My Main Comment On The Captive Prince Series Is That It Needed A 4th Book To Resolve That Baby Plot But

maybe stocks are fucked now but that's only because baru cormorant just got promoted imperial accountant of asia

Gideon telling Harrow to stop screaming for her after she sacrifices herself on the fence still haunts me to this day btw

one thing i find absolutely fascinating about the griddlehark dynamic and specifically gideon's relationship to her sacrifice/harrow's ascension

bc recall that at the end of gtn, the very last thing she says to harrow before fence time is

at this point, gideon seemingly understands that harrow doesn't actually want to become a lyctor *at the cost of gideon's life.* gideon fully understands that to harrow, losing gideon is the worst thing that could happen. the CRUELLEST thing in harrows life, when gideon is intimately familiar with the lifetime of cruelty that harrow has already endured. she's sacrificing herself so that harrow (and secondarily cam lol) can live, fully aware that this is something that she's doing TO harrow, not FOR her.

and yet we get to htn and gideon seemingly can't comprehend that harrow would try to reverse the lyctorhood process in service of saving her life. she thinks that harrow doesn't want to accept her sacrifice because she hates owing gideon anything. which is the opposite of what "the cruellest thing that anyone has ever done to you" implies.

i think the simplest answer is that gideon severely lacks emotional permanence. gideon and harrow got along for like a week at canaan house. it's been months and months since then, months where harrow isn't affirming her devotion to gideon because she literally doesn't remember that gideon exists. and i think that's another crucial piece - gideon wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, she wanted to matter to harrow for the rest of eternity, she wanted to be missed, because she has no conception of what a healthy interpersonal relationship looks like. can't wait to see whether gideon is ever going to understand harrows lobotomy the way that harrow experienced it - as the ultimate expression of love and devotion and grief.

the griddlehark reunion is going to make me ugly cry for days.

nona the ninth will always be one of the most beautiful and most painful books in the world to me because. it is about love in its every possible form. it's about the love you have for someone who takes care of you and the love you have for those you care for. it's about loving someone after seeing all their rough edges and ugly sides and choosing to love someone even if it hurts and even if you know it might doom you. it's about not choosing to love someone, but loving them anyway because sometimes it's not up to you to choose. it's about loving the dogs on the street and the stranger you met at the park and the child that never speaks to anyone in class. it's about loving the creases in someone's face when they laugh and the way their hips sway and how they can't stand still. it's about your love for the sea and the pang of grief at the tought that it is being poisoned. it's about the immense pain that comes with the loss of someone you loved. it's about bearing that loss, it's about letting that cut burn because its presence means that there was love. and that cannot be taken away. you have loved, you have been loved, and you always will. and the fact that it hurts and it ends doesn't erase the fact that at the end of the day, it's always love at the core of it all. in its every form and expression, by turning into rage, or kindness, or utterly destructive force, it all starts and ends in love. you can't remove that. you can't take loved away.

they are done!

I'm giving Anastasia a try, on the fence

article title clickbait for the gangsey —

blue:

gansey:

henry:

adam:

ronan:

noah:

bonus, gray man:

Harrowhark but she's Blood of Eden and her name is Spooky Scary Skeletons Send Shivers Down Your Spine. Is this anything.

The thing that really gets me about the start of Nona the Ninth is how - even though she didn’t end up being either one of them - Cam, Pal, and Pyrrha couldn’t figure out whether she was Harrow or Gideon because they knew how absolutely fucked up their childhoods must of been.

They knew that if they took away all of the horrible things that Gideon and Harrow went through they would be almost unrecognizable as people - how much of their personalities were shaped by what they were trained to do, or how they resented their training. Making them wonder that maybe if things were different Harrow or Gideon could have been the happy and loving little girl Nona is.

Could you imagine having the chance to reparent your friend, giving them the things you think they deserve, that they never got, and realizing they are nothing like the friend you knew?

And then realizing that either way, this must be better.

are you afraid of dying alone?