This is an old roughly sketched thumbnail (now resized for the post), made for a zine, but never submit it since it was too much long. But I was reading it again lately and though it was a pity I never shared this somewhere before. Unfortunately I don't think I'd be able to ever finish it, so I just let you enjoy the rough version of it!
Gideon Nav but make her a modern casual urban-fantasy character
ig: d.ill.usion
Subaru and Hokuto in Tokyo Babylon
I think what I love/hate most about the Arcane ending is that everyone got what they needed but not what they wanted.
Jinx needed to end the cycle, she’s been wishing someone could finish the job the whole series, she just didn’t want to go out a hero.
Echo needed to be a savior to help his people, he just thought it would be as a leader and not as a soldier.
Mel needed to prove herself as a Medarda, she just never wanted the acarne skills or the cost of her mother.
Jayce and Viktor in beautiful turn needed to be seen and understood. They found their own truths and destiny in each other, yet it destroyed them.
Vi needed family. She wanted the family she had back, instead she’s given closure for her loses and the chance to build a new one with a person she loves.
Caitlyn needed respect. She got it, but she now understands just how much it costs and just how heavy that crown is.
All of their endings satisfy exactly what they’ve wanted this whole show, just in a way none of them wanted.
I am forever grateful for the balanced way Harrow’s psychosis is displayed. She is a rational person. She is able to evaluate data as sharply as anyone else. Maybe even more sharply than anyone else. She just isn’t sure if the data she is evaluating is all accurate. She reads as someone who has long since adjusted to this self-doubt about reality, and possibly as someone who’s intelligence was honed specifically by the process of needing to run every observation through rationality checks. It makes her weird, socially, but it also makes her very good at processing and deduction.
This got me thinking about something I don't think I have seen discussed before, RE: life on the ninth house before GtN. The ninth house is a cult, with predictable routines. This is very soothing for Harrow.
Gideon however is an element which cannot be wholly predicted. Its canon that Harrow used Crux as a reality check when she thinks shes hallucinating. How many times did Harrow (upset that she was hallucinating) go to Crux because Gideon re-arranged some skeletons so that they were (sigh) boning, and Harrow thinks its a hallucination at first.
(No one can convince me Gideon didn't do this. Tons of times until it stopped being funny for her, which probably took a while. Gideon had dirty mags and a love of puns and there wasn't much else to do in the Ninth.)
I think that this helps explain a lot of Crux's hate toward Gideon. After all, Harrow is the de-facto head of the religion that Crux has devoted his whole life to serving. He has spent his whole life venerating Harrow and her parents. People bow and scrape when Harrow comes by. The head of his religion comes to him afraid and asking for reality checks because of stupid pranks and such that Gideon would pull, he would hate Gideon for destabilizing Harrow for refusing to conform to the expected routines.
So imagine the stupid pranks left for Harrow to find, the voice Harrow hallucinates (sometimes) being Gideon where she isn't supposed to be according to the routine of the ninth causing Harrow to need more reality checks than she would need without Gideon around, and then muse with me about how
"But I don't even remember about you most of the time."
sounds like Harrow having been reminded she's not hallucinating, its just Gideon, doing what she isn't supposed to again. Think of how that influenced their dynamic, and how fast Harrow shifts how she treats and sees Gideon once they're on the first and there is no routine that Gideon is violating.
Actually, I'm not done here, because it is kind of darkly funny just how screwed Crux is here.
Gideon breaking with the routines of the Ninth is destabilizing Harrow who in his mind is the only thing standing in the way of the tomb getting open and the sun going out. He devoted himself to the Ninth, so he's got to believe this. He is scared out of his gourd about Harrow not being able to keep the tomb shut, and he is seeing Gideon breaking with the ninths routine as destabilizing as apocalyptic because to him it very well could be.
Of course, he can't tell Gideon why her breaking the routine is such a big deal, because he can't tell her about Harrow (think about what Gideon could/would do after being given this information), so he just comes off as a hard ass to Gideon, whose personality would then be compelled to rebel harder, making the situation worse.
I'm not saying that I approve of Crux's attempts to kill Gideon a couple of times, but I can see how he arrived at that conclusion.
That is actually a painfully accurate representation of how siblings of children with severe behavioral issues can get treated, by their well-meaning parents who are just exhausted. They get yelled at for doing totally normal things that trigger the high-needs child, because there is no point in trying to stop the high-needs child from having high needs. The best the parents can hope for with peace is that the kid doesn't get triggered. This sets both kids up for failure, because the high-needs kid learns that it is other people's fault for triggering them, and the sibling learns that anything they do can be considered bad if the other kid dictates it. Part of behavioral therapy is helping parents to realize this dynamic, and to work with their kid on better ways to respond to triggers.
How dare you make me feel sympathy for Crux of all people.
Sorry about the Crux sympathy.
I think you identified something that I gestured at originally, but you're totally right, in this case, Harrow would have absolutely internalized that her getting triggered sometimes was Gideon's fault for being in places she shouldn't be. Add to that Harrow being raised from birth with the routine of the ninth house and not knowing anything else, the fact that she is essentially a nun running her whole society, and being told repeatedly that hallucinations were caused by Gideon (even if not all of them were) breaking the routine, and I think I can start to understand why Gideon called her a butt-touched nun.
01 - Glass
"One flesh, one end!"
Me and my friend @girasoliasonagli have collected some prompts from parents/friends and created our personal inktober (here the complete prompt list, feel free to use it). I also decided to use these prompts as a Locked Tomb themed inktober.
Let's see if I'll finish all of them this time!
Did this with my friend @littlesat and oblivious family and friends cause we were in the mood for october drawing challenge.
Free for everyone to use! We'd love it!
I've just noticed I've never posted this one so here I am, come back from hibernation, to share with you my piece for the @fmatriozine
