#Unwanted House Guest

[shanxpennywise]

Creepypasta Art Dump (Old Art.)

[beguilingcorpse]

it drives me crazyyyy that like. palamedes is out at canaan house with tenderness in excelsius for dulcinea. the perfect regency era gentleman. every moment is the pride and prejudice hand flex scene. if the pov character was attracted to men even a little bit the narration would be filled with swooning. he’s lowering her gently into chairs and handing her tea so that their hands brush and looking at her with those big grey eyes of his. and all of it is WASTED because it’s NOT dulcinea it’s CYTHEREA. FUCK

[torpublishinggroup]

“Two is for discipline, heedless of trial; Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile; Four for fidelity, facing ahead; Five for tradition and debts to the dead; Six for the truth over solace in lies; Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies; Eight for salvation no matter the cost; Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.”

8-74-13-18 13-343-25-111 8-269-16-10 15-386-33-34 9-209-9-25 14-131-22-34 7-283-11-34 13-283-27-55 9-453-6-17 14-508-25-65 7-212-10-17 14-172-21-153.

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

[luce-cannon]

"You're fucked, my lad"

Obviously had to draw Ianthe in these outfits after reading that story

[featherbreak]

Camilla’s clockwork interrupted with a series of urgent beeps: the BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP of a timer alarm, faster and more panicked than the usual time’s-up sound. ... but then Camilla had straightened and was blinking furiously, and it was Camilla. Her eyes were pale grey again and she shuddered like herself.

happy Nona the Ninth paperback release day! here's some New Rho Palamedes Sextus Camilla Hect for your "I just read The Unwanted Guest or remembered that Paul exists, and now I have 99 feelings & all of them are pain" mood.

no? can't be just me sobbing about Camilla Hect forever

bonus action outtake inspired by @shesmymausoleum 's awesome fanart of my last cosplay post:

[gideonisms]

Dulcie thought maybe pal & cam would make it to the funeral.....she thought they'd never see her alive but maybe they would see her once she was dead and then planned the whole funeral just to give them one last joke with her......do you ever just.

[occasional-rambler]

okay it literally just hit me an hour ago that Palamedes and Dulcinea will literally never see each other again. If I understood right, Cam and Pal’s soul merging thing was just that, they’re technically not dead and their souls won’t enter the River.

I’m glad Palamedes got to see and speak to the real Dulcinea at least once, but god is it tragic that it only happened after they’d both died. It wasn’t enough that they just missed meeting each other when they were alive, they only get that one little conversation in The Unwanted Guest before they’re separated for good. I suppose it was never a guarantee that they’d meet again in the River after Dulcie’s choice when the river bubble was collapsing in HtN (I’m still so curious what she did and where she ended up), but I can’t imagine that Palamedes didn’t think about finding her in the River if he died for real.

Did he make his peace with saying goodbye to her forever when he was planning the soul ritual with Camilla? Was it easier to follow through after meeting her when he was fighting Ianthe for control? God I love how much this series makes me think.

[derseprinceoftbd]

"Don't say what Babs would say!"

"I *always* say what Babs would say."

Very glad I read The Unwanted Guest when I did.

[shanxpennywise]

Slenderman Vs Unwanted House Guest (Old Art.)

[thesixthruin]

just thinking about the parallels of lyctorship being compared to meat consumption by palamedes in the unwanted guest and alecto's "kiss" at the end of nona the ninth. "you swallowed a piece of meat" vs. "this is how meat loves meat". alecto's cannibalistic display of love. ianthe's visceral and brutal consumption of naberius tern, with no love in it, only using him as a means to an end. camilla and palemedes' softer and prepared consumption of one another. the sixth house's resistance at allowing one to eat away at the other, but rather letting all wholes be consumed into something new. the mutual cannibalism of it all. thinking about ianthe's unwillingness to consume coronabeth, how lyctorship is not love in her eyes, like it is in the eyes of the sixth house.

[alectothinker]

the unwanted guest vs [redacted bc spoilers]

bc im insane about this story and its references

anyone getting jb priestly an inspector calls vibes from the unwanted guest ?? a couple things i noticed:

the stage play format + old timey rich family house setting (fireplace, butler/maid, calling card etc) is very similar to AIC 

from the play: "The dining room is of a fairly large suburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer. It has a good solid furniture of the period. The general effect is a substantial and heavily comfortable but not cosy and homelike."

ianthe straight up calls pal "inspector" lol

pal questions ianthe indirectly to reveal her guilt about killing/exploiting babs (v like the inspector vs the birling family)

from sparknotes (lol): "Strangely, the Inspector does not ask questions about what they know about her death. His questions, instead, prompt each family member to struggle with and eventually face guilt for Eva/Daisy’s death." "The Inspector’s questioning unravels the mystery of how each family member has used social standing, influence, and power over others without personal consequence, devastating the young woman’s life." ^ vs pal calling out 3rd house heir and lyctor ianthe tridentarius for seeing+spending babs (who had been assigned cavalier status at birth) as a resource 

 Pal: "you never stop to check the price tag. You just pay whatever's asked, up front, and walk away."

vs AIC: "The play, as events unfold, suggests that an empowered class exploits the underclass without consideration of consequences for its exploitation."

consequence being that tern's whole life was fucked, and ianthe never considered that her own soul would be corrupted (in her pov) by babs'

Lastly, pal vs the moral of AIC: 

"The Birling family’s collective guilt conveys Priestley’s message that it is the social duty of every human being to examine the impact of any action on others and to care for and help them, without self-consideration."

vs everything that pal says in the story, +in ntn, paul still tries to help ianthe/babs: "There’s still time, Ianthe. Time for you, and for Naberius Tern.”

someone on tumblr has probably written this meta but to me TUG is pal (+tamsyn) laying out how systematically exploitative the necro/cav relationship can be (with ianthe helping out a lot lol). which imo aligns pretty closely with what priestly is trying to say with AIC, and also with dulcie's hamlet quote: ‘Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?’

also TUG feels like some sort of. idk awakening in pal? and therefore paul? cant wait to see them fuck shit up in new and interesting ways. ok thats all pls lmk if yall have thoughts!! i last read AIC in middle school for my GCSE's LOL

[wubbelwubbwubb]

the unwanted guest

[spookyscaryfox]

things that make me feral about the third house:

the neptune imagery (trident knife, the pool scene)

their specialty in necromancy (eating pieces of flesh to convert it into necromancy? sick)

the titles of their house (the mouth of emperor? invokes their school of necromancy AND their role as spies. the house of the shining dead? terrifying imagery and another tie in for their necromancy. the procession? no idea what could that mean but still cool)

the insane way their necromantic abilities are used to shape everything (babs had to be the perfect cav, so he became the perfect cav? fucked up on so many levels. the way his actual physique can be attributed to the requirements of the duelling? mind-blowing)

the funeral in the unwanted guest if we assume that's the actual procedure that happens there (and do y'all think about why ianthe chose the opening scene to be her own funeral?)

[nevermoor-batty]

alright, was someone going to tell me that palamedes and Camilla are second cousins or was I just going to have to read that on Tamsyn Muir’s tumblr blog by myself??

[caiternate]

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead (tom stoppard, 1966) // thyestes (seneca, trans. e.f. watling, 1966) // angels in america (tony kushner, 1991)

no context unwanted guest spoilers but it's just plays that i was insane about in college