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Tlt - Blog Posts
Nova AU: Reverend Daughter Gideon
[I had a thought that rather than doing canon Harrow's style of corpse puppeting, RD Gideon would get really into programming her constructs with complex instructions (like getting the skellys to dab every time Nova says the word "die"). Her mother's skeleton is her ongoing pet project and she teaches it to mimic affection.]
i think the thing about griddlehark is that i don't actually see a future for them where they're like. healthy. like independent partners in a sustainable symbiosis. i don't see that for them. they're always gonna be kinda codependent and weird about it but like. i do see a future where that's kinda ok for them? they walk around with gideon's carabiner clipped into one of harrow's belt loops. when they must be separated in public gideon wears like. a bracelet or a choker or something because harrow said "no" to dog collars in public. if harrow gets home and gideon isn't there then she gets separation anxiety that spoiled puppies can only dream of. she likes to do discrete checks to make sure gideon's heart is still there, her blood pressure is ok, her hormones levels indicate good sleep and relative calm. gideon pretends not to notice. and then one day when they're both very old and maybe one of them gets sick, they simply throw themselves into the sun together. and it's not healthy but, you know, it works for them.
harrow the ninth is really like. what if orpheus didn't turn around. what if he wasn't going to turn around. what if he kept his face pointed resolutely ahead and trusted that she was there even not knowing what he was hoping for. what if orpheus had to be cajoled and threatened and eventually forced to turn around. what if eurydice hadn't been told the rules and also had a crippling fear of abandonment and spent the whole time pleading with him to look at her. what if orpheus trusted that she would follow him but eurydice couldn't trust that he would care. what if orpheus was told point-blank that eurydice was almost certainly not actually behind him and he chose to keep walking anyway. what if eurydice touched sunlight again and orpheus wasn't there. what then.
have u ever thought abt the sheer gastrointestinal distress that Gideon must have experienced during those first few weeks at Canaan House. like yes she might be the child of God but my girl was raised on nutrient paste and snow leek which does not prepare the disgestive system for any kind variety. Harrow was probably fine bc she barely ate anything but Gideon went full ham on all the food. THIS is why the narrative breezed over those first few days at Canaan house. it wasn't just bc she was bored and had nothing to do. it was also bc Gideon was in the bathroom.
you’ll wish she didn’t!
For science, I collected what each of the Houses hears when Gideon speaks to them for the first time.
Seventh: “Yo. Step off.” (when Cytherea faints)
Sixth: “Then get off your ass and help me.”
Fifth: never got to hear her talk :(
Fourth: thee line of all time, which is to say, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”
Eighth: “They had names, you lily-livered, tooth-coloured asshole, and if you want to make a thing about it, I warn you that I’m in the kind of mood that can only be alleviated by walloping you.”
Corona: “No. I thought their arms would all flop around.” (in response to Corona asking if she’s seen a necro hold a sword before)
Ianthe/Babs, probably also the Second: “Why?” (after they gather to confront Cyth about Pro’s head)
sat bolt upright in bed at 12:38am to deliver this extremely hot take.
I would like posit that Gideon has no fucking idea what a cow is, and that Jod, self-aware memelord that he is, decided to decorate his inner sanctum with engravings of cattle.
I love how Gideon has no idea how OP Harrow is. Like, she's fucking proud of her, at the end, but she just hasn't seemed to have clued in that her girl is not normal. By several degrees of magnitude.
Look at this, here:
Harrow calls bullshit on Dulcinea having turned Pro into a Beguiling Corpse because it should not be possible for a single necromancer to do it. Not even a necromancer in the prime of their power. And Cytherea considers this a fair hole in her story, and amends it to say that it wasn't her, it was all the heads of the Seventh House working together.
Harrow completed this spell twice, by herself, at the age of ten.
rereading GtN is so funny. harrow goes missing and gideon flies into full panic mode, spends her whole morning desperately searching, says "ugh I give up, she can just die", eats lunch and then immediately recommits to searching again, dissociates out of stress when she learns Harrow's blood is everywhere, breaks her vow of silence to try and get help for Harrow, nearly breaks her wrists trying to open the door in panic, sprints her way down to Harrow, finds that she's okay and is immediately like
haha. as if i even cared. whatever
You know, it was a very interesting perspective change to see Gideon from the outside. This was literally the first time we’ve ever had scenes with Gideon where we’re not hearing her internal thoughts, and it really changes her character.
Like, I know Muir consistently described Gideon as a “dirt bag” in tumblr posts and interviews when the first book came out.
And this is someone who kicked Harrow when she fainted rather than catching her; this is someone who, when carrying an unconscious Harrow intentionally bumped her into walls and doorways in the hopes that she’d wake up with mysterious bruises on her head or maybe even a concussion. But, you know, we heard her internal narrative at that time, we heard about how she was holding back from doing worse, but also about how she’d been so consistently abused that maybe this was all justice anyway.
But we saw her grow and change, we saw her be kind to Harrow at the end (…and then not), we saw her stop hating on the teens and actually care when they died. Corona liked her (Corona pretty much never heard her speak), Magnus liked her (Magnus literally never heard her speak), Jeannemary liked her (Jeannemary was a teen looking for a role model and would have latched on to her no matter what her personality). So when she came back and never had a good thing to say to anyone at the end of the second book, we were all rooting for her anyway–she was awesome and they all deserved her wrath and her snark, because we’d been in her head for two books.
And now we have… she’s rude to Nona, because Nona is possessing Harrow’s body, and because Nona kissed her based on her body-language reaction to thinking she was seeing Harrow. If it were Gideon’s narrative still, we’d be told how well and truly justified she is, how sketchy and even villainous Nona is; but it’s Nona’s narrative so instead we hear about how rude Gideon is in her body language, not even her conscious choice of words.
We have, she’s about to give Paul her jacket but gets awkward and doesn’t. Nona sees her fail to help; in Gideon’s narrative her instinct was to help but she just felt too awkward.
We have, she says the same rude jokes to everyone that she did in the first two books, but even though Pal and Cam are still putting up with that, even though Ianthe still thinks she’s funny, we’re getting it from Nona’s perspective and Nona doesn’t like her and so doesn’t like her rude jokes.
Ianthe actually does like her, and it’s not clear whether that’s a point in her favor or not.
It’s the same Gideon through and through, she even gets mad at Alecto usurping her place in service to Harrow. But what a difference an uncharitable reading makes.
the HtN exchange between harrow and ortus leaves me weeping because. ortus was only a child during the creche massacre. he was left with no peers, no friends, with an abusive father pushing him to fulfil a role he was never going to be able to fill. and he grew up into an adult who did nothing as two children were hurt, beaten, poisoned, starved.
and harrow was a child deprived of nothing a child needs to live but everything they need to thrive. deprived of love, and care, and warmth and touch; born into a blood debt she can never hope to repay. it’s no suprise then that she grew into an angry and cruel creature who hurt others just because she could.
and their exchange abt this in HtN just gets me because. like.
ortus tells her he is sorry, because he was an adult and they were defenseless children, and he knows his parallel suffering cannot absolve him of his inaction. he knows he cannot change the past but he can stand for her now, and maybe that can still count for something. and harrow apologizes to ortus, because she realizes nothing, not even the hell of her childhood, will never excuse how she treated him. but she can honor him now, defend him now, belive him now.
im just. idk. something abt two people who were hurt, who are hurting, who hurt each other, coming together and saying that they will stop. that the cycle will not continue. even though nothing they do now can fix the cruelty of the past, even though they both know that whatever they do now could never even begin to tip any kind of cosmic scales; despite all of this, they will do right by each other now, even though it is too late. even in death and after it. weeping.
i think it was a very interesting choice by muir that, out of all our protagonists and characters, the only two people who tried to stop the lyctor trials in gtn were:
1. silas octikiseron
2. judith deuteros
the two most devout characters! and both characters’ opposition to the trials that were explicitly sanctioned by god and designed by the lyctors stemmed from their devotion to the laws and practices that developed from their empire and god.
silas wanted to stop the trials on the grounds he believed it was unholy and judith wanted to stop the trials right after the fifth died on the grounds that people were getting killed over this and it’s her duty to prevent that.
and like. silas is the one who attacks ianthe, a now SAINT, and brands her a heretic for becoming exactly what god wanted them all to become. and it’s judith who attacks teacher to flag down the emperor’s ship for help, which is what cytherea wanted because it endangers god. and silas, and later judith, both refuse to become lyctors on the basis of their moral belief systems.
and anyways where im going with this is that all throughout gtn muir paints them in an unquestionably negative light from the lens of our protagonist but ultimately both end up being right? in the most ironic possible way. i think it was a really neat choice for muir with her book that plays heavily on the theme of religion and dogma and what it looks like in different people.
If I had to choose a moment in time to take with me into eternity,
I'd choose this moment, with you in my arms
d'you ever just. think about gideon and harrow as two people who lost everything, had nothing their entire lives, and then just when they had each other in a more positive way. another sacrifice. another loss. and then in htn they still have nothing. a fucked up temporal lobe and a well to stick a soul in to show for it all. DO YOU EVER JUST ---
- Harrow repeated fumblingly, and then could say no more.
My fanart debut for the books that overtook my life this Halloween, brought to you by @winterscarf ‘s commission fund (and book pitching agenda)~
Gideon Nav as St Sebastian by Juan Carreno de Miranda. Such a fun study to draw her as😎
It's only a tiny detail, but I love that Gideon is fastidiously tidy while Harrow is a slob who leaves mounds of dirty clothes lying around her living space. It goes against stereotype for Gideon's boisterous jock personality and Harrow being a fussy nerd, and it makes sense when you think about it
i absolute love that gideon actually has a braincell (exemplified by her very large vocabulary as well as her general knowledge of necromancy and bones) and she just chooses to be an idiot just to fuck with harrow
what a little goblin, get it gideon
The way Ianthe performs life-extending experiments on apples, the forbidden fruit, the original sin……sexy