the strike, the pause, the message from God

What makes the villain the villain (inasmuch as it's useful to examine TLT characters through that kind of simplistic lens) is that when the chips are down and he has to choose, his priority is punishing the wicked, not saving the people left behind.

I would invite anyone whose engagement with their cause consists of finding the 'correct' group of people to hate, to consider whether 'evil emperor' is the next career move you see yourself taking, and if it isn't, to gently suggest disembarking from the hate train.

We know that Jod’s empire reflects fascist white supremasict ideas, and I personally read Coronabeth’s inhuman beauty as being a facet of that. When you think about how the third house is the “mouth of the emperor” (ie. the political and celebrity types. The royal family being the crown jewel of such) and about how Corona is implied to have had her appearance altered by necromancy, it beckons the question: what was altered?

I think theres a good chance her weight/ fat distribution was altered to make her skinnier while acting as Princess of Ida. Thinness is a tool some women feel they have to use to gain safety in a hyper judgmental, individualistic, and fascist society. And then, when you combine that with the pressure for her to be a “matched set” with her sickly necro twin, I think it’s pretty plausible that she had some issues with her weight.

Harrow is doing great. She’s completely socially incompetent and also tragically orphaned but she likes not having parents to answer to. Coronabeth is the life of the party the girl everyone wants and no one actually knows.

Essentially Harrow gets someone to forcibly socialize her but Corona doesn’t mind when Harrow is a weirdo cause she is one too so it’s fine. Harrow goes from her strange cult attire to the more societally acceptable ultragoth (about 40% more femme then she’d choose but she doesn’t really care). Coronabeth has someone who also gets the weird gender stuff, does not care about how hot she is, and will tell her when she’s being pathetic. She also is great at verbally eviscerating fools and Coronabeth loves watching that.

It’s all great until Ianthe flirts with Harrow Once and Crown decides she needs to get Harrow a girlfriend Now. So naturally she dolls herself up, goes to the local gay bar, and finds herself a nice butch who might be Harrow’s type.

Like, she spent all of the previous book trapped in a walled off portion of Harrow's subconscious and thinking that Harrow hated her bc she refused to properly eat her soul. Then in the last like thirty minutes of the book harrow's soul goes on holiday and Gideon's now in her body fighting fucked up bug things and she still thinks Harrow hates her but also she's going to do her best to keep Harrow's body safe but definitely not because she cares about Harrow, just because she's her cavalier and that's what she's meant to do.

Then offscreen she got resurrected by god—kinda sorta we'll find out I guess, pyrrah seems to know what's up but is not sharing with the class—who she learned five minutes ago is her dad and was going around doing her tower prince thing with ianthe tridentarius who I'm sure she had a very normal and not at all weird relationship with. Idk maybe they bonded over wanting to fuck Harrow (not that Gideon would ever admit that of course).

Then while Gideon's being all corpse-y in her off time, who does she see but Harrowhark fucking Nonagesimus. Who immediately kisses her. Gideon then learns that said body that she definitely has only very platonic feelings about, antagonistic feelings even, is being piloted by an autistic six month old. Whose one really good skill is reading people and who kissed her because the second Nona walked into the room she read her like a fucking book and saw that Gideon really wanted to kiss Harrow('s body).

Gideon proceeds to be very normal about desperately needing to know where Harrow actually is. Not because she's in love with Harrow obviously, that would be crazy, she needs to know so that she can, uh, point and laugh at whatever predicament Harrow's in, yeah that's it. Only to learn that Nona doesn't fucking know.

f in the chat for cam having to third wheel yet another couple while stuck on the BoE ship (ft. hand!pal, who it amuses me to think has perfect font writing)