media club plus has made me start tiptoeing into friends at the table, and I'm starting at possibly the weirdest entry point but that doesn't MATTER because it means i got to hear the following, in a gundam mini-game...
Jack, happily, conversationally, after confirming their character has a trait that lets them know weak points in machines: Hey, Austin?
Austin: Yeah?
Jack, about to commit a minor war crime: You want to know what the weak point of a mech is?
I got Too Like the Lightning out as an ebook from my library so I was able to highlight with WILD ABANDON. I went particularly feral over:
foreshadowing/delayed decoding stuff where they have conversations about Secret Affairs right in front of you, the reader, without you, the reader, becoming aware of what was going on.
crimes and general freakery (affectionate)
Utopia ;; and Martin ;;
potential 9A sightings
Heads up that the selection of quotes/associated commentary might contain spoilers for the whole series. if you (ps?) are interested in a subset that only spoils for TLtL and/or Seven Surrenders, lemme know.
right [taps papers on desk] let’s go :)
Chapter 2: A Boy And His God
Carlyle Foster: “If I were going to abuse my position, all I need is the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’s door key to wreck the world.”
gosh, I... I sure hope... nobody in the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ would ever misuse their power... Wonder if this has occurred to anyone else, Carlyle! Really makes u think.
Chapter 3. The Most Important People in the World
Ockham Saneer, speaking to Martin (et al.? #damnatioMemoriae): "You think just because your bash' ponces around the Sanctum Sanctorum you can waltz in here and improve on my security?"
i feel sick, and by “sick” i mean “thrilled.”
(Ockham Saneer) Humanist: "A mass crash is not the danger. The system will ground all the cars if any tampering's detected, and they can self-land even with the system dead. The problem is shutting down all transit on Earth for however long it took us to recheck the system, could be minutes, hours. The Censor told me a complete shutdown would cost the world economy a billion euros a minute, not to mention stranding millions, cutting off supplies, ambulances, police. That's your catastrophe."
looks directly into camera. DIRECTLY!!
"Martin Guildbreaker." His eyes widened as he realized his mistake. "I mean Mycroft, my real name's Mycroft, Mycroft Guildbreaker, but everybody calls me Martin. But I'm not in a cult or anything, it's just one of those nicknames that happens."
things that will absolutely convince people you’re not in a cult: telling them “I’m not in a cult or anything.” also, Martin, sweetheart... you are a Mason...
Chapter 4. A Thing Long Thought Extinct
Mycroft on Danaë: But I do know who would win a worldwide vote for the face on Earth most likely to launch a thousand ships.
we’ll see about that :|
Mycroft to Danaë: "Martin understands better than anyone how important it is to keep press and public from hounding Hive leaders' children."
but he’s not in a cult or anything.
Chapter 5. Aristotle's House
Mycroft: "Could you resist, day in, day out, if you could resurrect a friend?"
Carlyle: "No. No, I couldn't. No one could."
I did not correct him.
ok this one’s here partly because it made me emosh, and partly because uh. No one did!
Chapter 7. Canis Domini
Lesley Saneer (on meeting Dominic): "What are you supposed to be?"
fucking pwned, get ‘em Lesley!!
Chapter 8. A Place of Honor
Bryar Kosala just likes helping people, and is good at running things, and when invited to become the world's Mom she said, "Sure."
can’t tell if it’s my own agenda speaking or if this seemed just as sinister the first time i read it. “likes helping people” “good at running things” ok sure whatever.
Before taking Servicers out for ice cream: "She [Kosala] did not have a smile for Mycroft Canner."
... u in that crowd of Servicers, 9A? [squints] anyway, Kosala can smile at whoever she wants, Mycroft, but also you pointing this out DID make me grumpy at her so gj.
"Jung Su-Hyeon Ancelet-Kosala is a good person, a worthy successor to the Censor and deserving of a place on a legitimate Seven-Ten list someday."
looks directly into the fic that i need to finish writing... camera
Chapter 9. Every Soul That Ever Died
"This will be the gentlest of sessions, as Carlyle takes a child down the many paths of skepticism, not to conclusions, but to questions. I will show you worse in time, but you will never understand this history if you do not dare read about another's God."
welp! <3
Chapter 11. Enter Sniper
Ganymede at a big party in front of lots of witnesses: "It's been too long, Doctor Weeksbooth. We hear excellent things about your work on the system, innovation after innovation. Admirable. We all sleep the safer knowing the Hive has you guarding its interests."
this made me feel like I was absolutely losing my mind, I had to stand up and walk around. INNOVATION AFTER INNOVATION, HUH. you are at a PARTY.
okay I’m gonna go walk around again now.
"Poor Cato." Sniper mussed his ba'sib's hair. "You were great! No one could have lived the part better. But the spotlight really isn't your place, is it? Don't worry, I'd never mix you up in any real trouble. Cross my heart." Sniper spoke the last words, and made the gesture, looking not at Cato, but straight at Ganymede, holding his President's eyes with a rare expression of true gravity.
MAYBE I SHOULDN’T’VE SAT BACK DOWN. cross my heart.... Ada Palmer, your mind...
Chapter 13. ... Perhaps the Stars
"There is one race in whom ambition flows still. I do not mean the Humanists' lust for fame, Masons' for power, or the driving need of Europeans and Mitsubishi to prove their nation-strats superior to one another---those ambitions are appetite or envy by finer names. What I speak of is the primordial ambition which brought us from the trees, which launched the first ships across then-infinite oceans, and drove one brave ape to approach the heavenly destroyer 'fire' and make it ours. Reader, we no longer aim for Earth nor atom, but, so long as the Utopians still live and breathe, they will not give up on our last great dream: the stars."
;~; whispers “never gonna give you up...”
The coat of ruins shrugged. "We're used to it."
You may not believe me, but I wept.
of COURSE i believe you, Mycroft. Jesus. also, me too.
Chapter 16. Thou Canst Not Put It Off Forever, Mycroft
"¿How long until the next Mars launch?" He asked Cato in Spanish, His voice soft to the point of weakness, as when one talks to one's self to relieve too long a silence.
"Two days, fifteen hours," Cato answered automatically, like a child caught mid-daydream by the teacher.
"¿For how many generations has the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' been Humanist?"
"I don't know. Ten, maybe."
"Thank you. I am J.E.D.D. Mason. The safety of your bash' and the incomparable service you provide humanity has been entrusted to Me, by order of all seven Hives and the will of the Alliance. I am looking for My dog. ¿May I come in?"
I CAN’T PICK OUT JUST ONE PART OF THIS. Cato being as open a book as a human can be, J.E.D.D. Mason never being able to turn the dial down from an 11, the casual dehumanization of Mycroft, His dog.... catnip to me, all of it.
Chapter 17. Tocqueville's Valet
Mycroft speaking to the Major about J.E.D.D.: "They are a good Person, Good, honest, kind, trustworthy, and keep Their promises more absolutely than anyone I've ever known."
let’s hope!!! Also love the capitalization of Good.
Chapter 18. The Tenth Director
"These Nine Directors don't believe Utopians will really live on Mars in 2660. Utopians do."
I say again: ;~; Utopia.
Mycroft to J.E.D.D. "And if hired Utopians were to plan such a thing [as the Black Sakura break-in] for one of the other Hives, they would succeed, and they would make sure we did not suspect them." I cringe even now repeating this, reader. Do not fear the Utopians. Anyone would call Utopia a fearsome foe, but they do not play these Earthly power games, and, like a nest of hornets, they sting only when provoked.
We Thought We’d Redacted This, Episode 1
Chapter 19. Flies to Honey
Chagatai speaking to Thisbe and Carlyle: "Mycroft dropped off a pretty battered young thing they said they rescued from somewhere. Servicer Mycroft, not the Mason, Servicer business as I understand, somebody's ba'sib."
[squints] whose ba’sib, Chagatai. whose!!!
Chagatai's paraphrased answer to Thisbe asking about J.E.D.D. Mason's hobbies: J.E.D.D. Mason's most common activities, at least at home, were reading, conducting business over His tracker, sitting perfectly still doing nothing, and, the all-time favourite, lying perfectly still doing nothing.
never gets old <3
Chapter 22. Mycroft is Mycroft
Carlyle doesn't think Mycroft is reformed: "You create things, Bridger, you don't make people into different people."
Bridger: "You should talk to Mycroft, you'll see how different they are."
uh ?? UH??? (while I fully believe Mycroft had his come-to-J.E.D.D.sus moment and got the bug protection shoes and spurned violence etc. before he met Bridger, ... Bridger, did you do something? Bridger, kiddo, I think you did something!!! )
Chapter 24. Sometimes Even I am Very Lonely
"the deadliest majority is not something most of my contemporaries are, reader, it is something they are not."
;;
Chapter 25. Madame's
"Can you imagine a nobler act, reader? Sacrificing his [Diderot's] own chance to add his voice to humanity's Great Conversation to safeguard the Conversation itself?"
unexpected 9A emotions here, gonna go crawl into a hole, brb
Chapter 26. Madame D'Arouet
Narration: "Fear forced Utopia to act. They chose a gentle protest. When the Graff trial began they called in sick, "indefinite stasis," as they put it, not one, not hundreds, but all four hundred million at once. The laboratories, factories, think tanks, presses closed. For three weeks the world tasted life without four hundred million vocateurs. Hate rose, and fear, all the arrows of complacent Earth against Utopia, and it was that threat which steeled Mycroft MASON to step onto the Senate floor and stop the Nurturists' Eighth Law at any price. Your hero gave his all for them, reader, for Aldrin, for Voltaire, for Apollo Mojave, not for his Masons, not for Eureka Weeksbooth, not for you."
Mycroft MASON [handshake emoji] tumblr user stoppit-keepout
28. The Enemy
Mycroft to Eureka about the Wish list: "You need to be careful---it may have started as a joke, but in the wrong hands it could make the whole Hive look like murderers."
can’t have that...
Ok and this part was just Mycroft’s backstory because I got kinda confused. I feel like there must’ve been foul play RE: the destruction of his & Saladin’s birth-bash’, but I can’t tell if it’s textually-supported, u know? Was this an O.S. thing? Just random bad chance? anyway:
Gardens at Alba Longa very imperial; Brill suggested Aeneas MASON make it into a Denkergarten
Emperor built 5 bash'houses, invited 5 coolest bash'es to live there
"The committee picked one bash' of ex-European Masons, one of Cousins who would later take me in, one mixed Brillists and Humanists, one Cousins and Masons, and, that rarest of treasures, the Mardi bash', which boasted six Hives and a Hiveless, while Apollo's constant visits almost granted it the seventh. Much has been written of my house, the fifth house, the service house, the groundskeepers and maintenance staff that served this think tank, and what inferiority complexes I might have picked up even before the accident as I grew up knowing all my playmates were genius children earmarked for greatness while I was not. It is somewhat unfair of me to contradict my biographers at this late point, but, for the record, I and, while they lived, my ba'sibs knew full well that a committee had chosen the other bash'es, while Aeneas MASON himself selected us. If we had to squander some hours on the not-unpleasant task of gardening, it was the only way the Emperor could secure an undebated seat for the one bash' for which he held the highest hopes. He visited me in the hospital after the accident that claimed the others, and from how he wept I might have been the last chapter of a now-lost masterpiece."
that’s rough, buddy.
Apollo Mojave to the Mardi children: "Would you destroy a better world to save this one?"
putting that in my roster for when I’m baby-sitting for my friends.
Tully Mardi to his crowd: "War! I'm talking about war! Revolution! Blood! You think it can't happen, that without nations, without armies there can't be war? We have police! They're forces enough. It can happen, and it will."
Tully Mardi Shut Up Challenge. But also reminding me of my favourite Fantasy High side characters, the Cubbies. (”laws are threats made by the dominant socio-economic, ethnic group in a given nation. It's just a promise of violence that's enacted and police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean?“)
Chapter 30. Deo Erexit Sade
Headmaster Faust is an avatar of curiosity. "What project would that [the Utopians' most sensitive one] be, Mycroft? What constellation?"
"Cultural preparations for Mars," I answered without actually lying.
is this finishing Apollo Mojave’s manuscript?? am I a fool?
31. Dominant Predator
Saladin soothing Bridger: "No one else can hurt you while I'm here."
welp!!
Providence had its king [Bridger] defend himself: "I wish you really were Apollo Mojave." The child sniffed. "Apollo would be able to figure out what the bad guys want, and make me understand it, and then we could make a plan, and get Utopians to help."
don’t remember if this made sirens go off in my head before, but !! bridger it’s rude to wish people were other people...
Chapter 32. That There Are Two
[starts off with a long Servicer interaction]
[squints VERY HARD] u there?
"I've seen this [Bridger's collection of toys] before," Carlyle whispered. The Message doesn't have to be a burning bush, reader. From the Maker of planets, atoms, and electrons, the Message can be a thought.
CHILLS.
~
ok that’s all I had highlighted! feeling better now that it’s out of my non-backed-up notes app and out into the world! also feeling regretful that now I have to like... do my job for the rest of the day... terrible. I wanna restart Seven Surrenders instead. :(
“Since I’ve been here it’s just me, (Petry), Taylor (Hall) and Jordan left,” said Nugent-Hopkins, who watched over 40 players leave town since he arrived in 2011-12.
"I'm really thankful I've been given the opportunity to play in the NHL as a young kid... And now going to an organization that's winning right now and hopefully going to have a deep run is really exciting for me."
