#let I tell you one story of the vamPYRes

[isevery0nehereverystoned]

Andrew my little strudel Page of Cups

[theresattrpgforthat]

I found a goth speakeasy/coffee shop by my school that does a Thursday tabletop night where you can bring and run your own games and I was wondering if you had any recommendations for games you'd feel comfterble running with a table of strangers / mostly strangers? Thank you!!

THEME: Games to Run with Strangers.

Hello friend, fall comes upon us and I finally get around to answering your ask. Thank you so much for your patience! I’d definitely recommend bringing some safety tools to any of these games, since you’re playing them with strangers. That being said, I tried to pick games that were easy to pick up and quick to learn considering you’d probably want each session to be a standalone one.

I often run games with groups of people who don't know each-other beforehand, and I'd recommend allowing silliness to blossom when possible, even if you're running a spooky game. Let’s see what we can find!

Wizardry and Bureaucracy, by Oh Little Moth.

You are a member of the National Parks Service. You and your team would do just about anything to protect your national park. Also, you’re wizards. But all the magic in the world can’t save you from the slog of paperwork you have to endure as a civil servant. Your mission is to preserve your park and all creatures living in it, promote a love of nature and the environment, and also keep park visitors from seeing through the curtain separating the magical from the mundane.

Like most Lasers and Feelings games, this has quite a bit packed into one page. Easy character generation, a standard list of gear, an introduction where you collaboratively design your park, and the classic Lasers and Feelings mechanic that makes you automatically better at one thing and worse at another. The game is also set up to be raucously silly. This game includes the very good piece of GM advice that I adore for improv: ask questions and build on the answers. You don’t have to come up with the entire story yourself! Give your players the chance to tell you how exactly magic interacts with the local National Park.

The Children of Saturn, by Dan John Crowler.

The people of Petrikstein are tormented by a blood craving beast prowling the night. Players take the roles of parish appointed investigators on a mission to find and slay this alleged Vampyr, before it claims even more lives. Will they be able to find out the truth in web of lies, myths, and fear fueled superstitions? Play to find out!

The Children of Saturn is a neat little game that combines the Keys mechanic from John Harper’s Lady Blackbird with the graded 2d6 roll of Powered by the Apocalypse. You can accumulate dice to roll depending on whether the action in question is in line with your character, and failure increases the chances of success the next time you roll. The characters are pre-made to some extent, but the players will be able to make them unique through names, descriptions, and how they decide to role-play. This game also come with a small hex map for your characters to explore - and everything fits on one page! If you want something spooky and quick to prep, this is definitely worth checking out.

2400, by Jason Tocci.

2400 is lo-fi sci-fi. It’s centuries in the future, and it’s a decades-old modem that screams like a dying robot when it connects to the net. It’s a space ship with an FTL drive, artificial gravity, and a flickering display you gotta tap a few times to see the jump coordinates. It’s hacking something together with whatever cheap materials you have on hand, ignoring the rules until you need them, banging out something that might not sound finished, but definitely sounds fun.

The 2400 system is a stripped-down ruleset inspired by the OSR that has been used to create a number of hacks in different settings. Every time I’ve run a 24XX game, the session lasted about 2 hours, so it definitely has the ability to play quick. The original page for 2400 currently has over 20 different settings to choose from, so if one of them really hits off, you could come back with a different setting each week for your friends to play through!

The Great Soul Train Robbery, by Cloven Pine Games.

On the road to hell there was a railway line. An express train to the infernal city of Dis, crewed by furies and carrying treasure and souls to damnation. You’re going to rob it.

The Great Soul Train Robbery is a tabletop roleplaying game for 2–6 players and 1 gamemaster about Desperados robbing the train to Hell. Spin an allegorical Weird Western yarn as your sharpshooters, fiddlers, homesteader widows, and other Desperados attempt a Hellish train heist. Will you claim your prize from the train, or be overcome, damned, or broken by the heist?

This is probably the biggest Honey Heist - inspired game that I’ve seen to date. It’s a solid pitch, with very little background needed in order for your players to grasp what exactly it is they’re doing. If players aren’t sure what kind of character they want to make, all of the options have d6 roll tables to give your group a goal, your train some complications, and your character a name and a special item. There’s quite a few pages of GM advice in this, which is probably a big boon to anyone running the game, as it allows you to construct a more complex train than what you might have created out of the top of your head. I’d probably even just steal the train construction section to use for other similar games!

Hold Your Own, by Sharkbomb Studios.

It's a time and place, not unlike the one that you, the players, grew up in. A dark mirror of the decade of your youth.  You play as a group of friends at the cusp of adolescence and life is hard. You're unpopular and unwanted. All you've got is each other.

But it comes worse: A strange menace threatens to devour everyone you know. And nobody wants to believe you, not the teachers, not the parents. It looks like it's up to you to save your home.

Fans of It and Stranger Things will probably like this game. This game uses small dice pools and four basic stats. You’ll be facing off against an antagonist called the Menace, a threat that the rest of the community believes doesn’t exist. The Menace will always be strong enough to provide a challenge, and as you play, you’ll learn more and more about what it is exactly that you’re fighting against. This is a great game for fans of suspense, and it’s also small enough to learn it within the few hours that you’d have at a coffee shop.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Something is Wrong with the Chickens, by Elliot Davis.

Koboldly Go, by CoffeeSnake Studios.

Faewater, by A Smouldering Lighthouse.

The Station, by pidj.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hello!

I was doing a deep dive into the history of vampire literature and my mind was blown when I heard about “The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo” published pre-bram stoker Dracula, in America 1819. Maybe it’s bad to say but if never heard of it before. It was really revolutionary, and the first of its kind of many things. A comedic study that explored themes of slavery, interracial marriage, and had a mixed race protagonist, a (possibly ambiguous?) vampire child character AND was literally one of the first anti-slavery stories.

I’d be so curious if Anne Rice ever read it and if Rolin or any of the show writers came across it during research. I’ve not read it yet but wanted to ask you if you’d come across it before?

Hey!

I have not read it, but I have actually just gone and ordered a copy.

For now:

I went through the Vampire Companion, and while I do not know if Anne read that book (maybe someone else knows?) there are some... let's say interesting tidbits that could connect:

Saint-Domingue The French name for Haiti, a former French colony. Lestat claims to be married to an heiress from this island when he first becomes a vampire; the claim is part of his disguise while dealing with Pierre Roget, his lawyer. Two centuries later, Lestat is in this country when he sorts through his doubts about Akasha's plan. They argue and Lestat perceives Akasha's weakness: she needs an allv to confirm her vision. (VL 118, QD 391-398)

and

Haiti The Caribbean island where Lestat and Akasha go following the slaughter they perpetrated on Lynkonos. Overcome with shame at his participation, Lestat resists Akasha here, even though the island of Haiti has been the scene of male violence for over four hundred years. Lestat ironically refers to Haiti as the "Garden of God," for revolution, aggression, slavery, and bloodbaths have turned this virtual paradise into a land of mud and poverty. It is in Haiti that Lestat begs Akasha to bring him to the other surviving vampires who are currently in California. (QD 391 , 395)

Now... I'm not sure if that is indicative of her having have had the knowledge of the book (as I do not know the content of it yet), but it kinda seems that she could have, and I would think the show maybe does, too. (Obviously the QotD arc might give a bit more away here, so the future will tell I guess.) And of course the child vampire might parallel other things as well, though if Anne might have read it before or after or maybe because of that...? Sheer speculation^^

But the themes of the book you described definitely make one listen up, right?!!!

So thank you for putting me to it, I'll come back to it when I've read it.

And if someone who has read it wishes to weigh in, please do so!

[syntheticmortal]

I got tagged by the lovely @crownedinmarigolds! Thank you so much mate!! I'm absolutely charmed 🥰

Now my rat bastard spouse stole most of my tagging options on their post so to not double-tag I will add:

@skaerdir, @klaciate, @tzimizce and @vamp-orwave!!

If anyone who sees this wants to be an honourary tagee, then go for it XD

For those who don't know - Hi I am Alex! (He/They) and I'm a writer and an English immigrant to the USA!

3 ships: oh mate all of these are OCxOC with @c-n-i-d-a-r-i-a-n

Victor and Gloria – A Nos and his unbound Ghoulfriend. Making your touchstone one of your mission Ghouls is dangerous af but live fast love hard, lads.

Jeff and Lamb – Another of Vic's unbound Ghouls and the Thin Blood Nos that joined the Warren. Disgustingly fucking cute injected into the den of the rejected and disgruntled.

Ventan/Taakur Rig and Rozanin Rig – My and Daz's SWTOR PCs respectively. A Chiss Cipher Agent that ends up having to go hide with his Mandalorian hireling with her Clan and Roz's unrequited love becomes hella requited and suddenly Ventan/Cipher Five-now-Taakur has step kids??

I love it so much.

first ship: Oh god this takes me back to being little. Probably a Sonic one??

Shadow and Rouge if I had to take a guess??

last song: Temptation by Sean Paul! A proper bop

But honestly massive shout out to the second Nostalgia Synthwave mix by Odysseus on youtube

This thing keeps me sane, and has all the songs marked! – that opening one, Realign by Cerulean, can usually just melt my brain into peace whenever I hear it

last film: Snatch – Like VTMB it's a problematic fave that oozes style and characterisation throughout. Watched it as prep for a Setite I'm going to play in a V5 game >:D

currently reading: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan as part of genre research. Finished The Vampyre recently too! Really I should pick AC up today, I've been working hard on my editing and outlining of my own pieces and neglecting the reading part of the craft for a few weeks >.>;

currently craving: So I'm drinking far less booze to save money whilst I'm out of work trying to get some Proper Writing done. So when I hit a good worthy milestone I'm getting a bottle of whiskey and I am ready.

fav color: Green! Sometimes purple!

relationship status: Maaarriiied to @c-n-i-d-a-r-i-a-n

last google search: I had to double check the spelling of Taakur for the ship section, so it was 'mandoa' :')

and before that I'm pretty use I searched Scryfall last night to go look at MTG cards even though I have no one to play with right now :'D (at least it's saving me money >.>)

current obsessions: Was tempted to add my own work here but I'll tag that on the very end XD

There's a lot of fandoms I don't leave – World of Darkness and Warhammer 40k predominantly as settings I always have another angle I want to see explored in!

I do however have the Magic the Gathering bug, even though I haven't really played in years and years now – but card interaction as a generation for narrative has always kind of captivated me? Like there's a couple big mean Ogre cards that make Rats more dangerous, but due to the way the systems work they also empower the Ratfolk of Kamigawa, the Nezumi, as they count as 'Rat' cards still. So big Ogre spellcasters improving Rat people as part of a contained bit of narrative kind of fascinates me as a concept.

Plus each deck presupposes a Planeswalker character who's casting those spells – and I was always intrigued by that notion and so most of my OCs are representative of decks I played (or wanted to :P) and then in turn each Planeswalker needs a Plane to come from, probably from a still existing culture on that Plane too, and so it can kind of wonderfully reverberate inspiration.

Like how every VTM Kindred OC presupposes a Sire!

BONUS ALEX SECTION

So if you want to get to know me, let me tell you about what writing I'm working on/have made recently.

Out now!

The Mutilation of Finley Reid

A short story of masculine horror, about a young man by the name of Finley who suffers in the pursuit of having his place as a man affirmed by his peers.

The world of Torranham Nights is an anachronistic reflection of England set in the coastal city state of Torranham, drawing from contemporary culture and folklore as well as the legends and reality of the cultures that came before – without being fetishistic about it like a lot of stories will.

Handle It

A short retail horror, about working the cash register of a butcher's counter, and the customer who orders increasing amounts of ground beef...

Inspired by my own work in a same spot, anyone who's done service work should get a kick out of this – plus it's free and only takes 20 minutes to read! XD

On the way!

Defector – name subject to change

A short story of grief, shame, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, and community. On the moon.

A Special Recon mech pilot, “Crash”, from Earth has defected to the Moon rebels, and now lives in Magnolia City, rotting away in her tiny apartment. Then the Provisional Government sends one of its elite commanders, a former enemy of Crash's, to pull her out.

Elhart: Arrival

The first of a short story fantasy anthology about a city of refugees at the edge of time and space, hiding from the end of the multi-planar universe. A super soldier has washed up with a near-fatal headwound and no memory, and she must learn to live in a far more peaceful world than the one her instincts suggest she came from. But who was she? And can she earn the trust of people who fear her potential to kill?

Neon Sun

A novel! Cyberpunk Vampires! If we're mutuals you can come ask about this but I'm not ready to share things too publicly for this one yet, but the outlining has gone beautifully in my opinion, and the worldbuilding is singing.

Speartip

I'm making a TTRPG!! It's a Powered by the Apocalypse engine game, about serving as the primary field agents of a faction of people who need your support and protection. Because if you're going to be a hero, who are you doing it for if not your kin?

Setting agnostic as hell, excluding some implicit need for magic in the class moves – I'm prepping to playtest this in sci-fi and fantasy settings to see how well my mechanics hold up in both swords and firearms based stories. Plus I'm going to explore a variety of perspectives of what the faction can be – from ethnic groups, to gangs, to guilds, to neighbourhoods.

I'm VERY excited about all this!!

[cleolinda]

Varney the Vampire: Chapter 14

Chapter 13: Interview with the vampyre

This is a short chapter and also a good one. If you were a fan of Henry Bannerworth Knowing That He Is In Dracula, this is the chapter for you.

I'm going to tag this "cannibalism" for real-life reasons, and also "unreality" because I want to talk about an aspect of fiction that might not be great for you if you don't feel like you're on solid ground. I mean, if people are using that tag for Goncharov, this is the high-octane stuff.

Chapter XIV.

HENRY'S AGREEMENT WITH SIR FRANCIS VARNEY. -- THE SUDDEN ARRIVAL AT THE HALL. -- FLORA'S ALARM.

To catch you up, the Bannerworth family's new neighbor has offered to buy Bannerworth Estate, since the family obviously will not want to live there now that a mysterious vampyre is harassing them by night. Upon arriving at the neighbor's house, Henry Bannerworth discovers that said neighbor: is the fucking vampyre. Like just chilling there, in a dim room, vampyring. Henry promptly starts having a very apparent breakdown, all while his kinda-uncle Marchdale is like, "Shhhhh, Henry, it's rude to tell people they're vampyres."

I. Still interviewing the vampyre

The unnamed servant brings the unnamed refreshments that Sir Francis has called for—unnamed but for "a glass of wine."

"You take nothing yourself?" said Henry. "I am under a strict regimen," replied Varney. "The simplest diet alone does for me, and I have accustomed myself to long abstinence." "He will not eat or drink," muttered Henry, abstractedly.

I grew up with the impression, and you may have too, that vampires specifically don't like wine, but why? I spent way too long googling this without getting a solid answer, as you will remember from our Public Domain Wine Dot Com digression. But I have finally learned that the "I never drink......... wine" thing was not in Stoker's Dracula, nor anything before it; much the way that Nosferatu (1922) introduced the concept of sunlight crisping vampires, it was the Balderston-Deane play adaptation (1924) that introduced the line, which was then adapted by Tod Browning for the screen (1931):

Both the line as written and Bela Lugosi's delivery put an outsized emphasis on it being wine. He could have been saying he didn't drink coffee after dinner. I'm spending an hour on google trying to figure out if it has anything to do with communion wine—nope. It ain't blood. That's all. As Henry points out, Varney doesn't eat or drink, period, and that's the underlying premise here. Because, you know. He's dead. That is the story that James Malcolm Rymer has going at this point in time, and he might or might not stick with it.

I'll wrap this segment up by noting that Henry is absolutely sure that the painting and the person are the same, because they both bear "the mark or cieatrix [a transcriber mistyped cicatrix?] of a wound in the forehead, which the painter had slightly indented in the portrait, but which was much more plainly visible on the forehead of Sir Francis Varney." A cicatrix—[sic]atrix?—is just a scar. The dude has a telltale scar.

II. Will u sell the house tho

Varney still has real estate on his mind (one wonders if this gave Stoker any ideas):

"I cannot yet," answered Henry, "I will think. My present impression is, to let you have it on whatever terms you may yourself propose, always provided you consent to one of mine." "Name it." "That you never show yourself in my family." "How very unkind. I understand you have a charming sister, young, beautiful, and accomplished. Shall I confess, now, that I had hopes of making myself agreeable to her?"

OH

NOOOOOOOOO

This is already bad for both Flora and her devoted Charles Holland, obviously, but you have to remember that Varney was inspired by the template of Polidori's Lord Ruthven, who was, pop-culturally, the Dracula of his time. And (SPOILER), the way the story ends is that Our Hero Aubrey is unable to prevent Lord Ruthven, who he has discovered to be a vampyre, from marrying, murdering, and vampyring his sister:

When on the staircase, Lord Ruthven whispered in his ear—"Remember your oath, and know, if not my bride to day, your sister is dishonoured. Women are frail!"

That is to say, in the context of 1819 rather than the consumptive Victorian "angel of the house" trope, morally "frail": the unnamed sister was willing to have premarital sex with Ruthven. Meanwhile, Aubrey has a literal rage stroke and is unable to tell anyone what Ruthven is, until after the marriage has been solemnized. These are the actual final lines of the story:

Aubrey's weakness increased; the effusion of blood produced symptoms of the near approach of death. He desired his sister's guardians might be called, and when the midnight hour had struck, he related composedly what the reader has perused—he died immediately after. The guardians hastened to protect Miss Aubrey; but when they arrived, it was too late. Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey's sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!

Welp. We're gonna need to call in some wellness checks on Henry, I think. But notice that we are in the 1840s—the Victorian era—now, and Flora has thoroughly been coded as both pure (to possibly a racist degree) and physically frail (except for when she's blasting vampyres). We are assured over and over that Flora is the very soul of goodness, and entirely worthy of that paragon of manhood, Charles Holland. I think the two of them might be in for some trouble, but it won't be "moral" temptation. Probably.

"You make yourself agreeable to her? The sight of you would blast her for ever, and drive her to madness." "Am I so hideous?" "No, but -- you are -- " "Hush, Henry, hush," cried Marchdale. "Remember you are in this gentleman's house."

Marchdale manages to drag Henry away before he can insult the vampyre who wants to continue stalking Henry's sister any further, because that would just be uncouth.

"Adieu," said Sir Francis Varney, and he made one of the most elegant bows in the world, while there came over his face a peculiarity of expression that was strange, if not painful, to contemplate.

Peculiar in what way? I have filed this away for later.

III. Coping: not even once

"Marchdale, it would be charity of some one to kill me."

"This man, Varney, is a vampyre." "Hush! hush!"

"I tell you, Marchdale," cried Henry, in a wild, excited manner, "he is a vampyre. He is the dreadful being who visited Flora at the still hour of midnight, and drained the life-blood from her veins. He is a vampyre. There are such things. I cannot doubt now. Oh, God, I wish now that your lightnings would blast me, as here I stand, for ever into annihilation, for I am going mad to be compelled to feel that such horrors can really have existence."

Honestly, I think half the problem is Marchdale telling him to shut up and not rock the boat. Everyone would feel a lot better if they could just gear up, ride out, and—

"Nay, talk not to me. What can I do? Shall I kill him? Is it not a sacred duty to destroy such a thing? Oh, horror -- horror. He must be killed -- destroyed -- burnt, and the very dust to which he is consumed must be scattered to the winds of Heaven. It would be a deed well done, Marchdale."

—yeah, that.

But how do you just go do that? This isn't Count Dracula, who lives in a spooky abbey and then flees home to his spooky castle and gets dealt with there. This is a dude who's going around the neighborhood being friendly and asking to buy estates. He's got servants, he's throwing around money on properties, he's trying to court your sister. How do you just go in and murderate him? What if, somehow, he's not a vampyre, and you were Extremely Mistaken the whole time, and now you're on trial for homicide?

Two examples from my taste in television come to mind:

One is the Hammersmith Ghost episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime, in which a man decided to go hunt down and shoot a Boo Ghost™ harassing a district of London in 1804. It ended with one Francis Smith on trial for the murder of a bricklayer who happened to be wearing an unfortunate amount of white. I am sure Smith absolutely believed he was shooting a real ghost, right up until it became tragically apparent that the ghost hadn't already been dead.

The other one is the FASCINATING "Hunting Vampires" episode of Expedition Unknown, in which Josh Gates visits rural Romania to get scared by a cat and talk to a man who actually... well. Let me quote the fan wiki (content note: technically necrocannibalism?):

The next day, Josh meets Petra Rotar, a local journalist, and they drive to Craiova where they meet Daniela Barbu, a prosecutor. She had to charge six men who desecrated and exhumed the grave of Petre Toma. After Petre died villagers began to get sick and have nightmares with Petre in them. Six men went to the cemetery and pulled out Petre's heart, grilled it and prepared a potion from the ashes and everybody who was sick drank it. The villagers' jail term was suspended […] . Petra and Josh go to Marotinu de Sus and to the cemetery where they find Petre Toma's grave. Two angry villagers come but they are able to calm down and one of the men, Florin, is related to a man who dug up the body. Florin and Josh row across a lake to meet Florin's cousin Mitrica Mircea, where Mitrica [one of the six men] recounts the story for them and believes what he did was the right thing.

Like. This happened:

'No one is bothered who did it, it's their own business,' declared 80-year-old Tudor Stoica, shading his face with a fraying hat. 'This ritual often takes place, but in secret, within the family. The problem comes when the police get involved.'

This happened! And they're all sure they're doing the right thing! And I'm tagging this post "unreality," so if you have issues with certain kinds of ideations, I'm gonna say skip down to the next pull quote, but I'm trying to describe a certain quality in fiction: 

Of course I want to say that Mitrica Mircea wasn't doing the right thing, this is real life, there are no vampires to go around staking. But it's a funny thing, how people in genre fiction have to realize they're in genre fiction and things are real, and people in real life have to remember they're in real life and things aren't real, but also, the nature of consciousness is such that a fictional character might express the belief that they live in the real world, and a real person might find themselves in a traumatic moment thinking, This feels just like a movie. Do you ever find yourself in real life saying, "This feels like that moment in movies where the characters don't believe in monsters, and that's why they get eaten?" Can you, then, understand a character in fiction going through the same thing? I can't believe this is really happening, but it is.

Except that they are wrong, because it is fiction.

But they can't know that.

I feel fairly confident of my reality, and I'm confident none of my neighbors need to be staked. But I'll stop there in case anyone else isn't.

"Yes; but reflect, Henry, for a moment upon the length to which you might [have to] carry out so dangerous an argument. It is said that vampyres are made by vampyres sucking the blood of those who, but for that circumstance, would have died and gone to decay in the tomb along with ordinary mortals; but that being so attacked during life by a vampyre, they themselves, after death, become such." "Well -- well, what is that to me?" "Have you forgotten Flora?" A cry of despair came from poor Henry's lips, and in a moment he seemed completely, mentally and physically, prostrated. "God of Heaven!" he moaned, "I had forgotten her!"

H E N R Y.

IV. Marchdale what is your deal

Kinda-Sorta Uncle Marchdale pleads with Henry to not curl up and die because Flora needs him! Possibly to stake her someday! No, Marchdale, Flora has Charles Holland now! HUMPH, says Marchdale to that. As you will recall, Marchdale and Charles Holland loathed each other on sight for literally, in the literal sense of literally, no reason, and Marchdale stands by that:

"I, therefore, now prophecy to you that Charles Holland will yet be so stung with horror at the circumstance of a vampyre visiting Flora, that he will never make her his wife."

Bro, why are you like this. On one hand, Henry insists that Charles Holland is the soul of honor:

"You are, you may depend, entirely wrong. I cannot be deceived in Charles. From you such words produce no effect but one of regret that you should so much err in your estimate of any one. From any one but yourself they would have produced in me a feeling of anger I might have found it difficult to smother."

On the other hand, one might perhaps become concerned that the text keeps raising the issue of whether Charles Holland is trustworthy or not.

V. Anyway, when do we kill him

Henry and Marchdale agree that they won't tell the family that their new neighbor is the vampyre stalking Flora, because that always works out just fine. Marchdale declares, in fact, that there is no way that "this Sir Francis Varney, or whatever his real name may be, will obtrude himself upon you." Obviously, Varney will be intruding on them anon. Should he try such a thing, Henry announces that he will kill Varney really most sincerely dead:

"It would be fatal, so help me, Heaven; and then would I take especial care that no power of resuscitation should ever enable that man again to walk the earth." [Marchdale, very helpfully:] "They say the only way of destroying a vampyre is to fix him to the earth with a stake, so that he cannot move, and then, of course, decomposition will take its course, as in ordinary cases." "Fire would consume him, and be a quicker process," said Henry.

Well, I hope to fuck that they know where the matches are.

Varney the Vampire masterpost

[silurisanguine]

20 questions for fic writers

thankyou @poetic-poltergeist for the tag!! <3 (starting a new thread as the other was getting looooong.)

okay let's see

1) How many works do you have on AO3

23 currently!

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

245,631 and counting...... (as i new chapter of a fic should be going up any day now)

3) What fandoms do you write for?

Starfield, Deus Ex, Vampyr, Dishonored, Thief and one for Destiny2 at the moment.

4) Top five fics by kudos?

Savages, Paradigm Shift, To See Beyond Forever, Starry Starry Night and Take me Away from All this Death. (would love to see some of my Starfield fics get in here by next year! ).

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always do, comments fuel me! Seriously the serotonin boost from getting a comment is often exactly what i need to keep writing.

6) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Shattered Reflections i'd say. (but chapter wise, it's my new one Chasing Your Star...)

7) What’s the fic you write with the happiest ending?

That will be.... [redacted].

8) Do you get hate on fics?

First fic i published on Ao3 got a unsolicited crit. One point was valid but the other i thought was unwarranted...and in fact incorrect anyway. But other than that, i've had nothing but positive comments.

9) Do you write smut?

haha.....oh ...OH YES. But always with plot and in context of story.

10) Do you write crossovers?

Yes i have one crossover right now - Emerging Shadow (Dishonored/Thief), but i plan another -( deux ex/ Assassin's Creed).

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Probably by AI.....

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, i dont believe so.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, i'm too much of a control freak for story telling, though i do work with others to work out plot points sometimes.

14) What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Named ships? Emsider and McReid. (also Sam Coe& Spacefarer).

15) What’s the WIP you hope to finish but doubt you ever will?

Im not jinxing anything. I WILL finish all my fics. It just might take a while...But i doubt i will write any more for the Destiny fandom.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Story telling and scene setting I'd like to think.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Expanded grammar and finishing stories.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I try to find someone who speaks the language natively to help me with any foreign dialogue i might add.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

Xena, Warrior Princess. Back in my Live Journal days.

20) Favourite fic you’ve ever written? I have to admit i have a soft spot for Obsidian Dreams and Take me Away from All this Death. But i am absolutely loving writing Chasing Your Star Until I Find Home. I tag - @lakritzwolf @eridanidreams @bearlytolerant @atonalginger @fangbangerghoul @booburry @toxiclizardwrites @aro-pancake @aislingdmdt @onewhoturns @lisa-and-shadow @thatsgoodsquishy0 @despicablediet @themortalscout

[awellboiledicicle]

I'm collecting books with Fido under the rp of them learning about the world, imagining Gale teaching them to read common etc and

I have found 9 copies of the same Curse of The Vampyre.

Astarion is in their party.

I just imagine them holding up a book like "what's this one"

He squints at the battered cover and sighs.

"The vampire one, again."

They pause and look at the rest of the party picking through the chamber.

"Are vampires that big a problem here? You'd think they're falling put of the woodwork."

"Yes," Astarion deadpans, trying not to stand in a way that the candle light will highlight his eyes. "You would think so. They're not that common in my experience, though."

"Still good to learn about, I suppose." They slot the book in beside the rest. "In my world they're just stories. Oh! I should tell you guys Dracula someday."

"Let me guess, vampire slaying? Dashing heros?"

"Kinda? One guys basically a wizard with all the shit he knows, one guy runs a madhouse and is like a breath away from being a mad scientist. Ones a cowboy-- think rancher with a crossbow that shoots really hard. Ones just a rich guy. The main guy is Jonathan Harker, his wife Mina and oh god, I forgot Lucy!" They waved their hands excitedly before reining it in. "Its a great story but that can wait. Let's see of that lever open a the door or if we're about to explode."

"Why," Shadowheart paused, nearest the button, and squinted. "Would we explode?"

"Dunno, traps? Dramatic end of a dungeon?"

"Traps like that are rare, thankfully." Gale turned another book in his hands and snorted. "Rarer than this bloody book, at any rate."

Basically Astarion tasks himself with destroying so many books and is more likely to be caught doing that than trying to bite Fido. Which is suspicioussss.

[stars-inthe-sky]

For the fic meme! 3,5,18,29! 🙏

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

It's like choosing a favorite child! tell me where your strength lies is the thing I'm probably proudest of having written, just because of its sheer length and complexity and timeline. I think Every Part a Flame may be the most "me" story, in terms of bringing together, like, all my favorite things in a fic and showing readers what I'd learned in years of writing. And Days of Awe is easily the most personal, and also a deep point of pride for entirely different reasons.

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Oh, the answer to that is always Star Wars Watergate, which I explained in detail almost a full decade ago here. Anyone who actually wants to do the research is welcome to the idea, just let me know so I can actually read it. In the meantime, I will think fondly on it anytime I see pictures of the original trio hanging out in the 70s.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

From Hello, Flying Fatality (aka Rosa Diaz the Vampire Slayer): "Okay, we’ll call you Lady Van Helsing, mysterious and leather-clad defender of the night, and I will be Sir Jacob the Tenacious, killer of the vampyres and slayer of the ladies, if you know what I’m saying. Codename: the Fancy Garlic. No, wait—”

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

I've had this Old Guard/Leverage fusion in my head for a good few years now but have never figured out what the actual caper would be. Details under the cut, because I do feel strongly about them, and would be down to collaborate if anyone can tell me what the actual caper would be.

The premise is that Nate's backstory is exactly the same, right up until he actually does drink himself to death after losing Sam, and—lo and behold—he wakes up again. Being Nate, he figures out the basics of what's happening (if not why) and, based on the dreams, tracks down the others to meet up.

Hardison is the next-"youngest," having died for the first time somewhere in the American South in the early nineteenth century. He's spent his immortality leveraging whatever technology is available to fuck with wealthy people and empower those without—so, confounding bloodhounds with the Underground Railroad, robbing robber barons, eventually defrauding the Bank of Iceland, etc. (Part of the actual writing of this would be crafting that backstory in a way that's not, like, exploitative and flat-out racist, just for the record.)

Eliot died fighting in the American Revolution, on the side of the U.S. He's since been every kind of soldier for the cause, in and out of the light, but if Vietnam didn't break him than the Bush Administration(s) definitely did. He switched to mercenary work at some point but has always kinda felt he could be doing something "better" with this immortality thing.

Sophie was a traveling player in the Middle Ages somewhere, and while she probably did not die of the Black Plague, she and her troupe may have been accused of spreading it. Or perhaps she just got caught admiring some manor lord's décor by someone with a short temper. Or not. Who's to say? Since then, she's mostly been flitting around impersonating her own aristocratic descendants in several European countries, buying and/or stealing art, and doing a spot of wealth redistribution when it suits her.

Parker...no one knows how old Parker is, or how she originally died, or where she's from. It's unclear if she does. But she is the best of the best at what she does, which is stealing and hoarding and flying solo, and also occasionally teaching kids how to crime. (She did, for a short time, have a mentor whose name sounded something like Archie to modern ears, but that's how she knows they can die. So she doesn't get close now.)

Key here is that the others have never met before. They've all had the dreams, they've just had their own things going on and no real interest in the others. (Hardison: "And what, like I'm gonna be friends with the guy who spent the whole Civil War in gray?" Eliot: "Damn it, Hardison, I was a spy for Grant!" Parker: "Which Civil War?" Eliot: [sputters])

But something about Nate's journey to date has them all under threat. This is where the caper needs to come in. Presumably someone (Sterling? Dubenich?) found out about Nate, and by extension the others, so they have to work together to eliminate the evidence of their existence and con whoever into believing they are not immortal. But I don't know what that is in practice, and I don't expect the Leverage crew to leave quite the trail of bodies that the Old Guard does in the movie. Think more extreme hacking plus over-the-top performance kinda con—very Leverage, minimal actual non-Eliot violence.

Somewhere in the course of that caper, we meet Harry, who's pieced together the holes in history where these people fit in and realized they did some good, if not always on purpose. But he's given the information to the bad guys, and now he feels quite bad about it. I think Breanna is an enterprising intern (?) of some sort who has been quietly following all of this and is thrilled to pitch in in some fashion.

Once things are resolved, the team goes through the same "no repeats" routine that they do in "The Nigerian Job," and then they almost immediately realize that they all belong together and could do something special and meaningful with their collective talents. (Plus, the dreams have stopped now that they met, so they just might have to keep in touch the regular way. You know. If they want to. Possibly Hardison is already drawing up plans for their own Avengers Tower.)

[ruindunburnit]

Can we talk about my biggest pet peeve in the House of Night series? Thanatos was said to be almost 500 years old. Why the effing hell does nobody talk about the fact that she was born shortly past the middle ages!? You're telling me there are adults in that school who have lived through wars and those old victorian paintings, the discoveries of science and there are literal immortals running around and the kids aren't all over that? Has Nyx seen dinosaurs? Why is no one talking about that? What were the fucking middle ages like? I wanna know so badly! Why and how did nobody ever ask about that!?

Okay but this is a fantastic point and I would love to talk more about it! There's such a strange incuriosity that the fledglings -- and vampyres in general -- have around history and historical events that it just completely baffles me. Because you're right! There's surely no way that the younger characters wouldn't give more than half-a-whoop to finding out "what really happened" way back then! And if a real teenager had a chance, surely they would ask Nyx if She saw the dinosaurs and what She thought to them, and if Spielberg's films captured them very well at all.

I've taken a little while to think about this ask because I really wanted to chew on it, and I think I have two ideas as to why it possibly is as it is, going strictly by the Cast canon, but I don't like what they say.

The first is a Watsonian explanation: there's very little focus on what these ancients know from the past because the big conflict of the series story is (at least supposedly) "how do you take a culture that's old and imbued with tradition and keep it alive and contemporary?" It's not a bad question to base a series like HON around, and it is something that many old and ancient traditions and religions have been trying to answer. And you do see that from different characters, from Shekinah and the High Council (it's okay to be modern, but these are what we do and we don't enjoy most change if any), to Neferet (let's go back to the older ways and isolate even more), to Sgiach (there are parts of the traditions you refuse to acknowledge and I will be over here until you're ready to acknowledge them), to Zoey (they're great and precious but we're not modernising enough and we're too insular). But as a result, it does mean that we don't even give a thought to the history that all these traditions come from, or the memories and voices of the past that inform the present. I (as I often do) also wonder where the Burning Times figure in all this and if it may have shortened the cultural memory somewhere -- as cataclysmic, apocalyptic events suffered by an entire people tend to do (and there are a few very real ones we could refer to here as examples!) -- but since it's almost as though the authors don't know what it involved, I'm not going to ask about it. (My own thoughts are all headcanon, and ergo, apocryphal to this discussion).

In any case, it's kind of hard to take that central thesis statement seriously when we don't have a lot to compare it to, and what we have feels either thrown in or, well, not very well done. As a result, the conflict of tradition versus progression is hamstringed by the lack of historical evidence on offer.

This brings me to my Doylian explanation: the characters are incurious about history because either the Casts are, or they're at least aware of their limitations in portraying it properly.

What do I mean? Well, we know the worldbuilding in the HON series is truly a sight to behold (derogatory), so what doesn't surprise me is that almost no one mentions what the context of having Known Vampyres running around might have done to change the events of history as we know it. I think that's the question we seem to dodge in the fandom (or one that I personally haven't seen asked), partly because we can infer from the series canon that very little (if anything) differs between their world and ours, yet if we think for more than five minutes, having an entire species of power-imbued Person running around, known openly to the world as vampyres, should have surely changed a lot! If almost nothing in history differs, and yet the existence of vampyres is the same, that tells me that these vampyres, who are so powerful and benevolent, saw the horrors of the past centuries being inflicted on their human siblings and, well, did nothing. I personally think that this aspect wouldn't be a bad thing to have as part of the canon, since trying to incorporate historical differences could have led to a Revisionist rewriting of history that would have been executed really poorly or at least been dubbed incredibly insensitive (which no doubt it would have been, given their track record). I can see why the Casts went along the route of "vampyres leave the human world behind and do their own thing" on that score, although it doesn't explain why nothing of historical events differed at all, since vampyres would have had to interact with the human world at some point anyway. That is, I think having that complexity and shame to vampyres taking a bystander stance to the human world and its problems, when they know they can do so much good, would have been interesting to explore! However, for the Casts to realise that this state of unchanged history in a world with vampyres in it would require vampyres to be bystanders to misery, and acknowledge it, they would have found it very difficult to reconcile it with the image they hold of their vampyres as ultimately good and wonderful.

Meanwhile, the other problem is that when the Casts have tried to give voice to history, such as with the backstories and flashbacks of various characters like Neferet and the Lankfords and Lenobia, it's turned out so, well, bad! The inaccuracies alone have been so outstanding, I have to assume they were writing by the seat of their pants the whole time and hoping you couldn't see the cracks, and I can see why they hesitate to delve into it.

That is, I assume they don't have the young characters asking about history because the older characters would, by their characterisation, be required to answer, and P.C. and Kristin Cast simply do not know the answers and hesitate to find out. Because they don't know enough about history and don't seem to know how to go about finding the answers, they haven't asked how much it would have changed with vampyres in it, and they hesitate to bring it up.

In short, sadly, the answer is incompetence and ignorance. I would love to know what you think to this long, slightly rambling answer, though!!!

[transsexualunderground]

So I got tagged in a WIP game by @lswro2-222!

"RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPS." Not doin' that last bit. I don't know that many people. Anyone reading may do this if they'd care to.

Note that I'll be naming my sub-WIPS here as well, since I tend to accumulate some in a big ol' doc. Some are individual though. I'll also put current lore documents and trivia lists in here too, for sake of... uh, why not. Without further ado...

THE TTTE OC TIMELINE GETS REMADE AGAIN (CURRENT VER)

Lancaster Family Lore

Forsythia Without Nicolas / Nicolas Without Forsythia

A Verbal Description of the UHR Route

SYCORAX IN: DAY OF THE DIESELS

The Noble Art of Having a Good Grumble (mostly not WIP anymore but I love excuses to talk about it)

Next are all things under "TTTE/RWS Fanbooks / Fanbooks + Engine Canon Fanstories, Chronological "Publishing" Order." All include Forewords but I'm not counting those.

wesley book/Wesley The Show Engine [rewrite to be placed here when finished]:

Wesley’s First Impression

What It Means to be Wesley

Story Title C (Re-write of Wesley’s Rough Run)

The Plate

Forsythia the Rambunctious Engine:

Tales From Before

Arrival Troubles

A Run Along the Skarloey Railway

Tricks & Trucks

More Wesley & Forsythia:

The Little Waterfowl

[In which passengers do not refrain… from singing the damn humoresque. AKA forsythia and nicolas clown on wesley with his least favorite song ever at the time. so does thomas. idk what the moral is here]

Ice on the Rails

[Another Forsythia and Nicolas one]

The Scrapyard Engine:

Wesley And The Scrapyards [Extract Douglas]

Whatever Happens Next

A Horrible Place

A Scrapyard Finale

The Scrapyard Engine No Longer:

A Railway Beginning

A Name Fit for the Fat Controller's Railway [Extract Donald and Douglas? Switch for Bill and Ben because that’d be funny right?]

The One Where We Flesh Out The Wesley and Clara Mentor and Mentee Dynamic (establishes “…what if i don’t see you” conflict) (maybe some “I’m a bit surprised you care this much about it, too, Wesley” from Clara)

Clara Pulls the Post

[something] Engines:

Wesley and the 17 Classes (WIP)

Clara The Really Fucking Strong Engine, Jesus Christ, Man (Working Title)

James and Clara

Bertram the “Old Warrior” Engine:

Scrap Deal

Bertram and the Mines

Toby's Discovery

Shit Goes Nuts With Trucks

Heritage Railway Engines:

[Prudence One]

[Sycorax One, possible transition to both being at works and maybe also just the full story of Sycorax getting their name]

[Prudence Antics]

[More collective antics?]

More Heritage Railway Engines:

Sycorax's Masterwork

Elias the _ Engine:

Elias's Tender [Combine with Gordon and the Eel)

[To be titled. It’s a sad one.]

Elias's Return

Elias and the Eels [the one where Elias gets his eels back]

Engines After Dark

The Bitch Incident

May They Smelt

The One About Funnels and Couplings

Engines Nowadays:

Placeholder 1

Placeholder 2

Placeholder 3

Placeholder 4

And finally, my one non-TTTE WIP...

Red Moonshine: The Uses of Blood in Alchemical Processes (and its Impacts on Vampyres)

That's all.

[dexadin]

Your sanity system sounds very interesting! Are the players aware of the Dark Powers? How are you using them? My own players are a long way from the Amber Temple, and I’m not sure yet how I want to integrate the Dark Powers into my game. Ideally I would like to build on what the book has, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that.

So my players OOC since the jump have been aware that the Dark Powers exist, and that one of them is Vampyr, because spoilers are unavoidable for a variety of reasons. In ATSBB, I sometimes run a 'B Plot' oneshot on weeks when people can't make it, that takes place directly outside the mists. The theme of that realm is folk horror, so I wanted to use the Dark Powers to connect Barovia to my homebrew world just outside it. A lot of my interpretation of the Dark Powers are based on the CoS module, VGtR, and MandyMod & Dragnacarta's CoS guides on reddit, with a hefty helping of my own homebrew.

Spoilers for CoS, but especially for my ATSBB players

As such, my Dark Powers are old gods, who over time fell out of worship in favor of the Faerun pantheon, becoming weakened and/or corrupted in the process. I also fell in love with MandyMod's expansion on the Three Fanes. Naturally, I said fuck it, they're Dark Powers, too. So we have a variety of Dark Powers inside Barovia of various alignments and strengths, and ancient relics of their worship outside Barovia to connect my B plot homebrew to the world of Barovia.

All of that said, my party doesn't actually know who the Dark Powers are, or to what extent they affect them. I honestly like that the module has sparse info about the Dark Powers, more or less saying that they're dark entities that are powerful enough to create Domains of Dread and that they benefit off of evil people doing evil things, because they feed on souls. Sweet! I love that.

But Barovia doesn't have a lot of people, and they've already eaten a lot of souls, so they need to keep bringing in people to Barovia to feed. Some of the Dark Powers, like Vampyr, are malevolent--they seek to torment Strahd for fun and profit. Other Dark Powers, in ATSBB, the Fanes, are benevolent former deities who want the best for people, but are forced into doing bad and questionable things to survive. It was Madam Eva, who is a Dark Power and goddess of the Forest fane, who pulled the strings necessary to let the party into Barovia safely, guiding them through Vanya's tarokka deck.

As I detailed in my answer about my sanity/desperation system, the Dark Powers can also become interested in party members when they've done enough questionable stuff to become a suitable victim. The Dark Powers can tug fate, occasionally giving their little investment guidance or advantage, especially on rolls of dubious morality. I do this with a little word picture, something short like, "You have a sudden feeling that you are not alone, and your action feels bolstered by your apprehension." It spooks the hell out of the players, but also surreptitiously encourages them to keep making those morally dubious choices--as the Dark Power wants for them and their scrumptious souls.

Interacting with the Dark Powers by way of the fallen fanes is a different story. These three genuinely want what is best for the party, and loathe that their humanoid bodies don't posess the magic and influence they once had. As such, they use their humanoid abilities and their last bits of lingering magic to help party members who devote themselves to their service, knowingly or unknowingly.

For example (don't tell the ATSBB crew, lol) Corsair is a warlock who unknowingly has a pact with a Dark Power, who bolsters the decisions that make the player say "we're letting the demons win today, boys" before rolling the dice. This Dark Power constantly haunts Corsair, showing up in his peropheral vision to torment him and occasionally give him flashbacks to his time as a failed military general. Corsair also has devoted himself to the River fane, who shows her presence by ruffling his hair like the water does, and occasionally bolstering choices that she is particularly proud of. On occasions where I decide to microdose on being evil, especially when Corsair calls out to the river Fane for help, the party will see evidence of these two mysterious entities fighting over influence of Corsair, and the aid's effect will be different based on who answers. The Fane prioritizes Corsair's health, helping him with saving throws and healing, while the malious Power prioritizes his damage output, helping him with attack rolls and battle strategy. Vanya has the attention of Madam Eva and of Vampyr, for reasons probably obvious to anyone following along with me and ATSBB. Because of some events that have occurred in game,m recently, Vanya has actually begun considering Vampyr (who manifests as the sensation of a clawed hand on their shoulders) with more regard than Madam Eva, who Vanya no longer believes has their best intentions in mind.

I have a great time running the Powers like this, and the party has a great time trying to figure out what the hell is going on while simultaneously dreading the fact that whatever is going on is deeply, deeply wrong.

My players have also not reached the Amber Temple, but I feel quite ready for it when they do. I'm hoping that it'll be suitably impactful, as they finally come to confront the "shoulder friends" that have been coming along for the ride. So, yeah! This is just how I keep the Dark Powers as an active presence in ATSBB. I hope it was helpful! Let me know if you're curious about anything more specific :3

[ein-is-offline]

Hi, I have to info dump about how much Mass Effect means to me as N7 day approaches, my first one so far! More below.

September 2022 I had just finished playing through Vampyr, I loved it but knew I needed another game to play in my downtime as I was going through a rough patch. Playing video games helps me relax and forget about life for a few hours.

I would see Mass Effect:LE pop up here and there and I did interest me! But ultimately I held off on looking into it.

And so, I stumbled on a post here on Tumblr about a glitch that happened in their game... And a few hours later I bought ME:LE. Yes, I purchased this game because of a post on here about a mako flipping out lmao.

I booted up the game knowing virtually nothing about it, I told myself I'd just throw myself into the deep end. Went in blind.

What I wasn't prepared for was the world - galaxy - of Mass Effect. I quickly became attached to Commander Shepard and their crew. I loved how dialogue heavy the game was, I loved exploring empty planets on the Mako, hated being up at 3 am and hearing that one eerie song that plays in the labs, I loved hating on the Council, I loved the hard choices. I loved everything about the first game and finished it in five days.

I remember this scene in particular, one I wished the later games had more of. Where the camera steps back and shows you just how small Shepard really is, despite them being the savior of the galaxy.

It reminded me of the "leap of faith" scene in spider-verse, this one obviously coming first, but I digress. Here Shepard is looking down, yet rising. The silence in the scene, just letting the player take it all in. I really fell in love here. Even more so when M4, Part II started playing at the credits gah. Wish that song was brought back for the third game at least. Good way to tie things together + nostalgia.

The second game was really well-done as well, hated probing planets though. But I could tell the story with Cerberus and everything was setting up a grand finale in the third game. I loved all the characters you met here, and had my heart torn out of my chest when Kaidan and Horizon happened. I later found out about his romance with male Shepards in the first game and was disappointed, but I ended up loving the slow [PAINFUL] burn between him and my Shepard.

The final mission was so satisfying, having everyone by my side and just getting through the impossible. It was such a wonderful conclusion.

Then came the third game, I was so hyped and sad when I knew my Shepard's journey was coming to an end. But this game is just so well-made. There is so much heart that went into it and I loved seeing everyone come to together from all three games.

Mordin had become one of my favorite characters when I first met him in the second game. Such a charming guy and a lot of his dialogue made me laugh the hardest in the second game.

So, you know. Of course I bawled my eyes out when he died. And, you know, again for Legion, who had also become one of my ultimate favorites. A bittersweet outcome for peace among the geth and quarians.

Then came everything with Cerberus and seeing Shepard become so, infuriated and just distraught for the first time. I joked a lot through my playthrough that he showed little emotion, but this?

I felt his stress and frustration. I genuinely felt hopeless as well. Seeing everyone come together and piece back together your hope and encouraging you after you've spent three games encouraging them? It was so good.

I felt playing through the leviathan dlc after this made the most sense and woo boy. Best decision.

Then came the Citadel DLC and it was my favorite part, hands down. Loved all the humor in it, loved seeing all my beloved friends come together and interact. Mourned the ones lost.

This game really had a knack for getting you attached, even to newly introduced characters like Vega and Traynor. I loved it, and hosting the party right before the end game? Ah, it's a bittersweet feeling.

And then came the finale, and nothing could've prepared me for it. I want to remind you, I didn't look at anything online for these games. I knew nothing going in, and knew nothing going through it.

It was exhilarating, stressful, and heartbreaking. Going through the ruins of London and speaking to your crew - a warm, bittersweet goodbye. To the players, I thought. I mean, that's how it is right? This is the end of the trilogy. Shepard would take down the Reapers and go back home a hero and live out their days in the Milky Way.

But... [continued in reblogs]

[janeeyreheresy]

The Third Nocturnal Incident

Rochester is away on a business at another one of his estates. He doesn't return until late at night. He tells Jane he's put everything in order and they would start for their honeymoon as soon as they got back from the church. Jane still addresses him as "sir". They sit together and talk, as she previously promised him she would stay up with him the night before his wedding (when he still pretended he would marry Blanche). Another one of his strange orders, another task that is not in the job description of a governess. The fact that neither of them would get any sleep doesn't bother them. 

This is the third instance of Rochester not letting Jane get a good night's sleep. Even if you make allowances for the other two (and he didn't have to keep her awake after she saved him from death by fire, the Mason incident is a different matter), she already complained to him of tiredness. You know, that time he LARP-ed as the gypsy fortune teller?

Jane admits something's on her mind--he can read it in her face at any rate--and recounts the happenings of the previous night.

Because Jane so much insisted on wearing very plain clothes and no jewellery, Rochester had ordered her a luxurious veil from London. She had made her own veil before, one more suitable for, as she puts it, "low-born head". But the groom had his mind set on his bride wearing at least a beautiful veil. The night was a bad one, windy and cold, despite it being July, and she had bad dreams. She woke up, thinking it was daylight, but it was not. There was a stranger in her room with a candle. A strange woman. She thought at first it was Sophie, Adele's French nurse, but when Jane called her name, the woman didn't answer. She stood by the open closet, where Jane's wedding dress and the new veil hung. Jane realised it was not Sophie, neither it was the housemaid Leah, nor Mrs Fairfax, nor even Grace Poole. 

And you know it gets serious when Jane is sure it's not Grace Poole. 

Rochester asks her to describe the figure. Jane does so: tall, long dark hair, dressed in white, the new veil on her head. She didn't see her face, the strange woman having her back to her, but she did glimpse it in the mirror. It was, by Jane's description, quite a ghastly face, all purple and swelled, with red eyes. Jane compares it to a foul German spectre, the Vampyre. (Not sure if this means the same as what we imagine vampires to be today. Vampire fiction is not my thing, but as far as I know, they're supposed to be pale, not purple. Google search of the word "vampyre" brings up mostly the story of this title by John William Polidori. Anyway, for the purposes of this post, what matters is that Jane thought the woman to be a malicious supernatural being, or someone that looked like a malicious supernatural being.) Jane says the creature, for whom she uses the pronoun "it", then took the veil off her head, tore it in two, let it fall on the floor and trampled on it. 

Jane has not been trampled on at Thornfield, but the poor veil was.

Next the strange woman looked out the window, walked to Jane's bed, gave her an ugly look and distinguished the candle. Dawn was coming. Jane lost consciousness. When she came to, there was no one in the room and it was daylight. 

Jane asks Rochester who that woman was.

Rochester tells her it was just a dream, like the other bad dreams she had that night. In one of them she saw Thornfield in ruins; he points out Thornfield is not in ruins, thus the strange visitor was also only a product of Jane's over-stimulated brain.

Jane says: okay, but how do you explain the veil on the floor, torn into two halves?

Rochester:

Suddenly he's all concerned and thanks god nothing happened to Jane. He tells her it was part reality, part dream, that the woman was Grace Poole and she came to Jane's room and tore up her veil, but Jane, half asleep, ascribed her a ghoulish appearance. 

It seems like a reasonable explanation. Except for the part where he still keeps a seemingly unstable, even dangerous, person in the house. He promises Jane he will explain all about Grace Poole after they've been married a year and a day. Jane, on Rochester's advice, sleeps in Adele's nursery that night. 

[queerlit]

Six Spooky Queer Novels

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Photo Source Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she's hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. So while most girls celebrate their Quinceañera, Alex prepares for her Deathday―the most important day in a bruja's life and her only opportunity to rid herself of magic. But the curse she performs during the ceremony backfires, and her family vanishes, forcing Alex to absorb all of the magic from her family line. Left alone, Alex seeks help from Nova, a brujo with ambitions of his own. -- Amazon

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle L. Gómez

Photo Source The winner of two Lambda Literary Awards (fiction and science fiction) The Gilda Stories is a very lesbian American odyssey. Escaping from slavery in the 1850s Gilda's longing for kinship and community grows over two hundred years. Her induction into a family of benevolent vampyres takes her on an adventurous and dangerous journey full of loud laughter and subtle terror. -- Goodreads

The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Photo Source Caitlín R. Kiernan is a master of her craft of dark fantasy-sci-fi horror and The Drowning Girl is an excellent place to start with her books. India Morgan Phelps — aka Imp — begins her first person story by telling the reader that she is schizophrenic and that she’s aware of her own unreliability. This, of course, calls into question the entirety of the book that follows. But this is not a story that asks you to guess whether the supernatural elements are real or whether they are just a product of Imp’s mental health status. Instead, it’s an investigation of how the paranormal — Imp’s encounter with a mysterious figure — interacts with mental illness. This post-modern creepy, if not outright scary story, also features a lesbian relationship between a cis and a trans woman! -- Autostraddle

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Photo Source Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness. But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets. In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing. -- Goodreads

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Photo Source Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets, and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now. -- Goodreads

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Photo Source Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps. -- Goodreads

[percontaion-points]

VOEN chapter 24

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Click here for the rest of the series!

Chapter 24

That collar was fastened around the neck of a vampire. It writhed as the Rinches dragged it forward, its long, spindly arms spasming in the sunlight, its head thrown back in agony. It let loose another scream. 

So here’s a legitimate question: why do these people look at this terrifying creature and IMMEDIATELY think “vampire”?

Yes, the term vampire is really old. But it wouldn’t begin to take hold in pop culture until Dracula was published. Which I’d like to remind the chronologically oriented people… This won’t be for another 50-some years. In fact, in the timeline of this book, Bram Stoker’s MOTHER is currently pregnant with him. 

But even then, as I tumble down a wikipedia rabbit hole, I’m not even sure if the term “vampire” would have reached Mexico… Seeing as how it was a European hysteria. (Also, the old term was technically “vampyre”, if we’re going to be historically accurate.) Maybe stories had travelled over with the Spaniards, but considering how much that they don’t like them, IDK why they would listen to those stories. 

I KNOW WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT VAMPIRES IN ORDER TO ENJOY THIS. 

She reached for his hips and pulled him hard against her. His groan sent a trill of pleasure through her. “I want all of you,” she said.

Chapter 24 summary: So the sound that they heard was that the yankees grabbed at least a couple of vampires, and are loading them up onto a barge. How convenient that this happened to be near where Nena and Nestor had stopped during the heat of the day. As one of them lies on the deck of the barge, it seems to look at Nena, and she knows this. She feels like the thing senses that she’s an “unfinished meal”. 

Nestor finally says that they can leave, since the yankees are obviously more than a little preoccupied with the creatures that they captured. They go back to the horses, saddle up, and ride and ride until the horses can’t anymore. They then stop in a cave for the night, and Nena puts salt around the mouth of it. 

As they sit on the ground, Nena worries that the vampires are creatures sent by the yankees to not only drive them out from their lands, but also to kill the people. Nestor then starts to talk about the ranch where he’d been as a boy, before he’d come to Nena’s father’s ranch. White men had pushed them out and murdered everybody, including Nestor’s father. He’s certain that they’re going to continue to do the same thing. 

However, this is quick to lead into the idea that home is where your loved ones are. And they start to make out. Nestor tells Nena that if she wants this, then they can be together. The money doesn’t matter; only each other. Nena obviously does actually want this, which she’s quick to tell him. 

[silurisanguine]

WIP Title Game

@vorchagirl tagged me to do this fun WIP title meme. Seeing

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it. Tag as many people as wips.

WIPs: (separated into stories and ones offs)

Deus ex- Informants A new mission A history lesson The curtain parts Hope you like your prize Spyboy

Starfield- Rekindled Fire Safe Harbour The Empty Nest. Like a daughter Serpent's Embrace ~ Eternity's Embrace (working title) Mass Effect Andromeda (F Reyder) - He Who Is upon His Mountain (working title) Thief - Truth in dreams ~ Embers

Dishonored - Remnants

Vampyr- Finding information The Blackwood mansion ~ Meeting of minds Priwen's newest recruit

I'm not going to tag this amount of people, but i will tag the Coemancer Crew, @sentryskyhawk @lakritzwolf @bloodofthepen @despicablediet and Anyone else who sees this, yes you are now tagged!