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tumblr keeps putting posts on my dash about how it’s not “realistic” for Gideon to be fat/buff/fat+buff bc all the Ninth House eats is snow leeks and oatmeal

I’m so sorry, I can’t seem to hear you. I was too busy adding 20 pounds to her, as I do every time I hear this rancid opinion

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The effects of face paint on Harrowhark's psyche

I've now cosplayed Gideon Nav 3 times, with my wife along as Harrow every time. Naturally, this has included full face paint for both of us each time and I have some thoughts.

Let me start by asserting that everything Muir writes in TLT about the face paint is accurate. Rubbing off your lips first, smearing into gray where the black and white meet, the way sweat makes it ooze but not run. I can't say if Muir (a known Homestuck) ever cosplayed as a troll, but I'm positive she tested out the practicality of the skull face paint or otherwise has first hand experience with extensive use of grease paint. Also, the way she describes normal people flinching when they see you is spot on.

I've noticed while putting on the make up that once most of my skin is covered, any flesh tones sticking out start to become unsettling. Specifically, the red/pink of the inner mouth and around the eyes jump out upsettingly. Every time I've done skull paint I find myself meticulously trying to patch over these edges of skin, despite knowing that it's inside skin that Shouldn't Have Make Up On It. Once my face is monochrome, I don't want to be able to see a scrap of real human under there. Smiling, or otherwise opening your mouth wide enough to see the pink, looks UNSETTLING. My own skin causes the uncanny valley effect. You see where this is going. In NtN we learn Harrowhark disassociates often enough that Crux isn't surprised or concerned to see "Harrow" insisting she's someone else. Obviously this is due to her schizophrenia, and perhaps trauma besides. But it doesn't account for every aspect of why Harrow's "like that." On her most lucid days Harrow ignores her body to the point of sweating blood and passing out. She goes entire days without eating. She thinks of herself as a skeleton unfortunately covered in flesh. She sleeps in her paint.

All of which is heinous, but that last one has stuck with me. From age 13-18 I barely glanced down while I showered and whatever I saw I basically blocked out. I wore underwear and a bra under my pajamas to sleep every night. I was going through the wrong puberty, "my body was in open rebellion" as I liked to say at the time, and the only way to cope was to bind it down and pretend it wasn't happening. By Gideon's narration in HtN one gets the impression most nuns of the Ninth are putting their paint on after breakfast and taking it off when they get home. It's not even expected the average person wears it every time they leave the house. But Harrow regularly only takes her paint off in order to redo it. I suspect a combination of being the most brainwashed person in her own cult, knowing how she was conceived, and the regular disassociation make it very difficult for Harrow to conceptualize that she actually lives in a body. If she faced that fact head on she'd have to ask why it so often feels someone else is using her body. She'd have to cope with owning this body, being a part of this body, that was bought with the blood of 200 children who should have been her peers and friends. Instead she pretends it's an object on loan from them. And she does it with 10 layers of black petticoats and so much paint she never has to see her own skin.

Which brings me to the final thing I've noticed wearing full face paint. It dehumanizes you to yourself and everyone around you. I couldn't read my own expressions in a mirror. Even people who understood and were delighted with my cosplay were visibly nervous talking to me. You don't look like a person. Studies have shown that faces wearing heavy make up are ranked as harder to read and perceived as less empathetic. It's a particularly insidious trap of patriarchy that many women find self esteem in wearing make up, while that very act makes everyone around them treat them more callously. And, worst of all, if you stop wearing it once you're used to it, your naked face is shocking. You look sick due to your colors being less bold and the normal small flaws of your face appear unbearably ugly. With all this in mind, Harrow has trapped herself in a feedback loop of not being able to witness her own face and becoming more and more disgusted with the flesh and person underneath whenever she has to glance at it.

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‘unreliable narrator’ but it’s ’narrator is deeply in love with the person they are narrating’

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I'm only halfway through but means so much to me that not only does Nona the Ninth depict a character with profound intellectual and developmental disabilities with compassion and depth, she is surrounded by love and support. Her family may occasionally be frustrated or exasperated (pencils aren't FOOD Nona) but they never get upset, never make her feel stupid or useless, they challenge her without depriving her of support, and love her unconditionally.

At school the teachers are unfailingly kind and give her jobs that are within her capabilities and make her feel helpful and competent.

She is not required to go through a gauntlet of social trauma in order to earn friends. There is loving teasing among the gang but she is accepted and valued as who she is.

Even in the interactions we see with random strangers, she is viewed with kindness or gentle humor (with the one creep exception), not the disgust and aversion we so commonly see people with disabilities treated with in our culture.

So much can be written about how, even in the midst of The Horrors, Nona finds love and support, but right now I'm just holding the simple beauty that she gets to experience that people can be good.

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my favorite awful terrible girlvillain ianthe 🥰

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I am creation both haunted and holy;

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whoa look who just appeared in my hades 2 playthrough... crazy

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I am UNBELIEVABLY excited to share this with you all!!! Hozier x TLT x Reinaeiry !?!?! And I got to make art for it!?!?!?!!?

I put so much tlt love into the artwork and Eiry's cover is absolutely stunning!! Truly a dream project.

Here's the spotify link also!

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*as always I tried to avoid any names that seem rooted in other cultures but I may have made a mistake. If I did put a name that's completely normal in other cultures, it's just me being an idiot. Not trying to make fun of that culture.

Boy Version

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I am undone without you.

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How do you want to do this?

—

Goodbye, Faithful Caregiver.

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ianthe's little cannibalism moment except it's not little, it's 15 pages long, enjoy!

(this took a total of 115 hours, waw, i am still sick as all hell, so feel free to leave me all ur thoughts in great details, i will read them.)

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Based on what Tamsyn Muir said about Alecto “hopefully” being the last book. I wish I could tell her directly “Do it. If the story needs to be longer do it. Hell make an entire book about the Harrow Nova au cause it ties into some later arc. Take up space. Dominate the genre.So many male writers make 5-8 books about some fantasy/Sci-fi world cause they feel like they have the audience’s attention to do so. And to be completely honest Tamsyn Muir has my attention like no other. Like yes girl make me read 3 more books consisting of 500-600 pages. I am sat.

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The book you wish you had. 👁👄👁🖤💀

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'Don't you dare look at me'

Commission for @kurisus

commission info

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"together either way"

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what if we hung from the side of a building and we kissed..... and we were both spiderman.....