2022-07-06 1:00:01 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

morgannormally:

> nav-ix:

> > ok now I can’t stop thinking about the soup scene. it’s SUCH a good scene, I think there’s nothing I love more than a character who is extremely, surprisingly capable, who everyone underestimates (the same reason why the “go loud” scene hits so hard in GtN, because nobody but us and gideon knows how good cam is, and it’s thrilling to see everyone proved wrong). but it’s not just that they underestimate harrow, they straight up dismiss her as like this useless, failed child. and the whole fucking book she doesn’t get a shred of respect, and the entire book we have to see harrow- our proud and sharp and clever harrow- reduced to this trembling bleeding ball of grief, and she has to endure that too. I think she knows that she used to be more. and finally when she’s pushed to her breaking point, lobotomized, hunted, six-days-no-sleep harrow still does what no one else can do, because she’s just that desperate and she’s just that good.

> YES this scene and the pages immediately after (aka her finally sleeping and then replacing Ianthe’s arm) gave me a visceral reaction the first few times I read them, at this point its been over 200 pages of Harrow being constantly stressed and paranoid, treated like a useless child by everyone around her, having to bottle every feeling and reaction in front of her god. The reader has the constant knowledge that something is very wrong, but not knowing exactly what. We go back and forth from the constant stress of the Mithraeum to the Canaan House memories where it just denies the fact that it is wrong, that it goes against everything we read in GtN. Neither us not Harrow get a moment to rest or relax or any catharsis, until this moment. Its been 6 days since any amount of safety or calm we may have felt was utterly destroyed, and she has not slept, and is progressively getting more stressed and paranoid. But despite that, we finally see the scheming, insanely skilled and powerful Harrowhark we remember, she tears through a Lyctor within a second using diluted bone cells in his stomach. Harrow finally gets a win, or at least something close to one. Then she sleeps! I literally got chills when she woke up feeling rested, because the entire tone of the book changes. She is herself again, she is cool and can think properly and her mind is clear, and she regrows Ianthe’s arm out of just bone, which is insane. We are shown that Harrow is still a force to be reckoned with, she is not the non-functioning child that everyone sees her as. And while she doesn’t get to ride the high for too long, she isn’t as constantly stressed and paranoid for the rest of the book. She immediately has a plan to kill G1deon, with the help of the other Lyctors! She isn’t being hunted anymore, she is the hunter. Of course the plan doesn’t go perfectly, but G1deon does almost die that night. And his other attempts to kill her are just footnotes, barely mentioned.

> Even the Canaan House scenes get less stressful after this, we immediately get a somewhat domestic scene with Abigail and Magnus, and are presented with the fact that Harrow is haunted. Doesn’t change the sense of everything being off, but presents Harrow and the reader with direction, a possible cause for everything going wrong.

> The soup scene marks such a massive pivot in the book’s tone, I cannot read it without an actual physical reaction

damn I wasn’t even thinking about the emotional impact of the scenes that happen right afterwards but ur so right. tbh I feel like it’s a super similar shift to when Gideon comes back. cuz not only has harrow forgotten Gideon the whole time, she’s kind of forgotten who Harrowhark was before, and after 200-odd pages, we’ve almost forgotten too. and then for a moment she wins, and then she sleeps, and for the first time in a while, the power dynamic between her and ianthe is reversed (all book, she’s needing ianthe’s help, and in the bone arm scene we finally see ianthe helpless and at harrow’s mercy) and finally she’s reverend daughter harrowhark nonagesimus again