#jod's only begotten child

[yuck-pfaugh]

Reading the opening chapters of GtN for the fifth time it crosses my mind that the Ninth's habitual brutality towards Gideon is not less shocking, but perhaps less incredible, when you consider they've had 18 years' worth of mounting proof that she's unkillable.

Terrible things happen to these people's bodies all the time and Nine Houses culture would have them just stuff their entrails back in, wipe off the blood sweat, and trot along on their new legs as though damage to one's physical envelope has no meaningful or lasting effect upon the soul within. And now here's Gideon the unkillable serf, whose very unkillability is the central conundrum she presents to Ninth House leadership, whose body can absorb phenomenal punishment and sometimes falter but never fail. Nerve gas, skeleton gangbangs, bloody diarrhoea, kicks in the head... Even if nobody is saying it out loud, they know her physical envelope will heal. So the trauma doesn't really count, does it? So why not make her the whipping girl for an entire house's problems? After all she's one of them.