#So many retellings...

[msbunnat]

Re-drawing my Zeus and Ganimedes designs using ancient pottery as reference

[mouse-of-mischief]

Whenever I come across an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that I have not seen/read yet, I immediately think two things without fail:

1. I hope that they do Holmes and Watson's relationship justice and don't just make one a cold-hearted, unfeeling machine and the other one a gormless side-character or someone who just constantly scolds their partner

2. Oh damn, how do they handle The Fall...?

[umblrspectrum]

go read Memento Nori and Like the Stars and What Friends Are For and just generally all of Ad Astra Per Aspera by LadyDaybreaker on ao3

[beaulesbian]

The Terror 1.09

[bookshelf-in-progress]

The trick to writing a good story is to make sure it has at least one element that people like so much that they don't care if other elements are imperfect.

People are drawn to stories with stuff they like; they're going to like flawed stories that have those things more than they're going to like perfect stories that don't have those things. I personally love certain authors because of one thing they do well--I go to this one for character, and this one for intricate plot, and this one for immersive worldbuilding, etc.--and get confused when people complain about the other elements not being done well because that's not what I'm reading for. If one element is really well-done, I will forgive a million other storytelling sins that would make me tear apart a book I liked less. If I can give that grace to other authors, I can trust other readers to give me that same grace, if they like my stories well enough to keep reading them.

[storytellering]

if anyone's looking for me, I'll be in delulu land manifesting Tony Redgrave for the new dmc anime, don't try and get me back xoxo thanks

[lycandrophile]

does anyone want to hear me rant about how jekyll and hyde can function as an allegory for how trans manhood is portrayed as an evil contagion that twists pretty, mild-mannered women into violent, deformed monsters? because i’m not even done reading it yet and i already have so many thoughts about the parallels between how hyde is described and how trans men are seen.

[reddamselette]

thinking about a little speculation idea about valgrace based off would you fall in love with me again from epic (i cried listening to that)

like can you imagine leo dies right? except he still does come back but fate and destiny gets in the way because valgrace were never meant to be alive together in the same universe. bear with me here, walk with me, so he has to go thru so much pretty much to find his way back to camp half blood.

then he does

but it’s been years. he and jason are older, nothing but memories and holding onto hope. and they finally reunite. now run with me, they just talk. they talk for hours and even though leo’s tired, he’s afraid to sleep because this might just be a dream or he finally lost his mind and is hallucinating jason.

and he asks jason if he would fall in love with him again.

and jason cradles his face, looking at him with blue eyes leo has been missing for so long and it’s the confirmation leo needs that this is real, that jason is real. and jason asks him about something only the two of them know about (don’t ask me, it’s between them).

jason tells him that he will fall in love with leo again in the end.

[wish-i-were-heather]

"icarus imagined himself to be the stick of a candle, the wings to be the wick, and the sun to be the flame. for a small time, the wick would burn. the candle would be alight, shining brilliantly, lighting up the space for as long as the wick could last. until inevitably, the wick reached its end, the candle burning out. until the wick finally died, reaching the stick of the candle and engulfing that, too, in flames."

[cosmicourple]

hnnnn,,,, Wetthunderthighs hot spring sex. Hnhhhh,,-

[valensolo12]

Been playing Pillars of Eternity all week and decided to try to keep a journal of interesting moments, since it turned out to be pretty fun when i did it with fallout 1. It's a much longer game so this is gonna take a while but here are my favorite pages!

also a family photo of the party so far :) Durance is the weird uncle

[shmowder]

In case you missed it, Game Rant did an interview with Nikolay Dybowski about Pathologic 3. Here is the link for it.

And here are the bits that stood out the most to me:

Q: The non-linearity of time and how it will be related to the nature of the Town are also core story components. How did this affect design and direction?

A: Connecting non-linear time with a long, narrative-heavy story that involves many characters and cause-and-effect chains would be extremely difficult. We focused on what the player feels in the moment rather than on gathering information in the right order. The latter approach works well in shorter formats like Her Story or 12 Minutes, but in Pathologic, it would be overwhelming.

We wanted players to feel like “everything, everywhere, all at once”—similar to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. Different versions of reality coexist simultaneously, creating a “quantum” feeling for the player. Look at the time travel mechanic as an opportunity to correct mistakes, or even to make deliberate mistakes in order to unlock new paths and ideas. It is like a "sanctioned save scum."

-

Q: Conversely, how will it (Pathologic 3) connect to and consider the events and characters in Pathologic 2?

A: Consider it as two subjective retellings of the same events. This is the same Town, the same twelve days, the same participants and events that occurred in the Haruspex’s story. But this is a different perspective. Like two witnesses recounting the same event in Rashomon, the stories vary greatly, each focusing on different details. Finally, we always give our heroes the right to make honest mistakes, forget, and even lie. Every narrator is an unreliable narrator.

-

Q: How did Pathologic’s previous philosophical explorations help inform or play into the narrative and themes here?

A: Everything we now see as true and valuable, we’ve kept. Everything we’ve outgrown, like childhood clothes, we either reimagined and reinterpreted to give these ideas new meaning, or let go of them. After all, we’ve grown a lot (hopefully, along with the industry). When I first conceived Pathologic, I was 21 and completely alone. Now I’m 47, surrounded by incredibly talented people who enrich this universe as much as I do, and that makes a difference.

We’ve kept the idea of the tragedy of utopian projects. We kept the idea that the plague is a voice of the natural order—one that the thinking human mind cannot accept—and that it has its own truth. We retained the belief that evil cannot be defeated with its own tools or outplayed on its field; yet it can be defeated realistically in a different, orthogonal way. In another dimension.

-

Q: It’s mentioned that the Bachelor is searching for an immortal man in Pathologic 3. Can you say if this is in reference to Mark Immortell?

A: No, there’s no connection between Simon Kain (one of the town’s rulers) and Mark Immortell (the director of the town theater). Mark is a clown. He awkwardly mimics Simon, parodying him, which is why he takes on this pseudonym. He's fully aware that he’s a jester, and the gesture itself is ironic.

-

Q: What do you hope players will take away most from Pathologic 3?

A: The hope that humanity remains a promising and capable species.

-

Also, new game pictures and screenshots dropped:

(some are old ones I forgot to post)

[themoonking]

the book trend that needs to be left in the dust for the new year is greek mythology retellings. i am so sick and tired of "retellings" of greek (or roman, but mainly greek) mythology from authors that clearly have a very surface level pop cultural understanding of the myth(s) they're adapting and the culture(s) they're depicting. especially the many that market themselves as "feminist retellings" where the "feminism" is basically just "men bad sometimes", and especially when they're "feminist retellings" that take some of the few mythological women who get happy endings and take it away from them for the sake of saying "men bad sometimes". it's all so shallow and they exploded this year and i'm sick of it.

[teawiththegods]

I think we have enough feminist Medusa retellings thank you very much.

How about instead we explore how Perseus risks his life to save his Mama?

[ritzy-biscuit]

Ohhh this sound interesting!

It premieres October 10

[arihi]

I won’t go as far as to say sadness is self-obsession, but I will say that the most helpful thing my futureme letters did was create little snapshots into the past that I would read a whole year in the future and 1) hold empathy for, 2) realize that whatever was tearing me apart back then really wasn’t that big of a deal, and 3) honestly cringe a little at it. And that’s okay! Maybe I was super dramatic over this friend whose name I now barely remember. I was so worried about dropping this one uni class (that I read years in the future when I was already in law school). I was so wrapped up in myself that I couldn’t see a way out of the sad hole/spiral I flung myself into for no reason. So wrapped up in myself that I didn’t think of a me post-handling the issue. Maybe I was really sad and upset and I had a good reason to be, but maybe-not-maybe, maybe-for-real even, things wound up working out.

And maybe things I’m stressed and upset about now will wind up working out. Maybe this is a silly story or cute (in a slightly pitiful way) memory for a future version of myself. I know it’s of little comfort in the moment when you’re going through anxieties, but so much fretting comes out of stretching ourselves thin, into shapes and boxes that are really and genuinely not real, but when that clicks in your brain for the first time a lot of things start getting better.

Anyway this was going to be my Twitter post of the day but the character limit is so fucking small and here I can also ramble in the tags, so.