#river aus

[faggedoutsocialite]

harrow nova would 1000% install herself at the foot of that bed. we’re all in agreement right

[faggedoutsocialite]

In the Nova au, I /don’t/ think that Necromancer Gideon would be crazy piety the way Harrow is. I think she would still be largely herself-- the way she relates to jod wouldn't be too far off from how she does in the original, and the way she would relate to the creature of the locked tomb is that mainly she wouldn't.

That said, I do have a proposal for what she /would/ be weirdly and inappropriately gung-ho over, and that’s loyalty to the Ninth house and specifically their parents.

She's adopted in, shown this kindness, but she knows it's conditional because she can see what they did to Harrow when she didn't satisfy them. She's NOT going to be secure in her position, she's going to be continually scrambling to stay on the inside.

Compounding this effect, Reverend Daughter Gideon is almost certainly subject to exceptional neglect broadly comparable to what original flavor Harrow experienced. She's going to be that much hungrier for that love and acceptance she's never actually going to get.

Gideon, who's not even Ninth, can be replaced as easily as she was used to replace Harrow. But that can't happen because she's the best good daughter! The Ninth is good because they're good to her because she's a good daughter. Out of this… very specific form of gratitutude, she's… exceptionally noncritical of the Ninth house. Loyalty.

When Gideon discovers what their parents did to all those children, what if she forgave them?

What if Harrow can’t?

Okay, so in the series itself, we see that Harrow absolutely does not forgive her parents for making her, but I think the tenor in Nova could be really different in an interesting way, and especially if you place the knowledge a little later and as something that was concealed from her, rather than a burden in one of her earliest memories that recontextualizes her entire life before it's even begun.

Placing the knowledge later is plausible: I am confident that once she's disowned as reverend daughter, she would no longer have access to the Ninth's most cloistered secrets (or the family library or the salt pool for that matter)-- and would only have her recollection of whatever disclosures occurred before Gideon's adoption. In gtn, we learned that Harrow was told about what her parents did to get her at basically the youngest vaguely plausible age a child is capable of the self-regulation required to maintain concealment over time. What if, in Nova, they figured out Harrow wasn't going to be a necromancer and adopted Gideon before that interval?

What if the secret of Harrow's origin haunts her, gothically, from the margins, its shape in absences rather than direct information? The truth is yet another thing she must claim from the Ninth.

I'm seeing the situation of the Ninth genocide, particularly in the context of the unfulfilled vow, as having the potential to act as a wedge between Harrow and... all of it; the ninth, the tomb, the immortal emperor. This discovery, one that transforms her relationship with the ninth house, would happen around 10-12. The genocide and not the locked tomb at that kid agency interval.

In gtn, Gideon, raised as a reviled outsider, wanted to flee the Ninth. And that is absolutely not Harrow Nova, but! I think that she would have developed... some complicated and critical opinions, perhaps, by the time she is injuring Ortus for her right to Cavalier Primary.

The idea of her being alienated from the Ninth house in some significant ways --questioning it in ways that parallel but are different from how Gideon did-- while simultaneously drawing closer by becoming Cavalier is very fun!