Oh boy you still haven't read HtN? Oh boy! I'm curious to see what your reactions to it will be. Also that is kind of amazing. My point of no return is when I start making fighting game AUs for the thing. Which I do in fact have for this series. Fighting game AU as in...The cast all is into fighting games, with several of them being involved in the competitive scene. Harrow's going to EVO and going to be a disappointment to her rich family. TELL ME OF MARCHING BAND AU.
Yeah, after the end of GtN i like, paced around the living room freaking out for like an hour. My roommates were worried about me (they are all normal people who do not react to media in this way like, ever). I will totally share my reactions here. And that is so wonderfully specific XD I assumed you meant like, imagining what their moves would be in a fighting game, which would also be cool. Making a marching band AU of this book is kinda funny, because it was Tamsyn Muir herself who cowrote the Homestuck marching band AU back in the day, which inspired this pattern in me. The lineup is as follows (with my only having read GtN): Judith- flag/rifle Marta- snare drum Ianthe - trumpet Corona- also trumpet Babs - alto sax Isaac - flute Jeannemary - tenor sax Abigail - woodwinds grad* Magnus - brass grad* Palamedes- mello/french horn Camilla - tuba Dulcinea - pit percussion (oboe in concert band, she also plays piano, which makes her good at pit) Silas - clarinet Colum- euphonium Harrow - quad drums Gideon - trombone (this isn't projection shhhh she has bone girl energy) (also 'we do bones' get it) *this is loosely based on my college band experience, where we have a few conducting graduate students help out with marching band every year as part of their program. they are referred to as 'the grads' and are like the beloved older siblings of the band. i thought abigail and magnus fit this role well. at first i thought maybe all the houses would represent different sections? but i kept running into road blocks and there weren't enough sections, and then i figured if it's college band i can make the backstory that all the houses are different high schools. they all go to Dominicus State University or something. (the fighting dead? i'm still workshopping)
Oh also worth adding is that Ianthe is incredibly good at trumpet, and Corona is bad at it, but has the best spirit and shouts the loudest.
tfw you share an instrument with the twins And oh yeah no I mean like they play the things. And on that front...Harrow likes to play puppeteers if she has the option available. Very fond of ones that function like Zato-1. Highly technical and with a playstyle based around set play in the extreme. Assuming she cannot play a puppeteer due to one not existing, she goes for the most irritating keep away zoner she can get her dirty little hands on. Harrow enjoys this for many reasons. One, it lets her be in control as much as possible. Two, these characters are often the most technical and therefore gain her instant bragging rights over other people just by virtue of being skilled with those characters at all. Outside of the game, Harrow is very, very into studying the game. She's obsessed with shit like frame data and spends a lot of her time arguing with people on fighting game theory. Gideon is the very definition of unga bunga. Harrow believed for years that Gideon was merely dumb as fuck. But no. Gideon is very good at turning brain off and just going apeshit. But she's smart about that. And what's more she's aggressive as shit in a way that scares people. Yeah she's dumb as hell but she's dumb as hell and she's not fucking stopping and you're stressed the hell out because she just won't fucking stop. Gideon was a Blanka main as a child. This has given Harrow a pathological hatred of Blanka. But Harrow played Guile and did Guile cheese so like is she any better? Gideon says "No." Cam's also aggressive as hell and also favors rushdown, but she's the thinking man's rushdown. People look at Cam and how she plays and talks and go "Yeah she is smart. Plays dumb characters but she's smart". Cam consistently has two characters she plays in any given game. Her actual main she often keeps in reserve. This is well known about her, but it does get to people emotionally when she does break out The Real Main. To those who do not know of this habit, it's just kind of baffling to be dismantled by an entirely different character that she is playing on an entirely different level with. Palamedes is a lab monster. Dude doesn't compete terribly often, but he does break these games in half. And in games he is part of, he is on the forefront of research. You owe those nice frame data breakdowns to Sex Pal. He ends up talking with Harrow a lot as a result of his focus on these games. She is often a combative little shit who seems to stand against his theories out of no other reason than sheer fucking spite at times. Palamedes is less of an ego driven shithead with no real self esteem though, so he often wins these arguments simply by way of Actually Fucking Thinking. Babs is a salty dickhead. Just. So salty. He knows the Scrublord's Prayer inside and out. Dude is technically good but he's just such a little bitch about his losses that people are like "lol fuck that dude". Babs is a dude that people make memes about online for being a bastard man. There's definitely a video up online of his getting his shit kicked in by Gideon and being dressed the fuck down. Babs probably picks high tiers because he's a dick. Ortus picks characters based on their lore. He is the one person in the play group besides Harrow that actually knows all the game lore. And part of why Harrow knows it is that Ortus tells her about it all. Ortus also writes fanfiction and does lore videos. Aiglamene survived one of the fabled SFII stabbings of the 80s.
Is there a character labeled as "tricky" in the wiki? Ianthe picks that asshole. She has also probably done shit like push buttons on her stick that aren't assigned to any function just to throw people off. This is horrid. People are like wtf why is she so lame all the time and she's like well I'm sexy and I won so get over it loser. Corona does not play fight games very well at all, though she is her sister's frequent play partner. Corona accompanies Ianthe and is registered as her coach during events. Even though her coaching appears to just be "Is Ianthe's supportive twin sister".
I know about half of the words you're saying Aon, but it seems in character and I'm glad you're having a good time. Here is my band info dump: I imagine Marta as lead snare (the one who always gives the tap off at the start of a piece) Ianthe is the star player, she gets all the trumpet solos, Corona is not (every band I've ever been in has had a trumpet player who is Terrible At Trumpet, but Hyped Anyway) Babs is the guy who is constantly shirtless at every rehearsal even when it's not hot out Camilla is a tuba bc Strong Gorl, and also because any time you meet a girl tuba player, she is the coolest person you've ever met. Gideon and Harrow went to the same high school, which in this universe is probably some weird Catholic school with an insanely intense music program. They hated each other back then, but now...ohoho Jeannemary is the one person in the band who actually knows the rules of football and has to teach everyone else. Harrow's always trying to get the drumline to do weird polyrhythm shit and everyone else is just like 'can we pls play normal rallies' Corona and Gideon get into drinking contests at the afterparties In another version of this AU, both Gideon and Harrow are on drumline (they are the most 'shadow culty' section) but I just couldn't NOT make Gideon a trombone.
god the band au is so good and valid. my french horn heart delighted at mellophone pal. and gideon absolutely has trombone energy
If I had artistic skills, I would totally draw Gideon and Dulcie doing a 'when Harrow isn't home' recreation
Also the other thing my brain likes to do when getting into a new thing is go 'what if this were a musical'? Which I'm not sure how that would work exactly, since there are three books and so many Events in each of them, but I have a really good idea for what the first song of the show would be. Gothic fugue, Latin chanting with the Ninth prayers incorporated, introducing the two leads. Maybe I'll write a rough draft in Finale when I get done with finals!
My roommate is stopping by the library and picking up Harrow the Ninth YEAH BABY LETS GOOOOOO (he has a card for the local library and I do not so he has been graciously letting me use it)
I love my goth lesbians! I love that this is somehow giving me a fuckton of feelings about necromancy and death!!!! I can't! Fucking! Get over! The memes! I have to go back and reread HtN all the way through at some point though bc I am 100% aware that it will make more sense on a second read.
After about 48 hours of neglecting ALL my responsibilites, i have finished Harrow the Ninth (was planning to share some live reactions but I got sucked in oops) I..... have so many emotions I just.... the necro/cav bond makes me fucking INSANE i am such a SLUT for devotional relationship shit like that I also have to go do some of those responsibilites I've been neglecting so I'll share more collected thoughts later
I am also 100% the person who starts frothing at the mouth at the mention of oaths, so I am also excited for thoughts! And Aon, I am also excitedly awaiting that fic bc YES PLEASE. I haven't started in on fanfic for this fandom yet, bc I want to do that reread first I think, but I will definitely get there... especially if I can finally get one of my family members to read these.
In terms of necro/cav I'm very hype about them because like. I've been hype about that kind of relationship for ages. I'm a yorusoi motherfucker. I got wild over knight/lady ships in FE. The things that get me the most about Tain Hu are related to her knightly devotion to Baru. So like I am already biased in favor of this. But it also comes with like this extra bonus of functioning as a homophobia metaphor. Like it's not direct and so it lets people look at it and see in it what they need to as they are comfortable with it. But like there's a lot going on there with like it as a metaphor. I think the most open and easy to spot example of it is I. M. Bias's essay where he whines about how people keeping shipping his historical favs because WHY CAN'T THEY JUST BE FRIENDS WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE IT ABOUT ROMANCE. and on the note of that very specific kind of fuckery. apparently someone read the first book and was like "oh i love the relationship between harrow and gideon it's so sisterly" to muir and like. harold. they're lesbians.
Herald, they're lesbians! OK wait I keep hearing about this "harrow nova" stuff and like... what is it exactly? I kept thinking it was going to be explained in the book but I think I must have missed it. The only mention I can remember was in one of those messed-up-memory-flashbacks Harrow has with Abigail right before you get to learn how she lobotomized herself.
Also, a non-exhaustive list of quotes from this book that made me say, out loud, "Oh Harrow, honey" Spoiler "What dismantled you-- you bereft idiot-- was not even the God who made the Ninth House, the Emperor All-Giving, the Kindly Prince; your end appeared in the form of a grown adult telling you that they might have liked you for their own." "You had always been afraid of anyone touching you, and had not known your longing flinch was so obvious to those who tried it." and just like, the ENTIRETY of the Soup Chapter. God I just want to adopt this poor girl
Harrow Nova is the name Harrow has in the roleswap AU that her lobotomized hell brain imagines when Abigail is trying to help her figure out what actually happened. People go absolutely fucking feral over it because I mean. Harrow. As a cav. And not just Harrow as a cav. It's specifically like. They're still born the same way they were in canon. 200 children still died for Harrow. ...and then she didn't show aptitude for necromancy. The weird cursed child they couldn't kill did though. So that weird cursed child gets to be their new daughter. Meanwhile Harrow gets to lose the -hark in her name and her Nonagesimus to become just Harrow Nova. Girl isn't even initially allowed weapons and when she steals one her father just brutally whips the ever living shit out of her until Gideon intervenes and gets him to stop. And she's fucking salty about that. And salty about the fact that Gideon apparently brings up that intervention often. Another reason for absolute feralness is that while we never see Gideon in this AU at all, we do get a sense that Gideon is still a much nicer person than Harrow is. And she's still protective. She's not only got Harrow the Chain and stopped the beating, but she's been petitioning Harrow's dad lately for something (likely Harrow's release to go to the Cohort or something similar). Ortus defends her against Crux's bitching too. Quietly and mostly to himself but he does at all. So it seems that he and Gideon are close, whereas Harrow was just kind of. Really mean to Ortus? And this is worth going feral over because it indicates that Harrow believes that even if Gideon were given her position and power, Gideon would not be the sort of person Harrow was. She literally cannot imagine Gideon ever being the kind of person she was. Can't even hear the woman's name without bleeding but like she is just so devoted to this image of Gideon as like a fundamentally kind, loving, protective person. ...while Harrow's still a fucking bastard even without the power. If anything she might even be more of a bastard. What with threatening to fucking murder Ortus and being super aggro at Gideon's attempts to help her. She's just a ball of hate and rage. And that just hurts! So good!
