#suuuuuuper excited for breaking ben!!!!

[pierswife]

Rare manda selfie! Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, and Jinjer concert time!!!

[marinersubmariner]

I finally read The Locked Tomb series and I’m very excited about it!!!!!

A funny part of this is that when Gideon the Ninth was first getting popular and I was seeing the bone people everywhere I went and read a summary because I wanted to know what the deal was, thinking I would never read it (because tumblr popularity is usually more annoying than it is enticing) and therefore didn’t care about being spoiled. I’m so dumb I’ll do that for things I think I won’t bother with and then when I do eventually decide to consume them I’m like “WELL FORTUNATELY I forgot the spoilers.” Except... while all the details were fuzzy and decontextualized I did very much remember that Gideon dies (and I specifically remember because I found it unusual that the bodyguard-type character was the protagonist instead of the super special magic descendant [ALSO funny in hindsight]). It sorta didn’t matter though because I kept thinking “maybe I’m wrong! or there’s more to it than that! it’s not gonna be what I think!”

And I mean, the resolution of the first book kind of was and kind of wasn’t what I thought it would be. I kept expecting the result to be that Harrow becomes the best Lyctor ever because she accidentally has the best cavalier ever, and for her and Gideon to be able to continue to communicate internally. But I also DIDN’T WANT THAT because when you ship two characters you want them to remain as separate entities with their own minds and bodies! They can’t smooch if they’re in the same body!!!!!! (I have already thought about this a lot because of Reylo. this is like my specialty now. asshole soul-merging space wizards. what the fuck)

So Gideon disappearing made me SUUUUUUPER upset and I worried that she was GONE gone because I’VE BEEN THROUGH THIS BEFORE. Despite my dim awareness of her continuing popularity I didn’t know if she was actually only in the one book! But then right off the bat in the second book it’s like WINK WINK WHY IS GIDEON NOT BEING MENTIONED AT ALL WINK WINK and I was so relieved and excited, not least because it feels eerily tailor-made for me.

Yeah, of course this circles back to my permanent Star Wars brain damage, but listen, The Rise of Skywalker made me extremely sensitive about favorite characters dying and disappearing and never being mentioned again (nobly sacrificing themselves, even! with accompanying soul transference shenanigans!!!!). So I was immediately hyperaware of the ways in which Gideon was very obviously and purposefully redacted from Harrow the Ninth, and I LOVED IT because I have basically spent the years since TROS trying to reimagine Ben’s death as some weird mystical puzzle and his erasure as something deliberately strange and wrong, since it is such a dissonant false happy ending it feels more akin to a type of horror. So to do it here intentionally, early enough in the series when you know it’s actually going to go somewhere into bizarre space magic, that exact thing I have been wanting and thinking about!!!!!! IT’S VERY EXCITING and now I’m like, damn, why didn’t I read this before?!? This is exactly what I needed!!!!

A story that treats absorbing the person you love to use their life essence as a battery (!!) as not actually an ideal scenario! And being so unable to accept that as a terrible and unfair price to pay that you break all the magic rules!!!! (...and lobotomize yourself, lol.) MUTUALISM OVER PARASITISM YYYEEEAAAHHHHH! How did Star Wars, a story constantly emphasizing “balance in the Force,” get this wrong???? We’ll never know.

As a bonus I’ve now imagined Ben telling Rey “see you on the flip side, sugarlips” in his last moment before he disappears, so that’s fun too.

I was taken aback by the sudden switch to second person narration in Harrow the Ninth, but I didn’t really think too hard about the reason for it because it still sounded like Harrow’s voice. So the reveal when she first says “me” BLEW MY MIND, and of course the full switch when Harrow is out of commission and it’s truly GIDEON AGAIN! was so thrilling. There are so many good uses of ~mysteriousness~ that are vague enough for you to notice and be like “hm that’s weird” without truly understanding what’s going on so you can backtrack later and be like “omg THAT’S what was going on!!” But to have the NARRATION ITSELF be where a secret is hiding... it was so surprising and so great! I love when I still have the capacity to be totally caught off-guard, especially by things hidden in plain sight.

I mean, just Gideon starting to seep in before the full switch (coffee shop AU oh my god, the sunglasses on the skull chapter marker aaaahhhhhh) was unbelievably exciting because I spent the whole time up to that point being like “WHEN’S GIDEON GONNA SHOW UP, WHERE’S GIDEON, WHEN’S IT GONNA BE ‘GIDEON’ AND NOT ‘ORTUS’!!!!”

I did a lot of theorizing as I read because of all the piecemeal bits of information scattered throughout, and one of my more baseless speculations was when the monster in the Locked Tomb was revealed to be a girl, I thought maybe she was God’s daughter (because between Gideon and Harrow and the lineage aspect of all the Houses there was so much parental/familial baggage, and what better mortal enemy for God than his own daughter!) LITTLE DID I KNOW WHO GOD’S DAUGHTER REALLY WAS, LOL. But I fell for the red herring (red HAIRing ahahaha idk if that’s an intentional joke but given Tamsyn Muir’s brand of humor it sure feels like one) and thought Gideon Prime was Gideon’s father. So did Pyrrha! Ha

At the beginning of book 2 when the Ortus name swap became apparent I also had to immediately work out Ortus Nigenad as an anagram (because Gideon is clearly in there) but then was like “okay... Gideon Saturn????? hmm... I’ve learned nothing.” PUZZLES. It’s fun!

I really enjoyed having to adjust to an entirely new status quo with each book, and each POV putting extreme limitations on what information the reader is privy to, and then everything getting progressively crazier with how much consciousness/body-swapping is going on. But I do think that book 3, with Nona’s POV being so separate from Harrow and Gideon’s story, felt sort of incomplete. I mean, they all end on pretty abrupt cliffhangers, but even before that, other than the birth of Paul (!!!!) and opening the tomb and John’s backstory, the convergence of characters and events wasn’t quite as satisfying or enlightening as the first two books. But maybe that’s symptomatic of it being an additional intermediate book. I just really missed the connecting dots of how Gideon got back to her body (I thought that was gonna be a whole thing! But she’s just… walking and talking like normal! Albeit mean and sad and dead.) and what she’s been up to this whole time. FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS?!?!

The Sleeping Beauty kiss did have me going nuts even though a) she wasn’t even really asleep! and b) it wasn’t really Harrow kissing her! BUT STILL. And it made me very happy that after all her aloofness, as soon as Alecto wakes up and pledges herself to Harrow, Gideon is out there calling Alecto a big slut. :’)

CAMILLA AND SEX PAL ;______;

I loved Nona and I hope that some part of her manages to reappear in some form—her delighted stupidity and the comfort of the Cam/Pal/Pyrrha family unit was all so endearing. I can’t believe I was sobbing about a “Mustache Rides” t-shirt.

Pool scene from book 1 now living in my head forever. ;___; Even though Nona turned out to be Alecto, I still think that somehow because of sense memory or whatever there was some Harrow there too (she dreamed of Gideon! she was still gay! she hated eating! THE BODY REMEMBERS), but regardless, before knowing who was in there, Nona in the ocean and being soothed by salt water made me very emo.

One of the only other things I knew about this series from scrolling past fanart about it was that there’s a lady with a skeleton arm, but only registering that it was a blonde lady I didn���t know specifically who it was until Ianthe got her arm chopped off in the climax of the first book. But the thing about that fanart is that it has always annoyed me because I find the disproportionality of a meatless arm to be extremely offputting (it’s too skinny and fragile-looking and impractical!!!! arms don’t work that way!!!!). Now that I have context I do like Ianthe (she sucks!), but I probably am still not going to like the visuals of that skeleton arm. It irritates the part of my brain that has practiced figure drawing.

When I started this, since everything said “The Locked Tomb trilogy” and there were three books, I mistakenly thought the series was already complete. But I share digital books with my mom because she is an EXTREMELY prolific reader and she beat me to finishing these by a good month or so, so while I was in the middle of book 2 she finished book 3 and informed me that there’s a fourth book coming and I was like “WHAAATT. I thought it was a trilogy!!!” So I’m excited that there’s still more to look forward to, but I’m VERY bummed that now I have to wait. At least I know from years of ignoring it that there’s a lot of fanart to look at.

As much as I’ve been thinking about Sailor Moon stuff with all the solar system magical girls, what I’m really feeling like is that now would be a good time to finally watch Utena, because I never actually saw beyond the first few episodes (!!!!! I KNOW. I’m ashamed. But I started it in the VHS days, okay, it was harder back then, and once the internet made it easier I just never got around to it). Sword lesbians... it’s time

[roane72]

TLJ trailer theories

Okay I know Star Wars theories are like assholes, everybody’s got one and most people don’t want to see yours, but bear with me because I’ve been DYING OF FEELINGS since last night.

I absolutely AM NOT going to engage with anyone who’s anti-sequel, this one’s all for those of us who love the sequel trilogy. Life is too short to fight about fandom theories on the internet. (Remind me of that the next time I get embroiled in something.)

(Welp, this got long. Behind the cut: all my Luke feels, with some Kylo theories thrown in.)

I know some people have concerns about Luke giving up training Jedi, but listen: is there anything more Luke Skywalker than giving up on something when doing whatever it is means his loved ones are in danger?

Luke, all set to take Ben to Mos Eisley--until he realizes Owen and Beru are in danger. Luke, training to be a Jedi--until he realizes Han and Leia are being held captive. And this time, it’s worse. This time, he feels responsible for creating the danger that his loved ones are in. (Argue whether or not he has any responsibility for Ben Solo’s fall elsewhere--what matters here is that he believes he is.)

So yeah. I can totally buy Luke going “haha, well, I just ruined my best friend’s and my sister’s lives, not going to do THAT anymore”.

And as far as him resisting training Rey... guys. OF COURSE he’s going to train Rey. She’s going to bring him around. It’s part of the trilogy. The Jedi Council didn’t want to train Anakin, but they did. Yoda didn’t want to train Luke, but he did. I’m willing to bet that Luke’s now-infamous line, “It’s time for the Jedi to end” is something he says as he’s conceding. Like, “okay, I’ll train you, but not in the same way.” (Making Luke, of course, the Last Jedi.)

Okay, Kylo Ren. WOOBOY, all of my Kylo Ren feelings had completely gone away but they’re back. Help. 

Redemption ahoy, maties. It looks like we’re going to see the opposite of what we saw in Revenge of the Sith, where instead of beginning with a scarred face and taking on a mask, Kylo is going to start with the mask and end up showing his scarred face instead. Doing a reverse Darth Vader seems ESPECIALLY APPROPRIATE here. 

Obviously, what we see in trailers is suuuuuuper misleading most of the time, but it might well be that after killing his father, Kylo ultimately can’t kill his mother as well, and that leads to his break with Snoke.

Reylo? Ain’t gonna happen, as delightfully trolly as that last sequence of the trailer was. As many people have pointed out, those aren’t the same scenes. But it’s fascinating that they went there, and I’m thinking it’s indicative that we will get Rey and Kylo working together.

As far as the rest of the cast, I am DYING over Finn and Phasma coming face to face and I feel like we’ve been teased with the Rey storyline so much it makes me wonder what they’re hiding. I have a strong suspicion that the Finn storyline is going to be the bulk of the movie. AND POE. I’m sorry, I can’t type anything over the hearts in my eyes. So yeah, not as much to analyze about those two, but I’m so excited about what we’ve seen...