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iviarellereads · 1 year

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Full TLT series to date thoughts on rereading Harrow the Ninth, chapters 5-10

A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.

Mercy's naked relief that Harrow isn't in any way the product of Dios Apate, Major. That she doesn't have to deal with that mess. Little does she know yet who's tagging along behind Harrow's retinas.

I still don't really understand the Sarpedon fanatics in the fandom but y'all are out there doing your thing and I respect that and love that for you.

Alecto seeing John. Just, that's it, that's the whole statement. The hard angles of her Barbie face soften for him.

Harrow's unsureness in herself, thinking that John is only saying he thinks her incapable of surviving the River… but Ianthe is still fighting Babs too.

In chapter 7, when they're in the ship in the River, John says a word Harrow doesn't understand. Did he just cuss in te reo Maori? (EDIT) User typicalstormcloak in the replies raises a good point: it's "Kumbaya". Of course it is.

Here we are at last, chapter 8 and the description of Canaan House's origins, at least as far as the remaining multi-soul construct of Teacher will or can explain in the River bubble. The House came first, then the disciples at different times across centuries. But why does John's story in Nona conflict so much with this? I need Alecto so bad.

Given that Varun caught up to Nona… I wonder if it sped up because it felt Harrow in the River, felt Alecto with her. Felt its sibling traveling close, and felt a drive, a need, to find out why she was back.

And I don't get to brag about much in this read, but I can say that I put together that Harrow had done something to her brain and forgotten Gideon and replaced her memory with Ortus as soon as chapter 9 ended. I already had a strong suspicion so much earlier, when John names Gideon and Harrow hears Ortus and starts bleeding and losing control of her body. This just cemented that suspicion in my brain. I'm not always very good at guessing what's coming next, so I'm disproportionately proud of that one and I'm sure it will never happen again in this series. LOL

Seeing Ortus, Abigail, and Magnus talk around Harrow's delusion that the River bubble is real (since I suppose it IS real in a way, she's the one shaping it so), it's just so interesting. I can see exactly why I didn't guess this reveal on the first read.

That recipe is fascinating and I didn't recall it at all until literally just reading it to summarize. The only M we know in the original crew is Mercymorn… If it's her, then it's funny that it's abbreviated to just M, not Mercy, while Nigella is in full. It calls to mind John's (and Pyrrha's!) mentions of the dead names of his crew, though that would be M-.

Wake's missive to Mercy in chapter 10 is the W I L D E S T of rides. That's it, that's the whole observation.

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #nona spoilers #tlt spoilers #the locked tomb spoilers

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smallerplaces · 9 months

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Kid Kore Katie joins the fam

Stacie, Whitney, and Hilary have a new friend: Katie, who is a mid-1990s Kid Kore "Dancing Brook."

in thinking about my small community of dolls, I'd been pondering who isn't represented. A glaring omission is Native Americans. So I went looking for indigenous girls among vintage clone dolls, and in a weird clonish way, I hit pay dirt.

We need to backtrack a second, to Maureen Trudelle Schwarz' "Native American Barbie: The Marketing of Euro-American Desires." Schwarz looks only at Barbies -- and, oddly, doesn't address Mattel's Pocahontas dolls, even though Pocahontas was likely at the heart of the 1990s craze for Native American dolls -- but this narrowness of focus doesn't change the validity of her point. She argues that Native American fashion dolls have been consistently marketed as "other," "historic," and spiritually tied to the earth, in a manner that has no equivalent for white fashion dolls (or even Black ones).

Hooboy is she right about that for Kid Kore's many, many Native American dolls, as well as Totsy's smaller assortment. Kid Kore's are part of the Heartland series, complete with actually labeling dolls as "Indian Princess." Totsy's are packaged as Heroes of Yesteryear. Everyone is in a movie-western version of "traditional" garments. Nobody except the men have any attempt at a head mold that isn't also used on the white dolls. And yes, the boxes have friendly information about historic close-to-the-earth practices.

"Dancing Brook" is a Kid Kore Katie, the 7" younger sister of flagship doll Kelsey. She is also cute as all get-out, and I'm less concerned about head molds on a character that's a mid-sized little girl. I bookmarked a bunch on eBay and bought the one whose seller offered me the best deal.

She arrived in her "traditional" costume, in really great shape. I don't think she'd ever been undressed.

The first step is, of course, to get her out of that costume, since she's here to be a little girl among other little girls. In the long haul, all of the 6-9" little girls are going to belong to a children's performing arts group that requires them to have traditional dance dresses, but this requires getting out the sewing machine, which means getting some eBay listings done first. Point is, Katie will be defined by her "traditional costume" exactly as much as Stacie, Whitney, and Hilary.

Speaking of which, here's Katie showing that she's a little shorter than Whitney (Stacie) and about an inch taller than Creata Hilary. She's also reminding me that I'll need to sew casual outfits for the whole gang, as the clothes I think are Stacie clothes mostly fit Kelly, Skipper, and hypothetical other dolls that may not exist.

Let's see what's under the clothing.

Katie has a pretty simple body, but because she's Kid Kore, she has a secret.

It's not in how she does splits.

It's not in how she sits much more gracefully than Hilary.

No, it's in how Kid Kore handled articulation. Those legs are bendy!

It's unsettling, but allows for a range of motion.

Her face is adorable! I might want to do a little washing on her hair, but it's in great shape for a doll that's almost 30 years old. Unlike Hilary, she has kept her eyebrows.

She's looking forward to hanging out with her new friends... oh wait... her name!

Well, I'm not going to call her Dancing Brook. That's an obvious "white person romanticizing" name. I haven't decided what tribe she belongs to (which is going to be important in making her a more accurate festival dress). The major candidates are Northern Yokuts, Miwok, or Tohono O'odham [the first two for where I live now, the third for my 10 years in Arizona]. For naming, though, it doesn't really matter because west coast natives usually don't disclose their native names to white folk, for reasons that should be pretty obvious. So I'd only know her Anglo name, and... she's a Kid Kore Katie. As the first Katie in my little doll community, she gets the name.

#kid kore #kid kore dolls #kid kore katie #stacie clone #clone dolls #native american doll #vintage clone doll

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karltface · 2 years

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It occurs to me that I've never reviewed a "girls' toy". And I have just the thing: one of the few toys I've gifted my other half that she specifically wanted on the main Old Stuff Shelves.

It's Celestra herself! And no, there didn't seem to be any way to kill that glare; the packaging is so warped it won't photograph well no matter what.

Manufactured in '86 by discount-store bottom-feeders Placo, Celestra and crew are essentially shrimpy She-ra knockoffs with entire hollow vehicles hanging off their backs. Oh, and no weapons. Only combs, because "girl". And "cheap".

The back of the card reads more like a distributor's ad copy than anything, but it gives us the basics: these are mashups of Transformers and Barbie, your kids will love them.

I did look up some photos, and while Celestra is arguably the best choice, it almost doesn't matter, because all four not only share a body/head mold, there's no unique paint either. They're all wearing the same colors and patterns, the same blond hair. Just a hilariously disinterested execution, and we haven't even seen it clearly yet.

Hoo boy. Seldom do I encounter toys so bad they can't even meet my gaze. That's a thousand yard stare if I ever saw one, and it's permanently cast downward. She moves at the Big 5, naturally, and can't even hold her comb. Which is attached to the packaging with some sort of alien super-tape, and irretrievable without destroying what's left of the package. It's just as well, her hair isn't getting out of place anytime soon after being crimped into that shape for 30-plus years.

Honestly, the robot form could've been a lot worse. It's got a nice touch of Zeerust without looking stupid. Almost more 50s than 80s. The legs still move, but not very far. She can give a slight bow, but then she just falls over. I guess you could pretend she's so powerful, she doesn't need to move much, just floating around in a fairly neutral pose like Stardust the Super Wizard, firing rays of indeterminate power from her visor.

In an interesting twist, a proper toy designer seems to have snuck into the factory at night and altered the molds, adding a good sturdy slider joint to raise and lower the helmet for ease of transformation. Simply bizarre.

This is exactly the sort of wackiness I miss. A lack of cross-cultural awareness and some lax copyright enforcement led to a decade or so of samurai turtles on European warhorses, space skeleton pirates, and Skipper's fanciful notebook doodles forcibly dragged into three dimensions. It was a wild time, and we'll never see it again. Whether this is ultimately a good thing is up to you, but I'm happy slowly mining it for inconsequential content.

#80s toys #toys #vintage toys #dolls #celestra

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