Transcript of Episode 1: Chapters 1&2: “A Disgrace in a Vacuum”

We know you love to read, you little Sixth House fiend!

 

~Content warning for all our episodes: This podcast contains bones, blood, smut, and swear words~

 

Episode 1: Chapters 1&2: “A Disgrace in a Vacuum”

 

Content warning, this podcast contains bones, blood, smut, and swear words.

 

Act I. Welcome, Penitents.

 

Hannah: Hello and welcome to the Frontline Fifth, a Locked Tomb podcast where brand spanking new novitiates explore the Locked Tomb series for the first time, while a couple of dried-out bone witches cackle over how little they really know. We're currently reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

This week, we're dishing all about chapters one and two. And in the interest of following that age-old maxim, don't count your escape shuttles until they arrive, we're going to make sure we do this the right way. So please allow me to introduce our incredible cast.

I'm Hannah, Bone Witch Extraordinaire, and I'm joined today by long-time penitent of the Locked Tomb, Marie. Welcome, Marie. Marie, what's your Ninth nun name?

 

Marie: Uh, Marianna Novanegesimus.

 

*long pause*

 

Hannah: Solid. This was a very hard question that I threw at you with no prior information. So, proud of you.

Also joining us, of course, the merest infants, the sweet fools, as yet untouched by the creaking rod of Drearburgh, it's Brooke and John.

Brooke, John, do you have Ninth names that you want to share?

 

Brooke: I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it.

 

Marie: Fair.

 

Hannah: Good enough, good enough.

 

John: Same. There's some terrible bone puns, like Rigormorticus or something. I don't know.

 

*general cackling*

 

Marie: I like it.

 

John: Again, I have no context for the question besides reading through the names at the beginning.

 

Marie: Maybe you were a Ninth penitent, but you were not of the Ninth. And so you don't have a Ninth name.

 

Hannah: He’s done a pilgrimage.

 

John: Again, that means absolutely nothing to me.

 

Hannah: Okay, okay, okay. All right. Before we get into the nitty gritty, and girls, it does indeed get gritty, I want to know your first thoughts.

So, if you were to sum up these two chapters in a couple of words or a half choked off scream, just vibes.

So, each of you, ready? Brooke, go.

 

Brooke: I am so worried for Gideon right now.

 

Hannah: Perfect. John, what do you got?

 

John: Perplexing. And that's probably the biggest feeling I have right now. And yeah, we're just gonna go with perplexing for now.

 

Hannah: A+. Marie, do you have one?

 

Marie: The first time that I read these first two chapters, I was like, oh, I am in.

 

Hannah: All right. Well, I think we all made some really important and cogent points here. So, I'm just going to add the phrase “frontline titties of the fifth,” and we can dive straight into Episode 1: “A Disgrace in a Vacuum.”

 

Act II. Absolutely Boned in All Directions.

 

Hannah: All right. Let's get into it. What happens in Chapter One? We open Chapter One on Gideon's escape attempt from the House of the Ninth, right? She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and peaces out to the shuttle field, where the shuttle's coming to take her away.

At this point, what are you thinking?

 

John: I have so many unanswered questions already. And I think one of the strongest aspects of just the first two chapters is there's no apologies for throwing you into the world immediately. And there's no soft world building, right?

It’s not like, oh, we're gonna…no, it’s like we're just gonna smack you in the face with so much world building immediately. They're like, ‘and we’re just gonna expect you to be confused for a little bit or not know about these things.’ And it's gonna pay off immediately.

And I mean, we can talk about, maybe a little bit farther along, where she's just cleaning up the landing field. It's like, why is she doing that? Oh, immediate payoff, right?

And so, yeah, that's the spoiler alert. But yeah, it's...

 

Brooke: John, I had a similar reaction, which is I did not enjoy reading the first chapter. I had to read it so many times over because I felt it was contradictory at times. You know, how could something be super dark, but then clearly you can see a lot of stuff. I kept getting all these contradictions, this whole cleaning up of the field. I was so confused. It was like, why are we doing this?

It felt like we were just describing actions without ever ascribing a purpose for it. You get to the second chapter and you start to figure it out. But at the time, I was just going through this going, “I'm annoyed.”

Like the first four paragraphs.

 

*literal teeheehees*

 

Hannah: I have to admit, this is one of my favorite things about Tamsyn Muir. And it's probably one of my favorite styles in books is to drop you in with no information, where you have to figure out what the world is like. And I kind of, I like that because that's what would happen if you were just straight up dropped into a new culture.

You're just learning from context clues. And you're so… your understanding is so colored by your own knowledge of what you expect to be going on, which means that you're constantly surprised when you get new information that contradicts your own biases.

I wasn't sure about this book until probably chapter three, four. And then I was like, “Nope, all in. In forever, completely obsessed, will do a podcast.”

I really didn't like the style. The way Gideon talks and thinks is, seems almost so…

 

Marie: Anachronistic.

 

Hannah: Yes! It seemed too modern. It seemed like I was getting uncanny valley because it just felt like it was someone I knew.

 

Brooke: To some extent…So, that was what I had been warned about going into this, is that the language was so modern that it was throwing people off.

But honestly, the very first time I picked up on this anachronistic sort of concept was even when they talked about fancy hotels. In the very second paragraph, she talks about leaving her security cuff, in its stolen key on her pillow, like a chocolate in a fancy hotel. And immediately I was just like, “Wait.”

 

Marie: How does she know what a fancy hotel is?

 

Brooke: Chocolates on a fancy hotel are very much a contemporary concept.

So I think that was the first time that you hit that wall of being like, ‘oh, this is not exactly going to be a world built in a traditional sort of sci-fi or fantasy concept.’ This is definitely meshing things together.

So that when we got to the language, I was less thrown off. I'd already been thrown off four times beforehand. So that was totally fine.

 

Marie: The first sentence tells you what you're into because she gets… the things that she's packing is her sword and also her dirty magazines. And you're like, “what are we doing here?”

 

Hannah: And these are equivalent. This is the world we're living in is big swords and dirty magazines, which also, just a brief aside, cause I was thinking about this earlier. I mean, Gideon's gone to all of this trouble, we learn, to try and get a shuttle to come and take her away. It's a whole back channel thing. Where is she getting these dirty magazines in the first place? In my head, she's been doing back channeling. So, they're coming in with food and shit on shuttles this entire time. She's like, ‘I can't sneak a person out, but I can sneak titties in.’

 

Marie: But also it has to be… you have to be fine with missing some of what's going on because even Harrow later on mentions Gideon's magazines. You know? So they know that she's ordering her… cause she says, “some of your magazines are very nasty,” right? So it's like Harrow knows about the magazines coming in.

 

Hannah: Oh, a hundred percent. And also Gideon's not keeping it a secret, right? Because Crux comes in, Marshall Crux, who's this just hulking hideous man of gristle and bone, tries to get Gideon to come downstairs and she tells him to fuck off and then tries to bribe him with Frontline Titties of the Fifth.

 

Brooke: I mean, is it actually… it's not necessarily clear to me yet that they're illegal or banned or something. Like it could be an open secret, but it also could just be something that some people have proclivities for and people are okay with that.

 

Marie: But it also becomes really clear that the Ninth house is essentially a monastery.

 

Brooke: So, yeah, they start in the opposite direction and then start to build that construct.

 

John: I was, I was suspicious because I think the Ninth house is the only one at the beginning that has nuns mentioned, right? Like one of the members is a nun.

I was like, “Oh.”

And then as someone who's familiar with the Catholic church, I am not shocked at all that nuns would be looking at titty magazines at some point.

 

*we have a collective laughing aneurysm*

 

John: So, it's actually less surprising, honestly.

But no, what I was going to say reading the first chapter and the second chapter is, it was like a hyperbolic time chamber of white guy introspection, basically. I read through…I reread it twice. The first time, and this might've just been colored by the cover art…Cause I looked up the book when you guys introduced it to me and I saw there were so many positive reviews from so many famous people. I've read a bunch of V.E. Schwab's books. Like I've read ‘Darker Shades of Magic’ and some other things. And, you know, nothing but really great things to say.

And then the quote on the cover just seems so reductionist. And there are so many nice things to say about the book. And it was just like, no, we're just going to describe it in a sentence as opposed to, you know, these hundred influential people all say that this is an incredible book and you should read it.

And then you go through and it's just like, “oh, this is…” similar to what you guys were saying, the writing is superb, but also edgy. And I think there's just a part of me as a white guy who grew up on the early internet where edginess is just so cringy to me that no matter what you can do… like this is exceptionally well-written edginess and it's not even true edginess. And it made me hate it at a core level, like in my bones, haha.

I read it the first time I was like, “oh, I'm going to hate this book.” And then I reread it, and I was like, “oh, this is actually really interesting.” This is a really interesting melding together of styles and flavors and everything else.

And because I was expecting it to be sci-fi, I was expecting it to be this way. And because it was necromancy, I was expecting it to be this way. And because she had a sword, I was expecting it to be this way. And I hated that everything didn't fit into the little box, all wrapped in a giant cringy bundle of just like, “haha old as balls” and “titties” and that type of thing.

I was like, “I'm going to hate this book.” And then when I reread it, I was like, “this is actually really well done.” This is like a smoothie, not like a shit sandwich.

 

*laughter*

 

John: Anyway, that was my journey of reading the first two chapters, two or three times. It was like, it slowly got better and now I'm more excited.

 

Marie: Yeah, this is absolutely fascinating. And considering, I don't know if this is a warning I should give or not. I feel like Tamsyn Muir is a meme lord.

 

John: I'm so excited.

 

Marie: Okay, good, good.

 

John: Because when I reread it and I have avoided spoilers like the plague, I knew absolutely nothing about this book prior to it, minus the fact that, again, you guys liked it and my wife had read it, among other things. But I was like, “oh, why did they put that quote on the cover?”

So, I started looking for what other people said about it. I came up with all these other quotes. And the one other thing that stuck out was everyone just mentioned this was just… there's going to be a lot of internet jokes and memes in here that are just sprinkled throughout. And I was like, “Oh, this is going to be great! I'm going to get all of these because I was a white guy on the internet. This is going to be great!” So, I'm, again, very excited.

 

Marie: I am very excited for your experience with this too. I want to know both of your *stops to giggle* initial reactions to learning why we titled this podcast Frontline Fifth.

 

Brooke: Uhhh. I initially didn't actually know the name of the book. And so when Hannah sent out some material for Frontline Fifth, I assumed maybe that might be the name of the book. And I Googled it to go and find the book to download it. And I didn't get the book.

I did not expect so much titty content.

 

John: Honest to God, I didn't Google it at all. And now I am. And this is...

 

Brooke: I was so confused. How did you guys choose it?

 

Hannah: We went through a lot of things.

 

Marie: It's something funny that isn't a spoiler because you get to it in the first chapter.

 

Brooke: God, I imagine that the Fifth is actually going to be hilarious to learn about as people who would be showing their titties. That was sort of the idea I got looking back at it. The Heart of the emperor, the Fifth, it says, “for tradition and debts to the dead.” So that's what I have to go off of. And I was just like, oh, these are maybe not the people you'd expect to be flashing their boobies. That would be like the Seventh House maybe.

 

Hannah: You know, Marie and I are not going to tell you, even though it's everything that I want right now is to spoil it so badly. All right, let's keep going with the chapter.

So, we've talked about how weird the style is, but all of the characters who are coming up really give me at least kind of like medievally deep fantasy vibes, right?

There's Marshal Crux, there's Captain Aiglamene, who is sort of a mentor to Gideon, and clearly is a captain, is some sort of military person. And one of the first things we actually learn about Gideon is that she is trying to run away to join the Cohort. I mean, we don't know anything about the Cohort from this, but I feel like the implication is that she is off to join the military in some meaningful way, right?

 

Brooke: Mm-hmm, yep.

 

Hannah: When she's talking to Crux and when she's talking to Aiglamene, both times the Lady comes up, the Lady of Drearburgh. And I want to know what you were… and Gideon gets like real sassy about it, you know, “your Lady can go straight to hell.” So, , what are you picturing from the Lady of Drearburgh at this point?

 

Brooke: Well, so we have one other clue about the Lady which is coming from the people, which is we know that there's the Lady of Drearburgh and then we are introduced to her mother, her father. That's exactly as it's written is with the pronouns. And so you're kind of left to assume that those are the Lady's mother and father.

So, I'm not thinking of like some old Dowager figure. ANd they end up talking about her as well, even in the later bit of the book is, or in Chapter One even, that she is of age with her, right? And so throughout this chapter, you're building an image quite quickly of somebody who is young and of her age and something of a rival.

 

Hannah: See, and that's just because you're way too smart. I literally, I was reading this, I'm imagining just some old stony witch, you know, who controls everything and puppets all of these people.

 

John: I've played way too much World of Warcraft. So I had a literal… when they were like, oh, Lady Drearburgh, I was like, “oh, okay, I have the exact picture.” I could pull it up for you, but, I had a literal character in mind from World of Warcraft that was like, “oh, this is probably what this person looks like.”

And now I'm trying to figure out if this book was released first, when this World of Warcraft expansion was released, that has some of these definitely necromancer vibes that have similar names. So it's interesting.

 

Hannah: So as Brooke points out, right, we learned that Harrow's kind of of age with Gideon. And part of the way we learn that is that you get this sort of extended flashback about Gideon's past, which is, to quote the book, “obviously mysterious as hell.”

 

Brooke: My summary chapter is, there's a lot of missing information in this chapter. Mystery!

 

Hannah: What we know is that Gideon's mother fell down the pit into the Ninth House from the surface of the planet in a haz suit. And by the time she gets there, she's already dead. But in a little bio container attached to her is a baby. That baby is gonna grow up to be Gideon Nav.

The nuns of the Ninth try to call back her spirit, but they only get one word out for Gideon, Gideon, Gideon. And that's where Gideon's ultimate name comes from, right?

 

Brooke: Which we should point out is… I think they want you to come to the conclusion very quickly that she was saying her baby's name, but probably not!

 

Hannah: Right?!

 

Brooke: This is not my first book.

 

Hannah: Our Gideon is brought up as a bond servant in the House of the Ninth. When she's born, there are 201 babies in the house. Two years later, there's only three children left: a much older boy, the Reverend Daughter of Drearburgh, and Gideon.

 

Brooke: Yeah, what happened there?

 

Marie: Uh-huh, what did happen there?

 

Brooke: That's also in my notes. So basically what we've learned is, people don't seem to really raise children here, except that there were 200 at some point, and suddenly there are three.

And then they also mentioned that by the time she's 10, she knows too much. And then I'm also remembering that they're the House of the Sewn Tongue. And this is all a little bit… I was talking about being scared for Gideon, that's these things kind of starting to come together.

 

Hannah: And there's something deeply terrifying about the idea of all of those children just disappearing or dying or whatever. And to me, it's giving very, I don't know, it just feels like the whole house is in decay. Certainly Gideon feels like the whole house is in decay, that basically everybody is just—

 

Brooke: Crux is kind of described as gristly, which is, wow, what a way to describe a person.

 

Marie: Yeah, Crux loves verbs.

 

Hannah: Even Aiglamene has this weirdly attached leg, and it just feels like everything's sort of falling apart.

Finally, with just two minutes before her shuttle lands to take her away to the Cohort, the Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, comes to call Gideon down into the house because there's a house muster.

So Harrow is dark and creepy and skeletal, and I have an unbelievable crush on her, or I want to be her. What did you think when you met Harrow?

 

Brooke: She's definitely described more as somebody who's a little unstable in this chapter, so was not getting crush vibes on her. She definitely seems… I don't know, they definitely haven't crafted her into a fully evil person yet, but definitely cunning, which is cool, which is cool. And we're seeing this all from Gideon's perspective, so there's a lot of room for interpretation on who Harrowhark becomes.

You know, I stopped taking so many comments in this chapter, in Chapter Two, which I think is a way to tell that the writing style sunk in. I've adapted entirely. I'm not highlighting words because they're standing out to me as being unexpected and strange. There's not a single highlight in this chapter. It's just random comments. So I think I'm adapted. I think I'm not one of those people that bails out because she can't get past the writing style.

 

Marie: What do you think of Harrow, John?

 

John: I like the meticulous planning side of things. It makes her not feel psychotic. She's more calculating than that. She's still sane in a lot of ways, which I think adds some depth to her character initially. But yeah, the dark creepiness, pulling off the rib cage and the other things.

Again, I'm going to say this a bunch, but it's very well written. It's very good world building. I was not expecting that. I was like, “oh yeah, she took off her coat” and then pulled off a rib cage, right?

 

Hannah: I love the degree that she's adorned with human bones, that she's got bone studs in her ears and stuff.

 

Marie: A necklace of human teeth. That's the one I don't. Ughh.

 

Brooke: Yeah, you know what? When we first get introduced to her and she's got all these bones, you don't know why. We didn't know why.

She's just like, yeah. To your point, John, she just opens it up and is wearing a skeleton. You're like, oh, that's a choice. And I don't understand why you would choose that.

 

Marie: And then you understand.

 

Hannah: So we find out almost immediately that it has functional implications for her. But as I was reading this for the first time, for me, I just assumed it was aesthetic.

 

I just assumed that they had collectively decided to lean into it. And it wasn't a Harrowhark choice. It's just that the Ninth is a place that celebrates darkness, celebrates bones. That's what art is, is rib cage.

But of course, that's not really what's happening because Harrow's there and Harrow kind of threatens and cajoles and ultimately tries to bribe Gideon into going downstairs with a purchase of her commission in the Cohort, which is something that Gideon desperately wants. But ultimately, the only way she can get Gideon to engage with her is a fight, right?

So, she challenges Gideon to a fight. And either way, Gideon's gonna get to leave with the commission. But Gideon thinks it's a fair fight.

And also Gideon, I mean, talk about instances where something's happening and you don't really know why. Like when Gideon's patting her down all the way and you're like, what the fuck are you doing?

Would one of you like to explain what happens in the fight?

 

John: Basically bone storm? Seven people will get that that'll probably ever listen to this podcast.

Yeah, and also, again, it's just incredible world building because now it makes sense why she walked around trying to make sure that there were no bones.

 

Brooke: Pressing her hands against the wall real hard, kicking all the clumps of dirt. And I was just like, what are we doing? It feels like there's a purpose, but you're not actually giving me any reason to think that other than the adjectives and adverbs and the way you're doing things in this chapter, it was driving me nuts. I was like, all this feels like for a purpose, but you've given me nothing. And it didn't even feel like it was set up in a way that was going to be explained. It just felt like ambling around.

 

John: Yeah, it's such a quick payoff. And also, it's so good because it means that, you know, Gideon was planning, but it was a shit plan. And then, or sorry, maybe it wasn't a shit plan.

 

Brooke: I agree, I said she was a lazy planner.

 

John: She prepared for something, but didn't prepare all the way. And then

the better planning from Harrow just shows up and just buries her in a giant mountain of bones basically, right?

And also it's very interesting to me because I would think skeletons aren't that… like, they're just skeletons, right? A sword should be able to just go through the skeletons, but then also, how do you kill skeletons with a sword? You can't stab them, they don't bleed.

 

Marie: Yeah, you literally have to bash them apart. And if you are getting, I think, is this, this is where she uses the phrase “gangbanged to death by skeletons.”

 

John: But that just seems like poor planning getting your sword to fight skeletons. If you're worried about it, why you, why not bring a mace? I don't know. This is just me, but, that's just poor planning.

 

Marie: Fair point.

 

John: Swords don't work on skeletons.

 

Hannah: I— so I love this. I love both that skeletons can be reanimated and used in this way, but I also love— they make it clear that Harrow has a particular talent for expanding, for scale. That with a little piece of bone, she can kind of pull it into a whole skeleton.

 

Brooke: What does that mean? Is that something that's going to be revealed to me later down the line? Because I was under the impression, you do need a complete set of bones or at least some subset in order to create something that at least is functional with movement.

 

Hannah: Right. But clearly Harrow doesn't. Some part of the necromancy allows you to kind of use what's in a bone and expand on it, at least for Harrow.

But it costs her, right? She's like—

 

Brooke: Blood.

 

Hannah: She's got blood sweat, right? She's just leaking blood out of her nose and eyes and shit. I don't remember if it was the eyes. In my head it's the eyes. But it costs her, but it's worth it.

And this fucking cracks me up and is horrifying because Harrow could have just— Harrow clearly knew that Gideon was trying to escape, right?

 

Brooke: And she was planning on letting her leave regardless. All of this is clearly a setup where somebody knows that somebody's going to leave; somebody says, “okay, I'm not going to stop you, but I do have basically a trap to set you to do what I want you to do before you leave.”

And then Gideon even is like— this is not her first rodeo with Harrowhark. Obviously she was digging her boot into the dirt to see if anybody could have touched it. Apparently a fail sauce, whoops.

 

Marie: Well, isn't there a line where she was like, ‘oh, it's way too hard. There's no way anybody would have dug into this.’ And then Harrow was like, “yeah, it was really fucking hard to dig into this.”

 

Brooke: Yeah, “it was more exciting than this fight.”

 

Hannah: Harrow's hands are completely destroyed.

I completely love both that Gideon knows Harrow so well, knows to look for this, but that Harrow is even more crazy beyond Gideon's expectations.

And honestly more cruel. Because again, she could have stopped Gideon earlier in the process, but instead what she wanted to do was let Gideon believe she was going to escape and then crush her with the most *elaborate* planning possible. Harrow could have literally just put a padlock on Gideon's cell door and that would have stopped this entire endeavor.

 

Brooke: Yeah, a little unhinged.

 

Hannah: I also love—this is classic Harrow—Gideon asks “Swear by your mother, it's a fair fight.” And Harrow responds, “I swear by my mother, I have nothing on me.” Because she doesn't.

She's just a sassy little bitch. I love her.

 

Marie: Which is even more of Crux because Crux loves Harrow so much. He's like, “yes, it was a fair fight.” And you're like, there's no way that was a fair fight.

 

Hannah: No, not by a fucking mile. Again, how are you going to fight skeletons with a sword and not that many at once? I love it. I live for it.

I think that about does it for Chapters One and Two. But before we all head off to sweet slumber on a bed of writhing cloisterites, I would love to hear any last thoughts and more importantly, wild and rampant speculation. What the fuck is happening?

 

Brooke: Oh my God. I'm going back to this, this sewn tongue thing. She knows too much. They got to go and do something to her because they're clearly letting her go out there. But there's going to be a, there's a catch. And I'm very worried that this catch is painful or otherwise suppressive in ways that are going to be a theme.

 

John: Yes. Yeah. I'm worried that it's going to be like, ‘you can go, but you have to do this for us.’

And I honestly, before I was aware that it was a murder mystery, locked-in scenario, I was like, ‘oh, she's gonna have to go spy on the armies or do something for the House of the Ninth.’ And now I'm just worried that like, ‘oh, this is not going to go well for anybody,’ just from the, from the foreshadowing.

So, I don't have any other reckless speculation beyond that, that this is not going to go well, which seems like the easiest cop-out of all time, given it's a book about necromancers and just… the magic is powered by blood. So, generally when magic is powered by blood, things don't go well for most people. So, yeah.

 

Hannah: Absolutely boned in all directions.

 

John: Some people pay extra for that.

 

 

Interstitial: My Parents Should Have Smothered You.

 

Hannah: Well, dear listeners, your attention and duty to the House of the Ninth has paid off, because it's time for our little game!

This week, we're playing First Impressions of the Ninth. That's right. It's a game where we try and understand the complex and otherworldly personages of the Ninth House in terms that even the internet can understand.

So first off, let's do Harrowhark.

 

Brooke: You know, the first description of Harrowhark, was straight up describing a member of KISS. KISS the band. She's got the face paint. She's got this choppy black hair. She's wearing all black clothes. I mean, obviously the bones go kind of crazy a little bit, but she's got these facial expressions that— she's constantly sneering or something. She's showing a certain level of instability, right? So super KISS.

But then, yeah, you get to that whole blood sweat thing when she's doing her necromancy thing and it gets a little bit chaotic.

 

Hannah: I feel like KISS would sweat blood if they could.

 

Marie: If they could, if they could, they would go for it. I think that because she's tiny— she's always described as tiny and skinny and very dark: very dark hair, very dark eyes. To me, she's a tinier, skinnier, meaner, less funny version of Jenna Ortega's Wednesday.

 

Hannah: I think that's perfect.

 

Brooke: Oh my God, Jenna Ortega in the band KISS.

 

Marie: Yes, but less funny and like really mean.

 

Hannah: And I, so I went with, for the mean reason— and I'm sure that Cara Delevingne is not mean in real life but she looks so scary.

 

Brooke: But those eyebrows!

 

Hannah: It's the eyebrows! So in my head, she plays Harrow. Although also in my head, she also plays Gideon. So I, you know, we'll figure that out later.

 

Marie: Yeah, yeah. Where did you go with this, John?

 

John: So I honestly, just based on the first description, when she shows up and she's just taking off the bones and… the face, I was like, “oh, this is just Lady Gaga.” That was my first association. It was just the outfit that was described was like,
“I'm sure Lady Gaga wore that to an award ceremony at some point.” So that was my, that was my first thought.

 

Hannah: You know what, actually in common between KISS and Lady Gaga and Harrow are people who can commit to a bit. They're like, “we're just going hard for the aesthetic and we are not going to fucking blink.”

Okay, okay. John, what do you think about Crux?

 

John: So I felt like he was big Filch, basically from Harry Potter.

 

Marie: I like that.

 

Brooke: Ewwww

 

John: He's just a giant blobby Filch from Harry Potter, where he's just a little bit icky, a little bit bloated and just hates the kids basically. I don't know, I don't know how to describe it, but he just gave off Filch vibes for me.

 

Brooke: Uh, I didn't have a good one. I, I, I, they, they talk about him almost like he's some sort of a zombie orc and then they describe his skin and I just immediately imagined Deadpool's skin.

 

Hannah: Okay. So I actually… I don't know why all of these come together for me, but this is how I picture Crux: is Mitch McConnell's head, but on Jabba the Hutt's body. And then you age the whole thing in a desert for a thousand years.

 

Marie: Oh.

 

Brooke: Ew!

 

Hannah: Right? I think it works.

Um, okay. Let's do, let's do Aiglamene.

 

Marie: So I definitely start out with Angelica Houston as she is now, because she's …it's mostly because… it's the nose.It's the nose because Aiglamene, the word, it starts out with the root for Eagle. And she just has that aura of just being like, “don't fuck with me,” you know? So, if Angelica Houston was ever in an action movie, that is Aiglamene.

 

Hannah: Yeah. So I totally feel that in terms of… it's Angelica Houston with her hair back. That's the aesthetic for sure.

And for me, the vibe hits more like Viola Davis in The Woman King. I don't know if y'all saw this, but I actually really loved it. But it's just a person who has been through some shit and isn't going to take it anymore. And they're trying to lift up the young women around them, but it's not with the… it's not with the patting on head.

 

Marie: It’s not nice

 

Hannah: Yeah, exactly. It's not cute. It's not adorable. You're not buying them presents. It's pushing them to their absolute limits so that they also will not have to deal with shit.

 

Brooke: That's cool. What do you think her prosthetic leg is made of?

 

Hannah: Uh, I mean, okay. So they talk about a bone adept replacing it, right?

 

Brooke: Yeah. Uh, my question is whether that means she's just raw dogging a femur and a tibia.

 

*chaotic laughter*

 

Hannah: I actually really like that. In my head, it was just—they attach the whole leg, but it's just at an angle. But I really like it better if it's literally just bones.

In my head, it's more like…

 

Marie:  She's lopsided.

 

Hannah: Yeah. I have a friend who broke his collarbone like seven times in two years. And his collarbone literally has an angle now. It comes to a point in the middle.

 

John: He should probably stop doing whatever he did to break his collarbone seven times.

 

Hannah: You try and tell a cyclist that! Okay, John, what do you think about Aiglamene?

 

John: So, I pictured young— again, Harry Potter vibes— young Maggie Smith.

 

Hannah: Intriguing!

 

John: Just kind of no nonsense, no shit. And maybe this is just because she—RIP— she passed away recently, but I've been seeing so many clips of her when she was younger or around the age that this character would have been. And it was still just a little bit sassy, a little bit attitude; no nonsense, no messing around.

And then, obviously her as Professor McGonagall, I kind of pictured that as well, just with some rougher edges.

 

Brooke: McGonagall meets Moody.

 

Marie: Oh, right, because Moody is definitely missing pieces.

 

Hannah: Okay. All right. So, the last person we're going to do is Gideon, obviously. And I found this one to be the hardest.

 

Brooke: They don't give you a description of her. The most we get is about her is her getting dressed in the very first paragraph. And all I got is that she's kind of clean. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. And that doesn't really fit with the rest of the book, which feels quite grungy. And then everybody's wearing thick layers of face paint. I don't know…We have to just trust that she's hot and I definitely get dark hair vibes from her, but I don't have a lot to work with.

 

Marie: Oh, this is terrible. Have we really not gotten a description of her yet? So I can't say anything.

 

Hannah: I feel like we can spoil her hair color because it's on the front of the cover.

 

Brooke: Oh, was it red?

 

Marie: Yeah.

 

John: Oh, I was just gonna say, I know who's getting the first two calls if they cast this as a movie. It's probably Brie Larson and Zendaya because that's just who they would probably cast for this. I feel like those people are going to—they're going to call the Marvel superheroes.

 

Brooke: No, that’s not what I see.

 

John: No, I feel like that's who they would call. I don't feel like that's actually her, though.

 

Brooke: They’re too poppy.

 

John: I was picturing more of someone like the Olympic sprinters almost as her build. Where they're kind of just jacked. Not jacked, cause that's like… but very toned and strong.

 

Brooke: Yeah, I don't see her willowy like Zendaya.

 

Hannah: For me, she's like the OG butch lesbian in the best way. And that sword, that two hander, has got to be a beast. In my head, that’s a… she has the arms for that sword.

 

Marie: To me, she's like a red-headed, not quite as big Gwendolyn Christie.

 

Hannah: And I, I fully feel this. I feel like Gwendolyn Christie could perfectly play her and fits in my head version of her, except that Gwendolyn Christie and Brienne of Tarth just seem like they have so much honor. And I feel like Gideon is the anti-honor to me. She's got Bianca Del Rio sass. Just permanently throwing out insults.

 

Brooke: Who's in Brooklyn Nine-Nine?

 

John: Rosa. Yeah, that would work.

 

Hannah: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, all right. Finally, our last thing, more broadly, what are your impressions, your internet impressions of the Ninth House aesthetic?

 

John: It feels like steampunk necromancy almost. Where it's just, there's oil everywhere and stuff is stuck to the walls. And it's just dripping, right?

 

Marie: John, I love it.

 

Brooke: I am so also attached to the greasy dark, the oily rock. I came to the conclusion that this is somewhere that Gollum would be living.

 

Hannah: *literal tee-hee* 100%.

 

Brooke: From the environmental surroundings. And then there's all these people with their precious lady. I wouldn't want to live here.

 

Marie: No, no, not at all.

Steampunk necromancy is it 100%. Because in my mind, it's like you took that bone church, the, the whatever, uh, ossacre or ossuary, that's what the word is. Ossuary in the Czech Republic, that's just that cathedral made of bones. You took that, but you put it inside a crumbling industrial warehouse that is freezing and not lighted and hasn't been doing any upkeep for like 200 years.

 

Brooke: I don't get super warehouse vibes. I get like, this is a dirt pit, a rock dirt pit. And then there's just rusty shit in it.But I actually didn't get the steampunk vibe. I didn't get the idea that we were living in a… this, I, well, obviously we are. They're pumping an atmosphere, right? Like to some extent.

 

Marie: I think it's like, you're stuck because you're living in a pit, but you have machinery and the stairways are not rock stairways. It's metal. In my mind, they're those metal industrial stairways and balconies and stuff.

 

Hannah: That's why for me, it's got this dark academia vibe. Like somebody at some point early on created this beautiful aesthetic of the bones and the blackness and the robes and then they forgot about it. There was like a huge flood, everything rotted to shit, and everybody left.

So, it's just the dregs of something that had meaning and beauty and aesthetic. And now it is just kind of crumbling and the rats are everywhere.

Although I'm sure they don't have rats. There's no way they have meat to eat.

 

John: I was gonna say the Capuchin crypts in Rome. We saw those on our honeymoon at Hannah's recommendation. And that's basically what I pictured with some oily dripping craziness. Basically a mineshaft and the Capuchin crypts put together with the machinery.

Yeah, if you haven't seen it, it's really cool.

 

Brooke: No, I'm Googling it. Wow.

 

Hannah: So, I thought it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And actually, this will mean literally nothing to you until we get to Harrow, but that's how I picture the Mithraeum is as the Capuchin crypts. So, we'll have to come back to it.

All right. Well, that's about it for this week's little game. In future episodes, our Ninth House newbies are gonna bless us with some rampant speculation about the state of the affairs in the world of the Locked Tomb, but this week, we're gonna cut them some slack because they literally just got beat to shit by a dozen skeletons. And that was after checking out their entire recording room.

So, instead, we're headed straight into the spoiler section. Marie, after you.

 

Marie: Thanks.

 

Spoiler warning. This portion of the podcast is 98% spoilers and like 2% snickering.

 

Serious spoiler warning. Seriously, we will spoil anything and everything in the series up through Nona the Ninth. That's not what you want, turn back now. 

 

**everything in the spoiler section is in white font-- to see it, you simply need to highlight**

 

 

Act III: Obviously Mysterious As Hell.

 

Hannah: Oh my God. So, we talked so much about the style. And again, I found the style very off-putting initially because of how modern it felt, and how anachronistic. And so y'all listeners, Marie texted me this freaking brilliant theory the other day and I was like, “Save it, save it for the podcast!” But it’s about why Gideon's attitude and mental voice is the way it is.

So, Marie, can you share with our listeners your theory?

 

Marie: Sure, share with the room. Okay, so this is all based on— honestly, it was probably a year ago, I saw this TikTok where somebody finally explained what the fuck was going on in Harrow with Wake’s soul and revenant and moving around.

So, if you don't know, and this is all very contextual, very much like, “Okay, this is actually what was happening on the Mithraeum,” is that the two-hander that Harrow is carrying around that is Gideon's two-hander carries Wake’s revenant. And when Harrow goes sleepwalking and stabs it into Cytherea, that transfers the revenant to Cytherea. And you'll notice after that, that Harrow doesn't have a problem holding the sword and she doesn't mention the sword hating her anymore.

But then Cytherea starts walking. And you know, by the end, with the whole showdown, that it's obviously Wake in Cytherea body at the very end. So, my supposition is, when the hell did Wake get into the sword?

Because from the sword, Wake could get into Harrow, and she's kind of split herself so that she's haunting Harrow in the river bubble. Maybe she doesn't even have to split herself, but she's haunting Harrow in the river bubble, but she's actually attached to the sword and then to Cytherea’s body. But how did she get to the sword? Because what was special about that sword? How would she know to get to that sword?

 

Hannah: Right And you actually know, you learn in these first chapters of Gideon that it's Aiglamene that ultimately put a sword in Gideon's hands, and that can't possibly have happened until she was at least seven.

So, was the soul of Wake just floating in Drearburgh for years and years before it got there?

 

Marie: And later on, we know that souls go absolutely insane when they're attached to inanimate objects, which explains a lot later on. But, I think part of the reason that Wake is as coherent as she is, even though she was attached to a sword, is because she actually wasn't in the sword very long. She actually was always in Gideon until Gideon died.

And my evidence for this is, Gideon says in these first two chapters— this is what made me think of it this time around— Gideon says in those chapters that she started trying to escape at four years old. And if you think about that as a child, even a hideously abused child, when you are that abused, you do not understand that that is abuse. Even if you are miserable, you don't understand.

 

Hannah: No, and kids actually tend to lean towards it to try and make themselves feel better and be wanted. And actually, even Gideon does that, right? We ultimately learn that part of the reason Harrow’s parents die is that Gideon tells them what happened, in the hopes that she can get some praise, some positive reinforcement. So, I agree, it makes no sense for her to start running away at four.

 

Marie: And that's before she would even know anything about what's going on other than a sense of people disliking her. Because it’s not even necessarily that she was necessarily abused. It was just that nobody loved her and nobody liked her and she was completely neglected.

And so it makes sense if Gideon was always holding Wake's revenant, which is what— and that's why it was so hard for the nuns to try and pull Wake back, because she was already attached to something else. It said her spirit took off running as soon as she was dead because her spirit knew exactly what it was…it's like, “I got a purpose and I'm gonna stay attached.”

So, I think Wake attached to the baby immediately and that also explains why Gideon knows such anachronistic shit because she essentially talks like somebody from Blood of Eden.

Hannah: I fucking live for this so hard because we literally know…I mean, is Wake pre-Resurrection? I think she is.

 

Marie: We don't know that. I don't think.

 

Hannah: I guess it's possible that it's just cultural. That's routine from the world that's pre-Resurrection.

But either way, it cracked me the fuck up. I was trying so hard to keep a straight face because Brooke clocked this. Brooke was like, “how does she know about hotels and little like mints on the pillow in a fancy hotel?”

And I'm sitting there being like, “she may not; maybe Wake knows.”

 

Marie: Yeah. So that is my theory of what happens to Wake's soul.

I think it's also possible that Harrow tried to put pieces of Gideon in the sword as well as a fail safe to make sure that she couldn't completely consume Gideon. And that's why she was so obsessive about the sword and having to take care of the sword. It wasn't just that it was a keepsake of Gideon. It was that it actually was part of Gideon or that she had anchored Gideon to the sword.

 

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. This makes sense that she would make an effort to tether it. That it wasn't just trying to make sure that she wouldn't eat Gideon's soul…

 

Marie: But also that it wouldn't leave.

 

Hannah: Exactly. There was a tethering mechanism. And that explains both why she's obsessed with the sword and has such rituals around the sword, and also why in her very first letter to herself, she's like, “You suck ass at spirit magic. Please get better at spirit magic.”

 

Marie: Right, you have to figure this shit out.

 

Hannah: We tried this, I need you to work harder.

This is my biggest thing on these rereads. I am a person who, despite the fact…

I mean, this will come out inevitably over the course of the podcast. Three of the four of us are scientists. So, in theory, people always think scientists think very clinically and very small ideas. And I can do that. I do Easter eggs, but I also am a person who mostly operates on big picture vibes just in terms of how I live my life.

And reading these books the first time, I really took for granted the vibes. And one of the things that rereading these books is doing for me is, in these books, everything is real. You actually should take it at fucking face value. You don't dismiss it as like, “oh, maybe Tamsyn Muir did a bad job writing this when she put in the hotel pillow. Cause that's not something Gideon could know.” No, no, that is something Gideon knows. And it is deliberate. And it is true every single time.

Every thing is happening. And the best example of this is in the bubble in the river, right? Harrow is experiencing what happens at Canaan house, but you, as the reader, know it's all wrong. And it's really easy to be dismissive and say,” oh, this is all in her head. It's imaginary.”

It's not imaginary. It was happening, but it's happening on a different plane of existence, right? But it is happening. So, I'm trying to get a lot better at that.

And it's for example, things like she started to run away at age four. You can dismiss that as Gideon hyper- hyperb- hyperbolic- she's exaggerating her escape attempts. Or you can say, no, she literally started escape attempts when she was four, which makes sense in the context of a different adult soul being attached to her.

So, I'm gonna ask you to try and keep me, keep me honest about this. Cause I feel like I have a tendency to just brush it off or to assume that the author didn't do it on purpose. But this witch, she does things on purpose. She's, she's planting shit permanently and indefinitely.

 

Marie: I have two— I have three more instances— or I guess they're two, but there are three more lines of things like this, of Tamsyn planting things. So, one of them is, here, I got to find it in the book.

 

*Marie rifles through the pages*

 

Marie: It's when Gideon and Harrow are arguing and Harrow says, “You threaten my house. You disrespect my retainers. You lie and cheat and sneak and steal. You know full well what you've done, and you know that you are a disgusting little cuckoo.”

 

Hannah: Which also I fucking love as an insult, “disgusting little cuckoo.” *chefs kiss*

 

Marie: And Gideon follows up with a typical Gideon line, which is, “I hate it when you act like a butt-touched nun.” But it does say, “said Gideon, who was only honestly sorry for one of the things in that lineup.” And the one thing that she's sorry for is, “you know what you've done.” And it was going to talk to Harrow's parents.

 

Hannah: Because she blames herself for the suicides of Pelleamena and Priamhark, right? Yeah. Which is tragic. Like, I mean, they both do. They're, oh God, they're both—

 

Marie: They're so fucked up.

 

Hannah: Such broken children. It’s so sad that the first huge portion of their life is spent in deliberate opposition because it's the only way that they can notice one another, that they can count on one another's attention, is that they will always be fighting. It's like the only source of foundational—

 

Marie: That's the only relationship they have, right? Which is another thing of when Harrow goes to give her a bribe, Gideon's like, “oh, this is going to be good, right?” She's like, “what are you going to do? Gideon, here's some money, right?” Which is like, that's what you first would expect is going to be a bribe. She's like, “Money's no good. What am I going to spend it on?” The second thing she says, which is probably the only thing she actually wants as a bribe, is, “Gideon, I'll always be nice and not a dick to you if you come back.”

 

Hannah: Right. It's like a throwaway joke because you're like, “oh, it's definitely not going to happen, but if it could happen, I would love it if it could happen.”

It's that underneath, I'll say it out loud just in case.

 

Marie: Right. But the thing that kills me is Harrow's still pissed off at Gideon being like, “oh, you'd actually just tell everybody, even if it would fuck us all over.” And Gideon says, “it's all because I completely fucking hate you because you're a hideous witch from hell. No offense.” And Harrow's response is, “Oh, Griddle, but I don't even remember about you most of the time.”

And then later, later in that chapter, Gideon says, “I gave her my whole life.” And that is fucking Harrow. That is the book of Harrow, is Harrow not remembering Gideon and Gideon giving her- Her entire life.

 

Hannah: Yeah. Her entire life and her death, right? It's literally start to finish. It's completely fascinating.

And also, when Harrow says, “But Griddle, I don't even remember about you most of the time,” for me, that’s incredibly deliberate, because I do think that Harrow does understand cruelty. And the reason Harrow understands cruelty is because of how much pain she feels and how much shame she feels. So, she knows how to give it to other people.

There's some things in here that are, I mean, I guess it is dropping you into a world without a lot of knowledge, but there's some things that are quite explicit in this chapter. Where, for instance, Harrow signs her mother's name, right? And Gideon's like, “You signed your mother's name.” And Harrow's like, “Yeah, dude, that would give away the whole game, you dumb fuck. Other people still believe there's a Lord and Lady here and that I'm just a random child of 17, instead of the person running the entire show.”

 

Marie: Which gives you a lot, but also it's kind of like, “oh, she just doesn't want the parents to know.”

 

Hannah: Fair enough, fair enough. And we definitely know that— and Brooke picked up on this again— that Gideon knows too much and has known too much since she was 10. And I feel like when I initially read this, I thought that maybe the House as a whole had some dark secret… that they were conspiring against the rest of the....

 

Marie

I think that's what I thought. Or there's some initiate ceremony or something that it's like, if you've grown up in the house and you've gone through the 10-year initiation, then you don't get to leave.

 

Hannah: Well, that wraps up our first real episode. We will be back next week chatting about Gideon the Ninth chapters three and four. If you want to follow along with us, our reading calendar is available on our website and you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok, which are linked in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends and give us a five-star rating anywhere you can. And if you didn't enjoy the podcast, feel free to lie. With that, I'll just remind you not to unlock any tombs or enter any doors without permission because, you know, ghosts. Bye! Frontline Fifth is a locked tomb podcast starring Marie Adomako, Hannah Grunwald, Brooke Anderson, and John Ryan.

 

Our cover art was designed and created by Marie Adomako, who also edited this episode. Our fabulous music was composed and recorded by Blake Anderson. The Locked Tomb series is a completely dope-ass book series by Tamsin Muir, who does not know we exist and is in no way affiliated with this podcast.