"Doesn't count," is the first thing Jimmy says when he opens his eyes again.
YOU WILL FIND I DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT--
"Nope! Doesn't count," Jimmy says. "Fuck you--I can swear no one's watching I'm dead--fuck you, doesn't count, I wasn't first, baby!"
WHAT? NO, AS I SAID, I AM THE ONE WHO DECIDES WHETHER IT COUNTS OR NOT. AND YOU WILL FIND--
"Doesn't count! And don't try to--I'm not sad about it. I mean I am, I'd have preferred not to get obliterated by a warden, but like, as I said, fuck you, it doesn't count."
YOU'RE DEAD.
"Yeah well, I mean, that part counts, sure. Pretty familiar at this point, right? And--man okay now that all the, the game is wearing off, I do feel a little bad about Lizzie. I really didn't mean to kill her last session. Except I don't feel that bad. Because it doesn't count baby."
The figure standing next to Jimmy shuffles its incorporeal feet. I ADMIT I AM VERY CONFUSED RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE DEAD.
"Yep."
YOU ARE NOT ARGUING THAT.
"I mean, sort of hard to at this point, right?"
WHY DO YOU KEEP SAYING IT DOES NOT COUNT. IT DOES. I AM HERE WITH THE SCYTHE AND EVERYTHING. I HAVE DRESSED UP TRADITIONALLY. MOST OF THE TIME YOU'RE SCREAMING ABOUT HOW IT'S NOT FAIR AND YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE AND ALL OF THAT.
"Yeah, well, it doesn't count, so I'm not going to do that."
IT DOESN'T COUNT AS... DYING?
Jimmy shrugs.
THAT ISN'T--YOU KNOW THIS ISN'T HOW THIS WORKS?
Jimmy laughs, and all at once, it's bitter and exhausted and everything else he's been feeling for two years, since he stepped into a circle with Grian to start a game and stepped out again the first casualty on a battlefield. He's not sure he can name what the emotion is. He just... does.
"Doesn't count," he says.
VERY WELL. THAT DOES NOT CHANGE WHAT MY ROLE IN THIS IS, EVEN IF YOU ARE... EXTREMELY CONFUSING.
"I want to go say thanks to Lizzie. Maybe apologize for the whole accidental murder thing but mostly thank her for being bad at the game." Jimmy pauses. "Is that mean?" He pauses again. "No she'd totally do that to me in my place. So yeah. Here you go. Take me away, big man."
The incorporeal figure shuffles its feet again. I. AND THAT'S IT? THAT'S ALL YOU'RE GOING TO SAY?
"I mean, yeah," Jimmy says. "It doesn't count. I don't have anything else to say because--well, it was unremarkable, wasn't it? That's the good bit about it."
MOST PEOPLE PREFER DYING REMARKABLY.
"Most people are stupid," Jimmy says, and he grabs Death's hand, and they leave.
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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
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Thank you for the tag @tonguetyd! My spoons are indeed low but my sleep schedule is GONE so. Random burst of energy let's go.
I didn't know what artist to pick because I didn't want an obvious (?) one, so I'm going super niche and choosing Bright Eyes because it's been a minute since I've talked about them, and they're one of my favourites 💙
Artist: Bright Eyes
How do you feel: Nothing Gets Crossed Out
What is your gender: Bowl Of Oranges (obviously funny but also it's a beautiful song! poetic storytelling!)
If you could go anywhere: Lua
Favorite mode of transportation: Driving Fast Through A Big City At Night (yes that is the title)
Your best friend: First Day Of My Life 🥹
Favorite time of day: Sunrise, Sunset
If your life was a tv show: A Line Allows Progress, A Circle Does Not
Relationship status: I Won't Ever Be Happy Again 🥲
Your fear: Waste Of Paint
Idk who made this or not so I'm tagging randomly, no pressure to do this whatsoever! @dearscone @corviisquire @hookedhobbies @politemagic (hi!) @leonsleftbicep @melit0n
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I just remembered that Stephanie Harper is only meant to be a temporary overseer for Vault 32, presumably until they have time for a real election. So either she'll compete against people who aren't from Vault 31 (and she'll win because it's rigged), or they'll thaw someone else out.
My guess is before the series is over, we might see Barb again as an overseer for either Vault 32 or 33. I actually think she'd be great at it, especially if they thaw Janey out at the same time. Then she would finally have her chance to build the world she wanted for her daughter.
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