Thinking about the books it’s apparent that a big part of harrow’s whole deal is she can’t necessarily trust that what her senses are telling her is correct. I mean, the journal describing her time at canaan house, the way she documents all the doors on paper, the way crux treats Nona who he thinks is harrow in ntn, but also the fact that at the beginning of htn she wakes up unable to understand her own experience & immediately takes the word of her past self like it’s something she’s had to do before.
but I do think that particularly in htn, the depiction of schizophrenia as it relates to like. Institutions of power like academia and religion is doing something interesting in text. because it’s the whole experience of not being able to trust that your brain is showing you objective reality but *also* not being able to trust that other people are right about reality or have your best interests at heart either. The people in htn discount a lot of harrow’s experiences because they perceive her as mentally unstable, but then it turns out that someone IS trying to kill her the whole time and she DID get into the tomb after all and she IS being haunted.
It speaks to an experience with authority that I think a lot of autistic people also relate to, the experience of knowing that you’re not always able to process reality in a way that is helpful–but that to a certain extent, this is the human condition and other people are also misjudging things constantly. it’s just that there are certain societal illusions more people/the people in power are buying into. and if you fall outside of those, you can even be right more times than not. but those people will not believe you. Because you’re not acting how they want you to
