#like who could be attracted to the very different people that are gideon and ianthe?? me and my bestie harrow that's who | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

paradoxcase · 11 months

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Chapter 15 of Gideon the Ninth

Harrow's plan for destroying the bone construct sounds fun, and sounds fun to read about, I'm interested to see how it goes. It's interesting that necromancy has "theorems", I just saw a post recently about how it's mathematical in nature, but Harrow also talks about it like weaving, and previously it's been described like programming. Although, if you go back to the roots of it, programming, math and weaving are all pretty closely related

Is Harrow actually frightened of not being the first person to become a Lyctor? Or maybe social anxiety, but I feel like Gideon is actually right that she should have some solid MO for formal social events at this point. I wonder if there's some particular person in Canaan House right now that she's afraid of, there's a couple different options that might make sense, I think at the top of the list we have Ianthe, knife-face/mayonnaise uncle who is still without a name, and maybe Palamedes, but these also strike me as the people who were least likely to attend Magnus's anniversary party. I'm not sure if she thinks/suspects that Dulcinea is evil yet

Teacher thinks Gideon could tell Harrow some interesting things about the relationship between the 4th and 5th Houses, but I'm not sure that's actually true? I think Teacher might be overestimating Gideon's attention to detail and general political acumen

I've looked up a bunch of lock diagrams, and I don't know what he could be referring to here unless he's talking about the pins/tumblers, which don't seem like words that are apropos to this discussion. Unless locks work differently here?

Goddammit Gideon, that was an interesting conversation, I almost thought I was going to learn something about about this universe for a minute there

Also, that was a Dune reference

So, ok:

There was a Resurrection (of the Emperor?), and then later "sovereignty" and the Cohort, and it sounds like the time period she's talking about after the Resurrection but before the other stuff was when the original Lyctors were around/ascended

It sounds like Abigail is not going to inherit even though she is the heir? Or traded some future that she was promised to her brother in order to come to Canaan House to attempt to become a Lyctor

I see this is like Star Wars and we're deathly terrified of things like C-sections. Also, I guess Ianthe really was born second, but was sent to Lyctor Camp anyway. I have no idea what knife-face means by "a wasted opportunity". Naberius's only role among the three of them so far seems to be to stick up for Corona to Ianthe, and neither of them are having it

I appreciate the use of itty-bitty text for most of what Jeannemary and Isaac say, even when it's actually directed at Gideon specifically

I mean, I think Harrow wants to become a Lyctor before anyone else can become a Lyctor, but I have a feeling there might be some other answer here

Ok, someone help me out here. I cannot social interaction. I cannot with Meaningful facial expressions. I cannot with whatever this is. What is this? There is something Being Communicated here, and I do not know what it is. Is this supposed to be sexual attraction? Is this a way that people describe sexual attraction? I mean, Gideon seems to think it is, but like, she's not a reliable narrator. This seems very antagonistic to be sexual attraction, and while yes, I understand that antagonistic sexual attraction is apparently a thing in this book, these two specific characters are just Not It for the antagonistic sexual attraction so that does not make sense to me

I think Harrow is overestimating Abigail's ability to make headway on the bone construct puzzle. The puzzle requires having a cavalier that can actually fight, which is something I do not think Abigail actually has, although Harrow may not actually know this herself

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth

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darkveracity · 3 years

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Sexiest TLT Ladies Survey Results

About 3 months ago I ran a survey asking the locked tomb fandom to rate the attractiveness of each member of our large and varied cast of lesbians, necromancers, and necromancer lesbians on a scale of 1 to 5. Now it’s time to publish the results! The credit for most of this writeup goes to @misanthropicacegirl who applied a little of her data science expertise to analyzing your answers.

Preliminaries

The survey ran for 3 months and received 357 responses. The overwhelming majority of those were in the first two weeks but a slow trickle continued to come in over the remaining time it was open.

Section 1: Averages

One way to rate our girls is to look at their average rating.

Average Ratings

Gideon 4.25 Camilla 4.22 Harrow 3.80 Pyrrha 3.68 Corona 3.31 Alecto 3.30 Dulcie 3.28 Pal 3.20 Wake 3.15 Abigail 3.06 Ianthe 2.99 Cytherea 2.65 Mercymorn 2.61 Marta 2.57 Judith 2.32 Aiglamene 2.17

Gideon and Camilla are the only ones with an average above 4. Clear stand out winners here. At the bottom of the pack are Marta, Judith, and Aiglamene.

But it’s not all about averages. What are our other summary statistics?

Median Ratings

Gideon 5.0 Pyrrha 4.0 Camilla 4.0 Harrow 4.0 Dulcie 3.5 Alecto 3.0 Wake 3.0 Abigail 3.0 Marta 3.0 Pal 3.0 Corona 3.0 Ianthe 3.0 Aiglamene 2.0 Mercymorn 2.0 Cytherea 2.0 Judith 2.0

Gideon and Harrow both benefit from the median! The absolute middle of the road voter ranked Gideon a 5/5.

Difference Between The Median And The Mean

Cytherea -0.651026 Mercymorn -0.609971 Judith -0.322581 Corona -0.310145 Alecto -0.298817 Camilla -0.219020 Pal -0.197059 Aiglamene -0.174041 Wake -0.151335 Abigail -0.061584 Ianthe 0.011561 Harrow 0.198847 Dulcie 0.216374 Pyrrha 0.317507 Marta 0.425220 Gideon 0.748555

The difference between the median and the mean tells us a bit about the range of feeling, and how much outliers are influencing the average. Most people have an average fairly close to their median. Gideon, Marta, and Pyrrha all move up in the median – they have a couple of detractors who dragged them down. Cytherea and Mercymorn both move down in the median, because their average was raised by a couple of pro-lyctor fans. Surprisingly, Ianthe, who I would have thought would be very affected here is our most centrist/stable. She’s a 3 and she’s staying there.

First Quartile Ratings

Camilla 4.0 Gideon 4.0 Pyrrha 3.0 Harrow 3.0 Alecto 2.0 Wake 2.0 Abigail 2.0 Dulcie 2.0 Marta 2.0 Pal 2.0 Corona 2.0 Ianthe 2.0 Aiglamene 1.0 Mercymorn 1.0 Cytherea 1.0 Judith 1.0

What about on the low end? Whose popularity is most stable? Answer: Camilla and Gideon again. Even down to the 1st quartile, they were still getting a 4. (E.g., at least 75% of people gave them a 4 or higher.)

Standard Deviations

Camilla 0.978607 Gideon 1.017420 Judith 1.120026 Harrow 1.167082 Marta 1.182399 Pyrrha 1.216243 Corona 1.238687 Aiglamene 1.243601 Dulcie 1.274022 Pal 1.356506 Abigail 1.363070 Mercymorn 1.375335 Alecto 1.389682 Wake 1.426035 Cytherea 1.486678 Ianthe 1.491963

Looking at the standard deviation, Camilla has the lowest score too! Closely followed by Gideon, and surprisingly, Judith. No surprise that the bottom of the list features Ianthe, followed by Cytherea, Wake, Alecto, and Mercymorn – all fairly polarizing girls with a wide spread of potential takes.

Section 2: Ratings by Character

This is one more way of thinking about the distribution of answers each character got. I would have expected Ianthe to be mainly 1’s and 5’s, but she’s actually fairly neutral all the way through – nobody really has much of a bimodal distribution. Ianthe does have equal numbers of 1’s and 5’s, however. In contrast, Alecto’s 5’s outnumber her 1’s at a 2:1 ratio, and Gideon has nearly 20x the 5’s as 1’s.

Section 3: Ratings Given Ratings

Are Ianthe girls really so different from everyone else? Maybe a little. The people who rated Ianthe highly were also higher on Dulcie, Cytherea, Mercymorn, Pyrrha, Wake, Harrow, and Alecto– pretty much every morally gray girl on the list. Judith, Marta, Camilla, and Gideon don’t see much of a difference – and Pal goes down!

Here’s one way we could look at this up close to see the change.

This is the same chart from a Gideon perspective! As you can see, Gideon’s rating doesn’t really change Harrow or Camilla very much – their ratings are pretty high across the board without a lot of change. Pal has a stronger connection: if you rate Gideon a 1, chances are you rated Pal pretty low too. The reverse is true with Cytherea: the people who rated Gideon a 1 rated Cytherea more highly.

Section 4: Correlations

This is a correlation matrix! Each cell in the table represents the strengths of the relationship between the row and column character, between -1 and +1. +1 represents a relationship that totally corresponds with each other, 0 represents no relationship at all, and -1 represents a relationship that goes the opposite way. Each character has a perfect relationship with themselves, so there’s a diagonal of “+1’s” going from top left to bottom right.

Section 4A: Top Positive Correlations

They go together, like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong

Top Positive Correlations

Judith->Marta 0.63 Pyrrha->Wake 0.58 Dulcie->Cytherea 0.47 Wake->Alecto 0.44 Cytherea->Mercymorn 0.41 Alecto->Aiglamene 0.39 Dulcie->Abigail 0.34 Judith->Aiglamene 0.33 Ianthe->Cytherea 0.32 Cytherea->Wake 0.31 Abigail->Mercymorn 0.31 Marta->Aiglamene 0.31 Mercymorn->Wake 0.31 Wake->Aiglamene 0.31 Corona->Wake 0.31

Our second house girls go together! Yes, mostly people both voted them 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s, but people generally ranked them the same.

Our next strongest pair is Pyrrha and Wake. Most people put them both at 5, but people who were negative or lukewarm tended to be similar on both. Probably because they are terrifying warrior MILFs.

This Dulcie and Cytherea one is funny because we have 3 very different points happening. People who hated both, people who loved both, and a minor contingent of people who loved Dulcie but hated Cytherea. That last contingent is significant enough to show up, but not enough to throw off the correlation.

What do Gideon and Camilla look like here? There’s nowhere for us to draw a line–almost everyone put them both at a 5. True, some people rated one a 4 and the other a 5–but not enough for us to see a pattern from it.

Section 4B: Negative Correlation

Opposites…. repulse

Top Negative Correlations

Corona->Pal -0.14 Ianthe->Pal -0.13 Gideon->Mercymorn -0.12 Gideon->Cytherea -0.08 Harrow->Pyrrha -0.05 Pal->Cytherea -0.05 Pal->Mercymorn -0.03 Harrow->Marta -0.02 Harrow->Wake -0.02 Harrow->Pal -0.02 Gideon->Ianthe -0.02 Ianthe->Camilla -0.01 Gideon->Abigail -0.01 Camilla->Cytherea -0.00 Gideon->Dulcie -0.00

Basically, this correlation exists because there are two different groups – the people liked Pal and put her at a 5 or 4, tended to rate Corona a 3, and the people who liked Corona (who put her at a 4) tended to rate Pal a 1 or 3.

Pal and Ianthe are also kind of opposites! In this case, there’s a VERY pro Pal contingent (3-5) that all rated Ianthe a 1, and a generally pro Ianthe faction (who rated her 4-5) that was pretty lukewarm on Pal.

Lastly, a totally different pattern: Gideon and Mercymorn. In general, everyone was very positive on Gideon and very negative on Mercymorn, hence our major dark spot at (5, 1). This correlation isn’t as strong, since most people loved Gideon regardless of how they felt about Mercymorn. But there were just enough contrarians who loved Mercymorn and disliked Gideon to give us a negative relationship.

Section 5: Clustering

What if we pretended to do some fancy machine learning, and tossed these into a clustering algorithm?

Two Clusters

Abigail & Aiglamene & Cytherea & Ianthe & Judith & Marta & Mercymorn

Alecto & Camilla & Corona & Dulcie & Gideon & Harrow & Pal & Pyrrha & Wake

If we tried just two clusters, we can see a split like this. I’d call this line the conventional heroines VS the meaner, more frightening and military women.

Three Clusters

Abigail & Alecto & Corona & Dulcie & Ianthe & Pyrrha & Wake

Camilla & Gideon & Harrow & Pal

Aiglamene & Cytherea & Judith & Marta & Mercymorn

We can see a pattern here too:

Supporting characters with some redeeming features and some problems

Main heroes

Mean older women

Four Clusters

Abigail & Cytherea & Ianthe & Mercymorn

Alecto & Corona & Dulcie & Pyrrha & Wake

Aiglamene & Judith & Marta

Camilla & Gideon & Harrow & Pal

Breaking this down into 4 gives us similar slices again.

Older and/or Dangerous women

Bitches horny for revenge, probably

Military women

The Camilla/Gideon/Harrow/Pal quadrilateral of friendship

Five Clusters

Cytherea & Ianthe & Mercymorn

Alecto & Corona & Pyrrha & Wake

Abigail & Dulcie & Pal

Aiglamene & Judith & Marta

Camilla & Gideon & Harrow

Last one! Rolling around 5 clusters we get:

Morally dismal lyctors

Women who’ll try killing the emperor in book 3

Friendly but dead nerds

Military women again

Our heroes

Bonus: Harrow or Gideon?

Can we bring back the simple times of the Twilight fandom? Can we be divided into team Harrow or team Gideon? We turn to the data to find out.

Gideon vs Harrow isn’t a very big divide either, as it turns out. The biggest effect it has is (drumroll)…that people who ranked Gideon higher than Harrow had high rankings for Gideon, and vice versa. Everyone else is fairly similar, and I wouldn’t put money on them being statistically significant.

Though there is a slight preference for Ianthe from the Harrow faction, and for Corona from the Gideon faction, which is definitely funny.

We can also observe some slight team Gideon preference for Judith, Marta, and Pyrrha.

#gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb

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dude1818 · 3 years

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Part two of my Gideon the Ninth reread liveblog. First adventures in Canaan House.

Far away its king and emperor sat on his seat of office and waited, a sentinel protecting his home but never able to return to it. The Lord of the House of the First was the Lord Undying, and he had not come back in over nine thousand years.

We learn in book two that it's because of the Resurrection Beasts. Even when Cytherea explains that her plan was to get the Emperor back to the First House, I don't think it was ever explained why that was such a bad thing.

All the other shutters were closed up tight and had been for most of the trip, which had taken about an hour of rapid travel.

Just casual FTL travel in-system. My main issue with this series is how terrible Muir is with astronomical distances. It's not that hard to look up how far apart things are! Same with the location of the Mithraeum; why is it outside of the fricking visible universe?

[Teacher's robes] looked as though they had been made a thousand years ago and kept in loving perfection. Everything about him was ageless and pristine.

Oh, foreshadowing.

“I only count six shuttles,” said Gideon.

The only time anyone has ever been able to count in this series. Teacher's follow-up comment that they don't like discrepancies should also be a big red flag for, like, everything. How many keys? How many Beasts? No one ever knows.

[Protesilaus] was staring at Gideon emptily.

I forgot where I read this analysis first, but Gideon describes Pro the same way she describes Harrow's parents. And yet it's very Gideon that her only conclusion is "I could take him."

Then in the very next scene with the tea, the only people who don't drink are Harrow (who only drinks lukewarm water), Pro, and the priests. In fact:

[Teacher] was eager, interested, vital, alive. The penitent calm of his fellows made them seem more like the robed skeletons arrayed at the sides of the room: silent and immovable, with a red speck of light dancing in each socket.

(quote break)

Gideon watched, paralysed, as one of the very expensive shuttles fell hugely and silently over the landing platform: it dropped like a suicide and seemed to hang, grey and shining, in the air. Then it fell from sight. To its left, another; farther left, another. The scraping ceased. Skeletal feet pattered away.

I assumed, as I expect Muir wanted, that it was Teacher who directed the skeletons to scuttle the ships. Part of the whole mystery of Lyctorhood. But it was probably actually Cytherea, huh, who wanted to ensure everyone remained trapped in here with her.

“I think,” the bright twin was saying, “that it’s a hell of a lot better than sticking us in a room and playing who’s the best necromancer? Or worse—loading us up with old scrolls and having us translate rituals for hours and hours on end.”

“Yes, it would have been unfortunate,” agreed her sister placidly, “considering it would have demonstrated within the first five minutes that you’re completely thick.”

Again, a major twist laid out plain as day, but hidden in totally believable sibling dialogue. Corona and Ianthe can make as much fun of each other as they want, but Naberius needs to shut his trap. Also this, when Ianthe spots Gideon:

“I would not attract attention from the necromancer of the Third House.”

Note the singular.

Gideon looked down. She looked at her rapier, pointed skyward like a black arrow.

I love how horny Gideon is for Dulcinea. I'm so sad she never met the real Dulcie, because I think they would still absolutely have a ball together.

Did we ever get an explanation for why Palamedes's attempts to determine the age of Canaan House gave such wildly different results?

“A head start,” said her necromancer, “is the only advantage one can claim by choice. My other advantage is in workforce.”

People have made good points about Harrow recording the 200+ doors in the first night, although it's worth pointing out that she had skeletons doing a lot of the searching too.

#gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt

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