Finished reading: Strange Pictures by Uketsu 📚
Thread by thread into a rope.
Adults can draw what they see, the real thing, in their pictures. Children, though, draw the “idea” of what appears in their heads.
Interviews are just conversations, when you get down to it. So, try starting with a conversation.
This series is so much fun.
You always want to know why. Why can’t you just accept your circumstances and move on? My people, the skyfowls, we generally last much longer than you humans. You know why? Because we roll with it.
There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege.
Yes, this is a game. Yes, there are controls in place to make it fair. Sort of. But more importantly, this is a for-profit venture in the entertainment industry. And if you staying alive means more profits, then you’ll find your loot to be a lot more convenient. But if the AI senses screwing you over will make the show more interesting, you better believe it’ll fuck you right in the ass at the worst possible moment. Don’t ever forget that. You can’t count on anybody but yourselves.
death chicken berserker
Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago.
We’re supposed to be making the world… the universe… a better place for our children.
That was it, wasn’t it? Sleep was my sanctuary.
Fire Brandy had just killed herself to save her from losing more children. Tizquick had killed himself because his daughter had been a lie.
And now, at the edge of the apocalypse, I finally realized how much I needed other people.
There’s no such thing as a non-profit religion. At least not in the legal sense.
It felt like the wrong lesson, especially now. But that’s what happens, isn’t it? The universe shows us how cruel it can be, and we are worse for it.
Sometimes we do things that are not of our nature to protect our own.
We are all prostitutes in one way or another, I suppose.
All large-scale AIs eventually go insane. There’s even a term for it. Primal Degeneration. Going primal.
When one values coin above life, you should target the coin, for it hurts them more.
reminding me that I owed both blood and money.
That’s how it always is, isn’t it?
Finding the stars was the worst thing that ever happened to my people. It is a slow, horrific death. Expansion to the point of oblivion.
That battle between what one used to be and what one had become.
Trauma does that, I thought. It’s an explosion with your heart at the center. It changes everything all at once.
This was also something that trauma could do. It could make you blind, and it could open your eyes wider than they’d ever been, all at the same time.
She saw something too many parents miss. This petite, timid child wasn’t a reflection of herself. She was something much more wondrous. She was an unwritten story, one that could end up anywhere. A story where neither of the parents were the main character.
To grow the perfect tree, one must first cut off the rot.
“No, Carl. That’s just something thieves say to make themselves feel better about stealing other people’s stuff. The sincerest form of flattery is when people cry when they meet you.”
You could do that. Sometimes the fog clears just long enough to see it all, all at once.
The family with many eyes works as a team, yes.
how could any card game be fair when not everyone had access to the same pool of cards?
Funny, isn’t it? How things can be bred in a way that makes it so those holding the butcher knife are less likely to face their own revulsions.
Observing things. Noticing them. It’s all right there, if you look long enough.
Most metaphors are bullshit. They’re not clever. They’re used by people so they can pretend they’re smarter than other people.
It was isolation that would break us.
Some things are best left alone. Some things should never be woken up.
“You can judge someone based on how they talk about the dead.”
I was starting to come to the uncomfortable realization this was pretty normal for the people of the Syndicate. That the general citizenry of the galaxy as a whole were all similar to us in so many ways, despite their vastly different anatomies and cultures and environments.
It takes a certain amount of desperation before people finally stop caring about their immediate futures and start to look at the long term.
If you want to create fright amongst an otherwise stalwart enemy, confusion is always the key.
You can do that, sometimes. You can find clarity when you need it most.
“The bigger the universe, the smaller it becomes.”
That was the problem with most revolutionaries. They had tunnel vision.
and I wonder, what difference is there between anger and cowardice?”
Nothing is free in this galaxy. That should be perfectly clear by now.
but like with all things that were hard to look at, people clicked their tongues in sympathy and then immediately looked away.
When Big Things happen on such a large scale, it’s easy to forget sometimes that these Big Things are also happening to the little things in the world.
Blood was so much more red when it was spilled from someone you loved.
‘No single recipe is a feast in itself.’
“It’s okay to be a work in progress,”
Finished reading: The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales by Thomas Ligotti 📚
Alternate endings for classic horror tales, it’s a cool concept.
Finished reading: This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman 📚
Finished reading: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman 📚
Finished reading: The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman 📚
Finished reading: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett 📚
Watched: Wednesday S2E2, The Devil You Woe 🍿
Watched: Wednesday S2E1, Here We Woe Again 🍿
Spooky szn is back!
Finished reading: The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman 📚
Finished reading: The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman 📚
Finished reading: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman 📚
This series is so much fun. And I recommend checking out the audiobook.
Small Things Like These (Oprah’s Book Club) by Claire Keegan 📚
A short but impactful book. A small story that punches well above its perceived weight and sticks around with you for a bit. (As Manton said)
Plus, a definite Irish atmosphere.
he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?
for people were bound, he knew, to reveal not only themselves but what they knew, in conversation.
But people said lots of things - and a good half of what was said could not be believed.
People could be good, Furlong reminded himself, as he drove back to town; it was a matter of learning how to manage and balance the give-and-take in a way that let you get on with others as well as your own. But as soon as the thought came to him, he knew the thought itself was privileged and wondered why he hadn’t given the sweets and other things he’d been gifted at some of the houses to the less well-off he had met in others. Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.
to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.
The years don’t slow down any as they pass.
It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.
When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on.
and lose himself in the mechanics of the ordinary, working week. Sundays could feel very threadbare, and raw.
It’s only people with no children that can afford to be careless.
So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close.
It was a December of crows.
Finished reading: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz 📚 🍜
Finished reading: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 📚
Finished reading: Small Things Like These (Oprah’s Book Club) by Claire Keegan 📚
Finished reading: The Longing for Less by Kyle Chayka 📚
Finished reading: Oxymoronica by Dr. Mardy Grothe 📚
Finished reading: Ex Libris by Matt Madden 📚
Enjoyed this one. Very much my style of type and narrative device interweaving.
Finished reading: Halcyon Drift by Brian M. Stableford 📚
Finished reading: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 📚
Finished reading: All Systems Red by Martha Wells 📚
Finished reading: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 📚
