Mr. Mimicry

A book excerpt: The diviner was staring at the dregs in his cup, then frowned. The effect of the strangely positioned, jutting head with its even more jutting spike of a pony tail, suddenly frowning was enough to make Tian the discombobulated one for a moment. “Boy, do you have any… unsavory habits?” “I don’t think so, but then, I wouldn’t know, would I? Could you narrow it down?” “Are you… interested in girls?” “Not romantically.” “Boys?” “Not romantically.” “Would you say that… you had carnal knowledge of a bird, you filthy little degenerate?! Confess at once!” “Does eating poultry count as carnal knowledge?” Tian was the one to spread his arms this time. “Ancestors preserve me, I hope not.” Outspread the Discombobulated shook his head. “But it says here you are chasing your daughter, who is a bird. And that means you did something dreadful with a different bird. And I drank your tea. In a long, happy life, this may be my darkest day.” Tian blinked. Then blinked again. “She’s adopted. A foster arrangement.” Outspread counter-blinked. “Fostering. A bird.” “Yes.” “Boy, are you crazy?” “I’m not crazy, I’m just not well."

- Sky Pride by Warby Picus 🪐📚💙

A book quote: "Are you usually bandits?" he asked. "Is this your profession?" "Fifth time," the largest one said. There was a note of pride in its voice. "Fifth time robbing someone?" "Fifth time trying." "...Trying?" "Yes." Sael waited. The goblins did not elaborate. "And the previous four times?" he prompted. "Did not work," the largest one admitted.

- The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived by Prismo101 🪐📚💙

A screenshot of a book quote: The doorknob started to turn as I quickly turned to Ophelia, putting on the most serious face I could. “I forgot to tell you—he’s… he’s a thing, a bizarre creature. You have to watch out.” I warned the now-concerned woman as the doors swung open. In walked William. As always, in a full suit, his black hair falling flat against his scalp, of course, in a faultless, combed hairstyle. He wore a fine, deep-blue coat over the suit, with a fancy, silver-decorated dagger sticking out from the inside. His face was handsome, bringing to mind English aristocrats from TV dramas. “Don’t move,” I whispered to the now slightly panicked Ophelia, as all of us froze in place—aside from Luna and Q’Shar, who just sighed, rolling their eyes. “What’s going on?” Ophelia whispered. “Can you idiots stop?” William asked with a groan. “It’s unbecoming of a grown man.” We still sat without moving. “It’s kinda fucked up, but he’s… he’s—” I said, as if struggling. “He’s… British.” I let the silence hang. “I heard they react to movement,” I whispered to Ophelia. She took a while to process my words and then turned to me with a mixture of disbelief and disapproval.

- Eldritch Exorcist by Hastum
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A book quote: Tian’s first move was the product of years of careful, expert training, built on top of a couple of months running through the jungle. It might, to the uneducated eye, have looked like wild flailing. Nevertheless, he was prepared to argue that it was really very tactical and sophisticated, especially since flaming monkeys jumping at your face with their enormous teeth and jagged claws and flames leaping off their white-gold fur merited the highest level of combat.

Sky Pride by Warby Picus 🪐📚💙

And Xathar was a very observant horse demon, yes sir

- The Warcrowned by LostInTranscription
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Sister Su just calls them out, and if they won’t duel, she follows them around and loudly reads essays, with footnotes, references, appendices and codicils, about their moral, physical, spiritual and hygienic failures. She got a little printing machine, hand cranked. She’s gotten very fast at setting the type, and has started commissioning new blocks of characters in different handwriting for extra emphasis. Sis’ Su has all her little printing blocks organized, categorized and regimented better than a unit of Imperial Guardsmen. She prints fliers, and distributes them widely, even commissioning missions to other Immortal Grottos (which is what they call their subsidiary temples.) The fliers come with attached bibliographies and a table of citations, as well as lists of women whom the young masters have failed to satisfy. She usually includes the ‘gentlemen’s’ mothers, but notes that the disappointment is merely inferred based on the totality of evidence. I insist that you picture Sis’ Su, sitting at her worktable, carefully and precisely setting the characters into wooden forms. It’s all backward, of course, so it prints properly on the page. With her slim, white fingers, stained with blue-black ink, she arranges the following sentence- “Allegations that he has personally received the unspeakable attentions of a Bull Hippopotamus, repeatedly and enthusiastically, are not without support despite his embarrassing physique and general lack of vigour. See Appendix C for an explanation of what a Hippopotamus is.”

Sky Pride by Warby Picus 🪐📚💙
V4C27 Spoiler Warning
(This is one of my favourite stories, and the letters are some of my favourite chapters.)

I will take my future payment in horses, bush mage,” Xathar rumbled for the fourth time. Marcus just did his best to hang on, legs already itching. The demon was running fast enough to exhaust any regular horse within miles, something it had been doing for over an hour now. “It was old, sickly and so very stale, but I found it to be a pleasant experience.” Marcus grunted. “I’m happy you’re happy. And no, you won’t get to eat a horse every time I need your services. We’ll save it for special occasions.” Xathar grumbled something about greedy bushes, moving left to dodge a fallen tree

The Warcrowned by LostInTranscription
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"Sure, this might be some sort of Trojan Horse, but it also might be a ‘Don’t-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth’ type situation.” “This analogy has a lot of horses, Dan,” Croc said softly, before stealing a furtive look toward Nikoli. “Do you think he has some sort of secret bargain with horse people?” I pinched the bridge of my noise. “What? No. Don’t worry about the horses, bud."

Croc’s ears flattened. “Too many legs. I always say you should never trust something with more than ten legs. As the saying goes, nine is divine, eight is great, seven is heaven, five is fine, four galore, three is the bee’s knees, two is tried and true, and one is likely a very sad workplace accident. But ten?” Croc shook his head. “Never ten.” “There’s no way that’s a saying,” Harper replied with a frown. “That’s just so incredibly specific and there can’t possibly be enough scenarios to warrant someone coming up with a saying like that.” “Nope, it’s definitely a very common scenario,” Croc assured her.

Discount Dan by James Hunter 🪐📚💙
(And our favourite doggo, Croc!)

"Sneaking around, poisoning food, and making people defecate themselves to death,” Adam lamented. “Who have we become.”

“Heroes, Adam."

- Path of the Deathless by OstensibleMammal 🪐📚💙

Shiv. Look at me. Look at me. Speak the truth. Say what is right. Do not be your parents right now.” “Are you felling serious?” Shiv hissed. “You’re using that on me now?” “Well, I’m not going to out-bloody-seduce Uva, am I?” Adam said. “Pitiful,” Uva deadpanned. “To give up without even trying. Do seduce Shiv, Adam. Let me see how you might do it.”

Path of the Deathless by OstensibleMammal 🪐📚💙

"Interesting. I can differentiate the blessing based on the god.”

“So you chose to bless me with the one that creeps me out.”

“Yes,” said Michael simply as he moved on to Marcus

Penitent by Seersucker 🪐📚💙

‘I’m a lady, Ryles, not a creepy little hopper bug or a gross, slimy frog,’ she’d said, shooting him a pointed look and a smirk.

He would have his revenge at some point. A bucket of frogs in her bed ought to do it.

The Cloudfarers by HC Mills
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Tian could respect the strength to struggle on in the face of adversity. Especially when the adversity was your face.

Sky Pride by Warby Picus
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He found a rock in the courtyard to sit on and pulled out his bowl. He had eaten half of it before he realized he wasn’t alone. “Oh. Didn't see you. Sorry.” Even he didn’t believe he sounded sincere. “You looked straight at me, and didn’t see me. I’m not asking, I am telling you that you looked straight at me and didn’t see me. If I thought I would succeed, I really do think I would try to kill you right now.” Lin said. Her tone was conversational, but Tian believed her.

Sky Pride by Warby Picus
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"I… I am the potato?" Shiv mumbled, mimicking slicing motions in the air. Uva winced slightly. "No, Shiv, you are not a potato. You are misremembering. Your memories have mingled. You have overdrawn and over-focused on the wrong part of your mind. This happens in Psychomancy sometimes. I will mend you in a moment." "I'm not a potato?" "No, Shiv, you are not the potato."

"Hey, Uva," Shiv asked. "Yes?" "Would you still like me if I was a potato?" "Enough to eat you, probably," she replied wryly. "I prefer fish, or maybe something green. But I suppose I'll make an exception for a potato if you became one. But if potatoes-you can still cook, well… I suspect I would prefer to keep you alive instead.” "I guess that's all a man can ask," he replied

- Path of the Deathless by OstensibleMammal
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“Did you fucking hurt her?”
“Horse kicked me,” muttered Sunny. Her head felt all light.
“Horse?” Vigga rounded on the horse Alex had stolen. “This fucker?”
“No, no!” said Alex. “Different horse.”
“It better hope I don’t get hold of it!”
- The Devils by @joeabercrombie.bsky.social 🪐📚💙

Vigga watched them go, scratching thoughtfully at her stretched-out throat with the backs of her fingernails. “I like the sound of shield-maiden.”
“Shield-maiden, please.” The baron snorted. “Axe-bitch, maybe.”
Vigga grinned. “I really like the sound of axe-bitch.”
🪐📚💙 The Devils @joeabercrombie.com

Sunny had quite liked Mother Wilton, even though she’d been pompous and English, which were two black marks against the woman for most.

- The Devils by @joeabercrombie.bsky.social 🪐📚💙

“Aurora,” Pointy asked. “Do you like rainbows?”

The other little girl nodded shyly. “I love rainbows.”

Cassie’s face lit up. “Me too!”

“What are the odds,” Pointy said, deadpan.

- Apocalypse Parenting by @erinampersand.bsky.social‬
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“The Ramsdale estate is cursed. The village too. Terrible things happen here.” “Well I'm sure terrible things happen everywhere.” “All too true. But especially bad here. A month before Mrs Ramsdale disappeared, she purchased a new hunting dog for the kennels.”

- Murder on Hunter's Eve (Lamplight Mysteries 3)
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“It's times like these I wonder why I gave up drinking. But then I remember all the geese attacks, and I am freshly sobered and invigorated in my decision to swear off the spirits.”

- Murder on Hunter's Eve (Lamplight Mysteries 3)
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The Wandering Inn, by PirateAba
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Someone throws a [Diplomat] in your way? You toss one at them, and it distracts the two long enough for you to walk past and get the job done. Cats, that was it. It was like cats. All you had to do was throw enough of them at each other, and whatever they got up to was fine, even if they multiplied.

Hong just groaned. “It was a spar. Brother Zihao has an allergy to allegory and is malicious towards metaphors."

Sky Pride by WarbyPicus
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2/2
"- and a fog-cloaked view of the situation it was born in. If there is no lesson for you to learn from guilt, then it has nothing else to offer you. A righteous scholarly exit from a useless instructor is the only choice sometimes.”
#SuperSupportive by Sleyca🪐📚💙

“There used to be ways to teleport from city to city, but that required a beacon and there aren’t any left.”
“What happened to them?”
“Someone destroyed them”
The brevity of the answer raised his suspicions. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it”
#ScholarOfMagic Michael G Manning🪐📚💙

"But whenever you wake from these better dreams I am about to give you, ask yourself this again. And steep for as long as your day allows with the truth that guilt’s only gift to any of us is instruction. Often, it is an instructor with little sympathy for its student -" 1/2
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Birds are not difficult to understand. Their behaviour tells me what they are thinking. Generally it runs along the lines of: Is this food? Is this? What about this? This might be food. I am almost certain that this is. Or occasionally: It is raining. I do not like it.
#Piranesi by Susanna Clarke🪐📚💙

“Everyone’s always so prim and proper. So measured. You should learn to relax. Just complain about some asinine shit every once and a while. It’s healing for the soul — and it’s a lot of fun. Good way to kill a few hours.”

#ReturnOfTheRuneboundProfessor by Actus
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It reminds me somewhat of a robber fly, kind of a long-limbed dragonfly-esque creature that—oops I've already put it in my mouth.

...Mmmm.

#HiveMindsGiveGoodHugs by Thundamoo
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