#in the land of gods and monsters

[metvmorqhoses]

Artemis smiled as Apollo opened the door to their oikos.

It was a beautiful house surrounding a garden filled to the brim with wildlife and even some vegetables. The walls were painted by Apollo himself and some even had mosaics on them. Artemis told her brother it was unnecessary but he wouldn’t listen, saying that if the garden and the outer walls have been left just as wild as she wished then the inner walls could be as colorful as he desired.

He was as dressed as a newly hatched baby bird, not that she could judge, her weapons where the only thing covering her pale skin. She looked as ready for battle as she was for xenia, as Leto was returning to Hyperborea. Apollo assured her of that fact a fortnight ago, eyes unwavering even now, eyes of the predator that he really was. Artemis was absolutely convinced that they looked laughable, hunter and predator working together.

She left the nymphs on the edge of the river Eridanos, Artemis knew they would wait for her, days and even centuries if they had to, although Artemis wondered how many of them would be pure by the time she came back.

She let Apollo drag her to the gynaeceum, where, on the klines, was the lovelies dress that she had seen. Stars woven together to play the part of a dress, just like she was

“Couldn’t let my sister not look the part of the hostess, could I?” He kissed her neck, knowing that’s the most she will let him do, knowing that she was only playing, just as they had when they we’re in the lovely forest for only a day, that lasted weeks, she could still fell those mortal’s terror when they realized that the day would not end, just as Apollo will never end. For what reason, not even Gaia herself knew, much less Artemis.

Artemis looked at her twin and her smile widened. She felt ready, sparks under her skin and an almost satisfied heart.

She put on the dress that Apollo gifted her. He watched.

He went to the andron. She followed.

He dressed. She watched.

She started to set the table. He brought the wine.

They get a cow and rip out its heart.

Apollo sets up everything for the symposia. Artemis cooks them dinner.

Divine siblings sit at the table waiting for their mother. They wait and wait and wait and wait…

The dinner never gets cold. The hostess never rises and the host never speaks. Neither move.

The day doesn’t end. Babies are morn and made of stone. Mortal scream and scream and scream…

The door opens. Apollo smiles. Artemis rises.

Nyx runs free, cloak falling freely behind her. Mortals scream in ecstasy. And a mother smiles at a predator playing the role of a hostess greats her in a place that she can’t bear staying for long, let alone calling it home.

-

So, you inspired me to write this, I used some actual ancient Greek words

Oikos refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family’s property, and the house.

gynaeceum - women's room

Greek houses would typically contain an ‘andron’, or men’s room. This was a sort of lounge where men would host friends and associates and hold ‘symposia’, essentially dinner parties.

By then the Greeks had a couch/bed called a “kline” that was used for lounging and sleeping (hence our word “recline”). 

I love this to bits.

[moondancer71]

Rules: provide at least four spoiler pictures and/or gifs for a current wip without any context. Thanks for the tag @arielchelby and @evax3 Consider yourself tagged if you wanna join! 😊

[00blackbird]

«Por primera vez, no podía responder esa pregunta. No sabía cómo se sentía, realmente. ¿Qué significaba «estar bien»? ¿Seguir respirando aire por la nariz por instinto de supervivencia? ¿Tener las herramientas adecuadas para procesar y asimilar experiencias? ¿Debería atribuir el estar bien con haber disfrutado del beso? Porque sí que lo hizo. No obstante, «bien» resultaba una definición tan superflua y banal que no podía atribuírsela. ¿Uno seguía estando bien cuando, súbitamente, un momento agradable ponía patas arriba todo su mundo? ¿Cuando, después de que esa química que se despertaba en su cerebro comenzara a disiparse, tantas sensaciones comenzaran a agolparse que se sintiera abrumado? ¿Uno estaba bien cuando, después de compartir un momento íntimo con otra persona, se sentía completamente aislado? ¿Era ésa la definición de «estar bien»? No lo creía.

[...] Se precipitaba hacia el fracaso, era evidente. Soltó el agarre con suavidad, dejó que los brazos de Joanne resbalaran para dejarle escapar cuando retrocedió un par de pasos.

[...] Korso siempre era sincero, no se le daba bien camuflar su «yo» real. El «yo» que siempre buscaba respuestas, lógica y orden. Su Arte era pasional, su motivación feroz en cualquier ámbito. Pero su mente debía estar en paz, dentro del raciocinio que justificaba y daba sentido a su propia visión del mundo. Y aquel beso ponía en tela de juicio toda esa lógica, despertaba preguntas que nunca imaginó que podrían formularse. Le hacía tener que invertir en él, en descubrir qué había dentro y cómo afectaba eso a todo lo demás.»

—Korso Stallworth en @thesoundofsanfranciscorpg

[saturnpanther]

Gods and Monsters feels very Dabihawks

[strawlessandbraless]

Get his ass

[astarionsilverbough]

‘this is a dream.’

‘then it is a good dream.’

a halstarion doodle from my personal ‘verse to get used to them in my style ~

[lilaccatholic]

I am once again thinking about the reluctant ruler whose arc justly and correctly includes assuming the throne and taking responsibility for the people set before them

[b4kuch1n]

sunstroll

[angermango]

freestyle shitposting with the Huldra Bros (+some other guys but this ain't about them)

and an alternative take for the first one:

[monstermoviedean]

14x02 takes place in late october (presumably 2018), 14x01 took place 3 weeks after 13x23 which was approximately may/june 2018. so dean has been possessed for 4-5 months now.

[secriden]

Oh wow, what a monumental step for Diew to offer this!! I very much expected it to be something God would have to ask for.

But it also doesn't feel unnatural or unearned for Diew to be willing to try, because God is so clearly different from his ex. God has done such a good job of being honest about what he wants (in big and small ways) but giving Diew the right to choose whether he's ready to step out of his comfort zone. It makes so much sense that Diew feels safe enough to trust that God wouldn't bring him into a situation which will make him feel as terrible as his ex did.

Also it was really sweet how God offered to hang out with Game first, like he's showing how it's not a one-way street of Diew having to step out of what he's familiar because God is 100% willing to get to know the people Diew cares about and engage with what Diew likes (like with the puzzles). Unlike with his ex where it was Diew being told that he needed to change to be more like his boyfriend, God is showing he wants them to grow towards each other.

The show also makes it clear they DO have things in common - eg their love of dogs, their appreciation of peaceful spaces (since it was God who brought Diew to the riverbank), and art (even if they both have different styles, they both enjoy art/drawing). This is just such a believable relationship because it really feels like 2 people who have genuine compatibility whilst also having enough differences that each finds the other fascinating and being in this relationship is growing them both.

And God really continues to not disappoint!! Like, I definitely don't think he'd abandon his friends (he's not that kind of person) but he's also making it clear that he's willing to hear feedback from Diew and is actively checking in on Diew's comfort levels. <3

This whole episode was such a natural lead up to their becoming official boyfriends. And just look at the happiness radiating off the both of them!!

The swelling music; the way everything is shot in this kind of dreamy light, with the literal fairy string lights; the way their first kiss is so so soft and God clearly looks at Diew to check if he's okay with it before continuing! Just, great job, MND!!

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[evax3]

Seriously, that first picture makes me hopeful and scared at the same time!!

Rules: provide at least four spoiler pictures and/or gifs for a current wip without any context. Thanks for the tag @arielchelby and @evax3 Consider yourself tagged if you wanna join! 😊

[ahopefulbromantic]

I just realized the most tragic thing - that I cannot gush about 31st October being Dziady / Forefathers' Eve because it's a Polish thing and none of my mutuals know what it is and no really good translation of the dramatic works exists to have them read it :(((

It's like a traditional Polish Halloween and nowadays it's mainly known from Adam Mickiewicz's (he's to Poland what Shakespeare is to England) 4-part drama centered around it. It follows a tortured poet (my blorbo, I love him) during the time Poland was partitioned and erased from the maps, its people oppressed but always fighting back. It is one of the most important and culturally significant Polish works ever created. And it's got, like so many themes, so many themes you guys. It's one of my favorite works ever one of my all-time dreams is to play Konrad, a protag from part 3.

So if anyone does know it or is interested in finding out more please please please message me or drop an ask I'd love to infodump!!!

[ruthlesslistener]

[Through gritted teeth] I still hold firm to the belief that civilians should never be the targets in a war, however. The people of Israel are making it extremely fucking difficult to remember that belief. Doubly so when they're very willingly placing themselves into the war effort to make the life of innocents living hell

[astarionsilverbough]

druid blood hits different