#op i'm sorry but you perfectly articulated this thought and i *needed* to ramble

[ossifer]

you get it! this is exactly what i keep rambling about to anyone who will listen! just look at these two excerpts from harrow the ninth:

Looking deep into the eyes of the cavalier she murdered, you realised, not for the first time, and not willingly, that Ianthe Tridentarius was beautiful.

Another woman sat close beside her, wearing her own shabby shirt of indeterminate colour, but as though it had been designed for her royal use: a woman you had last seen calmly falling to her death. Ianthe Tridentarius’s features stared out of Coronabeth’s face[...]

and this one from nona the ninth:

It wasn’t Crown. It was someone exactly Crown’s height, someone with Crown’s face, but like someone had washed her in hot water and soaked the colour out—a Crown who gangled, without any of Crown’s lovely curvy softnesses or bignesses, a wretched white Crown.

ianthe and coronabeth have got nearly the exact same face, and can even pass for each other on a first glance, with the difference lying in how ianthe is a sickly necromantic rat who chows down on hair far too often, and the fact she has such an earnestly repungnant demeanour. the hilarity comes from the fact that she's literally like if you took corona and removed all the extra fluff that makes her so strikingly radiant, leaving behind the bare bones, pun fully fucking intended

no see the thing is ianthe isn't the ugly twin she and corona have the exact same underlying structures it's just that she's sickly and washed out from necromantic wasting & almost dying in the womb and she's creepy and offputting and bitchy and annoying and again i will reiterate she chews on her hair so naturally people find her unpleasant to look at and be around but she doesn't actually look bad it's just her inner freakishness shining through and i think that is just so so funny and compelling