#nav dynamics

[harrowharksboner]

[hvecomvndo]

“the entire point of me is you” goes even further when you remember Gideon was conceived to destroy the tomb and Harrow was conceived to secure it. There’s no tomb annihilating “bomb” without a tomb keeper.

[eileensdress]

Hey sick and fucking twisted to really go for the ‘devoted enemies who hate each other but have really weird chemistry and stare at each other 24/7 and god forbid you try to kill one of them bc the other wont let you live’ trope and also make it two of the most insufferably lesbian women Ive ever met

[blueberryflavoredfeelings]

Our ship name is Weaponized Incompetence—I’m a Weapon and you’re Incompetent

[tooturtly]

Thinking about how the origin of Harrow and Gideon’s fucked up relationship (you know, being children in the Ninth House) actually adds a lot of context to exactly why they are like that, but because it’s technically not on the page it’s harder to understand.

In anthropology and associated fields there’s a term called “habitus” that I think is useful for this discussion (I also like spreading anthropology bc this is the brainrot impacting the course of my career). This is an academic way of saying behavior that is so ingrained, so habitual, it doesn’t even require thought or pass any level of notice. How you walk is an example of habitus, how you chop vegetables, how you enter a room, what clothes you pick for certain occasions, literally anything you can do could be an example of habitus.

Humans are hardwired to learn, we are constantly picking up cues from the people and society around us from the moment we are born until the moment we die. We do it so much and so easily that we don’t notice unless it’s very overt, like someone holding your hand and explaining how to do something. Even then you will subconsciously pick up the ways that person does things, making it your own habitus.

For Gideon and Harrow, their habitus is different from our own as the readers, because habitus is deeply cultural, it comes from mirroring the behaviors around you. They have been taught how to act, how to speak, how to think in the ways of the Ninth, no matter how willingly or unwillingly they learned.

They weren’t born with a deeply antagonistic relationship, it was taught to them. Harrow was taught to uphold the Ninth, to give her entire life to it, to die for it so that the cost of her birth can be worth it. Her parents also modeled a strong aversion to Gideon. To avoid, to belittle, to ignore her so that they can ignore the generation they sold to keep the line of the Tombkeepers. Harrow obviously picked up this behavior, modeling it as she picked up the mantle of running the Ninth House at all of ten years old (which is insane by the way. Let’s take a moment for ten year old Harrow, a literal child who just watched her parents kill themselves and their cavalier and who expected her to kill herself, who had to pick up the pieces and try to do what they had modeled for her).

And then we have Gideon: a child (she’s still a teen in Nona, she hasn’t aged past 19) who at first wanted to fit in, who still desperately craves acceptance and intimacy, but who has been ignored, belittled, and abused her whole life. Who then gets that behavior repeated by the only peer she could possibly have.

She became a self fulfilling prophecy. She was treated as a nuisance who can do no right, so that’s what she became. She was punished either way for existing, so she did what was expected. Just as Harrow did what was expected of her in her roles, Gideon acted like what Crux saw in her.

They were both children failed in so many ways by the adults around them. Even Aiglamene couldn’t support Gideon wholly without going against the rulers of her house. So because they were children, they did what was modeled and taught to them. They fulfilled the prophecies laid out by the adults in their lives.

They, so far, have continued the cycles of abuse they were taught. Even in Nona, Kiriona is modeling the pain and anguish she has experienced all her life, now with the addition of Ianthe’s perspective on her life influencing her. (Ianthe comes from a vastly different cultural background, and hasn’t been inside either of their minds, so her interpretation of their relationship and the culturally appropriate response is wildly different from either of their readings of it)

It almost reminds me of Wuthering Heights, how to truly break the cycle you have to let the past go and find someplace new. But that’s just another series with vaguely religious undertones and some weird abuse and incestuous dynamics, likely completely unrelated. (Note, I haven’t read wuthering heights in a hot minute, but when I did I saw it as more a story of inter generational violence rather than as romantic love, so take my thoughts with some salt)

The toxic, antagonistic, and later interdependent (though the antagonism is also interdependent) relationship between Gideon and Harrow doesn’t have to continue. They can break the cycle. The cycle that strongly parallels John and Alecto in many ways. I hope they do. But their relationship as it is makes sense if you consider both characters, how they were raised, and how they were taught to act, without necessarily saying that one character or the other is evil/corrupt/the relationship is unsalvageable.

The cultural layers included in tlt are vital to unpacking the characters, and their relationships. We don’t always get it overtly because we’re inside the characters minds, but there’s important stuff included in there. To unpack all of it would take probably a dissertation of length and then you’d still miss some, but I have tried my best.

[procrastinationaccount]

Another griddlehark banger courtesy of Lucy Dacus 🙏

[creature-once-removed]

every time I re read GtN I am caught off guard by how serious it is

Like, Gideon spends the first few pages checking everywhere for possibilities for Harrow's skeletons to ambush her. And then she nonchalantly tells Aiglamene that Harrow would do literally anything to hurt her.

You don't really notice it the first time around because of the lighthearted way it's written, but when you know the context for all of it, it becomes uncomfortably clear how intense and dangerous the situation is that Gideon tries so thoroughly to avoid here.

[chrysoprine]

Sooooo @/TelekineticBlue on Twitter made a suggestion that Harrow and Gideon as kids, throwing hands in their small nun outfits would be funny as hell and yeah, that's about it. They're so silly-

[ourg0dsal]

I'm not going to lie, the idea that there is a chance, no matter how small- that Harrow picks Alecto over Gideon makes me want to rip my own skull from my head and knock Harrow out with it.

Like if Harrow decides Gideon is no longer her top priority. I will cross the dimensions of reality and fantasy to fight her.

[ceslatoil]

I need Coronabeth and Gideon friendship like I need fucking air to breathe tbh

[beedreamscape]

To pair my last post, but in happier tones.

Part of me thinks Kiriona was so set up on turning John back to mortal, after any Harrowhark intentions that overrule everything else, not because she has lofty plans of ruling over anyone but because if he isn't immortal anymore, he's not god anymore, and if he's not god nor the emperor, he's free to be just her dad.

I want the griddlehark drama and angst and romance for the next book, but I also want to see Gideon experiencing some, at the very least, normal times with an adult figure that doesn't hate her, that feels responsible for her, that might even love her, in an environment that isn't 'headquarters of an empire at war'.

Which alternatively could also be achieved with Pyrrha once they overcome the larger-than-life wall that is Wake between them, but that'd still be different than the father figure of John who, in his best days, has a personality that matches Gideon's so well and could very well offer the tenderness she's never been shown before, tenderness he's very capable of when he's not drunk in his own revenge plots.

[harkharrow]

I have so many feelings about Gideon Nav

I know that Fandom characterizations are lighthearted reductive and silly but a lot of the time I feel like Gideon is reduced to "Brawny butch! Golden retriever gf! No thoughts head empty" when she is so much more than that!

She desperately wants to be wanted, to be loved, and to be esteemed, even if its to her own detriment. From her desire to join the cohort, (and her romanticized view of war), from all her interactions with Aiglamene to Dulcinea, she is looking for both approval and affection in a very earnest and vulnerable way, where I almost feel like I need to look away.

[tindome-art]

“I appreciate it, my crepuscular queen. It was good. You were good.”

When a club location has neat Halloween decorations, you use them. So we did.

My Harrowhark is Darkesttears. There will be more, because we absolutely cannot let these two robe-clad Ninth House douchebags be a thing of the past, and both of us want to adjust and improve our stuff.

Also I'm going to borrow a longsword the next time we have the chance for photos.

[domibomz]

im doin smth nasty

[zombiebaybe]

Griddlehark is literally wangxian

[mossytrashcan]

I think they look gay but my daughter loves them <3