#oooh 👀

[iobartach]

A lone spiderbot may be crawling on the wall...

Entrenched in his lab, he played the part of sentry, observing incidents that were both happening here, within the walls of the Society, and further afield, in realities where the effects of anomalies was completely unknown. Had he reason to, Miguel could drag a new holoscreen towards his position, pull up a feed of his choosing, upon selecting from a list. But he hadn't valid cause to do so. Not when all seemed to carry on in expected fashion, with teams of Spiders departing for missions on time and as planned, whilst Miguel himself could...

Track down the sound of a particular noise. A faint, tink tink tinking of mechanised limbs, that emanated from somewhere close by. Quick to dismiss it as one of his own Spiderbots, scattered throughout the multiverse to monitor worlds in his absence, this fact increased his eagerness to pinpoint its location. As such, garnet hues skimmed the floor, rising over consoles and other various equipment before extending to the walls, where... there!

Like the crack of a cast fishing line, an arm snapped outwards, silvery thread spewing cleanly from the back of a hand as webbing shoots across the room. Aimed directly at his skittering guest, the bot's momentum grinds to a halt as each silken strand wraps tightly around its tiny form, wrenching it from the wall and reeled in, in a single, smooth motion.

Taking possession of the Spiderbot, it hit his palm with a muted thunk, that saw the soft glow of its eyes dim and fluctuate as it recovered. Intact, until, without ceremony, Miguel's fingers closed around its metal shell with a crushing pressure, crumpling it within his grip. Relying exclusively on his strength, talons remained sheathed as the contraption gave a final, strangled whine of servos breaking apart, until all that remained were a few twitching legs and sparking circuitry.

Once done, a flick of wrist casts aside the shattered pieces, choosing not to waste any amount of time inspecting the wreckage.

Whoever had sent it hadn't earned such courtesy.

[spaceydragons]

@irresponsibility101

18th century embroidery.

[miyku]

''[Back cover of #anan Issue 2435 unveiled] On the back cover of the special feature "The Law of Sexiness" to be released on February 19th.''

[rendellstreet]

Brief character information from the TTS series pitch bible seasons I & II

[saskiaalonso]

[spaceydragons]

@bobafettuccini

[princedevitt]

[2deadboys]

i may have been sick for like 5days but the brain doesnt stop the payneland thoughts

so i have this fun little idea (for a fic?) where a slightly in the future, post s1 payneland are newly in a relationship, kinda honeymoon phase.

and they end up with another case that turns out to involve a demon and portals. and when theyre banishing the demon something else happens to crawl out of hell at the same time....

its a past! altnerate universe Edwin! who was finally escaping hell! but whoopsie hes ended up in the wrong universe? (or perhaps the future? .. but current! Edwin doesnt remember this..)

so of course past au! Edwin is like 'aw fuck now hells just getting weird, and i gotta deal with myself?? and a random beautiful guy clinging to other me??'

and current! Edwin is like 'oh dear i do not want this absolute messy fresh out of hell version of me interacting with Charles... weve got to put him back.'

Charles upon realising this is just another Edwin and not a trick is like 🥺 'aw Edwin we gotta help him, obviously were gonna make sure he meets up with his Charles right??'

and is of course immediately trying to reassure this Edwin that he got out of hell and hes safe and theyll help him get to where he should be (with his Charles)

(past au! Edwin is faced with this version of himself that is put together and doesnt seem as messed up-- bc this is raw straight out of hell, hasnt interacted with normal things in 70 years Edwin--- and this other/future version has somehow managed to land this incredible guy as a best friend.. and what seems to be more.

Is it weird to be jealous of yourself?? And even if he allegedly has his own version of Charles.. thats not this Charles who is so kind to him now.

Edwin seeing everything he could have ever wanted right before his eyes (and its not his). And he is afraid of leaving because surely this is some sort of heavenly dream and it already took so much to get out of hell. Now he has to find the unknown and hope? That his own future is just as wonderful. That he has a Charles just like this one.)

[ephemii]

by the way besties, do stay tuned for the summer!! I've got a surprise for you all (,,uᴗó,,) 🩷🩷

[treemaidengeek]

The audiobook for Floralinda is read by Moira Quirk, the same narrator who does TLT. @thanergetic-hyperlinks I am thoroughly delighted to inform you that she uses her Coronabeth voice for Floralinda. It adds immensely to an already-excellent experience.

Tamsyn Muir's writing beyond The Locked Tomb

Y'all, turns out there's lots of imagery and themes in TLT that Muir was already playing with in her earlier fiction. A lot of it is easily available online, in which case I'll link to it. (The short stories that aren't can also be easily read if googled, to be quite honest—that's how I read The Deepwater Bride and Why the Mermaids Left Boralus). • The House That Made the Sixteen Loops of Time (2011)

5K. Short sort-of-cozy romance (?) with (you guessed it) a time travel loop. Explores a very queer potential relationship. CamPal enjoyers might find a similar sweetness.

• The Magician's Apprentice (2012, Lightspeed Magazine)

5K. This is the one that stopped me dead on my tracks. It features an older, male mentor figure called John (a “very ordinary man” with “dark eyes”) who introduces the young, female main character to magic that has a terrible cost—and to literature such as Lolita. This excellent post by @familyabolisher does an incredible job of analyzing the very deliberate intertextual links between TLT and Lolita.

• The Woman in the Hill (2015, Lightspeed Magazine, originally for Dreams From the Witch House anthology of Lovecraftian horror by women)

4K. Possibly my favorite! It's a straightforward Lovecraftian horror, centered on the image of the woman (is it human though?) trapped in an unnatural pool inside a cursed cave. Chain imagery too. It does something different from Alecto, mind, but you can see links, ways of playing with facets of a strong central image. It's fun to consider how reliable the two narrators are. Here's an analysis and afterthought from Reactor Mag.

• Chew (2013) 4K. Zombie abuse and cannibalistic revenge story ft. an uncanny woman revenant, told from the eyes of a traumatized German boy. I was strongly reminded of Harrow's conversations with the Body. Tamsyn gave an interview on the themes and her intentions. Interesting to read in light of Alecto, I think, although I don't think she's going the same route in TLT: “the idea of post-war rebuilding connecting to rebuilding the body of the zombie; a Frankenstein who once rebuilt doesn’t act as planned or desired. […] I love cannibalism […] it’s innately spiritual […] any afterlife she goes to, he’s going too.”

• Apothecia (2014, published on Tumblr and tapas.io)

Short webcomic where an alien monster tries to corrupt the ruthless human girl who holds it captive. Musings on responsibility and murder, mention of child abuse. The alien's speech patterns remind me of a Resurrection Beast. You get wonderful dialogue like “Murder is a profession. Job. Employment, you tiny leg dog. There you are, walking along. Walk walk walk. Now you are a walker. Good job. Special child. Murder is like this.” Art by Shelby Cragg.

• The Deepwater Bride (2015, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

The opening line is: “In the time of our crawling Night Lord's ascendancy, foretold by exodus of starlight into his sucking astral wounds, I turned sixteen and received Barbie's Dream Car.” Need I say more? Extremely fun. A novelette where a young queer girl from a clairvoyant family struggles with an apocalyptic event while being annoyed by another very plucky girl. Lots of descriptions with nerdy marine zoology terms. Close in tone to Gideon. In the background, someone dies EXACTLY like that one death at the end of Gideon, which makes me wonder what happened to make Tamsyn interested in this particular image. I also liked that Tamsyn is aware of Nightwish. No link, but you'll get a PDF immediately if you Google.

• Union (2015, Clarkesworld Magazine)

5.5K. Very weird, extremely Kiwi story about a town that gets sent lab-grown wives by the government, but they're not made the usual way so they're Weird and people have feelings about it. Fascinating and eerie description of non-human (in some people's eyes, sub-human) women (?) who cannot be observed to have recognizable feelings or thoughts, yet have some sort of inner life. Quite touching, very uncanny.

• Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (2020)

Short novel (~200 pages). Very funny. I was reminded of Coronabeth because the whole plot is “princess finds herself branching out into decidedly non-princess-like activities”, but other than that—this is a fairytale for adults about people who make eachother worse. No particular links to TLT but a very fun read with some gut punches. Extremely Tamsyn through and through, what with the dubious morality and all.

• Why the Mermaids Left Boralus (2021, in Folk & Fairy Tales of Azeroth by Blizzard Entertainment)

Set in the World of Warcraft universe. Haven't read this one yet, will report back lmao. As with The Deepwater Bride, no link but I easily found a PDF of the entire compilation. It's illustrated!

• Undercover (2022, from Into Shadow, Amazon Original Collection)

Haven't read it either. Will edit once I do.

[doodleddaisies]

Was gonna wait but I’m gonna post this now in the attempt that the sharks prove me wrong

[skyward-floored]

Swamp Link!! What was the first, second, and third thing you thought about Zelda when you first met her? (Also good luck getting free, I'm rooting for you ✊ and next time someone gifts you cake, I'd take a closer look at the insides! 👍)

Swamp: first? I think it was about how I’d never actually seen a girl Hylian before. I’d seen a handful of travelers from a distance, but they were all guys, and I’d never spoken to them before either.

Swamp: second I was making sure she wasn’t hurt, since she looked pretty freaked out, and I noticed she... uh. W-was... yknow. pretty.

Swamp: *ears going red* um. don’t tell her that one.

Swamp: *clears throat* annnnyway, the third thing I thought about her was that boy did she talk funny. I’d never heard such a weird accent before, it took me a second to figure out what she was saying. It was interesting though. I like it.

[miguel-owhora]

could you imagine one of the boys just walking in on you pounding Dutch's pussy 🥱

[walkingstackofbooks]

I'm back to thinking about autistic aro-spec Julian Bashir and how he doesn't know it, and how desperately he tries to do romance "properly", and how it always feels just off of what other people describe, but many emotions seen to do that anyway...

And how he's completely convinced that finding his One True Love would finally unlock the key to happiness he's been struggling to find, because hasn't it worked for Jadzia and Worf and Kira and Odo and Miles and Keiko...? Even for his parents, who always seemed to understand each other so much more than they in understood him, who always told him he'd "understand when he's older"...

He's a little bit in love with all his friends but it's all mixed in with the gratitude he has that they even are his friends as he he latches onto any and all strong emotions in the belief that this is what romance feels like - at last! - and he never even considers the possibility he might be aromantic because he's been in love, hasn't he, and sure he might not really "get" the whole romance thing, but he's trying and anyway he has felt it before - must have felt it before, right? - even if he couldn't place his finger on it or on quite how or why it felt different. Or even if it felt different.

...He's just one of the many flavours of queer Julian that live in my head, but I do like him this way so so much.

[peyoso]

spinning the Twobit Pony Angela friend group in the CTD/VTM au aka the sillies <3

a vampire, an ancient nymph, and a teenage girl traveling across the country and getting up to weird fae shenanigans

meanwhile dallas is in the middle of nowhere trying to teach johnny how to fight a bear or whatever

[dreamings-free]

Michael & Isaac at FITFWT rehearsals recently

victoryampsuk instagram story 28/3/24