Note: I'm writing this only because I haven't seen anyone else touch on these specific points. I'm not Māori, so my understanding may be mistaken; if so I would be very grateful for correction and elaboration from tangata whenua. (And I've only read Nona once so far, and we all know that's a scratch upon the surface of it.)

Tazmuir has received fandom flack for saying in interviews that Gideon and Harrow are both Māori without mentioning it in the text — which understandably reminds sf/f readers of a certain other author's tendency to dispose of the difficult bits outside the actual work. I think it is clear by now that the reason it wasn't dealt with explicitly earlier on is that Tazmuir sticks religiously (ahem) to the flawed and limited knowledge of her point-of-view characters, and in the Nine Houses they have no concept of pre-Resurrection races and ethnicities, because Jod has not allowed them knowledge of any world but his. (Besides, explaining Gideon's lineage in a Doylist aside would have been rather tricky without revealing, before their proper time in the narrative, juicy details about Jod himself.)

My prediction is that we will find out Anastasia was also Māori. Maybe, probably, from the same iwi as Jod and/or G1deon.

Which makes Harrow, her last descendent, Māori as well.

No matter how many generations separate them. No matter how much other blood.

"Mixed Māori" or "[percentage] Māori" is kind of a pākehā concept. The more important question is, do you whakapapa? Do you know who you are? Do you know where you come from? All it takes is one verified ancestor and you're in the club, no matter how long it's been or what brand of egg carton your skin looks like on the book cover. I think Harrow is descended not just from a line of Tomb-keepers but a line of kaitiaki, guardians of the land, who through Anastasia's private pact with Alecto are sworn to protect her — Papatūānuku, the earth mother born from salt water — and who have been holding on for ten thousand years to right Jod's wrongs. We know salt water is sacred to the line of the Ninth House; we know that Alecto was called "the saltwater creature"; we know that it's Nona's natural element, which calms and renews her; all this links Alecto/Earth specifically with Māori creation myths, more than any others. And we know that preserving the ancient bloodline of the Ninth, Anastasia's bloodline, in Harrow's own improbable and desperately yearned-for person (that Alecto can recognise at a taste), was the goal Pelleamena and Priamhark pursued at the cost of the Ninth House's entire future.

Yes, this series is portraying an indigenous man as the destroyer of Earth. We know that Earth chose him as her saviour and he betrayed her, imprisoned her, set himself up as master of an empire that was her antithesis, then imprisoned her again — arguably worse sins for someone who was born into that special relationship with the land, whom the Earth loved and trusted so much and still loves even now because love past understanding is her gift.

But here's the answer to that. Here's his opposite number. Harrow, who fell in love at first sight with the Earth, who found in that love her reason and her drive to continue living and to hold to her goals through intolerable trauma, who has a unique combination of bloodline and genius and Jod-and-Alecto-derived power (through her Lyctorhood with Kiriona Gaia, wherever that ends up going) with which to fulfill this sacred pact entered into by her tipuna Anastasia.

Harrow being Māori is not a trendy convenient afterthought. It's an integral point.

Harrow knows who she is. She knows where she comes from. She knows where she's going: Hell itself, to get to the bottom of all this shit. So I think we will be hearing more along these lines.

Mercymorn, explaining variant Lyctorhood: "it's theoretically possible for two souls to combine into one. Both individuals essentially die, and a completely new individual takes their place."

John: "Just like..."

Mercy: "Like toothpicks. I know. You've been saying that for ten thousand years every time I have to give you this lecture. I do not care. I will never care. Even if I am ever possessed by a demon of curiosity and begin to wonder what you could possibly mean by 'toothpicks' in this particular context, I will never, until the heat death of the universe ever, give you the satisfaction of a single follow-up question about toothpicks."

John: "I didn't say toothpicks..."

Having a normal post-NtN night by which I mean lying awake thinking about “Guys as careful as I am don’t make mistakes.” Just spiraling about how seriously we are or are not supposed to take that line and how it may or may not recontextualize half of Harrow the Ninth.

We already get a glimpse at the end of that book of how John is impossibly in control of a batshit off the rails scenario, well beyond what we might expect of him from the rest of the book. But like

Did he let dios apate happen, knowing the result of an open Tomb was what he actually desired?

Did he let Mercy “kill” him, perhaps giving her a chance until the very end to change her mind?

And what about Augustine attempting to drag him into the stoma?

I truly have no idea how to answer the question of how much was foreseen, how much was just unconcerning because of his power, and how much was truly him not expecting betrayal from the people he loves. John, was that a cool line to impress your daughter in law and your planet-revenant wife, or did you just look in the camera and tell us that attempted murder by your dearest friends (returned with actual murder) was preferable to telling them the truth and apologizing?

So yeah having a normal one

in The Harrow Nova AU, Alecto should be Emperor and John should be in Acid Jail.

“Are you and Ianthe being safe” says the guy who can instantaneously cure any disease

John, sending a fax to the entire cohort declaring "The Saint of Joy has suffered an unexpected rapid disassembly and will no longer be joining us for tea tuesdays"

hello anon this is very funny so i don't really have anything to add but here's a tweet for your troubles

The way John tells Harrow he sometimes wishes she were his daughter in htn and then later finding out he *does* in fact have a daughter but she's nothing like Harrow but he still tries to connect with her and share his culture with her and gives her what she wants (I bet she was the one who decided to go fight on the frontlines because it used to be her dream and she was still bitter and hurt over Harrow) but she's still not what he wanted and they both know it and oooouough aurgh eck

Alecto's body was created from a memory of a Barbie that John used to play with that belonged to his mom. If John is an insufferable millennial, that means his mom probably had a Barbie in the 50s or 60s. This means that when Alecto grieves the "terrible arms and legs and the terrible middle part" and the "nose too short, the ears too brief," that's because John made her look like this:

Photo source: Barbie's Evolution from 1959 to 2016

In John 19:18 in Nona, there is a sentence that says (about Jod) "he was always scared of the water" and boy I can't wait for him to get waterboarded in Alecto.

In too many stories, the protagonists kill God. God is not redeemable. But, in dying, God is not held fully accountable for God’s own actions. In the locked tomb series, killing and dying are shown as easier than living. But what if God were to live? What if instead of swift dispatching, John Gaius must atone, take care, give back? What if redemption runs through him, the same way destruction does?

Insomniac thoughts about consistency of characterisation pre- and post-Resurrection, surfacing mid-morning because I couldn’t cope with the post editor in the iOS app at a quarter to three… *ahem*

My impression is that Jod and most of his OG duplicitous sluts were in their thirties, up to fortyish, at the time it was all going down. Old enough for some of them to have multiple tertiary degrees and be leaders in their fields; not quite older adults yet. In HtN Augustine tells us Pyrrha (the “stone-cold fox”) was ten years his senior, so probably in her late forties or fiftyish. In NtN:

I didn't have to worry about the public or the media — we had a pet cop, P—. She'd made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD. Knew G— from way back, and G– and I were both hometown boys, so P– kept the heat down for us.

Later on Jod reiterates that he and G— grew up on the same street.

We also hear that P— “adored being a cop”.

This is of course off-putting for a lot of readers. But I understand that the New Zealand police, while by no means a squad of saints, are not abusive and murderous on the same level as the American kind we may be more familiar with (e.g. they don’t normally carry guns). So I’m fairly sure what we’ve got here is a character who might actually have been a good cop, in a country in which that concept is not implausible beyond belief — who then, crucially, turns her back on the law (and on her own successful career) to protect the kids from her neighbourhood. Because that was what it was about for her all along.

I don’t think the Dad Pyrrha we love to see is separable from Cop Pyrrha. I think in each life she lives her priority is to look after and protect her people, and she does that in specifically masculine-coded, paternal-coded ways. The Pyrrha we get in NtN is — as with the other Lyctors we know, charming Augustine becoming a man of plex, reproductive justice advocate Mercymorn stealing semen, dutiful Gideon obeying even the command to launch multiple violent murder attempts against a tiny traumatised teenager — someone whose best qualities have been worn out and warped by too many centuries of Jod’s unliving, undying empire. But, perhaps because Pyrrha was awake and aware for less time than the rest, that kind of love does palpably linger on in her.

Pyrrha practically stumbled away — she dropped to her knees before the chair and Palamedes — she reached out and took Palamedes's hand, and then Camilla's. Her face and hands showed only dumb despair. "I've loved you two," she said. "Not well. Not even wholesomely. I don't have it in me. But I've loved you — in a better world I'd be able to say, 'Like you were my own,' but I don't know what that would even mean anymore. You've been my agents ... you've been stand-ins for something I haven't had for longer than either of you can understand."

You can feel it every time she bribes Nona into eating, or carries her when her legs fail, or buys a birthday present and hides it away under the sink for the big day. (And when she looks at her lover's daughter with that mute hunger to have been a parent to her, too.) It’s a feature of the system Jod designed, that Lyctors don’t get much of a chance to love anyone but him. His hands, his gestures… raised by him, bound to him, renamed by him… God must be able to touch all of creation... He’s the epitome of the kind of parent who can’t imagine or allow their child to have an existence apart from their own, who’d rather stunt them than let them grow. He claimed Kiriona as his child, but he also made her his construct. And we know what he did to Alecto. But six months with Pyrrha (and the Sixth, likewise good at modeling love) and Nona just blossoms. The betrayed soul of a murdered planet has learnt anger management techniques — and now she’s learning to dance.

It seems as though at every step of Pyrrha’s story (and, just to confirm, I shall be going on a bloody rampage if we don't get the missing pieces in AtN) she knows she can’t save everyone and get everything right. Sometimes she can't save anyone at all. She has often been a casualty of her devotion. But she keeps on and on still trying, also like the Sixth, to make the best and kindest and truest choices she can in this myriadic shit sandwich. And she never stops loving the people she loves. Wouldn't know how to.

In conclusion… since I should probably conclude something… let's see. Whatever she thinks of herself, Pyrrha’s a good dad. Her accidental agents are lucky to have had those six months with her. It's not ‘playing’ house if the love there is real. And you can’t take ‘loved’ away.

I just know jod was an ardent "pluto is still a planet!!!" defender. Back in the twitch streamer days he would get in violent arguments with chat about it. The lyctors used to call him on it pre-ressurection but then he erased the memory of the term "dwarf planet" from their minds when he brought them back. I bet he was like "do you think pluto gets sad that he isn't a planet anymore :((((" and then fucking killed it at the first opportunity. I hate him so much

John Gaius made Cassiopeia eat her wife and now she'll never see her again. Did she and Nigella know what they were to each other? Did they even get the chance to fall in love again? The last thing C— and N— ever did was get married. Did they get to marry again? They forgot they got married before, because John stole those memories. John stole their memories because he wanted to make himself the center of their universe, the hand directing their fingers. John made Cassiopeia eat her wife and now she'll never ever see her again, not for all eternity, not in any eternity.

Nigella, N—, did you get to marry your wife? Cassiopeia, C—, whatever has become of you, do you remember now?

imprisoned for a thousand years for his crimes of eating peanuts in important meetings.

9 & 10 for the violence ask game <3

[reads URL] So I'm guessing you like God's Divorced Polycule, so!

9. Worst part of canon

The moment John Gaius, Literal God, dropped the line "None Houses with left grief" I groaned and rolled my eyes so hard I briefly summoned the very essence of Mercymorn the First, Saint of Joy. I then locked my phone and paced my office like an angry horse. Then he has the BALLS to say "People as careful as me don't have accidents." JOHN YOUR WHOLE MISERABLE LIFE HAS BEEN ACCIDENTS YOU ABSOLUTE WILTED CABBAGE OF A MAN.

10. Worst part of fanon

Augustine Quinque would not be that suave. And you guys hate Mercymorn and make her a huge bitch for all the wrong reasons (misogyny) versus the good reasons (she's the embodiment about that quote about how "father and daughter both laugh at mother").

My Locked Tomb hot take is that I don't think perfect lyctorhood exists. I think you achieve lyctorhood by having more spirit than you have body, and therefore having an excess of thalergy that can be used to do necromancy. You get that by eating someone (à la trad lyctorhood) or by merging with someone (à la Paul).