#the unwanted guest

[sofipitch]

Souls are permeable-> The more you interact with a person the more it changes you. This is obvious when it's in friendship, and or it is a chosen change. But even if you don't want to change, knowing others will change you will regardless, in ways you may not be able to predict. That is the nature of all relationships, we are not static things. Yeah. That's it, just gonna think about this one all day

[vantherelentless]

Unreliable Narrator: Not Paying Attention

Unreliable Narrator: Actively Hallucinating

Unreliable Narrator: Six month old Infant

Coming soon in the Unreliable narrator series! Ancient Rage Barbie!

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[ancientannoyance]

tfw that nerd from the sixth informs you that the cavalier you killed like a piece of meat is now slowly but surely becoming an indelible part of you and you just have to live with that

[cutetanuki-chan]

the unwanted guest made an unrepairable damage to my soul

[unreachedgalaxy]

underrated part of the unwanted guest is dulcinea knowing full well that palamedes and camilla are a package deal. like, she’s in a weird emotional situationship with palamedes, and she is aware that means that she is Also, By Extension, in a weird emotional situationship with camilla. and she’s quite happy about it

[naomistares]

ianthe's poker fantasy

[molassicide]

part 1 part 2

[theriverbeyond]

It's sooooo interesting how in Harrow the Ninth, Harrow is constantly noting all the ways Ianthe is failing at femininity: the awful frilly nightgown, the clothes that don't fit (in the bust, in the hips), her hair, her attempts at flirtatious behavior, the specific way she is sucking up to Augustine etc. And like, this is a weird house for Harrow to be throwing stones from, sure, but I think it makes way more sense after The Unwanted Guest gave more context to soul permeability wrt the status of Naberius Tern, because it is now arguable that Ianthe is essencially being forcemasc'd throughout the entierty of HtN -- we just dont know about it bc Harrow dgaf. And this is doubly interesting to me because when we next see her in Nona the Ninth, she is now Ianthe Naberius, a Tower Prince in masculine dress and leather trousers and boots, and she no longer has any of that sort of gender failure going on.

[whimsicallywiddershins]

So we found out from Palamedes and the Unwanted Guest that lyctorhood is not perfect and leaves a mark on the necromancer. The necromancer devours the cavalier's soul, and unintentionally gains something from it, mostly emotions or new urges or something like that. Like Ianthe getting Babs' hatred/distaste of Gideon.

John devoured Alecto. For a little while, John and Alecto were one, two souls intermingling like two pieces of flesh bleeding together. Then John created her a body and poured her soul back in, unintentionally creating a perfect lyctorhood.

John didn't really know what he was doing. He was running on guesswork and instinct. So I think he and Alecto shared and gained something from eachother.

Alecto is always described as angry. Which makes sense, considering the circumstances. But when John killed and devoured the earth, he was furious. He was raging. He hated.

What if Alecto got most of her anger and hatred and rage from John? Some of it was hers, yes. But hatred? A never ending anger? What if Alecto got what John was feeling when he ate her, made her?

And John. What did he get?

The thing is, we don't know what Alecto's personality was like. She was a planet, not exactly a person with feelings.

But we do know what Resurrection Beasts are like. They are relentless. They hunt and hunt and hunt John. Angry, yes. But mostly unstoppable and stuck in a never ending cycle of hunting John no matter the cost.

John won't forgive the Trillionaires. He doesnt even seem that angry anymore. But he won't stop hunting them, not for anything. Augestine begged him to stop. John doesn't let his lyctors tell him to stop. John doesn't care how many worlds he kills, how many people he displaced. He doesn't care about the cost to the Houses. He is relentless. He hunts and hunts and hunts.

John acts like a Resurrection Beast. And Alecto acts like John.

[mayasaura]

I'm going crazy thinking about Pyrrha and Gideon and the permeability of souls. Bc what first tipped Palamedes off was a habit that he, the intrusive soul, picked up from Ianthe, the host. The osmosis doesn't just go one way. While Pyrrha's soul bled into Gideon, he was seeping into her, too.

Gideon wasn't an attack dog in John's recollection. He was steadfast and devoted, but he was an engineer moonlighting as a grill dad. Reminding John to put airholes in his bovine forcefield, then firing up the barbie to make sure everyone got fed. It was Pyrrha who carried a gun and wanted to hit back hard and fast. Pyrrha who advocated for a show of force.

How much of the Saint of Duty's bloody minded perseverence did Gideon get from Pyrrha, and how much was originally his? Would the Pyrrha of ten thousand years ago have stood at a stove on the eve of an apocalypse flipping pikelets for the kiddie, or is that something she picked up from Gideon?

[bzedan]

A specific whim

I got into my head that Tamsyn Muir's The Unwanted Guest needed to be bound to look like a Samuel French script. You know them, if you've done theatre. And although they've redesigned their covers, they looked the same for a very long time. I'd hoped to unearth one of mine as a reference (No Exit, by Jean Paul Sartre), but I have no idea where it disappeared to in the two decades and half-dozen moves since I first marked it up.

Luckily, "vintage" acting editions abound in the second-hand world and I was able to find reference images to suit. I think I did a good job getting the vibe right. I made three copies, two gifts and one for me (which worked out great since I fully forgot orientation for my printer and the inside cover of my copy is upside down).

For this bind I added a lot of fluff, like inside covers advertising posters, other scripts available from the Mithraeum Play Service Inc. library and a new play available - The Noniad.

I also wrote little character descriptions, which I'm proud of. Luckily the script book I had to hand to physically ref was also a two-person play so it helped with the vibe. The inside text block is… fine. I realised way too late that I had mucked up the scene headers, so we won't look at those.

Also fun: text on the spine. You know, to become completely rubbed off as your sweaty hands keep fussing with the script as you completely destroy it while memorising your lines. Probably nowhere near accurately bound but it gives the vibes.

This was a delight to do, and (other than messing up the scene headers) they turned out exactly as I'd hoped and imagined. The covers were off-cuts from a photo backdrop! The perfect colour I think.

[alienvampyr3]

[tio-trile]

So that unwanted guest huh

[cutetanuki-chan]

a couple of self indulgent tlt sketches

[nona-gesimus]

we moved on from the unwanted guest way more quickly than we should have…ianthe boobs out, palamedes smoking, both of them serving dyke drama realness, the reveal that souls in close proximity rub off on each other…it was too good

[naomistares]

the unwanted guest spoilers

tamsyn muir when i catch u. tamsyn muir when i catch u tamsyn when i

(yes i died for a while but i came back exactly the same)