#oh this book

[alwayslookingforthose]

What have you done FITA!

GUESS WHAT I JUST READ! A GOOD, HORRIFIC BOOK. How can something be so gothic and so old money 1920's and so steeped in the 80s at the same time? The feeling of the mish-mash of time periods makes the reader (me) feel more unsure and emotionally gaslit by the whiplash of the senses this brings! There's television sets, but the house is very much a lavish deco? It's just enough to set a precedent that this is very much a recounted story - just as it is written - and not a present telling of the story. What I mean by that is the story is not of a girl living through the future, but a woman telling a grand audience of her and her life like it were as poetic as it were traumatic. I felt as though I was sitting in a theater to bare witness of a craft of one desperate martyr. And what a grand martyr she is. Was? I have yet to read petals in the wind.

Several times throughout the read I had to pause because of the actions of the grandmother and of Corrine. Cathy's retelling pierced my soul and left a metal branding loop on the edges, which tore some not so pleasant memories from it like it were made of flesh and it, a fork. Messy, congealed in time's past goop, covered in a wall of dust of the forgotten. Cathy's emotions of fear and confusion and resentment and love were expressed so well. Her relief of freedom, and the subsequent irony of her entrapment made me believe her every word. I clung to them like they were old friends.

I devoured this book within 10 hours. The pages of my copy were thin, like many lesser quality bibles. My copy is also a duel-book. Smashed together are the tales of both the first and second volumes of the Dollanganger family series. The text was small, about a .5 spacing between the lines. It made me squint, but not from the text formatting. It was from the actions of the characters, the words of deceivers, the words of lips that kiss upon fate and death and blood.

Oh this book. I felt every line like it were a knife cutting into skin, like scissors slicing flesh on accident. Surprising. Jarring. Painful, pulsing, heart throbbing from the shock. My heart did flips of dread from the horrors these children went through, all because someone wanted to bury their grief in money. Oh I wish to purge how rectifying it was to read this and therefore reflect on personal matters.

I do not recommend this read for the feint of heart. If your nerves break from the psychological horrors of the real, scummy world, then I am afraid this book is not for you. If you're for the maddening staircase of pungent gothic wrath - then by all means. Read it.

[myasphodelmeadow]

rots novelization is killing me. It pains me to see the miscomunication between Anakin and Obi-Wan.

In one chapter you have Obi-Wan saying, "I trust Anakin with my life."

And then in the next, we have Anakin voicing his doubts, "I'm not sure he's on my side (...) I don't think he trusts me."

[eggsistential-breakdown]

Okay, but hear me out -- what if his parents weren't usually red and blue?

[ered]

Here’s my take on the whole audio books vs. reading:

Oral tradition of storytelling predates written ones by millennias, and honestly, which one you like is just a personal preference.

The actual difference is

when listening, you have no idea how to write characters’ names

when reading, you have no idea how to pronounce characters’ names

hope this helps!

[kesopan]

warmth in the cold

[atalana]

but seriously i do find it so funny that ford was like OH GOD MY PRECIOUS REPUTATION after bill possessed him around other people for all of one night

and then he gets back to this dimension after thirty years and this is now the photo the press associates with his name

[angstflavoured]

i dont think bill would be used to someone actually liking him.... especially as much as ford did like it was embarrassing

[eeriedragone]

And that’s how he discovered Fordtramarine!

Couldn’t find the post of the og meme so here

⚠️ i"ve also made a Bill Cipher PMV if anyone is interested :')

[donniipao]

shout out to toxic yaoi or whatever

I saw all the human bill designs arising and an idea sparked in my head

[krysmcscience]

I have some questions about karaoke night, Alex Hirsch. Very Important Questions. Which I will happily scream at a poor hapless baby triangle who can have no answers for me, and possibly also does not have object permanence yet.

Follow-up that is I guess suggestive, but let's be real here, Bill's a fucking triangle:

Dude slipped right into his birthday suit, lmao

this is so stupid :D

Anyway, I don't care what anyone says, this brilliant individual knows what's up - Bill is absolutely way more of a monsterfucker than Ford could or ever will be, full stop.

[gigireece16]

“how do you plot / plan your book?” very bold of you to assume i do that.

[emptyjunior]

so I have a couple of questions

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[charbroiledchicken]

reblog if you're a writer but would rather drink straight cyanide than show any of your family members your work

[theaologies]

Also who put Gideon the Ninth on the cosy fantasy table. Absolutely nothing about Gideon could be mistaken for cosy

[babycharmander]

(BOOK OF BILL SPOILERS)

I just finished reading The Book of Bill and I am kindof losing my mind over some of this stuff.

I had wondered if Alex Hirsch might make Bill sympathetic in some way and oh boy I was not expecting him to do it so successfully (and without cheapening Bill's character).

So, we learn that Bill was born into a 2D world... as a mutant who can see into the third dimension. He claims he was absolutely loved by all, but when talking about his powers, he mentions under Pyrokinesis:

"Cipher, Cipher, he's insane / Starting fires with his brain." The kids in grade school could be so cruel. But where are they now, huh? WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

So probably not quite as liked as he was letting on. To add to that, there's the silly straw page, which looks like silly nonsense until you decipher some of the codes:

"EYE DOCTOR OF A DIFFERENT KIND / WHO WANTS TO MAKE HIS PATIENTS BLIND" "THE DOCTOR SAYS / THREE SIPS A DAY / WILL MAKE THE VISIONS / GO AWAY"

I wasn't sure what this meant until I saw someone point out... he was seeing a third dimension that no one else could see. His parents probably took him to the eye doctor to try to "fix" him. Which, speaking of his eye doctor, the coded message in the section about human eyeballs says something interesting:

"MY OPTOMETRIST NEVER SAW IT COMING"

It could be a joke given beforehand he's talking about dissecting a human eye, but given the previous hints of medical abuse, I wouldn't put it past him that he tried to get revenge on his eye doctor.

Oh yeah and the whole thing about him setting his entire dimension on fire? Yeah it turns out it was entirely a mistake (he just wanted everyone to understand the third dimension he was seeing so they could be free of only two dimensions), he was so traumatized by it he blacks out when trying to recall it. He deeply, deeply regrets it, and...

"What? Your ENTIRE home dimension? destroyed? How? By what?" Bill looked distant, more distant than I'd ever seen him. "By a monster."

He sees himself as a monster.

And yet, he's not some innocent, misunderstood being. He still revels in causing pain and chaos. He's terrible in general, but becomes incredibly abusive toward Ford.

"YOU'RE MY PROPERTY. DON'T FORGET IT. The hillbilly abandoned you, your father won't want you returning without millions, you have no friends, and if you died out here in the snow, who would even miss you?"

Which... speaking of him and Ford...

Yes, yes, I know people ship them. But like, whether you see their relationship as romantic or platonic (I see it as the latter), there's some interesting parallels to be made here.

Both Bill and Ford are mutants who were mocked for their being different. (Bill was not physically a mutant, as far as we know, but more in the sense of him having vision stronger than that of everyone else in his dimension, and also having special powers. And he does describe himself as a mutant.) Both became social outcasts, separated from their families but still haunted by them (Ford seeing commercials of Stan on TV and running across old photos of him and his brother, Bill being haunted by his family in some form). Neither could return home for one reason or another. Both more powerful than their peers (Ford intellectually, Bill in terms of actual powers). Both of them isolated and alone. (Yes, Bill does have the Henchmaniacs, but they seem like shallow friends, and only really seem to follow him out of a desire to have a place to party.)

Ford was not aware of most of this, aside from knowing that Bill could not go home because his dimension was destroyed. But Bill absolutely saw himself in Ford. There was no other person he tried to use whom he felt a stronger connection to.

And he actually seems to care about Ford--he actually gave him a birthday present, and when Ford didn't like it, he decided to get drunk and party with him instead to make up for it.

And then when Ford realizes what Bill's plan actually is and refuses to go along with it, and fights back no matter what Bill does, Bill completely breaks down.

After living for trillions of years, he met someone who was like him, and that person rejected him.

He goes berserk, wreaking havoc, being caught by the dimensional authority that he's been taunting for most of his life.

And then after dying and being cast out of hell for being too annoying, he winds up faced with the Axolotl, who sends him to therapy, where he continues to break down further, sending out the book in a desperate attempt to find someone, anyone who will help him break loose and wreak havoc once again.

"You have no friends, and if you died ... who would even miss you?"

I don't know, Bill. Who would even miss you?

In short,

[ID: The front and back of one of Bill's Valentines cards. On the front is a black void with Bill Cipher lying down without his hat, gazing blankly upwards, with the text "I DON'T WANT TO DIE ALONE" above him. On the back is a simple white "TO/FROM" in red, with a red outline illustration of Bill spontaneously growing a mouth and eating a realistic, bloody heart. /end ID]