REASONS I HATE TLT SERIES

Hidden in a rant so I don't bother my friends who like it way more than it deserves

There are so many spoilers do not read if you do not want to be spoiled

• The brush-over of Gideon's enslavement
• Harrow's complete non-redemption
  • she doesn't even apologize
  • self-loathing because you're a terrible person doesn't make you a better person
  • and certainly doesn't count as redemption or earning forgiveness
  • the pool scene was the opposite of romantic what is wrong with you people. Was it the flowery language? Please don't tell me you actually fall for that shit
• I could predict most of the plot
  • I really wanted to be surprised
  • but if you're going with 'the disabled one is the bad guy' and 'the smart/nice ones die' and 'children always die' and 'the lesbian dies' and-- you're not groundbreaking anything
  • I've read Agatha Christie and she did it better
• I've read these genres and this is a poor example
  • Trigun (body horror with space elements and insane politics/unhealthy gay relationships)(bonus: two dumbass lesbians on the side)
  • Time to Orbit: Unknown (sci-fi that promises to be in space, that is actually set in space, with body horror and insane ethics and culture clashes and politics and queer people-- yeah this misses nothing but the bones, and you could replace the bones with golems in TLT and it would make no difference to how they use them)
  • The aforementioned Agatha Christie
    • having a shitton of characters in a mystery doesn't have to be confusing, the author just sucks at writing an ensemble cast
• Did I mention how much I hate Harrow? She did not get better in the second book
  • Gideon has had the agency to do like one (1) thing without Harrow's permission and Harrow immediately tries to undo it
  • She's such a fucking control freak and has no respect for Gideon's agency
  • Gideon even says in the book: you couldn't handle it, not being in control
  • Also, she's already absorbed part of Gideon, enough that she could heal at the beginning, so even if we get Gideon back it's not gonna be Gideon-Gideon, it'll be hurk Harrow-Gideon (this is me taking a break to gag).
  • And I haven't even mentioned the years of sadistic torture in this point, but let's mention the years of sadistic torture!
• Killed my boy Palamedes. How the fuck Dare You. Yes I know he 'survives' in a bubble attached to his own skull matter, who gives a fuck, he's not in the second book enough to make up for all the Harrow.
• Remember that bit where I figured things out too fast? Yeah, I figured out who was speaking in HtN almost immediately, which means the 'reveal' was less of a 'reveal' and more of a 'finally oh my goddddd'.
• Got halfway through second book. Realized what the world-building was sounding like. Looked up the Homestuck wiki again, and then the author, and guess who published her badly-written fanfic about Homestuck. Literally all of the most interesting parts of her world-building can be taken from Homestuck, I stg, except hers is worse because Jod is a 4chan incel in ways I can't even handle.
• Oh, by the way, God's a 4chan incel, which is why all the fucking memes.
  • fuck, do I hate the memes
  • "There's nothing that says he's a-" honey look at what he's done to his supposedly most important woman, like come the fuck on, he's an incel. A woman was More and Better than him for once and he couldn't handle it. (Much like Harrow.)
  • Also, nobody clings to memes for 10,000 years as much as 4chan does, even Tumblr lets them go after a while, this is pure internet garbage man
• Speaking of things I saw coming, the bubble-world of Harrow's was A) more proof that she could have at any time chosen to be a better person to Gideon, because while she's still an absolute dirty tampon, she's still nicer to Ortus than to Gideon, and B) a cheap way to bring Magnus and Abigail back after realizing literally all the bearable and smart characters were dead
  • yes, they kicked ass, but that doesn't make it good writing
  • also, Harrow didn't like them in reality, so her suddenly liking and respecting them just made it even more obvious that she could have been a decent fucking hu--
    • I don't know how many times I can make the point that Harrow being a sadistic bitch was not a trauma response but a deliberate act, because she clearly knows how not to do it in polite company
  • anyway I totally figured out that was her hallucinatory coping mechanism brainspace bullshit with a side of ghosts by like, the third time we went there, so that was also just a "yeah, we been knew" when it was 'revealed'
• The memes. I know why they're there. I still hate them. Memes aren't funny unless you know the context, and these people don't know the context and are still throwing them around like the memes make sense outside of the context. "I tried my best, therefore no-one can criticize me" isn't funny unless you know of DR and SNL, and choosing that phrasing when it's not funny is 1 in a million
  • and if we're saying that Jod remade the solar system in his image and therefore with these memes embedded in them somehow, that's the cheapest literary deux ex machina I've ever seen
• Did you need that many names for each character. I can get using First and Last names, and even the House number, but literally every decent writing course will warn you not to use dumbass descriptors like "the huffy one" or "the dull one".
• NOT TO MENTION we never get descriptors of how they are being huffy and dull, I'm just expected to insinuate based on the fact that they're called "the dull one" in the last paragraph. Talk about telling instead of showing.
• Baaaaaaaaad pacing. So bad. So, so bad. If you're going to have the first 2/3 of the book be aimless wandering, at least have some aimless wandering where your supposed enemies-to-lovers can bond/grow, so it's not a single pool scene to build that whole bullshit up.
• OH! AND! SPEAKING! OF! As a survivor of a cult myself, all that time apart is super unlikely to make Gideon want Harrow more. Especially considering not everyone is unkind to her, and she recognizes that -- 'Dulcinea' is kind to her, and so is Magnus, and she gravitates toward them, so it makes literally no sense for her to suddenly fly back to Harrow the way she did. She's deprogramming slowly in the narrative and then suddenly?? All that is undone??
  • Unless the whole pool scene is just supposed to be 'everything about Gideon gets rewritten because dumbass lesbian sees real tits' but you told me Harrow was a stick so what tits??? Bitch, where??
  • Also, that'd be a real gross track to take, frankly
• The worldbuilding is so, so shoddy.
  • If the First was killed in some insane radiation/global warming disaster, how are humans just hanging out there now, with all the radiation, eating all the radiated fish.
  • Where are these porno mags coming from if paper is a luxury. Where is Gideon getting comics.
    • Not to mention how did the Ninth not like, burn the comics as heresy or something before Gideon ever got to see them
• Gideon isn't stupid, she just doesn't give a fuck, which is infuriating if you want me to give a fuck about your stupid Lyctor challenge
  • the fandom keeps calling her stupid and I'm so annoyed
  • she's not stupid, she's just come to terms with the fact that she's probably gonna be Harrow's slave for the next forseeable, so who gives a fuck if Harrow wins or loses? The only time she gives a fuck is when Harrow nearly dies of a chronic case of Stupid downstairs, and that's cause if Harrow dies, there's no reason for Gideon to survive, and if they send her back to the Ninth, the Ninth would likely just kill her
• OH and while I HATE HARROW: she is not as fucking clever as she thinks she is. My boy Palamedes figured out shit way faster than she did. Hell, Palamedes figured out the 'right' way to do Lyctorhood and dismissed it as too easy. Harrow can fall right off her high horse and get trod on, she's not clever, she's just a spoiled brat.
• A spoiled brat who would rather let her entire planet die rather than ask for help because then she'd have to gasp share power

  • And is totally chill with grabbing as many people as possible to keep the Ninth going even though the Ninth is literally a death cult made up of abuse

  • 'she was abused' -- YEAH so she should KNOW better. SOME of us grew up in cults and didn't become fucking sadistic bitches about it. SKILL ISSUE.

    • by the way? That's how you use a meme.
• I get that the lesbians are starving for content but my god. Go watch Xena if you want badass lesbians kicking butt. This is just disappointing
  • also I think a lot of you are reading it out of some really fucked up feelings about your exes. Your exes are not going to apologize. Your current shite partner is not going to apologize. Dump your Harrow and find yourself a person with a soul rather than pining for a shitheel that isn't going to change
    • because I've finished book two and guess who hasn't changed, apologized, or become any sort of better person, let alone reflected on her actions
    • to nobody's surprise, it's Harrow, being a bitch again
• "Gideon throttled Harrow, it was a mutually abusive--" Gonna stop you right there and ask you to look up a phenomenon called reactive abuse, and then consider the power structure of Harrow (able to literally starve and whip Gideon) and Gideon (literally only able to retaliate physically).
  • And then tell me that taunting a child who has basically been in solitary confinement socially for their entire life and is grieving their dead parent is not literally a custom-designed reactionary abuse tactic.
  • I can't think of a single thing Gideon has done to Harrow that wasn't a reactionary abuse response. Wanting to be free, is, shockingly, not an abusive act.
• Also, I figured out the Ninth was Pluto in like, the 3rd chapter of the first book? Was this meant to be a surprise? It made the whole "Jod saved our solar system" thing blindingly obvious in the worst way. The books kept acting like this was meant to be a reveal. How is this a reveal. You put the death cult on the planet named for the death god, you're not subtle!

THIS LIST WILL GROW BECAUSE I'M NOT EVEN CLOSE TO DONE BUT IT WAS CATHARTIC AND THANK FUCK I GOT IT OUT OF MY SYSTEM
(Written on 14Mar2025. Dating this because I'm sure I'll be back and I wanna laugh at how this grows over time because I get re-angry every time I hear someone gush about these goddamn books)

• If you want me to root for a bad person (which I happily will do when a book is written well) you have to give me something they're set up against, so I want them to win.
  • This does not happen in these books. Harrow might have been interesting if she had literally anything she could call an antagonist to her protagonist. Instead she's just selfishly gobbling up all the real estate of the book and I have no reason to care. Why should I care if she becomes a Lyctor? Why should I care if the Ninth fails? Why should I care if Jod and G1deon kill her? There's no oomph to drive any investment in what she wants and why she wants it.
• If you're gonna be evil deliberately at least embrace it. That's the other thing. Don't go about moping about how terrible you are. Just admit you're a bitch who enjoys being a bitch and get on with things. I fucking love a bitch who's having a good time.
  • But Harrow can't commit to the bitchy sadism. She does it anyway, knowing it's wrong, and still manages to slump around like she's the victim of her own shitass decision-making.
• Maybe (maybe) I'd hate these books less if they weren't billed so dishonestly.
  • "Lesbian" - Gideon's bi, so jot that down
  • "Necromancers" - Necromancer, Gideon doesn't necromance
  • "in Space" - for about 0.2 seconds before being back on a planet again. (EARTH, even, which just makes that even dumber)
  • Enemies to lovers – bitch where, once again, I'm not seeing love here
• Oh, that is a good point. That's a major reason I'm mad
  • these books bill obsession and control as love
  • which is insane
  • you cannot have love without respect
  • Where's that Granny quote, I'mma go find it
    • “There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
      ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
      ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
      quote from Carpe Jugulum
      by Terry Pratchett
    • Anyway. HARROW
  • If the fandom could tell love apart from whatever the nightmarish fuck this is, that'd be great, but I think too many people are worried they won't like the truth
    • Yeah it sucks to come to terms with the idea someone never loved you, they just liked the idea of you, or liked being able to control you, but that doesn't mean we just call it love because it's nicer to think about that way, fuck
• The fucking makeup.
  • It says a lot, how many people cosplay Gideon in the makeup
  • Because the makeup, as we've seen, is a religious thing, Harrow feels 'naked' without it in book 2
  • between the makeup and the silence mandate Harrow may as well be a man in Afghanistan
  • "put on this religious layer that hides your identity and denies you self-expression. and don't talk" yeah it's familiar.
  • And people cosplay her in it. AUGH
  • AT LEAST GIVE HER SOME FUCKING AGENCY IN COSPLAY FOR FUCK'S SAKE
• Which brings me to the other point, which is that if Harrow were a man, everyone would loathe her
  • because of the abuse and control etc etc
  • when your only redeeming feature is that you're a woman, we got problems
  • and I'm mad people are falling for it

Told you I'd be back. Written 15Mar2025.

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