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POST NAMER TBC-- work harder, meme!

Welcome back, anyway! Chat fandom, media, creative things, weirdness from around the net, funny stuff, anything! Meme awaits!

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From: (Anonymous)

And yes, I know I'm a bit late.

I'm 70-odd pages in. This book is fucking insane. One minute, he's describing his life at a ridiculously posh school where the "matrons" wash the children's hair for them. The next he's stuffing his head inside a dead deer and covering his face with its blood, because posh people do this as a rite of passage, apparently. There's typical memoir-mawk (never has a book been so utterly ghostwritten) interspersed with stuff that actually reads as an honest and moving description of the hellish situation of your mother dying and the press trying to monetise your grief-- while you're 12. It's a big jumble and I have no idea wtf is coming next. He hates books; he prefers sport and fighting. You get the sense he is intensely bitter he has not been born at a time when he could be Henry VIII; he sounds like the sort to be jousting 24/7. He seems pretty brutish and narcissistic, and has accidentally produced a book where (so far) his dad sounds like an ideal Anime Boyfriend. Quoth I: "I was not expecting this book to make Prince Charles sound hot".

Anyway yeah. It seems to be a book from the perspective of a jock in an immediate family of nerds, which is kind of interesting because by definition jocks can't really read or write-- but, being mega posh, this is the rare jock that has had the opportunity to produce a book. So it's an odd mix of "rrrrrargh I like run!" and anecdotes about being extremely posh, with a self-awareness dial that fluctuates a little, but which is usually set to "minimal". And a lot of "my father always seemed a bit checked-out, though he tried, I suppose" followed by description of Charles being the best dad ever. *shrug*

From: (Anonymous)

(Charles is described as being a history nerd who can quote Shakespeare off the cuff (and wishes for everyone else to have the opportunity), loves theatre, and who grows his own roses. Every night, before Harry is old enough to go off to boarding school, Charles puts Harry to bed, tickles his face until he falls asleep, and leaves the door open a bit because Harry is scared of the dark. Charles is apparently shy and rarely talks about his emotions, having been violently bullied at school, but writes Harry little notes saying how proud he is of him, which he leaves in Harry's room. This is the parenting which Harry describes as "he tried, I suppose". xDDD Harry seems bitter that he only got handwritten notes, not a daily heart-to-heart. I pay little attention to the royal family, but this book makes me understand why so many people find Harry ridiculous. I doubt that's what he was going for when he had it written...)

From: (Anonymous)

There's also much "nobody cared about me or my welfare. I was the spare" and then two lines later it'll be like
> my bodyguards
> my panic alarm
> my electronic tracker

From: (Anonymous)

"He was a Navy civvie, a kindly grandpa who loved sailing - a top bloke. But he had the heart of a fucking ninja.

And at that moment I needed a ninja."

What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About.

From: (Anonymous)

"My mind flashed back to Eton. The fox I'd glimpsed, when stoned, from the window of the loo. So, he really had been a messenger from the future after all."

From: (Anonymous)

"Time, as the doctor predicted, would fix my todger. When would it work its magic on my heart?"

From: (Anonymous)

He tries to pretend he goes to the supermarket all the time; just a regular bloke, him-- then reveals it's bollocks by saying he's shocked when his supermarket moves stuff around, and can't believe it's legal to do so. He also claims he spends some 200 quid every 6 months in TK Maxx, buying clearance items. Sure. (He makes sure to get a bit of product-placement in, at this point.) In the supermarket, he continually overhears people talking about him, discussing his marital status (sure, dude), and he even steps in to confront a couple abusing a cashier (double sure, dude). Whole chapter reads like pure fantasy, cobbled together from a list of "Top 10 Relatable Tweets About Shopping" his PR people found somewhere on buzzfeed.

From: (Anonymous)

He goes on a mushroom trip and a talking bin tells him good things lie ahead. This is the foreshadowing for him getting with Meghan Markle.

I am convinced this ghostwriter hates him and set out to make him look ridiculous.

From: (Anonymous)

Only about a quarter of this absurd book to go. Now he's talking about the stress for Meghan of being stalked by the press, and I would be sympathetic, because it sounds horrible-- except, after that supermarket/tk maxx, nonsense, it wouldn't surprise me if every word were a lie.

And he keeps namedropping celebs. Cringe.

From: (Anonymous)

TIL the word todger. What on earth was the context here???

From: (Anonymous)

He went to the North Pole, of course! He says he was too sweaty and got frostnip on his dick; the doctors said there was nothing to be done and he'd just have to wait for it to repair. Then he broke up with his gf (apparently unrelated to frostnipped dick) and felt sorry for himself.

(There's a LOT of very weird stuff in that section of the book, though I've already seen some of it quoted online, so I've been posting the stuff that I haven't seen!)

From: (Anonymous)

Pg 312. Although Harry is displeased by reporters saying things like Diana's "early death spared us all a lot of tedium", and their referring to it as "Diana's tryst with the underpass", his REAL rage is reserved for Hilary Mantel. Why? She says royals are "expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment", but "interesting" and "nice to look at", and, to top it all off, compares them to pandas. Not pandas! Harry feels this is a "uniquely barbarous" act of dehumanisation.

From: (Anonymous)

Finished. I'd have quoted more, but I ended up spending much of my evening Dramatically Reading excerpts in a posh voice for my family to laugh at. Tempted to write a parody play.

From: (Anonymous)

Anyway, if anyone's curious about the royal rift, afaict, based on this book, it goes like this:

Harry: The PAPERS are saying rude things about me and my new wife!!!

Royals: Just ignore them.

Harry: No!!! Someone wrote a mean tweet!!! I want them silenced!!!

Royals: We are just figureheads and have no power.

Harry: Why won't you FIGHT them with me?!!!

Royals: There is nothing we can do and starting a fight will make things worse.

Harry: You all just hate me and you're jealous of me and I'm leaving you!!!!

Royals: Ok. In that case, we're going to stop bankrolling you.

Harry: This is the most unfair thing ever!!! You raised me to be a big baby and now you expect me to stand on my own two feet?!!! ABANDONMENT!!! You can't expect me to spend my OWN money! That's my inheritance, it's special! And I can only afford a 2 million dollar house! How am I supposed to survive?!!

Royals: But you left...

Harry: You're all out to get me!!!

Royals: You're delusional, Harry.

Harry: YOU'RE delusional! I can commune with the animal kingdom!

From: (Anonymous)

And a lot of stuff that goes like "literally every person who ever met my wife said she was a bully. Lies! They were all liars and snakes. My whole family welcomed her at first, then after a while said she was awful. See, they're so crazy and erratic! They believed lies in the papers! The papers they didn't read!"

People he talks to consistently say she's nasty to the staff. But she buys the staff a cake or something so, PROOF, it's clearly all lies. I had no opinion on her before reading this book; this book gave me the impression she's a bully. The royals come across like kind people who warmly welcome her and only change their minds once they believe she's mistreating the servants.

The best stuff in the book is the stuff about him being a soldier, if only because I knew nothing about helicopter-pilot training, so it was interesting to learn how they went about that.

From: (Anonymous)

Some other misc that I didn't write up:

* The army trying to keep Harry busy with nonsense tasks is pretty funny. You know how Maggie drives the car in the opening of The Simpsons? His military career comes across like that.

* Meghan Markle can apparently talk to seals, and this causes the seals to stage an "opera", just for her and Harry. The book notes that, by trying to sing to the seals, she may have lured the seals to their deaths, then glides past it, suggesting that the seal opera helped her get pregnant with magic.

* Everyone loses their shit over wedding seating arrangements. And outfits. And beards.

* Harry is suspiciously keen to note that Meghan did NOT suffer morning sickness, and was a "dynamo". This feels like a really weird dig at Kate Middleton, to this nonny; pretty much the only thing I know about her is that she had a really bad time with morning sickness.

* Harry tells a deeply unconvincing story about William suddenly launching a physical attack on him out of nowhere, and smashing him into a ceramic dog bowl. Read like darvo to this nonny.

* All the courtiers are randomly mean to Harry and Meghan for no reason and then the family believe the mean things the courtiers say for no reason and it's all a terrible injustice, damn those servants.

* Harry keeps going Gavin Belson with different animals, having Significant moments of connection with them, sometimes bordering on telepathy. They are often messengers, meant for him. A leopard, a fox, some bulls, a hummingbird, a dog, an elephant, some seals. It is suggested by someone that, despite being British, he has a ~wild African heart~.

* In general, he treats Africa like a resort/spa that he pops into whenever he wants to chillax. He seems unaware that a) most people can't do this and b) this comes across as crass.

* Surprisingly good chapter on the horrors of poaching.

* His wife goes into labour; he sits there eating nandos, uses up all her nitrous oxide before she can have any, and then earnestly instructs her to "push".

From: (Anonymous)

And again: this is the book that he put out in an attempt to make himself look good. We've been joking all day about Charles slipping the ghostwriter a twenty.

From: (Anonymous)

Another thing I forgot to mention: Harry constantly complains about unflattering press coverage of himself, but also acts like it's unprecedented. He shows nothing but antipathy toward Camilla, for example, casting her as the ultimate villain of the book. But the press was *much* more vicious to her, over the years, even suggesting that she had had Harry's mother *murdered*.

Meanwhile, Harry's furious about being referred to as a Hooray Henry. Never mind that he *is* a Hooray Henry! His name is even *literally* Henry!

(Mentioned this to friend. "Huh? What's a hooray henry?" "Er... Basically a guy like him. Posh, terrible." "Oh, okay.")

Anyway yeah this book is slightly fascinating because you really do get a glimpse into what Henry VIII would be like if you teleported him over to the present day. Harry even complains, at one point, that royals are not perceived as divine any more. He was born to hunt and joust and fuck around, stropping all the while. He gives the impression he very much wishes he could behead all detractors and control the press. He hates books and book learnin' and Shakespeare and theatre and history; he wants to run and shoot things and jetski in natural beauty spots, and he wants everyone else to pay for it. And to agree that He Is The Best.

Fascinating document.

From: (Anonymous)

>Meghan Markle can apparently talk to seals, and this causes the seals to stage an "opera", just for her and Harry. The book notes that, by trying to sing to the seals, she may have lured the seals to their deaths, then glides past it, suggesting that the seal opera helped her get pregnant with magic.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1LdjVtHqNxs

From: (Anonymous)

> The army trying to keep Harry busy with nonsense tasks is pretty funny.

My vague memory from the newscycle at the time is that they initially managed to give him proper work to do under a pseudonym, which he was pretty okay at and loved, and then the media found out so that all went away. I would assume the point would have been to make any media hay with it later, but that also there was a genuine concerted effort to give him and William some space to grow up and be relatively normal.

But this is from memory, and it’s very difficult to look anything up now without it just being about what people think now, plus I am not that interested.

From: (Anonymous)

He presents it this way, but the details of what he actually does read like "keep him busy" tasks, and he trains to pilot a helicopter and then... never pilots it. It's sus. But yeah, I was reading between the lines; he never overtly says that they were just keeping him busy.

From: (Anonymous)

Like, one of his jobs is to look at a big bank of security monitors, just in case something happens. So he's spending hours just sitting in the base, watching a screen, having been told it's very important. He also has some kind of job involving taking notes of other people's radio calls (which is how he finds out he's getting pulled out). And he's using some kind of computer thing that none of the other men doing the job seem to be using. I think they gave him a toy one. He has the job of telling men if they're cleared to fly above the base, but doesn't seem to do any scheduling or anything, so wouldn't be surprised if he were being shadowed the whole time (or if he was basically the shadow xD).