#The Book Rat

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[shyjusticewarrior]

Duke: Dick looks like the type of guy to wiggle his fingers and say "don't mind if I do" when he sees a box of donuts.

Dick: No actually, this is a Jason thing. He does that.

Dick: He, uh, he would have not wanted me to tell you that.

Steph: Please? Dad?

Bruce: I'm not your dad!

Steph: Well you're everybody else's dad, I thought it might work!

[the-twst-cast-needs-therapy]

Thank you for your service, soldier 🫡

[pine-rhyme]

Harowhark study because i got the flu (Nonegesimitis).

[dansemacabre]

(tw unreality!)

ayo new theory just dropped and bad news! the implications are cosmically horrifying

in the bulletin from time baby in book of bill, he says bill is a “danger to narrativity”, and that he risks the fourth wall. this kept bothering me. why reference the fourth wall here? why have time baby reference it? yeah the heaven page and shit is a bit meta, but thats just how bill talks, right? Well i was a fool

when you put “seven eyes” into the lost files site, this warning pops up from the oracle question mark? from journal three:

the therapese at the bottom translates to “set coords for dimension: r34lity”.

and putting r34lity into the website gives us this image:

the text below it reads they found a new home. those are “real” fucking images. the henchmaniacs are in our “reality”. the cryptids page might not have been a goof goof bit- they were “real”. (“real” meaning our reality in the book of bill sense of it but still our reality. is that tracking.)

none of the rest of the cast actually references us as a specific audience, or the fandom, or acts like we know them at all. the cast addresses everything they write to a mystery “reader” who needs to be saved from the book’s influence.

meanwhile, in the book of bill:

because bill’s not talking to a mystery “reader” who’s reading this book.

bill fucking sees us.

bill sees reality. REALITY reality. like this earth the one with alex hirsch and gravity falls the show and tiktok and shit. book of bill is a book in our reality for us the reader. (ie. there’s a reference to “they both reached for the gun” if you put gun in the website, which would only make sense if bill was sentient in this “reality” right now.) and someone is trying to get here to hide from him. maybe they’re already here.

[automatonz]

Book of Bill spoilers bewarb ⚠️:

[kurikorso]

oh shit look who it is!!

please click him for better quality

[gin-juice-tonic]

So, for Starters: Book Of Bill Spoilers warning. Another opinion from me below. This new one is about the lost journal pages again, of course.

Originally, I wanted to make a super big crazy essay about all the reasons I think the journal pages in BOB (The Book of Bill’s given name) are fake, and show off my super-cool totally completely sound deductive reasoning techniques in the process.  

Unfortunately, knowing myself I’m not sure I’m actually capable of accomplishing such a feat. You all know how I tend to post things in parts, sometimes out of order, often never finished. However I would like to share something in particular that’s been eating at me that I’ve seen… partially discussed, but only partially. And certainly not the part that I would like to discuss. 

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

I saw these rats being talked about since before I was even able to have a look at the book myself. 

But before I get further into it all, I would like to start off with a joke: 

Why did dead rats, eggnog, a land orca, shrimp colors, It’s a Small World After All, and an Anti-Cipherite Suit cross the road? 

Well, that’s easy. To get to the other side. 

Of the book, that is. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably skipped right to the journal pages upon contact with the book. And if you’re even MORE like me, you were probably left a little confounded by them. Not only did they seem… wrong somehow. But they also felt random. Full of odd choices of subject that didn’t make a lot of sense. Could these pages really have come from journal 3? If so, why do parts of them feel so… completely out of context? 

And this is where the rats come in. As I mentioned before, I saw many people discussing them. In particular, they were noting a connection to this passage from earlier in the book:

Many of the related discussions also felt odd to me. Though I lacked the knowledge to be able to articulate why at the time. UNTIL, I read the book for myself from start to finish. That's when I realized something:  This is not the only time something from earlier in the book connects back to the journal pages. In fact, it happens many, many times throughout the earlier passages. (Here is a small collection of them for your perusal.)

And then it started clicking into place. The reasons the pages felt like they were so abnormally out of context… is because they WERE lacking context!

Now, before you can finish saying “Gin, you’re an idiot.” I would like you to ponder these three questions: 

1) Why, if these pages were taken from Journal 3, should they require context from outside of it to be able to be completely understood?

2) Why is it that this context can be found in what Bill Cipher has been writing in the preceding passages up till now? 

3) If you put food in a mogwai’s mouth at midnight EST but drive it over the CST time zone line back to 11PM before it can swallow, will it still transform into a gremlin? 

Okay, you caught me, that third one is unrelated. But the first two I believe require further thinking. So let’s delve a little further into the idea. Consider this the real third question: 

3) Are we to seriously believe that these, the only pages of J3 still lost to us, just so happen to tie into the new topics from the rest of the Book of Bill over and over like this?  

And since you’ve done so well thinking thus far, I’ll ask a fourth question: 

4) Are you aware of the concepts of Watsonian and Doyalist analysis? 

Assuming you don’t and you won’t google it, I’ll skip to the important part. Watsonian analysis is to analyze a story from within it, as if you yourself were Watson making deductions in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  

Now, from a Watsonian point of view, what happens when we try to answer our earlier questions? Why should it be that the Book of Bill provides so many of these points of reference to the journal pages? 

One possible line of thought could be that Bill wrote the earlier passages of his book *around* the idea of what was contained in the pages, but I think this doesn’t work for a few reasons. For one thing, the purpose of the book is to get the reader to make a deal, not to take a whole novel to set the stage for a 3 day mini Ford adventure. For another, not all of what I described prior is really fit to be called “context”, is it? The rats, the “Small World” cassette, and the Bill-Suit are one thing, but Eggnog? Shrimp colors? Land Orcas? I certainly wouldn’t define them that way. If anything, they’d be better suited to being called “references”. And unlike the more contextual ideas, there’d be no real need for Bill to sneak mere references to the pages into his grand story.  And lastly, there are a great deal of Bill pages that have nothing to do with the content in the journal pages at all.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

If we do intend to think of the callbacks outlined above as references, the only logical conclusion within the story is that the journal pages themselves are referencing back to the Book of Bill, not the other way around.

But… how? And why? Something Ford has written in the 80’s shouldn't be able to reference something Bill is writing post-weirdmageddon certainly. 

That’s because “Ford” isn’t referencing it at all!

And as for why… Well, have you ever noticed when you're writing a story on the fly, things you wrote earlier all come crashing back to you as you try to wrap things up? I believe personally that the journal pages are not pages actually written by Ford, but more a strange endcap on Bill’s crazy train of thought! That Bill is the one writing them, and the "references" are just fuel that further the pages creation. Almost as if, to quote someone much more knowledgeable than me on this subject…

(This single paragraph has been inserted a good deal after the original writing of this post.) I would like to clarify, I am not trying to claim the ideas presented in the pages have no basis in reality whatsoever. Ultimately, what I'm saying is I think Bill wrote them, and they should be taken with suspicion instead of as complete fact. "Did this event happen exactly this way?", "Does some of this feel distorted?", "Did this part even happen at all?" I think those are questions worth examining with the events detailed on these pages.

In the end, all I've described above (as well as other aspects of the pages I've not mentioned here) leave me with the impression the pages are not real.

As I stated only a bit earlier, the idea that these pages, the only pages of J3 purported to be lost, should be so connected to the rest of the book is beyond coincidence to me. Not to mention that in order to take these pages as total truth, you must give credence to several other passages of Bill's book as well. And I'm not too keen on having to trust him that much.

To all who have read this far, even to those who may have scoffed at the ideas in here or think I've only written up nonsense. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts.

I am not saying anyone must agree with me on this. I know some people have found the pages to be important and meaningful to them, and I do not wish to give the impression that I think my view is the end all be all correct one, or that I think lesser of those who believe them to be Ford's own writings. I only want to share my own thoughts on them. And to anyone else who found the pages to feel "off" somehow, possibly validate their feelings too.

[ironinkpen]

hands down one of the best pieces of subtle world building this season is the name High Five Heroes and the way it doesn't mean anything. the Bad Kids and the Maidens' names actually say something about their respective groups and what they've done/been through. meanwhile High Five Heroes is clearly a name that was handpicked by Kipperlilly long before she stepped foot in aguefort on the first day or actually met any of her party members. it's a pre-approved inside joke specifically designed in a lab to be as bland and palatable and inoffensive as possible—a middle manager's attempt at manufacturing camaraderie. the most generic, perfectly marketable name she could come up with for her Perfect, Optimal Adventuring Party.

[beepsbees]

After his execution, a detested crown prince discovers himself in the past without his status and power but with enough knowledge to seek revenge. A fantasy BL light novel with 15 full color illustrations. Full of drama, betrayal, time travel, and found family, with blood and gore sprinkled in Unlucky Clover is ride of a read. $7.99 for 220k words of protagonist Willow's unlucky attempt to fix the future he ruined. With the help of street rat Crow and the mysterious stranger Ny he might just stumble his way out of his mess.

I was the art director and illustrated art for this novel alongside the amazing Jiminsi! This book is a wild ride and well worth checking out! It was really fun making the character designs for the cast as well as working with Jiminsi for all the illustrations! The main trio is a treat of found family and the supporting cast is a joy to read how all their stories interconnect.

This is Kiwi Rat's first novel and you can see their eclectic influences from Terry Pratchett's Discworld to magical girl anime to Villianess webtoons bouncing out of the page and creating their own unique world.

[mrghostrat]

oh, yea, it’s very real btw

[nemfrog]

Rat dissection. Teaching High School Science. 1958.

Internet Archive

[shyjusticewarrior]

Red Hood Incorrect Quotes Pt 44

Jason: I can't go back to prison.

Jason: There was a farewell party, I gave a speech, and it'd just be awkward.

Barbara: I need a four letter word for disappointment.

Jason: Dick.

Barbara: ... *gasps* It fits.

Dick: ...

[candycatfalls]

frankly I think we all moved on from the love pages too easily

[smashpages]

DC Horror Presents … (DC, October 2024) variant cover by Francesco Francavilla

[horror-aesthete]