Nothing more realistic than Gideon acting like the most got-it-together “the world is my oyster thanks to the unrivalled power of my hotness and awesome” and sincerely believing in that facade, only to then turn into a wallflower the moment she’s out of the Ninth and among okayish people because the only thing she knows social-wise is nonstop-hostile interraction with a cult of octogenarian nuns.
This is exactly the thing that a lot of fic writers don’t seem to GET about Gideon. She’s not some chad-ish alpha butch. She’s actually quite shy. She’s charismatic, in her own way, but she’s not exactly a people person, and can often be quite rough and clumsy with people. She was lucky she ran into the Sixth when she did, who were exactly the right wave of codependant to be charmed by her passions towards Harrow. Or Cytherea, and her associated Evil Femme dynamics. Or the Fourth, who appreciated the facade of an edgy badass muscle amazon when they saw it (I obviously was NOTHING like this as a 14 year old).
She’s like one of those cats that just freeze up and then fall over when you put tape down one side of them.
Mind you, this is all a testament to the malevolent genius of Muir. That’s her whole THING, people. She blends the narrator’s descriptions and impressions with the protagonists impressions. You have the world filtered through a Gideon/Harrow/Nona coloured prism. New Rho is a REALLY fucked up and anxiety-inducing place, but it comes across as homey and wholesome because we’re marinading in Nonaverse. And Gideon comes across as a lot more together and bold and correct because she THINKS she is. Compare with how wet-cat Harrow is in HtN compared to her Regina-George energy in GtN. That’s the difference of Harrow’s perspective vs Gideons, even with the material circumstances aside.
Can you imagine how different that Landing scene would be from Harrow’s perspective? Her terror at the fact that her Cavalier, who she had brought to this KILLING FIELD, had almost had her spine shattered within seconds of disembarking. Her hand-wringing misery during the opening scenes, at the realisation that Gideon might actually escape her forever? Her self-destructive anxiety during those first days at Canann house, desperately looking for any sort of advantage to stave off her feelings of dread and failure?
We don’t really see any of that. Gideon doesn’t, and we confuse her perspectives with the actual world.