Hey again, it's time for another of my commentary posts! Come, gather around and watch me misunderstand everything that's going on!
Here's my read-through of Chapter Three:
"This... entire... stupid... system!" I growled in frustration, punctuating my point with my fist hitting the wall. "How does any of this make sense?!"
Trismegistus had been schizophrenic, that was the only explanation.
According to real-life
quacks occultists, Hermes Trismegistus was the founder of a philosophical system based around alchemy, astrology, and the study of ancient writings. Hermetists claimed that they had developed a special technique for rising, step by step, from the earthly plane to the highest spheres of the mind and spirit.
So, the question I want to ask those of you who are more familiar with
A Practical Guide to Evil is this: does the Trismegistus of the story have anything to do with Hermetic philosophy, or did the author just like the name? I'm curious.
I was thankful my self-taught Old Miezan had been a wise investment of my time, even if our teacher said that my accent was atrocious. Nobody spoke Old Miezan anyway, and my written form was adequate.
If nobody speaks Old Miezan, how does her teacher
know that her accent is atrocious?
Out of the remaining three, Kharsum was, excuse my Francois, a bitch to learn. I wasn't the only one, thankfully. The scholarly orc with several ugly scars covering his whole face who was teaching the subject told us that we had particular trouble with several vowels due to our "high-pitched, girly voices" and, on a more practical note, a lack of fangs to hiss the consonants through. He said that it could be remedied with a correctly broken nose or by squeezing your throat until you learned how to growl and wheeze in a particular voice range, but I was sure he was joking. Almost sure. The language itself was surprisingly poetic, almost musical in composition, though the subject of the few poems he read to us was quite depressing, or bloodthirsty, or both.
Ah, yes. It sounds very much like my experience of learning Welsh. (I still can't speak Welsh, sadly.)
After he was discharged from the infirmary, he again demonstrated the astonishing lack of intellect and made a case to file a formal accusation of assault to the Legate presiding over the College. In turn, I explained my side of the situation in full. Turned out, I wasn't the only object of his tender affections, though it never quite escalated that far before. I was given a formal reprimand for assaulting a superior officer without filling a form explaining my actions since he was a sergeant ( there was a form for that, it turned out ), and he was dismissed from the Legions and incarcerated.
Wow, Tanya may have accidentally stumbled into the perfect career. This army seems ideally suited for her: they even have forms to fill in for 'assaulting a superior officer.' That sounds like exactly the sort of thing she would have come up with herself!
Anyway, it was a useful experience that went a long way towards informing my approach of maintaining the facade of an eager warmongering patriot. There were some general rules to the deception that I'd managed to glean: you shouldn't be too flamboyant, for example. Natural exuberance was quite distinct from unnatural, and people unconsciously picked up the clues to tell one from another the entire time you are having a conversation with them. The trick was to convince the conscious part of the observer of your honestly so thoroughly they would disregard the unconscious input as faulty or irrelevant. The second part of the trick was, of course, not to give the unconscious too many clues to pick up on in the first place.
Unfortunately, I had more trouble picking up those clues than an average person would.
I didn't expect Tanya to be this self-aware, to be honest. I may have read too many other fanfics in which she was convinced that she was the best at social interaction.
"Nothing like that," she assured me. "I prefer brunettes, anyway, and I definitely won't want to sleep with anyone just because they owe me. I have self-esteem too, you know?" Implying that Talib didn't have any, a nice wordplay.
"Chris has black hair," I pointed out.
I've reread this section several times and I'm struggling to make sense of it. How does the fact that Chris has black hair have anything to do with what the Lieutenant said before that? It just seems like a weird non-sequitur to me.
It would probably be something opportunistic and at least party illegal, but I was willing to pay the price for the potential advantages it'd bring me, though I wasn't quite sure my countrymen would feel the same way.
"party illegal", huh? So... like a rave in the middle of a pandemic? Or do you mean "
partly illegal"?
"It's a deal," I smiled easily, clasping her hand. She drew back slightly, probably surprised I agreed so quickly, before smiling back and shaking my hand with hers. "We'll see you tomorrow, Lieutenant Killian."
"See you tomorrow, Cadet Degurechaff," she said and echoed her previous sentiment. "Just don't expect any miracles."
Well, Lieutenant Killian seems nice. Or, at least, not a complete asshole.
