Photos of the notes

Image 1. Lyctor. LICK-tor. In order to facilitate "Lyctor? I hardly touched her," stand-up routines in the Nine Houses.

Image 2. NOTE: Naberius is one of the demon princes of Hell. Will this mean anything significant later on?? (No.)

Image 3. NOTE: "Dulcinea" is the famously illusory persona assigned to the prostitute Aldonza in Don Quixote: a case of a woman you want to exist, but who really doesn't. In this essay I will

Image 4. Palamedes Sextus. Pal-AM-a-dees. At first I had a coarse comparison here, but then I removed it. SEX-tus. "Us" as in "bus" rather than the "oos" of Nonagesimus. "Sex" as in "you'd have to be weird to want this with Harrow."

Image 5. NOTE: In the original, Ianthe and Corona were “Cainabeth and Abella," a feat of naming so unsubtle that I might as well have just gone with "Goodtwin" and "Badtwin." And it's not even accurate! It should be Badtwin, and Lessbadtwin.

Image 6. NOTE: Protesilaus is the first hero to die at Troy. He is also the first man who dies as a result of the Lyctor trials. “Johnny Quickdeath" would've also been a good pick.

Image 7. Priamhark Noniusvianus. PRY-am-hark. Three distinct syllables; avoid eliding the H. NOH-nee-us-vee-AHN-us. You should have the trick of the "us" sound by now. If you don't, it's fine, nobody cares, it's a random name in a novel about bonermancy.

like, you look at

and it’s a completely normal sentence! which feels very natural to write or read! but, well, there’s no way to convert those diagrams to… words. there’s no order in which they’re supposed to be read, no convention for how it’s supposed to turn into sounds in your brain, and in fact it… just doesn’t, yknow? you switch between “read words” mode and “decrypt diagram” mode without even thinking about it and the whole thing somehow parses as a sentence in your brain anyways.

you also get incredibly cool stuff like

i mean just look! he put a semicolon after the diagram! a semicolon actually needs to be there or the thing won’t be grammatical! here after something that is not written to be expressable in words! it’s so! ugh! i love it!!!

in fact there’s like, multiple conventions as to where the punctuation is supposed to go after diagrams. johnstone above has been kind of old fashioned w/ putting the punctuation after the first line, these days people tend to write stuff like

where the punctuation goes after the rightmost symbol of the bottommost line of the diagram.