#tug spoilers

[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

[sydneysageivashkov]

nona the ninth / the unwanted guest

[mayasaura]

Wait fuck. shit. ooog my fucking god. Mercy's fun double layered way of interacting with John. the way she talks to him both like he's her god and like he's her most annoying friend. It's Cristabel. She's talking to him like she's Cristabel. permeability of the soul ft. the nun and the atheist

[g1deonthefirst]

like how much of the augustine we saw was alfred's habits and memories. how much of mercymorn was cristabel's. you digest your cavalier until you can't tell them apart anymore

[eggpngg]

She was the coffin that contained Babs all along

[vaguely-concerned]

In light of the info about the properties of souls in The Unwanted Guest, I want to shout out that Gideon — with no grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of the subject whatsoever — actually makes basically the same observation about the permeability of the soul at the end of Harrow the Ninth, when she's in Harrow's body and (with some justification) is pretty sure she's about to die in the River:

Harrowhark, did you know that if you die by drowning, apparently your whole life flashes in front of your eyes? I didn't know, as I died and took you along with me—having kept you alive for what, a whole two hours?—whether it was going to show me both. Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last.

‘As we always were’! ‘Melted steel, mingled blood’! (Also interesting that despite saying earlier in the book that all she ever wanted was for Harrow to eat her (oh Gideon), the metaphors Gideon reaches for here are not about consumption ala what Ianthe’s deal and thus traditional lyctorhood is presented as in TUG, it’s about similar and equal substances joining together to a new whole, more like what we see with Paul. I personally feel like a Paul-style merging for Harrow and Gideon is not in the cards and would not be a satisfying ending — it worked as a bittersweet conclusion specifically for Pal and Cam because those two are utterly nuts in all their sanity lol, but I don’t think the series means to present it as The definitive answer to the central question of individuation vs. connection. There is something so moving to me, though, in the fact that right at the end this is what Gideon wants for her and Harrow. Not for Harrow to eat her, not simply to be of use to her, but to be made together from the same stuff. It’s a longing for connection and union that’s finally at least in imagery free from the imbalance within the ultimately hierarchical roles of necromancer and cavalier that Gideon internalizes through her corruption arc in Gideon the Ninth, understandably so as it’s the only model she’s presented with in their society to understand intimacy and attachment and devotion through. But Gideon says Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last, mutually and equally. And I’ve written about this before, but at what must be almost exactly the same time, the same process is happening in Harrow’s mind through the evolution in the symbolism of her dream bubbles. Help I am emotions now) 

Palamedes is so right, Gideon is a lot smarter than most people -- including Gideon herself -- ever give her credit for.

[camgoloud]

okay sorry to be That Person but i’ve seen this in a couple of places and it’s been bothering me. guys babs didn’t smoke. no way in HELL did naberius tern ever touch a cigarette i mean look at him. you want to talk about someone who needs everyone to know that his body is a temple. IANTHE smokes because she saw augustine do it and thought it looked cool and everything for ianthe is forever and always about the aesthetic. the reason pal brought it up in his argument is that he’s been in ianthe’s mind and has thus absorbed the knowledge of how to smoke from IANTHE. which he then uses to be like “see, when souls overlap they will always bleed into each other.” he’s not saying that he learned how to smoke from babs. or even that ianthe learned how to smoke from babs! babs never touched a cigarette in his life. he was too concerned about “work[ing] his little butt off” (thanks ianthe for that phrasing I’m never going to stop thinking about it) to attain physical perfection so that he could win shiny trophies in every dueling competition the nine houses had to offer. i mean. come ON. it’s BABS

[syl-stormblessed]

brb just gotta go scream about how Ianthe was so focused on the fact that she was Ianthe Tridentarius that she failed to realize when she stopped being Ianthe Tridentarius entirely and became Ianthe Naberius instead

[decemberiste]

the unwanted guest (2023)

[scoobhead]

hm. so. how does dulcinea know hamlet. how does palamedes not know hamlet. why is it complicated. what is going ON

[katakaluptastrophy]

Is Harrow just very angry occasionally in chapter 10 of HTN...or is there something a bit more...permeability of the soul going on?

Magnus is a "moron". Ortus should be whipped for publicly reciting poetry. When Ortus laments that heroes are passé, "She did not murder him. It was a very near thing."

When Abigail asks about the number of signatures in her spirit energy, her reaction is very specific:

It took long years of self-discipline not to kill the woman then and there; or at least make the attempt. Against any other ghost-caller, their wards so exquisite and so fatally slow, Harrowhark had no doubt that a single decisive strike would do the job. Abigail Pent introduced doubt. It was that doubt that made her turn and flee—a tactical retreat, as she kept telling herself.

Has Harrow spent a lot of time contemplating combat techniques against spirit magicians? What is it about Abigail Pent - historian and ghost caller - in particular that throws her off?

Perhaps this is all very characteristically Ninth and very Harrow:

“If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm—frankly, on any minor excuse—I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances.”

But it is just after this that Harrow opens the Lyctoral note given to her by Abigail to read her first of Wake's diary entries, where Wake is furious at the idea of being considered weak or being shown pity, and threatens Mercymorn and Augustine.

Harrow is haunted by Wake. And Wake is angry.

[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?

[racefortheironthrone]

The Unwanted Guest and Grand Lysis

As part of my ongoing obsession with a certain transcendental plural entity, I re-read "The Unwanted Guest" with an eye towards what was Palamedes thinking about Grand Lysis and the nature of spirit magic shortly before the transmutation.

While a lot of the discourse on TUG has focused on the permeability of the soul (for good reason), I found myself on this re-read focusing on a different bit of Sextus' Poirot reveal:

PALAMEDES It’s all so messy … so much messier than we ever imagined. I’ve been in Camilla’s body for months now, and I’ve started remembering things I never saw. This is the real truth of Lyctorhood, Ianthe—it’s not some bloodless swapping-out of batteries. It’s grafting; transplantation. When you absorbed Naberius Tern’s soul, you didn’t swallow a diamond. (emphasis mine)

When I initially wrote my essay about Grand Lysis and Paul, I had thought of the Sixth's version of the Eightfold Word as a megatheorem that was enacted in the very moment as we saw it in Nona. That's certainly how it appeared at the time, but this paragraph above strongly suggests that the process we see later with Paul on the Ninth was in a certain sense already underway throughout their time on New Rho.

This certainly explains why Palamedes was so confident in his psychic duel that he had out-thought Ianthe about something so core to her core area of expertise: the nature of the soul. Because contrary to Ianthe's arrogant presumption that only she had "eaten ice cream," Palamedes and Camilla had been experiencing transplantation-leading-to-lysis for months and had been thinking really hard about what it all meant about the soul and the nature of Lyctorhood.

Moreover, one of the things I absolutely love about TUG is the way it completely recontextualizes and makes us rethink one of my favorite passages from Nona:

They dashed toward the abandoned body of Ianthe Naberius—an abandoned body that was now propped up on its elbows, staring out with pale, distrustful eyes, an expression on its face of commingled hate and despair. “So there was another way, Sextus, after all,” the body murmured. The figure crouched down and extended their arm. “I know how hard it is for you to kick against the goad,” said the new person. “But there are more worlds than this. Come with us. We are the love that is perfected by death—but even death will be no more; death can also die. There’s still time, Ianthe. Time for you, and for Naberius Tern.” The abandoned body stared at what had once been Camilla’s hand, at what once had been Camilla’s face, then at the hand again. After which it said brightly— “I bet you say that to all the boys.”

As I said in my original essay, one of the things I originally thought was so funny about this sequence is the idea that Ianthe would ever have contemplated the idea of Grand Lysis with Babs. But now that we know what passed between Ianthe and Palamedes during their psychic duel, it explains exactly why Ianthe is consumed by "commingled hate and despair," because she's just had a core element of her worldview, her ambitions, and her sense of herself comprehensively debunked and sees the proof of it standing before her.

And it also throws in a different light Paul's offer to Ianthe, which is rendered far more sympathetic and compassionate than before. They’re not just trying to convert Ianthe to their way of thinking, they’re recognizing that lysis is actively happening to Ianthe regardless of her will. Unwantedly, the inviolability of Ianthe's personhood has been compromised because she never stopped to count the cost of ascension, and thus Ianthe Tridentarius no longer exists - she is Ianthe Naberius (not Tern) now. Better to fully embrace the comingling of "proteins and lipids and molecules" and become something new and whole, rather than poison yourself with resentment and denial for a myriad.

And thus the tragedy that Ianthe refuses Paul's good news.

[alice-blogs-things]

The Unwanted Guest Thoughts

We've all talked about what the permeability of the soul thing implies about Pyrrha and Gideon Prime by now, from what it suggests about the reality of their body-sharing throuple with Wake to the apparent transition of the last myriad, from P— the pet cop and G— the loveable grill dad to Gideon the attack dog and Pyrrha, Nona's beloved parent.

But another thing I keep thinking about in relation to this newly revealed lore is the theory that Pyrrha was secretly the necromancer. Others have pointed out that in Nona the Ninth, Pyrrha talks about the Second House lyctor trial like she was the necromantic brains behind the operation and not the assisting cavalier.

For a while I was convinced by this theory as well, but now I'm not sure. Now I keep thinking about Ianthe remembering Babs vs Gideon the way Babs himself would've remembered it, talking about it with the language he would've used, and I wonder. Was Pyrrha talking about the trial like that because she was secretly the necromancer, or was she talking about it the way Gideon would've, remembering it through his eyes and his understanding?

Gideon Prime's soul may be gone, but I wonder, did they spend so long mingling and rubbing against each other in the same body that even now, it's impossible to know where one of them ends and the other begins? Even now, are their memories and identities so intertwined that even Pyrrha can't tell what memories belong to which of them?

[mjdrawsalot]

the unwanted guest brainrot is real

[tiffanyachings]

bold question coming from someone hours away from killing himself for a second time