[cannibangel]

chapter 3 of harrow the ninth... something i thought was interesting

[benegesseritofficial]

How literally did John base Alecto's body on Barbie? A big complaint about Barbie dolls is how disproportionate they actually are. If Barbie's head is scaled up to that of a normal human, she's like 7 feet tall, an H cup, and has a waist that wouldn't support her being able to stand. And we know that Alecto is insanely tall. I'm wondering if when she said "you've made me a hideousness" she isn't mad strictly about being in a human form. She's mad that it isn't a human form. When Nona draws the frog, she talks about how she talks about how it would move. The functionality is inextricable from it being a good design. A Barbie made real would not function. If Alecto is dealing with those sort of proportions, it's only her endless regeneration that keeps her going. In contrast, even Harrow's sickly, fucked up body is an actual, functioning human body. Hence why Alecto might find it so much more beautiful and a comparative relief to exist in.

[milleniumdyke]

In Harrow the Ninth Mercymorn says “she never could act human. But you stand like a human - you gawp like a human - you are human” when she figures out that the eyes in harrows body were Gideons and not Alecto’s. This to me says a lot about how she struggled to maneuver her Barbie doll body especially since I don’t think there’s any remarks in Nona the Ninth about how Nona moves her body. She struggles at first with coordination (worm with problems) but she works it out and it’s not mentioned otherwise. The source of the issue there is probably being put into a new body rather than how Alecto instinctively moves.

I think Alecto struggled to act/ stand like a human because her body isn’t made like a humans and can’t move like a humans. So she is probably just a Barbie doll shaped human, which is definitely freaky.

[light-camera-bitch-smile]

[paleonymy]

the more i learned abt mercymorn in ntn the more i grew to like her bc if my years of effort trying to save the planet from dying resulted in said planet being exploded & i was made immortal without my consent & then i had to live the next 10,000 years working for the guy responsible for both, i would have to work Really hard not to be a vindictive, crabby bitch

[gardengnosticator]

so ianthe is hosting some gay brunch thing and she's had wayyyy too much cheap champagne and has ended up rooting around in coronabeth's room and comes across her pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs (because of course coronabeth would have a pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs) and when she comes back to cackle about it she catches gideon and harrow having an argument over something incredibly stupid and ianthe decides to handcuff them together in "gay jail" as she calls it before promptly passing out and leaving harrow and gideon to try and figure out how to get these fucking sex handcuffs off before anyone other than ianthe catches them in it

[henreyettah]

At least I’d had your full attention.

[firespunalchemy]

"We are one flesh." "I am your end."

[tsukkinami]

i was gonna make a post about how the alectopause has spoiled us because whatever alecto the ninth is will not be the same as whatever the fuck the fandom has predicted. but then i remembered the entirety of harrow the ninth. the audacity to make it mostly second person. harrow's lobotomy. ianthe saying choke me daddy. god's tumblr jokes. and remembered that we don't know the inner workings of muir's mind and i should stay humble

[forgotaboutnoodle]

Hopeless lesbians

[stargzrrr]

Ianthe come home the kids miss you..

Nvm she’s too busy lobotomising Harrow. Also fun fact- Ianthe means violet flower in ancient Greek

[hilbertslargepowerfulmagnet]

I am rereading Gideon the Ninth and one of the funniest scenes in the whole book gotta be the scene where Gideon (has never had a hot beverage in her life) knocks back half a cup of boiling tea. And then just stands there suffering in silence. Imagine being Jeannemary Chatur or someone and seeing the super cool and mysterious Shadow Cultist from the Ninth House just absolutely SHOTTING a cup of piping hot tea. and then trying to play it cool. I would lose it.

[tooturtly]

Rereading gtn and Im stuck on Colum's missing finger. What happened to it?

Was it a battle injury? Do the Templars truly live up to their name and see actual battle?

This, to me, seems incredibly risky. To go through all the effort of getting one heir with a matching cav and then risk them both potentially dying in combat, after going through the trouble of making three potential cavs to get a blood type match, is just not worth it. I mean, Judith, heir to the official military house, hadn't ever seen actual combat. And Isaac was going to join, be we know the fourth uses stored genetic material, and is an appendix of the fifth, so his personal survival didn't matter as much. So if it wasn't likely a battle injury, and cavs of the Eighth need to be a blood type match, I have a second theory.

What if Silas ate it? (Or, at least, has it)

I admit, it seems waaay too much like something heretical for the eighth to do, but, they're also soul siphoners. What if the necro having tasted/consumed a small part of the cavs flesh allows them to call them back easier? Maybe this is why a blood type match is so important, because the flesh is more involved than it would appear. We know Ianthe uses a similar practice to boost thanergy, and while the others think it's gross it's not said to be openly heretical. And it's an essential part of the Lyctoral process, a requirement to merge souls. And we know that souls, to return from the place beyond the physical, need a link back. The link to the corpse is the strongest.

So even if Silas didn't eat it, it's not ridiculous to think he wouldn't at least have a preserved Colum finger on him. Or somewhere on the Eighth. To make it easier for Silas to "bid him return"

(This line is so specific too, and the way he mentions how long it took Colum to come back... hmm... the things we don't know)

Im not sold on this theory, personally. Im not putting all of my eggs in this basket. There could be plenty of other explanations. I think it's reasonable that Colum could once have gotten into a scuffle meting out the "Emperors Justice", but would it not be mentioned? The detail of his missing finger keeps jumping out at me. And I likely missed a line about it. But it's like a gap in my teeth.

[katakaluptastrophy]

I fear I've always gently assumed the Eighth take a rather Gileadean approach to justice and perhaps Colum was rather more exuberant in his youth...

Though I could be over-reading into the fact that we learn that Colum is missing his middle finger and that the Houses use giving a middle finger as an insulating gesture in the same paragraph: "at least one finger on his left hand was a gross-looking stump, which she admired" and later, that's specified to be his middle finger: "is “your kind” people who aren’t nephews and who have middle fingers?... If it had been Crux she would have given him the finger."

It would certainly add an interesting dimension to Colum watching this hot-headed kid chafing against expectations.

[butchbrav]

ortus died for the ungodly

[nymphwood]

the lament for gideon

i haven’t done a master study in a while, this was so fun!! based on the lament for icarus by herbert james draper. obviously, i had to make it griddlehark

[mouldybrie]

[mouldybrie]

choripan camilla

[vividciggy]

Domestic doodle