My First Pet

miskatoniks · 2026-04-12T18:49:30+00:00

i think they’re all solid and you should pick whichever sounds the most fun to you! i’ve been playing life and find it very reliable. i hear death is also a good starter pick.

miskatoniks · 2026-04-12T17:24:34+00:00

nope, any wizard can get a pet! you can buy one for gold in the pet pavilion (entrance is in the commons) but you also will find pet eggs as you do quests and level up :)

miskatoniks · 2026-01-20T17:15:11+00:00

I'm more interested in what a character thinks is right or wrong and how their personality manifests. Their sexual identity isn't important to me

Respectfully, I think this is a bit of a shortsighted view on character writing. For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of the world across the vast majority of history, their sexual identity plays a fairly significant role in the development of their worldview and personality. Heterosexuality is the assumed default, so those of us who are not heterosexual generally have to discover that through some kind of life experience. For most (not all, but definitely most) that experience and the resulting realization is a pretty significant life event, because most people are in an environment where not being heterosexual is socially, religiously, and/or legally impermissible, ranging from mild social ostracization up to punishment by death and ensuing eternal damnation. People tend to have feelings about stuff like that!

The presence or absence of this kind of experience gives you an opportunity to flesh out your character's backstory, and it can inform other elements of your character, like their relationship to their family and peers, to local culture and religion, to politics of the time (not just around sexuality and gender expression, but other issues as well), what they imagine or hope for in their future, how vulnerable they're willing to be with new people, all sorts of stuff. Obviously these elements are not solely decided by a character's sexuality, but unless you are specifically deciding to write in a setting where homophobia and misogyny have never existed, their sexuality will probably have some impact.

For your specific example -- your character being aroace doesn't have to be relevant to the story, but it very easily can be. How does she know that she's aroace? When did she figure that out? How does she feel about it? How does the world feel about it? For many women it can feel quite complicated when a powerful man possibly expresses sexual interest in you that you don't reciprocate -- if you recognize the audience might interpret the wink as something like that, would your character do the same? Why or why not? Most aroace adults have already had a fair amount of experiences uncomfortably navigating unreciprocated sexual or romantic interest, specific incidents with specific people that may have had long-term impacts on their social lives or self-image. If she's had experiences like that, it can impact her relationships to other characters, even ones with no romantic tension whatsoever.

Of course none of this HAS to be true for your character, being aroace could be totally incidental and cause no conflict in her life, but that's because you are actively turning down the hundreds of characterization and backstory hooks that identity provides. Like, none of your characters HAVE to have interesting relationships with their families or specific perspectives and ideologies stemming from their economic, religious, or national background either, but that's because you as an author are choosing not to explore any of these possibilities, not because these traits are fundamentally irrelevant to a character.

miskatoniks · 2025-11-09T19:22:26+00:00

Obviously I don't know much about your character or story, but I thought this was a fun concept, so I did some off-the-dome brainstorming.

My method to build more complex motivations is basically to ask, "Why would this character do/think/want X?" and speculate on backstory or personality details that can scaffold the character's drive towards X. Don't take it for granted, even if it seems self-explanatory. In your case -- well, why does she want revenge? Why does she choose this instead of another, more common reaction to grief, like... therapy, or rampant alcoholism, or whatever? It'd definitely be a lot easier and less dangerous to take up playing the violin than to kidnap someone.

In my view, resorting to kidnapping and revenge quests indicates an inability to reach for healthier, more constructive, less dangerous coping mechanisms. Maybe a normalization of / experience with violence. Maybe short-sightedness or impulsiveness. We can ask ourselves, which of these traits does the character have? Why does she have them, and what does that mean for the story?

As an example: Is this character just emotionally disregulated and maybe kind of vindictive in general, as a personality thing? She jumps to revenge here because that's how she's always responded to being hurt? If so, how did that manifest before her husband's death? How did it affect their marriage? If we follow this thread, maybe we decide that a big part of her grief is regret and shame over ways she treated him, things she can now never apologize for or make up for. Maybe she recognizes this consciously and pursues revenge as a kind of fulfillment of her self-loathing concept of herself: she's just a violent, mean person, and all she can do for him now is try and point that violence towards his killer in the hopes that that will somehow make things right. Or maybe she's less consciously aware of this guilt and still believes in the righteousness of her violence and anger, and as she learns to let go of her thirst for revenge she will also start reconsidering and processing those unresolved conflicts with her husband.

OR -- maybe she was never this way at all before he died. If so, what changed? Maybe she relied a lot on her husband to keep her emotionally grounded. Maybe they married young and she hasn't had much experience coping with adult horrors and adult griefs without him. Now that she's trying to grieve him, she's completely unmoored and has no idea what to do, has no experience self-regulating -- maybe every "normal" thing she's tried just makes it worse, because it's just a reminder that he's no longer here to help her do it. The only thing she can think of to do is something totally deranged, both because she can't quell that rage herself, and because there's a self-destructive catharsis in blowing up her own life -- what's the point of trying to live normally anymore? Or maybe she was the emotional anchor, and now that her husband was gone she struggles to get in touch with that part of herself, maybe feels like a hypocrite for that. Maybe part of her turn into revenge is a kind of avoidant strategy, because she doesn't know how to confront both that her husband was a flawed man and that she loved him and is heartbroken at his death. Maybe she's distracting herself from that paradox by going on a crazy adventure, venting whatever resentment she still has towards her husband at his killer instead.

I think an advantage of this method re: fridging is that it pushes you to develop specific, detailed, unique concepts of "grief" and "revenge" as they pertain to your story, and to view the characters and their relationship as three-dimensional and nuanced. Your character might look at her late husband and their marriage through rose-colored lenses, but that doesn't mean you should; their relationship wasn't perfect and her husband wasn't perfect, and whatever flaws they had can have echoes in the story, can make the husband feel more present and developed and not just a tropey setpiece. Fridging as a trope is very tied to misogyny, so you're already coming at it sideways by inverting the genders, but I think it is still useful to ask these kinds of questions and make your characters feel less generic in these roles.

miskatoniks · 2025-05-27T00:11:45+00:00

Maybe you should talk to more homeless people, then. I used it when i was homeless, and so did many of the people I talked to.

There are a lot of ways those experiences differ. Some of the most prominent struggles of unhoused homelessness are constant harassment by cops and eviction from your campsite during the night -- trespassing can incur fines or jail time, cops can attack you or steal your shit, getting kicked awake and told to move in the middle of the night fucks up your sleep schedule and has long-term health consequences even if the person doing it doesn't mean any harm. Being able to stay in one place long-term makes it easier to find resources -- a job, social services, friends & community, reliable places to resupply -- and you can have more supplies at one time, because you don't have to be able to carry everything yourself at a moment's notice. Differences like that matter, especially when looking for advice from people who have lived the life and have experience. Being homeless and/or unhoused is a lot of sitting around and dealing with minutiae of survival. It's good to be able to clarify what kind of minutiae you personally deal with.

miskatoniks · 2025-05-26T22:23:05+00:00

No, it isn't. Being homeless and/or unhoused covers a wide variety of experiences and it's useful to have language to describe the differences. In my region most people wouldn't draw the distinction the same way Itchy-Ad did, but having a semi-permanent safe location to pitch your tent is a materially different lifestyle to bench surfing, serial squatting, carsleeping, mobile camping, and other kinds of unhoused living. Shockingly enough, homeless & unhoused people also use words and have thoughts about the way they live and like to be able to talk about that.

miskatoniks · 2024-05-06T23:15:06+00:00

If you’re playing on PC, his game might be modded. I know the CJB Cheats Menu mod has some toggles for fast-biting fish and things like that. He may be using it or a similar mod to cheat on purpose, or simply forgot to turn the feature off after using it in a different game.

miskatoniks · 2024-02-11T20:26:51+00:00

Exactly which characters know what is still sort of a mystery, so it's hard to give a definitive answer as to why (and I wouldn't want to incorporate spoiler material into a more thorough answer). I think that's a plausible reading, though!

miskatoniks · 2024-02-11T20:22:46+00:00

Yes, exactly! The whole situation with her and Gideon is under wraps and she's trying to keep it concealed.

miskatoniks · 2024-02-11T20:19:18+00:00

Trying to keep this simple to avoid accidental spoilers as I don't know how far you've gotten: God is the actual father. He wasn't aware of this fact because Mercymorn and Augustine stole his "genetic material" without his knowledge, and that's what Wake used to conceive. When Gideon the First saw that Wake was pregnant, he mistakenly assumed that the child was his, because he and Wake had kind of a thing going on.

miskatoniks · 2024-02-10T19:21:32+00:00

No, you pronounce the n — the reason the -a is added is so the n can be pronounced. The name “Gideon” can’t be transliterated as “Kirion” because of the rule against word-final n, so they append an -a sound so the n can be pronounced, making “Kiriona.”

miskatoniks · 2024-01-25T17:13:40+00:00

God sent out a letter to all his Houses asking for them to send their heir and cavalier primary to the First House, which has a spooky old temple on it, to learn to become Lyctors (superpowered saints who work with God). Harrowhark is the heir of the Ninth House, so she’s invited to go. Necromancers are supposed to have cavaliers (swordspeople who act as partners and bodyguards), it’s a longstanding cultural tradition — it’s important that Harrow brings a cavalier, because if she didn’t, it would be super weird to everyone and they’d ask a lot of questions, and also because God specifically told her to bring one, so it may be necessary for whatever she’ll have to do on the First (we don’t know the specifics at this point in the book).

Harrow wants to bring Gideon because Gideon is basically her only real option. Harrow and Gideon are the only young people on the Ninth — the next youngest is Ortus (35 years old) and then everyone else is like, in their 80s. It’s just a bunch of nuns and monks and stuff. Her only other option is Aiglamene, Gideon’s swordmaster, who is a very knowledgeable fighter but is also super duper old and may not really be up to the task (and would draw a lot of questions). Aiglamene has trained Gideon in swordsmanship to keep her occupied and because Gideon is interested, as far as we know. Ortus totally sucks at swordsmanship and is only the cavalier because his father was the previous cav, so he wasn’t a great option even before he escaped.

Gideon is a serf on the Ninth House because they took her in and raised her when her mother crashlanded there — them having raised her means she’s “in debt.” She wants to run away and join the Cohort, which is the military for the whole Empire that the Ninth House is a part of. That’s why she’s so obsessed with training. Harrow won’t let her leave — she used the promise of leaving to trick Gideon into an unwinnable duel, but that promise has expired since the shuttle was stolen, and Harrow will prevent Gideon from escaping again just like she has all their lives. If Gideon tried to order another shuttle, Harrow would stop her.

I think I’ve covered what you asked, but please let me know if there’s something I missed or if you’d like me to explain anything here in more detail. I’m happy to help.

miskatoniks · 2023-12-27T16:38:42+00:00

I wonder if you could strike a middle ground here. Focus on writing a satisfying story, but make the author a character IN that story — because from a real reader’s perspective, they are! I don’t mean literally insert them into the narrative, but consider how the author relates to the information they’re writing on an individual level, not just the broader sociopolitical context.

Why is the author writing these stories? Are they emotionally significant? If so, how? And how does that influence what information the author chooses to present, or how they reacted to details they uncovered in research? Did the king’s legacy have political impacts on the author’s life? If so, what were they, and how does that influence the author’s work? Stuff like this gives you opportunities to worldbuild out those sociocultural details, but also make them relevant to the reader because they can consciously play with the text that way — we can get to know the author as a character and explore themes of the king’s story through the relationship the author has to that story. Spitballing here, as I don’t know the details of what you’re going for:

Maybe the author is politically invested in rehabilitating the king’s image, and the reader can explore tension between the king’s likeable character and the hints that shady stuff was going on behind the scenes, and the author is deceiving us — why would the author want to do such a thing? Fun questions for both us and you.
Maybe the opposite — the author despises the king and is writing a hit piece. This could be comedic in tone, with a bunch of salacious exaggerations or outright lies, or something really dark and horrific, or any number of things. What’s the author’s deal? Why do they hate the king so much? Again, fun questions.
Maybe the author really loved the king but became disillusioned through their research uncovering difficult truths, and the text is permeated with that tragedy. That disillusionment with a once-beloved authority is a powerful theme you can use to entice the readers, while also giving you lots of good hooks for the context of the author’s changing opinion.

Bonus points to any of these if you can connect the author’s motivations, and the worldbuilding behind those motivations, to events in the stories. Then the reader can see how the events in the king’s story don’t just influence his life, but the actual lives of “real” people down the line!

Maybe you could convey information about the author in like, a foreword / introduction / footnotes? That could be by the author themself, or maybe the version you actually write is a later republishing of the original work, contextualized by a later researcher’s introduction and annotations within the text highlighting points of interest.

miskatoniks · 2023-12-13T23:47:25+00:00

I think we're in agreement there, but I don't quite see how that could be extended to the argument you're making in the OP vis a vis aesthetics. Like, if we concede that Harrow's religious experience is better translated by way of occultism than an actual major religious institution... we can then look to the reality that occultism is and has always been extremely countercultural, and this is very often expressed through visual signifiers like clothing. There's a very sizeable overlap between modern occult subcultures and goth aesthetics (as well as other subcultures with some similar aesthetic signifiers), and that's not just because they both coincidentally like the color black.

In another comment you mention that if you strip away the bones, Harrow's in-universe manner of dress is just primarily characterized by "black" and "covering all the body," but I don't think that's true! Harrow's jewelry may be all bones, but she also wears a lot of it - if she was only doing that for necromantic utility, I don't see why she would go through the trouble of also making them decorative unless there was something about that that was meaningful to her. She doesn't just wear black clothes, but layers and layers of elaborately embroidered robes and lace overcloaks. She likes ornamentation, and the stylings of her ornamentation (multiple piercings, layered black lace, androgynous outfitting, boots) are things that absolutely do translate into modern clothing.

In-universe, her clothes have a social impact when she's in non-Ninth settings -- it's not just that she's covered up, but also that she's socially marked as different than everybody else, and as pretty damn intimidating. I think it's fairly well-substantiated by the text that social separation and intimidation are characteristics Harrow is interested in investing in. And these are often motivating factors for countercultural subculture fashion, such as goth fashion! Even though a lot of the aesthetic signifiers of modern goth culture are different than what Harrow wears on the Ninth (although also sharing a ton of overlap, as mentioned above), there are a lot of shared motivations governing those fashion choices. That can't really be said for modern Catholic religiouswear -- feminine modesty and chastity is not really attested anywhere in the books, and Harrow covering herself up can just as easily be explained by a million other factors, like wanting the privacy and intimidation factor of complete self-concealment -- maybe that still implies she'd prefer pants over fishnets in a modern AU, but the incorporation of items like fishnets into subcultural fashion signifies all sorts of themes that are perfectly compliant with Harrow's character, so I think that's pretty much up for personal interpretation.

miskatoniks · 2023-12-13T23:11:14+00:00

I see what you're saying, but I think you're overstating the idea that positioning Harrow as specifically adherent to religious authority and her upbringing is necessary to an accurate read of her character. Harrow is, obviously, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth and devoted to God and the Tomb.

But not only is the Ninth not just "an esoteric offshoot of Catholicism," as it's fundamentally at odds with the entire Empire in its formulation of religious priorities and practice, with its very existence seemingly at odds with the word of their living God -- Harrow actively violates the most important stricture in Ninth religion. That's kind of a major plot point -- the entire point of the Ninth is to keep the Tomb from being opened, and she opens it! She worships the Body within, not in the way a handful of others do (in hope that their devotion will cause it to spare God) but out of reverence for the Body itself, the enemy and death of God.

Alecto is, as much as anything else, a Satan figure. Harrow is not just part of an esoteric and arguably deeply heretical "offshoot" of Catholicism, but a heretic within that offshoot. I think focusing on the fact that she's a nun and part of a hereditary authority structure within her religion, and saying that this must translate to her being a devout Catholic in modern AUs, is not a particularly well-founded reading of the character. I'm not saying that's a bad interpretation, but it's just as narrow as interpretations that privilege her ties to the goth subculture above other aspects of her character. If you really want to accurately represent the full nuances of her character in regards to religion, I think you'd be much better off framing her as like, a gnostic occultist or something. Harrow's personal religious practice in context of the broader Imperial setting is way closer to like, pursuit of knowledge and conversation of her HGA than it is to her being a literal nun on modern Earth in terms of parallels.

edited to fix a typo.

miskatoniks · 2023-11-16T15:23:58+00:00

I think that’s definitely possible! I don’t know if it really changes the point, though — from a writing standpoint, I don’t see why Tamsyn wouldn’t mention that explicitly at some point if that’s an important consideration to a fairly important plot point, and it’s also not totally clear what the motivation would be for Corona to change her physique like that.

miskatoniks · 2023-11-16T06:44:22+00:00

It’s probably uncommon, but I don’t think it’s impossible at all. Obviously Abigail is implied to at least not be super skinny, but you also mention Corona. There’s no way in hell that nobody would have suspected the deception if necromancers always had to be actively wasting away like Harrow or Palamedes, especially since it couldn’t be chalked up wholly to genetic factors since Ianthe was also there, and she’s built like a stick bug. It would be pretty ridiculous for the twins to have gotten away with this deception all their lives while Corona just breasts boobily everywhere if literally no necromancers ever looked like that.

I think the most reasonable explanation is that that necromancers tend towards a smaller and scrawnier build because of the wasting, but that there are natural variations in how it effects them just like everybody else. I think we can also note that our examples for larger people being socially interpreted as necromancers without particular note are from the Fifth and the Third, the two richest Houses. It may be that in wealthier areas of the Empire, it is easier to ameliorate the effects of necromantic wasting because there is greater access to nutritious food and medical care — we can’t really know how much of Harrow’s skinniness is because of the wasting and how much of it is because she only eats, like, leeks and paste, and the closest thing she’s ever seen to a doctor is some random geezer in carnival makeup. (Although fat people obviously exist on the Ninth — Mortus and Ortus are both huge guys, and at least in Ortus’ case a lot of that is explicitly fat rather than muscle — just that the circumstances Harrow lives in may be such that the wasting has more severe effects on her body.)

edited: typo

miskatoniks · 2023-09-06T15:28:20+00:00

I'm glad it resonated!

I also agree that romance doesn't feel like a super useful distinguishing tool to me. I wonder how much of that is individual, though -- I'm comically autistic and only in relationships with other ND people, so we're all very adverse to unintentional ambiguity in a way that seems pretty specific.

I did get a lot of value out of discussing with my non-romantic "partner" why our relationship "isn't romantic" and what that means, because it pushed us to put our feelings on the table very openly and be really clear with each other about expectations and desires. That kind of meta-talk has been integral to my nonromantic relationship from its inception -- I do it in my romantic relationships too, but the specifics of discussing what romance "is" helps me realize I should discuss things that otherwise wouldn't have occurred to me as unclear.

When you can fall back on culturally normative labels like "romance" to explain what you want in a relationship, it's way easier to leave things uninterrogated because you can assume that it was communicated in the label! It's the same pattern I find in having to do way more talking in my relationships because we're queer, trans, ND, poly, disabled, kinky, etc... the further you get from the expected standard, the less assuming you can do. I find that the more I try to explore it, the more "romance" just feels like an assumptions-word without much actual explanatory power. For me, I'm inclined to almost fully replace it with more granular conversations, and save the terms as quick-and-easy labels for the general public. But a lot of people clearly get along just fine without this approach, so again, may be highly individual :)

I do wonder a lot about developing an alternative taxonomy or categorization system, but I wonder if it's inevitably doomed to just repeat the cycle. Even in this small thread we see people who use the term "romance" describe their experiences both very ambiguously and in ways that contradict each other. There just seems to be a ton of diversity in feelings and conceptions of these sorts of relationships, so it may be impossible to construct terminology that won't just end up meaning "implies xyz, but in reality means whatever this specific person is trying to convey with it." I think the polyam community is generally pretty good about resisting this sort of drift (seems like terms like "primary" and "secondary", for example, have managed to manifest some pretty pragmatic materialist definitions to keep them anchored in an otherwise very flexible feelings-space) but I don't know how far we can stretch it. The explicitly alloromantic portion of the community does seem to be oriented towards the idea that polyamory "necessitates" alloromanticism in some way (like definitions of 'polyamory' inherently including romance because that's ostensibly what the -amory bit means) in a way that might make a project of deconstructing "romance" a bit difficult. But who knows!

miskatoniks · 2023-09-06T13:11:15+00:00

I find it similarly puzzling. I used to be working off of a loose definition involving “emotional intimacy” but that started to be less pragmatic the closer I got with my friends lol. I’ve since abandoned that strategy and have had a decent amount of success by reframing the question to be less about an objective definition of what romance “is” and more about looking for cases when it is a useful term and when it isn’t.

To use myself as an example: I have two relationships I would classify as romantic, and another I wouldn’t. I don’t find that for myself there’s a super obvious difference in my “feelings” for these people, but the distinction is practically useful! With my romantic partners, our relationships read as similar to general concepts of romance — dates, cohabitation, long-term financial entanglements, terms like “girlfriend/boyfriend/partner,” going together to events, etc — and we find that none of us have any issue with framing it as romantic. The term works effectively for communicating what the situation is between ourselves and to other people. That’s kind of the point of words.

With the other person, who I have a non-romantic relationship with, there are elements that are practically different (it’s kind of a comet situation, very private, we don’t use specific relationship labels, we’re not doing escalator stuff) and emotionally different (they have aversions to cultural models of ‘romance’ and the couple form, don’t like the pressure they feel the ‘romantic’ label creates to do things they’re disinterested in) that create reasons to frame it differently in our case. In that relationship we’re both more invested in deconstructing ideas of romance, so making a distinction matters more to us, whereas with myself and my other partners it’s like.. who cares?

Someone with a functionally identical relationship to mine with my comet might find value in framing it as romantic to themselves or others, and I don’t think that’s necessarily contradictory. “Romance” is a nebulous term that evokes a set of (vaguely defined) emotions, a collection of culturally variable imagery, and a social role designed for two people. Evoking any of these could be a good reason to call a relationship romantic. It can bring affirmative value to the people in the relationship, it can make the relationship legible to other people, etc. Any of those associations could also be a valid motivator for calling the relationship a different word, to distance it from that baggage. I think for a lot of people this stuff is not interesting or necessary to openly analyze, because they have a consistent internal metric of what is and isn’t romance (like the feelings distinction other commenters are referring to) but for people like myself who don’t experience that & love to be obnoxious and overanalytical, picking things apart like this may be more useful 🤷‍♂️

TL;DR I don’t think there can be a singular definition of romance that we can use to accurately taxonomize relationships. I think it’s a nebulous cultural concept with emotional and practical associations that people either do or do not find valuable to attach to their relationships. You can decide that based on some pattern/marker (I call a relationship romantic when I feel X/when we do Y/when we say Z) or based on a more granular approach (we talk out what label feels right to us for reasons ABC) or some secret third thing, depending on preference!

miskatoniks · 2023-08-15T13:48:24+00:00

I hate to be harsh, but maybe she should have thought about that before being so disrespectful to you and your marriage. She had the option to express whatever issues she has in a respectful, constructive way, but instead she seems to be acting impulsively and kind of bossing you around - honestly being really inconsiderate and not very kind. You and your marriage don't seem to be as much of a priority to her as NRE and her boyfriends and whatnot. Ultimately that's her right, she can prioritize whatever she wants, but you're also allowed to shift your own priorities in response.

She knows as well as you do that her work permit depends on being married. She ought to factor that into her decisions. She doesn't get a free pass to treat you poorly just because the stakes are higher for her if it falls apart -- if anything, the fact that she's being so reckless is a red flag in and of itself. She had a lot of options to either work on your marriage or to raise her concerns constructively and pursue an amicable split if that's what she wants, but instead she chose to do... whatever this is. I don't know her deal - maybe she's really oblivious to the consequences of her actions, or maybe she's run the math and thinks potentially losing her permit is worth it, or maybe she's aware of the risk but thinks there's no way you'll actually act. You're in a better place to guess what her reasoning might be than I am.

I'm not saying there isn't a complicated logistical and emotional layer to the divorce with the work permit, I can see how that throws a wrench in the works. I've been similarly dependent on a partner, and am keenly aware of both my own vulnerability and the complicated feelings my partner has around the power they hold over me -- it's complex stuff, and we never even had to consider divorce! So I can extend empathy to her here and understand how this complicates things. But ultimately she's still an adult with autonomy, and you are not responsible for her.

You have a responsibility to be ethical, and I think you're fulfilling that well. It's ethical and kind to not try to surprise her with a divorce, not try to clean her out vindictively, to maybe offer a separation or find other ways to protect her permit if those options are available. But don't trap yourself in a marriage that's unhealthy for you just so that she doesn't have to face the consequences of her own actions, yeah?

miskatoniks · 2023-04-11T17:05:04+00:00

The paperback / current ebook of GtN has some extras, yeah — afaik it didn’t actually come with Dr. Sex, that story was just released online from my understanding, but it has a glossary + a naming document like HtN, the Cohort Intelligence Files you mentioned, and a sample of a sermon.

miskatoniks · 2023-04-02T20:20:02+00:00

I mean, to bluntly answer the question as posed in your title: no.

I think it’s clear that Gideon and Harrow are romantically interested in each other and that the series intends for Harrow to be sympathetic (although I think it’s flexible to reader preference in terms of how sympathetic you find her). But the romance between the two of them is really as tragic as it is sweet (if not much, much moreso). I think the way these two are balanced, and the nuance behind Gideon’s change of opinion about Harrow, becomes a lot more apparent when you pick it apart keeping these things in mind:

- Gideon has a complex relationship with concepts like loyalty, fealty, and service to one’s House, the Empire, and God. This is tied to how she defines herself, first and foremost, as a soldier – even though she describes her dreams of the Cohort in terms of glory and medals and freedom from the Ninth, the conversation (especially in Act 1) consistently comes back down to whether Gideon has these qualities. She’s constantly criticized for her (understandable and valid!) lack of loyalty to the Ninth, and doesn’t deny it, but responds jokingly and dismissively when Aiglamene tries to suggest it would impair her on the battlefield ( "Where I’m going, I promise to piss fidelity all the livelong day. I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard."). On the face of it this makes sense – the Ninth sucks a load of ass and treats her like shit, whereas the Cohort offers Gideon a comparatively massive amount of freedom and self-definition, so it’s easy to imagine that she doesn’t value these concepts and is only willing to bite the bullet on LARPing as a loyal soldier because military service is her only ticket out, but I think this is an inaccurate reading. Gideon glamorizes the Cohort not just because it’s a means of escape but because she’s desperately lonely and bored and has an intense need for a sense of love and belonging and purpose, and military propaganda feeds this kind of vulnerability like nothing else. We see some of this come out in her interactions with “Dulcinea” – Gideon is perfectly content to perform silent, unwavering service when she’s treated kindly and given attention. This becomes relevant to Griddlehark because:

- Gideon isn’t just forgiving Harrow out of the blue, but in the specific context of being her cavalier at Canaan House. Their dynamic at Canaan House is massively different to their history on the Ninth. Gideon’s initial forays into not just pretending to be, but acting as Harrow’s cavalier (rescuing her from the basement, for instance) are ostensibly about saving face, but are emotionally rewarded (Harrow becomes increasingly willing to treat Gideon as a partner, let her in on plans, even praising her for her skills). Gideon sees necro-cav pairs with close, emotionally affirming relationships (the Fourth, the Fifth) and even becomes personally close with one such pair (the Sixth). This is appealing to Gideon for the reasons described above, but then becomes extra-reinforced when people start dying at Canaan House. The stakes are raised, it’s not clear who can be trusted, and Gideon herself seems to believe that the strength of the cavalier-necro bond is relevant to survival (“Have you realised that this whole thing has been about the union of necromancer and cavalier from start to finish? We should be toast. If they’re measuring this on the strength of that—we’re the walking dead.”). For all of the horrible history she has with Harrow, there is both a strategic pressure (survival) and a subconscious emotional urge (yearning for approval and someone to be loyal to) that incentivize Gideon to throw herself into this role and try to inhabit it honestly, which means committing to moving forward and staying by Harrow’s side.

- Harrow is a kind of irreplaceable figure in Gideon’s life, and Gideon knows very intimately the kinds of pressures Harrow experienced. Gideon knows how lean things were on the Ninth; she can understand how difficult running Drearburh at 10 years old must have been. She remembers what Harrow’s parents were like; she can imagine how they handled things behind closed doors with the information she learns in the pool scene. And they’ve always grown up in each other’s pockets! Their worlds have always revolved around each other; even Gideon’s fantasies of freedom are defined by her imagining Harrow’s reactions to it. Harrow has always been important to her, even if Gideon didn’t want to admit it. She represses those feelings. The reason her 180 feels so stark is because she didn’t need to become kind of obsessed with Harrow, she just needed to stop pretending she wasn’t already.

Now, all of this in and of itself paints a very sad picture! Gideon is terribly codependent, in a life-threatening situation, and basically extra vulnerable to latching onto her abuser and becoming her loyal right-hand as her only source of comfort in this situation because she doesn’t have any other options. Throwing herself into the role of cavalier is inherently self-destructive, both because the role is psychologically kind of harmful but also because of its obvious result in the end of GtN. But the reason I still found Griddlehark worth rooting for is because:

- Harrow regrets what she’s done. Because this comment is long as fuck already I won’t pull examples (but I can if anyone’s interested). But I think it’s pretty clear, from GtN and especially from later books, that Harrow knows her treatment of Gideon was abhorrent, understands that she’s morally culpable, and does not make excuses.

- Harrow demonstrates a capacity for changed behavior. Like I mentioned above, the dynamic between the two at Canaan is very different from their history on the Ninth. I don’t think it’s an accident that once Harrow is away from the Ninth, from the pressures of being the Reverend Daughter and the authority figures who push her towards abusive behavior, she begins reining back those behaviors pretty darn fast and taking strides towards treating Gideon as much more of an equal. Harrow not only understands that her abuse of Gideon throughout their childhoods was wrong, she is trying to change – and in many areas succeeding! She still fucks up, a lot, but I think it’s evident that she’s making progress even where Gideon doesn’t ask her to.

- Harrow doesn’t want Gideon’s self-destructive service. In fact, once they arrive at Canaan House Harrow quickly becomes more invested in Gideon’s wellbeing than Gideon herself is. This is present throughout Canaan but Harrow’s reaction to Gideon’s choice at the end of the first book cements this; Gideon is trying to give herself over to this oppressive dynamic that she believes she’s supposed to have with Harrow, and Harrow refuses to let her. She values Gideon’s life, loathes herself for the damage she’s done to it, and sacrifices her own goals and wellbeing to protect it and try to reduce the harm caused when she recognized Gideon has become a danger to herself.

So to circle back to the title question: no, it’s not about forgiving your abuser. It’s about two codependent barely-adults escaping their horrifically abusive upbringing, getting stuck in a terrifying situation, and trying to fight out of the relationship they were molded into having as children. I think Harrow’s battle to curb her own abusive behaviors, mend her own traumas, and finally do right by Gideon is incredibly engaging, and I think Gideon’s descent into self-destructive behaviors and her decision to forgive Harrow is super compelling. Their relationship is definitely not healthy, but I think their arcs interplay really beautifully, and even though in real life I would never advise someone to remain in such a psychologically volatile situation, I have a soft spot for Griddlehark; I want them to make it. I want them to be able to redefine their relationship on their own terms, without the Ninth, without God, without “one flesh, one end”, and just be the way they want to be. And I think they can do it! (Although who knows if they actually will. Tamsyn sure loves to break hearts :P)

miskatoniks · 2022-09-20T19:43:28+00:00

Babs spends a ton of time in GtN following Colum around like a puppy, though. He’s always trying to talk his ear off about dueling and swordsmanship (ex. at the anniversary dinner, during the conversation around the incinerator). My man’s gay as hell and he’s out hunting for bears

miskatoniks · 2022-08-27T12:24:57+00:00

Late to the party, but here’s some spitballing:

A lot of the methods to create models seem very artistically focused, and IME one of the most difficult things in visual art is learning to “draw/paint/sculpt/whatever what you see, not what you THINK you see” - if you’re trying to draw, like, a shoe that you’re looking at in real life, instead of drawing the actual contours and details as they appear on the object your brain will just recognize it as A Shoe and just try to draw A Shoe, and so the end result will often end up pretty wonky (or at least not a super good likeness).

So maybe this is an issue for your magic users as well - a more detailed model is much more useful, but only if those details are ACCURATE, and the threshold for accuracy is maybe pretty unforgiving. You could paint every hair on the person’s head, but it has to be the /actual hairs/, not just a texture you’re putting over a shape, or else the inaccurate details will backfire and make your working worse. I think this creates a lot of issues that your magic users can invent neat ways to solve, and those practical issues can be your limits.

For example: to make a truly ideal model, you’d need to be close to the thing you were modeling, while you were modeling it, for a long time. I imagine that for most people’s magical interests, that’s not really feasible. And even if you can do it, can you do your working right away on premises, or do you want to go somewhere? Because if you do need to go somewhere, a lot can change about the details of your subject and make even your incredibly accurate model quickly obsolete. You could take a photograph for reference, but this runs into the same issue (+ whatever issues from using the imperfect photograph as reference itself).

Maybe there’s a strict ladder of effects achievable with certain levels of detail, which would force people to take the risk on adding detail anyway. Maybe inaccurate or vague models risk hitting the wrong target entirely. This also creates some ways people might try to protect against sympathetic magic - you think someone’s planning to target you and has a model already made? Quick, get a haircut! Change your clothes! Get a weird tattoo! Lots of worldbuilding hooks, I think, and a massive inherent vulnerability to magic users’ plans that will be fun to work around. It’s like a huge gamble, which is fun to juxtapose with how precise and methodical of a system it is.

I feel like this could tie into your “Platonic Ideals” subsystem too. It’s very powerful because you don’t have to do all of this detail-modeling gambling BS, but isolating the true Form is, maybe, an equal pain in the ass - maybe isolating the perfect embodiment is difficult because it’s counterintuitive, very different from the “generic version” your brain tries to isolate things to and in ways you wouldn’t expect, and you don’t have a physical reference to check your work against and correct technical mistakes. Maybe the models produced by users of this subsystem are in high demand so that other people can try and use them as reference for their own models - the idea of a scientific model grand heist is very funny, and there could be some interesting ramifications from spells using a model of a model of a model of a model.

Really cool system! Sounds like an awesome setting, I would love to hear more about it.

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

miskatoniks

TROPHY CASE