Work Text:
“I don’t enjoy parties that much.”
“I really am having clandestine honey-trips with the Topsy King. We use the red kind.”
“I own the factory that produces Neddy Suits.”
“Feducci is.........” Sets of ellipses evolve into a series of increasingly long dashes that eventually go off the page. “It's complicated.”
“I don’t know what the New Sequence is, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.”
“I voted for the Bishop of Southwark in 1894.”
“I have accidentally advanced the Liberation of Night by several years by sleep-smashing whole bags of Phosphorescent Scarabs on multiple occasions.”
There are no English words on the page, only a sketch that straddles the line between intricate and casual. ‘Straddle’ is certainly a fitting descriptor. Upon closer inspection it appears to be of two large anthropomorphised bats locked in an amorous embrace. Both are hiding Key-to-Heart daggers behind their backs; the outline of one bat’s blade has been filled in with black ink you assume is meant to be blood. Good Lord. Good Lord. Beside the sketch is a scrawl that resembles two ‘O’’s flanking a 'w’: the Correspondence sigil for 'what’s this?’
“I stole the Melancholy Curate’s face. I would do it again!”
“I am overseeing an extensive anarchist operation of painting white ravens black and black ravens white, then releasing them at strategic locations around the city.”
“Occasionally, I regret my choice of sobriquet. People always ask me how I pronounce it: 'JOH-vial Contrarian' or 'JOVE-ial Contrarian'? I always tell them the same thing: “It's pronounced 'CUN-trarian'.””
“I feel as if I'm stuck in an endless cycle of debating the same topics with the same people at Caligula's. Attending the same parties with the same guests! Providing the same hapless citizens with the same - ” The ink has been smudged to illegibility.
“Almost every high-ranking auditor in the Ministry of Public Decency is a devoted spy for the Revolution. Ascending the ranks, none of them know this. Every year or so, one auditor learns the truth about another auditor; they are forced to choose between cementing their position by turning them in, or accept a greater risk of betrayal or discovery. Without fail, they choose the former. I once published an allegorical short story about the situation, which was promptly censored by one of the auditors. I began writing another allegorical short story about publishing an allegorical short story about dramatically ironic censorship only to have it dramatically, ironically censored. Somebody knocked at my door. I panicked and ate it.”
“The urchins accepting Lucky Weasels are actually collecting them on my behalf. I have eight hundred thousand weasels.” There is a large space between this sentence and the next, suggesting a pause lengthier than a full stop would indicate. “Eight hundred thousand and five weasels.”
“It's hard to kill a man. It's harder to witness a man's death. It's hardest to contrive creative and exciting ways for a man to meet his temporary demise on a near-weekly basis until you receive approval to have him poisoned with a lethal dose of Cantigaster venom.”
“I voted for myself in 1895.”
“After a month of torment and temptation, I finally told the Orts to go bother someone else.” The ink lines become raised enough for you to touch, a telltale sign of greater pressure applied from pen onto page. “I didn't think they would listen.”
“My antagonism has doubled as of late. Troublesome, I know, but I must compensate for how my conscience has stopped arguing with me.”
“Dear God, how I hate this notebook. I have been shaking with rage since laying eyes on it. I purchased it just to ensure there's one less in circulation. What I hold in my hands is an absolute affront to notebooks everywhere; a peerless specimen of how not to bind a notebook. Unfortunately, it must be preserved in order to serve as a cautionary example for future generations. But not a word will be written inside. Not a dot!
”...Wait a minute.”