mayasaura:
It kind of confuses me when I see people talking about cavaliers as if the Nine Houses have established and normalised some radical social role of human sacrifice. It really doesn’t seem to me like the role of a cavalier is that simple. The only members of their society we’ve seen who weren’t horrified by the idea were the Tridentarii.
The career soldier, who was born into the military class and trained for that role since birth, believes no necromancer should ever have to see their cavalier die. The other child soldier was killed while putting himself between his cavalier and danger. The heirophant of the Emperor’s law who draws on his cavalier like a battery—a level of exploitation the other Houses condemn—turns against the will of his God when he witnesses the sacrifice expected for lyctorhood.
The deliberate sacrifice of a cavalier is not normalised. Not even in the front lines of their military. The role of a cavalier is exploitative, of course, and that’s where the interesting part begins. Is it any more exploitative than a king whose knights are trained to die in battle? Than employees who are forced to work or starve? Than the existence of a noble class, or capitalism?
Human suffering exists in any society, and in most societies I know of, much of that suffering we inflict on one another through exploitation. The Nine Houses are not unique in this respect. I am very much in awe of the worldbuilding in this series, tho, that it has managed to defamiliarise human suffering and class dynamics as to show us their grotesquerie plainly without ever tipping over into anything as straight forward as direct allegory.
raeyxarte:
Come on Barbie let’s go party
frozenjaegert:
Reread time! I take annotating very seriously 👆
cigfigsfan:
Never realized that the first thing Gideon does when she’s in Harrows body, the first thing she does as a character since her death, is un-impale herself. Harrow had been skewered through by Mercy just like Gideon was by the fence. Tamsyn fucking Muir.
notaficwriter:
i keep thinking about how varun treats nona like a baby sister, and how harrow (the entire future of her planet killed in one swift, violent act) is a kind of resurrection beast, just a very, very small one. so i’d like you to imagine the resurrection beasts Pondering harrow very intently, like a bunch of very large dogs sniffing a two-week-old kitten.
notaficwriter:
you know, something i have been thinking about a lot recently is the bath scene in htn, specifically something of the intentional framing or paralleling of it to sexual assault. i don’t think we’re intended to read it as harrow literally being assaulted in a sexual way, but the staging around it feels very intentional. it happens to harrow while she’s bathing, that none of the barriers she’s put to defend herself in a moment of vulnerability, and that it ends with harrow naked and helpless, on the bathroom floor.
but more so than the attack itself, what has me thinking about it as a parallel to sexual assault is the reaction everyone else on the mithraeum has to it. everyone knows what happened. and if they weren’t physically there to see the aftermath like ianthe was, then they certainly see harrow spiraling after it, her completely decompensating and not sleeping for six days, and the reaction is… nothing, really. ianthe turns away from it for a complex set of ianthe reasons, augustine and mercymorn are augustine and mercymorn, and john, even during the soup scene, just shrugs at harrow. now, obviously, we know in the full context that jod told g1deon to attack harrow, but in the context of the scene alone, harrow is bringing the situation to the one person who can help, putting it in front of him in a way that he can’t ignore, says, “he attacked me in my rooms.” and what does john say?
he says, take it as a compliment.
puffywiz:
there’ll be no rest for the wicked
