#the unwanted guest

[claudiatherelentless]

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!

[cutetanuki-chan]

the unwanted guest made an unrepairable damage to my soul

[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.

[naomistares]

ianthe's poker fantasy

[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.

[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

[cemetegee]

Dying as a Skill Issue

I just made a post about Ianthe's "Dying is for suckers." quote and now I realized that "Dying as a skill issue/dying as failure" is actually an essential part of her character.

In the psychogram story The Unwanted Guest she talks about it even more. She presents several deaths of known characters to Palamedes and tells him why they have died in her opinion:

Ortus did not die because Crux was an asshole and killed him, but because he was too sad.

Abigail did not die because Cytherea murdered them, but because she brought her husband to Canaan House as her cav. (This point is especially random. As if Cytherea wouldn't have slaughtered Babs as well...)

(It's by the way interesting that she doesn't mention Jeannemary and Isaac here. Maybe even she knows that that would be hella tasteless. Ooorrrr she has a different reason.)

Dying is for suckers in her opinion and dead people died because of a lack of skill.

That even partly explains why she wants to become a Lyctor (and likely a God or even more than a God) so much: Dying would be a personal failure to her.

[sydneysageivashkov]

nona the ninth / the unwanted guest

[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

[tio-trile]

So that unwanted guest huh

[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

[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?

[cutetanuki-chan]

a couple of self indulgent tlt sketches

[iabyrinthus]

reading the Locked Tomb series again because i want to feel something and I noticed something that made me think about the whole Palamedes-Camilla-Dulcie situation. specifically, about their relationships with each other.

in the Unwanted Guest, Palamedes has this conversation with a disembodied voice that we soon learn to be Dulcie. he asks her: “That merely by loving you, I added to your torments?” to this, Dulcie responds that: “yes, and also my agonies.”

as heartbreaking as that is, it contrasts a different conversation between Camilla and Palamedes in Nona the Ninth: “Simply by being in your life, I have added indelibly to its weight?” “Yes.”

i am NOT emotionally stable enough to analyze what this means. but just knowing this — i am hurting. i am in pain. and tamsyn muir definitely knew what she was doing when she wrote this.

sometimes, i think that this series has done me enough harm. but it goes out of its way to show that yes! it can hurt me more!

[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)

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

"ianthe gets hot and bothered at the thought of harrow shyly removing her baggy, black robe to reveal an even baggier, blacker robe underneath" sounds like it originated in a tumblr post. it sounds like something we would make up to make fun of her. but no. that's canon. ianthe said that. out loud. in the actual canon of the series.