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Everyone posted:At a certain point in this series gender seems to be so irrelevant that I just assume that everybody's downloaded into whatever meat robot they prefer at the time. Like AIs without the A. And sometimes without the I, too
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Sep 18, 2022 15:07
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I really enjoyed the way NtN played around with and subverted gender. Like, from Nona's perspective it's the most natural thing in the world for Pyrrha to be in the body she's in — she's just Pyrrha — and for C&P to both exist in that body naturally. Basically what I'm saying is, I love Nona, even when she's out of the gang.
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Sep 18, 2022 15:18
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Happy Landfill posted:Someone on Tumblr compared Honesty to Cuno and I can't stop thinking about it. Hey, Cuno would immediately eat all the drugs he steals. Honesty immediately asking where he can get horse tranquilizers, 
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Sep 18, 2022 16:05
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I'm rereading Gideon and (some spoilers for NtN) there's definitely some textual evidence that Kiriona/Gideon is just Gideon who found a place that wanted her. After she runs into Silas and Colum in the cafeteria as she's finishing up lunch and they're coming in, she leaves when Colum asks politely and then there's a bit of her internal thinking: "Gideon felt awfully suckered by the whole thing. She had longed for the Cohort, in part, due to being heartily sick of her time alone in the dark; she'd wanted to be part of something bigger than encroaching dementia and snow-leek husbandry. What was she now? An unwelcome spectre roaming the halls without a necro to pursue - the stinging slap in the face that she didn't even have Harrow - still alone, just in better lighting."
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Sep 18, 2022 16:06
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Danhenge posted:I'm rereading Gideon and (some spoilers for NtN) there's definitely some textual evidence that Kiriona/Gideon is just Gideon who found a place that wanted her. After she runs into Silas and Colum in the cafeteria as she's finishing up lunch and they're coming in, she leaves when Colum asks politely and then there's a bit of her internal thinking: I think that's a lot of it, but I think even more that Gideon found a person (John) who wanted her. I mean, think about Gideon Nav's introduction to John from John's perspective: Narrative to John: Your closest compatriots for ten thousand years have stolen the seed of your body and colluded with your bitterest enemies to use that seed to build a weapon to destroy you and everything you've worked to achieve. *points at Gideon* This is that weapon. John: Oh My Me. I have a daughter! "Hey there baby girl!"
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Sep 18, 2022 17:34
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Maybe I'm dense and don't get me wrong I somehow have enjoyed reading these but I have no loving idea what's going on and couldn't tell anyone a single coherent thing about the story. So uh thanks to this thread for explaining it all somewhat.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:37
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It's extremely obtuse and most of the actual story is delivered by elliptical conversations overheard by the protagonists, so no shame in that
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Sep 19, 2022 00:48
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These books are definitely designed with re-reads in mind. Rereading each one with the context of the books that have come after is a really rewarding experience, but it does mean that first read is just about going along for the ride a bit.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:54
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Yeah, I think Muir gets away with it because the ride is really fun.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:57
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There's almost no world building and it's perfect
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Sep 19, 2022 01:16
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sebmojo posted:Yeah, I think Muir gets away with it because the ride is really fun. As someone in this thread mentioned, "I'm 60% of the way through Nona and this train has no brakes" and that phrase has stuck with me, it feels like that's how the entire series goes.
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Sep 19, 2022 01:16
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I just need to know who made the friendship bracelets. who???
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Sep 19, 2022 01:54
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I think I must be just the right kind of messed up for this series, because I feel like I've had a decent grip on what's going on. There's definitely something wrong with me though, because I strongly associated with both Nona and Harrow as characters while reading their respective books...
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Sep 19, 2022 02:08
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silvergoose posted:As someone in this thread mentioned, "I'm 60% of the way through Nona and this train has no brakes" and that phrase has stuck with me, it feels like that's how the entire series goes. That was me! I read the book in two sittings interspersed by fitful sleep. Keret posted:I think I must be just the right kind of messed up for this series, because I feel like I've had a decent grip on what's going on. I feel like the writing style plays directly to my ADHD somehow, instead of working against it like some books do. It's certainly written from lived experience as a neurodiverse person. The entirety of Nona reminded me so much of what it was like for me growing up, able to read intent and emotion in body language really clearly while at the same time rarely understanding the true context of those emotions, and often being confused by what I saw. Kesper North fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 03:36
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Keret posted:I think I must be just the right kind of messed up for this series, because I feel like I've had a decent grip on what's going on. Oh my god, everything with Nona and the Gang reminded me of my school experience. It was incredibly uncomfortable for me. It’s almost like Nona was written with undiagnosed autism or something, I say crying in the mirror I don’t feel like I identify with Gideon (well, other than my amazing red hair) or Harrow but definitely identify with Cam’s descriptions of Pal in GtN, hyperfocusing on details, having to know everything and solve every single problem, being obsessed with certain subjects, being unable to function without someone saying ‘you, go eat something.’ He reads as incredibly neurodivergent to me. I just want them to be happy 
Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 06:28
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After having a bit of time to digest it (and after re-reading some of Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth I've come to some conclusions about Nona I didn't dislike it. The best metaphor I can come up with is... remember after vaccines became available for COVID and people started going out to restaurants again but there were still a bunch of supply chain issues? Maybe you had some favorite eating place which served a dish you really, really liked. And now you go there and because of the supply issues, that dish is off the menu for now. What's on the menu isn't bad, but it's not your favorite thing that you've been craving during the Time Without Haircuts and Movie Theaters. The "dish" I liked in Gideon the Ninth was Gideon. And Harrow. And Gideon and Harrow bouncing off of each other and the different characters. In Harrow the Ninth the relationship situation had changed because Gideon was deadish and Harrow had given herself brain damage to literally forget that Gideon had existed to avoid eating Gideon's soul. So now we come to Nona. Like I said, I didn't dislike the book or the character. The dish I had at my "restaurant" was still pretty good even if it wasn't what I really wanted. But it wasn't what I really wanted. Harrow is barely even a character here. She's just the object of a massive exposition dump on "How John Became Jod." Which was okay but Harrow may as well have been Castaway's Wilson in those scenes. Gideon/Kiriona is interesting and raises a lot of questions in her limited time in the book. Really if Tamsyn wants to add a short story of maybe 60 pages on how Gideon became Kiriona, her experiences as part of the Empire's court, how it felt to go from the Ninth House's Emotional Punching Bag to the Imperial vice-Goddess Prince(ess). As for Nona herself, it's kind of difficult to identity and empathize with a character when the author pretty much refuses to give the reader any real idea of who or what that character is. I admit that one reason I wanted the group to bring Hot Sauce with them is so that we as readers would have her as a mostly ignorant audience surrogate to whom the others could explain stuff. So we'd get stuff explained to us as well.
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Sep 19, 2022 06:51
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The 1am thoughts continue as I process NtN. I was watching one of my favorite B5 scenes on YouTube, where Refa gets beaten to death by Narns as revenge for his war crimes intercut with a particular raucous Gospel number about how sinners can’t hide from the Lord and will always get what they deserve. Alecto is described as the rock who became meat. The RBs, souls of planets, will chase John to the ends of the universe for his sins. Revelation 6 describes the sinners hiding in the mountains, calling for the rocks to hide them from the wrath of God. But, as the spiritual succinctly puts it: the rock cried out, “no hiding place!” And that’s how I got a crash course in Catholicism from Babylon 5 and gay necromancers.
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Sep 19, 2022 07:06
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Some of my messy initial thoughts. I know I missed a lot of the plot stuff, but I vibed with the characters so hard I let it wash over me. I loved Nona, I loved how she was doing her best and how kind and patient her family was. I loved how Cam and Palamedes really wanted her to be Harrow or Gideon, but didn't push her in that direction and were never outwardly disappointed in her. John, John, John. I love this awful man. The little turn he made from wanting to save the world to just wanting to save the Earth. His compulsion and love for Earth driving him to literally consume her and remake her in an image of his choosing. To resurrect his own loved ones and alter their memories and later leading others to consume their cavaliers to become Lyctors. The spot Gideon's been put in! She has power and respect and love from John for the first time in her life, but she's tethered to him and dependent on him for her very existence. She's a caged bird, I can't wait to see how it all resolves.
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Sep 19, 2022 11:06
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ntn spoilers https://youtu.be/lrdkCVubDjE
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Sep 19, 2022 11:31
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Just finished Nona, then caught up on the thread to hopefully fill in the blanks where I'm too stupid to catch subtle connections. So thanks. One thing I'm still unsure of, though: Do we ever find out how John became a necromancer? Like, specifically how he "learned" all that poo poo?
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Sep 19, 2022 14:58
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I might have missed something too but doesn't he say his power was given to him by the Earth? Like Earth chose him to get it. Of course he's unreliable as hell for the narration but it's probably pretty close to what happened, if planets can have wills of their own she might have picked him thinking he was going to help, is my thinking. Probably something we'll find out in Alecto.
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Sep 19, 2022 15:03
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Not done with Nona so I don't know if this bears out any or is strongly contradicted, but with the constant slow expansion of what "necromancy" means over the course of the series - not just between books but even within them - makes me wonder if instead it wasn't supposed to be some kind of more general biomancy that John was to have learned. Power over organic material, not just death and souls. But John, being very focused on saving people, never really expanded properly out beyond that and explored his abilities beyond his whole death-and-human-biology thing. Yes, he gains power from thanergy, but complex life basically requires feeding on death so of course things would have to die in order to be renewed. Basically he was supposed to be a D&D druid instead of a D&D necromancer.
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Sep 19, 2022 15:33
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This series is weird, but I love it so very much. There's a part of my brain that seizes on clues and half-truths and context-less details, then tries really hard to fill in the gaps. These books are like mainlining heroin into that part of my brain. I run into something that does this to me every few years, at best, so it's absolutely lovely that there's a whole god drat series of books that do it. Nona the Ninth is just as obtuse and weird as the others in the series, and I love it so very much
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Sep 19, 2022 16:33
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My immediate concern, having finished Nona, is: I preordered this one and, upon retrieval of it, became aware that preorders are the hardcover, black-paged copies, which means to make them look the same I will now have to go back and get the preorder black-page copies of the first two. 
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Sep 19, 2022 17:00
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This is precisely why I'm refusing to buy any paper copies until the whole series is out. They must match!
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Sep 19, 2022 17:14
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One thing that jumped out to me in Nona that I don't know if the thread talked about - apparently Lyctors take the middle name of their Cav. So Emperor John Gaius is named that to show that he is in Lyctoral union with the spirit of Gaia, as we learn in the Nona Harrowhark sections . I have to say that even with some of the hints that in retrospect were in HtN, I did not see that coming and it is one hell of a concept.
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Sep 19, 2022 17:18
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Notahippie posted:One thing that jumped out to me in Nona that I don't know if the thread talked about - apparently Lyctors take the middle name of their Cav. So Emperor John Gaius is named that to show that he is in Lyctoral union with the spirit of Gaia, as we learn in the Nona Harrowhark sections . I have to say that even with some of the hints that in retrospect were in HtN, I did not see that coming and it is one hell of a concept. I was also just thinking about that. Also fits with Gideon’s new name, Kiriona Gaia. John’s eyes make a bit more sense now too: “And his eyes were just absolutely, insanely hosed up: deep black wells, this unreflective flat black.” - like a dolls eyes. On the other hand, Hollywood Hair Barbie has intense blue eyes, but if Jod was just creating women for the first time from his ribs  then eh, maybe he got a few details wrong in the heat of the moment.(Stray thoughts, Nona spoilers) It feels like Cam/Pal becoming Paul should be a cleaner biblical reference, but I can’t find any deeper meaning there. I liked that Nona could understand all languages but not writing, so that the multi-part BoE names were all translated in her head into a common language- wouldn’t be surprised if some of the names change once we’re not reading from her perspective. Can’t wait for some clarity on what a Tower Prince is, though I’m assuming it’s just referring to the big tower in the River.
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Sep 19, 2022 19:31
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Can’t wait for some clarity on what a Tower Prince is, though I’m assuming it’s just referring to the big tower in the River. From context a Tower Prince is someone extremely powerful in John's government like a Lyctor. Since Gideon/Kiriona isn't a necromancer, but is still John's actual accept child and heir, she (assuming gender is still a thing in the Necroverse) qualifies. She actually has the title Prince Kiriona Gaia.
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Sep 19, 2022 19:54
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Sep 19, 2022 20:02
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Another Dirty Dish posted:
It also feels like a reference to The Princes in the Tower, although I can't quite articulate what the significance might be other than that they both died for someone else's ambition.
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Sep 19, 2022 20:05
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Notahippie posted:One thing that jumped out to me in Nona that I don't know if the thread talked about - apparently Lyctors take the middle name of their Cav. So Emperor John Gaius is named that to show that he is in Lyctoral union with the spirit of Gaia, as we learn in the Nona Harrowhark sections . I have to say that even with some of the hints that in retrospect were in HtN, I did not see that coming and it is one hell of a concept. Gaius is just a Latin name, and extremely common (e. g., Gaius Julius Caesar). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_%28praenomen%29?wprov=sfla1 Which isn't to say it's not also for Gaia, as in the Greek name for the spirit of Earth, though.
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Sep 19, 2022 20:09
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Yeah and he's got the crown of leaves too, he's a conqueror. Caesars also had a slave behind him at triumphs whispering 'you are mortal', which in an interesting thought.
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Sep 19, 2022 20:18
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Anarcho-Commissar posted:Gaius is just a Latin name, and extremely common (e. g., Gaius Julius Caesar). It seems like a reference to Gaia theory, too, which you might know from SimEarth: that all living things on Earth are part of a self-regulating system that maintains the conditions for the continuation of life. Add mysticism and woo and you go from that to “the planet itself has a soul, and wants to keep itself going,” which would be pretty appealing if you believe the planet itself gave you power over life and death. He’s Gaius as in Caesar and Gaius as in Gaia.
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Sep 19, 2022 20:26
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Anarcho-Commissar posted:Gaius is just a Latin name, and extremely common (e. g., Gaius Julius Caesar). It's both, op. They already pointed out that Lyctors take the second parts of their names for their Cavs, and though it's a cross-language pun, Gaius is also the masculine version of Gaia and that's obviously not a coincidence. It's just also a misdirection because people are like "Oh of course he's named himself after Caesar, that checks out" and then carry on without thinking about it until it clicks in Nona. Efb
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Sep 19, 2022 20:28
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Yeah exactly.
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Sep 19, 2022 20:46
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Another Dirty Dish posted:(Stray thoughts, Nona spoilers) It feels like Cam/Pal becoming Paul should be a cleaner biblical reference, but I can’t find any deeper meaning there. I saw some stuff about this on Reddit, but my knowledge of Christianity is pretty limited. Open your Bibles to Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 12 posted:12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Remember Cam and Pal talking about how they had “the perfect love?” And how often Lyctors look in mirrors at their eyes? 1 Corinthians 13 posted:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
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Sep 19, 2022 21:09
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I mean, for Paulchat, it feels like a real easy reference to the conversion of Saul to Paul the Apostle. The whole Road to Damascus thing is A Big Deal in Catholicism, and Muir’s been really open about the role a Catholic upbringing had played.
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Sep 19, 2022 23:20
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cptn_dr posted:It's both, op. Oh I was the opposite, heh
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Sep 19, 2022 23:28
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Has Tamsyn done any interviews on her writing process for these books?
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Sep 20, 2022 02:33
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I feel like I've learned a lot about how Tamsyn Muir experiences the world by way of reading her characters' experiences, and that's very neat.
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Sep 20, 2022 03:45
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