#especially the body horror is very evocative but

[werewolfpdfs]

the spirit bares its teeth isn’t necessarily “good” but i have read most of it in a single night and it does genuinely have interesting things to say even if it’s saying them in a way that isn’t how yours truly usually enjoys them….

[iamnmbr3]

what are some really outstandingly written and creative hp fics. (please no wholeslae canon rewrites tho. AUs are fine).

Here are a few fics that I find to be especially outstanding and creative and well written.

Amulette d'amour by The_Carnivorous_Muffin, Vinelle (words: 58,092 | not rated | Tom Riddle/Alphard Black)

Tom is commissioned to repair a magical amulet.

Why I rec it: Listen. This fic is absolutely phenomenal. It has a fascinating and well developed exploration of wizarding society, brilliant and highly complex and multifaceted characterization, and very original and unique plotting. It's extraordinarily well written and is both thought provoking and dramatic as well as laugh out loud funny in places. It's not a fic premise or pairing I would ever have imagined but it's legitimately an outstanding piece of writing that will live rent free in your head.

At Your Service by Faith Wood (faithwood) ( words: 95,752 | rating: E drarry )

Hogwarts students are in danger; Harry is determined to save them all. There’s only one thing he knows for certain: Draco Malfoy is somehow involved.

Why I rec it: This is the closest to book 8 that I've seen. Stylistically it really recalls the feel and structure of the canon books and it has a lot of really cool plot developments and world building. It follows on nicely from the rest of the series and expands on whats there. It feels like a book 8 where drarry happens.

the pleasure, the privilege by asterismal (asterisms) (words: 19,901 | rating: M | Harry/Voldemort | CW: Horror, Extremely dark themes)

It begins with Vernon Dursley’s body, dead across the table. In which Voldemort is dosed with amortentia, and nothing is better for it.

Why I rec it: It takes a crack plot premise and runs with it and really makes it work in a serious way. This fic is DARK and very unique and creative in its plot resolution. It kept me on the edge of my seat and is incredibly innovative and dramatic.

Running on Air by eleventy7 ( words: 74,876 | rating: T | drarry)

Draco Malfoy has been missing for three years. Harry is assigned the cold case and finds himself slowly falling in love with the memories he collects.

Why I rec it: Brilliantly well done characterization and amazing world building and plot. The relationship and characters all develop so naturally and the writing is incredibly beautiful. It never feels rushed and yet you can't put it down.

Denude by Faith Wood (faithwood) (words: 4,172 | rating: E | drarry | CW: Underage)

This is a HBP AU. It's set a few days after the Sectumsempra scene and takes the story in another direction, asking the question: "What if the Sectumsempra scene had a greater impact on Harry and Draco?" Harry and Draco are sixteen. In medias res beginning. Non-linear storytelling.

Why I rec it: Stylistically it feels like it could be taken out of book 6. The characterization and dialogue is so spot on and its very emotionally evocative.

Sparkling Cyanide by Asenora (words: 1,415 | rating: G | Gen | complete)

Tom Riddle had nothing to do with the death of Hepzibah Smith. Hokey had just had enough of being a slave.

Why I rec it: Amazingly creative world building and premise and characterization. It feels brand new and yet wholly plausible and right.

[tyrantisterror]

What are your top favorite fairy tales? Either classic literarily stories, adaptations of literary fairy tales, wholly modern fairy tales, or even just stories that you think are structured like fairy tales. (Roald Dahl books, Studio Ghibli movies, even Shrek and Puss in Boots movies, etc.)

That is an unfathomably vast genre of fiction to try and condense into a ranked numbered list. I think... I think that may be impossible to actually answer as requested. But I can ramble about some of my favorites I suppose.

Let's do this sorta like the Oscars and divide things into categories.

Category 1: The Heavy Hitters

Some fairy tales are significantly more famous than others, so this category is for them: the heavy hitters, the classic fairy tales that are most well known, as defined by my own nebulous perception of which fairy tales are more popular than others.

Of the heavy hitters, my favorites are Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Little Red Riding Hood is such a spooky story no matter which telling you're looking at, and has contributed a lot to both the fantasy and horror genres thanks to its simple yet evocative premise and visuals. Jack and the Beanstalk, meanwhile, is just a really solid story of a trickster fool, which is one of my favorite archetypes in all of fiction. Love a good trickster fool.

Category 2: The Obscurities

As I said, this ask is covering a HUGE amount of fiction in its topic, especially since the border between a fairy tale and, like, ANY folklore isn't really well-defined (not in a way anyone can agree too, anyway). But there are a lot of obscure folktales I love that are at least sometimes lumped in as fairy tales, and I'm gonna list them here:

The Lambton Worm - a classic tale of dragon-slaying and getting fucked over by prophecies

The Lindworm Prince - queen can't concieve and consults a witch, ignores witch's directions, gives birth to human baby and dragon baby. Dragon baby grows up and demands a wife before human baby can get his, and a clever girl decides this is her chance to get rewarded for monster fucking.

Maud and the Dragon of Mordiford - the story of a girl who adopts a dragon only for it to end tragically, which inspired one of the novels I'm gonna write one of these days

Tam Lin - the story of a woman who wanted that elf dick and wasn't afraid to do some weird shit to get it

Biancabella and Samaritana - a story about a girl and her sister who is a snake because her mother had trouble concieving

King Odd - a story about an odd king who's actually an exiled fairy queen in disguise, and the man who wins her heart after surviving her attempt to execute him. It's like a Nordic medieval Tenchi Muyo.

You've probably noticed some themes about my favorites right now - lots of stories with dragons, people being transformed into monsters, and heroes who are into that monster shit.

Category 3: Archetypal Pieces

Ok, so for this I'm going to focus less on individual folktales and more on recurring plotlines, character types, and story beats, which you begin to notice the more you read up on Fairy Tales in part because many of the more obscure ones take beats from ones you're probably more familiar with and mix them together in new ways. So, my favorite plot beats in fairy tales:

Any sort of monster, obviously

The villain who literally removed their heart out of fear of being vulnerable

The baleful polymorph (i.e. a human who inhabits a beast/monster body against their will)

Monsterfucker protagonists

Trickster Fool protagonists

Disobedient Girls (examples: Little Red, Goldilocks), though I don't like how this archetype is treated

You want to have a baby and seek a witch and she gives you VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS which you ignore because you really want this baby and oops you've got twins and one of them is some sort of monster good job asshole

The hero helps three (or more) people/creatures in need, and when shit hits the fan, they return the favor

Category 4: Modern(ish) Adaptations

Our penultimate category focuses on adaptations of fairy tales from, like, the 1900's on - anything made in a century I've lived in part of, basically. These arguably shouldn't be divided from "normal" fairy tales, but my brain regards them differently than, like, Victorian era fairy tale retellings, because hey, I lived in the age of these, more or less. They're "modern" for whatever nebulous definition of that word my brain's decided on.

And there's a lot for me to put in this category. Sleeping Beauty might be my favorite of Disney's fairy tale retellings, though Beauty and the Beast is a strong competitor for that role (and maybe Mulan, if we count its source material as a fairy tale, but I'm not sure we can). I think overall I like Sleeping Beauty's more stylized animation and character designs as well as its less conventional story-telling structure a bit more than B&B's, but Beauty and the Beast is still gorgeous and kind of perfectly scripted, so it's a tough competition.

My alltime favorite adaptation of fairy tales, though, would be Jim Henson's The Storyteller:

Using the magic of 1980's muppeteering, it adapts several fairy tales, many of which are more on the obscure side, and sometimes mashes a few different ones together to make sure each episode has a good three act structure. It's wonderful and fully captures the weirdness of fairy tales, while also having a lot of heart - The Heartless Giant is my favorite of the whole series.

Category 5: Works Inspired By Fairy Tales

I almost lumped the following stories into the above category, but while the division is, again, purely in my mind, there's something different about modern works that claim to adapt fairy tales 1:1 and ones that take fairy tale characters or concepts and throw them in entirely new tales with different directions, so that's what our final category will be.

I've gushed about Puss In Boots: The Last Wish enough that I don't think it'd surprise anyone that it would end up here - the same goes with the works of Rankin Bass, which is why I doubt anyone is surprised I'd put The Last Unicorn here too (technically based on a book, but it still fits the "has big fairy tale vibes despite not being based on one specific one" that I'm using to justify this category).

Pan's Labyrinth would also go in this category, with a protagonist who's both a trickster fool AND a disobedient girl, as well as a beautifully gothic take on fairy tale motifs. I'd put Company of Wolves here as well, being a very multifaceted riff on the Little Red Riding Hood story and a movie that sets both my analytical and creative parts of my brain on fire each time I want it.

I'd also put The Path, a short video game explicitly inspired by Company of Wolves, on this part of the favorites list. It's a game about, like, a DOZEN or so different takes on Red Riding Hood and her story, all with different flavors and subtext to analyze. It's unsettling but good.

Dimension 20 had a whole season focused on a horror-themed crossover of fairy tale characters called Neverafter that was fantastic, with one of the best riffs on Little Red Riding Hood I've ever seen, Puss in Boots and Pinocchio working together as con artists, and a vampire Snow White, so yeah 10/10 there, no notes.

And while I've only seen scattered bits of it, what I've seen of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, a sequel series to Disney's Rapunzel adaptation, is pretty great, though maybe I just think Cass is hot.

If you put an angry woman with a sword in your work of fiction I will at least stay for a few episodes to see what you do with her.

Given how much it consumed my brain in so little time, Revolutionary Girl Utena has to rank among my favorite Fairy Tale things ever - like, this is too chaotic a list to really rank things, but if I were to try, it'd at least be in the top 10. The same is true for Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which in addition to being a big fun crossover between a bunch of the Heavy Hitter fairy tales, is also one of the best musicals ever written - and indeed, one of the best stage shows of all time.

Shit, where do I put A Midsummer Night's Dream? It feels like it should be here, but it predates the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, whose works my brain categorizes as "old fairy tales" rather than "modern fairy tale retellings." Well, it'd be somewhere among these categories, being one of the best tales with fairies in it ever told.

The Princess Bride would be up high like Utena no matter what - it's one of the best works of fiction about love that we've got. Same goes with Galavant, which I consider its spiritual successor, although I think one could argue Galavant isn't specifically a fairy tale pastiche and is more just a lampooning of fantasy in general.

Oh, and The Hazards of Love, a concept album by The Decemberists, should be here too. That's the last one I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll think of a few others later that I like enough to regret not putting on here.

[fostersffff]

As I was beginning to formulate the thought that- once you get past the inherent body horror of a lot of it- that the art for Slave Zero X is very evocative of Yoshitaka Amano. Especially when you look at the human characters like Shou and Isamu who are very “wispy” in the same way I would describe characters drawn by Amano.

And literally right as I was putting that thought together, I arrived at the final boss: Not Golbez.

[oliveroctavius]

ALSO on the topic of domestic abuse, canonicity, and popular male characters I was thinking recently about probably the most viscerally uncomfortable to me personally comics sequence ever, More Bad News from ASM 369

This is going under the cut because it's just kind of omnidirectional pondering of something that makes me upset and therefore not really Comics Criticism but my gut feeling on JMD is that while he cranks up everything very high he's ultimately very like. centrist.

The sequence rides on the tension of justifying psychiatric restraint (the razor blade of fear being is Harry about to hurt Liz the entire time) and you have characters express pretty blunt opinions on both sides of the issue. the guys in full body armor with huge future laser guns are on the side of "locking him up and throwing away the key" and Liz on the side of "this is a horrible way to treat a person, what the fuck" which is a position she holds pretty much through everything, repeating that Harry has never harmed her and isn't going to... and which seems to be intended to make her look more delusional than he is.

like the dialogue goes all in on "I am not going to hurt you"/"I am not afraid of being hurt"/"I am in a really uncomfortable situation"/"I want to get you out of this situation" while tone and staging signal the exact opposite. is this a veiled threat? Liz doesn't take it as one but the art signals it as one.

hang on in another panel they misspelled "Osborn" with an E on his jumpsuit. anyways.

after what Liz sees as a normal conversation (except for the audience-aimed cues that Harry is dangerous) he breaks out of the stupid metal straitjacket and starts going full alpha male rhetoric while like... grabbing Liz and it's unclear what's going on but it's definitely drawn in a way to evoke strangling. there are a lot of shirt collar and face grabs as a violation of boundaries in Sal Buscema's art for JMD around here and they kind of have this air of "you aren't listening to me, I am forcing you to face me so you listen" but the sheer aggression of the one here seems so intentionally evocative of harm that it makes me wonder what the script said in any of these.

like, when included between in this sequence the last panel becomes much more upsetting too. as much as an in-character reading supports taking the boundary violation as "look at me" it's equally easy to read as intending harm. Harry is after all in a situation where he feels powerless and there's only one person who he can exert power over (physically) and it's Liz. this characterization is uncomfortable but that doesn't make it noncanon; a lot of the story already hinges on the fact that Norman's motivations were "love" but the output was still abuse.

at the same time the thing that feels so Gross to me is the voyeurism of the danger Harry supposedly poses as a "crazy person"—literally, this interaction is being watched by people with the power and stated motivation to find an excuse to harm him. and they're getting fuckin horror movie closeups of this sensationalist comic book staging through their security cameras, somehow.

so Harry's only advocate is the person he's also a threat to, who is either too naiive or stubborn to understand the danger. I'm guessing the language here comes a lot from the idea that like, the abused stick with their abusers out of misguided obligation, but I feel like that applies a little differently in a situation where people are just waiting for him to so much as get his hands free so they can burst in and shoot him with stun guns. Which is what happens.

and they drag liz away too for how upset she is at witnessing this. "he loves me! he loves me!" "sure, whatever you say." I feel so bad for Liz on every level and especially when this comes up later when MJ and Peter are trying to get her to call the police on Harry and she refuses because like have you ever had a family member acting very scary and unpredictable but you just got them out of a really really bad situation and that's the option people are suggesting again. I suppose taking everything here as face value canon, yeah actually, you would have a feeling of obligation to someone who hurt you if you knew that bringing charges against them could for real get them killed and that absolutely also traps people in bad situations! though much less often.

anyways it ends with him bodily strapped down to a bed again with multiple security cameras pointing at him. fuckin insane intense sequence. I really hate how reading it makes me feel but it's pretty telling of like the entire JMD goblin II arc

[cantsayidont]

February-March 1979. In the second part of an unsettling two-part Batman story by Jim Starlin, with finishes by P. Craig Russell, a bizarre murder investigation segues into outright horror:

If you're familiar with Earth-2 villains, you might wonder if this is the Ultra-Humanite, a Golden Age Superman bad guy with a penchant for brain swaps. It's not, and in fact the Humanite didn't adopt his mutated white ape body until JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #195, published a year and a half after this story. The mind in the white ape belongs to Xavier Simon, an old enemy of Thomas Wayne's, who is using the ape as an intermediary step in a complex and sinister plot. Having brutally murdered his three other surviving enemies, Simon now means to take Bruce Wayne's body, his money, and his life:

This is a silly premise that Starlin has transformed into a surprisingly creepy horror story by approaching it completely seriously, with effective pacing and evocative art aided by Tatjana Wood's excellent colors — the shifting color overlays to emphasize Batman's reactions are a great touch, and Russell breaks out the Zipatone for some interesting texture fills. (In this era, the use of Zipatone always signaled to me an artist especially committed to achieving a particular look; my understanding is that the publishers didn't pay for it, so it was a matter of the artist taking on the extra expense and effort out of creative rather than commercial ambition.) The ensuing fight is genuinely tense, emphasizing that Batman is physically overmatched. There aren't many Batman stories of this era that really suggest that Batman is in mortal jeopardy, but this is one of them.

I'm a little curious about the genesis of this story, which is quite a bit different in tone than the usual fare in BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS at the time. DETECTIVE COMICS had recently absorbed the defunct BATMAN FAMILY anthology, so some of the material included in DETECTIVE in this period (including solo strips for Robin, Batgirl, and Man-Bat) had obviously been commissioned for that title. THE BATMAN FAMILY hadn't originally included a Batman feature, but one was added when the book became an anthology with issue #17, presumably in an effort to spark interest in a title that was bleeding sales. The Batman stories in THE BATMAN FAMILY #18–20 had featured some very attractive artwork by Michael Golden, the standout being "The Tomb of the White Bat!" in #19, a Denny O'Neil script with art credited to Golden and Russell:

My tentative guess is that this Starlin/Russell story was intended to run in THE BATMAN FAMILY #21–22, and ended up in DETECTIVE #481–482 instead. That may be why DETECTIVE COMICS #481 had two Batman features: the first part of the Xavier Simon story ("Murder in the Night") and also a Denny O'Neil story with stylish art by Marshall Rogers.

[ynfg-review]

Yume Nikki Fangame Reviews: Answered Prayers

Website | Wiki | Play online

Answered Prayers was first released in 2010 by Klaufir, and features a girl called Fluorette who explores the spirit world from a forest shrine. As of August 2024, the game has no endings implemented, but Klaufir has indicated that it is in active development and has been working on an update.

Atmosphere: Combining folklore and calm natural environments with neon lights and glitchy cyberscapes, Answered Prayers is an extremely atmospheric game.  There’s a sense of peace and beauty to many of the worlds, but their mysterious emptiness makes you wonder whether you’re really wanted there. The music and sound design does a lot of work to take the feel of Answered Prayers to the next level, working very closely with the graphics to create fully realized environments. It probably has my favourite soundtrack of any YNFG.

Exploration: Answered Prayers is a fairly small and unfinished game, but this sort of works to its advantage. The fact that there aren’t many worlds several layers removed from the nexus means that it’s not nearly so annoying to retrace your steps if you hit a dead end as it is in some fangames. Although not every area is well connected, there are some cool routes to take and connections to unlock. I feel that the game is so beautiful that it’s worth playing just to soak up the atmosphere of the worlds, even if there’s not loads to explore.  

Art: This game has really beautiful graphics, and is extremely good at expressing the feeling of the environments it represents – the snowy world feels cold and crunchy, the nexus feels sunny and peaceful, and the weirder environments have an evocative simplicity to them. Every area in the game is interesting to look at and has its own unique aesthetic.

Storytelling: Although unfinished, Answered Prayers hints at a developed narrative. There are repeating visual motifs throughout the worlds which give a really mysterious feel to the environments, and there’s a small amount of dialogue. The game doesn’t have many events, but there’s some information on the YNFG wiki which suggests that the dev has a complex backstory and setting planned out.

Horror and CWs: Answered Prayers has very little gore or body horror, but there are a few areas which have a creepy or threatening feel. There is a hell-maze like world with aggressive and bloody chasers, but they’re peaceful everywhere else in the game. The most significant content warning I can think of is the number of brightly flashing areas, and a spider that functions as a teleport.

Best thing about it: Wandering around almost any of the worlds and taking in the graphics and soundtrack. It’s a lovely game to just be in, rather than focusing on hunting for connections and effects.

If you like… Collective Unconscious, Touhou Project, Studio Ghibli (gives me Laputa vibes especially).

[nonbinarygamzee]

something to be said about how homestuck as a continuity kind of gets away with the presentation of themes of csa and assault without ever having to commit to being stories that actually talk about those things because despite an at times overwhelming presence on the narratives at large, these topics only ever get Addressed in particular scenarios. most pointedly as means of blanket condemnation of characters the story already doesnt want you to like but keeps running into the trouble of having written them with more sympathy than intended. otherwise its all safely swept away into the implied, into the vague. for me, that only functions as another layer of alienation,to see things that happened to me and that have continued to literally control my life, regarded as like. a plot device. and i dont think every story that talks about abuse, especially sexual abuse, has to do so with this veil of horror and unease, because theres something to be said about making it a taboo too far that other direction, right. too horrible to speak about, thus too horrible to teach about.

idk. i think a lot about how as a teenager i was very into using the terms trauma/torture porn to describe why things hurt me so deeply, and how i feel now is kind of different, but moreso for realizing i was always kind of using it. differently. not to say i wasnt obviously a product of my environment in the hellscape of 2010s internet feminism, but like... for all it is a term reliant on demonization of porn as a stand in for sexual desire, i think its pretty evocative as relying on porn as a stand in for the horrors of an industry that uses bodies without care for those bodies. not to say porn is alone in that obviously, but theres a difference to me between a story that just invokes ideas of rape and assault in a way that is lackluster, or lazy, or clunky. vs a story whos insertion of these topics seems to function almost entirely as a means of shutting down a conversation. of reasserting that x character actually deserves everything without a shred of understanding and youre kind of the bad guy for thinking otherwise, since he like, totally raped/beat/molested that girl/child/whatever. and as further means of justification when those characters are then brutalized themselves, with a lot less obscurity than the supposed crimes they are committing.

i probably wont, because i doubt it would be pleasant for literally anybody else, but as ive been working on this little project idea of mine, i keep considering in application just going full ham on these themes, because ultimately in making anything sequential about homestuck, im kind of caught in this space of tearing open the walls of conversation the story (and its continuations) have been trying to shut down. i do not want to have that conversation on homestucks terms because homestucks terms have always prioritized telling me and people like me why we are wrong for feeling any kind of way, often before we even say it all, and then throwing our own experiences back in our faces and calling us perpetrators. if you want to have a story about the evils of preying on children, then actually have it.

[richincolor]

Title: And Break the Pretty Kings Author: Lena Jeong Genres: Fantasy, Historical Pages: 448 Publisher: HarperTeen Review Copy: Purchased Availability: Available now

Summary: A crown princess. A monster the gods fear. A destiny no one can outrun.

Inspired by Korean history and myths, the first book in the Sacred Bone series is a rich and evocative high-stakes fantasy that is perfect for fans of Gallant and Six Crimson Cranes.

Mirae was meant to save her queendom, but the ceremony before her coronation ends in terror and death, unlocking a strange new power within her and foretelling the return of a monster even the gods fear. Amid the chaos, Mirae’s beloved older brother is taken—threatening the peninsula’s already tenuous truce.

Desperate to save her brother and defeat this ancient enemy before the queendom is beset by war, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost.

Review: [And Break the Pretty Kings includes scenes of torture, drowning, and loss of control due to episodes of “madness.” Sexism, body horror, and coercion feature significantly as well.]

The world building in And Break the Pretty Kings was one of the highlights for me. It’s a rich fantasy world, with a complicated magic system and court politics that, as the blurb says, are inspired by Korean history and myths. Author Lena Jeong did a careful balancing act of exposition and trusting readers to pick up on things in context, though it helped that Mirae had to learn one of the types of magic from the beginning. All of the details did a great job of developing depth, even in areas/aspects we weren’t able to spend much time in. It’s the kind of book where I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the author had written several thousand words of the world’s history that never even made it anywhere near the final page.

Mirae made for a very interesting narrator. Her mother’s deteriorating state means she has to take the throne much sooner than anyone thought she would, and her fight to appear and act confident even when the readers know her doubts and how unprepared she feels at times. Her position as royalty also provides an extra layer of conflict between her and her companions, not only in who is willing to argue with Mirae (and how they go about it) but also watching Mirae change as the journey continues and she is challenged on her worldview in various ways.

I struggled a bit with the pacing/structure of And Break the Pretty Kings. It is, essentially, a road trip book, by which I mean a lot of the action is trying to get from one place to another in order to Do a Thing, then move on to the next location. The road trip is supposed to be to rescue Mirae’s brother, but the focus gets split with the Inconstant Son (and maybe the queendom is corrupt and deserves to be torn down) plot line to the point where I felt like the road trip and rescue structure was getting in the way of the latter. Mirae’s time switching felt underutilized as well, especially since we didn’t “catch up” to more than one of those future points. There’s a sequel slated for next year, which I’m sure will tackle the dangling threads, but I felt this book suffered some because of just how much was left unanswered. At the end, I was uncertain of my footing and the story’s overall progress.

Recommendation: Borrow it someday. Lena Jeong has built a fascinating world and characters for And Break the Pretty Kings. There’s a lot of promise here, but overall, I think this is a book that I will appreciate more once I know what the ultimate destination is and how everything is meant to fit together.

Extras: And Break the Pretty Kings by Lena Jeong, a Book Spotlight & Interview

I Am Not Your Token Asian Writer

Mirae, Mirae in My Thrall (playlist)

[critterfloozy]

Random Critical Role Reclist, part 1

I had the idea that I would use a version of the reclist tool for a personal reclist, posting everything I liked once a month. Only I'm also contributing to two other weekly reclists, and most of my fic reading has been related to those two. So it's taken me two months to get my first reclist out.

I still think it's a good idea, though! The general idea is that you write the rec right after reading (and presumably commenting), while it's still fresh in your mind. Then, at some point, you run the script and it spits out a formatted reclist for you. (there's more of an explanation here)

So here's the first part - Critical Role fics I've liked - some Shadowgast, some Laudna, a meeting with Aldreda and Kingsley, and more.

the same twist in your heart as mine by Hanap (6000,Teen) Pairing/Characters: Kingley Tealeaf & Aldreda Tavelle Seriblo Warnings: None

In which Kingsley discovers that the last occupant of his body had a younger sister. Recced because: I love complicated family dynamics and questions about identity, so this is a pairing I love. Hanap's prose is so evocative on top of this.

both my broken hands are true by quothhh (1805,Teen) Pairing/Characters: Nott the Brave & Caleb Widogast Warnings: None

The woman who runs the apothecary seems nice. It’s a shame Bren has to rob her. Recced because: It's a fun AU that's well characterized and has some killer lines in it

patterns in our skies by 2manyboys (4752,General) Pairing/Characters: Shadowgast Warnings: none

Ch 1 It's a beautiful day in Nicodranas and Luc Brenatto is going to win at hide-and-seek. Ch 2 Essek wonders if the death of his pride is worth a bowl of soup. Recced because: It's a very soft shadowgast AU, and it just feels incredibly comforting.

What To Make Of Me When I'm Gone by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink) (1959,Teen) Pairing/Characters: Bells Hells Warnings: None

A Bells Hells Conversation around the campfire, mostly dealing with bones and after-death plans. Recced because: It feels like something that could have happened in an episode, with pitch-perfect dialogue. Sweet and a little morbid.

when i saw your teeth i got scared (well, excited and scared) by pigflight (2131,Teen) Pairing/Characters: Laudna & Imogen Warnings: canon-typical body horror

The first time Imogen sees Laudna's Form of Dread. Recced because: It's sweet, creepy, and both body horror and a little monster-fuckery, so it's perfect for Imogen and Laudna

a body in absentia by nonwal (34849,Explicit) Pairing/Characters: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast Warnings: atypical modes of consent, boundary negotiations that are sometimes preceded by unintended boundary crossing

A scourger AU where Bren sets out to seduce Essek but only succeeds through all the ways he's not trying. Recced because: It's a great exploration of different types of intimacy, and allows Bren and Essek to have very complicated relationships to morality, sexuality, and their own bodies. Bren especially is capable of doing horrible things within this AU, but is still a likable and deep character.

[bloodiedbeloveds]

Wait, you wrote BDTA?? Just wanna jump on the bandwagon that my-deer-friend started because I loved that verse <3 The whole series is bookmarked and it definitely left a profound impression. Especially the one written as an article by A. Hamilton, that one felt like such a masterpiece to read.

I remember trying to picture John's art, and the 'tumblr discourse' fic of the series (genius btw). I remember how I broke a little when that poster had seen the picture of John after the attempt and said "how small he looked" 😭 shit i'm shedding some tears rn, that line just gets to me for some reason, as if i can see him

Body horror fascinates me, especially as a trans man, so I seriously adore the concept of this world. This may sound a little nonsensical, but the way you write is evocative of paintbrush strokes on an impressionist painting to me.

I agree wholeheartedly with my-deer-friend; BDTA!John is precious and intriguing, and he pops into my head now and then, just wondering about what his life has been like before the story and what might be in his future.

hi oh my god we are so flattered. yeah that was us!!!

we have so many thoughts about we never really learn-- at one point we even had a whole bunch of lore for the ten deaths of acadia setter, despite the fact that its narrative purpose is exclusively to be Problematic. every tumblr discourse must pull in some very irrelevant dispute about a piece of media. there are so many tiny details in that fic that we think a lot of people overlook but We Know. we know they're there

the way people received this particular fic is interesting too, because without the context of the later work + stuff we haven't even written we can totally see how it reads like john's suicide was mostly about this internet cyberbullying stuff but oh, boy, it was not. it very much was not. after not a perfect son i think most people have figured it out but there was a while there where we were always internally like "oh you don't even know the half of it"

we're obsessed with body horror also-- for us it's not just being trans but also being autistic and plural and just all around weird. love monsters. love fucked up shit. also that's so very kind thank you!! verbal impressionists, that's us, i guess?

(his life before the story: sucked, but in various different ways. his future: no spoilers, because the urge to come back to this series is hitting us. we left the next fic (which is mostly about our unhinged polly headcanons) unfinished, but we're thinking of finally finishing it + going through the hell of putting all the html for it in properly.)

[inapat16]

Soviet union films that you should check out

Viy (Вий) (1967)

The film was directed by ukranian directors Konstantin Yerchov and Georgi Kropachyov in 1967. The film is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story Viy, published in 1835. The story is about an encounter between three young men freshly out of the seminary in Kiev and a witch, to whom they take shelter after wandering off into the plain. The witch sets her sights on one of them, Thomas, who is not fooled and tries to catch her at her own game. In revenge, she pretends to be dead, and Thomas is forced to watch over her body in a chapel for three days. After what, Thomas’ soul is promised to heaven. But things don't go according to plan, and the corpse comes back to life at night, to torment the young clerk. 

Gogol's story is rooted in the rich folklore of Ukraine, but from the outset it is an anti-clerical manifesto. This vein can be felt in the film adaptation, which sticks very closely to the text. Indeed, anti-clericalism was one of the main spearheads of the Soviet regime, which meant that the adaptation project was widely welcomed by the authorities. What is interesting, however, is that the film delves into Ukrainian cultural history and gives a fantastic portrait of medieval Ukraine. One can see this especially in the duel between Christianity and older local beliefs, and particularly through the character of the witch as she invokes the demon Viy, king of the gnomes, as Thomas is trying to perform exorcism on her. 

The film is on the side of horror, but paradoxically it is less through the evocation of monsters than through the character of the witch herself. The power of Natalya Varley's gaze is heightened by the stillness of the shots and the silence, building up the film's horrific tension. The ambivalence of this character, who oscillates between looking like a young girl and an old woman, tends to deconstruct the vulnerability of female characters in cinema. It is she who triumphs in the story, simply by virtue of her powers, which enable her to destroy the man who was standing up to her. In relation to the context of the film's production, this character is truly unsettling just as magnetic. 

The character of the young clerk is also very interesting. Far from being a hero, he has many flaws, including alcoholism and cowardice. The use of diy special effects with proto-green screen attempts to make the character's flaws more palpable on screen. He is very much inspired by the characters of Gothic novels, and his destiny only confirms this. 

As for the figure of the devil Viy, it encapsulates both the power of folklore and the fatality that mows down in its path all individuals who do harm to society. It is Thomas's greedy and selfish quest for salvation that causes his downfall. Beyond these considerations, the staging of the demonic saraband is remarkable. Many of the special effects, such as the green screens mentioned above, and the analogue processes used in the sets and costumes are brilliantly executed. And in a way, they set the standard for the representation of monsters in cinema, since relatively similar processes will be found in other films later on, such as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings saga (2001-2003). 

Link to watch the film : https://youtu.be/4YmQn6q36HQ 

J.A Lenourichel

[inventors-fair]

Common Ally-Ties: Wordplay Winners! ~

Congratulations to @helloijustreadyourpost​, @nine-effing-hells​ and @reaperfromtheabyss​ for winning this (er, last?) week’s contest!

@helloijustreadyourpost​ — Oko’s Dearest

Ah, it’s “second main phase,” The Card! It’s a solid body that’s ready to die, and even then maybe not. One of the things I really like about this card is how you can then play your five-drop creatures on your next precombat main phase to make attacking more difficult for your opponent if you’re offering a trade, and even if they have a combat trick or need to multi-block it’ll be bad news for them. Trample’s an interesting one here because of how it encourages this creature to be an attacker. I think it was the right choice to make; vigilance would’ve been fine but aggravating. Its design shows the aggression hinted at in the format.

Oko as a choice here was nice as well. How does one show favoritism? Giving a nice death. I mean, yeesh, not that Oko’s giving the death necessarily, but it’s an interesting natural take on a character whose connection with nature is really, well, weird. I can clearly envision it, though, and how Oko would like to distribute his power. I wish the flavor text had been a little more concise? Besides the “subject” missing the plural grammatically, I think that “isn’t” or “wasn’t” would’ve been fine. I almost docked it for that reason, but I’m taking a step back and looking at the emotion and merit; for the fact that I can see the elk in the grove with a sunlit Oko leaning against its flank in ardor, well... I feel this card! Truly, it’s evocative.

@nine-effing-hells​ — Shadow Puppet

Is delirium back? It better be. Is artifact-y discard-y madness graveyard craziness back? Absolutely it is. Pumping for the sake of [graveyard mechanic here] at instant-speed, on a reasonable body balanced with color weight and a lack of tribal support—yes, the lack matters, can you imagine if this was a zombie?—is crucial here. Well, maybe I’m overthinking the environment, but this card screams Innistrad to me. If it had a voice, anyway. I suppose that’s the gist: that this card’s ability to elegantly do everything you’d want it to do is enough to make me pump my fist. It’s not P1P1, but it’s potentially P3P1-2 for sure. It’s a little slow, I think, in multicolored formats, and that’s still very much okay.

I’m really surprised that there’s no card with this name before, most of all. Seriously, there’s been double agents and whatever, but no shadow puppets? I guess it is kind of niche. This is one where I’m especially curious what you had in mind for art direction. I’m just now thinking of a scarecrow with a scythe in one hand, surrounded by a miasma of purple malice, glowing eyes drawn to a distant village, perhaps, as the skin-suit it’s wearing is stretched into a grin not of its own volition. One hand tugs at the place where it’s been nailed haphazardly several times into a worn, creaking post... Heh heh heh.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ — Eyecatching Preener

~ I’ll boo your puns later. Even then, this is gonna be an infamous card. Black fliers at common can be really darn good, especially with a card as versatile as this one. Late-game control discard to make ‘em hellbent, early discard for advantage, picking off postcombat creatures or getting rid of tokens before swinging—yep, this card does it all! The body makes sense for common; a 2/2 feels like too much with the modes even if the modes aren’t going to win you any games. The card might, though, a neat little toolbox for your slower decks. Maybe aggro can appreciate the flier, but I think this card’s more of a steady lil’ thing.

I wonder what world it exists on, too! Could be any with goblins, really, although I’m feeling more of a Lorwyn bend of all things. Ooh, or Eldraine, yeah! Eldraine’s got some eye horror and birdy things and also goblins, and fantasy tropes, too. Not that the world especially matters, but I think that if you wanna go for the dark humor angle showing the poor goblin who’s dealing with involuntary facial reconstructive surgery, might as well place it, right? It’s an obvious pun, but on a card like this, the supposed levity is dark enough to be a little more eerie than eye-rolling. The card feels fun to play, too! An eye for an eye, go to combat.

More to follow! Once again, thanks for everyone’s entries on this one. - @abelzumi​

[safereturndoubtful]

Day 92 - to Bertrix, Belgium

A good reason to be in Ban-de-Sapt is to visit the Fontenelle Cemetery which contains the bodies of 1384 who were killed in the Great War.

French battalions set up camp on the hill, which is at 600 metres altitude and has a wide grassy plateau, in September 1914 - the Vosges was one of the first French Departments to experience combat in August of that year.

In June 1915 German troops took advantage of large part of the French army called to Alsace by attacking the Fontenelle hill, or hill 627 as it came to be known as. But the French counterattacked during a summer of immense loss to both sides, and it was held.

The hill was ravaged due to the artillery. Few trees were left to provide any shelter from bombardment, so the French built cave shelters, 5 of which remain and are maintained as memorials.

Some of the trenches now form a kilometre long circular path, accessible to wheelchairs, around the cemetery.

The other, and longer, path I took, was the Sentier Des Hameaux Morts Pour La France, which takes in several hamlets, chiefly of two farm communities that were lost during those two summers. The farms, the Colin and Maurice families, were taken over and set up as military hospitals. The land was so devastated that the surrounding forest took fifty years to grow again.

Though at the time the dead were buried close to where they fell, many of them near to the two farms, in 1920 they were all exhumed and moved to their current site.

This morning when I visited I was the only person there, with the hill shrouded in low cloud and mist. In such conditions it was an especially poignant visit, and one I can highly recommend. The 8 kilometre path Roja and I took is impeccably maintained so now that its natural environment has returned, it makes for an unforgettable and evocative experience - that such a place could have seen such horrors.

I mentioned yesterday that I always enjoy time in the Vosges. On this occasion it’s been too brief. It was a great stopover last night at the Gardens, just a couple of kilometres away.

I’m trying to restrict driving to about 3 hours a day on this return section, so today headed north through Nancy and Metz into Belgium and the Ardennes. Again, just a day’s visit here, hopefully to find a bar with a good Belgian beer, and a forest hike tomorrow.

It’s still early in the season, so on a Tuesday quite a few bars and restaurants are closed, along with Mondays. My first call was at the town of Herbeumont, but the one bar open didn’t look very welcoming, so I moved on towards Treignes, an hour away, and where I had stayed and enjoyed their five museums, most famous the railway, and a good pub, a couple of years ago.

It’s never far to go to find a good bar in this part of Belgium though, and twenty minutes on, at Bertrix, there looked like a few. I parked up at the sports complex and went to investigate. And indeed it delivered.

The glass with the stands, to the left of the Kwak bulb glasses with stands, are for La Corne beer, a 10% blonde.

[innsjovide]

some misc thoughts about modern horror (especially indie horror video games & internet horror [such as args and whatnot])

tw for discussion of horror topics obv and also my very biased opinions

[please note that my interests are usually peripheral to this stuff and I don't actually consume almost any of it, but I still have opinions on it bc I am an opinionated bitch]

rant under cut

it seems to me that a lot of modern popular horror media follows the same general trends and themes & that this has been happening for the past decade or so

those themes in question being 'sick and twisted horror under the guise of innocence'

this has always been an element of horror obv its not like fnaf invented the idea of making a children's thing creepy but its definitely had a rise in popularity in the past few years

in part bc of fnaf

and now you see it everywhere, its the most prevailing theme in modern horror media.

its in horrible steam games called 'bimbaps playtime' its in every new arg that comes out its in fucking yandere simulator its in everything you see and because its in everything you see there's nothing else interesting

and yes there are interesting things to do with this concept but when its all that's being done then the amount of things you can do with horror based on children's media

like I genuinely thing having horror based on children's media and this pretense of innocence limits the depth of theme you can actually go into bc ur limited by the aesthetics of 'childrens media but with blood'

bc even when you're twisting it into something dark and evil and horrific its still in some capacity got the trappings of children's media. it's limited by the fact its pretending to be something else and that's ugly

and its not like this sort of theme cant work well I mean. religious horror (which I am a huge fan of always) typically does the same thing but with jesus instead of chuckie cheese but idk it works better IMO there's more u can do

its like. we get it. the children's thing is secretly fucked up bc of whatever reason its seems like theres nothing there its just lame

also body horror gets extremely more lame when its a plush/puppet/toy/whatever instead of an actual human being with actual guts. miss me with all that symbolism shit it just doesn't pack the same punch

the inside of a build-a-bear will never illicit the same visceral reaction as actual legit intestines

[little side note obv horror doesnt need to be gory to be effective but theres something to be said about how the lack of actual violence against humans tones down the horror]

[little side note 2 I am mostly referencing the welcome home arg with this point and also fnaf and those are 2 separate things bc I'm pretty sure that imitation gore is not what the wh creator is trying to do with their story (their project actually seems pretty well written for this genre) and ik fnaf has actual gore but its lame and all kinda the same concept IMO (machine stabs u or whatever) also I hate fnaf and all the terrible things its done to this genre]

these projects seem to be lacking some of the things that make horror such an evocative genre. things such as themes. and social commentary. and things that are actually scary instead of just jumpscares

it all just seems so vacant and stupid and I also hate the culture around having to dig around for the actual secrets of a story. arg culture has done a lot for internet culture and unfortunately that is one of the annoying things. the actual plot of ur thing should not be hidden in ASCII art in the code of ur development blog

idk man I guess I just cant take ur horror concept seriously when the thing I'm supposed to be afraid of looks like a funko pop

the genre just seems so confining rn and I know that's bc this sort of stuff is extremely popular bc it appeals to people who want lighthearted stuff in addition to horror content but its just so fucking. lame.

horror for children is lame and bad. its too violent for children and too simple for adults (at least adults who enjoy actually thought out stories) and all the horror that's really popular rn is. pretty much just horror for children

TLDR

cj innsjovide is pissed off bc modern horror/horror for children lacks themes and stories bc its. for children. also fnaf still sucks

[nicklloydnow]

“What, for example, was the attitude of the intellectual in Auschwitz toward death? A vast, unsurveyable topic, which can be covered here only fleetingly, in double time! I will assume it is known that the camp inmate did not live next door to, but in the same room with death. Death was omnipresent. The selections for the gas chambers took place at regular intervals. For a trifle prisoners were hanged on the roll call grounds, and to the beat of light march music their comrades had to file past the bodies - Eyes right! - that dangled from the gallows. Prisoners died by the score, at the work site, in the infirmary, in the bunker, within the block. I recall times when I climbed heedlessly over piled-up corpses and all of us were too weak or too indifferent even to drag the dead out of the barracks into the open. But as I have said, people have already heard far too much about this; it belongs to the category of the horrors mentioned at the outset, those which I was advised with good intentions not to discuss in detail.

Here and there someone will perhaps object that the front-line soldier was also constantly surrounded by death and that therefore death in the camp actually had no specific character and posed no incomparable ques: tions. Must I even say that the analogy is false? Just as the life of the front-line soldier, however he may have suffered at times, cannot be compared with that of the camp inmate, death in battle and the prisoner's death are two incommensurables. The soldier died the hero's or victim's death, the prisoner that of an animal intended for slaughter. The soldier was driven into the fire, and it is true that his life was not worth much. Still, the state did not order him to die, but to survive. The final duty of the prisoner, however, was death. The decisive difference lay in the fact that the front-line soldier, unlike the camp inmate, was not only the target, but also the bearer of death. Figuratively expressed: death was not only the ax that fell upon him, but it was also the sword in his hand. Even while he was suffering death, he was able to inflict it. Death approached him from without, as his fate, but it also forced its way from inside him as his own will. For him death was both a threat and an opportunity, while for the prisoner it assumed the form of a mathematically determined solution: the Final Solution! These were the conditions under which the intellectual collided with death. Death lay before him, and in him the spirit was still stirring; the latter confronted the former and tried - in vain, to say it straight off - to exemplify its dignity.

The first result was always the total collapse of the esthetic view of death. What I am saying is familiar. The intellectual, and especially the intellectual of German education and culture, bears this esthetic view of death within him. It was his legacy from the distant past, at the very latest from the time of German romanticism. It can be more or less characterized by the names Novalis, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Thomas Mann. For death in its literary, philosophic, or musical form there was no place in Auschwitz. No bridge led from death in Auschwitz to Death in Venice. Every poetic evocation of death became intolerable, whether it was Hesse's "Dear Brother Death" or that of Rilke, who sang: "Oh Lord, give each his own death." The esthetic view of death had revealed itself to the intellectual as part of an esthetic mode of life; where the latter had been all but forgotten, the former was nothing but an elegant trifle. In the camp no Tristan music accompanied death, only the roaring of the SS and the Kapos. Since in the social sense the death of a human being was an occurrence that one merely registered in the so-called Political Section of the camp with the set phrase "subtraction due to death," it finally lost so much of its specific content that for the one expecting it, its esthetic embellishment in a way became a brazen demand and, in regard to his comrades, an indecent one.

After the esthetic view of death crumbled, the intellectual faced death defenselessly. If he attempted nonetheless to establish an intellectual and metaphysical relationship to it, he ran up against the reality of the camp, which doomed such an attempt to failure. How did it work in practice? To put it briefly and tritely: just like his unintellectual comrade, the intellectual inmate did not occupy himself with death, but with dying. Then, however, the entire problem was reduced to a number of concrete considerations. For example, there was once a conversation in the camp about an SS man who had slit open a prisoner's belly and filled it with sand. It is obvious that in view of such possibilities one was hardly concerned with whether, or that, one had to die, but only with how it would happen. Inmates carried on conversations about how long it probably takes for the gas in the gas chamber to do its job. One speculated on the painfulness of death by phenol injections. Were you to wish yourself a blow to the skull or a slow death through exhaustion in the infirmary? It was characteristic for the situation of the prisoner in regard to death that only a few decided to "run to the wire," as one said, that is, to commit suicide through contact with the highly electrified barbed wire. The wire was after all a good and rather certain thing, but it was possible that in the attempt to approach it one would be caught first and thrown into the bunker, and that led to a more difficult and more painful dying. Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.

Now of course, no matter where you are, the fear of death is essentially the fear of dying, and Franz Borkenau's claim that the fear of death is the fear of suffocation holds true also for the camp. For all that, if one is free it is possible to entertain thoughts of death that at the same time are not also thoughts of dying, fears of dying. Death in freedom, at least in principle, can be intellectually detached from dying: socially, by infusing it with thoughts of the family that remains behind, of the profession one leaves, and mentally, through the effort, while still being, to feel a whiff of Nothingness. It goes without saying that such an attempt leads nowhere, that death's contradiction cannot be resolved. Still, the effort contains its own intrinsic dignity: the free person can assume a certain spiritual posture toward death, because for him death is not totally absorbed into the torment of dying. The free person can venture to the out most limit of thought, because within him there is still a space, however tiny, that is without fear. For the prisoner, however, death had no sting, not one that hurts, not one that stimulates you to think. Perhaps this explains why the camp inmate and it applies equally to the intellectual as well as to the unintellectual did experience agonizing fear of certain kinds of dying, but scarcely an actual fear of death. If I may speak of myself, then let me assert here that I never considered myself to be especially brave and probably also am not. Yet, when they once fetched me from my cell after I already had a few months of punitive camp behind me and the SS man gave me the friendly assurance that now I was to be shot, I accepted it with perfect equanimity. "Now you're afraid, aren't you?" the man - who was just having fun - said to me. "Yes," I answered, but more out of complaisance and in order not to provoke him to acts of brutality by disappointing his expectations. No, we were not afraid of death. I clearly recall how comrades in whose blocks selections for the gas chambers were expected did not talk about it, while with every sign of fear and hope they did talk about the consistency of the soup that was to be dispensed. The reality of the camp triumphed effortlessly over death and over the entire complex of the so-called ultimate questions. Here, too, the mind came up against its limits.

All those problems that one designates according to a linguistic convention as "metaphysical" became meaningless. But it was not apathy that made contemplating them impossible; on the contrary, it was the cruel sharpness of an intellect honed and hardened by camp reality. In addition, the emotional powers were lacking with which, if need be, one could have invested vague philosophic concepts and thereby made them subjectively and psychologically meaningful. Occasionally, perhaps that disquieting magus from Alemannic regions came to mind who said that beings appear to us only in the light of Being, but that man forgot Being by fixing on beings. Well now, Being. But in the camp it was more convincingly apparent than on the outside that beings and the light of Being get you nowhere. You could be hungry, be tired, be sick. To say that one purely and simply is, made no sense. And existence as such, to top it off, became definitively a totally abstract and thus empty concept. To reach out beyond concrete reality with words became before our very eyes a game that was not only worthless and an impermissible luxury but also mocking and evil. Hourly, the physical world delivered proof that its insufferableness could be coped with only through means inherent in that world. In other words: nowhere else in the world did reality have as much effective power as in the camp, nowhere else was reality so real. In no other place did the attempt to transcend it prove so hopeless and so shoddy. Like the lyric stanza about the silently standing walls and the flags clanking in the wind, the philosophic declarations also lost their transcendency and then and there became in part objective observations, in part dull chatter. Where they still meant something they appeared trivial, and where they were not trivial they no longer meant anything. We didn't require any semantic analysis or logical syntax to recognize this. A glance at the watchtowers, a sniff of burnt fat from the crematories sufficed.” (pages 15 - 19)