August 2020

incorrect-gideon-the-ninth:

Gideon: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Coronabeth: Okay?

Gideon: Thou art hot as fuck.

All right!! I’m gonna start Harrow the Ninth

Fuck it I love Harrow… I kinda forgot this unfortunate fact

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Ianthe calls her HARRY what the fuuuuck I’m gonna die

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Wow the very first meme to make an appearance is um…. yikes. I think I might get why Ianthe is her own trigger warning now

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Honestly just the juxtaposition of Harrow being dramatic and miserable as usual with that heavy prose and then Ianthe the just fucking going “choke me Daddy”… I don’t know what else I expected from this book but I’m still not over it tbh

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The Body?!?!! Gideon’s….???? Ugh also Ortus’ name in all caps on the lyctor list..? Like when he was gonna say Gideon’s name in the flash back but we got all caps ortus instead..?? Fuck this

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Oh nooo so the “girl who isn’t interested” Harrow’s pining over isn’t Gideon at all….! This is very unfair on multiple fronts

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Uggggh I miss Gideon and idk if Harrow is repressing or forgetting or if this is a timeline where she never existed or if the whole of Gideon the Ninth was some unreliable narrator deal but this SUCKS! I miss her!!! And the revelation that all this time I had assumed Harrow was secretly pining over Gideon and being horrible to her in some sorta pigtail pulling way I was WRONG and in fact Harrow had much more interesting things on her mind the whole time….. Don’t like it! Miss my shitty funny annoying oblivious big beefy sweetheart daughter. Also can’t believe Harrow kissed a girl before Gideon got to and it was Ianthe of all people ugh gross

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Fuck this, genuinely, with all my heart…! This is the most disrespectful flourish so far. Gideon don’t listen to her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about

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Very fun that the Emperor is an emperor and gives big sweeping fascist flavored speeches and then calls his opposition “insurgents”

Edit: oh damn are we gonna get secret rebel hero Cytherea? I can get behind that. I liked her

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Honestly I like Harrow less now than when I started. She’s surprisingly passive as a protagonist, when as a non-pov character she was a fucking firebrand. I get the feeling this is something the author struggles with, cuz it was a problem with Gideon too. Also she’s kinda just…. really colorless. You don’t get too much of her personality, what she feels or what she wants, and of course it must be by design since she’s such a repressed and calculated character, but without Gideon to push and prod her and bounce off her she’s both a bit boring and unbearable tbh. The one consistent thread I’ve enjoyed is her utter distaste for food. She just called pasta “flour-paste shapes in red sauce” and it was great, but oh man I would’ve enjoyed it so much more if there was someone (Gideon) to react to it with horror.

Also since this version of her hasn’t experienced/doesn’t remember the events of GtN it just kinda feels like she’s regressed, all that character growth and catharsis and vulnerability thrown away. She isn’t the Harrow who got hugged, twice, and had to reckon with her emotional ignorance and her need for connection and all the lies she tells herself. The payoff might be epic tho, here’s hoping.

Also hoping the relationships take center stage after we’re done with the fantasy thermodynamics lessons lol

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💖💖💖💖

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Oho I do wonder which particular, very specific party

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This whole section was the most engaging and emotionally involving section of the whole book so far and I mean that sincerely

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If I come out of this book shipping Harrow and Ianthe I swear I will never forgive Tamsyn Muir

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I cannot believe this… Is this the first pun in the book??? Ugh I guess this is what she would have wanted tho

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Fuck yeah this is what I’m here for!!!! Also I just really appreciate seeing the word “gay” explicitly in a fantasy novel, it makes it more real and culturally connected. There’s just a differences between a character doing gay shit in a contextless fantasy setting and a character explicitly articulated as gay.

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Palamedes reviewing terrible romance novels is so exactly what I wanted…. 😭😭😭😭 Harrow you’d better listen to his opinion about the horny swordswoman yeah

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He hugged her 😭😭😭 He hugged her so good 😭 Thank you Palamedes I really needed that 😭

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WHAT what what!!!!!!! First person!!! What the FUCK!!! GIDEON??????

and here I was talking about how “intimate” the second person was……!

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Fine!!!!! I like Ianthe!!! She’s great actually the horrible little creep

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Fuck yesssss we get all the fun characters on the cool rebel faction! Let’s kick some God ass!

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Necrolord prime, horde prime… Uncanny. Basically the same person. I suspect plagiarism

Edit: “none house with left grief”…. he really is evil

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I swear if she doesn’t get hugged within the next 5 lines I’m gonna fucking LOSE IT

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Thanks Gideon I needed that

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I would really like to enjoy the cool role swap au here but I really can’t shake the feeling that this whole book is one extended pool scene but with no hug at the end and no sympathetic audience either and in fact no personal catharsis at all. If one more single emotionally, physically or mentally taxing thing happens to Harrow before she gets a modicum of human connection, understanding and care I genuinely don’t think I could take it

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Actually hold on I wanna know more about this cinderella au, this one rules

Edit: a fucking…. barista au………. what next……. flower shop/tattoo artist??? Fake dating??? ABO, calling it now

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I can’t believe just seeing a lil thumbnail of a skull with sunglasses makes me fucking cry

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Fuck me all the way up. The sheer dramatic, romantic potency of this revelation. She didn’t do this to forget or numb the pain or to be able to do what needed to be done or whatever the fuck. She did it to save her, that’s all, and it never fucking occurred to me. What a gamechanger. Kinda reminds me of the reveal in Utena. I’m….. completely fucking struck

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Real Harrow is sooo much more fun. Fuck I missed her. Amazing what actually caring about other people and having them care for you can do for a person

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Gideon baby I’ve missed you so much 😭😭 Go on and give me another 5 takes of the exact sound a sword makes coming out of a stomach

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I’ve missed her so much I can’t stop crying 😭

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I’m struggling so hard not to screenshot every single line right now but this is just such a delight after such a drawn out, torturous, humorless, harrowing (shhh I deserve this) like 80% of the book that I don’t know how to contain it

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I love her I love her I love her I love her

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Very incredibly into the idea of Gideon being some sort of artificial construct abomination, let’s get some monster/AI fucking up in here

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Ah how I’ve missed Gideon’s empty threats followed immediately by protective heroics. And yes every single bit of her interaction with Ianthe is objectively just the fucking best

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Gideon, you goon, as if you’d even known what the fuck a cavalier was a year ago. This is a love story, haven’t you noticed

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Omgggg where was she during the horrible solemn self important bulk of this book to make “your mother” jokes at that little bitch of a god

strangehunger:

gideon the ninth is SO FUNNY bc Gideon probably seems so cool and mysterious, walking around with a “vow of silence”, face painted like a skull, tall and imposing, when in reality whenever she opens her mouth it’s like

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It’s a love story it’s a love story I get it 😭😭 I’ve only been waiting for this for one book and three quarters and now I can’t handle 😭 talking about rolled shirtsleeves and crooked smiles, Harrow how gay can you get 😭

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I’m gonna FUCKING…….!!!!!!!!!!!

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I can’t even comment on the childhood reminiscence I need a thousand years to process and cry

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That’s my girl that’s my GIRL