#ugh its horrific and harrowing help

[ominouspositivity-or-else]

i think one of the most harrowing experiences of trying to unlearn hating your body and trying to figure out how to love and accept yourself as you are is seeing other people around you do the opposite.

for me, it's specifically my little sisters that get to me. i completely understand when my peers struggle. we grew up in the same time, with the same kinds of people raising us.

but my sisters? my little sisters? they're between the ages of fourteen and twelve!!!! You are little, you are perfect, stop thinking about how many calories are in a treat and wondering if it's "worth it"! Stop thinking about being a bigger size! Stop thinking about not wanting to eat too much!! YOU ARE TWELVE!!! YOU ARE FOURTEEN!!!!

And part of it becomes my fault, i feel like, because i know better. i need to do better. if my mom won't do it, if my aunts won't do it, if my grandma and my dad and my brother won't do it, then it's on me, because I KNOW bETTER.

it's all on me, i've been given knowledge and i must use it. but i don't have the right words. never in time.

[cyprith]

I read Gideon the Ninth and I’m conflicted.

I mean, would we really be so excited about that ending if Harrow were a guy?

The novel starts out, Gideon HATES the Ninth House. She hates it for good reason. She is tormented there every. single. day. She is, essentially, a slave. She has no ability to leave the Ninth House. Every time she even makes an ATTEMPT to leave, she is BRUTALLY beaten back down. We can assume she’s been attempting for years now because I think I remember her mentioning she’s up in the double digits of escape attempts. And the person who beats her down and grinds her under heel the most?

Harrow.

Towards the end of the novel, she even says that they’ve been brutally fighting for their entire lives. They’d go at each other frequently, fights that Gideon was whipped for and Harrow was not, regardless of who started it. She remembers one time that Harrow scratched chunks out of her face. This is a person she hates and has hated for--again, I cannot overstate this enough--her entire life.

She only even goes with Harrow in the first place because A. Harrow tricked her, trapped her and literally beat her into submission. and B. Because she realized that she had no other means of escaping the Ninth House--which even Harrow admits is a prison--and figures that she’d rather die somewhere else than die in the Ninth House.

She continues hating and barely tolerating Harrow for probably about 60% of the novel and then she just... decides? that maybe Harrow isn’t awful after all? And that maybe she likes her a little?

Harrow, who beats her into submission to get her way, threatens her FREQUENTLY with murder and the use of her literal corpse as necromancy fodder, who got her WHIPPED and fought with her constantly? Harrow, who beyond considering Gideon as a person for like, .02 of a second once has showed literally no other flicker of redemption? That Harrow? I’m supposed to believe that maybe she’s not that awful after all?

And then, THEN. One of the only people who has ever shown Gideon kindness, who she admittedly both likes AND finds attractive, turns out to be Big Queen Lich and Gideon just... suddenly becomes Harrow’s #1 fangirl?

Gideon was psychologically and physically abused by the Ninth House. She was kept as a slave, with no freedom or agency. Harrow tricked her and then BEAT HER into getting her here. And now, one person who was legit nice to her basically says, “Hey yo, I’mma kill all these other guys but I like you okay. I won’t kill you. Just back off for a minute, lemme get to work.”

And Gideon, who should have NO LOYALTY to anyone in this bar suddenly decides to SACRIFICE HER ENTIRE LIFE so Harrow can become a Queen Lich too and defeat the Queen Lich that was nice to her. And then we suddenly see from Harrow’s POV that she’s like grieving and shit because she really liked Harrow after all and just didn’t realize, what? that WHIPPINGS weren’t how you made friends?

Fucking what? What the fuck?

Harrow was an unrepentant asshole for 92% of the book aside from that one time she went all shifty and made eye contact for like the first ever time and tried to say that maybe she actually needed Gideon’s help after all. But I’m supposed to believe that she’s grieving for the slave she spent a lifetime torturing?

That she’s so broken up that the first thing she does upon waking up to Necromancy Jesus at her bedside is to ask for Gideon back? Really? This little shit?

Nah. I don’t buy it. Yeah, yeah, she had a shitty childhood too or whatever. Fuck that, she was basically a princess. I’m sorry if she didn’t like being rich and in charge. It must have been so hard for her having everyone do whatever she said including--oh yeah, BEATING GIDEON INTO SUBMISSION.

If Harrow was a dude torturing this girl her whole life, I don’t think most people would buy it either. I mean, sure, some 50 Shades people would be into it, but I hope to god at least it wouldn’t be marketed as a “romance” then. Who am I kidding it totally would

Ugh.

It was a well written and engaging book. I think I’m only this upset because I loved Gideon so much as a character, it hurt me for her story arc to end on such a wet fart.

I wanted so badly for her to take the Queen Lich’s offer and just fuck everybody. No, she can’t trust the Queen Lich, but she can’t trust fucking anyone anyway so what would that even matter? Why not just take everything she’d ever wanted and get the hell out? Fuck the Ninth House, fuck all the other houses that let this happen to her and Book 2 Gideon the One and Only can be the next biggest bad and bring the whole universe to its knees.

Anyway, TL;DR: cool motive, still absolutely horrific human being undeserving of personal sacrifice.