something something you are harrowhark nonagesimus you are in love with god’s death and god’s daughter and you are in love with god’s protection and god’s words and you hate yourself for loving god’s downfall while allowing yourself to not like god very much; you do not like god’s cookies or his patronization you love god the father and not god the man. you love god the father because you love god’s daughter. in your dreams she is god’s daughter. you construe yourself as sin and you construe yourself as martyr but you cannot be a saint god tells you that you are not broken and you cannot be a saint. for a planet you are very small.
Tamsyn: the iliac crest is like a ragged shoreline
Me, not knowing what the fuck that means: soo true 😭 the cinnamon topography 💯💯💯
I was wrong she calls it a “beautiful riverbed edge” and compares harrow’s love for it to her love for god in a paragraph that fucking decimates me every single time I read it and, let me emphasize this, I still do not know what an iliac crest is
what we understand as the pelvis (or the “inomanate bone”, if you want to be fancy) is actually 3 bones: the ilium, ischium, and pubis. these bones are completely seperate when we are born and dont fuse together until late puberty, with full fusion only happening in early adulthood. the peace sign looking area where they all join up is where the head of the femur sits:
ALT
the iliac crest (highlighted above in bright blue) is the most superior (top) aspect of the iliac bone. the iliac crest is an important clinical marker for finding where stuff is under the skin and also attaches to some important large muscles of the back. the iliac crest specifically is what is commonly meant when people talk about “hip bones”.
and it DOES look like a beautiful riverbed edge. tamsym muir is a genius and a scholar.
For context: John the Apostle (also known as Saint John the Beloved, which strikes a certain chord in the context of tlt, though I may just be tangling my conspiracy yarn threads) enters the tomb after the resurrection, finding it empty.
So
What is the tomb? Is it Alecto’s body—now empty of her (and inhabited by Harrow, who’s our Peter stand-in? Since he’s also present in the tomb with John the Apostle?)
The note at the end: “FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS”
The Harrowing of Hell takes place between the crucifixion and the resurrection, during which Jesus brings salvation to the deserving souls of those who died throughout all time. In universe we know souls go to / pass through the River. What does this mean for our resident butch Jesus? Is Gideon still stuck in the River? If so, what is she doing? If not, did Harrow take her place?
“I still love you” feels VERY Nona/Alecto, yet John calls her Harrowhark and seems weary about it. Is Alecto like, programmed with this? Is it a remnant of her, carried by Harrow in her body? Or there is context we’re missing / Harrow’s on her nun shit.
Let’s talk about the poem in context
You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning. I asked, What is morning? and you said, When everyone who fucked with me is dead.
When everyone we loved has gone or fled, That’s morning. Empty’s the same as clean. Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed.
Everyone they loved HAS gone or fled. Mercy, Augustine, G1deon — even Pyrrha, if he even knows about her, has fled. The tomb is empty. The tomb is clean. John’s so-called “first-draft dream” is “‘as dead as I can make her’”, as Mercymorn recalls him saying in HTN.
This time will be the time we get it right: Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long;
“This time” gives me the creeps.
You held aloft the sword I still love y
John never says it back, does he.
Best of luck to John and Harrow Alecto-Bod in this dream/river bubble situation. I hope he drowns❤️
Ok, so the fact that it seems like Nona is Alecto in Harrow’s body seems to complicate the “Anastasia is The Body” theory but I actually think I’m getting it here; the theory is rooted very solidly in textual evidence and everything we’re learning just refines some of the details slightly. Either:
1) Alecto is in the Locked Tomb on the Ninth but the text is filled incessant references to a tomb on the First because like, THE Tomb is in Canaan house, in the sense that it is THE tomb precisely *because* it is empty; it is where Alecto, the Earth resurrected, walked out of. In a way the entirety of the Earth is the tomb, but I do believe that there is literally a room or space in Canaan house that functions as this tomb and returning there will let Harrow and Gideon find vital knowledge about necromancy/resurrection/John/the end of the world
OR, more likely, my personal theory:
2) Alecto was “shut off” and her body entombed on the First, but immediately her spirit or soul attached itself to Anastasia. Alecto communicates to her by visions and voices, and Anastasia becomes a saint in a very old sense. She is possessed of a terrible clarity her colleagues lack and possessed by a deep rage against God, and she begins her mission to somehow end him in secret. Either John really does want to mislead others by building the locked tomb or something tips him off that Alecto lives in Anastasia, or perhaps both. Either way, when the time comes to seal it he seals Anastasia inside.
So the body in the tomb is indeed Anastasia’s but The Body, the ghost entity that haunts Harrow, is Alecto. It appears to Harrow as Anastasia’s corpse, possibly on purpose because she understands Harrow loves it or possibly because that is just how Harrow’s brain interprets her. We have seen The Body appear to Harrow in different guises and she speaks in others’ voices, so the possibility that her main form is not actually hers isn’t a stretch. Anastasia’s soul is either long gone or has somehow been absorbed by Alecto (possible, given that Alecto is already billions of people and every other living thing on earth). John’s wards sealed Alecto in the tomb (the text makes much of ghost wards!), preventing her from finding another host(?) until Harrow came along.
At the end of the latest excerpt John addresses the person he’s speaking to as Harrowhark even though everything else indicates that it must be Alecto. In a literal sense I believe this is because Harrow is experiencing Alecto’s memories in a dreamlike fashion, but on another level this tells us that Alecto is wearing the guise of Harrow (in the sense that she is currently operating Harrow’s physical body and in the sense that she once wore the guise of Anastasia). The name Anastasia means “resurrection,” and she WAS Alecto’s second resurrection. Harrow will be her third and final resurrection.
Either way, a tomb lies empty on the First (either entirely empty or empty because Alecto is not in whatever body resides there), and we’re gonna go in there, and we’re gonna see and believe.
ALT
