Just Another Online Idiot

you can’t even conceive a baby using god’s stolen sperm and kill it to open a tomb that’s housed an eldritch horror for ten thousand years anymore. because of wake

I often read "Harrow did her lobotomy just because she didn't want to live in a universe without Gideon, and there was no bigger plan behind it" and... it's not exactly true.

Because, not to live in a universe without Gideon is of course the biggest factor for the lobotomy, but Harrow really seems to think that there was a real chance that Gideon could take control over her body. Why else should she give the letter for the "other happence" to Ianthe?

What must be the letter Gideon opens later and that reads:

also she read all of Palamades notes, according to their agreement. She knows he understood (and was horrified by) Lyctorhood and planned to develop a cure for it before he, uh... became exploded, and is either aware of Cam and Pal's "plan for that" and expects him to do it anyway, or is simply trusting that the sixth house is filled with people that would see "incomplete, ground breaking research work the warden can't complete anymore because of an untimely death" as a personal challenge.

All she had to do was invent a way to preserve the cavalier's soul until that happens, which she did.

Note: I’m writing this only because I haven’t seen anyone else touch on these specific points. I’m not Māori, so my understanding may be mistaken; if so I would be very grateful for correction and elaboration from tangata whenua. (And I’ve only read Nona once so far, and we all know that’s a scratch upon the surface of it.)

Tazmuir has received fandom flack for saying in interviews that Gideon and Harrow are both Māori without mentioning it in the text — which understandably reminds sf/f readers of a certain other author’s tendency to dispose of the difficult bits outside the actual work. I think it is clear by now that the reason it wasn’t dealt with explicitly earlier on is that Tazmuir sticks religiously (ahem) to the flawed and limited knowledge of her point-of-view characters, and in the Nine Houses they have no concept of pre-Resurrection races and ethnicities, because Jod has not allowed them knowledge of any world but his. (Besides, explaining Gideon’s lineage in a Doylist aside would have been rather tricky without revealing, before their proper time in the narrative, juicy details about Jod himself.)

My prediction is that we will find out Anastasia was also Māori. Maybe, probably, from the same iwi as Jod and/or G1deon.

Which makes Harrow, her last descendent, Māori as well.

No matter how many generations separate them. No matter how much other blood.

“Mixed Māori” or “[percentage] Māori” is kind of a pākehā concept. The more important question is, do you whakapapa? Do you know who you are? Do you know where you come from? All it takes is one verified ancestor and you’re in the club, no matter how long it’s been or what brand of egg carton your skin looks like on the book cover. I think Harrow is descended not just from a line of Tomb-keepers but a line of kaitiaki, guardians of the land, who through Anastasia’s private pact with Alecto are sworn to protect her — Papatūānuku, the earth mother born from salt water — and who have been holding on for ten thousand years to right Jod’s wrongs. We know salt water is sacred to the line of the Ninth House; we know that Alecto was called “the saltwater creature”; we know that it’s Nona’s natural element, which calms and renews her; all this links Alecto/Earth specifically with Māori creation myths, more than any others. And we know that preserving the ancient bloodline of the Ninth, Anastasia’s bloodline, in Harrow’s own improbable and desperately yearned-for person (that Alecto can recognise at a taste), was the goal Pelleamena and Priamhark pursued at the cost of the Ninth House’s entire future.

Yes, this series is portraying an indigenous man as the destroyer of Earth. We know that Earth chose him as her saviour and he betrayed her, imprisoned her, set himself up as master of an empire that was her antithesis, then imprisoned her again — arguably worse sins for someone who was born into that special relationship with the land, whom the Earth loved and trusted so much and still loves even now because love past understanding is her gift.

But here’s the answer to that. Here’s his opposite number. Harrow, who fell in love at first sight with the Earth, who found in that love her reason and her drive to continue living and to hold to her goals through intolerable trauma, who has a unique combination of bloodline and genius and Jod-and-Alecto-derived power (through her Lyctorhood with Kiriona Gaia, wherever that ends up going) with which to fulfill this sacred pact entered into by her tipuna Anastasia.

Harrow being Māori is not a trendy convenient afterthought. It’s an integral point.

Harrow knows who she is. She knows where she comes from. She knows where she’s going: Hell itself, to get to the bottom of all this shit. So I think we will be hearing more along these lines.

Reading HtN I was like: “aww, I see! This is all part of a clever scheme Harrow! What is your masterful endgame I wonder?”

And then it’s literally just:

honestly no wonder harrow forced ianthe to lobotomize her so she could save gideon. listen…LISTEN…if i was a secret-war-crime cult nunlet princess worshipped by my entire planet and the only person that (barely) kept me in check was my childhood nemesis—a butch a year older than me, towering over me in stature and physical prowess, and so hot it made my teeth hurt from how hard my jaw clenched in her presence, who wielded a two-handed seven-foot sword and had irritatingly huge biceps and told very lewd stupid jokes and also learned how to wield an entirely new weapon and be my bodyguard with startling accuracy in three months—only to have us finally learn to trust each other because we got invited to a magic murder mystery and then before the bubble burst i spilled the worst secret about myself that i was born because my parents murdered an entire generation and tried to Kill Her along with them and she just wouldnt die, and i told her this expecting a swift death i believed i deserved, only for her to fucking cradle me in her big butch arms and kiss me on my forehead with her soft butch mouth and just. forgive me for a shameful weight ive carried my entire life and then MAKE AN ACTUAL NECRO/CAV VOW with me despite every evil thing i have done to her……to have her tell me, in the end, bleeding and broken after putting up the most beautiful and glorious fight of her life, that she understands purpose and she understands duty and she knows loyalty more fiercely than ever now, that she knows who she is to me, that there is no her without me….to have her backed into a corner and make the ultimate sacrifice…..for me…..to recite scriptural wedding vows of eternity to me in her last wisps of soul-consciousness…..if i thought there was even a snowflake’s chance in the pyre that i could save her by turning myself into her very own locked tomb, i’d be begging ianthe tridentweirdius to crack my skull open and turn me to mush too, goddamn. i understand you harrowhark girl you don’t have to explain a thing to me. god said you couldn’t undo the lyctor’s bond bc it’d kill you. you told god and his angels that not even a lyctor’s bond could outshine the power of female spite and lesbianism and they didn’t listen. they didn’t believe you. but i heard you loud and clear and i was 17 and hormonal and hopelessly romantic not too long ago unlike those fucking dinosaurs and i’m saying it’s valid it’s what i would have done and really everyone should be thanking you for not being worse and more wretched about it, all things considered

I really am curious what Muir thinks will get her excommunicated in Alecto the Ninth. I mean, she already wrote God having a threesome with two of his saints on the dinner table at dinner time.

#well based on the ongoing background throughline of reproductive justice/autonomy vs reproductive injustice/coercion#(wake & the eggs/harrows 'duty' to further the anastasian line/abigails infertility/'we still hadn't solved the maternity problem')#(mercymorn 'i will not be part of a plan that relies on reproductive injustice' cristabel/corona almost killing ianthe in the womb)#(judith being born in the thanergy void of deep space and having to be wrapped in grave dirt as an infant)#(the sixth house resorting to eugenics in an attempt to reverse engineer themselves out of an extinction event like animals in captivity)#(the mention in HtN that flipping a planet from thalergy to thanergy results in 'lifeforms eventually no longer being able to reproduce')#(john chapters ntn mentioning that bc they hadn't solved 'the maternity issue' they were 'recommending termination before cryo')#(nona being the name of a roman goddess associated with i believe springtime birth and fertility)#(john telling harrow on the mithraeum that lyctors were named 'the first' because they were. 'all A.L.'s children in a very real way' 😬)#(whatever's up with the whole unbroken line of anastasia/mint green nursery on the ninth thing)#(plus when harrows false caanan house river bubble started to fall apart...)#(... the book says that syringes and needles and microscope slides and fimbriae showed up all over caanan house)#(fimbriae is a part of the ovary and the others are used in IVF. so presumably that was wake's psyche changing the scenery)#so like. because of all THAT!#...i am not ruling out the possibility that it could be a yellowjackets-type 'abortion depicted as a holy act' moment?#that's not an official prediction either mind you! not even a hunch really! it would just be thematically consistent#+ it would def piss off the church#and i for one am Beyond psyched at the prospect of reproductive justice themed body horror that ISN'T transphobic awful terf shit tags courtesy of @harrowharkwife!!!

@harrowharkwife

Which character do you think is mostly likely to become pregnant? By whom? And what are the circumstances that lead to the abortion being needed?

@griseldagimpel no clue! like i said, not an official prediction by any means, i'm just spitballing here.

but off the top of my head, i would honestly put alecto at the top of my list. we know so little about her, and my bible knowledge is admittedly rough at best, but john called her "his Adam" in HtN, which immediately draws to mind eve, who was notably cursed with the pain of childbirth. (and remember, they "still hadn't solved the maternity problem," ie, they hadn't found a way yet to make reproduction and cryofreezing/necromantic resurrection compatible. meaning that a resurrection would do jack shit, if the original generation couldn't produce a subsequent one.) this is about three paragraphs before he goes on to tell harrow that lyctors are named "____ the first" because he "called A.L. 'first,'" and he says that none of the lyctors could have existed without her, and more specifically, that they are all "her children, in a very real way." (??? this phrasing, to me, pings as john's way of skirting a difficult conversation by, as he puts it, 'not lying but...flattening a sacramental truth.') combine that with nona in roman mythology being the goddess of pregnancy and childbirth (specifically because the name means 'ninth' and pregnant people would pray to her in the ninth month of their pregnancy for a safe and easy childbirth), and the implication at the end of NtN that there was some secret vow or promise made between alecto and anastasia, who went on to then create an entire house whose *only* goal was a continuous, unbroken line of direct genetic descendants via gravid carry, not vat womb? as well as pyrrha vaguely mentioning that she'd "helped out at a birth, once" but not giving any further details, and john telling harrow that augustine and mercy still felt bad/guilty for their part in... something? that happened with alecto? back at caanan house? but that g1deon/pyrrha did not, which i think aligns with the way that pyrrha knew/suspected nona was alecto all along, and loved/cared for her anyway, instead of hating her the way the other OG lyctors seemed to. also, alecto's speech to pyrrha, about "playing mother and father... you should have followed your instincts. chew and swallow. more natural that way." (??? still no clue what this means, but the tie to parenting and children specifically has me raising an eyebrow, and her delivery of it seemed... upset, to say the least.) all of that, coupled with harrow mentioning in HtN that flipping a planet (say, earth? or alecto?) from thalergy to thanergy eventually "renders reproduction impossible" on that planet, makes me wonder if the concepts of "reproduction" and "alecto" could be tied together in some way in AtN. the 'abortion' part in and of itself is just a guess, based on tamsyn joking about getting excommunicated. but i think the autonomy issues inherent to alecto having been made to resemble a doll, are. suggestive, perhaps! as far as logistics goes, honestly my best guess would be anastasia offering to somehow stand in for her or shoulder the burden instead, via sacred pact or vow, since they seemed close. which could, potentially, explain the origins of the ninth house's focus on reproduction as a primary objective.

again, this is allllll just a guess! but top of my list, i would say alecto, followed by anastasia, given that she's already explicitly linked to the topic of reproduction in the text.

No more insults and threats! Only ✨Friendship✨

Little over 100 pages into GtN, and I have to say, I really love Dulcinea!! She might be my favorite character besides Gideon, she’s just so interesting.

stop saying "gideon nav" in the tags i don't know who that is you're scaring me

Hold on hold on, in John and Harrow’s last scene together she says:

And then he says:

John is panicking, he literally asks her where will you go if not with me.

Then Harrow replies savagely:

And then she turns her back on him.

Harrow is the descendant of a long line of nuns, she is the religious leader of the 9th house. Her purpose is to follow the one true god and she’s no longer sure it’s John.

The chapter is named John 5:4 and because Tamsyn is a crazy genius; this is that bible verse:

4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

aiglamene couldn’t have been harrow’s cavalier to canaan house because the whole book would have been over within 3 pages after they land, which would be about the time it takes for aiglamene to look around at all the nonsense and start knocking heads together

tags have passed peer review op

aiglamene the minute that cytherea starts on her bullshit at canaan house:

I am unfortunately just like other guys. I like trashy horror, dog poems, cannibalism as a metaphor for obsessive devotion, religious imagery, people who use my name in a sentence, academic validation, lying for fun, being bisexual and bleeding out in the snow.