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TL;CR MEME
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
harrowhark nonagesimus
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But they just kept vibing, you know? She mentioned they were dead, and admitted it was weird for her to talk about, and then he started suggesting his own relationship with his parents was fraught and that's kind of an even deeper secret, in a way? For all that they have in common, one thing they don't is that on the surface her parents treated her really well. There's not really anything she would point to and say 'this is them being abusive to me.' (Well, I mean, there's how they died, but she wouldn't see it that way.) She was always the golden child and everyone thought she was brilliant and let her get away with absolutely anything she wanted. They were never physically violent and they were never cruel or unkind. But Harrow has a strong (and probably accurate) sense that they weren't capable of loving her because of what she represented to them - this horrible faustian bargain that paid off but that still haunted them. She's always suspected (again, probably accurately) that if she hadn't paid off, she'd be nothing to them.
So Harrow on the surface is always understanding of her parents, and will defend them reflexively, and seems attached to them. But there's a lot of unexplored pain in that relationship she's never really shared with anyone even though she has her own strong opinions about it. Her bond with Gideon is made up in a lot of ways of them both having grown up there and experienced different forms of abuse that the other understands, and I won't spoil this but there's also another relationship with a person who Harrow always assumed didn't really care for her as a person, but who later admitted they were just ashamed to have never done anything about all the fucked up things that were being put on her shoulders, and this admission totally wrecks her. More than anything, she wants other people to see what happened and understand it without her having to explain it, because she kind of needs other people to acknowledge it was wrong for her to believe she's allowed to feel that it was.
So anyway I explain all that because I feel like this was really the crux of how much they bonded. There are a lot of things he did that annoyed her, and more than just the surface level of bad jokes. But fundamentally they just went through some things as children with a lot of weird parallels, but in his stuff it was a little easier to recognize the abusive nature of it, so when he also saw the parallels, it was validating and important to her. That Harrow made some progress in this game in terms of her thoughts of her childhood and her parents had a lot to do with the things they spoke about. That she eventually got to a point where she felt like, it's not just that I can't go back to the Ninth House because I'll endanger it, but I shouldn't go back because that place was bad for me and molded me into a person I don't like, was a lot to do with how much progress she made in understanding the way she grew up as bad.
I said this before, but I do think this is kind of the crux of what it means to have a sibling relationship - whatever differences you have, there's always going to be a bond there based on the fact that you shared a childhood and have shared experiences and trauma, so your personality flaws and hang ups and the ways you respond to things are often very visible and understandable to one another whether you want it to be or not. The difference between sibling CR and friend CR to me is that sibling CR has that element of just 'we are more transparent to each other than I perhaps would choose to be, I have no say in this.' And I think that really defines how they were throughout the game. All of the teasing and bickering has a foundation of like. I know who you are, so you can't stay mad at me forever or get rid of me, so we can really get vicious.
And then on top of that they also both had the parallel of trying to pull off the con of being the perfect heir and hiding their imperfections. I did feel a little bit bad that like. Her madness was not what she thought it was, it wasn't a real obstacle the way his injuries are. (When you joked OOC about how Harrow seemed like she actually was able to let the madness secret go while Gu Yun was still stuck - it wasn't a real part of her backstory so it was easier to dislodge!) But I do still feel like this parallel worked because hiding what's really going on to instead seem capable and in control at any cost is a huge part of Harrow's deal. It's just less direct and more a matter of her hiding all of her weaknesses and the poverty of her House. Even without the madness she's still a fucked up kid with a lot of trauma and brain problems trying to pull off the con as brilliant savant and savior of the Ninth House, and so much of her backstory revolves around knowing she had to hide no matter what how poor and deteriorating and failing the Ninth House actually was, and that her own bravado and confidence was critical to the illusion. And there was a lot of pride in this decision - it was always possible for her to reach out to the other Houses for help, and get more resources and food and technology and fix so many of the problems. The drastic decisions her parents made and the ones she made were all avoidable if they'd asked for help. But they and she always believed that if the other Houses saw their weakness, the powerful Houses would fight over who got influence and control over the Ninth and one of the rich Houses would likely make it a sphere of influence, and that would end their fiercely independent and remote way of life. So she instantly understood his fears of discovery and showing weakness on just a deep level and never would have questioned why it was important.
She overreacted so much to the CYOA because hers was so traumatic, and not on a physical level, either. It's hard to give Harrow new traumas but Flurry managed it. So her reaction was just like. This awful thing happened to me and I can't even explain to other people what happened or how it affected me, but I hate the idea of other people who I care about having to live with this, too. She just really loathed her inability to overcome the conversational barrier, and that she just reacted emotionally, instead.
She overreacted to Molly's CYOA for the same reasons, but in that case Molly was also actually dying. I don't think this is something she could understand well enough to explain, but the reason she snapped at him is that she was really scared and upset and trying hard to seem like she wasn't and she had it under control. So when both Wrath and Gu Yun comforted her, it was a little like 'wait, do I have a tell? can you both tell how upset I am?' (The answer is yes, because they know her and what her feelings are and care about her, not because she was acting irrationally or emotionally) But she just lashed out because of the aforementioned deep seated conviction that you always have to be able to hide the fact that you're really a scared little girl, and she felt like she was being seen in a moment she really didn't want to be able to be seen. I don't think she would have brought this up with him if he hadn't, though, because she kind of knew he would understand why she snapped at him. But it led to a really good conversation where they both admitted they just care about Molly and don't always know how to deal with those feelings, and where she admitted she cares about him, too.
Anyway, on to the murder. His confession came at the most hilarious time, because it was right smack in the middle of her dealing with the Misa stuff. But her reaction to it was very different than it was to Misa, because she did understand why the medicine was important enough to kill over, and also had a level of trust in Gu Yun that he wouldn't make decisions that would hurt her, so he didn't have the crisis she did with Misa where she was very afraid of who he would choose to kill. Instead, she was just more afraid for his life? So she really wanted him to not murder so he wouldn't be in danger, and she was angry with him for doing it anyway for that reason rather than some moral objection. She doesn't like the idea of killing for medicine but if she was in his position she would have probably done it exactly as he did - take out someone she strongly believed to be a dangerous killer.
It's still good he didn't tell her in advance, though, because if Harrow knew about it she wouldn't have been able to stay uninvolved and would have made a lot of creepy intense Harrow plans about it. I think she would have probably tried to knife block him or force him to bring her as an accomplice because she can't kick back and relax or stay uninvolved when she knows it's happening. She wasn't that shocked, though, both that he did it and that it wasn't self defense. His story 'remember how I was planning to kill this week? well, I didn't, but Mahito attacked me randomly' just didn't make sense and made less sense when Aoi was in the picture too. So she was suspecting he was lying on Friday night and over the course of trial on Saturday became certain.
Anyway, she just reacted badly because all of the lies and deceptions and basically every time he made decisions but didn't tell them about them in advance - including involving Childe at all - was just so familiar. She absolutely got why he would go to Childe and make agreements to cover for each other, but the thing about that type of arrangement is it's easy to betray it, but also you always know betrayal is on the table and predictable. It's harder for people like them to approach a relationship where the cooperation isn't transactional; it's more vulnerable, it's weird and uncomfortable to accept people will help you just because they care. So it was just. That's what I thought you'd do, you dumb fucking Marquis. It was never really more than just personal anger at dumb and bad brother behavior because she got why he did it so much, but it made her angry, too. Her feeling was just. Once you looped Molly and I in on this, you should have realized we'd be 100% in because we care about you, and therefore equally involved and responsible, and that means you can't lie to us or have secret co-conspirators. But she also forgave him pretty much instantly when she made that point and he understood it.
Okay more later but I have to do work now and don't want to leave this open to get accidentally deleted.
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They talked about traveling together and it was really sweet. This was a big thing for her most of this game - she didn't want to admit she was considering what to do after the indulgence center, because she felt like imagining a happy ending for herself made her too vulnerable to disappointment; she felt like being cynical and expecting everything to go bad meant she'd be able to be more tough and less susceptible to emotional manipulation. Molly was the one to basically forced her to consider it and make plans despite her protests, but she stubbornly kept insisting she hadn't made any decisions to him. So it was a big deal to just kind of casually talk about it with Gu Yun, knowing that he was more like her and that he'd allow her to talk about the future cautiously and then go back to pretending it wasn't that big of a deal. I do think that's kind of the moment where it became real, when she admitted to someone else that it was her plan.
And then he wanted her there with him if he travelled, which really did mean a lot. She brushed him off because she felt like he was cheating a little; clearly he wanted her and Molly, but she didn't get the sense he had really made plans with Molly, and she personally values a lot being asked directly so was like. Ask him, idiot. But it still meant a lot to her that she felt that he wanted her there specifically. It felt like she had options which made her feel a little bit less of a loser stray Molly adopted.
As far as Golly goes like her general attitude towards other people's relationships is just awkward prudishness so she was always like. I can tell you guys are having a thing but I will not learn anything about it. But honestly despite their general awful horniness levels she liked and supported them in her own way in doing whatever they were doing. Molly did tell her about the ~love confession~ but he did it in a Molly way where he was like "oh it was no big deal and he probably wasn't that serious" despite being obviously pleased, and she was immediately like, no, he probably was, stupid. Anyway, she has no opinions on anything going on or any ship messes other than please be nice to each other's feelings. Whatever the specific relationship status is beyond that or who else is involved she refuses to ever know or care.
Endgame was really nice having the gang together to go to the satellite. Honestly she was probably going to bow out of satellite mission because she knew she might not be useful for anything that was going to happen there, but she went because they wanted her to come even if everyone treated her like she was a fragile princess in need of defending. She'll be so excited when she gets to show him at some point what she can actually do in combat and correct this impression of her. But it was good; her giving him the sword was a big show of trust, but also a nice moment because like it bothered her less than expected. And then she had both of them there to help her when she got her brain unbroken, which she definitely needed.
After the game and after GY goes home to deal with his own shit they will definitely see each other again and keep being a dumb fambly and doing adventures and Harrow will keep grossing him out with bones.
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Harrow didn't understand and could never understand Aoi's whole. . . deal, but I think that worked out to her benefit in some ways because she was just like. This is a person? I will treat her like a person? And just rejected anything to do with Aoi being fictional or not real. She did babycode her a lot, and Harrow is super awkward and has never interacted with a baby, so didn't know what to do.
I know Harrow like explicitly said this in her threads but she sees a lot of herself in Aoi and that's why she felt so protective of her. Aoi didn't see herself as a real person and didn't value her life at all, and that was a little triggering to her because of her own issues with like. Growing up being trained to view herself as the embodiment of a sacrifice rather than a person and how it made her really suicidal most of her childhood.
Anyway, a big part of Harrow's motives here have always been her feeling that she didn't approve of this becoming the type of competition where people kill for their prizes, and she was always determined to do whatever she felt best to stop that. Early on, it was kind of 50/50 whether she'd approach that by focusing on trials or focusing on murdering dangerous people but it turned out to be the former for a lot of reasons. But she felt this was necessary because the idea of people like Aoi being targeted was really distressing to her.
The Aoi in early weeks was just super helpless and she saw her as a huge risk to be taken advantage of, and spent some time trying to help her? But like. Her Week 1 CYOA also hit her in the same trauma of like. Self sacrificing child that doesn't value their life, and she felt like they'd failed somehow in the CYOA, so after that she got upset and kind of decided she wasn't sure she had the right to tell Aoi what to do when she barely knew herself.
But I think she learned in later weeks to respect Aoi a little more as a person who can make her own decisions? Like - one thing with Harrow is she always wanted to not vote in executions, but didn't really believe it was possible or strategically viable. But she respected Aoi a lot because Aoi always openly told people she thought they should not vote, which she thought was what everyone who didn't want to vote should have had the courage to do. She also did kind of respect/admire Aoi's desire to forgive people and be pacifist even if that wasn't her. In general, Harrow is just a person who respects people who have the courage of their convictions and she felt Aoi did. That's why she was willing to use her boon to help Aoi with her plan to curse Mahito to love limited edition items; she just thought there was something very nice about the fact that Aoi was so set in her determination to be gentle and kind of make people happy that she'd be determined to use her boon on something so simple and silly.
Anyway. Harrow knew Mahito was a bad dude through the grapevine, and warned one or two people off him - Molly and Gu Yun, mainly. She thought those were the kind of people Mahito would manipulate and hurt, not Aoi. But she was wrong and she took that really hard. And that aforementioned decision she made to focus on trials and not murdering dangerous people - Aoi's death was the only time she really regretted that, and it led to her wanting to deal with Childe much more harshly.
It just was really awful to listen to Aoi justify Mahito murdering her because she doesn't value her own life; it was really hard to hear. And she just would like to have been able to convince her before things ended to feel that way, too.
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The specific similarities are the way he reacts to her teasing/bullying him and kind of his specific child abuse damage where he tries to act cool and self sufficient but generally assumes people won't care about him and wants validation. Also, he's a cutie and cares a lot. So all these things really drew her to him and made her feel really fond of him, but also made her want to bully aggressively because that was what her friendship with Gideon was always like.
Memshare week solidified these feelings because seeing where he came from kind of helped her understand the way he was? And she admired him for being so sweet and trying so hard and standing up at all that shit. And when he fucking listened to her about staying away from Molly it also solidified that because it was so cute and funny that he listened to her. Even the Santa curse was cute to her because he justifiably tried to get revenge and then instantly didn't have the meanness to follow through and felt bad. Very funny and sweet, she forgave him instantly.
Anyway she was always bad at expressing it and probably seemed harsh to him at times or critical but its just because he triggered her soft spot and she was just a bully and bossy in response, but also very defensive and protective of him. She felt like he really tried hard and was a good person and deserved to be treated well even if she often. . . didn't.
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gimme bonus gideon thoughts, too
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But yeah she really liked SQX a lot. Molly and SQX were the two people who unlocked 'hug me when I cry' after week 1 CYOA, which is a really significant thing for her; it's kind of a running thing with her that she's absolutely terrified of being vulnerable with people but also wants to be comforted very badly, so once someone has successfully gotten her to allow it she just imprints on them. SQX was one of the ones who navigated that convo well enough to just instantly S rank Harrow. This is why Harrow was so super aggro towards SQX about both drinking pre-execution and about not telling her Ming Yi was framed; she's just someone who doesn't know how to handle having strong feelings towards someone very well, and SQX unlocked hers too early and she didn't feel like she had enough control over the situation or that they were returned in the same intensity.
At first, Harrow actually big sister zoned SQX pretty hard? Like she thought she was beautiful but really only saw it platonically because when she found out she was a goddess, Harrow's feelings were sort of. . . Harrow's current canonpoint has her living with God and various other immortals (saints, but they're basically the same as a pantheon) and she (spoilers) is also in the process of ascending but it's going badly. And they're all really, really cruel to her, ranging between actively trying to kill her to total, blatant apathy towards her death. So she latched onto SQX when she learned she was someone who had ascended to godhood a little in the sense of like, this is what I wish it was like, I wish there was someone as nice as this who cares about me and cares about people in general.
But over time she stopped big sister zoning her because she came to saw her more as a person, with her own fears and vulnerabilities and insecurities, and their relationship shifted to something a little more balanced, with Harrow feeling like SQX cared for her back to the same degree she cared for her and valued the relationship in return. She always had a bit of a crush but never intended to act on it because Harrow for reasons was really determined not to ship here and she'd already fallen a little bit into one, so there was really no chance of her trying to add to it once Virrow was sort of happening. She did try a couple times to shoot her shot in terms of indulging with her but she's an incredibly awkward nerd who has no idea how to do that and it failed spectacularly every time. That thread where she brought up that maybe she should be sleeping around more and then they ran out of texts haunts my dreams.
As for the murder reveal, she'd felt for a while that SQX was hiding something, though SQX admitting to her sad backstory did throw her off the trail a little. Once she heard the circumstances she was truly like. Well, good, sounds like you saved Eleanor from becoming furby juice, but also I want to fight Envy behind a Wendy's for asking you to do this when there were so many other people here who could have been asked who wouldn't have tortured themselves over it. (She knows that there's probably a reason, she's just fighty. Fortunately she loves Envy too, so it'll be fine).
Happy for her that she's going back to Fodlan. Harrow will stay in touch and if she's even in danger she'll be right there and she ain't afraid of no ghosts. The second she meets Gideon, Gideon will try to hit on her.
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Okay, so. I have a tendency post unsolved murder to have a lot of theories and suspicions and then am almost always wrong. Usually I do not transition any of this IC until I am on more solid ground. But Harrow is a really paranoid character. She literally has post traumatic stress from being targeted for murder all the time and her vibe in this game was always just like. I need to find the murderers and fuck them up before they can fuck me or my friends. She also in canon is like. Always wrong about who the murderers are? Like she spends the first book being convinced its one person for very wrong petty reasons and then swerves off them and suspects like. The nicest boy in the universe instead, and then swerves again, and is just. Wrong, constantly, all the time, because she's driven so much by paranoia and her feelings that everyone is always playing mind games with her and only being nice to her to manipulate her. Meanwhile, she's really bad the other direction of correctly identifying who actually wants to kill her; she lets herself get betrayed by someone pretty spectacularly and never even has an ounce of suspicion of what's obvious to everyone else, because they manipulate her the right way instead of just being nice.
So this is the vibe I wanted to bring to her anti-murder efforts. Week 0, she got really fixated on the Tamaki murder because she'd befriended Molly a little and wanted to bring him the name of a killer. She settled on her theory that whoever framed Beau was at the Envy party, and then there was the whole skull thing, which she initially thought maybe had something to do with Douman because of his skeleton theming. So our early threads post Tamaki murder were like. Very much her trying to feel them out. This is why she started talking about like. Being comfortable with murder and stuff.
This should have all been resolved at HK-47's execution, but before that happened she got back from the CYOA and was really offended by their pushing her, and specifically their fixation on the idea that there was maybe a child with them on the CYOA. This was correct, but it was a detail she was wholly unwilling to talk about because the whole situation with the child was extremely traumatic. And she thought Douman was a murderer and was trying to learn information from her just for vulnerabilities / to use against her, and reacted very badly to it. So by the time she learned they weren't behind Beau's murder, she was deep set in her clown grudgewanking ways and wouldn't let it go. I also vaguely suspected Douman OOC after both the Toblerone murder and the clown shoes (because of the kicking curse), and while I knew that it definitely wasn't true that Douman did all of the murders, it was funny to me to have Harrow think so.
She came really close to putting in a proposal for them the same week they died, because she was sure they'd done something. But when she was redirected off doing that, she instead unwisely confronted them in person about all of it.
Anyway, she was interested in talking to a priest who is into skeletons, so the entire Ashiya Douman vibe was very interesting to her and she and the baby clown could have been friends, probably, if they'd had more time to interact. When I joked about her being disappointed Douman was nice now it was mainly because she was excited to get to grudgewank again against someone who is fun to grudgewank, not because she actually missed the clown. She thought Limbo was very obviously evil and gross and was very pleased every time the real Limbo came out because it vindicated all her grudgewanking feelings.
So as you can see she was kind of right, but for extremely incorrect reasons, and that's very IC of me.
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Harrow's relationship with her parents is pretty weird. They died when she was ten, and before that they always had a relationship with her where they were super encouraging and proud of her genius and necromancy prowess, but were pretty aloof and distant in all other respects. Harrow's feelings about them are messy because she's logically aware of information that means she knows they were pretty bad people, but she's also very defensive of them, gets upset if anyone says something unkind about them, misses them, and then deep down knows they didn't really have a normal parent child relationship but a very toxic one.
I just explain this lore because she's a pretty lonely girl who is pretty desperate for positive approval from parental figures, but is also extremely unused to it and caught off guard from it. She thinks she's used to being encouraged and praised and shown support, but it was always only for a few limited qualities, and no one ever really showed her much encouragement or support for who she is as a person.
Because of that I was so happy when Sheila was assigned to my CYOA because I felt like they would have great CR, but wasn't sure how to get it. Harrow would just naturally find zombie stuff fascinating and it wouldn't bother her, and I thought she and Sheila would vibe in terms of their creepy but ultimately moral outlook on things, but Sheila's nice suburban mom thing is by contrast so alien and weird to her that it would just wig her out and I don't think she'd realize she had anything in common with Sheila ever on her own. So the CYOA was a great way to get her to trust Sheila and bond with her a little and see her as capable, and then once I was able to get the zombie lore I was rubbing my hands. Since Harrow had reasonable creepy necromancer reasons to keep spending time with Sheila and sharing personal stuff with her, she accidentally got a healthy dose of decent mom energy sent her way.
Sheila really was pretty important CR for Harrow because it was so uncomplicated once they'd bonded. They just got along and Harrow cared about her but was also like 'oh, Sheila can take care of herself on her own.' She didn't see Sheila as a nice mom who needed to be sheltered or taken care of but just a perfectly capable lady who needed to eat corpses. Sheila always just casually saying 'yeah, I'd kill some people if they did bad things, but I'd tell you if I did' was the perfect way to get Harrow to trust her. Because first of all, Harrow has the same view that killing dangerous people is good and not morally complicated at all, but Harrow isn't a sharer.
One of the funniest things to me this game is how by even mid game, there was such a large number of people Harrow felt she could not hide things from, and would instantly tell if she had a problem. That's not at all naturally who Harrow is; she has a tendency to take on problems by herself to an unhealthy and unreasonable degree, and put all the responsibility on herself to fix things, and doesn't loop people in on her plans even if it's very detrimental. Most of this is because she doesn't expect people to trust her, rather than her lack of trust in others; she doesn't see the point of informing people of plans if they're likely to side with someone else or undermine her plans because they think she's shady. So Sheila's just obvious, casual trust in her worked wonders to make her feel like 'okay, that's the arrangement - if we kill anyone, we've agreed to tell each other and work together.' And ironically that probably kept her out of a lot of trouble because if she did something reckless there would be so many people she wouldn't want to lie to about it.
In general I just think it was really healthy for her to have Sheila around saying nice and encouraging things about her as a person and obviously liked her without making it a big thing. She always got embarrassed when Sheila complimented her because Sheila never talked about what a genius she was or anything she viewed as a natural born ability but instead complimented personal qualities she had. This made her want to die as any teenager would, but it was good for her.
After the game, I'm sure Harrow comes to visit sometimes and is completely overwhelmed by anything like going to target or Joel saying something dad-like to her, but is very engaged and right at home if they need to hide a body or are being targeted by zombie hunters or evil spiders. Maybe she'll try to teach Abby some necromancy techniques.
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apparently vlad complimented her once early on in the game?? i don't remember that at all lmao but almost immediately he soured on harrow because like. she's so commandeering and trying to actually solve these murders and find the killers, but she's still so blinded by bias that she dismissed vlad at face value or even treated him with disdain and suspicion when, in his mind, he'd done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
That only intensified in death, watching her get even closer to others and make excuses for their behavior when vlad got immediately pegged as heinous for absolutely nothing. Especially in the last few weeks, with all that rhetoric of "oh, let's all band together, unity is more important than pointing fingers about murder!" like bITCH,,,,
anyway now he views harrow as an immature, self-important child who bites off more than she can chew and gets away with it. gross.
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Anyway she treated him with disdain and suspicion for the murder he actually did, you dingus!
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