TL;CR MEME

[probe]

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.

Comments

[bonetiddies]

Literally all she was planning to do was admit her parents were dead. They had that conversation at the drinking game, and it was a little awkward because it was clear his had died when he was young, but she was pretending with lies of omission that hers were alive. This was just the ruse she'd had to live with years, and she was paranoid about it, but recognized there was no reason to maintain it anymore, given both events in canon and the fact that no one here knows shit about her House. So she never intended to have a deep conversation with him, so much as follow advice she'd gotten from a couple of the Avatars and share one very small thing that was a lie she'd lived with for a long time but was now only holding onto out of habit. The idea of spilling a lot of her personal feelings about her family was not the plan.

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.