Nona The Ninth: The Book In Which Half The Cast Dies And/or Comes Back Wrong To The Shock And Horror

Oh hey two obscure things I relate to!

is this anything

Moira was probably my favorite character aesthetically and lore-wise back when I was an egg and playing overwatch on somewhat of a daily basis. Some things age like a fine bio-engineered wine I suppose 🧬

Leyendecker redraw featuring moira (ofc) and my hcs for her body

Yes, YES, YEEEESSSSSS!!! 💀

why fortiche should animate the locked tomb like arcane:

incredibly good grasp on "characters not acting like themselves" (e.g. viktor's changed mannerisms after merging with the hexcore, down to microexpressions)

the fight scenes

wide range of female characters that nevertheless all appeal to the sapphics (just. imagine seeing gideon built like sevika)

animating the moments where harrow's memory is "corrupted" along the lines of jinx's hallucinations

the pool scene. like imagine the water effects that the silco scene uses and pair it with the intimacy demonstrated with the caitvi interactions—

Now see, the big brained strategy that I’ve employed to combat this is to transition to the point where I’m forced to come out as a formality.

Transition goals 😈

“It's one of patriarchy's perfect self-perpetuating cycles: the demonisation of older women ensures we do not wish to identify with or learn from them, so cannot gain any knowledge to prepare us for our own experience of ageing. Instead we turn away from our future selves.”

- Hags, Victoria Smith

And then each subsequent book continues to flip expectations of the genre like the cohort flips planets!

By the end of Gideon we’re already reeling, but then Harrow comes along and really shows off the brilliant inner workings of the setting and magic system all while gaslighting us on the very existence of the previous book. 😅💀

The thing that really gets me about the Locked Tomb series is that from a worldbuilding perspective it’s YA catnip. Like any other author would have started it out from someone low ranking in the cohort, maybe falling in love with a rebel or vice versa, introducing parts of the world slowly. There are even houses to sort yourselves into! It’s perfect! That would have been a good story in and of itself! However Tasmyn Muir started in the deepest depths of the equivalent of death cult Amish territory from the POV of someone trying to escape and join the terrible death army, and it works. It’s like if you started explaining the concept of Star Wars with a clone from one of the tanks in Palpatine’s lair. Obsessed with her as an author.

Gideon is just as much a product of the 9th as Harrow is, just with different sets of traumas. Harrow bears the burden of her entire House’s expectations and future, whereas Gideon was never expected to amount to anything save for a set of bones to tend the snow leek fields.

Gideon’s whole persona is a reaction to “nobody” seeing her as valuable or worthy of attention. So she makes herself as annoying and loud as possible in order to get the people in her life to notice her.

It’s why she caves to anyone who gives her a scrap of recognition or appreciation, well intentioned or not 💀

thinking about the fact that Gideon grew up in the same exact place and with the same exact background as Harrow, yet there isn't one religious bone in her whole body and she just seems to not care at all about the Emperor or praying or religion as a whole.

thinking about the fact that she doesn't necessarily mock the Ninth for believing, but it's clear she doesn't. yet, she has to have spent at least some years of her life believing in the same religion because it was the only thing she ever knew and she was raised to possibly become a nun, so someone had to teach her about it.

thinking about how I personally stopped believing after growing up catholic and imagining a six years old Gideon Nav hiding in a corner of the Ninth just like I used to do in my house, praying the Emperor for someone to come and claim her, for her father to save her from Crux, from Harrow, from her life. thinking of Gideon going to the same corner day after day, maybe near her mother's burial niche, because in her naive mind that has turned into the praying-spot where God can hear her more clearly, for some reason. he doesn't usually listen to her, but maybe if she prays there he will actually listen to her and help her. and she keeps praying, every day, for weeks, months, years.

thinking of eleven years old Gideon Nav that has prayed and prayed and prayed and ultimately has decided that there must be no God, because he never once listened to her. not even when she asked for something small, something that the Kind Undying should have no problem granting her, since everyone always talks about how powerful he is and how many great things he has done.

or maybe there is a God, but he clearly doesn't care about her, just like everybody else, so why should she care about him?

I feel seen by this in so many ways, especially given the absolute rollercoaster 2024 was for me. Thank you OP.

I was going to make this a poem but I feel inept in that regard right now so buckle up for Just a Rant

I'm 28 years old and I've identified as so many things that I've stopped counting. And I don't think that any of them truly were "wrong" and that just adds to my confusion.

I thought I was bi, I came out as asexual when I realized other people thought about "sex" and I did not. I came out as demisexual when I met my first girlfriend and I realized making her cum made me feel good. I came out as nonbinary cause I realized I'm not cis and that felt like the "less radical" thing to come out as. I came out as a trans woman when I realized I wanted to transition and I thought that estrogen was just for women. I came out as nonbinary and butch when I realized that people's well-meaning "womanhood 101" felt just as oppressive as the endless choir of "how to be a man". I called myself a bambi lesbian when I found REAL ADULT LOVE for the first time and I did realize that I quite liked the label and the things that it contained. I spent years skirting the edges of identity and listening to weirdos giving me exclusionist talks until I threw all that in the bin and stopped giving a fuck what other people thought about the divide between "bi" and "lesbian" and what that all meant about who was allowed to be what and why.

I came to realize that to me "lesbian" is more about my feelings regarding EVERYTHING that society expects of me in terms of gender AND sexuality and that maybe if it truly came down to wording it I was panromantic.

I started exploring polyamory more and realized that most of my relationships had at least been partly queerplatonic.

My relationship with one of my partners started as as non-romantic, non-sexual and then gradually started looking more and more that way. We started being horny for one another, we had so much sex one time they visited me that I injured myself a number of times. Eventually over the years they lost their libido and I spent some time crying in therapy cause I thought that meant they didn't love me until I realized that they obviously do love me and if they desire sex or not REALLY shouldn't matter to me as an ace person in the first place.

I got into another relationship, with one of my long time best friends, and that ended up involving sex. I realized I'm not exclusively a top and a dom, I realized that maybe I wasn't just stone butch after all. I started exploring all that more.

Eventually my partner of 5 years came out to me as aromantic and I thought that my heart broke until they told me that they'd always felt that way and they just lacked the words. When we sat down and mapped out common ground I'd never felt as happy and I came to realize that love could change and still be whole.

I started getting closer with someone and I realized that I wanted to hold her hand and maybe kiss her. That budding romance came to be one summer long and there were countless talks of what "romance" actually meant because after my partner's coming out I started to deconstruct all that. I entered that connection prepared to get my heart broken and then the heartbreak never came. We've been together for over a year and we've redefined what "together" means multiple times and what remains the same is that we love each other.

I'm a service top. I'm a power bottom. I'm a switch verse. I'm a soft stone butch. I'm a bambi dyke. I'm a transfem femboy tomboy drag peasant. I'm a lesbian but not in the way that society thinks. I'm asexual, I'm aromantic, I'm so in love.

Does it make sense? Maybe not. But love is like a living being. You cannot rightly cut open its skin and dissect it without killing it.

Low key would LOVE to be able to attach computers to myself like this. Imagine the memories you could store and retrieve with this tech. Plus it just looks cool… that may be the main reason… body modification 🤖

Nerd and jock from yesterday’s illustration

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS 🤘

Spent all morning distracted by what an amazing needle drop moment it would be at the end of a Gideon the Ninth adaptation if the outro was War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

Hear me out

The instrumental intro of that song is pretty long. What if we slow it down a tad. Make it a tiny bit moodier. Jod does his whole monologue about not being able to save Gideon, about the need for Lyctors like Harrow. Then the song starts in its normal speed/sound.

“Then rise, Harrowhark the First.”

🎶 Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerer of death's construction 🎶

The both look out the window at a fleet of imperial ships massing at the edge of the system.

🎶 In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning🎶

The scene fades to the bloody and abandoned mess of Canaan house, to the skeletons scattered everywhere, rubble from the building, the bloody spikes of the railing. It transitions to the house coffins in some hanger on the ship.

🎶 Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

Oh lord, yeah!🎶

Screen goes black, credits start the rest of the song plays on.