when ianthe killed the thing posessing colum at the end of GtN and was like “you can have that one for free, there are worse things in this place”, i don’t think she was talking about cytherea.
bc she did that, and then fucked off for an unknown amount of time. she doesn’t return until most of the way through the cytherea v. harrow/cam/gideon fight. she was doing something with that time and i dont think it was just twiddling her thumbs. i think she was using her new lyctoral abilities to fuck around in the secrets of canaan house and i want to know what she knows.
i just think ianthe is working very hard and deserves to do a little self modivated sulking and scheming, as a treat. we only really see her through gideon & harrow’s very uncharitable perspectives, but like!!!! she spent most of her time at canaan house solving necromantic puzzles in the basement and not causing any trouble. she killed the thing posessing colum, saving gideon’s life. she intervened when cytherea was about to slaughter harrow and gideon and cam, and got the shit kicked out of her in the process. she helped harrow do a homebrew lobotomy to save gideon’s soul, even though she didn’t agree with harrow’s reasons for it. she saved harrow from gideon the first that one time by rolling her down the hall in a ball of fat. she helped harrow plot g1deon’s murder. when mercy (temporarily) killed john and the whole system of dominicus as a result, she was horrified at mercy’s callus disregard for the massacre that would have happened if john had not gotten better. like she’s definitely a murderer and has done several other bad things but also i think she is underappreciated for the sheer number of times she has bailed our beloved protagonists out of bad situations or otherwise managed to Hold Everything Together
ianthe and gideon would probably be friends if they were not repressedly pining over the same necromatic meow meow. they both have a similarly crude sense of humor, are critical of the tradition and ceremony of the nine houses, and they both enjoy good food and good parties.
rereading GtN and being struck by how consistently uncomfortable gideon is witnessing the public displays of affection/trust/comfort between other cavalier-necro pairs. she’s being confronted for the first time with how she and harrow could be, what their relationship could have been, in a different universe in a different life if they both hadnt had such fucked up childhoods. anyway. feeling unhinged abt this today.
somehow harrow’s body being canon confirmed to be Attractive™ and Regarded By Most Normal People To Be Pretty™ makes it so much funnier that gideon and ianthe are both incredibly down bad over her. she’s feral, she’s gorgeous, she’s sleep deprived and a genius, she’s covered in bones and very pretty
canaan house = lyctor frat house. i have been trying to make a coherent post about this for days but im. im just. obsessed over the House Of The First being reveared as a holy temple and a shrine to God And His Fists And Geastures, but actually, it was basically a fucking frat house. they had sexy parties. they got drunk and fell under the table. they made weird art and put it on the wall, they never cleaned up their study rooms. there were life sized nude paintings and handmade ceramics everywhere. nobody ever fixed the broken flooring.
gideon nav my blorbo. dead twice over and somehow absolutely unkillable. sexy and smart and deeply susceptible to the affections of older women. will eat multiple dinners and does not care about nerd shit. What Would Gideon Nav Do. WWGND? think about tits, and maybe also ass
thinking abt Alecto Harrowbod bc while i am basically convinced that Nona IS Alecto, the eye color thing just does not add up on surface level, esp w how we have seen it and how Palamades has described it…………..
bc like. Nona’s eyes are assumed to be Gideon’s yellow eyes but like. they could definitely be John’s. it was a whole thing that Augustine and Mercy assumed Gideon-in-Harrow’s eyes were Alecto’s (John’s). they could not tell the difference between Alecto’s (John’s) eyes and Gideon’s eyes. Nona’s yellow eyes being Alecto’s eyes, John’s original eyes, would make way more sense wrt how trading eyes works as described in canon – like it just does not make sense for Harrowbod to have Gideon’s eyes when neither Harrow nor Gideon are in residence. It would actually make more sense IMO for Nona-in-Harrow to have Harrow’s original eyes, than Gideon’s. im chewing on this im clawing at the walls when this book comes out im going to lose my shit
thinking abt Harrow and grief and HtN as a book as very much a sort of grieving……. wish fulfillment? Harrow is told by so many people that she needs to accept that Gideon is dead, that her denial and refusal to Deal With And Process Gideon’s Death not only hurts herself, it insults and wastes Gideon’s sacrifice.
and Harrow isnt only told this by people out self interest. like. yes John, and even Ianthe, want Harrow to Digest The Soul for their own likely selfish goals. but she’s also told this out of love and care. Magnus and Abigail tell her to move on, because Gideon is dead and Gideon would have wanted – and does, very actively want – Harrow to live and “go full lyctor” and survive and let Gideon die. their advice is very loving and also extremely real. this is realistic advice that grieving people get all the time, and like, in the real world it is not… wrong? it’s good advice coming from a place of love and care.
but it’s also not what you want to hear as someone embroiled in grief. Harrow does not want to hear it. and not only does she says say no to all of them, she is rewarded for it? she was right. she did all these things and ignored every piece of loving advice and she saved the soul of her beloved. and in the real world if you do that you fuck yourself over, you fuck the people who love you over, etc etc etc. And while Harrow is not having fun, she is proven to on some level have made the objectively correct choice. which is just… wish fulfilment. because that’s what you want, ya know? everyone says the right thing and you know it’s the right thing, but it feels wrong and bad and impossible and you’d rather set the world on fire. anyway.
i really love how tamsyn muir portrays gideon’s reaction to seeing other people grieve. her visceral discomfort at the sight of other people grieving is really. like. like she has this deep, terrible anguish that’s layered all over with discomfort and derision and absolute resignation. i want to eat it.
i love that palamades is extremely smart and observant and careful EXCEPT when he is down bad and wanting. the man figured out perfect lyctorhood AND managed to get through gideon’s 37 emotional layers of defensive deflections, but could not tell that the woman who he was in love with, who had been exchanging letters with for over 10 years, had been replaced with a stranger. love that for him.
thoughts that keep me awake at night: what IS the price of ressurection?
because John specifically says that he brought people back once, and he can never do it again, because the price was too great. and he is a liar liar pants on fire but like. something about that rings true to me. so what IS that price? the 10 billion were already dead, so there wasnt any kind of sacrifice needed. John himself ostensibly got off scott free, with an immortal body and the power of God to boot. The Ressurection Beasts can’t kill him, any fear he pretended to have of them was a lie. Blood of Eden might threaten his empire, but i cannot imagime them being any real personal danger to the King Undying.
im deeply fascinated by that conversation he had w Harrow where he told her that her parents had commited a type of ressurection. commited being the operative word – why is it a sin to bring back the dead? what is the price? what is the consequence? is it inherently related to massacre, like how Harrow’s parents only ressurected the souls that they themselves had just killed? is that what John did? did John kill the 10 billion? is the price of ressurection that you have to kill them first? but then what is the POINT of it? did he, like Harrow’s parents, want to create necromancers? that doesn’t any make sense purely on the cost benefit analysis of the utter destruction and loss of skills, culture, etc that must have preceeded the ressurection. people dying, especially on a “everyone on earth” scale, is generally considered bad by basically everyone. so how could reversing that be immoral? Tamsyn Muir is way too careful with her word choice for it to je an accident. so why is ressurection something to be committed?
i do not think that these are a questions that can be answered with the information we have avalible to us right now, but i am aggressively turning it all around in my head like a microwave.
