[-] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 10 points 9 months ago

My namesake - Rottcodd.

Rottcodd is a minor character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. He's the caretaker of the Hall of Bright Carvings - a gallery of statues high up in a far distant corner of the castle Gormenghast. He lives there contentedly and peacefully by himself and rarely sees anyone, but through a window at one end of the gallery, he can see the castle spread out below him, and can barely make out tiny-with-distance people scurrying around doing... whatever it is that they're doing.

And yeah - for better or worse, I identify with him so much that I swiped his name.

[-] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 9 points 10 months ago

The only thing I don't like about the fediverse is the constant stream of people blathering on about how "we" supposedly need to centralize and homogenize it and fill it up with botspam, so that easily confused morons with short attention spans will move here.

[-] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 5 points 11 months ago

Huh.

I had no idea Marvel Groot was that old.

That seems to make it more likely that it's not a coincidence though, particularly since while Marvel Groot existed, he was still very obscure. I can see Moorcock slipping the line in, and even giving the character that name so he could slip the line in, just for a bit of amusement.

19

I'm currently (re)reading Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain. Short synopsis - an educated, cynical, apostate and unapologetically brutal mercenary in the Middle Ages is recruited by Lucifer to recover the Holy Grail, nominally so that Lucifer can wheedle his way back into God's good graces.

He's told to start by finding and talking to a hermit named Philander Groot, which he does. He turns out to be something other than a stereotypical hermit.

"You don’t look like a hermit.” Sedenko put his hand on the hilt of his sabre and strode forward to inspect the apparition.

“Sir, I assure you that I am, indeed, a hermit.” Groot became polite. He was distant.

“We heard you were a holy man,” Sedenko continued.

“I cannot be held responsible for what others hear or say, sir.” Groot drew himself up. He was somewhat shorter than Sedenko, who was no giant. “I am the same Philander Groot for whom you were looking. Take me or leave me, sir. This is all there is.”

“We had not thought to find a dandy,” said I, by way of apologizing for Sedenko’s frankness. “We imagined someone in homespun cloth. The usual sort of garb.”

“It is not my way to fulfill the expectation of my fellow creatures. I am Groot." (emphasis mine)

Granted that there's no seeming connection between any of that and Marvel Comics, and no similarity between the characters, that simple declaration "I am Groot." really leaped out at me as at least an odd coincidence.

[-] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes.

I have a friend who is extremely intelligent, endlessly curious and was raised in a locally well-established and notoriously generous and civic-minded family. So he was raised in that milieu of sincere kindness and generosity, and whenever he's come across anything that interests him (which is seemingly something new every week) he seriously researches it until he understands it.

So it pretty much doesnt matter what the topic is - he knows something about it, but his personality has been shaped so that he's attentive and considerate rather than pedantic and self-absorbed. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen him engage in obviously mutually enjoyable conversations with complete strangers over... pretty much anything.

I vacillate between thinking that it's remarkable that he's the way he is and that it's remarkable, in a different sense, that that's so uncommon.

[-] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 70 points 1 year ago

I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven't used google for ages, so I first had to search "google" in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.

But no - there it was, right at the top - "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."

And with that, I'll contentedly go back to not using google.

Rottcodd

joined 1 year ago