#hear me out harrow alecto gideon john parallels

[gideonisms]

every day I think to myself if the lobotomy hadn't happened. But the lobotomy DID happen. The lobotomy literally did happen

[wiccaphiliaa]

TLT Alecto The Ninth possible theory

Hear me out.

Gideon and Harrow are going to be the new Alecto and John.

There are a couple of things thst made me think about this but it could be a reach.

First is the Gaius/Gaia name. Which are respectively male and female version of Earths name. Makes sense why John would have that name since he tried to basically swallow earths soul and therefore part of it it’s merged with him, but why would Gideon (or Kiriona) get that name?

The other thing that its connected to what i said earlier is how Gideons soul just like Alectos seems to be separated between her necromancer and original body. This could somehow lead to a perfect lyctorhood perhaps.

This part could be a bit of a reach but their eye color. We know that John had brown eyes turned golden after he developed his necromancy and black (eclipse like) after perfect lyctorhood with Alecto causing Alecto to have his golden eyes. Now Gideon has golden eyes she inherited from John and Harrow has black (not eclipse like but close enough). Could this be a parallel to John and Alecto.

Also i think that theres a reason why sometimes even John is surprised on how strong Harrow is even with her butchered Lyctorhood.

The other idea is that John and Alecto might die in a double suicide and someone will need to keep the solar system going, someone will have to replace John.

But this could be just me wanting god to be a woman and Griddlehark to be connected to each other for the rest of eternity but differently from John and Alecto to actually have a good relationship and not try to murder each other

[lady-harrowhark]

I have a theory about the arm! I think John used the arm to ‘regrow’ the whole of G—. I think that G— being at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion would mean that the majority of (if not all of) his matter was vaporised, and therefore there would be nothing for John to resurrect. If he had the arm beforehand, he had a G— ‘blueprint’ with which to reform him completely. What do you think?

It makes total sense to me! I'm curious how much of the John chapters in NtN align chronologically to the main narrative - basically just wondering if when he said he still has it, does that mean he still had it during the events of GtN/HtN/NtN? Or is that only true in the dream/bubble/whatever? If it's true in the "real world" timeline, I'm just imagining John propagating G— like one of those spider plants. Ya know, just stick the arm/clipping in some dirt, wait for a plant/person to grow, take another clipping/arm. Which like, not that I think that's what happened necessarily, BUT if we want to put on our recreational thought experiment tinfoil hats for a second, that would actually be kind of a slick parallel to John crafting Alecto, in part, out of dirt as well.

Just letting some thoughts spiral out here, and I'm too lazy to check any of this against the text so apologies if I'm misremembering anything in this stream-of-consciousness infodump:

Lyctors supposedly can't regrow limbs, but we do see Harrow's thumbs regrow, and Harrow's able to regrow a limb to some extent for Ianthe. We know Harrow's GOOD and she's worked out that Lyctoral healing relies on the nerves and she's then able to replicate that for the bone arm, but I have wondered about the logistics of that. Like can Lyctors just not regrow their OWN limbs? In which case, that doesn't seem like that big of a barrier (provided you're on good terms with one of the others), and the way Harrow phrases "I didn't bother about the meat" seems to imply she COULD have attempted it but didn't. It definitely could have something to do with Harrow and Gideon's connections to Alecto and John respectively, meaning a typical Lyctor couldn't do that but Harrow can. Would have loved to have seen everyone else's initial reactions to the bone arm. I've seen a few people musing about whether or not Ianthe could have fleshed it over herself but I don't really have any further thoughts on that. We also don't know where Ianthe's temporarily transplanted flesh arm came from.

The other incident that comes to mind is the reference they make to Cassy "taking half her finger off" while cooking and not telling anyone until after they'd eaten. Which like, idk, I feel like you might notice if someone was missing part of their finger at dinner, but maybe not, or maybe "took half her finger off" was an exaggeration. Orrrrr maybe she did and it regrew. Anyway, I'm just thinking that IF it's possible for John to regrow/reform/whatever someone from part of their body, it would make sense that he wouldn't want any of the other Lyctors to know about it. And he certainly wouldn't want anyone else attempting it, much less succeeding at it. I think we only ever hear that Lyctors can't regrow limbs from John (via Ianthe), but I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't true, or not the whole truth. If Mercy and Augustine had started figuring that out (or knew to begin with), even bringing up that story about Cassy might have been a way to subtly needle at John (sort of similar to the way Cristabel and Alfred get brought up during dios apate minor, actually).

I also think the way John refers to the arm as "material" is an interesting parallel to Augustine's quip about needing John's genetic "material", especially after the way that both John and the narrative position the Lyctors and the resurrected bodies as he and Alecto's "children". I've seen some discussion about whether Lyctors could be sterile, which, if true, adds another interesting layer. Specifically, we see that Pyrrha thought Wake's baby was hers/G1deon's and that she wanted that baby, and it does tug at the heartstrings to think that perhaps there is some of G1deon's "material" remaining that could conceivably (pardon the pun) be used for some form of reproduction whether literal or more abstractly. I don't think it was an accident to specify that Gideon arrived in the kind of container one would use to "carry a transplant limb" and then be named after the figure that John takes a limb from; that description could have just as easily been "the kind you'd carry a transplant organ in", but it wasn't. Maybe it's plot relevant, maybe it's just another way to symbolically link the two within the narrative.

So anyway, that ended up spiraling pretty far out from what you originally asked but the tl;dr is yeah that sounds super reasonable!

[a-big-apple]

Whither the cheeseburger?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Nona, and who has combined to make her who she is. Some things are quite clear in the text: Nona’s body is Harrowhark’s body, and Nona’s soul is, either in part or in whole, Alecto, the body in the Tomb, the soul of Earth.

Some things are less clear, because we know almost nothing about Alecto’s personality pre-Nona. We know she seemed inhuman to Augustine and Mercymorn; we know John loved her, and Pyrrha and Gideon were fond of her. But did she laugh at upholstery jokes, and like hugging well-endowed women, and not think very much of red hair? Did she hate being locked up? Did she wield her sword two-handed?

All of these are entirely possible, and some of them are probable: with her body chained and trapped in the Tomb and her soul previously trapped in a body she called “a hideousness,” it’s easy to assume she doesn’t want to be locked up. We know that, as John’s cavalier, she wielded a sword: we don’t know what kind, but given the many parallels made between Alecto’s sword and Gideon’s two-hander, it’s not unreasonable to guess Alecto might fight two-handed as well.

The other things are possible too! Any attributes we see in Nona could easily come from Alecto’s soul and Alecto’s soul only. But I picked out what I think are the most deliberate parallels being made to Gideon, the status of whose soul is unknown for a good chunk of the book. Gideon, of course, definitely loves a crass joke, definitely has a healthy appreciation for well-endowed women, and could very well dislike the color of her hair--one aspect of her appearance she never brags about, in her efforts to cover her own self-hatred. Of course, she wields a sword two-handed, and she spent the majority of her life trying to escape the Ninth, and a good chunk of her death trapped inside Harrow. As Kiriona says: “’Nobody locks me up anywhere.’”

So! This brings me to Prince Kiriona Gaia. I am fully, absolutely on board with the offscreen emotional journey that transforms the Gideon we saw in GtN and HtN to the Kiriona we see in NtN. I don’t think she needs to be explained away by soul shenanigans. She suffered a number of traumas, died traumatically too, and then (from her perspective) was utterly rejected by Harrow. She was left alone in Harrow’s body, lost and endangered, and confronted with the reality of her parentage packaged in yet more trauma.

When last we saw her, she was in the River, likely being ejected from Harrow’s body by the soul of the woman Harrow told Gideon she loved. Then she spent her offscreen time with her father, a masterful manipulator, and Ianthe, another masterful manipulator, clinging on as a revenant to her own gory dead body and fighting devils in between being paraded around in a mockery of the Cohort heroism she used to dream of. Most importantly, we don’t get to hear her internal monologue, which is most of what makes Gideon Gideon to us as readers. Kiriona is brash, angry, deeply depressed, has nothing to hold on to, and then is confronted with Harrow’s familiar body without Harrow actually in it.

All this is to say that I don’t think any soul weirdness is needed to explain why Kiriona seems different. But I do think that soul weirdness is happening. Tamsyn said in a recent interview that “if Gideon’s soul is a Happy Meal, Harrow only ever ate the cheeseburger; whither the fries, the soda, and the tie-in toy?” Well, we find out in NtN that probably the fries, the soda, and the tie-in toy are in Kiriona Gaia. But whither the cheeseburger Harrow ate? I think, still attached to Harrow’s body.

In the latter chapters of NtN, when Nona is struggling to stay Nona, she talks about middle-of-the-brain thoughts (identified as Nona thoughts), and thoughts above and below that she can’t look at without losing herself. One of these, I’m presuming “above,” is Alecto. Her own repressed memories, repressed personality, which breaks through more and more.

I think the other, I’m presuming “below,” is Gideon. The part of Gideon that Harrow couldn’t help but absorb, in the few days she was a Lyctor before altering her brain. Enough of Gideon to laugh at upholstery jokes and kiss the reflection of Harrow’s body in the mirror and wield a two-handed weapon, in easy harmony with these aspects of Alecto. Perhaps, metaphorically, her missing heart. And though we know from Alecto’s narration in the epilogue that Harrow, awake in her body, has her own black eyes back, I think we’ll discover that little bit of Gideon continues to exist inside her.

So, whither the cheeseburger? It was right in front of us all along.

[skytouches]

In the midst of my harrow the ninth reread still so I’m probably gonna start on Nona later than most people who pre-ordered it but I’m going to post a couple theories here that I have going in — keep in mind that I haven’t finished re-reading Harrow so I might disagree with myself when I’m done lol

The locked tomb is connected to Canaan house: my Big thought here is that the River connects the two, we only know of one entrance but I think the river is another entry point — harrow ends up in some bubble river version at the end of htn but that’s not what I mean — there are Multiple mentions of “brackish” water at Canaan (the fountain for instance), the River to my knowledge is neither described as fresh or salty (called oily and bloody) but brackish water occurs where rivers meet oceans and the salty and fresh water intermingle so it’s semi-salty — this would make sense with Canaan house surrounded by salty ocean water and the river as freshwater (standard for rivers) — there are other instances of salty/saline water like the pool at Canaan house and on the ninth which feel distinctly baptismal (like The River tbh) tho salty and I think that could be a grounding effect for necros? Like not something Practiced really but like a necro equivalent of a folk remedy/protection — beyond salt we hear of crux working in abandoned tunnels on the 9th and Abigail mentions something about tunnels at Canaan house soooooo 👀

And if this is the case then…who is in the tomb/s — I think Anastasia, Alecto, and Gideon are all contenders on the ninth in the locked tomb Alecto makes intuitive sense being the resurrection beast that God can neither give up nor defeat Anastasia makes sense as a decoy she builds this tomb with John and then ends up being the one buried there and she’s like the origin of the ninth, I think harrow could be a direct descendent so that may have given her a leg up in successfully getting into the tomb (or since they’re 9th traps she just intended for someone ninth time break in) also I think Anastasia has some parallels to Peter in the Bible being the rock of the church so it would make sense with the people on the ninth having sort of a secondary God with their worship of the locked tomb that it would make sense for it to be Anastasia also Gideon is my wildcard move but it makes so much sense to me for Gideon to be the body, that was one of my first thoughts even when they were in the pool in Gideon the ninth I was like OK but was it Gideon?? and on the one hand you would think Harrow would recognize her or that Gideon would recognize her when she sees her as well in harrows “hallucinations” but her hair is unseen in color she has the same eyes as Gideon after the lyctor trials and harrow plops all of Gideon stuff in her bubble tomb with her so I can’t shake it as an option… plus I think there’s gonna be a big plot with time in the two upcoming books — time kept getting mentioned in Harrow and so I think it’s possible that the body in the tomb is Gideon displaced in time

Alecto is the soul of earth/it’s resurrection beast — I feel like this is all but confirmed it just makes so much sense w language used to describe her, Jod’s monstrous eyes, the beasts/monsters, the planetary flips in general etc my question is more the HOW or WHY like where did her body come from, Jod says he saved the world for someone once but not for himself…is the resurrection him saving the world? Is the apocalypse saving the world? Not sure of his motive so could be either like did he destroy everything so he could rebuild a better place or did he destroy everything so he could bring back one person and in that case…did he have someone he was trying to save and he then placed Earths soul in that body and slowly the soul overtook what was human — there’s also a mention of a “rib” out of context but nearby and that wording placement is interesting given the context of creation or saving a world and the rib of Adam being what was used to create Eve

Hubris is a bitch and the ianthe quote about her interest in “what eats us” or whatever kinda feels like she’s gonna get eaten by a mouth in the river…or just a resurrection beast maybe…the whole Cain/Abel thing def makes it seem like corona will be involved tho — also re-corona I know we were thinking this anyway but I’m just gonna restate that I think that she is the crown him with many crowns character she’s described in royal terms and in sun terms so often and she’s radiant and her name has a sun connection and I just always think of Louis the 14th the sun king and it just all clicks for me

Who is Nona? Idk bro. I think it could be Gideon and Harrows body and Gideon just doesn’t remember things because she was in the river too long and so her brain kind of got wiped but also I might just be placing her there because I miss her — it definitely could be a Alecto or Anastasia too lol I am so committed to Anastasia being a larger part of the storyline so I’m also throwing her many places as well but I whoever is the body in the tomb is a good bet because harrow goes into the river portion of the tomb and I think it’s possible that by doing that and by harrows body dying in the river that left a gap for the soul in the tomb to escape through the river sort of like a one for one exchange…so TBD

BOE: eden is earth which is Alecto… at one point Harrow asks who is Eden and doesn’t correct her by saying it’s not a person…suspicious

[mercymorn-was-right]

Been thinking about the parallels between Harrow and Jod lately

Like how Harrow puppeteering her parents around for years echoes John’s usage of Odysseus and Titania.

Or how John is said to have meddled with people’s memories and Harrow meddling with her own.

Their relationships to Alecto, as people Alecto chooses.

And that leads me to my thesis: Harrow will resurrect Gideon. I mean, it’s something that I would experience happen outside of these similarities, but hear me out: Jod got the power to resurrect through Alecto but it took the thanergy of the solar system to do it. I think because of what he is, Jod has more thanergy than the average person — hell, the sun is tied to his life! — so if Harrow kills Jod, what if the thanergy is enough for just one resurrection?