#HtN

[ratrotted-art]

I have the one and only Harrowhark Labubu

[fawntastic]

I FUCKING LOVE CRISTABEL OCT!!!!!!!

[fandomfuhhhckery]

Love, love, LOVE that despite Harrow's absolute disdain for Ortus (in her "flashbacks" but also clearly from her time in Drearburh to inform the flashbacks) she obviously has paid attention to his poetry plenty.

Sure, you can hate something and still have internalized it, but it feels like this is a big enough body of work that it is IMPRESSIVE she did. I mean, girlypop could recognize a stanza and know exactly which Book it was from, as well as quote not only the plot of specific lines but even how quickly or slowly said plot points went down (such as when they were studying with Magnus and Abigail and she knew how quickly Mathias dispatched different assailants).

Harrowhark is incapable of half-assing her displeasure. She'll trepinate herself and memorize the Iliad, she don't give a fuck.

[maezanilla]

The inglorious mask

[toooceanblue]

Thinking about how in Gideon's narration she employs 206 anatomical names for bones but Harrow doesn't know the difference between a hilt and a pommel. Something something cavaliers being expected to respect/understand/integrate into necromancy while necromancers are not expected to do the same for caveliership. Is this anything.

[indigokra]

one flesh, one end. ☠️

[gradient-of-aster]

John specifically sits down with Gideon the first at some point. Probably it went like this: "Look, Gideon, I want you to-- well, don't kill her exactly, but, well, apply some stress. A little stress test, to get her Lyctor abilities to, shall we say, course correct." "Right." "If she happens to die... it would be a shame of course. She's such a good kid, and a talented necromancer besides. Having an incomplete Lyctor around does pose a significant risk to us, however." "I'll apply some stress." "I knew I could count on you to understand, Gideon. I can always count on you." Meanwhile, Harrow's sleep-deprived code journal entries are like: Ortus the first apparently enjoys running me through with his sword and/or spear. I am going to kill him spectacularly at the dinner table in front of God.

I'm listening to Harrow the Ninth (after reading it the first go around) and I ADORE Harrow's extreme dedication to collecting information. Her whole 'cataloging information on the lyctors' section goes like this: "Jod said things to you, ending with, 'Maybe don't mention that to Mercy or Augustine' When you mentioned it to Mercy, she got a very interesting amount of angry, and when you mentioned it to Augustine he said a bunch of things you later took down word for word in your secret code journal" It's like she's the protagonist of a JRPG, dead set on experiencing every line of dialogue in the game.

[naomistares]

this one part from harrow the ninth always made me really upset. so i made a four page comic out of it!

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Something funny to me about the Soup Scene is that… it's literally that scene from Alien. For those of you who haven't seen this movie (and it's very good and you should watch it), the soup scene in Harrow is I'm sure a deliberate homage to the most iconic “sudden dinnertime death aboard a spaceship” scene ever.

[crtki]

Harrowhark, the first ⚔️

[ydteus]

Coronabeth babyyy

Trying out a new coloring style!

[foxgirlmindcrank]

Wasn't expecting the big mystery of "what the hell does a ten thousand year old necromantic empire even fight/fear" being straight up stated in chapter 2, but we'll take it. Revenants of an entire planet is pretty cool though.

[lesboygideon]

gideon and harrow stickers now for sale on my etsy!

[pencildragons]

did jod have any hand in shaping what the houses' schticks were each going to be when the lyctors founded them. did he put his best friend, whom he renamed after a biblical military leader, in charge of founding the fucking MILITIA CENTRED CULTURE.

[faenixx]

eepy

[lichenbu]

While I’m fascinated at the depths the ao3 author has gone for (in a good way—I love this fandom), I’d like to propose my own theory (and borrow some things from OP):

Each member of the gang is a facet of Jod that must be understood to fully understand who he is.

Teacher is obvious. She’s the gentle teacher who guides everyone but is secretly dangerous.

Hot Sauce is also obvious. The leader who has a past they won’t share, a hankering for revenge, and a fear of what necromancy really is (along with a sense of betrayal when their necromancers leave).

Kevin was stated above—a child who can’t quite do art and loves dolls, unaware of what exactly their actions mean.

Honesty represents his hypocrisy, I think. His propensity to not want to face the truth and the way he takes things for his own good without thinking too much of others, but also his moments of overcoming this traits.

Beautiful Ruby is the facet of John that can struggle with his social life and not always stick with his friends and family. There’s also something to be said about how Beautiful Ruby has mixed feelings about his mother’s wish to give into John’s empire—the desire to give into your oppressor/become the oppressor vs the desire to liberate yourself from oppression?

Born in the Morning, especially the deal with him temporarily not being with the group because of his dads, might be a connection to how John is willing to throw away the cavaliers—his own cavalier too—in order to achieve things, and then how this gets him rejected from the group. I’m not too sure on this one.

Noodle and Nona, however, are both reflections of Alecto’s inhumanness and relative innocence to how the world works. Nona can observe situations, but isn’t entirely sure how to respond to them; Noodle is unwilling to put up with discomfort for long term gain because instinctually he wants the pain to go away. There’s a “meat loves meat” and Alecto’s anger at John parallel here.

Anyways. Sorry to override. I don’t think the ao3 theory is wrong, either, I just think there are a lot of ways to interpret the Nona gang.

Oh Jod fucking dammit I am going to lose it. Do you wanna know what I just realized. Do you.

So all in all, Nona’s worth to the children was universally agreed to be minimal. She ranked very low among them, definitely below Honesty and Beautiful Ruby and only fractionally higher than Born in the Morning. The only person Born in the Morning outranked was the seven-year-old, who was just Kevin. Those were really all their names—even Kevin—but nobody ever told Nona why Hot Sauce was called Hot Sauce.

Nona loved to watch the moon tremble in front of the big broken hanging blueness in the sky, careless of it, while Honesty prised bullet casings out of holes in the walls and Kevin played with his dolls.

But Blood of Eden never cared if you had to go to school, or clean the whiteboards, or examine the psychodramas Kevin was playing out with two erasers that Born in the Morning had drawn faces on.

Nor had Pyrrha ever looked at her the way she now looked at the dead corpse with red hair—a kind of soft, guarded want; a hunger—a living desire to take the corpse in her arms like Kevin’s wanting desire with his dolls. To own, to squeeze, to cosset and destroy.

He paused and said: “But I was stressed, okay? I was insane. Most of what had made me John had gone somewhere else. There were a few little thoughts left … a handful of things that made me me … a couple scraps of id. It’s not fair to judge me, right? I didn’t do this thinking … I didn’t do it like art. When I was seven, you know, all Nana had to play with in her house was some of Mum’s old toys. And my favourite out of all of them…” He gave a long, shuddering sigh. “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures.”

If I had a nickel for every time this series presented a seven year old boy with a painfully boring common name who notably loved playing dolls, with or without actual dolls to play with...

The smallest baby in Nona's gang being a parallel for the Necrolord Prime, the absolute picture of both what John used to be and how he's become the enemy of everything he used to be, is actually going to destroy me. Goodbye good night.

Literally not a single side character wasted in this series, every single one of them important, even Kevin...