#but they are still WITHIN the houses gideon has dreams of the cohort harrow has dreams of of revitalizing her house

[eskildit]

i think a lot about hot sauce and jeannemary. two young girls so ready to kill and to die. a comparison made all the worse when you recall that hot sauce lost all her family to the cohort, that she can specifically recall fourth style necromancy (using corpses as bombs). a fourteen and thirteen year old that could easily have been on opposite sides of the same front line. 

#the locked tomb #the loss of childhood! senseless violence! #opposite ends of the propaganda machine #eskildit posts tlt #all of nona the ninth #how am i supposed to tag hot sauce #jeannemary chatur #ok to rb #edit: okay im actually gonna use these tags to ramble a lil #in many ways i feel alecto the ninth is gonna be the hardest book to actually pull off #first for the obvious reason that its an ending and endings are always hard #but second because nona the ninth was by far the most political book of the series #books 1 and 2 following harrow and gideon mean we're following characters on the outskirts of the empire #gideon is individually oppressed by the ninth and even harrow is considered a black sheep outsider of the nine houses #but they are still WITHIN the houses gideon has dreams of the cohort harrow has dreams of of revitalizing her house #nona was our actual introduction to the real consequences of the empire that characters like judith like jeannemary like corona herself #have their livelihoods and status entirely built on the imperial violence we see first hand on new rho #anyway i say all of this to say it means coming back to these characters might be kinda tricky! #the cost of the empire is no longer abstract its extremely palpable! #how does one return to our core cast we've know for multiple books now that we understand that #idk. interested to see where we go!

[shieldsurf]

HUGE fucking nona the ninth spoilers. dont read if u havent finished it yet heart emoji

i have been thinking a lot about gideon in nona the ninth and her total heel turn. gideon is my Favorite Favorite Favorite character in the locked tomb by a mile, i love her so much, so when she appeared and was basically a different person? that shit caught me off guard. i still adore her tho.

unfortunately gideon, or kiriona, got kinda glossed over in nona the ninth, which sucks, because she played a super important role (speaking of, nona is the first book in the series so far i have real, not-nitpicky criticisms of. i really enjoyed it, but it was not as good as gideon the ninth, and Definitely not as good as harrow the ninth). that, and i find her offscreen character arc to be insanely interesting. she's suddenly very much not the gideon we know and love, and obviously something's up. so what happened to her?

at first i wondered if she was an impostor, but only a chapter or so after her reappearance, i was convinced this wasn't the case. there were two reasons i initially expected gideon was actually a fake: the first was that her eye color was wrong. gold? shouldn't she have harrow's eyes? those are a smoky black, right? harrow has gideon's eyes, after all. the second that gideon was, as she herself described, "mega dead" -- and the fact that her body functions like a walking corpse is proof of that. however, this runs counterpoint to the mechanics of the universe of tlt that were not only officially established in but heavily featured in nona the ninth. if gideon's soul was placed in gideon's body, by god no less, shouldn't she be very alive? both of these, however, are explicitly explained very simply: gideon is not in her own body. she is in a super-strong vessel created by god slash john slash dear old dad. a perfect recreation. this is very, very strange. i thought that the houses had gideon's body? why would she not be allowed to return to it? remember this.

three extremely important motifs present in gideons arc are those of freedom, idealism, and belonging/acceptance, and all of these suggest what may have happened to gideon in her absence -- or rather, her time with john and the cohort. we see from the moment she is teased that since meeting john she has been elevated to extremely high status, both as crown prince of john's empire and within the cohort. to the gideon nav of the first book, this would've seemed like a fairy tale. rejected, ostracized, and permanently indebted to the ninth house since infancy, there is nothing more that gideon wanted than to be a cohort hotshot. the beginning of gideon the ninth is her attempting an escape: she'd been imprisoned on that horrifying little planet her whole life, wants nothing more to escape, but her attempts are foiled and the whole book throws her longing for freedom in her face. she finds herself connecting with the harrow she terrorized and was terrorized by her entire childhood, pledges herself to her, falls in love with her, and ultimately dies for her. harrow is the one she finds herself belonging to, and she decides that is worth more to her than any freedom she could obtain.

then gideon learns who she is. harrow is gone, but suddenly there is a reason for gideon to be loved and accepted -- not just by harrow but by everyone, and it's more likely than not that she grasped it like a lifeline. she is not some nobody orphan slave to a cult, she is a crown prince, a half-deity, an icon of the future to the houses. she suddenly likely finds herself facing more power and adoration she ever could've imagined. so what happens to her when she realizes it's a gilded cage?

gideon is not allowed to go and do as she pleases; there is no freedom. she acts as a figurehead and never gets to be the respected lady-killer soldier she dreamed of; her idealized view of the cohort and her potential role in it is squashed. but she belongs, right?

when gideon kills crux, she tells him of her status. that he was always wrong to be so cruel to her. that she is more worthy of a place in the house than he ever was. and he simply does not care. he spits and her face and tells her flat out that none of it matters. to him, all she did was make harrowhark's life worse, ultimately fail her, and in his eyes, she is the greatest disappointment she could've been. gideon explodes upon killing him. it didn't feel good, she says. why didn't it feel good?

in the end, gideon's titles, her sacrifice, the months she spent playing dress-up in some sick facsimile of her face, they do not matter. it's quite like trying to reach out to your shitty parents and being rejected anyways. you say their opinion doesn't matter to you, but it does, doesn't it?

gideon has been living a twisted perversion of her childhood dreams, and realizing they weren't what they were cut out to be. she is ultimately a pawn in a larger game and she seems to be unwilling to accept this, but she knows it. she can't even have her own body back.

why wouldn't that change her? nona sees that she is deeply, unmistakably sad. it is not hard to understand why.

#sorry this is not coherent or good lolxd im just having a lot of thoughts about the cool butch lesbian with the funny sunglasses. #i missed her. i can't wait to see her again #and i will be sad when she goes for good #anyways if you read this meandering little essay (if you can even call it that) i hope you enjoyed and would like to hear your thoughts :] #tlt #gideon nav #nona the ninth

[nocerealmilk]

Harrow the Ninth Timeline + Synopsis + AtN Predictions

Ok So I know I wasn’t the only one really confused after reading HtN, so when I reread it I made a bunch of notes so I could try to piece together the timeline! Here’s what I got, it’s as accurate as I could make it.

The universe is dominated by the force that is called the Cohort at the behest of the Necrolord prime AKA John AKA God AKA the Emperor, a man who resurrected all of our solar system to use “thanergy” (dead stuff energy) instead of “thalergy” (alive stuff energy). For unknown reasons, instead of just living in the galaxy, the Cohort overtakes planets by “flipping” them from thalergetic into thanergetic, allowing the arrival of necromancy. This is achieved by front line Cohort non-necromantic soldiers indiscriminately killing enough of the creatures on said planets that the Cohort necromancers can then use that energy to perform necromancy which causes the planet to die, releasing thanergetic material that can then be used for necromancy. It should also be mentioned interstellar travel is apparently only easily achievable for regular people by obelisk, which is a structure that must be bathed in fresh blood daily. They are, basically, super evil. 

They are at war with Blood of Eden, a rebellion insurgency of people who want to cleanse the universe of necromancy, which was (ambiguously?) created at some point by God and then betrayed him.

 Wake, the previous leader of Blood of Eden, was sent by Mercymorn and Augustine, who had betrayed God to work with BoE, to the Ninth House to take samples and look for signs of life within the locked tomb, which contains The Body (AKA A.L., Annabel Lee, or Alecto), God’s cavalier. Because the locked tomb is only accessible by God’s genetic material, Mercy gains God’s genetic material via menage e trois, and uses it to make foetal dummies, which all die, leading to Wake carrying God’s genetic child to term. 

Gideon the First, Lyctor, is sent to intercept her - he does not and betrays god, Because both him (Gideon) and his lyctor (Pyrrha), who both share Gideon’s body, were both separately having an affair with Wake, and believed the child to be theirs. Wake crashed to the Ninth and died, but the baby lived; as Wake died she said “Gideon”, so the child was named Gideon, although she was referring to Gideon the Firsts name when she said it. (Note: I don’t believe it is ever mentioned what happened before Wake came crashing to the Ninth, only that she was intercepted by Gideon1, who failed to kill her.) 

Wake’s hatred of necromancy is so strong that her ghost remains a revenant, haunting first her old bones, then haunting a two-handed blade, which the child of hers and God’s, Gideon9, the Ninth raises wields and loves. 

When Gideon9 and Harrow are 10 years old, they get into a fight - it’s important to note that Harrow says specifically that Gideon9’s skin was under her fingernails, because she is able to bypass the wards that only God (or a genetically similar being) can access. Harrow looks inside of The Locked Tomb and sees Alecto’s body, who she both falls in love with, and is haunted by her via auditory and visual hallucination.

8 years later, Gideon9 and Harrow go to Canaan house, all of the events of GtN happen. Gideon9 dies and something (which I will speculate on later) happens in the time between. 

Harrow the Ninth starts with Harrow not remembering Gideon’s existence, having made a debt to Ianthe to compartmentalize her memories of Gideon so as to avoid truly absorbing her soul. (Harrow does not remember this either). It is important to note that Harrow feels none of the rapid healing benefits of lyctorship, although her soul/body is a void like other lyctors. 

The body of Gideon was not recovered, neither were the living Coronabeth, Camilla, or Judith, who ended up with Blood of Eden (It is easy to extrapolate that Gideon’s body is probably also currently in possession of BoE).

 In the meantime, Wake’s soul haunts the two handed sword Harrow possesses, which her past, cognizant self has told her to never let leave her side, and not allow it to come in contact with flesh. (Harrow’s past self is evidently aware of the sword’s haunting; she also is aware the revenant wishes to leave the sword, and apparently that was not intended) During a moment of sleepwalking or possession, Harrow stabs the sword into the body of the dead lyctor Cytherea, whom the ghost of Wake leaves the sword and possesses the body of. 

Later, Harrow is on a faraway planet, murdering it, when Camilla Hect and the other two who survived Canaan show up in a spaceship. Harrow’s letter to herself tells her to seal Judith Deuteros’ mouth shut, which she does just as Judith attempts to tell her someone has betrayed God and that she is a “prisoner of war”. She also successfully restores part of Palamedes Sextus’s body, creating an articulated hand for his soul to possess. Important to note, Gideon9 is not there, alive or dead. 

In the meantime, in the River, which is basically a limbo-type place souls go after they die, and also where alive people can go if they know how, Harrow has been reliving an incorrect version of the events of GtN within her mind, using the trapped ghosts of those who died to re-enact the story. The story, however, goes haywire when The Sleeper, AKA the ghost of Wake, attempts to kill Harrow (and the others) in this dream-bubble esque world. Wake’s ghost changes the parameters of the story, causing Canaan to fall apart, be plunged into freezing cold, blood raining from the sky etc. Abigail Pent, a spirit caller who is also a ghost now, helps Harrow’s memories return and then awakens the Sleeper/Wake.

 In the real world, Harrow has been fatally stabbed by Mercymorn, who attempted to kill her because she didn’t want Harrow to go insane and suffer as a resurrection beast, the soul of one of the nine originally resurrected planets, approaches them. Instead, Harrow’s memories are restored and she is trapped within the simulation she created, fighting Wake’s ghost, while Gideon’s soul is able to overtake her body.

 Shortly before this, Harrow’s visual hallucination of The Body AKA Alecto vanished.

 Gideon9, in Harrow’s body, is able to fight off the heralds of the resurrection beast easily, and has wicked regeneration powers - her thumb grows back entirely within seconds, something that was directly stated to not be possible for normal lyctors. Mercymorn and Augustine have a big reaction to seeing Gideon9’s eye color inside of Harrow’s body. 

Gideon9 and Ianthe find God, Mercymorn, Augustine, Gideon1, and a tied up Wake-possessed Cytherea having a discussion. Mercymorn and Augustine confront God about Gideon’s yellow eyes, which God does not have but Alecto has. The only possible way Gideon9 could have yellow eyes like Alecto is not because she is the child of Alecto, but because she is the child of God, and Alecto is God’s cavalier, whose eyes were perfectly swapped with God’s, and Gideon9 is God’s daughter. Previously God told the Lyctors that to become immortal they had to kill and absorb the soul of their cavaliers, but since Alecto/The Body was still alive after the eye swap that took place before they all met, it was apparently a lie and perfect Lyctorship was possible the entire time (in which both parties absorb and share the combined power of their souls, resulting in a reversal of their eyes, and remain living). 

Wake tells God that Mercymorn, Gideon1 and Augustine betrayed him and had had prior contact with her. Mercymorn also, importantly, notes that when she checked Gideon’s body at Canaan house she neglected to open her eyes, implying that Mercymorn was at Canaan house and worked with BoE to ferry Corona, Camilla, Judith, and Gideon9 out of Canaan.

 Mercymorn explodes God. Augustine and Mercymorn express a hope for the death of necromancy in the future. 

God somehow rematerializes (will get into my theory on that later), and explodes Mercymorn back, who does not rematerialize, because she is dead. God admits the resurrection beasts cannot kill him, and he lied to their faces for 10,000 years.

 God offers to spare Gideon9, Gideon1, Ianthe, and Augustine. Augustine instead plunges the entirety of the space station into the bottom of the River, attempting to throw God and the rest of them into the stoma, which is basically just Hell or Nothingness. Augustine and God fight; Gideon1 tells Gideon9 (still in Harrow’s body) that Gideon1 actually died, and who is taking through Gideon1’s body is his necromancer Pyrrha, whose soul was compartmentalized similar to how Gideon9’s was. Ianthe chooses to push Augustine into Hell and save God, which is very evil of her.

 Gideon9 decides she would rather try to save Harrow’s body and brave the river, a futile act. In her last moments, Gideon9 sees light, and then sees the face of Alecto leaning over her saying to perform chest compressions despite her shattered chest (Which, I believe, is Gideon’s soul returning to her own body)

 At the same time, Harrow has defeated the sleeper and everyone has left the dream bubble except her and Dulcinea. The bubble is falling apart. Dulcinea tells her something left intentionally ambiguous to the reader, which leads to Harrow popping the bubble. In Harrow’s last moments she walks into a coffin that has Gideon’s sword and spicy magazines inside of it, and falls asleep with a smile on her face. Important to note it specifically says this happened in a “faraway place”. This is happening, I believe, in tandem with Gideon seeing that final vision. 

The epilogue describes an unknown character with unusual healing powers (most likely in the body of Gideon), living in a faraway land (Harrow is also there, possibly?), who is given bones and a sword but does not understand what to do with either of them, and Camilla Hect is there, but her eyes are gray, the color Palamedes’ eyes are described to be. The narrator notes their specific love for those eyes.

Ok now ~predictions~ which I mostly wanted to put here to look at later when the new book comes out.

Dulcinea is the character that we see in the epilogue. Honestly, I’m not completely sure; I think Harrow or Gideon both could love Pal’s eyes, they did care about him, but it feels kind of like a weird thing to point out unless it was relevant. If it was Alecto, like i’ve seen some speculation on, why would she comment about the eyes of someone she doesn’t know? Dulcinea also alludes to an understanding of perfect lyctorship in HtN: “Goodbye, Palamedes my first strand, Goodbye Camila, my second...One cord was overpowered, two cords could defend themselves, but three were not broken by the living or the dead”...One by itself was very strong, two could defend (as a cavalier defends their necro in the river), and three were not broken by the living or the dead (essentially, true immortality with invulnerability). This, and the board in the Lyctor room at Canaan in GtN also describes the pinboard as having numerous clusters of three pins. (Granted it is not stated completely what perfect lyctorship between three people would entail, or if the pinboard in GtN was alluding specifically to lyctorship.)

I don’t think Harrow is in Harrow’s body right now, if she is, I don’t think she is lucid. Harrow also states “There’s a difference between saving a shred of dance card, and saving the last dance” Dulcinea gave Harrow the information that crawling into that coffin, whatever it means, would allow Gideon to survive. That is what she wants above everything else, I think knowing that is the only way Harrow would be content at the last and go without fighting.

Harrow planned the entire thing. I actually do think this is possible. I don’t think Harrow does anything irrationally. I think she erased her memories knowing that it would cause her to forget a plan she made at Canaan with the others, agreeing to go with Ianthe to the First. She did specifically give instructions to her future self to seal Judith Deuteros’ mouth shut, to stop Deuteros from giving her the information required to stop the attempt on God’s life. My personal prediction here is that Harrow always meant to reconvene with BoE at the end, and Wake’s revenant leaving the sword and Mercymorn’s failure to kill god compromised all of that.

Harrow and Gideon are currently occupying Gideon’s body together, but neither of them are at the wheel.

Alecto is not dead, and maybe never was dead. I know she is literally called The Body and is described as being dead. However, I don’t think she’s in a state of death she can’t come back from. I believe that “perfect” lyctorship involves one body being able to remotely protect the other, hence why God reformed from complete paste and Alecto is who Gideon sees. I think God being dead would involve somehow killing the both of them, or killing one and then stopping the other from reforming while you kill the other.

Alecto is not human, she’s a robot or alien? She is referred to as a monster most of the time, and originally had the black and white eyes of God.

God’s three person Lyctorship is him, Samael and/or Anastasia and Alecto. Still not totally sold on 3 person lyctorship being the goal, but I think if it is the case that’s it. I know Gideon says Alecto’s voice is “wrong twiceover”, which is what made me think it was two people, and neither were Alecto.

I don’t think Alecto is the main character of the third book. I think Gideon will still be the speaking character, but I think Alecto will be the pivotal character.

The Cohort is bad actually. I think it’s one of those things where it seems glamorous because the main characters are brainwashed a bit. I mean as far as I can tell, it’s outrightly stated in the text that the Cohort murders innocents and overtakes planets. Real Empire vibes!!

BoE is also bad actually. I think we’ll learn Cohort bad, then BoE good, then BoE bad as a twist at the end, that they have some kind of hidden agenda or something like that.

Corona kills Ianthe. Most people just suspect this because of the whole Cainabeth and Abelle placeholder names and I’m also in this camp. I think Ianthe is pretty morally gray so I don’t necessarily think she will end up being killed because she’s straight up a villain, but I think she will be killed.

Harrow comes face to face with Alecto

Necromancy goes byebye, God is Kill

#gtn #textpost #mostly just posting this so i can look at it later when im inevitably confused before atn comes out and i reread the books #then ill be like oh me of the past youre so smart and sexy and just read this post to become unconfused