Noise is Noise. It's crash and clatter and it usually adds up to one big mash of sound and thought and picture and half the time it's impossible to make any sense of it at all. It's what's true and what's imagined and what's fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what's true and what's not when yer getting everything?
Bit like Tumblr, really.
I'm Laura.
Welcome to my Noise.
thinking about Viola hitting Todd on the head the first time they met and Todd cutting her with the knife then putting a bandage on her. Thinking about it as a parallel to the Mayor putting bandages on Todd after having him beat up, and continuing to figuratively put bandages on the crowds, easing restrictions that he placed himself. How the first was an act of true regret and care and a wish to make amends and the second was just a tool of manipulation and control
Had a dream about a Tesco (british supermarket) Chaos Walking AU, where Prentiss was the owner and instead of noise he just used made very pointed announcements over the intercom. Coyle was an employee trying to unionise and Todd & Viola just wanted to shop as normal
I don't remember the plot but it was actually peak trust me guys
i wonder how long prentiss had to wait to execute him. if davy actually 'tortured' him to death.
i think that's what interests me about davy in particular. his thoughts/noise are extremely cruel. he is perfectly capable of committing horrible acts against the spackle. but at the same time he was too scared to chase after ben, and was terrified at the branding of the women.
i wonder if he actually did kill gault in such a way. or if todd just heard about it.
for every scene that Todd and Viola are both present but actively arguing/being passive aggressive in I will be going back to Chaos Walking and reading a scene of them actively loving each other, for my own mental health
OKAYYY it's midnight it's been five hours i've read a little over a hundred pages bc if i read too much at once my brain will catch fire
here is a bullet list of more PATGOD thoughts. it will contain more spoilers maybe actually associated with the plot this time. it may also contain comparisons to Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer Trilogy. bc of the Same Universe, Sequel Series of it all
edit: i did not get the chance to make the Ness/Stief comparisons bc i've been writing this post for an eternity so be on the lookout for that later
i guess let's start at the top!
the Max Hewitt of it all
in Chaos Walking, Patrick Ness, a gay man, was only ever able to like sideways allude to the queerness of his characters. Ben and Cillian lived together but their relationship was never defined. The Return's one in particular had male pronouns in like one little flashback of him. were there other examples? that might be it. Chaos Walking was published 2008-2010.
i love love LOVE that Max is trans. i love that we're finally getting an exploration of how Noise works with trans people, since that was always a big question in the fandom. i love that Patrick Ness can freely make his characters lgbtqia+ without having to hide it in layers of subtlety. i love that Max being a trans boy is an important part of both his AND Ben's characters
i also just REALLY LOVE MAX. i know the jacket blurb already told us that Ben was more like Viola and Max was more like Todd, but i like seeing the ways in which that sort of thing is explored. i like that he has his father's rambling inner dialogue and that he's hilarious with a comeback and that he's bullheaded and honest and idealistic. he called Burly "shlumpy" at some point and that fucking sent me
the Ben Hewitt of it all
as i've mentioned, the past six months have been pretty rough for me bc i had a vocal chord affliction/injury/illness whatever that's caused me to have a LOT of doctors appointments, take a LOT of medicine, go to speech therapy, and make me existentially wonder how my communication was going to work if my OTHER vocal chord started dying too
things have gotten better. but the existentialism was pretty rough, wondering if i should start seriously learning ASL, if i should carry paper and pen with me, how i'd be able to continue to have fun at parties and large loud gatherings when i couldn't get a word in edgewise bc my throat hurt too badly to talk loudly, much less shout
so it's very important to ME that Ben Hewitt exists as a non-speaker, and that that's just as essential to his (and Max's) character as Max's transness
personality-wise, Ben ALSO feels like how Todd did to me in Chaos Walking. in the way that sometimes Todd would do something you wouldn't want your protagonist doing or saying or thinking, but you also secretly know that if you were in that scenario, when you've been in scenarios similar, it's probably what you would do too. and you don't really like it.
but you respect it being put into text and into a character. it's why Todd Hewitt has always felt more real to me than any other novel protagonist
Ben feels that way to me in the way that he does with his half-agreeing. when Mayor Burly says something like "sometimes lying to the public is the best option to keep a panic from starting" and Ben signs "listen, he's not wrong" and I go "oh shit, i was kind of thinking the same thing"
and then Max will say something so idealistic and morally pure and you feel like shit for the fact that you half-agreed with the logic of someone who hasn't straight-up done anything wrong but is DEFINITELY being shady, is DEFINITELY lying, but part of you thinks "he's not being THAT bad, though. you guys are comparing everyone to Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, but this guy ISN'T THEM"
and i like that about this book too
i like that you can tell that maybe Ben is too lenient with his feelings about authority figures lying and you can see that Max's ideals are inspiring but not always realistic and that neither one of them are entirely right or wrong about anything that's happened so far
Patrick Ness masterclass writing. we been knew.
anyways
my beloved legacy characters
from a writer's perspective, i know you can't have everyone start from a place of happiness and rainbows. it will be much more satisfying to see Todd and Viola acting happy and lovingly towards each other if they don't start off this way
there's also the whole deal with legacy characters that every creator feels the need to make sure they are still Complex and Interesting, so they make sure that their adult selves aren't exactly like how their child selves were in their original series
logically, this makes sense to me
must i be HAPPY that Todd and Viola are literally living in different houses most of the time and actively arguing with each other in every scene they're in together? i think not!!!! i want love now now NOWW
i do think it's awesome that Viola Eade is still on the City Council and is one of the best scientists in the city, therefore one of the most intelligent human scholars on New World
i love that Todd Hewitt is perhaps the ONLY true diplomat between The Land and humans
okay i'm sorry Viola i'm gonna monologue about Todd a lot actually
at the end of Monsters of Men when Todd was at the Pathway's End Viola was curious and a little afraid of what Todd would be like when he woke up. if he would be changed the way Ben was, with his new Noise and new VOICE and just feeling a little further away because he was a little more connected to Everything
it made me curious if Todd's Noise would be similar to Ben's. if he wouldn't use human speech anymore and if he'd be connected the Conversation and all that
and it pleases me so much to see that we got a mix of both
that Todd's Noise is still similar to human man's Noise, that he can still speak human speech, but he's also more connected to The Land than anyone else in the settlements and that HE'S the one person that The Sky comes to speak with when things are going wrong. that they might still not like each other, that The Sky still calls Todd The Knife, but they respect each other despite everything Todd has done to The Land and everything The Sky has done specifically to Todd
(and i love that Viola, my grudgeholding queen, has never gotten over The Sky killing Todd and never will, so she still hates his guts. she and Todd can BOTH be right about how they feel about him)
but i really do love getting to see Todd use Noise in the correct way, how no one can really understand their conversations when he communicates with The Sky because they don't have Noise, and honestly even if they did, this way of communicating would probably still be too much to comprehend
after everything Todd and Viola did in Monsters of Men I kind of expected them to be hailed as heroes of myth by the people of the city, so to see Todd ostracized because his enlightened ass refused to take the cure pains me. he's never really been great with other people (though to be fair MOST people have been cruel to him) but it does sadden me to see him as such a curmudgeonly adult
i've already mentioned that i love that Wilf was elected to be Mayor of the city THREE TIMES. it's probably the only reason the people of New World are even alive and kind-of thriving now
i love that he and Lee's families are one big blended family. i love that their farm is named after Lee's wife. i love that Lee and Wilf never took the cure either. i wonder if there are any men like that left in the city
Angharrad still being alive is truly more than i could have ever hoped for. i've seen her like twice and both times have brought a tear to my eye
as did the quiet mention that the Hewitt family will never get a sheepdog
the lack of Bennison Moore living close by the Hewitt and Smith farms led me to believe that Ben had maybe passed, so the revelation that he's ALIVE out there somewhere, living his best life as a nomad or a hippie or whatever (i have not read the explanation yet), is GREAT news for me. show me Grandpappy Ben. i need him.
i still don't even think i've talked about the plot LMAO
definitely thought the first scene was a dream so imagine my surprise when the god was REAL and broke Ben's arm and maybe tried to eat him!!
i'm wary about this guy. or guys? unclear how many gods there are. but i'm wary because Patrick Ness has a history of writing sympathetic monsters that I cannot ignore. When a Monster Calls and Snowscape both showed us that something that is monstrous and scary to humans can actually be wise, can actually be gentle, can actually be the victim of cruelty. so. i reserve my judgement of those big guys bc we don't know enough about them. the modern-day ones have yet to eat any kids. the folktale ones maybe didn't either, who knows
i don't know which way i feel about the corrupt preacher and mayor. because, on the one hand, it's like UGHHHH we already went through this!! not again!!
but on the other hand that's kind of the point? Todd does keep saying history repeats itself. and it would be a really interesting concept for a sequel series to have incredibly similar antagonists from the first series, have all the knowledge of the horrendous types of corruption that could occur, and STILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP THEM. because the will of the many is unfortunately relentlessly stupid
so i think its an interesting concept to have similar antagonists. and they're already being taken in different directions than their previous counterparts, who were indeed at the very worse end of the spectrum that things could possibly get in terms of mayors and preachers
i have ultimate faith in Patrick Ness to do interesting things with Burly and Wingard
it's also interesting that the town bullies are not as relentlessly bad as one would expect. that Tara has tried to have an vulnerable conversation with Ben and that both Tara and Taper never misgender Max
they could find new and different ways to be terrible but it did surprise me that aren't cartoonishly terrible all the time
(i sound like Ben. you see?)
the Glyph and this "infection" are both confusing me. The Sky seems to think that the Glyph is involved with the dreams and the god because a new star appeared in the Piper story. but the infection bit is coming out of nowhere in a way that i have to believe is BS simply because there's only ever been TALK of it. there's TALK of evidence of it too, but what does that even mean? there's actual, biological evidence of a person getting an illness, and it being related to The Land? what does this infection look like in a person? how were they tested for it? how do we know it came from The Land specifically?
its all so "the Noise germ killed the women" coded that i'm simply not going to buy it. it feels like something random being thrown into the mix to distract people from all the other shit going on. and Todd and Max aren't wrong that Burly is already sowing seeds to the city that The Land should be kicked out
it's Todd-loving-hours again, bc i have yet to mention that i love that Todd hates The Land being called Spackle now and actively yells at anyone who dares to call them spacks. i love that both of their sons make an effort to also call them The Land even when no one else does
it's 2 am now so i have to cut this post off here. i didn't get an chance to compare this book to Call Down the Hawk so expect that post soon bc i have Thoughts
I'm sorry, I sign, I didn't mean your truth. But you saw how people reacted when you told them the truth.
He relaxes, but only just a little bit. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I did. But what you're forgetting is if you hide the truth because people are weak and afraid, how are they ever going to get strong and brave?"
in case you forgot that Patrick Ness is THE writer of all time, thank you very much
