#among ashes

[gebo4482]

Among Ashes - Horror Game Release Window Trailer

Website / Steam

[satoshi-mochida]

Metafictional horror game Among Ashes adds PS5 version, launches in December - Gematsu

Metafictional horror game Among Ashes will launch for PlayStation 5 via PlayStation Store and PC via Steam in December, developer Rat Cliff Games announced. The PC version is self-published by Rat Cliff Games, while the newly announced PlayStation 5 version will be published by Dojo System.

Here is an overview of the game, via Rat Cliff Games:

Among Ashes is a metafictional horror title about a haunted video game and the disturbing story behind its creation. It’s a stormy night in the early 2000s and your friend has sent you a link to “Night Call,” a horror game that he found online. As you play, strange things start happening in your apartment. Something is terribly wrong with the game. Among Ashes features an innovative, meta-framing device in which players will experience a full retro-inspired first-person survival horror game within another first-person horror game, in addition to a host of unique presentational touches, surprises, mechanics and puzzles that transport players back to the turn of the millennium—providing a terrifying dose of nostalgia in the process. In the retro-styled survival-horror “Night Call,” players will explore Stoker manor; solving puzzles and fighting off the nightmarish creatures that have infested its labyrinthian halls. In the real world, however, they’ll be haunted by the dark entities that have latched on to this strange game, as they frantically try to unravel the mystery behind the game and its enigmatic creator. Whatever you do… KEEP PLAYING.

Watch a new trailer below.

PlayStation 5 Announce / Release Window Trailer

[g4zdtechtv]

Cinematech's Trailer Park - Among Ashes (PS5/PC)

Whatever you do… KEEP PLAYING.

[ranilla-bean]

@ash-and-starlight le bébé 😘🫶

[sejanusarchive]

“Your own father used to say those people only drank water because it didn’t rain blood” vs two district boys who are assumed to be murder machines, yet prove that statement wrong multiple times: Reaper and Marcus.

PART ONE: REAPER

When Reaper is first introduced to us, we learn he’s rangy but muscular; we read about him wrapping his hands around Coriolanus’s throat on the truck headed to the zoo and about Dill, his District partner, saying he has killed a Peacekeeper before in District 11, without ever getting caught. 

Our first impression of him is that of a dangerous person, one who’s even clever in his lethality, and because of that we know he’s a presumed possible victor.

Lucy Gray mentions him more than once as one of the biggest threats, when talking about how she’s going to try as hard as she can to win the Games.

She also tells Coriolanus how Reaper apologized to the other tributes for having to kill them and told them he is going to make it up to them after, by taking revenge on the Capitol. Everyone takes this as him meaning it maliciously and with arrogance, ‘cause how else could he possibly mean it, right? Coriolanus thinks that he’s not only powerful, but good at mind games too. 

But the truth is that Reaper meant that genuinely, even with a certain innocence, and naivety to how it could have been misinterpreted. There was no malice or arrogance in his statement, but there was guilt and regret and grief, because of being forced into taking lives. He went into the arena fully prepared and resigned to kill the others to save himself, but not without obvious dissent.

When the Games start, he arms himself and heads to the stands. Coriolanus thinks he does so to begin his hunt, even if everyone else had fled in other directions and he had made no move to go after them.

Right after this we read about how Tanner, someone who’s also a presumed possible victor, is able to climb up to the first row of the stands and sit in the sun for a while, completely unbothered and unharmed. Reaper doesn’t try to fight him, even if it would have only been to his advantage, since he could have easily taken out his strongest opponent now that the Games had just begun and he wasn’t exhausted and starving.

His first interaction with another tribute in the arena is with a dying Dill, carrying her out of the tunnels, placing her in the sun and talking to her in the last moments of her life. 

His first act with another tribute, is comforting a dying child. 

This is when the “murder machine” image starts to crumble. Coriolanus’s classmates talk about how he doesn’t look so tough, doesn't look like the person who “promised to kill all the others”, which he never actually did.

But still, after all this, Coriolanus sees his distressed pacing around Dill, as him possibly being “eager to get back to the hunt”, a hunt he never even began, and not just him feeling pained and powerless at Dill’s condition. 

When Coriolanus is sent into the arena to get Sejanus out, Bobbin, Mizzen, Tanner and Coral are the tributes who go after them to try to kill them. No sign of Reaper at any point.

When Lucy Gray gets out of the tunnels with a rabid Jessup after her, he makes no move to kill them either. Coriolanus points out how he lets Lucy Gray go and only walks up to the bottles of water on the ground.

Again and again and again, he has a chance to easily take a life to save his own, or take a small revenge against the Capitol, but he doesn’t. 

His second interaction with a tribute is with Lamina. He walks up to her, they negotiate an exchange of something both of them desperately need and that forms a bond between the two of them.

Then Coral, Mizzen and Tanner appear and he leaves, he goes behind the barricade and he falls asleep.

When he comes back out, he’s shocked to see Lamina and Tanner dead on the ground. And this is when he starts to make true his promise of avenging the tributes after their death. 

He lifts Lamina up in his arms and places her next to Marcus’s and Bobbin’s corpses and then collects Tanner, Dill and Sol as well, and covers them all with the flag of Panem. And he keeps doing this with all the tributes for the rest of the Games, right until his death. 

This is the best form of revenge he could take. Not only because he disrespects the flag, causing great disdain among Capitol citizens, but most importantly because he humanizes the tributes and gives them dignity, two things the Capitol has tried in every way to take away from them. He gives them as proper a burial as he can manage in those circumstances, makes it so now they can finally rest, tucked in a corner and covered, their corpses no longer on display for a bunch of sick people’s amusement. He honors them. He could have left them all scattered out on the dusty arena ground, but he didn’t. He took care of them.

Even when it’s just him and Lucy Gray left and he’s one step away from winning, he shows no signs of wanting to attack her. Doesn’t matter that he could easily take her out, save himself and finally go home. No, even then his main concern is that the tributes can properly rest with their corpses concealed. 

Everyone expected him to kill the most people, but he died in that arena killing no one and without ever even attempting to. He died holding strong to his humanity and making sure the fallen tributes could hold strong to theirs as well even in death.

Contrary to what we and the Capitol are made to believe initially, Reaper turns out to be pretty innocuous. He’s not a naturally violent or aggressive person, not a natural born killer and he refuses to be as well. This was a life or death situation and yet he didn’t even harm anyone. He has killed before, he is capable of it, but if he didn’t even do it in this case, even when all it would have taken for him to save himself was killing a girl smaller and younger than him, then imagine how dire and desperate the situation must have been when he had to resort to it.

He defied the Capitol by not participating in the Games, by not letting them turn him into the murder machine they wanted and expected him to be, and by honoring the corpses of the children whose lives have been so cruelly and unjustly cut short.

(Before moving on to Marcus, I wanna clarify some things in case anyone who’s reading this has only seen the movie. Reaper snapping at Clemensia during the one-on-one mentor-tribute interviews never happens in the book, neither does him looking angrily into the camera in the arena and challenging the Capitol to punish him arrogantly. Like we’ve just seen, this perceived arrogance and aggression in Reaper is a very surface level misconception of the people around him, that’s easily debunkable, that who made the movie took and ran with wrongfully. 

And actually there’s a few heartbreaking scenes in the book that contrast heavily with the image the movie created of him, like him tying a piece of the flag around his shoulders like a cape and spinning around, watching it fly behind him, and then running in the sun with his arms spread wide; and him rocking gently back and forth on himself for comfort, after the snake attacks, which is not when he dies in the book. He’s not the threatening, angry guy who tests the Capitol that they made him in the movie, he’s just a severely traumatized kid. Nothing more than a kid.

The movie made tons of stupid changes like this, that completely miss and disregard the whole point of both characters and story. Trust me when I say 99% of the characters are portrayed very wrongfully in it. So please keep that in mind.)

PART TWO: MARCUS

Marcus, like Reaper, was initially seen as a probable winner in the Games, before being murdered. Coriolanous makes note of his size multiple times, describing him as “towering”, as having a “colossal frame”, as “dwarfing the other tributes” and comparing him to a grizzly bear. 

It’s exactly because of his size that people think of him as a sure winner, as capable of taking down everyone else, as threatening and deadly.

But then we hear Sejanus, the only person who actually got to know him at some point, talk about him, and the first and one thing he mentions about Marcus is his kindness. 

He tells Coriolanus how when they were still classmates in Two, he hurt his finger really badly and Marcus helped him by bringing him a cup of snow he scooped from the windowsill. He says he did it without being prompted by anyone, without consulting anyone, not even the teacher, and without even being friends with Sejanus. 

That’s actually the very first thing Sejanus tells us about him. They weren’t enemies, but they weren’t friends either. Marcus had no real reason to do it, especially considering how the Plinths were, and still are, deeply despised in Two, for having helped the Capitol win the war. He did it almost as a reflex, because that’s who he is as a person. 

And this pure, unconditional kindness, told by the one person who actually knew him, goes against the image of him everyone formed by just looking at him, against what everyone assumed because he’s district, he’s a tribute, and he’s tall and strong and broad, so he has to be dangerous and lethal, he will brutally kill everyone to save himself, he’s capable of it anyway.

As I already said, the Plinths are deeply despised in Two, Sejanus is a filthy traitor in his eyes, one who’s benefiting from a luxurious, safe life in the Capitol, thanks to blood money; blood of thousands of what were supposed to be his people, blood whose spillage made them lose the war and caused the realization of the Games, bringing Marcus to that very situation.

Sejanus doesn’t have to worry about whether or not he’s going to be able to fill his stomach everyday; whether he’ll be able to finish his studies or will have to drop out of school early to go work to help sustain his family; whether the dangerous working conditions will be the cause of his early demise or being sent to an arena to kill or be killed by a bunch of other children for amusement will be, and what will happen to his family once he’ll be gone. All of this thanks to his family’s betrayal.

No doubt he resents Sejanus and is angry at him, a part of him maybe even faults him a bit for everything, but he never takes it out on him. It would be easy to single him out, pick him and make him pay for this situation, since he can’t make the whole Capitol pay; take some sort of revenge on Strabo Plinth in the name of Two and Thirteen and all other Districts, by harming his son. 

Sweet Sejanus, who brings the tributes food when no one else thought about it, who keeps pleading with him to accept it, who tries to help them however he can, would probably let him do it. He would take the hit, metaphorical or not, because it’s clear he has guilt gnawing at him and would feel like he deserves it. And Marcus is definitely aware of it. 

But he never gets violent, physically nor verbally, never tries to attack him or spit insults or hate at him. Instead he just ignores him.

He had many chances to do harm, even to kill Capitol citizens and Peacekeepers as revenge, a small and trivial one, but still a revenge, and he had many chances to let his frustration and anger out on Sejanus and use him as a punching bag, but he never did, because despite what everyone assumed about him, that’s not the type of person he is.

PART THREE: SEJANUS 

Sejanus, whom I’ve already mentioned several times in this post, is another District boy with the ability to take lives, but who’s repulsed and disturbed by the mere idea of it. 

With Marcus and Reaper, it’s a matter of first impressions and then getting to actually know them and learn they’re not like they seemed. With Sejanus it’s the opposite. 

First thing we learn about him in the book is his background: born in District 2, his father made fortune during the war and was able to buy his family a life in the Capitol. 

But the first thing we learn about him as a person is that he’s shy and sensitive. 

Throughout the entirety of the book, over and over and over again, we see that he’s good, and kind, and gentle, and sweet and takes things so to heart. It’s constantly pointed out by the people around him. 

And it’s constantly shown to us by him as well, with the passion he puts into standing up against the dehumanization and mistreatment of District people; with how affected he is by these aspects and by the Games; with how he tries in every way he can to help the tributes; with how he made it his life mission to make things better for the Districts; with how he’s never mean or spiteful to people who bully and disrespect him.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is at its very center a discussion on human nature. He (alongside Dr. Gaul) is the main character who explicitly talks about it, and he believes in the inherent goodness of humans and constantly advocates in favor of it. All the injustice and atrocities he witnessed, never made him change his mind or his actions, never made it so compassion and love weren’t his driving forces.

His heart is big, and kind, and pure. And he wears it on his sleeve all the time. He’s referred to as “emotional” and “compassionate”, his eyes are soulful, his face is incredibly expressive, and there’s so many instances in which he’s described as speaking with a voice so full of sentiment, so many instances of his eyes filling with tears, of him wiping his face cause they spilled out. 

It’s well established how good and uncorrupted he is, how devoted to humanity he is, how much he values life.

And then in the third part of the book, we learn he’s an excellent marksman, a natural one even, who has been training in shooting every week since he was tiny.

He’s so good, that the sergeant in Twelve, as to not lose someone with Sejanus’s ability, refuses to give him the recommendation he needs in order to train to become a medic, even when Sejanus purposefully shoots much worse than he’s capable of, to hide his talent. 

The boy who values life more than anything in the world, has the ability to take one even with his eyes closed.

When he arrived in Twelve, wearing on his body the signs of the toll the Capitol, the Games and what happened to Marcus had taken on his mental health, with the prospect of building a new life for himself in which he could help the world become a better place, of training to be a medic and save lives, Coriolanus noted he had a much lighter air to himself, as if a heavy weight had been lifted off of him.

But when he is confronted with the reality that he is now a soldier and is expected to kill, Coriolanus says that his expression goes back to being as gloomy as it had been in the Capitol, the heavy weight now back on his shoulders. 

At dinner he doesn’t take a single bite of food, which is a behavior we’ve seen from him before, one he falls into when his mental health gets concerningly bad. And the reason is that he is terrified by the idea of having to kill someone, or someone dying because he can’t bring himself to shoot first. Because to him, every life is precious and none is disposable, and the possibility of being the cause of one being taken away, is an unbearable thought.

Reaper and Marcus had many chances and what could be considered reasons to kill, but they refused to. Sejanus, who is expected to kill because he’s a soldier and the best shooter, who would be punished, possibly even with execution, if he didn’t, refuses to. 

All three of them have the power to take lives with little effort but choose to cherish and honor them instead, choose kindness, choose humanity even over their own self preservation, proving both the Capitol and Crassus Snow’s statement about District people being bloodthirsty, wrong, by simply being their honest, uncorrupted selves until the end, by being truthful to who they are no matter what.

[spittyfishy]

Pokémon Journeys ladies and gents

[wondereads]

Sapphic Book Recs for Pride 2024

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Adult, high fantasy, 4.28 star average (my rating: 5 stars)

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Adult, sci-fantasy, 4.29 star average (my rating: 5 stars)

The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Young Adult, high fantasy, 3.55 star average (my rating: 5 stars)

Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide

Young Adult, thriller, 4.27 star average (my rating: 5 stars)

Crier's War by Nina Varela

Young Adult, high fantasy, 4.11 star average (my rating: 4.5 stars)

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

New Adult, low fantasy, 4.18 star average (my rating: 4.5 stars)

Seven Devils by L. R. Lam and Elizabeth May

Adult, space opera, 4.03 star average (my rating: 4.5 stars)

Malice by Heather Walter

Adult, fantasy romance, 3.97 star average (my rating: 4.5 stars)

Beguiled by Cyla Panin

Young Adult, high fantasy, 3.48 star average (my rating: 4 stars)

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Adult, high fantasy, 4.21 star average (my rating: 3.5 stars)

Ash by Malinda Lo

Young Adult, fantasy romance, 3.57 star average (my rating: 3.5 stars)

We Ate the Dark by Mallory Pearson

New Adult, horror fantasy, 3.04 star average (my rating: 3 stars)

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Adult, historical fantasy, 3.66 star average

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

Adult, historical fantasy, 4.13 star average

Flip the Script by Lyla Lee

Young Adult, contemporary romance, 3.64 star average

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Adult, high fantasy, 4.07 star average

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Adult, historical fantasy, 4 star average

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

Young Adult, contemporary fantasy, 4.17 star average

Tink and Wendy by Kelly Ann Jacobson

Young Adult, low fantasy, 3.4 star average

The Tiger's Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera

Adult, high fantasy, 3.84 star average

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Adult, horror sci-fi, 4.04 star average

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Young Adult, high fantasy, 3.65 star average

The Goddess of Nothing at All by Cat Rector

Adult, high fantasy, 4.23 star average

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Young Adult, historical romance, 4.28 star average

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

Young Adult, dystopian sci-fi, 3.92 star average

The City of Dusk by Tara Sim

Adult, high fantasy, 3.72 star average

Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills

Young Adult, contemporary fiction, 4.25 star average

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi

Adult, gothic fantasy, 3.83 star average

A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson

Adult, gothic fantasy, 4.12 star average

Seven Faceless Saints by M. K. Lobb

Young Adult, high fantasy, 3.5 star average

Darker by Four by June CL Tan

Young Adult, contemporary fantasy, 4.11 star average

The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling

Young Adult, paranormal romance, 3.64 star average

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Lin

Adult, mystery thriller, 3.63 star average

Once & Future by Cory McCarthy and A. R. Capetta

Young Adult, sci-fantasy, 3.57 star average

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Adult, high fantasy, 4.1 star average

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Young Adult, sci-fi horror, 3.48 star average

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfled

Young Adult, contemporary fiction/low fantasy, 3.69 star average

[ao3-anonymous]

Fastest Growing Fandoms on AO3 This Week (05/23/2023)

Every week I pull data on how many fics are in each fandom and compare to the previous week, then calculate the percentage increase to determine fastest growing fandoms.  Since this naturally skews towards smaller fandoms, I have included the same data filtered to Over 1k, 5k, & 10k fics.

Overall:

Over 1,000 Fics:

Over 5,000 Fics:

Over 10,000 Fics:

Source: AO3 Fandom Dashboard

[kyraxyrespace]

Day Nine - Ash Ketchum/Misty, PokéShipping (Pokémon)

[detectivedrewshouldgetaclue]

[moonxpalace]

World Champion Ash and his partner Pikachu, Reigning Unova Champion Iris, and little Oliver

[gebo4482]

Among Ashes

Website / Steam

[satoshi-mochida]

Among Ashes launches December 9 - Gematsu

Metafictional horror game Among Ashes will launch for PlayStation 5 via PlayStation Store and PC via Steam on December 9, developer Rat Cliff Games announced.

Here is an overview of the game, via Rat Cliff Games:

Among Ashes is a metafictional horror title about a haunted video game and the disturbing story behind its creation. It’s a stormy night in the early 2000s and your friend has sent you a link to “Night Call,” a horror game that he found online. As you play, strange things start happening in your apartment. Something is terribly wrong with the game. Among Ashes features an innovative, meta-framing device in which players will experience a full retro-inspired first-person survival horror game within another first-person horror game, in addition to a host of unique presentational touches, surprises, mechanics and puzzles that transport players back to the turn of the millennium—providing a terrifying dose of nostalgia in the process. In the retro-styled survival-horror “Night Call,” players will explore Stoker manor; solving puzzles and fighting off the nightmarish creatures that have infested its labyrinthian halls. In the real world, however, they’ll be haunted by the dark entities that have latched on to this strange game, as they frantically try to unravel the mystery behind the game and its enigmatic creator. Whatever you do… KEEP PLAYING.

Watch a new trailer below.

Release Date Trailer

[ashes-onthewind]

>be me

>sees ash post about gw2

>"what's that stand for again? Garden warfare 2?"

>check "gw2" tag

>"guild war 2"

>ah

idk why this keeps happening they aren't even plants

jshwuejjdjdjsjwjjfjfjdhjehfhdhwhdhhf oh my god

tbf. i do have plants. in gw2. i have a plant lesbian and a plant gay. both of them are gay for their human s/os :3 and then there's my yearning pan(? havent decided) salad man ... i love him already and I've had him for like two hours of playtime

like i get what you're saying but also gw2 tumblr is pretty much all about the plants. that is a very significant thing that happens in the fandom

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Book names + authors under the cut

Balthamos/Baruch- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Chloe Green/Shara Wheeler- I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

Jack Wolcott/Alexis Chopper- Wayward Children Series by Seanan McGuire

Uriel/Ashmedai "Little Ash"- When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

[canonrpfinder]

.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

🍀 Hello angels! I‘m 30 and looking for those who are 18+.

I'd absolutely love to find someone who’s a fan of the game that’s called Oxenfree. I’m currently only interested in starting storylines based on the first game. I hope you are going to be fine playing as a canon character. I’d really love to try out Alexandra, who is better known as Alex and it would be amazing to find someone who can play as Jonas, Ren or maybe her brother Michael. It would be quite fun to explore her interactions with either of these characters. I have been wanting to do a storyline based on this particular game for a while now. I hope there’s someone out there who finds this interesting. But, if you prefer a different fandom. That's no problem! I'll happily share a few of my favourite ones in the post and we can discuss others if you'd like to know.

I have more than ten years of roleplaying experience. It truly is the best thing to do in this world. I’m semi-literate and advanced literate. It would make my heart super happy to find people who can do at least two to three detailed paragraphs. But, please don’t feel pressured in any way to match my length. I don’t like one liners because it gets boring very quickly. I’ll be more than happy with one paragraph if that’s all you can do.

Fandoms:

Guardians Of The Galaxy

Detroit Become Human

The Last Of Us

Resident Evil 4

The Walking Dead (Video Game/TV Show)

The Wolf Among Us

Life Is Strange

Star Wars Jedi Fallen

Until Dawn

House Of Ashes

Sonic 1 & 2

Anne With An E

Doctor Who

Harry Potter

Twilight

The Vampire Diaries

Titanic

Pirates Of The Caribbean

Please like this or feel free to message me if you’re interested!! I'm sending a burst of positivity your way in the meantime!!! 💖

.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

✒