judith has unlocked my affections by way of being the exact sort of frustrating idiot i can't help but be charmed by. i was not expecting on this fine day to gain two new ships but i guess that's just how our life is going now.
rn my current guess is that nona is going to be same universe but focusing on difft characters, maybe lyctor-era?? and not officially part of the trilogy, more like a spinoff
There's been an update. Apparently Nona the Ninth is slated for a Fall 2022 release and is a full novel. It is the result of the character demanding more time during the writing process of Alecto the Ninth. Similar to how The Monster Baru Cormorant and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant were originally going to be one book but it got to be far, far too much for just one book. Alecto now has a release date of Fall 2023. Also the thing with the Amazon preview's been fixed, so if anyone wants to sneakily read the Judith short before the paperback's release you're going to have to find an archive. People have of course made them and then backed those up too.
I am so THRILLED about the As Yet Unsent story it was so good holy shit And I am going bonkers trying to figure out who the hell Nona is??? I've heard a million theories: (spoilers) Spoiler that it's Gideon-in-Harrow, or Harrow-in-Gideon, or a person who fled the Ninth after the creche flu, or it's one of the defrosted ppl that Jod was gonna use to repopulate the Ninth?? Or that it's one of Harrow's ancestors (she is once described is being like the 80th 'nona' of her name? but imo i didn't think that was supposed to be literal, i thought it was just cause all their names kinda start with that. Another theory i've heard that i think is cool is drawing from the fact that I think Nona was the name of a roman goddess of pregnancy? and that in this case Nona was someone who was pregnant at the time of the creche flu (or the child of the pregnant person), and saw all the kiddos die and was like 'nope i'm getting out of here' it's driving me insane!! what does it all mean!!
Spoiler: Nona theory and mostly Judith shit The theories I've heard have mostly been Harrow in Gideon theories. But then I don't like actively go digging for theories so I haven't seen too many. We've mostly been losing our shit over Judith's incredibly repressed ass. The woman is just over there like "I was lucky to have been turned down due to cultural standards and taboos," and I'm like jesus fucking christ Judith I'm sad for you. You're kind of a dick but like jesus fuck no one deserves to go through this shit. The fact that she like spent time reading stuff and thinking about it hurts too. She sat down and thought about this and had the strength to be like "Yes we are gonna do the thing" and then she gets turned down and just goes "Oh. Oh I had done A Bad Thing actually." MAN. This also makes me think about again how much I just like the necro/cav relationship taboo? As like I look at it and it's a very on the nose homophobia metaphor, but like others might see other things. And because it's a metaphor it doesn't have to be literally actually that. So we get to have Judith being DEEPLY ASHAMED in a way that reads like a self hating lesbian crushed under the heel of an incredibly homophobic society. But without the direct, literal, unflinchingness of things like you'd see in the Masquerade series. I love the Masquerade deeply and the incredibly in your face way it deals with Baru's shame over being a lesbian due to how shit Falcrest is means A Lot to me. But also a metaphor that softens some of the blow for that kind of thing like this also means a lot because sometimes you can't just look the thing itself in the eye unmasked.
Spoiler YES omg judith's shame over the rejection was so well-written and so deeply profoundly relatable uggghhhhh Also corona being described as "a princess, a king" just made me Feel Things a;ljsdfkjasdklgjf I don't know if I'll be able to read anything NOT written by lesbians anymore after this lmao. Tamsyn has spoiled me Also unrelated to the new stuff but, in high school i had a big crush on this tall blonde girl who was on the swim/dive team, and i just realized i TOTALLY have just been picturing corona as an older version of her LMAO
Spoiler: Judith shit It's a very good handling of that sort of shame. Though the one that hurts me most for relatibility's sake was done by a cishet man. Partly because the reveal that it was shame at all took like. Two whole ass other books to entirely reveal and then you go back and read the thing and you're like Oh Baru feels ashamed of being a lesbian even when she thinks she doesn't. Seth Dickinson might not be a lesbian or any form of sapphic. But he sure does get how to write internalized lesbophobia across a series of books in a way that fucks me up and makes me cry because OH NOOO IT'S ME. I legitimately didn't even notice it until later in the series and one specific moment I only figured out right as Baru herself did and I was like. Oh. Oh gods. The realization's fundamentally changed how I read the first book and a specific scene in it. And that's just wild. A similar sort of thing happened with me and HtN. Specifically with like...I didn't really register just how fucking mean and awful people had been being to Harrow until the very end of the book when Gideon calls Ianthe out. And even then I had to take a few weeks for it to sink in that, yeah no, everyone is constantly awful to Harrow through the whole book. I didn't really notice though and was like "Oh yeah this isn't really ok but I mean that's just what family is like lol". Meanwhile some others I've seen who read the book stated that part of what they didn't like as much about HtN is that the book is just so overwhelmingly cruel to Harrow in a way that they were deeply cognizant of and very what the fuck about the entire time. Now that I have realized this though like...HtN as a book is just very different to me now. It's less like "haha wow family am i right" and more like "Here is another unacceptable thing we tend to just think of as normal". Anyway back to Judith. Another thing I really like about her is how apparent it is that like. A very big part of her specific issue isn't just the like necro/cav taboo or the Space Catholicism (even if she's shitty at praying she's still painfully Space Catholic). It's also the military family. I grew up in a military family with a mother who had been like severely fucked up by the military brat lifestyle and like. It does some shit to you. And boy howdy has that and being destined for nothing but military life done some fuck shit to Judith. She's going to end up becoming my precious projection baby for my military family woes. Fucking wonder what Cohort boot camp is like. Fucking wonder what sorts of stories her dad told her as a kid about boot camp. That frame it as like A Good Thing that Makes You A Better Person. Military families can get REAL fucking weird about boot camp and valorization of it.
i have not read the baru cormorant series but everyone who reads TLT seems to like it so maybe i should haha
If you do read it I'd look up a cw list first. It's a very good series and it stands up there with Berserk and Kencyrath in terms of dark fantasy that helps me get out of bed in the morning. But like. It goes places and it goes to those places hard. Extremely good series if you can handle that sort of thing though. The series also goes in hard on colonization, imperialism, and racism too if that has like any sort of interest for you.
Ooh sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up! When I get back to a place with a library I'll check it out (currently living at a remote research station for the summer lol)
Nona theorycrafting, as a result of rereading Harrow in intimate detail - Spoiler I'd already theorized a bunch re: the pov of Harrow's epilogue. My running theory is that it's technically Harrow's body, but neither Gideon nor Harrow - bc the rest of the survivors, who they've joined up with, are trying to figure out which of them that person is by basically doing reincarnation-esque "which of these is more familiar to you" tests with bones and sword training. And I don't think it's either, but someone entirely new. Because John says to Augustine in their confrontation, "if the person you were before the Resurrections saw you now - " meaning, the people who get hit by the Big Res got their memories wiped, and possibly are new souls/souls in the wrong place/etc in old bodies. What I think HAPPENED at the end of Gideon's last POV section in Harrow is that she(/they, when you include that she and harrow are body sharing) died or "died," and the mystery woman (possibly Alecto, possibly Anastasia, I'm not convinced on EITHER count) pulled a "true" Res that, like the Big Res John did, created a new personality in that body with none of the memories of the original (Gideon OR Harrow). basically every book in the series, Gideon dies in the end. And that new person in Harrow's body is who I think "Nona" is - most of the survivors we know of habitually called Harrow by her last name, and Nona is a logical nickname to that, or they might just be using it as "slightly more personable than calling them Ninth all the time."
Spoiler That's such a good idea but also if Gideon is truly dead and doesn't get to go back in her body i will cry and throw things like a toddler But i do really like the idea of the BoE trio trying to figure out exactly who is taking up residence in Gideon's body lol
This makes me very happy to hear! I was honestly worried I wasn't conveying just how much the feeling sucks as well as I'd like. But no people seem to be reacting with "ow"!
I finally dug into Gideon the Ninth today. this thing has got homestuck oozing out its pores - golden age homestuck fanfic specifically, the stuff from that 2012-ish time. I can't remember which fic author it's by but the writing style is very familiar.
If the author in question is urbanAnchorite then you are in luck. Muir is in fact the author of such things as The Serendipity Gospels.
uA, that was it!! I don't think I ever actually finished TSG but yes that is definitely the flavor this has. also I am generally in awe of her descriptive ability. the way she unfolds the room around Gideon is just. guh. it's rich and vivid without being at all flowery, and thorough without excessively lingering. she has a way of telling you only the most important details, or only the ones that jump out to Gideon, in a way that still fills in the rest of the room around them. you can smell Canaan House. absolutely beautiful.
I can definitely see the influence of TSG's Legislacerator/Subjuggalator relationship in the Necro/Cav bond.
