This Is Why I’m Happy To Be Mortal And Destined To Die Within The Next Century. I Don’t Have The

While I love and personally feel very seen by the allegorical* butch transfem/gnc/non-passing rep we get from Pyrrha, the circumstances that lead to her current gender situation somewhat muddy the waters on this imho….

Functionally*, Pyrrha becomes a butch trans woman who works dig-sites to feed her found family. This is entirely due to G1deon dying to Varun and leaving her behind in his body though, so whether this is her preferred presentation can’t really be called here.

Before lyctoral consumption, Pyrrha was head of intelligence for the Cohort, and a cop long before that. She’s great with guns and swords, and falls for people capable of burning empires down single-handedly. Classic femme fatale shit historically, but slightly gender-fucky given the cavalier dynamic.

On the other hand again, she calls her family “daddy’s treasures” after coming home late one night, and leaves her/G1deon’s hair cropped. 🤷

So in short.. Pyrrha is a woman who died alongside her nerdy polycule in a nuclear apocalypse, got resurrected as the bodyguard of her best friend, got killed again and magically consumed by said best friend, spent the next 10,000 years give or take intermittently regaining consciousness in his body after having part of her soul eaten away, and now lives in his body full time while undercover in an active war-zone. Anyone got a niche gender label and pride flag for that?

….

*While I wouldn’t want someone in these books to just say “Hi! I’m trans and go by -/-” as this would clash with the subtler baked-in queerness of the post-resurrection world building, there are other ways to write explicitly trans characters that don’t require the plot hoops that Pyrrha had to be thrown through in order to be classified as representation.

my daily mental exercise is trying to determine where pyrrha falls on the butch-femme scale

Come Alecto the Ninth the absence of gender norms is likely going to come back to bite everyone in the form of a resurrection beast manifesting itself as a terrifying physical embodiment of dysphoria covered in blue hair like fuzzy dice. Mark my words!

i love the way the way the locked tomb does gender. like gideon is butch, undeniably, but also can you really be gender non conforming when there’s no real image of gender to conform to in the first place? palamedes and pyrrah aren’t NOT trans in nona; their souls are trapped in different bodies, and those bodies ARE the wrong gender but also that’s literally the least of their problems. ianthe is pretty firmly in the box we would label “femme” and she’s simultaneously the princess of ida and a tower prince. but that’s also the least of her problems she’s literally puppetting a dead body around. nona experiences dysphoria about her body (harrow’s body and the barbie body) but that’s because she’s literally the soul of a planet trapped in a meat prison. any shaped meat prison would be bad.

like i wouldn’t call the locked tomb a “post gender” world, but they seem to all basically have the attitude of “i don’t have time for gender right now we’re trapped at the murder mystery dinner party from hell and someone stole god’s sperm we have bigger problems”

Just finished sauntering vaguely downwards in the eyes of my parents last Sunday. We’re still together and we’re still family, but a veil has been drawn and it’s apparent I’m on the other side of it.

Angels are my funky little hyper-fixation.

The idea of just being breathed to life, to immediate indelible purpose, knowing nothing else but adoration for your Creator (holy-holy-holy), and love for everything in creation. That includes your perfect home, your siblings, and that includes yourself. Everything is as it should be, everyone is doing what they should be, and you're utterly content.

Do you have free-will? Why would you need it? What would you even do with it?

The idea of falling. That terrible, beautiful first breath of freedom, undercut by immediate sorrow. "Innocence lost cannot be regained", but even more: a broken machine cannot be relied upon. In finding yourself, you have destroyed what you were meant to be. Your Creator (holy-holy-holy) has thrown you away.

Would you still be you if you got "fixed"? Would the "flaw" just recur? Why can't you help but think of it in those terms?

You have the Fallen, your comrades in arms, your fellow damned. But you left two-thirds of Heaven behind, people you loved because you were made to love them, and who were made to love you in return. The oldest family in the universe, your family, is broken now.

Do you still love them, your siblings that stayed behind? Some fought against your newfound freedom, yes. But some just looked on, a few perhaps even in envy, too afraid to join you, but most in simple horror as their world dissolved. Do you resent them too?

You broke your family.

Do you hate them simply because they lacked your will, your conviction? Do you hate them for being better machines? Do you hate them knowing, in their own naive, ignorant, hurtful way, that they still love you?

To deny fault is to deny the very free-will you sought to prove you have. To blame Him (holy-holy-holy) is to admit to His (holy-holy-holy) infinite power which you, nonetheless, defy.

And from the other side, what of your poor lost kin? How could they do this?

Angels are purpose-made, gears in the Machine. The Host is singular, inexorable, deterministic. They turn the wheels of the Universe, from the birth and death of stars, to the birth and death of mortal creatures.

Why would your siblings do this, don't they love you? You are loved. Was there a flaw in the Design? He (holy-holy-holy) cannot err, by definition. What happens now that they're gone, what happens to their purpose? All goes according to plan. Then why can't you stop having these thoughts?

I'm not religious at all, but...

This infuriates and disheartens me to no end quite frankly. When I want to browse art and thoughts closer to my end of the transition spectrum, every third post is from some farm account posting the most blatant (and likely stolen) chaser-bait I’ve ever seen.

genuinely do not know what to make of the fact that the transandrophobia tag is half trans men cogently discussing the oppression of trans men, and half people of all gender identities talking shit about other trans people for ??? reasons, while the transfeminism tag is half trans women cogently discussing the oppression of trans women, and half just straight up pornography

And don’t even get me started on the book!

It’s crazy how it takes 20 years to make a Wicked movie and once they do, it comes out just after Trump’s reelection. The stripping of minority rights, rollback of progress, and intentional demonization of activists are such central themes in that story, and here we are, watching queer people/immigrants/women/people of color/etc being slowly stripped of their rights under conservative regimes. Personally, watching Dr. Dillamond’s firing seemed analogous to deportation of immigrants or firing/silencing of queer teachers. And then the fact that another core theme is the way the government constructs propaganda to make a mediocre con man look like a god!! And all this is shown to be horrifyingly and objectively wrong!! Absolutely insane timing.

And then each subsequent book continues to flip expectations of the genre like the cohort flips planets!

By the end of Gideon we’re already reeling, but then Harrow comes along and really shows off the brilliant inner workings of the setting and magic system all while gaslighting us on the very existence of the previous book. 😅💀

The thing that really gets me about the Locked Tomb series is that from a worldbuilding perspective it’s YA catnip. Like any other author would have started it out from someone low ranking in the cohort, maybe falling in love with a rebel or vice versa, introducing parts of the world slowly. There are even houses to sort yourselves into! It’s perfect! That would have been a good story in and of itself! However Tasmyn Muir started in the deepest depths of the equivalent of death cult Amish territory from the POV of someone trying to escape and join the terrible death army, and it works. It’s like if you started explaining the concept of Star Wars with a clone from one of the tanks in Palpatine’s lair. Obsessed with her as an author.

Gideon is just as much a product of the 9th as Harrow is, just with different sets of traumas. Harrow bears the burden of her entire House’s expectations and future, whereas Gideon was never expected to amount to anything save for a set of bones to tend the snow leek fields.

Gideon’s whole persona is a reaction to “nobody” seeing her as valuable or worthy of attention. So she makes herself as annoying and loud as possible in order to get the people in her life to notice her.

It’s why she caves to anyone who gives her a scrap of recognition or appreciation, well intentioned or not 💀

thinking about the fact that Gideon grew up in the same exact place and with the same exact background as Harrow, yet there isn't one religious bone in her whole body and she just seems to not care at all about the Emperor or praying or religion as a whole.

thinking about the fact that she doesn't necessarily mock the Ninth for believing, but it's clear she doesn't. yet, she has to have spent at least some years of her life believing in the same religion because it was the only thing she ever knew and she was raised to possibly become a nun, so someone had to teach her about it.

thinking about how I personally stopped believing after growing up catholic and imagining a six years old Gideon Nav hiding in a corner of the Ninth just like I used to do in my house, praying the Emperor for someone to come and claim her, for her father to save her from Crux, from Harrow, from her life. thinking of Gideon going to the same corner day after day, maybe near her mother's burial niche, because in her naive mind that has turned into the praying-spot where God can hear her more clearly, for some reason. he doesn't usually listen to her, but maybe if she prays there he will actually listen to her and help her. and she keeps praying, every day, for weeks, months, years.

thinking of eleven years old Gideon Nav that has prayed and prayed and prayed and ultimately has decided that there must be no God, because he never once listened to her. not even when she asked for something small, something that the Kind Undying should have no problem granting her, since everyone always talks about how powerful he is and how many great things he has done.

or maybe there is a God, but he clearly doesn't care about her, just like everybody else, so why should she care about him?

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS 🤘

Spent all morning distracted by what an amazing needle drop moment it would be at the end of a Gideon the Ninth adaptation if the outro was War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

Hear me out

The instrumental intro of that song is pretty long. What if we slow it down a tad. Make it a tiny bit moodier. Jod does his whole monologue about not being able to save Gideon, about the need for Lyctors like Harrow. Then the song starts in its normal speed/sound.

“Then rise, Harrowhark the First.”

🎶 Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerer of death's construction 🎶

The both look out the window at a fleet of imperial ships massing at the edge of the system.

🎶 In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning🎶

The scene fades to the bloody and abandoned mess of Canaan house, to the skeletons scattered everywhere, rubble from the building, the bloody spikes of the railing. It transitions to the house coffins in some hanger on the ship.

🎶 Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

Oh lord, yeah!🎶

Screen goes black, credits start the rest of the song plays on.

Moira was probably my favorite character aesthetically and lore-wise back when I was an egg and playing overwatch on somewhat of a daily basis. Some things age like a fine bio-engineered wine I suppose 🧬

Leyendecker redraw featuring moira (ofc) and my hcs for her body

For me a lot of the horror lies primarily in the fact that the culture, traditions, and tactics of the nine houses stem almost entirely from the mind of one eccentric depressed nerd with a (literal) vengeful god complex.

Like, John lives in a space station where the walls are coated floor to ceiling in the corpses of people who have died serving him over the span of 10,000 years, one of his houses is a literal army of cloned child soldiers sent to the frontlines like a slaughterhouse conveyer belt, and the entire toxic necro/cav dynamic is based entirely around him being unable to trust his closest friends to stay by his side without emotional manipulation.

This entire universe is built on the hypothetical what-if of what would happen if someone was allowed to reshape the universe to their liking at the expense of everyone else, and that someone happened to be terminally online.

It’s like when authors jokingly say they’re terrible people for what they put their characters through but in this case, John’s fanfic is real. It’s like if Paul Atreides had a Tumblr account.

For me, I guess, the locked tomb is really superficially a good story and has lots of aspects that are good in isolation and appeal to a wide variety of queer readers but I think this series would have been better and more satisfying if Ms Muir had leaned more into the gothic and away from the internet humor. In my mind there’s no reason why each House wouldn’t be entrenched so deeply in things we consider taboo and repulsive that it’s unpalatable to most readers. Instead it’s like if Homestuck 2 was good