also. we don’t talk enough about how the og Canaan House gang were doing metaphysical experiments on people. just cramming a dozen souls into one person. five hundred into fifty. yes yes it’s tragic that all the cavs died but also they were ALL taking those freshly resurrected batches and squeezing their souls like juice to make creepy priests. Anastasia I just want to talk
my role in this conversation is now immortalizing excellent jokes from the tags in reblogs, apparently
(I had the damnedest time trying to decide if it was Harrow or Gideon who would make this joke. I went with Harrow only because I couldn’t think of a good Twitter handle for Gideon).
i think the primary difference between my perception of Harrow & many other peoples’ is that y’all primarily see her as Goth (which is a counterculture aesthetic that allows for self-expression) and i primarily see her as Nun
yes the nun aesthetic of the ninth absolutely whips (skull face paint! robes! bone corset!) but harrow is not spray painting shitty thrift store boots and fucking around with black lipstick for funsies. the face paint is sacramentally blessed. there is an established canon of liturgical skulls to be chosen from. her robes are vestments of office. all that skeletal mass has a purpose.
the modern parallels, IMO, are much closer to “only novitiate in a decaying abbey trying to get them vaguely into the 20th century” or “eldest daughter desperately keeping the family business afloat in her dying hometown” than they are to cool goth girl
in a modern au do u think harrow would be goth raised by goths or goth raised by normies..... i feel like goth raised by goth kinda cancels out her gothness similar to how a cool person raised by cool parents makes them less cool since they didnt have to work as hard for it but it feels like a disservice to pellemenea (srry for spelling im not gonna figure out how to spell her name) to make her a normie after all she did
Oh, no. The kind of Catholic who wears a veil at mass and takes Lent waaaaay too far. Harrow with a scapular and five rosaries on her person at all times. Alternatively, Protestant version: homeschooled fundie loser Harrow who wears ankle length jean skirts and has waist length hair in a bun. She still manages to be incredibly vicious while singlehandedly keeping her family’s ultra-Calvinist theological press alive.
As I’ve said in the past, I don’t think goth is the important facet of her personality, it’s nun.
tags @trambrosia you are soooooooo right. liturgical scrupulosity. has to pray a daily office & a compline every day. extremely strong opinions about prayer books. regards rite II with the deepest suspicion. genuflects so hard you hear her knees crack. as High as you can get but would die before she swam the Tiber
can you imagine chuckling at none pizza with left beef and then living through the death of humanity and resurrecting a chunk of it and becoming a god figure to the new society you create and then 10,000 years later referencing it in conversation to a horribly traumatized teenager who has no possible frame of reference for this ancient meme that no one else alive has ever heard of
i assume this is a reference to something but choose to believe it is simply a creative exercise that tumblr user spleen9000 is inviting me to participate in. like yes. yes im imagining it
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?
I’m sorry but that moment in GtN where Gideon walks in to see Ianthe in the process of Lyctorhood while Coronabeth sobs over Naberius’ body, and her immediate reaction is like - aw fuck, she must be so sad Tern is dead, only for the reveal to be that Corona is weeping cause Ianthe didn’t kill HER…!!! raw. instantly iconic. completely recontextualizes their relationship and adds like six fucked up layers. love the tridentarii twins
i’ve been brain spiraling about how anastasia the ninth had to have had a baby in between failing lyctor trials and dying in the tomb in order for harrow to be her myriad-great grandghoul since this book dropped so HOW did i miss that pyrrha straight up said this
anastasia on the dead planet that was never supposed to exist that she was exiled to saying goodbye to the baby in the nursery pyrrha painted mint green (earth colors. the color of new leaves in the springtime) to waste away in the tomb with the last fragment of earth left in the whole universe……a baby whose descendants would always always have to be necromancers as part of the oath anastasia made alecto….literally for she so loved the earth she gave her only begotten child..
ALT
