gideon is so nonbinary in my brain i legitametly sometimes forget shes a she. or a woman. etc. but also its not like im thinking man. but ill be like “man i shoukd draw gideon in a leather jacket” and then im like bUT WHAT IF WAKE hah yea i like drawin women- wait….“
ive got it. The way I see Gideon re:gender is like when ur a kid and u keep pointing at bugs doin cool things and goin “LOOKIT HIM GO” but as soon as you say it u remember that u found out most of the bugs ur pointing out are probably closer to female and ur like “oh yea” and thats cool and u appreciate them but ur still gunna call them a little guy cause theyre just a lil guy.
Or like. ladybugs. probably a dude. But also. Ladybug. who knows. still just a lil guy.
Note: I’m writing this only because I haven’t seen anyone else touch on these specific points. I’m not Māori, so my understanding may be mistaken; if so I would be very grateful for correction and elaboration from tangata whenua. (And I’ve only read Nona once so far, and we all know that’s a scratch upon the surface of it.)
Tazmuir has received fandom flack for saying in interviews that Gideon and Harrow are both Māori without mentioning it in the text — which understandably reminds sf/f readers of a certain other author’s tendency to dispose of the difficult bits outside the actual work. I think it is clear by now that the reason it wasn’t dealt with explicitly earlier on is that Tazmuir sticks religiously (ahem) to the flawed and limited knowledge of her point-of-view characters, and in the Nine Houses they have no concept of pre-Resurrection races and ethnicities, because Jod has not allowed them knowledge of any world but his. (Besides, explaining Gideon’s lineage in a Doylist aside would have been rather tricky without revealing, before their proper time in the narrative, juicy details about Jod himself.)
My prediction is that we will find out Anastasia was also Māori. Maybe, probably, from the same iwi as Jod and/or G1deon.
Which makes Harrow, her last descendent, Māori as well.
No matter how many generations separate them. No matter how much other blood.
“Mixed Māori” or “[percentage] Māori” is kind of a pākehā concept. The more important question is, do you whakapapa? Do you know who you are? Do you know where you come from? All it takes is one verified ancestor and you’re in the club, no matter how long it’s been or what brand of egg carton your skin looks like on the book cover. I think Harrow is descended not just from a line of Tomb-keepers but a line of kaitiaki, guardians of the land, who through Anastasia’s private pact with Alecto are sworn to protect her — Papatūānuku, the earth mother born from salt water — and who have been holding on for ten thousand years to right Jod’s wrongs. We know salt water is sacred to the line of the Ninth House; we know that Alecto was called “the saltwater creature”; we know that it’s Nona’s natural element, which calms and renews her; all this links Alecto/Earth specifically with Māori creation myths, more than any others. And we know that preserving the ancient bloodline of the Ninth, Anastasia’s bloodline, in Harrow’s own improbable and desperately yearned-for person (that Alecto can recognise at a taste), was the goal Pelleamena and Priamhark pursued at the cost of the Ninth House’s entire future.
Yes, this series is portraying an indigenous man as the destroyer of Earth. We know that Earth chose him as her saviour and he betrayed her, imprisoned her, set himself up as master of an empire that was her antithesis, then imprisoned her again — arguably worse sins for someone who was born into that special relationship with the land, whom the Earth loved and trusted so much and still loves even now because love past understanding is her gift.
But here’s the answer to that. Here’s his opposite number. Harrow, who fell in love at first sight with the Earth, who found in that love her reason and her drive to continue living and to hold to her goals through intolerable trauma, who has a unique combination of bloodline and genius and Jod-and-Alecto-derived power (through her Lyctorhood with Kiriona Gaia, wherever that ends up going) with which to fulfill this sacred pact entered into by her tipuna Anastasia.
Harrow being Māori is not a trendy convenient afterthought. It’s an integral point.
Harrow knows who she is. She knows where she comes from. She knows where she’s going: Hell itself, to get to the bottom of all this shit. So I think we will be hearing more along these lines.
thinkin abt anastasia today and i have a little headcanon that she grew a partial skeleton of herself + literally let it get crushed by the rock of the tomb + thats where the facepaint of the crushed priestess comes from + why anastasia has a tomb + so no one knows she wanted to be locked in with the body cause jod would probably not like that + also part of why anastasias bloodline has a advantage to breaking in (ik theres the theory that harrow had gideons blood on her from their scuffling but im… not fully convinced thats enough)
update; the idea of jon locking her in was proposed as like part of the whole oopsie with sam which i dont love but i do like for the idea of her secreting away her descendants somehow despite him
i always find it kinda funny when people like any of the ways i draw gideon cause like, knowing the other art that exists out there, i v much draw them all to be their canon ages like these are babies. I fully agree with the artists who draw gideon as a giant beefcake. just. not yet. its too soon give her time her bones are still growing
also random headcanon; corona was born with 1 dimple. Ianthes first instance of successful flesh magic was giving her a second one so she’d be symmetrical
im curious abt some stuff with caanan house i might look into more but thoughts are welcome; also that timeline post i need to find. anyways.
how involved in the goings on at caanan was jon. did he know of rbs at that point, was he even allowed at caanan initially.
whats the timeline on when each pair became lyctors
when and why did the facility become… gamified? and the lyctor rooms locked. did they not all work together or were they all just working individually at first.
how does the timeline of anastasia and the ninth house compare to the lyctoral ascensions
was she “half” lyctor kinda ala assumed harrow was experiencing before she tried again long after everyone else? Was samael alive? or did she simply hold off after everyone else had done it cause she wasnt convinced?
all kinda coalescing into; did anastasia or jon or teacher intentionally preserve but make it more challenging to understand lyctorhood to prevent people from achieving it; jon for “consent” reasons and anastasia because she knew there was a more full way and that this would not be it? to try to get ppl to come to the same conclusion she did before she “failed”/jon sabotaged her?
idk what it means but i believe strongly that “perfect” lyctorhood or whatever function in that narrative implication is heavily reliant on there being multiple people involved. like more than 2. harrow and ianthe have access to multiple. cam and pal finished without more. when teacher is “killed” *all* the souls connected to caanan’s contructs get untethered… god, obviously. also makes me REAL CURIOUS about anastasia and alecto and samael and her “failure”.
Hey, so I was browsing your tlt meta tag (because I remembered your post about Ianthe being waxen, still love that btw) and I saw a post about you writing a thing called The Megatheorem. Is that still a thing in the works? Was it already posted somewhere? Am I causing you physical pain by asking about it and should not do that?
(I've also got ADHD and fully respect if it's Option Three there and you'd rather I never asked about it again. Sorry if that's the case.)
Ahahahaha yes, it’s still in the works and no, you are not causing physical pain by asking about it, although I did actually laugh out loud when I saw this 😂 Anyone is free to continue prompting my about it as encouragement to work on it! (Also I’m still surprised at how that Ianthe post took off - I very genuinely almost didn’t post it because it was just sort of a passing thought at first lol)
The Mega-Theorem hasn’t been posted anywhere because it’s not finished yet lol. I also have ADHD and I was massively hyperfixated on working on it for several months and The Hyperfixation Shine has worn off BUT it’s definitely not abandoned by any means. I did post the current table of contents a while back as a sneak peek, which I can share again here!
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Several sections are pulled pretty directly from posts that I’ve previously made, which are all in my tlt meta tag. As an aside, I’m glad someone else is finding my tagging system useful lmao. I love being able to go back and browse specific tags for art or meta or whatever and I get a kick out of knowing other people do too lol.
I do plan to post it once I feel like I’ve tied up the loose ends! It’s definitely going to have to be split into multiple posts/sections, though, given that it currently sits at 12,849 words and 25 pages 💀 When will said loose ends be tied up? Excellent question! I would also love to know the answer to that one!
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@jbm04 You’ll be delighted to know that The Secret Door Theory is actually an integral component of The Mega-Theorem! A teaser screenshot directly from page 3 of the document to whet your appetite:
f in the chat for cam having to third wheel yet another couple while stuck on the BoE ship (ft. hand!pal, who it amuses me to think has perfect font writing)
random just vibes theory but part of me feels like jon actually doesnt think alecto is even on the ninth. like. it was actually a decoy and he thinks he put her on the first or something.
Like im not convinced of this cause theres no real reason for it but like. hes just so dismissive about it being impossible that harrow opened the tomb. so nonchalant. and so avoidant abt him being totally unable to go to the 1st. and how a huge section of the 1st isnt used. of course he could just be being cocky or whatever. but idk. maybe the saltwater pools are like nonlyctoral river enterances? like a lil secret teleport. that seems farfetched. but ye. it keeps buggin me.
More cosplayer doodlin this time @wrenegadepilot and @ridrawsart (emeytroi on tt) who i did not know were also artists before finding to tag so thats fun
also while thinkin abt that it made me wonder, is there actually any proof of god being able to preserve people indefinitely? Like its assumed as truth but was there any proof?
Im wonderin if part of the space left in caanan house that was theorized to be gods quarters (why so much space) was actually housing for his initial cyrotech (upgraded maybe) and he can only keep so many un-souled bodies in there at a time. Cause like why wouldnt u keep the cavaliers bodies perma iced in a sleepin beauty coffin for their necros to faun over. Why is any body that is left around for a long time and not a body with soul turn to only bones?
Like i dont fully think this is a solid theory cause theres implications that parts of caanan is kinda weirdly preserved but its also not completely in stasis?
currently slowly massaging a theory that part of whats fucked with the river is a metaphor/similarity to the few times on earth when rivers have changed their flow to run in reverse to do some big change in geography; and what that means for all that has happened and will happen.
life <–> death, hell <- (purgatory) -> heaven, that kind of deal.
abigail also talks a bit about shores, but shores are not the start nor end of a river, they run along side, rivers start from their feed (glaciers, rain, etc) and end in the large bodies, but even there (ignoring cyclical nature) its more up/down (sky;oceanic depths) than point a to b… But the idea of shores seemed semi-destination based so like… what are the shores. There was kinda an implicatiin theres like. The shore that you can touch and cross from the life the necromancers live to get into bubbles, theres the river itself which contains lost souls, theres wherever the demoney things come from (river depths? stoma?), wherever the awful teens went, and then theres wherever the stoma definitely goes.
And given that like. the teens seem predisposed to focusing more on thalergy than thanergy based necromancy im curious about that.
about what inverting the flow from life to soul-planes means, is that flow like sucking up corrupted souls from the depths and spitting them into the living world like a water table inverting? why does the corrupted body of a murdered melange of thalergy naturally get magnetized to the stoma, is the stoma instead a magnet towards life? why is it tongues, why do we eat? why would it be hell/morally negative yet a mouth and hunting thalergy eating planets?
Also why stoma? like it seems like a natural stoma, which just is an opening in the body, but like they coulda just called it a mouth or something too (less cool is reasonable) but also makes me wonder if given the more common usage of stoma as a medical intervention… like can u make a necromantic stoma to wherever the stoma goes.
anyway. this isnt really a theory or anything just… musing.
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