#cause is fallen London

[vonlipvig]

I had to draw one of my favorite bits in Fallen London: serving in Court in your birthday suit!

It's still so funny to me that Henry (guy who has no idea what is or isn't trendy at all) is canonically besties with the Neath's top fashion influencers. But then again, who wouldn't be charmed by him. The Fashion-flies certainly are!

[letters-of-fire]

listen they're on a date

Twitch belongs to @capn-twitchery :D thank you again for letting me draw them!!!

[thegreatyin]

two of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[waterlogged-detective]

Sometimes a gun is the quickest way to end an argument, you know how it is.

[violant-apologia]

students in the neon future learning about the fifth city

[zeebreezin]

My comm of @neathbowprideflag ‘s Courier, drawn for the Fallen London Fans for Gaza Event, hosted by @bizarrebazaar13 !! Nothing shall stop the mail!!!

[mushroomlasagna]

I've been thinking about eldritch horror, and how it pertains to Sunless Skies and its universe at large.

You see, a lot of eldritch horror focuses on a realisation of incomprehensibility. The realisation that there is something out there, much larger than you, a being so vast and clever and different from you, with goals and hopes and desires that you could never hope to understand, that it drives you to despair and madness.

But in Sunless Skies, and the universe it represents, well...the beings aren't really incomprehensible. Yes, they speak a language that burns, but personality wise? They're positively ordinary. They fall in love, they have preferences, they betray or are betrayed. They have siblings and children. Sometimes, they come off as petty and petulant rather than mighty and powerful.

And yet, there's still that classic eldritch horror mind-shattering realisation in the world. It's just not about the incomprehensibility of the universe, and the struggle to understand the universe as a tiny human.

No, it's the realisation of authority. It's the realisation that so many of the world's rules are not some quirk of mathematics, but put in place by someone who sees you as not worth considering. Gravity or death are not the natural state of the world, they are there because someone decided they should be. Someone who, when you really get down to it, doesn't seem that different to you. None of the rules, or the cruelty and suffering that you've experienced because of the rules, actually have to exist. I can only imagine that to live in this world and to realise this fact could drive you just as mad as any other eldritch horror.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. After all, one of the true horrors of this game isn't the giant monsters or the cannibalism or the devils. It's the Victorian-era exploitation of labour and the suffering of the working class, turned up to a hundred through the magic of this world. When you first enter Albion, the place that you are told is the beating heart of your people's community and the place that connects to the last games, the first place you are likely to find is Brabazon.

Nowhere is this horror more manifest than Brabazon, the place where you can help countless people escape and yet never see any changes. And all of this suffering, the rules and regulations that say this workworld has to be here and that it is right and good, don't have to exist. The rules were put in place by a queen rather than a sun but still here, again, the rules are not immutable facts of nature, but put deliberately in place. Put in place by someone who is in many ways so normal, so like yourself, but also so difficult to defeat. It seems so impossible, to resist authority and change the system that you live under, to make a world without unjust laws. To overthrow not just the monarchy, but all authoritarians who rule unfairly, and to create a world that is truly equal is so difficult. Sometimes it feels like its own eldritch horror, that though it's no tentacled monster or sun shining darkness it still causes that same madness and despair.

But there is hope. After all, what was the tagline for Sunless Skies? Sail the stars. Betray your Queen.

Murder a sun.

[the-dye-stained-socialite]

lineart for a comic I'm working on! this follows the moment whenever elias exchanges their heart for the queen's prize, a replacement heart

lyrics:

Life's full of tough choices, in'it?

Come on you poor unfortunate soul!

Go ahead, make you choice

I'm a very busy woman and I haven't got all day

it won't cost much!

Just your voice!'

[grimm-the-tiger]

My FL main went through some really weird, organic development over the...oh god, I think it's been five years since I started playing now.

So my main is named Skadi Larkin. They are a little bastard. They started out extremely 2D; I named them after my favorite Norse goddess and the protagonist of the book I was reading at the time. I originally wanted to make them female like both of their namesakes, but the second I saw the third-gender option, I thought it was too good to pass up. This is where they got their primary base characterization as a mad scientist who wanted to Cause Problems.

Then I started the Nemesis ambition and forgot which option I'd chosen for who I was trying to avenge, so they lost both their lover and their older brother under tragic circumstances (only the lover was killed by Nemesis's antagonist, though).

Then I got an Exceptional Friendship and had to give my tragic backstory in order to gain entry to the House of Chimes. Skadi pulled said tragic backstory (orphaned in a hansom accident) more or less out of their ass, but it did establish that their parents are dead.

Somewhere down the line, I realized that technically Skadi is a linguist, since the Correspondence is a language, and I made that their profession on the Surface as well.

Around this time, I started working on character designs for my fan comic. I got really into messing around with skin tone, and somewhere along the line thought it would be fun to draw Skadi (who was originally white) with darker skin, and it stuck.

Then I abruptly realized I was taking a lot of options that increased my Melancholy, and almost all of them were based on the Surface. So now Skadi has a longing for the Surface.

I left the game for a few years, but somewhere during this stretch of time, and I don't know how this happened, but I decided Skadi was now Native American; specifically, Metis. I changed their design to incorporate a sash woven in a style characteristic of the Metis, which also added a bit of color to their design (which was mostly black or grey at this point).

During this time, I started incorporating Skadi into my fan comic. This would eventually lead me to actually flesh out their backstory in greater detail. When I started playing the game again, I also created my first alt by total accident (long story), and I decided to weave her backstory with Skadi's.

So Skadi is in the interesting position of being an Indigenous person who is what we'd probably consider Two-Spirit today but they'd just call "Bollocks to that gender crap". They never belonged on the Surface, since the Metis are in a bit of a liminal space compared to other tribes due to their interesting background (the Metis are the descendants of French settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, mostly Cree), and Skadi exists in a liminal space within that liminal space due to only being half-Metis and raised primarily in white culture, although they still maintained a connection to it through their late mother. They also never belonged because no one else on the Surface outside of the communities they already felt isolated from would ever accept them for their gender. London gave them a chance to express one of those, but not both, and despite knowing that the Surface hates them just for existing, they still long to return.

[cjsees-art]

I FORGOT TO POST THIS. SENECA'S NIGHTMARES ARE GOING UP VERY VERY FAST AND THEY'RE SEEKING MR EATEN AND THE WALLS ARE WRONG AND THEY'RE DOING SUPER NORMAL

also: sketch and lineart were commissioned from @kori-dearest who was kind enough 2 let me colour this piece myself :] go check him out NOWWWW his art is glorious and it's for a good cause

[bluestockingbaby]

blorbo archetype: annoying men who know they’re annoying and can’t stop so they weaponize it

[sparingiscaring]

I love discovering something I had no clues towards in Fallen London. And I love it when I have just enough context to maybe have an idea what's happening without looking to other people for answers.

[thegreatyin]

12: how long have they been around? do you know their birthday? is their birthday the day you made them or another day? what do they think of celebrating birthdays?

for the scoundrel!

12- How long have they been around? Do you know their birthday? Is their birthday the day you made them or another day? What do they think of celebrating birthdays?

Okay the subject of the Scoundrel's age is actually really funny because it is potentially anywhere between late 20s to like. Early 40s. And I have absolutely no idea how old they actually are beyond that incredibly generalized range. I do know they use their silverer glasses as actual reading glasses, which implies they're at minimum in their 40s, which. Is a feat in of itself in Victorian London.

As for their birthday, so far I've been thinking of it as their actual account age:

But it could just as easily be any other date on the calendar. They don't particularly care for their own birthday, much less anyone else's. It's just another reminder that they're a human that was born as a human and could potentially die as a human. Why in the world would they want to celebrate that?

They do probably love getting birthday presents though. They feel like the type of guy who has their birthday, like, 5 different times a year, specifically because they keep randomly declaring it so people give them free stuff. They're completely shameless about this.

[waterlogged-detective]

Alas, it's Cards

[violant-apologia]

finally a proper apologist ref! featuring:

the violant-scrawling apologist, in 1899

the infernal apologist, in 1891

mr bricks, in 2023

the apologist's (current) tattoos and scars

and headshots of his parabolan reflection and his noman!

commissioned from the wonderful @waterlogged-detective (yet again thank you, i'm so pleased with the end result!)

[vonlipvig]

not to be a metagamer or anything but is there something to achieve in the sixth coil so far other than just Make Number Go Up?