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babydarkstar · 2 months

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honestly no wonder harrow forced ianthe to lobotomize her so she could save gideon. listen…LISTEN…if i was a secret-war-crime cult nunlet princess worshipped by my entire planet and the only person that (barely) kept me in check was my childhood nemesis—a butch a year older than me, towering over me in stature and physical prowess, and so hot it made my teeth hurt from how hard my jaw clenched in her presence, who wielded a two-handed seven-foot sword and had irritatingly huge biceps and told very lewd stupid jokes and also learned how to wield an entirely new weapon and be my bodyguard with startling accuracy in three months—only to have us finally learn to trust each other because we got invited to a magic murder mystery and then before the bubble burst i spilled the worst secret about myself that i was born because my parents murdered an entire generation and tried to Kill Her along with them and she just wouldnt die, and i told her this expecting a swift death i believed i deserved, only for her to fucking cradle me in her big butch arms and kiss me on my forehead with her soft butch mouth and just. forgive me for a shameful weight ive carried my entire life and then MAKE AN ACTUAL NECRO/CAV VOW with me despite every evil thing i have done to her……to have her tell me, in the end, bleeding and broken after putting up the most beautiful and glorious fight of her life, that she understands purpose and she understands duty and she knows loyalty more fiercely than ever now, that she knows who she is to me, that there is no her without me….to have her backed into a corner and make the ultimate sacrifice…..for me…..to recite scriptural wedding vows of eternity to me in her last wisps of soul-consciousness…..if i thought there was even a snowflake’s chance in the pyre that i could save her by turning myself into her very own locked tomb, i’d be begging ianthe tridentweirdius to crack my skull open and turn me to mush too, goddamn. i understand you harrowhark girl you don’t have to explain a thing to me. god said you couldn’t undo the lyctor’s bond bc it’d kill you. you told god and his angels that not even a lyctor’s bond could outshine the power of female spite and lesbianism and they didn’t listen. they didn’t believe you. but i heard you loud and clear and i was 17 and hormonal and hopelessly romantic not too long ago unlike those fucking dinosaurs and i’m saying it’s valid it’s what i would have done and really everyone should be thanking you for not being worse and more wretched about it, all things considered

#i think about gideon nav every day #she makes me want to eat drywall #shes so jesus shes so her own thing shes so god and savior It Is Finished divinity of love and sacrifice #honestly so much of harrow is so so relatable to me shes so real for everything she does #her little griddlehark meetcute au her little divine highness au #ive already waxed poetic about the harrow nova au #sorry to keep waxing poetic about this but i really am rotted about them #like im going insane. tamsyn muir when i get you tamsyn when i catch you #griddlehark #tlt spoilers #harrowhark nonagesimus #i am you as you are me we are one and two and two and one #i cannot conceive of a universe without you.#should i forget you let my right hand also be forgotten; add more also. if aught but death part me and thee.#I FELL INTO THE WATER AND NOW IM FREE

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wizardsoup · 2 years

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POOL OF BLOOD: CHECK. CAV AIR SO HOT: CHECK.

#im sorry but i just finished htn and i simply have been thinking about gideon every day for months #gideon the ninth #gideon nav #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #my art

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cosmiado · 2 years

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The Bomb

[I.D. a digital drawing of Gideon Nav from the Locked Tomb series, seen from the collarbone up. She is a dark-skinned young woman with red curly hair and freckles, and has glowing gold eyes. Behind her, explosions are going off. End I.D.]

#tlt #the locked tomb #tlt fanart #gideon nav #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #spoiler tagging this just in case #every day i wake up and think about griddle #cosmiado draws

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mblematic · 5 months

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pretty much every day i think about how tamsyn muir stuck an honest-to-god coffee shop!AU right in the middle of harrow the ninth. stuck it right in there. gideon nav as a barista. this is my roman empire.

#rereading harrow and waiting for this chapter ...#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #griddlehark #tlt #*

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theriverbeyond · 8 months

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every day i think about botched top surgery Gideon Nav.... One Nipple Nav.........

#trb.txt #tlt thoughts #what if she was wonky. and i bit her.

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liesmyth · 6 months

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has something from a tlt fic ever become headcanon to you? i ask because i find this happening to me all the damn time with this fandom but not others

OK SO, my tlt headcanons are like schrodinger's cat, they explicitly contradict each other sometimes and all of them exist at the same time in different quantum states of canon. So in that sense I've never read a fic and thought, okay, THIS is my canon from now on.

But I've read so so many fics that burst my third eye wide open and made me consider different perspectives on a character / dynamic, or helped me shape some I already had. A few favourites:

the soul that seeketh him by bittybelle — missing scene pre NtN ft. John and Kiriona. Wherein John Gaius meets his daughter, remembers the women he left behind, and deals poorly with being the male god of a universe in which the divine is essentially feminine.

AO3 user LesbianJesusLovesYou gave me Big Feelings about Gideon's childhood on the Ninth and her relationship with Harrow, Aiglamene, Ortus and Crux

believing in everything (and knowing nothing at all) — A series of childhood memories from the Ninth

when i call, will you come to me? — “My Lady,” Ortus wheezed, shifting uncomfortably. “I only thought you should know… Gideon Nav was flogged before the congregation.”

A few fics set right after NtN that really stayed with me:

never hear the sound of someone calling me home by @corpsesoldier — Kiriona Gaia returns to the House of the Ninth.

One More Son by captainpeggy — After Nona, Pyrrha Dve walks the Ninth.

two old broads split a cigarette by @forjodssake — Aiglamene/Pyrrha. “sometimes the girl you like becomes one person w her soulmate and you have to jack off about it”

Post HtN missing scenes:

Death in its season by @ancientannoyance — John holds Mercymorn's 24 minutes funeral

recognize them by their fruits by @ceruleanvulpine — John and Ianthe emerge out of the River

Other stuff that Stuck With Me

so I open the window to hear sounds of people by @sunderedstar — post NtN flashbacks. John and Alecto are the only two beings on earth, and he starts working on the Resurrection. This is harrowing and I'm absolutely obsessed with the implications in this fic of WHY John removed everyone's memory.

and they were roommates by @herenortherenearnorfar — pre Resurrection Mercy and Cristabel, from their first meeting onwards and it just really burrowed a hole in my brain and grew roots and sprouts and everything. Latin American nun Cristabel it's all I can see now, and YES they met working with climate refugees when M— was a bright eyed idealistic doctor. It also lines up great with the Asian Mercy headcanon that exist in my head (I have a whole elaborate backstory about M— aged 12 proclaiming to her Filipino Catholic family that she's an atheist now). Anyway, it's just a lovely, gorgeous fic. I think about it every day.

John 25:12 by @halfeatenmoon — pre-Resurrection, John and his friends escape the cow fortress to spend Christmas Day at the beach. With beer, salads, pavlova, and the corpses of a million fish killed by nuclear weapons testing. Ft. Southern hemisphere holidays in Mururoa Atol and 100% canon. To me.

Operation: The Most Honorable Man by @cadmean — Augustine has a proposal for the Saint of Duty (Dios Apate. That's the proposal)

lowkey cheating but I can't choose — absolutely anything AO3 user Raxheim has posted has been SOO up my alley. Every time I read one of their fics I feel like I'm enlightened by some never-before-considered detail. And mean ANYTHING, from Harrow Nova to Wake to Cytherea and the Lyctors to the Universe's #1 Sadgirl Gideon

#this accidentally turned into a rec list?? sorry #ask #anonymous #tlt fic #fic recs #tlt

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corazondebeskar-reads · 5 months

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well it's love, make it hurt - chapter fourteen

well it's love, make it hurt series

fourteen: we can't go back

series masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter

dom!Din Djarin x sub!f!reader

Words: 1.9k

Summary: your past comes back to haunt you in your new life.

Warnings: discussions of genocide, the purge of mandalore, descriptions of grief, survivor's guilt, bounty hunting, gratuitous batuu references, canon-typical violence

a/n: i just want to say thank you. yesterday's chapter had some of the loveliest comments and y'all have warmed my cold little heart. it was very short and so is this one, so here it is early. I almost made them into one chapter but thirteen needed to end where it did.

(if you make it past the first line without cursing my name, i love you. if you don't, well, i still love you but I'm not sorry 😂 i am, however, hella anxious)

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika

5 Years Later: 9 ABY - Fall

Din Djarin climbs up to the cabin of the Razor Crest. The Kid is still asleep, drained from the confrontation with Gideon, but Din is restless without a destination. Fortunately, the comm is flashing with a message, sure to be Karga with a lead. He hits the blinking button, and Karga’s holo flickers into view.

“There’s a man called Gor Koresh who allegedly knows where to find Mandalorians. Abyssian, a real shifty sort, runs Carnita Arena. Sorry I don’t have more for you, but he keeps his tracks covered.”

Din grins. Perfect. He doesn’t need more than that; he’ll find Koresh easily enough. He goes to turn off the holo before it repeats but freezes with his hand hovering over the button as Karga begins to speak again.

“There’s one more thing. And you didn’t hear this from me, understand? But there was a bounty turned in two days ago on Batuu that might be something you want to investigate.”

The loop resets, and he hits the button. His heart is pounding so loud he thinks he can hear it reverberate in the helmet. He checked Batuu. But when was the last time he was there?

Kriff, it’s probably been a couple of years.

At first, he’d done everything short of commissioning a fob or taking out a bounty. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered it. But if you were hiding from him? Or at least, if you had left not knowing, if you had decided not to stay, then tracking you across the galaxy would be a betrayal you’d never forgive.

In his most desperate moments, he thought about—and once came very close to—slicing into the guild database. But in the end, as always, duty won out. He couldn’t wager the job that supported what was left of his people over one person.

As the years passed, he found himself fatigued, the search less of a cuff around his chest and more of a string tied around his finger.

It hurt to think about, but like the ache of a once broken bone in the cold rather than the maw that used to be in his heart.

He still took bounties in every crevice of the galaxy, still looked over every crowded market and every booth in every cantina, but it was more of habit than hope.

Something very akin to hope burns in his gut now, boiling the acid until it crept up his throat and threatened to smother him.

There was no place in the life of a Mandalorian for the kind of cowardice he was considering, so he swallowed hard against where his heartbeat battered, shook the static from his fingertips, and programmed the nav.

Raga Bua has bounty hunting figured out. The rest of the guild needs to catch up, you think. The drop-off system is so much more efficient than carbonite freezing, and the tiny guild’s presence is so subtle that mid-level criminals keep thinking they can hide out here. After all, Black Spire has a reputation.

Lots of places for seedy types to lay low.

She has one rule—never take a bounty on a Batuuan. The locals are more than happy to keep the operation quiet for protection. Of course they are. The bounties are their competition.

It’s consistent, and the credits are steady. It took you a couple of years to get on the good side of things and get into the inner circle, but now, things are almost stable. You have your own place. An apartment, not a room in a shitty inn. Not an abandoned cargo unit. Two rooms and a fresher, all to yourself.

You don’t have friends, exactly. You think you could, since no one is afraid you’ll turn on them for a wupiupi, but you can’t bring yourself to try. You’re friendly, and on a first-name basis with almost everyone who runs a stand in the market.

It’s just. Despite the relative peace here, something never quite settled right in your bones after. You’re quick to anger, and you don’t fancy losing your cred because you pulled a knife on a drunk who got a little too close.

So you keep to yourself. You hunt. You train with new weapons, since the Batuuans prefer that the blaster fire be kept to a minimum. You spend most of your time outside the outpost limits, sitting on the banks of the Surabat River, or throwing knives at the old petrified tree trunks.

It’s a weird place. But it grows on you.

You almost start to think of it as home.

When you apprehend today’s bounty, it’s too easy. You’re too skilled, too dangerous, and he gives himself over to you.

“Thanks for not shooting me. I’m just glad you weren’t that Mandalorian.”

You jerk to a stop, yanking the Heptoonian to a halt with you. “What did you say?”

“There was another hunter, a Mandalorian, at the market earlier. Gave him the old slip, though.”

“There are no Mandalorians left.”

“Then someone got their hands on a full, shiny set of armor. Bet those go for a lot now.”

Your knife is at his throat. “Shut up,” you snarl and drag him into the nearest drop spot, heavy automatic lock sealing him in.

After scanning in and swapping his location for your credits, you go home. You change into something less equipped for hunting and better suited for blending in before sneaking through your neighbor Moshi’s apartment. Your apartment isn’t close enough to reach any of the huge beams that cut through the adobe, but you can swing over from Moshi’s window from the back of the building to hoist yourself to the roof.

Most of the buildings here are either connected or close enough to jump between, though your knees won’t thank you later. The idea that there’s a surviving Mandalorian isn't something you really consider. No, you're much more seduced by the idea that there's some scumbag with stolen beskar. It makes your vision get fuzzy around the edges, that sickening rage that you haven’t been able to shed threatening to spill out. You almost hope it’s true, because then you’ll get to slit a throat tonight.

It doesn’t even cross your mind to hope. Your Mandalorian has been dead for five years, and part of you with him.

From your vantage point, he’s not hard to find. He thinks he is, holed up in the ruins of the old outpost, a few klicks from town. You wait, and when night starts to fall, he leaves. It’s a mistake a lot of the outsiders make, thinking the outpost has a nightlife, that their target will be getting pissed at the cantina or stealing from the market.

But the streets are quiet, and they are yours.

The beskar is all silver, shiny and spotless. Not pocked and scratched with battles won. You grin. It’ll be an easy kill.

He doesn’t even see you until you jump, but the ease at which he defends himself is a bit troubling.

It doesn’t take long before he’s on the ground, your vibroblade to the cowl around his neck. You’re strong, but you know that you wouldn’t have been able to take him down that easy if he had any idea how to fight back. You don’t fancy cleaning blood off the beskar when you peel it from his corpse. (What you’ll do with it after hasn’t come under consideration yet).

Instead, you dig your knee into his lower stomach, where the plate doesn’t cover. “Take it off, or I will,” you hiss.

“Going to kill me, cyar’ika?” says the man wearing the metal face of your dead lover. He glances quickly to the pod, making sure the kid isn’t waking up to choke you out for threatening him.

You follow his gaze and seem to notice it for the first time.

“Is that a pram?” you ask, but you’re already up and off him. Your eyes are wide, moving between the ghost and the apparent baby.

He raises his hands in supplication, sitting up and nodding.

You run.

You’re off before he can even register it, leaping over the gate of a stall and through the back.

He swears and gets up, forced to follow your path because he can’t remember where it would exit, where you will go.

When he pushes through the curtain into the street, you’re gone.

Your leather shoes barely make a sound as you flee. You can’t go home. You can’t go anywhere that might put someone between you and what you’re starting to think is a nightmare you’ve summoned into reality.

You’ve lost him for now, but—and it makes you sick to consider this—but if it is a Mandalorian, you know their abilities. You slow down and let yourself be seen, looking around you before going into Oga's Cantina. Slipping into the refresher, you’re relieved to see the vent panel already open. You go into a stall, and then another, and another. You double back to the first stall, walking backward to further confuse any tracking capabilities in the visor, and pull yourself up to the top to straddle the divider.

It’s really un-fucking-comfortable, but you manage to open the ceiling access panel and leave the covering on the top of the toilet to set a second trail. Then, you stretch over to swing to the next dividers before pushing off and tumbling through the open window. You close it behind you, climb up the side of the roof, and ease your way down the back of the apartments that connect to Oga’s.

You figure you’ll head to Peka and lay low for a few days, maybe a week or so. You’ve got a few connections who might let you crash in a barn. There’s an open valley through the forest between the Outpost and the small town, but it runs along the most direct route, so you stick to the trees along the edge.

Now, you’re alone in the dark in an area you’re not very familiar with. The wildlife here are mostly harmless, and you’re fully armed, but it’s irritating. And you’re mad at the Mandalorian about it.

Their modulators must all sound the same, you decide. And he never told you what cyar’ika meant, but it was clearly a pet name. It was a coincidence. Your Mandalorian had red armor. Your Mandalorian didn’t have a jetpack.

Your Mandalorian was dead.

There's one logical answer, and so the question was, how did you end up with a bounty on your head?

You’re losing your nerve. Every noise makes you jump. You're mad about that, too. So one piece of bantha shit shows up in Mandalorian armor, and you fall to fucking pieces?

Your heart had finally stopped leaping into your stomach every time something shiny caught the sun about two years ago.

Kriff. The sooner you find a pile of hay to sleep in, the better. As it is, you’re pretty sure you’re going to cry.

You’ve managed to talk yourself down, and you’re more than halfway through the valley. Once you pass it, you’ll have another hour’s hike to Peka, but you’ll still have the cover of darkness. As dark as you can with both moons overhead, anyway.

That’s when you see it. A flash of silver. You freeze and consider if you should run or climb. He has a jetpack, you remind yourself, but you haven’t seen him use it. And the branches would be a good obstacle.

Quietly, you scale the tall, broad tree and find a sturdy branch. Silver catches the moonlight again, and you peek down through the leaves to nail down his location.

But it’s not a suit of beskar. It’s a ship.

Someone has parked their ship at the back of the valley, cradled but not covered by the dense canopy.

It’s the Razor Crest.

*title from "Error Operator" by Taking Back Sunday.

#din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x reader #mando x reader #the mandalorian fic #din djarin x f!reader #din djarin x you #mando x you #the mandalorian x you #dom din djarin #make it hurt verse

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makethosenarratorsfight · 10 months

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UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

Dr. John Watson Propaganda:

He literally admits that he changes his stories. "One day the true stories may be told"? Do I need to say more?

Gideon Nav Propaganda:

(Spoilers for Ht9) She just. Fully ignores most of the magic plot happening around her in the first boom to be a dyke. In the second book it’s even less reliable and it’s fully fucking insane. It’s first person but she’s telling YOU (harrow) what is happening and it’s impossible to decipher. The appearance and personality of every character is fully morphed by Gideon’s mean dykishness.

MASSIVE spoilers. Like even mentioning that this is a thing is a huge fucking spoiler. I normally don’t care about spoilers that much but I legitimately feel awful for anyone with even a passing interest in reading these books who has this spoiled for them. Anyway. Yeah turns out the second-person narration is actually a first-person narration by the dead girl living in Harrow’s head whose death traumatized Harrow (and the entire fandom) so badly that she literally lobotomized herself to forget it and give Gideon a chance at not having her soul digested.

constantly adds her own commentary, does not pay attention to the interesting moving parts of the plot bc she's too busy looking at pretty girls, cannot be trusted to read her own intentions correctly never mind anyone else's. I love her dearly

she just doesn’t notice or doesn’t give a shit about a ton of plot-essential information. Harrow and Palamedes are talking about a necromantic theorem that would blow open the entire story if we could hear them? You can instantly feel Gideon’s eyes glaze over and her mind wander to the nearest available hot girl, and our attention goes with her. It’s handled so smoothly that you might not even notice it happening until a second or third read.

More Propaganda under cut!

Gideon Nav is all but useless as a narrator, and we love her for it. So first of all, she knows absolutely nothing. She grew up under a rock. Almost literally. When the plot is happening near her, she almost never tells us about it. Politics, history, and the magic system are boring. Let her know when there's something she can FIGHT. She also has very selective emphasis and focus that can change a scene completely without ever actually lying. She can tell the same story—to us, in her third-person narration as a factual recounting—and in one version the incident will be a schoolyard scuffle, while a later telling will reveal it to have been a near-homicide. She'll confidently interpret other character's motivations and emotions, only to later be proven wrong. But the thing that makes her REALLY unreliable? She lies to HERSELF constantly. She will tell us in her narration that she doesn't give a shit where someone disappeared to, and then spend the whole day searching for them. She'll say she hates someone, when. Well....

okay so i am actually going to do one segment about her own book and one about harrow’s so many apologies and also many spoilers ahead okay? okay so in gideon the ninth it’s a well known thing that she’s an unreliable narrator on two fronts: she lies to herself and therefore us about how she’s feeling and what she’s thinking, and also she isn’t paying attention to the plot at all. the only things she pays any attention to are hot girls, swords, and hot girls with swords. at one point she watches their only way out be sealed off and is so bored about it that she goes to sleep watching it happen, taking absolutely no note of “oh hey they’re trapping us here”. later someone asks IN FRONT OF HER “hey where did all our shuttles go” and shes like “😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌” and still does not make the connection. babygirl. but THEN!!!!! in HARROW the ninth (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) gideon is the narrator the ENTIRE TIME (except for the revised canaan house parts) and not only does she editorialize, she also straight up lies about events and motivations! partially justified by her being inside harrow’s head, but like. babygirl. beloved. the interjections of “holy fuck” and “pommel” and othersuch things is so important to my mental health and wellbeing. thank you. thank you for lying to us so so much.

#gideon nav #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #dr john watson #john watson #watson #sherlock holmes #unreliable narrator battle #unreliable narrators #polls #side c

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lockedtombbrainworms · 23 days

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Patriarchy and the Nine Houses

I've been mulling this one over in my brain on long drives recently, and as I'm currently at home resting up after an insanely busy few days and also some sort of illness flareup, I want to put some of what I've come up with into writing. These are coming from the perspective of a somewhat masculine-presenting queer trans woman with some degree of familiarity with anarcha-feminism, a lot more familiarity with anarchism in general, but not really much academic feminist background. I'm also white, which may well impact what I'm taking away from this here.

Something else that might influence what I've written here are the frankly insane doses of decongestants I'm currently on, but here goes.

So firstly, I don't think 'Patriarchy' as common feminist discourse uses the term exists within the Houses.

In terms of "Evidence Against", for one, there is seemingly no gendered violence in the Nine Houses - I've seen more than one post about how at no point does Gideon Nav feel like she's in any sort of danger of sexual assault or anything like that from the men she interacts with - she's quite happy to walk into Silas and Colum's room, and at no point does the narrative mention her being concerned about sexual violence while she, a teenage butch lesbian, is trapped in a room with an older man whose intentions towards her are unknown. She gets worried, sure, but mostly about swords or necromancy, not sexual assault. Our Griddle may be a bit sheltered, sure, but she's read a lot of adult-oriented comics, which in my experience tend to be fairly lurid about any and every fucked up thing that happens in the society that produced them, and none of those, nor anything she's been told by Aiglamene or witnessed on the Ninth, seem to have instilled any fear of patriarchal sexual violence in her.

The houses also don't seem to have a concept of homophobia or particularly rigid gender roles - at absolutely no point does anyone take issue with Gideon's sexuality and gender presentation, despite various other characters being absolute shits to her in various other ways throughout the book - Crux, Naberius, Silas, the Reverend Parents - at no point is it even hinted at that any of them were homophobic or shitty about gender-non-conformity. I don't really think you can get rid of any of those things entirely without also at least taking a big chunk out of patriarchy, if not eliminating it - they're all too tightly linked together.

I honestly don't think you can describe, for instance, Palamedes or Silas or Naberius as benefitting from "male privilege" in the context of the books without getting into some weird gender-essentialist bollocks about how being male Just Does That For You, at which point you may well be sliding into terf shit and I don't really think we have much of a common ground to discuss this from. The fandom's treatment of gender (and race, while we're at it) is another matter, but in the context of the books, I genuinely don't see "male privilege" or "patriarchy" existing within the wider society of the Nine Houses. You can look at the necro/cav dynamic as a sort of metaphor for gender, and I do consider them through that lense in some cases, but it's not a 1:1 map for gender and I don't think it's trying to be.

You could argue there's some weird patriarchal ideas of manhood in Mortus' treatment of Ortus - the guy very clearly abused his son to try to "toughen him up" and make him into a warrior when Ortus wanted nothing more than to write poetry, but while that's arguably written with a patriarchal bent to it from a doylist perspective, at no point does anyone actually tell Ortus he's less of a man in the text. What they do tell him is that he's less of a cavalier, which is why I actually view that dynamic as much more of an exploration of cavalier-hood as a metaphor for gender - 'toxic cavalierhood' rather than toxic masculinity, albeit via a dynamic that's unforunately very familiar to a lot of us.

The big flaw in my argument is that, unfortunately, in the literal sense of the word, the Nine Houses very much are a capital-P Patriarchy. They're run by an immortal God-Emperor dude with some fairly intense catholic shit going on! John actually was raised in a patriarchal society, and while his experiences as a he remembers it, and while he seems to have done an OK job of not passing homophobia, misogyny or strict gender roles onto the society he built after literally fucking nuking the one he grew up in, I don't know if someone in his position of power is really in a position to unlearn anything more at this point. To a lesser extent we see it with Augustine as well - the Saint of Patience definitely reads as a misogynist at times during the text (telling Mercymorn "you have made yourself unlovable" and his whole thing about Ianthe chosing to be broken spring to mind), and while he may not remember the pre-resurrection world, it still shaped him (and his brother, who is as much a part of the man we meet in HtN as the original Augustine who was resurrected).

Also none of this is to say the society of the Nine Houses is perfect - far from it! There's all sorts of fucked up abuse dynamics present, and the entire thing has been a fucked-up expansionist empire since it found someone to do expansionist imperialism on about five millennia before the story takes place, before which it was still a fucked-up death cult living on the reanimated wreckage of a dead solar system. If anything, the lack of misogyny, homophobia, rigid gender roles and the like are a parable - it doesn't matter how inclusive and egalitarian the society of the imperial core is when it perpetuates brutal violence on the imperial periphery.

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #tltposting

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genericpuff · 5 months

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Cait comp'd her book to The Locked Tomb. THE LOCKED TOMB COMBINED WITH LORE OLYMPUS. NO. NO NO NO. IN WHAT WORLD ARE THESE TWO IN THE SAME SENTENCE. I NEED TO SCREAM.

Apologies in advance, but these are two polar opposite series and it's a joke Cait thinks she can combine the two without Gideon Nav manifesting in her apartment and throwing hands. Oh my god.

I won't try to do spoilers here because I think you would personally vibe with the series, it's right up your alley and I highly recommend the audiobooks, especially while drawing. It's currently three books and the last one (the fourth book) should be out in Fall 2024. The Locked Tomb is starkly gothic and dark (gruesome death, resurrection, body horror, weird twins, turbo cancer (an actual quote from the books), and so much more), full to the brim with horror, sci-fi, and modern-day political commentary, and is apologetically queer as fuck. I'm talking lesbian enemies to friends to lovers, I'm talking Maori-coded rugby player who loves to talk about her porn magazines while trying to keep her homeless chihuahua of a girlfriend from getting herself killed (said chihuahua controls skeletons), I'm talking using clever ways to sneak in memes, I'm talking loving the side characters as much as you love the leads and the author loves them all too, I'm talking Catholic guilt but make it sexy and gay, I'm talking a literal ghost shows up with a fucking gun. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a series you need to re-read multiple times to try and figure out every little detail and people to this day are still finding out foreshadowing from the first book alone. There is no random lines or dropped ideas, every little detail is planned out and connects. It's great.

To compare a series made by an insanely smart and openly queer woman (who is also from New Zealand, shout out to Tamsyn Muir) to a series that obsesses over a straight couple down to making it a Blue Boy and Pink Girl, a series that acts like putting in queer characters are a chore, a series that treats sexual assault like a minor inconvenience at worst, a series that can't even plan a week ahead much less years, a series that is written by an immature woman-child like Rachel, is so offensive to me.

Well damnnn I'll take this as a glowing recommendation! It def sounds like something I'd enjoy. I've been wanting to get more into audiobooks so maybe I'll make The Locked Tomb my first stop ;3 If/when I do get around to it, I'll definitely let y'all know my thoughts! <3

#ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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angelltheninth · 5 months

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Place of Worship

Pairing: Gideon Nav x Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Tags: nsfw, smut, omegaverse, mating cycles, heat/rut, knotting, creampie, mating bite, church sex, kissing, groping, teasing, banter, size difference, alpha!Gideon, omega!Harrow

Word count: 2.4k

Ao3

A/N: Time for some omegaverse goodness. But like, really sappy too.

Some of the worst days in the Ninth were the days that Gideon and Harrow were in the thorns of their mating cycles. They were of course separated during that time because no matter how much hatred and loathing they held for each other their hormones were just a little stronger. Thankfully neither of them went through this in the Canaan House but Harrow had after. Like so many times before she opted to shut herself into her room and spend her time learning, reading, trying to kick that need and a want for someone she couldn’t remember out of her mind.

After their reunion there wasn’t much time to dwell on things like heat, rut or any physical desire other then the two of them sucking face until they would be separated by the still very annoying need to breathe. They would do away with that one as they grew more powerful as Perfect Lyctors.

That carefully practiced and honed restraint that they both showed was slowly edged away every time they kissed, every time Harrow opened her legs to feel Gideon rub her cock against her, every time Gideon encouraged Harrow to grind against her until both of them came and then had to take quick showers to cool off enough to sleep next to each other.

Because of these thoughts Harrow now knelt and prayed to… well she wasn’t sure who she was praying to now but it was a habit, one that helped her before. Plus morning prayer was still very much a ritual at the Ninth, so as the leader of the House of course she was the first one to arrive and the last to leave.

“If you wanted me to rail you there’s more direct ways than this.” Gideon walked into the church with her hands in her pocket, not even caring to hide the smell of her rut. It made Harrow clear her throat to avoid choking on the scent. Did the rut just start? Right in time for her heat? Shit.

“Gideon. Good of you to show up for once.” Harrow tried not to pay much attention as the alpha knelt down beside her. She could feel Gideon’s eyes upon her, roaming over her body and making it burn with desire. It was distracting to have her here, but at the same time she knows she would track her down if she wasn’t here right now. Harrow’s pheromones were going all over the place, it made focusing on prayer impossible.

Gideon being there didn’t help, every time she looked over she saw the alpha’s bulge. It too was annoying. But it also made Harrow want it and wonder how Gideon, one of the horniest people she knows was keeping her cool right now. There had to be something she was planning, Harrow just didn’t know what.

To her surprise her prayer went on without a hitch, Gideon was quieter than a mouse. “Are you finally done?” Gideon asked, now looking a little bored. “If you are then can we get out of here or are you kinky and wanna bone in here?”

“Stop being crass Nav. And I wasn’t exactly thinking about boning you. Not everything is about your cock, you egotistical alpha.” Harrow was happy she was so good at lying, otherwise she would feel bad about doing that in a place of worship. “Is that what you came here for? To bother me?”

“Harrow, I smelled your heat starting last night. Thought today was gonna be the day we… you know took things to the next level and all. Could you imagine how disappointed I was to wake up with a raging boner and no omega in my arms? And then when I come here you edge me? Well I suppose that has to be someone’s kink.” Gideon let out a long sigh, as if resigning herself to this treatment.

“I was not edging anything, I was praying, you know this. And if you’re so horny why didn’t you leave, or say anything? I can’t read your mind Griddle, thankfully.” Harrow shivered at the thought of the kinds of things Gideon could think of.

Gideon swept her off her feet in one swoop and placed her on the altar. She grinned as she slowly took off the semi-transparent veil that covered Harrow’s face and held her hair in place. Without it Harrow’s hair almost reached her shoulders now. “This is kinda like the whole kissing the bride thing.” Big hands took hold of smaller ones and held them in between the two Lyctors, “I want to take the next step with you Harrow. Not just sex and knotting. I want to exchange mating bites.”

The omega's eyes widened at the ask. The two have been rubbing their scents all over each other lately, each make out session leaving them absolutely covered in each other's scents to the point their friends asked when the pup was coming. They always had to explain that they weren't mated yet. Or expecting a pup.

And now here Gideon was, asking for a mating bite while both of them were at the start of their cycles. The most sensitive time to claim someone.

"Surely you're aware that if we bite each other now it all but guaranties knotting, which in turn guarantees a pregnancy." Harrow really needed for Gideon to understand what she was asking here.

"I know. I'm not gonna knock you up and then leave you Harrow. Maybe I would have before we left for Cannan House but…" She caught herself before she said anything more. What she already admitted made her look on her past self with shame.

Harrow saw the instant regret in Gideon’s eyes, “Bold of you to think I’d let you leave if you got me pregnant. Then or now.” One of her hands pressed against Gideon’s chest focusing on the heartbeat, so fast, so scared, so strong. “Are you serious about this, that you you want it? You know as well as I that once we do this we won’t be able to take anyone else as a mate.”

She wouldn’t dream of it. “Aren’t we already bound to each other?”

“I… suppose we are.” Harrow was so grateful for her ceremonial makeup on so Gideon couldn’t see her face burning hot. Her hand went lower until it reached the belt of Gideon’s pants. “Let’s move this elsewhere then.”

“Nope. I don’t feel like it.” Instead of moving Harrow else where she pulled her against her, making the omega let out a breathy moan when she felt Gideon’s cock press against her clothed pussy and start rolling her hips.

“This a holy place you oaf. We’re gonna get caught.” Despite both of these things Harrow’s pussy throbbed. It throbbed around nothing, adding to Harrow’s frustration.

Gideon’s pupils dilated when she took in Harrow’s scent, so potent she could almost taste it on her tongue. Harrow would probably taste so sweet. She could finally admit that to herself, she wanted to taste, to kiss, to hold, to make love to Harrow. Before when all those feelings surfaced she pushed them down by justifying it with lust and then tried to jerk off to push her feelings to the far back of her mind. Harrow wasn’t that different, the only difference was that she didn’t try to entertain the thought of fucking Gideon and hated herself when her fingers strayed down to her pussy in the thorns of her heat.

Neither had to hate or hold back anymore, they could love and indulge instead.

But first… Gideon ran to the door and pushed them closed, locking them for good measure and practically danced her way back to Harrow, her face all smug with victory. “Your dashing alpha solved the problem for you, my Bone Empress.” She unclasped her cloak and took her shirt off, flexing for Harrow and wiggling her eyebrows, goading her on.

Harrow couldn’t look at her though, as she started stripping she looked off to the side, first her cloak then waiving away her bone corset and finally lifted her shirt over her head. When she looked back at Gideon she was already fully naked, her cock standing hard, with the tip a red, angry color and strong veins running down the shaft. The omega in Harrow wanted to get down on her knees and worship the alpha’s cock but on the other hand her heat told her she should turn around and have Gideon’s cock in her cunt first, to ease her ache first, both of their aches in fact.

Gideon too practiced self-restraint, with every article of clothing that Harrow shed she could feel her cock throbbing so much so that she had to wrap her hand around it to prevent it from twitching and the knot from forming. She watched with interest as Harrow gathered up her clothing, and then Gideon’s and threw it in a pile on the floor, arranging it in the way sh saw fit. She was nesting. And she was using Gideon’s clothes to do it.

Once Harrow was satisfied with what she’d made she arched her back downwards and threw her ass back, legs spreading slightly, a position that she knew would guarantee Gideon’s cock deep inside her. She read books too, and she was eager to put that information to practice.

“Presenting for me, huh omega?” Gideon got on her knees behind her and swiped her thick cock through Harrow’s folds, gathering the wetness on her dick. “I like it but I’d prefer this instead.” It was very easy to manhandle Harrow onto her back and spread her legs. “Much better like this.”

Harrow looked down to get a better and clear look at Gideon’s size. Was that… three of her fingers? At the very least, plus the knot…

“You need to relax. Else I can’t get all this inside you.” She pushed her cockhead past Harrow’s entrance, “You want it don’t you? You want your alpha’s cock, every fat inch of it.” The words got her a wonderful fluttering sensation around her cock. “Just like that, that’s my Harrow.” The omega whimpered as her hands found Gideon’s and used that as leverage to pull them closer and Gideon’s cock deeper inside of herself.

It stopped at Gideon’s knot. “Fuck.” Harrow already felt to full. “Make me come.”

“Bossy omega.” Normally an alpha would hate being bossed around but Gideon fucking thrived on it because there was no denying that she was the only alpha who could ever fulfill Harrow’s needs. There was no denying that when Harrow held her like this, when she rolled her hips against Gideon’s she was being both submitting and demanding for Gideon’s cock, cum and her knot. “I’ll give your cunt what it needs.” Gideon pulled out to the very tip of her cock and thrust back in until her knot stopped her. She wasn’t gonna let that stop her from going as fast and hard as she wanted to. “You can take it, you can take it, you’ve had it rougher.”

“Much rougher.” Harrow echoed and bared her neck to her girlfriend, offering her whole self to her. Gideon’s thrust increased in frustration as she couldn’t get her cock as deep as she wanted. “Good alpha.”

Gideon groaned, her hips jolting forward at the slightest bit of praise. She was very obvious with her kinks. “So good for you.” The only person Gideon would ever be good for. “Marry me.” From the rare serious look in her eyes Harrow knew that Gideon was serious, although it was odd that she was proposing in the middle of mating. “We’re in a church, we’re gonna exchange bites, so why not?”

“You sappy alpha.” Harrow tightened around Gideon’s cock and tugged her closer, her fangs skimming over Gideon’s neck, “If I didn’t know better I’d say you planned for this.”

“With this rut ridden brain? I’m flattered you think so high of me.” Gideon let her own teeth nibble against Harrow’s neck, teasing her with a bite, each nibble making her cock twitch inside her omega’s warmth. She was ready, she just needed one word from Harrow to seal the deal.

“Yes.” Gideon’s hips kept snapping forward, the alpha growled against the restrain of her knot, “Gideon… I do.” Not only did Harrow accept her proposal but she was ready to take the full step.

“I do.” As those two words left Gideon’s mouth Harrow’s fangs dug into her neck, marking the alpha. Gideon groaned, trying to stop her orgasm until she got her knot inside. “Let me knot you babe, I wanna knot you so bad.” She was almost whining at this point, only silencing her noises when she left her own mating mark on Harrow’s neck. This finally got Harrow to climax, her pussy juices coating Gideon’s cock and knot enough for it to slip inside. They were tied now, Gideon could come, she could fill her omega will all her seed and know it wasn’t going to waste.

Their hips jolted back and forth against each other, Harrow’s legs tight around Gideon’s hips not willing to let go of her mate. With their mating cycles temporarily quenched they could catch the breath a little. Gideon buried her nose into Harrow’s neck, taking a deep breath of Harrow scent, her heat and the distinct smell of sex that clung to her. That combination might be her new favorite now.

Harrow ran her fingers over Gideon’s hair, playing with the ends and then scratching along the undercut, getting another pleased hum from the alpha. Gideon could crush bones and she was putty in Harrow’s hands, no need to fighting or cutting words. “If only I realized what made you tick sooner.”

“What?” Gideon rasped quietly against Harrow’s neck.

“Nothing. Just thinking.” She pulled Gideon into a long kiss, sealing their spontaneous wedding, “We have to get out of here sooner or later you know?”

“Yeah. Need to get some food to keep this thing up.” The Cav wiggled her hips against Harrow’s, accidentally pressing her abs against Harrow’s clit and making her bite back a moan. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident, definitely not judging by Gideon’s wide smirk.

“I want a divorce.”

“No can do. You’re stuck with me now, literally.” As long as they were in a church Harrow could pray that their kids didn’t inherit Gideon’s brand of puny humor.

#griddlehark #the locked tomb #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon x harrow #tlt #the locked tomb fanfiction #tlt fanfic #griddlehark fic #omegaverse #omegaverse fanfiction

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dabs-into-oblivion · 4 months

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closing out the year with a short locked tomb fic because the unwanted guest reactivated my bullshit.

Title: do not go gentle into that good night. go loud.

Summary:

That's the thing about self-sacrifice. You think it all through, you make all of your preparations, and once you've done it you realise you forgot to say goodbye. Of course, when I woke up that morning, I didn't know it would be my last. I must have assumed we would have a few more days. Time stretched so oddly at the end, there—I could see it in Cam’s face, and Harrowhark’s and Gideon's. We were all so tightly wound, and when we came from Marta’s body through the sickroom and then found Ianthe standing over Naberius’ body and the Eighth decided to be the Eighth about it, I thought, This is the day when it ends. If I had said goodbye to Cam then, if I had let her see me leave the room, I would not have had time. I was able to keep Gideon suspended while I had it out with Cytherea, but that was only because she was not my cavalier. I had not spent my whole life with her, taking our every step together.

—

In the truck, while Nona is in Honesty's house, Palamedes makes one last tape recording.

> link and short excerpt are behind the cut <

Clack.

Being dead affords one a lot of time for contemplation. Even now, sitting here in the truck while Nona is inside asking her friends for information that will determine whether the Sixth survives, in a body that isn't Camilla’s for the first time in months, all I can do is think. I suppose that's good, in a sense. I can rest up for whatever comes next.

I was never really sure why I became a revenant and Dulcinea didn't—it probably has something to do with Cam, and with Dulcie’s illness. Revenants need to want to live, or at least to have something to live for. That's a mind fuck, a rabbit hole best not traversed. If I start thinking I wasn't enough for her to live for… well. I’d better not. It would be cruel and unusual punishment, and she wouldn't like it at all.

But in my case, I think it wasn't just me who wanted me to live. It was Camilla, my Scholar, my cavalier, who refused to let me go. She never told me how she survived Cytherea—it never mattered more than the other things we had to say to each other, bouncing in and out of her head like tennis balls and pressing the tape recorder in between. But she did survive, very plausibly in fact, and she went looking for me in the River, and in the end it was Harrowhark who found me.

What Ianthe said about Coronabeth… now that's interesting. It’s the Naberius in her again, of course. He could never bear to be thought of as a lesser swordsman than someone who was never afforded the chance to be a real cavalier. And Coronabeth wanted it. She would have died if it had meant ascension as part of her sister; but even without Lyctorhood, she wanted what being Ianthe’s cavalier meant. None of us saw it at the time, and more to the point, none of us would have believed it of her; but she was terribly jealous of Naberius. She was jealous of Marta Dyas, too. She might even have been jealous of Gideon Nav.

read more on ao3

#the locked tomb series #the locked tomb fanfiction #the locked tomb spoilers #palamedes sextus #camilla hect #dulcinea septimus #nona the ninth spoilers #the unwanted guest spoilers #az writes #my fics #posts into oblivion

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bossoftheoss · 2 years

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Gideon Nav Superstar

Up top, while this is a biblical analysis of TLT, I mean to preach nothing as the gospel truth. Believe (or don’t) whatever you want. All are welcome. Be kind.

It has already been covered that Gideon Nav is something of a Christ figure. She is, literally a child of God. In Harrow’s awareness, she was dead for three days, and then “rose” again. She was begotten, not made. Others have covered these, but I wanted to dive into the themes of the sacrifice of Jesus in the bible, and how this is remixed in Gideon and Harrow’s story.

In many religious traditions predating Christianity, the sacrifice of a living thing is often a way to earn special favour or forgiveness from the gods. This is mirrored in the nine houses using blood and flesh sacrifices to commune with the dead. In Christian Biblical belief, Jesus’ role was to be the final of such sacrifices. He would essentially take on the weight and responsibility of human sin, and in dying lift that burden from humanity, allowing human souls into heaven. (There are many interpretations of the specifics).

Gideon Nav’s sacrifice is portrayed in much the same way, but only with the added context of what we learn in Harrow the Ninth. A child of god dies, and in doing so opens the way for others to ascend, to escape the permanence of death. But in many ways, Gideon’s story becomes the opposite of the biblical Jesus.

Christian tradition holds that, after nine days of being hung up on a cross, Jesus is essentially the furthest away from God he has ever been, famously crying out “why have you forsaken me lord”. Gideon when she wakes up in harrow’s body in HtN, is similarly the farthest away from Harrow she has ever bee. While there have been times of emotional and physical distance between them, this new reality means that Harrow and Gideon may now never exist simultaneously. Gideon reacts accordingly.

“You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. “ (HtN)

However, Gideon’s sacrifice, while it did save lives, does not have the long term effect of freedom that Jesus’ was supposed to. Regarding being beholden, here’s Harrows pov.

“I have bested my father and my grandmother—every single necromancer ever taught by my House—every necromancer who has ever touched a skeleton. Did you see me? Did you behold me, Griddle?” (GtN)

“At least if she failed here, she would no longer have to be beholden to anybody.” (Gideon the Ninth)

“If you think that you and I are not more beholden than ever,” said the girl, “you are an idiot.” (Harrow the Ninth)

Harrow has lived her entire life feeling indebted. She knows, from very early on, that her power comes from the culmination of two hundred deaths of the ninth, and she feels responsible for every single one. Already living with this guilt, Harrow then violently inherits her parent’s legacy, and must now care for the whole of the ninth house. Harrow is nothing -but- beholden. In a sense, Gideon is right. In rejecting Gideon’s sacrifice, Harrow is rejecting another debt. But she is doing so t hold on to maybe the one good thing she has ever allowed herself. Gideon’s sacrifice would make her, finally, home to all two hundred and one of the Ninth’s children. While Jesus’s sacrifice is viewed as an act of lifting guilt, to accept Gideon’s sacrifice would mean that Harrow’s guilt would be compounded, complete.

The three days between Jesus’s death and resurrection are referred to as the “Harrowing of Hell”, in which Christ, now in hell, sets about reordering the place. Material in GtN says that Harrow is named for this exact event, but for her the Harrowing is personal. Harrow herself is a prison of sorts for two hundred souls who were unjustly placed there and needs herself to be freed from the weight of that responsibility. Gideon, ironically, had already taken steps in this direction before her death. Would she have seen traces of the two hundred while bouncing around Harrow’s mind, or are they kept somewhere separate?

At the Last Supper before Jesus was executed, Jesus is said to have offered wine and bread as his “body and blood”, a symbolic meal which commemorates his sacrifice and lives on in the form of the ritual of Communion. Gideon Nav’s “all I ever wanted you to do was eat me” (HtN) is, in this context, kinda gay, but also another call back to the whole sacrifice and communion thing. Harrow refuses to participate in this communion and thus refuses the sacrifice.

The Last Supper is also where Jesus is betrayed. Jesus is believed to have had, among an array of followers, twelve disciples, one of whom was Judas. Offered money to reveal who and where Jesus was, Judas accepts, and Jesus is detained by soldiers before being put on trial and killed. This theme of betrayal mimics the whole Harrow and Gideon dynamic, but more important is how Judas reveals Jesus. Judas tells the soldiers that “the one I kiss is Jesus Christ”, and that is how the scene in the bible plays out. This is reversed again in Gideon the Ninth. During the pool scene, which itself can be viewed as a baptism, Gideon’s kissing of Harrow on the forehead is the emotional catalyst which ensures Gideon’s sacrifice will be rejected. While their development at Canaan is long and twisty, it is here that Gideon cements her own betrayal.

Finally, one of the final major moments of Christ’s execution is that it doesn’t hold. Three days later, when one of his followers Mary Magdalene goes to visit his tomb, she finds the rock rolled away and the tomb empty. Jesus approaches her (as some guy) and asks her why she’s upset about his own body being missing, revealing himself to be Christ a moment later. As the name suggests The Locked Tomb series contains an important (and opened) tomb, so how does this work? One interpretation is simple. Harrow finds a model of the locked tomb inside her brain, presumably where Gideon’s soul was resting. This tomb is now empty, only to be refilled by Harrow. A second reading is that Harrow is carting around the soul of whoever is in The Locked Tomb on the Ninth. If the Body now possesses Harrow, then the Tomb is empty. Now, in an inverse of the original story, Gideon’s friends and followers have Gideon’s body, but no soul. And here comes Nona, similar to their missing friends but different, Just Some Guy, asking what everyone is so upset about.

#gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt spoilers #long #harrow nonagesimus #gideon nav #i feel like i should tag jesus or smth but thats too much

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 years

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reading update !

friends. lovers. clowns. I'm going to be real with you: I am going the fuck through it. the schoolyear has started at the shit tier midwestern university that I call home, and that means I am once again up to my eyes in students having problems. this is the best job I've ever had and I think it's going to kill me.

none of that is your problem, of course, but it does feel like a necessary preface to explain why the list is a little on the short side this month and also why it's just. really all over the place.

what have I been reading?

Thirsty Sword Lesbians (April Kit Walsh, 2021) - I swear to god and jesus it's a ttrpg guide and not Locked Tomb erotica. I was gifted this for my birthday by my boss and his spouse (mostly the spouse, who spotted this at a farmers market in Kansas City and thought of me, bless her), and I'm really looking forward to getting to run some sessions! Walsh has put together a fun-loving, emotion-heavy system that's RIPE for creating dyke drama in every imaginable genre. the playbooks manage to cover a lot of archetypes - the Spooky Witch is a standout for me, I'd love to play one! - while leaving lots of room for customization and making the characters your own, and I like the way the mechanics prioritize the characters' feelings and arcs while also leaving options to be more action-based. the book can get a little precious about The Magical Power of Love Against the Evil Forces Capitalism and Oppression, but it's a sweet system that's obviously been with a lot of love, and the art if absolutely killer. I can't wait to report back on my adventures with my own band of thirsty sword lesbians.

Paper Girls Vol. 5-6 (Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, 2019) - that's right, I finally finished it! and when I got to the end of the last volume I had to sit there very quietly staring at the wall and say "oh" to myself. I was delighted when all the twisty time travel bullshit was finally explained and the story still managed to feel very personal and intimate to the twelve year old girls at the story's heart - at the end of the day, this is a story about four friends doing their best to get home against all odds. I really appreciated that Vaughan could make the question of "will we still be friends?" feel so urgent when the question of apocalypse hangs so heavy in the series, and the ending was a bittersweet question mark on that front. it felt right - Paper Girls was never the kind of series that could be wrapped up too neatly. you should go read it yourself - and, I cannot emphasize enough, I do mean read it, not watch the amazon series.

Nona the Ninth (Tamysn Muir, 2022) - Nona the Ninth is a wildly jarring change of pace for the series that is, I think, wholly and hugely necessary to stop and provide better perspective on the world. I frequently see people commenting that previous protagonists Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus don't really "feel" like teenagers, and that there's no good reason they shouldn't be aged up except that Muir is trying to appeal to a YA audience. with all due respect, these people are very bad at reading comprehension and quite possibly piss on the poor. the personal tragedies of the Locked Tomb's characters are numerous, but one of the greatest injustices of the series takes place almost in the background, so deeply woven into the culture of the Houses that the characters hardly think to comment on it: the way the Empire feasts upon its youth, grinding them up in positions of leadership or shipping them off to the front lines when they're children and teens. and you see that so sharply in Nona! I'm not going to say anything spoilery but GOD, getting to see a main character who's just... a kid? just a really sweet kid with an extremely limited perspective who loves her family and kids from school and dogs and the beach and has no idea how truly, hideously awful the world around her is? it was so STRANGE to see a teenager being young and largely untroubled in this world, especially next to younger kids who are already concerned with selling drugs and killing necromancers. and that's so goddamn sad, and this whole world is a tragedy, and I love so much that some of the characters in this series are still trying to find ways to care for one another. I hope at least some of them manage to survive Alecto.

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution [Revised Edition] (Susan Stryker, 2008) - a short and sweet read, and one that I like a lot for its ability to talk about the history of trans and gender-nonconformity without getting too hung up on, for lack of a better term, black and whiting. I understand the urge to project very contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality backwards to find commonality with the past, but it's so crucial to be able to understand how much ideas of gender and sexuality can change over very little time - even the relatively short span between Stonewall and now! Stryker, herself a trans woman, does a remarkably respectful job honoring the work of past pioneers for the trans community without attempting to tidy up or sanitize any individuals to make them more palatable for 21st century readers. a quick and informative read, with a solid place in my growing personal library of queer history.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America [Revised Edition] (Kiese Laymon, 2020) - it's fitting that Laymon is perhaps best known for his acclaimed memoir Heavy, because everything this man writes is heavy as hell in the most gripping way. I'd say Laymon passes being a challenging writer to be an outright confrontational one, by which I don't intend to perpetuate stereotypes about the "angry Black man" so much as applaud the way Laymon takes the reader firmly by the shoulder, sits them down, and says the quiet part out loud. Laymon is deeply interested in the uncomfortable truths that America runs on, and he demands that we all join in his examination. he's a relentlessly thorough thinker and writer, turning his gaze on a broad variety of topics: the disproportionate focus placed on "fixing" Black boys to make them more respectable, the way Black girls are seldom institutionally addressed at all, what it means for Black student athletes to labor for universities that still proudly sport imagery of the Confederacy, the overlooking of Black Southerners as a potential source of art and brilliance, the expectations placed on Black writers to pander to white audiences' limited ideas of Blackness. Kiese Laymon's nonfiction writing really is like nobody else's, tonally; he's so stubborn and ruminative and I love the way he talks about masculinity and love. there's a chapter that consists of five letters, written between Laymon and four other Black men, reflecting on all manner of things - Blackness, masculinity, queerness, incarceration, and more than anything else, the way Black men love each other. it's really something special.

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service (Tajja Isen, 2022) - one early review that I saw of this book is that it's too topical for its own good, and that surely within a year everyone will have forgotten what Isen is even referencing in her essays. with all due respect this is absolutely bullshit and implies that the reviewer possibly only skimmed the book, or perhaps read a blurb and decided that Isen has only bothered collecting essays dissecting various flash in the pan subjects of Twitter discourse. in fact, what Isen as done is written brilliantly about various areas she knows well - voice acting and animation, university admissions and law school, personal essays and the publishing industry, the entirety of Canada - and neatly examines the ways in which those institutions overwhelmingly fail to engage in any meaningful way with the notion of racial equity, while putting on a show - the titular "lip service" - to give the illusion of doing otherwise. she's an excellent writer, and I particularly love the way she writes about literature. I'd strongly recommend this excerpt from a chapter on the publishing industry's new trend towards publishing stories that decry the stiflingly white nature of major publishers while doing absolutely not a damn thing to actually change their whiteness.

Run, Riddler, Run (Gerard Jones and Mark Badger, 1992) - before anyone feels the need to inform me of this, yes: I am aware that in 2018 Jones was convicted of possession of sexually explicit images of children and sentenced to six years in prison. I found out immediately after finishing this zany little comic, at which point I did an innocent little google search to see what the guys who made it have been up to in the 30 years since publication. turns out nothing good, in Gerard Jones' case. and I have no idea what to do with that information; it doesn't really change my opinion on this story but it does cast sort of a yucky shadow over what's otherwise a pretty alright story.

our boy Brucie learns that gentrification is pretty bad, actually, and that poor people have feelings that should be listened to rather than just bulldozing all their yucky old neighborhoods because you think you know what's best for them. like many of the best Batman comics, Bruce's isn't the most interesting part by a longshot; the real star here is Roberta "Bob" Cifuentes, a queer grassroots organizer who scares the everloving shit out of Gotham's wealthy with her militant efforts to save her neighborhood. comic books being comic books, things naturally get pretty zany - there's a team of robocops led by a guy still mad that the Berlin Wall came down who frame Batman for murder after he starts siding with the poors and that's like, probably because writer and noted sex criminal Jones didn't want to commit to just making straight up regular cops an unambiguous tool of oppression that Batman has to fight, which is some weenie-ass bullshit, but DC still probably couldn't publish this story today without getting screamed at for being pro-antifa. I'd say it's a solidly b-tier Very Special Episode if not for the almost entirely arbitrary inclusion of the Riddler, whose presence could be totally excised from the story really easily but also makes the story INFINITELY more fun. according to various DC sources that I won't be bothering to fact check this is the first miniseries to prominently feature the Riddler, which makes this a great idea from a truly reprehensible human being. he's in peak Riddler form - pissing off Batman, his boss, his own parole officer, and the Joker by being just absolutely fucking insufferable and frequently incomprehensible, contributing very little to the overall story, and visibly having a blast doing it. love that for him.

#bookblr #reading updates

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kiriona-apologist · 2 years

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prompt: griddlehark, lack of sleep delirium

thank you for the prompt anon!! really enjoyed figuring out exactly how i wanted this one to play out!!

her days have been turned to a living hell

Gideon forgets how to sleep. That’s what happens when your soul plays several intense rounds of musical bodies. She settles back into her own body (so comfy!) and Harrow finds her way back to hers (less comfy, but that’s Gideon’s thought) and everything should be perfect and wonderful. Except…Gideon doesn’t sleep. Neither does Harrow, but she sleeps more than Gideon and that is a terrifying prospect because if Harrow is sleeping better than you there’s basically no one sleeping worse than you in the entire universe.

See, thing is, Gideon’s soul has moved enough to know the exact shape of the entirety of Harrow’s being. She knows the insides of Harrow like someone scooped everything out, handed Gideon a schematic and a flashlight, and she burrowed inside. She knows Harrow more intimately than she’s ever known anyone. This all being true, she’s still Gideon. Her self is still a scared kid looking for the skeleton of her mom and hiding all the hurt under muscle and bravado. All the shit that happened at Canaan house still grips her brain in a vice, still haunts her like a revenant. The stuff after is even worse.

So she doesn’t sleep.

Every time her eyes even think to flutter closed, she sees Isaacs arms thrown wide, the profile of his face as she drags Jeannemary kicking out of the basement. She feels the scrawny teen in her arms struggling and screaming and she feels the moment Isaac dies and Jeannemary goes limp, a deadweight. Gideon sees Magnus and Abigail, laid out and alive at the same time, bloodied and smiling. They lurk in doorways, in crowded rooms, in the corner of her and Harrow’s bedroom. Dulcinea, Protesilaus’s head, Palamedes’s bright explosion, it’s a loop of a loop over and over again. Heralds and Wake-As-Cytherea and Her-As-Harrow and God and his child in the body made of 200 children, scared shitless.

It takes a long time, but Harrow notices, right about the time that the Fourth’s hole-ridden bodies begin to appear at the corner of Gideon’s vision. Harrow doesn’t say anything about it until Gideon starts talking to them.

“Griddle,” she says slowly as they’re lounging in bed after a long day of being Lyctors and being one flesh one end and all that good shit. “Griddle, have you slept recently?”

“Hmm?” Gideon asks, because the Fourth had started mumbling nonsense the moment Harrow opened her mouth and she’s found she becomes very easily confused nowadays.

“Sleep, Nav,” Harrow says. “You’re dead on your feet.”

“I’m fine,” Gideon says, pushing at Harrow and finding that she’s moved several inches to the left and is growing even more concerned. “I’m fine, Nonagesimus.”

“You are most certainly not, you pig-headed ignoramus,” Harrow says and it’s one of the nicest things Harrow has said in a while.

“‘M not a pig, Harrow,” Gideon says quite smartly and Harrow huffs. Gideon loses time for a little while, and when she comes back to herself, Harrow has somehow maneuvered her onto her back on the bed. The ceiling is ugly. Harrow straddles her stomach, face pinched in concentration and Gideon digs around for an appropriate, provocative comment when Harrow presses a finger to her lips.

“Shut up and go to bed,” Harrow says. There are four of her. Gideon blinks to clear her vision and it doesn’t go away. Strange. Gideon doesn’t think too much of it. She tries to sit up but Harrow somehow finds the strength to keep her down on the bed.

“If you wanted to pin me, Nonagesimus-” Gideon begins but the four Harrows glare at her and Isaac gurgles from his corner. “Oh my God, shut up!”

“I didn’t…Nav, please. Sleep?” Harrow must be having a moment because she almost never says please to Gideon and if she did it certainly wouldn't be about sleep. Gideon stares at the four Harrowhark heads for far too long before squinting at her girlfriend. She comes into focus a bit better (the four heads get reduced to two) and Gideon is taken aback at how much concern paints her face.

“I don’t want to,” Gideon says, and she feels like a little kid again, meeting the eyes of Harrowhark Nonagesimus and fearing retribution of some kind for daring to be vulnerable. “I can’t.”

Understanding dawns on Harrow and Gideon wonders how she even managed to get the hidden meaning when Gideon isn’t even sure of it herself. Still, a hint of tenderness replaces the concern.

“It’s alright, Griddle,” Harrow says and the love in her voice makes Gideon shake. The Fourth teens are rattling in her vision. She could feel their eyes fixed on her but she’s focusing on Harrow with all of her might. “I’ll be here.”

Somehow, it is enough reassurance. Gideon doesn’t remember falling asleep, succumbing to the days of exhaustion that suddenly drag at her bones. She doesn’t remember Harrow curling around her, tucking them both in.

When she wakes up, gasping and sweating in the middle of the night, the phantom sensation of returning to her body lingering in each of her nerves, Harrow holds her tight, even in sleep, and doesn’t let her go. Gideon sinks into the comfort and finally, blissfully, returns to sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Thank you again anon!! My asks are still open and I'll be working through prompts as they come in so if you feel like it send me something to write!

#griddlehark #the locked tomb #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #griddlehark fic #my fic #prompt #asks

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