I JUST HAD A TERRIBLE REALIZATION HOLY SHIT WHEN JOD TOLD HARROW "NO ONE HAS TO KNOW" IN RESPONSE TO

Alecto the terror and the sublime

characters of all time, really

still not over chapter 13. dorian killing the one person who loved him as something more than just a pretty face because that’s all dorian saw himself as. basil seeing the torture dorian’s soul has endured but still believing he is not yet lost. and the action of killing basil being the point of no return for dorian. only the artist could have helped his art, but the death of the artist leaves his work finished, no matter what.

harrowhark getting her lobotomy done at claire's

(ps: merry christmas eve! you can't see but we just hit 10k on here... my christmas gift to the world, thank you dearly)

i would be feral abt t4t paldulcie

adds such a great layer to the ambiguously erotic long distance mentorship situation… dulcinea as a trans elder… i’m frothing at the mouth

SEE i wasn't thinking of Dulcie as a trans elder in this situation, I think Juno Zeta would put her her son on blockers aged 10 and be the kind of mom to have a toddler portrait tattoo redone to be like, still extremely binary but now the baby is dressed in blue with a baseball cap.

specifically I want to explore the experience of being trans and having these kind of... long distance, no faces, text only relationships where you can feel fully affirmed and the disconnect that then exists between your real world experience, and how this interacts with of course also being critically ill and not wanting anyone to see you because of that. the compounded body horror and also then, intimacy when there IS someone you trust to see you sick, see you naked, and the way that interacts with the vulnerability and exhaustion of sickness,

and there's another layer I really want to explore regarding how critical illness i.e. cancer can often impede or slow medical transition while ALSO drastically shortening the time in which one has to make these decisions. to quote my favorite movie "there is still time", but what if there isn't? what is there ISNT time? what if you're dying, and you want to die in the body you want to be remembered in, but you don't know if you'll get there? there's a horror in that. this quote from harrow the ninth:

"“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, Reverend Daughter, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.”"

i think this would add to Palamedes' like... "i need to cure her i need to save her" and also heighten Dulcinea's rebellious streak (she wants cigarettes!!! she hates roses!!!) while also interacting with how she DID, in fact, decline Palamedes' proposal. she decided to stay where she was. there's so much here. im getting dangerously close to getting really personal here on tumblr dot com but im shaking the bars of my cage

Hello!! I hope this isn’t an odd/rude question to ask but it’s been on my mind a lot.

And forgive me if any of my assumptions about these characters are incorrect or if I’m just missing something, my media literacy isn’t always awesome hahaha

So anyways, we all know Rosier and Asmodeus’s relationship is pretty unhealthy, but if I’m remembering right I feel like I’ve seen some descriptions of their relationship that imply that they’re Both bad for each other.

Maybe I just wooby-ify Rosier too much because I love him lol, but I honestly have a bit of a hard time not seeing Asmodeus as the sole aggressor/one in the wrong regarding their relationship issues, and mostly only seeing Rosier as a victim of Asmodeus’s assault.

Perhaps Rosier’s wrongdoing just comes from his desire to stay with Asmodeus despite the pain and trauma it left him with? I’m not sure, but I was just wondering if there was something I may have missed that Rosier had done/currently does that would also hurt Asmodeus too?

I mean obviously other than cutting his head off but that was in self defense so I don’t count that haha. But then again, maybe that is what Rosier did wrong? I’m not sure lol

Hi! Not a rude question at all! I really like talking about Rosier (that's why he's getting his whole own novella (in case you didn't know, since I've only discussed this on my newsletter).

Rosier doesn't have... any wrongdoing, so to speak. In terms of his relationship with Asmodeus, he definitely hasn't done anything wrong. Asmo and Rosier are not a case of "they're both bad people so it's fine that they're toxic" (like Lucifer and Baal, for example, or even Lucifer and Michael in A&M). Rosier is a victim and there's not a lot of nuance about it. He was hurt and it wasn't his fault.

I'm not sure if you mean something I've said when you say "descriptions" but if you do, let me explain what I mean when I say that Rosier isn't that "good" of a person. (This isn't going to be "Rosier is toxic and evil too, and he's evil to Asmodeus" because he's not. He has (toxic) codependency issues with Asmodeus, but that doesn't make him evil. I mean, we can understand that as a result of the trauma of losing, you know, God.)

So to make it very clear, let me tell you about demon Rosier without bringing Asmodeus into the equation about Rosier's morality:

Rosier knows what Lucifer is up to all the time. He knows a lot of the awful things Lucifer is responsible for. Rosier might be out of place with the demons, but he's kind to them (see: Baal). He will clean up the blood of innocent people if Lucifer asked him to. He would do it if Baal asked him to. (Even if he's sad about it, he'd still do it). If Baal needed someone to comfort him after a mass murder, Rosier would hold him. If any horrible demon needed a shoulder to cry on, Rosier would offer his.

Rosier is a very kind person. He's actually what happens when you're too kind. He makes excuses and he allows bad people around him to do whatever they want. He's almost a complete bystander. He's not as trapped as he thinks himself to be. And (this is important in his novella) being a "good person" is about more than just smiling at people, it's about not letting bad things happen to innocent people. (Sometimes we read about horrible people irl and we're shocked by the family/friends around the perpetuators that just let them get away from it. We like to imagine they agreed with it, but the truth is that they probably just kept making excuses. They downplayed it because they loved them. (I used to know the son of a very bad man (a guy with a wiki page, so yeah it was bad), and though the man is locked up for life, the son loved his father. He loved him so much he just refused to think about the people his dad hurt. Does this make the son a bad person? Who knows, but it definitely puts his morality into question. I mean, are you really willing to forgive the worst crimes imaginable against innocent people just because you love someone or think that you do?))

This is also why demons can be annoyed with Rosier for acting so angelic. They think that Rosier is just as bad as everyone else just by virtue of never doing anything about the bad things. They think he just wants to feel better about himself.

So returning back to Asmo, yeah Rosier is not the aggressor here. Not even a little. Rosier's imperfect goodness exists even though he's a victim. (I feel like I say this a lot in relation to characters in the series but yeah — you can be a victim and do things of dubious morality). His imperfect goodness exists independent of Asmodeus (Lucifer, Baal, for example) but exists within the context of his love for Asmodeus, as well. Not that Asmodeus is hurt by it. Asmodeus is mostly hurt by his own actions and his own thoughts. If you asked Asmo, I think he would tell you that Rosier's never done anything wrong to him.

Anyway! This is really long! but Rosier's morality is very fun for me to talk about because of how complex it is. There's a line in his novella about how there are 2 kinds of demons: those that kill and those who knowingly welcome the killers home. And Rosier realizes that despite how kind and good he wants to be, despite his intent, he's become the latter.

In essence,

please be nice to me. i am a thousand years old and very shy

Do u ever think about how Gideon's last words were ,,, WEDDING VOWS. And then do u think about how they're the first thing Harrow says when she finally remembers in htn .... AND THEN do u think about how Gideon/Kiriona acknowledges the fact that yeah they were wedding vows in ntn ... BECAUSE I DO. I FUCKING DO.

Gideon the Ninth, chapter 37.

Harrow the Ninth, chapter 43.

Nona the Ninth, chapter 25.

tumblr tags bring out the insanity in me