#and more relevently have you SEEN her narrators? i don't trust her one bit

[mayasaura]

Hi, I'm quite new here and I'm looking for meta and... okay even comfort from the fandom too. so we saw harrow's character development in HtN. What do you expect for Gideon in the next coming up? she has always given and given, and no one has ever listened to or treated her like a human being until now. ngl i am worried about my two little babies gideon and harrow but also for my shipper heart lol. the "one flesh, one end" it's kinda seems that the roles have reversed now? 1/2

First off, hello and welcome to the Locked Tomb!! This got a little long, so I'm gonna answer your part 2 separately.

Yeah, I am super big time worried about Gideon too. I mean yes she's dead, but aside from that, she's never been given the opportunity to see herself as having value beyond being useful to other people. And there's a whole meta post in that alone, but that's not the main point here. The main point is that our girl is not okay.

I really hope she's going to have to confront that about herself next book, and I'm optimistic that she will. The narrative knows she's not okay, it definitely knows why, and I'm pretty sure it cares. It ended the last book emphasizing just how fucked up Gideon's self worth is, and the story has always been told so far through close character study and relationship development. Harrow's had her turn solo, it would make sense for Gideon to be next. And this next part is me shamelessly plugging an agenda, but I think if she survived Pyrrha Dve might be able to help. Pyrrha thinks of Gideon as a child, and for twenty years she thought Gideon was her child. That's a relationship Gideon has never had before, and it has nothing to do with what Gideon can do for Pyrrha.

About that point on it seeming the roles have reversed!! You are so right and I'm SO excited to see where that goes. We don't know where exactly Gideon ended up, but we know Harrow took herself completely off the board. The ball is one hundred percent in Gideon's court. I made a joke before about how nobody knows what Corona is going to do next, least of all Corona, but it's even more true of Gideon. She's never been free before, she’s as confused as we are! You might even say she's in uncharted waters. (Get it?? Bc she was in the River?? It's a pun!!)

That said next book is probably going to just plunge her straight into an identity crisis I dont have a chance of predicting, but in that case I'm hoping it'll be the kind of identity crisis that lets Gideon explore who she would be without Harrow and/or the Ninth. The same way Harrow's ghostly improv group allowed her to explore a life without Gideon, or lives where they met differently. Harrow the Ninth set up for the power reversal in those epiparodos chapters, but we still only have one side of that equation. They carefully never let us see who Gideon was when she had power. They couldn't, they were Harrow's stage and Harrow couldn't call Gideon's soul, so anything of Gideon we saw in them would have just been Harrow's projection. They were only able to finally meet in the coffeeshop AU, where they could meet as equals. Her Divine Highness and the Daughter are both a side of Gideon Harrow doesn't know and we don't get to see yet. I'm hoping we'll get to see that side of her in the second half of the series. I'm also kind of hoping that the coffee shop AU is foreshadowing that Gideon and Harrow won't meet again until they can meet as equals. That will mean Gideon learning to value herself outside being useful to Harrow first.

And I mean, this is all just hopeful speculation. For all I know they merge into a fusion being soul melange like nightmare Steven Universe, or keep missing one another until they both die for good and their souls find eachother in the River. But I doubt it. Silas and Colum's plotline is still unfinished, along with John and Alecto's, so I'm putting my money on the second half of the series exploring power imbalance.

[bringmoreknives]

Can you explain to me the whole demolition lovers story? I only remembered that the guy had to kill 1000 evil men. Other than that i am lost and i was super mindblown with what you said about the hang em high lyrics about the dem. bride because i was never able to connect a lot of lyrics with part of their story. (Or if you don't have time can you direct me to ANYWHERE at this point where someone analyses the whole story?) Thank you x

sure! i’m no expert but here’s a little intro to the story. (i wrote this and then proceeded to write like over 500 words oof)

so basically the demolition lovers are the couple at the center of the narrative of the song named after them and then the revenge narrative after that. based on the lyrics to the song, we can assume they’re like, a crime duo, bonnie-and-clyde-esque, and the song kind of narrates their capture and defeat (by someone unnamed but i always kind of saw it as the police).

at the end of this song, in the space between the albums so to speak, the woman dies, but her lover escapes. and the devil comes to the man with a deal -- he says he’ll return the woman to the world of the living, if the man brings the devil the souls of one thousand evil men. so this is the beginning of the revenge story, and why revenge deals so much with themes of murder and violence and mortality. because the man is forced to commit all these heinous crimes. it’s about weighing awful thing against awful thing, it’s about morality. i have to kill these people because if i don’t, i’ll never see her again, not until we’re both dead. but how do i deal with this selfish act? is it worth it?

then the ending of the narrative is that the man’s killed 999 evil men. he’s so close to his goal, to getting to see his love in person again. and then he realizes the cruel irony of the devil’s deal, because they all come with a price. the last evil man he has to kill to complete the deal is himself. which is like, obviously very “tragic with a capital t” Tragedy, like shakespearean and stuff, but it’s also SO interesting to consider the big questions this raises. what makes someone evil? is there a point when they cross the line from good to evil? can evil acts be justified?

this is like, the confirmed story/timeline. beyond that, a lot of the stuff i talked about is more my take on things. some things like the orpheus and eurydice comparisons are something i’ve always seen as obvious. if you don’t know, orpheus and eurydice is a greek myth, where orpheus is the son of apollo and the muse calliope, and an extremely talented musician. he marries a girl named eurydice but she dies suddenly and tragically and he goes crazy with grief. through a combination of like demigodly abilities and musical prowess he makes his way down to hades, in the realm of the dead, and asks for eurydice back. hades says she can come back to the world as long as while she follows orpheus out of hell, he doesn’t look back at her. he has to be patient and trusting. but he can’t be, he loses the sound of her footsteps and looks back and she’s trapped in hell forever. the “don’t look back” part of hang ‘em high is relevant and also there are just a lot of similar plot beats.

as for what i said about hang ‘em high being about the girl demo lover’s time in hell, that’s never been confirmed or anything. a lot of the songs are only loosely thematically connected to the main narrative, or by a few lines. i honestly never thought of it until i saw @draintheblood (sorry for @’ing you so much lol)’s art for this song, and i instantly fell in love with the idea. the song has kind of crazy wild west vibes and also refers to a woman specifically quite a few times. i think that overall the story is way more about the guy than the girl, which is frustrating, so i like the idea that hang ‘em high could be a little bit about her at least.

um ANYWAY. if you like the basics and want to hear more natasha @gerardofarc has this amazing demo lovers post that literally gives me CHILLS every time. i would also totally recommend the rest of draintheblood’s revenge series, it fleshes out the demo lovers/revenge narrative in a way i never really thought of before!