Madames and Monsieurs. Poirot has seen much evil in the world, but the evil of this man is in a category all it’s own. His crimes are those of which Poirot cannot speak of in polite company, and they stretch the limit of discretion and manners. And he flees his persecution but cannot resist to remind the world of his existence. To brag about the money his filth has brought him. To try and, how you say, “flex” on a girl who’s concern is for the future of this planet by touting his many fast cars. But she is not so easily cowed and came back strong against his crude message with one of her own. Poirot may not condone the language, but he cannot deny it may have been called for. And there, there he let his hubris lead him to make his mistake. In his video, there, there is his pandora’s box. It does not look like much, it is after all a pizza box and such food is popular among the masses today. But this box…this box proved where he was hiding away. What hole this rat crawled into!
This year, I’m reposting previous pieces that I liked and thought would fit with the prompts. This one inspired by New Years 2021 when I was stuck in with my roommates (for obvious reasons) and we had a grand ol time drinking champagne on the couch. Love you guys 💕
Tamsyn Muir probably doesn’t need a lot of introduction here on Tumblr, but for those who aren’t yet familiar with her work: Tamsyn Muir is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Series. Her fiction has won the Locus and Crawford awards. It has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Dragon Award, and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
We asked Tamsyn some questions about Nona the Ninth, the next installment of the Locked Tomb series, which comes out on September 13. (Mild spoilers ahead. You have been warned!)
Can you tell us about Nona the Ninth? How would you contextualize it alongside the previous Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth?
The Locked Tomb has always followed a concrete set of rules about whose point of view we’re in—there’s a priority list and a hard if-and-else-if set of codes about who is telling the tale. The priority character is always Gideon Nav herself, but after Gideon the Ninth, in many ways, she gets knocked out of the ring.
Nona is the next rule on the priority list—the next storyteller. Except there are also a bunch of other storytellers popping up in the priority list as she lets her guard down. That’s kind of one curtain I wanted to pull back on The Locked Tomb as a whole. Who’s telling this story? What is the truth as someone else understands it? Which is why, where the last two books have been told very much from the perspectives of the Nine Houses, we’re finally in a setting where the Houses have pulled back, and the truth told is completely different.
You have a knack for approaching the next part of the story from a completely different vantage point, which is deliciously frustrating for the reader. Why do you think this works so well (when really, it sort of shouldn’t)?
Oh, but it does, and it’s been proved to work—just play an RPG! One thing I passionately loved in Final Fantasy IX, my very favourite Final Fantasy at the end of the day, is that one moment you’re with the thief-turned-thespian Zidane and a wonderfully dashing attempt to kidnap a princess in the middle of a theater performance—then you’re with…some very bizarre kid called Vivi…who has lost his ticket and is getting negged by a horrifying rat child. You’re given a completely different lens on a completely different situation in what’s basically a completely different genre. In the same game! There’s a risk of getting too comfortable in someone’s truth—you might want to settle down in a character whom you have learned to understand. But then you have to practice a very radical empathy in settling down in Nona, who just absolutely does not give a shit about swords or empire and, at her worst, can be quite an irritating, materialistic babe in the woods who is WAY too into dogs. Of course it’s alienating. If the experience of being in Gideon’s head was the same as being in Harrow’s as being in Nona’s, there wouldn’t be any point. If different vantage points didn’t work, A Song of Ice and Fire would never have gotten off the ground. Hell, neither would The Iliad. I just sit longer with my vantage point.
After writing foul-mouthed and horny Gideon and acerbic, memory-challenged, and also horny Harrow, how did you approach writing Nona’s character, and what did you enjoy most about the process?
Harrow would hate that you described her as horny. Gideon would be fine with being described as horny. Nona would love to sit you down and talk about all the things that make her horny, at the end of which you are 50% worried that she doesn’t honestly understand ‘horny,’ and 50% worried that she DOES understand ‘horny.’
Nona is my character who doesn’t give a fuck. Gideon and Harrow both give too many. It was fun to write a character who sincerely seeks out love as she understands it, who has a large collection of friends and interests, and has no ambition. And yet what I really enjoyed is that Nona is easily also the most terrifying POV character of the series.
We meet some old friends in a new place in Nona. What aspect of the familiar characters meeting the unfamiliar world was the most fun to write?
Honestly, the fact that they’re in such a different milieu was fun enough. One is a woman completely out of time, trying to find something to live for; two are dyed-in-the-wool Housers forced to re-examine values they’ve always taken for granted and what the next part of life after death is going to look like for them. All three are fish out of water. And then there’s actually the reader meeting the familiar after two long books about the unfamiliar, and all the ways I hope that’s entirely weird and recontextualizing. And then, for Nona, what’s familiar to us is entirely unfamiliar to her. Writing Nona was like one long experiment with jamais vu.
she's butch. she's 100% beef and sexy as hell. she might be unkillable. she wears sunglasses inside and pulls it off. she wants to fuck every princess she meets. she has a huge bitching sword. she WILL sacrifice herself whether you like it or not and you will never ever stop thinking about her. i didn't say her name, but she popped into your head anyway, didn't she?
john: i have got to kill the trillionaires who abandoned earth
john: kills literally everyone, including his friends and every person and animal on earth and also the soul and normal viability of all the planets in the solar system, EXCEPT and i cannot stress this enough, the trillionaires who abandoned earth.
a customer just came in and ordered a flat white with six (6) shots in it. for clarity thats like.. a full cup of espresso with maybe an inch of milk sitting on top. this mf is trying to meet the hat man
same guy came back yesterday. same order. i said, "ah, entering the shadowlands again, i see." he asked me to explain this remark to him. i did so to the best of my ability. he returned again today and said, "i'll have another shadowlands please, extra hot." think i might have started something
it’s so fucking funny to me that Jod rambles about having crafted the most BEAUTIFUL and most PERFECT body EVER for Alecto and he’s so proud of it and Alecto just fucking hates it
htbthomas
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