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liesmyth · 2 days

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Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

#i'd totally read posts or fics where this happens differently but TO ME it's juicy if he does it outright :3 #i doubt we'll ever find out for sure bc i think we've seen ALL that we're going to ever get of the resurrection unless it's from alecto's d #so it's really all headcanons! but this is mine #ask #anonymous #elle tlt posting #ejg #tlt thoughts #SORRY I HAVE SOOO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS

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theriverbeyond · 8 months

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Gideon Nav terrible fashion sense is so important to me babygirl has never been free to dress herself in her LIFE and i firmly believe that if she did have that freedom she would wear just. the most dogshit outfits. socks with slides. neon colors. shirts that say TITS with an arrow pointing down. outfits so bad every woman she meets is begging to take her on a department store makeover episode. outfits so bad you wonder if she got dressed in the dark upside down picking her clothing items by chaos potential. outfits so bad they wrap around to being sick as hell before winding back and punching you straight in the face

#gideon nav #the locked tomb #thinking about how her whole life she's just been. stuck in roles dictated to her. and trying to break free so bad #but babygirl is in QUICKSAND the more she reaches for freedom the more violently it is ripped away from her.#anyway. gideon goofy oitfit truthers rise up #like if she had the freedom to dress herself eventually i think she would grow to have a really nice sense of style #but she needs that freedom first. to be goofy.#to ME #trb.txt #tlt thoughts

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rapselsstuff · 2 months

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Tamsyn Muir be like in every new book I will answer like three of the open questions from the previous one but leave you with eighty-seven more and also an open chest wound

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

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vengeful-horde-of-angry-ghosts · 1 year

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Am I the only one who didn't feel betrayed by Kiriona? I see a lot of stuff about how people expected Gideon but felt like Kiriona's antagonism was a slap in the face, or they realized that their loyalty had shifted away from her, and I just...didn't? My first thought with her was, "oh honey, you need a hug."

Maybe it's my own brand of mental illness, but I understand the whole, no you're not suicidal but you don't really want to be alive either and you don't see any way out and it's all just so hopeless and meaningless so sometimes you lash out just to feel something. That's depression, y'all. Our girl is hanging on by a thread and that thread is finding Harrow.

She's not an imperial stooge any more than she was a nun. She just literally can't say no or they'll turn her off. You think she didn't learn anything from her 84 escape attempts? I know it has kind of become fanon that she's dumb, but she's really, really not. She can't find Harrow if she's turned off (heh).

She gave it away when she she told Nona that she didn't care where Harrow was, she just needed to know.

Our girl is still in there, she's just been through some shit. Tonally, I think the end of HtN when she's piloting Harrow's body is the perfect bridge between Gideon at the end of GtN and Kiriona.

To me her character arc so far is the most transparent and relatable. Like, I will never understand how Camilla got to the point of thinking Paul was a good idea. That's just not how I tick. But Kiriona? Damn do I get it.

I think the final proof is that she still sees herself as Harrow's cavalier (which I think is going to spark a serious convo with Harrow at some point bc Harrow knows that cavs are meant to die so obviously Harrow won't want that). She is fucking ready to throw down with Alecto to offer herself (again) to Harrow. "Get in line, thou big slut" indeed.

#tlt #gideon nav #kiriona gaia #tlt thoughts #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #my own tlt thoughts #ntn spoilers #angry ghost thoughts

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transbutchbluess · 7 months

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hi locked tomb fandom !!

i made an analysis document that compile important informations about the series, comments on every single chapter of every book, theories, biblical and classical parallels, name meanings (not limited to those in the prononciation guides, and linked to character theories), and other things. i spent a very long time on it and it’s still in progress, but i think it’s long enough to be shared now, since it’s over 100 pages.

please tell me if you have ideas of things to add, any theory you’d like to share, anything you think might be relevant. and please share this, writing it really helped me understanding and connecting things better, so i think it could be useful for others

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lyrifaun · 1 year

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Just thinking about the way that Harrow feels love internally, the means by which she recognizes it, even if she does not understand what it is or how to name it or even the object of it:

She wants to live.

Even in her letter the intention of her instruction was clear: She had to stay alive forever.

Just in case Gideon ever woke up.

(Many thanks to @n1ghtwr1ter for helping mw find the specific passages 🖤)

#tlt thoughts #tlt #the locked tomb #harrowhark nonagesimus #griddlehark #the locked tomb spoilers #locked tomb

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nibblette · 5 months

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The fact that Jod has hopped in and out of the head military ships of the Nine Houses for like 9000yrs is a trip for me. So like if your grandpa survives his time in the Cohort he comes home and was like…. “I saw God eating peanuts in an admiralty meeting, once.” And that is like the family legend/brag for like hundreds of years.

Even worse (or better?) if your ancestor banged Jod. Does he let those people survive? Or does a Lyctor or high ranking officer find a way for them to conveniently die a “heroic death in battle”?

It’s got to be so weird for people of the Nine Houses who worship a god who hasn’t come back to their solar system for 9000yrs but your random cousin of a cousin of a friend’s uncle saw God and the Saint of Patience making out in a broom closet during his time on the Erebus.

#tlt #TLT thoughts #random fandom thoughts #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #emperor john gaius #john gaius #jod #og lyctors #the cohort #empire of the nine houses #the nine houses

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lambentgrey · 4 months

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i'm bracing for the amount of identity crises in atn and i don't even mean people having crises about their Own identity (which will also happen) but like. people having crises when seeing how much Others have changed

obviously harrow seeing kiriona but also:

harrow seeing paul

alecto seeing paul (will she remember them???? will she remember camilla and pal????)

harrow Not seeing crux

ianthe and harrow seeing each other

and ofc. john and alecto seeing each other

#off the top of my head those are the ones where i'm like. WOWEE all of these reunions are FUCKED! can't wait for the fallout <3 #harrow never getting to thank pal and cam as pal and cam for what they did for her and gideon after she remembers. goodbye #alecto the ninth #the locked tomb #atn speculation #tlt thoughts #lambentgrey.txt

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mayhaps-a-blog · 1 year

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OK so I finally got around to reading Gideon the Ninth and like. I get it. I get it.

Imagine you’re Harrowhawk “my existence is a war crime” Nonagesimus and your parents killed 200 infants so that you would live. Was it worth it? You don’t know, so you break into the tomb you’re meant to be guarding, because you have to know. Was it worth it? Except your parents think this is heresy deserving death, so they all hang themselves, and you’re there holding your rope and getting ready to join them but 200 souls are clawing at your heart asking you was it worth it? Was it? Was it?

And there’s this one girl, this one person who somehow survived, who you couldn’t kill, who your parents couldn’t kill, who somehow refused to die for you, and you love her for it, love her for being the one soul that you aren’t carrying on your shoulders (was it worth it?), and you hate her, because she should hate you, hate you for what you are and what you’ve done and your torment her because yes, you are awful and terrible and a blight upon the world (was it worth it?), and she hates you because you’re a bully and a bitch and she thinks she killed your parents so of course you hate her too.

And you can’t let her go, because who will hate you without her? And she can’t let you go, because who will hate her without you?

But there’s this chance, a chance to become something better, greater, perhaps a fraction of what you were meant to be and maybe then it’ll be worth it (could it ever be worth it?) so you drag her along because who else would you bring? And finally you’ve done it, you’ve told her your secret, and she told you yours, and maybe you don’t have to hate each other after all.

And then what does she go and do?

She goes and fucking dies for you.

Now you’ve got 200 infant souls and that of Gideon Nav hanging off your shoulders, and there’s nothing you can do, no way to fix this, you can’t even fucking die, so fuck it, was it worth it?

Was it?

WAS IT??

#anyway looking forward to book 2 #gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth spoilers #gideon nav #gideon #harrowhawk #harrow #harrowhawk nonagesimus #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #tlt #tlt thoughts #tlt spoilers

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tonsillessscum · 9 months

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Gideon: “aughhhhhhhhh the only person Harrow even cares about is a dead corpse we’re supposed to worship or some shit idk”

Harrowhark “You are my only friend. I am undone without you.” “As she approached Harrow grew very still, and her throat worked, and her eyes opened black and wide: she looked at Gideon without breathing in, her mouth frozen, her hands unmoving, a perfect bone carving of a person.” Nonagesimus: “…”

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franzias-cave · 1 year

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face of a rat, body of a dead person, soul embroiled in complex game of musical chairs

#and she IS the moment #YES there is a version with no paint YES there is a version with glasses off YES my eyes hurt from looking at a screen for too long #everybody loves (posessing) harrow #the girls want her and the girls want to be (posessing) her (body)#one day i will draw something else and today is not that day #harrowhark nonagesimus #nona the ninth #nona spoilers #gideon nav #tlt thoughts #franzia's art #did a little rearrange

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liesmyth · 27 days

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@moscca you're right and you should say it! Here's a really great compilation of Taz quotes I've been keeping in mind

From an interview where she says that Lovecraft was one of her main inspirations, talks about her relationship with horror vs. sff as a genre author, and wanting to find relatable heroines in horror lit.

I didn’t write Gideon the Ninth for the characters—I wrote it entirely for the structure. I wanted to tell a very specific story, and I needed everything to serve that story.

I want people to realise there are no boundaries. I also want to release people from having to take their universe entirely seriously, if they don’t want to. Science fiction and fantasy reflects ourselves, our anxieties, our joys. I’m just writing to amuse myself, as per usual.

I am writing for my younger self and it would be disgusting of me to try to teach her anything.

(& other quotes from that same interview)

Although love and forgiveness aren’t necessarily the same thing either, Gideon’s frankly divine ability to forgive is a huge core of the novel. [...] Forgiveness is almost the electrical current being able to transmit through love.

The way I personally stay true to the story I started down on is to give myself permission to not teach anyone anything. [...] I know that a lot of people do take enormous pleasure and relief in lines or phrases or ideas from stories that ring true to their own lives, but it’s important for me that I tell a story and that I’m not writing Chicken Soup for the Necromantic Soul.

...the God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to. But the divine in the Locked Tomb is essentially feminine on multiple axes.

It seems to me that most books by anyone female-adjacent have an expectation that they will comfort the uncomfortable and discomfit the comfortable etc., whereas a guy can just tell an adventure story and be done with it. This ties in with an idea that I think nowadays that good art is moral and bad art is immoral: i.e. if a story is good it must somehow be beautiful on the moral scale. We go looking for why the art we love is moral even if the art we love is a donut.

#gathering quotes for the ask in my inbox lol #tamsyn muir #tlt thoughts #on writing #i want to get drunk with her so bad. what a mind #elle tlt posting

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theriverbeyond · 9 months

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so I started rereading GtN (as one does) and was struck by this passage where from the very beginning of the book, Gideon positions herself as more important to Harrow than the Locked Tomb:

cut to the pool scene and Gideon learns that not only does Harrow love the corpse of the Locked Tomb, but that the corpse of the Locked Tomb was, in all her silent sleep, able to convince Harrow to live in a way Gideon's (loud, active, constant) existance in her life was never able to

and I think that is really, like, when Gideon truly starts her sort of... backslide wrt her perception of her relationship with Harrow -- like, at this point in the story in the pool, she's already well along in her corruption arc into the "Perfect Cavalier". BUT like, we know from being inside Harrow's head that Harrow would break herself and her duty in order to hold onto Gideon. she would & she did!!!! which is!!! something that Gideon KNOWS at the beginning of GtN but then forgets/is convinced out of, entierly unintentionally, but to the point where by the time she comes back in HtN she has a totally reversed perception of how Harrow feels. leading to, of course, this:

anyway.

#gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #tlt meta #griddlehark #tlt thoughts #trb.txt #not sure if im articulating the things i wanna but i just woke up from a 4 hour nap so

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lady-harrowhark · 2 months

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I’m so confused by the 9 months before and 10 months before chapters. Am I misunderstanding that in chapter one of HTN they’re on the Erebos and haven’t been to the Mithreaum yet and we haven’t met other lyctors but in 19 which is meant to be a whole month before that they’re AT the mithreaum and we DO know the other lyctors..

Am I missing something

i don't think you are! i'm inclined to believe it's a typo/mistake that got overlooked, but also given The Way These Books Are, i also wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was some Fuckery going on relating to that.

it wouldn't be the first time there was a numbering/timing typo - for example, the version of As Yet Unsent that Reactor (previously tor.com) put on their website has Judith stating that Camilla told her Gideon was "no older than seventeen" whereas in the paperback copies of htn it's "no older than eighteen." the paperback's eighteen matches what we know of Gideon's age, so i'm pretty content to say that one's an oopsie.

if the nine months/ten months thing isn't a typo, i don't think we have the full information to be able to make any sense of it yet anyway. i'm just living my life as if it's a mistake, but also occasionally shooting some suspicious glances at it.

#it's tamsyn's world we're just living in it #(also sorry there's another ask that's been sitting in my inbox for like a month but i want to make sure i respond coherently)#(which is hard when i am EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED)#ask #anonymous #tlt #tlt thoughts #htn

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firstfloweroftheninthhouse · 7 months

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I just stumbled across an E. A. Poe poem I wasn’t familiar with. It’s titled The Sleeper???? As in Wake’s river bubble pseudonym. I would be willing to write it off as a coincidence if it wasn't for Alecto also having a Poe poem as an alias in Annabel Lee. And let me tell you, this poem is fascinating if you read in a tlt context with the presupposition that Tamsyn is unhinged enough to weave allusions to external media into her works as a form of foreshadowing. (spoiler: I am fairly certain she is)

Some highlights of The Sleeper include:

“I pray to God that she may lie

For ever with unopened eye,”

Which reminds me an awful lot of a certain ninth prayer: “I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain.”

“Looking like Lethe, see! the lake”

A reference to a river in Hades

“For her may some tall vault unfold-

Some vault that oft has flung its black

And winged panels fluttering back,

Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,

Of her grand family funerals- “

A description of a tomb being opened

“Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

Against whose portal she hath thrown,

In childhood, many an idle stone- “

A description of someone throwing stones against the door of a mausoleum - which to me feels really reminiscent of Wake futilely “throwing” baby gideon against the door of the tomb

Followed by:

“It was the dead who groaned within.” (within the tomb)

Which could refer to Alecto, but I actually lean toward Anastasia

Anyway, I made this post to beg you to go read “The Sleeper” and tell me what you think its implications might be because I am going a little crazy over here.

#Tamsyn please chill. I don't have enough red string or brain cells for this 4d chess nonsense #tlt #htn #the locked tomb #awake rembrance of these valiant dead #alecto tlt #tlt thoughts #htn spoilers #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth

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chilly-weirdo-in-a-tomb · 26 days

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How Dios Apate (Major and Minor) went:

#Dios Apate #Dios Apate Major #Dios Apate Minor #augustine the first #mercymorn the first #mercymorn cristabel #augustine alfred #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #alecto the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt #tlt series #tlt brainrot #tlt thoughts #tlt memes #brian david gilbert

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