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"And then things get weird..."
—Caius Caligula
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In August of 2010, people finally got fed up with Caius Caligula telling them about all the books he read, so he repurposed what was an angry rant blog and started doing book reviews instead. Here he has continued, through Schedule Slip, a move to Tumblr, and a lack of anyone caring what was said, to review weird fiction books for anyone who would care to read. Recently, due to a habit of going to conventions and generally faffing about, Caius has added articles about the various places he goes to and faffs about, including an anime con and a book expo. He plans to do more of this sort of thing. The reviews are strange, normally starting with a "how I found this" anecdote, and Wall of Text usually applies.
Blog can be found here, though that one is missing most of the "state of the blog" stuff. A more complete archive can be found here.
Geek Rage provides examples of:[]
- Aborted Arc: After the Schedule Slip, a lot of the "Next time" stuff kind of tended to get lost in the shuffle.
- Accentuate the Negative: Mostly inverted, with the exception of the review for The Magicians and Ghosts of Manhattan.
- Affectionate Parody: The colors used in his House of Leaves review.
- The Artifact: The title of the blog is left over from its old days as a Rant Blog. Caius just never changed it.
- Berserk Button: Lazy writing, certain authors, disappointing sequels, not properly loading Chekhov's Gun.
- Catch Phrase: "And then things get weird."
- Also: "But, and here's the important bit:"
- And: "Way back in the dawn of time...(okay, it was really (insert date x here))"
- Referring to readers as "all two of you" for Self-Deprecation
- Caustic Critic: Inverted most times. He seems to enjoy almost every book he reads, with a few special cases, which he apologizes for.
- Color Coded for Your Convenience: In the old days. Reviews were colored green, site stuff was colored red, and personal comments were neutral-colored
- Did Not Do the Research: Mostly averted, though he has been known to get certain details wrong. And then there was the review he posted an apology for...
- Naughty Tentacles: The blog's tagline reads "We are Cthulhu, You are Japan", referencing this and Kaiju
- Purple Prose: You can usually tell when a bad review is coming when the writing style shifts towards this
- Precision F-Strike: Once in every bad review. Lampshaded heavily.
- Self-Deprecation: Every time Caius does a video or a personal article, expect at least one crack about his weight, physical appearance, abhorrent personality, or lack of a social life.
- Sitcom Arch Nemesis: George Mann, it would seem.
- Take That: James Joyce, Ayn Rand, George Mann, Tumblr's formatting issues (said formatting issue jokes also doubling as Biting the Hand Humor).
- Wall of Text: Every review is a load of this.