ok but the parallels between htn and gideon’s upbringing though.
be her
young and sad and vulnerable
have a vague sense of something missing but no real memories of the person who would fill that void
trapped and surrounded by people who neither like nor respect you through absolutely no fault of your own
you are broken in a way that you can’t describe or justify but which you instinctively understand
this is a large part of why the people around you neither like nor respect you
also you are robbed of physical autonomy at every turn
it is made very clear to you that you don’t get to pick how you dress and you don’t get to pick where you go and you don’t get to pick what tasks are assigned to you and nothing you are given truly belongs to you
also there is one person in particular who is antagonizing you to a greater degree than anyone else
they cause you significant bodily harm on a regular basis and you don’t know what else they may be capable of
this person has unrestricted access to you and may attack at literally any time
this includes moments you wish to be private
your privacy is a whim of people surrounding you and cannot be effectively defended
there is one person who seems to like and care about you in a parent-coded kind of way
however
this person either cannot or will not protect you in any way that matters and they don’t love you the way you need them to
you don’t blame them
you resent the way these people treat you
but not so much that you actually think they’re wrong
and i. god i feel like htn is pretty much just the most brutally efficient way to level the playing field. if harrow didn’t Get gideon before then boy howdy i bet she does now. i want to tear something apart with my teeth.
ok so “the unwanted guest” implies it’s ianthe & palamedes in their mind-fight yes. or are the torbooks acc just messing around & do they actually have no idea who’s in the short story
Me, reading GTN for the first time, biased for the Gideon POV narration: why everyone is so mean to Gideon why arent they befriending her when she is so cool???
Gideon most of the book:
“Gonna spend my time not talking and standing in the shadows full in black”
ok rereading nona the ninth and i can’t believe this never occurred to me but. the kids know about resurrection beasts. they know varun the eater by name.
but like. of course they do. this is what people are constantly being “resettled” over, isn’t it? it’s not just the war. the lyctors move people off populated planets to flip them. of fucking course beautiful ruby knows what a resurrection beast is. even if he doesn’t understand it, even if he doesn’t know it by that name, of course he would know what it is. of course these people have names for them.
i can’t believe i never considered this before. the children of the nine houses are raised not even knowing about them. harrow, with all her appetite for learning, with an entire library of nasty, forbidden little books at her disposal, had never even heard of them until she became a lyctor. but fucking kevin knows what a resurrection beast is. he knows their names, because he has to.
john has spent ten thousand years keeping them off his precious houses, and he did that by leading them straight into the path of populated planets. this isn’t even subtext. we knew this. this isn’t new information. i had just never really thought about it in those terms before.
I think the funniest thing that happened in gtn is how both harrow and ianthe immediately clued in on cytherea weekend-at-bernie-ing protesilaus but because both of them are the way they are they just didn’t do anything about it
cytherea: *holding whole ass fake hushed conversations with her corpse bodyguard*
ianthe: this bitch crazy (complimentary)!!
harrow, who’s puppeteered her parents’ corpses since age 9: :/
it’s striking me on a reread of ntn how so many people in nona’s community know and like her. like the men at the dairy. they start to argue and then they look over at nona and catch themselves. that’s so sweet. there’s this ninteen-year-old girl who everyone assumes is incredibly traumatized (who in that city isnt?) but she’s also genuinely kind and unguarded and earnest so fuck if they’re going to argue in front of her. they’re not even named characters but they get embarrassed about it and then ask for her opinion and they chuck her under the chin and holy shit i’m gonna cry. new rho is full of tired and desperate and unhappy people but so many of them go out of their way to make nona comfortable. so many of them try to preserve her innocence. no wonder she loved beeing alive so so much. no wonder she loved life and new rho and humanity, even though she saw the worst of all three. so many people tried to show her the best too. it’s so fucking sweet.
i’m re-reading the locked tomb series and going crazy because the ONLY time palamedes calls camilla “scholar” is during the “love and freedom don’t coexist” scene
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the rhythm of the scene relies SO heavily on the clacks and the pauses, and there are THREE pauses right before palamedes says “you know that i adore you, scholar.” and camilla, who’s been pausing before responding to NEARLY EVERY line in this scene until “we are one flesh / i am your end,” responds IMMEDIATELY
more specifically, here’s all the dialogue not separated by a pause:
(click for better quality)
it’s all terms of endearment or expressions of devotion, including the paul foreshadowing. they both know what they’re both thinking. they find love easiest to respond to, in each other.
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