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rereading nona

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some pins from The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Archives of Western New York pin exhibit (1970-2018)

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MORE, Pyrrha?

Did not realize her nicknames for Nona included another hint that she remembers the pre-Resurrection world. Until I was re-organizing my niblings' bookshelf and fished a handful of tiny hardback books from between the shelf and the wall...

(Pictured: Not their exact copy, but equivalent)

First published 1983, by a New Zealand author, a children's book about a black dog long of strut and short of limb, who loves to accumulate a scrappy gang of other dogs with funny names. You can see the first book read aloud here.

I think it's funny how Nona probably started out resembling Hairy as the ringleader accumulator of dogs, before going to school and being accumulated herself into Hot Sauce's motley gang for a change.

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I dont think that as a fandom we've considered the possibility of a gideon nav baker au enough. do yall know any bakers? MAD jacked, AND for practical reasons. And you know that girl loves her breads.

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We see the aviators Gideon wears as anachronistically modern for this archaic world, and Harrow reacts to them accordingly, but we must not forget that they are an ancient artefact, pre-resurrection. For all we feel like they mess with her Ninth image they must actually strengthen it to the other houses. This Ninth cultist is wearing ten thousand year old glasses to block out the light. I dare you to think of something more Ninth than that.

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GtN Chapter 37 // HtN Chapter 49

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john gaius is an interesting character because he is a charismatic and nice and funny guy AND he is an indigenous man living in his homeland that has been colonized by a brutal imperial force for centuries AND he's an anticapitalist working hard to prevent climate change AND he's a biologist trying to save all of humanity and get everyone out alive, not just the elite with the means to pay for it AND he is an indigenous healer being targeted and hunted down by multiple colonial governments AND he is entrusted with the powers to save people by the spirit of the earth itself AND he kills everyone on the face of the planet to try and stop the trillionaires from leaving but fails AND he resurrects his colleagues and friends but wipes their memories AND he cannot forgive himself but also cannot let go of the very feeling that made him guilty to begin with AND he puts the soul of a planet and 10 billion people into a flesh-and-bone doll AND when she is furious at him (what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill) and scaring the others he locks her away AND he's a masterful manipulator AND his actions towards the earth are a metaphor for sexual assault AND he based an entire society around violating other people's bodily autonomy AND he's committing genocide by killing all the other habitable planets AND he kills his closest friends a second time when they learn the truth about him AND he half-resurrects his own daughter to use as a weapon AND he's a neoliberal fascist and serial liar and in all his time searching for revenge, he still hasn't noticed that revenge is out for him instead

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i fear the day someone tries to make the argument that gideon nav acts Like That as kiriona bc she's butch, completely missing the point that anyone given that much power--& who keeps it--in an imperialistic fascist state is going to act like that

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Trying to break down that one part of htn like. There’s three characters in the scene: God, a teenage nun, and God’s dead daughter (who is currently sharing a body with the nun and is also kind of the nun’s girlfriend? They didn’t really get a chance to define the relationship before the whole dying thing). God doesn’t know his daughter ever existed. The nun has forgotten that she ever existed. The audience does know she existed, but they don’t know she’s present in this scene. The daughter knows that she exists and is here but doesn’t know that she is at all related to God.

And then God looks the nun in the eye and says “If I ever had a daughter, I’d want her to be like you,” and no one involved has enough information to know how fucked up a statement that is.

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harrow the ninth is really like. what if orpheus didn't turn around. what if he wasn't going to turn around. what if he kept his face pointed resolutely ahead and trusted that she was there even not knowing what he was hoping for. what if orpheus had to be cajoled and threatened and eventually forced to turn around. what if eurydice hadn't been told the rules and also had a crippling fear of abandonment and spent the whole time pleading with him to look at her. what if orpheus trusted that she would follow him but eurydice couldn't trust that he would care. what if orpheus was told point-blank that eurydice was almost certainly not actually behind him and he chose to keep walking anyway. what if eurydice touched sunlight again and orpheus wasn't there. what then.

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the other day i was thinking about how the first time i read htn, i was waiting the whole book for a twist about john. specifically, a twist in personality i was waiting for him to 'drop the act', so to speak, and reveal himself as a cruel, intelligent manipulator instead of the most pathetic piece of man i've ever read. but then the twist happened, and it completely blew my mind bc even after the twist, he still is just like that. he exploded the heart of one of the few people who maybe ever really loved him, but he's still just like that. and that hurt even more. the aspects of his nature that briefly endeared me to him suddenly became repulsive and honestly insulting. mercymorn is right, how dare you sit on the couch and discreetly eat peanuts. how dare you tell the child begging you for absolution to get a hobby. he can't even do fascism right. he literally just exists to eat hot chip and lie and that's so INSULTING. it's INSULTING. JOHN GAIUS'S EXISTENCE IS SUCH A SLAP IN THE FACE.

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Clear as mud! But I expect nothing less from a Homestuck 🫡

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i can’t believe tamsyn muir fucking said this. i can’t believe how right she is. i want to take her out for tacos and have an emotional affair with her that ruins me for all other dinner partners.

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every so often i’ll see a post that’s like “ugh the characters in gideon the ninth seem way older than they are, they were obviously aged down to appeal to the YA market”

and i’m like

HUH

their youth is the point!! the fact that they are teens and young adults and the oldest among them are ~30 illustrates just how deeply cruel this world is!! that children are holding up entire houses, dying in wars, obsessed with being the greatest of their generations!!

mercymorn’s running bit about harrow being so young is not just her being condescending—she is genuinely horrified by how young harrow and ianthe are. especially compared to her ten thousand-ish years. they are infants!!

and don’t even get me started on the kids in nona the ninth, which is even more blatantly about how war permeates every aspect of life, even for kids, and makes them grow up too fast

anyway. tlt is not YA and even if it was, arguments about kids in dystopian novels “seeming too old” will never be convincing to me because 99% of the time…that’s. the. point

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Ok I just realized that I thought Gideon's name was taken from the Bible but she had not much in common with her namesake.

But the biblical Gedeon is not her namesake, Gideon the first is, and that name was chosen by Jod for a very on the nose reason.

Gedeon was asked by god to lead an army, and asked for two miracles before he did so. God gave them to him, just like Gideon witnessed the cow dome and the walking corpses. God wanted Gedeon to be seen as an extension of his will and not his own might so he sends him with 300 men chosen by him instead of the 3200 he had rallied. Jod sends gideon with the suitcase nuke he got, and he is the one with the dead man switch. Gideon has no agency, he is only an extension of the will of John.

Later Gedeon is used to dethrone prince's, high placed enemies of god, like Gideon is sent to fight Resurrection Beasts. Both are tools for massacres where they have little to no agency. Near the end of both stories they act independently, Gedeon by killing the murderers of his brother, Gideon by falling in love with Wake.

When Gedeon died the region he took back for god instantly went back to the cult of Baal, turning their back on God. The second Gideon dies, Mercymorn murders Jod, the betrayal plot is revealed, Pyrrah Dve flees with the body of Gideon and Harrow, his two most devout followers, and he is almost killed definitely by Augustin.

And what does John do? He creates another attack dog, using his daughter, Gideon, renamed Kiriona (the Maori translation of Gideon). And he locks her in further than her predecessor by making her indestructible, but leaving her dead.

John is only capable of repeating his mistakes and doubling down. The lineage of Gideon is the best proof of that.

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i may be the last person on this webbed site to put this together but… that “ah, ah, ah” thing that Nona/Alecto and Judith/Varun do a few times? like this?

and this?

and this one?

and this last one?

…do you think it has anything to do with… this?

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All this talk about Princess Maker 2 Hell had me curious, and I-

Now hang on a second....

No way...

TAMSYN!!!