"The future tense of fear is either comedy or tragedy." https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliedwolves/works TMA, Starkid, and theatre word nerd stuff is most of what's here. I roleplay Muralist with people sometimes, or take questions about his universe. I'm over 25. Artie or Ally are my names, he or they are my pronouns.
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For those who don't know: Ikumi Nakamura is the woman who was senior artist on Bayonetta, and designed the titular character along with Hideki Kamiya. Their greatest moment of bonding was over their insistence that Bayonetta keep her glasses on at all times.
Nakamura cannot go to horny jail. She is the warden.
I want u to know that every time I see ur art I smile and giggle and look at each piece for atleast ten minutes each!!! Also can u pretty please draw more fem mercs!!
Awww thank you so much!!!! ;___; That is so sweet ajjdjdjs
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#he was a tiny furious bisexual socialist in the 1930s i mean goddamn#and he woke up almost a century later and found out there are literally *nazis* in america *still* so like Imagine (robotmango)
steve: i punched so many nazis⌠i spent years punching nazis, i went around the country punching hitler and singing showtunes⌠how are there still nazis? i kind of died to get rid of nazis and there are still nazis!
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Last month I caught Covid, and right at the start of my symptoms I saw this post. For the next 8ish days, I was HAUNTED by this song. It played on a loop in my head for hours. I would wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat singing ââŚmixed with Zach Galifianakisâ as it bounced around in my virus-addled brain. It was literally inescapable.
Anyway as soon as that ended, the Morbin Time memes started so you can imagine how that went for me, who would be deliriously sick for another 5 days.
"Stop scrolling and please help me spread the word, because if I've landed on your page you're most likely either a black woman or someone who cares about black women and the simple phrase I'm about to share could help save a black woman's life.
Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.
If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.
And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.
So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:
I will need you to document on record that you are refusing the treatment (or medicine) I've requested, and the reason you are doing so."
This works. I have used it in other situations. If medical staff have to document and take responsibility and be on the hook legally for doing shady shit they behave much differently.
If you werenât already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because itâs applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.
But particularly women, and especially black women.
A sick wizard castle with a nondescript van painted on the side. A gothy pin-up girl with the portrait of a random trucker tattooed on her thigh. A bathroom-themed beach vacation. A beautiful brightly coloured cupcake that tastes like soap.
Jesus with a portrait of my grandma on his wall. A scimitar-wielding fantasy protagonist reading about the adventures of sixth-grader Kelsey. A National Park with a framed print of somebodyâs living room.
hello locked tomblr! i was at the tamsyn muir event in oxford - here are my notes
i've tried to group them thematically rather than chronologically, and to point out spoilers when i can. there are some parts that i missed/didn't hear correctly - i would appreciate it if others at the event correct me :D
Key takeaways
Alecto is still being written! Muir was reluctant to say a year, so it will probably be more than that
Alecto wonât be written in a Biblical style, and there will be multiple POVs. It will mostly be told from Harrowâs POV (I hope I heard that right)
Muir loves the idea of a TLT videogame
Muirâs not yet done with Floralinda
Q&A: Alecto when?
(putting this first because I know you want to know!)
Alecto is not yet finished
Reason why:
Muir was already slated to write another book before Alecto (Floralinda, I think)
Floralinda took longer than expected
Muir also suffered from health issues
Muir was about to say Alecto would come out in a year, but was reluctant. It will be soon. It will be before she dies.
Once Alecto gets to the editor, it will be fast-tracked. There will be few advance reader copies
And Alecto will not be 2 books, do not fret!
Publishing journey for the Locked Tomb Series
TL;DR â Muir got published because she had good contacts
George R. R. Martin was Tamsyn Muirâs mentor at Clarion
Muir took what she described as the âtraditional routeâ into publishing
She spent around 3 years publishing short stories
Then she got contacted by an agent for a novel
Muir acknowledges that routes into publishing are not like that now
Sometimes, fanfiction writers are approached â Muir doesnât approve as that ruins the hobby, it adds a financial incentive and makes people do it for a career rather than for fun.
Muir wouldnât do anything differently
We joked a bit about an agent who remarked on the âsisterly relationshipâ between characters in Muirâs manuscript
Advice for aspiring authors
Send stuff to an agent regardless of where you are
Work in the industry
There was a bit of discussion on self-publishing â it doesnât suit Muir personally, but itâs a good route for someone with the energy to be their own editor, advertiser, etc.
Q&A: something about being a successful writer (sorry I forgot)
Basically, getting successful requires having good connections
Videogame Influence on Locked Tomb Series
Muir is a big fan of the emergent narrative that videogames afford
Muir worked for Disney and wrote videogame scripts before GtN. Thereâs an insane House of Mouse script archived somewhere, which Muir wrote.
Novel writing is very different from videogame writing.
In a videogame, you have to fully flesh out the in-game universe and provide enough choices and points of interest for players
This taught Muir to be in-depth when writing her novel universesâŚ
âŚwhich particularly influenced her to write tonnes of AUs for the Locked Tomb series
There are two versions of Nona, for example: one which is whatâs really happening, and one which is Nonaâs POV
Q&A: did the videogame influence help Muir to write so confusingly in the Locked Tomb series?
Muir strongly cites Umineko as a key influence
This is a perfect example of a slow reveal, like in the Locked Tomb books
Muir doesnât strictly plan her reveals (e.g., on the second reread, the reader finds this out), but she does love a slow reveal and works hard to make close reading rewarding for the reader
Tamsyn Muir would love for the Locked Tomb series to be adapted into a videogame!!
A funny story was told where Muir got approached by a gacha game company⌠which didnât come to anything
POV voice shifts in the Locked Tomb series
A key reason for the books being so different is that Muir didnât want to write the same thing again â she gets âeasily boredâ
She focussed on the sentence links of each character â Gideonâs sentence links are very different from Harrowâs
Vocabulary also played a key role (again, compare Gideon and Harrow)
The second person narrative in HtN was planned for a while, the tricky thing was convincing publishers to accept it
Muir has an HtN draft somewhere, 50% written, thatâs in third person
POV in Alecto the Ninth: It will not be written in a biblical style
There will be different POVs
Q&A: Book inspiration for writing in the second person?
Muir notes that she didnât write in perfect second person â it was actually first person
She will always turn to On a Winterâs Night a Traveller
And this is another videogame inspiration
She mentioned Homestuck then said donât mention Homestuck soâŚ
The theme of memory in the Locked Tomb series
Memory as a result of love, and memories which are a source of pain
This is a key theme in HtN â note how memory affected Harrow throughout the book
Itâs also going to be a key theme in Alecto
Muir is using memory as horror
The horror of not being able to trust yourself and to know what is real
Sheâs drawing on her own experiences of being schizophrenic
Magic systems in the Locked Tomb series
Muir wasnât actually a big fan of necromancy before writing TLT
She found it too passive in Dungeons & Dragons
She wanted an active magic system, something unintuitive that required hard work and study to learn
She also wanted a magic system to be gross!
TLT magic system was described as âtelekinesis with meatâ
Worldbuilding in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: what was Muirâs worldbuilding starting point/seed?
Muir struggled to find this out. Thereâs no magic formula
Creative writing canât be taught, only practiced
For GtN, she wanted a story about duty, and duty vs freedom
She wanted the story to be about two young women
Gideon was originally a cop/fireman
For Muir, worldbuilding is there to serve the plot. She does not worldbuild for worldbuildingâs sake
Everything in Muirâs books is there to serve the plot
Would the TLT protagonists make a good DnD party?
Absolutely not!
Although Camilla and Palamedes would be fine
There was some joking around about how Muir and her friends tried to play as Gideon and Harrow in DnD and it didnât work out
Genre merging in the Locked Tomb series
Muir identified her blend of comedy and horror as unique to Kiwi fiction
She used Peter Jacksonâs early films before the Lord of the Rings as an example
For Muir, science fiction and fantasy are merged â it only really feels like science if you do hard sci-fi
Muir grew up with Star Wars, so it felt natural to set her fantasy world in space
The genre merging created publishing problems
Publishers want an easy comparison to other books to make it sell, but there was nothing like Gideon the Ninth
We joked a bit about TLT being compared with Dune
Q&A: now that TLT books are out, has Muir noticed any very similar books that GtN etc. are being compared to?
Not really.
Muir sees the most similarities with people who know her and have had similar influences
An example is A. K. Markwood
Another book that seemed very similar is âDawn Hound by Necksy Strownackâ another New Zealand author (I did a quick google and I think this is the Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach?)
Comedy and Humour in the Locked Tomb series
Muirâs advice for aspiring writers is not to write humour to appeal to everyone, as youâll please no one. Stay true to yourself.
Muir writes plenty of humour into her manuscripts, which are often cut away during editing
Q&A: memes that didnât make it: (note: I struggled to catch what was being said under all the laughter and I am also woefully uncultured â many of these are me transcribing as best as I can. Do correct me if Iâm wrong!)
Mr Bonesâ Wild Ride
Emperish meme
Horse Plinko (this got referred to a lot!)
Harrow calling Ianthe the âGod of Thotâ in HtN
And many more
Muir mused about whether she will dial back the humour in later work, or whether she will go full throttle as she doesnât care anymore
Writing process for short stories vs books
Muir sees her short story days as mostly behind her, although she is getting one published soon (as we are aware!)
With short stories, you only have time for one thing, whilst with a novella, you have time for plot and subplot
Short stories are great to practise your technical writing skills
Muir personally would not turn her short stories into novels â she wants to do something new
Q&A: The planning process for the Locked Tomb series
Muir had already planned the whole story before writing GtN
GtN and HtN are the question arcs
NtN and AtN are the answering arcs
Muir really enjoyed writing a New Zealand story
Lesbians as epic heroes in the Locked Tomb series
Muir doesnât see this as jarring â why canât epics have lesbians in them?
All epics want you do to is die gloriously
You can do anything after that
Q&A: Epic influences on the Locked Tomb series
The Iliad. It all comes back to Homer, and the Iliad.
There was some insightful discussion on how the Locked Tomb world codifies its past. In a sense, itâs stuck in time. Thereâs no golden period to hark back to.
The discussion then turned to the idea of the hero, and what a hero should be.
This is heavily explored in Gideon the Ninth, which centres around Harrow failing to prevent Gideon from being the hero
Add lesbian to anything
Muir would love to see a lesbian Hunger Games
Floralinda vs Gideon and Harrow
âFloralinda blowsâ â Tamsyn Muir
Floralinda is a supervillain story about a âbad girl who gets worseâ
Muir has written/is planning to write more on Floralinda
Q&A: Advice for writing characters who suck?
Just let them be shit, go hard first and donât hold back
Take a sin, take a virtue
All of Muirâs characters, in some way, are a âfuck upâ
Catholic imagery in the Locked Tomb series and Catholicism in general
Q&A: was it difficult to link lesbians with Catholicism in the Locked Tomb series?
It felt good for Muir, a lesbian Catholic
And also very fun!
Q&A: whoâs the hottest saint?
In the TLT universe: Valancy!
In the real world: Saint Barbara
This sparked some light-hearted banter
Q&A: Meaningful names in the Locked Tomb series
Muir loves writing meaningful names that hide things in plain sight
Muir does not browse âBehind the Nameâ lol
She has a âlaundry listâ of names she likes which sheâs accumulated throughout her life
Homer and ancient Greek influences played a key role
Also Biblical names
Changing names are highly important in the books, e.g., Gideon to Kiriona
Muir doesnât mind if people sus out a characterâs plot after immediately reading their names
Umineko inspiration
Lolita and the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: the audience member read Lolita at the same time as NtN. They were wondering if the similarities between the two were deliberate.
Muir loves Lolita and thinks that Nabokov is an expert in writing misery
Muir was open about being a child sexual abuse survivor. The influence of this is pervasive in her work.
There is a strong focus on relationships with authority people
Particularly in NtN, which contains sexual threats. This was hard for Muir to write.
Another example is the relationship between John and Alecto.
They are not a one on one comparison between Humbert and Lolita, but the theme of a man fashioning a girl into the perfect partner is there
Whether there is a sexual element in this will be answered in Alecto the Ninth
Muir explicitly does not want to include overt sexual violence in her work
Misogyny in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: In the worldbuilding of the Locked Tomb series, how do you balance the misogyny that still exists (which is particularly obvious when John talks to/about Mercymorn) and the outward appearance/initial impression people get of the houses having gender equality (e.g., Abigail as head of the fifth, Jeannemary as a knight)?
This question had Muir wriggling in delight
The answer to this is addressed in Alecto
Why is John fucking up in the creation of his utopia?
Muir encourages readers to question what you, the reader, perceive as misogyny, versus what the characters perceive as misogyny.
Q&A: Cannibalism in the Locked Tomb series
Cannibalism is a metaphor for toxic love
Cannibalism of the soul is much more severe than cannibalism of the flesh
Link to Lolita
Itâs eating someoneâs life and personhood. A central theme in TLT is exploring love as something taken violently
Can you love someone without taking something from them? This is one of Muirâs favourite ideas
And, itâs not necessarily negative
Example of Camilla and Palamedes (spoiler for NtN!!)
They had to eat each other
Grappling with the question: Is love weightless?
Q&A: How much of their old selves are preserved in the Lyctors?
HtN spoilers!!
John didnât simply wipe and rewrite them â if not, why are they trying to kill him?
John wanted his friends, so he tried to bring his friends back
Interesting implications for the two people he didnât know well and only saw as cowrokers
BUT then the Lyctors are changed by their immortality and John
Q&A: What was it like to write immortality?
Muir acknowledges that she doesnât do a perfect job, and that itâs actually impossible to actually write immortality â it will be too alien for the reader
But this links back to the theme of memory â how much can the Lyctors retain?
The Lyctors are heavily weighed down by time, Mercymorn in particular
Q&A: How long would Muir last in the TLT universe?
0.5 seconds
Muir doesnât see herself as a necromancer or cavalier
Nor is she particularly aligned with any House
Q&A: Books that Muir is reading right now that she would recommend
(again, my poor listening skills and lack of culture limit me here!)
Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
âPayback for Malory Towersâ
A.K. Markwoodâs new book, the Seventh Banisher
Muir has advance access. AK is her friend.
Q&A: Books and media that influenced Muir as a child
She was a highly prolific reader as a child!
Obviously Animorphs
Weird Kiwi fantasy stories
Margaret Margey
She read a lot of David Eddings as a teenager and got annoyed at the role of women in the books
Gormandust was a key inspiration for TLT (I googled this and âGormandustâ doesnât exist, hopefully someone more in the know can help to translate my poor transcription!)
Grimmbolts was another influence (again, I probably didnât hear this correctly)
Q&A: Warhammer inspiration
Muir didnât get into Warhammer until after HtN. She loves it.
She has been approached to write for the Black Library but she had to decline as she had too much work
Q&A: Whatâs Muir going to do next?
Muir does not want to keep going back to TLT, she is happy to release it to the fanfiction writers once itâs done!
There are a couple more things in the TLT universe she may add
For example, thereâs a big Harrow AUâŚ
Muir wants to go back to videogames
But in her history, the projects she works on tend to fold
Muir is trying to write her own videogames and is slowly learning Python
A very good question about deconstruction was asked, but I missed it because I was too excited
Everyone was really lovely at the event! Cambridge folk, you have a lot to look forward to :))
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Thinking about John Gaius listing his educational credentials in Nona the Ninth. Thinking about how the lab tests in GtN arenât just designed to teach necromancers how to complete the lyctoral process, but are structurally designed to have them competing against each other to be the bestest and brightest, even though the summons claims to want as many new Lyctors as possible. Thinking about how there is dubiousness among the House reps about whether these trials are meant to be approached competitively or cooperatively but the structure of the challenges as presented creates a competitive atmosphere and set of incentives so itâs moot. Thinking about how it is possible to refuse any and all of these educational tests but completing them appeals to the pride and self-esteem and determination of a character like Harrowhark who knows that her necromantic skill and maybe even her necromantically inclined intellect was purchased for her at great price and who was educated more than she was loved, who is groomed to literally understand her worth to her House in terms of her capacity to be so necromantically Gifted that she can save everyone and everything through that and through climbing the corpses of others to get to that rescue. Thinking about how, meanwhile, Palamedes, who we might presume to be from the Obsessed With Academic Achievement house, is so secure in his intellect and grounded rather in moral concerns that there is no temptation to complete the Avulsion challenge and he is able to fully feel his revulsion toward the assignment.
Anyway John explaining his origins by listing the elite schools he attended is probably as reflexive to him as breathing, and also probably something he used to both be proud of and use strategically in his old life to get grants and respect as a MÄori man, and something he hasnât been able to share with anyone in ten thousand years, and that probably Means Nothing for the structure of the Houses and their social orders.
sometimes you see Takes⢠that make you go "mmmhmmm okay yeah i see we both interpreted that differently based on what the show gave us, but i see how you arrived at your ideas even if they're different from mine," and then sometimes you see Takes⢠that make you go "brother what show did you even fucking watch"
"What on earth"? Nothing. @amusedmuralist - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
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