as a shadow smudged against the wall,

the coloured version of a sketch i made last week for the front page of htn's chapter 53 💀 i would love to be able to illustrate an actual book someday hheh

closeups under the cut 🗡 prints!

When we see the very beginning of his story, John is afraid. He's afraid that if he admits to any kind of failure, he will become unlovable - that love is something that can be earned and lost, that forgiveness doesn't truly exist. The path to becoming a world-annihilating horror is paved with the belief that to be fallible is to be unlovable.

John first meets the nun worrying that she will accuse him of being the antichrist, and watches her die after she has told him that "fear doesn't help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart". Which is all rather 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." 1 John is one of the New Testament letters, maybe by the same John as the gospel and the apocalypse, depending on who you ask. And it's about how you can defeat the antichrist with the power of friendship recognise truth because it is characterised by love.

One of Paul's first actions is to offer the real possibility of forgiveness to Ianthe: a forgiveness that undoes the metaphysical violence of her actions and could restore both her and Babs. Paul calls themself "the love perfected by death", which is an Oscar Wilde reference, but also rather loops back to 1 John, and "perfect love casts out fear."

And this idea that metaphysical violence can be undone, that it is love, not fear, that gives power, fits with what we know about Alecto the Ninth, in which it would seem there will be some kind of Harrowing of Hell. One of the fundamental aspects of the Harrowing of Hell in Catholic thought is that Jesus liberates Adam and Eve from the underworld, restores them to wholeness with God, and defeats death. John and Alecto are Adam and Eve figures in a number of ways, and it's interesting to wonder what that might mean for them in the end game of the series.

It feels like all of these thematic threads come together to suggest that John might still have the possibility of redemption - whatever that might mean in this series. But it might be just that: a possibility.

Does Pyrrha at one time say "we pushed her out an air lock" and at other times say "I pushed her out an air lock?"

If it's both, I'm thinking:

Pyrrha blames herself for not stopping Gideon even though she didn't have the power to (can't take over at will)?

Pyrrha blames herself for not stopping Gideon and secretly did have the power to (by taking over at will).

Pyrrha did it and left Gideon not understanding why he killed Wake and his unborn child.

Hold on this works better in poll format.

What's your reasoning? I really want to know. Did I miss something?

EDIT: