#thread: gideon

[hasan-demir]

For: @drrutherford​

When: After Party Where: The yacht Hasan approached Gideon when he was able to find him taking a moment for himself.  Putting a hand on the man’s shoulder surprising him with his blackened eye. “Congratulations to the most successful man of the year.  How have you been enjoying the party, your sister is throwing a good one.  As you can see I’ve been enjoying the festivities fully myself. I really do keep running into you after being assaulted by irate women don’t I?  Perhaps you can help me with that, what do you know about Melissa Lin?“ Despite the wound Hasan seemed to be in high spirits.

[fleshadept]

part of the reason the locked tomb characters are so memorable and complex is because they are very, very weird in the way only writers who understand that every human being is a little freak in their own way. harrow is the standout example of this—she is unnerringly pious to the rites of her religion in a way that to others comes across as zealotry but once we get into her point of view is revealed to be both, yes, because she is a zealot and also because the rituals and safety of painting her face, praying, etc calm her down. she eats penitently because she actually hates strong tastes. she is both schizophrenic and quite literally haunted, facts that recontextualize her behavior in gtn in an important way.

gideon is a butch and this universe’s version of a jock, and the first thing we see her do is try to escape harrow and the ninth and join the army (something that’s forgotten a little too often when people talk about her being “out of character” in ntn) because she wants to have a purpose, but we also come to learn that despite being raised in the literal dreariest place in the solar system she’s funny, sometimes even on purpose. she doesn’t know what a salad is. she reads sleazy porn magazines. she’s a talented swordswoman but is head over heels for every pretty woman she meets, to her own detriment at times.

every character is like this! they feel so real and complex because they have contradictions and weaknesses and opinions and incorrect beliefs and correct ones that are hard to tell the difference between.

[chaoticstabby]

The wildest experience of recommending Gideon the Ninth to someone was my friend who, after reading up to the second trial, casually said "yeah, one of my theories is that the trials are preparing the necromancer to absorb the cavalier's soul". With four people having read the whole series so far in the zoom, the amount of self control it took to keep our faces neutral.......

[fipindustries]

you know what, fuck it

no nuance, no option if you havent read the locked tomb trilogy

[elfieafterdark]

Elfie's Locked Tomb Review

Preamble

I don't really know what I'm doing here formatting wise. So bear with me. My plan is to review each chapter as I read them, and then sort of compile a larger conclusion as we go.

This is going to be loaded up to the fucking gills with spoilers, so if you haven't finished the series please do so first. I'm going to be spoiling everything pretty much from the word go .

I've never done anything like this before, but I hope that I can improve my writing by doing this and I hope that you all get some entertainment out of witnessing the madness of my brain.

Okay, time to get reading. Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 1. Let's do it.

[croweofthebog]

is this too niche

[xaviermattthews]

x 📲 gideon.

x: i'm not going to be able to make the meeting on wednesday. x: thursday work for you?

[aberfaeth]

yay! now i can proclaim my love for codependent necromantic nerds wherever i go! (the sleeves say one flesh one end in morse code)

bonus with collared shirt:

[sudsyjellyfish]

I'm going to be moving soon, so I'm running a sale on my Etsy shop - all items are 25% off, and you can take an additional 5% off with the code TUMBLR

[villainsidestep]

oh fawn we are really in it now

[xtinyslip]

gideon couldn't believe he'd let this stranger talk him into getting in the car with him. not that he figured he had much of a choice. doctor pederson didn't seem to take no for an answer and as SHAKEN as gideon was all by of this. deep down, he couldn't help but be a little impressed. not that he was trying to show it. "i think you could fit my old house in the space you have just to park your cars." this place was insane and he couldn't believe that the other was going to let him stay here. there was going to be a catch. right? like he was going to have to sleep outside in the shed or -- or something because this was far to good to be true. perhaps there had been a STRUGGLE to get him in the car and the entire car trip had been made in complete silence. honestly, he'd been too scared to make a single sound after how difficult he'd made this be. gideon finally braved a glance up at the man upon getting himself out of the car. "... what happens now?" @lcvenderhcze

[giordirossi]

Tagged: @drrutherford Location: St. Catherine's, A&E When: A day or two post-everything

Despite all protests against the entire idea of venturing into a hospital, getting her ribs and possible (read: definite) concussion checked out by a qualified professional somehow became a nonnegotiable. Apparently her bathroom mirror hadn't received the proper training to make the call on whether any lasting damage was imposed by the other evening's scuffle. Annoying, but considering all that occurred with recent fallout, Giordana uncharacteristically found herself in the business of tempering waves rather than making them.

Sitting in a chair rather than on the parchment lined table as a quiet act of insubordination, she's already begrudgingly allowed the triage attendees to run a handful of tests and vitals. The results of which can apparently only be interpreted by the doctor on rotation tonight. Wholly inefficient from her point of view, but this is precisely why she doesn't work in the medical field. The man who enters minutes later just happens to be another solid reason in that arsenal.

"––Wow, they sent in the big guns. Guess I must be dying." Again. "And here I thought we'd filled our surgery quota for the fiscal year."

[spending-life-pretending]

Thinking about the locked tomb and how there is a story underneath the story. About how john and the lyctors technically fill the role of villain and supporting characters—at most, considering half of them are dead the whole time—and yet somehow when I’m learning about them it never feels like backstory but rather just another story, another part of this story. There’s a story underneath the story, and to we have to unearth it in order to come to any sort of conclusion for either. This story is ten thousand-odd years long.

[thcophagy]

open to: @angeldcgs.

featuring: miriam odom, twenty-eight, bisexual, guitarist for kerouac.

plot: while on tour with her band kerouac, miriam meets gideon graves backstage and immediately falls head over heels for his easy charm and flowing compliments. against the better judgement of her bandmates, she starts spending more and more time with him, till she's so under his spell that she can't see him trying to isolate her from her friends in favour of having her all to himself.

"i'm' a bit pitchy." miriam frowned down at the control panel and fiddled with one of the knobs aimlessly, no longer trying to make her voice sound any better since she had decided the whole thing was an undeniable flop. she'd never wanted to make her own music, hell, she'd never really wanted to make music at all. the only reason she'd picked up a guitar in the first place was out of boredom, it gave her something to do while skirting through various foster families in her youth, a skill she could focus on improving but it never came alongside any goal of fame. even when she joined the band, she was only using it as an excuse to get out of town and see some of the world. how was she to have known the success they were going to achieve in such a short amount of time? never had it crossed her mind that she was good enough to make it in the industry by herself, and she'd never really wanted to either but then she met gideon and it was like a whole different world of possibilities opened up. for the first time ever, someone had pointed her out and made her believe she was something special, could she then be blamed for so eagerly following after him, ready to obey his every command? he was smarter than she was, and he understood the music industry in ways she could never dream to. it only made sense then that when he suggested bringing her into the studio to try recording a song, miriam was eager to do as he pleased, even though she was concerned about her bandmates finding out she was making stuff behind their backs. "maybe this is a bad idea... the song ain't that good and i don't wanna make a fool out of myself, especially when the boys find out i've been sneaking around behind their backs." her bandmates were good boys, each with their own individual flaws but ultimately soft at heart, the last thing she wanted was for them to think she thought herself better than them all of a sudden because someone had scooped her up and proclaimed her a star. then again, nothing like that had happened to either of them, and maybe there was a reason there. "what'd you think? can we fix it or... or should we call it quits?"

[sidesteppostinghours]

im being so brave about the robbery fight x2

(TW for noose under the cut)

and the version without text:

click for better quality and enjoy :)

edit: i was looking at this again because i always get a nagging feeling that im forgetting something after i post and. I WAS RIGHT THIS TIME

v NO TEXT VERSION WITH THE THREADS LMFAO

[ignitesthestxrs]

are you a kiwi? I'm american myself, but honestly feel like I haven't seen enough kiwis talk about the locked tomb (though i think im partly just missing most of the discourse anyway somehow??)..

if you ever feel like layin out some more thoughts ab tlt id love to read em! <3

i am a kiwi! there is a small but thriving kiwi sf/f community, but overall people are not...terribly online, or terribly into fiction lol. i definitely know there are kiwi fans of the series out there but in general i can imagine most of them simply not wanting to get into it. i don't really want to get into it! i just saw a reply on a post i reblogged and lost my mind about it for a couple of seconds.

as a pākehā/white kiwi i am like, both protective of these books, critical of them, and kind of ill-equipped to be the person criticising how māori characters and māoritanga/māori culture is depicted in them.

tamsyn muir is a pākehā author writing māori characters that she didn't initially identify as such getting like,,,increasingly more māori in depiction as the books go on and she learns more about the general consensus on how white people should write characters of colour. and those māori characters are involved in instituting, recreating, participating in a uh....very roman? sort of societal structure? and in the latest book there's this further māorification of Jod while also depicting him as a radical under fire from the government in a compound, and act which has both deep historical and very recent (2007!!)roots in aotearoa nz culture.

this māorification of gideon too with the prince kiriona stuff is also: something. what is it? i don't know. i don't think it's Cancellable Offense Bad, or even bad at all. but there's an overall freedom of mishmashing aspects of kiwi and māori culture into a broader sf/f context that muir has kind of taken it upon herself to perform, when ultimately it's not her who should have been the person who got to do it, you know? the structural racism of the global publishing industry means that a pākehā writer can step up onto that stage with an ease and popularity that a māori writer is going to have institutional difficulty accessing in the same way. do i think carl tor editor picks up these books if they're written by a brown author? idk man

and then on the flip side - this is a part of her lived experience too. as a pākehā writer, choosing to write, do you include your pākehā-ness? your kiwi-ness? choosing to do that, do you include your knowledge and understanding of te ao māori/the māori world? are you stealing or are you sharing? what is yours to share in the first place?

these are questions that i think every pākehā writer should ask themselves as they're writing and they're also questions that i don't think have a Correct Answer, or even an answer full stop. they're things that i think muir started asking around book 3 lol which is a very better late than never kind of thing, but it's also clear as the books go on that she's laying down her road as she runs on it, so to speak.

i think muir is Trying In Public, which is a deeply vulnerable thing to do, but also, she is right now a very popular pākehā writer introducing māori character and culture to a broader audience, many who have not encountered any of this before, in an environment where very few māori writers have an opportunity to do the same.

so when that broader american audience comes and picks up what muir has put down and then unthinkingly applies their own american cultural lens to what they have in their hands - it's weird, right? it's weird in ways that many (i generalise - not all, obviously, there are also many americans who do have global context) americans can't understand, because those americans don't live in a world where they are outsiders on the global stage. even americans who understand that the rest of the world is not america have not necessarily experienced that in a way that is intrinsic, intuitive.

the world is shaped by america, either by its presence or by its absence. so when a pākehā writer creates māori characters and uses te reo māori/the māori language in her work, which then gets read and used and consumed by an american audience as though it is a creation that belongs in their worldview - it becomes disconnected entirely from the source muir borrowed, or stole from, or grew up with. it forces the conversation into this place of whether or not the americans playing with this particular doll know what they're doing or where the doll came from or why it's a doll anyway, instead of like, why has muir made this doll and should she have and are there other people making dolls, or are other people making different things entirely.

links to some sf/f by māori writers:

THE DAWNHOUNDS by Sascha Stronach

LEGACY by Whiti Hereaka

WATCHED by Tihema Baker

PŪRAKAU, ed. Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereka

GUARDIAN MAIA