#my progress: deathless

[elementroar]

Analysis behind the backstory and personal story arcs of A.B.A. and Paracelsus (part 1)

Sorry for the people who waited. Technical and real life delays and all that. On the positive, I happened to run into new resources in the past two days that have helped lining up the facts easier.

Anyway, I originally wanted to compress all the lore into a single post, but I find it’s so much more massive once you really dig into the analysis between the story across multiple mediums, the in-game animations and interactions etc. To make this more readable for you all and to make creating these posts faster, I’m going to separate them up into parts that focus on different facets of their relationship and lore as I progress through them.

This first part goes into their origins, and I hope this big post helps to thoroughly explain who/what A.B.A. and Paracelsus are, their backstories prior to STRIVE, and my own analysis sprinkled on top. I want to try to keep the info/lore dump minimal and focused, so if I mention a character without elaborating, I’ll leave a link but if I’m not elaborating more, it’s because they’re not relevant to A.B.A/Paracelsus' stories that much.

Related links:

Analysis of Paracelsus' initial bloodlust and its longlasting effects on A.B.A (Part 2)

This is the "Why ABA and Paracelsus can feel horny" lore/theory post

Flament Nagel - Paracelsus’ true form theory

The Red King and White Queen alchemical concept in A.B.A and Paracelsus’ relationship

The beginning with A.B.A.

First off, to introduce their individual origins, it’s easiest to start with A.B.A. She’s a homunculus, an artificial lifeform created by a scientist in his mansion, which was located in the mountains of a region called Frasco or Flask. But before she was ‘born’, her creator had been taken away by the military for his skills in creating artificial life, and so A.B.A. woke up alone.

Despite this, within the 10 years she spent alone in the mansion she was able to learn to read, write, and even create some alchemical magic (seen in some of her attacks in games before -STRIVE-). It’s assumed either she was created with a set of memories and skills, or she naturally learns very quickly. It’s probably due to reading leftover journals and research materials that she even learnt her creator’s name was Paracelsus.

Technically, A.B.A. could’ve left the manor quite easily, there was even a village not far from them. However, she understood that she knew nothing about the world outside and was scared to leave the safety of the manor by venturing outside to explore the unknown world. But she did yearn for freedom and to leave Frasco, so she took to fixating on keys, which she found fascinating in being able to unlock doors to different places.

In the last bit of her 10 years in Frasco, A.B.A would accidentally cross paths with the hidden the demon axe Flament Nagel (which she would later rename to ‘Paracelsus’ in honour of her creator, or just cos that’s the only other name she actually knew).

What’s a demon axe doing here anyway?

So what is Paracelsus? He is what’s known as a magical foci, which are objects or even people that get a soul or a collection of memories/emotions/desires attached to them, which eventually leads to them gaining sentience and often supernatural abilities. They draw from the Backyard, which is basically where the information that makes up all reality is stored in the Guilty Gear world, and also the source of magic. This is the origin of ‘demons’ within the GG world, like Paracelsus.

The story of how Paracelsus/Flament Nagel ended up in Frasco actually involves the ancient Nightwalker (technically not a vampire but he's basically a vampire without the bad stuff) known as Slayer.

Now Slayer is this incredibly old, incredibly strong vampire Nightwalker, who nonetheless is a very nice guy who doesn’t need to feed on regular people because his wife, Sharon, is a deathless woman that he can feed on indefinitely without worrying about her dying.

Because of his immense age (AFAIK he’s the oldest of the main GG cast) and overwhelming power (he always holds back in-game), he has very insightful observations of Paracelsus and A.B.A.

The following screenshots are excerpts taken from the English transcript (available here) translated from the Night of Knives Vol.2 audio drama CD (you can listen to it here), and are from the perspective of Slayer recounting his encounters with Paracelsus and A.B.A.

Sometime near the end of the 100 year long war between Gears and humans known as the Crusades, Slayer was roaming a battlefield and came across a mountain of corpses of both Gears and humans. In the middle of it was a wandering blood covered warrior that was swinging an axe wildly. After confronting the man, Slayer realized that it was the axe that was the true master, the man had already lost his mind and was under its full control.

That axe called itself Flament Nagel aka the Flaming Nail, or the Sanguine Gale. I'll still be referring to him as Paracelsus at this point in time though.

Now magical foci start off simple-minded, only repeating small word fragments, and evolve over time to become more intelligent and sapient. At this point, young Paracelsus was a demon axe who had just gained sentience on that battlefield. Hot-headed and hungry for blood, and wanting to prove his combat superiority, he challenged Slayer and got curb stomped. Slayer was disappointed in how primitive Paracelsus still was in mind and soul, so he left him there to rust.

However eventually, Paracelsus was picked up from that battlefield and was sent to the alchemist Paracelsus, creator of A.B.A. We don’t know if the alchemist knew what the demon axe was, or whether he even requested him specifically for research. But the alchemist ultimately didn’t let Paracelsus out, not letting him take control over him and hiding him somewhere in the depths of his mansion.

(Inaccurate information removed, updating with A.B.A.'s JP GG World entry from XRD)

It would be after A.B.A.’s 10 year long isolation that she decided for reasons unknown, to leave the mansion and explore the outside world. By pure chance, she comes across Paracelsus, who because kinda resembled a key, she immediately picked up and she fell in love with him and decided they were married from then on.

Becoming her key

It's always been known that Paracelsus has some form of empathic abilities, and that he could tell that A.B.A. was fixated on keys and assumed the shape of a giant key to entice her to wield him. This was also the first ‘manipulation’ that Paracelsus admitted he had done to A.B.A. during their heart-to-heart talk.

It’s been further clarified in this recent interview, that it wasn’t so much Paracelsus deliberately taking the form of a key to attract ABA, but because ABA had been so heavily fixated on keys that she saw Paracelsus as a key straight away. That image she had of him as a key seemed to immediately imprint itself on him the moment she touched him, because of his true nature as “an axe (that) transforms into the owner’s image” of what his wielder wants him to be.

Slayer actually did mention this was likely the case over 20 IRL years ago in the audio drama CD, when he observed Paracelsus behaviour with A.B.A. in their second encounter.

Because A.B.A. never sees Paracelsus as a weapon, Paracelsus began to change to fit her ideal of what she saw him as, to become something more than just a weapon, and allowing Paracelsus to truly change and evolve physically and emotionally.

It’s important to note, Paracelsus isn’t bound to his wielder, and he doesn’t HAVE to allow this to happen either. Despite being dragged around by A.B.A. and acting like he has no autonomy; he actually has all the power to stop her from the start.

As Slayer notes, Para still has the power to completely take over A.B.A. 's mind and force her to do what he wants if he is truly unhappy. However he has never even threatened A.B.A. with this ability, and if not for Slayer knowing his past, no one would know Paracelsus actually can do this.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Para was becoming more than just a demon axe from the moment he met A.B.A., and in his heart of hearts, he was begrudgingly accepting of his then situation-ship with her.

Fast forward to STRIVE and it's shown that he still continues to evolve to fulfill her 'vision' of what he is. When described as becoming more key-like, it's more obvious when you place both his old and new design side-by-side.

Notably, the blade part of his axe form has gotten smaller by STRIVE, just as he has sworn off violence and bloodshed by STRIVE.

It's even shown in how A.B.A. wields him., especially when Para partially possess or influences A.B.A. in his Muroha mode in the old games (mechanically this is the Jealous Mode in STRIVE). A.B.A. would wield him like a proper 'axe' blade-first in XX/ACCENT CORE. In STRIVE, since A.B.A. is now the dominant one in Jealous Rage mode, she doesn't wield him like an axe and now wields him by...bashing his head into people.

(Also I'll be going over the in-game animations and what they convey in a future post, don't you worry! You can view the comparison compilation here first.)

This even is shown in how A.B.A. uses Paracelsus as an actual key in her Overdrive "Keeper of the Key", which is a new move for her.

If we go further, I have speculated in this semi-crack theory that due to A.B.A. also interjecting her ideal of Paracelsus being her spouse over the years, that him actually 'reacting' to her advances now could also be an example of his evolution.

Even if he's trying REAL hard not to.

Hope this was an enjoyable read, let me know if you have any suggestions for improving readability or other stuff. Feel free to ask me questions through the inbox in the mean time that I'm working on the next part.

The next part is going to be analyzing and comparing Paracelsus' XX/ACCENT CORE Muroha mode to STRIVE's Jealous Rage mode, which has quite a bit of detail from comparing their effects on A.B.A. in in-game sprites/animations, plus how it reflects on the change in their power dynamics between games.

Edit: Part 2 available here

[fuck-you-upmusicbracket]

Take Me To Church (Hozier)

I was born sick, but I love it/Command me to be well/A-, Amen, Amen, Amen/Take me to church/I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies/I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife/Offer me that deathless death/Good God, let me give you my life

“1. It’s Hozier, what do you expect? 2. Worship imagery... (I don’t know why I like it, but I do.)”

Against the Kitchen Floor (Will Wood)

And I swear! I will die trying!/I'm still in the process, but I'm making progress; I promise I honestly wanna prove improvement's possible, I swear!/I'm so fucking sorry! I'm not a good person, I'm barely a person at all, But someday I'll be perfect, and I'll make up for it all!

Less rare than scarce, less diamond then rough/Unlikely to be more than just the coal you failed to crush

I'm catatonic in your arms, crying, "How did I cause so much harm?"/I'm down pounding my head against the kitchen floor/Apologizing for my life and ever entering yours

The vertex of my redemption arc/I’m searching on that virgin heart

"The raw emotion! And I strongly relate to desperately wanting to improve for someone you love. I belt out this song when I feel really hopeless"

"my one OC. also me. also it's just a really good song. one of will's best imo. screaminbg"

"Literally hits almost all of my self-esteem issues. Feeling like people only care about you for your body? Check. Not understanding why anyone would want you? Check. Thinking that all you do is hurt people? Check. I don't cry very often but this song DEFINITELY made me teary"

"one of those if u aren’t paying attention to the lyrics ur like this is nice but once u hear them its an OW holy OW and guilt and I’m sorry feelings"

"Just. Loving someone but not feeling like you’re good enough and trying to improve."

"Not only does this song have lyrics that are deeply relatable to me, but this song also feels very deeply personal to the artist and I feel that anyone who listens to it for the first time has that same feeling of getting punched in the gut. Just the lyrics and the melody and Will Wood’s vocals make this song an absolute masterpiece and I cry every time I hear it."

"One reason I'm attached to this song is because my friend sent it to me and said "I'm kin assigning you this song" and ruined my life (/j) It messed me up because I've always had a hard time in my life figuring myself out and dealing with my emotions, and for what feels like the first time, this song has been able to near perfectly describe how I feel about myself and my impact on other people, and it always just meant so much to me that my friend who sent it to me knows me better than I know myself and shared the song with me and I love them dearly."

Against the Kitchen Floor submitted by @pixopolis + others

[ageless-aislynn]

Day 3 (there was no post for Day 2 😉) of Project: Mass Effect 1 on Insanity!

Friends. My friends. I've cleared all of the side quests I'm planning on doing and am in the process of fighting my way through Feros. Still have Noveria and Virmire to go, then the big battle on the Citadel at the end. But still. I'm playing on Insanity and I'm continuing to progress and I'm so happy about it! 🤗🤗🤗

I also am NOT looking forward to Mass Effect 2 which is going to nerf all of my wonderful powers and be about 10k% harder but hey, let's just stay focused on fighting the Thorian and Temporarily!Evil!Shiala 'cause that's a slog on lower difficulties for me and I'm not anticipating a lot of fun. But! I've made it this far!

But for the important thing that you're probably ACTUALLY wondering about: what armor is everybody wearing? 🤔

Garrus in cutscenes continues to wear his standard armor. Probably because he's tired of GLOWING IN THE DARK in the armor I have my stealthy Archangel sniper in during gameplay...

Yeah, that's not exactly camouflage, I'm sorry to say. But it gives him the best stats so... 🤷‍♀️

Liara looks pretty good in hers, I'd say, more tanky than usual. And I'm getting used to Shep's not!N7 armor now.

I actually kinda dig the helmet with those lights!

Annnnnd, of course, then I got a set of armor with better specs so had to change it, lol! 👀🤷‍♀️😉

Don't know what the helmet's going to look like yet but at least it's back to my N7 red and black colors!

Also! If you're like me and that fight on Therum ruins (right before you go inside to rescue Liara) is a tough one for you, what with the Geth troopers and those darn jumpy Geth Stalkers (grr 🤬) and the Geth Colossus just sitting back there all murdering you on Casual and Normal? Friends. I got through it deathless on Insanity. Let Auntie Aislynn tell you how so this part of the mission will never, ever bother you again! (You may know all of this, of course, but I didn't until I was doing some research before this mission. 😉)

Oh no, the Mako can't drive through that narrow opening, guess we have to go forward on foot and face all of those Geth with just our handguns and biotic/tech powers! 😞

Heh, or you can get the Mako to roll onto its side and then wiggle wiggle wiggle thruster jet thruster jet thruster jet wiggle wiggle until you pop through to the other side! NOTE: Make sure to save right before you try this maneuver because the first time I did it, I got jammed in there and couldn't go forward, back or exit the Mako so had to revert. But it's worth the risk to get your two Mako cannons in this fight with you! (I have the actual gameplay footage so if you'd like to see this all in action, just let me know! 😉)

Jumpy Geth Stalker?

An easy kablooey! 💥

Geth Colossus? Stood there and took it straight to the face and never even fired a shot at me ether because I was out of its range or it was just so 😱SHOCKED😱 I'd gotten the Mako in here, lol! 😂😉

So definitely take that tactic if you can, my friends. It makes this part a breeze! 😎

Anyway! I've got some tough fights ahead of me but I've done better than I expected. I didn't have to do the Rogue VI mission (aka proto EDI) but I needed some targets for Tali to user her AI hacking abilities on for an achievement, so I thought I'd just go there, let the bazillion drones kill us but hopefully get some AI hacking in, revert, get some more in, etc. then just abandon the mission when I got tired of it. It's not required to advance the main mission so can be left undone.

I beat the mission. 😲Granted, we all died A LOT because those drones are SUPER AGGRESSIVE and there's not a lot of room to run. And I was focused on trying to get hits with Tali's AI hacking talent as much as possible. But still! I just kept trying and trying, took about 6 times to finally clear all the waves and we were done!

So now, wish me luck, that darn Thorian and Temp!Evil!Shiala are going to be my hardest challenge yet, I think! 😬🤞😣🤞 Love you all! 🤗💖

[gatesofminrathous]

DA Fic Master List

In the interest of trying to consolidate info on all of my Dragon Age fics in one place, I think it's time for a master list. Please note that my ao3 username is throneofthegods, not to be confused with the tumblr user of that name (just a coincidence because everyone loves that banger of a line).

Veilguard-Era

No Rest In This World

Relationship: Lucanis Dellamorte/Rook de Riva, Lucanis/Rook/Spite

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 118,205 (23/?) - Active In Progress

Tags: Post-Game, Antivan Crow Politics, Childhood Trauma, Family Drama, Angst, Established Relationship

“How does it feel?” said Illario. “How does what feel?” said Rook. “Being in his shadow.” --- When you’ve lived through the end of the world, how do you move on? A city saved, gods killed, an apocalypse averted, and the veil restored. As the survivors of Thedas struggle to pick up the pieces of a fallen world, the Antivan Crows are faced with an unusual contract from an unexpected source. But for Rook de Riva, moving forward is no small feat, especially when the Crows’ newest contract claws at the doors of a past long ignored. As the new First Talon struggles to find his place - and peace with the demon within - Rook and Lucanis must find a way to build a new life together from the ashes of the old. But quiet domesticity has never been easy for a Crow, and death - and the ghosts of the past - are always just around the corner.

---

You Only Feel It When It's Lost

Relationship: Emmrich Volkarin/Rook Ingellvar

Rating: General Audiences

Word Count: 2,598

Tags: Regret, Hurt No Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Lich Emmrich Volkarin

He has not drawn breath in more than half a century. He does not remember how. And yet, still, he feels a pang where once a beating heart thrummed beneath his deathless bones. It is not the first time he feels this pain, but it is the last. --- Immortality is a heavy burden to bear alone. When the last of the Veilguard passes on, Emmrich stands alone and questions if the price of lichdom was worth it.

Inquisition Era

Where Shall I Begin?

Relationship: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 69,360 (27/?) - On Hiatus

Tags: Epistolary, Letters, Lyrium Addiction, Slow Burn, Mage Inquisitor, Friends to Lovers, Multi POV

For Cullen, the Inquisition was a chance to atone, to make peace with a Templar's regrets. For Evelyn, it was the chance to live a life free of the Circle's restraints and to reunite with the Templar brother she has not seen in twenty long years. But even in the midst of chaos that follows, there are always quiet moments. Letters from a brother to a sister, separated by time and circumstance. Notes passed between friends, reveling in the gossip that surrounds a burgeoning hero. Strange figures met on the road...and sometimes closer to home. And the friendships and love that grows between the unlikeliest pairs. This is the story of the Inquisition as told through the letters of its people. And the story of a former Circle mage and ex-Templar who, despite it all, find hope - and the chance at a future - in one another.

Nothing He Wrought Shall Be Lost

Relationship: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 5,292

Tags: Family Reunions, Fluff, First Meetings, Post-Inquistion

Thirteen years after entering Kinloch Hold and three months after the fall of Corypheus, Cullen Rutherford and Evelyn Trevelyan make a visit a long time coming, and Cullen is forced to reckon with the question haunting him for the past decade: just how unconditional is a family's love?

[malottie]

My qualms with Nine Sols

1: The problem with the endings

2 Introduction: The lessons from the Sols

2: Why I can't agree with the true ending being a good ending

3: The last element of confusion : difference in treatment

The problem with the endings

the fact that the catalyst for which ending happens is whether Eigong decides to infect the Fusang or not makes it feel kinda disconnected from player decision.

i get the idea that in one you align yourself with solarians so she entrusts Yi with the future but in the other you want to help the apemen so she goes on her mad scientist thing but there's no clear moment in the game where you show your allegiance to either side (well there is but there is no logical way for her to know your choice as she's already in the council room at that time) and the fact that the dialogue with her is so similar between the 2 endings makes it feel extremely random

i did the true ending first then the base one and i was baffled when she just keeled over

there's also the fact that there's only 2 endings. for a game it makes sense not to have too many but there's so many things wrong with having just these two extremes with no room inbetween for nuance, the thing the game seemed to have been directing us towards. ryzomatic arrow + apemen friendly = true ending

so if you wanna help the apemen, do everything with shuanshuan and shennong etc but don't have the ryzomatic arrow suddenly she decides she's fine with you and just dies on the floor ? it makes sense gameplay-wise because it would lead to a failed true ending where all solarians of new kunlun become mutated monstruous immortals, which would be extremely frustrating because nothing ever hints at you to go get the ryzomatic bomb or its importance for the ending but it's pretty stupid you'll have to admit

and then even if you helped the village and became close with shuanshuan, as long as you don't choose the ending where you blow yourself up you're forced into the one where you have a full storage room continually supplied with apemen brains

there is no inbetween. you're either a lunatic who has learned nothing after your meaningless quest for vengeance and continues exploiting and torturing other species to fuel your escapism. or. a lunatic that has come to peace with yourself after your meaningless quest for vengeance so much that you don't care about dying at all and decide to obliterate yourself, your last comrades and your past in a blaze of pseudo-nuclear energy

this puts growth not as a progressive spectrum, but as a balance where change is meaningless and inexistent unless that change is complete in all aspects, which is harmful and incorrect

The lessons from the Sols

each boss has a piece of meaning, a lesson attached to it

Kuafu shows you that vengeance is rarely about moral and justice, but rather an endeavor originating from interpersonnal conflict

Goumang teaches you that both good and bad intentions can lead to dark extremes and that vengeance can transform you into something worse than what you seek to destroy

Yanlao demonstrates that some traditions aren't worth holding on to and wherever power, money and/or status rules, corruption always arises

Jiequan is about how those that idealise the past and cling to bygone glory are stuck and cannot move forward, hurting everyone around in their single-mindedness

Lady Ethereal exemplifies that silence is compliance, and keeping quiet stabilises the status quo, helping only a very few, but also that guilt is meaningless if it causes you to shrink and auto-flagellate instead of fixing your mistakes and helping others

Ji's message is that immortality is a curse and deathlessness brings meaninglessness (which i don't necessarely agree with but sure)

and Fuxi and Nuwa drive home the point that running away from your problems (no matter the way) never solves them

but Eigong has a lot of stuff

Why I can't agree with the true ending being a good ending

"no goal is worth sacrificing everything you have". "being unable to accept failure as a part of life will drive you insane and endanger everything around you including what you aim to do", which is all fine but after that is where i don't agree with the final concusion reached in the shooting star ending. yes, you can't always stop bad things from happening. yes, dedicating all your energy to trying nonetheless is both an inevitable consequence of hope and something that can swallow you whole. yes, all things are destined to end

and in the context of that ending it's a necessity of sorts to stop the infected Fusang, and it is even the "true" ending. the "good" ending

the framing is sort of that Yi has found peace at last and rights the wrongs of his people by blowing up new kunlun but. why ?

you might say that the time of the solarians had come ; accepting their death is a big part of the story. but that doesn't mean you need to bring about that end yourself. you don't need to die right that moment. Kuafu even survives

you could also say that Yi atones for his sins by dying here or that he deserves it in some way, that it is his destiny at this point in time as the only thing that remains after vengeance is death : but there is no "deserving" anything ; neither Yi nor any of the sols "deserve" to die for what they've done, nor do they "deserve" to live, actual good praxis is that to "atone", you need to fix your mistakes and change. and in order to do that you need to not be dead. sacrifice is meaningless

no one gains anything from the sols dying. the tragedy has already happened. their death means nothing and that is why Yi's quest of revenge is meaningless, and by the same logic Yi's own death is meaningless too

a perfect ending would be one where Yi is still affiliated enough to solarians that Eigong doesn't infect the Fusang, but he has changed enough that he understands it is the end for solarians and apemen deserve a try at life. he might seek out eventual survivors in New Kunlun, giving them the choice between accepting the end will come or stay within their dreamscape as the station slowly falls into disrepair and the system shuts down for lack of computationnal power, coming from no apemen brain being collected anymore. he would then go find Shuanshuan and Kuafu with the eventual survivors that chose to go, where they could all live their final days in peace. doesn't it seems so much happier ? so much sweeter ?

not all stories need a perfect ending, or even a good ending. but this one does. isn't Yi's story over the course of the game one of change towards peace, understanding and compassion ? wouldn't it be better for his story to end not with a final burst of violence, but a slow and mellow acceptance of life and death ? wouldn't it be more interesting thematicaly and emotionnaly for him to die the same way Heng did, the little sister he could never understand before ?

it would even be a possible ending technically, though not sure with how inconsistent that endings system is

The last element of confusion : difference in treatment

to finish, and highlight why Yi's sacrifice is meaningless, let's take a look at Kuafu

for some reason, Kuafu is exempt from this idea that a form of atonement is necessary. the game is inconsistent. and that's not just from the shooting star ending where he is the last solarian to survive

Kuafu might be the "least" guilty of all sols but he still has his part of responsibility for everything, and he doesn't do much to redeem himself, though he does become more fond of Shuanshuan and the apemen. whatever moral metric there might be that the sols and yi's deaths are necessary/deserved/good should be applied to him too. but no

in Eigong's vital sanctum we see a cinematic representing Yi's guilt and realisation he is no better than the other sols. "when the curtain falls, none of us are really at fault" says the Heng in his mind. but Kuafu is not present for some reason, where all the other sols are. "we are sols [...] we are martyrs, working in vain [...] our light is already faded [...] no one's at fault, for we are only sols."

the difference in treatment feels like it's coming out of nowhere, which only muddles the game's final message

so there you have it

Nine Sols is a master piece in many regards, a veritable treat gameplay-wise with a very interesting story, but that gets less clear at the end with unsatisfactory endings and a message i ultimately cannot agree with

to live is good

the solarians' sin was never their search for immortality or for a cure to the tianhuo virus

it was the thousands other mistakes they made on the way

mistakes that dying as martyrs cannont resolve

[frythebrains]

Me, finding a new comfort character: Oh boy, I finally have a blorbo to cherish! I love them so much!

The world my comfort character resides in: It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die. Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

[secretaryofdarkness]

Excerpt of Saints in the Desert (draft)

Putting under the cut bc it's long lmao

And also for (mild) disturbing content. Read at your own discretion.

Dark clouds gathered in the sky, the first Damian had seen since entering the desert so long ago. He had almost forgotten them. The air cooled, leaving only the sting of his burnt skin in the breeze. How could it rain here? Damian stopped walking, looking up to the sky in nervous wonder; it had been so long since he felt weather like this, weather that felt like home. When Damian turned he noticed the king looking up at the sky as well. He wondered if the king would be able to feel the rain. The thought was only brief; Damian started walking again.

“Why do you keep walking? You are far from my kingdom now. Is your cowardice so deep that you fear being tracked even this far?”

Damian ignored him. The specter drifted behind him as they moved on. The air was almost pleasant. It was such an alien feeling these days that Damian almost couldn’t place it at first, like some part of his core had grown over with misery and dampened his nerves. Damian thought about Leander, roaming somewhere in this horrible desert holding his head. Leander should feel this cool evening air. Not him.

Oh god, Leander.

Damian came to a massive dune, steep and wide. Thoughtlessly he trudged, pushing ever more sand with his labored steps, losing nearly as much ground as gained, crunching beneath his feet. Damian began to notice that the leather of his soles had worn through; sand was finding its way under his heel, sticking itself to his sweaty and clammed skin. What a perfect picture of misery, to work toward such pointless ends with such injurous means? No matter. He planted his hands to climb, grabbing at nothing save the endless amounts of sand.

He might’ve spent hours this way. Climbing up far enough to reach the upturned sand of his handholds with his feet, slipping on the lack of anything solid, only making progress by jamming his pointed hands so far into the sand as to anchor themselves among the tons of granules’ weight. The thought of wasted effort crossed his mind, but never stuck. There was no wasted time for a dead man, no injury for a deathless one. The top was nearing anyhow.

Damian reached the peak with his now bloodied hands, no sooner conquering the dune than collapsing to fall down the other side. He tumbled end over end, falling completely slack from the exhaustion of his Pyrrhic victory. He winced as his back finally crashed into the sand hard enough to stop rolling. As he lay with his eyes tightly shut, he began to smell something odd. Was it… flowers?

Damian hesitated to open his eyes. He heard the rising and falling of someone breathing next to him, an even in and out of complete serenity. The flowery scent grew clearer, as if a haze was lifted from Damian’s senses and he knew now where and what he truly was. The feeling lulled him, lifting his aching muscles from so much torment. Damian could feel his chest rising and falling in rhythm with the breathing body next to his. A sigh overtook him. Was this contentedness? No.

No.

Damian shot upright, peeling his eyes open to the dark evening. The rain clouds still loomed overhead. The ground around him was a grove of columbines growing at odds with the desert sand. He swallowed, mustered his courage despite the pit in his stomach, and turned his head.

Lying in the flowers was a relaxed man, his dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail that was cast beside him, his head resting on his crossed wrists, looking skyward. His breathing remained calm as ever, gentle rises and depressions. Without turning to look at Damian, Leander spoke.

“You’ve been gone a while, Damian.”

This was wrong. This was terrible. Disgusting. Leander was dead. Leander is dead, he thought. As sure as the axe he swung that day, Damian was sure Leander was dead.

Leander turned his head and smiled that easy smile Damian had missed so long. The depth of his dark eyes felt close enough to drown in. Floods of emotion washed over him in every direction at once, leaving him in the depths with no sign of shore. Seeing Leander alive. Or whatever this was. His head still on his shoulders, his face still full of vitality. No awful voice crawling through Damian’s head from stitched lips. The feeling in Damian’s chest was pounding harder than his heart. Even the hunger subsided, at least in this moment. The scent of these columbines, favorites of Leander’s from back home, impossibly sweet. Damian knew of the tales of men losing themselves to madness in the sun, but the realness of his ache was heavy enough to drown out the doubt. He let himself fall back into the flowers, just as Leander beside him.

“I’ve missed you. So terribly. It’s the ache that’s stayed the strongest.”

Leander pushed himself up on one elbow, looking at Damian. “Let me see your face,” he said, pulling Damian by his cheek to turn his head. Damian looked deep in his face as Leander appraised him. “Your hair has grown unkempt. So has your beard. God,” he said, his face painted with concern, “you look fucking awful.”

Damian laughed, Leander with him. “Yes, I suppose I’ve had other concerns. I wish I could’ve been washed and groomed to see you again. I just never thought I would.”

“It’s not a meeting I’d have guessed either, if I’m honest. Tell me though,” he started, looking downcast, “you are a saint now, yes?”

Damian’s breath caught. He looked down at the columbines, idly tracing the edge of some petals with his fingers. “So you know about that.”

“Of course. It was my neck, after all.”

“I’m so sorry, Leander.”

“Don’t be. You didn’t know.”

“I’d still be a murderer even if it wasn’t you.”

Leander looked up to meet Damian’s eyes. “We’re soldiers, Damian. We made our peace with that long ago. You told me once that any man that objects has freedom to walk away.”

“I know. I didn’t think I’d be killing my own, though,” Damian said, his voice cracking.

“But you don’t hold that regret for the women and children of Enura. Only for me.”

“No. I regret them too. I wish I’d walked away that day when I said you could. I should have walked away with you.”

Leander began plucking columbines from the ground, raising them to his face, his eyes not leaving Damian’s. He inhaled deep, then said, “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Your favorites, if I recall.”

Leander nodded. He held the plucked blossom to his mouth and planted a gentle kiss on its petals, reached out, and placed the flower behind Damian’s ear.

“A shred of beauty amongst the decay. You’ve still got a sense of humor.”

“No. Two beautiful things.”

Damian stopped, his smile fading. He looked now at Leander differently. “What?”

Leander pushed himself forward and put his hand on Damian’s cheek. Such a gentle feeling. He pushed Damian to the ground. Damian looked up at his best friend, his dead friend, mouth agape. How had he not realized?

Damian stifled the words. “How long ha-”

Leander pushed himself down onto Damian and kissed him. It was forceful, ravenous. His hands pushing him deeper into the flower bed below. Damian’s cracked lips peeled open under the force of this hunger, this consumption. It was as if Leander was drunk on his bleeding lip, hungrily lapping at drops from his mouth. Damian’s head was swimming. He felt Leander’s ponytail draped across his cheek, felt the heat of his breath that was so unlike the even in and out from before. He felt the rain beginning to fall. He felt hungry.

He felt himself give in and kiss Leander as forcefully as he had. Wants he didn’t even recognize clawed at him now. The rain was drenching them both, but neither cared. Lust found itself buried in Damian’s mouth and he wanted it out. He wanted. Oh god, he wanted. He felt Leander’s hands on his chest, smooth and determined, sliding down to the hem of his shirt, rolling over him like coveted gold. Elation washed over him, saturated him, made him shake. Leander pulled his mouth away, grinned, and pulled Damian’s head to the side.

He sank his teeth down into Damian’s neck. A flash of pain, but gentleness with it. It was a loving bite. He could feel Leander’s lips close around the skin, his hot breath next to Damian’s ear. His eyes rolled, his body shaking, overcome with new sensations. To think this was hiding below the surface. He felt Leander’s hand creep lower. Dangerously low. A twitch of surprise, which Leander laughed at.

He pulled his face up. “Not bad for a dead man, eh?”

Damian tried catching his breath, realizing only now how hard he had been panting. “Where in the hell did this come from?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know. You felt it as strongly as I did. You felt it every time you spared the other men the kindness you gave me, every time I gave you a portion of my dinner at camp, every night we stayed up talking to avoid going to sleep.”

Damian knew he was right.

“You slept rough every night. You never spoke about it but you had terrible nightmares every single night. I slept next to you until morning every time, holding your arm to keep you company because it’s all I could do for a man who wouldn’t tell me what battles he was fighting in his sleep. You tell me you didn’t know I loved you.”

“Loved,” Damian said, quietly. He mulled the word over in his mind. “Past tense.”

“Yeah. You and I both know this isn’t real. It can only be past tense now, can’t it?”

“It feels real enough,” Damian said, placing his hand on Leander’s chest. “I hope you know I love you too. I don’t think I understood it at the time, but I do. But then I always am the last one to figure things out, I guess. I’m sorry I didn’t love you sooner.”

Tears rolled on Leander’s cheeks among the rain. “You loved me enough that I knew. Don’t regret what’s done, darling. Where are you?”

Damian thought to himself. He had no idea. He was in a patch of foreign flowers that shouldn’t be growing here. He was in a rainstorm. He was with his lover, his dead lover whom he had killed with his own hand. He was starving. He was resting for the first time in ages, somewhere lost in an eternity, nestled in a little patch of impossible home. Home. What did that word even mean anymore? He didn’t belong to Kelsys any longer. He wondered if he even wished to. All it would take would be to turn back around. He could hide himself among his countrymen. Nobody really knew who he was beyond the scant few soldiers of the castle that he had fled; it wouldn’t be difficult to hide anywhere else. Kelsys was vast country, perhaps he could find a place out in the frontier? A simple agrarian life. He’d always wanted to raise animals. Have a window in his den to look at the columbines.

Damian looked back up to meet Leander’s gaze. There was a softness to his evening eyes that made Damian weak. The pain was catching up to him. The hunger. The aches of his muscles. His burnt skin. He’d spent so long pushing it under, trying his best to ignore it, but it was now bubbling up in a terrible boil. Leander’s face shifted with growing concern; he could obviously detect Damian’s pain. Before he could speak, a shadow fell over both of them, leaving Leander in an almost inky black darkness. A man’s shadow.

He appeared as if from nowhere. Ephemeral, illusory. Damian could look through him into the darkness of the rain. He squinted his eyes, trying against all to see the detail of the man, details which seemed to dance away from Damian’s eyes.

“Who are-?”

Before Damian could even finish his question the man materialized, a severe man in dark armor holding a long axe. Damian’s eyes locked themselves to the man’s face. His face. Damian was looking as a horrible shadow of himself, his eyes full of malice. A contemptible zealotry radiated from the shadow’s eyes. Damian knew it well. Horror mounted in Damian’s mind as he realized what was happening. He couldn’t even scream. He couldn’t do anything.

Damian’s shadow raised the axe. With a clean and mighty cleave, Leander’s head fell into Damian’s lap.

[hpowellsmith]

Hi! I have played and enjoyed all of your games, and even though I am a big fan of CoG, I have struggled to find any other companies who make similar games.

I’ve seen you post on a few  occasions about similar games and was wondering if you had any recommendations, CoG or otherwise. Thank you!

There isn't really a company that does exactly what CoG is doing, but there are lots of places to find IF or IF-adjacent games to play!

There are a lot of companies making and/or allowing users to make narrative mobile games which are often free to play with a model where paying opens up "premium" choices or cosmetics. Lots have sprung up over the years and sadly a lot of them have shuttered (Storyscape, Lovestruck, and others). Some friends have written for the Storyloom and Whispers apps. For a couple of years I worked on Love Island the Game but haven't been keeping up with it after I stopped working on it (which was during late Season 4/Bombshell). Then there's things like Dorian, Romance Club, and the older Chapters, Choices, Episodes, etc, some of which are created on commission and some of which are user-created games... It's worth having a look and seeing if any catch your eye.

I'd always recommend the work of Failbetter Games and inkle. (Mask of the Rose, Failbetter's first visual novel, is out now!) Both have branched out beyond being purely text-based but they have strong foundations in IF. Similarly Over the Alps, which was made by my former colleagues at Tributary Games, and King of the Castle (a narrative multiplayer game that I finished working on last year) are a great time. Games from Hanako Games are great, and if you liked Crème de la Crème I'd point you to Black Closet for dark academia school scheming. Christine Love and Autumn Chen are incredible creators too. I haven't played them fully yet, but Pentiment and Roadwarden promise fantastic narrative experiences with great storytelling.

I recommend having a look through the AdventureX lists of past exhibitors which include lots of really exciting narrative games. Narrascope also has plenty of speakers who have made or are discussing interesting games.

Also take a look at the IF Comp and Spring Thing archives for a huge collection of free IF with loads of different genres, tones, and sizes.

sub-q magazine isn't publishing new material anymore and you'll need to click past the expired security certificate but it published a wide range of short IF, some with more branching and some with less, but always interesting. (my first game writing sales were to them!)

On here, @/interact-if often posts themed recommendations. There are a lot of authors posting ongoing progress and devlogs of IF projects, sometimes on the CoG forum and dashingdon, sometimes on itch.io, and @/interact-if can be helpful for filtering though or finding ones that match what you're looking for. @/manonamora-if-reviews has started doing in depth IF reviews too. And on the subject of itch.io, there are many interactive fiction games on there both complete and in-progress.

Finally, if you're interested! Some of my all-time favourite ChoiceScript games include:

A Study in Steampunk

Asteroid Run

Choice of the Deathless

Heart of Battle

Heart of the House

Professor of Magical Studies

Tally Ho

(You can play Choice of the Deathless and Heart of Battle for free with ads.)

Thank you for the ask!

[fetznerdeathrecords]

Scent of Thorns - Deathless Heights

Melodic Death Metal from Ioannina, Greece

Scent of Thorns is an Extreme Metal band founded in October 2022 in Ioannina, in the context of the music club of the University of Ioannina. Their artistic career began with covers from various genres of the Metal scene and simultaneously they progressed to the composition of their own music. Scent of Thorns took influence from bands such as Mors Principium Est, Jinjer, Eluveitie and with their main genre being Melodic Death Metal, they experiment with the aim of shaping their own distinct sound, that has characteristics of many genres such as Metalcore, Progressive Metal, Groove Metal etc. With their ultimate goal being to release a debut album in early 2025, they are planning to share the stage with great bands, performing their songs for their growing fanbase.

1. The Mysteries Ahead 01:33 2. Wanderers 04:38 3. Devour the Will 05:48 4. Death Foreseen 04:26 5. Ascension 03:53 6. Craft your Betrayal 03:41 7. My Soul to Linger no More 05:09 8. In Chains we Die 05:06 9. Merciful Breath 03:47 10. Deathless Heights 06:16

Release date: March 10th, 2025

@scentofthorns

[noahsbookhoard]

📚January 2025 Book Review (Part 2/2)📚

January is the month I've read the most comics and graphic novels since... middle school and my manga phase maybe? And I like it, I might read more of them this year

Part 1 here

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

What did I just read?

This was recommended to me by a book club friend, I had heard of it but never read it and she told me how much she loved thi book, how it inspired Disney's Encanto, that it wasn't as depressing as the title made it seems etc... Well she and I haven't read the same book because that wasn't what I was expecting from her description.

Nonetheless it was interesting: we follow 5 generations of the same family in their small village far in the jungle, with their struggle, their conflits, their violence sometimes. They live through natural disasters, revolutions, war, technological progress and political changes. And that's not mentioning how cruel the family members can setimes be with one another, they ruin each other's life, they rest their legacy apart, and yet somehow it always remains enough to be mended, rebuilt. They might leave but somehow they always come back home to Macondo.

I don't share my friends enthusiasm but It's a classic and I'm glad I read it.

Les serres sous le velours noir by Charlène Ferlay

Okay, I know, I thought the same thing when I saw that cover but hear me out!

Man that book is a banger. I would never have picked it up on coverart and backcover summary alone:

In a Renaissance Italy-like setting in which The Goddess and her Angels and Archangel intervene in every aspects of life, Francesca Sebastiani is coming to the merchant City of Alba. There, she must obey her father's orders, to marry a merchant from lower social class as hers and to find her brother Taddeo, whom she hates, to convince him to take his place as the family's heir, but all she wants is to find the murderer of Iacopo, her other brother.

... and I would have missed what will very probably be on my top 10 for this year. This is something of a historical fiction, something of a fantasy novel, something of a thriller and just a truly amazing story.

Francesca, our main character would be absolutely unsufferable as a real human being but as a character she felt even more relatable because she's so bitchy: she is a noble woman, recently widowed, who just lost her beloved older brother, and whose father wants to marry below her. And she is SO MAD about it. She looks down on anyone who isn't a patrician, she falls in love with all the wrong people, she accuses every one that upset her even a little of the horrible murder... It was a tight balance because a character like this could have been very annoying but her aspirations, her anger, her doubts but mostly her love and passion were driving and made me empathise with her a lot.

I loved the setting: it looks like a quite well researched Renaissance Italy: architecture, art and clothings are vivid and anchor us in the period but the fantasy setting allows the author to twist it out and add 1) badass angels and 2) so much homoerotic tension it's bursting out of the pages.

The plot itself is full of tension and I had to force myself to pause it because I wanted to make it last, but wow that was hard! The investigation is very well handled and the climax of it felt so satisfying! The romance subplot was compelling but never took too much place in the story but it adds so much stakes, it works great!

It came out on December last year and isn't available in English but if you read French go read this one, you won't regret it I swear.

What Manner of Man by St John Starling

These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw

This is technically my second reading but this time was the revised edition and I can't believe it could get better, yet it did!

Father Victor Ardelian has been sent to St Silvan's Head Island for an exorcism, however as he spent more time with his host and the object of his investigation, Lost Alistair Vane, his duty as a priest and his own feeling start to tear at him.

This is an epistolary novel and I loved having Victor's voice with his restrain and propriety slowly sliping as his feeling changes. Also it was funny to see the dates disappear of the dairy and the letters to his sister become rarer the more he got entangled with Lord Vane, every little elements surrounding the text itself worked to create this atmosphere and this feeling of a man slowly losing his purpose.

The eroticism was even better for all the loops Father A was jumping through to not have to say it (both 1950's sensibility and priestly ones). Victor's struggle with his identity and his eventual acceptance were very satisfying.

That answer one question for me: I like queer romance and ask a new one: why is Catholicism so dramatic?

Anyway, the next project of @stjohnstarling is Frankenstein inspired and I can't wait to see how it goes!

Short but impactful: The relationship between a woman with bone magic and her bratty stepson, and how it only spiralled downward from the start.

I don't want to say too much because it would get into spoilers really quickly but it was thrilling and a little satisfying too to see the stepmother realise what is going on with the boy and put an end to it.

Escape Incel Island by Margaret Killjoy

Years ago, the government manage to trick incels into getting trapped on a deserted island and since the inmates are under heavy watch and had no outside contact except crates of weapons and supplies. Mankiller Jones and Dr Helena Morrison are sent to the island to retrieve sensitive information that the military left behind: they will have to face the inmates, uncover government secrets and one way or another, escape incel island.

This was fun, there's no big revolutionary insight on humanity to be found here, only Lord of the Flies if the boys had already hit puberty and spent all their free time on 4chan. The inmates have sort of organise and there's some good idea on what their society would look like. I loved Mankiller's point of view with her attitude and her no nonsense talk. The message about toxic masculinity isn't reallyvsubtle but if you want a nonbinary person shooting Nice GuysTM with a shotgun this is.

This story reminds me a lot of The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi: this isn't the greatest book I've ever read but damn was it cathartic!

The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri

This is the third and final book in the Burning Kingdom Trilogy, and it is a great finally to of ofvmy new favorite series.

We start right after the end of book 2 (as in I had to reread the last 5 or so chapter to catch up with the story). There is everything I loved from book 1 and 2: ruthless politics, badass women, queer ships, the original fantasy empire of Parijatdvipa with its gods.

The story takes its sweet time building up but the climax was worth it. And I got to catch up with by faves! They were not doing great! We get to see more action from Rao and Bhumika in a good 2/3 of the book, which I am not complaining about.

As well as the political threat, the danger of gods and fanatic priest is ever more presents and to me felt even more frightening than in the two first books. It was to me the most interesting part of the conflict as it was a built up from the very beginning of the series and at some point the purely secular political intrigue was being repetitive. I was expecting something more dramatic for the end of the yaksa plot though.

I have one reservation and it is on some dialogues between Priya and Malini: there is a very thin line between toxic yuri and Exes With A Messy Divorce Who Have To Sit Together For Their Kid's School Gala. I'll forget it because the conclusion of their relationship was worth it.

It is a big hit for me, I need more fantasy like this.

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

Shubeik Lubeik means Your wish is my command: In this universe wishes are real and are a whole industry. There're laws, international decrees and classification of wishes, from class 1 to class 3. The more powerful it is, the more reliable but also the most expensive and thr more regulated.

Shorky owns a little store in Cairo, for decades he had had three class 1 wishes he had never manage to sell: this is the story of those who will finally buy those wishes. And oh those stories are sad! Nour's especially hit me, a coleguw student put of their depth, plagued by anxiety. And that's the comic's strength: the characters are so real it hurts.

The worldbuilding is so clever: some of the informations are given by the characters but everything you need to know about wishes is explained between each part in infographics, as if the readers were handed out information pamphlets. It's simple, easy to follow and I never felt like the author was explaining this stuff to me out of the story. It reinforces what the characters already pointed out and adds informations to anchor it in the universe like dates and laws and advices for wish users.

This is the kind of books that makes me want to read more comics, I loved it.

Persephone's choice by Yihan Sim

Sophie has a simple life divided between her flower shop and the care for her mother who suffers from dementia. And then one day a stranger appears out of nowhere, saying he doesn't remember anything but his name: Hades. Sophie offers her help and somehow along the way she might not want him to repay his debt to her.

(Tw for dementia, emotional abuse and child death)

I will start with my one big and only complain: this is a Swiss gruyere of a book. Like, I liked it but there's plot holes everywhere!

Why is Hades amnesiac? Is he actually even amnesiac because I can't see what he has forgotten since he knew who he was all along? Why does The Rapture of Persephone exist as a children book if he has never met and loved Persephone before? Why is Hades immortal but not Demeter? What does the underworld look like to Hades, he never answered that question? Why is Sophie so chill about discovering Greek gods are real and part of her life? Seriously she has the best adaptation skills ever: The man who just fell from the sky is the Lord of the Underworld? Yeah, but does he want tea?

Nonetheless, this was a very low stake, switch-off-your-brain-and-enjoy-the-fluff kind of read. And I usually can't switch said brain off, ever, so this is saying something.

Sophie has the most AU fanfic shop ever (affectionate): it's both a flower shop and a tea shop in which she always have enough time to offer her regulars floral tea she creates herself and make unique compositions for each bouquet. And I love that for her. The relationship with Hades is so soft, too.

Conflict is minimal, it's mostly Demeter throwing wrenches in the work, which means the romance part is entirely this fluffy thing that slowly blooms and they just do heart eyes at each other for the 200 pages of the novel.

Honestly, the mythology retelling part is the least interesting. The love story would have worked just as well with all human characters. The supernatural explanation for the pandemic was interesting but that and the epilogue is all the god and goddess did for the plot. Still it made for some comedy, including Hermes' summoning ritual and teasing on fashion sense.

The book gets a bonus point for reassuring me that Cerberus is a good boy (of course he is) and the ending wraps it all in a woolen blanket with a nice cup of tea. Ovreall very cute, so I'm willing to forget the plot holes.

If you want a cute no brainer romance, Greek mythology retelling which does not fall into dark romance you might want to try this one.

Ruined by S. Vaughn, S. W. Searle & N. Smith

Catherine's reputation has been ruined and now she must marry Andrew Davener who she barely knows to save face. He needs her money, she needs to escape: neither of them require anything else out of this marriage but they both wanted more out of life. What if they get it anyway?

Or : What If I Freaked Out About Being In Love With My Own Spouse?

That's basically it, Catherine settles in her new home and slowly warms up to her husband, they grow closer but when she feels she herself fall she panics and runs away. While she is at her parents he realise he also fell for her (no actually that moment was cute, the bewilderment on his face was priceless) and scraps his brain for a way to win her back. Ok, I am not entirely fair here, there's a little bit more to the story overall but the backbone of the romance between Catherine and Andrew is this.

The plot mostly rest on the characters having No Communication Skills Whatsoever and a dynamic of Oblivious Man in love with Contrary Woman. There would be no story if they just talked about it like adults and some of the things they did but hid form the other makes for nice revelations, but at some other occasion Catherine just seem to keep Andrew away for no reason at all! But still the ending wad satisfying, Andrew's letter was adorable and the final pages are really nice. For me and my pickiness with romance this is more than good.

However, I was disappointed with the subplots in general: there's many of them, Andrew's sister Gemma being afraid to go out in society, Catherine's maid miss Lee who wants to be seen as the talented seamstress she is, Catherine's sister and her woman lover, not to mention Andrew and Catherine's respective past... and most of them fall short. Gemma especially was frustrating: she gets no character growth! She was so sad, I wanted her to feel better and it cuts just as she was making an attempt! I understand the main focus being Andrew and Catherine but at least Gemma's story deserved closure.

I am not giving my opinion again on the Bridgerton series, no sir, but if I had to compare this comic to Julia Quinn's novel it ranks higher than even the books I really liked in the series. It shares the same tropes and structure but with more diversity in the characters and minus the heterosexual romance tropes that are absolute red flag on any real human.

I wasn't too fond of the drawing style though but it's a matter of taste and the story is good. A nice moment.

[quiettime3]

Cultist Simulator

Not every game has the same goal. Dark Souls, as a typical example, wants to challenge players - it’s not afraid to kill you and push you to try again. As such, it gets a reputation for being particularly hard, inspiring the bravest of players to do impressive deathless runs and make attempts to complete the game deprived of all but the worst equipment. It’s wonderful to watch a master take the game apart! In that vein of celebrating those that choose to do things the hard way, I’d like to meet the players that first wrote the wiki for Cultist Simulator. They really did choose the path of most resistance, because as far as I can tell, this game’s goal is to absolutely baffle you.

Very little is explained to you when you first launch into Cultist Simulator - you are an aspiring occult fanatic, looking to find your place in the world and form a cult to increase your standing. Controls are given in the options menu, and a measured build-up of abilities introduces you to the core gameplay loop. You receive tiles, you place them under an appropriate verb (work, study, explore, etc…) and they produce new tiles. The actual buttons for this operation require trial and error, but at least the timer element doesn’t come into play until you’ve done this a few times.

When you get the hang of the dense controls, you may still be a little confused on what exactly your goal is, mechanically. I found actually starting my cult fairly difficult - not due to the requirements, but because the operation was hidden in the ‘miscellaneous’ timeline. Your verbs are on the ‘main’ timeline, but pressing up on the D-pad takes you to another area with the actions you don’t have direct control over. Missing this led to the death of my first run - when a Despair event occurs, Dread cards start to build up here, and if you hit 3 without a Contentment card to counter them, you lose.

Starting another run, I explored some more and got things running with a cult dedicated to the Grail, one of the eight lore aspects. You need enough funds to not get ill, and you can recruit new cultists by speaking about lore tiles, that much made sense. I also had a goal card for Sensation, which, once confirmed using the ‘dream’ verb, told me I would need to ‘work’ this goal with… ‘The Know’. Another roadblock, as I had no idea what this was, but this felt like an intentional part of the Cultist Simulator experience, rather than a poor menu decision. Blindly fumbling with my tiles, I realised that plugging lore fragments into my dreams allowed me to progress through a realm of occult challenges, including eventually attaining ‘The Know’ and progressing my goal.

During this time, I had picked up an honest job at Glover and Glover, and after sending an appropriately aspected follower (indicated by small tiles on their detailed info card, accessed by pressing the Y button when hovering over them) to take out my overbearing boss, I got promoted to a senior role, put in my best effort at work, and ran into a minor endgame. My character gave up on running a cult to work a high paying job at an office. To be fair, this was telegraphed, but not with total clarity - still, another run down, albeit in a better state than previous endings. Thus began my next attempt - this progressed well, fighting off rival cultists and hiding my activities from the law. I prepared to ascend, before giving up my chance for power to remain with my lover. A beautiful story, exactly what you might want from a game like this - but it took over 10 hours to get there.

The question you’ll really need to answer then is this - is it worth the investment? Cultist Simulator sits in a very strange place for me, much like the esoteric subject matter. I personally enjoy the game quite a bit, but I find it hard to recommend to all but the most experienced management game fans - it’s so stingy with instructions that it’s hard to work out any of your goals, and getting a good ending will require hours and hours of play on top of any background research you think you’ll need. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it, and if you can handle the kind of insanity-inducing minutia it provides, you might just love it too. In the spirit of the game, have some purposefully vague tips for those brave enough to delve into the occult - lore can be subverted in a chain, restlessness will decay to dread but could be used in recruitment rituals, and speaking with Sulochana will freeze timers on your topic of choice. Welcome to the cult!

Pros:

• Creates an amazing atmosphere as you play

• So many variant endings and potential choices to make along the way

• Correctly managing the mass of spinning plates is so satisfying when it works

Cons:

• If you want to learn as you play, prepare for failure and constant questions

• Incredibly convoluted controls, though considering the complexity, I’m not sure how I’d improve this beyond clearer tutorials

[catullus0525]

Prologue: The World Forgetting, By The World Forgot

Notes:

This is the full first draft of the biography of Robbie Ross (1869-1918) which I have been working on over the past few months. I am posting it today because today (25th May) is Robbie's 155th birthday. I will be posting it bit by bit over the following weeks.

I will be revising it quite drastically over the next few months when I have a bit more time. It is therefore still an imperfect work in progress.

In line with my previous post, apologies in advance for any inaccuracies or inappropriate language -- I have tried my best when writing to avoid them but as with any first draft they are inevitable.

I am happy to answer any questions & provide references & recommend readings!

I will be vibe-matching songs with each chapter.

I know Oscar Wilde kind of hated Alexander Pope but I quite like some lines from his Eloisa to Abelard I am going to quote him anyway

We may forget those transient things 

That made your charm and our delight: 

But loyal love has deathless wings 

That rise and triumph out of night.

—— Siegfried Sasson (1918), Elegy

Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;

And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain;

Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,

And wait, till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

—— Alexander Pope (1717), Eloisa to Abelard

I. 

On 3 June 1918, taking the witness stand in the Old Bailey which Oscar Wilde had saved him from 23 years ago, Alfred Douglas indignantly denounced his ex-lover as ‘the agent of the devil in every possible way’ and ‘the greatest force of evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years’. No longer the champion of ‘the love that dares not speak its name’, this time, Douglas was testifying on behalf of Noel Pemberton Billing, a viciously homophobic proto-fascist politician on trial for libelling the actress Maud Allan known for playing Salomé. Billing alleged that a circle of 47,000 clandestine gay and lesbians tied to not only Maud Allan but also Robert Ross and the ‘Wilde cult’ had been infiltrating English high society to undermine the English war effort on behalf of the German Kaiser. The laws were not on Billing’s side: his entire legal argument hinged on the fact that Maud Allan understood what a ‘clitoris’ was (which, he argued, proved that she was a lesbian), and alleging that Oscar Wilde was aiding the Kaiser eighteen years after his death was legal delusion. But, crucially, the war-wearied, hate-filled, paranoia-driven English public hungry for a scapegoat was; and Alfred Douglas’s testimony gave them exactly what they wanted. In the end, in a farcical turn, the jury acquitted Noel Pemberton Billing and condemned Oscar Wilde. 

Douglas would forswear his statement years later (as he had forsworn many other things in his life), but the harm done was not reparable. For Robert Ross, who had dedicated the past eighteen years to rehabilitating Oscar Wilde’s literary reputation, witnessing his effort turned to dust and Wilde's name sullied once more must have been an excruciatingly agonising blow. Days after the acquittal of Billing, Ross angrily snubbed Sir Charles Mathews, then the Director of Public Prosecutions, ‘the bastard of a mummer’, and sardonically congratulated him on ‘the complete rehabilitation of [his] protégé, Lord Alfred Douglas’ and snubbed him ‘the bastard of a mummer’. Meanwhile, to his friends Cecil Sprigge and Charles Ricketts, Ross expressed his despair over the war-weary English public’s eagerness in ‘kicking Oscar’s corpse’ and lamented that he himself had been ‘used as a piece of mud’ in smearing Oscar Wilde. Four months later, Ross died of heart failure, aged only 49. 

Unlike Douglas, who wrote endless autobiographies regurgitating his narrative, Ross never publicly told his side of the story and left scant traces of himself. Therefore, unfortunately, we would never know whether his official cause of death, recorded as ’gastritis caused by chronic bronchitis’ belied a broken heart. Did the fresh wave of anti-Wilde furore made him believe that his advocacy for the past eighteen years had all been in vain? Did he fear that Wilde’s legacy would be irrevocably tarnished by Douglas’ ongoing vendetta against himself? Did he die tormented by regrets and despair? These we could only speculate. We only know that for a long time before his death, Ross had suffered from severe depression and chronic insomnia which ruined his health and prematurely aged his appearance. This was due in no small part to Alfred Douglas’s relentless persecution of him due to his homosexuality. It would also be reasonable to postulate that the uncharacteristic sarcasm of his letter to Sir Charles Mathews was the tip which belied an iceberg of agony.

Ross left almost everything in his possession to others upon his death. The Oscar Wilde estate was transferred to Cyril (then deceased) and Vyvyan Holland in its entirety. Most paintings in his possession were presented to the British Museum. His personal savings were largely left to More Adey, one of his ex-partners with whom he spent nearly 15 years. To himself, he had reserved only a quiet little enclave in Wilde’s famous Père Lachaise tombstone: unbeknownst to everyone, he had requested a small secret space for his own ashes when commissioning that majestic tombstone. In his will, Ross directed that:

[…] my remains shall be cremated at Golders Green Crematorium with the ordinary burial offices of the Catholic and Roman Church. And I direct that my ashes shall be placed in a suitable urn and taken to Paris and buried in the tomb of the said Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde. 

Moreover, since the will was penned during his persecution by Alfred Douglas, Ross foresaw difficulties with placing his ashes in Wilde’s tomb. In response, he directed that were burial to prove impossible, his ashes be scattered in Père Lachaise around Oscar Wilde. 

It was as if Ross was being the Heloise to Wilde’s Abelard. In that famous Medieval love story, much like how the illustrious writer Oscar Wilde was captivated by the 17-year-old Robbie Ross, Abelard, the brightest philosopher of his day, fell for his astute pupil Heloise, 19 years his junior. They were not only intellectual partners but also passionate lovers, yet loving Heloise was the beginning of calamity for Abelard. But Heloise’s love was unwavering even after Abelard’s ruin, not unlike how Ross steadfastly stood by Wilde after his imprisonment till the very end. In the end, much like how Heloise demanded to be buried with Abelard 22 years after his death, 23 years after Wilde’s death, Ross yearned for eternity alongside Wilde, beneath the same hallowed earth that cradled Heloise and Abelard.

Yet, unlike Heloise, whose effigy lay proudly beside Abelard's in Père Lachaise and whose name was engraved alongside his in history, Ross deliberately left no mark of his own on the final resting place he shares with Wilde. So whilst Heloise receives countless visitors’ songs and tears alongside Abelard, out of the hundreds of kisses imprinted on Wilde’s grave, none was intended for Ross; and most who wander through Père Lachaise remain unaware that Ross's ashes are silently guarding Wilde’s body.

Such self effacement was despite the fact that Ross had given up his eternal life with God for eternal rest with Oscar Wilde. As a devout lifelong Catholic, in directing his body’s cremation, Ross had denied himself resurrection —— it was not until 1963 that the Vatican finally conceded that cremation was ‘not opposed to the Christian religion' and ceased to deny Catholics wishing to be cremated their sacraments and funeral rites. Although at the time of Ross’s death, the Catholic Church sometimes acquiesced to cremation in practice as a result of  WW1 (as reflected by the ‘the ordinary burial offices of the Catholic and Roman Church’ at Golders Green Crematorium), it was still quite possible that Ross never received the funeral rites which prepare a Catholic’s soul for afterlife. 

What had prompted such grave sacrifice? Perhaps he wanted to take up as little space as possible, lest his presence eclipse the master’s lustre. Perhaps it was his ultimate penance for his incurable sin of loving Oscar Wilde. Or perhaps he saw incineration as the only way to purify his body and to make himself worthy of eternal rest by the artist he had corrupted, just as Alexander Pope had written of Heloise: 

Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;

And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,

Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,

And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

Yet, were it not for Robert Ross, us contemporaries might not have known Oscar Wilde at all. Despite Nicholas Frankel’s brilliant effort to re-write Wilde’s final years as a joyous saga of love and self-acceptance, there is no denying that Wilde died a ruined bankrupt in 1900. Upon his death, he was a persona non grata in England whose name was synonym to scandal, and due to his bankruptcy, everything he had owned was automatically passed into the hands of the Official Receiver in Bankruptcy. This meant that none of the proceedings from Wilde’s works (if there were any at all) would go to his orphaned children. Furthermore, though Salomé was successful on the German stage and The Soul of Man under Socialism welcomed by the bookshelves of Nizhny Novgorod, Wilde’s works were deemed worthless in England: the complete rights to Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest were sold off for the meagre sum of £100 each. Indeed, the Official Receiver had told Ross in 1901 that Wilde’s works ‘would never command any interest whatever’. But Ross’s labour of love worked miracles. In eight years, Ross had accomplished what none had thought possible: he had repaid all of Wilde’s debts, restored Wilde’s children’s rights over their father’s literary estate, and restored Oscar Wilde’s literary name. Moreover, Ross might have taken some comfort in the fact that he had reinstated Oscar Wilde so solidly in literary history that even the setbacks of the Billing trial did not hinder the reading public's rediscovery of Wilde’s genius in the long term. In particular, the remarkable 14-volume Collected Works of Oscar Wilde Ross had almost single-handedly compiled remains one of the most exhaustive collections of Wilde’s writings. To this monumental endeavour we owe much of our current understanding and appreciation of Wilde and his works. Few in history had done so much yet said so little. 

II. 

In the years since Ross’s untimely death, two drastically different images of him emerged. 

To his friends and acquaintances, Ross was a erudite wit with a big heart, selflessly devoted to Oscar Wilde and his legacy but also endlessly keen on supporting other artists. Edmund Gosse described him as a ‘talker’ with rapid thoughts and astonishing breadth of knowledge and an ‘expert […] in the art of benevolence’ who ‘wore himself out in deeds of active kindness’. Siegfried Sassoon corroborated Gosse’s assessment in his Elegy, and added to it endearing snippets of personal stories, such as when Ross put up an umbrella to reassure an old lady bewildered by air-raid during the Great War. Arthur Humphreys remembered him as someone who ‘never talked of anything without touching the salient point at once and bringing his fancy and brilliancy to bear upon all’, who knew more but showed less of their knowledge than most men, who was always eager and capable of giving help to those in need, and who never ‘became embittered’ or ‘say an unkind word of anyone through the trials and tribulations of his life. William Rothenstein praised Ross's ‘genius for friendship’ and his ability to inspire the best in those he admired. Vyvyan Holland cherished Ross as his ‘dearest friend’ whom he could look to when he wanted ‘sincerity and advice’. And The Times wrote in Ross’s obituary that ‘It was his foible to pretend to be a trifler in all things and to gibe at the greatest reputation; but he knew more and did more than many solemn people and, in acts of kindness, he was always in earnest’.

However, to Alfred Douglas (who outlived Ross by almost three decades) and his sympathisers, Ross was a conniving, almost-psychopathic social climber mad with unrequited love for Oscar Wilde and jealousy for Douglas. In his Autobiography, Douglas described Ross as a ‘sinister looking, bloated and bald-headed person’ with ‘snaky eyes’, ‘bulging face and body’ and ’n—er-like mouth and teeth’. In addition, Douglas described Ross as a jealous, embittered man with a ‘subconscious determination’ to ‘get even with’ himself, and a hypocrite who socialised beyond his station by contrived ‘flattery “laid on with a trowel”’. Somewhat corroborating this, Samuel Roth claimed that Frank Harris had once described Ross as a ‘rascal of the first water’ drunk on the illusion of being Wilde’s only lover. Following closely upon Douglas’s narrative, Rupert Croft-Cooke (who was a friend of Douglas’s) wrote in 1963 that Ross was an ‘amusing little queen’ who ‘ingratiated' himself with Wilde with 'feminine willingness’, who ‘had no other serious interest’ beside Wilde, who took Wilde as his life with ‘exhibitionist devotion’, who was tormented by ‘the green fires of jealousy’ after Wilde met Douglas, and who ‘had nothing else to warm his nature but a little rancid promiscuity and a dilettante interest in art and letters’. Caspar Wintermans likewise maintained that Ross was a jealous hypocrite who saw Douglas as ‘an impediment’, who schemed, lied, and manipulated to tear Wilde from Douglas, and who maliciously used Arthur Ransom as a ‘tool’ to ‘get even' with ‘the Adonis [Douglas] who twenty years ago had appropriated Oscar Wilde, relegating him, Bobbie, to limbo.’ In a similar vein, Douglas Murray portrayed Ross as a despondent abandoned lover whose effort in rehabilitating Wilde stemmed from a twisted desire to ‘claim back Wilde for himself’ as a ‘revenge for the back-seat role that the advent of Douglas had forced him into with Wilde’.

Ironically, were it not for Douglas, I would not have embarked on my journey to rediscover Robert Ross. I had knowledge of him as one of Oscar Wilde’s many lovers and literary executor after watching Wilde (1999) and The Happy Prince (2018), and was briefly intrigued by the bickering amongst Wilde’s lovers. However, it was the feud between Douglas and Ross over the publication of De Profundis which really led me down the rabbit hole. 

De Profundis is my favorite work of English prose, not only for its exquisite elegance but also for its delicate balance between truth and deception, and between artistic form and poetic spirit. Because it was composed in prison, Wilde’s genius in weaving beautiful lies ‘lying’ was marred by and married to raw, almost religious agony, producing a unique literary masterpiece which stands out from his other works. On a more personal level, the book had been the healing balm to my soul amidst some of my darkest personal moments, and it has been a source of strength and comfort since. So, quite naturally, I searched for anything and everything related to its composition and publication, which eventually led me to Robert Ross, the man who quite literally made De Profundis.

But before I got to Ross, I first encountered Alfred Douglas’ various autobiographies and biographies which levied extensive allegations against Ross’s character and conduct re the publications of De Profundis. Douglas and his biographers accused Ross of stealing personal letters, acting contrary to Wilde’s wishes, manipulating writers, and luring Douglas into a libel action, all for the sake of destroying Douglas and avenging the loss of his lifelong love (amongst other things). I shall analyse the merits of such allegations at another time —— here it is suffice to say that I was fascinated by the colourful character of Ross their narratives constructed, as I had always been drawn to tragic villains in romantic sagas. So I began my search for Robert Ross, hoping to discover a complex, twisted, and fascinating Jekyll-and-Hyde type character, whose too-profound love and hate had led him to stoop low and weave elaborate webs of lies in the dark to bring down the innocent protagonist in a one-sided romantic vendetta. 

However, what I found was exactly the opposite. 

The more times I read over Douglas and his biographers’ narratives, the more contradictions, inaccuracies, dubious interpretations, and arbitrarily imputed intentions I noticed, and the less convinced I became of their portrayal of Ross. Things simply did not add up for me. I shall elaborate on the reasons I found faults with Douglas’s narratives some other time; in short, I discovered that most of Douglas’s allegations were either unsubstantiated, untrue, or maliciously misconstrued. 

Moreover, as I read into the life of Robert Ross, I realised that he was, or rather deserved to be, so much more than simply a footnote in Oscar Wilde’s story. I found that in his rather brief life, Ross had inspired, supported, and made many great names in literary and queer history. Indeed, as argued, without Ross, us contemporaries might never have had the pleasure of reading Oscar Wilde. I also came to believe Ross deserved to be remembered as a hero (if not a martyr) in British queer history alongside Wilde in his own right, for his remarkable, lifelong courage to live as a somewhat openly gay man and shelter other young queer men from a society which condemned homosexual intercourse to life imprisonment. So increasingly I wanted to extrapolate Ross from the quarrels amongst Oscar Wilde's lovers (which, I believe, are somewhat blown out of proportion by the two brilliant Wilde biography films I had mentioned above) —— I believe Ross deserved to be remembered as so much more than an embittered ex-favourite in an all-male harem, or the male version of a forbearing traditional wife whose sole purpose in life was her man. 

III. 

But I could not help but to notice that, despite all his achievements, throughout his life Ross had consistently erased himself from the narrative. Even at the 1908 dinner which celebrated Ross for his remarkable success in rehabilitating Wilde’s literary legacy, Ross claimed that he regarded himself as no more than an instrument, that it was chiefly to others’ credit that Wilde’s debts were repaid, that he was not the only friend by Wilde’s side over the latter’s last years, and other friends have done more for Wilde than himself. 

Moreover, like T.H.Crosland (out of all people), I wondered why didn’t Ross defend himself when faced with vicious persecution Was it fear —— fear that had he defended himself he would have incurred more severe persecution and be imprisoned for his sexuality like Oscar Wilde? Was it love —— could he have worried that if he had defended himself as vigorously and relentlessly as Douglas did, the squabbles between them could eclipse Wilde’s literary legacies which he had poured his heart and soul into? Or was it simply a lack of time —— might he have told his story had he simply lived a little longer? 

On top of which, I wondered whether Ross would have preferred to be relegated to a small footnote in Oscar Wilde’s story, just as he wanted his ashes to be quietly laid in a secret little enclave in Wilde’s grand tomb in Père Lachaise without his name being engraved anywhere. As Edra Bogle postulated in her 1969 PhD thesis, Ross might have wished to be forgotten himself and have any fame to go to ‘those whose work he hoped to advance’.

Thus, I deliberated long and hard before penning this piece, wondering whether I might be disrespecting a dead man’s wishes in trying to tell his story. But eventually I decided to write, for three reasons. Firstly, with the decriminalisation and increasing normalisation of homosexuality in Britain, the factors which had caused Ross to fear publicity in his time are no more. Secondly, thanks in no small part to Ross’s effort, Oscar Wilde’s position in literary history is so well-established today that no stories of his personal life could have eclipsed his literary legacy. Indeed, volumes had been written on the private lives of Wilde, Douglas, and Ross (albeit with varying levels of accuracies), but none has diminished people’s appreciation of Wilde’s literary genius. If anything, the biographies and films served to augment the reading public’s interest in Oscar Wilde by fleshing out the literary personality. Thirdly, personally, I suppose if Ross had known that ten years after persecuting him into his early grave, Alfred Douglas would continue to not only drag his name through the mud but also refuse to assume any substantial responsibility for Wilde’s downfall, he might have wished to write something.

So, this piece is for Robert Baldwin Ross. It is a labour of love by an amateur Wildean upon the occasion of Queer History Month. I hope to pay tribute to the man who not only introduced us to Oscar Wilde, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and so many other queer luminaries, but also was a beacon in queer history in his own right. This was a man tormented by his faith and suffered endless prejudices from a cruel society, yet he braved the troubles of his life with heroic resolve. He came out to his family at the tender age of nineteen, never married to conceal his sexuality, and nurtured a generation of queer artists. I hope I could honour his beautiful soul by doing justice to his extraordinary story, a story of courage, of struggle, of sacrifice, and above all, of love.

[devotion-that-corrupts]

4 8 and 17 for the end of the year book ask meme! 📚

end-of-year book asks

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

catherynne m valente my beloved!! i'd had "deathless" and "comfort me with apples" on my tbr list for a while, and this year i've finally picked them up, as well as one of her short story collections. the combination of atmospheric magical realism, folktale motives and reimaginings, beautiful writing, and meta narrative has me by my throat.

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

i don't really do reading goals tbh. my goodreads one is set at 24 so it wasn't that hard to beat. i'm still not done with my old tbr, but i got 14 books off it this year. also i've been reading more books written by women, i'm very happy with my progress in that regard.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

yes! two books in particular.

the first is "the bog wife" by kay chronister. i expected it to be moderately fun but nothing extraordinary, like all the other recent gothic horror releases i've read. instead it turned out to be genuinely great. it has everything i want from the genre. a family isolated from society, siblings who "have uncannily grown into each other", their different kinds of strangeness, their interactions and dynamics distinct and full of rituals, the slow collapse of the world as they know it, and very importantly writing that is both lyrical and oppressive. it's just great. i highly recommend it.

the second is "and i darken" by kiersten white (it's part of the trilogy titled "the conqueror's saga", but after i liked the first book i obviously wasn't surprised when i liked the others). the thing about it is that it has no right to work. i could tell you the premise and the direction of the plot, and it wouldn't sound good at all, or at least it wouldn't sound like something i would normally like. and the fact that the author mostly wrote ya paranormal romance before that didn't give me much hope either. and yet i enjoyed it a lot. mostly because of unapologetic batshit insanity of our female mc and her messy relationship with the second pov character, her brother. you can really tell that she's genderbent vlad the impaler, i'll leave it at that.

[darknessillumina]

E V I L

The meds in my head are craze 'Cause I meditate laid to eleven snakes Bitch went through these seven rapes by Leatherface Dressed in Ghostface with a bowie knife to mess your face On the coldest haze the plague of your fate The Rader pace, get sentenced to eight years I'm getting a grey beard just sitting And waiting here until my prisoners safe Hole in the System phenomenon are liberty to inmates The best thing that ever happened since date rapes Don't you face the Desert Eagle I'll play in my waist Deadshot snipers in headshot zones, abortion and the proportion Why mom won't love her dead son? Every line I write they bite Just like the bed bugs, utopia is an world where we will no longer Shed blood! Redrum: My evil's progression are attacking cathedrals With weapons and resurrecting Gacy after lethal injection We'll curse on your soul leaving your body in astral projection Larvaes eating your deep wound in the nastiest infection Redrum Black magic and bad influences I'ma mental case Put you in a state of shock Shake aftershocks and raise Deathstalkers Swallow whole grenade launchers Spit it back at you, nightmarish Daywalkers Reverse verse talkers, more menacing than fucking Dennis The clitoris expanded by the fucking penis I'm deathless, I'm breathless or Edgar Allen Poe Version in hip-hop with Hitchcock stories meat-eating crows You're a leader? No, meat cleaver through your flow Every rapper I killed on tracks becomes a John Doe Sneaking in your lady's condos during night where's dark The attack looks like the bite of a great white shark I'm not natural, set fire to your religious tabernacles Suck worms from poisoned apples, spit it in your tequila snapple I want my own castle to masturbate in a lone room Underneath the full moon, the wolf's transformation pure resume The funeral, the coffin and the rose flowers My group won't let injustices happen, I just arose from powers

[oplhimepriestess]

| Shadow of Me | :Creature Concepts: Pt.2

Doing part 2 now to the previous post:

|Previous Post|

So once again here are some more of the creatures found in our book~ Some of them are more aggressive creatures, but a few are more passive~ As always.

Banburr - "term used for referring to the gentle giant cow"

These creatures are extremely compassionate and expressionate beings. They honk, whistle, and whiffle as a means of communication. They can form strong bonds with their owners and can live up to 200-300 years. So long as they live a long healthy lifestyle. They can run on four legs or two. But because their bodies are so massive they can only sprint on two legs before needing to trot on four. The males are mainly used for their strength and are primarily the choice steed for merchants. But nomads and travelers will typically choose the female for her milk over strength. As they are not needed to haul large loads. The female's milk is subtly sweet and floral tasting, but in general, the Banburr's milk is creamier and can be used for cheeses and other cooking. Though like most creatures from the primordial realms, again these creatures bones, claws, horns, and beaks are made up entirely of a crystaline keratin. Which is prized by human game hunters but not to the Abnormal society.

Kaddacus - "term used for referring to the one who is gluttonous"

The Kaddacus is a dangerous and unpredictable creature. They detest any sort of light. The Kaddacus is a subterranean monster that lives in water. Much like an amphibian, though for these creatures direct sunlight dries out and fries their skin on contact. So these creatures will only hunt at night to get their prey. When they do find prey they will swallow them whole and store them in their first stomach till they get to their den. Which is usually a dark deep crevice where they can regurgitate their food while they're still alive. Then leave them to find more. These creatures do not need to eat but only once a week. Because their digestion is so slow. So they will eat one big meal when it is time for them to feed. But once enough prey is collected they will gorge themselves and fill both their stomachs. While the second breaks their food down the second will feed in the remaining prey stored. Though they do have teeth, they do not use them. Their teeth is mainly superficial. Only for display purposes.

Wulkinth - "term used for referring to the one who is deathless"

These creatures are never good to come across. Whereas they are slow-moving and usually just threatening to look at, their blood is extremely toxic and can infect you with a flesh-eating fungal infection that can quickly spread if left untreated. They are notorious for their endless movement as they drag their bodies along. Because they are deathless in a sense. But not immortal in body... So as a result their bodies decay and rot while they still move. Parts of them will break off as they go and help to fertilize the earth, but still toxic should you touch it while it's still wet. They will continue to move even if the bones have tendon and muscle still attached. They will only finally stop moving when nothing is left but bone. But their brain will continue to work till it too rots away...

There we go~ A few more creatures found in my husband's and my story. I will likely still show more creatures or really start showing the various Abnormal species in our lore as well. If you want to see more and our work in progress on this world and the story they hail from- Check my Patreon for more~ (Oh and we have started on the lore book to our world- the Penumbraverse/Penumbra Universe) Check the link below for more:

[rudojudo]

So there's a TTRPG work in progress meme going around and I've been tagged by @theresattrpgforthat and I love talking about my ideas! With the release of Giant of Light, I've got a few going, I'll borrow the cooking metaphor @bleongambetta came up with:

Front Burner (actively in progress, I know what I want the game to be, spend some time in the document at least once a week):

-Free Lunch for Magic Users

Fantasy post-post-apocalypse in rural New England. Players are fast talking conmen with a teaspoon of magical talent, inspiration from Fallout and Discworld.

-4AM in Santa Carla

Lost Boys game where you're one of the background vampires. Hopefully a one-page game.

-Hero of Tomorrow

Superman hack of GoL.

Back Burner (I think about it often, I make notes when I have an epiphany, but major mechanics are still open):

-Demon Castle Dracula

My tribute to Castlevania; a mapping/exploration game using a Tarot deck.

-Sentai Squads (title subject to change)

A competitive game based on Super Sentai/Power Rangers. Each player manages a team that's trying to be the most popular team while also saving the day.

-V/H/Essence

Be a movie monster! A thesis on Queerness and mental illness in modern America, also a bit of a World of Darkness deconstruction.

-Pegwarmers

Metafictional game about The Tranformers (or toylines in general); fight to make sure that you have enough fans that you're in the next reboot of the franchise!

-Journey to the Quest

Optimistic Shonen Jump adventure! Play as a powerful child overthrowing oppressive regimes with a card game battle system. Theoretically first in a trilogy.

Still on the Prep Station (I have an idea here, but probably one or two mechanics at most, several don't even have titles):

-plUnderworlds

GM-less existential adventure game about being the last survivor of a dead universe.

-Cooking Competition Game

Mario Kart meets Cutthroat Kitchen. Improvise a dish and mess with your opponents.

-Demonbrain

Anime combat game about having a spiritual parasite. Less JoJo's, more Venom if the symbiote was looking to escape.

-Wasted

"Hi, I'm Ishida Mitsunari and welcome to Jackass!" Time travellers are stuck in a deathless purgatory dimension where the odds no longer make sense.

-Fighting Game Game

Built to replicate my favorite mechanics from fighting games and in service to the wild, expansive lore of the best fighters.

13! Seems fine. I'm not tagging anyone else to do this, because everyone I know well enough in TTRPGs has either done it or has said they're trying to step back from new game design. But I'll answer basically any questions about any of these!