#ntn cover

[zombie-bait]

happiest girl in the whole entire world

thinking about my favourite kind-hearted eldritch horror trapped in the body of my favourite traumatized goth girl

(+ purple variant)

[tranthedykentarius]

Alt covers of Gideon, Harrow, and Nona the ninth from illumicrate, along with a letter from the author!!

[crandairy-juice]

i feel like we forget that nona has freckles

[theriverbeyond]

per the artist, due to NtN being chiseled off Alecto, the Alecto cover art has actually been done since well before NtN was even announced..... no AtN cover reveal yet is making me understand Harrow so much. ready to commit unspeakable acts of taboo bc Alecto is real she's in there she's waiting she is just insensate, with closed eye and stilled brain..... I pray it lives I pray it sleeps I pray it is revealed soon 💀 🙏 💀 Let It Be So

[mayasaura]

Mercy/John/Augustine really is the ot3 for me bc they only work as a threesome. Any two of them in combination just doesn't quite make it off the ground.

John and Augustine without Mercy are lacking a spark; they'll shoot the shit and spend eons verbally sparring but won't actually. You know. Do anything. Augustine and Mercy without John lack purpose; one way or another, he's their motivation. Mercy and John without Augustine just don't quite gel. She avoids engaging sincerely with him under the guise of ruthless efficiency, and he lets it slide off him with a nonchalance bordering on passive aggression. Augustine is the necessary catalyst to get them to react.

I'm just saying. There is a reason Augustine needed Mercy to help him seduce John. Any given pair of them have a fascinating dynamic, but it takes all three to fuck on the dining room table.

[thunderon]

okay i know for the sake of continuity and matching that the alecto the ninth cover should be just alecto alone in all her barbie glory blah blah blah but i would give a kidney to have a cover in the form of the og star wars posters that have everyone and their grandmother on it

like cmon who do i have to bribe to get an ensemble cover with every character in the series that’s appeared for more than 2 pages. i need gideon/harrow doing some power couple pose, the tridentarii/judith posted up on the side, paul/pyrrha on the other, john/alecto doing a freaky looming vader-esque thing in the background.

this post is my plea, demand, sales pitch, and prayer all-in-one.

[thatneoncrisis]

not gonna repost the art bc i dont wanna send the artist shit but just got white woman jumpscared by THE palest gideon nav i have seen to date. what are we doing to our beautiful queens

[beguilingcorpse]

premise 1: cavalier and necromancer marriages and romantic/sexual relationships aren't forbidden, but they ARE taboo

premise 2: all necro/cav dynamics are based on the original dynamic between john gaius (the man who became god) and his cavalier alecto (the spirit of the earth given flesh)

premise 3: john and alecto have said (and continue to say) i love you to each other multiple times, but the exact nature of their relationship is unclear.

possible conclusions:

1. john "just a guy" gaius fucked the earth and everyone was like "ew. weird" and it became taboo

2. everyone ASSUMED jod fucked the earth and honestly was cool with it but he knew that she was literally a planet and kind of a freaky monster and had to be like uhm . no you shouldn't do that actually haha

3. john fucked the earth and then was like it's cool when ME AND HER do it. not you guys tho

4. john TRIED to fuck the earth. the earth was a lesbian. he made up the whole thing about cav/necro relationships being taboo to cover the harsh burn of incel rejection

5. it was all mercymorn's idea, probably

[the---hermit]

Nona The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I finished this book this morning at six something am and I have not processed it yet, so I have no idea how this review will turn out.

This is the third book of The Locked Tomb series, which I started earlier this year. I fell in love with it from book one, and each novel has sent me deeper and deeper into loving the characters and the way the story is narrated. It's not really possible for me to talk about the plot of this book without spoiling something so here's the links to my reviews for Gideon The Ninth and Harrow The Ninth. Similarly to the previous book this new novel sends you into a loop of confusion that you only start to figure out in the last third of the story more or less. I feel like this story was very focused on giving context and explainations on what this world is like and why it came to be, which was very exciting to find out. I am happy to say the narration didn't lose its very funny tones, which I absolutely adore. It is definitely different because this time we follow the story from Nona's perspective, which is definitely more innocent than Gideon's in the first novel. I was glued to the pages just after the first couple of chapters, and I have no idea how I'll cope waiting for the last book in the series. I definitely want to get my hands of English copies of this book series (I am trying to manifest a paperback box set after the last novel is published), not only because I like it so much and I really want to read it in the og language, but also because I didn't love the translation of this last book. The Italian translator changed, and to be very honest I much preferred the previous one. I should have reread the other two books right before this one, because I had very faint memories of a few things and it definitely didn't help. After finishing this novel I feel this growing void inside me that I don't know how to fill, so I hope it won't compromise my next reads.

[forthehonor0fgreywhales]

Alecto Alecto my favorite girlboss

[luxolin]

One minor detail that infuriates me is that Harrow carried around that two-hander for the entirety of HtN, obviously very attached to it, then Gideon (in Harrow's body) uses it on Mithraeum. There's no damn way John didn't know its significance. He saw, several times over, what it represented and who it belonged to. And yet when he creates Gideon 2: Necromantic Boogaloo, he gives her a rapier. He cares more about the the idea of his heir and making her the platonic ideal of a cavalier to keep up appearances than anything about Gideon herself. I want to kick his ass so bad.

[iphisesque]

hello lesbians

[xoshepard]

the nice thing about if nona DID bodysnatch harrow is that she’s the first person to openly compliment harrow’s looks, everybody else is weird about it and puts a bunch of qualifiers >:(

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Whew.

Okay.

I think I'm too tired to keep spamming Starset.

I need sleep.

But it's been awhile since I hyperfixated on a thing that hard and felt that much sheer JOY about it.

I will say that Brave New World was a hyperspecific instance of hyperfixation that started it tonight... ;P

But I'm going to be reading the novel(s) this weekend.

'S' in parenthesis because I don't know if I'll have time to FINISH both... but I do HAVE both! I'll only be reading them at home because as SOON as ABHotF came out, they stopped selling The Prox Transmissions on their website? So uhh. I may have gotten a collector's item. Thank you, ebay!

Anyways, I'm not carrying them in my bag because they're both paperback because that was The Only Option and also the second novel is SIGNED. So. Nope. Not letting THAT guy get beat up in my day bag.

(Kinda tempted to find a .pdf pirated copy to read for the same reason I burned my Fully Legally Obtained CDs. Just so I wear out the COPY instead of the original in use.... but alas. My eyes get sore reading white-background black-text files anyways and I really strongly do prefer a physical book. And I don't have any kind of kindle-y thing.)

[benegesseritofficial]

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.

[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.