People acting like Kiriona Gaia was way too mean to be Gideon are so funny to me. GtN Gideon thought Ortus’ mom having a breakdown over the possibility of losing her only son was peak entertainment
Everyone wants to believe Gideon is nice because we like her. We want good things for her, and she is good fundamentally, and we believe in her and enjoy her character. But she isn’t nice. Kind, self sacrificing, moral, yes. But nice? Absolutely not. She is brash and mean as self defence without considering if everyone actually is on the offence because everyone always has been against her.
She’s traumatized, and has trusted too many bad people to risk being nice.
Gideon can be downright nasty, just because it’s funny from her/our perspective doesn’t mean she isn’t
But was she though?
Most of the nastiness we saw from her was toward Harrow and her other abusers on the Ninth. She had awful things to say about them, and they were justifiable.
I don’t know what Gideon you read was, but the one I read was brash, and mean, and snarky, AND nice. She entertained Jeannemary and Isaac. She thought Magnus was funny, and fell fast and hard for Corona and Dulcinea. She rushed to help Dulcinea the very moment they touched down in Canaan House. She was devastated at the thought of stealing Palamedes’ crush. She wept for everyone she couldn’t save. She forgave Harrow without a second thought. None of this was for self defense.
And no matter how she vented her frustrations about Harrow’s abuse, she was always loyal to her and loved her until the very end. Beyond the end.
Kiriona is different than Gideon. Maybe not a different person, but a different set of behavior. Would Gideon have been the type to play dead, to be inert, at any point, if she could help it? Would she have threatened to kill everyone in the room?
I feel like convincing everyone we’ve had a mass misremembering of Gideon from GtN and HtN really does a disservice to how Tamsyn Muir has chosen to reveal Kiriona to us. Kiriona is Gideon finally broken down, after 6 months of exposure to John “Gaslighter” Gaius, after losing every last scrap of autonomy she had. It’s supposed to be shocking, and it’s supposed to feel wrong.
“Opposite, Dulcinea murmured to Abigail: “I think that is a perfect shame.” “Thank you. We’re over it; it simply wasn’t in our cards,” the necromancer said, a bit bracingly. “My younger brother’s the next in line. He’ll do well. It gives me more time to collate the manuscript, which I’ve been married to longer than I have to Magnus.” - Gideon The Ninth, p. 173
“You had not sold the marrow of your soul for stolen eyes and a half-hearted kindness. What dismantled you - you bereft idiot - was not even the God who made the Ninth House, the Emperor All-Giving, the Kindly Prince; your end appeared in the form of a grown adult telling you that they may have liked you for their own.” - Harrow The Ninth, p. 347
Just. What if you had a planet. A world. And it’s dying. And it’s betrayed. And it’s killed and half eaten and then killed again.
But that world wakes up. And she’s a little girl. A kid who loves. Loves people and kids and weird little dogs. She loves to sit in the blue light and float in the ocean. She loves and loves and loves. And she is so so good at knowing people and she speaks all languages and she wants her 6 month birthday party on the beach with all her friends. She’s the world but she’s also a ghost but she’s also just a little girl and she was killed and then killed again.
And imagine a different little girl. A lonely little girl surrounded by death and made of death and maybe she wants to die a little. and one day she looks and she sees the world, the soul of the world. And she loves the world so much that she has to live after all.
hey noam, what was ur reaction reading the John chapters in NtN? did u follow?
Well the moment I got to “You always say that, Harrowhark” I lost my shit. The poem in the beginning? Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed? Gave me chills. I’d assumed he’d been talking about Alecto as some sort of man-made construct of his, but now I’m not sure if he’s referring to his empire or the process of lyctorhood or what, cuz surely even he can’t be conceited enough to consider the Earth his own creation, no matter the body he put her in. When he promises the part where he hurts her is coming, ugh. I enjoyed him as a character in htn but his chapters here were really something special. Who else does it like him. Spends his life and career obsessively trying to save the world to the point of developing corpse powers, then just nukes it all to hell in one day. Becomes a youtube influencer and loses his clout cuz he pissed off PETA. Only resurrects people he likes, gives all his coworkers lame names and makes them literally call him my Lord. Eats the Earth and stuffs the leftovers in a barbie. Quotes the bible at Harrow like he wrote it. Renames his childhood friend after a dog. And the real magic is that every step of the way, you can totally see it happening. He’s your average principled, goofy, self-centered, controlling, struggling academic type with a mission and blind spots and a bit of self-awareness and a lot of self justification. Only he’s also a god.
The blending of Harrow/Nona/Alecto was so fascinating, I saw somebody point out that Nona was experiencing Harrow’s dreams, being gently enfolded by Gideon’s arms in the saltwater pool, and vice versa. It’s so much. That Harrow has only the one dream and of course it’s this one, that Nona finds it so comforting, that Nona fucking hates Gideon’s guts. So good. I saw another theory that the dialogue in quotation marks is actually Harrow speaking and not the memory of Alecto, which I like. I miss Harrow! At least she got to exert a tiny bit of agency here. I wonder whether she can remember Gideon now; it’s a bit tragic that she’s been trying so consistently and so tenderly to dream of Gideon, and she didn’t even get to experience her own dreams.
Re: did I follow, as usual with these books, I simply followed along 😂
imo gideon and harrow should be in a band with a dope aesthetic and the most unlistenable music of all time
Hot Bone Gunge the death-metal post-grunge bonewave swordpunk noisecore band. Gideon rarely wears a shirt, and a bra only occasionally. Harrow goes through every single one of her own performances with earplugs in. Camilla has never heard any of their songs all the way through but Palamedes owns multiple t-shirts
Hot Bone Gunge fell off after ‘We Want Some Chussy (Reprise)’ imo
Smh at fake fans like you who are all in for We Want Some Chussy (original) when it’s all fun and games and rah rah chussy, but then when the reprise gets a little sincere and contemplative you jump ship. If you’re here for “finger blastin’, blastin’ fingers” you gotta be here for “cut your teeth on me, lost in vascular cacophony/nothing grown, ingrown, ignore/me as I fight for atrophy”
