#would it kill you to let Gideon and Harrow interact for more than one out of four books?? plz

[elfieafterdark]

I am suddenly struck with dread terror, down to my very marrow. My heart freezes like the waters of the tomb, my soul trembles under the staggering pressure of this new burden I bear.

I have to wait for the last book with everyone else.

And I must scream.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Characters

<< Previous: Cytherea | Masterpost

-

The legend herself. I still love her so much.

I also have some questions, and some answers. This is gonna be a long one.

How did she open the tomb?

I puzzled over this for most of the book. Always assumed that John was lying when he said it was impossible - but then again, Gideon was around, so did she get Gideon's blood somehow? Or was it something else?

The proof was right here - right after John was revealed to be Gideon's dad:

It was worse when I was a kid. I remember the time you caught me telling her, I love you, and I can’t even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back—I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn’t even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven? Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?

Harrow was ten; she had Gideon's face under her fingernails. Harrow opened the blood ward when she tried to kill herself. This makes a lot of sense. Mystery solved.

Is Harrow actually insane? Is the Body more than a hallucination?

Simply put: No, and yes. The Body is the manifestation of Alecto herself. She hitched a ride with Harrow's body when Harrow opened the tomb. She's been "haunted" by Alecto, the same way she was haunted by Wake for most of HtN.

I realised that this must be the case when I read this, after Harrow tries to kiss Alecto's ghost on the mouth.

As though you had crossed no boundary, and above the soundless rough shouting in your ears, the Body said: “I have to go away for a while,” and you regretted everything. “I have done wrong,” you said. There was the tiniest suggestion of a furrow in that cool unbreathing brow, and she said, “How?”

Alecto isn't upset that Harrow kissed her. She simply has to go away for a while. I thought about this. I read it as upset in my first read, but now it doesn't feel that way at all. "As though you had crossed no boundary", questioning why Harrow would think she'd done wrong. Alecto isn't upset at the kiss. She just has to go do Important Alecto Business.

Harrow interacts with Alecto throughout HtN. The Body is always there, until it isn't. Picking up on what we learned about Revenants from Wake, Harrow is haunted by Alecto in the same way. Dulcie, in the bubble, confirmed that she could sense someone other than Wake. Alecto came forward to Gideon when Harrow's sternum was shattered, her tomb was empty in Harrow's final vision.

Alecto isn't a revenant. She may not even be a ghost. Some essence of her, however, managed to cling to Harrow and infiltrate her mind. Alecto's powers must be strong - did she have enough of a connection with Harrow to adhere to her body? Wake needed Harrow to die to come forward - Alecto may have no such limitations. She's there, in Harrow's peripheral vision, most of the time. I don't think she had the limitation of needing that connection. Anyone or anything would do, hence the locked in an ice cave behind a million wards. Not exactly a revenant, as Alecto's body is almost certainly still alive, but an ability to cast her spirit and let it cling on to something, anything that moved in there.

Is Harrow actually insane? Well, on one hand, yes. She's Harrow, after all. She's had to live with what she thought were hallucinations all her life. She's been hearing things like the Secundarius bell and doors closing/banging as well, which might also be Alecto's input - some sound comes in even through the ice?

Alternatively, well, Harrow has 200 souls inside her, from the kids that were killed. (How did the Ninth, a house of mostly decrepit elders, get 200 children anyway?) Those kids will have left some kind of mark on her soul, and they all would have heard the bell and doors during their short lives. Maybe it's just a reflection of this.

This means that the hallucinations we've seen Harrow have, are all likely caused by souls hitching a ride with Harrow. Wake, Alecto, the unnamed 200.

Doesn't mean Harrow hasn't been hearing things and seeing things that were ostensibly not there, though. All throughout her entire life! That kinda stuff would drive anyone a bit mad.

Mind you, Cytherea under her bed was absolutely real. Ianthe took advantage of Harrow's vulnerability in that moment.

I'm still convinced that Ianthe is with Eden in some way. Eden came to Canaan House first, retrieved Camilla, Coronabeth and Judith, along with part of Palamedes's skull. Cytherea somehow managed to call BoE to the scene before she died. Harrow wiped some memories - maybe she strategically also wiped this memory? I really wanna know what happened at this point in the story.

Okay well I think it's time to talk about what and who we know.

>> Next: Ianthe, Coronabeth and the Blood of Eden

[terezis]

how Did you like nona tho?

short answer: i liked it! i didn't love it. as of this exact moment, having read it twice, i think that nona the ninth should have been pruned mercilessly and put into a very long alecto. (breaking dawn is 756 pages! they could’ve done it!!!) it didn’t need to be its own book, and does not do enough to justify itself as one. 

that said: it was still pretty good!!! 

long answer: i’m gonna be spicy first and then talk about what i liked LOL... spoilers under the cut

most of my criticism here comes back to the fact that this was originally meant to be the first act of alecto the ninth. you can tell. i definitely feel like i have read the beginning of alecto. like, don't get me wrong, most of nona stands on its own as a story, and it's a fun read; but you could have cut a good third of this book and it wouldn't have changed anything. 

we spend a frankly OBSCENE amount of time on nona's daily life when we could have gotten the picture in forty pages... and for all that she's deeply invested in her home life, her time at school, and her friends, the book fails to make ME care, which is disappointing because i know tamsyn muir is capable of doing so.

i mean, in the first two books everyone was uniquely delightful and felt like they could be the main character of a different story. it was hilarious to watch gideon interact with silas and colum; i love the original lyctors. but why should i care about beautiful ruby, whom i cannot distinguish from the other one, what's his name, born in the morning? we suffer? hell, even the angel???

you could replace pash with any nameless rebel and the story wouldn't change overmuch; the fact that she's apparently wake's niece has no relevance, except that it makes her hate zombies more… but most people in this book do, so who cares. what’s the point.

likewise, details and subplots that, in previous books, would have become relevant to the larger story at some point, don't seem to matter as much in nona. is that because they're going to be addressed again in alecto, or because they actually don't matter? i can’t tell.

take for example: hot sauce’s burns. compare it to something like abigail's backstory; it's a minor detail, but her interest in lyctoral history ended up spooking cytherea, which got her murdered, kickstarting the main conflict of the first book.

am i being too nitpicky here? did it not feel like those burns were supposed to be more relevant than they were? especially after we learn that she thinks edenites are too soft, so she hangs out with a fringe group implied to be responsible for the zombie burnings? but neither thing ever comes up again. is it just flavor? 

also consider: the different factions of the blood of eden, namely the hopers, who we’re frequently TOLD are major obstacles to the characters’ immediate goals, but who we rarely see become a problem. we suffer says it’s hard to convince them of anything, but they never really refuse her in any meaningful way. what are the stakes? is this the same group who previously killed 18,000 cohort soldiers with a space nuke? where's the oomph??? 

i feel like all of the above is also exacerbated by the fact that the entire book is told from nona's pov, and nona just does not give a single shit about the larger conflicts happening around her. it's not her fault. if i were her, i don't know if i'd care either. but as a result she spends SO MUCH of the book away from the action, which sucks when the best parts of this book are when she actually gets to be involved. 

i loved when she snuck out to talk to varun; when she listened to cam's tapes; when she and hot sauce ran off to see the broadcast. those parts fucked!!! i liked when she got to throw a tantrum!!! it was spooky!!! let her loose!!! i guess she has been let loose now, but it would've been nice if it had happened sooner.

look, i know this is a lot of criticism for a book i keep saying i liked. i really did enjoy it. harrow the ninth also had to grow on me, and u know i love that shit now. i like when a book is a puzzle, and the locked tomb is one of those thousand piece motherfuckers. right now nona gets a 6.5/10 from me, but mayhaps that will change on another reread.

anyways here's my highlight reel:

i was thrilled when gideon woke up and made a joke about stealing palamedes' girl

it’s so fucked up that ianthe wore babs' body like a little suit (complimentary) and when that body hugged corona omg. recall the last time the sisters saw each other. so fucking juicy. i love her

i LOVED the nun. pre-res anastasia? when she did the thing with the gun??? delicious

the thing with anastasia's bones at the very end Intrigued Me Deeply, and i want to know more about her relationship with alecto

the part where pyrrha told nona about her terrible shirt made me cry, which is funny bc the shirt had a sex joke on it

THE PART WHEN AIGLAMENE TOOK GIDEON'S FACE IN HER HANDS AND FLINCHED BACKWARDS BECAUSE SHE RELEASED SHE WAS LOOKING AT A CORPSE, AND SAID THEY KILLED YOU, AND GIDEON JOKED ABOUT IT, AND AIGLAMENE TURNED TO HARROW FURIOUSLY FOR LETTING GIDEON DIE, OW MY HEART

did not expect gideon to do a kill on crux, liked it, liked how she reacted to it, still don't think it's really gideon as we know her though

like she was MEAN. she was so sassy!!! i know she is sassy in general, but she was like NICE sassy in the other books, why is she acting like the villain version of herself, the stuff she said about becoming john's cavalier was so fucking weird, i don't think it was a front??? but why would she want that??? she was so MEAN

i hope she and ianthe are actually friendship bracelet wearing buds though like imagine when harrow finds that out. hilarious

i REALLY liked the fucked up nun. like a LOT

[ghostmartyr]

She remembered one thing: Harrowhark saying you dullard—you imbecile—you fool, all the old contempt of the Ninth House nursery back and fresh as though she were there again. Harrow the architect, sweeping down the halls of Drearburh. Harrow the nemesis, flanked by Crux. It wasn’t clear what in particular Harrow was haranguing her for, but whatever the reason, she deserved it.

Harrow hating herself at Gideon helps neither of them actually and in this essay I will --

There’s something terribly sad about how the first two Houses taken out are the ones that give Gideon a taste of positive human interaction. She’s never been around kids her own age who aren’t Harrow, and she’s never received unflagging good will from an adult. Jeannemary openly admires Gideon. Who else in the universe has ever done that?

(The answer might be Cytherea. This answer is a very sad answer.)

But another layer to it is that Gideon has been asked to do very little throughout her life.

It’s one of the reasons the Ninth is such a demoralizing environment; no one lets her do anything. They all know she isn’t nun material, and the only thing she’s good for is waving a sword around. They proceed to deny her all chance to wave her sword around for something useful. Gideon’s life on the Ninth is all about denying her the opportunity to be anything more than property. It’s pointless.

Besides the neutral damage that would inflict, Gideon flourishes when performing acts of service. She wants to be doing something. Anything. She wants her use to be recognized, but none of her uses are even wanted.

Canaan House starts out the same way, with Harrow more likely to die in a bone than to accept Gideon’s help. It’s aggravating in part because it’s so stupid. Hi yes, here is your fake cavalier! Ignore her! This makes sense! Yes, it is actually more rewarding to hold a ball of yarn for some random hot chick!

Then Harrow starts making use of Gideon, and for a little bit, things shine. Gideon has an established purpose, and she’s good at it. Harrow even notices. They start to collaborate. Gideon’s still a fake cavalier, but she’s being used as a real cavalier. She is allowed to have a fucking function outside sitting around waiting for someone to decide she’s a nuisance. The boring dark tunnel of nothing gets a light. Yep, Gideon can fight the giant bone monster. Provide battery juice for a light sprint across a death field? No problem.

Go down into the scary basement with two children, acting as their protector? Absolutely fine.

Oh wait the children are dead.

Gideon has one job. She fails.

All she’s ever wanted is to have something useful to do, and when the chance is offered, she fucks it up, and the only people who look at her like she’s something admirable -- cool, even -- are gone. The deck is stacked, but what does that matter? All she has is the first promise of something real in her life, and it’s all going to hell. Of course the natural conclusion is that she’s the problem.

(While in the opposite corner, Harrow knows she's the one who arranged who went where, and it’s pure luck that her decisions haven’t gotten Gideon killed. Her expression of guilt is obviously instantly understood and not absorbed as further sign of Gideon’s shortcomings.

Healthy emotional practices are not covered in Ninth doctrine.)

[tanoraqui]

@rattyjol said I should write down all my theories from where I am, at the end of Act I of Harrow the Ninth, so here we go: Musings on the Nature of God, his Lyctors, and specifically Harrowhark Nonagesimus. (Needless to say, SPOILERS!)

first off, I want it noted that, while I do not believe it bears any relation to his role in the Homestuck AU that I highkey theorize was an early stage in the creation of this fictional world, I absolutely hate that his name is John. Stop that instantly.

on the continued nature of God...I detect a certain amount of passive voice re: the rapid death of the planets. You sure used the word “murder” in your analogy there, bud. Why are they hunting, uh, you in particular, huh? Listen man, I”m very sympathetic to mad science gone wrong, just admit that you killed every planet in the solar system - I don’t know yet if accidentally or for personal gain - and...I’m willing to bet that he’s chained one of them, maybe consensually? as his own lyctorean battery. That’s why he’s so OP, and why the other beasts hunt lyctors as well as him. 

or admittedly they may just look really tasty. Shining soular flares in the darkness

I highkey wonder if the Resurrection Beasts would be satisfied if he and the Lyctors just let them kill them. Probably not.

In the time between first waking up on the Erebos (GtN epilogue) and the start (post-prologue) of this book, Harrow has Done Something to make herself forget Gideon in every way but the very subconscious (she mouthed the name while thinking herself dying, she saw a red-haired body in the River and it broke her.) Well, she knows Gideon existed at some point, or some red-headed other girl did, but believes her dead as a child. Ianthe helped with this, the Emperor doesn’t know about it, and I assume it’s in pursuit of getting Gideon back alive and well

I can’t tell if she’s having a visceral reaction to the sword just from emotional memory or if whatever she did actually involves the sword. Given that we’ve been reminded that ghosts can be called back using objects they handled in life, probably the latter

the memory-rewritten flashbacks are fascinating. I wonder if something like some of them did happen - did she have a conversation with Ortus about the letter, before addressing the matter with Gideon? Did she ever meet Abigail and Magnus in a library and shove breadsticks into her bag and leave when Abigail asked about the imprints of 150+ other souls on hers? It could definitely have happened, while Gideon was off doing other things...but Harrow’s memory has been rewritten more thoroughly than to just leave out Gideon, because she also doesn’t remember meeting Camilla, and we know she interacted with the Sixths without Gideon. I assume this, too, was deliberate on Harrow’s part, but it’s hard to tell. She certainly is gambling here, desperately

it’s delightful to see more of Abigail and Magnus, specifically in a way that makes it clear why Cytherea killed them first. Abigail was very, very dangerous, with that plan to summon a Lyctor’s ghost and ask them questions.

Given the timing of the memory loss, even Harrow-who-had-a-plan didn’t know what happened to Camilla, Corona, and Judith, and clearly neither does Ianthe. I comfortably assume that the ever-competent Camilla and Palamedes have it in hand (a strong implication from a friend + my own faith in the Sixth having contingency plans assures me that Palamedes is...if not fine, then alive)

I judge it more likely that the Body is a hallucination/false memory, but the fact that she told Harrow to lie about her age suggests that maybe she is...the ghost of the woman in the tomb. I used to think that must be the Emperor’s own cavalier, but given that the Lyctors apparently came about after he was already God, and my theory that he’s more likely to be drawing energy from a planet...I don’t know. I’d guess that perhaps she’s Anastasia, the ninth house adept who never became a Lyctor, except the next book is called Alecto the Ninth, and that’s GOTTA be her

there’s no one in the Dramatis Personae named Alecto. I don’t know where she’s from. M a y b e she is/was a planet?

I thought the Body was Gideon at first, but she has dark hair and a slight build. She has gotten Gideon’s eyes, though, as though from Lyctor transformation...probably because Harrow did whatever she did?

Or it’s all just a hallucination and Harrow is blending the women she loves

A series of conjectures I’m pretty confident in:

Mercymorn asked about Harrow’s age on the suspicion that she’s, well, Gideon Nav

that is, the child who fell into the Ninth 18 years ago in the arms of a dead woman

I think that woman was a Lyctor - not sure which - and she wanted to be a mother? I guess? Because eternal life is a bitch and maybe you want to bring more life into the world, idk. But the Emperor sabotaged her attempts at artificial insemination and when she did it herself, he sent...another Lyctor after her. Maybe it was Ortus Gideon, once of Second House (it was him and his cavalier in that room, G&P), and they had a passionate - or at least pitying but productive - night and then her ghost said his name bc she wanted him to know that yep, they’d had a daughter?

Or she and (adult) Gideon had a romance and yes artificial insemination (it’s probably hard to get pregnant when you’re immersed in thanergy all the time) and...man, idk

I’m very sure that she poured a hysterical amount of thalergy, thanergy, idk into that baby, such that Gideon Nav was impossibly difficult to kill save by her own hand

...ok I think that’s all I’ve got, for now

OH, that line about a lyctor’s body lying empty being dangerous...that felt very foreshadowing. I don’t THINK Harrow is going to at the end of this book, bc we’ve already done that once, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her plan is to bring Gideon back in her (Harrow’s) body in place of Harrow’s own soul if necessary. Alternately, Alecto might end up in it? Or some other lyctor’s body will be lost...almost certainly, actually. I dunno whose or to whom (or to what), but I bet it’ll happen.

[vateacancameos]

I Won't Let You Let Me Down So Easily

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandom: The Locked Tomb Trilogy Pairing: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus Tags: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Gideon the Ninth, Post-Harrow the Ninth, Pre-Slash, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, they're working on the lovers part, POV Gideon Nav, Gideon watches Harrow Word Count: 1804 Part 2 of the Watching series (read Part 1 here)

For all of her short years of life, Gideon Nav has never wanted anything more than to ignore the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. To pretend she doesn’t exist. Unfortunately for Gideon—and the entirety of the Ninth—Harrowhark Nonagesimus has made that impossible from day one. She’s always there, one step away from Gideon, not looking at her, but making her own presence known, making sure she’s seen. That shrill, commanding tone is there from the moment she says her first word. Bones follow her every command, and she’s a tiny tyrant in black and wearing a painted mask. Where she is, skeletons follow, and Gideon is left behind, bloodied and beaten on the floor.

She never asked for this. She’s never wanted to be the bane of everyone’s existence. In fact, she tries her hardest to get away, time and time and time and time again. But Harrow demands an audience, and with most of the House being blinded from old age, Gideon is the one forced to watch. So she watches. Mostly, she watches her back, but over time, she watches just to see. What she’s looking for, she’s not sure.

She’s never wanted this, so why does a part of her now ask for it?

*** 

 (read the rest under the cut)

***

Somehow Gideon isn’t surprised that even in the afterlife, she’s forced to watch Harrow. The Dark Mistress of Drearburh is a necromancer after all. If Gideon couldn’t get away from her during any of her eighty-seven escape attempts in life, it’s doubtful a little something like lacking a body would stop Harrow from forcing her to stay.

The really annoying part is that this time, Gideon actually does want to watch, but she’s got less a front-row seat and more like she’s using binoculars turned backwards so the thing she’s looking at is tiny and the lenses are smudged and she’s got cotton stuffed in her ears. She’s grateful for that when Ianthe tries her hand (haha, hand) at flirting with Harrow—she’s never felt such intense second-hand embarrassment in her life—but seeing what’s happening on The Mithraeum would be rather helpful right now.

Especially considering she isn’t allowed to do her job (protecting) thanks to one pointy-faced emo chick performing an at-home lobotomy with only a sociopathic princess to watch over her. Oh yeah, pre-surgery, Gideon could watch everything just fine. Why is it always that she’s forced to watch when she doesn’t want to, and she can’t watch when she does want to? She’s more than a little ticked by that.

No one ever asks her what she wants.

***

You know what’s really fucking annoying? Dying for your best frenemy so she can become the thing she’s wanted to become since she was four, then getting not only walled up in a tiny corner of Prissy McBitchFace’s brain, not only forced to see how awkward God is during tea time, not only stuck watching Harrow fumble her training and social interaction, but ALSO, unable to make her fucking necromancer work out or learn one single thing about a sword.

IT’S A FUCKING POMMEL, HARROWHARK. You can learn all the bones of the body by age two and a half, but you can’t learn the very few parts of a fucking sword? Sigh.

She’s being willfully ignorant on purpose. Gideon knows it.

***

You know what’s really fucking sad? Watching Harrowhark unable to function. Not just in her usual disconnected with reality and living in her special world where she’s the queen and everyone bows to her way. No, Harrow is … not Harrow. She’s barely human now (not that she was ever particularly human, more like a pointy, annoying bat), she’s paranoid (granted, someone is trying to kill her on the daily), she’s not sleeping, there are more wards in her tiny room than in all of the Ninth House, and she’s trying to … make soup?

It’s embarrassing to watch, and once again, Gideon is grateful her view is fuzzy and distant. Except that since she only gets a far-off snapshot of events a few times a day, she has lots of time to think and contemplate. And the more she thinks about it, the worse she feels. It’s sad, Harrow’s life is. And not in a oh she’s such a dork, how sad way, but more in a way that hurts Gideon’s heart, if Gideon had a heart still, which she guesses she doesn’t, not properly.

But still, she aches for Harrow. She wants to do her job, to be the big bad protector, but someone decided to be a selfish jerk and not let Gideon do the one thing she literally died to do.

Some people suck.

***

Swear to John (who’d’ve thought God’s name would be John), Gideon is really fucking tired of watching. At least when she was forced to watch Harrow in the past(life), she had a sword in her hands and a cocky smile on her face. Oh, what she’d give to go back to being able to watch and do, rather than watch and … watch, but not really watch, because time moves funny for her and it sounds like everyone is talking under water and faces are distorted (oh, no, wait, Ianthe’s face is always like that, nm).

She needs to be able to do again. She needs to force her dumb necromancer to get some sleep and then some exercise and then some brain surgery, in that order (what? squats are important). And then maybe learn the parts of the sword. SERIOUSLY, HARROW, HOW HARD IS POMMEL?

She wishes she had Harrow’s dumb army of constructs to fight. Even without a body, she has excess energy to get rid of and– HOLY SHIT. A CONSTRUCT JUST BURST OUT OF THE SKINNY/BUFF LYCTOR’S abdomen.

Okay, Harrow. You win this round.

***

Sleep does not help Harrowhark’s mood. She’s less of a zombie, sure, but she’s still a bit bananas. Watching her cut off Ianthe’s arm is pretty great, though (less great is watching her climb on top of Princess Bitch to do it). And the sex thing with God and two of the saints is … well, the jury is still out on that one. She actually got quite an eyeful of that scene. Perhaps all the wine allowed Gideon more freedom to move about in her necro’s brain.

None of that shocks her like watching Harrow save the lyctor whose been out to kill her for months. Gideon would definitely save him if she were in Harrow’s shoes (except she’d never be in those shoes because, one, they’re too small for her, and two, SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE A FUCKING SWORD). But even after everything that happened at Canaan House, and all that she’s seen of the disaster that is Harrow’s current life, watching Harrow save the man she’s absolutely bloody terrified of is … staggering.

Gideon’s not sure what to do with this information. Harrow with a normal human conscious is not something she thought she’d ever see. It’s not the Harrow she knew for seventeen years. It’s not the girl she fought tooth and nail with almost all of her life. It’s not the tiny mad genius who broke into the Tomb just to say she could. It’s not the tyrant who puppeteered her dead parents’ bodies for seven years for a power trip. It’s not the necromancer who longed for nothing more than to become a lyctor, even at every other person around hers expense.

It’s not the bone magician who performed possibly deadly surgery on her own brain rather than share soul space with the woman who died for her.

And if Harrow’s actions now say she’s not those things, then what else doesn’t Gideon know about her?

***

For once, Gideon is the watchee instead of the watcher.

Leave it to Sextus to be the one to see her.

***

Gideon takes it all back. She’d rather spend a myriad watching helplessly and foggily as her necromancer bumbles through life because she refuses to accept help in becoming a real lyctor. She’d love to go back to watching her make soup and avoid kisses with Tridentarius The Lesser and grimace at tea and cut her hair every three days and fuck up Gideon’s beloved two-hander by covering it in bone glue.

Because the alternative, of Harrow just up and leaving her body, which has just come to pass, is untenable. It’s wrong. Not just Gideon’s eyes and her WTF expression on Harrow’s face, but also the pure lack of Harrow in the room. For such a tiny little witch, she takes up a lot of space. She always has. It’s why Gideon had watched her their whole lives. Harrow would enter a room, and her presence would draw Gideon like a paperclip to a magnet. It was hateful, but it was comfortable, a known entity.

But Harrow being gone is so wrong.

Luckily, there are plenty of bug-human-acid-monster things that hold her attention for a time. That, and trying to figure out how to work Harrow’s limp noodle arms so that she can use a sword that weighs about the same as she currently does. As Gideon hacks and kicks and watches Harrow’s extremities regrow (trippy), she avoids thinking about why Harrow has left her. She fights Princess Peach and avoids thinking. She bickers (and maybe falls just a tiny bit in love) with Ianthe Tridentarius and avoids thinking. She listens to confessions twenty years in coming and avoids thinking. She finds her (very fucked up) family and avoids thinking. She (maybe?) befriends the lyctor who tried for nine months to kill her necromancer (except its actually not the lyctor anymore and she’s definitely going to have to learn more about that at some point when she’s no longer fighting for her [lyctor’s] life) and avoids thinking.

She’s going to have to think again at some point, but she’ll avoid it as long as she’s able.

***

When Gideon finally escapes and gets somewhere safe, she has time to watch again, and she hates it. She watches Harrow’s face in the mirror. She wills her necromancer to come back. She begs Harrow to come back. She paints the best skull she’s ever painted on Harrow’s face. She puts on the rust-black robes. She stares at the mirror and tries to find Harrow in the frown lines and pointy chin. But she’s not there, and it looks wrong. Gideon screams and punches the mirror. The broken flesh repairs instantly. She hates that. She needs the pain the last.

She has always associated pain with Harrow. The physical pain of their fights. The emotional pain of being unloved. If the pain is no longer there, does that mean Harrow is gone for good?

Gideon Nav’s eyes sting, and she watches the paint melt off Harrow’s face.

[arlingtonpark]

Harrow the Ninth Act I Thoughts

This is all your fault, @ghostmartyr. If you hadn’t reblogged what seemed like heavy metal boy band fanart, I wouldn’t be in this hole. And for that, I hate you.

So.

When I first encountered the Locked Tomb online, I couldn’t tell if it was a story about edgy, neogothic, teenaged angst, or something better than that.

Turns out, it’s both.

But in a good way.

I love it. It’s great.

It’s unabashed, it’s thoughtful, it’s entertaining, it’s suspenseful.

Gideon the Ninth is finished, and after starting Harrow the Ninth, I decided to blog about it as I go.

I’ll be doing one post for every act of the book. I hope.

Let’s start with our new main character, Harrow. Newly reborn as a god and one of the only survivors of the last book.

So….

Right now, Harrow’s…

Um.

She’s uh…

-gestures at everything-

She’s fucked.

Fucked, broken, in the shit, started godhood on the wrong side of the bed.

200 babies were killed in the name of birthing her. Her parents died in front of her because of what she did. Death has always seemed to follow her, and she carries the burden of all that death.

Harrow despises her existence and wishes she were dead because of the circumstances of her birth, and yet for that very reason she is committed to living, because if she dies, all those sacrifices would be null.

She takes up the duties of governing the Ninth, she applies herself rigorously to mastering necromancy, and when the opportunity arises to become a lyctor, she jumps at it.

Harrow does this because it’s why all those people had to die. She was birthed to carry the Ninth’s legacy; its traditions and obligations and to some extent its very existence.

The twisted nature of the Ninth and her parents is inseparable from that legacy, so in a sense it was that legacy that led to her infanticidal birth, but regardless, this legacy is all she has. It’s all she was ever meant to have. And so she devoted herself to it.  

Now that she’s a lyctor and her house’s future will be guaranteed, but to do it, she had to sacrifice Gideon, whom she loved.

It’s more of the same shit from her perspective: more people dying for her sake. 200 babies die to grant her obscene necromantic talent, her girlfriend dies so she can gain even more power. Harrow doesn’t mean to step on innocent people to get what she wants…but that’s always how it’s turned out for her.

But to add insult to injury, even after all she’s sacrificed, she still didn’t get exactly what she wanted.

Her house will have a future, but she can never return to it. She’s essentially divorced from the only thing that gave her life meaning.

She can never return to her old life; to the extent she saw that as desirable, she can’t have that. Her old life is gone forever.

Something also went wrong with her ascension to godhood. She’s violently sick, mentally unstable, and the powers she should have are…half baked, for lack of a better word.

Nobody said you could get hungover from ascending to godhood. Harrow should sue.

It’s like going in to surgery to remove a tumor and coming out lobotomized.

Is she even immortal?

It all stings of pointlessness. All that effort for nothing.

Worse than that; She lost everything. Her home, her love, her pride and dignity.

Her only purpose in life now is to fight these hell beasts that she’s never heard of before. Happy days ahead, surely.

Oh, and one of the people she’ll have to work with is named Gideon.

Does God hate her?

And then there’s God.

This guy is sus as hell.

He’s gracious and humble. Perpetually calm and soft spoken. Empathetic and understanding. That’s what He’s like in person.

But He’s…maybe the villain? I guess.

God works in mysterious ways, and I have no damn clue what His are, but it’s probably ugly.

Yes, He’s a cordial Dude…but he’s still the God-emperor of a galactic undead empire.

Dude wears a crown made from the bones of dead babies FFS.

Not to be accusatory, but this guy definitely has skeletons in his closet.

-bu-dum-tish-

One of the things that really got my attention while reading this series is how the magic system in this world is depicted. Usually, in fantasy stories, the magic system is depicted as being morally neutral. Good guys use it, bad guys it, but the magic itself just is.

The Locked Tomb Trilogy isn’t like that.

Necromancy is bad. Perverse, even.

All the necromancers are frail and sickly. Practicing it is deleterious on the body. Doing too much too fast with it causes even more pronounced harm. As in, bleeding from your sweat glands.

Necromancy works by manipulating the life force of living beings and, primarily, the death force those being give off when they die.

The forces of nature that necromancy utilizes are (apparently) fundamental to the universe, akin to the laws of nature, but the use of those forces in this way are clearly a perversion.

It’s sort of like a bad tv show, like Sword Art Online. Sure, the things that went into making the show are natural parts of the world, but you just can’t put those things together like that.

John and his empire epitomize that.

All known beings in the universe are fundamentally thalergetic in nature. They are beings who radiate life energy. Except for the planets of the empire. Those planets and the star they orbit are thanergetic in nature.

They literally radiate death. And they are apparently one of a kind in that regard.

John is the first necromancer. John used his newly harnessed powers to “resurrect” multiple planets that had died.

Except he didn’t really resurrect anything, he turned them into an entirely new form of being using his entirely new form of science that uses some kind of mechanism that doesn’t occur naturally.

What I’m getting at here is that everything about John, his power, and his empire is artificial. Man-made. Perhaps even John-made.

We don’t actually know what happened during the Resurrection. What killed off the planets, how John attained his God-like powers, and what life John lived before it.

Oh, yeah, and every planet the empire conquers is systematically killed over generations to fuel their necromancer’s powers.

Every planet God touches literally dies.

One thing I appreciate about this series is how layered the story is.

The Locked Tomb series is a fun, irreverent romp. It’s about allowing the past to rest in peace. It’s also surprisingly political.

The metaphor is pretty blunt: it’s about capitalism. What’s more, the metaphor seems to be from a progressive or maybe even socialist perspective.

Ok, so hear me out on this. This is less fan theory than speculation about the author’s intentions.

The empire is a society built on a system that requires them to move from planet to planet, gradually killing those planets until they have to evacuate and move to a new one.

This process of gradual death takes generations to play out, so apparently they don’t even consider it to be an event that happens.

The heart of this system is necromancy, a perverse science that is ultimately derived from natural phenomena.

This system places the most powerful necromancer atop a literal throne and worships them as God.

God’s disciples are the lyctors, second only to Him in power. They attained that power by a very special process.

The lyctoral process is exploitative. It requires the necromancer to use their cavalier as a sacrifice and to turn their soul into a power source.

The lyctoral process is built around domination. The necromancer, in sacrificing their cavalier, subsumes the cavalier’s soul into their being to gain power.

The lyctoral process is dehumanizing. The cavalier is degraded from a person to a mere battery, but the necromancer is degraded in a way as well. The necromancer can never return to their house, or any of the other houses for that matter. Instead they must fight and die for God in his battle against the Revenant Beasts.

If you’re progressive, this may sound familiar to you.

Relationships of exploitation, domination, and dehumanization. A society built around perversions. That rewards people with talent in those perversions with idolatry. That cold-heartedly and shortsightedly extracts every drop of usable resources from a planet until it is dead, then moves on to the next one.

To a socialist, this may sound a lot like capitalism.

Saying that is already bold enough for me, so I won’t try to argue that it’s a one to one allegory. Necromancy equals the profit motive, lyctors represent the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (So I guess that means the non-lyctor necromancers are the petit bourgeoisie) and the empire is humanity.

You could make a case for it, but the hot takes in this post are already pretty spicy, so…

OMG Mercymorn. XD

Mercymorn is my favorite out of the new characters. She’s a bitch.

Snide, rude, assertive, bitchy, and standoffish. No, it’s not that I want her to step on me, I just can’t get enough of her interactions.

I guess in real life she wouldn’t be fun to be around, but as a character in a book, she steals every scene. Her arrogant and bitchy remarks always make me laugh.

My one wish heading in to Act II: that Mercymorn is in charge of Ianthe’s training.

Just so she can kick her ass for not measuring up to her standards.

[katkonstant]

Harrow the Ninth: Act 1 Analysis - Local Bone Lady Newly Single and Ready for Mental Breakdown

I am so scared! so confused! and so turned on by the sepulchered mystery of Harrow the Ninth’s Act 1! And because it’s quarantine time, it’s organizational mapping and near-obsessive theorizing time baby. 

I’ll warn you: this got LONG. 

Spoilers galore. 

This post is to try and organize my own thoughts as well as preserve in time that I don’t know shit when HTN finally hits. All to answer the big question: What in the necro-hell is going on? Here’s what we know as fact:

Gideon the Ninth was about Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter and Badass Emo Princess, and her not hugged enough but grinning through the pain sword lesbian cavalier, Gideon Nav. A catalogue of their romp of death in Canaan House.

Harrow the Ninth is currently cataloguing two things: (1) Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter and Mentally Unstable Concussion, and her cavalier, Ortus Nigenad and their guided tour of Canaan House. AND (2) Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Baby Lyctor, aboard His Imperial and Unending Magic School Bus.

Similar to @Siadea‘s wonderful post (x), I am all aboard the Timeline Fuckery Theory (TFT). Operating under the TFT, I will refer to our cast of characters accordingly. To summarize the TFT, the major point is thus:

In the prologue of Harrow, I think the Harrowhark of Gideon the Ninth (hereby Harrow1) settled in, swan dove into the River, somehow backstroked in time to when she woke up on the Emperor’s ship, and then she resurfaced (with Ianthe’s help), stripped of all memory&detection involving Keyword:Gideon. 

Gideon  [ORTUS]

It appears Harrow1 has programmed Harrow2 with a find+replace formula for ‘Gideon’ and replacing it with ‘Ortus’ on a pure, sensory input level. I have NO idea how she (or something else) did this. Prologue Ianthe Tridentarius telling Harrow, “I know what you’ve done, and I know how to reverse it” makes me think Harrow did this to herself. 

It scrubs the past as well as the present. Proof - (1) When Harrow2 gets the Emperor’s invitation to Canaan House, we gather from context that Ortus asks her if she’s considered someone else. Only we read it as Ortus saying, “have you considered ORTUS NIGENAD?” AND THEN THE SCENE STARTS OVER, but rewound to moments before. Like a glitch in the Matrix; (2) The Emperor’s lips distort when he says “Ortus Nigenad did not die for nothing” and is confused when Harrow2 says it back to him; (3) When the Emperor later says the name of the third Lyctor ‘Ortus’, Harrow2 starts bleeding from the ears and passes out.....We’ll get to him in a sec.

The three syllables Prologue Harrow dies on: Could be ‘Gideon’ and the mark of her successful mindflaying from recognizing the word. Could also be ‘Alecto’. Hell, could even be ‘Nigenad’. Inconclusive.

The Chilly Weirdo Harrow Has the Hots For (alternatively, who tf are you?)

The Lady of the Locked Tomb is appearing and disappearing in Harrow2′s mind, both at her recall of Canaan House and in her (current?) stay with the Emperor. 

She has Griddle’s Eyes. As we’re familiar with the lyctors, we know that when their cavs are “eaten”, necromancers’ eyes change to their cavalier’s colors. OR the Lady has simply taken on Griddle’s eyes to put Harrow2 at ease.

She has the voice of who Harrow2 needs to hear. We’ve heard the Lady sound like Pelleamena (Harrow’s mommy dearest), Crux, and Aiglamene (Captain of the Ninth guard). Both of these are people who loved Harrow1. 

These characteristics ^ lead me to believe that the Lady can see Harrow1′s obsession with her and is either Manipulating Harrow2 by manufacturing her voice and eyes, or is genuinely trying to love Harrow2 in return. (She may have been present for Harrow’s entire life. See my Ch.3**)

What does she want from Harrow2? --> I think, without support or proof, that the Lady wants to Rise Again (as villains entombed are wont to do). As she doesn’t have a corporeal form, she’ll likely need Harrow’s help. Underlying idea being: the Emperor dies when his Unholy Other Half returns. It would be a little contrived to have the “beautiful lady revealed to be the big bad” device be the GTN and the HTN twist but we’ll see. 

Interesting point: The Lady doesn’t like His Holy Frumpyness & Co. “Lie. Lie now.” She’s either protecting herself further down the line, or the Lady thinks that Mercy would have harmed Harrow2 because of this info. It’s possible this is the same interest if she needs Harrow’s help to free her. 

Now Let’s Talk about Swords

AKA the sexiest part of this dissertation. 

Harrow the Concussed is carrying Griddle’s Two hander. Not just any two hander. It is in fact and distinctly, Griddle’s sword. This is supported by (1) Harrow2 was given the sword by the Emperor “as a gesture” implying he knows Griddle and the sword’s significance to Harrow1. And (2) The severe physical reactions Harrow2 has to the sword’s loathing. In GTN Harrow1 mentioned to Griddle, “I have always felt like that sword hates me”. (this in and of itself is mystifying but I’ve got bigger occult fish to fry)

Either Griddle’s Sword or Cytherea is alive. The fade to black of Harrow rekilling Cytherea is a mystery within a Christmas light tangle of other mysteries and I’m not fucking with it. BUT. There are Five lifeforms aboard the ship that traversed the River: Mercymorn, the Emperor, Ianthe, and Harrow. Harrow2 tells us that the Body/the Lady isn’t in sight. That leaves inanimate objects: Cytherea’s body, or the two hander that hates Harrow. 

Harrow2, the Concussed, is not carrying a rapier. Only in the Prologue does Harrow have a rapier on her hip. Ortus the Alternate cav carries a rapier. See the next theory for why this is significant. 

The Events of Canaan House Two are Not Real. 

These are my weakest theories. They’re all weak, but these ones are chief weaklings. The Time Fuckery Theory’s biggest snag is ‘Canaan House: What’s Real?’, and I think only the events with Harrow2 on the ship with Ianthe are actually occurring. 

I think someone is soul/spirit guiding Harrow2 on this Canaan House Round II to show her something. Proof: (1) The repeated “Is this how it happened?”/”This isn’t how it happened.” Clearly indicate that this IS a repeated experience for Harrow, and not the original. (2) Ortus glitches a bit, looks at Harrow2 and says “You never did have much of an imagination.” Someone who knows Harrow1 made him say this. I think. (3) If we count who possibly could spirit-guide Harrow2 on this quest, we have to find the denominator candidates: the only people who knew Harrow1 at Canaan House and at Drearburh are Gideon, and Harrow1 herself. And - if the Lady really has been following her around, the Lady of the Locked Tomb. (4) This theory cannot account for the strobing red egg hallucinations on paper Harrow2 is being delivered. 

Second explanation: it’s all happening in Harrow’s head, and Harrow1 is the spirit guide. In support: There is a surprising amount of explanation and character depth from Ortus. I believe Harrow1 knows Ortus enough from childhood to be able to project him onto Harrow2 this way. 

Third explanation: Because the people Harrow2 is interacting with are all dead, it’s microscopically possible Harrow2 is tripping some soul-shrooms in the River and having the souls of Canaan House teach her something via flashback. In support: Prologue Harrow says five pairs of eyes close to submerge into the River, but hers would not open again. Incredibly vague, but could mean she was going to be spending a significant amount of time in the River. This theory is unlikely, as Harrow is a bone adept. Souls are squishy and freaky to her. Unlikely also from what we saw of the River. Ie; the River is an inhospitable predator which ripped Cassiopea apart and scares the hell out of Mercy and the Emperor. Not an ideal destination spirit-walk vacation spot. Plus, the only clear reasoning we get from Harrow about why she’s descending into the River is because she knows she’s going to die (although she tells Ianthe she has no plans to die)

Things to Note: (1) Teacher immediately spills the Sleeper beans, lets the laboratory cat out of the bag, and unmasks the key mystery. I think who/whatever is guiding Harrow2 around makes this happen legitimately just to save time. (2) Harrow2 is learning things from Ortus, Teacher, Abigail Pent, etc that Harrow1 and Gideon didn’t know.

If the Events of Canaan House Round Two ARE Real. 

If the Great Value Canaan House timeline is actually happening and are physically influential, the implications are fucking vast, because now we’re considering the multiverse of how time works. I am not about to get into that shit because I do (contrary to this post’s existence’s suggestion) have a life, and I don’t feel like rededicating it to the theory of relativity and time dilation. 

The biggest question though would then become: How would events have unfolded if Ortus had gone to Canaan House and not Griddle? The only conclusion to that is: everyone would be dead and Cytherea would be alive. Which does not jive with the happenings of Emperor Frizzle’s Magic NecroBus and Harrow2 (many are alive, and Cytherea is dead). It could be that Cytherea is, in fact, alive and needs re-killing via the Act 1 end of Harrow2 stabbing her. I can’t say.

What does freak me out about Canaan2 is Harrow herself. 

Not her insanity, mind you, but the fact that Harrow2 is hilarious. She’s always been acidic and funny, but Harrow2 is crude and funny. This is very, very bad. She makes a remark about the term ‘bone frenzy’ that Ortus says only someone who’d prefer ‘prurient magazines’ would think of. Can anyone guess who might be more incline than Harrow to prefer prurient magazines? Say a messy sword necrolesbian with a subscription to Frontline Titties of the Fifth?

Harrow2 is also not chasing Palamedes Sextus around the grounds of Canaan House in a near-suicidal race to Lyctorhood. 

Not only is she not working herself to death, but Harrow is doing the opposite: she is socializing. With the Fourth and Fifth! She’s caustic and rude while she does it, but she’s still spending time around them for whatever reason. 

All these behaviors are Griddle behaviors and they make. me. nervous. 

Is Harrow2 Actually a Lyctor?

Harrow’s Dramatis Personae section lists ‘Harrowhark the First’ with a huge and glaring and delightful redacted section below her name. If someone truly had the time, I’m sure they could sleuth out the layers of the censorship and find out what it says. However, it’s plain that the underlying text does NOT say ‘Gideon Nav, her cavalier’. So we’re left with more questions - who or what died to give Harrow her power? .....As a point of interest, it looks like the original writing has been overlaid with even more text. 

Ortus’ eyes were black - the same shade as Harrow’s. Harrow2 wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny that she had successfully eaten her Canaan Redux cavalier.

In the prologue, Harrow1 calls herself “half a lychtor” implying that either 1) she’s simply not trained, or 2) something went wrong in her lyctorhood creation

And then we have this weird Chapter 3** internal narration of Harrow2′s childhood without Griddle. And she’s.. absolutely bananas. She grows up a ghoulish, lonely, nut job. But she still says she had committed the indelible sin halfway. That she hadn’t been able to choke him (Ortus) down. 

Her manifestations of power don’t add up. First, Ianthe (undisputedly a lyctor) shoves Babs’ knife through her hand and has no problem with it, or healing right up. Harrow2... isn’t so lucky. Prologue Harrow is also in the process of dying. Conversely, while in the River, Mercymorn dismisses the idea that Harrow2 could possibly be using theorems and freaks out when she discovers Harrow can. Conclusion being: Either Harrow2 is incredible weak, or incredibly powerful but untrained, or she is Something Else Entirely*.

Harrow2 isn’t experiencing lyctoral indigestion. Cytherea tells Ianthe right after she eats Babs, “I can see him fighting you. Mine [meaning her cav, Loveday] came willingly, and it still hurt for a century.” We know Babs still fights Ianthe in HTN, as her eyes are usually swapping shades. It’s not something Harrow1 or 2 mentions as a problem. 

* My working theory is that Harrow2 is kind of lyctor-ish and being protected by the Lady, the Sword, or Griddle (who might be incarnate in either).  

Side note: It might be too far into the weeds to wonder about but I want to know what pregnancy would do to a lyctor. If we follow the Die Young but Beautiful and Powerful practices of the Seventh House, Dulcinea’s family uses their crappy genes as internal combustion engines: cells dying within them allow a perpetual source of thanergy. On the opposite end of that same theory, a necromancer constantly producing thalergy (life and cell growth) should therefore be significantly weaker, right?

This^ is only relevant when considering the other theory:

Papa Gideon [ORTUS] knocked up a fellow Lyctor. 

While it would explain the creepy “egg” texts Harrow2 is hallucinating, as well as why Cytherea spared Griddle multiple times at Canaan house, I doubt this theory for a few reasons: 

Of the available lyctors able to carry children, there is Cassiopeia, Anastasia, Mercymorn, and Cytherea. We only know Mercy and Cytherea.

It’s strongly implied that Cytherea and her cav, Loveday, were in a relationship. Since Loveday is technically still inside of Cytherea, I doubt she wanted to date around. 

The Emperor strives to present the Lyctors as siblings. This a) props himself up as the holy and imperial papa bear to guide and govern them, b) perpetuates the eternal and indestructible bond of siblings, and c) kills any idea of inter-lyctoral hooking up. Can you even imagine the destruction a Jersey Shore: Unholy Power bar fight would wreak?  

I’m not fully convinced Lyctor Gideon [ORTUS] is Griddle’s father. While it would make sense in terms of stature (Lyctor G/O is a single rippling muscle and Griddle’s biceps are... noteworthy), Silas Octakiseron told Gideon that her mother had hair just the same shade as her (source: Sister Glaurica’s toiling soul). Could be that Griddle’s Mom’s soul screaming “Gideon!” was her calling for the Lyctor, her brother/other relation. 

However, I DO believe Griddle is... more than. She wasn’t killed by the nerve gas, and Harrow2′s eyes are not Griddle Gold. 

As a second side note, Lyctor Gideon [ORTUS]’s cav was named Pyrrha Dve. This is exciting to me because of my slutty fandom tendencies and because a name like ‘Pyrrha’ begs for Tragic Backstory, and I’m here for it. Also, I want more interaction with Augustine as he’s who Ianthe says “won’t come save” Harrow. Eye emoji.  

Alecto

As far as I’m aware, there are no solid leads on who or what Alecto the Ninth is. Casting about in wildly unwarranted guesswork, I can throw a few baseless theories out; 

Alecto is Griddle’s truer name (possibly birth name or even what she’s called if when she is brought back);

Alecto is the Lady of the Locked Tomb; 

Alecto is the Emperor’s Cav. In Harrow’s ‘Dramatis Personae’, The Emperor is listed as well as his lyctors and their cavaliers. Except, the Emperor does not have a deceased cav. He has “A.L.”, his guardian. A.L. =Alecto, mayhaps?; 

Alecto, a combination of (2) and (3). The Lady is supposedly the Emperor’s death and who he could not kill twice. If she were his ‘guardian’ she would be a) more powerful than him, and b) someone he was emotionally attached to which he couldn’t bring himself to kill again. 

Things I Cannot and Refuse to Account For:

Ianthe Tridetarius became a sewn tongue as a favor for Harrow1. Wtf. 

Ortus Nigenad’s self-insert cavalier epic of Matthias Nonius. Wtf. 

**The entirety of Chapter 3 is either true or it’s not. Wtf was that shit.  

The psychotic “You lied”/”Egg” texts Harrow2 is hallucinating. Wtf.

This is.... all probably incorrect, and I applaud you if you made it this far. I could keep going, the material of Act 1 is that dense. But in answer to The Great Big WTF that is Harrow Act 1 - my theory is simple. 

TLDR; I think Harrowhark Nonagesimus is tearing down the laws of the universe to bring back Gideon the Ninth.