#ask ht9

[hibiscustea9]

The moment I realized Noah was going fuckbuddies with Clint is when the depth of his depression really hit me. That's not bottom of the barrel, that's Cask of Amontillado.

Also I admire your firm refusal to acknowledge Alex's existence.

Good job on Blue Velvet.

Hi, anon, thank you for the ask. I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you; I haven't been on Tumblr for a few months.

Noah's depression was meant to be stark, not just in how he viewed himself, but how he thought others viewed him as well. Obviously, "Blue Velvet" is a story that's focused primarily on him and Qi, and how he comes to realize his own worth and the value of his life, but choosing Clint as the third-most important character in the story served a variety of reasons.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed reading "Blue Velvet" - and as for Alex, I actually have a story with him as one of the main characters early in development. It probably won't start until next year at the absolute earliest, but he won't be a background character for much longer. Thank you again for the ask!

[puffywiz]

💙 for the ask game!

💙 Did any parts of the books make you cry? If so, which ones?

I fully didn’t expect the ending of Gt9 🙃 I was naively like, oh well, Judith sent the SOS. They’ll be fine? And they. Were not. And neither was I! I sobbed! It was the most cathartic release I’d had in ages! I was never the same! And now I’m here :)

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

*NOTE; tie sweeps require a 50/50 with a 0.2 margin. additionally, the extra propaganda is at the very bottom, with it being kinda funky

Harrowhark Propaganda:

She gave herself a lobotomy and gives completely incorrect flashbacks to the previous book. Things that straight up did not happen. Gaslight gatekeep girlboss.

She’s schizophrenic (confirmed by the author) and also lives in a world with necromancy and ghostly revenants. She’s not just an unreliable narrator for readers, she’s an unreliable narrator of her own internal experience. She knows this and has to work with people around her to compensate for it. Descent into spoilerville below. Seriously Do Not Read if you want to read these books. There’s also the little matter about how she is *not actually the narrator* of a huge chunk of the story that we are initially led to believe is being told from her perspective.

(Spoilers) Holy shit she is THE most unreliable narrator. This gremlin gave herself a lobotomy so that she could forget about Gideon Nav, the most important person in her life (for magic soul-preserving reasons) so half of the second book in the series is spent gaslighting the reader about a book they just read. She comes up with an entire alternate version of the events of the first book in the series to carefully exclude any mentions of Gideon, and any time someone says ‘Gideon’ in front of her she LITERALLY has a stroke and/or an intercranial hemorrhage as her brain overwrites the word with someone else’s name. God occasionally intentionally triggers her memory revision to get out of difficult conversations. She also hallucinates ALL the time (unrelated to the lobotomy). She shows up at her frenemy’s room in the middle of the night (think little kid stumbling to their parents’ room and saying “I frew up”) to ask her to come check underneath her bed for the corpse that’s been wandering the space station. When frenemy checks underneath the bed, frenemy claims not to see anything, and Harrow is such an unbelievably unreliable narrator that it’s an open question in the fandom as to whether frenemy genuinely didn’t see the corpse or if frenemy was just yanking Harrow’s chain. Harrow is also haunted by a literal ghost that fucks up her already fucked up alternate history. Girlie will pick up a piece of paper and read from it the most violent and haunting piece of prose ever composed, when in reality all that’s written on the paper is the elementary school Superman S*. I am NOT joking that is a real goddamn scene. Harrow was created to win this poll. TLDR; she has brain damage and memory loss, she hallucinates, and is also haunted. * https://twitter.com/vestenet/status/1301012651145859072

Girl is so unreliable, she unreliably tells me events I was there for!!! She's retelling the previous book and I'm like "girlie, this is absolutely not how it happened". Also, she gave herself a DIY lobotomy, it has to impact your memory center I guess

She literally had a lobotomy, how can she be reliable

Gideon Nav Propaganda:

(Spoilers for Ht9) She just. Fully ignores most of the magic plot happening around her in the first boom to be a dyke. In the second book it’s even less reliable and it’s fully fucking insane. It’s first person but she’s telling YOU (harrow) what is happening and it’s impossible to decipher. The appearance and personality of every character is fully morphed by Gideon’s mean dykishness.

MASSIVE spoilers. Like even mentioning that this is a thing is a huge fucking spoiler. I normally don’t care about spoilers that much but I legitimately feel awful for anyone with even a passing interest in reading these books who has this spoiled for them. Anyway. Yeah turns out the second-person narration is actually a first-person narration by the dead girl living in Harrow’s head whose death traumatized Harrow (and the entire fandom) so badly that she literally lobotomized herself to forget it and give Gideon a chance at not having her soul digested.

constantly adds her own commentary, does not pay attention to the interesting moving parts of the plot bc she's too busy looking at pretty girls, cannot be trusted to read her own intentions correctly never mind anyone else's. I love her dearly

she just doesn’t notice or doesn’t give a shit about a ton of plot-essential information. Harrow and Palamedes are talking about a necromantic theorem that would blow open the entire story if we could hear them? You can instantly feel Gideon’s eyes glaze over and her mind wander to the nearest available hot girl, and our attention goes with her. It’s handled so smoothly that you might not even notice it happening until a second or third read.

More Propaganda under cut!

Harrowhark:

Harrowhark is simply the unreliable narrator of all time. Can’t remember shit because of a lifetime of trauma? Check. Maybe lying to yourself and those around you a bit? Most definitely. Being gaslit by the survivors you depend on to orient you to reality? For sure. How about a little bit of canon schizophrenia? She’s got it all. Ghosts? Or something? Spirits that are attached in some way to your body and are not perceivable by others? Sure, sure! But how about spirits that are attached in some way to your body and are gonna use you to hijack others’ bodies and maybe kill God, too? Absolutely. Wee bit of DIY brain surgery? If it would make you an unreliable narrator, friends, then Harrowhark Nonagesimus has been there, been subjected to that!

Okay I don't know that much about this series since I haven't convinced myself to read all of the first book, but this is my blorbo in law so I'd feel bad not spreading propaganda (all of what I'm saying is something I've read, as to prevent myself from straight up submitting misinformation). So all of Harrow's unreliable narration takes place in the second book, Harrow the Ninth. Basically, without her even seemingto acknowledge it, Harrow's brain is very fucked up during this book, to the point where even she's not sure how reliable her narrative is. There's many questions left unclear as a result of her fucked up little brain, like what's real, what's fake, whether we can trust her judgement, whether even she can trust her own judgement, whether her original cavalier is dead or not (Harrow is convinced she is), etc. Let me tell you, I adore unreliable narrators who aren't even that sure if they're reliable. I have yet to eat that trope up here in this circumstance, but this poll might not run again by the time I do, so for now, here's my messed up blorbo in law.

OKAY SO REMEMBER MY GIDEON SUBMISSION? HARROW DOESN’T! SPOILERS AHEAD BECAUSE SHE LOBOTOMIZED HERSELF TO FORGET GIDEON BECAUSE THAT’S A HEALTHY WAY TO GRIEVE AND THEN IN THE ONLY PARTS OF HER BOOK THAT SHE NARRATES (THE REVISED CANAAN HOUSE PARTS) IT’S LITERALLY A ROOM FULL OF GHOSTS HER BRAIN SUMMONED TO DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT SHE CUT HER BRAIN IN HALF TO FORGET GIDEON. she also is a) haunted and b) psychotic, experiencing hallucinations her entire life of both the ghosts haunting her and less supernatural hallucinations- bells tolling, bones rattling, her parents (some of the only dead people NOT haunting her), etc! in the revised history of canaan house that her brainghosts invent, she brings along someone who knows about her psychosis to help reality check her when she tells him go! her caregiver as a child and support when she got older, crux, is a horrible man- but at one point, when someone other than harrow is in harrow’s body and tells him “i am not harrowhark, i am sorry,” his response is simply “aye, you’ve said that before too. who are you then, if not my lady harrowhark?” showing his familiarity with her psychosis and his love for the child he wouldn’t dare see as a daughter. but enough about that lets talk about her unreliable narration! she lies about her feelings of course but she also simply hides the truth from everyone, all the time, compulsively. also literally the entire section of her book that she narrates is a lie she’s telling US about a lie she’s telling HERSELF and no one understands even a little bit of the truth until like the last act of the book. queen.

Gideon Nav:

Gideon Nav is all but useless as a narrator, and we love her for it. So first of all, she knows absolutely nothing. She grew up under a rock. Almost literally. When the plot is happening near her, she almost never tells us about it. Politics, history, and the magic system are boring. Let her know when there's something she can FIGHT. She also has very selective emphasis and focus that can change a scene completely without ever actually lying. She can tell the same story—to us, in her third-person narration as a factual recounting—and in one version the incident will be a schoolyard scuffle, while a later telling will reveal it to have been a near-homicide. She'll confidently interpret other character's motivations and emotions, only to later be proven wrong. But the thing that makes her REALLY unreliable? She lies to HERSELF constantly. She will tell us in her narration that she doesn't give a shit where someone disappeared to, and then spend the whole day searching for them. She'll say she hates someone, when. Well....

okay so i am actually going to do one segment about her own book and one about harrow’s so many apologies and also many spoilers ahead okay? okay so in gideon the ninth it’s a well known thing that she’s an unreliable narrator on two fronts: she lies to herself and therefore us about how she’s feeling and what she’s thinking, and also she isn’t paying attention to the plot at all. the only things she pays any attention to are hot girls, swords, and hot girls with swords. at one point she watches their only way out be sealed off and is so bored about it that she goes to sleep watching it happen, taking absolutely no note of “oh hey they’re trapping us here”. later someone asks IN FRONT OF HER “hey where did all our shuttles go” and shes like “😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌” and still does not make the connection. babygirl. but THEN!!!!! in HARROW the ninth (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) gideon is the narrator the ENTIRE TIME (except for the revised canaan house parts) and not only does she editorialize, she also straight up lies about events and motivations! partially justified by her being inside harrow’s head, but like. babygirl. beloved. the interjections of “holy fuck” and “pommel” and othersuch things is so important to my mental health and wellbeing. thank you. thank you for lying to us so so much.

[theriverbeyond]

For the tlt ask game, ✍️ and 💀?

✍️ Of the supporting characters, who's POV would you be most interested in reading?

Already answered here and here but a third POV i'd love is We Suffer And We Suffer, detailing the obvious shitshow /fun house /loony toons that is BOE governance. I think it would be so funny. she is going to get a thrombosis.

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

too many the count, HtN is my favorite book in the series. in attempt to not paste the entire book into this reply, "Sick of roses and horny for revenge" is a very important quote. to me.

[letthebookbegin]

OMG HOW FUN!!!!!

💀 ✍️ 🔬 for the tlt ask please!!!!

(be happy I didn’t ask for 💙 tbh)

thanks sudha!!! 💕 and yh 💙 would just be. all of them. multiple times 😭

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

also so many..... also the entire last act, but i'm gonna pick this one bc my entire day is derailed every time i think of it:

Always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life or death that they want to throw at thee and me. I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.

(honorable mention to the "i am a nonsense." monologue bc it's burned into my brain and i just want to give harrow a hug okay 😭)

WAIT ALSO i can't let this question go by without

It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.

✍️ Of the supporting characters, who's POV would you be most interested in reading?

this is such a good one!! there's so many but i'll go with camilla or palamedes; they're there for so much of the story & i'd LOVE to get their perspective on things

🔬 Who is your fav lyctor and why?

i'm so invested in all the OG lyctor's stories, i've said this to you before but my kingdom for a prequel!! anastasia figuring out true lyctorhood and dying for it, cassiopeia giving the sixth house instructions to desert hundreds of years in advance, cyth - just all of cyth!! - g1deon falling for wake when he's known to not fall for anyone else & thinking he's going mad with the gaps in his memory, augustine and mercymorn's WHOLE thing, there's just SO much there! my answer as i started typing this was going to be pyrrha, but i now realise she's. not actually a lyctor hahaha, so i'm going to go with cassiopeia! i need to dissect her brain

tlt asks

[idolshineitai]

⚔️ 💀✂️

SAW THIS ASK AND GOT IMMEDIATELY SO EXCITED IT FELT LIKE I COULD THROW UP. rabbiting heartbeat. IM SO RHGHGJHJNJBMGN. thank you beloved :3

from this ask game!

⚔️ Fav Gt9 quote?

THIS ONE IM ACTUALLY UNSURE OF. in the end it’s probably something from the pool scene. almost definitely the one about harrow consenting to being ritually drowned but thrashing away from a hug (not gonna go grab my book copy right now but you get the gist). im in the middle of rereading GTN and it took a while to finish the first time, so there are MANY good tidbits, hints, and clues that totally escaped me then! so many bangers too. Properly enjoying them now 👀 i will also say that “ghosts and you might die is my middle name” is currently consuming a lot of my brainspace <3 I Love Gideon Nav The Regular Amount (Which Is A LOT)

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

again. so many good good GOOD ones. thinking of the entire last dance exchange. thinking of “Around you, people would go back and forth, giving you the widest berth possible, ignoring you so entirely that at one point you were convinced you were dead. With that conviction, you had felt only intense relief.” because it makes me want to TEAR MY HAIR OUT. but i really really have to give it up for *gestures at my current bio* “There were a couple of callouses now on those soft necromancer’s palms, and I was proud of you.” THIS IS FOR A MULTITUDE OF REASONS and half of them are praise kink /j NO NO NO OK SO. god, just… the fact that gideon could be PROUD of harrow for ANYTHING. the fact that it’s this. the distinction of “soft”, to call harrow of all people in any way soft, and to be a “soft necromancer” even just in reference to the flesh… the pacing, the timing, where this line falls 😭 like ok my girl ok. i genuinely am considering getting this one tattooed but i need a good design for it. I WAS PROUD OF YOU!!! she can be SO mad at her and still PROUD of h— *dies on the spot*

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

SHORT. FUCKING OBVIOUSLY IT’S SHORT. i can admit that the slightly longer hair is cute on the HTN cover, and nona’s braids are fucking awesome for NONA, but for harrow? the length of her hair is something that she kept up with meticulously — every one of her most devout people had their hair cropped close — and the way that her hair DOES grow longer is bc she gets too damn sick to take care of it, and bc someone magically manipulates her hair for fun. WITHOUT HARROW KNOWING. to me it’s a companion to the autonomy-stealing haircut (i think there’s an actual real life term for this, or at least a trope one, but can’t recall it rn. that’s also… very gender-y to me). this new length actively distresses harrow, who doesn’t have the wherewithal to comprehend the unfamiliar sensory experience and who is already dealing with a Whole Fucking Lot. so yeah. it’s short. it’s the short hair. i love my darling girl.

thank u so much stein im actually indebted to you now /j. infodumping is my life’s greatest joy and this felt SO GOOD to talk abt !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🫶

[procyonis]

💀 and 🥀 for the tlt ask game !!!!

Questions are from this

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?-

GOD this is a difficult one, since Ht9 is my favorite out of the three books out. There's just so many to choose from! BUT since I'm absolutely typical it's this-

“It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.”

This is one of the many quotes that haunt my brain.

🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canan House, who would it be?-

One of the teens, their deaths all around just were so supremely shitty but also if one lived- plot wise it could've worked. Everyone else's death had major plot relevance sadly (even Marta, who I contemplated.)

[a-big-apple]

For the TLT ask Game

💀 Fav Ht9 quote? ✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow? 🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canan House, who would it be?

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

shit this is difficult i think it's a very close race between "There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow--but she had died before Harrow was born" and "You'd touched that letter, and I--you know it was killing me twice that you weren't there, right?" but fuck i'm also so partial to "gall on gall"

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

listen i love Harrow all the ways, but buzzed head Harrow is very close to my heart.

🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canaan House, who would it be?

THIS IS SO HARD. i want to say Jeannemary, but make her survive all that without Isaac and Abigail and Magnus? or i want to say Abigail, but then who else would be able to exorcise Wake from Harrow's river bubbles later?? and of course i'd say Pal but he did kind of survive and now we get to have Paul... and to say Gideon would make the rest of the books not even happen jlkdfsjkldfskjdf so maybe my answer is Dulcie! maybe she would survive long enough for the many very powerful necromancers in the books to find a way to help her.

<3 <3 <3

[smashed-hard-drive]

No, i absolutely agree! I read back through my post and i wasn't super clear on what i saying 😅

I was trying to say that i agree that:

1) Ianthe wants Corona immortal. This isn't really debated, but this list is partly so i remember all my thoughts

2) Conventional Lyctorhood is likely to be a nonviable route. Conventional being one person using another soul as a battery, like (most of) the og lyctors and Ianthe eating Babs. I don't think this is a route Ianthe is actually considering for Corona, but it's very fun to think about how it could be messed up in fun interesting ways when the eightfold word is performed on someone by an outsider.

3) The apple cores and theorem notebooks mentioned in the reply you highlighted are definitely related to Ianthe's plan to keep Corona with her. (Only caught that on like my 4th time through the Ht9 audiobook rip)

4) Even if Ianthe knew you could body share/after finding out about gestalt Lyctorhood (so called perfect Lyctorhood according to Palamedes/Paul), i don't think she'd want that with Corona. Sure the twins lived basically their entire lives as a single unit, but Ianthe wants recognition (and posters of her face) and she treats Corona like a doll or pet in a lot of ways. She doesn't want to merge with Corona, she wants her where she can touch her and interact with her.

5) Kiriona/Gideon's currently lease on (un/dead) life as on Nt9 has probably given Ianthe more ideas/options, is she hasn't had them already. Obviously Jod has a fuckton more power to work with, and necromantically viewing his work tends to result in a case of citrus seared sinuses, but Ianthe has been proven to be adept at understanding and interpreting necromancy even without much to go on (e.g. the trial labs in Gt9). Furthermore, she's into liminal magic, so i wouldn't be surprised if she picked up some spirit magic asking the way, which would presumably help with keeping Corona around indefinitely whether she wants to be there or not.

quick question, what the *fuck* is Ianthe planning?

(NTN ch. 23, p. 337)

[altschmerzes]

Hey! I just read your post about the John chapters in Nona the Ninth and their corresponding book of John verses, and I'd love to read more! If you have a link to share, that would make my day.

YES OKAY CRACKS KNUCKLES HERE WE GO

for context: the john chapters in nona the ninth correspond to the book of john in the gospels of the new testament in the bible. i'm a theology nerd who has a degree in religion and - after first going a little nuts about the positioning and regard of john compared to matthew, mark, and luke in the gospels - i looked up the verses before reading the sections, jotting them down as i went, only to discover the verses had a pretty much DIRECT literal or thematic link to what was about to go. under the cut, i'll go into the verses and the summaries i wrote of the john chapters in nt9 to explain this to some friends. (my familiarity with the christian NT is a liiiiittle less than my familiarity with the torah, Being Jewish And All, but i think i'm pretty on the money with this one.)

for ease of clarity, the structure is 'verse from john, followed by what i refer to as a summary of the corresponding section in 'the gospel of the world's smallest violin.'' also, sections of the bible are sometimes given titles. so the title bit there with the quotes from john refer to that section's title.

also worth noting some of these quotes make me, as a jew, kind of. uncomfortable or annoyed but i'm putting that aside for the moment for the sake of ~literary analysis. also also, the quotes are from the nrsv for the most part.

John 20:8

The Empty Tomb Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside, and he saw and believed.

summary of the gospel of the world's smallest violin section:

we're introduced to the whole bit of that. john starts his story about what happened. he talks about how they believed what they were doing was going to work and it would be okay. the cryo plan. the others had questions but he knew it would be fine.

John 5:20

The Healing At The Pool

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.

summary of the gospel of the world's smallest violin section:

they get shut down by the gov't. john and company start to get creative. the general public realizes everything is fucked vis a vis climate change. john starts getting into it with ulysses and titania - naming them, spending time with them, etc. most importantly, the bodies he touched stayed uncorrupted. they do not rot.

John 15:23

The Vine and the Branches

Whoever hates me hates my Father as well.

summary of the gospel of the world's smallest violin section:

they start believing him with what's going on. the bodies still don't rot. they're trying to figure out how to make it not real, how to make them respond the way they should, it doesn't work. nobody was paying attention to them yet. augustine was trying to get him to snap out of it and knock it off. mercy had been trying, but had stopped by then. he 'introduces' mercy and augustine to the bodies - ulysses and titania. he's able to move them for the first time.

(that one doesn't quite connect as well but i think it still resonates thematically - the concept of pushback, of him producing these 'miracles' and basically being like. if you love me, you'll stop trying to make me stop. you'll listen to me.)

John 5:18

The Authority of the Son

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath but he was calling God his own father, making himself equal to God.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

everybody else learns about what he can do as he gains more control over the body. everybody freaked the fuck out at first, they 'had a big fight over what it meant.' they ultimately believed, bought in, and john knew that 'it was fine.' he knew he'd 'touched something, come away with something, that could be used for good.' the line: 'Two scientists, an engineer, a detective, a lawyer, and an artist walk into a bar to help me become God.' they run trials. they knew if they were caught they'd be shut down and hushed up. he says they 'decided to stream' to tell the world.

John 8:1

this is a disputed part of the gospel of john. from the website i was using to reference: [The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]

the included verse is: "Unbelief of the Jewish Leaders

-but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

john starts telling the world. making their big announcement, getting attention. the audience members walk away and freak out. people say he's a satanist, or an alien, or something. everyone starts asking him to fix their problems. they actually talk about jesus directly here, that helping people 'was christ's whole problem' and 'got way too much attention and brought the heat down on everybody.' the mount of olives bit, for context, is a time when jesus is interrogated by leaders of the community and basically put through some paces, authority and legitimacy is questioned, and he works in the community. etc.

John 19:18

The Crucifixion

There they crucified him, and with him two others - one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

they all end up with interpol warrants. the world is closing in on them, only the inner circle left. he talks about being unable to bring back people once they're gone. he talks about how the gov't announces they've got this plan with the ships. he talks about how they kept being called monsters, crazy, etc. the uh. cow thing happens. he tells harrow/alecto 'they didn't give a fuck about trying to save you. they left.'

John 5:1

The Healing at the Pool

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

corresponding smallest violin bit: they decide they're going to get people to take them seriously. the people who ask him to reanimate a world leader who's died show up and he goes to this very important meeting. he does it. they pay him a shit tonne of money and they're given the nuke.

John 3:20

Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the fight for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

he says they never wanted to actually use the nuke, just have it to use as leverage. force people to take them seriously, listen to them. among other things john says 'either you're the evil wizard and everyone wants to know what you think, or you're the good wizard and nobody cares.' the plan to leave earth is still accelerating, they're still not listening to him. they paid people to find facilities where the gov'ts are making the ships. they see the whole story is kind of. bullshit. he finally gives up trying to be a scientist and announces to the world he's a necromancer.

John 9:22

The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had declared that anyone who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

"They made it clear that they'd arrest anyone who tried to join us. Floods of people came anyway." talks about the general reaction to his necromancer announcement. he's kind of. scaring everyone with what he can do. he's still trying to figure out the soul question. there's an exchange of fire b/w the local cops and the new people trying to join them. john kills people for the first time i believe. he..... 'forgot' to start their hearts again. they dragged in all the corpses.

John 1:20

John the Baptist Denies Being the Messiah

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not the Messiah."

corresponding smallest violin bit:

the escape plan from the gov'ts escalates. they work out the truth about the plan - that there will be one ship, one leaving, and everyone else is big fucked. nobody was listening to them anymore. and they - the other og lyctors - are asking john for a miracle. to fix this. he says he has to stall the ship leaving. they use the nuke as blackmail. the ships are counting down to launch. he sends gideon to the meeting with the nuke. he tells everyone the nuke is armed. he also takes over the man he's been puppeting around to have a second nuke threat. they start telling him to stop, that he still has time to walk this back. he walks away from everything, doesn't want to deal with this anymore. cristabel uh. kills herself. and he touches the soul and then walks away from her. he's touched the earth too, alecto, and that's what he's after now. everyone is dying or dead. he absorbs alecto, or as much of her as he can. he makes her body. he Becomes God. blasts through the planets. etc.

John 5:4

The Healing at the Pool

One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years.

corresponding smallest violin bit:

john and harrow talk about god. about loving god. he keeps on going with his story. says he'll bring back the good ones. fix them. the ones he can stand to look at and forgive. he talks about how he took their memories. talks about how the deaths happened broadly. he talks about alecto, i can't die if she's alive, etc. he needs the lyctors around him etc. the tomb is the death of god. harrow talks about how she wants to find god. maybe she's in the tomb. she walks into the river and to the tower in the river, and says she'll start there.

OKAY. so. there you have it.

it's not always a perfect or clear analogy but given what i know of the gospels and the context, and in a more thematic rather than specific sense, they all line up pretty fucking directly.

this has been: a guided tour through the gospel of john and also the gospel of the world's smallest violin with your host, gav

[hibiscustea9]

i really hated blue velvet and i know a lot of other people did too. i can't believe someone who wrote as beautiful a love story as fire walk with me could write such an ugly, hate-filled story. you pulled the rug out from under us and that made so many of us mad. your writing is amazing and you're so talented and its a shame you wasted it on a story like blue velvet. when you write stories like you have, that's what your readers expect. go back to what you do best and the readers will follow.

Well. Hello to you, too, anon. This is quite a message to get at the end of a work week. The saddest part of this message is that I think you actually thought you might have been trying to help here. I can only assume that your absolute lack of tact and empathy comes from a desire to see more of the writing you previously enjoyed and that this is an attempt, however misguided, to motivate me into writing that. I'll respond more in detail after the jump.

You're not the only person to dislike "Blue Velvet," anon. In fact, I've gotten several comments on that story from people who didn't enjoy it. I'm aware that the shift in the story, and the revelations late in the game, did change what people's expectations were. That is one of the risks readers have to accept in reading in-progress works. I don't work by writing an entire story and uploading it all at once, so tags are updated as the story progresses, and as needed. I ensure that the tags are up to date for whatever the most recent chapter of the story is, but if you're going to read something that's still being written, you have to accept the fact that there might be something which occurs that you aren't in favor of.

As to your description of "Blue Velvet" as ugly and hate-filled, that, I would argue, is in the eye of the beholder. I received a number of comments describing the story as beautiful and full of love. You have the right to disagree with that, and so if you found it to be an ugly story, that's your perspective and you have the right to feel that way.

What you really don't have the right to do is come into my house and piss on the carpet. I can only assume that you haven't left comments on any stories I've posted on AO3, and since you don't have the courage to post this any way other than anonymously, I'm willing to guess this is the first feedback you've given me on any of my stories. I don't know what sort of perspective you have on the world and the way it works, and I'm not going to speculate. But the fact that you felt comfortable enough to come to Tumblr, fill out this form, and submit it, tells me that you don't really care about other people, and your pitiful attempt at giving advice - which seems completely to be about what you, personally, want to happen - underscores this.

Here's the reality, anon: I'm not your personal fanfic writer. If you want to pay me $5000 a month so I can quit my job and be your personal fanfic writer, I will absolutely write anything you want. But you're not going to pay me $5000 a month. Nobody is. Nobody has ever paid me anything for any fanfic I've ever written. You have never had to pay a single dime to read any of the almost 2 million words of fanfic I've written since July of 2020. Nobody has ever had to pay for what I write, and that's the way I like it. I like to have the freedom of writing what I want, and publishing it, and getting feedback.

If you actually had constructive feedback based on an aspect of the story, I'd be more than willing to listen to it. If you wanted to argue, for example, that Noah wasn't a realistic character, that his dialogue sounded false, that there wasn't anything clear about what his motivations were, or anything else, that would actually have been helpful. That would have been appreciated. But even then, you don't give advice like that unless someone specifically asks for it. This is not an advanced writing workshop and you are not here to give brutal feedback to get my writing in shape. You are a reader, I am a writer, and if you do not enjoy what I am writing, I have very good news for you - there are literally 11 million other works on AO3 you can read instead.

You might also be surprised that what you've said about readers coming back if I go back to what I do best isn't even true. "Fire Walk with Me" was the high water mark of my fanfic writing career in terms of reader response, as you've noticed. But since then, my readership has fallen off a cliff, even when I'm literally writing work in the same series. "Blue Velvet" has more kudos and more bookmarks than both "Cobblestones" and "Half Past Midnight," so you clearly haven't looked at the actual story data itself.

I'm not angry with you, anon. I feel sorry for you that this is how you choose to interact with the world and what you have to say to someone whose work you allegedly admire. And I'm frustrated, because all feedback like this does is make it less and less likely that I'll write anything in the future.

[puffywiz]

TLT ask game!

⚔️ Fav Gt9 quote?

💀 Fav Ht9 quote?

🐕 Fave Nt9 quote?

🏰 Fav House aesthetic?

👯 Which twin is worse and why?

✍️ Of the supporting characters, who's POV would you be most interested in reading?

🔬 Who is your fav lyctor and why?

✂️ What is the best hair length on Harrow?

💙 Did any parts of the books make you cry? If so, which ones?

🔮 Which one of Harrows AU's do you find the most compelling?

🥀 If you could have chosen one character to survive Canan House, who would it be?

🛡️ Which Cavaliers would you wanna see fight 1V1? Who would win?

🧪 Which Necromancers would you wanna see fight 1V1? Who wound win?

🤹 Which meme would you want to see make it into At9?

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

Dr. John Watson Propaganda:

He literally admits that he changes his stories. "One day the true stories may be told"? Do I need to say more?

Gideon Nav Propaganda:

(Spoilers for Ht9) She just. Fully ignores most of the magic plot happening around her in the first boom to be a dyke. In the second book it’s even less reliable and it’s fully fucking insane. It’s first person but she’s telling YOU (harrow) what is happening and it’s impossible to decipher. The appearance and personality of every character is fully morphed by Gideon’s mean dykishness.

MASSIVE spoilers. Like even mentioning that this is a thing is a huge fucking spoiler. I normally don’t care about spoilers that much but I legitimately feel awful for anyone with even a passing interest in reading these books who has this spoiled for them. Anyway. Yeah turns out the second-person narration is actually a first-person narration by the dead girl living in Harrow’s head whose death traumatized Harrow (and the entire fandom) so badly that she literally lobotomized herself to forget it and give Gideon a chance at not having her soul digested.

constantly adds her own commentary, does not pay attention to the interesting moving parts of the plot bc she's too busy looking at pretty girls, cannot be trusted to read her own intentions correctly never mind anyone else's. I love her dearly

she just doesn’t notice or doesn’t give a shit about a ton of plot-essential information. Harrow and Palamedes are talking about a necromantic theorem that would blow open the entire story if we could hear them? You can instantly feel Gideon’s eyes glaze over and her mind wander to the nearest available hot girl, and our attention goes with her. It’s handled so smoothly that you might not even notice it happening until a second or third read.

More Propaganda under cut!

Gideon Nav is all but useless as a narrator, and we love her for it. So first of all, she knows absolutely nothing. She grew up under a rock. Almost literally. When the plot is happening near her, she almost never tells us about it. Politics, history, and the magic system are boring. Let her know when there's something she can FIGHT. She also has very selective emphasis and focus that can change a scene completely without ever actually lying. She can tell the same story—to us, in her third-person narration as a factual recounting—and in one version the incident will be a schoolyard scuffle, while a later telling will reveal it to have been a near-homicide. She'll confidently interpret other character's motivations and emotions, only to later be proven wrong. But the thing that makes her REALLY unreliable? She lies to HERSELF constantly. She will tell us in her narration that she doesn't give a shit where someone disappeared to, and then spend the whole day searching for them. She'll say she hates someone, when. Well....

okay so i am actually going to do one segment about her own book and one about harrow’s so many apologies and also many spoilers ahead okay? okay so in gideon the ninth it’s a well known thing that she’s an unreliable narrator on two fronts: she lies to herself and therefore us about how she’s feeling and what she’s thinking, and also she isn’t paying attention to the plot at all. the only things she pays any attention to are hot girls, swords, and hot girls with swords. at one point she watches their only way out be sealed off and is so bored about it that she goes to sleep watching it happen, taking absolutely no note of “oh hey they’re trapping us here”. later someone asks IN FRONT OF HER “hey where did all our shuttles go” and shes like “😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌” and still does not make the connection. babygirl. but THEN!!!!! in HARROW the ninth (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) gideon is the narrator the ENTIRE TIME (except for the revised canaan house parts) and not only does she editorialize, she also straight up lies about events and motivations! partially justified by her being inside harrow’s head, but like. babygirl. beloved. the interjections of “holy fuck” and “pommel” and othersuch things is so important to my mental health and wellbeing. thank you. thank you for lying to us so so much.

[txttletale]

Vi or Gideon for the character ask game! :)

gonna do gideon because all my opinons on vi boil down to "i just think she's neat" (and also i like the way u portray her in ur fics). my two opinions (ask meme. send me blorboi) favorite thing about them: i love how gideon is good at some things and bad at others. like, she's perceptive and understands a lot about stuff that makes sense to her (swords), but she's also totally oblivious and short-sighted and doesn't pay close attention to things that bore her. and that's just a great trait to have in a protagonist, you see her shine, you see where she doesn't. makes her rounded and likeable. least favorite thing about them: nothing she's perfect. the only two points in her narration when i disagreed with her was when she called abigail and cytherea's conversation boring (noo gideon historical trivia is actually very interesting) and when she condemmned ianthe's decision to throw augustine into the stoma (ianthe sucks but if she hadn't done that the Sun Would Have Gone Out.) but those aren't bad moments or anything they're in character and work well. i love her. #girl favorite line: ok this is a tough one. i think it might be "This is Gideon Nav Talking Time". like. the assertiveness. the 'i am not taking this bullshit anymore of it'. it's glorious brOTP: okay this is a weird one but hear me out. ianthe. i just thikn the brief dynamic they have at the end of Ht9 of Gideon being like 'you're a horrible creep and very evil please stop making such funny jokes' is really endearing. but also palamedes as like the first genuine real friend she has is also a heartwarming classic. my brOTP is gideon/any friends at all honestly OTP: i mean her and harrow obviously. are they unhealthy and insane and codependent? yeah. so what. let the #girls have a fucked up relationship in media for once i say. its feminism nOTP: ok its not so much a nOTP but i do think everyone who thinks that gideon/coronabeth would be healthy or even functional has a HUGE misreading of coronabeth. they're attracted to each other, for sure, but as an actual relationship they'd be awful for each other and it'd end in disaster. random headcanon: adhd gideon isn't a hot take but adhd gideon. unpopular opinion: every time i see a post arguing that gideon is 'actually smart' i'm like, idk, nonplussed. just feels like takes like that devalue the actual strengths and forms of intelligence she shows in order to frame them in a more, like, traditional way? lame. song i associate with them: cry for judas. i mean:

mistreat your altar boys long enough and this is what you get: sad and angry, can't learn how to behave still won't know how in the darkness of the grave long black night, morning frost i'm still here but all is lost

favorite picture of them: idk i don't keep fanart in mind usually but i like it when fanartists make her look like a bit less of a super-badass and instead focus on the fact that she's a goofy teen. she deserves to be smiling like a dumb asshole i think

[eerna]

I hope this ask isn't annoying but I just read Gideon and Harrow the ninth (tbh because I saw u posting about it and I googled it and google was like "it's lesbians" so I ordered it) and I'm so excited to be excited about a book series again! Even though Nona comes out in September D: tbh I found Ht9 kind of a lot more confusing than Gt9, but I didn't mind so much, it seems like Muir's style to let the explanation unfold after some initial confusion. I kind of knew the reveal with the 2nd person narration was coming but it was so well done and such a relief when it did lol I didn't realize how much I missed Gideon's cheeky narration. Now I'm looking for something to fill the void until Nona the Ninth comes out- do you have any recommendations?

Not annoying at all!! I'm glad you enjoyed it~~ Yes, not knowing wtf is going on throughout mons of HtN is the way it was intended to be. Miss Muir really said "FUCK first time readers <3" but that's adding to the entire dreamlike confusion aesthetic of the book so it's great. I too was pretty sure I knew who was narrating but I was already so hurt that I didn't dare hope it wasn't some weird necromantic thing or a hallucination. And sadly, no, I have no similar books to recommend :((((( You can check my goodreads for my list of favs, but I can't hink of anything that could mend the Nona-less hole in our hearts. Hope you enjoy whatever you pick next~

[auber-dee]

I'm turning this into its own post because I ran off on a tangent, but on this post @kyraneko said:

Other question: as revealed by the endward chapters of Ht9, the Emperor stands accused of sabotaging the perfect-lyctorhood process to keep it from those of his first batch of lyctors who could still make use of it.

What might he have in play to keep his new batch of Lyctors from figuring it out?

Or did he panic the first time around and figure it’s a reasonable way of covering his tracks to let the new group “discover” the process, oh so tragic that it was developed too late for his first group, sad sad, but hey, now nobody has to die anymore?

And that’s actually one of my big questions re: John. Because some of the things he says earlier in HtN imply that he did not expect any of the house heirs to be able to work out perfect lyctorhood — IIRC he said something about wanting people to choose the sacrifice willingly, in full understanding of what they were giving up, which to me says dead cavs moreso than just “now necro and cav both are chased by planet ghosts that maybe cannot actually kill us.”

I honestly suspect that John didn’t think any of them would be smart enough to figure it out, since the trials were all set up to lead people in the “Gotta kill the Cav” direction. And that was a fair supposition — only Palamedes, that we know of, truly believed in perfect lyctorhood as the intended end state, and his belief was a matter of philosophy as much as science. But also, leaving something like that to chance because of course it won’t happen is very in keeping with other things we know about John “I will just be extremely careful about bleeding for 10 000 years” Gaius, who suffers deeply from Thinks He’s The Smartest Person In The Room Syndrome.

I also have Questions about whether or not he knew/suspected that Cytherea was headed to the First to mess things up, and figured that was a win-win, in terms of the pressure prodding the kids along toward imperfect lyctorhood, and hopefully getting rid of a rogue lyctor in the process… This is, after all, the same man who asked Gideon Prime to try to murder Harrow lots on the off-chance it would fix her.

On the other hand! I am a little bit in love with your second possibility, because that a) is hilarious, and b) also strikes me as very John. The man is shown to be sorrowful/remorseful about a lot of how things “had to” play out, and I think a bunch of that is genuine. At least, it comes off as genuine to me when he berates himself during his conversation with Harrow in chapter 37 of HtN (“Ten thousand years, and I am still such a fool" and “Damn it, John — damn it.”). I think he knows that he’s done a lot of awful, horrible, unforgivable things; he’s just convinced himself that it’s how it had to be, and it was all for the greater good, and he’s the smartest so he’s right about this, and, and, and… I can absolutely see that man being like “Oh how wonderful, these new kids have figured out Lyctorhood v2.0, that was so clever of them, SUCH a tragedy that absolutely nobody knew about this a myriad ago.”

(Can you tell I have Feelings about John? He's just irredeemably awful. I love him.)