral. But he was the kind of asshole where if I called my hair a pixie cut and ditched the Doc Martens for mascara when I came around for dinner, he’d happily keep paying my tuition. He’d even hug me, sometimes. Mostly after Mom died. Both arms around my shoulders, like he meant it. So I had my reasons, basically, for not wanting to publicly tell him to go fuck himself. And even if I hadn’t, she was the last person I owed an explanation. Easy for her to say she’d cut off her parents in a heartbeat when she didn’t have any, just an inheritance ten times the size I was ever getting and a bunch of framed tabloids with pictures of a Rolls-Royce twisted around a lamp post and a cherub of a girl who knew, even at ten years old, how to cry pretty.

december

this past month i've been juggling grad school apps and finals and prepping for my thesis, so i haven't written a ton, but i went back to fun shakespeare fanfiction collabs with @inkgel for a bit! here's me attempting to write julius caesar pov `for our caesar/antony character study that we did after playing those characters on zoom (and playing them as in love, of course)

He could do the same with Antony. Antony wouldn’t make him ask twice for it—wouldn’t make him ask at all, probably, because he is always so delightfully quick to capitulate, all it would really take is a finger ghosted over those plush and slightly reddened lips. But Caesar doesn’t like him to be carved out of marble. He likes it when Antony stumbles, the laugh bubbling up from his throat loose and lazy, the perfect planes of his cheekbones marred with a ruddy flush. When Antony clings onto him, half for balance, half because he’s surely looking for any excuse to. When he hangs on several moments longer than he needs to, his pupils blown, his hair mussed not-quite-artfully, and kisses him with the heady scent of wine still on his breath. Perhaps sometimes he would deign to think he loved it, but it’s been years since that word has been his to offer. These days, it’s only for lesser men to give.

if you got this far, thank you so much for reading! see you all in 2023!!

#my writing #next day after dawn #dearer than a friend #preston young #mona lunares #austra lunares #prince cyrus #darcy mercurialis #princess cassandane #renan mercurialis #king cyrus #cyrenan #castor martis #rielle blanchette #jack livingstone #orphan heir

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idolshineitai · 2 years ago

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⚔️ 💀✂️

SAW THIS ASK AND GOT IMMEDIATELY SO EXCITED IT FELT LIKE I COULD THROW UP. rabbiting heartbeat. IM SO RHGHGJHJNJBMGN. thank you beloved :3

from this ask game!

⚔️ Fav Gt9 quote?

THIS ONE IM ACTUALLY UNSURE OF. in the end it’s probably something from the pool scene. almost definitely the one about harrow consenting to being ritually drowned but thrashing away from a hug (not gonna go grab my book copy right now but you get the gist). im in the middle of rereading GTN and it took a while to finish the first time, so there are MANY good tidbits, hints, and clues that totally escaped me then! so many bangers too. Properly enjoying them now 👀 i will also say that “ghosts and you might die is my middle name” is currently consuming a lot of my brainspace <3 I Love Gideon Nav The Regular Amount (Which Is A LOT)

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

again. so many good good GOOD ones. thinking of the entire last dance exchange. thinking of “Around you, people would go back and forth, giving you the widest berth possible, ignoring you so entirely that at one point you were convinced you were dead. With that conviction, you had felt only intense relief.” because it makes me want to TEAR MY HAIR OUT. but i really really have to give it up for *gestures at my current bio* “There were a couple of callouses now on those soft necromancer’s palms, and I was proud of you.” THIS IS FOR A MULTITUDE OF REASONS and half of them are praise kink /j NO NO NO OK SO. god, just… the fact that gideon could be PROUD of harrow for ANYTHING. the fact that it’s this. the distinction of “soft”, to call harrow of all people in any way soft, and to be a “soft necromancer” even just in reference to the flesh… the pacing, the timing, where this line falls 😭 like ok my girl ok. i genuinely am considering getting this one tattooed but i need a good design for it. I WAS PROUD OF YOU!!! she can be SO mad at her and still PROUD of h— *dies on the spot*

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

SHORT. FUCKING OBVIOUSLY IT’S SHORT. i can admit that the slightly longer hair is cute on the HTN cover, and nona’s braids are fucking awesome for NONA, but for harrow? the length of her hair is something that she kept up with meticulously — every one of her most devout people had their hair cropped close — and the way that her hair DOES grow longer is bc she gets too damn sick to take care of it, and bc someone magically manipulates her hair for fun. WITHOUT HARROW KNOWING. to me it’s a companion to the autonomy-stealing haircut (i think there’s an actual real life term for this, or at least a trope one, but can’t recall it rn. that’s also… very gender-y to me). this new length actively distresses harrow, who doesn’t have the wherewithal to comprehend the unfamiliar sensory experience and who is already dealing with a Whole Fucking Lot. so yeah. it’s short. it’s the short hair. i love my darling girl.

thank u so much stein im actually indebted to you now /j. infodumping is my life’s greatest joy and this felt SO GOOD to talk abt !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🫶

#🍎#WRAAAUUGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

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funsizedshark · 2 years ago

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your griddlehark was such a funny and cute reading! and i was wondering if you have any griddlehark recs on ao3? thank you!!

hi anon! first of all thank you so much, i'm so glad u enjoyed it hehe and second of all!! i absolutely do :] i wouldn't call myself an expert but ive been going through the tag and i definitely have a few favorites that i need to comment on because i really loved these fics a lot. all of these are currently complete! i hope you enjoy them and if you want im always up for discussing great works hehe

here we go: not enough to ruin me by autumntales: 29k, the handmaiden au set on the ninth. showstopping amazing incredible if you havent seen the handmaiden i think id recommend you watch the movie first because knowing the plot twist is coming makes it even sexier but! theres no movie knowledge required. excellent work.

its a long road (losing all you own) by greekphilosophress: 5k, library au, harrow thinks shes being haunted and antagonized by gideon. honestly whats new. harrow's internal monologue on the brink of a nervous breakdown is what rlly makes this fantastic

the things that befall cavaliers by ThatAloneOne: 1k, short and sweet in that rip your heart out way. gideon and harrow from the end of gtn are time-looped back to the beginning of the events while theyre still on the ninth. i wanna read a 40k fic with this premise now

Midnight at the Mithraeum by zoicite; 66k, harrow is the manager of a speakeasy, gideon works at a casino, they hate each other and wake up married. literally what more could you ask for. i love realistic relationship development and even though they are very stupid and bad at communicating i adore them

Cake by the Ocean by zoicite: 15k, same author!! gideon bargains her voice for human legs after she saves harrow from drowning. it goes just about as well as you imagine it would go but its hilarious

The Furnace of You by Cypseloides: 67k, post htn (not nona compliant) where harrow, gideon and cam(and pal) end up escaping from the mithraeum. the summary reads angst. dramatiques. kissing. and theyre right its all of that but theres also camilla being incredible. palamedes being just as great. and most importantly, gideon getting some LOVIN

blue gray green lavender by smolranger: 29k, harrow and gideon are forced to work together to participate in a sailing race. this made me want to learn how to sail, which is the highest possible compliment i can pay a fic-you made me wanna learn something. thats incredible. i love it. the amount of detail in it is so good to read and the griddlehark is just. chef's kiss. excellent work

raise the gates, love by syntheseas: 3k hades (the videogame) au where gideon is zagreus and harrow is thanatos. if uve ever played the game youre gonna love this, its so good and the premise is PERFECT like are you kidding. thats Them

trust/fall by strangehunger; 4k, piercer harrowhark lets tattoo artist gideon tattoo her. anon u dont know me but tattoos are IT for me so this really checked all the boxes for me personally

we've got a good thing goin' by sinshine: 14k, nebulously post htn, team 69 find a safe house and its. the tern family vacation home. its hilarious. griddlehark try and fail to figure their shit out until they get it right. i love it

beat your swords into ploughshares (and your spears into pruning hooks) by NotAFicWriter: 18k, post-war, harrowhark goes cottagecore and avoids everyone. she plants tomatoes instead. little butch farmer harrow was everything i never knew i needed but this fic DELIVERED. i was yearning for a butch farmer wife like ten words in

eyes and words so icy, oh but she burns by groundedsaucer (coasterchild): 47k, harrow is a figure skater, gideon is a hockey player. obviously they end up pair skating together for a competition. obviously they hate each other at the beginning. i went into this with high expectation and finished it with the delight i usually associate with good sports anime. loved it

nothing safe is worth the drive by saltwaterconfessions (rosesandcinnamon): 4k, modern au with out besties on a road trip, the pining is incredible. hit a little bit too close to home ! the lesbian yearning is strong in this one !

let’s drink to feelings of temptation by overnights: 25k, bartender colleagues au, extremely fun because i love them being antagonistic. it fuels me.

memories of darkness undone by the light by corpsesoldier: 5k, not nona compliant post htn, if these two just TALKED TO EACH OTHER............ i swear to god. also an excellent example of lesbian miscommunication and yearning. really good

i hope u have fun reading! make sure to also check out other fics by these same authors and send them some love :] i might update this list in the future as i read my way through the tag. have a nice day!

#anons #answers #tlt #fic recs #captain's log #i might put this in a read more later! and maybe add some other links in the future just so i have this post as reference #if anyone else asks for recs #heres to hoping the links work lolol #have fun anon!#griddlehark

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lesbrarians · 2 years ago

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Nona the Ninth: A Spoiler-Free Review

Disclaimer: I'm a librarian who received an Uncorrected Advance Reader Copy of Nona the Ninth. Thank you to TOR for providing me with this ARC.This review is my own and is not influenced in any way by the privilege of receiving this ARC. I swore on the Tomb not speak its secrets, and as promised, this review will contain no spoilers.

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The only negative thing I have to say about my experience of reading this book was simply that I could not sit down and read it all in one sitting. Unfortunately, I needed to do such stupid human things as go to work, eat, and sleep. Which was most unfortunate, because Nona was the most engrossing book I've read in a long time, and I would've rather read it than do, you know, any of those things.

I've been waffling about where Nona ranks in my personal ranking of the Locked Tomb books. Because like, I didn't think it was possible to like a book more than GtN, but tbfh? NtN is a strong contender to replace it.

This is not to say that NtN is similar in tone to GtN, though! One of the things I admire most about this series is how uniquely different each of the Locked Tomb books has been in terms of its narrative voice. And look, I'll be the first to say that I struggled when I read HtN at first. My brain had a really difficult time getting over the mental roadblock with the switch to second-person tense. Of course, the emotional payoff was worth it in the end! But it was a challenge for me to get into at first.

I didn't have that kind of mental roadblock with NtN. Nona immediately sucked me in. Her narrative voice is so different than the narrative voices found in Gideon or Harrow, and it is truly such a delight to read. It wasn't as meme-y as the first one or even the second one. I think I only caught like two legit memes? The humor was still on-point (when I tell you that there was one moment towards the end where I went from quiet blubbering to actual hooting with laughter, the emotional whiplash killed me and I loved every second of it), but it took the side seat next to the worldbuilding. God, the lore encased in NtN... I need a reread to really digest it all.

And Nona herself? Being inside her head is just... it's charming. Nona as a character absolutely charmed me. The little cover blurb of "You will love Nona, and Nona loves you"? Accurate in every respect. I would die for Nona. I was so sad to finish the novel and honestly wanted to flip back to the start to go on Nona's whole journey all over again. (Because goddamn, what a journey it was.)

Also, every other character in this, not just Nona, was amazing. I loved reading about every character on the Dramatis Personae, especially the "you three." Well, except for the dogs listed. There sadly wasn't enough of the dogs. Asides from Noodle. There was a satisfactory amount of Noodle, whomst I adored.

Let's talk (not really, because No Spoilers) about twists. I went into Nona with a starting theory, and as I read, my theories changed as we learned new pieces of information. There were a few twists where I picked up on the breadcrumbs that Tamsyn was laying and called it before it actually happened, which I must say is tremendously satisfying. And then there were a few twists that absolutely sucker-punched me right in the gut because I was not expecting them at all. And then I had one theory that I was convinced was gonna be true and... I mean, it wasn't confirmed. I suppose it wasn't also denied, though? I'll sit on it.

And now that I've finished writing this review... there's some research I need to do. A few things I've written down that I must look up. A few comparisons to make between my notes and the text.

And so much thinking I must do.

And after I do all that.... then I need to decide: do I immediately reread Nona, or do I go back and reread Harrow and Gideon first? Decisions, decisions.

---

TL;DR Absolutely incredible. Thought-provoking, insane, amazing. As with Gideon and Harrow before them, I am so, so excited for the world at large to read Nona. It is worth the wait.

#will crosspost on GR!#nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb

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andmaybegayer · 3 years ago

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Finished Harrow the Ninth

This one had so much more going on tham GtN, massive change in scale, despite taking an almost identical form factor. I used to be frustrated by this style but now I like stories that take a while to run through what is effectively setup, placing all the pieces where they are needed for a big dramatic finish. Reminds me of a lot of things but most stupidly: Portal? Which is a game that is ⅞ths tutorial. Also of The Left Hand of Darkness, which is I suppose ⅞ths tutorial for Genly.

Names take on a LOT of importance in this book, absolutely everything is dripping in entrenched meaning, much like Mithraeum itself I guess. For a story that has to basically avoid using Gideon's style of narration for most of the book, it manages to still have fun text to read. None House With Left Grief. Augustine and Mercymorn really chew some scenery.

Not sure if this is just me scoring 0 for reading comprehension, but the mysteries felt very strangely paced. A lot of questions were proposed very early on (who is A.L., what the hell has Harrow done to herself, what is going on in the alternate past with all the dead characters, etc.) but the clues for solving these tend to get dumped on you in pretty rapid succession, so you go from "well that's an interesting question" to "oh good you're giving me some leads" to solving it five pages later both in text and for yourself. Weird.

John Gaius Summary:

John is a fantastic character, what a huge dick. Manipulate Mansplain Malewife Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss. He's your dad. He's god. He's killed billions. He likes tea. He's an imperialist warlord. He's bisexual. He wants what's best for you. He can turn you into vapour. He's just some guy.

Need to go read the Nona excerpt and the Study of Doctor Sex.

There's a lot more metatext-ish stuff going on, especially in the alternate history segments, which are very reminiscent of the Act 6 dream bubbles from homestuck, and really, given that once again all the characters are kind of crammed together in a fortress, aren't they all homest-[WHO KEEPS GIVING THAT GUY THE COMICALLY OVERSIZED SHEPHERD'S CROOK]

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #books

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ninthhousedyke · 2 years ago

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Nona The Ninth Live Blog - #5

Finished Day 4! Honestly really want to keep reading and I probably will because I don’t have class till 1 tomorrow but this got too long so I’m posting it!

Tamsyn Muir punching down the fourth wall with this line: “I want you lot to make that your motto. What we know is that we don’t know anything.”

Cam and Pal’s recording dialogue made me scream obsessively into my pillow. They’re so gonna die and I’m gonna send TM my therapy bill.

No don’t let these kids go off to war!! Dhslfhakfwhfkwbdf not my babies!!

Oh my JOD

PASH?!?!?!

Tamsyn Muir needs to stop writing the MOST FUCKABLE SIDE CHARACTERS or else I WILL send her my therapy bill! How am I supposed to focus on the literal battle for their lives when a blue haired, half shave, sword wielding, scarred up, well built, canonically wants to be called sir, handsome ass butch lesbian is STANDING RIGHT THERE? HMMM?? TAMSYN DID YOU THINK OF THAT?!?!

Literally did not even register that Cam and Pal got shot and managed to revive because I was still frothing at the mouth and imagining getting railed by Pash proposing marriage to Pash.

Also she literally reminds me so much of Gideon. Like the way she speaks, her guns blazing attitude, the self confidence, the “find a way out of this” mindset, the “it ain’t fucked up yet” outlook? Like I miss my baby Gideon so much since the end of book 1 and now I was all depressed over the weird corpse situation but Pash feels like a Gideon part 2 that made this chapter feel like I was reading GTN all over again. The warm fuzzy feelings are BACK! I hope she lives so her and Gideon can meet because oh my god those two as friends would have everyone running for cover.

Alright back to the thoughts:

If anything happens to Pash I will riot.

So Cam can now regenerate? Is this only because Palamedes was in charge or is their soul synthesis thingy becoming stronger? Are they not gonna be able to die? Kinda become immortal? At what point DO they become a Lyctor then?

Nona wanting to marry Cam and adopt a dog together is precious. I too fall in love with any woman who smiles at me, Nona. Or who glares at me (blinks adorably at Pash).

Y’all I cannot be this fucking horny for a book character.

It is a fucking CRIME we didn’t get so see Pash and Cam fight together.

I knew the Angel would be important, but I’m confused. Is she working for BOE? Pash was bodyguarding We Suffer earlier but now she’s also bodyguarding and driving Aim so is Aim on the same side as We Suffer? Are her and Pash secretly defecting to a more extremist BOE faction? Why didn’t Aim know about Nona and the Lyctor project? Why are the BOE people coming in and ignoring Aim’s command to back off? WHAT IS THE CHAIN OF COMMAND HERE?

But honestly the fact that BOE seems to be a mess of warring factions rather than an organized rebel operation is both refreshing and hilarious. Like we have YA books where teenagers are running and comprising huge rebel operations and there’s a perfectly rational and obeyed chain of command, very minimal and quickly resolved inner fighting, and almost no defectors from the main plan, which is WILDLY inaccurate to how humans actually work. As long as there’s a command chain there will be people who want to climb it because they feel their plan is better than what those actually in power are doing. BOE is mostly full of adults and they STILL can’t even agree on what to do with Nona, Pyrrha, and Cam or how to negotiate with John Gaius. It’s REFRESHING to see humans being humans and doing what we do best: argue until it’s too late.

Hot Sauce baby…

Like this poor kid. She watches her close friend get shot and is then quickly whisked off by a strange armed person to sit alone in a dark room not knowing what’s going on or who is on her side. She’s already been through so much and life just keeps shoveling shit on her.

I don’t blame Hot Sauce for shooting Nona. Like, necromancers took everything from her: her home, her family, her safety, her peace of mind, and even her body. Of course she reacts that way to seeing confirmation Nona isn’t exactly human.

Pyrrha telling John “We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard” is such a powerful section and I can’t fully articulate why. Like…..John and the others HAD the best intentions; they wanted to save the world, save humanity. They just so happened to make some horrible mistakes along the way, but their intentions began as so good. Something something the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Also the fact that in the current story John has mostly been seen as the enemy when he wholeheartedly began as the good guy while the BOE ancestors were the bad guys who are now trying to play it as the good guys themselves. *screams*

Tamsyn Muir is channeling that line “history is written by the victors” because both sides are writing their own histories where they are the victors and no one is really thinking ‘well what IS best for this universe and the people currently living in it?’

“Turns out nobody wants papers, nobody wants principles. They just want to be saved. I told them I’d save them. And I said, I’m a necromancer” CHILLS MAN!!!

#the locked tomb #locked tomb series #nona the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth #Nona the ninth live blog

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aeondeug · 4 years ago

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So while I was reading GtN and HtN I occasionally stopped to be like “Wow, it’s great how these can be just so gay!” And like. That is really great. Super great. I love that about them. But I also remember at least once stopping and going “Wow, it’s great that there’s no homophobia here!” And like at the time I just kind of nodded along to myself. Around when I just finished GtN, I remember being very fond of the bit after the book with like the guy explaining like. The deal with necro/cav relationships in The Media and throughout history and how actually none of these things have ever been romance. This is just a pure relationship, unaffected by naughty things like ROMANCE. WHY DOES EVERYTHING NEED TO BE ROMANCE?! shouts the author of this paper. And I laughed at this. Because it reminded me a lot of people who do this shit with queer love. They do it with history and just go “Why does Sappho have to be gay, why can’t she just have passionate feelings for her BFFs”. Which is mindbogglingly stupid to me and anyone who has so much as LOOKED at some of the poem fragments. But like people do say that shit. And they do this a lot over like queer anything in fiction unless it like punches you in the face with rainbows immediately. “Why do Bubblegum and Marceline have to be gay? They’re just friends!” is a take that I legitimately saw on the day of the finale. And not just once. I saw it a few times. And I’ve seen that happen over so many ships in so many things, whether or not the ships end up canon. “Why does it have to be gay?” and the specific sort of outrage over it I’ve seen in essay length posts is just common, and that sort of outrage reads very similar to the argument that dude made about necro/cav relationships. It reads like that and close enough so that I made a joke about it even. I didn’t think too, too much on this at first though because I mean. We have Abigail and Magnus. They’re right there. A man and a woman, a husband and a wife. So like I was able to simultaneously go “omg it’s just like those why can’t they just be friends WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE GAY people” and also “wow it’s nice that there are spooky negative queer experiences of SADNESS here”. Which has got me thinking. Ok. So we have that essay. Now what else do we have in the books? I suppose could point at the entirety of Gideon and Harrow’s just furious refusal to admit that they might actually be in love with one another. Even though it appears to be obvious to literally everyone else in the galaxy. And is obvious to the readers. Hell, Gideon even has a moment of feeling like she needs to tell Harrow something the day before she dies. Something which is heavily romance coded, I don’t know the word for it. But like a “Wow I feel a need to tell them something and it’ll be my last shot” before a death just kind of always reads “It was an ‘I love you’. They needed to say it and didn’t get a chance”. So we’ve got that and, specifically, we’ve got their outrage at the suggestions. Gideon stresses that she’s JUST Harrow’s cav. And she’s very fucking insistent on that. Part of the why is that she knows Harrow is in love with a fucking dead girl in a casket but like. It just hits a certain way. There’s also Harrow’s just repeated disgust she expresses towards the concept of necro/cav relationships. She needs to explain away to herself that like, well, Abigail and Magnus were ALREADY married before he was named her cavalier primary so maybe that makes it fine. And even then she’s not like super duper comfy with the idea. A taboo has been broken, Harrow feels, and she needs to get really rules lawery to find any comfort with that. Other small things that feel of note to me here are the nature of the ways we know that these two are gay outside of like. Their weird thing for one another. With Gideon we’re introduced to it basically immediately with her joke about titty mags. Harrow specifically makes a comment at some point that some of the magazines Gideon gets are very gross, yes. Her interest in women is explicitly made sexual from the get go, and the idea that The Gays are just weird sex fiends and there is no love there is a frequent one. With Harrow meanwhile we know because she says she’s in love with the girl in the Locked Tomb. Who is very much dead. A thing that is fucky enough that like there is an entire song and dance about “GIDEON THE FIRST IS MAKING OUT WITH A CORPSE??????” and how Harrow is a hypocrite for being so offended by that all. Also the girl is behind the door. She is something that isn’t supposed to be seen or known about or, heaven forbid, woken up. That is all the ultimate taboo and Harrow not only fucking broke that but she looked at the girl and went “Wow I’m in love” on the spot. So we have this collection of things that could be read as some sort of metaphor for like...The taboo nature of queer love. “Why can’t they just be friends?” and issues of purity and the lack thereof. And we have characters who are very clearly in love but who can’t just admit that because they think there’s something fucking wrong with that. Gideon’s JUST her cav and Harrow is also in love with a dead chick. We also have Magnus and Abigail around who are just like. Happily married and fine with things regarding their whole necro/cav aesthetic. Ianthe doesn’t seem to give a shit that Gideon’s into Harrow at all. There’s a fondness for necro/cav relationships enough that there’s an entire romance genre centered on them and like characters in the cast are fond of those, some of them. Things appear to be Fine, at least as far as their friends are concerned. Maybe the asshole writing the essay that kicked this pondering off would have an issue and a stuffy old grandma would pitch a fit. But like their friends don’t have a problem with necro/cav shit. But we still very much have Gideon and Harrow being “Well no. We’re just a necromancer and their cavalier. GOD.” Now part of what got me thinking about this is that I recently decided to start watching Bly Manor. Because fuck it we haven’t yet. And specifically part of why is I remember seeing an analysis of it done by Rowan Ellis which had this bit where like the argument that “Bly Manor proves you can do queer stories without homophobia being a part of it!” is brought up and like...Ellis is like “Ok but we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out”. And lo and behold in the first episode we very much do just lock a queer woman in a literal closet while she screams to be let out. In an episode showing that she’s like just unable to go back home for...some reason. And that she has some sort of difficulty with her relationship with her mother. No, the show is not having the character literally go “Wow I sure am in the closet and I kind of fucking hate that woe is me I am so gay”. But figuratively? It’s all over the place in that first episode. I’m not sure about the others because I haven’t watched them, but it is there in the very first one. And that’s something horror does very well. It takes things that are scary and uncomfortable and bundles them up in shades of metaphor. It hides them from you by showing you the thing cleverly disguised. Maybe you do not notice it the first time through perhaps. Maybe you felt that a certain thing like the closet scene resonated very hard with you and you’re not sure why. But you perhaps don’t consciously go “Aha! It is the horror of being closeted!” Upon looking back on it or back through it though you might notice it. And be like “Oh that was there. Holy fuck.” Now maybe you’re also someone who isn’t like. Comfortable. With straightforward depictions of specifically queer suffering. Maybe it’s just too scary. But with this show hiding it in a metaphor you got to sit through that. You got to be brave enough to sit through a very, very scary thing. And afterwords you go to think about it. This is the power of metaphor and it’s something horror has been very, very good at doing for ages. Maybe racism or homophobia or whatever else is too nerve wracking for you to look at face on in media, but maybe you can watch a movie or a show where the horror of those things are very much there but cloaked in metaphor. And so maybe we are getting that with Gideon and Harrow’s weird issues around how “taboo” their feelings are. Two people who are just unwilling to believe that it might be that thing, in part because that thing is “taboo”. Except instead of the taboo being literally “They’re lesbians, Harold,” it’s instead cloaked in a comforting metaphor of necro/cav relationships and some dude who is really fucking offended at people’s space ao3 fanfictions about his historical favs. Which is important because every fucking scrap of anything one gets is an argument. It can’t just be that they’re in love. It’s that you must PROVE it and some asshole with a degree or just a bone to pick is going to come by and be like “WHY CAN’T THEY JUST BE A NECRO AND A CAV” about it all. And like I’m someone who’s known they’re into other women for a long while now. At least half my life. We have conquered that hurdle. But we haven’t entirely unpacked all the weird little societal bullshit that is still in there. Hiding. Lurking. And that societal bullshit specifically frames that sort of love as something gross and taboo and “Why Can’t They Just Be Friends?”. With that last thing hurting a lot. I’ve constantly run across people going “Why can’t they just be friends?” or going “They just have a sisterly relationship!” about things I shipped. Even when those things involved shit like the characters kissing on screen or mentioning that they’ve been dating in a sequel series. I can’t simply like my ships. I can’t simply see myself in romance. Because my sort of love is so taboo that it is, in itself, a debate. Maybe being shown the thing cleverly disguised as another thing might help me unpack that. At the very least it helps me look at it. When it’s something that hurts a lot to this day.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #spoilers #this is a bit painfully long #but i have FEELINGS about uncomfortable things being hidden in metaphor #and that metaphor being the thing that helps you be brave enough to look at it

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elftwink · 3 years ago

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i know i said i would take a few weeks but i’m almost done htn lol yesterday one of my classes was delayed by like 20 mins after i already got there over half an hour early so i banged out a couple hundred pages then (side note i always forget how fun it is to read that much in a day, but also if i keep doing it i’m going to run out of books to read during my commute). i think i have a chapter or two left? maybe less if there’s stuff at the back after the story like in gtn. anyway some thots under the cut. spoilers obvs

i am a LITTLE annoyed at myself bc i was gonna post about a couple theories i had but i just kept reading and now you all just have to take me at my word that i was right about some stuff (what happened to gideon and harrow’s brain surgery that she did on herself fwiw) but anyway. gideon is back at least temporarily and omg i missed her so much. i’m like RIGHT in the middle of the final battle (confrontation? both?) so i have no idea if she makes it through... intact but i missed the quips

in general i would say that i enjoyed reading gtn a little more (i like gideon’s internal commentary quite a bit and the second person perspective, although BEAUTIFULLY used holy shit, took me awhile to adjust to), i think htn is... not better written per se but more artfully constructed [i guess??]. i think i’m almost more excited to do a reread than i am to actually finish because then i can go back over and see the big picture because htn is very good at showing you only a little bit but also making you feel like you can figure out what’s going on if you pay enough attention (you can’t, i don’t think, not all of it; harrow never has enough information at her disposal). every time things are revealed it feels like another puzzle piece snapping into place and it’s all so intentional that even when i think i don’t particularly care for an element it always ends up making total sense and being incredibly well suited to the story.

anyway like i said i’m not done done yet and so the final resolution and explanation of everything escapes me still so this is more me rambling than anything else but iirc when the fourth kids died in gtn the writing on the wall that gideon saw was at least the same font as all the notes to harrow in this one so. i think maybe i’m just not keeping very good track of who is in what body at any given time but at that point it was just cytherea in disguise killing people. we knew she killed fifth the first time (magnus or abigail said so when harrow asked), and afaik the sleeper [cant remember her name because she had like. several? wake me up inside? though that might have been someone else. i’m always getting names mixed up. good grief. anyway] really only exists in harrow’s fake memories at the moment (well, i think she is tied to the two handed longsword. was? you can really tell i’m gonna need to do a reread to have any coherent thoughts about this all lmao) sooooo. i don’t know where i’m going with this i feel like i can’t draw conclusions without like taking notes on it all but ive connected the dots. ive connected them. what is the picture that i’m connecting the dots for? i don’t fucking know i’m just connecting them

it is imo just very fun to talk about these books and try to predict what’s going to happen next because i always guess enough that i feel self satisfied but am missing enough that every reveal still gets me. muir is an excellent author i will say that much. anyway i have class now and i’ll probably be done htn before the day is out so expect another long ass post about it lol

#good idea generator #htn spoilers /

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