#harrow spoilers

[froopa-coopa]

love a canon (?) coffee shop AU

[saltwife]

Ortus I love you bb. Inspired by one of my favourite Achewood strips, which is probably older than many people on this website. 😅 Image descriptions below the cut.

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Image descriptions

Panel 1: Harrowhark is standing with her arms crossed, addressing Ortus. “You REALLY need to step it up if you’re going to be believable as my cavalier.” Panel 2: Ortus looks downcast. Harrow continues from off panel: “For instance...” Panel 3: Harrowhark, scowling, holds up a black t shirt that says 'I’M THE GUY WHO SUCKS.’ “Were you ACTUALLY planning to wear this to Canaan House?” Panel 4: Ortus says nothing but looks more ashamed of himself. Panel 5: Harrowhark, scowling even harder now, flips the shirt around to reveal that the back side says ‘PLUS I GOT DEPRESSION’ Panel 6: Ortus covers his face in his hand, possibly sobbing. Harrowhark says “for fuck’s sake,” from off panel.

[coelecanthheart]

I often think about Anastasia too, like did she truly misapprehend the process or did jod kill her because she figured it out?

I think she was too smart. I think the face paint serves a functional purpose. It's not just for cult reasons. I think, after getting to know Nona, and how she reads humans and faces and lips and body language, the black vestals disguise themselves as the dead because Alecto is mad at the "living". The living, of course, meaning the resurrected.

I think it's why Gideon lived and Jeannemary died, impaled by the construct in Canaan House, even though they both were asleep in the room. Bc the part of alecto that jod didn't consume still lives on the first house and she resents the resurrected.

And ya know, I think a lot about Canaan house. I think about how the OG lyctors mentioned RBs are so big they sit halfway in the river and halfway in the physical world. I think about Palamedes complaining about how he can't accurately date the room the tower room, the one to access the facilities. Which is probably the room Jod first ascended in. And I wonder how much of that room is half dipped in the river, and what they see in the first book is just a projection? A river bubble in reality? How much of the river is tied to a rift on Canaan House?

And now that Nona's awake, and the first RB is on the move, no wonder the river is all messed up. She's on the move and with it everything else.

Where exactly is hell? And is it just life Pre-resurrection? Abigail Pent deserved to stick around more.

[onegreasygal]

I think Wake and Mercymorn should kiss, for the drama.

[ellenyoudidnt]

So, i can't believe my first post in this account is gonna be TLT shitpost but who am I lying to of course it is

I was thinking about HtN and NtN and the fact that prince Kiriona is obviously Jesus, resurrected by the grace of god after sacrifice, with all her wounds untouched to prove it and all. I read some people say this implies that Harrow is a sort of Lucifer, a fallen angel-lyctor who left Jod's side.

Being raised catholic and all I wanted to bring sillier, more mundane and funnier implications that come with this:

Commander Wake is the Virgin Mary

Pyrrha/Gideon are Joseph

The Reverend Parents Priamhark and Pelleamena play the role of Herod

Aiglamene and Crux are the ox and the donkey

[pdalicedraws]

“I finished Harrow and I’m still processing” shitpost doodles: Gideon’s Parentage Edition

(Alecto in the tee shirt was @chaoticcreaturehideaway‘s idea, thank you Lizzy I’m still laughing)

[more-gremlin-than-fae]

Maslow Soup Hierarchy Mithraeum Edition

[cityhawk]

Laying on my bed weeping over the role of the Noniad in HtN... the love and care and passion of a poet being strong enough to summon the spirit he idolizes... the fact that Harrow considers the Noniad a joke and then is the one to recite it at the end... the fact that the poem not only constrains Nonius’ spirit to verse but changes the very rules of the dream... that Nonius’ appearance is the deciding factor in the fight against the Sleeper... as a poet and a writer I am incoherent over this love letter to art and how it can save you

[n3c20515]

Imagine meeting god and he’s just some weird dude who makes dad jokes and admits that he was doing war crimes just cause

[alltheprettygirlsintheworld]

So, I’ve been reading Harrow the Ninth, and I am currently on page 60 so what I am operating on here is based on what I have read so far and what I have seen from spoilers. I have not yet read Nona, so this is all conjecture. 

However, I think it is interesting that Harrow decided to rewrite her ENTIRE EXISTENCE because she could not fathom Gideon’s death. This girl, this poor, lonely, heartbroken girl, decided that she would rather gaslight her self and destroy her own brain rather than remember that the girl she loved had died for her. 

The narrative leads you to think that while Gideon is painfully in love with Harrow, Harrow is in love with The Body and therefore can’t love Gideon back. However, we do know two things about our lovely protagonists. 

1) They are incredibly codependent

2) They are notoriously unreliable narrators. 

I haven’t finished Harrow yet, but I can already tell that her narrative towards herself as she exists post-lobotomy is incredibly skewed and may (or may not) be entirely accurate to the events that are actually occurring). In Gideon’s case, we have her whole “bravado and swagger” narrative style that actively understates the intensity of any emotion Gideon feels by hiding it behind the sex jokes and the eternal flirting with every woman with a pair of legs (see, Gideon focusing on how Ianthe and Corona were wearing nightgowns instead of paying attention to the literal dead bodies in front of them). 

My argument is that Harrow is just as pitifully in love with Gideon as Gideon is with her, and she hates herself for it. She hates herself for falling in love with the one person who wasn’t killed for the cause of her birth, and she hates herself for letting that love die in front of her. This is the same girl who puppeted around the corpses of her parents for a decade, you think she doesn’t have attachment issues? In this case, there wasn’t a body left to puppet and play house left. There was NOTHING. Not even bones that Harrow could wrap herself in and hide behind. Harrow just couldn’t handle it. So she begged Ianthe to mutilate her mind so that she didn’t have to remember why she could never escape her all-consuming grief (I’ll talk more about Ianthe when I finish the book because she’s a whole other conversation) and she decided to recreate herself because she didn’t want to die yet (she is two hundred dead children. How could she kill them again?) but she didn’t know how to live anymore either. 

Love doesn’t come from nowhere. It doesn’t just disappear. It lingers and it haunts even when you can’t remember when it started (even if all you want to do is let it go). The Body was a creation in Harrows mind in reaction to the love she felt. She had to put it somewhere, and the only other thing Harrow had ever loved was her House and the girl in the Tomb. So she replaced Gideon with the only other thing she knew how to love, and decided that it was better to exist in insanity than acknowledge the depths of her pain and what she had lost.

And even when she can’t remember who Gideon is, she is obsessed with her... just slightly differently. In this case, it’s through the sword. She is carrying around Gideon’s sword like a teddy bear and she won’t let anyone (even GOD) touch it without going into a full rage and she doesn’t even know why other than that it feels important. She goes on and on about how it weighs her down, but we’ve seen her carry the sword before in Gideon’s novel, so we know that she can absolutely do it. The burden is only half-physical (I say half because Harrow is only barely more than a skeleton herself). Yes the sword is heavy, but the burden it represents is even heavier. She hates her sword. She complains about it constantly. And she loves it beyond measure. And she wishes she was good enough to deserve it

Thank you for coming to my ted talk. 

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

ianthe getting rejected by harrow and then gideon describing her walking away "all split lips and gay loneliness" PLEASE how did i forget this line

[millionth-attempt]

part of the magic of harrow the ninth is that neither of them understand SHIT. they dont get it, they are both stubborn assholes that don't get it. they love each other aggressively, in a completely selfless way that above all assumes that they are. not. loved. back. in a way that doesnt allow them to fully love each other, because beneath all, they hate that the other shouldn't be able to love them back (they accept it tho, they accept that it is impossible to have their love be requited). gideon will continue to joke around the fact that harrow simply is too obsessed with her bones and deads, fully respecting that and willing to give her whole self to support her.... and harrow is not able to express how much she honestly doesn't give a fuck about bones compared to how fucked she is with gideon, because ultimately she is willing to sacrifice every connection with gideon just to save her and not continue to ruin her.... so they keep surrendering, staying away, separated from each other while aching for the other, AND YET they are not physically (or spiritually) able to stop feeling the twisted and insane need to be with the other, not because they are the important part of the ecuation themselves, BUT TO PROTECT THE OTHER AND NOT LET THEM BE HARMED WHEN IT IS PRECISELY NOT BEING TOGETHER THE MAIN PERPETUATING FACTOR OF THEIR DISTRESS AND SELF-DESTRUCTION.... it is absolutely crazy that while not interacting at any point throughout the book, the story is never not about their love, about their missing each other in a desperate, world shattering way and i wont be able to ever be over it

[shadowsenchantment]

what happens when you meet god only to discover he’s a taika waititi twitch streamer tumblrina that still wears his evanescence t-shirt from ten thousand years ago when he nuked the earth and ate its soul then spit it out as life sized hollywood hair barbie? also he’s your dad. lol. like literally.

oh and your sword is haunted by your mom until she jumps into the bones of the dead chick you wanted to bone.

and you died to protect a tiny gremlin that would rather lobotomize herself than remember you ever existed. also she’s in love with your dad’s barbie girl.

and your dad, who is known for fully resurrecting the dead, just shoved whatever is left of your pathetic soul into your corpse, made you invincible but didn’t bother to heal your body so you could actually be alive.

God damn(ed me) ah haa ha.

anyway send tweet i guess

[elithedndyke]

Blank prediction card and then me and my wife’s cards

[onegreasygal]

I think Ianthe and Mercymorn should’ve explored each others bodies, for the drama.

[ellenyoudidnt]

I know people are expecting Harrow to harrow hell anytime in Alecto but actually Harrow the Ninth representing the harrowing of hell is A Thing i think about a lot tbh.

I mean, this whole book is the period of time between Gideon's sacrifice and her later resurrection which is basically the whole deal about the harrowing of hell (Jesus saving the souls in hell in between crucifixion and resurrection). And meanwhile Harrow -the harrowing- is the one that's there, the main character while Gideon's lying around in half-absorved limbo (Harrow carrying Gideon's sword and repenting like she's carrying her and her parent's sins tickles my brain and makes me feel they are both 'Jesus' in some ways but that's another topic).

The whole bringing salvation to the souls trapped in hell since the beginning of time.... That's Alecto. A soul existing from the beginning of time. Trapped since the beginning of the resurrection, the beginning of their world. Gideon's sacrifice and then Harrow's in HtN is what will finally allow Alecto to come back. It kind of IS the harrowing of hell, if we considered both of them 'save' Alecto's 'soul' from 'hell'.

Anyway just some toughts I have sometimes, I love all bible interpretations you can bring out from TLT