#i very specific want to learn more about Mary for a story idea I have

[theotherwesley]

I'm going to posit something that may sound a little weird at first: but I think the same kind of dissatisfaction that leads people into questionable or dangerous reactionary movements, is the same dissatisfaction that leads people to start witch hunts and dog piling on social media, is the same dissatisfaction that gets people into new age, vibes-based "health" and "cleansing your toxins" lifestyles, is the same dissatisfaction that leads people into an Marie Antoinette-style obsession with cottagecore and the nostalgia for an imaginary bucolic lifestyle that never really existed. It's estrangement from results, particularly direct results.

This is essentially just the Theory of Alienation, but the connective tissue between cult-of-action-to-cottagecore hit me in a particular way that made me want to dig into the specifics in terms of internet phenomena.

Just about every aspect of the computer-bound/computer-dependent lifestyle is geared towards separating people from process from product. We don't see the results, we don't see the mechanisms, we don't see the other people involved. So the prospect of working outdoors to plant something nourishing and be able to see and enjoy the results is intoxicating (especially if you don't rely on doing it for a living). So is the idea that you can just pick up a weapon and make something happen. So is the idea that you can punish people for real or much more often perceived crimes directly without waiting on due process. So is the idea that you don't have to throw yourself on the mercy of a doctor who trivializes and ignores your symptoms to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Hell, the obsession with generative AI being pedaled as a "solution" to the apparent "gatekeeping" of "talent" (or time/labor/compensation) is stemming from the same thing. There are plenty of examples but the roots connect. Returning to the theory of alienation for a second-- is not an accident that we have been separated from each other and from our labor, it is unimaginably profitable for the ones selling us things and keeping us beholden to them for scraps and pennies our entire lives. It is killing us. It has been killing us. Some people exponentially more than others. You know this, you're living in it.

I don't have a plan for the Revolution or whatever but I am pretty convinced that it is critically, vitally important that we Make Real Things, with our hands and brains and with other people-- real art, food, friends, crafts, tools, stories, clothes, fun; help with something, do things for people, grow something, fix something, learn something. Get a result you can see that's YOURS and GOOD and not a product of consumerism or fear. --Are there obstacles to all these things? Oh baby, are there ever! That's the point! That's the problem!! <-THE PROBLEM. This isn't a judgement!! We are all fucking struggling!!!

Making real things is essential not in a woo-woo way but in a practice so you can improve way. So many people are convinced they can't make things simply because they haven't made things before. Start somewhere, anywhere, and you can build the confidence to in yourself that you can do more. It will help you adapt and strengthen yourself in a world that is trying very hard to keep you powerless and isolated. Again -> The point. People end up seeking things that make them FEEL like they've made an instant change in the world, or feel like they're escaping the rat race, or anything that feels like regaining power over their lives.

But if you don't also control where that feeling comes from, you are open to being manipulated by all manner of opportunistic and predatory forces. If you create something tangible/observable within your own means (and this does NOT preclude collaboration), you made something of value and that value remains with you, to do with as you wish.

That's empowerment. It can be practiced and nurtured, in fact it MUST be.

[maxwell-grant]

I managed to finally read The Chimera Brigade and it's given far, FAR more to talk about than I ever expected, and much like last time with Mina Murray and my LOEG breakdown, I'm devoting a separate post to a specific character that gives me far too much to talk about to include in the main write-up. The character in question is a French pulp hero I've covered some years ago by the name of Leo Saint-Clair a.k.a The Nyctalope - here presented as the "protector of Paris", entrusted by Marie Curie herself to watch over the city, and just about detested by everyone who has to interact with him on a daily basis, with the feeling very much reciprocated. He is a profoundly funny character, one of the smartest and most purposeful usages of a classic pulp character I've ever read, and one of greatest, most incisive takes on a pulp hero I've ever seen.

The official English translation of the comic calls him "The Eye", because despite being from 1911 and not having seen any kind of continuous publication since his author was disgraced for becoming a Nazi collaborator, apparently there are Nyctalope rights holders from Jean de La Hire's family who forced them to change the names for this comic and to alter it for all releases of the prequel series Lehman and Gess did, which is a hilariously obscene and yet fitting note to start this on - the very idea of Nyctalope rights holders invested in the sanctity of their hero, which is very funny considering that, within the story of The Chimera Brigade, the Nyctalope is driven in no small part by the fact that his legacy was entirely penned by hack pulp writers, and he desperately wants to correct that so he can take his place next to the greats that he claims he used to be on equal level with. It's an extension of the all-consuming insecurity that completely defines him and makes him such a pathetic, funny, and ultimately compelling character to watch, regardless of how much context you have for who The Nyctalope is.

Saint-Clair, as his alias indicated, has the ability to see in the dark after an injury. He has an artificial heart. He leads a crimefighting organization, the CID.

His decline is all the more pitiful: after traveling through time, rediscovering Atlantis and exploring an errant planet called Rhea, Saint-Clair becomes a collaborator in a 1944 tale called Night of the Nyctalope.

Even as an outcast, he remains a major figure in the French imagination, the missing link between the "gentlemen crimefighters" of the end of the 19th century and the modern adventurers of whom Bob Morane is emblematic.

He is painfully aware that, next to the likes of Lupin and Fantomas and Holmes, he is an insignificant nobody, that history will simply not remember The Nyctalope the same way it did them, and he has no idea why. We can certainly understand easy enough why he is generally despised by the other characters: he's a weasel, he's a cop, he's vindictive and petty, he's a reactionary, he's uncomfortable to be around, he's rude and snooty and demanding, he's self-obsessed, he's a piece of shit, he's unlikable, and we eventually learn he failed his most important promise on the most profound level possible and has only aggravated the problem ever since. And he is aware of all of that, and none of that, in his view, should have any kind of bearing on his record. Up until the finale of this, he had brushed off his failure to protect Spain from fascism, the dying promise that Curie entrusted to him above all else, as a quirk or flaw on the record, comparable to Holmes' cocaine addiction. None of these flaws explain to him why is it that he is not on the level of Lupin and Fantomas, despite having known them and been, theoretically, on their level. He has no context for his own existence.

He doesn't know how profoundly the world is gonna forget him. He doesn't know he's the last of a kind already on their way to extinction. He doesn't know what Jean de La Hire is gonna do in 1940. He doesn't know that whatever legacy he could have as a proto-superhero is gonna be tainted to shit because his author was a hack who sold out to the Nazis and fled town for it. He just knows that there is a Canon, and he is not a part of it, and this fact is killing him and blinding him to everything that doesn't revolve around his attempts to secure a legacy for himself.

The streets of Paris are adorned with big signs of him as it's protector, he is invited to political conferences as an international player of note, and Marie Curie, whose discovery of radium and whose scientific institute defines the backstory of the entire setting, entrusted him to protect the city, a huge unthinkable honor that her own children are baffled by, and none of this truly matters to The Nyctalope, because it's not enough. He holds a position of authority and power, but he is far less concerned with the impending war and bloodshed than he is at what's going to happen to his own legacy. Best exemplified by a particularly funny sequence in Issue 4, where he attends a Soviet conference and and learns firsthand about the alliance/treason kicking off the war that's gonna ruin all their diplomatic efforts so far, and his immediate concern is "what about the Eisenstein biopic I was promised??".

A single hour of darkness, and the vampires will tear the city apart.

What is Saint-Clair waiting for?

The first deaths. The public will crucify us, all he'll have to do is name the place. Well played.

It's in large part this obsession with legacy and imagery that makes him such an unpleasant person. The Curies even state in Issue 3 that the Nyctalope is willing to let the Chimera Brigade fail publicly and let casualties occur if it means he can take greater credit for fixing a problem they failed to contain, and eventually you can even see why he is so obsessed with the public perception: all of his victories and achievements have been hidden. Defeating and killing the secret ruler of the world, protecting the city from the shadows or up top in his airships, keeping dangerous beings hidden in his cave, none of that gets the public applause the Chimera Brigade got for stopping that alien frog.

If he'd kept up his promise to Curie and saved Spain, no one would have seen it happen. He says as much in the last issue that even now, to him, Mabuse is nothing, no more of a threat than Cagliostro, and certainly not as big of a priority as those dirty communists at the Curie Institute he will publicly deal with first. If you stop the threats before anyone sees you do it, they might as well not have existed, and he can't afford that anymore. He needs to have something to show for it all, he needs to have a victory that matters, he needs to belong in The Canon, and he has no way of understanding why he doesn't already.

I've said before, on my old post about the Nyctalope, that he is inherently emblematic of failure in a way that I find very interesting in so far as what it can say about the genre he's part of. How, disturbing origin and weird sci-fi adventures and design aside, he really was essentially a fairly clean-cut superheroic do-gooder. A Superman, a Captain America, indistinguishable from any other idealized patriotic do-gooder, and how none of that changed when his author sold out to the Vichy government. How just that single turn exposes how contextual and finnicky the entire premise of a pulp hero/superhero is, and how what happened to the Nyctalope could have befallen any number of other characters within the medium.

The Chimera Brigade's take on Nyctalope isn't even really about that historical fact surrounding him, although it is very much cognizant of this fact - it is more so about the failure state he represents and lives in. He stands for France, and thus stands for the failure of France in the pre-war era, the failure to do anything against it's fascist neighbors, the failure to assist in containing the threat of Nazism until it was far too late, the obsession with legacy and preservation of image coming at the cost of human lives. The failures of the Nyctalope are the failures of France, and he is a perfect character to stand in for failure. He is the perfect character to do this kind of thing with.

Significant and recognizable enough that he matters, not too significant or recognizable enough to not be irrelevant. A guy who was a perfectly ordinary pulp hero, if not for these strange proto-superhero quirks and that inescapable shame of his creator. He is part of the Canon, but he doesn't define the Canon, and the Canon will not wait for him to join it. He is just one of many pulp heroes, significant as a missing link between the ones that actually matter, and nothing more. Self-proclaiming as the last of the greats, instead of just being one of the greats or the next step of the greats - of course he wants to be the last of the great Gentlemen Vigilantes so that no others can come after him and overshadow him - ultimately a historical curiosity rather than a true step in the genre.

There is indeed real pity, even sympathy, for this contemptible schlub. There is an acknowledgment that his past deeds indeed mattered, and that it's his failure to move past them and grapple with his true present obligations that damns him more so than anything else. A lesser story absolutely would have cared about giving this guy some due, some respect or acknowledgment, but The Chimera Brigade is unflinching and the Nyctalope is not spared. He is laid out in clear terms as a colossal fuck-up loser too obsessed with his own myth to be of any help, and why would he be depicted otherwise? What does it actually mean to be The Nyctalope? What does he want to be remembered for? What does he HAVE to be remembered for?

For his great past deeds that nobody really saw? For his great magnetic personality? For the promise that he never kept, for the city that he doesn't protect, for the country he's failed, for the allies he's pushed away and the enemies he enables? For all these great adventures and accomplishments boiled down to nothing anyone really cares about, penned in cheap disposable pulp magazines? He desperately wants you to overlook everything else that surrounds him and listen to his assertions that he is one of The Guys, because his legend doesn't speak for itself, so he has to babble for it instead. And that's the note he ends on - finally realizing that there truly is nothing left for him, and that he failed on the most profound level possible. That even his tragic realization of failure is accompanied by a hilariously pathetic reveal - that all this time, in his most private quarters, he has all of his supposed "peers" framed in posters looming above him, and he was waiting to put himself next to them.

Holmes, Lupin, Fantomas, they were seismic shifts, they were major notable steps in their genre, they changed the world as a result of them, they were The Guys - and The Nyctalope wasn't. He was noteworthy, respectable, but just that, and he couldn't deal with that - that his legend will fade instead of endure. Ultimately, all he wanted was a spot on the wall next to them, and he's at last acknowledging that not only he will never have it, but that he never deserved it.

Whether you knew all this context about him or not going into this story, all along, deep down he knew the same thing that you did.

[darkfictionjude]

- Love your games. I wanted to ask if O Heavenly Stars is just a patreon access game because I did try playing it but I ended by the part where I have to do something called a Patreon Access to play.

- I also so one of your messages where you said you wanted to do more historical type of games and you brought up French Revolution which is kinda cool since I'm learning about that concept at school but that's not the point I was going to ask

Number one: what would you say would inspire that French Revolution storyline like e.g. maybe you were inspired by assassin's creed story or maybe a movie or show or anything at all.

Number two: would you be interested in doing one where you were a viking kinda like the show Vikings?

Number three: what has been your favourite game you have worked on so far and why?

Number 4: you've already said French Revolution but what other types of historical stories do you hope to do?.

Thank you!! I’m happy you asked! It’ll be released publicly soon

The thing is I just said it because the other nonnie suggested it. Not because I have any clear idea of what a story like that could be about nor because I have any plan to do one about that time period. I don’t find Marie Antoinette that interesting. I do like the reign of the sun king though

Honestly I’m not that into Vikings, never quite found the appeal of them at all

My favourite IF depends on whatever I’m writing at that moment tbf which sounds like a cop out but I love them for different reasons

Likely the ottomans I’m really into that time period specifically either the reign Mehmed II or Suleiman I and I like the aesthetic of the time as well very beautiful. Their fighters were some of the most vicious in history

[glitchy-creations]

Update of this post!

I did all of the sketches for the character pairings I wanted to do for this ship dynamic and decided that I wanted to colour this one first! This one is with my Telemachus design and my oc Pyrrha!

I’m going to include more info about Pyrrha under the cut because it’s gonna be a lot and I don’t want to obscure y’all’s scrolling 👍🏻

Pyrrha info

To start, Pyrrha’s “original” name was also Ambrosia (I liked the irony of a demigod child of Hades having a name that mean “immortality”), I have since given her the nickname Pyrrha (based off her hair colour lol) to help differentiate her from my goddess oc of the name name!

Pyrrha originally started as a Percy Jackson oc from like my middle school days. Every now and again I allow myself one “Mary Sue” type character, and Pyrrha was that character for PJO. I have a hand full of other OC’s and Pyrrha is literally the only one who’s a child of the big three, I don’t even have a Roman demigod who’s one of the big three. Pyrrha was pretty much just an amalgamation of things i thought were cool about the universe; so she’s a demigod child of Hades and is a Hunter of Artemis who’s lived a rather long life. I was still wanting to keep close to canon lore as well even back then, so she’s always been way older than the other characters to adhere to the fact that Hades never broke the pact he made with his brothers about not having more demigod kids after WW2. She has since grown to be a more “Greek mythology media in general” oc like Ambrosia. With that in mind, her lore does tend to change based off the lore of whatever media she’s in!

Her General Lore;

In the past two years I think, I’ve decided that she’s originally from Ancient Greece, Sparta specifically.

Her mother was a mortal and came from a well off family though was a very independent woman. She was a “follows the beat of her own drum” kind of person.

While she never seemed interested in marriage (she actually never married) she was someone who valued fidelity. She was quite upset with Hades when she discovered that he was married while he was seeing her and was very sympathetic towards Persephone.

Despite that, she did love Pyrrha very much and the two were close when Pyrrha was young.

Pyrrha’s mother did, however, die when Pyrrha was young. She didn’t know her father outside of the stories of the gods and her maternal grandfather was always busy so Pyrrha grew up a very isolated and lonely childhood.

Pyrrha did seem to inherit her mother’s independence so she never seems bothered by the loneliness. She would usually keep to herself and entertain herself by learning to hunt and use a bow.

Pyrrha would later be sent to train under Chiron. I haven’t decided how this came to be, but I’d probably go with the idea that Hades had a hand in it. Maybe he saw her talent in archery and thought Chiron could help train her, or maybe he thought Chiron would offer a more stable, fatherly role for her.

She thrived under Chiron’s guidance and would excel in almost anything she did. Chiron would become a fatherly figure to Pyrrha and he was the one who gave her the nickname “Pyrrha” in the first place.

Note: I personally like this Reddit comment when I come to estimates ages of the characters in the Iliad so it’s what I have roughly based Pyrrha’s age on! She’s roughly three years younger than Odysseus.

Pyrrha met a young Achilles while with Chiron. She’s roughly eight years older than Achilles so ngl she thought he was a little bit of a brat (I like the idea of little Achilles having a little bit of an inflated ego because he’s a demigod, had a prophecy about him, or a little bit of both lol). The battiness did mellow out over the years 👍🏻

Despite their little “rivalry”, Pyrrha did see Achilles as something of a little brother for lack of a better word. She did care for him, he just annoyed her more often than not 😅

This is a common occurrence with Pyrrha mostly because she didn’t have a strong family unit before Chiron. She tends to apply familial titles to the people she’s close to and care for.

Pyrrha would train with Chiron for most of her early life, though she would occasionally travel if the urge struck her. This was especially common in her later teen years. She would occasionally travel to Ithaca or other closer city-states.

She met a younger Odysseus a couple of times when she would visit Ithaca, but they weren’t like best friends. It was more like “oh, there’s that quiet girl who’s surprisingly good with a bow who I bump into every once in a while.”

When Pyrrha was roughly 22 she tried twice to join the Trojan War. It was more out of a desire to bring Helen back home to Sparta than for glory or anything. She may not have lived in Sparta for many years, but there was still some loyalty there. Of course she was denied both times primarily because of her gender.

She met Artemis sometime after (perhaps a year or two later when Artemis was not helping Apollo and Troy) and devoted herself to Artemis (the nature of how the hunt works varies depending on the media). I should probably mention that Pyrrha is aroace, so she also has no desire to marry or have any sort of romantic/sexual relationship with anyone.

As I mentioned in the second image, Pyrrha met Telemachus when he was 10. I imagine he was like the embodiment of child like curiosity so when he saw this strange woman with red hair and a bow walking around Ithaca’s marketplace, he just sort of started following her (Telemachus honey….no…)

Long story short, Telemachus ended up growing on Pyrrha and she sort of just started teaching him archery. Of course Penelope knew what was going on (Pyrrha promptly brought back little Telemachus home when she realised she was being followed) and was okay with it as long as Telemachus wasn’t getting in trouble.

Again, as I mentioned in the second image, Pyrrha and Telemachus started to form a “mentor-student” type relationship over the next ten years. He was also the one to decide first that Pyrrha was kind of like a big sister or an aunt figure to him. She also had a very good relationship with Penelope.

Once Odysseus returned to Ithaca Pyrrha would become closer to Odysseus as well. It definitely would prompt her to visit more often.

Everything after that is kind of dependent on what media she’s being included in.

Lore that’s subject to change:

The nature of Artemis and her Hunt is one thing that’s subject to change. This also ties into Pyrrha and her apparent eternal youth or “immortality”.

I think most are familiar with how the hunt works in PJO; young women vow themselves to Artemis, reject romance in all forms, and are given semi-immortality as long as they keep their vows and aren’t killed in battle. As Pyrrha was originally a PJO oc, this was the original reason for her young appearance.

Outside of PJO, I generally think of the hunt as it was depicted in mythology. I think this Reddit post does a good job at kind of summarising/explaining the hunt in mythology. Pyrrha would absolutely devote herself to Artemis for life given she is aroace, it wouldn’t be a big life altering decision for her and would probably provide her another sense of community or familial support in her mind (she would see the other hunters as her sisters as they are sister in arms so to speak.)

This would then bring her semi-immortality into question. I feel like it would probably depend on the media’s lore, or it just wouldn’t be questioned. Perhaps Artemis gave it to her as a gift as she had sworn herself to Artemis for life. Perhaps she’s garnered the favour of another god or maybe her father had something to do with it. Idk, I kind of don’t want to make it too specific to where it can’t be a flexible detail.

Even her demigod status is something that is (very rarely) subject to change. This is mainly in reference to Blood of Zeus and maybe the Hades games when it comes to how/when she was conceived. I’m not sure if either media grants Artemis any kind of group of hunters (BoZ definitely hasn’t shown any evidence of one, though Artemis hasn’t been shown as a main focal character…yet).

This prompted a little discussion with me and a friend where I mentioned that if she was given god status at any point, she’d probably be a goddess of kinship; particularly if non blood related kinship. Obviously, this would be because she had a tendency to form familial bonds with close friends as such.

This point, however, hasn’t been fully fleshed out. BoZ hasn’t really explored the idea of a mortal becoming a god (not sure if it will be touched on in future season) and I’m not super familiar with the detailed lore of the Hades games. My biggest concern is keeping Pyrrha’s lore as close to the media’s canon lore as I can which is why these are flexible detail points.

I think that’s all I have for now! If you made it to the end, thanks for taking the time to at least skim my ramblings lol. I don’t want this to get any longer than it is, so if anyone has any suggestions feel free to ask me!

Also Pyrrha and her lore is not meant to be taken seriously as a part of actual Greek mythology. I have tried to keep as close to mythology as I can while having creative liberties for my of and her “universe”, obviously she’s not a real mythological figure and shouldn’t be treated as such! She was made just for fun! 💕

[arcadekitten]

Alright I have officially caught up on ALL of your games. Firstly, WOW, they were all amazing. You genuinely haven’t missed. I could go on about all of them, but in particular I wanted to highlight how you handle endings. The way you do plot twists is always impressive, and I look forward to them in every game. With that in mind, I have a couple of questions about the endings. Spoilers for basically every arcadekitten game ahead.

1. What’s your favorite ending you’ve made for any of your games? It doesn’t have to be a canon one, just an ending that you particularly love. Personally, I have to give it to Reggie’s good ending in Cemetery Mary, because that twist is perfect. Though huge credit to HFSH, because i genuinely did not expect that

2. Has there ever been an ending you were unsure about? As a writer myself I’ve doubted endings before, so I want to know if you’ve had the same struggles.

3. Which endings do you tend to come up with first? Good, bad, or true?

4. This one isn’t exactly ending related, but I’ve been curious, are any of the games directly canon to each other outside of Cemetery Mary and Holiday Shopping?

Annnd that’s about it for questions, just wanna say again these games are awesome and I’m eagerly awaiting My Wishmaker and any future projects.

Oh my goodness this is one of the sweetest things!! Thank you SO so much you have no idea how overjoyed I am whenever I hear someone enjoy them so! ♡

I will try to answer the best I can!

My favorite ending...it's hard to say! I definitely enjoy Reginald's Good Ending in Cemetery Mary too, which may or may not be influenced by my love for him...I also am still very proud of the Here For Sweethearts ending no matter how controversial it may be! I think I like all the endings of Blackout Hospital too, I think they each add something and I like how I was able to implement them. ---

I'm not sure! It's been a while, and I feel like I only try to put in endings that feel like a natural progression of events. I guess I'd say that while I wasn't unsure I was a bit nervous about the Normal End of My Neighbor Enide? Only because I was worried players would achieve it, think it's the only end, and then stop playing before they could learn the truth. But that's why I specifically labelled it as "Normal" to imply there was more than one and it seems to have worked! I'd also say that sometimes I get a bit...it's not nervous, but like. There's a feeling I get when I know for the story to work it can only have 1 ending, but because of that there's inevitably going to be people saying the game would be "better" if it had more, which I do not always agree with. ---

It's hard to say! In my head it feels like they all kinda...grow together, though I guess I'd say because the true ending is the most important I try to get it sorted first. From that point I can branch out as many times as I'd like for alternative endings. (Especially when a true ending can be good or bad, it just needs to exist) ---

I would say that some games share connections (such as Blackout Hospital and Cemetery Mary), but that so far Cemetery Mary and Holiday Shopping are the only games that take place in the same timeline!

[lloke]

I was tagged by @nohoperadio for this meme about 10 books or categories-of-books you're planning to read this year... their list is full of Actual Literature and mine isn't going to be nearly as impressive, but here it is anyway...

So I use Goodreads (link - feel free to friend me) and have a gigantic to-read list, which I've tried to manage by breaking it up into various categories/genres, ordering each list according to an obscure algorithm and then rotating through the categories in an overly complicated system that changes every few months... but without some kind of system to tell me what to read next I think I would just be paralyzed by indecision because there are too many books that I want to read Right Now. But anyway that means my reading is pretty planned out and I do have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be reading this year.

I read mostly SFF and one subgenre I've been very into lately is "stuff with interesting aliens" and one book that's currently near the top of that list is The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, which as I understand it is a book about aliens and religion, both topics that I'm interested in. So I'm looking forward to that one.

Another category which is sometimes a subgenre of the above is books (usually SF but occasionally fantasy) which depict a society that Does Gender Differently, especially in the sense of having some kind of non-binary gender system. Sometimes I become an insane completionist about things, and this is one of those things.... it's just fun seeing how many different tri-gender (or whatever) systems writers can come up with, even when the books themselves are otherwise terrible. I've now read most of the well-known stuff in this subgenre and have been venturing into the increasingly obscure... one that I'll probably get to this year is called Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, which apparently also involves both religious themes and aliens with three sexes? Hey, sign me up.

In the general category of "stuff by authors I like and want to read more of" some I've got coming up are Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick, The Truth and Other Stories by Stanisław Lem, Rocannon's World by Ursula K. Le Guin.... also some more Asimov and Heinlein, which I'm a little embarrassed about as I have been given to understand that all Real SF Fans already read all that "golden age" stuff when they were 12 and haven't glanced at it since.

Also: more silly Sherlock Holmes fanfics pastiches, of which I've already read way too many. I usually go for the ones that bring in SFF elements (the crackier the better) or that sound like they might have h/c in them lol. Coming up in the near future is Lindsay Faye's Observations by Gaslight.

In the nonfiction category, the next on the list is Buddhisms: An Introduction by John S. Strong, which I picked out just by searching around for a good introductory book on the topic. That's how I tend to approach nonfiction reading, by starting with a general overview of whatever topic I'm interested in to get some background on the "scholarly consensus" before delving into books on more specific subtopics or scholars presenting their own idiosyncratic view or "bold new theory" or whatever. Mostly I've been reading about religion lately; I kind of want to get back into math and science stuff which I liked as a kid and did well at in school, but everything I learned is so rusty now... and I dunno, I like the idea of being the sort of person who actually understands relativity theory or whatever but realistically I'm probably not actually smart enough for it lol.

I guess that's roughly ten things. Tagging (only if they want to obviously) @ipsomaniac @paradigm-adrift and/or anyone else who feels like doing it.

[goodluckclove]

hey clove! i'm taking an ap visual arts class this year and we need to do a "sustained investigation" aka create a series of works connecting to and exploring a theme. one i'm thinking about a lot is relating queer people and the essence of queerness to divinity and also the occult, as a lash-back at christian nationalism and a celebration of queer joy. some examples of this would be comparing the transmasculine experience to the christian creation narrative and gnc/genderfluid people to figures similar to dionysus. i'm still workshopping the concept, do you have any thoughts on this or experiences you'd be willing to share so i can think of specific pieces and ideas to explore?

also i recently bought a binder and i felt so pretty and masculine but at the same time felt this overwhelming freedom to be feminine. it was really cool and i've decided i'm going to grow my hair out long again. i felt a lot like scott, just having this sort of wild feminine whimsy, and it felt really nice

hope you're doing well!! glad you were able to relax a bit :))))

Dude I'm literally planning a short story about a transmasc man who forms a relationship from childhood with the voice of God. This is crazy. I'll tell you about it later but there's so much potential there and it's such a cool idea. The words virgin birth in terms of the virgin Mary herself being Jesus Christ. An idea of a god that arranged for the circumstances of something that has to grow into an intended outcome even if through struggle. A god that like learns from trans people and finds it interesting because it's different and it's the same and now people are making new genders? You made new ones? Why did it take this long for you to think of new ones? I threw up about five minutes ago because I am the child of severe alcoholics and yet if you allow me two cocktails my body will collapse on itself like a dying star.

Also fun fact you can still be Scott-core without your binder if you want. He's got a chest too. His secret is that if anyone tries to question the validity of a man with breasts he gets really, truly, openly bored and politely waits for them to make their point before changing the topic and not acknowledging what they said at all.

The binder sounds very useful though. I miss my old binder. If that's the thing that makes you feel powerful being masculine and feminine that's fucking radical as hell. Wear a pretty skirt and a cool shirt and put like a fucking scrunchie in your hair. There's so many options and if you're a guy or masc leaning person who takes advantage of them you are just objectively more interesting, case closed. Anyone who is locking themselves out of half the amount of baubles and drapery that exists because of gender or body type is at a strategic disadvantage.

I was going to say that if my man Scott saw you on the street he'd be proud, but I know he would be unable to perceive the potential risks or fears. He's so insufferably Non-judgemental that he could bump directly into you by accident and come out with no other thought than "I am the same height as who I believe to be a child".

Edgar, on the other hand, would absolutely stare at you too closely until they felt weird and looked away, but would think about your style and freedom on and off for days afterwards.

I need to sleep for a few hours you people need to stop being interesting and important to me.

[laindarko100]

Zine illustration # 2, meant to accompany a found poem I made using sentences & phrases from my great-grandma's poetry & stories about the family that she shared throughout her life. This was a very interesting creative process for me and I kinda want to talk through it here, if only for me to look back on later. (This is mainly about grief & death so don't read if you don't want to subject yourself to something heavy right now).

My great-grandma Lorene took a lot of care to document the actual lives and personalities of her loved ones, the things that made them special, and the memories she held dearly. It seems she had a pretty good sense of how easy it is for those things to be forgotten and how nice it is for future generations to have these stories, probably because she lost so many people so early (she outlived her husband, two of her three sons, and all of her five siblings). Reading through her memories, especially with all of the Christianity embedded in her writing, I started thinking about Mary and Jesus, specifically the classical image of the pieta. Stripped of religious significance, the pieta is the pain of a mother mourning her son, whose death was cruel and gruesome. My brain connected that to what it must have been like for Lorene to watch her son - my grandpa - suffer from terminal illness until his untimely death. A man who, for all intents and purposes, was a "savior" - not in a religious sense, he was literally an EMT and saved many, many lives over his career. So, I assembled a poem from Lorene's work which muses on that connection a bit, and I titled it "Pieta."

When I got to illustrating, my initial instinct was to do the obvious thing: create the classic pieta image with Lorene as Mary and my grandpa as Jesus. Now, normally I'm all for a bit of heresy, but as I kept trying to draft this idea out, I couldn't help but feel that, since this is a work in dialogue with my Christian great grandmother, I should respect that religious imagery a bit more and not mess around with it in this particular project. I also felt resistant to depicting her or my grandpa in any kind of pain, be it emotional or physical - basically, I wouldn't want to create something that would cause my mom distress if she were to see it. I also found it difficult to conjure their likenesses when I never really got to know either of them. So, I took a bit of a different angle; I thought about Mary rising and leaving to bury Jesus; the empty seat left behind after all of it is over. Lorene's writing was replete with nostalgia for old, long-abandoned houses and a domesticity that no longer seemed possible to her in the modern world; and had great fondness for the walnut trees and whippoorwills she remembered from her childhood. So: an old and empty room, a bare walnut tree bursting from the floorboards, an overturned chair, a whippoorwill, and a dark doorway through which the house's inhabitants have already left. A mundane pieta, the aftermath of the aftermath, the peculiar calm after a violent storm, and perhaps indicative of the peculiar position of myself, the artist, completely detached and isolated from entire branches of my family, due to tragedy and physical distance. Where memories should be, there are only empty spaces, symbols, vague outlines, and the pang in my chest the first time I watched my mother break down in tears over the father she lost when she was 14, and I learned for the first time that there was a person I was supposed to know but never could.

Over the years, I've fixated on this quite a bit, and in a strange way, I feel... Guilty about it. I feel like it's not right for me to have grief for someone I never met: even this soft and slight grief feels unearned. In channeling these particular feelings into art, I feel like a fraud, like I'm pillaging my mother's grief and trauma for my art. Now, I quite literally pillaged my great grandma's grief for my art. Is it wrong of me to do so? I felt uneasy until I completed this illustration and started to understand for the first time what, exactly, it is that I've been working through. We don't live in a time of heirlooms, or listening to stories at the feet of our elder relatives, or collecting photographs in albums. And in our case, especially, all we have of my grandpa is a meager selection of photos, since his second wife (a literal evil stepmother) kicked my mom and uncle out of the house after he died and didn't let them collect his things. There was going to be a hole no matter what, but it's bigger than it needs to be. I have to create my own boards with which to patch it up. I'm not pillaging, nothing is being taken from anyone; I'm building. Mostly, what I'm building is understanding. Creating shapes around generational trauma and unnameable emotions with art, no matter how simple, which can help me imagine what my ancestors may have felt, even though they cannot tell me. And that feels like a form of love, not precisely the same as what I am able to feel for those I've gotten to connect with in life, but a form of love all the same. I guess you could say it's a bit spiritual. In including this piece in the zine (along with another specific poem which I won't get into here), I hope there is something there for others to connect to, and that it won't come across as too navel-gazey, too personal, too sentimental. I guess I'm just not used to making stuff like this. Normally, for me, it's all creatures & critters & blood & sex & whatever. Visceral, certainly vulnerable in a bodily way, but perhaps never quite emotionally vulnerable...

Anyway, the bottom quote is from a journal entry my great-grandma wrote in 1999. The full quote is "the world will never be silent again with only the sounds of God's creatures. Man made sounds have taken over and we can never go back. I wish with all my heart my family could know the peace of just one of those days of my childhood." RIP Lorene, you would have found iPad babies utterly depressing.

[irrealisms]

liner notes for we were in the gold room

fic here if you haven't read it!

the idea for the first scene of this fic came from a friend back in February. i initially thought i wasn't going to write it. then chips killed me and i got the idea of dropping the collar on my death and i decided i wanted to write it. then i learned about the cage, and suddenly "i dropped chips a symbol of her ownership of me on my death" gained a lot of baggage, and i decided to hold off on writing this fic until the server ended but also got really excited to write it.

every scene of this fic is vitally important imo but i've got a soft spot for the second one for two reasons. the first is that it shows my actions vis a vis Elysium in a more negative light IMO than e.g. tall trees bend and lean or the third scene, which i think is important? obviously i'm biased towards di!will, and writing fic from her pov is always going to be sympathetic towards her, but i don't like when that ~minimizes the ways i fucked up. i don't OOC regret that day bc ultimately everything led to this story which I am proud of and would not change, but IC i think it's my biggest regret; while there are times i have been more acutely scared or unhappy on divorcesteal that was the moment that felt the worst, in terms of knowing i had failed at communicating and balancing my relationships and plans and was just... handling things poorly. the first scene is about being too shy to bring things up and the second scene is about the ways in which "too shy to bring something up" can be a major flaw that seriously hurts people. it's also tbc fucked in some ways bc i am absolutely prioritizing and caring about thousand suns over my actual team without telling said team, but it's not even solely that, i'm not even willing to fully commit to supporting thousand suns over chips, cf. not stopping chips on the plan to sell a wind burst book to arch and mari? i'm trying to preserve all my relationships in the moment by not bringing up anything, just going along with wherever the conversation takes me, and this is ... really bad, actually, and it seriously hurts chips and long-term damages our relationship.

the SECOND reason is because. okay. i'm not, actually, satisfied with how i wrote the second scene. i initially wanted to do a transcript of our conversation- Will: Question, do you want to, like, talk lore at all tonight or do you just want to like... hang out and have, like-- Chips: I feel like this kind of lowkey is lore right now-- Will (crosstalk): ...that's true. Chips: --'cause like even though we aren't like getting super into like emotional roleplay, we're still kind of, like, scheming. Will: That's-- yeah. I, I don't disagree with that but, like... that's, I guess related to the (nervous laugh) question of, uh..... [long pause] Chips: Hm. (pause) Jesus, those walls are fucking menacing, bro. and. i tried but couldn't end up doing that in a way that i didn't totally dislike for immersion breaking? i am asking if chips is open to Serious Roleplay. i can't change that to asking chips for a serious conversation bc it's important that i used an ambiguous word, i genuinely agree that what we did that night was in fact lore. but if i leave it in the fic unchanged, it reads very strangely, because it's an acknowledgement of the fiction, of the fact that there are people playing di!will and di!chips. it's a moment that could only happen or work the way it does in the medium of minecraft roleplay. so instead we just get "Her question trails off and Chips starts talking about the walls and Will doesn’t bring it back up." which is a damn shame because it was such a central and pivotal moment for me! but the interplay of IC and OOC makes it so hard to translate. i love minecraft roleplay

oh also note that the second scene is the only one that actually Happened. i made the rest up in my beautiful mind, although it's all on Specific Days (first scene is december 21, second scene is march 18, third scene is march 31, fourth scene is april 5). whether you want to accept it as canon is up to you. but all of the second scene happened! it was onstream and everything if you want to watch it

i got the idea for di!will having a collar in . uhhhhhh. mid december 2024. and i in fact never brought it up to chips in game (nor did i add it to my skin until postcanon pool party). there was really only the one moment (scene two, "I need to put you on a leash") where bringing it up felt--possible. and by then it felt impossible for different reasons, because there was a real sense in which i wasn't elysium's anymore. at first i liked "we talked about it offscreen at some point" so i could imagine di!will as having it anyway and i think this does still work fine as a headcanon given like, the first two fics in the series where i ~establish that elysium is doing offscreen Kink Communication, so i still do play in that space also sometimes. but in the aftermath of the breakup i also kind of liked ... okay, so you're too shy to bring things up to chips until after everything's fallen apart? that sure is a character trait you have! fuck you. uncollars your will

well. until the ending, since ofc elysium do get their happy ending. the ending is i think very characteristic of me as a writer; it honestly reminds me of memory foam in some ways. i like characters with weird relationships to kink

it also works with the fact of ending the server in the ex-cage? something will was terrified of being forced into becomes something will chooses. i might at some point write a fic about di!will and autonomy as a core value, we'll see, i have a lot of thoughts there that sort of just....emerged from playing her while myself. i'd want to be careful not to step on other ppl's ooc feelings with it, though.

chips having put the collar on her thigh is fucking AWESOME and also i didn't come up with it, credit to chips for that concept. i wouldn't have come up with it on my own and i genuinely can't imagine anything that would've been better.

there's a thing i'm sort of thinking about with will putting the collar in her echest before she gets jumped + chips putting the collar on her thigh instead of her neck so it's not visible + the three of us having a private wedding in the final base with no one there and no one in vc + will only putting the collar on when it's the three of them alone and the world's about to end + a thing angel said in the elysium group chat when it was alone in there about not wanting to show or add other people and not liking when people joked about that. the contrast between the collar as a very obvious and public symbol and it ultimately being a private thing.

wrt the third scene . there was an old elysium base that just. still had villagers???? it wasn't even a GOOD base, i moved out + never set up a zombification chamber before all the villagers were even killed bc i was so sure it had been found, but i went back to visit it to talk to angel shortly post-breakup and then it just. still had villagers????????????????? and even though it was like, objectively worse than thousand suns villager trading hall i started going back there instead bc they were Mine. using other people's halls always felt weird. i didn't like using animal crossing village except in an emergency for the same reason. but because angel also knew it had villagers and that i might go back there for them, i always checked pie chart before entering and then went down into it extremely slowly. this wouldn't even save me from most traps, on account of they most likely wouldn't be trying to just kill me with a bunch of carts or w/e, but it felt better than not checking at all. after the season ended and angel learned i was scared of this they said "never thought of this. 💔"

i debated which pronouns i should use for di!will a bit in this fic since. one of the possibilities is it/its and "whether or not i use it/its in the fic abt [complicated feelings abt a ~dehumanizing symbol]"... does actually have ~thematic meaning to me in this specific context, in both directions? but i ended up just going with she/her bc that's what i wrote ~naturally in the first piece of it that i wrote and i hate editing.

the title comes from Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room/where everyone finally gets what they want.

[hanjaxmikii]

illumi and kalluto

hi im like 5% awake BUT im awake enough to think about them so lets get into it

tldr, kalluto is the only viable option for Zoldyck heir and even then he’s ditching his family lol

My rankings of the Zoldyck siblings by favorites is Kalluto, Alluka, Milluki, Illumi, Killua. Kalluto being baby who can do no wrong and Killua the most obnoxiously annoying Mary Sue.

Illumi in the recent chapters got bumped up above Milluki but their ranking switches around depending on *when* in the story. (Milluki going outside is peak bruh)

But that’s only because of Kalluto dbsjshd

Kalluto is so fun to think about because in canon he’s so underutilized but through the power of context we can give him so much depth.

In my head, the Zoldyck hierarchy is like this: Killua is obviously the heir, but what if something happened to him? Then it would have to shift to Illumi but Silva doesn’t want him to lead, then it would shift to Milluki who does not give a shit whether he inherits anything or not, so then it skips over Alluka because 1. She’s a girl 2. They view her as dangerous 3. Obviously if Killua somehow dies she’s most likely dead too.

so it literally leaves just Kalluto to inherit the Zoldyck business. Like bro can already consider himself the true Zoldyck heir because none of his other siblings would do it (except illumi but he’s been a doormat his entire life I don’t think he can lead worth shit)

But will he though? Will he remain loyal enough to his family to follow their will? Or has the loyalty shifted to the Phantom Troupe.

Kalluto doesn’t open up very much but he’s spent about a year and a half(?) with them. He HAS to have confided in SOMEONE. Especially if the troupe has banded together for most of the time. (This specific scenario involves oc shit so I’m skipping over it)

But surely they think how the family operates is complete whack, and now on the Black Whale 1 they can see what Kalluto means about Illumi. The air is just… off with him.

I believe despite already learning how to think for himself and gaining somewhat of a sense of identity thanks to the troupe, Kalluto still follows Illumi because he’s always listened to him above others (minus mom). He’s still 12 years old, he’s scared to defy those who have “authority” over him. And who knows what Illumi would do if Kalluto chose not to listen.

If something happens to Illumi in which he gets clapped but Kalluto lives I think there’s a pretty solid chance he’ll fake his death too and stay with the troupe. Illumi is like the main chain that binds him to the family, the original familial bond chain has rusted, and the others are weak enough to break with enough force. Without it, nothing is obligating Kalluto to go back to the Zoldycks.

-

-

-

This is where oc shit does come in (assuming she too survives the succession war), because she took Kalluto in as her own little sibling. She’s the one he opened up to the most, because she’s spent the most amount of time actively interacting with him. She knows a lot about the inner workings of the Zoldycks through him and was the one to put the idea in his head that he has way more options in life than he thinks.

He can already consider himself the heir because his other siblings will take themselves out of the running, but he can also stay with the spiders, and by extension her. Something he *really* wants because she’s been teaching him to get stronger and actually treats him like an actual human with autonomy. She’s fun, he wants her to stay in *his* family. And if it means ditching the Zoldycks and claiming the Phantom Troupe as his family so be it.

We are not far along enough into the succession war to see what the fuck is going on with Illumi and Kalluto, but I just know Koruso is stressed as all hell that he’s being left alone with Illumi and she can’t be there to make sure nothing happens to him.

IF illumi and kalluto manage to survive, it’ll turn ugly between illumi and koruso. Illumi is stuck in his unshakable and rigid views on family, and Koruso believes in the exact opposite. He believes in control and order, Koruso believes in choice and freedom. It will come down to what Kalluto ultimately decides but who’s to say Illumi and Koruso won’t literally duel to the death over it.

[samsblades]

hii mari i love your writing. i wanna get into writing and start writing more, do you have any tips? 🥺 ty in advance

hi darling!! thank you so much for loving my writing!! here's an old post from my prev blog with some tips about emotions in writing that someone asked about before in case that interests you, here's some more general tips for writing/getting into writing!! i blab a lot heh

the biggest one for me is to not force myself to write if it's stressing me out/or no fun at all. there will always be moments that are maybe a little hard/stressful/annoying and not as much fun, and usually they can be something that you can push through to make it to the other side and start or finish a fic or whatever it is that you're writing! but i've learned from experience that i should just stop writing if it's genuinely stressful or unpleasant overall, because that can happen sometimes! for me personally, that's a sign to step back and come back later (maybe way later! i've gone months and months without writing a fic in the past).

and in the same vein, the whole point of writing for me is having fun and engaging in something creative! it does require hard work and thinking, but i think that can be part of the fun and makes satisfying when you come up with a final product.

especially in fanfiction, try your hardest not to be concerned with any sort of perfection!! your job isn't to write something perfect or even "good", it's to write something that you want to!! it doesn't matter if it's bad at first. my first few years of fanfiction were frankly horrendous according to my current standards LOL. the act of writing, no matter the product, is the most important thing you can do! and it's the only way you'll get somewhere that you like or are satisfied. i've been writing for seven years heh, it will take time! and that's okay :)

be kind and patient with yourself!!!!

if there's some sort of story forming in your head or something inspiring you, just go for it!! start writing it, maybe in the middle of a scene, or start with an outline!

outlines help me a lot when i'm stuck because i can at least know that i'm trying to get from point a to point b. and they help me stop overthinking things. sometimes i get stuck in trying to get the vision in my head straight into fic format (prose) that sounds nice and makes sense! so making a very casual bullet point outline is what works best for me if i don't have enough direction to just go for it! some blurbs i often just go for it, but anything longer, i like a little guide so i know the direction i generally wanna take it! and outlines can be changed or discarded! it's just a starting point or a guideline to help you along. outlines may or may not help you, but they definitely help!

other things you can do when you're stuck is build a playlist or pinterest board (could be super tiny) for the vibes you're thinking about! usually these only happen for me for long fics. or you could sort of just word vomit random things into a doc or a physical page. these sort of things can help spark inspiration. the biggest thing is to start somewhere i think!

and you can always ask others for help or advice on anything!! let me know if you have any more sort of specific questions or something you want tips about!! i weirdly really like giving writing tips even though i have no idea how helpful it is to other people LOLLL and that's another thing that comes with time! figuring out what methods and all that works best for you!

[hallowsweenie]

The connection between Angela Orosco & Alessa Gillespie

Content warning: Sexual violence and abuse. Spoilers for Silent Hill 1 - 3

Something I always found interesting is the similarities between these two Silent Hill characters. To me, I see them as two sides of the same coin.

Silent Hill 2 is a self-contained story about a man and his late wife, following his experiences going through a town that wants him to explore his subconscious. We meet other characters in the story that James Sunderland did not know prior to coming to this town, some having to do with the plot and Mary (Maria & Laura) and some that have seemingly nothing to do with his storyline at all (Angela & Eddie). While Eddie Dombrowski is possibly reflective of the cold, callous nature it takes to become a killer, Angela has little to do with James and Mary's relationships and psyche. However, when looking closely, some things can be speculated.

Angela is a victim of abuse. Throughout her life she was sexually assaulted by her alcoholic father and brother repeatedly, with her mother turning a blind eye to the situation, speculated to also be verbally abusive to Angela. She is apparently not even twenty when James meets her in Silent Hill, and is looking for her mother specifically. We later learn through a newspaper clipping that Angela had actually murdered her father and brother, details left unknown, and she is seeking out her mother assumedly for finishing her circle of retribution on her family and cause of her suffering. Angela displays suicidal tendencies and severe mental illness, being detached from reality (If Silent Hill is reality) at times, as well as a kind of childlike-demeanor that switches to a colder, more mature side of herself. When James finds her with a knife when encountering her for the second time, she offers the weapon to him out of fear of her own misuse of it. However, as he reaches for it, she suddenly becomes frightful. Angela is very severely afraid of men. Also in the encounter in the room with the mirror and knife, Angela reveals she finds it "Easier to run" which is how she handled her abuse several times, to no avail as her father had dragged her back to her horrid living situation. She has an escapist mentality until recently, as one can assume now she is confronting her trauma after murdering her father and brother and now seeking her mother. During her journey in Silent Hill we get the idea that she still sees herself weak to her abuse and trauma, as she cowers during the boss fight we, as James, intrude upon. However, once James defeats the Abstract Daddy boss, Angela beats on the dying creature and lashes out at James, accusing him of wanting her sexually. Later, Angela mocks James by asking him rhetorical questions about saving her. Angela struggles with herself, seeing herself as a victim and her own savior at the same time. The last we see of Angela is as she ascends the burning stairs in the hotel on the lake, at the end of the game. She demands James gives her the knife back, but he declines, not giving her a weapon to assumedly commit suicide with. We can assume suicide because she asks him "Saving it for yourself?" and James claims he would never do such a thing. She questions James seeing the flames too, and says, "For me, it's always like this." Angela's end is left ambiguous. We never know how she handles her trauma. We can only hope for the best for one of the more tragic characters in the game. Masahiro Ito, monster artist of the game, did confirm on twitter that Angela dies. But the way she passes is not remembered and left ambiguous.

Alessa Gillespie is another victim of abuse in Silent Hill. She is arguably the most important character in the series, and credited as the 'cause' for Silent Hill being the way it is (However, this is debatable). Her father is left unnamed with nothing known about him - it's speculated that Alessa was the result of a magical ritual performed by her mother in the cult she was a part of, thus Alessa having psychic abilities and destined for the fate that is put upon her. However, it could be just as possible that Alessa is a product of rape, which is implied in the movie adaptation. Her mother, Dahlia Gillespie, physically and emotionally abused Alessa and involved her in the famous cult of the town The Order, which believes in old world magic and a God that will bring them salvation. Alessa, at the very young age of seven, was offered up to be sacrificed by ritual of fire in her own home, by her own mother because Alessa tried to act against her mother's wishes to birth god. The cycle of abuse continues after, as the 'god embryo' Alessa is assumedly born with does not allow her to die in immolation - she is locked away in a hidden room in the hospital, treated for severe burns, unable to interact with the outside world while on the chopping block for birthing a monstrosity at the whims of insane cultists. Lots of other abuse is left unsaid and can only be assumed. Alessa's psychic abilities are very powerful. She eventually musters up the strength to actually sever her soul out of spite to prevent the birth of God, and launched that soul out of Silent Hill as a roadside baby. A baby that is raised by the protagonist of Silent Hill's first game, Harry Mason. Eventually, Harry goes to the town by the request of his young daughter named Cheryl, who unknowingly is following her destiny to be reunited with her other half, Alessa. Harry uncovers the truth about Alessa while searching for his daughter and is misled constantly by Dahlia who does exist within the town, trying to manipulate Harry into helping her with the ritual in thwarting her daughter and bringing about the birth of God. In the end, Harry realizes what he has done and does right by Alessa, who gifts him a new baby that is the whole Alessa reborn with both halves of herself. She gives herself to a man she has deemed worthy of raising her into a better life, a man who has gone through literal hell for his daughter. We never get to know Alessa personally. Everything we know of her is through environmental storytelling in Silent Hill, and she is painted as the true victim of the story. No one in the series has undergone the level of pain, abuse, suffering and tragedy that Alessa has. Her psychic abilities on top of an already cursed land combined with her trauma supposedly created the Otherworld that Silent Hill is known for, the kind that calls to people struggling with guilt of their crimes like James Sunderland. We can maybe get an idea of who Alessa was personality-wise in Silent Hill 3, where you play as that baby Harry is given at the end of the first game, renamed Heather Mason. She's sassy, she's strong, she's so independent already as a teenager. Knowing she went to insane lengths to thwart her mother and the cults plans driven by spite, and considering that she survived everything she went through, we can assume that Alessa was also a very strong-willed girl. If she was given the choice and the room to grow, she wouldn't have been meek in any way.

Angela and Alessa are like two sides of the same coin. Besides the physical similarities and the similar names, they are the same in the way that they are opposite.

Angela is a normal girl with no psychic ability, a survivor with a damaged mental state that renders her, at first, submissive and meek on the surface and fearful of the world. But underneath, she is an angry soul who wants to right what was wronged unto her. She is without a mother, looking for her to (assumedly) kill her and seek retribution and revenge for herself. The men in her life have severely wronged and abused her, thus she hates the gender altogether. She is a victim of rape but also a murderer. She is a victim, but she is also her own savior. She rejects James's help and goes her own path in the end in flames.

Alessa is a supernaturally gifted girl who survives her situation, but not without literally dying. She never actually escapes her situation until she has to rebirth herself magically and start a literal new life as a baby. She is without a father, and while she has no siblings, she did grow up with a girl named Claudia Wolf (Introduced in Silent Hill 3) in the same cult who comes to believe the same brainwashing the rest of the cult undergoes. We can assume Claudia would have unknowingly been complicit in the pressuring of making Alessa birth God. Her mother is the person she seeks to get away from, and while it isn't explicitly said that Alessa is sexually assaulted, she does become supernaturally pregnant and is expected to give birth without her consent. Without any say in the matter, really. She is burned alive and left to suffer with the wounds, and only receives her freedom and salvation in the form of a man she deems worthy of becoming her new father. Her end is not ambiguous; she becomes Heather Mason, and the protagonist of her own game installment.

Family figures between the two girls are opposite. The views on men are opposite. One has turned to killing to resolve her trauma, and the other chose to withstand and send a part of herself away. Both go through horrendous living conditions - but one makes it out renewed with a seemingly happy ending, while the other is fractured, angry, and looks to suicide with a tragic ending. However, both girls have that fiery spirit within them that are angry about what has happened to them.

The spirit of Alessa is still present in Silent Hill 2, a game that is separate from the plot about Alessa and the Order, in the form of Angela. To James, Angela shows that not everyone can be saved, no matter how innocent they are in their own stories. The tragic suffering of a young girl like Alessa was arguably molded into a unique mirror for James once he came to the town, just like everything else in Silent Hill. Alessa's story can be seen in Angela's and one could even think that they might be the same person just in different lives, in different worlds, but there to hold a mirror up to James and his own crimes, no matter how blameless he may see himself.

Video essays maybe worth your time:

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Uncle Jack & Foggy Jack

So if you're asking about both of them, I'm assuming that's because you're into the idea that they are one and the same.

I don't dislike the concept, but I like it much more for that the game seems to push that notion while simultaneously giving you nothing to substantiate it and, at times, even giving you details that seem to contradict it than the idea for its own sake. Good shit!

It's another one of those things you'll never have a canon answer for!

And frankly, I've never really found the question of whether Uncle Jack is Foggy Jack that interesting. It's a little contrived, a little obvious, a very basic bitch story. The most famous man in town has a mental breakdown and becomes a serial killer? And he somehow does this despite being instantly recognizable by everyone? And also he's doing this while he's still filming his show every day and looking all normal and shit?

Too, the whole Foggy Jack thing intrudes on the natural predisposition of fledging fanartists to make serial killer OC's.

Foggy Jack also exists as an urban legend in the town in a way I think predates even the toxic fog (and I was given a separate ask about this as well so I'll save my thots about that for then!)

But suffice to say, because I do not find the whole Uncle vs Foggy Jack thing compelling and I'd never really devoted much thought to it, I struggled to think of something interesting to say about it. The only chapter I ever wrote about the subject was actually about why Ollie's surface-level investigation of the crime scene in "A Pomaceous Puzzle" did not arrive at the correct conclusion. It simply doesn't fit the MO.

However... in reviewing what we know concretely about Foggy Jack from the main game, I actually did arrive at a fascinating new theory.

Because we think of this as a duality, do we not? Uncle Jack is one side of the coin, Foggy Jack the other. That's why you asked about both.

Let us go over what we know for sure about Foggy Jack, that was reported in the game, to separate out the unreliable information given in "Lightbearer". There are only two sources of "solid" information about Foggy Jack in the main game:

In "The "O" COURANT - Article 3", we learn that five Wellie women - Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, and Mary Anne Nichols - have been found hacked to pieces in the streets. All of these women are named for real-life victims of Jack the Ripper.

Stated in the above and reiterated in "Interrogation Report", these murders seem to take place on particularly foggy nights. "Interrogation Report" also states that the witness, Daniel Dunglass, reported that the apparent murderer's face looked "oddly familiar" to him.

One further piece of information that we learn in Ollie's act is that Foggy Jack apparently kept a hideout in the Gardner House, at least until plague wastrels overtook it. We know this from the suitcase which contains a cleaver and the "Mystery Note" with the only the phrase "I'm afraid you've come to the end of your time" on it.

And here we learn that Foggy Jack has some interest in Margaret. And that makes sense if he's actually Uncle Jack.

But... what it's it's not a duality.

What if it's a triptych?

What if it's not Uncle Jack, but someone who would have us come to that conclusion? Someone who would want us to think Uncle Jack is avenging his murdered daughter, but is in fact trying to frame him for it?

Why, who would have motive to do that?

Who indeed.

But DJ, you say, that's crazy. You play through Ollie's entire act and not once do they ever imply that he could be Foggy Jack.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of stuff they don't imply through his act, ain't there?

And just like with Uncle Jack, the details don't say anything conclusive but consider.

Ollie is said multiple times over his act to have periods of lapsed memory, both due to the Oblivion he took and excessive drinking. Margaret mentions specifically in both "The Camp of Thine Enemies" and "Cache as Cache Can" that Ollie has trouble remembering things due to his drinking. And it's an interesting coincidence that Ollie also "vaguely remembers" leaving himself a cache of supplies in that quest and its the same sort of vague notion that leads him into Gardner House where he finds Foggy Jack's suitcase.

He's also in deep denial about the limits of his morality and how far he'll go to see traitors get theirs. Still, killing innocent women just to make Uncle Jack look bad? Surely not! Maybe Ollie ratted out a little girl and got her chased down and murdered, but he's not a serial killer!

Then again, if there's one thing Ollie hates, it's a collaborator. Deutschland Über Alles special and all. And you know who about the first people to start collaboratin' with an occupying force are?

Prostitutes.

All of Foggy Jack's not-hallucination victims are named for the "Canonical Five" of Jack the Ripper's victims, all known prostitutes. Which, sure, maybe that's just the reference, but we actually meet Elizabeth Stride before her apparent death. As Ollie. At the Jack O Bean Club, where she works as a cook serving a bunch of collaborationist traitor lovers. She has no love for them, calling them toffs and wankers as she does, but she does also muse aloud to herself about it: "Take the job, she says. You'll never have to suck another cock, she says." Which sounds an awful lot like a thing a (former?) prostitute would say, making it two separate issues to Ollie, really. And why else would a fine upstanding Wellette be out on the streets at night anyway? That's how Foggy Jack gets you!

And for my most tenuous point: remember that guy from the Interrogation Report? Daniel Dunglass. I looked his ass up and

Reminiscent!

Dunglass (the character, not the actual guy) also says that the murderer's face is "oddly familiar" to him. Uncle Jack is familiar, but not oddly so. Ollie isn't exactly a nobody in town, but he's definitely odd looking in a world that conformist.

And as long as we're drawing specious connections, Daniel Dunglass (the real guy, not the character) was a Scottish medium famous for levitation and speaking with the dead. You know who else does a lot of that?

But... even if Ollie is Foggy Jack, I don't think he killed the constables at the apple tree. Which means there's copycat killer pretending to be the guy who's pretending to be Uncle Jack pretending be urban legend Foggy Jack.

[dann-art]

Hi! I find your post about Anne Rice's inconsistencies regarding Armand's heritage / background incredibly interesting, and this makes me want to ask, if you had the ability to rewrite aspects of it, what are some things you would change the most or have ideas on on how to improve on it?

Well, it's a very hard question. Especially for me. You see I read TVC like I read fanfiction. I don't have literally any expectations. I actually don't mind incontinences or mistakes. I come there for vampire romance, and that's all I care about.

From very basic level I would simply change like absolutely obvious mistakes, like geography, it's not that hard to look at the map after all.

But the point is, it need complete rewriting to make it correct in any aspect.

TVC is not the type of books I usually read, perhaps the interview but later parts? Man I read things like that only on ao3. And I really like it, it gives me a lot of joy, I'm very invested in it, but this books are just bad. The writing is bad, descriptions sometimes lazy. I'm sorry but this is not really quality writing. And that's fine, it's good entertainment.

But If I could rewrite it. I would love to do something I need sooo bad, and this is Vampire story, which is very connected to history, with careful reaserch, and where time and place really shows in charactera actions, thoughts and things he does. Because this books are written like It really doesnt matter if Louis was Turner during French Revolution, or liké hundread years later. You dont get period spirit anyway.

I would love to embrace what Is already there, but Just make It matter. Louis Is a plantator and slave owner, okay, fine, good, but make this affect his actions, thé way he thinks etc.

Lestat Is french? Well okay, actually he's good French représentation (jk)

I'm not a historian i dont knows much, Just what's i learn in school and some more on my few hyperobsessions so i can't say anything very specific rights away, but yeah. Give me something what plays with historical and cultural aspects and does It well. (Plus If the writing style would improve because Lestat i love you being a Mary Sue but how am i supposed to take this seriously)

[ksfoxwald]

Fire and Hemlock Readalong: Part 3 Chapter 2

In which Polly finds Tom again.

This chapter contains the most overt depiction of magic in the entire book, which almost overshadows Polly's magic. She finds Tom by "following a tugging in her head," leading her to the Dumas Quartet rehearsing for a last-minute show. "Knowing things is Polly's heroic gift," Tom says. Later on, too, she's the one who sees through Mr. Leroy's trick with the trash monster.

I have to wonder what Tom told the quartet about Polly. Like, I would be seriously side-eyeing any friend of mine that told me they had a twelve year old RP partner who they met at a funeral. I feel like Ann would have some words to say about that. Also, we later learn that she has some connections to the Perry Leroys as well, though it's not clear if Tom knows; Ann might even know enough to suspect what Tom is using Polly for, even if she doesn't know the how.

Ann alias Tan Audel is the most interesting member of the quartet to me. Her gift, as Polly says, is that she never forgets, and indeed she is the one who writes the story in the new timeline that triggers Polly's memories, even though one of the others wrote the original. But she's also interesting as pretty much the only positive adult female representation in the book (to be fair, adult men are all pretty shady here as well; but there aren't any women in Nowhere except for Hero and Edna until Tan Audel is revealed). And Ann isn't described as heroic or pretty or with anything grand; she is described as having a "frank friendliness," eyes "direct and amused," with a "square, quiet face." She's not the sort of woman who shows up in hero tales but is very much the sort of woman you want in everyday life.

And when Polly asks ("hopefully") if Tom might marry Ann, Tom responds with a laugh and a "Ann has her own ideas about such things."

The "hopefully" is interesting, because Polly's reaction to Mary Fields has strongly resembled jealousy, but perhaps it hasn't quite turned into romantic jealousy yet. Her hopefulness seems to indicate that Tom is a sort of family member to her, and she's hoping he might marry Ann the way a child might hope for a nice stepmother. Ann's "own ideas" seem decidedly queer, though.

The scene with the quartet is so gentle and soft and cozy, one of the happiest moments in the entire book. The way the quartet all immediately take care of Polly and make sure her well-being is a priority is something we haven't seen from anyone except Granny, and even Granny's love has a gruff edge to it. And this is such an important scene because it sets the standard for how people, particularly children, should be treated, and that the way Polly's parents treat her really is horrible. It's hard when you're inside a situation sometimes to see how bad it is when it just feels normal.

In fact, Polly specifically does not read her book here, because she doesn't need the escape. (We also get the call back about not putting books facedown - it's from Tom of course, and it was strong enough to make it into her second set of memories.)

Tom takes Polly to the station (and so much of this book takes place at or going to or coming from train stations, or on roads. The liminal spaces between No Where and Now Here) but the wind that has been threatening for the past two chapters rears its head - literally - becoming a monster made of wind and garbage. The Leroy magic, of course, uses what is already there. But just as Tom tries to run it over with the car, Polly realizes it is actually Sam - or Tan Hanivar, as she shouts, because they are very much in Nowhere at that moment.

This, as Tom notes, is almost exactly what happens in one of the stories he wrote. "What is it about us?" Tom asks. "We make things up, and they go and happen."

Mr. Leroy uses them, Polly wanted to say. But there was more to it than that. She thought of Mr. Piper's shop in Stow-on-the-Water, which seemed to have nothing to do with Mr. Leroy. "I don't know," she said wearily.

Tom is starting to understand his curse, though he hasn't fully accepted it yet. It's interesting because between Tom and Polly, they have a complete picture of what is going on - Tom has the adult knowledge of history and context with the Leroys, while Polly has a child's insight and intuition about magic. But they aren't able to put the pieces together yet.

[brooklynbred-a]

I saw your post about what your biggest strength as rper is shortly before I was about to go to bed yesterday... I will mainly make references about your other character Anya cause she's the only one I've written with so far but I still wanted to send you this.

So yeah here it goes:

Creating an amazing character! I love Anya so much and from the bit we wrote together she's really cool and fun to write with. I just loved the moment when Anya said otherwise Katya would have missed her glowing personality. This made me laugh so bad. I also love Anya's background story and the fact that she has this superpowers because she's a mutant. All of this shows how much work and love you put into your character. Anya isn't just another bog standard character that you have seen 1000 times before and who is clearly mary sue and overpowered etc.

Your writing style! I just love it! I love the way you formulate and explain everything that your character does. That you also write down what your character is thinking and feeling at the moment and about specific things. It gives me so much to work with so that it never happened that I read your replie and was like "Okay and what am I supposed to answer to this now?" Okay it did happen but more because I had so many ideas what to asnwer. And beside all of this I'm learning new words thanks to you. For example I didn't knew the word "scoff" before but now I do.

Your formatting style! I love how you are always formatting everything with the colorfull passages and icons etc. I would do the same but I don't have icons and I have no idea how to make them and tbh I'm also kinda lazy to make them. BUT I really love it how you do it. I even adopted the idea of making some text parts in another color because I loved it so much. I just have to learn how to use other colors because the standard colors of tumblr aren't that great.

Our OOC talk! It's so great for me to be able to talk OOC with the people I rp with. First of all because it makes things easier to plot but also to get to know eachoter better. It also helps so much with my anxiety and my fear to talk to people. AND THE PLOTTING!!! I LOVE PLOTTING!!! AND RANTING ABOUT OUR CHARACTERS!!!

You're personality! You're such a sweet, beautiful and lovely person and I really appriciate how niece you have been so far, for example with reading through my masseges which always tend to be far to long because of all my rambling without telling me to shut up or anything.

Over all I really love to rp with you. You're an amazing person and it's so much fun to build this story together that we are now working on but also to just talk about stuff OOC.

Sending You Lots Of Love

THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH SWEETIE!!! This really warms my heart and I am so glad that you enjoy Anya so much, and I am very much looking forward to the thread with Steve and Katya, he's gonna be such a sweet dad to her! And I really appreciate all of the things you pointed out. I don't have the opportunity to do the things I used to love to do, so writing is my main hobby now. It's nice to see that people love the amount of effort I put into my muses.