do you have any more thoughts about catchthesehands/morrithad because i find myself strangely charmed by them
hehe I'm v glad to know I've endeared at least one person to this rarepair!! I've said before that I don't really see morrithad as endgame because that title belongs to morridence, BUT this ask reminded me that I wrote out some endgame headcanons for all of Unit 919!! Here r my post-canon headcanons for Morrigan, Thaddea, and Cadence that I wrote shortly after reading Silverborn and have since slightly revised:
An accomplished Wundersmith, has earned all the Wundrous Art Seals
Also got together with Cadence by the end of the series, maybe in their late teens (maybe last year as a senior scholar) + got married in late 20’s
However, Morrigan and Thaddea had a brief thing in their mid-teens
Starts mentoring Wundersmith kids
Eventually also takes over the Hotel Deucalion as its proprietor (although maybe after Jupiter dies because I don’t know if he’d ever truly retire from that)
Advocates for refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants from the Wintersea Republic
Cadence Blackburn: “Detective Blackburn”
becomes a private investigator, Detective Blackburn fr fr
Keeps wanting Morrigan to “roleplay” as a femme fatale for her like Cadence is the main character of a noir movie but Morrigan cannot take it seriously
Mostly distances herself from Wunsoc (like Dame Chanda does) because she resents how they treated Morrigan
Part-time bookfighter at the Gob with Mahir + helps Wunsoc fight whatever monsters they need to use brute force for
After a long slowburn, gets together with Anah somewhere in their mid twenties
Like Cadence, thinks that Wunsoc’s institutions allow for abuse, but disagrees with Cadence that distancing themselves from Wunsoc is the best solution (Cadence: "it’s not about a SOLUTION it’s about standing your ground and saying this is not something I’ll abide by—"). instead does the thing of trying to work within the system to redeem it.
I want to especially point out that I think Cadence and Thaddea both resent Wunsoc for how they treated Morrigan because they're both protective over Morrigan, but whereas Thaddea engages with it directly, Cadence is more avoidant. (And maybe this is just because I read Worm where people get superpowers from things called "shards" that mess with their heads a little, but I now can't help but wonder where knacks come from, and if it's from Wunder, if knacks do influence how people in-universe think and behave on a subconscious, metaphysical level rather than just on the practical, empiric level.)
Now that I'm writing this out now, I also can't help but compare Thaddea to the guardian-soldiers of Plato's Republic (which, if you've beens talking my blog recently, you know i've been positively obsessed with platoposting as of late lmao), where they have to learn both gymnastics (as in, combat and exercise) and music (as in, the arts of the Muses) during their education. Gymnastics for courage (as Plato defines it: being able to distinguish what you should fear and what you should not fear) and music for moderation (as Plato defines it: a kind of harmony or like an absence of conflict in a positive way; consensus among people). If only taught music but not gymnastics, these "overly musical" children will become too weak, agreeable, cowardly, etc.; if only taught gymnastics and not music, these "unmusical" children become too obsessed with honor and become too warlike to actually be good guardians of the city. These unmusical guardian-soldiers then become like Spartans where they enslave the producer class/the common people.
This causes a transition from Kallipolis (the perfect city) to a regime referred to by Plato as a "timachy", and Plato also describes a "timarchic soul". Long explanation made short, a timarchic soul is one in which the "spirited" part of the soul (the part that is concerned with honor) rules over the "calculated" part (the part that is concerned with wisdom) and the "desiring" part (the part that is concerned with needs and wants).
What I'm driving towards is: you could kind of interpret Thaddea as a timarchic soul? She as a character is very concerned with honor: I'm particularly thinking about in the second book, she sees losing to that one weakass guy at Wunsoc's Fight Club as dishonorable, but she still honors her agreement to throw the fight, but at the end when it's revealed the whole blackmailing thing was their Loyalty Trial, Thaddea is the first person to say that it was injust and cruel to put them through that.
Also, in contrast, I think, Anah would be an "overly musical" soul. Or maybe Francis. Or both of them.
I could probably also make some sort of argument for Morrigan's learning the Wundrous Arts as her coming out of the Cave (and her going back into the cave as a metaphor for her returning to the fucked up political intrigue realm of Nevermoor), but that would be stretching the metaphor, I fear. But if I were to make that case, then I could argue that Morrigan has the soul of a philosopher-king, or at least has the potential to be so.
Hawthorne is totally a "democratic" soul btw: he's ruled equally by his spirited, desiring, and calculated parts.
I would say I'm sorry that this just became a character study of Thaddea and some others of Unit 919 through the lens of Plato's Republic instead of just cute ship headcanons about morrithad, but I'm not actually lmao. Uhhhh I really hope this makes SOME sense, but please feel free to ask me any clarifying questions because I know this was probably confusing af to read.
