#and whales and a bit of cosmic horrors

[slimyenemy]

idk who knows how it's supposed to work really but horror games are usually just such a survival grind to me like it's kinda grating??? lol

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, the Fire Giant Dreadnaught! 18-19 ft (5.5-5.8 m) tall and broad at the shoulder! Now we already know these are some incredibly skilled smiths, especially blacksmiths. That's the Fire giant trait, forging and fighting. What makes this one special? Incredible strength, even for a giant. These have a higher strength score than a sperm whale. They're in the strength bracket of cosmic horrors. some ancient dragons. The Leviathan. They're also honest working class, moving material around the foundry and guarding diplomats. They aren't as bright or observant as the others, but even for a giant these are a thick brick of a person!

On the right, Gnolls! Specifically the hunters and forward guard. Fun fact, hyenas have a pseudopenis. The females have dick-sized complex clits and fused labia. Animal genitalia be wild. Anyway, these are 7-7.5 ft (2.1-2.3 m) hyena people with a dominance-focused culture! They might have a bit of instinctive bloodlust and drive to hunt, but they're passionate, big on family, and super loyal!

[nevadas-night-time-novelist]

can u please do 2bdamned x reader but they have the same music taste? sorry for bad english!! :3

Your English is fine :]

Doc x Reader - tunes n chillin (in other words, yall gonna like MY MUSIC TASTE lol)

Hello there, the angel from my nightmare, the shadow in the background of the morgue.

The base was relatively empty, everyone else off doing who knows what, killing who knows who, leaving you plenty of space to zone out into your own world, music on in the living room while you doodled away in an old sketchbook. A ballpoint pen was the only tool you had on hand now, but the deep black strokes added weight and character to your art.

The unsuspecting victim, of darkness in the valley. We can live like Jack and Sally if we want, where you can always find me.

Scrawling what came to mind, the song inspired you to roughly doodle the main Nightmare Before Christmas characters, the gaunt and oddly handsome Jack Skellington, and his sweet patchwork lover Sally. Oh to have a romance like theirs would be a dream.

And we'll have Halloween on Christmas, and in the night we'll wish this never ends -

"We'll wish this never ends." You looked up from your art, seeing Doc nodding his head along to the music. "Hey, it's a good song." He shrugs when he notices you watching him.

Some weeks later you were in your room, exhausted from dragging around some guy whom Sanford was currently torturing information out of. To drown out the noise, you'd placed a CD into the player and flicked through an old manga, something about a cosmic horror planet coming to devour the earth.

I'm just a normal boy who sank when I fell overboard. My ship would leave the country, but I'd rather swim ashore. Without a life vest, I'd be stuck again. Wish I was much more masculine, maybe then I could learn to swim like fourteen miles away.

Your door was currently non-existent, Hank had ripped out part of the hydraulic seal during a half-MAG rage, so currently only a curtain served as your privacy. Privacy which was often ignored by the lads.

The curtain swayed as Doc stormed in, he wasn't wearing his mask and his displeasure was evident. "Trying to break passed some firewalls is incredibly difficult with all that fucking noise Sanford is making. I'm used to some level but his current toy hasn't stopped screaming his lungs out for two hours straight. I can't even think right now!"

You looked up from your lounging position. "Yeah, that's why I put music on. It's not like I can shut the door." Doc sat on your bed, going back to debugging and unencrypting.

"I'll get it sorted when I have the parts, I promise." You knew why he'd come to your room, it was the furthest from Sanford's makeshift torture chamber in the storage room. Well, that was half of why he'd come. In truth, the old dog had grown rather fond of your company.

You two had a few bits in common, music taste for one, and the differences were good talking points, clashing viewpoints being a discussion rather than an argument. It was nice, yes, he enjoyed being around you.

Now floating up and down, I spin, colliding into sound, like whales beneath me, diving down. I'm sinking to the bottom of my- Everything that freaks me out, the lighthouse beam has just gone out. I'm cold as cold as cold can be... Be...

As you flipped through the gruesome pages of your manga, you paid little attention to your surroundings, the music and all else just melting into background noise.

I wanna swim away but don't know how-

"Sometimes it just feels just like I'm fallin in the ocean." And there it was again, just barely above a whisper, Doc's voice mixing with the vocals.

You couldn't help but smile, his rugged voice was rather lovely when singing, Deimos was right. Dei secretly admitted to you that Doc used to sing him to sleep when he was young, it was nice to finally get to hear it.

"You sing pretty well Doc."

"Hm? Ah." You could see his cheeks turn red, his gaze averting from you. "Thanks. You wanna know something funny? Your playlist seems to have a lot in common with mine. Rather a lot in common."

"Really?" You smiled at him, he seemed to shift uncomfortably under your watchful eyes, his cold exterior slowly giving way to a hidden sweetness. "You'll have to share it with me sometime, we can just listen together for a while."

"Hm," Doc rubbed the back of his neck, giving you a shy smile. "I think I'd like that."

[drmobiusvanch]

a little bit offended that the whale weekly girlies are posting so much more about the sperm when not a chapter before everything had gone Full Cosmic Horror. but the sperm is really funny though

[honourablejester]

My Top 3 Ravenloft Domains

My three favourite (non-Barovia) Domains of Dread, essentially. With maybe some honourable mentions. Apropos of nothing, I’m just idly rereading some things.

No. 3: Bluetspur

The mind flayer domain. It would get points just because I love cosmic horror, but the thing I actually love most about Bluetspur is that it’s not designed for humans. It’s not a domain you can live in. It’s a domain people get taken to, have horrific things done to them, and then (if they’re lucky) get spat back out of again. It’s alien. A dying world, a vast, tortured, chaotic landscape under a dying red sun, such that even its alien inhabitants, the mind flayers, have to live underground. In, to quote, ‘their ancient metropolis-laboratory’, ruled over by a dying god. It’s not survivable. Not for anyone, not even its god. Bluetspur isn’t a domain you adventure in, it’s a domain that is forced upon you. A domain you have to escape, or rescue someone from, but never, not once, a domain you stay in.

If you’re in the mood for alien abduction, wiped memories, horrific psychic experimentation, incredibly inhospitable environments, and an alien world that is genuinely dying all around you, Bluetspur is worth a look. It’s a fantastic backstory horror to give to inhabitants of other domains, too. Extremely Lovecraftian, think the Plateau of Leng, with some William Hope Hodgson throw in for good measure.

No. 2: Richemulot

The plague domain. Look. Have you played Dishonored? Did you enjoy Dishonored? Would you like to play in an equally plague-infested series of cities ruled over by incredibly corrupt aristocrats who would not remotely balk at using bioweapons on their own people for their own selfish ends? Because if so, Richemulot is the domain for you! The rhythm of the domain is dictated by a rat-borne plague that ebbs and flows but is never successfully eradicated, and it may turn out there’s a reason for that. Navigate the fear, the sickness, the quarantines. Do you intend just to survive, to make it out? Or are your sights set higher, towards the eradication of this ever-present threat?

Look. The Pied Piper of Hamelin was one of my favourite fairytales, and Dishonored is one of my favourite video games. Richemulot is about paranoia, terror and control, the claustrophobia of the quarantine, the horror of corruption. Which, granted, given recent events, might not be what anyone’s in the mood for, but I do enjoy it.

No. 1: Lamordia

The Frankenstein domain. With some other influences mixed in. Lamordia is a fascinating mix of gothic, industrial and environmental horror, with a little bit of nuclear paranoia sprinkled in. An industrial hellscape of cities and universities pinned between a frozen sea and an irradiated mountain range, Lamordia is all mines and factories and broken bodies, relentless and remorseless progress, the flesh blackened and burned (by frostbite or radiation) and fed to the machine. You will be ground down, you will be broken, and you will be remade. Lamordia is a very 19th-to-mid-20th century sort of domain, the horrors of the industrial revolution made manifest. Staked out in a frozen and lethal world, this industrial hub uses science to write its own horrors, as terrible as anything one might find in the wastes. There are iron-clad whaling ships carving through the ice to feed the cities, there are mines where strange ores emit dangerous radiation and mutated monsters roam, there are universities where amoral scientists exploit the poor for experimental subjects, there are vast industries fed by bodies both living and dead. It’s a fantastically evocative setting, and I adore it. Lamordia is easily my favourite domain of dread. If you want a campaign built around bodily autonomy, class conflict, mad science, industrial revolution, worker’s rights, and environmental pressures, this is the domain for you.

(For real, I want to play a campaign where the party’s trying to get a worker’s revolution off the ground in Ludendorf, complicated by the facts that a) without industry the city literally freezes and starves to death, b) it’s hard to maintain morale when the factory bosses can, with the help of the universities and their mysterious backer, literally kill you, rebuild you, and put your corpse back on the assembly line, and c) death is the least worrying fate you could be landed with for trying to shake up the status quo. I don’t know, I feel like that would be an interesting storyline, you know?)

But, yes. Favourite Ravenloft domain, for sure.

Honourable mentions:

Cyre 1313, The Mourning Rail. It’s a haunted train that travels the Mists, fleeing a disaster they don’t realise has already killed them, inhabited by ghosts who don’t realise they’re dead, and a mysterious passenger who damned them all once upon a time. It’s fantastic, no notes.

The Sea of Sorrows. Just. The whole thing. I love nautical horror, we all know this.

Mordent. It’s just a good old-fashioned haunted-house-and-ghostly-moors domain, and I’m a sucker for a classic ghost story.

So, for a summary, I did rather enjoy Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft? Heh. I do like my fantasy (and science fiction) with a generous dash of horror for spice. And Ravenloft has a lot to offer outside of Barovia and Strahd, though of course I’d never knock the OG darklord and his domain.

Pardon the random diversion, and carry on!

[midweekblues]

Finally, after a slow night at work and much ruminating, I hereby present my own True-Detective-Night-Country world-famous ramble stew. Tipping my non-existent hat to one Mr @rhavewellyarnbag

Something something Sedna of the many names, Arnarquagsag, Nerivik, Nuliajuk, the one who would not marry, the wife of all.

What's you name, girl?

Navarro, Eve, Angie, Evangeline, Missy, your mother never told you your real name (the one of the Real People) and some think you have forgotten it.

Sedna of the many names many stories Arctic wide, Alaska to Greenland, many stories and in all of them she lives under the sea, in all of them she ends up there because of her father.

Her mother? sometimes a shaman (voices. episodes.) sometimes entirely absent from the narrative (died in chilbirth), sometimes a background character following her husband.

Her father? oh, he always throws her in the sea, sometimes in a panic, sometimes in a rage. She would not marry the man he told her to.

Why?

Well, is that the right question?

She would not marry the man he told her to, because she was already married to her dog who was a man, a shapeshifter, so they kept it in secret.

So many secrets here... do we trust Qavviq the dog-man, the home-brewer? or is he gonna die a terrible death?

i dunno, man. Annie keeping it secret. Danvers keeping it secret. But Everyone here knows.

Sedna whose fingers were cut went she went overboard and she tried to hold on to her father's kayak. Sometimes her whole hands, bit by bit.

So many fathers here, too. Hank, raised by an animal to act like an animal. His son trying to be better than him. The son's son drawing the woman with no hands, no fingers, spooking his father.

What is it with white people getting spooked about other people's religion? Not me, i was raised catholic. A lady with no fingers is no big deal. But maybe i mean white-white. Not opening that particular can of worms right now.

Oh and of course Travis. Fucking Travis Cohle. And his little interpretive dance. That was a man drowning. Or several. Didn't Lund cough up some filthy water when he woke up corpsicled? Cause of death: Spooketh. But also maybe drowned. 

The lady under the sea, the lady with no fingers, cannot untangle her hair. Her hair traps the marine animals and she gets agitated and there is storm and famine. Her hair under the sea, her hair maybe like the sea, and who hasn't dyed their hair sea-blue, sea-green, when they missed so much? i have. Wear the monster's face, wear her hair, whatever you can manage.

The lady with the sea-hair beautifully painted on the door to the warehouse where the people gather. And the people are pissed. 

Something in the water, and no one seems to be asking questions. Not even the wrong ones. Tsalal is the mine is the thing under the ice, now she's awake and y'all done fucked up.

The lady with no fingers that lives under the sea gets pissed off sometimes. Main thing driving her mad is greed and ungratefulness, apparently.Those who take more than they need and those who do not honor their prey. The seals have souls, and so do the whales and the walruses. Those are Sedna’s children, not exactly like children, born from her chopped fingers like Eve from Adam’s rib. 

Sedna (90377 Sedna) is also a dwarf planet hanging around Ceres. This season feels like the Belt. As oppresive as S1 made Louisiana look (humid, hot, that heavy heavy sky) this creeps me out more. What's worse, air thick with miasma or no air at all? Women walking out to the dark, a tiny circle of light and then the vast nothing. Very cosmic horror. Also i miss Naomi Nagata and i miss Camina Drummer. Funny that Danvers' kid was named Holden. But i digress.

You know how scientists are, naming stuff after goddesses. Pieces of rock, sometimes lifeforms. She's awake alright. 

Who are you, girl? Eve? An angel? I am reminded too that Evangelion means Good News. Are you catholic, Navarro? Was your father catholic? What did he drink?

Something in the water, something in the ice. Crabs are bottom feeders, aren't they? How fucked up is an ecosystem where the carrion-eaters die off? Maybe stuff isn't dying at the rate it should. Caribou spook relatively easy, but maybe they know something we don't, too. Micro earthquakes and magnetic fields and shit. Guess we’ll find out.

[the-golden-vanity]

💚 for the Terror. 💖🧡 and 📖 (but chapter(s) instead of entire book(s)) for Moby Dick

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

Ooh, it's time to make some enemies.

I really, really dislike the popular fanon characterizations of James Fitzjames. Depending on what particular flavor of queer a fanwork is depicting him as, the kind of... shallow femininity that gets forced on him makes me MASSIVELY uncomfortable. It often comes across as somewhere between homophobic and misogynistic caricature, personality stripped away and replaced with a pretty dress.

I can see where this started, though—the pre-Carnivale dress scene is something that's very important to a lot of Terror fans, and perhaps something that endeared them to a character whose Empire-loving, glory-hounding, "the atrocities I've committed are fun table conversation"-believing ways are (hopefully) unsympathetic to a modern audience. Still, I'd like to see more fanworks engage with that side of James Fitzjames—the tool of an empire that can never love him back.

This isn't to say I don't love queer or trans readings of Fitzjames! I just want to see the character still be a glory-hounding veteran of an imperialist war, and someone I can still believe would shoot rockets at bears.

💖: Already answered here!

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

I had to think about this one for a bit. I'd say it's the take that I see floating around on the Internet a lot that Moby-Dick is cosmic horror. If we're taking cosmic horror to mean the horror of the incomprehensible, the impossibly alien, the Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, then there is exactly one chapter that fits the bill—"The Castaway", which includes maybe my favorite passage of the whole book.

However, almost the entire rest of the book is our narrator-protagonist making sense of the whale, as if knowing everything he can about it is his way of coping with the devastating trauma of losing everyone he spent two years of his life living with.

It's almost reverse cosmic horror—rather than a sane man going mad from coming face to face with an incomprehensible monstrosity, our mentally ill (traumatized/depressed/bipolar/open to interpretation) protagonist makes meaning for himself by learning to comprehend the monstrosity.

📖: If you had to remove one chapter from the book, which would you choose?

Ooh, that's a good question. And a hard one.

Moby-Dick is, rather famously, full of chapters upon chapters of whale facts, some of which are even true. I will not be getting rid of any of those. Those are load-bearing whale facts. You pull them out, and the book collapses into a respectable revenge tragedy, rather than the earth-shattering psychological epic that it is. The whale facts represent both the fact that for long stretches of a sea voyage, nothing particularly exciting is going on, and you have time to contemplate things like the immense scarred brow of the whale, and also that this story is being told by a traumatized man who's going off on tangents because he really doesn't want to get around to the part of the story where he loses everything and all of his friends die.

If I had to get rid of one chapter, it would probably be "The Town Ho's Story". Of all the ill omens and tales of woe that the Pequod's crew encounter on their fateful final voyage, this one drags out longest and (to me) was one of the less memorable. However, I'm sure it's probably someone's favorite chapter. Many of them are.

Thank you so much, @georges-chambers/@alienmythologist! You gave me much to think about.

Ask me for my unpopular opinions about boat stories!

[marlasomething]

Hi, Tumblr queer users (so, like, Tumblr users in general) and horror fans in particular.

I bring you a Spanish movie for your consideration: Una Ballena (A Whale). This is an intimate, almost cosmic-y, horror movie made by Spanish filmaker Pablo Hernando.

It tales the intertwined stories of Ingrid (a young profesional assassin with a certain ability of dissappearing without a trace...) and Melville (an old dealer or something a teeny tiny bit more bizarre than antiquities, drugs or regular weapons), constructive a narrative that is not always straight foward but yet clearly going to a very particular place...

...and I cannot say more without spoiling it. Only: yes, this has GOOD queer rep (not to mistake with queer rep necesarily by having good people being the queer characters) and a FUCK FASCIST quite literal message.

The visuals are GORGEOUS and every technical aspect from acting to soundtrack is an eleven out of ten.

Please, find it andgive it a try, you won't regret it.

[synthetic-ultramarine]

Ten Book Reviews

To celebrate the new year I thought I'd do some short book reviews! This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything I read in 2023; I decided to focus on fiction rather than non-fiction for this post, and I slowly trimmed down my list of books to focus on the ones that gave me the most to talk about.

Books I Liked:

Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer There's so much to be said about these books, they really deserve their own post. This series is so characterful, so atmospheric, and so masterful in its use of suspense, dread, and tragedy. Lives up to the hype 100%.

Devil House by John Darnielle John Darnielle reads his own audiobooks, and he's good at it. This book follows a true crime writer as he confronts the consequences of framing people's lives as narratives. It's about haunted places. It's about the often-forgotten potential for cruelty in the storytelling impulse. But most of all it's about the thesis that it's self-defense for a squatter to kill a landlord with a sword. If you like this, Universal Harvester is also good.

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton I think someone should do an adaptation of this that takes place on tumblr.

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis In this book, C. S. Lewis writes about a woman's struggle against god- no, wait, where are you going, come back! It's a take on the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of the jealous sister, here reimagined as a genuinely concerned sister. Vivid imagery, beautiful prose, and a meditation on the relationship between the human and the divine that I still found interesting as a homosexual apostate. There's some fascinating stuff about the androgyny of God in here. Yes, for real. From Clive Staples Lewis.

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente This book is overstuffed with concept. It's set in an alternate 20th century where the empires of earth have settled the nine planets, and it's about the film industry, which is based on the moon because the united states never colonized california. The story is a collection of ephemera - interviews, ship manifests, tabloid columns, clips of damaged film - relating to the disappearance of a renowned filmmaker who vanished while working on an infamous lost documentary. Also, space whaling. It's about that as well. Every time I try to describe how I feel about Valente's writing style it comes out sounding like one of those weird perfume reviews. I'll just say I found the prose overwrought at times, but ultimately I'm glad kept reading. The book is packed with mythological references, and while some are quite effective, there are also some that don't really do anything. There's a lot of genre-hopping; the noir sequences chafe against the style of the prose a bit, but the cosmic horror scenes are chilling. What is really good about this book is how thoroughly everything in the alternate-history setting is thought through. It talks about how the long day-night cycle of Venus affects the work of a film lighting technician. It talks about French colonies on Neptune losing radio contact with Paris as the earth passes behind the sun. It confronts the idea of Venus and Mars and Pluto as terra nullius, even though that's a concept some people seem to prefer not to critique. I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. If you like Nope, Dark City, or Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, you should read this.

Finna by Nino Cipri Weird, fun novella about two exes who still love each other, wandering through a maze of alternate universes for minimum wage. Portal-esque corporate satire, snappy pacing, and a compelling central relationship. So good.

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon A beautifully written story about body horror, giant robots, gay sex, religion, mortality, and tenderness. The worldbuilding is intricate, sprawling, and sometimes ambiguous. The relationship between the main character and the love interest is far from the Standard Romance Subplot Structure, it's fresh and very compelling. The in-universe sacred poetry that shows up throughout the book is also very good. I have it on hold at the library for a reread. This book is tragically underrated because they're marketing it to the wrong audience. It's more cronenberg than canva cover. Tor should be selling this to the Annihilation weirdos, not the Red White & Royal Blue crowd. People go into it with the wrong set of genre expectations and then don't know how to react. I'm here to set the record straight: The Archive Undying rules and you should read it. I especially recommend this book to Friends at the Table listeners, since the author is One Of Us and the show is a notable influence.

Books I Didn't Like:

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty The setup to this book is very compelling: 6 people lived a happy life together, isolated on a spacecraft for decades, until they were all violently killed. New copies of their younger selves wake up in the ship's cloning facility with no memory of last 60 years. One of their future-past selves was a murderer, and the killer's clone inherits their legal culpability. While the high-concept murder mystery is a great idea, the future politics are profoundly unimpressive, and sadly by the end of the book the latter has entirely subsumed the former. There keep being these flashback scenes about cloning politics back on earth - not only are these very politically shallow, they also kill the claustrophobic ship-in-a-bottle atmosphere of a good fucked up space scenario. As an example of the shallow politics: "all major religions" are stated to be intolerant towards clones. Apparently all the sects and denominations of All The Religions are just doing the same thing, as if they are interchangeable with each other. And then there are The Riots, which are portrayed as a political misstep, too disruptive, too loud. And then of course we have the NYC real estate billionaire villain. Florals? For spring? It's beyond me why a locked-room murder mystery would even need a villain who wasn't in the room. There's also a hacking scene I found so absurd that it nearly made me return the book unfinished. Disappointing.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman Yeah, that's right, I'm gonna talk shit about Neil Gaiman on tumblr. You think you can scare me. old man?! I can't be silenced! Anyway, remember the Sexy Lamp Test? This is the worst failure of the Sexy Lamp Test I've ever seen. The girlfriend that the guy in this book is fighting with his brother over could be replaced by a nice car the brother took for a joyride, and the plot wouldn't change. At least with a car there wouldn't be consent issues.

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey In the real-life 20th century, there was a proposal by the U.S. government to introduce the hippopotamus to North America as a meat animal. Thankfully, it was scrapped. This alt-history western asks: what would the world look like if they went through with it? It's an intriguingly bizarre premise. Unfortunately, when I made that "your story should have scenes that aren't bioware cutscenes or tvtropes pages" post, this book was one of the reasons why. The dialogue and characters are nothing to write home about, and the plot is just rote. Here we are in a bar fight. Now we are planning the heist. Now we are remembering the tragic backstory. Now the antagonist has double crossed us. The hippos are involved in the plot, but they don't drive the plot in any way that depends on their being hippos. They only really differ from horses aesthetically. The thing that really bothers me about this book, though, is that this story clearly wants to be a modern, progressive take on the western genre, with a queer cast and all, but it doesn't give a single thought to the existence of native americans. There are no native main characters or side characters. Despite being a story about the radically destructive transformation of the north american ecosystem by the settler state, there is not even a single throwaway "the Choctaw are not pleased with the feral hippopotamus situation" line. Radiance gives more thought to the status of native american society in its alternate history than River of Teeth, and Radiance takes place entirely in outer space. Come on now.

[nemo-duspy-writes]

Let's see whether it's appreciated to put a snippet of my current WIP here. It's hard Sci-Fi, called Anarchtica, and mostly takes place in the early 23rd century in the Antarctic.

i'd love to hear what you think of this start of the Prologue. It's only the first draft, so don't be too harsh.

Anarchtica

Prologue

Somewhere on the Antarctic circle - 2057-12-31

From the small research vessel on a calm sea, Professor Bergmann spotted one of the massive, converted cargo ships. If he had spotted it, the staffless ship must've spotted them as well, though it did not make any efforts to change its course. It kept gliding through the water slowly, mostly moved by the current. It resembled a whale, using minimal movements to conserve energy. 

The container ship's propellers would only engage to keep the vessel on its long trip around Antarctica, or, after the curtain project is activated tomorrow, to hunt down every man-made object trying to cross the boundary to the cold continent. 

Bergmann's ship was the last manned vessel allowed in these waters, the last that would see the southern land mass for 150 years. The silence was eerie, it stood in stark contrast to the bustling of workers that used to work here over the last few years. The temporary housing still marred the otherwise untouched land, a windswept desert of snow and black rock. Though, it wasn't totally dead anymore. On some spots by the seaside, the snow had melted, and resilient plants took the opportunity. 

A bit away from the coast, on the side of a hill was a massive concrete cube. It had many nicknames while it was being built, but the one that stuck was 'Chtultwo', a portmanteau of the cosmic horror's name and two. 

Within its thick walls lay the world's entire stock of Sodium-22-chloride. Chemically nothing more than table salt. You could have used it for cooking, if the sodium isotope hadn't been radioactive, producing Neon-22 by emitting a positron - the antiparticle to an electron. Half-life time: 2.6 years. That in and of its own isn't too special, nothing that would warrant quarantining an entire continent. Until they figured out that Sodium-22 is the perfect catalyst for cold fusion of deuterium. The reaction created enough heat to be self-sufficient.

This was a great discovery. It promised an easy way to cover the world's entire energy needs for millennia, or even making the colonization of the solar system feasible. 

Then, in 2048, the city of Kairo was wiped off the earth by an explosion bigger than the Tzar bomba's. The victim count was above 10 Million. The culprit was suspected to be a small terrorist cell, having built a cheap and easy fusion bomb with the help of Sodium-22.

The destructive power that was the driving force for most politics since the second half of the 20th century, now in the hands of everyone with college level physics' knowledge, water, and a few grams of a relatively easy to buy isotope.

This was one of the few times in history the world came together. They knew no human and no government on the planet should wield such power. They put heavy restrictions on every way to produce or isolate the isotope, and they confiscated each gram of Sodium-22. 

At this point, the distrust between the nations welled up again. China absolutely refused the Americans' plan to store it in a safe area on their mainland until it is degraded, and vice versa. There needed to be a land on earth that was not affiliated with any nation, tectonically stable and easy to defend from anyone trying to take it.

As ludicrous as it sounded, Antarctica was the only option. 

And so, they rebuilt a fleet of container ships to be armed with drones, controlled by an AI program whose task was to destroy every attempt to reach the Sodium-22, until it was degraded far enough to be a threat. They settled on 150 years; in that time the stock would degrade to 4.3 quintillionth of its original mass. 

A big challenge was to make sure the ships survived the time without any outside help; that they wouldn't run out of energy. Most of the vessels were fitted with fission reactors; reliable and tested. But for some, as an experiment, some ships had different energy sources in their bellies.

His colleague, Doctor Defarote, joined Prof. Bergmann at the railing. 

She blew into her hands to warm them up.

"Cold here even in the summer," she said with a strong Argentinian accent.

"Yes, Daria," Professor Bergmann said, his view still on the container ship. "It's not that much of a loss that no one can be here for one and a half centuries."

Daria looked at him. "Is that sarcasm? We will miss all the effects that climate change has on it. With it becoming more temperate, we will lose out on the opportunity to observe a new ecosystem forming, while we will miss a lot of the old inhabitants dying. It's a loss for everyone."

"Yes, I know. But we won't be able to change it." 

The container ship was now almost at their vessel.

"Which number is that?" Doctor Defarote asked.

"34"

"Oh, so this is yours?"

"Yes." Professor Bergmann couldn't hold back the proud smile. "A thorium fission reactor coupled with an inertia-type fusion reactor. Not as efficient as a theoretical Natwotwo, but more efficient than anything else right now, while still being reliable enough to run for more than 200 years."

The container ship passed them, showing how much bigger it was compared to their vessel. Like an unscalable wall of steel. 

The Professor and his colleague looked at it with awe.

"A true marvel of human engineering," he said. "A monument to the intellect of humans and that with science and technology, their creations can even withstand the harshest conditions."

Doctor Defarote scoffed. "For me it means exactly the opposite. That humans are stupid and stubborn, that they'd rather quarantine a whole continent than not using the newest science to kill other people or destroy our home planet."

"What a pessimistic view." The vibration of the device in his jacket interrupted their conversation. "We can discuss this later, but I think it's time to leave the area. We don't want to be on this side of the curtain when it activates."

Professor Bergmann ripped his eyes from the massive steel hull. As he turned to go under deck, he spotted something else on the horizon in the water and froze.

"Is that another ship?"

[zombified-queer]

I'm going to be thinking about Madam Hotel for a while.

She's some kind of fucked up cosmic horror whale thing. Love that for her. Where the FUCK is your pod, girlie? There's predators out here.

I have rotated stripclub idea in my head. Yes there will be blood.

I say this often but Managerboy Locked Tomb AU she gets to be Alecto. Which means she's getting The Nona Treatment.

Yes I already picked a name. Yes it's Blood of Eden. No it's not funny or cool.

Madam Hotel streaming killing the guests (Sims, ostensibly) on Twitch I'm offering her bits to set that dude on fire just as a goof. Console Command resurrect him as a skeleton, bestie!

Meatbody as a reflection of Buildingbody. Grey had better thoughts on this like "Makeup running when it rains outside."

[ellora-borealis]

Thanks for tagging me @lemonizzy! :D

last song: took a break from the new Hozier album just to wind up listening to Paint the Town Red by Doja Cat on repeat... apparently I contain multitudes

last movie: hmmmm I think it was The Whale? lmao twas depressing as fuck. But the last movie I saw in theaters was Barbie

currently reading: in a bit of a reading slump at the moment but two books I finished last month were The Employees by Olga Ravn (trippy sci-fi cosmic horror) and Loveless by Alice Oseman (which I have *spicy opinions* about but that's a post for another time)

currently watching: Wheel of Time!! it's so good! why isn't everyone obsessed with it it's literally so gorgeous!!! For less violence and more lols tho I'm also catching up on Abbot Elementary and Ted Lasso

current obsession: well. there's always Critical Role. But more importantly I downloaded the app version of the board game Wingspan (collect birds, destroy your opponents with bird facts) and I have been playing it nonstop. Astarion Baldur's Gate who I only know roseate spoonbill and pied-billed grebe

I tag all my followers! all six of you!! you know who you are (but no obligation ofc)

tag people you want to catch up with/get to know better

tagged by @shinraalpha

last song: Fire Away by Dirty Honey. i'm never not a fan of loud alt-rock with classic rock roots

last movie: i genuinely can't remember. i watch movies, especially 'new' ones, incredibly rarely. it might've been Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which was pretty fun.

currently reading: Mort by Terry Pratchett. this is my first Pratchett book (apart from Good Omens) and i'm really liking it so far! i've been wanting to dive into Discworld for some time now, and i recently found myself in need of a break from the hard sci-fi kick i have been on so it seemed like a perfect opportunity.

currently watching: i'm up to date on Critical Role and Worlds Beyond Number at the moment (*sob*) so i'm sort of in limbo. i've been getting back into long-form video game stuff, so i'm catching up on streams from Johnny Chiodini (they're so wholesome and their community of Lovely Skeleton Pals make their streams very comforting to watch) and started watching Nerd³ Completes: Starfield last night now that there are a few streams up on Twitch i can binge.

current obsession: my ttrpg hyperfixation streak is still going strong. i'm looking forward to watching Dimension 20: Mentopolis once all the episodes are out (bc i'm incapable of consuming content in a healthy way and require binge-ability). i've been trying out some newer crafting stuff recently too. i used alcohol inks for the first time yesterday and had fun experimenting on galvanized metal icons from Dollar Tree, and i've ordered some ceramic ornament blanks to work on.

zero pressure tags (fun mutuals i'd like to get to know!): @itisizzy @nerdygingerandproud @comet-cowboy @taavicleric @ellora-borealis @heewalle

[aminiatureworld]

Hello! May I request a oneshot with Albedo with an s/o that's afraid of water? Like, they seem to always avoid either being near or splattered with water which Albedo finds a bit strange but respects it. However, he discovers that their fear of water is mainly because they're a mermaid and being splattered with water basically causes their tail to grow back (which are both uncomfortable and painful if its happening on land and not in a body of water.)

I hope this ask makes sense and please do take care of yourself! Don't rush if you feel stressed or anything

Hello anon!

This ask makes perfect sense! It was actually a lot of fun because it threw me right back into nostalgia about my old mermaid phase. Mermaids are so wonderful aren’t they? There’s something so beautiful yet - in my opinion - so viscerally creepy about them. Then again I think there are a lot of viscerally creepy things about sea life. For example I remember once seeing art of a mermaid the size of a blue whale, and while it was beautiful it was absolutely a work of cosmic horror. And yet mermaids have an undeniable allure about them, something so beautiful it’s difficult to pin down what to think about them.

Don’t worry though my creepy mermaid obsession did not make its way into this fic, because frankly I don’t think anyone needs that. Besides it was more about the journey of Albedo’s discovery than the actual existence and life of a mermaid so I don’t think there was time to cram my musings in.

Here it is, hope you enjoy it and hope you have a lovely week!

[not-the-conversation-starter]

The Itchio bundel for racial justice and Equality ends in about 12 hours

https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

This bundle is $5 and comes with over 1,500 items. Games, Tabletop instruction manuals, development resources, like 30 visual novel dating sims. And tons of other things.

Since there’s so many things, I’ve gone through a LOT of them to pick the best ones that should interest people. None of the experimental/visual novel games/resources/tabletop stuff will be on this list. And no, this list isn’t complete. I was going to finish it but then I saw the remaining time and decided to make the post early.

Below is the readme to make this post not unbearably long.

Local Versus  - Rebop Blaster: Smash Bros. but everyone is goku  - BADBLOOD: Hide and seek for adults  - Cosmic Rochambo: Everyone is Goku...IN SPACE!  - No Brakes Valet

Local Co-OP:  - Nuclear Throne: Roguelike bullet hell twinstick shooter  - Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate is a game about restoring things. With a friend.  - Tonight we Riot: Riot against capitalism, with up to a single friend!  - Micromages: 1-4 player NES platformer with death animations.

The Rest  - Pyre: NBA jam but you’re wizards and it’s a choose your own adventure. Airbud is there.  - Celeste: Outstanding 2d platformer with a story of equal compare.  - Night in the Woods: Furry game about solving a ghost mystery murder  - A Short Hike: Title is self-explanatory  - NIGHT OF THE CONSUMERS: Survive the 5 minutes before closing a store  - No Delivery: Run a cursed pizza place at night and fight balloons  - Death and Taxes: Be the grim reaper, sentence death appropriately  -  Democratic Socialism Simulator: Legally mandated fursonas request giving rights to the gays  - KIDS: Better than you think  - Wheels of Aurelia: Top down crazy taxi while managing dialogue  - Dujanah: This ones spooky  - Hidden Folks: Where’s Waldo  - Super Rad Raygun: Megaman clone...With 4 unqiue shades of off-grey!  - 10S: Bullet Hell Tennis  - Fortune 499: Deckbuilding fortune telling Rock Paper Scissors  - Sewer Rave: Talk to MSPaint rats  - Speed Dating for Ghosts  - Underhero: You’re an underling, you have the hero’s sword. Real time Mario & Luigi style combat.  - Rym 9000: There’s treasure on the moon! Destroy 2 of your senses getting there. It’s a shmup.  - Bit Rat: Singularity  - Master Spy: stealth Platformer with Ninja Gaiden cutscenes.  - Gun Rounds: Cutie Patootie turn based shoot game  - Mable & The Wood: Shape shifting girl cannot lift sword, so she lets it come to her instead.  - Overland: XCOM but Oregon Trail  - BEACON: Twin stick roguelike with a cool mutation system  - Haque: pronounced “Hack”  - Hyperspace Dogfights: Luftraser 2  - EAT GIRL: Mrs. Pac-Man horror story  - Butterflies: JET SET RADIOOOOOOOOOO  - Hair Dash: One Finger Death Punch But Cooler  - Ganbare! Super Strikers: fire emblem Soccer  - Boreal Tenebrae: Murder Mystery Horror Explore A Town Game. I think a Frog is mayor.  - NEXT JUMP: Schump Tactics  - Ruya: Lesbian Bejeweled  - Gutwhale: Descend through a giant whale  - Double Cross: Multi-dimensional cop propaganda  - Mobius: twisty 2d puzzle platformer  - Midnight Ultra: Another game about making your eyes bleed. In first person!  - Dominique Pamplemousse in “it’s all over once the fat lady sings!”: you’re non-binary and in a musical. With singing and everything.  - Dominique Pamplemousse and Dominique Pamplemousse: Who’s cannon, you? Or your clone from the alternate ending?  - The King’s Bird: Super Mario World Cape Powerup on Cocaine  - RISK SYSTEM: Side scrolling shmup  - cook, serve, delicious, 2!!: Cook, and serve. Be delicious.  - Radical Solitaire: Basically just Solitaire but cooler  - Headliner Novinews: Control the news, endorse drone police! Or don’t!  - FLAMBERGE: Turn based tactical rpg but everyone goes at the same time  - Octodad: It’s in here!  - Silver Grapple: You’ve got a grappling hook dude!  - Semblance: Shape the world around you. It’s all dough.

...I’m only about 1/5th of the way through. I’ll probably update this list when I see more games worth talking about just for convenience for people who DO buy the bundle.

[a-treatise-on-velociraptors]

Final verdict: like a 7/10, the production value and acting was good (I keep half-forgetting Markiplier is a pretty good actor and then being surprised anew). enjoyable but heed the triggers. would've enjoyed more if I knew there was a season 2 incoming

--deffo lost me at the dream wizards but thats because it leaned into some nebulously-religious imagery and horror points I didn't know would squick so bad til they happened (not to sound like the 'bottoms up and the devil laughs' lady but the supernatural cosmic evil Getting You In Your Dreams leaned juuuuust enough into revelations imagery for a little bit to make me go thanks but no thanks) so take my opinion with as much salt as you want

--I did like the imagery of the whales.

--I get that the podcast was meant to have a season 2 but man I wish they had leaned further into resolving what was up with the lab and the wakefulness medication and the dream chamber that they spent like 4 episodes setting up before pivoting so hard to dream wizards

So far Edge of Sleep feels like a biggish-budget realization of a pretty-good analog horror concept. I know its based on a podcast but I can see in my minds eye a hypothetical version told through fake VHS tapes and audio recordings.

I like it

[endless-bestiary]

GAPING DRAGON

From Software is very good at building a world that feels hopeless by inundating it with all manner of messed-up creatures and run-down settlements. From Blighttown's awful bloated insects to Darkroot Garden's terrifying predatory flora, there's a pervasive sense of the whole world just being against you. I can't think of anything that encapsulates Dark Souls' feeling of desolation, of grimdarkness, of fall-to-your-knees-and-weep-ness than the Gaping Dragon. The game has a number of horror themes running throughout, including traditional American horror (baby skeletons?) and Japanese horror (yokai-like possessed trees), as well as cosmic horror - and that's what our friend here is all about. It's almost impossible to show real cosmic-scale horror in a video game, but this is the kind of monster that a regular person living in this world would simply collapse and surrender to. 

The Gaping Dragon is a perversion of a perversion. Dragons are based on the idea of unchecked greed: they keep hoards, they demand tribute, they pillage and destroy to get what they want. In turn, the Gaping Dragon is a creature so twisted by greed that it doesn't even have a hoard. It just eats. This specific dragon is only distantly related to the everlasting dragons, but manages to be a grotesque mockery of their opulence. Its entire body is a single massive mouth that it throws at anything it sees. In reference to its ruptured rib cage, the lead designer of Dark Souls said it "simply did what it had to, to continue to exist". This is the other half of what makes Dark Souls so grim - no one's in control. This incredibly powerful creature that can kill and eat anything it wants is still just barely scraping by. 

Speaking of its exposed ribs, there's something about rib-mouths that I cannot get enough of. In "The Thing" (the 1982 one), there's a scene where a character goes to defibrilate an unconscious victim, and the victim's chest cavity opens and bites down on their would-be rescuer with their ribs. That scene, along with a lot of the other practical effects in that movie, stuck with me as genius uses of body horror in a functional way. The Gaping Dragon takes that idea and turns it up to 11. Part of its endless maw is made of ribs, but beneath those are rows and rows of cruel teeth. Getting eaten by the Gaping Dragon is less getting chewed up and more being haphazardly torn to shreds by a berserk lawn mower. There are a million fates worse than death in Dark Souls, but few of them are so overwhelmingly primal. This thing has snapped its entire rib cage open with the express purpose of *blending you into a fine meat paste*. At the end of the day, the Gaping Dragon is just a big evil lizard, but it occurs early enough in the game and is so peerless in scale by that point that it can make you sit back and ask "Is what I'm doing really the sane choice?"

One last bit: its dinky little head. Creatures can certainly have vestigial features, like the back phalange bones on a whale, but to reduce the head to such a state requires some serious dedication to mindless consumption. There's some inherent comedy in the Gaping Dragon's intro with how it shows its head before slamming onto the stage mouth-first, but it also drives home the idea that this is a hunger-crazed creature. Every inch of Dark Souls is draped in some sort of lore without being an infodump like other RPGs. You get the emotional core of what everything is supposed to mean without having to read flowery prose in an out-of-the-way codex. Sometimes the lore is in the flavor text on your ring; other times it's nonverbally shown to you with enemy animations. This sort of genius environmental storytelling is why Dark Souls is such a well-respected game.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 8/10, SOMEHOW DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 RIB AND TEAR: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 9/10