#askbox games

Alternatively, send 'reverse + 🗡' for my muse (receiver) to hold a blase to your muse's throat.

Congrats!! And as the first ask in, so you get the Blood Bank Special

Oooh fascinating. Disclaimer, I don't know if I've gotten deep enough into the Fandom yet and have only just finished As Yet Unsent, not started Nona yet.

Just on a surface level the "Gideon is dumb" take feels entirely at odds with what we're shown in the books. Yes, Gideon is obviously uneducated: she has no frame of reference outside of her direct experience of life in Drearbruh. She's probably unmotivated by certain cerebral topics like history, science, the intricacies of necromancy. BUT she is a genius with a sword. We are shown that she has unparalleled Battle IQ in so many different ways: her very first encounter with Harrowhark shows how thoroughly she is able to assess her threats given the information she has immediate access to. The only reason Harrow beat her is because she didnt consider that Harrow would be willing to spend all night digging, even after noticing all the grime on her fingers.

Lines about how most of her brains lay in her arms, showing interest in techniques she hasn't seen before (Babs' disarm, Camilla's back flip), her drive to join the Cohort, her eagerness to fight opponents and uncanny ability to determine how she measures up against potential threats (she doesn't bother raising her sword during the confrontation with Ianthe until Colum is possessed, at which point she moves automatically. She knows her own bones really well, giving running commentary on her own breaks during the fight with Cytherea. Her body processes her emotions more than her brain does. She knows exactly how to jump and land on a spike to pierce her own heart for the most painless death possible. She's convinced to become Harrow's cavalier by being told "hey get everything you want by learning about a new sword." She's quick to assess her own capabilities vs those of another as well as their limits. Harrow's gay ass telling her how much of a privilege it was to feel her fight indicates that Harrow respects Gideon's prowess in combat as much as Gideon respects Harrow's prowess as a necromancer: immensely, albeit grudgingly, though it's about their disdain for the art rather than for their counterparts skill. She's also EXTREMELY emotionally intelligent, perhaps more so than anyone in Canaan House except mayyyybe Magnus and Abigail, highly sympathetic and in tune with her own feelings.

All of these points are reinforced in HtN im a way I think goes to show Tamsyn's mastery of her craft. The narration in HtN is much more cerebral than in GtN, with occasional comments on how ridiculous she's being, or details she missed. Descriptions are a lot less immediate and detail oriented, focusing more on what is happening than the way it is happening. Obviously this is a way of showing Harrow's thoughts as filtered through Gideon in a sort of layered narrative that builds on GtN while allowing for a very different type of storytelling. BUT it also highlights the differences between Harrow's top-down processing (drawing on experience and prior knowledge to interpret stimuli and build understanding) vs Gideon's bottom-up processing (focusing on analyzing indivual stimuli and building up understanding by interpreting your environment).

This is highlighted even further in HtN once we shift into Gideon in Harrow's body, not in second person like the rest of the book, but in first person. When I read it for the first time it felt like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the movie shifts into color. All of a sudden the narration was so much more vibrant and immediate. Gideon's sense of humor coming back to the forefront was certainly a significant part of that, but it's also in the granularity and viscerality of the narration. Gideon describes parts to figure out the whole. Harrow describes the whole to figure out parts. Not only is this an incredible stroke of characterization on Tamsyn Muir's part - dedicating each entire book to entirely different style of narration - but it's also an incredible way of easing the reader into a complex world. We get the character who is present and detail oriented, but not concerned with higher level concepts, to introduce us to the world, establish vibes, and get us hyped and asking questions. Then we get the character who cannot stop overthinking to help us learn more about how the world works and get us started on the real mystery.

This blog is run by an adult; minors are welcome but I will not engage beyond my askbox, please respect that boundary (and for the love of StarClan DO NOT tell me how old you are, what grade you're in, or anything like that. In fact do not tell ANYONE online that information!!! Be safe on the internet you guys!!!!)

I type the way I speak, which often includes cursing and CAPSLOCK TEXT for emotional emphasis. I also use tone tags. If that bothers you, this is not the blog for you.

This blog was directly inspired by @spark-rates-warrior-names

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