#i know i started talking about gideon and ended up talking abt john but that scene almost made me throw my tablet into the trash

[rosalesbeausderholle]

Girls, gays, I've read The Locked Tomb books and I have to say this... everytime Gideon shows up I just want her to shut up. I'm so glad everytime she's gone again it's like omg the cringey humour is gone... bless... John is like that too but at least I'm supposed to hate him...

[seashard]

kiriona gaia is written to be as shocking as possible.

the lead up in the novel is that pal has a clear plan. bring nona close enough and soul gravity will punt gideon back into her body and hey presto. it’s simple it makes sense. prevailing fandom theory has been that since you have her soul preserved courtesy of harrow, you have her body perfectly preserved, it’s neatly set up for her to be revived once the two are brought together.

but then they actually finally reach her corpse and there’s this awful unreality around Nona maybe ? hallucinating her opening her eyes? before she seems completely corpse-like again and nothing happens. then she does start talking but she’s so WRONG she’s callous and she’s been conscious for 6 months already and her jokes AREN’T FUNNY (her greatest sin tbh). like nothing is going as expected. so many people come out of her first scene thinking it’s an evil doppleganger or john puppet scenario bc it just seems so fake.

it’s in direct contrast to htn, where Gideon arrives at the end and brings a great sense of catharsis in “she’s finally back and she’s tearing to shreds everyone who wronged harrow over these past nine months”, but now in ntn is only adding to the confusion and pain.

when they’re in drearburgh this scene is set up so you walk in and it looks like Gideon has just killed a bunch of the ninth in cold blood, and you kinda believe it….

the deaths and resurrections in this series don’t feel cheap. in htn harrow goes through hell for the whole book to keep gideon’s soul intact. im not saying i need the characters to suffer, god knows they’ve done it enough, but you can’t expect gideon to go through everything she’s gone through and come out emotionally unscathed. other people have already talked about the difference in seeing her without her internal narration and her abandonment and loss of agency and possible ulterior harrow-saving motives etc etc (poor girl she’s got a lot going on). this is why i dont agree with theories about how harrow has the part of her soul that is her emotion and her heart or whatever. it feels like a disservice to her character to say it’s just a case of straightforward compartmentalisation and that all her problems can be solved by harrow giving her back her missing piece <3 (she also CLEARLY feels things about harrow and camilla and aiglamene)

however i am curious what is actually going on with her soul re: being restored to life/lyctorhood. TM’s comment about gideon’s happy meal soul and pyrrha’s comment would indicate that some of Gideon’s soul is still inside harrow

(Pyrrha’s knowledge tends to be pretty reliable, so I kinda believe she’s right abt this but maybe not to it’s full extent abt there being no retrieval possible whatsoever)

palamedes also gave an explanation for why a soul from harrow wouldn’t have gone back into Gideon’s body (jod’s meddling and warding to make her invincible)

if Gideon’s whole soul is restored to her body it MIGHT bring her back to life? it sounds promising but that’s what we thought about the original plan. a big part of john’s chapters is about the soul and how it’s the key element to resurrection, but then he hasn’t resurrected anyone since the main event. Unfortunately he’s very vague about the actual details of the resurrection itself 😭 so it’s unclear whether it’s a case of he can’t or he won’t. it seems like a decaying body would barely be an obstacle for him so Gideon’s not really at much of an advantage. however he’s definitely putting in extra effort for her than when she was just harrow’s cavalier she was begging him to bring back.

there’s also the question about the state of Gideon’s soul in harrow’s body. I’d say Nona still counts as being unaware of its existence and therefore not absorbing it but I’m not sure, especially since harrow did come back to consciousness in the epilogue. also the lobotomy is maybe still in effect?? but only in this one instance lol, not any of the times she actually saw gideon, but it’s a weird callback to put in.

I’d say that the most likely path is for harrow to resurrect Gideon by putting part of her own soul in gideon in an exchange like John did with alecto, but I’m not even sure if perfect lyctorhood is the endgame anymore. it’s such a controlling, sinister concept that I don’t know if it can be redeemed, but maybe like with Paul it’ll be the only option they have. idk though there are so many things answered but still so many questions 😭 like even with nona we have the vague idea that she is kind of alecto (but also she’s just. nona) but when it comes to the specifics like what are her upper and lower minds or the voice that said “fool. you’re killing her”, iunno. so i mostly just wanted to bring together some of the hints i saw. would love to know what other ideas people have!