zenosanalytic reblogged
“true love” this, “endgame” that. what about “compelling dynamic that’s fun to explore”
#wake and g1deon(via @arrows-for-pens) Yes u_u
zenosanalytic reblogged
pyrrha looking at harrow and seeing her kid who she loved vs harrow looking at pyrrha and seeing the lyctor who wouldn't stop trying to kill her okay okaaayy. okay
zenosanalytic reblogged
John grew up playing with secondhand toys, went to a school where the majority of the student body were on scholarship — he probably didn't have much money. Probably same goes for G—, John's childhood friend
But Augustine. Augustine who was the liaison with the project investors and whose little brother was an hedge fund manager... I hope we can all agree that A— grew up rich. Alfred showed up at the cow compound in his leather briefcase and gucci loafers
zenosanalytic reblogged
had an au pop into my head. g1deon seeing this sopping wet kitten of a lyctor (harrow) and deciding to train her up instead of killing her. teaches her how to use the sword. teaches her how to defend herself against other necromancers.
harrow getting a proper mentor instead of whatever mercymorn was…
You know what drives me INSANE about this?? You know what sprongles my giblets???
How plausible it is.
Gideon the First didn't want to kill Harrow. He wanted to not-kill Harrow enough to voice displeasure with God about his orders to do so. A man he nuked a city for, before the man even was a god.
I think he liked her. Even when the Saint of Duty was the bogeyman haunting her life, he was also the only lyctor of the old guard to have multiple moments of geniune connection and respect for Harrow. He was the only one to ever apologise to her.
This AU is the world we could have had if John hadn't ordered him to fix her or kill her, and I would like to see it
zenosanalytic reblogged
John said G1deon made a pact with someone to protect him, someone John didn't have the power to overrule. Maybe that's Alecto, or maybe it's Pyrrha, or maybe it's bullshit.
But wouldn't it be funny if it was John's nana? Ten thousand years ago, she told G— to look after her boy. You know how he is.
zenosanalytic reblogged
hey you ever just stop and think about how g1deon was (on john's orders, granted) actively hunting and trying to kill a mentally ill teenage girl. and then he politely ate her shitty soup. with all his least favorite vegetables in it. he ate the soup. he spent that whole scene like. quietly picking around the veggies drinking stock rather than refusing or even just leaving the table.
and then he didn't even get mad when she tried to kill him with it. why should he? it was fair play. it was a good trick. if john hadn't been there, it probably would've worked. so he gives her a little good game salute with his cigarette.
i am. rotating him.
#lastflowerofyourhouse#Gideon the First#of COURSE he did. Like: OF COURSE. He was a Man of Honor#u_u u_u u_u#The Locked Tomb Series#Characterization#Ethics#Duty#Honor#TLT Analysis#appreciative reblogs#the real question here is why is he the Saint of Duty when the names are obviously all sarcastic#or are we meant to take it as: that's who they were INITIALLY but over the years they were twisted into this#tho maybe Gideon tF ISNT Duty. Like: he obvsl has a death wish. He's obvsl SEEKING destruction.#and Loyalty isn't necessarily Duty. Idk but maybe Muir was trying to draw that distinction
zenosanalytic reblogged
imagine being god's childhood best friend, and never swaying in your devotion even after he got blacklisted worldwide/ turned a bunch of farm animals inside out/ started a cult, and willingly carrying a nuke for him because he trusted your resolve more than he trusted his own, only to get 3rd place amongst his ranked sluts. imagine
zenosanalytic reblogged
-another layer of 'ow ah ouch' to everything pyrrha says about lyctorhood in nona the ninth is that she and g1deon may very well have been the first necro-cav duo to have done it fully mutually consensually, eyes open. it's heavily implied mercy and augustine had their hands forced by cristabel and alfred and wouldn't have done it otherwise ("I have built a myriad on the idea that I could have talked him out of it, given five minutes"), and they're the first and second saints... g1deon's the third. he and pyrrha presumably saw what it did to mercy and augustine, and they still decided to go through with it.
I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU
imagine the extra weight over the years in knowing you chose this. at least augustine can cling to that desperate fantasy world where he did stop alfred in time, but pyrrha and g1deon thought they knew exactly what they were doing. they thought it was love. john let them think that was love.
-...do you think mercymorn and augustine begged john for the same thing harrow did, after? Please, undo what I've done, Lord. I will never ask anything of you ever again. (Also one of my all time favorite Harrow moments where she gets to ask the question they aren't allowed to for ten thousand years: How dare you ask me to live with it?) did he comfort them? tell them he's so incredibly sorry, but he needs them?
at least pyrrha’s understanding of how the process works does corroborate his claim that he can’t extract a cavalier’s soul from their necromancer's after the lyctorhood is complete without destroying both souls, which I guess makes for the one thing he isn’t totally lying about lol. though while referencing their own situation paul tells ianthe there's still hope for her and naberius, a duo where the soul absorption did seem to complete, which suggests another layer here john might not know about (out of lack of interest?) or doesn't want anyone else to find out about.
actually let's reexamine some things from the Gideon the Ninth epilogue now in light of Nona I'm on a roll here:
-[God] said, "I know you became a Lyctor under duress."
"Some may call it duress," said Harrow.
"You aren't the first," said the Emperor.
screaming. howling. clawing at him like a wild animal. the two people who have loved you the most, and you stood by and watched as this happened to them, as you engineered it to happen to them, you've seen up close what it did to them, and now you're repeating the process with new children a myriad later without a blush. you suck so bad john I have no words fhksajfhsa.
-"I have three teachers for you. And a whole universe for you to hold on to, for just a little while longer."
a) oh yeah just wait for those three teachers they're a real barrel of laughs they probably won't even try to repeatedly murder you or anything lmao and b) what's that supposed to mean john. 'for just a little while longer'. why does it only have to be a little while longer. as far as I can tell you're no closer to the fullness of your revenge than ever. does it have anything to do with 'good morning, annabel' and 'it gets dirty, you clean it again'?
So, the universe was ending. Good. At least if she failed here, she would no longer have to be beholden to anybody.
could this also be some kind of foreshadowing? from the dialogue on page here harrow's conclusion that the universe is, for sure, ending is not necessarily a natural conclusion (john only speaks of the empire slowly dying) so like... does pre-lobotomy harrow know something we don't? or is it just that she's the saddest person anyone's ever seen pre-nona seeing gideon? (most heartbreaking shade of drift compatability discovered :') )
-He said presently, "Most of my Lyctors have been destroyed by a war I thought best to fight slowly, through attrition. I have lost my Hands -- not just to death. The loneliness of deep space takes its toll on anyone, and the necrosaints have all put up with it for longer than anybody should ever be asked to bear anything. That's why I wanted only those who had discovered the cost, and were willing to pay it in the full knowledge of what it would entail."
so... in the same way g1deon and pyrrha decided to pay that price willingly, then. I am 100% calling bullshit on him here, though, because if any of that had been his real intentions he would have taken at least a modicum of time and energy to write ANYTHING to that effect in the invitations haha. but I think he does recognize in some way that mercy and augustine are burning out under the ten thousand years he's asked of them, like cytherea just did, and maybe mistakenly thinks g1deon is handling it better, because his and pyrrha's decision seemed more informed/less coerced? loveday always knew it was her life or cytherea's, after all, that wasn't ever a real choice either. huh.
-god, harrow literally states all her (frankly very modest and doable) goals and needs to him -- to return to the ninth at least once, to find her cavalier's body, and to figure out what happened to the other survivors of canaan house -- and once she is incapable of remembering them........ he does fucking NOTHING to remind her or help her follow up on any of them fhsdkajfhasdkj I am losing it! at least there is the delicious irony that he could have saved himself a massive headache if he had helped her with any of these, so his own fecklessness and narcissism is its own punishment in this case I suppose lmao
-another observation: harrow is not as deferential or worshipful towards God in this epilogue as she will be in HtN or beyond. she's angry with him! she's kind of sharp and a bit rude, even! she seems more to feel begrudgingly beholden to him because fair enough he is god I guess than to emotionally buy into it as sacred service. I wonder how she'll think of him after nona the ninth, now that she knows him so much better and has more of herself too -- ironically my sense from their last scene in nona the ninth is that her worship of him seems to have all but disappeared, but she loves him more, despite uh the everything of him, in all his awfulness. not in that she doesn't recognize him for what he is or that she wants his approval anymore, she's grown so far past him already, but I do think there's still love there. 'I still love you' is the real power he has, I guess
zenosanalytic reblogged
Anonymous asked:
can you elaborate on your tag meta on the socioeconomic indicators in the john backstory chapters in nona? and do you think john and G had a similar background having grown up together?
So John is a stingy ass motherfucker when it comes to definitive information, and he doesn't talk about his family or his childhood much, but what little he says when he does gives me the impression he grew up fairly poor. Probably in a community where being poor was normal.
The way John talks about his nana, it's clear he loved her in the way a child loves an adult they feel secure with. He spent a lot of time at her house as a kid, enough that playing there is one of his core memories. She may have even been his primary caretaker starting from the age of seven, because he sure never mentions having any other family. So it stands out to me that all he had to play with at her house was a box of his mother's old hand-me-downs. And while he knows it wasn't much, there's no resentment in his recollection. He didn't feel neglected.
John didn't expect to have toys of his own when he was a kid. What that says to me, as a kid who grew up on second-hand and hand-me-downs, is his family didn't buy much of anything new. It being so normal to him is also why I think he grew up in a poorer neighbourhood. Hand-me-downs are only embarrassing if you're the only one who has them.
Then there's how Nana died. Pneumonia, when John was still a teenager. Not a lot of rich people out there who die of lung infections before their grandchildren are grown.
And yeah, I do think G— had a similar background! He and John grew up on the same street, and he was (also?) raised by his grandparents. John's totally joking when he says spotting G— for mince pies when they were kids meant that of course G— would let him cut off his arm, but it's the kind of joke with subtext. Like sharing food was a big deal when they were kids. Reminds me of our Gideon being forever fond of Camilla for sharing her leftovers, and the intense barter between the children of New Rho over the lunch fruits. The childhood food insecurity of it all.
zenosanalytic reblogged
I ate peanuts discreetly, the once.
I'm absolutely terrible at comics, but had to illustrate this silly scene from HtN anyways
zenosanalytic reblogged
you have a father, there is another. you have a sister, there are no brothers. you have good friends, you have a lover. when friendships end, you will still love her.
zenosanalytic reblogged
One of the subtler subplots going on in the background of Harrow the Ninth is why exactly Merymorn and Augustine agree to help Harrow, a child they expect to be dead in a matter of months no matter what they do, to kill Gideon, a man they have been friends with for a myriad. The lyctors are all deeply alienated from human connection and very willing to kill each other if necessary but it didn’t seem to serve their interests here. It wasn’t until I ran into this passage on a reread that it clicked for me
“No retribution, Gideon?” he remarked. His face was deathly livid. His features were still, but his hands were not. “I thought you might want to burn on his pyre.”
I opened my mouth to speak; I was startled when the raw-looking man wearing my sunglasses said, “No.”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised,” Augustine said, “but also lying if I said I wasn’t pleased. Here we three are at the end … Alpha, beta, and gamma.”
Mercymorn and Augustine don’t trust John and they expect that they will eventually get evidence he betrayed them at which point they will try to kill him. And when that happens they think that Gideon will take his side anyway. That means that it’s to their advantage to find a way to eliminate him before their final confrontation with John so they won’t have to deal with him then. Harrow herself and her conflict with Gideon are completely irrelevant to the decision making process that leads to Dios Apate, Minor. She’s just a convenient patsy they can use to off Gideon in a way that isn’t directly attributable to them.
zenosanalytic reblogged
“ AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT ”
anyone else think about pyrrha/wake/g1deon a lot. because i do
zenosanalytic reblogged
What’s a few murder attempts among Lyctors? :)