#fantastic story society

[whatsyourghoststory]

Rick Alan Ross on How Cults Work, & How to Get Out (Deprogramming, NXIVM, Waco, Heaven's Gate & more)

Rick is a fascinating guest as he's been a part of the story of some of the largest cults in recent memory, from working with both the Branch Davidians and the FBI in Waco, to working with a family to free their daughter from Keith Raniere & NXIVM.

Our season 3 finale was one of my favorite episodes of “The Fantastic Story Society.” We were able to get into the nitty gritty of the variety of ways cults operate and some of the most famous and/or unusual cuts of all time. The biggest point of this episode was to bring awareness that 1) cults exist and they’re more ubiquitous than one might imagine 2) literally ANYONE is susceptible to getting…

[amelikos]

The implication that Lucius must have read Heather's Scarlet Book (and that being why he used the name "Terapagos" in his memoirs) is pretty interesting. Lucius, someone from the past, who is currently inspiring the current generation also being someone who took inspiration from people who came before him, etc.

Briar also said that Heather's book was regarded as a mere occult story, and that no one believed it. I wonder if Lucius was one of those who believed it, or at least took it seriously enough that it may have inspired him to go on his own journey to check things for himself. Lucius believing in things no one else takes seriously, and that led him to meet Terapagos eventually.

I wonder if Gibeon and the third friend in their group were also people who were curious about these mysteries and wanted to find out more about them. Maybe they didn't fit the norm during their time because of this. It makes me think a bit about the Rising Volt Tacklers since Friede and the others don't fit in the traditional expectations for their chosen professions and took other paths.

[bonebabbles]

Hi! Sorry if this ask is quite random for you to see, but is it ok to ask you that

On a scale of 1-10, how sexist and/or misogynistic would you rate the book Watership Down being?

I’m considering checking out the book, but I’m unsure whether I should do that or not due to the possible sexism within it. Thanks!

If you can't handle sexism, I would skip Watership Down. It's pretty bad in that aspect, enough that Ursula K Le Guin uses it as a major example of how misogyny expresses in xenofiction narratives.

In spite of how doe rabbits are the ones responsible for founding new warrens, the main characters are all bucks.

Does are spoken about a lot in terms of reproduction, and mostly that.

There is a massive plot point later where the all-buck party realizes they need women, and set out to get them.

There's an evil rabbit warren, and they show that this warren is evil partially because of some implied sexual assault of the does they control.

It was also written by a White British Man Of A Certain Era. It will sometimes drop a line that we find VERY racist in today's standards, particularly near the beginning where it compares the rabbit culture to... "other primitive societies."

[yuridovewing]

like guys i promise im aware blossomfall is meant to be a glass child. i just think she’s a poorly written one lmao

[nkogneatho]

just completed queen charlotte and i am bawling my eyes rn. i am not even kidding. my eyes are swollen and it is 5 am

[sophieswundergarten]

Can I talk about the whole Reynie is a villain thing for a second because your Reynie in the snow story has been living in my brain RENT FREE since I read it and it WILL NOT LEAVE and can you just imagine building off of that to make him into a villain? (idk if you saw my comments or not on @nobodysdaydreams post but yeah)

Oh, absolutely. Go for it, friend!

I have a couple of ideas running around too (Several of them thanks to you!), but I'm super excited to hear your thoughts :D

[jazzystudios82]

Marvel: Adventures of Earth-8099

Synopsis:

"A series that follows a group of siblings and their adventures in reimagining of the Marvel universe!"

Titles:

Book 1: Second Chances

Book 2: Title Coming Soon!

Book 3: Ichor

Book 4: Title Coming Soon!

Book 5: Title Coming Soon!

Book 6: Adventures on Earth-8099 - The Guide Book

------------------------------------------------------------

[stardustedknuckles]

Well I meant to split this book up into two days and go to sleep before midnight but sure, 413 pages in... Wow. Three hours. I'm trying to be more intentional with my focus and get back into doing things in my free time that don't involve screens (hence intending to split it up) but it just kept feeling like running for the first time after being stuck in bed for a week. I needed to blaze through it the way I used to. Felt nice.

The book was "The Forest Demands Its Due" by Kosoko Jackson, and I'm a little annoyed it was YA after I was fairly clear to the bookseller that I was looking for adult fiction, but she got most of everything else I asked for pretty right, so I'm not too mad. It's just. It was for teens so there's not a lot to chew on in some of the dimensions I had hoped for. But it was a good glimpse of the ideas of reparations and atonement, where blame falls and who benefits from perpetuating systems built on pain from generations ago, and the conversation around that was really neat coming from a Black, gay author and main character. I'm glad I read it.

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

#1 interaction of my larp weekend:

"Arbiter [me] this is the accused [of stabbing another character, unprovoked.]"

"What is your name sir?"

"*high pitched whistle noise*"

"Uh...right. Do you have a nickname? I'm not sure how to write that in the report."

"Friends call Murder Bird? That do?"

"M...Murder...Bird. Alright then."

"I didn't do. Stupid-hat-weird-eye-nice-sword just mad. He took down my heads, made big shout bout. He want so bad, I put in bed for. No stab."

"...your...heads?"

"Kill bandits. Eat. Use bones for axes, heads on spikes to keep more bandits away. Protect town. Use all parts, otherwise wasteful."

"...but you didn't stab this man?" *gestures to alleged victim*

"No."

"...right..."

[ufonaut]

I’m fed up! I’m not even mad-- just disgusted! If this is the way you want it, Doiby-- you can have it!

Alan & Doiby in Comic Cavalcade (1942) #17

(Alfred Bester, Paul Reinman)

[whatsyourghoststory]

Haunted Lincoln Park, Chicago & Lake County, Illinois with Tony Szabelski, Fantastic Story Society Podcast

We chat with Chicago Haunted History tour guide Tony Szabelski about haunted places in Lake County, IL and downtown, specifically Lincoln Park.

I’m excited to co-host a couple of upcoming Lake County Ghost tours with one of Chicago’s premiere storytellers, Tony Szabelski. Before hopping on the bus for our all-day adventures, I wanted to get him on The Fantastic Story Society to hear about some of the other tours he gives throughout Chicago. You can find all of the Chicago-area tour info on the American Ghost Walks website here. The Lake…

[brokenhardies]

🤍 share something about Amber you've been thinking about recently

Not necessarily Amber herself, but bc the Emissary Verse isn't enough of an xover as is...

The Moon Knight system is technically the Emissary Verse's equivalent of the Spectre! Both are humans resurrected by mystical forces, have a similar suit (as Moon Knight specifically) and a similar... harsh attitude to crime (I could not see the Moon Knight system or Khonsu approving of some of the shit that Raguel does).

Steven even picks the name Spectre for himself after Amber discovers another alter who takes the name Mr Night. He bases it off the white costume reminding him of a ghost, before deciding on the name Spectre!

[oh-my-gordonramsay]

Just read the most beautiful and vile horror manhwa, my life is forever changed

[lamuradex]

It's been rattling around my head recently that Discworld is almost anti-whimsy, and I mean that in a good way.

Whimsy, as I define it, is when something magical is put in just to wow the reader. A magic thing that doesn't really effect the story, but its fantastical. Pots cleaning themselves? Moving paintings? A fantastical creature used as set dressing? A spell that does something cool but we'll never hear about it again? What do they mean? Why are they there? Doesn't matter, we're moving on.

But Discworld always applies Logic to these things.

e.g. The old idea of all dwarfs having beards? Ha ha, even the women have beards. How silly.

But that means all dwarfs are men. But there are female dwarfs, right? Are they happy being men? What if you gave one the chance not to be a man? Oh, sure, they'd still have the beard, the helmet, the axe, those are cultural, but what if a dwarf wanted to be a woman? How would other dwarfs react? Would there be biting insults? Snide remarks? Jealousy from other female dwarfs trapped in their society? What if the Low King were a woman? What then?

Pratchett always had this tenacity to follow a whimsical idea until it was ground down in its own grim reality. It's like those old conversations about what would really happen if Superman caught you falling from a high building. You'd smash on his arms because you're still hitting something indestructible at terminal velocity. But the comics would never show that.

Pratchett shows that.

Introduces a werewolf? She has a constant identity crisis and feels like a dog sometimes, between human and wolf, and she's discriminated against in places for being undead. A conman running a bank? Forces everyone to realise how useless gold really is in a scathing indictment of economics. Death becomes Santa? But WHY DOES THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL NEED TO DIE? WHY THE UNFAIRNESS IN THE WORLD? WHY?

What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the Reaper Man?

It's what sets these stories apart from so many others. Magic is never the solution, reality is usually the solution. And little is introduced without Pratchett delving the idea to its depths, sooner or later.

[tigergendermoved2tigergender]

I kind of wish warrior cats ended after arc 1 and it was remembered as a classic children's series that got cut short and had a small but nicely filtered fandom in the year 2023. I would miss very specifically Leafpool and Squirrelflight and the dozens of amazing MAPs based on the later arcs but at this rate I think we need to just stop

[honourablejester]

I’m realising as I browse around that I really love lore when it comes to ttrpgs, games and game worlds. And by that I don’t mean I like to obsessively learn lists of dates and wars, and the names of leaders of factions, I mean …

I like learning weird, juicy details about the worlds of games. I like finding little nuggets that say things about the set-up and culture and assumptions of the world. I like finding fragments of ideas to hang whole story and character concepts off.

I love that in D&D 5e’s Spelljammer, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods that you can fully sail up to in your ship. Just. Floating out there. Waiting for you to rock up to them.

I love that in Sunless Sea, the king of the drowned is the way he is because he fell in love with an eldritch sea urchin from space, and successfully married it. His niece is an angry sentient floating mountain whose mother is a goddess-mountain and whose father is a face-stealing humanoid abomination. This is fine and normal.

I love that in Starfinder, there are mysterious bubble cities in the surface of the sun that the church of the sun goddess discovered and cheerfully occupied despite having no idea who the hell built them or for what purpose.

I love that in Dishonored, the entire industrial revolution that has built the empire we’re in the midst of saving or destroying was built on the properties of whale oil harvested from eldritch tentacled whales that live half in the oceans and half in an eldritch void personified in the form of a weird-ass black-eyed shit-stirrer of a deity who was formed from a murdered and sacrificed child. And this is largely a background detail.

I love in the Elder Scrolls that the dwarves up and fucking vanished, as a race, at some point in history and absolutely nobody has any clue what happened to them or where they went, but their technology is so insane that ideas like ‘they time-travelled’ or ‘they erased themselves from existence’ are absolutely on the table.

I love that in Numenera, so many incredibly advanced civilisations have risen and fallen on this world that it’s absolutely littered with bonkers science fiction artefacts that have caused the current medieval-esque society built over top of them to develop in bizarre ways, and also you can find a mysterious artefact that absolutely baffles and delights your character, but that you the player will fully recognise as a slightly-more-advanced thermos flask.

I love that in Fallout, an irradiated post-nuclear apolocalypic hellscape, there’s a cult that worships the god of radiation as they have come to understand it, and they are mysteriously immune to radiation with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. They’re not ghouls, the usual result of fatally irradiated humans with some resistance, they’re perfectly normal humans who can somehow just tank rads all damn day. It could be a mutation, but Lovecraftian gods apparently do also fully exist in this setting, so it’s also possible that maybe they were on to something with this Atom thing.

I love that in Heart The City Beneath, there’s a mass transit train system that they tried to hook up to the eldritch beating god-thing buried under the city so that they could metaphysically chain the stations together more easily, which went horrifically and metaphysically wrong in entirely predictable fashion, and now there’s a whole order of train-knights who have to keep people safe from the extradimensional weirdness magnet the network has become.

That, and all the fantastic little details you can stumble across. There’s a biotech augmentation in Starfinder called an angler’s light that gives you a little angler-fish bioluminescent antenna on your forehead, and it was developed by asteroid miners who needed light but also both hands free for work. In Dishonored there’s a festival that everyone pretends is outside of time so nothing you do during it can be held against you. There’s a god of snuffed candles mentioned in a single line from Heart The City Beneath who has pacifist cannibal priests, and that is literally all the information you get on him.

While things like the history and geography and timeline of a world do also fascinate me, I’m not really here to memorise stuff like that. I’m here to find weird little nuggets of information and worldbuilding and delight in them. Give me funerary customs and weird myths and oddly specific circumstances and baffling little objects and absolutely bonkers cosmological implications. Give me the corpses of dead gods, and aesthetic movements with highly specific backstories, and bureaucratic fuck-ups of titanic scale, and mysterious things that seem to break all other rules of your setting with absolutely no explanation because people in-universe have no fucking clue how they work either. Why are the Children of Atom immune to radiation without ghoulifying? Not a clue, but Confessor Cromwell has been cheerfully standing in that irradiated pond that kills the player character with about 10 minutes of exposure for the last year and he’s still absolutely fine.

I just. I really love lore. I like my settings to have some meat in them, some juicy details to dig into, some inexplicable elements to have fun trying to explain. Particularly that last bit. I feel like a lot of people when building worlds feel like the rules have to be absolute and everything has to have an explanation, but nah. Putting some weird shit in makes everything immediately feel bigger, more real, because we don’t have even half an idea of how our world truly works, there’s always something we just don’t fully understand yet, and you can put that in a fictional world too. Some mysteries, some contradictions, some randomness, some weirdness. There’s a line, obviously, this depends on execution, but a little bit of mystery really does help.

Lore is awesome. And weird lore is even more so. Heh.