About

Grinning Hideously Over Their Canted Pieces refers to a line in the last paragraph of Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian describing a scene about Judge Holden. The line continues, "Towering over them all is the judge. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die." The quote became a TikTok sound in early 2025, inspired by a series of edits, with subjects ranging from NBA players to TV characters, using a sound which combined the audiobook and a song by artist wifiskeleton.

Origin

On January 24th, 2025, TikToker^[1] @willygrimes.cc shared a video that was an edit of UFC fighter Jon Jones, using a sound that combined a slowed remix of wifiskeleton's song "Nope your too late i already died"^[2] and the audiobook for Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Over two months, the edit received roughly 97,500 likes (shown below).

Grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

Spread

In the following weeks, others on the app used the TikTok sound^[3] of the abovementioned video. For instance, on February 1st, 2025, TikToker^[3] @r3wmy posted an edit of Tony Soprano from The Sopranos using the sound, gaining over 24,300 likes in a month (shown below).

On February 11th, TikToker^[4] @l2tufff posted an edit of former NBA player Kevin Garnett using the sound, receiving over 80,600 likes in a month (shown below).

On March 8th, 2025, TikToker^[5] @barryeagan posted an edit of Peter Griffin's evil clone Retep which followed the Grinning Hideously Over Their Canted Pieces format, amassing roughly 86,900 likes in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References