#zombified-queer

[diosapate]

☕️ what d'you suppose mercymorn and augustine's plans for society were post-john?

a couple thoughts on this:

i don't actually think Mercy had any plans for society after killing John — she's motivated almost entirely by her own sense of justice, which is vengeance — and her lack of commitment to recovering society is pretty clearly demonstrated by what she says to Augustine after she kills John:

“Augustine, you promised me that after we did it we would go somewhere and drop into the nearest sun—”

and even though she does say that they "planned for a mass evacuation", given what we see from her throughout HtN, this seems to never really have been a priority for her. she's exacted her vengeance on someone who's hurt her, and it certainly didn't heal her, so she's waiting on the green light from Augustine to reenact the suicide pact that gave them lyctorhood in the first place and close the loop.

on the other hand, Augustine seems to have actually planned out what his plan was (and even waxes poetic about it, the old drama queen that he is):

We’re going to go round up the ships—everyone who’s left—sue for peace as best we can—get the Edenites on side. And then we’ll find a place to fulfill the old promise … Somewhere out there exists a home not paid for with blood; it won’t be for us, but it will be for those who have been spared. Babies always get born. Houses always get built. And flowers will die on necromancy’s grave.

(with "the old promise" here, i believe, referring to Mercy's "you promised me" wrt their own deaths)

he actually seems interested in doing work as some sort of, i don't know, repentance for the horrific lives they've led. but he's also adamant that this new "home" isn't for them — actions that frankly seem uncharacteristically unselfish for him of all people, but given A—'s involvement in John's cryo project and his responsibility for getting people off of the planet to supposedly save them, i think it does check out for who he was before he was beset by, y'know, horrors of unimaginable magnitude.

Mercy wants to die, but Augustine — at least for a time — wants to live and do better (and only with her!! everything he's just wrenched from his heart and put up on the table goes completely out the window when John kills her) before he's satisfied with the both of them finally being able to die.

(i'd love to ask Tamsyn if she's intentionally referencing Voltaire here, given the striking parallels/refutations to 'make our garden grow' or if i'm connecting dots that aren't there, but that is neither here nor there)

logistically, Augustine was banking on just getting their people out of the house system, assuming Dominicus was going to collapse. he wants their people to be able to start over without the necromancy that has fueled imperialism for 10000 years, and imho, without imperialism as a whole given what he says to John about stopping and giving up the mission.

necromancy operates under the guise of being reverent of death, but has ended up being a gross disrespect of it since John first discovered his powers and started puppeting corpses. necromancy has been preventing things from their natural cycle of life and death — the corpses didn't rot! — he posits that maybe, maybe flowers could finally die upon necromancy's (as well as his and Mercy's) grave.

[liesmyth]

top five ianthe moments

WHEN SHE GIVES HARROW A MAKEOVER

When she eats Babs and she's like. Don't misunderstand me: this is NOT a confession. I don't feel bad :3

When she shows up on New Rho like HELLO. FASCISM IS HERE

Her soup recipe.

Every time she calls Gideon "Gonad"

[parasitic-saint]

showgirl's break (wip)

[mairen-marionette]

❄️Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing.

Thank you so much for the ask! Hehehehehe I'm so happy- here have a more recently tweaked snippet from the last bumaroion wip i shared in the server:

Bumaro gazes upon Ion, unconscious in his arms, alive and breathing once more and all the worse for wear, the marks of their brutal death ages ago at Bumaro’s own hand scarring their pale skin, and he fears that he will not be able to kill them a second time

:)))

[mistpodfics]

Room 505 written by zombified_queer | @zombified-queer

A The Hotel Podfic read by mistbornhero for Podtogether

The Lobby Boy gets to flex his creative muscles. The Hotel Herself observes with a pang of surprise.

Podfic Length: 13:09 minutes

[paper-carnation]

HAPPY DAY OF BIRTH!!!

Thank youuuuuu!!!

[muppetebbtide]

LOCKED TOMB CHARACTERS X CLASSICAL REFERENCES

explanations for parallels come from here and here

I know I spelt pelleamena wrong and missed off juno zeta btw but it was getting a bit crowded. I could also probably extrapolate more but it can stay like this for now

EDIT: BITS WOT I FORGOT AND ADDITIONS FROM TAGS:

@mayasaura makes a fantastic point about the treatment of gideon's body by BOE being almost identical to the treatment of hector's by achilles, down to animals refusing to touch it and it not rotting or tearing because of divine intervention. hence there should be a light blue line between gideon and hector. this hadn't ocurred to me is and is v cool, here is their post on it (the original asker's point about harrow and priam is also v good)

@iamanoccasionaldoodler points out that Pyrrha is named after Achilles directly, given the 'Achilles taking the name of Pyrrha while on Skyros avoiding the war' thing; I did just forget to draw the line here sorry lol it was in my post! also the tags about camilla and hector... no you're right. they feel so similar, there has to be something.

@zombified-queer mentions I left out dios apate; bugger it, so I did lmao. I was focusing mostly on characters but that's such a big one! in the iliad it's the deception of zeus, hera's plan to distract him by seducing him so that the greeks can regain the upper hand. in harrow the ninth, as we know, it's... not dissimilar! both times in fact it is very similar!

I did also forget Juno Zeta I know, but as it currently stands I don't really know if it has any narrative significance...? Maybe.

I also realised I forgot Protesilaus, god damn it

[loremaster]

oh yeah. so i’ve been rewatching a playthrough of rain code with my partner, and this line from vivia’s second gumshoe gab really got me:

now, it’s implied that all the gumshoe gabs take place before chapter 1… so i wonder… given what happens in the story and to whom… has vivia changed his tune about this at all?

of course there’s a lot to read into with this scene, vivia’s being coy about the idea that he is immortal (which, I wondered the same thing as yuma for the same reason in the beginning), being his usual secretive self. it’s also clear he’s thought about this hypothetical a lot, what you would do if you lived forever, and how it’d all eventually lead back to craving death in the end

we now know that vivia is not immortal, he’s just extremely fixated on death for other (understandable) reasons. he is absolutely able to die and kinda… lives his life on that edge, however long it may end up being. but even though ghosts, spirits, and the afterlife have been part of his reality for his whole life… immortality has not

it sounds like it’s straight out of a story. a fantastical idea that could only be real in someone’s made-up world. romantic, not in a relationship sense but in a thoughtful, poetic sense. for vivia, someone who craves (eventual) death, the idea of craving a death you can never have, that yearning… of course it’s very romantic. it makes one’s heart flutter, the thought of feeling anything that strongly… forever.

to him at this point, it’s a fantasy. it’s a story. it’s fictional. an idea to mull around in his overactive head, yet another escape from reality.

but as we find out later… here? it’s absolutely real. it’s real and it’s everywhere and it’s everyone.

when does that fantastical yearning for death cease to become romantic and instead become horrifying?

it’s only been three years since the people of kanai ward were replaced with immortal doppelgängers, so we don’t really know for sure… will they still die of old age? of sickness? or, if left unchecked, will an imperfect homunculus go on to live forever?

they can die, sure. but not in the way that vivia is so intimately familiar with. the homunculi leave no ghosts behind, instead their bodies keep walking - forever, while their minds remain shut down. it’s unclear really but it seems as if their spirits are trapped within their bodies but unable to control them. to die without being able to move on to any sort of afterlife is the exact opposite of what vivia yearns for. his whole life, he’s been connected to this other world, to people who have moved on from his life to that world, and one day wishes to join them there. but being held in this interminable jail between either world must be hell to him. too terrifying to be called romantic… and yet

we still have to talk about yakou.

yeah that’s right, you all thought it, this is why you came here to read this post

of course with vivia being as secretive as he is, it’s hard to say definitively whether his feelings for yakou are romantic in the relationship sense… (i personally do believe so, i’m going to cling to whatever scraps of queerness i can get) but they absolutely for sure are in the poetic sense. yakou was able to help vivia back up from his lowest point and give him something - and someone - to live for. gave him a place to call home. sounds like it’s straight out of a story.

and yet after inspiring vivia to stop chasing death, he immediately resigns himself to his own as soon as he gets that letter, in order to reunite with his wife.

yakou, as an imperfect homunculus who has died (through his own machinations), is now trapped in that zombie hellscape. no ghost, no spirit, no rest for the dead. he is, at least according to vivia’s definition of it, Unable To Die. …sounds like it’s straight out of a story…

yakou’s body is just a shambling husk now. and even with a potential cure for zombified brain cells thanks to his wife… what next? that still doesn’t solve the immortality problem. he’s still gatekept from the everlasting peace and quiet of the afterlife. he’s still separated from his beloved. he’s still Unable To Die. and in his current state he’s even unable to form enough semblance of thought to yearn for his own death.

so vivia has to do the yearning for him.

how romantic.

[red-dye40]

sweet @zombified-queer tagged me in a lil game to share some wips and i am feeling SO creatively disheartened rn so this couldn’t have come at a more perfect time thank you so so much 🥺

from stixxx:

The canvas is warm; it shudders against the cool of the paint and the icy touch of his hands. He drags his fingertips across its surface in gentle little strokes. It takes the paint with ease, with gratitude, bowing at his touch. So soft. The magenta is so vibrant in the blue of dusk in his room, almost electric neon, so alive and it keeps uttering his name. His fingernails drag down the woven texture, through splotches of paint, leaving white claw marks across its skin. The canvas gasps. He feels Lora’s hands again, this time grasping his back, the nape of his neck, moaning Johnny, Johnny, John-Nny. It drowns out whatever combating noise there is in the room; it’s just the scraping and the moaning now. Johnny gets lost in the breathing pit of pink before him, his hands act miles away from what his brain can catch up to, and soon he feels the canvas relent, and Lora yelps with pain and pleasure, and threads of canvas tangle under his fingernails, and he’s snapping its skeleton in his hands and over his knee, his palms littered with splinters, his teeth a mess of blood or paint. Lora loves saying his name and he loves to hear it when it’s her, so soft and forgiving even with bone grasped in his fingers.

The magenta floods his veins, blooms in beautiful clouds through his arteries, pours over his eyes so all he can see is Lora. It pushes him over. A rubber band snapping, or a blister popping. Careening down a hill in a car stuck in neutral, inertia pinning him against the seat, flinging him off a cliff towards a viscous throbbing ocean.

from ancaux (literally the first paragraph of the next chapter so enjoy da preview 🤪):

In the pitch black of the room, the door yawns high with gnashing teeth, a pinpoint cycloptic eye leering, from its belly a repetitive loud low bark. Devi has herself flattened against the carpet. She can see the window but nothing behind it, the outside just as inky as in here. All she hears is the rain—sloshing out gutters into the parking lot, running so copiously it sounds thick like gore or muck or particularly chunky vomit—and the knocking. The door shudders on its hinges with each knock. It shakes the whole room. Foreboding like a threat, someone is trying to get to her, she’s been found out. The reckoning’s right here at her doorstep.

i tag @margaritaville and @wastelockwoes bc i love to eat your writing w a spoon :) anyone else feel free to as well i love to read ppls wips !!!!!

[kuroshitsuji-g4g]

Thank you @roshytsunami for your generous donation! This piece was done by @zombified-queer. The proceeds from this request have gone to PCRF and Mohammed Khatib's GoFundMe

[spectrojams]

"A hard worker. Professional. Middle-management, if I had to wager a guess. Sending off those last minute reports before his work is well and truly done. People are counting on him. A shame, then, he’s checked into our Hotel."

Fic fanart of @zombified-queer's "Nameless Iridescence," a Concierge-focused work in ver series of New Crew rentals. I love this one so much, I'm such a sucker for weird, capital-c Cosmic horror and I love how it fit the Concierge's character, imo. From the setting to the guest and everything...all very symbolic all very fun to rotate in my mind, so I just had to draw some of it!!

I wanted to draw more but that might have to be for another day. For now, if you haven't already, go read Kwiyatsi's work!!!

[liesmyth]

Fic writer asks: 1, 3, 11

1. the last sentence you wrote

"You've already said enough. Now you listen."

3. how you feel about your current WIP

like maybe I've been a bit overambitious in planning but we're marching on!

11. a WIP you’d like to finish someday

NtN flashback era draft you will always be famous... that was supposed to be my TLT bang last summer but [life] and now I sort of associate it to a very chaotic few months in my life and I CANNOT bring myself to finish it. hopefully someday!

also I have like 5 unfinished fics on AO3. those also.

[fic writer asks]

[parasitic-saint]

second coming of christ? if he's with me there's gonna be even a seventh and twelfth

[mairen-marionette]

❓ any WIP snippet you want!

Kwiyatsi I am so glad you asked like honestly. Here have a thing from this one wip featuring a gaggle of OCs who I have no names for, all in the present era as circumstances beyond their control have revived some of them.

“…I met him, actually,” the former daevite prince says softly. “Or rather, my wife and I encountered him once. Before, well, everything.” *That *catches everyone’s attention, and now many pairs of eyes are on him. “You met Ion?” The Mekhanite asks sharply. “How? When he was still a slave?” The Daeva shakes his head, “No, no it- we encountered him on the road, about… it was when my wife was taking me and our child to the… to where *she *was from, to meet her parents finally. It was… we had her lieutenant with us and the horses, but were… there were no others. No other guards.” “You were unguarded?” One of the Nalka questions. “A Matriarch's son and his wife?" “Not- not unguarded, not unguarded, she was a general, she was strong, and I was- am- skilled in thaumaturgy- my mother and sisters wanted me to be protected. And we had her lieutenant, and for all we knew it was…”

AAAAAAAAAAA I want to work on this again so badly now- I really need to name people.

[smokedapplecores]

Drew him originally when @zombified-queer said ve wished there was more fanart of him and I heard about the pinup calendar. Fished him out since I'm writing an interesting take on The Hotel for Nanowrimo and The Concierge is featuring way more than I thought he would. That piece of writing will not see the light of AO3.

Enjoy, Cierge fans!

[mistpodfics]

Serrated written by zombified_queer | @zombified-queer

A The Hotel Podfic performed by mistbornhero, @aliteralgarbageheap, Avanie with a cover by Amanita_Fierce for VoiceTeam filling the challenge 3 Minute Masterpiece

Madam Hotel can be really fun. The staff just needs to learn to trust her.

Podfic Length: 02:10 minutes