just here to read all the things @almostmymoon - Tumblr Blog

i think the funniest possible plot arc for alecto would be ianthe trying to arrange a threesome between herself and her two closest friends (harrow and kiriona), but she just ends up wingmanning them both really hard by accident (since nothing ever goes truly right for ianthe) and that's how griddlehark ends up happening

milliebobbyflay

paired with their often intimate and violent subject matter, i find the incidental way tamsyn muir frames women and their bodies throughout the locked tomb series to be refreshing bordering on radical

consider harrowhark; in the first book we see her as gideon sees her. she's a hideous ghoul with a flat ass and no tits, she's a delicate sopping wet beauty with a sharp face and angel bow lips, she's a triumphant and awe inspiring master necromancer screaming and fighting drenched in her own blood. the shape and condition of her body is allowed to take on meaning contextually based entirely on the situation and how gideon feels about their relationship in any given moment

she then spends the second book hobbling around with a sword twice her size, ripping apart her body to use as a weapon and passing out in her own vomit, struggling to eat and sleep – she and puts herself through absolute hell and never once thinks anything of it, and we're made to mourn this not as the desecration of a beautiful woman but as a manifestation of a human being's despair and self loathing, and we see this specifically contrasted against the care gideon tries to take when inhabiting her body during the last act

it's jarring, in nona, when we're suddenly made aware that her body could be perceived or valued as a commodity, when pyrrha is assumed to be nona's pimp. it feels strange and horrifying when we learn alecto's form was modeled for a doll, learn that she was given a woman's body as a display of ownership, an alternative to being consumed, and as we're processing this we watch gideon, paul, and ianthe, immediately setting aside their conflict in a desperate scramble to preserve harrow's body for no reason other than because it is harrow's and they love her

feminist fiction often focuses on women's relationship to a body which is valued more than the person within it – and that is a worthy experience to explore – but as a transsexual butch(ish) dyke, i have never really had the privilege of seeing my body as a precious commodity, never felt like it couldn't or shouldn't be a sight of violence and disgust, and as a result the locked tomb books have made me feel seen in a way that few other works of fiction have?

we as an audience are not made aware of how attractive any character would be outside of the context of our lesbian POV characters' perspectives, their relationship to patriarchal beauty standards is an utterly irrelevant detail we're never told and only occasionally glimpse through implication. the women in the locked tomb books are simply free to exist, to have experiences and feelings, to love and hate and grieve and suffer and die like anybody else, and to have those experiences reflected in their physical vessels

it's a perspective that's so fundamental and obvious that to praise muir for it for it feels almost patronizing, but i also think it's a huge part of what's made the series so resonant for so many queer women and i feel that that's worthy of highlighting and celebrating

saphiradrake

Jensen Ackles has my undying love for looking at the trash spn finale, noping straight out of it, founding his own production company, immediately writing a fix it fic with a self insert arc and then putting it on screen for public consumption. Genuinely unhinged behavior but by god you have to respect his audacity.

#supernatural

bloodydeanwinchester

i know that misha loves castiel or whatever but he’s nowhere near the deranged level of adoration that jackles has for dean. like he would never throw a birthday party for castiel with cas’s favorite food and drink and wear a party hat while the cast of his show sings happy birthday to him and then he blows out the candles. all on the same night where the show he created that’s basically a fix-it fic by now resurrects his character. i cannot believe that out of the two of them misha’s the normal one about this

#supernatural

assiraphales

not keeping up w the winchesters but I am enthralled by the idea that jensen ackles might very well be balls to the walls crazy enough to completely rewrite the supernatural series finale out of sheer pettiness and love for dean winchester

#dean winchester #supernatural

lambentgrey

my controversial (?) but hot take is that gideon has no game because 1) she’s hot and doesn’t need game for women to fawn all over her (see: gtn, “as yet unsent”–which, ew, but my point stands) and 2) up until leaving drearburh in gtn, she had one (1) remotely viable romantic option and they both were too concerned with ruining each other’s lives to look at each other in that light, so she had no practice or experience and then pretty much died before she could gain any

swagless gideon nav rights!

#gideon the ninth #griddlehark

nonas-third-tantrum

sexpal69 strikes again, palamedes makes an ardent plea, and gideon feels left out

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#gideon the ninth

visenyaism

Anastasia is THE ghost haunting the lockedtomb narrative. Failed the lyctor trials because she could not bear to ask her cavalier, someone she loved, to die for her. Her punishment for that act was to be asked to guard the tomb and die for Alecto, who swore a cavalier oath to her quietly in the cold dark. Anastasia was too human and Alecto wasn’t human enough and so they got sent into the dark together to waste away. And she died. But she’s the only Cavalier whose name is remembered by her house!!!!! The Ninth was never supposed to exist but carried on and on for a Myriad because of the resilience and love and devotion Anastasia, the only human on the Mithraeum, had for the world.

All of her descendants have to be necromancers because that’s what love is, and that’s what god is: someone has to pass the candle to the next one forever. Anastasia died for Alecto, so now all her descendants have to LIVE for her. That promise is too much to ask of anyone. It’s what kept the Ninth House and their memory alive in the face of the negligence of god himself, but it’s also a curse. Anastasia’s oath is what dooms Harrowhark into being a war crime since her birth, it’s Gideon dying for Harrow because she doesn’t know how to live for her, but it’s also what made baby Harrow sneak down into the tomb and see Alecto and decide that she wanted to live…..love is god and love is a curse and god is a promise to endure made between a fallen angel and a failed disciple sent to languish in a tomb ten thousand years before the story even began. and they were both girls

#gideon the ninth #griddlehark #nona the ninth

belovedblabber

I would give

ANYTHING

to see the absolute disaster dysfunctional family sitcom situation that has been occurring offscreen with John, Gideon/Kiriona, and Ianthe. There is SO MUCH to unpack in the mentions we get of the whole situation in NtN, and I want to see what the FUCK has been going on over there.

World’s worst sitcom. Absolute disaster. The cast is a ten thousand year old war criminal god emperor having his mid-dismyriad crisis, his daughter who was created via a jizz heist orchestrated by his best friends/saints/weird fucking sexual situation pals and is now a traumatized corpse he has sorta just duct taped back together probably sans at least part of her soul, and fucking IANTHE.

You KNOW the vibes of the world’s most unhinged wacky family sitcom situation they have going on over there have been absolutely UNHINGED, I want to see a snapshot of it so bad.

#nona the ninth #gideon the ninth

belovedblabber

Ok time to make my hopefully coherent adjacent post about the whole ‘John made Alecto look like Barbie’ thing. Also this goes out to @opticor and @2impostors for the interest in my semi-coherent thoughts on this topic.

I’ve seen people reading it as like ‘wow John took the soul of the earth and made her look like Barbie what a typical dude thing to do’ and personally I don’t at all vibe with that reading of it so now I am turning some rambly tags I made into a proper post.

I’m going to start by posting a crappily highlighted passage, as is my wont:

I think one aspect of this that people misconstrue is “I wanted to make you the most beautiful body I could think of.” I think a lot of people are taking this as beautiful=sexy=John is super gross and wanted to make the earth a sexy hot Barbie body.

However, I very much read this as John, who loved the earth so much, wanting to make a beautiful vessel for the earth’s soul. I don’t think ‘sexy’ is the right way to interpret this one. There’s a big ol’ gulf between that ‘beautiful’ and the way people seem to be reading it as ‘sexy.’ Now is there a lot to unpack and think about in all of this? Yes. Is it ‘John is gross and made Alecto sexy because he’s gross and gave her the classic sexy lady body of Barbie?’ No.

And also very key here is “Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left…a handful of things that made me me…”

I think it’s really worth keeping in mind here that in this moment John was barely holding onto anything of himself and thus turned to one of the few things he had left to grab at, aka a childhood memory of playing at his grandma’s house. And more specifically of playing with his mom’s old Barbie:

He was eating the soul of the earth and barely holding onto his own identity and personhood and turned to one of the few scraps of himself that remained. His memory of playing with his mom’s old Barbie as a kid was one of the few things he had left in that moment, and that was what his fragmented mind reached out to and grabbed onto as something beautiful. The way he talks about the Hollywood Hair Barbie is also very deeply not in the realm of like, ‘wow Barbie is so sexy and I wanted to make the earth sexy’ sdfghjk. He talks about her “little gold outfit and her long yellow hair.” He thinks she was “the best,” and “got to have all the adventures.” Sorry but this really doesn’t read as ‘ah yes Barbie, the sexiest of women. A doll I lusted over’ asdfghj.

In a moment of almost completely losing his personhood and identity, John reached out to that memory and that very childlike love for something he’d found beautiful, and that was what his mind held onto.

John is also very notably defensive about the fact that this was what he chose for Alecto. He seems to view this as something embarrassing. He’s not bragging about making a sexy body, he’s sort of self-consciously trying to explain why his torn to shreds mind grabbed at that form.

When he made Alecto he wasn’t thinking in any coherent fashion. His broken mind was grabbing at his most basic, simple memories to find something beautiful. He wanted to give her a vessel that could have pretty yellow hair and have all the adventures.

Also ngl I really don’t see ‘I loved playing with my mom’s old Barbie and having her go on adventures and I loved her pretty hair and her golden outfit’ as a typical dude thing.

Like there is certainly a lot to think about vis a vis John’s view of himself as creator, and in how he also compares her to a Christmas tree fairy, a Renaissance angel, Adam and Eve, and Galatea. He evokes all of these when describing her, not just Barbie (and he also calls her “Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.”) I think there is a TON to think over and discuss with all of that. (The relevant passage for those comparisons is on pg. 409 of NtN for the record). But yeah, there is a lot to analyze in the things he evokes in describing his act of creation (for one I find it interesting that not all of them are ‘female,’ so to speak). There’s a lot to think about in terms of how he gave parts of himself to make her ( “I ripped half of my ribs from my body and made you from dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.” (pg. 408), and in him choosing to frame himself as creator, and as creator in a distinctly biblical way (the ribs being an obvious call to this). The reference to Galatea is also its own interesting thing. But anyway, John made her body from himself and oh boy is there a lot there but okay this paragraph is threatening to become too long, so I need to leave this topic for now and come back to it later in its own post sdfghj.

ANYWAY, all of this is to say that I really think interpreting John’s creation of Alecto’s physical form as a ‘typical dude thing, he wanted to make her sexy and picked Barbie, the most basic ideal of womanhood’ is a reading that really misses the mark.

Annnnd that’s all from me tonight, time to go to bed.

#alecto the ninth #nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #mind blown

rosenkranz-does-things

At the breaking of the chains and of the bones, one of the children there offered violence to her, appearing on the altar and raising her weapon high.

#gideon the ninth #nona the ninth

passionatememes

You held aloft the sword.

I still love Y

#nona the ninth #gideon the ninth

tereziii

Do u ever think about how Gideon's last words were ,,, WEDDING VOWS. And then do u think about how they're the first thing Harrow says when she finally remembers in htn .... AND THEN do u think about how Gideon/Kiriona acknowledges the fact that yeah they were wedding vows in ntn ... BECAUSE I DO. I FUCKING DO.