#harrow the ninth liveread

[makoden]

So 4 chapters in and Harrow the 9th is essentially WH40k mixed with Disco Elysium and a lot more obvious lesbians. I can work with this

[wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess]

If you love an interesting liveread and you are a locked tomb fan, follow @paradoxcase because the reflective comments are fantastic. Looking forward to their exploration of Harrow the Ninth for the first time!

Chapter 3 of Harrow the Ninth

So, we are back in third person. We are also back to backstory from before Gideon the Ninth. So the POV is time-based, maybe? Everything before Gideon is in third person? Or everything before Harrow is in third person? Or everything that's nominally about something that happened before Harrow removed Gideon and became half a Lyctor is in third person but it's all been rewritten after whatever it was to be about Ortus instead?

This doesn't have the broken ninth skull on it, but this isn't exactly a broken memory, either, it's just kind of a revised chronology

I think someone mentioned the great-aunts' creepy "nursery rhymes" before, but these aren't even like nursery rhymes, they're just made-up prayers to be recited exactly, over and over again. That's vile. But like, didn't Harrow say before that they didn't mention the two hundred children thing unless they were in the pool? Or maybe it doesn't count if it's not in plain language?

It's interesting that she didn't start having hallucinations until after she got into the tomb and saw the Body, and also a lot of her hallucinations seem to be about the Body. Maybe related? I mean, not related to Harrow's feeling about the Body, but to the fact that this tomb that was supposed to be kept shut forever and never entered was opened and entered. If the earlier Body hallucination was actually Gideon's ghost, maybe some of the other hallucinations were actually the ghost of whoever is in the tomb

Ok, I see why she wouldn't want to ask for help, but I think a lot of that might just be how she was conditioned growing up by the like hyper-religiousness of her family and the great-aunts' made-up prayers, and so forth. It probably would have been better for everyone if someone had helped her

"Falling in love the first time" implies that there was a second time. I wonder if we will ever get Harrow's perspective on the events of Gideon the Ninth with Gideon actually being present

Even aside from the fact that this is inaccurate because it features Ortus instead of Gideon, I don't think she messed up the process of becoming a Lyctor or did it halfway at the end of Gideon the Ninth. She seemed like a complete Lyctor then, and like she'd succeeded much better than Ianthe did by having a cavalier who gave herself up willingly. So, I guess this is a memory overwrite to account for whatever she did later to remove Gideon, since that seems to have been removed from her memory as well

Also curious about what mistake Harrow made when she was nine? She didn't open the tomb until she was ten, and I don't think she considers that to be a mistake, and I don't think she blames herself for the deaths of her parents. Did something specific happen when she was nine?

That's a great bit of doublethink

[wanderingthroughbooks]

Harrowhark’s first letter, to Harrowhark: hello, me, you incompetent, listen closely, you hateful little gremlin

[goattypegirl]

Harrow the Ninth Live Read: Chapter 3-5

Been absolutely lost in the sauce playing Bloodborne lmao.

Chapter 3

Starting off with some cool lore about the Ninth House, and more on Harrow’s backstory. (I am wondering, though. What exactly precipitated the Resurrection? It sounds like a whole solar system worth of people suddenly died; why? How? Something’s fishy...)

And some cool lore about the Body... and her parent’s suicide... Mmm... (two nooses for their cavalier? How tf does that work??)

Oh. Poor Harrow. 

Okay, this kind of confirms what I was thinking last time. Harrow has redacted Gideon from her memory, and partially undone the Lyctor ritual. I’m... pretty sure this isn’t supernatural though. Maybe.

Chapter 4

Okay Harrow’s being murdered. Okay, no she’s not! That’s good.

Did Ianthe do something to her, to make her think she was being murdered? Or is this letter she’s pulling out a suicide note written by Harrow to herself...

Oh nope okay it’s... instructions Lyctor!Harrow wrote? Letter 2 of 24? Where’s the first letter??

“Her resurrection constitutes a fail state and must be avoided at all costs” Beg pardon? Lyctor!Harrow knew she was going to suppress her Lyctorhood, and wanted that? 

“This letter cannot answer questions.” Ah. Thank you, Lyctor!Harrow (As an aside, what’s the deal with Adjective!Name? I’ve seen it a bunch, and it’s usually in reference to AU’s or other states a character can be in, but I picked that up through osmosis, rather than seeing it actually defined anywhere...)

Guideline 1: Stay alive. Ok, with this so far.

Guideline 2: Don’t Go Back to the Ninth House. Ok, matches what the Emperor said. Either the Emperor repeated himself on why and was cool with it, or he’s in on the work, OR Lyctor!Harrow figured it out herself. Interesting.

Guideline 3: Keep the Sword. Huh. It seemed like Harrow was following this during her power-vomit/murder days, as Ianthe put it. The blood and ash treatment is interesting, and not the way you normally take care of a sword? I think?

Guideline 4: You’re Compromised. It occurs to me, I don’t think we’ve seen Harrow do any real necromancy yet. It sounds like she has the souped up power of being a Lyctor... but is she unable to do bone necromancy now? That would be a problem...

Guideline 5: You Owe Ianthe. The fuck is “Favor of the Chain”? The first google result is from a reddit thread about this book that i dare not look at, so. Probably not a common phrase I haven’t heard before. Still, very spooky. 

Guideline 6: Don’t Read the Other Letters. OOOOHHHH this explains the “so you’ve about to die” letter from the prologue!

Guideline 7: Check Out Ianthe’s Jaw. hwat. Just. There’s so many questions. What circumstances would lead to her jaw being replaced? Why would that be disastrous? How is she going to kill Ianthe if it has? OH she’s going to have to smooch her to make sure isnt she.

LMAO I knew it. Okay so the Favor of the Chain is probably just a fancy word for this fealty oath she made. Also, fuck! That’s quite the fealty oath! Okay never mind Harrow just said it’s not that big of a deal. My mistake.

Okay these letters are scary. Eyes changing color seems to be related to being a Lyctor; that’s basically explicitly stated with Ianthe’s deal. Why would Harrow’s eyes changing be such a big deal that it requires a letter to Camilla? Also, Camilla’s still AWOL, right? Also also, I just figured it out. Harrow’s eyes would be yellow, like Gideon’s, and even with her false memories she may know Ortus’s eyes weren’t yellow. 

There’s a joke to be made here somewhere about Master-Stranger Protocols...

So Ianthe seems to think Coronabeth is still alive. Is it just denial or is there something more here? It would tie into the letter to Camilla. 

Okay so she remembers Naberius. 

HEY WHAT THE FUCK. There’s... Mmm... There’s a lot to unpack with the end of this chapter. Ianthe stabbed her hand, then stabbed Harrow’s, and... there’s some questions I have about some of the adjectives used here. Anyway, the real take away here is that Harrow did cast Pin Missile, and the nails stuck in the wall were covered with boxes. By whom? and when? What?

Chapter 5

Another flashback, it looks like. That’s what the sheared Ninth House skull seems to indicate.

Okay, this is the scene of them arriving to Canaan House, from Harrow’s perspective, and with Ortus shoved in. Ortus wondering about the tragedy of living forever is interesting; is this something Harrow wonders about, deep down? 

I can think of one confident and wild fuck you the Ninth House possessed, Harrow.

“The eggs you gave me all died and you lied to me”

…Huh. Does this mean anything? Like, is this going to be relevant later on? 

Also, I just went back and read this scene in Gideon the Ninth. This doesn’t happen at all. It’s not just the scene from Harrow’s perspective, with Ortus shoved in. It’s all something Harrow made up. In fact, here Harrow said she sat on some Ninth House dirt, but in Gideon the Ninth, Gideon specifically says that she read about necromancers doing that in comics, but Harrow just read her prayer beads. 

This is weirder than I thought.

[alltheprettygirlsintheworld]

I know it’s all leading up to a serious scene, but I am laughing so hard at the idea of Harrow obsessing over making soup and trying to smile (and terrifying Ianthe in the process)

[kkazbreker]

Hello I’m reading Harrow The Ninth and-

What! Is! HAPPENING!

[birdsaretoddlers]

WHO THE FUCK IS WRITING THE NOTES HARROW KEEPS FINDING???? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?????? WHY IS ORTUS HERE AND WHY IS ORTUS ALSO A LYCTOR AND WHAT DOES 'THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED' MEAN

Hey TLT fans what the fuck is up with HTN? Like what the fuck? Ortus is dead right? Huh???

[artbyblastweave]

Gideon The Ninth Liveread, Chapter 15

In which we have the obligatory party/ball scene. Obligatory to what? Off the top of my head, Murder Mysteries and Fake Dating AUs

A few hours later. A lot goes unsaid with this; it’s a time skip, but it’s a telling one. It means that nothing happened in the few hours between Harrow collapsing and waking back up; Gideon didn’t leave, didn’t look around, didn’t see or examine anything new of import. She kept vigil, and the narration breezes right past it.

“Necromantic Theorem.” So the magic system is formalized and not just pure will. Gideon’s being glib but this IS essentially how I thought this worked, so it’s nice to have this clarified.

Ha. Gideon remembers the name of the fourth Cavalier but not the fourth necromancer. Priorities.

“Fan Mail.” Possibly a concept Gideon picked up from the backs of the comic books. and from this fan mail we derive that Abigail and Magnus have a dynamic. Stern cop Jovial Cop.

Harrow jumps right to a (I assume) completely appropriate assessment of the genre they’re in and starts hypothesizing assignation plots. Gideon, meanwhile, demonstrates greater Machiavellian acuity than I’ve previously ascribed to her, purely because her first-ever dessert is on the line. She’s like Roger Rabbit with the Handcuffs. Extremely conditional trains of thought.

Harrow is nervous about the function. Gideon assumes that this is because she wants to get back to the trials, since she used to run Ninth House functions without a sweat. This brings us back to Gideon only really being able to model Harrow in a combative context; it’s cripplingly obvious why Harrow is afraid of this function. She ran a transparent con against addled, devoted, elderly clergy, many of whom were literally blind. This is a gathering of High Society, which Gideon herself just painted as a potential hotbed of information gathering and Machiavellian politicking- a thought that apparently literally stayed in Gideon’s head for the exact amount of time it took her to win the argument, and no longer. 

Glad Rags! Magnus is great.

Abigail Pent, Intense Librarian. Very curious how things are between her and Magnus, just generally. Political marriage? According to Teacher (they (helpful exposition dispenser) She’s a spirit-talker. A necromancer in the traditional use of the term. That’d be Fifth House’s bag?

Interesting exposition on the Fourth and The Fifth here; The Fourth has been implied to be subordinated to the Fifth a few times. Magnus I think is actually the dreadful teens Uncle, and Isaac is apprenticed to someone outside his own house. Did the Fifth swallow the Fourth the way Harrow is afraid the 9th will be swallowed? Is there precedent that she’s afraid of?

The Third and the Sixth are facing off before Teacher (conveniently!) defuses things by announcing the main event.

Gonna read stuff into the seating arrangements. Gideon is with Palamedes, her lady-love Dulcinea, and the fifth Cav. Harrow is with the Mayo dyad, Ianthe, Seventh Cav super mutant, and Naberius. Putting eighth and ninth together feels like some kind of power play.

“The same middle name.” Good God. Coronabeth is either laughing too hard on purpose as an ingratiation play, or she is, in fact, compatible with Gideon on two levels.

Okay, there are on-site greenhouses. That explains where the food is coming from. I was wondering.

Alright, Magnus and Abigail can’t conceive. Slightly adjusting my assessment; they have the affordance of being nice because they’re weird, and on the outs within the political system they’re ostensibly on top of. Abigail is interested in pure scholarship and Magnus is interested in Abigail. I refer back to my previous assessment of Magnus as embodying the fun aesthetic parts of courtly empire w/o the inherently monstrous decision-making power.

 And Dulcinea is, in fact, good at picking up on what her conversational partners care about and feeding it. It’s not a Gideon-specific thing; she’s honing in on Abigail’s interests as well.

“Post Resurrection, Pre-sovereignty, pre-cohort.” Aaaaand Gideon turns away from the exposition because that’s just what she does.

Okay, from the Young-Uncle-Ianthe-Babs interaction we get the following; young-uncle has something against… intervention in births? A religious taboo? Ianthe was premature, extracted by C-section; The Eigth (Silas, I checked the cast page) calls this a “wasted opportunity,” which feels like a deliberate inversion of real-life Catholic Abortion Dickishness ™. Babs jumps in to defend Coronabeth, as he did before; Ianthe tramples him verbally. From this we derive that Babs is into Coronabeth specifically, although it doesn’t end well for him no matter which of them he’s talking to. And he has opinions on Bucklers, which Gideon wants to hear. It’s always interesting to encounter someone who has your exact interests but is so massively dickish on every other axis that you can’t capitalize on it.

This is Gideon’s first interaction with Jeannemary, and it’s this. I like that even when Gideon is interacting with the fourthling directly, there’s a shift in the dialogue from when Jeannemary is speaking normally and when she’s doing the nasally whine thing. She’s great. (But is Isaac great? I can’t tell if they’re trading off on doing the bit, or if it’s all her, all the time.)

And Gideon gets to eat! That’s good.

Okay, so Harrow, given a chance to dig into things with Teacher, can make him look thoughtful. A theological discussion? Applied Theory? Most of the others haven’t gotten far enough in the trials, so far as we know, to be able to talk specifics in the way that Harrow now can.

Is Dulcinea’s bit about the Biceps a Gravity Falls reference?

Oh, Jeannemary was, like, jealous. And possibly Crushing. Okay, this is back to cute. I like how the vocal affect reflects their tone but also their physical distance from Gideon and Dulcinea; also, question answered. It’s all Jeannemary. Isaac is the voice of reason, ish.

Okay, so Dulcinea pops the question- the big question- why are the houses like this. The dysfunction is obvious if not yet explosive; The houses are militarily and financially secure from the constant influx of spoils; The Emperor’s favor is both nebulous in its actual benefit and completely unrelated to the task at hand, which is pretty explicit (learn how to be Lyctors!) You’re inclined to say that everyone in Canaan House, categorically, has virtually no higher place to which they can climb within their hierarchies; that’s the point of pursuing Lyctorhood. Of course, the situation with the Ninth tells us that the assumed notion of security isn’t true in the slightest, the situation with the Sixth demonstrates that the Houses can have orthogonal interests like pure scholasticism, The eighth clearly aren’t in it for money…the more I think about it, the more Dulcinea’s remarks feel like that thing pretentious poets sometimes do where they wax cynical about an arrangement without putting much thought into the petty incentives underlying stuff. This might be deliberate; Dulcinea is clearly pretty clever.

Alright, something’s going on between Palamedes and Dulcinea. Gideon thinks that his weirdo obsession with. uh. Medicine that works…? gives him the hots for her.

“Magnus was nice.” I forgot to mention in chapter 12 that Gideon’s word choice in relation to Magnus is tied like an anchor to her current mood. When she’s in the pits, Magnus “tries pathetically hard;” when she’s well fed and high on Dulcinea, he’s “nice,” and she’s hurt on his behalf when Harrow ignores him.

And we end the chapter on this; Harrow thinks Pent is now in the running. Harrow is really, really committed to the idea that she has to WIN; this is, with added context, probably at least a little true, because the Eighth is probably an existential adversary and the Third strikes me as an opportunistic adversary if they get an opening. But it’s very telling that Harrow hears the Eighth- the most zealous of all the houses- just hand this information over to the Fifth without any cajoling and jumps to the conclusion it’s a race. What she overheard was an act of cooperation. And she was asleep for a major act of inter-house cooperation. She’s sticking to her initial paradigm, in the exact way that she stuck to her initial paradigm with the 163 skeletons. And Gideon, with her ability to actually make nice with people from other houses, might be the only effective counter to this tendency.

[passionatememes]

I am making a twitter thread liveread about reading harrow the ninth so I won't repeat myself but just know. harrow my beloved I am so incredibly concerned for u

[wanderingthroughbooks]

older Lyctors: * having semi-silent conversation consisting mainly of facial expressions *

Harrow & Ianthe, watching: * exchange “I don’t even know, weird silent communication right?” speaking look *

Harrow: OH NO IT’S STARTING

[revelationoh]

goddamn fuckign???? “love is a revenant, it accumulates love-stuff to itself, because it is homeless otherwise??????” “i’m her cavalier, i’d kill for her, i’d die for her, i did die for her, i’d do anything she needed, anything at all, before she even knew she needed it, i’m her sword???????”

harrow the ninth liveread post bc i just know my talkative ass is going to end up making one by accident if i don’t go ahead and do it now

so like… Harrow calling this figure the Body fully smacks of “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting” right

[wanderingthroughbooks]

Harrow’s really just like. “Yes, I consider myself in love with a ten thousand year old preserved corpse that lives in a preservation tomb under a rock whose ghost may or may not haunt me. Yes, I think necrophilia is creepy and gross. No, these two things do not in any way conflict.” 

[wanderingthroughbooks]

Still thinking about how Ianthe’s idea of like. A fun prank. Was to vandalize Harrow’s hair follicles while Harrow was unconscious from giving herself a lobotomy. 

[wanderingthroughbooks]

There's a difference between keeping a shredded dance card and saving the last dance

[wanderingthroughbooks]

Harrow: ugh my hair grows so fast now is this my one (1) Lyctor thing?

(in the past) 

Ianthe: * making Harrow’s hair grow extra fast when healing Harrow after she gave herself a lobotomy * hehehehehehehehe

[wanderingthroughbooks]

Harrow: this is the worst party I have ever been to and that is saying something since all parties are awful 

Harrow: I have had to endure drinking wine (gross) and watching people stick their tongues in each others’ mouths (grosser), and one of those people being god (grossest)

Harrow: so glad to go stab someone

Ianthe: I could kiss you now?

Harrow: you could not, I am in a committed relationship with a ten thousand year old tomb ghost