okay so I’m going to post all of my perhaps the stars thoughts in this one post, under the cut, so they won’t clog up the dashboard/tags. And I’ll just keep editing this one post unless my thought is a joke and I want clout for it. Spoilers under the cut obviously
(last updated 29.11.21)
Like so.
Front matter - I love 9A as a narrator already. They have no idea what’s going on. I love the dramatis personae and just the ?? everywhere.
1 - gosh i love 9A so much. you can definitely tell that they and mycroft have very similar backstories and knowledge bases, but the distinction between the characters is so clear. also 🥺🥺🥺 it has to be a short war. 9A writes like they’re on the verge of tears and I want to protect them with my life (Mycroft writes like he’s in the middle of a breakdown and that’s the difference)
in addition, I love that they said that world war 1 ended in 1945 or 1989. It’s interesting to see how history recontextualises our mostly contemporary events.
2 - Carlyle!!!!!!!! Carlyle is safe and wearing a wrap and they are eating chocolate cake I am so glad. Being this far from Dominic can only do them good. I like that they’ve shown more of what the Anonymous actually does. i understand why the anonymous is so respected if part of their work is done 100% live streamed, typos and all. You couldn’t win the beer test harder. I hope the the Anonymous livestream also comes with a chat function where people can make fun of their typos I think that’d be really funny.
I love how much 9A is a part of the Ancelet-Kosala family they are so loved 🥺 Vivien and Bryar both inviting them to stay at their flat I want to see Vivien’s flat and Su-Hyeon giving them their old deputy sensor jacket was so sweet. I love them, I love their friendship. Also I love that 9A can describe affection and caring for people and be normal about it. This narration is so relaxing.
I hope Martin is safe. Also this is the first time in all four books I’ve actually liked Heloise so I’m going to make that a Mycroft problem.
3 - “I have never been in a place before.” boo hoo do you want me to be sorry? I’m in a place right now. I’ve been in a place this whole time. Jokes aside, I assume this chapter was written before the pandemic but it really does give me strong isolation/quarantine energies.
I’m not sure I love the top down narration of here’s what everyone’s doing in all the places, but I assume that comes with the tragedy of not being able to physically watch these conversations because they cars are down.
I’m gonna do it this way for ongoing thoughts. and chapter style as above for when I come home from work and I summarise what I read
MASON being allowed to pass through Levantine lands makes me think of when you’re playing Diplomacy and Turkey allows Russia to pass through Constantinople to the Black Sea, and now I’m wondering if MASON spent those 128 days playing Diplomacy online with the bois like I do
Nurturist to alt-right pipeline confirmed. A set-set is anyone I personally find weird and the more weird I find it the more set-set it is.
As a cousin I just want to put my foot down and say fuck the nurturists
This is unrelated to what I’m currently reading, but a thought I had earlier: we poppin’ the biggest bottles when 9A confirms ockham/leslie/ojiro loving polyamorous trio
A return of Vivien's bad spanish accent. I love every time they mention it
The logistics of religious holidays 🥺 thank you for felix faust for making carlyle look at 48 pictures of things eating bananas, you saved the world
Fuck Brillists are so funny. Once again i love su-hyeons friendship with 9A
4 - "we have four hours to save sydney" aw nah just leave it she'll be right
I forgot to write anything for like three chapters but here's just a list of stuff i remember
I love dominic as the Mitsubishi director actually. I think he's thriving. I expected him to shirk his duties as much as possible but he really is going to bat for his guys
9A putting their tracker on busy to avoid bryar, and then her overriding it was very funny
It sucks that the trackers are down. Imagine how that world would look if you lived it :( poor jedd mason. They can't even reconnect the system landline style because romanova is a modern city and doesn't have wires. That's such good worldbuilding
Oh no! Our masonic oath! It's broken! Also IS XIAOLIU OKAY? IS XIAOLIU OKAY???? MASON THEIR HUSBAND IS ALREADY LOST IN THE WILDERNESS HOW MUCH MORE CAN YOU DO TO THEM?
Did 9A not translate the latin from the first few books? Or did they get Carmen to do those passages as well?
Felix fausts zoom icon my beloved
9A and Su-hyeon talking around the reveal of Huxley/Toshi was so funny I've been thinking about it all day
9A laughing at latitudinarian but not dick hooker. I hate this book. I know that line was just put in there to make fun of me and I resent it
"mars or first contact?" And "wear the vs with me" made me actively emotional i love huxley and 9As friendship
That being said this is so awkward because i feel like I'm loosely hiveguard? Which seems unlike me but maybe i just think assassination is sexy
9- is it upsetting to know that carlyle is so suicidal at this point that they don't care if they live or die? Yes. But also, 'im suicidal so I'm happy to drag myself down with you' is metal as fuck. I hope you die i hope we both die. Also imagine risking world war because you're a horny rapist. Yikes. Anyway jesus christ sniper really wrote their chapter while experiencing THAT level of torture. I want to kill julia so bad she's so evil. But as a side note I was briefly obsessed with a The Adventure Zone fanfic with essentially the same premise if less overtly rapey so I do kind of love this, on like a I love feeling big feelings scale.
I'm kind of miffed that the answer to 'who kidnapped sniper?' was someone we were told explicitly that it wasn't, and not someone else that we could have foreshadowed. Like if they had just said 'it can't be julia because she wouldn't publish something admitting her guilt' that would have been fine, but they also said that the dollmakers were all vouched for. How are we supposed to predict a fifth dollmaker? (Then again the answer to who stabbed mycroft was fucking perry-kraye again, so sometimes that's just how it be) Anyway my favourite fringe theory was that sniper is cato weeksbooths frankensteins monster, and they were taken for related reasons. followed closely by masonic torture.
10 - haha yes let Anonymous say fuck! I checked and this is the first fuck since tltl. I like how 9A is acting like ECP Holmes and MC Moriarty is like, secret code, as though the whole world didn’t read about their Holmes/Moriarty relationship. This wasn’t so much a puzzle as a junior jumble
11 - I love pirate mycroft. Pros of having a cannibal murderer on your ship: willing to eat the dead crewmember instead of rations. Also this is very obviously the plot of The Odyssey.
12 - I though i already had comments on 12 started. I can't believe this is unedited. This is just how mycroft writes. Unbelievable. Also I want to quickly pause and read the Odyssey because I have a copy I just never got around to finishing it, and I would love to, just once, know more about something than Mycroft does. The only thing he referenced I’ve actually read was Candide and I literally forgot all the Manichean stuff in favour of making jokes about syphilis.
Natekari: i refuse to surrender
Ganymede: that's fine maybe we can sort it out tomorrow
Tomorrow: ganymede and natekari come in covered in injuries
Natekari: yeah it's fine i surrender
This is literally the funniest thing I've ever read
Cookie 😠
I can't believe the gender neutral future couldn't figure out a neutral word for parent's sibling in 400 years
Cookie fucking blew herself up?????? What the fuck
Apologies to the poor woman on the bus just like. Trying to get off at her stop while I'm visibly reeling about fucking cookie blowing herself up and turning ganymede into spaghetti. Jesus christ. What the fuck.
Okay whoever tf is doing all this shit and framing utopia u gotta stop fr fr
It's probably merion kraye. I hope it's not sniper
Okay but actually it'd be so funny if, after all this nurturist bullshit, the only person who is actually was set-set sleeper agent was cookie herself. That'd be hilarious
13
Wait does that mean perry-kraye 2 was a u-beast? Omg
This is actually so sad. Fuck lorelei but :(
Like i said it would make a great horror game/ visual novel tho. like it tricks you into thinking it’s like an rpg and you can pick certain decisions to influence the narrative, but after a while it locks out the third and fourth options entirely no matter how many times you press it. The game always ends with you killing Ganymede.
14
ET TU PAPA?????????
He's a cop what did i expect
Oh the palpable rage of Reader they're about to go off
Haha let papa say fuck
OH MY GOD THE FAUSTPACT. THE PROJECT.
Okay but papa being so awkward that all gendered historical clothing looks bad on him is so funny. My gender is police commissioner
Idk why the girls are fighting. Utopia and gordian want the same thing they just picked different scifi aesthetics to make their whole personality
15
MARTIN!!!!!!!!!!
Tully 😠😠😡😡🤬😡🤬😡😠🔪😡🤬
Actually i read the tully reveal the moment before i was supposed to start work, and so i hyperfocused on how much i hate tully so much that i turned around to sympathising more with him than i ever have in the narrative previous. We'll see how this turns out for me
I thought it was croucher yelling about how his name was going to be immortalised alongside achilles' and i was like no you're not. I forget you're in this story every time you're not in it.
Perry-kraye has more justification to think that, but i think in like 200 years when everyone who was alive for the war is dead, perry-kraye will be like, a detective comedy staple. "Somehow the murderer was casimir perry all along?" And he appears with a curly mustache eating a sausage because the sausage is the only thing people remember about him. Also he dresses in 18th century fashion every time
"We should always be able to pass words to friends, it’s the simplest, the most necessary thing." made my cry at work. I wish martin was here i miss him. I want him to be with xiaoliu and his kids
Not mycroft of all people defending tully. I guess if anyone is more responsible for this war than tully, it's perry-kraye
THE WHOLE TIME? THE WHOLE TIME?? HE'S BEEN ODYSSEUS THE WHOLE TIME???
Fuck am i gonna have to pause a read the Odyssey now? I kept joking about it because i wanted to be better than mycroft at something but maybe i really have to
Does this mean carlyle is someone? Thisbe? Or just mycroft? I don't know enough about the iliad to make guesses
okay but if Mycroft is Odysseus then who is Penelope? I assume the Mardis are the suitors and that’s why Bridger came up with the association in the first place. My assumption would be JEDD if JEDD wasn’t literally leading the war to begin with.
16
XIAOLIU 😄
Damn I can't believe I've been shit talking the Mitsubishi this whole time. They were the only ones who were right. I guess we all have egg on our faces
Also fuckin cornel if you're that dedicated to your empire that you would imprison JEDD in circumstances more torturous than ganymedes, then you shouldn't have made him imperator destinatus in the first place, dickhead
BOO LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SAY GOODBYE TO MYCROFT I'M CRYING
Okay this is probably the closest jedd ever gets to being affectionate and it's so cute. It's so sweet. mycroft hold My hand.
ET TU XIAOLIU???
The damnatus memoriae existed even in the chronicle we read oh my god. Oh my god. They're going to need a bash loss specialist 😧
This is all extremely heavy and I'm emotional but i can't believe weeksbooth won the race for longest continuous bash. Congratulations ockham 🥳
Martin Semaphoros.... I think it's really sweet that cornel would honour his loyal servants by absorbing them into his own birth bash
God the line about duty overthrowing even the right to struggle against death is so sexy. Oh my god. Oh my god.
"Cato Weeksbooth is no longer human" i mean. We know. Unless he means human in the literal sense. Was his presence in the Ráðsviðr cell foreshadowing? Was cato the frankensteins monster all along?
Also JEDD is definitely penelope but i guess he can have two roles the same way mycroft can be odysseus AND moriarty AND jean valjean
17
Oh god this is gonna hurt. "I do not know how to call friend one who does this" who is going to betray me now
Dominic when he finds out JEDD slept beside Mycroft but not him
Me: Aww cato gets to do science again :)
Anonymous: stop smiling mycroft this is bad
Me: 😐
ACTUAL MAD SCIENTIST CATO WEEKSBOOTH
HELEN
Oh my god, the man who launched a thousand ships.
Wait. Wait what? I thought it was a metaphor? Hello??
HELLO???
😧😧😧😧😧
i can’t believe i was the idiot who wanted to apollo’s iliad as a side story. you fool. it’s the book
MY OWN HIVE WOULD BETRAY ME LIKE THIS FUCK YOU
I'm so sad
!!!!
MECHA ILIAD. GET IN THE FUCKING ROBOT SHINJI
I literally for a second thought i was getting my bridger piloting achilles like a mecha wish but alas
I wish threatening to breakup with god worked all the time
Bridger 🥺🥺🥺 little alex 🥺🥺🥺🥺
Okay everything's great again. Eureka, cato, kat or robin, we're getting the band back together
But where's thisbe, cowards?
18
this chapter is actually calling me out personally because the main reason i’m cousin and not utopian is because I think it’s too hard and I want to take the easier path. like on a conscious level I respect gradatim and reaching the stars and doing stuff but for me personally i’m good out here.
Jedd picked the worse option because he loves mycroft and wants him to be happy I can’t do this
but also i still don’t get why the girls are fighting. like i understand it but i don’t Get it. it’s the same shit i’m sorry like i know the utopian thing is harder but it’s the same and you can do both.
eureka my beloved. i have missed her.
“I should have learned the brill system but i was too busy learning everything about philosophy and history and also learning 8 languages” “well you should have tried harder!” for fucks sake hobbes give him a break he’s just a guy
“stretches mandated by whitelaws” fucking dorks oh my god
19
'mycrofts gone again' how??? You put him in a cage
Whatever i love 9A
God it actually hurts so much more that the guildbreakers were influenced by brillists. Like they tore that family apart.
IS 9A LIKE 19?? ARE THEY A BABY?
I. Yeah, okay. Okay. I guess this is happening. I guess MASON is patroclus.
I am actually so sad for JEDD and the fact he let mycroft go? oh my god. he must be in so much pain right now he loves his dads so much that he’d let mycroft go and risk his life to save Cornel
i hate it but kosala does have girlboss energy for killing MASON. i wish she hadn’t done it but it did fuck severely
i feel like this series is going to end with everyone on a 7/10 list dead. oh god that includes vivien.
oh god what if it includes 9A?????
20
"asshole and a half" i fucking love you 9A
Also, goddamn, anonymous and acting emperor is pretty damn good for a servicer.
9MASON
Oh the prep notes for the chapter. i love this. I love 9A
Vivien is safe!!!!!!
i think it’s so funny that 9A is Masonic Emperor despite being so deep into the line of succession they didn’t even know they were in the line of succession. like, you’re the most qualified person who is not literally MIA rn so congratulations Caesar?
21
The autocaps thing is so funny actually. I hope 9A is okay in hospital ☹️ yes 9A it’s very funny to write Cornel mason why do you think i do it all the time?
VIVIEN IS A GOOD DIPLOMAT I LOVE HIM 🥺🥺🥺 once again i return to my roots as a vivien ancelet stan. I wonder if his spanish has gotten better
They started talking about audiobooks and i had a brief flash of horror that they were about to advertise audible to me. What a world we have found ourselves in.
I feel sad about the gorgon stuff but it's really interesting seeing the symptoms played out from someone directly
"the absolute surrender of earth" yeah okay
EEYYY ROCKHAMPTON. also i assume emerald city is a fantasy thing but also there is a city called emerald about a 3hr drive from rockhampton so maybe? We just wouldn't call it emerald city
IS SALADIN CANNER REAL? IS HE NOT REAL? WHO IS TO SAY REALLY
ET TU SU HYEON??????
I'm gonna start sobbing at work i stg
Four months they were trapped like that for four months jesus christ
Su hyeon 🤝 julia, being super vile and evil and i hate them
Su hyeon hurts the most but I'm fuckin taking notes down I'll tell you what. I love a tragedy, i love a betrayal where you know they betrayed you but no one else does and you can't do anything about it
22
God I've been teary this whole time. Once again carlyle saves the world 🥺 but trust someone experienced with manipulating to figure out how to get around manipulators. God she's so sexy and powerful
THE PREFECT IMMEDIATELY STEPPING DOWN OH MY GOD. ANGEL. I LOVE YOU. I think Masons are weird but they are extremely sexy
The part where they just keep repeating how they want huxley was so sweet but also bro you blew my cover. They're so cute. Friendship ended with su hyeon now huxley is my new best friend
WAIT. 10A???
Is she, you know... An essayist
I actually love carlyle as an essayist
Wait no! Fuck! They're setting up 10A to gently prepare us for 9A dying and let me tell you i won't hear a fucking bit of it. I swear to god ada palmer if you kill of 9A you WILL catch these hands
Oh god I'm crying again. "You saved the world by being kind and paying attention to someone in a sickbed when nobody else did...the world needs a cousinly voice who's used to talking about miracles" I'm literally so emotional i love this so much
YES. THE SHARKS WITH BANANAS ARE BACK. THEY’RE BACK!!
23
I doubt jedd had a tantrumy toddler phase but i can only imagine that chagatai is prepared for this because baby jedd did do the 'holding my breath until i get what i want' thing, and he ended up passing out and nearly dying because he Meant It
'i want my ibasho' 🥺🥺🥺
24
Danaë 😮 i totally forgot about her lmao
BABY
Tryna figure out when in the timeline leslie got pregente though
Also oof finding out you're gregnant right at the beginning of global conflict is just. The timing couldn't be worse
Wait also that's the baby that should have become a set set. Guess it's too late now. Also Olympian is so cute. Next gen OS right here
9A is starting to doubt utopia baby i am right there with you
I think since I wrote that note and came back I don’t think I’m doubting utopia anymore? but I think it’s easier for someone from the 21st to justify death than for someone from the 24th
i know JEDD doesn’t need to wake up but i think it is bullying to make him discuss his world conquest plans when he just woke up
also JEDD giving the same consideration to remembering if he ate breakfast that he would to the continuation of the human race is very funny
oh god, you asked him a trolley problem. oh man, we’re going to be here all day
oh, another gender speech huh? I think it is interesting the number of afab people that mycroft gendered male. it really does read as misogyny 2
i don’t know if this really solves the problem of masculinity being default tho. like it’s great that the world was ostensibly saved by “women”, but that doesn’t change the fact like, femininity is relegated to cousins and nowhere else
unless madame is full of shit, and there’s femininity everywhere, but it didn’t fit her vibe so she ignored it
regardless i think there still needs to be some work to solve sexism so that we can have gender again because, like, people like gender sometimes. it shouldn’t be this easy to reinvent misogyny
Actually saladin 9A isn't allowed to die because i, like raging achilles, will go to the ends of the earth to destroy you
25
I don't think this is mycroft. I think this is saladin
Okay they referred to 'my prison visit' so it's possibly mycroft, but it just doesn't sound like him? It's like tonally different, like someone who knows mycroft well is trying to mimic his writing style. Either that or its mycroft and mycroft is saladin and has been the whole time
Okay yeah thisbe is terrible. I know that. But do i also love her? Yeah
Haha yess the fact that chagatai is modo mundo came back that's so good what great foreshadowing
OMG. THE RESURRECTION
26
Yeah see this is mycroft canner! It's him!
Oh my god. I wanted sniper and 9A to meet so bad. This is exactly what i wanted "humanists keep trying to elect us both" I'M CRYING
"hey i just lead a war against you, the handcuffs are very my fault" SNIPER I LOVE YOU
"achilles didn't come back from the dead did they? Jedd mason was enough, twice would be ridiculous" this is just my sniper stan corner
This is my new sniper's chapter. My friend made fun of me recently for waking up full of strength and reading sniper's chapter every morning, but I'm just gonna get worse
the reason sniper doesn’t like the utopian oath is 100% just dickhead older ba’sib energy. sniper made fun of the utopia oath because cato likes it and they used it to make fun of cato. it’s the same reason i hate league of legends
i love the pronoun clarification. finally a real reader insert.
SNIPER DESERVES TO BE ON THE ODYSSEY OLYMPIC COMMITTEE I DON’T CARE WHICH BRILLIST OR UTOPIAN NEEDS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
“so one side says go to space, and the other says let’s stay here because it’s easy? screw them, let’s go to space” literally thank you. space is cool as fuck.
HEY WHAT THE FUCK
DON’T DO THIS TO ME
HOW?????
OH MY GOD
nevermind this isn’t my new sniper’s chapter i literally can’t handle this. i will never read this chapter again
just kidding this is sexy as fuck but also I want to die.
I can’t think of any other way the story could have gone. like who else could be tasked with finishing Mycroft’s narrative?
like it was so obvious in hindsight they were both greek servicers, followers of JEDD, familiaris, Anonymous, philosophers. mycroft’s got 17 lifetimes of work to do oh my god. oh my god.
I now realise that chapter 26 is, in fact, that chapter, like objectively.
Okay i forgot to update for ages bc pan finished pts before me so i yelled at them instead but
HELLO????? WAS I RIGHT??? WAS I RIGHT ABOUT THE POLYAMOROUS SNIPER-SANEER TRIO???? DID I ACTUALLY PREDICT SOMETHING IN THIS FUCKING BOOK? 🍾🥂











