"we're all just hallucinations anyway" this bodes well for the fictive prospects....

"life is too short to be anything other than exactly what you are" Sarah may have some major themes

"the blank page" prologuey page is definitely in conversation with the first section of MAGPIE's metatomic fic

fvrther thematic throvghlines as the magpie accepts death with both rage and relief (and then doesn^t die)

Determining whether "lady" is an address of honor or an epithet is a thrilling little game.

- RL

realized while reading the description of the first moment of the apocalypse that the narrator of that one part of godfeels may have described this one. don^t think so on review thovgh

this magpie is so long winded lmao I wanna give him a wedgie

really digging the not-explaining-the-setting approach. I'm really intrigued by Asthur and the Great Worm-Sloth and I would just be rolling my eyes if I were directly told what they are

i^m throwing a theory out now, on behalf of myself, the robot milf, and Soph, that the connection between this book and THE QVILT is a dark tower type thing. magpie is somehow derived from another version of the story told in good morning, magpie.

Sarah Zedig used homestuck to trick me into reading Redwall: Zombies

this is reductive and inaccurate but I think funny. I am enjoying the book.

the pacing is very strange to my current reader-brain. I'm used to stories where in the midst of the larger story, an episode conflict is introduced and then lingered on or disregarded for several chapters or even most of a single book. in good morning, magpie episodic conflicts are resolved shortly after they are introduced, such as the encounter with Adam and his followers, which lasts only a few pages.

this sounds like a criticism but it's not -- I ran out of characters

the quicker episodic pace works, not only because there's nothing wrong with that (I chose episodic for a reason) but because good morning, magpie is in a lot of ways closer to a fable than the kind of story that I'm used to. I feel like using animals as the cast to draw the mind to Aesop probably wasn't an accident.

I could just ask if the fable quality is intentional lol

we^re not very far in. not enovgh reading time and soph insists on spending half of what we have on they phone. speaking of which.

So with the post-Adam scene of the Darkness, I realize that it does somewhat resemble Epigone. Not in a way that necessarily makes me think they're the same THING; in fact i think they probably actively aren't, as the story seems to be about "sometimes awful, AWFUL things happen for no reason, no earns this even if they're irredeemable, because some things are ARBITRARY" and Epigone very fundamentally Desires things.

The tendrils of the darkness stabbing forward and corrupting people resembles a combination of the Halo vision of the horrible all consuming cult crossed with Roserot -- though it also very much reminds me of the Hunger, from TAZ

Which is 100% not me saying "oh derivative" just for the record; with Epigone it's me identifying themes in Sarah's work, and with TAZ it's me saying "man tendrils of corrupting darkness are fuckin scary"

But yeah the arbitrary nature of the apocalypse (from what I can see) reminds me of the narrator of godfeels breaking objectivity Kayfabe and talking about "we have seen worlds consumed by black holes that came out of fucking nowhere"

Genuinely a huge fan of the kinda, interlude about Adam's backstory. From a narrative standpoint I'm a huge fan. It's a good story also but damn if it didn't break my heart. Jenna, but especially the Bears. Poor lil Rowan. I have a huge weakness for like..... children being tormented for no reason :(

But yeah, Adam died, and *then* we got his backstory, and I think that's pretty cool as a narrative movement.