so, old news obvious news blah blah, but i keep seeing people not getting this about my girl gideon nav so have to say:
i think at first blush, people get the impression that Harrow’s got all the convolutions and layers and hidden vulnerability whereas gideon wears her heart on her sleeve and is just brazenly herself (a loveable rowdy himbo) & that’s the contrast.
and yes, that’s there, but that’s not all. that dynamic itself is a part of their mutual (codependent) front, and like everything else in this book, it gets peeled back.
i think the real contrast is that they’ve both got masks, and those masks are complimentary. they’re both kids who never got a childhood. they grew up tortured in the same place from very different angles with no one but each other to butt heads against. they both had to play-act grown up versions of themselves with few models for what a well-adjusted adult even looked like. so it’s cartoonish. gideon is the plucky hero of her own adventure story that will totally have a happy ending some day, far far away from her nemesis whom she’s totally not in love with. harrow meanwhile (to grossly oversimplify) has to imagine herself as someone cruel and cold enough to cope with being alive at the price of 200 other people. these two things fit very well together. gideon can play the hero to harrow’s villain, and harrow can enact cruelty toward gideon to make herself feel strong and mean (and generally just to vent anguish). the way they hate one another is a kind of mutual protection - it re-enforces the self-image that each of them needs to get through the day. but that’s the coping mechanism. harrow the ruthless bones overlord. gideon the hapless swords idiot, who thinks of nothing but tiddies & sweet sweet vengence (harrow’s corpse in various states of disgrace ) all day. and behind that they’re both tearing apart at the seems beneath caricatures of themselves that are deeply unsustainable and neither of them feels safe letting on the extent to which that’s the case. their hearts are a goddamned mess. neither of them is wearing that shit on their sleeve.
so yeah, there’s a lot more to gideon than being a swords himbo but that’s not the wild thing. the wild thing is she’s so convincing that she somehow manages to sell people on her no braincells act while being the pov character of entire first novel.
-
3K notes
·
View notes
Fallen London
i started the fallen london tumblr (well the Failbetter Games one but you know what i mean) in 2014
we are almost at 7,777 followers, at which point i will do something special for you all
please take this as my invitation to reblog this with the reasons you play fallen london so we can recruit more people into our fruity little victorian gang
thank u
266 notes
·
View notes
nagi was sleeping in class again
it's not much of a surprise that he does that. he's literally the talk of the class because he just sleeps all day. even earning the title 'the thousand year netero' just because he literally sleeps all morning
you just so happen to be desk mates with the said 'thousand year netero'
you've gotten a handful of comments from your classmates that luck was not on your side as you were nagi's designated desk mate. they even ask if you've ever seen him awake or if you've ever talked to him
the reply was always the same. it was just a simple, "yeah" because frankly, you have seen him awake and you have talked to him multiple times throughout the semester
nagi never fails to greet you good morning and offer you his bread when he walks in through your classroom door every morning. it was basically the only time he talks to you before falling asleep on his desk for the rest of the day
until recently, nagi has been talking to you way more than he usually does
and that's because you've developed a new hobby with your desk mate. you've been doodling on his exposed arm as he sleeps soundly beside you.
i mean, the opportunity was there. nagi, who was knocked out cold and you were bored out of your mind. you see his sleeve hunched up and you had a pen in hand. it was only a matter of time you started doodling your heart's content on his arm
nagi first noticed when reo pointed out that he had some scribbles on his arm and that he should go wash it off. nagi noticed your familiar handwriting and confronted you about it the next day
nagi will never forget how your cheeks turned into a bright shade of pink and mumbled apologies as you were caught in the act. nagi simply assures you it was nothing and he thought it was "pretty neat"
ever since then, it became your thing to doodle on each other's arms like it was nothing
as time went on, nagi could reference the doodles you'd doodle on his arm. that's when he noticed that you two had way more things in common.
slowly, he finds himself awake in class more often. he wanted to see you in the act as you doodle away on his arm. may it be song lyrics in bubble letters, or random characters you draw on the top of your head, nagi wanted to see you do it
one day in class, you were surprised to see him paying attention for once. usually at this time of the day, he'd be sprawled out next to you with a textbook merely covering his face so he wouldn't be caught sleeping.
nagi feels your curious gaze and shrugs. he then extends his arm and pushes his sleeve up to his forearm. he motions you to start doodling on his exposed skin.
you don't know why but you feel yourself blush. maybe because this was your first interaction that didn't involve nagi sleeping next to you as you doodle.
you felt shy in front of nagi for the first time. you were a bit skeptical to even start to draw on his skin.
"just pretend i'm sleeping" nagi says, now opening his palm, giving you even more space to draw on.
the bell rings, indicating that classes were over. your classmates all stand up and start packing their things to go home after the long day but nagi was still seated, watching you with his eyes, waiting for you to mark him for the day
in the end, you just doodled your name in kanji
you ended up leaving before nagi. nagi sits there in his seat with a small smile on his face, staring at your name you just doodled on his wrist.
the next day rolls in and you find nagi awake in class. wind blows through your class windows and nagi's paper flies away. he goes to pick it up and you can see his sleeve moved up a bit
there you see, your name still written on his wrist
2K notes
·
View notes
im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:
videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.
and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.
this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.
there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.
there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.
for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.
i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.
here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."
eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.
we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.
"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"
thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.
it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.
an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.
and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."
1K notes
·
View notes