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#(your soul your sanity the world you sacrificed everything to save the body you serve with all the fervency of your rotting heart -- – @countingnothings on Tumblr
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Counting Nothings

@countingnothings / countingnothings.tumblr.com

"But Jessica, you want to marry EVERYTHING"
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I'm still hung up on Magnus, earnestly telling an 18-year-old that she needs to give up her one friend and love because sometimes you strike out.

WHILE HE'S WITH HIS WIFE THAT HE GOT TO MARRY AND BE WITH FOR QUITE A FEW YEARS!!!

B. R. U. H. Incapable of reading the room... er, bubble in the river.

Even Abigail Pent, who is so bad at social norms she has to regularly be reigned in, thinks he goes a bit hard on that one, to be fair.

But in Magnus' defence, I don't think he's failing to read the room. He may have always been substantially more privileged than Gideon, and he may be drawing on much more mundane experiences, but he knows, intimately, what it means to be in a relationship that straddles the divides of status and acceptability and to watch the woman you love die in front of you because of the whole rotten set up of it. And I suspect he's giving Harrow the advice he might hope Abigail would be given in her place.

This is actually one of my favorite parts of HtN, because in context of everything we the readers know, of course you would fight for Gideon. This is a book where magic is real! Love Conquers All! But the thing is.... Magnus' advice is normal, in the context of Gideon is dead. She died. She is 100% no longer alive and Harrow does not want her to be dead and she is dealing with it Badly.

To me, a core aspect of HtN is that it is a wish fulfillment story about grief. Therefore it is thematically important that the people telling Harrow to "move on" are NOT just people who are using her, like John/Ianthe/etc. Magnus cares about Harrow, on a very genuine level, and he tells her what anyone who cares about you tells you when someone you love dies and you want to set the world on fire: she loved you, she is dead, you shouldn't let yourself die with her. You can live for her.

And like, no one wants to hear that. It's good advice!! It is kind. It is loving. But when someone you love is dead, you don't want kind and loving advice. You want your person to be alive. You want the kind and loving person to shut up. And in this situation, Harrow DOES says no, I won't accept that, and she's *rewarded* for it, a thing that never happens in the real world if someone dies and you refuse to accept it. But Harrow is rewarded. Gideon's soul is saved. Wish fulfilled.

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