#bring UR fears...

[wyrmfedgrave]

BroadwayWorld.com: FRIGID New York to Present Radiotheatre's 14th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Festival

Frigid NY presents RadioTheatre's 14th HPL live Festival, with limited performances of Lovecraft's "Whisperer in Darkness."

The plot should be familiar to Howard's longtime readers.

Professor Wilmarth has come to the NY Psychical Society to get help in warning the world to prepare for alien enslavement!!

He relates the fate of his friend Henry Akeley, who 1st found the creatures setting up on remote Dark Mountain.

And, whose scouts are already among us...

The performance is a live drama - with a 21st century twist.

As always, they back up their actors with an original orchestra score, cinematic sound design - &, a # of projections!

This show will run from the 23rd til the 27th of July at Under St. Marks, 94th St. Marks Place, NYC 10009.

Tickets are: $30 for live admission. But, there's a better deal if you want to watch - thru streaming!!

That'll just cost $5 bucks!

The story is 85 minutes long but, you're warned to not come alone.

Please, bring your imagination - & fears along...

Enjoy.

[teapot-of-tyrahn]

“i think when we’re red … we can have fun again!”

gem doesn’t love pearl. she loves red pearl.

she loves pearl when she’s not herself. when her mind is clouded by a red fog and a desperation for blood. when she’s at her lowest. she loves what they are when they both have nothing to lose.

she can only love her when neither of them are them.

“as much as she would love to, it’s too early for red pearl. okay? she can stay where she is.”

pearl has never considered red pearl to be her. red pearl is another person - red pearl is who she doesn't want to be. red pearl is what she has to become to survive.

gem loves pearl. she does!

just not the one who's healed. not the one who's happy. she loves the one that's hurt. the one that hurts. the one she can hurt people with.

[ranticore]

I just wanted to say that reworking Pascal and Nico in a new setting was really enlightening and helpful for me. I've felt out of touch with my creativity for years, stuck in a cycle of trying to revamp a 15-year old setting that held a lot of nostalgia and past identity for me but was fundamentally derivative and holding me down. Seeing you talk about your process made me accept that I can let go in order to develop something that better reflects my current taste and the stories I want to tell. I feel a lot more optimistic now!

hi this is so incredibly relatable to me... i'm sure i mentioned it when discussing the restructuring but my first real setting was my whole world from 2008 to about 2017... and the progression and ramping up of complexity and stakes was crazy in that time. the first book was just a basic "we are teens having fun in the woods and we have powers :)" and the last book was like "after the alternate dimension battle with 3 separate versions of myself, the giant spacecraft colony (all that remains of a destroyed 3rd Earth with its own entirely unique culture following interdimensional nuclear war in the 1500s) has come to my planet and intends to mine the world for resources, humanity's only hope is a gigantic televised space coliseum battle against the colony's most ultimate living weapon"

this was NOT within the scope of the original story and world but for me it was like tuning in to watch a tv show with 10 billion seasons that never truly concluded... i rewrote the whole thing twice, even got pretty far in the previous rewrite in 2021, but at the end of the day i was just digging up and trying to frantically hammer into shape something that was, at its core, a thing i made when i was 12, just workarounds and post-hoc justifications for old decisions. i had to let it go. one of the reasons i committed to writing books for mvf (and specifically a trilogy) was so that i could hold it in that scope, not exceed what it was, and - critically - end the story. so like you said, deciding to have a 21st century inver add-on was just me picking the safe option because it meant i already loved the setting, and didn't have to commit to making something new, which i might not enjoy (my attachment to settings is extremely fickle). but in just keeping a hold over stuff that doesn't need a continuation, i was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

conclusion: if you find yourself constantly having to write fix-it fic for something you made, putting bandages over bandages, then just stop and make something new that's exactly what you want right from the start. it's crazy to be able to just make a bespoke world for these characters instead of having to bend my beloved Inver to fit.

[luckylilpup]

i’m ONE DAY ON TESTOSTERONE !!!!!

i don’t think i’ve ever been so happy oh my god.

[took-my-breath-away]

I know that I’m a million years behind but I just watched TGM and the scene where Rooster says “talk to me dad” and Maverick “replies” sent me into the stratosphere. I cannot describe how much I love their father/son relationship. Mav & Ice & their 12 adopted kids

holy fuck - I know!!! great writing and weaving of scenes and dialogue (also welcome to the next tier of brainrot!!)

I remember my hand flew up to my heart in the cinema when I saw that and I was like. audibly: "oh..."

not many movies make me cry but that scene had me tearing up fr. you've reminded me that I need to draw more kid roo and dadmav, I just adore their dynamic so much and daydream about little domestic subplots all the time.

thinking about it right now... bradley running up to mav after a big baseball victory, slamming into him with a bear hug. mav almost topples over - he hasn't had a hug from brad in years (hugs are cringey when ur a teen, uncle mav!!). mav swears he's gonna cry any sec because he's just so damn proud!!

NOT TO GET EMO ON MAIN UMMMMM

[seoulmatez]

stop he’s so ugly — i mean cute!

[marzipanny]

Shedding my shame actually🧖🏻‍♀️🧖🏻‍♀️ lrb is the crux of their relationship development. manolo shrinked from javi when he expressed romantic interest (being aro-spec it felt like a betrayal of expectation and injected stress into what were already very stressful circumstances)… like what are u doing confessing to me in the midst of all this terror? when I can’t love u the way u need me to? Or so manolo thinks..

[vigilskept]

2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15 for your trevelyans!

2. What were their expectations going into the Conclave?

sander's genuinely just trying to find his siblings and get the hell out of ferelden. he would like it if they changed things but he’s not hopeful and wants to be far away from this place when it falls apart lol

thea's cautiously hopeful. the war's pretty clearly at a stalemate, with no clear path towards tipping the odds to their side & she’s already had to do some things she’s not proud of to get to this point. she needs this not to drag on any longer.

4. Was there anything in their life they were looking forwards to doing once the Conclave was done?

sander’s kind of hoping he’ll be able to find some excuse to cross paths with the valo-kas again :’)

thea literally is just hoping to survive without getting executed or made tranquil…. she is so paranoid for real.

under the cut as we start to get into the heavier stuff 😈

5. What was the Herald of Andraste's opinion about the Chantry and the war before the explosion?

they both start out extremely bitter towards the chantry for related reasons, though not exactly the same. thea was already 16 by the time she (very publicly) discovered she was a mage, and it threw her whole life into disarray. prior to the conclave this resentment is all externalised and placed squarely on the chantry. similarly with sander, he deeply resents his parents’ devotion which he sees as having torn his family apart. they sent thea away without even giving him a chance to say goodbye for the sake of “keeping up appearances” and they were going to sign away his future to the templars just to avoid scandal! he believes in the maker, sure, but he does not feel positively about the southern chantry.

6. Is the Herald impacted by Justinia's death? Or do they move on quickly?

sander feels nothing in particular about justinia’s death. he was kind of expecting her to be assassinated by one side or the other. what he’s terrified of is that his siblings might have died at the conclave and he has no way of knowing for sure. most of the bodies aren’t in any identifiable state (and he does try, at the temple, trying to find any markers that it might be them)

thea is horrified when they tell her and actually does think they might be correctly accusing her. she feels inexplicably sick with guilt and there’s a gaping hole in her memory. it could be that she did murder the divine. she must have murdered someone. after all, she’s only felt this particular type of guilt once before :)

8. How do they feel about the mark on their hand?

ohohoho. the short answer is that they’re both fucking insane about it.

sander’s extremely shaken by it at the start. it hurts! it feels like it’s tearing straight through him as it expands! it’s only after reaching solas that it goes from terror -> curiosity. bc solas does something to close that rift. which means he knows something about it. so it’s just an unfamiliar tool, not some incomprehensible horror. as to what placed that mark on his hand though….. he does really, earnestly wonder about this especially in the early days. is it the maker? could it be? he comes to believe it was, and the eventual revelation that it was solas’ orb, that the anchor was just another part of his plan that went wrong… oh there is murder in his heart after that. experiencing levels of rage heretofore unknown.

with thea….. it’s completely different. she sees it as something like a stigmata. there’s a story the southern chantry tells about how archon hessarian’s sword grew hot from the flames and seared into his palm at the hilt, branding him for his sin such that no healing magic could soothe the wound. that mark stayed with him for to the end of his days. for thea, just as the brand marked the archon for his part in the prophet’s death, the anchor is a mark of her guilt. she first thinks it’s for the murder of the divine, but eventually comes to realise that it was her murder of her brother (damian) that haunted her :)

9. How do they react upon being called the Herald of Andraste?

sander feels so trapped by it at first. he plays into it immediately because i mean, what else are you going to do when people who were accusing you of murder moments ago now see u as their hope for salvation? tell them to fuck off? the mob could turn on him at any moment so he is playing to them. in the long run, this will be his ruin, because being the herald leaves increasingly little for anything else to remain under that mask. it whittles away at him until the herald is all that’s left!

thea is horrified by it, because where people see a blessing at her left hand, she sees a curse! if the maker has marked her out as anything it’s as a sinner!!!!!! she takes on the mantle as well because she feels taking people’s hope away would be even crueler but she feels like she is playing with fire as she does. she wonders whether it won’t just make the maker angrier in the end.

10. What are the Herald's opinion on the Mage Rebellion and on mage rights?

pro-mage baybeeeeeeeeeee (at the start anyway)

sander thinks the circles are fucked given how they’ve torn his family apart, and thinks there has to be a better way to go about things than locking mages up and throwing away the key. he does come around somewhat on viv’s view that people are too frightened to accept so much change so quickly, and that getting rid of circles could put mages in danger from those who fear them (guess who he backs for divine)

thea deeply resents the way her entire life was thrown into disarray after becoming a mage and the total loss of freedom as a circle mage. she wants them gone. unfortunately her guilt and self-hatred after the conclave is going to lead to a WILD 180 turn and she will end up seeing her past rage and resentment as evil borne from being a mage, and begin to see her previous oppression as justified. mages can’t be trusted with freedom, look what they i did.

11. Who does the Herald of Andraste help - the Mages or the Templars? Why did they choose them?

sander goes to the templars, not because he believes in their cause by any means but as a political maneuver to bring them to heel under the inquisition. he disbands them and conscripts them into the inquisition’s ranks immediately.

on the flipside, thea goes to the rebel mages because she fears what damage they might do if they’re not brought under the inquisition. its not politics for her, it’s real fear! she means to gently bring them into the fold, initially, but after seeing that they were willing to work with a tevinter magister….. she conscripts them. she will not let them go astray as she has gone astray!

14. What type of Inquisitor are they? What are their motivations? How do they lead?

sander’s far more politically shrewd between the two of them since his life has always depended on other people’s opinion of him! he’s much more comfortable playing The Game, and he’s much more open to unorthodox approaches and points of views. he’s willing to hear sera out more often than not! once he’s fulfilled his initial goal (getting his siblings back safely) he begins to think more on whether there is some divine purpose to having been inquisitor, and concludes that maybe it was so he could help set things right. this unfortunately is the start of him taking the role of inquisitors more seriously….. and being far less open to hearing others out. it’s not immediate! but it does get to him, and he does begin to see others giving him advice as them trying to lead him astray/manipulate him into pursuing their own agenda. it’s not a a great trajectory from there!

thea on the other hand is motivated by guilt and fear the whole way through. the exact shape of those guilts and fears changes pretty significantly over time, but she ultimately views the role of herald/inquisitor as her penance throughout. mages have broken the world (again) and she must do her best fix that, in order to atone.

15. Since religion is a major component of DAI, is your Inquisitor religious? What do they believe in?

they’re both andrastian though…. as you can see, the exact shape of their beliefs is a bit complicated?? they both find faith & a renewed relationship with the maker through the role of inquisitor, but I wouldn’t say this is a good thing for either (even if the self-destructive nature is more obvious for thea).

post-trespasser u could say sander is no longer andrastian though! the maker is gone if he was ever real at all and the gods that remain are cruel and indifferent (and he intends to see him them pay)

inquisitor questions

[schrodingersbobbynash]

ubguys i ffu king love rick n morty

[shrimpothy]

my doctor recognizes the autistic tboy within me even when i’m fully masking,,,,.,, , ,,i lov her,,.,…,

[lifesver]

i watched a couple videos about queerness and horror and it's like, all stuff i've definitely parsed and thought about before-- how differently i and other queer people connect to horror media. anyway i was thinking about wewand as i do and it is important to me that my interpretation/reading of him is inherently queer.

in general theming, something that interests a lot of us about horror is that like... portrayal/understanding of being Othered, the fear of not being accepted, the discomfort and sometimes horror regarding your own body. i do write leland with a lot of insecurity and like, the shame/fear of not being accepted is a theme that lances through most of his actions and most of his dialogue, both inner and outer. he has the image projected onto him that he tries and tries his hardest to fit into, and it never works. it pushes away anything genuine in his life and it's a lesson that he learns when he meets the friend group in college. and it runs so deep with him for a while that he's not even aware he's masking it in his day to day.

and re: queerness, gender, sexuality, a big part of leland's insecurity also falls into this category. it's, you know, A Big Thing that makes him different that he doesn't want to look at too hard, but something he finds acceptance with in our portrayal of the friend group, etc. it's the fact that in this portrayal we share, the friendgroup IS queer. they represent that same thing to me that i felt when i first found my acceptance with other queer friends in college. it's a very specific thing but the general theme of acceptance that we portray the friend group with, whether it's about personal insecurities, real fears, or passions, or being your truest self-- is so important to me. bc that is so queercoded in itself, isn't it?

leland, who was raised with several sisters in my particular portrayal, a mother that encourages and nurtures his sensitivity/less 'masculine' traits, but a father that really tries to keep him in line with toxic masculinity bullshit on all fronts, manifests pretty seriously into inner conflict that informs a lot of his actions. for leland, it manifests in putting himself into a box of what the 'golden boy' should be, ur average image of a hypermasc jock with the pretty girlfriend on his arm, very normal, very liked by everyone, not weird or strange or Different. versus what we actually see from leland. just in the way he talks, the way he dresses, where it doesn't rly read Standard Jock, to me.

i think of his gender expression as something that will try to come out in repressed, but still meaningful ways. he won't cut his hair, even though his dad hassles him about Looking Like A Girl. he wears outfits with pretty flowery designs, he cares how he looks, he's Prettyboy. and regardless of how he tries to jump to meet expectations, esp of his father (and just, everyone ever really), he is still, at his core, that soft-hearted emotional compassionate person. he has that bleeding heart that he can't put away.

without directly touching on like... the inherent... fearmongering of the 70's in many regards re: queerness, it was a scary time to be out. it still is. so it's just... idk it's important to me that leland is bisexual and has those pieces of gender expression as well, and it's important to me that the friend group is this safe place for each other, even amidst what is absolutely a horror tragedy story. you know? like there's enough pain, enough going against them in this story. idk where i was going with this really but i was just thinking about how ig my own queerness informs my writing and why horror is a genre that interests me. and sort of just another of my nonsense rants about how important a sense of empathy is to me in writing within it.

[introvertgoat]

dropping hazbin n by association helluva boss has made me so apathetic to anything related to them 😭 girl idc abt stolitz n whether or not blitz is in the wrong or stolas is like !!! someone quick get blitzø in therapy n far away from stolas so he doesn’t relapse.

[aroacettorney]

aup would have been way more interesting if ludger had actually been possessed by lumensis since the beginning and their relationship would just be like kris and the soul in deltarune

[tadagyoten]

billy & max - body to flame by lucy dacus

"billy knows that max is always going to be that one constant in his life. at the end of the day, he wants to protect her. it comes out the wrong way."

came home from a 13hr night shift and made this edit half asleep because nothing is more important than the Hyperfix

billy fully believing that he's protecting max is always gonna kill me . he views his harsh treatment towards her as a necessary evil to keep her out of neil's line of sight - "you're lucky i'm around to watch out for you. remember that." - and tries time and time again to mould her into someone like himself . because, to billy, he wants max to be well prepared for neil, a luxury he lacked . "he went out of his way to make me just like him. any hint of softness and he would never let me forget it."

dacre montgomery saying that billy "really loves his little sister" but "hates where he is" yea get him on the writing team Now he's cooking

their potential just kills me . max and billy's inability to understand each other until it's too late: until billy's throwing himself once again into danger's line of sight to protect max, and max is left clutching at her brother's shoulders and wishing desperately that she had ran to him and pulled him away .

it reminds me so much of the scene in runaway max where neil beats billy, and max held her breath and waited. "i knew, in a deep unhappy way, that this was wrong. i just didn't know how to stop it." max sitting with her hands clasped, fingers locked together like they were about to say grace, when witnessing the extent of neil's cruelty; and her telling billy's grave that she imagined them like a real brother and sister, had she not "stood there and watched", which could very well apply to billy vs the mind flayer, but also billy vs neil generally .

max blaming herself for all of it, when billy would've never accepted her help to begin with........ SICKKKKK . billy watching the end of his father's belt with a resigned look, a helpless mix of fear and fury.... he wouldn't ever risk accepting help from anybody, let alone the very person he's trying to save from this abuse, because it opens him up to disappointment all over again .

"you always lose, even when you win. you will never be truly rid of him."

"you have never been of use to anyone, billy."

"what's it like to be so hard to love, that everybody leaves you?"

[arcticsilence]

my cat died over a month ago and these past few days ive just been randomly crying really badly over her??? embarrassing. i unironically thought i was ok w it lmao

[spidrboots]

a long, drawn out sigh ; an arm draping dramatically over his eyes.

❝ i’m hornyyyy. ❞