#Wake and Pal's movements were awkward and jerky while Ianthe moved with the same grace and fluidity as Kiriona inhabiting her own dead body

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also hi Heedee!! big thank you for the big juicy question to roll around in my head and thank you for liking my meta!! 💕 I love making it and it really means a lot to me that you like reading it sorry it took over a fucking month to get this one back to you it kept picking up new questions and implications like a snowball rolling around a yard like so how does the non-dichotomy of soul and body work re: Pyrrha? I think its partially the eightfold word and partially maybe bc Pyrrha's soul has had ten thousand years to acclimate to being Gideon's bod Pyrrha isn't surprised to hear that Nona is dying in chapter 24 because (to quote): 'It takes a lot to acclimate a soul to a body it wasn’t born in if that original body’s around for it to miss' and this is while Pyrrha still thinks it's probably Gideon in there we know bc she tells Nona later in the same conversation that she thinks the body they're going after might be hers so that means even the eightfold word isn't sufficient to acclimate a soul to a different body Gideon and Harrow have done it as completely as Pyrrha and her Gideon ever did but the eightfold word DOES lay the groundwork or at least I'm pretty sure it does because Ianthe in Naberius' body was nothing like Wake in Cytherea's or Palamedes in Naberius Wake and Pal's movements were awkward and jerky while Ianthe moved with the same grace and fluidity as Kiriona inhabiting her own dead body speaking of Ianthe and Naberius I am eyeing that line about 'if that original body's around for it to miss' what happened to the bodies of the other lyctors' cavaliers is a long standing mystery and Pyrrha seems like she might be implying there that her original body ISN'T still around to miss can't just be that it's dead; Gideon's is dead too and Pyrrha was talking about Gideon's body when she said the line so maybe there is something in the theory that the original cavaliers were cremated I can see the lyctors doing it if they thought it was the only way to prevent complications or later failure of the process kinda makes me wonder what kinds of complications might arise from Ianthe keeping Babs around to play play with

ntn spoilers ahead

Question!

I appreciate that you champion Harrow's schizophrenia, and I had a thought that I'd like to run by you. It's intended with full respect for anyone with the disorder, and is also related to the neuro-bio-psych elements.

When Nona, Cam, and Crown are visiting the Captain, Nona hears Varun speak through the Captain. Afterward, she references the incident and realizes that neither Cam nor Crown had heard this happen. I was confused *how* Nona-lecto had that sort of experience, but...

If Nona-lecto is in Harrow's body, is it possible that she's experiencing schizophrenia symptoms? I'm not wanting to imply that it's a full hallucination, though perhaps since Harrow's 'meat' is schizophrenic meat, there are effects. Would mental health/illness be tied to the soul? Personality certainly seems to be, and some forms of memory.

Just rolling this around in my head a bit, and have no thoughts more advanced than this. Thank you for all your theorizing and writings about the books 💀 - heedee

I've been wondering how or if Harrow's schizophrenia effected Nona since the cover first dropped, and literally speaking, the way you're wondering about? I'm still not really sure. Brain stuff is complicated, even before souls are part of the equation, and everything about Nona is already so goddamn weird. I do think Nona is thematically schizophrenic, the same way she's thematically intellectually disabled.

Like the scene you're talking about here:

I think you're absolutely onto something, seeing this as related to psychosis. Reading this scene with that framing in mind, Nona's experience is so clearly about hallucinations. She was just trying to change the subject, and fuck. Turns out no one else heard that! Camilla and Crown's reactions, too.

But to your point about neurobiology, and the relationship between soul and body, it doesn't really tell us much. Nona wasn't hallucinating, because it turned out Judith wasn't just screaming. Varun was speaking to Nona through Judith in the language of a murdered planet, a language that sounds like screaming to human ears. Like Nona's uncanny knack for human languages, that's a product of her soul, not her brain.

We get proof of that later when Nona is pretending to be Harrow, and faking being effected by the blue light. She imitates the way Judith screamed, makes her mouth make the same shapes Judith's did, and her words come out in italics; just like Judith's words that Camilla and Crown heard as screams. She calls for help, in the screaming language she'd heard from Judith, with Judith in the room to hear her, and Varun answers by attacking the planet.

To your question about whether schizophrenia would be connected to the soul or to the body in setting, I don't think there's a dichotomy there. Body and soul aren't separate things, even when they're separated.

Lyctorhood, for example. You'd think muscle memory would be a clear cut case of living in the body. It's muscles. But when Ianthe chowed down on Naberius' soul, she got his reflexes with it. His swordsmanship, his stance, his training. The soul brought the body with it. And when Harrow literally cut Gideon out of her brain, it removed Gideon from her memory even when her soul was elsewhere. She spent half that book in the River, but didn't remember Gideon until her skull construct failed and her brain began to heal. So I would say that, just like memory, it's both. Harrow's schizophrenia is tied to both her soul and body, and there's not really much point in trying to separate the two.