Ms. Smartarse > Recent Status Updates

'Granny.'
'What?'
'Do you know how wizards like to be buried?'
'Yes!'
'Well, how?'
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
'Reluctantly.'

“Even though you just had a colonoscopy, no one would call you loose in the hips.”
Marlene raised an eyebrow.
I waved it off. “Oh, that was just one of Bengt’s theories. He says you can tell when women aren’t having enough sex… Well, and now I’m wondering whether he might be right. Do I look to you somehow… well…”

Is the herd mentality really this strong?

The enemy in a nutshell...

Sometimes when humans argue with me, they’re right. (Statistically, they would have to be right sometimes, no matter how unlikely that seems.)

Naja said on our team feed, You look nervous.
It doesn’t look nervous, Farai countered sharply, for a human who was looking more nervous than I was.
Are you nervous? Sofi asked.
If we were on Preservation I’d ask for a solicitor. I lied and said, I’m not nervous.
(Emotion check: Nervous.)

I was hoping the hostiles didn’t know anything about Leonide’s plans, or that she had anyone with her in the house. It would be nice if they found her body and marked their mission as completed and submitted an invoice. No, threat assessment did not think the chances of that were very good.

"[The feather] was placed at a particular tale: Beauty and the Beast. Very fucking funny, Witch Owl. More like Reia and the monster. Except she knew her beast wouldn't turn into a handsome man no matter what she did.

Assumptions, beliefs and theories...

Back in high school we used to joke about classrooms smelling like burnt brain. Arisu here is doing an admirable job of demonstrating said burning process.

Things I google in the name of research: women's reproductive organs, long tongue muscle, wolf vs fox skull...

Frankly, the awkward writing style is bothering me way more than impending monster sex:
He was inhuman; that could never be changed. He didn't look human, and although he had obvious humanity inside him, he wasn't truly one within either. He wasn't a human in a monster's body, his mind was too... beastly for that by his growls and grunts, but the bits of humanity she could see were unravelling her.

“For heaven’s sake! Who created the social estates? Our Heavenly Father, of course, didn’t He? If He had wanted the beggar to marry the countess, there would be no beggar and no countess — no below, no above. Naturally the beggar should love as well. But please, according to his station!”

"Prepare a list of tasks that must be performed, and we shall delegate them to the ministers, the Heads, and some of the more competent castle guards. Perhaps if we give everyone a single task, they will not make a complete mess of it.”
Maddox looked at Lorn disapprovingly. “That sounds dangerously close to optimism.”
“I prefer to think of it as delusion.”

"Why did you not tell her about the wonders of Between? The mountains--"
"Filled with wraith wolfs."
"-- the lakes --"
"Filled with flesh-eating fish."
"-- the fields of flowers --"
"Mostly poisonous."
"-- and the wondrous creatures?"
Right on cue, thunder boomed right beside the tower. It was answered by the roar of a blue and orange winged beast as it flew past the window in all of its dreadful glory.

"At first, you were angry about your Destiny... then whiny about your Destiny... then scheming about your Destiny... and now elf-ish about your Destiny."
"I prefer the term resigned - it contains fewer elves."

"The citizens of Between are also quite pleased that you won; there have been raucous celebrations at the Sleazy Weasel all afternoon. The house band has already commemorated your exploits in a new song.”
Lorn looked up from his paperwork. “Is it terrible?”
“It contains a sixteen minute, improvised yodelling solo.”
“I shall take that as a resounding yes.”

“Take that prince in Snow White: he was riding around, kissing dead girls in forests. That’s not romantic—that’s necrophilia. Plus, she was 14, remember? He was a pedophilic necrophiliac. Come to think of it, the prince in Sleeping Beauty wasn’t that much better. I mean, who kisses a woman in a coma? That’s assault! Not cool, Prince Charming. Not cool ...”
“Wow, thank you for ruining those stories for me.”

"Passages that linked our realm to Otherworld were scattered across every country and continent.”
“Like subway stations,” Mrs. Landshome piped up. She winked at Lyla. “I thought you New Yorkers would appreciate the reference.”
Lyla grinned at the old woman. “Thanks for keeping this at my level.”

“Right,” she said reluctantly. “Marriage. Please, don’t take offense—”
“People always say that just before they are about to be particularly offensive.”
Sasha opened her mouth to refute his statement but then changed her mind. “You’re right. Please feel free to be offended.”

Lyla frowned at the pantomime. “You can’t tell us what’s going on… because your ear is crusty?”
Sasha stared at Lyla incredulously. “Really? Really?”
Lyla held up her hands in surrender. “You know how much I hate both mimes and games, and what Rosa did just then was a terrible combination of both. So ‘crusty ear’ was a pretty solid effort on my part.”

He had been seventeen at the time, she eleven. Barbara was a precocious girl. At first they were just playmates, soon already like brother and sister, and then… well, what? What might have been? Because only a few days after they kissed for the first time, Barbara was dead.


Hell of an age gap... even for a medieval setting.

-- you owe me. Your next substitute teaching position had better be in a place where men outnumber women two hundred to one, and the Internet speed is off the charts. Which, now that I think of it, is probably Silicon Valley. Do they need substitute teachers in Silicon Valley? Or are all the classes taught by robots?

And it's not because you have an "old soul", sweetie.

It was a sign of how disordered my nerves had become that I did not derive nearly enough enjoyment from hearing Miss Potter pronounce the word "nematode" with an accent so British that it very nearly had its own stiff upper lip.

I mentioned that we are a fierce warrior people, right? Even though we were bad at it? But we were proud of our warriors. Someone had to be, I guess.

The Pit and the Pendulum - **
The Tell-Tale Heart - ***

“She is a devout woman. She wants to serve God and at the same time be friends with you, a demon. What would you have done in her place?”
Given God the middle finger.

Back then, Akuma had found the idea of dwelling within a human intriguing — until Mother had shown him what was truly expected of a demon who practised that art. When Kjara had proposed their pact, he had been sceptical. At the same time, he couldn’t simply pass up the chance to learn more about humanity And what had that earned him? A life of unbroken darkness and boredom.

"[The book] sounds a wee bit...racy."
"Not really. I mean, I THINK they're screwing, but it was written back in the dawn of time, so they do it in rows of asterisks, or between chapters."