Tindome-Art. I paint, sew, create in general. I like cats and other things too. LotR, The Locked Tomb, Doctor Who, FFVII, W40K, Pusheen, costuming, l(a)rping, martial arts etc etc. They/them pronouns.
On representation of the non-normative and minority in popular media
You're invited to a three-course dinner. A person, maybe even the organiser, excitedly tells you that your favourite dish is going to be served! You can't believe your ears, but you go all in with the preparations, as it is a fine dinner and all the stops have been pulled out.
Your favourite dish isn't the main course however, you discover at once. No biggie. And sure, it's potato and lentil soup, a dish which you've eaten a few too many times, or might even just not be able to eat at all.
"Everyone likes it," the organiser and others say, "and we have to cater to the majority."
Fine, fine. They have a point. And there are side-dishes, too.
But your favourite dish isn't a starter. It's not an apetizer, nor is it a dessert or a cheese platter afterwards. It's a small bowl, at the other end of the table, and you can hardly see it. If you manage to get there, or get it to you, you discover it's actually made from wax. Perfect in every detail, maybe, or perhaps it's sloppily made. But it's there.
Everyone waits for you to exclaim delightedly, to thank them for their thoughtfulness, to be overjoyed and express your gratitude.
And if you don't, or point out the misleading information from the start, or criticise something⌠woe be unto you. You will probably be considered as having ruined the entire dinner. For everyone. Even those who just sat quiet and noticed the weird discrepancy, but didn't, doesn't ever, say anything.
Well, perhaps someone said some food kind of adjacent to your favourite dish was going to be served. Or a drink that goes well with it, but not the dish itself.
In the end, though, the sum is the same: You didn't get to eat, or even taste, perhaps hardly even see, the favourite dish. Even though this time you'd been specifically promised. And everyone really hates it if you complain.
That's a sort of similarity to what it feels like, hearing someone say "there's going to be POC/LGBTQAI+/non-monogamous/any-minority-at-all representation in this film/theatre/art/book/tv-series/any-media-at-all!" and then finding out the reality of it.
Because, well, that's how it generally ends. If you're lucky, you can have a glass of water. That goes together even with wax.
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go to discord support ( https://support.discord.com )
sign in or sign up (you do not, and imo should not, use the name and email you use for discord proper. this is a different account; if you've got Firefox, you can use an email relay mask very easily, and the email will end up in your inbox but the site won't know your email from it)
"Submit a request" (at the top)
fill all the dropdowns (I did "Help & Support" -> "Technical Support" -> "Account Settings" -> "[OS type"). it won't let you proceed until you do
Subject line: something about age verification
description box: keep it civil, but be clear. you don't like this, you're not participating, and you're not giving them your money anymore (whether you had nitro or not is irrelevant, remember that you didn't use your actual discord login to get here and they have no way to verify).
some reasons possibly worth mentioning: the insecurity of databases (Discord's had multiple leaks; databases being hacked isn't possible to prevent afaik, it's a matter of mitigation), the dangers of putting one's govt id on such a database, the technical problems people are already experiencing where it's already been established, how it will disrupt communities
be very clear that this is going to cost them money. "I won't use your service anymore" is a common threat ("I'm never shopping here again!") - you need to make them feel that they are losing money just by considering it, and it will get much worse if it's implemented.
"Apparently, you used to write poetry," the character description said. Wrackhark had even shown you a book full of the stuff written by Casimir-then, in the hopes that it might trigger Casimir-now's memory. The latter thought it was a bit too heavy on the "sad poetry" side.
And so I set out to fill a thin A6 Midori notebook with sad and not especially good poetry, since I doubt they had much variety to read, learn from and be inspired by, for example from outside the Ninth House.
More under the cut! Such as the why of "...it's not very good, is it?"
I have deliberately not made the best word choices, I have fudged a few syllables here and there, I took the structure of a James Elroy Flecker poem and wrote a Ninth poem instead, i stole and rewrote another fairly famous poem, I learned about every kind of metre of poetry that has anything to do with the number nine, and I wrote a lot of random ideas amd drafts. They're written in the multishading grey-ish ink (Colorverse "aUMA"), and I have not photographed all those pages. The finished poems are written with Wearingeul's "Black Dream". There is one other, a private one just for Wrackhark.
I think the only one I might admit is somewhat good is the haiku. And I'm so proud of ruining a promising poem by adding just one word (I did write it while I was trying to fight anxiety, without any drafting or thinking much about it at all)!
I have made two literature science/educated people cringe and facepalm with the poems already. I am ready for them to be released into the world and cause more such harm :3
Despite all my efforts, though... when people read them in-game (they asked to) they said they liked them X_X (I was a little dismayed, Casimir-now felt a bit worried.)
Incidentally I wrote the signatures differently between "the two Casimirs". Wish I'd had time to make a finished poem to write in the book, by Casimir-now. But this'll have to do.
I dyed some brown leather and glued it to the bindings, glued that skull on, and did the IX with a white fabric marker pen.
I technically didn't have to create an entirely new outfit for a Ninth House cavalier for 2D2F, but it's way too much fun... And so I thought, "I'll show off the details, and maybe that'll help inspire someone else!"
I tied bone beads on a black silk ribbon to the core-less foam dagger, bought a skull rosary and scratched IX into the largest, sewed a slightly wonky pendant of half a skeleton to the leg bag, and put those two daggered skull pins there, too. And hot glued a strap into another skull with a clasp ring. ...the IX button and skull on it are left from when I used it for Deidamia, because I like the look ^_^
More on the costume below the cut!
The robe, which is fantastically flowy and also works extremely well to fight in, is an abaya which I deconstructed. I did round and cut the bottom hem a little, so it wouldn't drag on the floor. Off with the zipper, ripped up all seams and belt holes! Remake, reuse, repurpose; it's the goth way since the 80's!
The holes are covered with jawless skulls cut from a lace ribbon, that also hold the sleeves slightly together. But having them slightly open/apart like the photo shows looked much better than putting the front and back together. Also the sleeves of my silk Ninth robe fits through them because layers, and I can never stop adding juuust one thing more on costumes (Gideon's in this case). I hope Saturday on NärCon Summer 2026 won't be too hot >.>
I'm planning to add more skulls to the former abaya... I like how it turned out, and might use it in everyday life. I know, after all, I will never play Casimir again (which is sad but all stories must end).
The hood is one my mother made and I wore during winters in my late teens. Fine black wool, lined with the same fabric for warmth and structure. I took off the "tail", rounded it off in the back, opened the front and made the veil (sewed onto the lining inside) from some random fabric. The hood is fastened to the robe/cloak with three snap buttons, and those two large metal skull pins. They're heavy enough to keep the robe from slipping back when I wear the hood down, an unexpected bonus! The white dots are some sort of dental prosthetics I drilled holes through and sewed on. Finally I had a use for another of those "this might work for something sometime" things! Also two lace skulls. Should've added more but I plain forgot!
Eighteen bone beads separated by a bone skull made a good clasp/cloak fastened thing when hung on the pins, too.
Oh, and there's the book! Don't worry. That will get its own post, because it contains poetry~.
So much handsewing, because I wanted a particular look or detail... Fun, absolutely, but why do I always?
Itâs not a Discworld joke unless you read it, donât parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like âItâs a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlovaâ and you scream Terryâs name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is heâll hear it.
#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)
Twurpâs Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.
In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burkeâs Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took âtwerpâ, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u.Â
The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.
Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "Ăźber/ hinĂźber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".
Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be Ăźber den Wald
Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Ăberwald
My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.
In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.
The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.
Malleus = "hammer"
Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench"
Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails"
Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"
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Once, there was a cavalier who
Once, there was a cavalier who served
Once a cavalier
The brilliant Hannah of Pretty Good Larps did it again, and, dare I say, even better? "2 Dead 2 Furious", a Locked Tomb larp taking"Harrow the Ninth" as a starting/inspiration point, was exactly the brutal amount of mindfuckery and tragedy and drama and wtf-ery I was suspecting, except more. Consider this, then, TLT fanart, and an expression of absolute love in getting to step into that world.
Is this really how it happens?
And one recovered memory (This is really how it happened.) that changed everything brutally for Casimir-now, concerning Casimir-then.
I was hyped to the max about playing the Ninth cav again, with my Ninth adept also being the same player as for "1 Dance 1 End", and DAMN we blew it out of the park. Such different characters and different dynamic, and oh Jod the tragedy...
Going to try and keep things spoiler-free because you might be able to play it yourself, and it is SO WORTH IT (it's free to download from the website if you want to run it, and every single character is amazingly written). Also lyctors are scary as all hell to meet. Especially, ahem, if they're named Cytherea.
Love the face paint I managed. Sketched for weeks to find one I wanted to use. Wore that hood and veil almost all the time, except when interacting with Wrackhark, and once others had gained some acquaintance. Yes, even when duelling. Which I did a surprising number of times, and Cas was delighted about every time (yay real experience!), even with the "What? Oh, yes, mercy I guess." from certain necromancers when you're cut down and bleeding out.
More costume details to come because I had a blast making stuff!
I remember on the first read through of GTN, wondering why everyone treated the Ninth as an immediately strange party (Magnus excepted, maybe) and then I make videos like this and realize how horrifying these bone cultists look walking through tunnels. Spooky.
Nuallach Endsong again, the street samurai of unfortunately well-named tr4um4_t34m, after another night at Dante's Inferno.
Really fond of the outfit upgrades I managed! Bought a few second-hand bags with those nice dark reflective polygon things on them and cut apart to make the sort-of-webbing/armour, and glue onto the leg armour. Holster, leg bag, belt, modified trousers, halfgloves and body... The hair is almost too floofy, but, nyeh, let's say I'm capturing that 2nd Ed Shadowrun aesthetic.
So when people act like John is conniving and malicious and Harrow clearly hates him...
She has so much repressed anger toward this whole system and the position it put her in, toward her House, not for its people whom she loves but for its existence and what it's demanded of her, and of course some of that resentment falls on him as well. She's never had as much devotion to "God" as she believed she "should". And as a person, she often finds him irritating and has little patience for his flippancy, and that's still true. But we've also seen a very clear throughline where she starts out with so much anger and fear, yet upon learning said full storyâthe story he'd feared anyone's reaction toâshe loses all sense of respect and worship, and in doing so grows to sympathize and care more about him as a person. She no longer believes in him as God and has a very strong suspicion about the true nature of the divine, but she makes a point of leaving the door open to be proven wrong and letting him know she's doing so. She used to be afraid of him, and she isn't anymore.
He is no longer her God, but he's still Teacher. Once she believed he could not understand her at all, and in many ways he doesn't, but now she sees how deeply he's broken, too. She may even still see him as a father figure and friend. She remembers what Alecto said, and presses him to: What else? What else? Remember, she said "I still love you" too.
And John's been internally shaking like a leaf with guilt for 10,000 years straight, I have no idea how people doubt that part. Of course he's often doing so much to mask and make himself more Approachable, but at his most vulnerable, this is still what we see. Like. Speaking of stupid analogies, but John is a pie. The top crust is a kind, sensitive, silly, and surprisingly pathetic person who you take one look at and go 'how the hell did this guy ever become God?' And then you dig even slightly deeper and there's SO much rage and fear and paranoia and guilt and grief and more rage and more fear and aversion to change and OCD from hell, pushing him to never question if he was actually in the wrong because if everything he's done wasn't for the greater good then he couldn't bear to live with himself and he isn't allowed to die, because he needs to Fix This no matter how much worse he makes it trying to get there; all the heinous acts and violence through negligence in the process, just a whole horrible gross sticky mess that clings to everything and makes nearly everything he touches worse. And then you get through all of that to the very bottom and it's the same as the top but now it's extra soggy. He's not only like that, and in the grand scheme there's so much more filling than crust, but he still really is like that.
And when Harrow leaves, he isn't upset. He doesn't try to stop her. He looks at her with wonder, and offers a lament in half-hearted warning. He worships Alecto in his own right, but her power is his power and he knows he's a fraud. He doesn't believe in a true God and never has. But, just like Harrow, he's open to being proven wrong. On some level, it sounds like he hopes she will.
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Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!
And if you can, donate to research about Alzheimer's disease, that horrid thief of not just memories, but people, leaving only shells behind.
For more on the importance of towels, read below the cut.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you â daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)[4]
ââDouglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Never thought I'd have the opportunity to say this again: Reducing women and girls to their vaginas and then forcing them to show those vaginas to strangers is not a feminist ideal.
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 :))
I'm not obsessed, I can stop whenever I want, what do you mean "too many skulls", there's no such thing!
I bought a few things for upgrading my Gideon cosplay, and to make Casimir's costume.... I wasn't the one who cast me as a Ninth cavalier for one more larp, you can't blame me for needing all these skulls and bones and stuff!
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I am so serious when I say you are not a trans ally if you watch the new Harry Potter thing. I will educate and perhaps even shame my own grandparents over this when they inevitably tell me they are watching it. And they have plausible deniability. If you are a young person or even mildly tuned into pop culture you have no excuse. If you watch it you are directly contributing to the disenfranchisement and abuse of trans people. You are putting money in JKRâs pocket. There is no excuse.
I'm playing a Ninth House cavalier again! ("Typecast much?" smirked a partner.) For "2 Dead 2 Furious", by Pretty Good Larps, taking "Harrow the Ninth" as inspiration. I'm expecting some amazing mindfuckery!
This is the title page in a book I'm filling up with words as a prop. Details on ink etc below the cut.
Ink: Wearingeul "Black Dream", black ink with red shimmer particles. Also a tiny bit of Diamine "Best Wishes" because I picked up the wrong fountain pen.)
Paper: Midori A6 thin notebook
Casimir Non must have been bad at their duties, seeing how both them and their adept Wrackhark Nonekalos were so badly hurt at the first attempt at Midnight Ball and finding their Ordained Thanergetic Partners. Not that Casimir 2.0? remembers anything, slightly to their shame. Such is the way with headwounds, heart failure and so on, or whatever caused it.
Casimir 1.0? seems to have written a lot of sad poetry. Wrackhark gave Cas 2.0? their latest book of it, to see if that could make them recall themself. So far no luck... but it has given me a wonderful excuse to write a lot of doleful, middling-bad poetry that has already made a Literary Science M.A. cringe when I let him read. Mwahahah.
