#this is literally just based on gideon the ninth

[pixiesnooze]

was it casual when she thwarted 87 of your escape attempts despite swearing that she completely hates you? (harrow)

was it casual when she got worried because she didn’t see you in over 24 hours and went on a mission to find you despite swearing up and down that she didn’t care what happens to you? (gideon)

was it casual when she tried to pry open the hatch you went through with her bare hands even though the cavalier and necromancer of another house have stated that it is impossible to do so without a key? (gideon)

was it casual when she called herself your creature and gave you nicknames in jest and you said she ought to stop lest you start liking it? (gideon)

was it casual when she couldn’t handle all these new expression she was pulling out of you unseen by anyone but her, hidden behind a wall of face paint, that she could catch as easy as it was to breath? (gideon)

was it casual when she agreed to let you siphon her energy knowing it could very well lead to her death? (gideon)

was it casual when despite hating being told what to do she offered to do it just because you asked her? (gideon)

was it casual when she said that she has lived her whole life at your mercy, and that she deserved to die by your hand, that you are her only friend and that she will be undone without you? (harrow)

was it casual when she employed a tradition of the family and told you the family’s deepest darkest secret that no one was supposed to ever know simply because you wanted to know? (harrow)

was it casual when she kissed you on your forehead after you confessed all your darkest secrets to her? (gideon)

was it casual when she forgave you for every transgression made? (gideon)

was it casual when they fought as though they were extension of each other, knowing every arc of a sword, every jostling scapula? (gideon)

was it casual when she said she didn’t give a damn about the locked tomb and only cared about you? (gideon)

was it casual when she said she couldnt do this without you? (gideon)

was it casual when she called you the first flower of the ninth house, the greatest cavalier they have ever produced, their triumph, the best of all of them? (harrow)

was it causal when she said the whole point of her was you, that there was no her without you? (gideon)

was it casual when she said her sacrificing herself for you is going to be the cruellest thing anyone has ever done to you and did it anyways so you could stay alive? (gideon)

was it casual when she sacrificed herself for you even though that would have been the last thing she would have done mere weeks ago? (gideon)

was it casual when she said she couldnt conceive a world without you in it? (harrow)

was it casual when her very soul turned you away from her dead body so you could fight and survive and not let her sacrifice be in vain? (gideon)

was it casual when she said you would work it out when you died, with such a conviction that your fates were intertwined and that you would meet again, be it alive or dead and buried? (gideon)

was it casual when the first thing she did upon waking up and meeting her God, was to beg him to undo what has been done to you, to bring you back to her? (harrow)

was it casual? was it casual? WAS IT CASUAL?????

[ourg0dsal]

Gideon Nav CANNOT Die. Hold on- I know... but give me one second and I'll explain.

So, as I said before Gideon Nav cannot die, or at least her body can't. Cause clearly (spoiler warning) Gideon Nav died at the end of Gideon the Ninth. There is no avoiding that.

But! If you have read all the books GtN, HtN, and NtN including all of the accompanying short stories (tho I will admit I have not read The Mysterious Study of Dr. Sex yet) then there is a better understanding of the timeline of the whole story outside of just what the three main books give you. Specifically and especially with Gideon's body. But also there are many times In Gideons life were she has faced near death events or events that she should not have survived from and still was breathing on the other side.

To go in chronological order of these events, when she was first born she was found in a container held by the air depraved suit of her mother. And while ofc In the book it does state that her mother had redirected her air supply to Gideon, but it is simply being stated to cover all my bases.

Then the 200 sons and daughters massacre when Gideon was 1 (or 2 im not sure) when she inhaled poisonous air without dying. Which led ofc to the Reverend Mother and Father fearing the ground she walked. And this is a big one because, it literally creates waves in the plot. It's a defining point of Harrow and Gideons relationship. That Gideon did not die when she was supposed to.

Later in the story Gideon talks with Pal when she believes Harrow to be a murderer and openly admits to him that "she nearly killed me a half dozen times growing up" which obviously in context was to emphasize on the brutal relationship between her and Harrow. But this could also be other times where miraculously Gideon survived death when she shouldn't have. Because as we know from the first confrontation between Harrow and Gideon. Harrow doesnt hold back for her.

Finally of all the events where Gideon escapes death, this one actually happens within the main story of Gideon the Ninth. When Harrow siphons from Gideon to retrieve one of the challenge keys. And at the end when Gideon passes out, it is narrated ""ha-ha," said Gideon, "first time you didn't call me Griddle," AND DIED." Now, this could obviously just be the snarkiness of Gideon narrating. Or something incredibly clever left behind by Tamsyn Muir for a book series that is so clearly meant to be reread. But ofc to do my rounds the next line after does state "well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying." But then immediately after "wake up had an air of ressurection." Which honestly feels like Tamysn Muir teasing the readers at this point. The question then becomes rather, which one was the tease and which one was foreshadowing/ evidence.

Now the point of listing all of these events is that in all of these cases the chances of death are so incredibly high that for most its a miracle she's alive. Ofc most notably for the siphoning trial and the poision gas, but none the less there is proof within the written story and and out that Gideon has looked death in face and moved on with maybe a headache. And it wasn't just in her child hood this is something she can just do. Some recreated in the written story! Because as Pal said. Even with the siphoning challenge done perfectly the chances of leaving Cam with severe brain damage was far to high. And Gideon didn't even suffer that.

Sadly, despite all these Gideon gets to the final battle and fights Cytherea and does die. At the hands of a particularly pointy fence. Or was it truly the fence that did her in? Rather than the lyctorship ritual that was started seconds afterwards.

My full theory, isnt just that Gideon Nav can't die. It's that Gideon Nav wouldn't have been able to die... If Harrow hadn't sucked her soul out. There are at the very least 8 seperate events that Gideon should have died, two of which were nearly gauranteed, but she was ended by a piece of metal. Yes, a very well placed piece a metal, but the point still up to that point she had faced worse a came out unscathed.

If Harrow had not completed the lyctor ritual, Gideon would not have died. Wether or not through resurrection or simply walking it off. Gideon's body has some sort of necromantic attributes to it that keep her alive. We see this in the Untitled Entry short story with Judith Deuteros that describes Gideons body, as it does not rot, cannot be injured, cannot be fed to animals forced or otherwise. And that is all before Jod ever gets a look at the body, because otherwise he would have known Gideon was his daughter before the later events of Harrow the Ninth.

And ofc during the first challenge when Harrow uses Gideon as her eyes to be able to see the construct in the other room and Gideon is able to see the thanergetic signatures that Harrow remarks should be impossible. (I assume because the process is Harrow extracting information (Gideons eyesight) from Gideon and so Gideon should not also be receiving information (the ability to see the signatures)) unless Gideon had some form of necromantic abilities, which she was tested for as a kid and apparently did not have. Alongside not having the correct attitude to be a nun of the ninth. And so we can round it out to be her body being naturally necromantic leaving Gideon without the ability to use it. (Which Is a jump from the actual point we are attempting to use, but for now this stops us from assuming Gideon as any sort of necromantic ability which is a theory all on its own. One that I personally have no evidence for or against)

Now, that I have hopefully made both my Ap Lit and Lang teachers proud with my 3 am essay, I must give you the real tragedy of Gideon the Ninth. Had Gideon not died, had Harrow been unable to complete the lyctor ritual for emotional reasons or otherwise, had Harrow not become a lyctor and killed cytherea. Gideon would have had to watch Harrow and Cam be killed, possibly even Corona, Judith and Ianthe. And then to be used for Cythereas own motives. Tamysn Muir beautifully set up the story so that the best possible outcome could have happened. Had Gideon not died. Everyone else would have. And "Camilla the sixth was no idiot" cam knew and accepted this whereas Harrow never would have. And so the unkillable Gideon had to die, and forcing Harrows hand was the only way to do it.

[theriverbeyond]

how do we know in the books that john is indigenous? can you say more about how his indigeneity is important to his story?

hello! so there is a word of god post on race (doesn't mention John but mentions that Gideon is "mixed Maori"), BUT I frankly don't think word of god statements are worth any weight without actual in-text support (see: the "dumbledore is gay" situation). SO!

Specific evidence that John Gaius is Maori, as revealed in Nona the Ninth:

When he is listing his education, John mentions having gone to Dilworth School (John 20:8). Dilworth is an all boys boarding school in Auckland and accepts students based on financial need instead of academic or sporting achievements. Demographics appear to be about 70% low income Maori boys, indicating that it is highly likely that John is Maori

John reports that P- said he looked like a "Maori-TV pink panther" (John 15:23) when his eyes turned gold. Maori TV is a TV station that is focused primarily on Maori culture & language revitalization, with presumably all or mostly Maori hosts, and tbh I don't see why P- would say this unless John was himself Maori

John uses a te reo Māori phrase ("kia kaha, kia māia") (John 5:20) when he is saying goodbye to the corpses in the cryo lab before the power is shut off. Though it is possible he said this as a non-Maori kiwi, but in combination with the previous two points of evidence I think this all very strongly points to him being Maori

He also renames his daughter Kiriona Gaia, "Kiriona" being just literally the name "Gideon" in te reo Māori

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter but to ME this is all pretty solid proof

Why is this relevant to The Locked Tomb?

In Nona the Ninth, we learn that before he completed apotheosis and ate the solar system, John was basically trying to save the earth from capitalism-caused climate change. Climate justice and the rights of indigenous people over their own land are deeply tied together, in the same way that climate catastrophe and capitalism/ imperialism/ colonialism are linked. disclaimer that this is NOT my area of study and others have definitely said it better; this is just the basic gist as I understand it, but on quick search I found some sources here and here if you want to do some reading.

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter, but i don't think it is a stretch to see John as an indigenous man trying to save the earth and getting ignored and shut down at every turn by primarily western colonial powers (PanEuro, the USA) who declare him a terrorist and then as a reader thematically connecting that to the experience of indigenous climate activists IRL

there are absolutely TLT meta posts that have discussed this before me; tumblr search is nonfunctional and I have been looking for an hour and a half and cannot find anything specific even though i KNOW i reblogged multiple posts about this in the first few weeks following NTN's release. sad & I am sorry

I think that by the time the books take place, John is 10k years removed from the cultural context he grew up in, with the Nine Houses having become a genocidal colonial power in their own right (with more parallels to be made between John's forever war for the resources of literal life energy and like, oil wars), but I also think that John Gaius is a fictional character who can represent and symbolize multiple different things in service of telling a story. (not to mention the potential thematic parallels being made to how oppressed people sometimes are pressed into replicating the power dynamics of their oppressors and continuing the cycle--now that is a tumblr post i KNOW i read last year and definitely cannot find right now, once again sad & I am sorry)

How Radical Was John Gaius, Really is a forum thread that was locked by the moderators after 234534645674564 pages of heated debate

[beguilingcorpse]

alright not to get all kingdom hearts on your asses over here but i've had an alecto the ninth theory cooking for a while now. which is that the gideon that narrates the end of htn is almost entirely disconnected from the kiriona that we see in ntn.

obviously there are the distinct name and personality differences, but there's also the big implication that harrow took something from gideon via the lyctoral process - something she absorbed - that kiriona currently lacks. i've seen some people kick around the idea of this being kiriona's "heart" because of the chussy (and the romantic implications), and i think that's a good a thing to call it as any.

if you aren't familiar with kingdom hearts, there are two creatures that can come from the same person: a heartless, which is literally a person's corrupted or stolen heart, and a nobody, which is the body (still possessed by a soul) that a heartless leaves behind. nobodies are their own functioning person, but can go through physical and behavioral changes and are usually pretty emotionless or bitter.

i'm trying not to Kingdom Hearts Lore Dump, but this sounds a LOT like what's happening with our girl kiriona. and i'm just saying that there are a lot of parallels between gideon's heart being out of her body/with harrow, but kiriona continuing to "live" (heavy scare quotes) while maintaining most of her soul because of the lobotomy and stalling of the lyctoral process. i'm just SAYING that when you put it like that, it sounds an awful lot like kingdom hearts. I'M JUST SAYING

and do i have any direct evidence for this? not currently, no. but based on what i know about muir and her knowledge of early 00s fandom and pop culture, i'm more than willing to bet that a kingdom hearts reference would not be outside of her wheelhouse. weirder shit has been referenced in the locked tomb.

if i had to extrapolate further, this all seems to point to some kind of reunion of gideon's heart and kiriona's body. harrow and gideon('s body) are in the same place again for the first time in two books. it kind of seems to me that either gideon will get her heart back, or she really won't - i.e., gideon's heart is gone forever (absorbed too completely?) and kiriona must either continue to exist in a state of incomplete megadeadness or cease being. which creates its own separate set of problems that i'm personally choosing not to think about. we can burn that bridge when we get there.

[onefleshonepod]

ID: A digital collage of "The High Priestess” tarot card as the Body from the Locked Tomb series. The card depicts the Body as a ghostly figure with both arms raised, dressed in a diaphanous blue-white robe, standing on a large crescent. In her left hand is a sword. In her right hand is a scroll. She is crowned with the headdress of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, a red sun disc with cow horns. At the top is another representation of the Body reaching out of a river, from Mermaids by Arthur Rackham. In the background is the Bird and Pomegranate pattern by William Morris. Behind that, providing the abstract landscape, is Avignon by Ralph Hotere, an influential Māori artist. The image of the Body is from Allegory with a Woman by Luděk Marold. The left side of the card shows the upright meaning of The High Priestess and reads, “Inner Voice | Unconscious | Intuition | Mystery | Spiritual Insight in all caps. The right side of the card shows the reversed reading and reads “Repressed Feelings | Secrets | Hidden Motives | Cognitive Dissonance” in all caps. The base of the card reads "The High Priestess | The Body” in a retro 1970s-style font.

My goal with these tarot cards was to choose characters who embody the meanings of the cards when you think of them, to make the cards intuitive to grasp for Locked Tomb fans who might not be very familiar with tarot. Discussion below:

The Body haunting Harrow is quite literally an inner voice and a representation of Harrow’s subconscious. She’s the perfect figure for the High Priestess card. It’s hard to represent spiritual insight better than with. well. um. a spirit who is a religious figure who also provides insights. The nature of the Body is also one of the central mysteries of Harrow the Ninth.

Regarding the reversed meanings, the Body is also emblematic of Harrow’s secret which is hidden even from herself. My personal interpretation (along with many others') is that Harrow sublimated her forgotten and repressed feelings for Gideon onto the Body throughout Harrow the Ninth.

With my visual interpretation of this card, I tried to preserve or nod to some elements of the Rider-Waite-Smith High Priestess card. As a disclaimer, the hodge-podge orientalist imagery of the RWS deck is a shameful product of its time, but the illustrations are iconic and well known, so I wanted to acknowledge them. I also wanted to use images which evoked the dark wet ghost imagery of pre-Nona art and fanon of the Body.

The RWS High Priestess, and mine, presides over two pillars, representing the balance between them. The RWS pillars can be seen as multiple different dualities (such as good and evil), but are often called are the Pillar of Establishment and the Pillar of Strength. I interpreted the left side (with the scroll) as Harrow’s path of completing the process of Lyctorhood and becoming a fully functional tool of the empire. The right side, where the Body is holding a sword, represents Wake, Gideon, and the path of heresy. Just as the High Priestess’ role is to mediate between the two extremes, the Body’s role seems to be to help Harrow on her own chosen path.

The crescent moon at the Body’s feet, in the same place as in the RWS card, is seen also in many depictions of the Virgin Mary. This is meaningful because (as has been more thoroughly discussed elsewhere) the Ninth House’s worship of the Body and the way this is viewed as heretical and idolatrous by the other Houses can be seen as a parallel to Catholics’ veneration of Mary. I tried to continue the Marian imagery from the RWS card with a subtle blue tint to the figure’s robes.

The pomegranates in the background, also a detail preserved from the RWS card, are a symbol of — well, what aren’t they a symbol of. Many things that resonate in the Locked Tomb series. Death, eternal life, Hell, being torn between two realities… I used the William Morris pomegranates because I love his prints.

Finally, the RWS High Priestess wears the headdress of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, which I kept specifically because the cow horns are perfect: the Body being the Earth and wearing the symbol of John’s first transgression against the Earth while also trying to save it. Hathor’s domain was to help souls transition to the afterlife, and she was often depicted as a cow.

[vickysaurus]

I’m thinking of reading Gideon the Ninth, because you lot seem to be having fun with it. Here’s what I know about it based on tumblr osmosis:

Gideon the Ninth is the first book of the series, which is called The Locked Tomb. It is about lesbian necromancers in outer space.

Gideon the Ninth is the main character. She has some sort of cool skeleton look. I don’t know if it’s facepaint, a tattoo, or her actual bones showing through her skin (with the necromancy and all). However, other characters have the same thing going on, so I imagine it’s something necromancer-related and not just a personal choice.

She also wears dorky sunglasses. I think she thinks she’s a lot cooler than she is.

This is probably a spoiler, but her father is George Washington and her mother did 9/11. I think that’s a metaphor and not the literal case, but then again this series seems kind of bazonkers so maybe it is literally true.

One time, Gideon fit a huge Zweihänder into a suitcase, and it is not elaborated upon how she did this.

According to at least one of you there is ‘not enough fanart of Gideon’s tits’

Harrow or Harrowhark is another important character. She is bald and also has the skeleton thing going on. I get the impression she and Gideon have a rivals-to-lovers arc.

The first book is generally well beloved. I think it is about Gideon getting hired to raid a derelict spaceship of some sort. Maybe Harrow is there for the same reason and they have beef over it?

The second book is mostly written in second person and tries to gaslight you about the first book. It is considered a bit of a challenging read.

There is a new book called Nona the Ninth. I think it’s at least the third book in the series, but maybe there are more in between.

Everyone in this universe seems to have regnal numbers, but I don’t know why. I don’t think they are nobility. Maybe, given the necromancy, it is some sort of counter to keep track of how often they’ve come back from the dead. ‘The ninth’ seems to be particularly common though, which leads me to suspect it may in fact not be a numbering but a last name or clan name of some sort.

I have no clue about any of the actual plots, but apparently that’s pretty normal and people default to the ‘lesbian necromancers in space’ explanation because the plot is wild and impossible to summarise.

Whiny clownbabies have left some very silly one star reviews on it that are basically recommendations.

[g1deonthefirst]

☕️ if you’re still doing these, and because it’s currently relevant: thoughts on fandom framing harrow as canonically beautiful?

OKAY SO. i have two separate problems with it. the first is that (mean girls voice) you can't just call someone "canonically beautiful." there's no objective standard of beauty that could be separated from culture and time and place that could make a character canonically beautiful vs. canonically ugly. this lack of an objective beauty standard is literally demonstrated in the text of ntn with nona finding her body beautiful while the kids find it ugly. i think (i hope) most people acknowledge that beauty is subjective superficially but demonstrate that they haven't actually internalized it when they say shit like "canonically beautiful."

my second problem with it is that even if "canonically beautiful" referenced conventional attractiveness based on the way mainstream western (white) society currently decides attractiveness (which even then is a pretty nebulous concept but let's pretend it's not), i think nona the ninth makes it pretty clear that harrow doesn't fit that standard. kids tend to be brutally honest, and the kids are quick to inform nona that she is not beautiful, that she has "the face of a rat and the body of a dead person." we get constant references to the fact that nona is malnourished, that she looks like a child, and that she's dying. frankly i think people put a lot of stock into nona getting hit on in the grocery store as proof that she's "canonically beautiful," but i think that scene has much more to do with her looking like a young teenager who was alone, cheerful, and naive. people point to ianthe, gideon, and alecto being into harrow as evidence that harrow is canonically beautiful too, but i don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that those three aren't really operating with our current standards of conventional attractiveness in mind.

i think that people really just want harrow to be beautiful, because a lot of people are still subconsciously operating with the beautiful = good and therefore the (female) protagonists that i like need to be beautiful. to which im begging you: can we just let harrow be.

[scalierpepper]

I gotta ask what the atn pov theory is

Haha fair. My current theory is that it's going to be an alecto/harrow pov combo. Apologies for how long the explanation got.

I'm basing this off of patterns from previous books and also what we know about alecto the ninth - mainly, that nona the ninth got split into two books because it got so long. Also, the epilogue of each book has featured the pov of a character who has chapter povs in the book that follows it (harrow at the end of gtn, nona at the end of harrow).

Alecto: atn is literally "her" book haha. Similarly there's the rationale that nona/alecto was narrator of ntn, just now it's split into two. She is also the pov of the epilogue of nona the ninth.

Harrow: the john chapters in ntn...are technically john talking to harrow. Most of it is filtered through harrow witnessing alecto's memory but in the final of those chapters harrow is refered to by name and asks john questions before returning to the river and her body. I think it's very possible that harrow would have been the pov of more of nona the ninth, if it hadn't been split. She is also one of the 3 povs we have seen (in the main works - not including as yet unsent, the unwanted guest, dr sex, etc.), and so far tamsyn has only added povs at the same time as book titles. Like gideon narrates her entire book and harrow pov is added in htn, then nona is added in ntn, etc. So theoretically the additional pov is "alecto" and any of the previous characters.

I also am specficially theorizing there will be at least 2 povs. None of the books have more than 2 (exempting the epilogues) so far but it's entirely possible that atn is different. As fantastic as "get in line thou big slut" is, and as much as tamsyn embraces complex prose and is unafraid to make readers work for the story, I still feel like it might not be reasonable to publish a book (at least, not all of it) written like a passage of scripture. Like I said earlier, technically the only 3 people who's point of view we have read from in the main works are gideon, harrow, and nona/alecto. I wouldn't be surprised to see narration from someone else like pyrrha or paul or john, but that would break the pattern. So if not harrow, then kiriona (which!! I would love! Girlie I wan't to know what you're thinking soooo badly). To me harrow is the most logical second perspective.

My final thought here has 0 logical basis lol. I just really like the vibes. My current mental image of pov distribution looks kind of like this:

So I just think it would be fun for it to end up sort of like this:

I also still have strong hopes and dreams for griddlehark from harrow (or gideon) pov.

Anyways! I'm definitely not 100% about this theory, just something I rotate in my brain for fun. Tamsyn likes to be misleading about the identity of the narrator and reveal it later so who knows. There has also been plenty of time between the announcement of ntn being split for new elements and povs to be implemented. So all this said, I would not be surprised in the slightest if there was a completely different pov thrown in there out of nowhere.

[paradoxcase]

Gideon the Ninth audiobook, to the end of Part 2

New voices:

Camilla's voice is described in the text as "low and calm" which should mean more deep-voiced women rep, but the audiobook isn't really reproducing that description well, I don't think

Palamedes' voice is not bad, although I kind of expected something clearer and lighter. I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but it almost sounds like another accent? I can't decide. It's kind of hard to tell when Moira Quirk's base accent is also foreign to me

I like Abigail's voice, it's definitely the same Welsh accent. I wonder why Moira Quirk picked that accent for the Fifth? Since they are culturally dominant, I would have expected an accent with more cultural capital IRL, but I guess the main characters are already using a standard British accent and the Fourth teens got the French, so I'm not sure what's left in that regard

There were a few words of Isaac voice, it seems fine

Magnus's voice is really growing on me... just in time to never hear it again for the rest of the book. Woe. Oh well, he'll be back in the next one

The pronunciation of Palamedes' name is also growing on me a lot faster than I predicted

Other stuff:

Gideon notes that Teacher does not eat breakfast, and guesses that he just eats it earlier in the morning. NOPE

On the possibility of Harrow being murdered: "What if the murderer was like, weird" and musings on Gideon's subsequent marriage to the murderer, and thoughts about swapping friendship bracelets with them - Cytherea is the murderer and is indeed seducing Gideon here, and this probably also foreshadows the "friendship bracelets" with Ianthe, although who knows if that's what they actually are

Harrow knew that Gideon was hanging out with Cytherea as early as when she was working in the facility by herself, which I had forgotten, and I'm wondering how she knows this. It doesn't sound like she's doing a lot of socializing and doesn't seem to know a lot about the others beyond the Sixth and the Eighth, who she considers her main competitors at this point, and I don't think either of them would know about Gideon's time spent with Cytherea, because they're also busy, and I doubt Harrow has been trading pleasantries with Cytherea herself

I still love that Gideon figures out the purpose of the Imaging/Response rooms by saying "the arms kind of look like swords, I want to fight it" after Harrow has spent literal days beating her head against it

Gideon punches the construct twice in this segment, which I think really shows the utility of her using that move against Babs earlier, and Marta's assessment that she was the better fighter for it. Babs would have been outraged that the construct didn't follow all the proper rules of dueling

I like how written notes and so forth are read in the voice of the character that wrote them (except for John's letter, I guess, but he doesn't have a voice yet); even when Gideon is reading Magnus's invitation aloud to Harrow, it's read in Magnus's voice

After the dinner party, Cytherea tells Gideon "I liked that dinner, it was useful" which is very chilling now considering I now know it made her decide to kill Abigail and Magnus first

She also says "What do [the Houses] compete for? The Emperor's favor? What does that look like?" I think it's interesting that Cytherea, who is intimately familiar with the Emperor, doesn't really know what his favor looks like, or possibly doesn't believe it exists. Or she just knows that John is shit and finds competing for his favor to be pointless and self-defeating, no doubt strengthening her commitment to murdering everyone before they can succeed

After reading the Unwanted Guest, I think I can guess that the reason Gideon sees the thanergetic signatures when she's fighting the construct is more permeability of the soul stuff - that when Harrow sits in her head, Gideon becomes enough of Harrow to see things that only Harrow can normally see? Even though they only did this for like a few minutes at this point

Gideon being completely floored by Harrow's praise of her fighting ability was fun to hear about again

And now Magnus and Abigail are dead and it's time for Part 3. I think the only voice that's left to hear for the first time is Judith, and also John will make his first appearance in the epilogue

[random2908]

We had a Halloween party at work today, and three people actually dressed up, despite the inconvenience of doing a lab job in costume.

A Roman soldier. The boss asked him if he just had that costume lying around. He said yes. His scabbard was empty, I noticed, because--

Gideon the Ninth. She had to take off her sword to sit down. I asked her if this was why she'd dyed her hair red last week and she said yes. Unsurprisingly, no one else had ever heard of it, although one guy said he'd seen a similar costume at a ComicCon. Slightly more surprisingly, she messaged me after the party to say that she had, in fact, kind of expected me to have read it, "based on literally nothing."

Wirt from Over the Garden Wall. One other guy recognized the name of the show when he said it, but I was the only one who got the character's name.

So, yeah, I didn't dress up but I was still somehow the biggest nerd lol.

[alltheprettygirlsintheworld]

So, I’ve been reading Harrow the Ninth, and I am currently on page 60 so what I am operating on here is based on what I have read so far and what I have seen from spoilers. I have not yet read Nona, so this is all conjecture. 

However, I think it is interesting that Harrow decided to rewrite her ENTIRE EXISTENCE because she could not fathom Gideon’s death. This girl, this poor, lonely, heartbroken girl, decided that she would rather gaslight her self and destroy her own brain rather than remember that the girl she loved had died for her. 

The narrative leads you to think that while Gideon is painfully in love with Harrow, Harrow is in love with The Body and therefore can’t love Gideon back. However, we do know two things about our lovely protagonists. 

1) They are incredibly codependent

2) They are notoriously unreliable narrators. 

I haven’t finished Harrow yet, but I can already tell that her narrative towards herself as she exists post-lobotomy is incredibly skewed and may (or may not) be entirely accurate to the events that are actually occurring). In Gideon’s case, we have her whole “bravado and swagger” narrative style that actively understates the intensity of any emotion Gideon feels by hiding it behind the sex jokes and the eternal flirting with every woman with a pair of legs (see, Gideon focusing on how Ianthe and Corona were wearing nightgowns instead of paying attention to the literal dead bodies in front of them). 

My argument is that Harrow is just as pitifully in love with Gideon as Gideon is with her, and she hates herself for it. She hates herself for falling in love with the one person who wasn’t killed for the cause of her birth, and she hates herself for letting that love die in front of her. This is the same girl who puppeted around the corpses of her parents for a decade, you think she doesn’t have attachment issues? In this case, there wasn’t a body left to puppet and play house left. There was NOTHING. Not even bones that Harrow could wrap herself in and hide behind. Harrow just couldn’t handle it. So she begged Ianthe to mutilate her mind so that she didn’t have to remember why she could never escape her all-consuming grief (I’ll talk more about Ianthe when I finish the book because she’s a whole other conversation) and she decided to recreate herself because she didn’t want to die yet (she is two hundred dead children. How could she kill them again?) but she didn’t know how to live anymore either. 

Love doesn’t come from nowhere. It doesn’t just disappear. It lingers and it haunts even when you can’t remember when it started (even if all you want to do is let it go). The Body was a creation in Harrows mind in reaction to the love she felt. She had to put it somewhere, and the only other thing Harrow had ever loved was her House and the girl in the Tomb. So she replaced Gideon with the only other thing she knew how to love, and decided that it was better to exist in insanity than acknowledge the depths of her pain and what she had lost.

And even when she can’t remember who Gideon is, she is obsessed with her... just slightly differently. In this case, it’s through the sword. She is carrying around Gideon’s sword like a teddy bear and she won’t let anyone (even GOD) touch it without going into a full rage and she doesn’t even know why other than that it feels important. She goes on and on about how it weighs her down, but we’ve seen her carry the sword before in Gideon’s novel, so we know that she can absolutely do it. The burden is only half-physical (I say half because Harrow is only barely more than a skeleton herself). Yes the sword is heavy, but the burden it represents is even heavier. She hates her sword. She complains about it constantly. And she loves it beyond measure. And she wishes she was good enough to deserve it

Thank you for coming to my ted talk. 

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on As Yet Unsent the thing that is to be read between harrow the ninth and nona the ninth in the locked tomb book series by tamsyn muir let's go

okay let's go

So this thing is about Judith, huh? This is either going to redeem her completely or bully her so hard into the ground that she can't come back.

The stomach pouch was removed on a previous excursion to what they said was an abandoned “steal planet.” I understand that they use the word “steal” for what we would term “shepherd.”

Firstly, that stomach situation has gotta be rough, but secondly, this already implies a lot about the nature of the empire, which is still something we don't know close to enough about.

So Camilla joining their cause was a gradual process. She conflicted with their captors on keeping Palamedes' bones — but clearly she was allowed to keep them around long term.

Wait. There's a question I should be asking. How did they get taken in the first place? Did the BoE just, send a ship over to the first and grab them? How did that work out?

I will admit with all honesty that even had I been in perfect physical condition I would be no match for her in chess. Only the princess gives Hect a good game.

I'd like to believe that Coronabeth at her peak potential is just as smart as Ianthe; only her emotional and literal dependence on her sister held her back.

There is no way of softening this. Coronabeth Tridentarius has already been radicalised.

BASED

Their main grievance is the resettlements. They are outraged that thanergenic conversion of a planet makes it no longer habitable for its previous organic life. Given that conversion happens over centuries and that all inhabitants are moved to a new planet with full economic support from the Nine Houses, I argued against sympathy.

Makes sense that this is what the empire does, has basically been implied for ages. Not a good way to treat the people of a planet.

Ianthe is gonna start feeling like the dumb sibling once Coronabeth shows up at her and starts quoting theory.

Yet it was a situation completely brought about by Blood of Eden pawns, if what Hect says about the Lyctor impersonating Dulcinea Septimus is true.

Oh yeah, I forgot Cytherea worked with BoE! I think that was alluded to ages ago. Yeah, if they knew what was going down, they could be waiting nearby to pick people up from the First.

My failure in the operation is down to a lack of imagination and leadership and a complete unreadiness to serve the Cohort in the capacity they granted to me. 

Truest thing Judith has said.

The corpse is still as it ever was. I asked Hect if the scavengers had got at it. She said that animals refused to touch it even when encouraged.

You know, shame on me for not keeping track of the bodies, but I am not sure which corpse this is.

She said what would be most economically productive was intermingling with these people, allowing immigration and absorption into the Nine Houses; that shepherd planets got more costly the further the Houses extended themselves, and that instead of creating long-lasting industry we were doing little more than slash-and-burn trading.

yeah damn crazy maybe you'd have access to paper if you didn't make enemies of the people with paper

She is being taught how to fire a gun by some of We Suffer’s underlings. They give her low-bore ammunition and teach her how to hit a target. Camilla says she has a good eye.

Sharpshooter Coronabeth? I said that the concept of her character reminded me of Usopp who is very dear to my heart.

The princess said Blood of Eden thinks necromancers keep wide and witless harems of nonaptitude House citizens whom they have sex with, often after their death. We agreed they must have procured a piece of niche pornography and gotten the wrong idea, although she was amused and I was not.

gideon what did you mail to them

You know, I said a while back that the obelisk and stele thing made perfect sense from the brief, vague descriptions I got back at the start of Harrow. I stand by that statement. The problem is now I've forgotten all of that.

lmaooo judith got rejected

well, that for sure clinches Abigail as above her in the pecking order. She got her cavalier.

This is doing its best to make me care about Coronabeth and Judith's friendship, and I'll acknowledge it as technically functional, but I'm not gonna be crying over this one.

Am I supposed to be able to figure out which Lyctor this is? Hmm. I think it's Mercy.

Ohhh, they have Gideon's corpse. Now that's spicy. Hmmm! So it's not decaying. Hmm. Just what body is the person in the epilogue of Harrow in? Maybe something happened and some souls needed to jump to this one, where they'd be more comfortable. That would explain why Camilla had possession of them. Although, I'm still unclear on what even happened to Harrow's body.

Judith got burnt once and now refuses to even humor the idea of indulging in her attraction with Corona. You know what? As much as I've enjoyed making fun of her, I hope she finds happiness.

Interesting stuff. Definitely useful context for how the characters got to where they are, although I don't think I know how Camilla reached the level of independence she showed when she met with Harrow. Is she even actively with BoE at the end of Harrow? Who knows. And definitely interesting whatever might be happening with Gideon's body.

Excited for the next book.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

13 is funny right bc like. okay shes both tesla And byron. shes bumbling little awkward cuteboy inventor And uh "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection". that.

and heres the thing i wonder bc these are both like, archetypes girls like, right? it's like when i was 14 going if i were a companion i simply wouldnt fall in love with the doctor rip to rose but im different and then being 22 going oh no im not different, right? like these are,, the Types. this is why people went so fucking insane bonkers over 10 right? hes also both. obviously because hes the same character and also he looks the part. 12 also is the same guy but he doesnt look the part. he looks like,,, well idk like a sorta wannabe punk anarchist i guess

im being meandering bc im not sure what im trying to say but i have a Wonder bc like. basically i wonder if 13 does the same thing as 10 does. i mean like as a character not like their literal Actions i mean their Effect on their Audiences does it come from the same Thing

bc wait heres another thing that goes in here right bc like 10 was based on david tennant doing casanova right? i havent seen it, i have it downloaded but like, it's sort of in the name you can kinda see where,,,, it all comes from. and then 13 was based on adult life skills anna right? now i HAVE watched that and it's EXTREMELY 13 but is it a byronic hero no it is not. it is nonetheless extremely appealing to me in a fangirl big embarrassing crush kinda way. like in a 14 yo fangirling over david tennant kinda way. im assuming. like technically it's definitely a 25 yo fangirling over 13 kinda way but how different is that really

and thats actually i think exactly what im wondering. how different IS that really. is the thing that appeals abt 13 is that what people feel abt their wet men? im watching that video essay abt snapewives again btw maybe good context to have. bc theres this thing abt the wet men people like right? like, theres this aspect of wanting to like, save them? like youve got a wet sad prettyboy and you can cheer him up. or youve got a wet sad meanyboy and he only likes you. right? theres thoroughness & nuance im missing but thats what i understand. with my head bc with my heart ive never been close. unless 13 counts bc then im very close but im very much wondering if she counts and if she doesnt then why not

IS 13 a byronic hero in how we ('we' here defined as people who have a gay little crush on her) relate to her or is she NOT bc she doesnt look the part? like 12

another question: if 13 is not a byronic hero is that because she doesnt look the part or bc of other factors. are the other factors there BECAUSE she doesnt look the part? if thats the case i'd expect it to work the same with 12. does it? (i mean like, people's biases abt age and gender subconsciously affecting either/both which traits we highlight/notice in them?)

if 13 is NOT a byronic hero, ARE there women byronic heroes i could use to compare here? (kinda expecting like an woman in gideon the ninth series here which i still havent finished)

[rotationalsymmetry]

Harrow the ninth heavy spoilers under cut, do not read. Meta about the Emperor Undying.

“But I didn’t get to where I am by being able by being able to die, you know?”

The Lyctor said, “the Resurrection Beast—“

“Can’t kill me.”

“You acted afraid —“

This is what I mean about Jod putting on an act of someone who’s trying his best, but not actually being that person. I couldn’t forget, because I bought it up to this point. I love the sort of character Jod is trying to present himself as. The kind leader. The Captain Kirk type character. Dad vibes. Powerful yet nurturing. Whether it’s in some morally black and white universe (fun) or a morally ambiguous one where even a good leader has to make impossible choices.

But, and it is really important to understand this if you want to understand the books at all, Jod isn’t that. Jod is the sort of person who pretends to be that, who puts on an act, but who actually does things like hide the secret to perfect Lyctorhood and watches his fists and gestures murder their cavaliers when they don’t have to. Jod is the sort of person who knows that the Resurrection Beasts cannot harm him, and who will nevertheless hide in the safest part of Mithraeum while the Lyctors who serve him, who can die, fight in his place. It’s an act. It’s manipulation. It’s about using people.

Granted the series isn’t over yet, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point, literally at this part of Harrow the Ninth, that we aren’t going to get some perfectly logical explanation for why Jod had to do things that way, why he truly had no better option and is still a good person in spite of the lies. He’s just incredibly, horribly, shockingly evil.

(which I guess shouldn’t come as a huge surprise for a book about a necromancy based empire. But uh, yeah. I was honestly expecting moral complexity, not…the sort of thing where someone gets to be even more evil because he’s capable of faking kindness.)

oh, and a few lines later:

“Gideon the First…I’m not even mad that you failed to either fix or put down Harrow…”

and in case you missed it, because there is a lot going on in this scene,

I said, “You told that bastard to beat up Harrow?” That was my job, after all.

God said, “I was trying to save her.”

What we know from this: Jod told Gideon Prime to try to kill Harrow. Jod told Gideon Prime to try and kill Harrow. This is news! This is new information! Harrow had previously been confused that Jod wasn't actively protecting her from Gideon, but she didn't know that Gideons orders came from him! This is new and very relevant information.

And yes, sure, the next line is some attempt to justify it, but which makes more sense here, that a good person somehow had to lie repeatedly about what was going on and why he was doing what he was doing, over life and death issues (and that somehow it would "save" Harrow to get murdered*), or that a person who's pretending to be good but is actually a total dickweed is willing and able to keep up the endless stream of bullshit when directly confronted with what he did? Yeah.

*admittedly Mercymorn also saying that killing Harrow would somehow be a mercy to her is maybe some evidence that that isn't completely implausible? There is some very weird stuff going on with death in these books.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2022-09-26

Putting the Reading section at the end because it's Nona the Ninth discussion hour if you want to skip that.

Listening: I've had Friends At The Table in my podcast rotation these past few weeks. I asked noted blogger and Tuesdaypost Originator girlfriendsofthegalaxy for a good start point so I've been in the Partizan arc, which is a Beamsaber game.

I like stylistically constrained game systems, I think they help keep everyone on the same page for how the game is meant to go and what the stakes are. Forged in the Dark provides the tools to do this well, so do Powered by the Apocalypse games.

At some point I'll go back and listen to their session Zero to learn more setting stuff but I love factions in TTRPG design. They're a great way to establish tensions and conflicts without having to deal with personal grudges too much, which are good but can sometimes be too easy to solve in the realm of stabbing someone with a sword. Guilds and polities function well as hard-to-kill machines made up of many individuals.

I've just got to the part where the Rapid Evening extract the Prophet and Clementine gets her Obsessed scar, which is a turning point for her character. I am having a hard time keeping characters straight in my head all the time but they're distinctive enough that I'm usually fine. The other half of the story has more distinctive characters I think? I like the separate halves for different reasons.

Watching: Death on the Nile, the second of the new Poirot movies. The mystery in Death on the Nile is kind of just annoying but if you ignore that the actual movie is gorgeously done, lots of big moving scenes with lots happening.

Playing: Hades! I bounced off Hades after I got my first full clear, I succeeded and then remembered oh wait it's a roguelight, I gotta do that dozens of times to build up the necessary resource to finish the story and romance the NPC's and whatever.

This time I'm approaching combat more as an engine building exercise and it's more enjoyable, I was treating it too much like other Supergiant games which are a) very narrative-forward and b) usually based on figuring out the quirks of a predictable mechanistic weapon and ability selection. Still haven't made a full clear but I only did like four runs, I'm still getting back into the controls and patterns. Got all the way to the final boss twice though.

Making: More quilting, ever onward. Cut a ton more fabric so we can keep going without stopping for a while.

Reading: Finished Nona the Ninth.

A lot of the sci-fi I've been reading does the thing where it takes literally half or more of the book to get to the first major inciting incident. The Left Hand of Darkness did this. The Diamond Age kind of does this although that's just Stephenson. Every single locked tomb book does this. You're like halfway through Gideon when the Fourths get got by Cytherea. You spend most of Harrow fucking around in Jod's magic space house. You are fully halfway through Nona before her secret slips. You meet Kiriona like 65% of the way through the book.

Every character here has intense motivations. Everyone has some existential threat bearing down on them and yet none of them are in an active war zone. Everyone is hanging out under the intense gaze of a resurrection beast and trying to decide which groceries to buy. There's a war going on but because we're with Nona, we never see it up close. I don't know if we're going to see the Cohort at work in Alecto, but maybe you don't really need to see them in the first place, you know what smiling imperialism looks like.

Kiriona and Ianthe work well together. They're damaged products of the empire that still feel like they need to be loyal to it. Gideon is way less friendly when you aren't inside her head, she's mean and she's content to align herself with power. The perspective change to Nona gives you new eyes on everyone.

There's so many gender and identity games being played and because Nona doesn't know who anyone is she passed that on to you. It's infuriating because you're meeting familiar characters and you can't quite figure out who they are because we keep talking about Crown.

Nona is good because she's not an asshole. She's a child, she's a little impulsive, but she likes and trusts Cam and Pal and Pyrrha which is even funnier when you know what she looks like.

It's impressive how easily it managed to make Jod a hugely sympathetic character. Yes he's still an asshole but you'd also be an asshole if you were just some guy who got the key to unlimited power only to use it too late to actually achieve the one thing you cared about but just in time to destroy the thing you wanted to protect.

Cam and Pal's arc is brutal. They've always been tightly linked but it's clear that they go far beyond the other Necromancer and Cav pairs. It looks like they flipped the script but in the end Cam is still sacrificing herself even if what comes out of it looks like her.

[lockedtombbrainworms]

OK, so what's the deal with the "teeth" in Kiriona/Gideon's chest wound? Is that just a figure of speech for the fact that her ribs are poking out through the edges of the wound, or does our girl have literal fucking teeth in there? If they're actually teeth, are those something to do with the eye teeth the devils have? Or the teeth around the stoma at the end of HtN? Are those two appearances of teeth related to each other, or are they just because when you're doing freaky necromancy with human bodies as a base, teeth are just a thing you see a lot of?

Asgdsgfjk I need it to be Alecto the Ninth release day NOW