thinking about how harrow doesn’t know that pyrrha is pyrrha. pyrrha, who cared for her body so tenderly when she was nona. pyrrha, who braided her hair and made her eat breakfast and got her funny shirts.
to her, pyrrha is still gideon the first, the man who tried to kill her.
what if harrow is terrified of pyrrha? what if pyrrha slips up and pats harrow’s head or calls her kiddie and harrow lashes out?
harrow the ninth is really like. what if orpheus didn’t turn around. what if he wasn’t going to turn around. what if he kept his face pointed resolutely ahead and trusted that she was there even not knowing what he was hoping for. what if orpheus had to be cajoled and threatened and eventually forced to turn around. what if eurydice hadn’t been told the rules and also had a crippling fear of abandonment and spent the whole time pleading with him to look at her. what if orpheus trusted that she would follow him but eurydice couldn’t trust that he would care. what if orpheus was told point-blank that eurydice was almost certainly not actually behind him and he chose to keep walking anyway. what if eurydice touched sunlight again and orpheus wasn’t there. what then.
harrow the ninth is really like. what if orpheus didn’t turn around. what if he wasn’t going to turn around. what if he kept his face pointed resolutely ahead and trusted that she was there even not knowing what he was hoping for. what if orpheus had to be cajoled and threatened and eventually forced to turn around. what if eurydice hadn’t been told the rules and also had a crippling fear of abandonment and spent the whole time pleading with him to look at her. what if orpheus trusted that she would follow him but eurydice couldn’t trust that he would care. what if orpheus was told point-blank that eurydice was almost certainly not actually behind him and he chose to keep walking anyway. what if eurydice touched sunlight again and orpheus wasn’t there. what then.
If there is ever a live action adaptation of Gideon the Ninth, the ONLY acceptable way to do it would be in the style of a competitive reality TV show. Each of them has a one line introduction like *from beneath the deep veil of a goth nun habit* “I am the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the greatest necromancer of my generation, and I did not come here to make friends. I came here to win.” And then we cut to the creepy Eighth guy in an interview segment and he’s saying “those heretical shadow cultists? I can’t even eat with them around. Whether I win or loose, I KNOW I’m not letting that creepy bitch ascend to Lyctorhood.” And then Teacher starts narrating “it’s only day one, and the competition is already heating up, but we still have a long way to go to find who the Next Top Lyctor will be. Now let us pray.” There’s those dramatic zoom ins and those drum sound effect and someone gasping whenever a body is found. Whenever someone storms off it’s filmed like when a cameraman follows someone storming off the sound stage after a particularly bad fight going “I’m done, I’m fucking done.” Harrow keeps telling the cameras to stop following her. After Ianthe says something deeply fucked up at the worst time, it cuts to her in a confessional segment going “Listen, I just tell it like it is, and I’m not afraid to stir the pot.” Do you see my vision?
It slowly shifts style, following the darkening tone of the book, until eventually it’s basically a found footage horror movie interrupted by the occasional increasingly fucked up confessional from Ianthe, culminating in the big fight at the end which is all cloverfield style. The cameraman dies right before Gideon, with just her legs in frame when she jumps on the fence. The conversation between Harrow and John at the end is like the award ceremony at the end of the season, where she visibly goes off script to beg for Gideon’s life. John says no, and we cut to one last confessional which is just Harrow staring at the camera in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time while her eyes grow ever tearier, until Ianthe throws open the door behind her with a scalpel or a bonesaw or something and says some shit like “oh, there you are, Harry. Shall I get inside you now?”
Every so often it cuts to a commercial break that’s just propaganda for the armies of the nine houses, which feature rousing drum & fife music, plucky commentary, and arresting footage of teenagers getting bravely blown up in the name of their emperor. It cuts back to the competition without comment.
i think my worst personal headcanon for the 4th house is that there are just no real adults there. the 5th “takes special pains with the 4th house” – hegemonic pains. what if those pains are broader than just Abigail & Magnus feeling parental for Issac and Jeannemary and instead take the shape of the 5th parenting a house of eternal childhood? Issac was a womb vat kid, conceived 6 years posthumously on his father’s side (acording to the cohort files). 6 years! you only have to be pubescent to bank your genetic material, maybe not even that with necromantic augmentation. and womb vat means you bypass all the risks of a child or young teenager giving birth.
the 4th house necromantic specialty is radical thanergetic fission – it’s a suicide bomb. and, we know from Harrow’s conception that younger people produce more thanergy upon death vs adults. fidelity. vanguard of the empire. big families, but only because you need spares. fuel for the machine & blood for the gears. why would you let them grow up when their purpose is to die young?
just spent an hour flipping through each of my tlt paperbacks and noting down which house crests come up at the start of each chapter. made a spreadsheet. likely will earn me nothing in meta/theories, but has earned me so many tism points
okay nobody asked, but i’m gonna post the spreadsheet anyway, bc i like it
THE FOLLOWING DATA ANALYSIS/BREAKDOWN CONTAINS TLT SERIES SPOILERS
(key: orange highlight is for GtN; blue highlight for HtN; pink highlight for NtN; a * indicates where a crest (or symbol) has been sliced through completely, where a # indicates it has only been cracked/sliced through incompletely; NGS stands for New Green Shoot aka a small sprouting plant)
i’ve done the math, so lemme break it down for you
in 1st Place, with the most uses across the series so far, is the Ninth House with 27 uses (7 of which were sliced)
in 2nd Place, with 13 uses each, is a tie between the Second, Third, and Sixth Houses. The Second House’s crest was sliced 3 times, the Sixth House’s sliced 2 times, and the Third House’s sliced just the once.
in 3rd place, with 10 uses each, is another tie between the Fifth and Eighth Houses. The Fifth House’s crest was sliced 4 times, while the Eighth House’s was sliced only once.
in 4th Place, with 9 uses each, is yet another tie, this time between the First and Seventh Houses. None of these House crests were ever sliced.
in 5th Place, with 6 uses, is the Fourth House. None of these House crests were ever sliced, however 2 of them (CH 8 and CH 42 of HtN) were cracked on the upper left side. these are the only House crests to ever appear cracked. it should also be noted that (in the series so far) the Fourth House is the only House that is yet to produce a primary character of any sort (vv sorry but the teens are tertiary to me & i’m rooting for a Ulysses Hell Reprise in AtN)
in 6th Place, with 5 uses, is the Tomb symbol. this symbol was unlocked/opened 2 times.
in 7th Place, with 4 uses each, is another tie, this time between the Gideon Skull and the Herald symbol. The Gideon Skull was sliced 2 times, while the Herald symbol has never been sliced.
in 8th Place, with 2 uses each, is another tie, this time between the Tree symbol and the Tower symbol, both featured in NtN. neither symbol was changed or altered in either iteration it appeared.
and finally, in a very fitting 9th place, with just one use, is the New Green Shoot symbol (NGS), which was used at the start of CH 17 of NtN.
everyones favorite NILF (Nun i’d like to fuck) lover and future chussy haver and her keychain/print design.
Not gonna lie I was so excited when I drew these because my main audience will always be myself and I am nothing if not obsessed with every redhead in a tense homoerotic relationship with their shorter goth enemy to lover
“i have crossed the face of the universe; i poison it to match my grief” is one of the rawest lines in Nona the Ninth. there’s like a whole thesis in here but Varun just says it so plainly, and it’s so human. because that’s what Cytherea did! that’s what John is doing! that’s what Kiriona, in all her rage and grief and loss of everything she ever had, has fallen down the path of. that’s Alecto, the fury of unceasing anger. that’s the cycle of abuse!!!
His nose was broken, and his lips and chin were wet with gore. There was blood in his eyes and under his hair, and his expression was one of cold and perfect murder. It was as though losing the rapier had snapped some invisible shackle. He didn’t even look angry; he looked like an ending given human form.
can’t stop thinking about how tamsyn muir regularly includes foreshadowing in the most bizarre and mundane places (like harrow threatening to make bone meal explode out of gideon, and then she does do that to a Different Gideon).
anyway on a totally unrelated note, remember how they’re fighting in GTN and harrow says “when I release you from my service, Nav, you will know about it”? and remember what harrow knows now about the meaning of lyctorhood and cavalierhood, and the fact that she likely no longer wants gideon to just be her cavalier? and remember that there’s almost no way they won’t have at least one blowup fight in Alecto the Ninth?
ok so I’m obsessed tonight about THIS John&Gideon parallel here:
NtN John 1:20 ->
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HtN ch 48 ->
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John and Gideon both begging and pleading to be USED, to be taken, to be a conduit for greater things. and this was originally going to be a “girls when they are like their father” kind of post but the thing is, what immediately follows each quoted section is where Gideon DIVERGES from John. John begs to be used, and when there is no answer he lashes out. he gives up
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he *lets go*, he lashes out, he hurts her, framing the rest of this sequence like it’s NOT his fault when it 100%, absolutley definitely IS. “one little nuke” like there even is such a thing. and nefarious use of the passive voice here, like all these nukes just… happened, like oh well. SAM sites opening up like wildflowers and not humans making decisions. he’s throwing in the towel!! nukes into nukes into nukes, like it wasn’t his fault the first one fired!!!!
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which is UNLIKE, of course, Gideon, who when Harrow did not come back, did NOT lash out. she did not give up, instead reaffirming her devotion and drive to protect Harrow, even when she wasn’t there. even if Harrow may never come back. even if she still felt thrown away and betrayed.
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and yknow, I’ve posted before about how Gideon’s suicidal devotion to Harrow is bad for her and it truly is SO bad for her but also like. she is already dead here. anyway Gideon Nav is her father’s daughter in so many ways but she is not like him in this!!! she is BETTER!!!! like what if John didn’t give up. what if in his rage and pain and grief he was able to do what his daughter did. what if he said ok, beloved, I’ll keep the home fires burning. what if he let the trillionares go. always your sword. whenever you’re ready.
Okay so we know that at some point during Harrow the Ninth, 500 people directly from the resurrection are sent to rejuvenate the Ninth.
Based on Jod’s pop culture references and apparent age, we can assume he is a millennial and the apocalypse happened sometime between appx. 2019 - 2029, CE. So the people waking up on the Ninth would be our peers. They could be us.
Obviously there is the whole concept of losing all your memories because of resurrection, but consider: your personality, your habits, your muscle memory and similarly brain-muscle memory would hypothetically all be intact, even if you don’t understand why you hate going to church, or find certain things funny, or
flinch at loud noises.
I am now going to take this fascinating idea and use it in the cringiest way possible. All references from our society would be lost, but the urge to create shitty memes would still be intact. Imagine this: you wake up o a lifeless, cold planet with no sky and it’s full of skeletons, incredibly goth elderly people, and catholicism. I can only imagine the memes that would arise.
THE UNWANTED GUEST (NONA THE NINTH SHORT STORY) SPOILERS BELOW
that short story gave us so much bullet pointing everything i need to rotate in my head until i understand it below
the coffin numbers and coffin positions?? there’s GOT to be a clue in there somewhere, i’m not even going to try and decode the coffin numbers (leaving that up to the campal server) but the coffin positions seem to spell out letters? but none that make a word (i got I C D C (ace attorney set/equals sign maybe?) C O C I) so it may be nothing, maybe it helps with the number code somehow?
the permeability of the soul - i’m inclined to think palamedes is right & ianthe is sticking to her reasoning bc if the soul IS permeable it conficts with her plans (possibly those re: coronabeth? apple cores?)
if pal IS right what does this mean re john/alecto? the other saints?
what does it mean re the state of gideon’s soul right now? if nona is the amalgamation of parts of gideon/harrow/alecto, where are all those pieces of their souls now? htn-dream-harrow does have certain gideonlike traits - i remember her making a dirty joke & a few other things i noticed but can’t remember now - but harrow at the end of ntn seemed completely different to harrow at the end of htn - does this have something to do with the state of their souls?
what’s the “shore”? dulcie says she died again, and pal seems to think this means she ended up there - is this what happened to the souls of the people who went to fight the RB in the river too? g1deon, nonius, ortus, pro, marta? would this definition also hold the people who were swallowed by the stoma - ulysses, augustine? or is it what happened to abigail & magnus when they escaped from harrow’s bubble - they shone with the same blue light dulcie did when they vanished? abigail said she wanted to cross the river - is this the outcome she wanted all along?
i think the above will DEFINITELY be a major plot point in atn
what’s with what ianthe says in quotes? at first i assumed she was doing an affected voice or something or is it deeper than that?
me and my girl don’t argue, she deludes me into thinking she is a terminally ill 26 year old while conspiring to destroy the Empire and kill all my friends and I walk it off like a man
yeah, well, me and my girl don’t argue, she deludes me into thinking she is a terminally ill 26 year old while conspiring to destroy the Empire and kill all my friends and I blow myself up like a man
yeah well. me and m̴͉̜̱͇͍̮͎̋̍̓̒̊͛̂͂͠͝ẏ̵̦͖̹̻͊̆͑̈́̓̃͊̌̅̉̕ ̶̨̡̣̲̭̈͆͆́͠g̴̳̜̜̘̥̬̬̝͉̘̠̱̜͇̣̍̊͊̇̓̌̑̏͊̃̕i̸̢̨͚̹͚̲̞̺̤͕͜͝ͅŕ̵̡̧͓͚̣̙̙̼̰͖̼̐l̵̛͖̇͗͆͆̅̇̾͗̿̏̌̿ORTUS don’t argue either. all I need to do is think about h̶̲̹͍̏́̾̾̈́̇͑̔̓̈̈́͜͝͠͝ẻ̸̡̧̘͗̅͋̀̋̈́̎̒͝ŗ̶͖̺̪̹̣̳͖͉͍̬̍̑ORTUS and then I get a nosebleed and pass out. like a man.
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