#harrow like canonically has a thing for bones LMAO

[babydarkstar]

just saw someone say that it’s obvious in the text that harrow is attracted to ianthe. where??? did we read the same fucking books lmao. harrow can barely open her heart up to gideon—not because she can’t, but because she believes she doesn’t deserve it and gideon doesn’t deserve to be with such a wretched abomination as herself. she worships a dead body in a cold tomb with unceasing religious devotion/admiration/idolization she mistakes for romantic love. it’s obvious that ianthe wants harrow and is attracted to her, but i really can’t get behind the idea that harrow has ever reciprocated in the slightest. she was wary to be in bed with ianthe, and even drunk and lonely she wouldn’t let herself be kissed by her.

[robot-singularity]

Alright so, hear me out, locked tomb/doctor who crossover

(my original thought was Ten and Donna at the start of Gideon the Ninth, but it could probs work other ways)

(like Canaan House would probs make more sense plot wise, bc that's a whole ass haunted house castle, but also "hey let's go check out Pluto! Wait what's w the skull cult? I wonder what's in this locked tomb in the depths of the planet?")

(continued under the cut bc I ramble a bit)

Anyways! Gideon would jump at the chance to get the hell off the Ninth (tho I'm not sure as of yet how Harrow would be persuaded to go with them)

Time travel besties adopt a couple of plutonian goth teens

The various interactions between all four of these characters is also really fun to consider

(Ten and Harrow: two scrawny mfs studying each other like bugs, Ten and Gideon: for the love of God please stop chucking yourselves onto the railing, Donna and Harrow: tempted to throw hands w this 17 year old bone nun, Donna and Gideon: red head squad :) (what do you mean you've never had tea?))

Also, new outfits from the tardis's wardrobe (aka Gideon somehow makes an outfit gaudier than Six's lmao)(also, Harrow (begrudgingly) in five layers, including an oversized nine inch nails hoodie she can hide bones underneath (the face paint stays on tho))(also also! Gideon picking a less gaudy outfit, and coming out in Nine's leather jacket (and Ten winds up explaining regeneration earlier than he canonically did lol))

Also, based on Harrows first night at Canaan, she tries to map the TARDIS, and it doesn't make any logical spacial sense. (She hates this, vehemently.) (Welcome to non-euclidian geometry, Reverend Daughter.)

Ten mentions his Christmas sword fight, and Gideon asks him to spar ("and if you get injured, you can patch yourself up, since you're a doctor and all!" "Weeelllll...") (Anyways, predictably, Gideon "best swordswoman the Ninth has ever produced" Nav immediately disarms Ten and decks him. Bitch went down lmao)

(also Gideon and Harrow doing their normal trying to beat the shit out of each other thing, Donna makes an aside like hey should we break this up or? And Tens like, nah, that's just, normal childhood best friendship, ya know? And Donna's just like, mate wtf are you on about???)

Basically, just a whole lot of Harrow and Gideon getting to be somewhat normal teens (or at least pretend for the most part)

(also, fun whump consideration: Ten (post Journeys End) 🤝 Harrow (post gtn/during htn): what losing your ginger better half does to a mfer (⁠´⁠;⁠︵⁠;⁠`⁠))

I have so many thoughts on this but I need to go to sleep gn

[ahollowgrave]

Hiiiii Pigeon!!!! I saw you comment that you like the Locked Tomb series so I had a couple questions to ask...

Are Odette's little skele friends inspired by the vibe of the series?

Does Odette herself have an inspirations that come from the Locked Tomb as well?

What's your favorite character interaction in the series so far? (Mine is the Harrow Bone Soup)

Who is your favorite of the main protags? (I've got a soft spot for Nona, but its barely above the other two.)

That's all for now, hope your day is going well! ^.^

Oh my gosh hello!! The Locked Tomb has been my favorite series since I read the first book a few years ago! I was obsessed I was full in I hadn’t been that into reading since high school when I would read in the back of every class. Never has a book made me ugly cry so hard.

The second book is the main reason I write in 2nd person POV for Odette most of the time (‘:

I’m gonna slap the rest of this under a readmore just in case people don’t want to hear about the books or don’t want things spoiled on accident !! But also this kind of turned into a long explanation of Odette’s whole deal, sorry (mwah).

But! To answer your questions!

1&2:) Yes. Pretty heavily but maybe not obviously? Like. Harrow and Odette would not get a long and Odette as she is does not fit the Necromancer vibes of the ninth house. But I was so enamored by these goth nuns being so out of place and so devoted and Harrow being so!!!!! Ready to ruin her life for her faith because she needed her faith so badly to cope with the grief.

And then the way it just all!!!! gestures.

Odette was always going to be a nun, as a result, and the psychopomp stuff felt right after I’d been playing her for a while. We run into Ashkin/undead several times in the MSQ, side quests, and fates and the like; someone being able to aid these ‘souls’ and return them to the lifestream feels like a role for Odette.

She would maybe make more sense being a nun of Nald’thal but I headcanon that each of the 12 have their own funeral rites. Nald’thal is the judge of all dead, that is his role! But each of the 12 get a say in how their faithful are laid to rest. A psycopomp’s role, traditionally, is not judgement but guidance and love knows no judgement, but she does know guidance.

The moths in her screenshots are souls themselves, flocking to Odette for aid in whatever form that means. Sometimes it means slaying their body so they can rest, sometimes it means cleaning their resting place or returning items stolen by graverobbers, sometimes it means finishing anything unfinished they have left, or solving their death or just finding them and laying them to rest. Each soul needs something different.

The skeletons originally were a metaphor and a call back to that root influence of the Ninth house. With encouragement from friends, though, they’ve become much more ‘real’ in her canon. Serving as her trust and guardians on more dangerous searches. (When None can’t join her but also sometimes with None!)

So you can see it’s a very loose influence, but the 1st book is 100% the reason Odette exists. Death nuns??? Please… What a gift.

I have a Locked Tomb AU with my friend, peep, in which Odette is the Ninth house Cav and Avidia the Third House Reject turned Ninth House Necromancer. The Cav/Necromancer relationship is sooo intense and I love reading into to them too much, as does peep, so it’s very fun for us. Would third house ever send one of their necro to the ninth house? No! Probably not! But Avidia must always be a reluctant ex-pat, and so! (It’s a complicated story but we really like it LMAO takes place far before the first book)

Ahem!

3:) The soup scene is SO good, I reread it a few times because it was just so!!! Amazing. This is such a hard question because so many of the scenes are so good.

Three-Way with God is good. Ianthe’s Arm Scene (SCREAMS!!!) The pool scene from book one is ofc a fav but ugh.

The one I think about the most is from book three and it’s a tie, I think, between tree moments at the very end of the book.

Paul’s (re?)birth and “You can’t take loved away.” and “Why are you not appeased? That is how meat loves meat.”

I can’t wait for Alecto the Ninth, truthfully !!

4:) GOSH! This is hard also!!! Nona is also a favorite of mine and I know she has influenced Odette heavily. She’s just so!!! Nona loves you!!! I hope we get to see some of her again, just glimpses, now that she’s been returned. Sobs into my hands for four days straight.

I think Camilla Hect is one of my favorites and Sex Pal, of course. Which means Paul… Paul… my love I can’t wait to know you.

You didn’t ask this question, but I do think there is a lot of Hect in my alt Prudence. That quiet competence and skill, that devotion, that dry wit.

Thank you so much for this ask and also your patience while I replied to it! I love these books very, very much and I always love to talk about them. Are any of your characters influenced by them @eorzeanflowers?

[theriverbeyond]

ask game: 16, 19, 22

16. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

i don't get why people like making Gideon out to be stupid and/or illiterate....... like yes she is a golden retriever bf to her bones but golden retrievers are one of the smartest dogs out there!!! Harrow insults her intelligence but 1) Harrow is an extreme and arrogant nerd, & 2) Harrow insults like, everything lmao and that should not be seen as reflective of Gideon's actual capacities

19. you’re mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

cringe is dead and so is shame, enjoying what you like is cool and good actually 👍. ok wait on another level. somehow tlt has grabbed me by the ankles and thrown me headfirst into my M/F shipping era (Mercy/Augustine, G1deon/Wake, John/Alecto, etc & et. al. ) which is not what i expected from the lesbian necromancers in space books. i have never had an M/F shipping era before. but here we are!!!

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

answered here!

choose violence ask game!

[harrowdubois]

okay, i said if there was interest i would think about making a post listing all the references i squeezed into the locked tomb fic i spent the last month or so writing, and now i’ve realised i don’t care if there’s interest because i want to be self-indulgent SO

under the cut is a (somewhat spoilery) chronological list of all the memes, vines, and cribbed tumblr posts, as well as homages to various books, tv shows, song lyrics, etc. that made their way into blessed with a wilder mind! 

(cw for suicide mention)

this is of course a reference to the legendary bodybuilding forum thread where they did, actually, argue over how many days there are in a week (cw for ableist slurs in the thread)

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buzzfeed unsolved meme. i am dirt and i love to eat dirt

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this is so well-known it’s almost not worth listing it but oh my god they were roommates

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in itself, this isn’t a reference to anything in particular, but if you didn’t do this on your first read then i’d recommend taking another look at this scene and thinking about the specific wuthering heights/frankenstein/rebecca excerpts discussed by harrow and mercymorn but in relation to canon!harrow’s trauma/relationship with the body in htn :~) 

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also not really a reference to anything in particular but when i looked back over the fic for this post it struck me that the ‘sex panther’ phrasing was probably at least partially unconsciously inspired by the shoebox project (professor mcgonagall’s oiled man panther was a formative moment for me, truly)

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cw gross/unsanitary: it’s the tinder poop window incident. i mentioned this in the end notes of the fic as being what i had in mind for that scene but if it’s too gross for you (UNDERSTANDABLY) then feel free to Death Of The Author me to your heart’s content!

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i listened to a lot of orville peck while writing this

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 very very very loosely inspired by this clickhole article

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respectively: fourth of july by sufjan stevens / wuthering heights by emily bronte

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TWO BROS, CHILLIN IN A HOT TUB, FIVE FEET APART BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT GAY

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there was absolutely no need to stretch this across three paragraphs, and yet

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iconic

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i already linked to this one in the end notes of the fic itself, but it’s good, so here it is again

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 i can’t find the actual original post but it’s this fucking horrible thing 

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the last line is a reference to the secret history by donna tartt:

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”

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a lyrical double whammy!

from ‘last words of a shooting star’ by mitski: “they’ll never know how i’d stared at the dark in that room with no thoughts like a blood-sniffing shark”

from ‘a better son/daughter’ by rilo kiley: “sometimes in the morning i am petrified but can’t move/awake but cannot open my eyes” 

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*

shout-out to maybe my single favourite video game moment, the encounter with the sky cat in night in the woods: “There is a hole at the center of everything, and it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming, and you are not escaping, and the universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it, not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole... You are atoms, and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence.”

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“Nothing is ever fulfilled, not until the very end.” - rust cohle, true detective s1, this reference is VERY tonally dissonant because in context it’s actually grim as all hell but w/e w/e i couldn’t resist the shout-out

also harrow quotes from the goldfinch again here! i had the reference included before i read this post and realised tamsyn muir also quotes from the secret history in htn. terrible synergy 

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they are in fact all real. you’re welcome

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this one’s doing a lot of work lmao. it’s paying homage to this quote by tamsyn muir talking about the draco-in-leather-pants trope in relation to ianthe by loosely referencing drop dead gorgeous, the best drarry fic ever written, in which harry is part veela

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“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.” - that’s right it’s another reference to the secret history, with a little bit of mary oliver (tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?) sprinkled on top for flavour

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a small one, but it’s the goldfinch again: “And I feel I have something very urgent and serious to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you...”

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my FUCKING cinnamon apple

 what if i... put my minecraft bed.... next to yours... aha ha just kidding.... unless?

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[cw: suicide discussion in these next two]

*

robyn can have little a rust cohle quote, as a treat.

1. “I'd consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction; one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

2. “This... This is what I'm talking about. This is what I mean when I'm talkin' about time, and death, and futility. All right, there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Fourteen straight hours of staring at DBs, these are the things you think of. You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read 'em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... Not at first, but... right there in the last instant. It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah, they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were. You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life - you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain - it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person.”

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ahaaa this one’s particularly rough. evil monkey no one alive dot jpg

“Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.” - annie proulx, brokeback mountain

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a TRIPLE lyrical whammy!

- harrow’s words to gideon in the dream are a bit of a vague reference to the song ‘adventures in solitude’ by the new pornographers (”we thought we lost you/welcome back”) - gideon’s words to harrow are a reference to the song ‘blush’ by wolf alice (”you’ve got two hands to take all you can/but don’t take too long”) - what harrow texts to gideon is a line from ‘about today’ by the national, aka the most devastating song ever written (”hey, are you awake?/yeah i’m right here”...)

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i CANNOT find a clip of it but harrow’s repetition of “life is short... it’s short” was me paraphrasing from memory a line from pride (2014), because i am the worst

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spooky scary skeletons! 

“jail for gideon” is obviously a reference to the “jail for mother” tweet that tm also referenced in htn. so, not original in the slightest, but it’s a great tweet

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one of my favourite tumblr posts

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because naberius tern absolutely would watch rick and morty. he would. i know it in my heart. 

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and that’s it, i think. hope you enjoyed this horrid little post and my horrid little fic!