mad :)

I’d rather carry you.

gideon, watching harrow suck ass at using her sword:

ianthe:

We are first introduced to her as the Body in Harrow the ninth (I mean we knew about her before but I’m talking interactively) and she’s basically Harrow’s rock. She has this calm air about her that provides comfort to Harrow. She courts Harrow, has dinners with her where they talk about anything, and prays with her. She’s Harrow’s partner in crime when she agrees with her that Gideon Zero needs to die. She protects Harrow; instructing her to lie. She has no qualms about Harrow’s desperation for her and looks at Harrow with pity when she regrets it. She takes it as her personal duty to save Harrow’s body at the end of htn, performing cpr, because she truly does care about Harrow and that’s what I’m getting at here; she cares about Harrow a lot. She’s also calm, cool, and collected.

Yet all the remaining Lyctors (save for Pyrrha and Gideon) seem to hate her. A lot of them apparently didn’t like her. They call her a monster. Which is a sharp contrast from what we’ve seen so far, in terms of the Body’s likability. Not to mention that Harrow notices that the Body doesn’t seem too fond of John either when she catches her staring at him (god I love that scene where John drops his bag? on her lap and Alecto just keeps staring at him unmoved, I yearn for their story), so like, what happened between all of them? I know Alecto hates necromancy and Lyctorhood but why call her a monster? What did she do?

Then later, this piece of Alecto’s soul, the Body, enters Harrow to become Nona (why Alecto did that is yet to be revealed) and Nona is a stark contrast to it. She’s this bubbly, sunshine person who’s ditsy in an adorable way and who loves everyone and everything. So yeah, Alecto can also be bubbly. That’s until Nona starts remembering who she is. Who’s that you may ask? Oh yeah, the fucking soul of the Earth! I mean, what? Talk about an insane lore drop. She feels for planets when they are shit talked (New Rho, Drearburh) cause they are her family. Isn’t that crazy? She’s a planet. She’s THE planet. The life giving planet. She’s life itself. She’s God.

That’s when the coke starts hitting because she is the soul of the Earth and she was dying and she picked John to save her and that was how he repaid her? By putting her in a body she deems hideous (because she’s not really fond of human beings actually) after wounding her original body? Killing her siblings? Nona’s in the process of remembering all this and loses her sparkle. Nona the six month old. Alecto the 4.5 billion+ year old. Nona grows colder, both physically and mentally, as she remembers herself. She’s fucking disgusted by the state of things. She’s angry. She lets Pyrrha know this. She gets embarrassed. She cries. She’s the soul of the Earth and she’s six months old and she’s hurting and she’s aware she’s killing Harrow and she blames herself for everything; she just wants to die. She finally wants to let go. Look at what trying to hold on did to the universe, right? The bubbly, calm, caring soul of the Earth is also, disgusted, cold, righteously furious, depressed, and is currently a six month old baby having a panic attack while completely falling apart. She also laughs at butt jokes. Atp, your skin starts itching with the need to know more and more about her.

Then she wakes up after ten thousand years, still angry. Angry because John. Angry because she remembers everything she was, everything she could have been, what she is now. Angry as she sees Pyrrha and talks to her. Angry still, as her eyes land on Harrow. She remembers Harrow and something about her irritates, calms, and even pleases her. This being because she realizes Harrow (after biting her lips off) is a descendant of the one person who seems to bring her any sort of peace, a person she, the soul of the Earth, vowed her entire being to: Anastasia. Why is that? She makes the same vow to Harrow because of this fact. She’s unamused by Harrow’s self deprecation but pleased by Harrow’s strength. She forces Harrow to accept her vows despite subtly agreeing that Harrow is too lowly to receive them. Then there is the whole reunion with John where she nonchalantly swords him through the heart with Harrow draped above her other hand. What I’m trying to say is: Alecto is fucking cold, detached, bossy, and swaggy. Which is, yet again, an insane contrast to her other two personalities.

Not to mention she screams blood and flesh and the sound comes from every part of her body. All this while you sit with the fact that the Earth is a conscious being that is fully aware of herself, her skin, and her body; with the ability to grant godlike gifts to fucking randoms, who are also her. Plus she speaks in old english. That’s sick.

…

very likely that they were too busy mogging all of new rho to teach nona to read

bonus palamedes under the cut

as cavaliers, gideon and cam are expected to die for their necromancers. but harrow is the first one to propose sacrificing herself, so these two expendable cavaliers can live.

to which gideon says: “harrow, don’t do this to me”. and then PROCEEDS TO DO THIS TO HER.

6th House is on mercury and 9th House is on pluto so they're on the opposite ends of the dominicus system

9 is 6 uspide down and 6 is 9 upside down

the Ninth House and the Sixth House are religion vs science

Gideon and Harrow are (were) childhood enemies, Camilla and Palamedes are (were) childhood friends. Gideon and Harrow had a hard time trusting each other, Camilla and Palamedes trusted each other with everything.

Gideon and Harrow are all about forgetting ("But I don’t even remember about you most of the time", the whole lobotomy situation), Camilla and Palamedes are all about remembering ("I’ve carried you, Warden. And I’ve carried your memory … I’d rather carry you", "Palamedes remembers everything: That was his problem. I always remember him. That’s mine")

Gideon and Harrow are water (the Pool Scene, Gideon being in the "well" in Harrow's mind, Harrow deciding to stay in the River and Gideon "dying" in the River), Camilla and Palamedes are fire (Palamedes's first death, Palamedes and Camilla's lyctoral ascention)

in griddlehark's case the necromancer carried their cavalier's soul, in campal's case the cavalier carried their necromancer's soul

Gideon and Palamedes sacrificed themselves, Harrow then carried Gideon's sword even though it was killing her and Camilla carried Palamedes's bones even though boe electrocuted her for it

Gideon and Camilla are both "devotion's casualties"

Harrow and Camilla risked permanent brain damage to save the souls they carried

Gideon barely had any training for her position and Camilla trained her whole life, but they both didn't normally use their rapiers and were both set on fighting rather than on traditional duelling

the 6th and the 9th are both poor, underestimated, dying houses. Harrow and Palamedes have been leading them since they were very young and they do anything to try to improve the situation

Harrow fell in love with the Body when she was 10, Palamedes began writing to Dulcinea when he was 8. both into old dead chicks (as Gideon phrased it) while also loving their cavaliers

Camilla watched Gideon impale herself to force Harrow's ascention, Gideon watched Camilla light herself on fire during her and Palamedes's ascention

"This was your shell but it was all filled up with me" & "It's not you. It's me wearing you"

"I keep turning around to find you, and there’s nobody there." "I know the feeling." & "You’d touched that letter, and I—you know it was killing me twice that you weren’t there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn’t even hear your damn voice?"

"Kiriona Gaia was staring politely at the side of the truck, as though there were something really interesting on the paintwork" & "Even Camilla, who had turned away to politely investigate something on the opposite wall, wasn’t there"

"It was just her and Harrow and Harrow’s bitter, high-boned, stupid little face" & "Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe"

AND

AND

AND

AND

there's probably more, that's just from the top of my head. but yeah, they make me insane and i'm foaming at the mouth.

EDIT: of course there's more

Palamedes and Harrow were both stuck in river bubbles in htn

"Oh, never mind. She knows what to do." & "You’ll know what to do, and if you don’t do it, what I’m about to do will be no use to anyone."

"But for the love of the Emperor, Griddle, you are something else with that sword." & "I love the way she moves,” she said pitifully. He said, “Me too."

"Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last." <- sounds familiar, doesn't it? you could replace Harrowhark-and-Gideon with Camilla-and-Palamedes and it would still fit perfectly

"What about Camilla Hect, the independent entity? Free to live her life outside the shadow of her necromancer? Free from his agenda dictating hers?" <- same situation, it fits perfectly for griddlehark

i find it hard to believe this post was not made w campal in mind tbh

bonus pyrrha, who i am excited to finally have drawn