#like yes it ended in g1deon eating Pyrrha

[winepresswrath]

g1deon has more game than anyone else in that universe. he's got Pyrrha leaving the cops for a deranged necromancer he's got Wake fucking a deranged necromancer (him) he's got Pyrrha proxy fucking Wake because she's only ever known two people that insane and it gets her down horrendous. the man is ugly & according to Jod he mostly doesn't fuck. Wake thinks he deserves a quick death. Pyrrha loved him on sight and asked him to kiss her before she died. what is going on with this man.

[thunderon]

Why did Pyrrha shoot Wake (in Cytherea ) at the end of Harrow the ninth and do we think she's proper gone gone

alright idk if we ever get an outright answer but here’s my speculation. first let’s review the death scene when pyrrha (in g1deon’s body) shows up and shoots wake (in cytherea’s body). here’s how gideon (in harrows body lol) describes wake’s expression when pyrrha shows up:

1) swoon

2) interesting, right? considering they were trying to kill each other a few chapters ago, why would wake be relieved to see pyrrha?

let’s rewind a few chapters (back to when wake was haunting harrow) and examine a note:

(HIM - G1deon; SHE - Pyrrha; WIZARD SHITS - A & M)

now here’s my supposition. to me, it feels almost like wake and pyrrha worked out a pact. wake agreed to give g1deon (and by proxy pyrrha) a quick death, and i feel like pyrrha is returning the favor. i mean, wake is tied to a chair, in the possession of john, with no way out and no hope of rescue. in a lot of ways, death is a mercy, and wake seems to know that pyrrha is going to give it to her.

and it’s very telling when later pyrrha and gideon (2.0) are stuck with the options of dying being crushed by water, pulled down to hell, or (on their own terms) shooting themself with pyrrha’s revolver and she says:

so tl;dr: i think it was a mercy kill as a favor to wake

whether or not wake is gone gone? well if we take this on face value:

then ya she dead dead. but. i stopped taking things on face value with this series a long time ago lol. i feel like i don’t quite have enough information to confidently say yes or no. im kinda torn to be quite honest. but tbh i feel like it’d be a little cheap for muir to pull the “shes alive” card after making such a huge deal about her dying like this. you can only resurrect characters so many times before character deaths stop having an impact on readers, ya feel? but also i love wake as a character so i would happily get off my high horse and eat my words if she ends up showing up down the road

[fagdykefriendship]

Nona the Ninth reread thoughts

Obviously spoilers for Nona.

Pyrrha Dve knew that Nona was Alecto, or at least suspected it at a certain point much before anyone else realized. Yes, there's the moment she nearly calls Nona Alecto - but there is also an air of her realizing the jig is finally up. She has to stop pretending. I suspect that Nona's regenerative abilities clued Pyrrha in.

Connected to this - Pyrrha and G1deon cared for Alecto when she was alive, before John buried her. Pyrrha says something along the lines of "We loved you" to Nona. This is interesting because Augustine and Mercymorn seem to have found Alecto disturbing or disgusting in some way. Why did Pyrrha and G1deon have a different relationship to her?

Anastasia and Alecto - Alecto loved Anastasia. I think part of why Nona loves her Harrowhark body is because she loved Anastasia. It's not some love for all humans - Nona very clearly states that she did not like Gideon's body with its red hair. She's bound to the tombkeeper's line, whatever that may end up entailing, but I think it is a bond of love. Also, Anastasia's bones are guarding Alecto's tomb. She may have built in a backdoor to the tomb because she loved Alecto.

Palamedes and Camilla -> Paul was not True Lyctorhood in the way of God and Alecto, obviously. I think it was normal lyctorhood, but accelerated. From the Unwanted Guest, we learn that Ianthe's soul is very slowly eating her cavalier's, absorbing it. I think Paul's creation, with the white hot burning flames, was an extreme acceleration of this absorption process. Camilla and Palamedes bypassed all the thousands of years it takes the souls to merge and instantly merged their two souls, making it so neither of them asserted dominance over the other.

The Angel/Aim is very important. contains some sort of message that cannot be comprehended by humans. implied that Nona/Alecto would be able to comprehend it. also said to have had what appears to be some sort of necromantic surgery. named after a pre-ressurection technology. i think either her message comes from God or another lyctor (Cassiopeia perhaps?) or even Alecto herself. It’s unclear how conscious the other RBs are. Like they have willpower they are revenants of planets but do they have that ability to communicate with humans? I don’t think so

Varun calls Nona “saltwater creature”. She loves swimming in the ocean. The tomb is surrounded by “real” salt water. I think there’s a connection between Nona’s love for the ocean and the River. The oceans are what makes planet earth a living planet but they are also rising at the end of the world. Harrowhark and her parents only speak their secrets in the salt water pool. Why? there has to be some connection, something Anastasia discovered about Alecto’s connection to salt water vs the River water

[camgoloud]

inside problems + 11?

11: What do you like best about this fic?

Oh, this is the HARD question—but I think my favorite thing about it is probably what I tried to do with the Pyrrha-Pal relationship. It’s just so complicated and MESSY: how does Pyrrha handle looking at Palamedes, who is maybe the Only person in the world who understands her exact situation re: hanging out in your best friend’s body after dying on their behalf, but ALSO represents the necro half of a necro-cav dynamic, which… I mean. Pyrrha used to be the cav half of that dynamic, right? And I don’t think she necessarily resents G1deon for the Way Things Went Down 10000 years ago—we know she died willingly and it’s not like G1deon had any way of knowing that there was another path to Lyctorhood, but… still. He still did very much kill and eat her, you know? That was a thing that happened. And now here’s Palamedes, squatting in HIS cav’s head burning her life force and plugging away at Lyctorhood 2.0, which we KNOW Pyrrha doesn’t trust is actually all that meaningfully different than Lyctorhood 1.0 in terms of “do the component parts of the Lyctor (especially the cav) actually benefit from the process?” so.

One of the joke tags I slapped on this one was “who does pyrrha kin harder: cam or pal? answer NOT to be found here but the question sure is raised” and like. Yes, that was a joke, but also I kind of meant it? I just think there are a LOT of complicated feelings there. I think Pyrrha really loves Pal (and Cam, of course!) and wants what’s best for both of them because she sees so much of herself in both of them. but then, because of their whole Situation™️, it’s kind of impossible for her to see a way that either of them can actually get what’s best for them—if Pal gets ahold of the body more permanently then Cam necessarily loses it; if Pal goes for good in an attempt to spare Camilla then everyone involved knows deep-down that Cam probably won’t last much longer before she follows him anyway… so it becomes a whole issue for Pyrrha where she’s not even really sure what she WANTS as a resolution because there just aren’t any good endings. Canon-Palamedes was right when he called Paul “the best and truest and kindest thing [they] can do” given the constraints they’re facing, but… even Paul was in many ways a pretty tragic ending, in my opinion. Right for them, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less—for the reader but also for Pyrrha herself.

The hardest scene by far to write in this was the one where Pyrrha and Pal argue with each other over the way he treats Cam’s body re: hangnails, but it’s definitely the one I’m proudest of. If anyone gets me started about What Exactly It All Means Line-By-Line I will literally never stop talking and be glad of the excuse, but I think the part that really says it all is the very end: Pyrrha essentially says “it’s not enough to necromantically heal her hangnails like that’s solving the fundamental problem of you killing her by inches just by being around” and Pal says “of course it’s not enough, but what else can I do? I didn’t actually choose to be in this situation” and Pyrrha finally replies with “Neither did I, kid”… it’s just!! aghhhh the (maybe reluctant initially, but ultimately genuine) kinship that they have is Something Else, and I hope I was able to do it justice in this moment and in the final scene where Pyrrha acknowledges Pal as a part of her family… this is way too many words in response to this ask I am well aware, but it turns out I have a lot of feelings on this dynamic! Who knew!

Thanks for asking!

[ask game here]