#memey sense

[itzpris]

urge to redesign peppa pig characters

[not-poignant]

The Gancanagh, 14 and 24 (if you’re still doing these)

14. How does your OC want to be seen by other characters?

The Gancanagh wants to be seen how he wants people to see him - i.e. he wants control over how he's perceived. Whether that's as a mysterious but likeable stranger, or a mischievous, dangerous seductionive menace, or a friend during someone's time of need. The Gancanagh likes to control how other people see him, and largely does.

24. What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions?

Honestly, no idea! This question is hard to answer because I have no idea what 'how different would their life be if they'd made those decisions.' What decisions? It would make more sense to say 'how different would their life be if they hadn't made those decisions' (and actually the MOST sense to say: How different would their life be if they'd made different decisions? OR hadn't made the decisions they made?) But then my autistic brain is also like which decision? The decision to fall in love with Oengus? To spend time with him? To sleep with Ash? To sleep with Augus? To come back at the end of The Ice Plague? They all lead to slightly different (or very different) outcomes!

Do other people's OCs like only ever make one decision? dslkafjas

That's why so often my answer is 'idk' or 'they'd die' because I just honestly don't know which decisions, and instead of imagining one or two things, I imagine like a thousand, and no one can be writing 1000 things in an ask aslkfdjsa

(I might just put a moratorium on answering this question because genuinely it baffles me and I don't know what people expect from it, sorry anon!)

~

From the Edgy OCs meme!

[kenzie-ann27]

meanwhile my experience with being asexual is just like. constant self hatred and apologizing about it

[crescentfool]

a silly little comic i drew in a one hour haze featuring @fwishfearme and i’s ocs! aka: what happens when you put fishing extraordinaire shirayuri fugetsu in the same scenario as my silly squid minatoast? (alt text/dialogue in image captions)

[deathshallbenomore]

thank you for coming to my hypotensive episode, hope y’all liked it when i almost fainted :)

[nimblermortal]

Sometimes you gotta make stuff up. Some options:

-the golden tomato: golden for our dreams. Tomato for a) kink tomato and b) rotten tomatoes are what you throw at things you don't want. Fruit for the parallel to golden apples.

(I was really hopping that the French for a tomato would be a pomme de something, a la pomme grenade (?) or pomme de terre, but no such luck.)

-If you want a fancy German word, it definitely needs to end in Trauer. You want to be more sympathetic than dismissive, so we don't want Selbstliebe, but I think a Treue-Trauer word would be neat and close. Umarbeitung is the word for adaptation. I'd like to get selbst in there somewhere but I think we're running out of space. Umarbeitungstreuetrauer? To be a little less correct and more punny, we could also go with Umarbeitungselbstreuetrauer.

-again, French would be nice but I don't speak any

-when I had this lack-of-a-word problem, Tea directed me to [redacted] Gerard Manley Hopkins, and his concept of quiddity. So you could also look to poets creating words. Or philosophers.

Anyone care to jump in?

I wish I saw more discussion about the kind of grief that can be felt about a media adaptation which isn't right for you, regardless of the adaptation's quality on its own merits. It's not a profound grief or a deep one, but the reality of the world is that tv/movie adaptations are expensive and generally singular, and if you come to them hoping to feel the same emotions you felt about the original and you don't...there's a grieving process there, a hope denied.

The way some people act about that grief is, um, wildly disproportionate and frankly disrespectful to adaptations as stand-alone works of art, especially when it crosses into the entitlement of Everything Should Cater To Me Personally, but it doesn't come from nowhere. I genuinely wish there was more space for people to be sad about what they didn't get rather than angry.

[bitchslapblastoids]

interesting but predictable how some of the inherent uncanny valley strangeness of bringing something that exists in the chronically online space into the real world can manifest. I’ve noticed this at all the other tours of theirs as well - some people can have a hard time separating internet behaviors from irl behaviors, and the sudden merging of these compartmentalized ways of being (online vs offline) can be hard to navigate.

I think it can also make people uncomfortable to see their comedic silly billie faves being serious, and there’s a dissonance to seeing them, these characters who live on our screens, along with the audience around you who are typically just avatars and usernames shitposting in lowercase, all suddenly in the same physical room. And suddenly that often completely disparate, scattered, semi-anonymous community needs to adapt to social mores and group norms in a new social context. It’s taking a community with its own set of rules that were designed for and in response to a digital landscape and plonking it into a completely alien environment. And yeah, we’re all humans who exist in public outside of our internet lives, but it’s different when that happens but you’re still in the context of the phandom.

Which I think is what leads to things like shouting out rly profane, out of pocket things during the quieter moments of their shows. because if you comment something like that online, you won’t rly be interrupting anything. you might be ignored, you might get some laughs, maybe you’ll get a notice bc haha unhinged right. Or like treating an evacuation drill as a lol pass the tea yas mommy daniel moment instead of an oh we’re actually here in real life moment.

I went back to my tatinof review bc I remembered writing this - “someone behind me kept screaming at them to "GET NAKED" (particularly during silences in the 7 second challenge) to which everyone in my area responded with claps and laughter.” During my second TIT show, there were people around me who wolf whistled and shouted “kinky” and “ayo ok freaky” during totally inappropriate moments. I remember during Dan’s quieter bits of WAD people could not seem to just stay silent. (I have suffered complete amnesia when it comes to ii so I can’t speak to any part of that experience lol.) after the preshow and during intermission at tit, I heard separate people at separate times making a range of critical comments about Dan and Phil’s bodies in ways that were downright shocking and not how I hope they’d typically feel comfortable speaking about other humans.

I think on the whole, phannies are so lovely and kind to one another. I feel deep gratitude for this community. And I know this isn’t just a phandom thing; I think how we treat one another in public spaces has generally really eroded, and concert etiquette has become abysmally poor. But phandom, as always, is a little unique, because of the sense of mutual understanding and the co-created dynamic between us and d&p. It dissolves the boundaries, so when Dan tells you to shut up, your online brain tells you that’s just a chance to be funny with your fave. When you have a chance to be heard, your online brain provides a memey shitpost joke and your irl self shouts it out even though that ain’t the move in a theatre performance unless invited to do so.

No real conclusion here, just some observations about the rly unique dynamic this all creates!

[margridarnauds]

Too afraid to ask. But what do you mean by people complaining that remake of Nosferatu is not Dracula? The characters have different names and it’s in different setting and even themes are different

You would think, Anon, you'd really think.

I've seen a number of posts in the tags complaining that there isn't a cowboy, that Mina would do this, that Jonathan would do that, why is there this psychosexual connection between Ellen and Orlock (I mean, it isn't there in the OG in the way it is in the 2024, no, but he does see her image and become obsessed, so there was some element of it as early as the 1922), why does Mina have more agency than Ellen (...we can talk about agency in 2024 Nosferatu, but first, we've got to accept that Ellen, in both 1922 and 2024, is in a totally different situation from Mina Murray.)

(I also think there's something to be said for equating "agency" with "writing female characters well", given that sometimes, female characters don't have agency deliberately, as a way of delivering a message. I feel like Ellen is a much more vulnerable character than Mina in general, but I also don't think that means she's an inherently worse character; it's all in the quality of the writing.)

Usually, these posts are phrased in a very....memey way, if that makes sense? Not in the sense that the complaints themselves are memes, but in an "I don't want to make immediate judgement calls, but I suspect that your involvement with Dracula begins and ends with DD and *maybe* the Coppola film, which is fine, far be it from me to gatekeep the 19th century vampire novel and its related media, but it does mean that your understanding of the legacy of Dracula, including the 1922 Nosferatu, is going to be...limited" way. I've also seen posts, for that matter, comparing visual shots of Coppola and Nosferatu (2024), arguing that Nosferatu (2024) is paying homage to the Coppola...when the Coppola shots are a reference to Nosferatu (1922).

And, on the record, I'm not saying "Nosferatu is the best film EVER, how dare you criticize it!" (...as I keep trying to emphasize, I am STILL trying to sort out MY thoughts and they definitely aren't single-minded worship) or "You can't possibly compare these two pieces of vampire media". I think the relationship between Dracula and Nosferatu, both 1922 and 2024, is complex. Nosferatu isn't just a knock-off of Dracula (even if it wasn't legally distinct enough for a 1920s copyright suit), but, at the same time, it is also intricately entwined with the adaptation history of Dracula, and it isn't a one-way history. In the same way that Nosferatu very obviously takes...a lot of inspiration from Dracula, every time a Dracula adaptation has Dracula see Mina's portrait, or that features Dracula dying via sunlight, it is borrowing from Nosferatu. With the 2024 remake, it's even more complex, because now we're dealing with an adaptation of a bootlegged adaptation of a novel, which, in turn, brings in material from the OG novel (Dafoe's character being expanded from the character of Bulwer in the OG, Knock eating animals, Orlok's mustache, the expansion of Anna and Harding from the OG to be slightly more Lucy and Holmwood-esque even though they are still distinct) while also doing its own thing in other ways.

...basically, I can see the impulse, but I also hadn't realized how many people weren't aware of the 1922 film? Or at least...weren't more curious about where the 2024 comes from? I'm seeing people on Reddit also having this trouble (I have compunctions about sharing Tumblr posts, due to how easy it is to reverse search, even with this website's terrible search function, and I don't really feel comfortable drawing attention to individual posts, especially when their main problem is just...narrow-mindedness and a lack of curiosity, not like. Outright bigotry.) :

(Interestingly, this thread had people saying that OP was being a snob for expecting people to be aware of a hundred year old film -- which, again...I wouldn't say I'm judging people for NOT being familiar with it, it's just...it's such a big part of pop culture and pop cultural vampirism that I'm *surprised*. But then again, my first interaction with Orlok was in a children's book of monsters and my mom used to recount a PG version of the Coppola film to me when we ate at Denny's when I was, like, 7-8, so I'll also accept that I might have just been an exceptionally goth child.)

Anyway, tl;dr: Adaptation is complicated, especially with this particular film, I think the film is doing varying things with the Dracula tradition while also being its own distinctive part of it (which is NOT in and of itself me saying the film is flawless), I don't want to make fun of people for simply not knowing but I do think that DD has created this environment of "if it does literally anything different from the OG novel it's bad" while itself often providing a memeified understanding of the novel itself and its impact and legacy, and apparently my viewpoint on what is common knowledge is skewed by my being a little goth child.

...and now I need to watch the Herzog because my guilty admission is that I've mainly ignored the Nosferatu side of Dracula adaptations for years and that should probably be rectified.

[a-holiday-ever]

I'm not colouring them✨

Character References:

Mario:

Luigi:

Bob:

It's not that I dont like them any less than the others

It's that I already have a lot of the characters coloured, I wanna be done doing references after Meggy, Tari, 3 and Shroomy are done

Maybe I'll come back and colour them some day but literally every time I look at them, I back up and colour someone else instead. My mind dreads colouring them for whatever reason so im just not going to ✌️

Mario:

Isn't a true blooded Elf, he was born outside of the Elf community and adopted alongside Luigi. SMG4s' influence caused the man to grow up Memey and Goofy bc 4 was basically their 3rd brother

Knows how much Four wants to make an impact but unfortunately doesn't really know how to properly help the guy other than doing this one favour.... That he constantly messes up bc he lacks some brain cells up there

Was gifted Elf Powers, and eventually because of how funny Mario was to Four. When Four became the next Santa he bestowed THE FUNNY powers onto Mario just to watch him do wacky shit

Mario is like if a dog took human shape- hes always hungry, loves you a bunch if youre in his friend group, not the smartest but tries his best, will destroy anyone who touches his family, and is a certified silly lil guy

All things considered, he's pretty lazy. He has no interest in making toys so instead does Meme Reviews of what Four makes for his youtube channel. Afterall if Mario doesn't laugh that definitely means it's not funny!

Luigi:

While Four was like a 3rd brother to the twins, Luigi didn't really get into the memes as much as Mario. Instead he liked following around Fours mother in order to watch her do motherly things. Finding them interesting

Awesome cook and loves to stay in the kitchen making home meals for as many elves as possible by hand alone, before needing to rely on his magic to do the rest

Bit of a scardy cat but brave when you need him to be

Sense Mario has 1 braincell on Christmas Eve, Luigi volunteered himself to travel with his brother around the world in order to make sure Christmas isnt ruined by wrong deliveries or Mario isnt arrested by Hal for speeding (yes they need to remind him every year that theyre allowed to go this fast)

Bob:

Mari Lwyd - Idea given to me by @liliththequeenofdemon

Mari Lwyd goes from door to door engaging in a song with the owners of the house, and if the owners yield they have to invite the horse inside. Give it food and drink.

So she proposed to me that Bob goes door to door rap battling people for alcohol and it was honestly perfect

Hes just like Bob in the cannon SMG4 universe. I don't wanna change him much bc that was the purpose of involving him in the first place. Hes fine how he is lol

[yukirayu]

this new translation, whilst i was super excited at first, honestly seems overly verbose. and some parts are just blatant plagiarism. i don't understand, if these people were going to go to the effort to "retranslate" in secret for over a year, why they wouldn't have completely thrown out JAST's script and started from the original. what do you think?

The patch is retelling the game by following the JP text more closely, so if it's very verbose, then that was how it was also worded in the original game. I even pointed out a few examples (albeit with MTL, which is more intended to give the closer gist of the sentence, than anything else) that does hint at this same verboseness. That, and the fact that there's far less slang and cursing, and while I can't read Japanese, I am familiar enough with the spoken version to notice a lot of worded lines (in the localization) that do not match the voice llines themselves.

And as for the claims of plagiarism, it is another version of an English translation of the game. I wouldn't expect every single sentence to be worded differently. If someone stays "Stop doing that" or "Stop that", then that's usually the best way you can word it. Or if the reply is a quick "Sure", then that's fine. It's impractical to think that for another translation to avoid the accusations, every letter is retyped and every single word (adverb, verb, preposition, adjective, etc.) is replaced.

And any posts that claim they barely edited anything only showed sneak peeks from the tutorial, and I have shown screenshots from when you're far enough into a route that show how whole sentences were changed. Even if you generally can see where either version of the same scene is getting at, wording and tone play an important role in how people understand the context, except that the localization got overly crude and memey and that can really affect one's perception of the characterization and the themes.

And they did say it's a patch. Patches like this function similarly to game mods, where you use the base file of the game and tweak it in a way that more features get added, or even refine parts of the game's coding to fix any potential bugs and whatnot. Since they explicitly stated that the patch works with the localization, it'd make sense that the do use the localization's files to insert their translation of the text.

One can only guess why they didn't patch over the JP version of the game, but if I am to make my own guess, it may be because this is their way of sidestepping the potential accusations of copyright infringement, since Slow Damage is still officially licensed by another company.

Another funny thing I have to share is that before the localization itself was released, there was a translation of the VN's demo, which was told in third person (much like this patch is). But that demo, which technically isn't the same as the licensed game and is also free property since that's what demos are for, got mysteriously deleted all of a sudden, and I've seen hints that it had something to do with JAST not wanting people to notice the change in narration POV (whichever you prefer is up to you, but the fact remains that they changed it, something that they didn't do even in the other N+C visual novels they licensed).

[skeletoninthemelonland]

I do have another question in regards to Behind the Codes and this one is a bit more to gage your thoughts on the community and how they interact with the story

Does it at all feel aggravating having to somehow twist some of the questions that people have been asking in order to tell the story you’re wanting to get across? Like going through and dubbing most of the artwork, I did notice that some of the questions seem almost inconsequential, yet you somehow found a way to make them fit in perfectly with the story, so do you have any advice on how to handle interaction between audience and creation? Especially seeing as how we are introduced to your little world via the audience’s question, and does it ever feel like people aren’t asking “The right questions?”

(Follow up question: do you often get questions you need to ignore for spoilers/wouldn’t fit into the story you wanna tell, or are just too memey to where you need to place it in a haha funny shit post context?)

This is an interesting one!

I do tend to filter a lot of the asks I receive, since some of them cannot be answered without spoiling important bits. I choose asks that further explore the fictional world of Behind The Codes, rather than choose the asks that are more direct and precise with how they seek explanations from the Vigilant.

I guess the answers come easily when you focus on world building and on each character's role. You get a basic idea of how things should work, and enough creative freedom to mess around with certain events.

I did not expect the right questions from people because I didn't think the story was well-solidified, if that makes sense. It felt like being watched while playing doll house (?) by following a very confusing script.

I did have to ignore a few questions, yes ^^'

[real-raincode-takes]

skill issue on the previous anon's part because i personally think vivia is an interesting character. he's one of the only master detectives to go through a substantial character arc- in both his dlc and chapter 4. he's one of the biggest narrative foils to yuma other than makoto, because of the way they oppose each other when it comes to revealing harsh truths. hell, vivia's arc is parallel to makoto's, because both of them choose to hide the truth for the sake of maintaining a fragile and faulty sense of peace. he's non-confrontational to a fault, and he makes long-winded flowery metaphors to be evasive whenever he doesnt wanna talk about something. his powers are more of a curse than a blessing to him, driving him to suicidal ideation. he grew up neglected by his parents and raised alongside eight brothers, so desperate for attention that he liked being punished. he was so willing to protect the honor and memory of chief yakou that he was willing to kill a friend for it. all of these things are pretty compelling to me and that's not even everything.

also... "you can't put him into memey situations"? open your mind, my friend! he may be a tragic character but there is a very thin line between tragedy and comedy! if it's OOC for him to willingly end up in a situation, just have an outside force drag him into it. or have the situation come to him because of his unwillingness to budge.

look at how many smiling sprites he has! look at how many one-off jokes he makes in his canon dialogue! look at how much he teases yuma! despite everything, vivia is not a character that's devoid of whimsy.

im not saying that everyone has to like vivia or find him interesting. "interesting" is subjective and he's not even my favorite character. but i think a great deal of love was put into his writing and it shows. i promise yall he has a lot more going for him than just being a pretty looking emo boy. he's just not as straightforward about himself as the rest of the cast... which is also pretty true to his character

.

[not-poignant]

34 Do you write to improve? Or is that not a concern for you?

Hmm.

I write to improve, but it's not my main reason for writing. So I am concerned with the skills shown in my craft, and I'm always evolving in different directions to try and get stronger in my areas of weaknesses.

For example I'm typically weak at beginnings so I've worked harder to write stronger first and second chapters. I used to be very wary of over-describing characters but that led to under-describing them, so I've been working on that. I learn techniques from other writers, and I read back through my own works and see the places where I'd write some things differently today.

Lately I've been a lot more pro-active about erasing entire sentences from drafts. I've also always been very focused on tightening my prose, which might be surprising to people given how long my stories are. But prose tightening is something I enjoy doing during edits and I believe makes my stories more solid.

So yeah I do write to improve! It's just not my main focus. I also write just for enjoyment, in which case I don't give a shit about improving while I'm writing, and just make sure that I'm shaping the chapter in the edits.

Folks might be surprised how much I believe on improving my craft in the background though, because I think I can come across as a 'I'm just doing what I want' author. But I studied - among other things - creative writing and scriptwriting at university for years, have done editing courses, and when I reread through my chapters before editing (which I did last night) I will often make a lot of mental notes like: 'You're using these words too much, this whole section needs tightening, this section needs clarity, this doesn't carry enough explanation, this carries too much explanation' etc.

And a person doesn't do that if they don't give a shit about improving their craft. :D

~

From this meme!

[docholligay]

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Thank you @becauseforoncethisisme for sponsoring this! Regulars know this, but if you're new here, all opinions are mine and it's fine to disagree with me, but please don't get weird about it.

Nonspoilery: 

Good God in high heaven and low hell, this is so much better than the first book. This is both a personal and professional opinion.  The only problem with it being, I cannot in good conscience tell anyone to read the first book in order to get to the second. I don’t think it’s so good as to justify that. That’s a pretty tall order. In all, though, if you read Gideon the Ninth and thought, “Hm. Okay, that’s enough for now,” this might whet your whistle a little bit more. 

Spoilery: 

Wow did I like this better than Gideon, you were all so right and it does not bother me even one solitary bit to say so. I think it starts slow, and I don’t know that I really ever connected with the second person bits--once I figured out what it meant, i wanted it to be confirmed and stop-- and of course Muir’s style occasionally grates on me (Muir and I are the same age. I know we grew up in the same fandom environment, and part of the reason I know that is I recognize elements of her style from fanfics being written then as now. This is stuff from like, sporking days. She’s so talented, and so loves these strange, memey asides even in lovely moments. That being said, i think this book strikes a much, much better balance with that and there were even times I found it fun, so, things are improving) But overall I would say I liked this book just fine, and would consider reading it again on some winter night. LEAPS AND BOUNDS over my experience of GtN

I struggled so hard with the first 150 pages or so of this book. I think it was a combination of how little I remembered from the first book, the taste the first book left in my mouth, and the fact that I am just, too stupid for high-concept fantasy. So all the stuff about thanergy and thelergy and conversion, I just, sat there not possible caring less about any of it. I don’t care now, and I came away liking the book! This is for someone, certainly, but I am not it. If this hadn’t been a commission, I think I would have given up at a certain point. I usually give a book 100 pages and this wouldn’t have done it for me*

At the end of the day, I think one of the things this book can be about--for me, it’s about more than one thing, but this is the easy reach--is about grief. And how being willing to give yourself a Fantasy Lobotomy, if that’s what it takes, to avoid the hurt and loss that grief brings in, and the guilt, only ends up hurting yourself and everyone around you. 

Also, it doesn’t bring them back. Forgetting them in every way possible does nothing to bring them back. Now, Harrow is a special case, so for her it can’t only be about avoiding pain, because what she’s also doing, because of how the whole Lyctorhood thing works, is, in a sense, keeping Gideon on life support. Like is said later in the book, shoving her in a drawer she can’t open, but so long as the drawer is never opened, Gideon is alive. It’s Harrow living her entire life in the doorway where where a policeman stands, ready to tell you someone you loved is dead, and she won’t let him speak. Because it’s not true until he does. 

I like Harrow so much more in this one by virtue of the fact that this book cares so much less if we like or forgive her. Because of the way it works with perspective, and the way it’s trying not to tip its hand to the fact that Gideon is our second-person narrator, we get a much more neutral version of Harrow’s life 

How Lyctors work: Love it. What a choice. My favorite takeaway from the first book, and perhaps the only thing I still think about actively while lying in bed at night, is the necromancer-cavalier system. I think it is fantastic, I love it, it works perfectly for imagining all shades of relationship and is very fun to do to your blorbim. I can’t remember if we found this out so explicitly at the end of the first book--as I said in an aside post while I was reading HtN, the pool scene in GtN pissed me off so much that I had a rage blackout for much of the book and forgot it the second I wrote about it--but the idea that the necromancer can only become this sort of ultimate power by killing this person they, by necessity, have some level of intimate bond with? Exceptional. I love that they are, in a sense, protected and powered by a person who loved them, that they murdered. I am so unbelievably into this idea, and the idea of those who can DO this, and who can’t. Reeled me back to my blorbos all over again. 

Which of course makes the whole thing with Harrow so interesting, because Harrow is someone who can’t deal with the cost of it. In full fairness to her, it wasn’t a choice she got to make, but she certainly does Gideon’s memory no honor by refusing to even acknowledge her sacrifice. She’s spitting on the roast lamb on the altar, so to speak. It’s sort of the murdered children problem all over again, though a million times better done: If an impossible sacrifice is made for you, what do you do to earn it? It’s Saving Private Ryan, and you have to spend your whole life hoping you earned a sacrifice someone made without your consent. And you should! What will you do, to earn your place? I know, i know, we all hate that except for me, but if Gideon died to make you a demigod, earn your power, and take your responsibility. 

Ianthe: I love a good horrible, manipulative cunt, and Ianthe certainly is that. This isn’t even me joking, she’s one of my favorite characters in the book (Though not my absolute favorite)  and also my poster child for “I support women’s wrongs.” I think it’s so smart and great that at the end, Ianthe makes the wrong choice, and that you are sitting there screaming for her not to do that, and yet when she does it, it feels completely correct. Of course this is a thing that she both can and would do. Ianthe is about hedging her bets, and above all else, about Ianthe. She killed Naberius as soon as she figured out the deal. We get the sense that she feels…i’m not sure how I want to say this…it’s not that she doesn’t feel about it, but she feels inevitable about it, also. To her, there was no other choice. 

She is willing to help Harrow destroy herself, shut herself off, because Ianthe loves a good “you fucking owe me” but also because other than how it benefits or hurts her, what the fuck does she care? I love her, it’s how I wish I could write Minako if I could get away with it. She’s clever and fun and terrible. I think she’s also, narratively, a great balance for Harrow’s whole ‘That girl in homeroom in an Invader Zim hoodie” vibe. 

Mercymorn my beloved: If Ianthe is my poster child for, “I support women’s wrongs” than Mercymorn is my ‘tag yourself.’ The longer the book when on, the more I liked her because the more I understood her. As an old lady who has been a part of things for many years, who has seen them grow and fall apart, who has lost people I loved and worked with people I hate, I loved everything about her. I love how utterly done she is with the whole thing. The way she so clearly loved Cristabel, and how she reacts to the pain of that love in a way I understand, and didn’t realize how clearly I understood her until Mercymorn killed the Emperor. Then it all hit at once, I remember that moment pretty early on in the book where it mentions that is you say Cristabel’s name to Mercymorn, she reacts like she’s stung. The way she yells at Harrow to never use her name with her, filled with rage. That is a kind of grief I recognize. I don’t want to talk about it and i’ll fucking kill you if you remind me. 

I felt every ounce of hurt, a plucking of a twin string, when she said, “This is the chance for unloveable Mercymorn--critical Mercymorn--to show you that she is the most capable of her name.” 

And then she kills the emperor. Do I think he was sorry? Do I think he never wanted any harm to come to Cristabel**? Does Mercymorn think that? It doesn���t fucking matter. Whether he feels bad about it or not, it’s academic at best. She murdered Cristabel because a man she trusted, a man she took to be her God, lied to her about it. He told her she, to save the world, had to give up a person she adored. Had to do it herself. I, too, would rip him atom from atom, if I were Mercymorn***. Maybe she does forgive him, but only because he is about to make repentance in blood. 

She’s my favorite character in the whole fucking book, bar none. 

(On that note, sort of, I actually came to very much love Augustine.)

Oh! One thing I loved, so much, and I don’t think anyone I’ve seen say anything even offhandedly about the book, is during the fight with the Sleeper, how Ortus’ BELIEF and PASSION form the basis to call up Mattias Fucking Nonius. Is that not incredible? That faith, can be so strong, that Abigail could call up a man that none of them ever knew, who is basically an idea more than a man, to fight? I think it’s such a lovely little lesson tucked in there, because we have been making fun of Ortus’ belief system for the entire book, mocking the way he recites this, and in the end, his deeply held belief matters, it matters so much, and I adored that as a real reversal of mocking someone faithful. 

I think part of the underlying problem with GtN is I just don’t like Gideon. I don’t like her point of view, I don’t like her character voice, I don’t like her general vibe, and the narrative does like her, and wants you to like her. In this book, it’s fine because so much of it is not from her perspective, but it became pretty clear to me that so much of what I disliked (though not all) of the first book was a Gideon-based problem. And you can’t escape her in the first book. 

This all flew immediately back to me when Gideon is taking up Harrow’s body and also the narrative duties. I cannot stand her character voice. Muir is capable of being so smart and so beautiful in her prose, but not only is Gideon herself irritating, but she inspires Muir to do this…recitation of memes, the one I can think of off the top of my head is “Jail for mother” Tamsyn i will fucking kill you. I will not read Nona, because the back page tells me, threateningly, that Gideon will be back in Nona, and not only can i not handle reading another word from her, but also that will unmake the beauty of telling Harrow that she has to let Gideon go, that she has to let them become one and thus lose Gideon, because of course it does because it’s a fantasy book, and fantasy just Does This A Lot. Stop letting people come back! Kill these motherfuckers and leave them dead! 

The thing about Pyrrha and Wake having an affair with Gideon’s body, and wake having God’s baby in order to open the locked tomb, it’s such a weird aside in a weird moment, that I can see I am going to forget about it. It’s so strange! I mean, it explains why Gideon didn’t die when she was supposed to, and I don’t have a problem with it per se, but I also don’t know that I have any feelings about it other than, ‘hm. Strange.” 

In all: Not a bad book! Enjoyed it more as the book went on, Mercymorn for Lyfe. I hope Ianthe continues being the world’s sexiest and worst person. 

Did you want to ask me something? As long as you’re not a dick about it, ask away! Let’s have fun. 

*I suppose that’s my own personal de jure vs de facto, because truthfully I can’t remember the last time I straight up did not finish a book. Perhaps I’m just lying to myself. I dnf shows and movies all the time, but not books. 

** No, I don’t think that. 

***Although I’m actually not all that sure in my marriage if I’m the necro. I think I’m actually the cavalier. I don’t think Jill would feel a whole lot of patience over having murdered me either, though.

[elias-magnusnt]

I gotta say, with how memey you seem to be, I'm not 100% convinced the stoner isn't still at least a little in charge of your current body

I resent the implication Elias Bouchard was funnier than me. Just because I'm old and evil doesn't mean I can't have a sense of humor.

... Besides, he was an adult in the 90's. I don't think he would be that on with the times... Unlike me. I'm hip with the kids and I stay on top of trends. How do you think I managed to posture as men 53 84 83 119 150 184 years younger than me and do so successfully?

@original-elias-bouchard what do you think

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for not apologizing to my boss after playing meme songs on the radio?

Okay. Hi! My name is O, and I run the local radio station in my town. My boss, P, is really adamant about what things can or cannot be played on radio. They've even made a list for me (due to finding a bunch of loopholes in the manual) which entails:

Do not play any documentaries on radio that are longer than 2 hours. - REVISED: Do not play any documentaries on radio period.

Do not play "your brother's fire mixtape" on radio. Ever.

Do not watch or play any audio for movies on radio. There have been many complaints of spoilers.

Do not call your friends on radio. They can hear you.

Do not play any country songs on radio early in the morning. - REVISED: Do not play any country songs period.

Do not put songs or audio snippets on loop for longer than 1 hour. REVISED: Do not put songs or audio snippets on loop period.

And there's more rules too, but you get the gist of it.

So anyways, yesterday night I was bored playing the same popular songs over and over, so I got an idea. I have a good sense of humor and laugh at anything really, so I went onto Soundcloud and looked up a bunch of memey and silly songs. Once I compiled a playlist (it was about 2 hours worth of songs), I put in some designated ad breaks, loaded the songs onto the radio, and let it loose into the world.

When I clocked into work today, P was furious. Somehow, P was driving late last night, and he was subjected to my lovely playlist while on the highway. So anyways, now he wants to fire me.

I asked him why. He said that I wasn't a good fit for the work environment and that my "attitude" was getting out of hand. I reminded him that he made a list and I followed it, and that technically I didn't break any rules so he has no reason to fire me.

He said if I don't apologize for it then he'll fire me. My coworkers are telling me to just apologize and suck up to them, but I really don't see what I did wrong here? I was just having a little bit of fun, and it's not like I always do this?? I'm holding my ground for now, but I'm really starting to wonder if I'm the a-hole here.

So, AITA?