#harrowing* time getting here

[aliengh0st]

Beyond obsessed with my Dazzling Bookish Shop editions of the Locked Tomb books! 😍💀❤️ Now I just need Alecto to come out so I can get all of my various collections completed 😬

[twink-with-an-agenda]

"The Lyctor took her silently in his arms: they held each other like children who'd had a nightmare and had woken in a fright. Just as silently, they detached."

[umbrastaff]

wowww what kind of manners are they teaching over there on the ninth??? smh my head 🙄

[staysaneathome]

Finishing the Locked Tomb series while waiting to read the last two Murderbot books sure is something, huh.

Watching these teenage necromancers and cavaliers go through the Horrors and thinking “Murderbot Would Not Tolerate Any of This Shit”

[near-dareis-mai]

#married for 3400 years and counting

[vaguely-concerned]

I have seen people question whether dios apate minor really needed to happen the way it did. it's the 'this could have been an email' of htn. 'augustine this did not have to be a threesome', I hear people saying. and boy do I have an obnoxious amount of things to say to protest this perfectly sensible assertion so here we go haha

1) yes it absolutely had to be like that. It says so on this piece of paper *hands you a piece of paper that says "because I said so and also it's narratively and thematically Sexy"* in my half-legible handwriting. seeing tamsyn muir describe harrow the ninth as a book about being a kid and realizing your parents probably had sex has given me such validation, I am unstoppable now. (to be serious for a moment, harrow the ninth is essentially a bildungsroman, and the threesome scene does a whole lot of thematic heavy lifting around harrow glimpsing elements of adulthood, relationships, and sexuality she clearly finds at the same time repulsive, bewildering and fascinating, and around opening her and especially our eyes to how much john is just a man with human longings still, under the god stuff. dios apate is crucial plot- and character-wise too -- it's a loadbearing threesome in terms of delivering the clues you need to piece together the mystery plot of the book, which is simply delightful -- but even more so thematically. and then the scene at the end where they confront john gives gideon some of that same opportunity to peek into adulthood and go '...well shit I guess', as a sort of mirror, just without the french kissing that time and more murder. the things magnus and abigail model for the girls about love and adulthood? mercy and augustine are providing the opposite-day batshit insane version of that fhdskjfa, you know, for contrast and spice)

2) listen... it gets lonely out there in deep space with your 'legendary unamorous' brother, two infant pathetic baby kitten sisters who you'll probably have to kill one day when you take another stab at god if they don't manage to get themselves killed along the way on their own, and the two people you've spent the last ten thousand years having separate yet connected married & divorced arcs with and also btw one of them is god... honestly a threesome over the dinner table is probably The most well-adjusted reaction one might hope for under those circumstances

3) on a characterization level I think Augustine is actually doing something incredibly deliberate with it: he's presenting John with yet another chance to admit what he did. which is notable especially since the deal he and mercy agree on as a condition for the threesome to happen at all seems to be that they're going to give the ol' godslaying another game try sooner rather than later. (I get the sense that it's not so much that he disagrees with her ultimate goal so much as that he thinks she's being dangerously indiscreet and hasty going about it, before. “though I think it will be the death of us,” huh.)

notice how he's structuring the whole thing: he's invoking the intimacy and love in their strange little threeway relationship and how long it's been by truly playing along with john's 'we're a happy family really when we're at home! :)' delusion (helped along by lowered inhibitions via enormous amounts of alcohol and what I've previously described as a joint mercy/augustine leyendecker themed thirst trap. ah, a classic). he brings up alecto and what happened to her -- or rather, he is clever enough to make john bring up alecto and how she is totally dead, right?? by seeming to make a careless statement that leads there and then acting contrite about it after. he (helped along by mercy, who I think realizes exactly what he's doing -- this is very much a two-man con) brings up how much they all loved their cavaliers, and wow funny how that's been haunting us for ten thousand years now huh :) wow, a lot of our other lyctor friends slash family sure are super dead in the name of some unknowable greater reason neither of us quite grasp and that you won't fucking tell us, aren't they. these are all the main grievances he and mercy confront john about at the end of the book, but put forth much more subtly and not phrased as an accusation -- he's baring his and mercy's vulnerabilities as bait, essentially. if john had, say, a conscience where his conscience should be instead of a black hole, it probably should have stirred something in him.

(also let me just say... the way augustine just takes a pneumatic drill to the TWO tender spots g1deon seems to have and then has the audacity to be like 'oh dear. did that upset him. ooof my bad *loooong dead-eyed slurp of his wine*' is just sooo... he's such a bitch!!! he's the only person who could ever have held their own in a ten-thousand-year bitch-off with mercy and I love him so much. well even if it wasn't all to get g1deon into murder range for harrow I think he wouldn't enjoy sticking around for the 'getting our tongues on god' part of the evening so maybe it's a kindness, really, and totally not pent-up aggression from the last twenty years or so breaking through)

he is all but shaking john by the lapels begging him to just... come clean about it already, to stop thinking he's still kidding everyone else along with himself. it's clear throughout the book that augustine knows exactly what john is at this point -- and all of the most cynical things he does say about it turn out to be distressingly right. john is always less sentimental than you'd think. john wouldn't forgive mercy, he will abandon in a heartbeat anything that isn’t necessary to him anymore, whether emotionally or in some other way. and still he seems to hold out some desperate absurd hope that the man he wants, the man he thought was there, is in there, somewhere deep deep down, if he just gives him the chance to show himself.

(mercy definitely has her own side of this whole thing, I'm just focusing more on augustine because this evening was like. his idea in the first place and I feel like we can Read Some Things into that fact lol. now that we have both ntn and htn to go from I sort of have this sense that the things augustine wants from john are more... personal? more interpersonal? they both love him equally, but mercy's love seems tinged slightly more towards the religious (augustine accuses her of knowing 'only worship without adoration', which like... also the eight house's entire Vibe lol) -- mercy at the end of that book is totally a person breaking up with GOD, not just with john -- while augustine's vibe is more like a man in the last not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper days of a marriage that sort of felt like it could have been something real and good once but all your illusions about it have since been taken from you and trampled underfoot into the mud and you've had the divorce papers signed and ready in a drawer for over a year now, hell, as it turns out, is other people etc. lmao)

having a threesome over the dinner table with god is one thing, having a threesome over the dinner table centered on the one man and god who has yet again let you down in a way so fundamental it can barely fit into words and who you both still love in a way anyway, miserably, and also just reaffirmed your joint resolution to murder (all under the pretense that it gives your baby sisters the chance to murder your brother of ten thousand years yeah that's why this is happening no other underlying aching emotional motivations here haha)... listen mercy and augustine are simply on a different level, theologically. they've added horny shrimp colours to the religious spectrum. who else does it like them

[bloodbonesandmarrow]

Fanime day 2!

Harrowhark- me

The most perfect Gideon ever- @bawdyknocker

Harrow vestige design (immediately marred by my traitorous watering eye) - @sleepysnailart

[six-six-cicada]

au where everything is the same except gideon just chews bubblegum constantly idk man

[moregraceful]

having trouble staying silly so made a medium impulse purchase of a slightly higher quality reloadable point and shoot than the one i got a target which had some strange warping i didn't like (like worse than a regular disposable camera, somehow...the shein-ification of target i think) for the roadtrip. i'm so harrowed by losing that entire roll of musty and will smith (shark) that i cannot bring myself to commit to the om-1 so i'm hoping that getting to blow through a roll or two on the roadtrip has promise of enough joy to get me through the next two weeks🥲

[time-is-restored]

btw this might be me swinging a bat at a hornets nest but like. absolutely none of my disappointment from the tl finale comes from ship baiting or any relationships that didn’t happen (though to be clear, i think the tedbecca fake outs were meanspirited and served no narrative purpose - in noted contrast to the season's earlier jamiekeeley fakeouts, for example, which were explicitly there to demonstrate jamie's growth + maturity)

tedpendant is a really fun concept for me, and i LOVE the characterisation + thematic potential there!

but as someone who personally resonated with a lot of ted’s struggles, the idea that ted could leave richmond so… seamlessly, for lack of a better word, really doesn’t sit right with me. the thesis of the shows entire first season - assuming it can be said to have only one - was about how everyone needs the love and support of a community, whether that comes in the flavour of someone who hypes u tf up or someone who will relentlessly call u on ur shit (or, as happened quite frequently, both!).

rebecca, roy, jamie are the clearest examples as the characters with the most screentime: they were all deeply isolated and disconnected from the people around them, and that was making them miserable. the connections they made with the team, the vulnerability they finally allowed themselves to express (the ghost banishing ceremony comes to mind!), and them going on to want *more* out of their life are what made their arcs about *progression* rather than *regression*. without that clear theme of compassion + community inspiring positive growth in everyone who encounters it, there is, frankly, no season one.

my personal favourite scene from season one comes right after michelle walks away from ted, when they’ve agreed to get divorced. ted sits down on the bench looking gutted, and a little shell shocked - and beard sits down with him. hands him the drink, and they sit there together. silent, but together. to me, that scene is an implicit promise from the episode, to the audience: ‘it’ll be okay. it’s going to be hard, but ted isn’t alone, and his friends won’t leave him behind.’

it also makes it clear to the audience that ted isn’t the saintly-giver-of-grace who needs nothing in return, as one might assume on first brush, but rather that he’s Also struggling with his own shit (as is everyone, always, in real life!) and he has something he needs from the people around him too.

and looking at the text of s3, and the conclusion to his arc in the finale, i just don’t believe that he got it. he wasn’t just sad that he was leaving (which would be understandable!), he was completely closed off. unresponsive to the people around him reaching out, borderline confused as to why they were trying so hard!

(side note, while i completely respect the read of ted and trents last interaction being rather rude + ooc on ted’s part, i personally read a different motive into it. for me, it was more like… he didn’t understand where trents enthusiasm was coming from? like, he read that as trent being too invested in what other people think of him, and responded in a way that he hoped would emphasise that ted doesn’t *need* to laugh at everything trent wrote, bc trent Already Knows that he’s done something really cool and kickass, and he shouldn’t value anyone else’s reactions above that. basically, based on his demeanour in the episode, i genuinely don’t think it would’ve even occurred to him that trent was more invested in HIS reaction than he would’ve been with anyone else.)

again, looking purely at the text, the show had already established that ted has really strong depressive + avoidant tendencies, as well as panic attacks (largely triggered by his fear of not being ‘good enough’ in various roles, ie: a father). we saw one area he was able to calm HIMSELF abt these fears (worry for henry, which is a Hell of a choice considering the ending…), but in literally every other heightened moment, he had to rely on his support system to help him make the choices that he WANTED to make, rather than ones inspired by avoidance and fear (ie: confronting michelle abt jake, talking to his mum abt why she was visiting + his dads death).

and to be clear, this is a GOOD THING! we’re not supposed to go through life alone, no matter how bad OR well we’re doing. rebecca and keeleys friendship isn’t worth less for all the scenes where they’re both in good places. if anything, the opposite is true - it’s lovely that they both have someone who want to celebrate the achievements in their life!

and fuck it, we’re sure as hell not supposed to go through life with exactly one (1) person whom we expect to fulfill ALL of our emotional needs at all times either! like, im sure i don’t need to labour my point here, but tying everything to one (1) person in ur life doesn’t make u any less isolated than if u were going it completely alone, whether it’s a family member, a friend, or a partner. i won’t pretend to know the first thing abt what it’s like to be a parent, but i don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that no parent would be at their best if they had absolutely no support/camaraderie/general love provided to them from Anyone other than their child.

so when ted is SPECIFICALLY shown to be in a bad place, over and over again (did he come to terms w his fear to be close to henry overnight???????), and then removed from his community? of COURSE the audience is left feeling unsettled, and like the rug has been pulled out from under them. there was no time in this finale dedicated to how ted would still be in contact with anyone from richmond. no promises of visits, or phone calls - fuck, nothing about emails!! according to the text, we might as well assume this is a clean break (and the maybe-dream-sequence does Fuck All to assure us otherwise. if ted doesn’t go to beards wedding, what WOULD he go to????). and since the show has ALSO completely failed to give us even an IMPLICATION of who/what ted’s support system would be in kansas, there’s… a reasonable argument to be made that this is It for ted. that, after two seasons doing NOTHING but attesting otherwise, the audience is supposed to suddenly believe that ted can (and SHOULD!) pull himself up by his bootstraps, and cope entirely on his own.

that, to me, is a betrayal of the show’s premise. we were promised a show about how, no matter how dark things may get, none of the characters would be left to struggle alone. and then they ended the show with ted alone.

i don’t know. i guess if i had to give this post a tldr; if anyone has any gen fic/meta/Literally Anything in the pipeline, i would absolutely love to be tagged/directed towards it. i’ll be endeavouring to write something myself, as well, but it might take a while before i can return to my WIP, lol.

[batcii]

i am in greece! here are some γάτες

[kkoct-ik]

i think i might be loved

[gravitasmalfunction]

Nona kisses Gideon because Gideon looked like she wanted to be kissed, because Gideon thinks Nona is Harrow and wishes Harrow would kiss her.

A good take, I can get behind it, definite angst potential here. But consider:

Nona kisses Gideon because Gideon's default ground state of existence, ever since she learned what kissing was, is wanting to be kissed. She looked in the snow leek fields wondering which skeleton was her mother and on some level it was in the hope of being kissed. Then she got older and she collected dirty mags not just because they were tittilating but because those brave Cohort soldiers snog almost as often as they fall out of their uniforms. Even when she's a revenant foxing being asleep she can't help her body language expressing this hopeless yearning for someone to love her so much they will lock their lips with hers. It takes Nona, who can read body language and isn't so well acquainted with Gideon that she dismisses this constant yearning as just a Gideon quirk, stumbling in on Gideon alone in this one perfect moment of vulnerability to actually give her what she's wanted forever. No ulterior motive. Just a kiss. Just because Gideon looked like she wanted to be kissed.

[gideonisms]

Lesbians will literally leave a situation to find each other somewhere else!! If it sucks hit the bricks!!!!!

[beastking-golion]

Finished my run of Mortum’s romance and.

[silverchronicler]

Prime Report for October 2023

Hey there, I know it's not October yet but after the Devstream yesterday I felt the need to look at how the primes are shaking. So let's cover some things!

Prime Access

Wisp is currently on Prime Access! She is accompanied by the Fulmin Prime and Gunsen Prime.

During the Devstream yesterday they announced that the next prime, Grendel Prime, will be coming with the Abyss of Dagath update on Oct 18th. Coming with him are the Zylok Prime and Masseter Prime. So, if you want Wisp Prime Access, there's 2 1/2 weeks left to get her!

When Grendel Prime Access launches, that will also mark Harrow Prime going into the vault. Harrow Prime is next in line for vaulting along with his weapons, Knell Prime and Scourge Prime. Relics with them will be rotated out from the drop tables on the 18th when the Grendel relics are added.

The next warframes up to be vaulted after Harrow are first Garuda Prime (with Nagantaka Prime and Corvas Prime), then Khora Prime (with Hystrix Prime and Dual Keres Prime), and then Revenant Prime (with Phantasma Prime and Tatsu Prime). If you're still planning to get Garuda (like I am), now's the time to make a plan to obtain her and her weapons!

Future primes after Grendel Prime are currently unannounced, but by the release dates the next one should be Gauss Prime by all accounts, followed by Protea Prime and Xaku Prime in some order. That rotation will be strange, since Xaku is of course nonbinary, but it means there's no way to fit them into the order without breaking the male-male-female-female cycle they follow with primes. Likely Xaku will be paired with Protea because they're right next to each other in release order, and the next female warframe is Yareli, who was put out significantly after them. But Xaku is comprised of several different warframes of likely different genders, so arguably they would fit in any spot they were put. Fun to think about!

Also, I can't wait for Ballas to go 'wtf' in Xaku's prime trailer. Or maybe we'll get a different presenter! I'd love for Grandmother to introduce Xaku Prime as if it's the most natural thing in the world and throw shade at Ballas.

Prime Resurgence

Right now Equinox Prime and Wukong Prime are gracing Varzia's stall, with their weapons Stradavar Prime and Tipedo Prime, and Zhuge Prime and Ninkondi Prime respectively.

But the stall says that they are due to rotate out on Oct 5, and will be replaced by Chroma Prime (with Gram Prime and Rubico Prime) and Zephyr Prime (with Tiberon Prime and Kronen Prime).

In addition, there are some special guests at Varzia's stall! Mag Prime (with Boar Prime and Dakra Prime) and Frost Prime (with Latron Prime and Reaper Prime) are also available to buy and in relic form at Varzia's, and have been since their Heirloom Collection was announced at Tennocon. The timer at the stall says that they will be available until Dec 30th, according to my math. So, you have until the end of the year to get them if you'd like!

Notes

This is still prime news (technically) so I thought I would mention it.

At the very end of the Devstream yesterday, the team mentioned that the Gotva Prime that was given out at Tennocon would eventually become part of Baro Ki Teer's stock, like other Tennocon and event weapons. No date or anything, but expect to see it there in the future if you missed it or want another.

Anything else you can think of? Anything I missed? Want to be excited about primes? Feel free to let me know!