#same with Gideon

[luna-the-cretar]

Hey guys. You know that ball of yarn Frost has? What if the ball of yarn came from his hometown? What if it was one of his favorite toys before leaving for the psionic order? And now it’s the only thing he has left from his homeland? I mean, we know that Frost carries quite a bit of seemingly meaningless objects with a lot of sentimental value (like the robes and the whistle), so it wouldn’t be out of character for him.

[eats-a-berry]

i wasn't sure exactly what i thought adult gideon should be doing, but i DO quite like the triple combination of cowboy-biker, drag queen, and used car salesman at the same time. she's always a busy person!

[areyouscaredyet]

if they dated i think it would be like this

[mayasaura]

Was thinking about this line because Harrow what the actual fuck are you talking about, and I realised something.

Not only does Harrow really for real not know that Gideon loves her—in the bullshit context of their lives, this is a reasonable misunderstanding for her to have.

What has Harrow known Gideon's life goals to be since they were children? Hint: There are at least two Harrow is fully aware of.

The first is to be wanted. As much as Gideon hates and wants to escape the Ninth, she also paradoxically craves their acceptance. They're the only community she's ever known. Harrow plays on that desire from the very beginning, mostly by kind of .... well, okay, by negging her about it. Ironically appealing to her sense of loyalty and duty to her house when they both know Gideon never even had that bridge to burn. That kind of thing.

Whether or not she's right, Harrow sincerely believes that acceptance to still be important to Gideon. First flower of my house, the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. When Harrow has only seconds left to make amends, she not only banks hard into praising Gideon, she frames it to unambiguously offer Gideon the acceptance she's always been conspicuously denied. Assuring her of her value not just as a person or as a cavalier, but as one of their house, one of their people.

The second thing Harrow knows is that Gideon wants to join the Cohort. Easy, everybody knows that. She's only been telling everyone with ears (and then some) since she was eight years old. It's the bait Harrow dangled to entice her into this mess. She wants to be a hero, to do great deeds like in the comic books. She wants to be a soldier.

Against the backdrop of all that context, Gideon's dying declaration "for the Ninth" starts to sound a hell of a lot more like "for Queen and country." Especially when you remember that Harrow is still the sovereign ruler of the Ninth. From Harrow's vantage point, Gideon could easily be playing the heroic underdog in a war movie. The soldier no one believed in until she threw herself on a grenade to save her squad. The knight errant who proved her chivalry by giving her life in service to her king.

From that perspective, Harrow's line to Ortus makes sense. She's following through on her promise of acceptance, defending Gideon's loyalty to the first Ninth face she sees. She's playing out Gideon's war hero fantasy, where Gideon's act of heroism proved them all wrong about her. In which case Ortus's response, "You are the most worthy heroes the Ninth House could muster. I truly believe that," flows very naturally as a reply. He understands what Harrow is trying to say, and affirms it.

It's not a hero's burial in the Anastasian, but it's the closest thing Harrow has the power to give her. And it's a fucking reasonable interpretation of Gideon's actions that doesn't touch on her feelings for Harrow at all. Fuck me.

[sapsolace]

obsessed w these boneheads as of late :]

[specialagentartemis]

Reading (listening to, as Homer intended) the Iliad making me go oh. Ohhh. I should have done this before I read Gideon the Ninth. I get it now.

Particularly thinking now about the tidbit that in early drafts, our beloved gray-eyed Necromancer Warden of the Sixth House was named Diomedes Sextus. For Diomedes, king of Argos, young, brave, noble, heroic. Favorite fighter of Athena, bestest friend of Odysseus. And, notably, fought gods and—well he didn’t win exactly. But he got them good.

And specifically, he fought and wounded Aphrodite; Aphrodite, who is also called Cytherea.

And then of course Tamsyn Muir said she decided to change his name so she could make the Sex Pal joke.

Palamedes is a less heroic, less fondly remembered character in the Trojan War, but according to Plato, he unrelatedly invented both number and the alphabet, so you keep that connection to scholarship even if that’s not the first association with him. More interestingly, imo, there’s also an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table named Palamedes, best known for his unrequited love for Isolde (and his apparent ultimately gracious acceptance of her choosing Tristan).

I think this is actually a super interesting shift in thematic naming focus: from favored-of-Athena, fought-gods-and-wounded-them to unrequited heterosexual love, but didn’t act like a dick about it.

Also y’know. Sex Pal

[codewitch]

Whenever someone in the locked tomb fandom calls Camilla/the whole cam/pal thing “normal” or “comparatively well adjusted” I’m like. Look, don’t let Cam’s deadpan demeanor or Pal’s nerdiness seduce you: they may not be disaster lesbians but it’s purely on technicality. They are what you see in the dictionary when you look up “codependent”. Cam carried fragments of his bones for months with nary a necromancer nor a plan in sight. Pal became a revenant and amused himself with bad romance novels. They shared a body passing notes to each other because a bone hand wasn’t good enough. Both killed themselves rather than let the other die. Like Cam died to become Paul. Pal was already dead but he died again to become Paul. This is toxic codependency 101, folks.

[nightmare-kisser]

Saw the top image meme on a random YT post but with anime characters and I said. Wait I have a different fandom this is perfect for. Bonus points that they're traumatized by like the same things lmao

[sofipitch]

Underrated Abigail Pent moment is when she said if you can't explain something in simple terms then you don't actually know it. Our anti-elitest queen. Not being in her field does NOT get you out of hearing about her dissertation

[s-aint-elmo]

the theme is same faces

(ID in alt text)

bonus + design notes:

sparknotes:

tridentarii: the building block was "lions" (corona's mane of hair and king vibes + ianthe's scar lionking swagger) but i think i lost that plot at some point. regardless peep the earrings for symbols of their twisted mutualism. also they have dimples <3 bc on corona they're perfect and on ianthe (when she smiles wide enough) they're sickeningly dissonant

the nonas: harrow has curls bc i think the only thing funnier than saddling a nun who's been shaving her head since infancy with fast-growing hair is for that hair to be horrible messy springy curls that are barely spared from frizz by the sheer grease #bathingisn'tsafeformern. please also applaud my restraint in adhering to canon and not giving nona dimples. she deserved them

the sixth: came to me fully formed honestly. palamedes calls camilla beautiful enough for the alexandrites so i just let my heart and sapphism take the wheel here. for pal when i first read gtn i visualized him very differently but other artists made such a compelling case for scruffy pal that now i can't see him any other way

the second: also let my heart take the wheel here. wanted to draw a man carved out of hardwood so i did <3 at the caliber of necromancer that g1d is i know he probably wouldn't have so much scarring but the heart wants what it wants (cool factor). in my head and in my heart they're from wake

naberius: i don't have anything to say in my defense. i rewatched teen beach movie, found the perfect face claim and set the wheels of fate in motion. i think babs is hot the way a ken doll is hot, y'know? it takes yanny piloting his flesh mecha for him to be gender (<- testimonial from my masc nb friend)

[corvophobia]

this one goes out to the griddlehark cosplayers i met at mcm london comic con that were quite frankly SLAYING... i believe the right are @/takemetothedark and @/th3.mane.attraction on instagram and jarofgrubs is the gideon on the left!!!!!!

[tiffanyachings]

interpersonal drama! at canaan house

[crowliphale]

worg (flags: kremy is demisexual & demiromantic, frost is demiromantic, gideon is bi)

[hotchology]

[absolutedestinyapocalypsse]

the thing getting at me the most after finishing my second read through is john's desperate fear of consequences combined with the ability to wipe people's memories about it. like he accepts that there's conflict between the lyctors, but he doesn't want to/cant comprehend that anyone would have a grudge against HIM. he justifies cytherea's actions as her being overworked, not her having a very real reason to want to stop more lyctors from being born. his fear of consequences is also a fear of change. he's desperately clinging to who his friends were ten thousand years ago, and i think it's entirely possible that he's so desperate he would cut parts of them out that were changing/disagreeing with him. he already demonstrates complete willingness to violate their boundaries and erase their memories "for their own good". He thinks people can and should be fixed- he's frustrated that mercymorn won't let him "fix" her anxiety, he tells them to kill harrowhark or "fix" her. If he has the ability to erase people's memories to avoid anyone being mad at him/stopping his plans, to "fix" the parts of them that were unfaithful or might hurt them, in his eyes, I don't trust that he wouldn't.

imagine how many times over ten thousand years the last straw was pulled and one of the lyctors got fed up with him, or he got fed up with them. imagine how many times over ten thousand years one of the lyctors tried to talk him out of something or objected to some genocide or another, and he found their objection inconvenient. part of the horror of harrow's experience on the mithraeum comes from the fact that she is both in actual danger that nobody is recognizing, AND that she can't remember or trust her own perception of events. Is she hallucinating? is it the ghost? what reason would anyone have to believe her, if she can't even believe herself?

maybe that's the horror of every lyctor- never being sure if you're being manipulated in the normal gaslighty "don't leave me or i'll kill myself and also kill the sun" way, or in the brain tampering way. knowing and feeling a sense of fealty and love and faith in john, and never knowing if it's coming from you, or from some brain magic. Harrow doesn't remember gideon, but there are LOTS of signs that something is very wrong, that something is missing. Imagine how many of those would stack up over TEN THOUSAND YEARS

[reflection-s-of-stars]

I think it’s very important that Abigail Pent is a little bit strange and off-putting. Like yes, she’s the oldest non-lyctor necromancer on cast and she’s a maternal figure and she generally makes smart decisions, but also! She’s a spirit magician! She knows everything there is to know about ghosts! She makes overly intense eye contact! She got so caught up in her research she forgot her own anniversary! She’s definitely the best-adjusted compared to the other necros and yeah she looks pretty normal but as soon as she opens her mouth you’re like “oh she’s not all there is she.” I fully believe she clocked Cytherea on some level at the dinner party but she was too distracted telling her about her research to really think about it. And most importantly I think Magnus Quinn is the normalest guy you will ever meet and he loves his weird weird wife with his whole entire heart and soul