I recently took a dynamic sketching class and decided to do a visual map of Gideon the Ninth as my final project! I’m really happy with how it turned out!
Medium: micron pen, grey toned comic markers, and white gel pen on toned paper
“I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.”
In anticipation of the latest book in the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, we did a fan cosplay shoot! I’m very proud of this short video we put together, and I hope you like it, too.
Featuring @partychickencosplay as Harrow Valentine Cosplays as Gideon and myself as Palamedes
Ugh so I feel like I need to add an NZ voice to Locked Tomb Discourse again: Gideon was always angry. She was never a soft nice stupid good girl, she just expressed her anger in a profoundly Kiwi way and I think a lot of overseas readers are acting like it’s some massive betrayal of character rather than – as NtN does with a lot of characters and ideas across the board – pretty much just a naked representation of what’s going on beneath the surface.
How do Kiwis (and Aussies often) handle anger? Well, repression + humour. You push it down and push it down, and it comes out as little barbed jokes. Somebody takes everything from you and you’re powerless to do anything about it? Well, humour is an equalizer but a safe one, you cut them where you can and they don’t even realise they could’ve cut back. One of the worst things you can do in NZ culture is Make a Scene, you need plausible deniability, you need control, big displays of emotion are taboo, then what happens if you’ve got bigger emotions than you can handle? Jokes are a valve to release pressure safely, but there’s only so far they can get you. There was always something about the way she joked, the often deeply inappropriate times she chose to joke, she came off to my Kiwi heart like ominous beeping and series of little red flashes beneath the table. She’s not stupid, she’s not socially unaware, she’s lashing out in whatever tiny ways she can without Making a Scene, she istrying to upset people. Over the last three books it has built and built and built, Kiri is pissed, and she has no tools to deal with that anger, we’re not seeing some brand new woman, the bomb just went the fuck off.
She’s not directing it in healthy or productive ways, but these books have always clearly been about trauma and Gideon has always been traumatized. People lashing out in pain don’t always do the nice safe thing you want them to.A/NZ critics and writers have been saying this the whole time, even in GtN something was clearly wrong with her, she was pretty much 24/7 sending out signals that she wasn’t coping. I don’t wanna put Americans on blast too much but I’ve noticed a lot of you seem to think Kiwis are like … inherently cute? It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about it’s sweet/nice/twee, and the idea we might have negative thoughts and emotions that we express differently just never seems to occur to you.
so Nona translates all the names she hears subconsciously & on instinct, I’m pretty sure, because she knows all the languages.
exhibit a: everyone calling Corona “Crown” might be the shortened version of her new BOE name, or people might be saying “Corona” which Nona then translates to “Crown.” this is the one that holds the least water, i’m aware, which is why it comes first.
exhibit b: when Nona mentions Born in the Morning to Hot Sauce and Hot Sauce goes, “you mean Born in the Morning,” and Nona says “that’s what I said.” i believe she translated some of the name back wrong or used a synonym, causing Hot Sauce to correct her.
exhibit c: when Palamedes asks if Honesty’s name is truly Honesty and Nona squirms and says that that’s how she hears it - she can’t be sure, because she might be translating his name from whatever it is into Honesty as soon as she hears it.
which all brings me to my point! Kiriona is Māori for Gideon (see screenshot below). I wouldn’t be surprised if Nona just… translated her name automatically. that does beg the question of why she didn’t translate Gaia to Earth, but someone smarter than me is gonna have to figure that out. maybe Gideon didn’t change her name, maybe we’re just being led to believe that she did to increase our sense of alienation?
