#are the devil's playthings

[romanticnihilistforhire]

Devil, please find something for these idle hands to do.

Or I'm gonna make things a lot weirder than they should be

[freelafan4life545]

These series finale gazes of freela are the cutest.

💜🧡

[weirdlookindog]

[doctorloup]

Audiodrama Sunday!

It's been a while - (in my defence I have been making things..)

The Dead has now finished it's final arc of this season, and oh boy was there some amazing work. Giancarlo Herrera in particular is adept at making me cry. Such heartfelt dad energy. I most enjoyed the arcs in the UK but Silent Key was also pretty touching.

The Devil's Plaything continues to be adorably unhinged. I particularly enjoyed the erratic fae realm episode.

In my efforts to listen to the podcasts of everyone who's been in Woe.Begone I binged Hellgate City, which is good horrible fun and full of very clever Yiddish wordplay.

Before I say this, please understand that due to Backstory I am scared of asphyxiating in space and drowning, so should be forgiven for putting off listening to Fathom/Derelict for as long as I did, but I did and wow, that is some amazing cinematic sound design and super-tense narrative. Wow.

All the homies have been listening to Remnants and Not Quite Dead so I binged those as well. Not Quite Dead is very very sexy and has a very very sexy (pre-)French vampire who tells the MC when he is being stupid, which is great. It also had immunoserology. There should be more vampire stories with immunology. This pleases me as biologist. Remnants I am ashamed to say I didn't notice for a really long time it was actually one big narrative disguised as an anthology because I was too busy enjoying the grouchy North Welsh mystery being. I am prone to going along with the vibes and noticing the story later when someone points it out to me and going oooooh. You can still support the NQD crowdfund here!

Hi Nay is fascinating and complex and I am grateful for the window it has given me into the Filipino diaspora and a whole family of cryptids and monsters I was not familiar with. (Not me with Wiktionary open looking up the episode titles…) I went off and watched the Netflix adaptation of Trese on recommendation as well which was very cool.

Ars Paradoxica - Eventually I will catch up on all these "audiodramas classics" I say like any of them is more than 20 years old. I do see why Ars Paradoxica is a classic - engaging characters, the physics just realistic enough to be fun for my non-physicist brain and a delightful main character. It ended very neatly and satisfying too. I shall miss the Time Travelling Adventures of Dr Sally Grissom

In Strange Woods - I listened to this as part of the Podcast Bookclub, I wasn't able to make the live listens so just binged it. I am a noted Not Liker of Musicals but podcast musicals I've often found to be more enjoyable. This had some gorgeous songs. I liked the one about the main antagonist(?) best, because it was also summing up a complex and damaged character both in the words and music.

I have also been enjoying the little audio-zine Miss Shipton's Travelling Teashop about a tea witch who warmly listens to people's issues while gently flirting. You cannot currently get this on a podcatcher, like all zines it is passed from person to person. Go ask Oli Morris for it…

Have a good Sunday!

[jennasvamp]

listening to hell or high rollers in public is so humiliating like sorry why am i laughing? because there’s a grown man in my ears playing a horned up vampire in hell, oh and there’s a princess frock drawn on his coffin which he also moves around in. because he’s on a boat. oh and the best drummer in the world is here and she is a giant rabbit. played by erika freaking ishii.

[dreamingofthewild]

Every time I see a Mystra defender in the tags, I'm more certain that Gale is better off paired with someone who doesn't like or is heavily critical of the gods.

It's the way they justify her treatment of Gale. It's not okay that she ghosted him and only spoke to him when she wanted him to sacrifice himself. Yes, she was protecting herself, but don't you see how toxic that is?

She only told him what the orb was when it suited her. If Gale gives the crown to her, she removes the orb so she can dispose of it at any time. Gale was already subservient and willing to do what she asked of him. She never had any reason to fear him.

Many aspects of Gale & Mystra's relationship are toxic if you translate it to a mortal x mortal relationship. Their relationship ticks many emotionally abusive relationship boxes. This is ironic given how many Mystra defenders humanise her. They justify that her actions are okay because she's a Goddess while missing the point that his story is very much about religious abuse.

It's strange how people can recognise that when it comes to Lae'zel & Shadowheart with Vlaakith and Shar, but not with Gale & Mystra.

Also, it's super weird defending someone telling someone else to essentially commit suicide. No, she's not asking him to do so to save the realm. She wants the crown for herself.

I really don't think Gale’s story translates to the modern world well, and that's the thing. If you pair that with someone who thinks that the God's are always right, and the powerful are always just, especially someone who doesn't want to acknowledge a morally dubious female character. Then you're going to get someone who justifies Mystra's actions and compels him to use the orb.

He needs someone who understands that the gods don't give a fuck, and that he shouldn't listen to what Mystra says, as she doesn't have his best interests in mind.

But at the same time, someone who will recognise that by becoming a god, he is just repeating the same cycle. Someone who would hate him if he became a God.

Someone who can justify Mystra’s actions is not a good fit for him.

I don't see people justifying Vlaakith, Shar, Mizora, Gortash, Cazador, or Orin's actions. It sounds a lot like religious zealotry tbh People just can't see it with Gale because they think that only the evil religious cults indoctrine people and think grooming only involves children. It's easier to blame the victim than it is to criticise the system. Especially when that system is religion.

[xyronian]

More gives writing advice.

Source: The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings

[trap-str]

[bazeleyez]

Devil’s Plaything

15/09/2024

By: Bazeleyez

I took drunken punches meant for you

As you turned a blind eye to the bruises she left

Letting me face the devil inside this home

I would scream and kick and punch about

At the attempts to hold me down

And when my strings were finally cut loose

I left as furiously as a raging blizzard

While you wallowed in your pity

You sat staring into the wall

Thinking nothing but “good riddance”

But years have passed since I’ve haunted those halls

And all the remains of me is a distant memory

The devil has lost her plaything

She screeches and stomps and scratches

Looking for her next prey

She searched around and all that was left behind was you

So now she gnaws on your bones, crawls under your skin

And even as she rips you apart from the inside out

All you do is lie down in compliance

Cursing me for being the first to leave

Because now it is just the devil and her puppet

And there is no one left to save you from being played like a fiddle

[whatsaterrarium]

wolf 359 is an underrated work of art for a lot of reasons but chief among them is that if I mentioned the lesbian mind rape episode you’d have to ask which one

[bandaidfingers]

🦇🩷THE DEVIL’S PLAYTHING (1973)🩷🦇 or Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern

An English-language German film. Easily the most explicitly pornographic movie in this little collection of mine, with the opening sequence being a five-minute, five-woman orgy of evil lol. This isn't actually a movie I’d really recommend at all, it has a decently compelling plot concept: two young women who have recently learned that they are distant heirs to the long-dead Baroness Varga discover that the housekeeper and maids of Castle Varga, where they now live, are actually witches secretly plotting to revive the spirit of their vampire Baroness so that she may possess one of the girls and live again. Much debauchery is apparently needed to make this happen. But the story is ruined by being poorly constructed. Scenes begin and end abruptly without any clear sense of passage of time or transition between locations and events. The cast consists of nine heavily-accented West German beauties doing all manner of despicable things to each other with two clueless hotboys along for the ride. About half way through this movie I started skipping over the story parts and just watching the more intelligently-written sex scenes. This is one of those movies that’s maybe worth watching to help yourself appreciate the quality of a truly good piece of film, or even the quality of a different, less mediocre lesbian porno.

eleventh drawing in my lesbian vampire illustration series :)

and you can buy the original drawing HERE :)

[freelafan4life545]

I love this reference so much. Freela never misses!

💜🧡

[weirdlookindog]

Ulrike Butz and Nadia Henkowa in Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern (1973)

[dark-ethereal-visions]

The Devil's Plaything aka Vampire Ecstasy (1973)

In the heart of a myth-ridden, mountainous region of Germany, an impregnable, centuries-old castle--where young women worship Wanda, an ancient vampire aristocrat--casts its cursed shadow over the land. Driven by the essence of warm, bright-red blood and the power of unseen dark forces, the evil temptress forces her luscious female followers to give in to their most intimate sexual impulses, to preserve her unholy spirit. But in this hellish purgatory of perversion and blood, the accursed black sisterhood is unaware that the raven-haired leader of sin has an ulterior motive: to reincarnate in the fresh body of one of her satanic disciples.

[recitedemise]

Gale does not fit the mold of a perfect victim — and to be fair, a perfect victim doesn't exist. There is no one way to express and vent out the volatile mix of emotions experienced when wresting with the pain of abuse and after, with all the power one can possibly muster, one confronts the reality that they've been used. Gale, who had been so deeply in love with Mystra, so besotted by the idea, the illusion, the fantasy of their relationship that he needed patience and time to digest the truth. What was once a blessing would later be recognized as the injustice that it is, Mystra's bestowing Gale as her chosen more her preying on his fealty, taking advantage of his faith and his obvious devotion. The anger Gale feels upon realizing is justified. He had spent years with someone he had thought loved him, but discarded for wanting to be held as equal, he had been summarily abandoned, neglected, and ordered to die. So, yes: he is furious. Yes, he had yearned terribly to take the Crown for himself. And even if it was petty, a need to punish her as much as it was a desire to feel enough, after over a decade of being spoonfed a fantasy, maybe just maybe!, his anger was due. He'd been docile enough and was gentle, patient, and has suffered enough as some languishing pariah. If he'd the audacity to show his rancor for a moment, it's because Mystra, too callous, had never admitted to her wrongs — and always thinking herself above him, will never do so.

[jbk405]

So I popped in "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" from my new Complete Series DVD set. Despite being 20 years old it still grabs me. Right from the beginning to the end.

I am glad that we got more of the series afterwards, but if it had ended here, it couldn't have gone out any better.