I don’t wanna further hijack that poor poll, but the thing about Harrow’s schizophrenia is that it’s canon. The author has confirmed it, and shared that it’s based on her own experience.
It’s a pretty obscure bit of canon, so of course there’s no shame in not already knowing, but that’s why I’m so obnoxiously persistent about letting people know.
Whatever else is up with Harrow, autism or cptsd or any number of likely headcanons, she isalso schizophrenic. I feel like that’s too important to be handwaved away as a difference of opinion.
It’s also in the afterword/author’s note of Harrow, iirc. So not explicitly in the story, but in the book at least. Harrow has schizophrenia, but at least on the Ninth, almost no healthcare and absolutely no mental healthcare to provide any kind of language or understanding of her condition.
The 201 ghosts are certainly complicating factors.
It sure is heavily implied in the acknowledgements of Harrow the Ninth!
ALT
If anyone is looking for the author’s confirmation that Harrow has schizophrenia, specifically, it apparently happened at a panel at Boskone and someone tweeted about it:
Ciara: Something that stands out about your books is how bizarre yet honest and authentic they feel on a very deep level. It doesn’t feel like you write for anyone but yourself while trusting that those who will love it will find it. In a time where it feels like marginalised authors are more tokenised than ever, and often boxed in by expectations of ‘minority stories’ (whether they be about women, lesbians, mental illness or anything else), how do you stay true to yourself and your vision?
Tamsyn: It’s very difficult. There are people who talk about Harrow in terms that are fundamentally thoughtless and unsympathetic to mental illness, and the tragic thing is that I know a lot of people who discuss it would probably rather eat their feet than say something hurtful, but because Harrow doesn’t flag itself up as a story about the mentally ill they have no idea what they’re doing. They almost need those flags to remind themselves to be kind. There are other people who have dealt with that particular brand of mental illness and one or two of them have reached out to me and gone ‘This is the first time I’ve seen this, I understood it immediately,’ and it’s wonderful, it will carry me through to the rest of my life. I didn’t intend Harrow to be a compliance test or a gotcha, it’s just interesting to me how some people talk about the book in terms that make me feel tired. But I knew that going in! When I wrote about this topic I had to write a very long letter to my editor coming out of that particular closet, and he and my publisher were wonderful about it but I knew it would happen. I just wishing anticipating it would take away the sting.
Secret fourth option: It’s entirely probable, but most of Harrow’s traits that people relate to autism are traits autism shares with childhood schizophrenia. One of the main diagnostic criteria used to differentiate childhood schizophrenia from autism is the prescence of hallucinations, so lots of schizophrenic kids are diagnosed with autism until their other positive symptoms, like hallucinations, can be reasonably proven.
It’s entirely possible to be both, and many people are, but pointing to Harrow and just saying “autism” bothers me, because it contributes to the erasure of some extremely rare canon representation for a badly stigmatised and misunderstood form of neurodivergence.
All sympathy for Palamedes tho bc having met Dulcie, a hunky mysterious death cultist swooping in to catch her like a romance novel protagonist is exactly the sort of excitement that would have distracted her for weeks. The thing with Gideon wasn’t all that out of character if you couldn’t hear their conversations
I bet Palamedes watched it happen and thought, giddy with excitement, that Dulcinea was going to tell him all about it soon
nope the ideal is two girls who are psychosexually obsessed with each other & have recreationally beaten the shit the other their entire lives while living on a sunless rock
some of y'all have done jod’s work noting discrepancies in this poem vs the printed version…. pencil’s down! our memory of the poem wasn’t as reliable as we thought. gg y'all remain undefeated
it is so funny to think about Gideon & Harrow on the shuttle bound for Canaan House because Gideon is just thinking about all the evil & treacherous plans Harrow must be scheming up in her evil & treacherous mind when in reality Harrow is just over here sweating buckets barely holding it together shaking like one of those tiny chihuahua dogs
ALT
ALT
