#or is it normal to live in a castle back in 19th century?

[open-sketchbook]

my girlfriend is asking for where she can find your written works, she really likes the one post you made about your mindstate wandering w/r/t making porn stories and she'd love to support you & read your stories

Sure!

I write my (public) fiction on the website Sufficient Velocity, a sci-fi forum. Most of them are in the form of 'quests', interactive stories; my day job is an independent tabletop roleplaying game designer, so the two things go hand in hand.

I unfortunately am both very busy and kind of a mess mentally, so fiction gets picked up and dropped a lot, and I write less than ever these days due to the shambles that my life has become.

For my quests, the stuff I'm proudest of is...

Castles of Steel, a longrunning (though currently on hiatus) story set in an alternate world much like our own, but with radically different gender politics. It's about the first woman in the navy of a country a lot like 1910s Imperial Japan, and more generally about how state power and imperialism entangles itself with and recoups social progress.

A Splinter in your Mind, a retelling of the Matrix with new characters and reimagined twists and worldbuilding. It makes the trans subtext into trans dommetext, and I feel its some of my cleverest writing.

Suffer Not, and especially its sequel The Witch Lives. Suffer Not is a Warhammer 40,000 fic about an Inquisitor who abuses her powers to actually make people's lives better, and is the story of her slowly realizing it is not enough. The Witch Lives takes place ten years later, following the grown up psyker the Inquisitor adopted, and focuses much more on faith, history, and the little people.

The Spider-Liv Trilogy started as a silly and honestly kind of bad extreme-divergence spiderman AU, but its sequel The Amazing Arachne is, I think, genuinely really good, because it's about what happens when a superhero gets hurt and then doesn't get better.

I've managed to properly publish two pieces of writing, as in you can get them in book form, and I'm still really proud of both.

Whispers from the Deep is an adaptation of the quest that defined the setting of my roleplaying game Flying Circus. It's about a young woman who steals a plane and runs away from her abuser with her boyfriend, and then has to take up life as an aerial mercenary in a 1920s-themed post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Also, she's a fish person and her village is a Cthulhu cult!

Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches is a pastiche of the Richard Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell, moving the setting from the Napoleonic Wars to a bizarre future world where sentient, cheerfully productive robots were invented in the early 19th century and promptly took all the jobs, elevating all of humanity to the gentry and then to the stars. It's about a redcoated robot soldier who uses her immortality to save up and buy a commission in the Army of Great Britain and Beyond, a position normally occupied exclusively by humans, and then facing the fallout of her decision and the life choices leading to it as her first deployment spirals out of control. It's also, sorta, a parody of Star Trek; the Galactic Concert is a mechanized, Regency-themed Federation, and the back half of the book is basically about how the problems of a world cannot be solved by an away team of well-meaning people with stun pistols.

[yanderepuck]

It is your first winter in 19th century Paris and it's snowing! You bundle up, getting thick leggings on, and the warmest coat you have. You grab gloves and a scarf, and while putting on your hat you hurry outside to the garden.

You walk around the flowers. How has Vlad managed to keep flowers alive even in this winter? What kind of magic gardener is he?

While walking around the back of the castle you spot Charles and get an idea.

Giggling to yourself you pick up snow to form a snowball. Once you have it loosely packed you get a little closer and throw it at his back.

He jumps and you laugh. "Gotcha!" You start to make another snowball.

"What was that?" He tried to look around at his feet to see what you threw but sees nothing.

"It was a snowball, silly," you smile, holding another one in your hand.

"A snowball?" He looks at your hands.

"See?" You hold it out to show him. "Don't you want to have a snowball fight~"

Now he looks confused.

"Don't tell me that you never had a snowball fight when you were youn-" then you remembered that other kids wouldn't play with him when he was little. He didn't get to have normal childhood experiences. "Here," you get closer to place the snowball in his hand and take a few steps back.

"Throw it at me!" You spread your arms wide, making yourself a big target.

"Won't it hurt?" You shake your head. Charles looks down at it then at you. He hesitates but finally throws it.

It hits you right in the chest and falls apart, falling to the ground. You laugh and immediately start to make another snowball. Charles watches you before bending over to make one of his own. As he starts to stand you hit him with another one. He laughed this time and throws his at you.

You two run around the snow covered garden making snowballs and throwing them at each other. You go to throw another one but when you turn around Charles is right behind you. He puts his arms around you and pulls you close.

"I got you!" then gives you a kiss. You giggle, dropping the snowball and kissing him back.

You both decide to go back inside to warm up. Going to the kitchen Charles makes the two of you a cup of hot chocolate.

"I used to have snowball fights all the time when I was little. Every first big snowfall all the kids would go out and form teams and throw snow at each other," you smile as you recall the memory.

"I never got the chance to play in the snow," Charles sips his drink, sitting next to you on the couch of the living room.

You snuggle up next to him as you sip from your mug. "Not even with the kids in town?" He shakes his head. Either he had never seen them playing, or they don't come out much when there is a lot of snow. "It's so much fun!"

Charles puts his free arm around your waist to keep you close. He looks at the fire that is in front of you. "It was fun," he smiles. "Really cold though."

"The best part is coming back inside and sitting next to the fire with a cup of hot chocolate," you look up at him, giving him a big smile. He gives you a kiss and hums.

"Maybe we can get Docture and Viovide to join us next time," he sounds so excited to play like that again.

You caught softly and rest your head in his shoulder. "Good luck convincing them of that "

~~

~~

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[wizard-smut]

THE FOUNDATIONAL MYTHOLOGY OF THE SEXY WIZARD SCHOOL UNIVERSE

from the nonexistence beyond even entropy there sprang from nothingness a cosmos irradiated with magic, whose laws of physics were born with jellied bones, where the rubber of reality stretched with the slightest application of will. the kind of place where misadventures followed the strict moral guidance of 19th century children's fables.

A Shitty Place, by any measure

in one neglected corner of this vibrant universe there spun a planet full of sapient bipedal creatures whose primary concern centered on growing the biggest grasses imaginable. tall grass, wet grass, potato, they had it all.

then one day, one especially unpopular and bad-grass-growing hominid wandered into a weird cave in the side of Only-Bad-Dipshit-Live-Here Mountain.

unbeknownst to this hominid, whose name was Gug but was commonly referred to as Ugg (this is a cultural joke that doesn't translate directly) ten billion years prior a sentient shaft of rainbow light wasn't paying attention and slammed into mt onlybaddipshit, permanently trapping itself in a crystal geode.

well, let's just say Gug made a real Ugg of itself and decided to smash open the ominously glowing crystal wall at the back of a cave full of skeletons of Freaky Space Mammoths &c and other species unknown to Grass Hominids or anything else ever

so Ugg is bathed in scintillating hues, obviously, saturated with colors from out of space, primitive hominid brain awash in magickal powres, gates of perception blown open, yadda yadda yadda, cognizant of all space and time, angels dancing on the head of a pin, and he becomes a wizard

this is just what one DOES

but not JUST a wizard. oh ho ho no. an EVIL SPACE CAVEWIZARD. that is legally the worst kind, according to law. real kill on sight asshoeles.

so Gug, who immediately starts referring itself to Drakenhof Von Vilesmythe, flies out of the cave and starts going full Dresden on the grass hominids. he rains fire, casts lightning, rains snakes, most of his attacks were either weather or vermin-based, just really typical Ugg behavior.

he wipes out the grass hominid society in like, fifteen minutes. there were not a lot of them, and they generally lived under piles of trees, because they were so fixated on big grasses that they never invented architecture.

Drakenhof Von Vilesmythe went ahead and magicked himself up a real nice castle atop Mount Very Normal Crystals, and sat alone on his throne.

as all despots do, he got bored, and wandered into his workshop, where he went about inventing all kinds of new monsters and such. Dracowyverns, Fang Children, Flying Knives, white people, Sexy Elf's, basically the most foul line-up of villains the universe ever seen.

well the universe DID in fact seen, and responding to the laws &c of cosmic narrative functionality, rose up in protest of such evil, and created GOODMAN MCMANANUS, a powerfully Good Cavewizard, and lo they did battle.

they cast fireballs, firesnakes, thunderrats, fought each other in the rain on the side of a tower, took turns hurling each other off cliffs, just really made a day of it

anyway this fighting went on for Way Too Long. the minions and fell servitors got bored and eventually developed their own society independent of the wizard wars. it evolved to exactly feudal medieval european level, or at least what i imagine that was like.

sadly due to the world being a janked up mess after aeons and aeons of Wizard Combat, the heavy background magickal radiation ensured that a higher number than normal of these babies were born with the W-gene.

after getting their shit rocked and re-rocked immediately after unrocking itself, the creatures decided that the safest thing to do was build a giant school for the wizards to fuck around in and just let them do their own thing way over there.

and so, every day, when a denizen of Normalsville turned 18 and started developing Protagonist Thought, they would find their asses shipped off to....

THE SEXY WIZARD SCHOOL

oh also i forgot to mention that all the monsters and wizard servants and stuff, their genes all combined and mixed together and made creatures that look indistinguishable from modern humans. note to clarion workshop scouts, thats the kind of rich worldbuilding and social commentary you can expect to find here at tumblr dot com slash wizard smut.

ok thanks everyone have a good day and dont get diseases

[margridarnauds]

☔

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

Back when I was younger, I was even more ambitious than I am now when it comes to big projects. I would come up with these epic, sprawling universes with what would have to have been 40 chapter concepts, at least -- easily 150k fics, and, because I was young and earnest and didn't know what I was in for, I'd commit to them.

And one of them was a fic that was a sort of crossover between Dracula and its Icelandic translation, Makt Myrkanna. Now, Makt is an oddball -- you'll notice that while I said it's a translation...there's a crossover. The reason is that. Well. It seems that whoever was in charge of translating it...took some liberties. A LOT of liberties. A lot of major plotpoints were radically reworked -- Jonathan's time at the castle was RADICALLY different, with a single vampire lady with an epic backstory who talks to him several times instead of the three iconic "Brides" that we know now, a cult of....extremely unfortunate Victorian stereotypes of "less evolved" or "primitive" humanoids who conduct human sacrifice in Dracula's basement, Lucy is not actually killed (because the author of the Icelandic translation, who was working off the Swedish translation...seemingly forgot?), Van Helsing goes to jail, Jonathan's killed. (The cowboy lives.) It's BATSHIT.

And I wanted to write this epic, epic fic around the concept of the Countess, that vampire lady, and Lucy tearing shit up. You know, I wanted to show the Countess stepping in as a sort of makeshift sire/mentor figure and lover for Lucy, who is making the transition from becoming a society girl to a vampire, throwing off her preconceptions about society and morality, seeing them go across Europe (there was actually a brief reference to Polidori's The Vampyre) when they were in Greece, seeing them adapt to the end of the 19th century. Their central conflict would have come from the Countess, who had an abusive husband (in canon! Who might or might not be Dracula himself, the evidence is conflicting) who basically...locked her in her room with her lover until he committed suicide (it's implied she banged him to death, what an icon), not really wanting to admit that she loves Lucy, and Lucy trying to content herself with that. There would also have been a B line running across it of the Crew of Light as they tried to continue hunting them, with a grief-stricken, widowed Mina (because remember: Dracula killed Jonathan in the final encounter) eventually facing down both of them but being unable to finish them off, with the second to last chapter being a note from the Countess (whose name is revealed in the epilogue to be "Dolingen", from "Dracula's Guest") basically telling her that she wasn't a dumb shit like Dracula, she wasn't going to try to invade England, she's sparing her for Lucy's sake, and to leave her alone in turn.

There was a LOT of good stuff with this fic, honestly, there was a lot of potential. Honestly, I think that the initial sex scene between Lucy and the Countess (taking place near a corpse, because, as we know, I Cannot Write A Normal And Non-Unsettling Sex Scene) is still one of the best sex scenes I've written -- I was a 19 year old undergrad, taking classes on Monsters in Fiction, Serial Killers on Page and Screen, Crime in Fiction, Dangerous Journeys in Fiction (which gave me the chance to reread Dracula!) going batshit insane and horny in a way that I was never able to quite replicate as I got older and more self conscious, writing about two hot vampire ladies having sex. I was in heaven. Or Hell. And I did do a lot of research for it, down to checking which operas were performing at the Graz Opernhaus in 1908 just to make sure that, when they were staying there, the selection would be accurate. I read a lot of 19th century vampire lit from the time -- Polidori's The Vampyre, I reread Carmilla, Das Grabmal auf dem Père Lachaise by Karl Hans Strobl (....given the name and that he lived into the 1940s...don't look at some of the other things he wrote), Paul Feval's The Vampire Countess, Eric Stenbock's "The True Story of a Vampire", I really, fully immersed myself in the world of 19th century vampire lore.

And I made good progress on it! 10,000 words! It wasn't like I wrote two pages and was done with it. But the problem was, honestly, as time went on...It felt like it was dragging on too much, like I was dragging the slowburn, which felt artificial for the Countess' character in Makt Myrkanna. She DOES have a tragic backstory, but she is also someone who is clearly here for a good time. Too much angst, too much heaviness between the two of them. It was too...human, you know? In fact, the entire section after the initial meeting/Lucy coming into her own under the Countess' mentorship felt artificial and dragged out, there to fit a certain idea I had coming in rather than anything natural. And the beginning wasn't the part that I had written out. So...I think that there's something redeemable in there, I think it might be able to rise from its vampiric slumber one day, with sections of it modernized to my writing style now, but it's going to be some time, probably. Which is a pity because I do love the two of them together, they are probably one of my favorite F/F relationships that I've written even if I didn't feel like I did the dynamic justice.

[thehorrortree]

Installing the Fantasy Kitchen Sink in Rural Australia to Ward off Cthulhu by: Ashton K. Rose When I first started writing Urban/Paranormal Fantasy, I never considered using the world I knew best as a setting. My first fantasy novel that had a distinct urban fantasy setting was a vampire political/crime drama I wrote at nineteen. It was the first time I’d written fantasy entirely set in the “real” world. My teenage writing in the genre sitting firmly in the portal fantasy genre heavily influenced by the Oz Series and Narnia books. The issue about writing stories set in the city, I’d never lived in one. I’d only been to “the city” a handful of times. The largest place I’d lived in was a small town of 4,000 people. Before that I spent the first fourteen years of my life living on a remote family farm. A lot of my ideas of what the city was like, was guess work based on the books and tv shows I’d seen. Making it easier to start writing Gaslamp fantasy in place of fiction with a modern city setting. It felt easier to write mistakes in a 19th century setting rather than a modern city. It was easier for people to notice the mistakes I’d made about life in modern cities. As the years passed, I slowly started writing stories set in rural Australia within the horror, supernatural Thriller and Australian gothic genres. The remote Australian bush, littered with old graveyards and the remains of abandoned towns the perfect setting for these stories. The isolation of the tiny towns or farms these stories were set in replacing the remote castle of the traditional gothic story. In late 2017 I started writing the story that would become the first three books of The Southern Magicks series. Originally it was a murder mystery/supernatural suspense series with a psychic medium as a main character. A rare power that became increasingly dangerous for my main character Dexter as I wrote the story. Then a vampire snuck in. Snuck in posing as a normal human, isolating Dexter before threatening to murder him. Back then I was very much a discovery writer and while the scene fit the vibe of the story it didn’t fit with the genre, I thought I’d been writing. Why did the vampire cut me short? It felt more like something out of Teen Wolf or True Blood. Fitting that it was the first book in series True Blood was adapted from The Southern Vampire Mysteries that gave me the inspiration finally dive into writing the paranormal fantasy genre to allow supernatural creatures outside of ghosts to enter the story. I’d been reading a lot of urban fantasy like The Rivers of London and Alex Verus series and decided that I wanted to write something with a developed magic system. The urban fantasy genre the perfect genre for my writing which always told a mystery/crime story with a speculative fiction coating. I slowly started to post this version as a web novel because I wanted to share my stories but didn’t have enough money to publish. At that point I thought I never would. Then I got a new job that paid me twice as much. Not a lot of money but I wasn’t working a casual job where I made minimum wage. I started to get the web novel version copy edited/proofread to attract more readers. I loved publishing a web novel and the community on the website but the reader base for web novels is limited to the users of the website you post it on. My story was also structured as a traditional novel and web novel structure is very different. I started using Twitter to connect with other writers. I was drawn into an incredibly welcoming little slice within the writing community filled with queer self-pub authors. At the start of 2021 I decided to take another look at this indie publishing thing again after seeing so many people thriving in the space. It wasn’t going to cost me much more then I was already paying for editing, and I’d have a larger better suited market for my book. I’d also be able to have a physical copy on my shelf. I looked

up what I needed to do and gradually used my connections within the writing community to find an editor, cover designer, interior designer and proofreader. In 2021 during developmental editing this draft would become three books to give each storyline space. Adding extra work to my plate when I thought I already had books 2 & 3 drafted. Leaving me with four books at various stages of completion, one thing was for certain I couldn’t stay a discovery writer. I also realised that I had an urban fantasy book set outside of a city to market which is what lead to me using paranormal fantasy interchangeably with urban fantasy. Paranormal fantasy seems more flexible with its setting and given that my main character is a necromancer and exorcist who constantly encounters ghosts and monsters. But it’s also heavily populated by paranormal romance which my book isn’t… well to give you an exclusive spoiler, at least openly in the beginning. The romance is between three human magic users… three perfectly normal humans. I feel like it’s pretty easy for readers to guess which member of the main romantic relationship might be the paranormal part of the romance. Given the other two members are surrounded by people who have known them their entire lives. I guess it’s also a spoiler for me to keep calling Dexter a necromancer, because when he wants to learn the skills that are considered necromancy by other mages he is told “hell, no”.  ---   Ashton K. Rose has a new queer fantasy/paranormal romance out: The Southern Magicks. And there's a giveaway. How do you prove your innocence when you don’t even remember whether you did it or not? After a demon attack reveals Dexter’s secret – that his Gran taught him magic – the twenty-three-year-old librarian is forced to work for the local magical law enforcement agency in order to prove his loyalty, and hopefully save his grandmother from execution. However, when someone tries to frame him for crimes he doesn’t remember committing, Dexter realizes he’ll have to start an investigation of his own. Joined by his beloved husband Eli, their best friend June, and his journalist cousin Kat, he desperately tries to prove his innocence…which is kind of difficult when gaps in his memory make him doubt everything he thinks he knows about himself. The race against time begins. Can Dexter and his team uncover the criminals weaving the web of guilt around him before it’s too late, or is he going to lose everything and everyone he cares about? Warnings: Assault, violent imagery, panic attack on page, police brutality Universal Buy Link | Goodreads Giveaway Ashton is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour: a Rafflecopter giveaway Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47271 Excerpt Chapter 1, Scene 1:I knew Nora Rowe had died in her home without anyone telling me. I unlocked the door and my stomach dropped as I took in the sight of the small dim living room of her kit home, filled with books and old newspapers. The acrid smell of cigarettes and wood fire smoke filled my nose as I weaved my way through the stacks. Mismatched flatpack bookshelves that warped under the strain of thousands of books lined the walls. Her living room held no other furniture apart from an old TV and a worn leather armchair—the carpet covered by stained, threadbare rugs. I flicked the first light switch I saw twice. Why had I expected the power to work? I walked over to the windows and pushed the dust-caked lace curtains aside. My eyes watered as the sun poured into the room. In the kitchen, the doors of the cupboards hung open. The only things left behind were a few cheap plastic items scattered across the scratched lino. I stepped on a plastic cup on the floor. I wobbled on my feet for a few sick seconds before I grabbed the counter to steady myself. The sharp aluminium edge bit into the skin of my hand. This place was a death t

rap! She had over twenty library books I had to separate from the donations. My legs shook as I walked to the shelves closest to the door. I ignored the erratic beating of my heart and the part of my brain telling me to run and pulled out my keys to flick the small key chain light on. I placed it between my teeth and examined the spines for library tags. When the light hit the grimy glass of a small photo frame on the shelf, I saw something move behind me. I kept my eyes fixed on the glass and used my thumb to clear a spot of dust. If it hadn’t moved, I could have ignored the human-shaped shadow reflected in the glass. As a kid, I’d been hassled about seeing things and having an overactive imagination. When I was seven, Gran told me the truth. I shared her secret ability to see ghosts. I turned to look at the woman who sat in the armchair. This Nora was a couple of years older than the one who celebrated her birthday in the photo. Her gaze focused on the TV, which would have been new the year Queen Elizabeth was coronated. I kept my gaze locked on her, blinking one eye at a time. I slowed my breath and took a careful step backwards to the door. The back of my calf hit something that drove several points of pain into my skin. The stack of books I knocked over sliced through my composure just as easily as it did the silence in the room, the hard covers and spines slapping against each other as they hit the floor. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Nora stood and turned to face me. I knew I’d given the game away when I jumped out of my skin and almost dropped my keys. I made a noise like a dying rat. She knew I could hear her. The first thing Gran had taught me was not to let a ghost realise you could sense them. It was dangerous—a trigger for the ire of a vengeful spirit. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Your son gave us the key.” “Worthless piece of shit. Letting strangers into my house. He stole my grandma’s dinner set for drug money before my body was cold. I saw him put it in his car before he called someone to deal with the mess.” “I’ll just be going now.” “Actually, I’ll be going.” I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I tried to breathe, but my lungs refused to move. I couldn’t breathe! The edge of my vision went black as I gasped for air. I fell flat on my front. I was so focused on trying to breathe, I almost missed the presence pushing at the back of my mind. It started small, a hint of a suggestion. The temptation to give in grew. This was her body. I was nothing but a figment of her imagination. Dexter wasn’t real. Nothing more than a thought exercise to see what it’d be like to be a man her grandson’s age. With each second, it pressed harder, and the urge to give in grew. Forget. It would be easy to give in and never have another worry again. All the pain and pressure of life could vanish if I relaxed and let her take control. No! I shivered as I tried to move my arms to push myself onto my hands and knees. I focused on the door. It was only a short crawl. I had to do it. For a second, my vision went entirely black. No! I gathered all the strength I had and screamed. The remaining air expelled from my lungs. I took a sharp breath. I moved my stiff arms and pushed myself onto my hands and knees. I was Dexter; I was real, and this was my body. Nothing would take that away from me. I closed my eyes and pushed back the ghost. I wrapped a mental net around the invasive presence in my mind and forced it back through the hole where it had entered. A hole it had dug in a part of my mind I didn’t even know existed. One arm forwards, one leg forwards, and breathe. Move. Breathe. Move. Breathe. I made it to the threshold and pulled the door open. I slid headfirst down the concrete stairs to lie on my back. The pressure in my mind slowly vanished as I fell. I opened my eyes. Pale blue sky, almost cloudless. My eyes watered from the bright li

ght. The perfect day was oblivious to my plight. The mid-autumn day was hardly different from late summer. I could’ve laid there for hours, but the hot concrete felt like it was melting the skin off my back where my shirt had ridden up. I rolled onto the dead grass beside the cracked front path. Sweat ran into my eyes as I sat up. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my vision. I could still feel the cold air wafting from the open door. I had to shut it. Mrs Gregory was looking for any excuse to fire me. I stood and walked to the threshold. All I had to do was grab the handle, pull it closed, remove my hand from the handle and step back. One quick movement. I could do it. As I stared, my eyes adjusted to the dim. She stood just inside, her hard eyes focused on me. She smiled. I stepped forwards and grabbed the door handle. Her hand shot out towards my arm. Her pale, icy fingers clamped around my left wrist. I tightened the grip of my right hand around the door handle. I tucked my chin to my chest and threw myself backwards down the stairs, using the weight of my body to swing the door closed. My shirt ripped as I fell backwards; the sleeve stayed in her hand as my arm slipped free. The air expelled from my lungs as I hit the ground. I lay on my back and my lungs refused to work. Fixed to the spot in terror, I gasped for air as my body refused to perform. A function that was usually thoughtless had become my only thought, the pinpoint the world had narrowed to. There was a dizzy relief as I breathed again, and after a few minutes I slowly stood. Blood ran down my exposed arm, the only part of my body that had hit the thin concrete path. Ghosts could touch me! Physically hurt me! I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, forcing back the panic attack that bubbled in the back of my mind. I knew about the possession, but the touch? Why hadn’t Gran told me? I needed to call Gran, but I knew she couldn’t help me. She hadn’t talked to me about magic since her accident when I was seventeen. I suspected the accident was magic-related, but she’d kept silent about it. She’d looked at me sceptically any time I’d mentioned magic afterwards, as though I spoke of childish whimsy and needed to grow up. So I had. I’d left Dunn and become a librarian, a nice stable job for a responsible young man who liked books. A normal young man who had resigned himself to a life of pretending he couldn’t see the dead. I’d somehow ended up with nowhere else to turn and ended up back in this town. Now Gran was in America with Aunt Myrtle, so it was hard to get help. I drove back to the library to pretend I’d been out for my lunch break.  

[miminorenai]

The person is beside the wagon with plenty of flowers, as if he’s bringing along the spring. (...At last, I met him.) “I found you ‘again’, after all.” I want you to tell me your name —

CHAPTER 03

The man with crimson eyes “I found you ‘again’, after all.”

MC “Huh...?”

The man with crimson eyes “I’ve always wanted to meet you since that snowy day. I feel like I’ll find you if I keep wishing for it.”

The man with crimson eyes “Thank you for making my wish comes true.”

I lost my words in front of the smile that looks too happy, but I quickly pulling myself together.

MC “I’ve been looking for you too.”

MC “The other day, I received an armful of flowers, but I couldn’t thank you properly...”

(Uhh...was there anything I could give him as thanks?)

When I look inside the shopping bag, I realize I was buying wine.

(No, this is the wine that Comte and Leonardo-san are looking forward to...!)

After some hesitation, I took out the strawberries I had bought for my snack —

MC “Um, I’m sorry. I don't think this is enough to thank you, but please accept it if you like.”

The man with crimson eyes “...”

MC “Er...”

The man with crimson eyes “...”

(...What should I do, was it annoying?)

MC “Either way, I didn’t have much now —“

The man with crimson eyes “Can I really take it? Thank you, I love strawberries very much.”

His appearance with a carefree smile while receiving strawberries slowly warms my heart, and I can’t help but to smile too.

MC “Hehe...”

The man with crimson eyes “What’s wrong, is there anything amusing...?”

MC “Sorry, I’m laughing since I’m so happy. I’m glad you like it.”

(...I could never forget the lonely figure I saw on that snowy day. Oh, I see.)

(I wanted to meet this person’s smiling face...)

As I’m feeling extremely peaceful, the person’s hand gently takes my hand.

The man with crimson eyes “Then can I *take you away from now on?”

(*連れ去って - kidnap

MC “Eh......? Take-take me away!?”

The man with crimson eyes “Yeah, it's a waste to eat such delicious food alone, so let's eat it together.”

The man with crimson eyes “There is a place with beautiful scenery.”

(...Is that so? Since he said things like taking me away, so I interpret it strangely.)

MC “Yes, of course! Just, before that —“

The man with crimson eyes “Hmm...?”

When I turn my eyes towards the people in the city lining up to buy flowers, the person smiles softly.

The man with crimson eyes “Ahaha, I’m sorry everyone. I’m just absorbed in my own matter.” 

The man with crimson eyes “Hey, can you wait for me a little while?”

Smiling as if he’s getting relieved, the person reaches out to the colorful flowers.

His soft and thin silver hair’s shining sparklingly through the sunlight and swaying in the winter breeze.

(Ah, right...!)

MC “I just have one thing I want to ask of you.”

The man with crimson eyes “Yes...?”

MC “What’s your name...?”

He smiles as if he’s *reacting to my question with his whole body.

(*受け止める - accept, take

Vlad “Vlad.”

Vlad “...Hey, what’s your name then?”

After all the flowers are passed into the people’s hands, Vlad-san takes me to the shore of Seine.

Vlad “···— That’s what happened.”

MC “Oh, really...?”

Vlad “Yeah, that’s true. Ahaha, isn’t that weird?”

While eating strawberries side by side, Vlad-san tells me about himself.

He’s been picking flowers from his own garden and selling them on a whim.

He lives in an old castle a little apart from here, with 3 person live together, named Faust and Charles.

And many other things.

(...It feels strange. Or, how should I put it, he’s talking without hiding anything, but I can’t grasp it somewhere although it’s being transmitted.) 

(Or rather, he’s being mysterious.)

But, I don’t want to step more than necessary, because there’re always parts that people don’t want to touch.

Besides, there were many things I couldn’t say either.

(There’s no way I can say that I came to this world beyond time and space.)

Vlad “Hey, let me hear your story this time.”

MC “Huh...? Things about me?”

Vlad “Yeah, anything is fine. If it’s about you, I want to know everything.”

Vlad “If I’m not mistaken...you just came to this land a month ago, right?”

MC “Yes, for a trip a month ago.”

Vlad “A trip, huh? That’s nice. It's very important to actually see the scenery you've never seen before.”

Vlad “Then, does that mean you’re living in a hotel now?”

(Well...the fact that everyone in the mansion is resurrected great men shouldn’t be known, right?)

— Much less in saying that they’re vampires.

I look back into Vlad-san’s eyes as I choose my words with care.

MC “No. I received an invitation from a certain nobleman, and now I live and work in his mansion.”

Vlad “Live-in employee, huh. You’re very remarkable to work in an unfamiliar place.”

I shake my head and Vlad-san looks into my face.

Vlad “Hey...how long can you stay in this place?”

(That’s...)

Comte “Everyone, get down!” Napoleon “Mimi, come over here...!”

MC “Well, in fact, I couldn’t go back to where I was because of a slight mistake...”

Vlad “...”

MC “Oh! But, it’s okay. Rather, I think it’s great that my trip has been extended.”

MC “And everyone in the mansion cares a lot ···—“

Then, suddenly the words are cut short.

It may be because the city is so beautiful at dusk, or perhaps it’s because Vlad-san’s asking so that I could accept everything,

The emotion that had been sunk deep in my heart ever since the door’s closed is overflowing into my voice.

MC “...I’m all right but sometimes, things like anxiety suddenly fills my heart.”

MC “I know it’s okay if I really talk to everyone and laugh away, but I can’t do that.”

Vlad “Why’s that?”

In the evening, I think of kind and strong people who reside in the mansion.

MC “Surprisingly even for myself, I cherish everyone in the mansion...I like them so much.”

MC “That’s why it’s hard to confide and speak frankly when my heart feels gloomy.”

Vlad “...?”

MC “I don’t want them to carry along my sadness by showing my sad appearance.”

MC “Since I want the people I love to laugh as much as possible even for a second.”

Vlad “...”

MC “Ah, I’m sorry. I just talked about myself —“

When I look back at him feeling apologetic, Vlad-san’s eyes are gently narrowed...

Vlad “I’ve been having a hard time lately.”

MC “Huh...?”

As I was surprised by the words spilled without context, Vlad-san keep on talking without any care.

Vlad “Right now, I'm selling flowers by myself, but I don't have enough manpower. That's why I have a request for Mimi.”

Vlad “Can you help me with my work?”

MC “I want to help you but...I also have to work in the mansion.”

Vlad “I don’t mind with only an hour every day, though...”

(...He said it would be just around one hour, so I guess it’s quite hard. Alright, then!)

MC “Okay, let me help you on my way home from shopping then.”

Vlad “Thank you, then I'll be waiting at the place where I met you today.”

MC “Yes...!”

From that day on, as promised, I started going to see Mr. Vlad on my way home from shopping, but —

MC “Hello Vlad-san. Say, if there’s anything you need my help with —”

Vlad “Hey Mimi. Look over here. A kitten was just born in a customer’s house. See?”

MC “Wow, so cute...! Can I hug it?”

Vlad “Of course. Here you go.”

(...Yesterday I just played with Vlad-san and the kitten.)

(Today I’ll do my best to help him properly!)

Vlad “Charles told me that new strawberry sweets will be available from today at the café here.”

Vlad “I'm glad you came to see me. Let's order all the strawberry menus and *splitting evenly between both of us.”

(*はんぶんこ - halfsies

MC “Ev-everything...!?”

After that, Vlad-san just took me around on a whim without asking for my help.

(I have to work properly today. Eh?)

Vlad “...”

MC “What are you doing, Vlad-san?”

[sartorialadventure]

weird question, but I'm hoping you may know as a historical fashion expert: How did people store clothes in like the renaissance/tudor era? I think wardrobes and trunks were common, but did hangers even exist back then? Depending on the size of the dresses and such, I wasn't sure if fitting them in trunks/armoire's was even possible :0

lol I love that I have fooled Tumblr into thinking I'm a historical fashion expert... I am a rank amateur lol

Anyway, I googled it, and Quora (I know, it's not very credible) says that clothing was stored in wooden chests in the early middle ages, and the chests could double as seats or beds in the castle hall. "During the Crusades, they borrowed the Middle Eastern practice of using cedar wood to make chests."

Another person, discussing the upper classes, wrote,

"They would have a small room for the storage of valuable items (and furred and silken clothes were very valuable in the Middle Ages, far more expensive relatively than now) opening off their own living quarters. This room was called a ‘garde-robe’ (French for ‘keep clothes’), which is where we get the English word ‘wardrobe’. Clothes might be hung on pegs to air, but would normally be stored in chests with lavender or other insect-repellent herbs to protect them from moths and fleas.

"It became normal for the garderobe to include the lord’s private toilet, which was simply a seat over a hole, built into a little projection from the castle wall so that waste could drop into a pit below, or into the moat. (Occasionally, a lord whose castle had been taken by his enemies was obliged to make his escape by dropping though it himself.)

"‘Garderobe’ is now the standard word to describe this kind of castle toilet."

Both of these answers were about the Middle Ages, but I think they work for the Renaissance to, because...

As far as clothes-hangers go, Wikipedia (I am hitting ALL the reputable sources today!) says: "US President Thomas Jefferson was known to have a device for hanging clothes in his closet at Monticello. However, today's most-used hanger, the shoulder-shaped wire hanger, was inspired by a coat hook that was invented in 1869 by O. A. North of New Britain, Connecticut."

So it looks like the consensus is 1) wooden chests, 2) clothes pegs. No modern clothes-hangers until the 19th century!

[beautiful-basque-country]

Egun on! The recent discussion about Isla de los Faisanes and Kintoa made me realize I've never asked about the two condominiums (if that's what they are called) of Cantabria (with the town of Villanueva) and Castille y Leon (wtih the town of Trevino) that are in Pais Vasco. What is up with those?

Kaixo anon!

Oh. THE issue. Besides the isla and Kintoa, we have 3 enclaves - an island of a region surrounded by other - in Euskal Herria.

- Valley of Villaverde: it's located in Bizkaia, surrounded by it, but belongs to Cantabria. Why? In the 15th century some random count bought the valley and, since his family had more properties in another valley in Cantabria, the valley was added to this region. There are several towns there, not only Villanueva, and the inhabitants of the area have been asking to belong to Bizkaia since the 19th century. Of course the Cantabrian government has sued once and again and the Spanish courts - OF COURSE - have blocked any law or referendum proposal to change things. Cantabria and Bizkaia had to reach some agreements so the kids of the valley go to school in Bizkaia, where health care is also provided. The valley is less than 20km2 big.

- Trebiñu: it's located in Araba, surrounded by it, but it belongs to Burgos (Castile and León). It's around 250km2 big and there are several towns there, not just Trebiñu. Why does it belong to Castile? Because in the 13th century the Castilian and Navarrese kings had some fights, the Castilian won, and the Navarrese gave him Trebiñu in exchange of other town. Since then, it has been a part of Castile. However, people are voting against it once and again, asking to be part of Euskadi once again. They even tried to be part of Araba twice during the dictatorship!!! Knowing how bad it was being for Euskadi, they still wanted in. Besides the linguistic and identity issues, there are many other like who pays for the roads maintenance, transportation, and even health system. Besides identity and language issues, there are also issues to lead a normal life: not that long ago, if someone from Trebiñu had to be taken to the hospital, they had to travel +100km until Burgos, when Gasteiz is just 20kms away. Burgos & Euskadi signed an agreement to treat Trebiñu people in Gasteiz. The citizens of Trebiñu clearly oppose to be part of Burgos, but whatever:

It reads: Belonging to Burgos against the will of the Trebiñu inhabitants.

- Petilla de Aragón: it belongs to Nafarroa, although surrounded completely by Aragón. This enclave - less than 30km2 big - isn't a piece of another region located in EH, but a piece of EH located in another region. Why? Because back in the 12th century the Aragonese king died and the noblemen of the kingdom couldn't gather the money to pay up the debt the king owed to the Navarrese king, so he added 4 castles with their lands to the Navarrese kingdom. One of them was Petilla. Aragon tried to siege the castle and take it back several times throughout history, but the inhabitants of Petilla resisted their former co-citizens and the Navarrese king awarded the loyalty with a tax exemption, which made the loyalty bigger if you know what we mean.

Anyways, the enclaves are totally anachronistic, all of them due to medieval royal feuds that nowadays regional governments can't let go. Imagine losing some km2 and some hundreds of tax payers, DOOM! They generally just make life harder for the ones living there, be it for identity issues or for everday needs that get complicated. Every enclave should have the right to a referendum and let the people decide where they want to belong to. And yes, it includes Petilla. If people there are Navarrese against their will, we support they can belong to what they feel as their homeland.

[dear-mrs-otome]

As someone who can’t read Japanese, could you please spoil Faust’s route? I’m really curious!

I can, sorry this took me awhile to get all down!

I’ll give you a summary of Faust’s route below the cut, so for those zooming past BE WARNED. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

SPOILERS AHOY!

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HAVE THE WHOLE ROUTE SPOILED IN DETAIL???

I MEAN IT - A GIANT WALL OF TEXT EXISTS BEHIND THIS CUT, ALL SPOILERS…

Faust’s route begins as all of the ‘Act 2’ routes do - just as MC is attempting to return home after her month vacation in the past, the door to the Louvre appears to malfunction and she’s forced to remain in the 19th century until Comte can figure out what is going on.

Life carries on much as usual for her, as she tries to keep her spirits up, when one day in town she stumbles across a church on the edges, presided over by a kindly priest (Faust) who seems impressed by her generosity towards a poor woman he’s given medicine to whose son is suffering from a mysterious epidemic that’s begun circulating the city. One night she attends a party with Comte when a critter of some sort steals her hair ornament. Chasing after it, she winds up in a graveyard, where to her horror she sees a figure digging up a fresh grave. She tries to run, is caught by said figure (Faust), and bitten until she faints. (First CG)

She wakes up in the church from earlier and the kind priest who claims he was merely a Good Samaritan seems willing to help her get home. Soon though it comes to light that she is the woman staying with Comte, and Faust drops his ‘nice’ mask and reveals himself as a vampire - biting her once more to observe the effects and proclaiming he will abduct her to be his new guinea pig, curious about her as a person both from the future and who has been living with vampires.

Waking up in Vlad’s castle now, she meets the Terrible Trio and struggles to deal with her situation now - Faust feeds on her for the purposes of observation again, and she goes on a hunger strike briefly, defiant and unwilling to accept being captive. Only when Faust threatens the other residents of the mansion does she reluctantly settle down, and they butt heads over their wildly different philosophies on life - Faust’s mission to grant humans eternal life, her proclaiming God gives us only that which we can handle, and Faust’s disagreement.

To prove his point he begins bringing her to the church with him disguised as a nun, where she witnesses firsthand the cruelties of fate in ways her 21st century self had never encountered before - children orphaned senselessly, people coming for confession bearing the crushing weight of guilt over their own poverty and misfortune. She begins to realize how she may have been wrong, but she and Faust continue to disagree over their different viewpoints. MC still believes that hope is real and necessary, whereas Faust is a committed cynic.

She slowly comes to lose her fear of the other residents of the castle as well, as they are nothing but kind and welcoming to her, though she still is unsure of what to make of everything and remains defiant.

The arguments between her and Faust come to a head when the son of the woman MC met that very first day outside the church comes around, seeking Faust’s blessing to send him on to the next life and refusing the medicine and help offered him. Faust reacts harshly to the man’s willingness to quietly acquiesce to his fate, to MC’s horror, and when she asks him if he has nothing of hope left Faust assures her it’s long gone. When she spots Napoleon and Sebastian later, she dithers for a bit but eventually tries to call out to them, only to have Faust intercept. Still unsettled from their argument earlier, he reiterates to her that she belongs to him and bites her on the church altar, as if to prove that bad things happen to good people no matter what.

Things are strained between them after that, not helped by MC’s increasing suspicions that the strange rumors of ‘resurrections’ going on around the city in the wake of the disease are somehow Faust’s work - an accusation that clearly wounds Faust upon hearing. She meets a young university student, Alex, who desperately wants to be Faust’s assistant and is studying the epidemic. Days pass as they continue working at the church and the orphanage, until one day the disease strikes even there - and finding Faust’s medication is running out, over his protests and concerns MC volunteers to help him make more, the two of them working day and night together to develop and manufacture enough to save the children.

They’re successful, save for one girl Lina who is still very sick that they bring back to the castle to finish nursing to health. They succeed, but afterwards MC falls ill with the same sickness and collapses...only marginally coherent of a desperate Faust doing all he can to save her life. (2nd CG)

She has time and evidence to rethink some of her assumptions about Faust, realizing that despite his best efforts to crush whatever heart and kindness he has it remains. There’s more to him than just icy logic. And when she asks him about his past he finally tells her some of it - that he was abandoned as a baby, raised in an orphanage by a kindly nun, and that when she fell ill he sold himself into slavery to provide her with money for medicine. It made no difference in the long run though, the woman still died...and Faust remains the cynic when they discuss hope and happiness and how MC still clings to these things.

Rumors abound about Faust’s miraculous work stopping the epidemic at the orphanage, as things return mostly to ‘normal’ for them both, working at the church and such. They’re each grappling with changing feelings for each other, Faust suffering his first bout of bloodlust, when one morning Faust collapses in agony bleeding from his mouth horrifically, falling unconscious for days.

Everyone at the castle is fretting, Faust growing weaker and weaker, as Vlad explains his theory that Faust has altered the timeline too much by stopping the plague at the orphanage and the universe is attempting to set things to right again by erasing him from existence. He claims the same thing has happened to him before when he tries to change world events too drastically - the difference being that as a pureblood he can’t die. Faust, however, can. 

He proposes traveling back in time and attempting to nudge humans here and there, make tiny alterations to the timeline to achieve the same goal of saving the children without the backlash falling on Faust, and MC insists on going along - realizing now that she’s faced with his death, she can’t bear the thought of losing him.

Going through the door in the castle with Vlad, she ends up first back at the mansion shortly after her own disappearance (where she assures Comte she’s doing well, thereby explaining why the mansion wasn’t losing their minds this entire time) and recruiting Comte’s help fiddling with the timeline. Upon the next passage she’s ripped from Vlad and dumped far in the past - where she witnesses firsthand little Johann’s heart and faith breaking upon the death of his beloved mother-figure nun, and then the natural disaster that crushed a town he frequented as a young man. This was the moment that solidified for Faust his determination to fight against God and Fate with all he had, and kicked off his obsession with discovering eternal life. (3rd CG)

After one more timey-wimey meeting with the Past!Faust at the point when they were nursing little Lina, where she offers him some much-needed words of encouragement, MC finally finds herself in the recent-enough past to travel around Paris with Vlad and encourage people to be more aware of the spreading plague. She even urges Alex to be more wary, prompting him to start developing his own medication from notes he’d taken from Faust.

Back in the ‘proper’ time, their efforts seem to perhaps have paid off...they return to find Faust gone, and after searching frantically around the city they find the orphanage has been set aflame on the strength of rumors that the plague spread from there. (As if the universe has manufactured some new tragedy instead for it, she realizes) Faust had gone into the blaze to save the last child, but comes out horrifically burnt and near death.

They take him to the church, where things appear dire...but Faust admits to finally seeing hope and accepting this outcome, just glad that something good has come of it all. MC refuses to accept his death though, and after Faust nearly dies again she cuts herself and he eventually revives. After he recovers, Faust corners her into confessing her feelings for him and admitting his own in return, before they finally consummate their love.

MC returns to the mansion as she had promised Past!Comte she would, happy to see all her friends again. A few days pass before Faust and Charles come to collect her, setting off an amusing set of interactions between the Mansion Boys and the Dastardly Duo, but it culminates in a scene where Faust thanks Comte humbly for his assistance with the timelines and for his consideration of MC. The couple then has a late-night conversation at the church where they’re both working again about the future of their relationship.

In Faust’s dramatic end, he asks MC to accompany him as he returns back to the place of that town that was destroyed, Faust making peace with his feelings surrounding the situation and reiterating his love for MC and how she’s helped him to see hope - before he asks her to help him with a different sort of ‘eternal life’, AKA having babies with him.

In Faust’s romantic end, he explains a bit about what motivates him to take on the role of a priest, and then he takes MC back to the castle where he intends to make love to her - saying that he can’t ever lose her but can’t stomach the thought of anyone other than himself ever biting her so he will have to work all that much harder to achieve his dream of eternal life so that they can continue to thumb their noses at God and Fate for all time together.

------

Even long as this is I’m clearly glossing over things - it’s a very busy route! And it’s complicated by the time travel stuff, which thankfully doesn’t get TOO complicated. If anyone’s interested in hearing my thoughts on Faust himself I’m happy to share, just let me know...I think he’s a fascinating complex character that definitely won’t be for everyone, but I am happy he exists in the IkeVamp cast and glad for this route.

[vampyrasgone]

   “  maybe to dracula,  it isn’t a mirror at all...  ”

                 in the 19th century, mirrors were created with a backing of silver - an extremely pure metal that was used to repel lycans and vampires. but the silver is what kept vampires from being able to see themselves in it, and would hurt them if touched. but what about mirrors that *weren't* made with silver? - were they used for vanity purposes??  for dracula, the answer is no.

the count used these mirrors for far different purposes, and often kept them scattered around his castle in shards.  this goes back to similar figures like baba dochia, dragobete, koschei the deathless and baba yaga, who in some stories used water or mirrors as portals to their abode.   the lake nesamovyte, in bucovina, also has a legend about the lake having a frozen mirror at the very bottom which is used to house the souls of the evil dead, as well as teleport horrible storms to the region.            his castle, located in bucovina, is said to have a great and terrible many-headed zmei (dragon) in its depths, submerged in a great, frozen lake where the bottom cannot be reached by the living.  that dragon is known as the weathermaker, or a balauri type dragon, and shoots lightning from its mouth and calls down horrid storms. 

thus, i am stating that the count both keeps a mirror on himself (a small shard, triangular in shape, shattered from being thrown and not cut) hidden deep within his pockets and wrapped strictly by a velvet cloth. this is used for emergency travel, whereas the remaining shards of this mirror (touched by alchemic magic) have been left to hover above a lectern in a tower at his castle where it is guarded by lycans and daemonic guardsmen.  this mirror, as i am taking from cv lore, is how he moves his castle- along with the heat and electricity provided by the balaur in his castle’s depths, that provides an endless supply of clean energy that is instant and hotter than the surface of the sun.  thus electricity is necessary to power the spell that has been placed on the mirror itself, and each shard resonates with the ability to move not only dracula, but through a mass amount of his energy and power, the castle in itself.   the mirror in his pocket allows him to return to the point he came,  this is namely whatever place he calls home at the time.  this mirror too can be fragmented, and the spell will remain intact unless the shards are utterly destroyed. 

edit:  in 2004 film canon, this is also accurate;  mirrors are sources of teleportation from his hold family home to the fortress in the upper end of the carpathia that he must pass through, and it cracks like ice when he does so before going back to normal. 

[ace-trainer-risu]

oh here! i’ll come ask you for book recs lol. do you have any spooky and/or autumn-y book recs? or just your fave books :)

First of all, I'm sorry this took me SO long to answer. I want to say I've been busy but it's just been general [waves hand vaguely] life.

ANYWAY thank you for asking! I actually don't read scary stuff a lot b/c I'm a wimp, but I have a few spooky/autumnal books up my sleeves! Let's see what we've got!!

1) The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Let me just start by saying that Sarah Waters is one of my absolute favorite authors ever! All her novels are suspenseful, twisty historical novels with great female and queer characters. Although, fair warning, actually The Little Stranger is like her one novel that isn't queer, but it is VERY good. If you read The Little Stranger and like it, please read Fingersmith and/or The Paying Guests.

The Little Stranger is set in the countryside of post-WWII England and follows a mild-mannered doctor as he becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the family living in the local, increasingly decrepit, possibly haunted mansion. Think Downton Abbey but creepy. Strange things keep happening inside the house, from dog bites to mysterious sounds to creepy black spots. Literally just typing that gave me goosebumps. It seems like someone may be out to get the family, but who...or what? Is it simply the ghosts of their own painful memories, or is something more? Sarah Waters is excellent at lush, intricate historical detail, and she leans into that here to create an atmosphere of slowly building dread and horror and mystery.

That being said, as a person who isn't normally a fan of horror, I don't think this book is too scary. It's more of an atmospheric, psychological horror than a jump-scare, bloody horror. It's not a book that will give you nightmares (probably), but you might lie awake thinking about it.

Also. Pro-tip. As a haunted(?) house story, the house is obviously fairly central to the story. Dear fellow Americans, keep in mind that the British refer to the floors of a building differently than us. For Americans, the ground-level floor is called the first floor, the floor above that the second floor, etc. For the British, the ground-level floor is the ground floor, and the floor above that is the first floor, etc. There's all sorts of creepy references to characters hearing noises above them on the first floor, but I was just like, Why are they always in the basement?

2) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

This and the above are two very different books, and yet they are both set in the mid-1900s and both are about weird, creepy, maybe-haunted houses. What can I say, I like gothic fiction.

After our heroine, Noemi, receives a bizarre, borderline incoherent letter from her beloved cousin, she sets out to visit her in the literally decaying mansion she resides in with her husband and his new family deep in the countryside of Mexico. All Noemi wants to do is persuade her cousin to come back home with her, but her cousin's new in-laws are very determined not to let that happen...or to let Noemi leave either. Secrets abound in the bizarre house and even creepier nearby cemetery, and soon Noemi finds that she too is suffering from bizarre dreams and visions...although, are they just dreams?

This book is so weird, but in such a good way? I read it for a book club and every week we had increasingly bizarre theories about what was going on, we were googling alchemy and fungi and St George, and some of our theories were even right. Although definitely not all. Another very twisty one that keeps you guessing.

In terms of scariness, interestingly I think there's more overtly creepy and horrifying moments in this novel than The Little Stranger, but I found TLS more overall scary? But that may be because I read it quickly, which I think is the ideal setting for suspenseful stuff, and I read Mexican Gothic over a longer amount of time since it was for a book club. This one does have some more typical horror elements to it, but I don't think it's more creepy than terrifying.

3) The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

I listened to this one as an audiobook and the audiobook is excellent so would recommend that, but have no doubt it would also be great to physically read.

Oh my god this book...it's more thriller than horror, but I think it fits the brief. There were multiple moments listening to this book that I literally gasped or said "OH MY GOD!" out loud, and there are moments which are very creepy and horrifying. There's a particular scene in the backyard... Again, incredibly suspenseful and twisty. And the character development and character psychology is just! really really good! There's also really interesting and knotty feminist stuff which is a lot more complicated and nasty than some of the "girlboss" stuff which is popular right now.

Super minimal summary: All you really need to know is that it is a sci fi novel about a scientific researcher trying to pick up her life after her marriage has imploded, only for everything to go BATSHIT WRONG. Trust me, that's all you need to know, it's better to go into this not knowing what's going to happen or what to expect. I had no clue what this novel was about when I started it, and holy shit. Very good book, absolutely recommend this if you want some super suspenseful, creepy sci fi that will make you say "oh my GOD" repeatedly.

Okay, shifting gears a little now b/c autumn isn't just spooky, it's also cozy and restful and daydreamy!

4) The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker

This isn't maybe a cozy book per se, but it's a great book to cuddle down with on a dreary day and lose yourself in. If you've ever asked yourself, "What would it be like if you crossed Pride and Prejudice with Howl's Moving Castle except the wizard was way worse but somehow still sexy" - then you should read this book! I actually came across this book b/c I was like, I wanna read a book that's a portal fantasy but for adults, and this book was like OH here's everything you wanted.

It's about a grad student, Nora, who has totally stalled out on her dissertation and is at a shitty wedding when she accidentally wanders through a portal into a beautiful, fantastical fairy world. At first, everything is amazing and literally perfect...but surprise surprise, not all as is it seems, and soon everything goes to, how should I put it, shit. Nora escapes, but rather than returning home, she finds herself trapped in a far more dreary realm. But not one without it's own charms and it's own magic, and Nora finds herself the student-slash-sorta-captive of the crochety, sexy, maybe-killed-his-wife magician Aruendiel* and she begins to learn magic herself.

Unlike the above books, this is not a fast-paced, twisty book, and I think if you go into this expecting high fantasy along the lines of Game of Thrones, you may be disappointed. It's not really a typical high-fantasy novel, it's more of a cross of an 18th/19th century realist novel, a fairy tale, and a fantasy novel. But if you want that, then it's REALLY good! I loved this book! And the magic in it is so cool, something about the way its described feels so visceral and real and like you could really do it if you just tried hard enough. There is a romance and it's totally, intentionally hashtag problematic, but it's very laid back, very slow burn, so I think even if you aren't a person who digs romance you can still enjoy this. If you're looking for a feminist-leaning fantasy novel that you can just sink into and lose yourself in, this is the perfect book. You will long to magically fix broken plates.

5) The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner

Honestly I can't even justify why I think this one is an autumn book. It simply is. It's autumn colored in my head. It is the coziest book I have ever read about necromancy and crime. Also I just want to recommend it. This is another one that I listened to as an audiobook and it's also a good audiobook, for those who are interested. But it also means I will not be able to spell absolutely any of the character's names.

This novel follows Delly, an enterprising young scoundrel of a fire witch with a teeny tiny gin habit as she attempts to support herself and her hot-mess of a mom in the roughest neighborhoods of Fantasy-City-That-I-Can't-Remember-The-Name-Of. Lice...gate? When Delly comes across an advertisement for a bodyguarding job for young women for a hefty fee, it seems like the answer to definitely not all but at least some of her problems. She accepts, along with an interesting assortment of other sorcerous young ladies, including a wonderfully bitchy Absentia (my love), a young woman who can turn into a boar, boar girl's necromancer mother, and the very sexy part-troll Winn, who in my imagination looks like Gwendoline Christie and talks like Miranda Hart. Which. Perfect woman. Winn being a fine, wealthy young lady, Delly can't help but think to herself that it wouldn't be such a bad thing if Winn happened to fall in love with her and carried her off to be rich and spoiled the rest of her life.

Of course, things quickly don't go to plan, and soon Delly and her companions find herself caught up in wicked schemes of murder, drugs, and an undead mouse named Buttons who says BONG. I love Buttons SO MUCH.

This book is just a silly romp of a novel which worms into your heart and your brain. It's fun and cute and gay, and also it made me cry. I haven't stopped thinking, "Not quite regulation hammerball" since I listened to it like half a year ago.

Also, while I'm here, this novel is set in the same world as and features a few of the same characters as Unnatural Magic. Which is also a hell of a book. Literally the best bisexual relationship I have ever fuckin read. It's a winter book tho, so I simply can't go into it here.

Aaaaand...that it's! Happy autumnal reading :)

[winterwrites23]

Next stop: Scotland, aka Alistair James Kirkland. He’s gonna be a big part of the Outlander AU story for obvious reasons. And yes he has a different name in the past, but it’s not because he got threatened by a sword like North. Past Scotland is the Laird of Castle Kaerndal and he goes by Allen because one, he doesn’t want to be linked with his brother Arthur at the moment and two, he wants to distance himself from politics for personal reasons by living a “normal and quiet” life. You’ll know more about it in the story.

For now, here are a few things about Modern Scotland you need to know about:

In the present (1997), he’s physically 28 years old whereas in the past (1743) he’s around 25 years old. He’s the second oldest of the family.

To strangers, he can appear a bit intimidating for his broad shoulders and his deadpan expression. But once you get to know him, he can be friendly, despite his dry humour and his bluntness. He's usually a pretty down-to-earth kind of guy and he won't take bullshit from anybody.

Hence, his motto being: “There’s always a grain of doubt in every truth.”

With his closes friends and brothers, some would say he's more 'open' while others would just say he's a bigger asshole. He relishes in the misfortune of others and is a master at pushing his brothers' buttons, especially Arthur’s.

But under all that not-give-a-fuck exterior, he cares deeply for his family, he just has troubles expressing it.

In other words, he’s a giant softie and if someone points it out, they’ll get punched. No hesitation. 

He’s closest to Ireland, sharing one brain cell when together. And it’s his mission to mess with his brothers relentlessly. Schadenfreude and all that.

When free of government duties, Alistair is a part-time paramedic. He got a medical degree in the 19th century, back when his people were thriving in medicine.

He’s the unofficial doctor of the family, but most of his brothers’ injuries came from him because of stupid fights and arguments. It doesn’t help he has the worst bedside manners in the entire world. Somehow, both parties survive.

Alistair has a wardrobe filled with ridiculous colourful shirts. Stripes, polka dots, swirls, shapes, patterns, you name it. The tackiest, the better. He does it mostly to rile up Arthur but it’s also hilarious to watch people do a double check at seeing a six-foot two deadpan looking man with an obnoxious kaleidoscope shirt.

He has no shame at admitting he has a collection of anything related to Nessie: mugs, keychains, glasses, t-shirts, pillows, etc. He makes great efforts to thwart people’s expedition and destroy any evidence to keep her safe. She has been his friend for centuries and wants to keep it that way.

And boom, that’s it for Ali. Same with North, I’ll post more about him later in the future. You can check the other bros: 

Northern Ireland | Scotland | England | Wales | Republic of Ireland

[princesssarisa]

Assorted thoughts on “Little Women”

 In no particular order.

*I’m glad I waited this long to read the original, unabridged novel. If I had read it as a teen or a preteen, I just might have followed countless girl readers’ example of having a crush on Laurie and being angry that Jo doesn’t marry him. Reading it now, I’m able to see him as the well-rounded, likable yet flawed character he is, not just as a girl’s prize, and realize that while he and Jo have a beautiful friendship, they wouldn’t have worked as a couple. The canon pairings of Jo/Friedrich and Amy/Laurie are the right ones.

*About the controversial issue of the characters’ ambitions... None of the young leads achieve their childhood dreams in the end; Alcott’s intended message was clearly  “We don’t always achieve our dreams, but life can still be happy in ways we never expected.” That’s all well and good. But apart from Meg’s gender-neutral dream of being rich, the characters’ “castles in the air” are all in defiance of their expected gender roles: Jo wants to be a famous author and Amy a famous artist, two fields normally reserved for men, while Laurie wants to be a composer instead of going into his grandfather’s business. And all three of their endings are distinctly more gender-conforming: Jo becomes a schoolmistress, Amy becomes a society lady, both become wives and mothers, and Laurie goes into business “like a man.” I think it’s fair for modern readers to be disappointed by that conformity, even while appreciating the realistic message about childhood dreams. Those feelings aren’t mutually exclusive. For modern audiences, I think the standard adaptational change of Jo publishing her own version of Little Women at the end (instead of 20 years later in the last sequel) is a good change.

*About Jo needing to control her temper... I understand why this annoys some feminists. So often women are expected to suppress all anger and never stand up for themselves. Maybe it is problematic that role model Marmee explicitly never shows her anger, but only purses her lips and leaves the room. But personally, I think it’s presented in a healthy, gender-neutral way. Jo’s anger isn’t a problem because it’s “unseemly” or “unfeminine,” but because it can lead her to do cruel things to others. The mistake that teaches her the lesson in “Jo Meets Appolyon,” letting Amy skate on the thin ice, isn’t a loud, aggressive act of rage, but a cold, silent act (or rather inaction) of spite. Besides “control your temper” doesn’t mean “never stand up for yourself.” The book has several examples of women calmly yet firmly calling out other people’s bad behavior (most often Laurie’s ^–^) and it’s portrayed as entirely right. And though it’s tempting to be annoyed by Mr. March putting his finger to his lips when he sees his wife starting to get angry, it’s also a nice subversion of gender stereotypes to see a marriage where the husband is gentler by nature than his wife and is a calming influence on her. Stereotypical couples are the other way around.

*As a person on the autism spectrum, I relate strongly to Beth. I fully embrace the headcanon that Beth herself is autistic and that Lizzie Alcott might have been diagnosed as such if she had lived today. So it hurts a little to see other readers call Beth “boring,” “annoying,” a “doormat” and “the worst of the sisters.” Although she is idealized because she was Alcott’s tribute to her dead little sister, she’s not the cardboard cutout of bland feminine virtue she’s so often been stereotyped as being. It’s clear from the start that Beth isn’t “normal,” either by our standards or by past ones. Her crippling shyness isn’t just “sweet Victorian modesty,” but portrayed as a real flaw that she struggles to overcome. She’s been homeschooled because as a child her social anxiety made regular school unbearable for her. She still plays with dolls, believes in Santa Claus and has imaginary friends at age 13. She has no desire to get married, or to have any kind of career, or ever to leave her parents’ house. And because of all this, she clearly has a low opinion of herself: hence she tells Jo that she was never meant to live long, because she would never have been anything but “stupid little Beth, trotting about at home.” But the narrative belies her words. In both of her illnesses, so many people rally around her and reveal how much they love her and how valuable her quiet kindness has been in their lives. Ultimately she dies in peace because she realizes her life hasn’t been worthless after all. With my own social struggles, my tendency to be “younger than my years,” and my own desire to have a quiet life close to my family instead of going out into the big, overwhelming world and doing big, overwhelming things, I find her storyline beautiful, because it gives me hope that my life is just as valuable as anyone else’s.

*I also relate to Jo, as so many readers do. The result is that I’m of two minds of the chapters “Calls” and “Consequences.” On the one hand, there’s no doubt that Jo is at fault in those chapters and does more-or-less deserves to lose the trip to Europe. She’s genuinely, purposefully rude to her aunts and to the other people they visit and she humiliates Amy and harms her social life – at the subsequent fair, the Chesters ban Amy from the art table because Jo insulted them. Plus the only reason why she has to join Amy in the calls in the first place is because she promised she would, so it’s hypocritical of her to whine about it. But on the other hand, I do empathize with Jo. With my own my social difficulties, I relate to her hating formal occasions where she has to dress up, mind her manners, make small talk about topics that don’t interest her with people she dislikes, and always be “agreeable” and “docile.” For Jo and for so many of us, it’s so hard to be that way, yet it’s the mold that all women were expected to stuff themselves into in the 19th century and to an extent still are today. Amy is lucky that she enjoys playing that social game and that it comes naturally to her. So it’s easy to sympathize with Jo’s envy when Amy is chosen to go to Europe, to feel as if Amy is rewarded for her social conformity while Jo is punished for failing to conform, and to feel as if the message is that all girls should conform like Amy. Fortunately, the book as a whole doesn’t send that message: even Amy achieves her ultimate happiness by letting herself be a bit more like Jo and call Laurie out on his laziness and apathy, when back in “Calls” she had argued that a lady should never show disapproval to a man.

*I don’t understand why some commentators think the chapter “On the Shelf” is so horribly sexist. Well, actually, I do. It’s tempting to find fault with John for being “jealous” that Meg is focusing more on their babies than on him and for “neglecting” Meg and spending carefree evenings out while she slaves away with the twins. And for Meg to be told by her mother that this is her own fault for “neglecting her duty to her husband” understandably rankles some feminists. But I honestly don’t think there’s any real problem. Meg genuinely neglects John and overtaxes herself by devoting every waking minute to the twins and letting neither John nor anyone else help her, because she’s afraid that otherwise she’ll be a bad mother. John isn’t jealous of the babies, he understandably feels ignored and useless. Nor (despite what some critics think) does he cheat on Meg, or want to. He just goes to a friend’s house rather than sit alone at home; Meg’s fear that his eye is roving to Mrs. Scott is just a product of her own stress. The resolution is arguably just the opposite of sexist: Meg finally lets John take an equal share of child-rearing duties, lets Hannah babysit often so they can both have time for themselves too, and steps out of her domestic sphere to share talks with John about politics, literature, etc. By the end of the chapter, their marriage is more egalitarian than ever.

*I’d like to read a fanfic where Jo meets Rodolfo from La Bohéme. I wouldn’t ship them, since they’re even more “too much alike” than Jo and Laurie are, but I’d like to see them meet. They’re both lively, passionate, temperamental ENFP writers, whose minds are full of “castles in the air” (they both use that exact phrase), yet whose lives both turn out differently than they had hoped, although Jo’s outcome is much happier. Both also adore a sweet, gentle, sickly young girl (Jo’s sister Beth/Rodolfo’s love interest Mimí) whose death they both regard as the end of their own youth. Furthermore, both of their authors modeled them after themselves. Jo is more down-to-earth than Rodolfo, though, and I’m not sure if they’d be friends or hate each other – Jo would definitely be indignant to learn how Rodolfo emotionally abused and broke up with Mimí because he couldn’t bear to watch her die, when she herself nursed Beth day and night through both of her illnesses and never left her side. But it would be an interesting meeting.

@fairychamber, @thatvermilionflycatcher

[teamhawkeye]

unfiltered and massively spoiler filled thoughts on RE8 below the cut [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]:

The Good

The first half of the game

The initial village segment and the castle portion and even “the house in the mist” sections were all pretty taut and well put together. i loved exploring the castle - was more than a little disappointed that you get locked out after Alcina’s boss fight, i didn’t explore it fully D: - and the unexpected terror of Donna’s section really pulled me out of the sense of comfort i had started to fall into, right as i was saying to myself “this hasn’t been scary at all”

The return of some series high notes

Revisiting things in previous Resident Evil games is not always a bad thing. I really enjoyed the return of weapon customization and treasures, those were aspects i enjoyed in RE4 and RE5. The return of the Merchant, in the form of the Duke, was welcome as well. The Duke is a G - he’s a good guy and i respected him most

Graphics, scenery, etc.

It’s a pretty game to look at, there’s no getting around that. I liked the set pieces, especially the Castle portion

Ammo crafting

Now this was something i greatly enjoyed. There are often times you get too much ammo for the gun you use least or you run out of ammo in harder difficulty levels. Being able to collect scrap material and make your own ammo was a very nice addition that i greatly appreciated

The Bad

(some of these are going to be personal opinions about the storytelling and narrative choices, so be prepared for that)

Pacing and direction

RE7 was a return to the series’ “roots”: so back to the footnotes of RE1 and RE2. If that was the case with 7, then RE8 did a speed run of RE3, Code Veronica, RE4, RE5, and RE6 all at once.

I know i said earlier revisiting hallmarks from previous games isn’t a bad thing, and it’s not - but while RE7 did it masterfully with sticking to mainly RE1 and RE2 and pulling in just a few old hallmarks, RE8 went absolutely buck wild in trying to cram in as many past enemy types and encounters as possible. A callback to one standout enemy is one thing, ala the Stalker type that is Mr. X, Nemesis, and Ustanak that Lady Dimitrescu also serves as...but then also the giant water monster from RE4, the Executioner of RE5, the “chainsaw” enemies (here, drills instead) of RE4, RE5, and RE6. hell, even the Lycans after a time started to feel very Las Plagas-esque in their ability to use weapons and track and coordinate. And you can’t tell me you didn’t see very similar designs/similarities between Miranda’s boss battle that you did with Alexia’s in Code Veronica...

The pacing started off solid with the initial few segments, but quickly seemed to lose its footing once it oscillated violently between wildly different styles of play and storytelling and didn’t regain its stride the rest of the game. One moment, it’s classic RE. The next, it’s P.T. + Outlast. The next, back to “a mash up of action and horror, leaning more on action” styles of RE4 + RE5. Then the finale straight up started to feel like an entirely different game before you reached that final boss fight - it felt like i was jerked in one direction one minute, and a completely different one the next

There is a lot of exposition and explaining that doesn’t happen until legit the last 45 or so minutes. Not new for the series to withhold information until the back half of the game, but there was legit almost no build up to the very sudden plot bombs that got dropped successively in the last throes of the story. Previous games rewarded you with fragments at a fairly even pace - i felt like all of RE8′s story gets dropped on you in a single monologue and a handful of notes just before the endgame

I’m not even gonna go that deep into how hard it was to keep up with all the different infection methods the mold managed to have - it was just A Lot and i’ve played a lot of Resident Evil in the past, so i know just how many different ways a single pathogen can have on humans and animals...and it still felt excessive

I honestly felt like the third segment with Moreau wasn’t even necessary. they really played up these “four lords” to not have them do a whole lot of anything. and i know there’s always been mini bosses before you actually reach the final Big Bad, but seriously, Moreau’s segment can be blitzed through in a span of 20 minutes or so first playthrough. the castle segment with Dimitrescu was solid, the house segment with Donna was nightmare fuel, lmfao, but still engaging and challenging. by the time you get to the third and sprint right through, you’re left wondering what the point of it even was. you can tell that was the least cared about narrative arc in the whole story

A giant point of note is that a huge chunk of RE8′s story could have been avoided or altered had Chris just actually fucking spoken to Ethan at the start about what the fuck was going on. And for him not to is completely unlike Chris past RE5 and RE6, that made no narrative sense whatsoever. Just another opportunity to pile on some more trauma and guilt onto Chris’ shoulders by making him “responsible” for Ethan being pushed to far and dying as a result

“Ethan actually ‘died’ when first meeting Jack Baker and was completely taken over by mold, it’s a big secret to everyone but Mia. also, he’s gone too far, there’s no saving him, he had to die”

You’re going to tell me that Ethan still being infected or impacted by the mold from RE7 is some big secret??? did the BSAA not run tests on him and Mia to make sure they were back to normal levels??? how do they not know?!? the government was able to figure out that Sherry’s exposure to the G Virus altered her permanently and study her healing capabilities, how the fuck was that not the same with Ethan???

Also, how is it that the mold’s impact on him is so much higher? he was at the Baker estate for like, 2 days max and while, yes, he did sustain some serious damage, he never fell prey to Eveline’s control and showed absolutely no signs of infection outside of being able to heal/use his hand after it was chopped off. and depending on how you played RE7, the only major injury he sustains aside from probable bruising or broken bones is that hand being cut off as mentioned before

You’re also going to tell me of the number of Resident Evil characters who have been infected with viruses and parasites and what have you and have been cured or had the negative effects negated, Ethan was the only one “too far gone” to be saved??? Jill got infected with T Virus, Claire has been infected by two separate viruses, Leon has survived a parasite infection, both Zoe and Mia were exposed to mold for years and seem to be okay...why is it that Ethan was the only one who couldn’t be saved? because he “died”? how in the world did he get infected so fast - he’d been there an hour, max! - that he was able to be revived in the first place and it wasn’t even noticeable that he had changed at all???

“the BSAA can’t be trusted anymore, they’re involved in shady shit, like deploying bioweapons into battle”

we already went through this a bit back in Revelations 1 with the blackmailed director and double agents. but to full on go “well, the entire organization is now dirty” after it was legit founded by Chris, Jill, and Barry to combat bioterrorism really sits wrong with me. all i can think is that they are running out of villains at this point and now are poising the BSAA to be a Big Bad in the future. which, again, doesn’t sit right with me

Retconning

Tying Ozwell E. Spencer back to Miranda wasn’t such a huge dealbreaker for me, but it is a bit obnoxious to now have to go back and amend “he came up with the idea for Umbrella and its pursuits with Marcus and Ashford, its other founding members” to “well, he didn’t actually come up with the idea for Umbrella and its research with Marcus and Ashford, he already had the idea from his time spent with Miranda uwu”

More so, the retconning around Eveline is a bit of a pain in the ass. So she only came about as a result of Miranda crossing paths with the Connections and giving them some of her mold to work with? And Eveline was only a failed experiment to Miranda in her attempt to be able to transfer her daughter’s essence/subconscious/whatever into a living child? And there are pictures of ‘10 year old” Eveline in Miranda’s possession - how come Evie didn’t have any memory of her at all (speaking of Evie, why the fuck did she appear in 8 briefly as a hallucination [?] to explain to Ethan his condition???)

How are you going to try and tell me that some village from prior to the 19th century was using the “Umbrella” symbol and Spencer just snatched it for himself? that was just stupid, honestly - even more stupid how Ethan didn’t recognize the symbol, despite flying off in a Blue UMBRELLA helicopter at the end of RE7

Mocap and cutscenes

Was it just me or did parts of this game look severely unpolished compared to RE7??? some parts looked good - like the Dimitresus all seemed to be rendered very well. It became very noticeable to me in the back half of the game, mainly with Chris and Mia, but a little with Heisenberg too, where their mouths didn’t match up with the dialogue a lot and they looked a lot less put together than previous scenes and characters. Mia in particular, i was struck by how much better her mocap seemed in RE7 compared to RE8. Maybe because there was a bigger ensemble cast in 8 that they spread themselves a little too thin in that regard?

[mor-beck-more-problems]

[meta] What, if any, games, movies, books, tv shows, etc. have you drawn influence from for your character?

// Okay SO the Morgan concept came from wanting to create someone who had a journey into the world of death without naturally possessing easy to access to death within her. I had just finished binge-reading The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle back to back and was consequently taken by the idea of a lone survivor of a cursed, troubled family.

GLOW Season 3 had just finished, and while I was batting around ideas around temperament, the kind of determinedly upbeat in the face of misery temperament Ruth Wilder has came to mind as a great contrast to such a grim backstory. This connection also fed into my determination that Morgan should have a much greater capacity for darkness than one might guess from a first meeting. The cheerful, casual, open affect also gave me the chance to make a big stylistic departure from my last RP character. In leaning into my gif resources and clumsily trying to write a character with more comedic potential I dropped a lot of time into finally watching Community and taking on some of Annie Eddison’s snappy quirks, especially when it came to constructing Morgan’s Etsy/Totally Normal persona.

I was really drawn to the way The Haunting of Hill House TV Series handled ghosts with emotional rather than mechanical logic and wanted to apply this to Morgan’s dealings with her past as well. #itried. 

Subconscious influences include Willow Rosenberg, 19th-century gothic literature and its tropes, and any movie about mommy issues that I’ve ever seen (Carrie and Black Swan come to mind, with their high-strung and well-meaning protagonists). Also, “Mama Who Bore Me.” from Spring Awakening.

[sparklyjojos]

CARNIVAL DAY recaps [2/13]

Today’s recap: Lots of monkeys and a nagging grandma figure, or: Yasha’s adventures in his hometown.

--

FIFTH ILLUSION

05 Oct 1996 — 18 Oct 1996

--

Yasha’s ancestor Inugami Sahei was a poor orphan, who at the age of seventeen was taken in by a Shinto priest. Later in life Sahei became a wealthy businessman known as the Silk King of Japan. His death shortly after World War II and the outrageous will he left led to a series of murders... 

The famous Inugami Family Murder Case just like the Saimon Family Murder Case was one of the Ten Great Crimes of the Showa period. It was even described in detail in Yokomizo Seishi’s book The Inugami Clan [which is an actual classic mystery. It has been translated to English and is also known under the name The Inugami Curse. This recap has a few tiny spoilers as to who survives in that book.]

The Inugamis weren’t quite as influential in 1996 as half a century earlier, but the people of their town Nasu still felt respect for them. Sometimes curious mystery fans came to see the famous tragic family’s house for themselves.

Like every other place in the world, Nasu was impacted by the Crime Olympics, the death rate in the town rapidly increasing. Several people spotted a giant person in a monkey mask walking around at night, perhaps on his way to killing townsfolk. Whether or not this Monkey Mask was actually a part of RISE, catching them would certainly put the people at ease. The mayor himself asked Yasha to investigate, and Sayo was as nagging as ever about him staying home for a while, so whether Yasha wanted it or not, he had to keep living in Nasu for now.

Juku told him on the phone that perhaps this Monkey Mask was connected to an ongoing serial killer case targeting police officers in Kyoto. Each week three victims would be murdered, the first body found without eyes, the second without tongue, and the third without ears, clearly symbolizing the three wise monkeys. Juku doubted the Monkey Mask and the Three Monkeys Killer were the same person, but Yasha should definitely check what’s going on.

The media quickly caught on to Yasha's return to town and kept talking about how the young genius was pursuing the Monkey Mask. The attention was becoming so bothersome that Yasha resorted to change his clothing style and wear sunglasses around town… which didn’t help much, as the silver hair was a dead giveaway.

All those monkey cases made Yasha think about his family’s old servant, Saruzou [the saru written with the kanji for “monkey”; the English translation of The Inugami Curse simply calls him Monkey]. Saruzou had once cared for their garden and was known for making wonderful chrysanthemum dolls. During the Inugami Family Murder Case, Saruzou saved Yasha’s grandmother Tamayo countless times, so in a way Yasha owed his very existence to the man. Saruzou disappeared some time before Yasha’s birth. Tamayo even ordered a chrysanthemum doll portraying him to be made in his honor.

One possible solution to the Monkey Mask case was that Saruzou came back and patrolled the town at night, trying to keep the Inugamis safe from potential attackers. That strongly built man even without a mask had an uncannily simian face.

Yasha kept hearing about new sightings of the Monkey Mask, so he sneaked out the window at night to walk around the town (Sayo would stop him and preach about danger if she ever saw him trying to leave normally). He honestly wondered how Juku was able to wear sunglasses at night, as they made it difficult to see anything.

When Yasha woke up from a nap one October day, he found a piece of paper tucked behind Kanaihidetaka’s collar. The message said:

Do not wander at night. Inugami house in danger.

— The Man in the Shadows

Yasha recognized this signature. During the Inugami Family Murder Case, one of the people involved wrote a certain important note and signed it as “the man in the shadows”. But if it really was the person Yasha thought of, they could have just warned him directly. Besides, not even Sayo knew about his nightly escapades. Did the message mean that Yasha’s wandering would bring danger, or that there was already a danger present and Yasha should keep watch over the family?

Yasha had no idea what was going on, but decided to keep sneaking out to investigate. That very night he spotted the Monkey Mask and tried to pursued him, soon joined by the local Shinto priest Hiyama, but the mysterious giant got away.

--

SIXTH ILLUSION

19 Oct 1996 — 01 Nov 1996

--

In the morning Yasha talked with Hiyama about the sightings. According to the priest, his trusted friend had seen the Monkey Mask head towards the shrine a few nights earlier. The friend woke Hiyama and they searched the grounds together, but found no one, as if the man simply disappeared. Last night Hiyama heard someone walking on the gravel path outside, saw the Monkey Mask and trailed him all the way to the town, where he lost sight of him for a good while. Then he walked into Yasha and they chased the suspicious man together.

News came later that a murder had taken place near where Yasha first saw the Monkey Mask. Could he have killed someone in that short time after Hiyama lost sight of him?

--

In the beginning of October, Juku called Yasha to say that Yaiba Somahito had kidnapped a boy and fled the country, an event just as surprising and shocking as all the disappearances. Tsukumo Nemu was ordered to ride the Trans-Siberian Express and catch Yaiba half-way through Russia.

Just days later, on October 5th, the ninth Billion Killer case happened to target Yaiba’s train. The ground suddenly bulged underneath the tracks breaking them, making the train fly out like from a ramp and land in Lake Baikal. Thankfully Hanto Maimu had predicted that something would happen in Russia and rescue teams were gathered near the lake at the time, so they could pull out the passengers (and a skull of the Billion Killer) from the wreckage.

A week later, on October 12th, another case happened at Loch Ness. The only surviving witness died soon after claiming they had been attacked by Nessie. Recovered video footage showed a long-necked something that attacked the gathered people and destroyed Urquhart Castle. The tenth skull of the Billion Killer was found at the scene.

On October 19th, a Robo-Ship identical to the one that had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle suddenly appeared in the Niagara Falls. While sudden, the event didn’t kill anyone. No passengers were find inside the submarine, but the eleventh skull of the Billion Killer was recovered. This was the first time Hanto Maimu’s prediction was off, most likely because she would give birth soon.

On October 26th, thirteen people including the Cali Cartel’s boss were found shot in a hideout in the Amazon Jungle. According to a woman called Fabian who was at the scene, a strange man somehow escaped that locked room situation and took away the Billion Killer skull somewhere.

--

Thanks to contact with Juku, Yasha learned more details that the media kept quiet about.

A couple days before the Trans-Siberian Express derailed, many electric traction posts had been destroyed, forcing Yaiba’s train to switch from an electric engine to a diesel. That was the very reason why the train kept going even when the mysteriously bulging patch of ground broke the tracks. Right after the train went flying, the raised ground settled back down like nothing happened. It was possible that someone could have toppled the traction posts to force the train engine switch, but how they made the ground move remained unexplained.

The Nessie footage was found not to have been altered in any known way. It was interesting how when the monster was shot at, it didn’t seem to get wounded at all.

The Robo-Ship that showed up in the Niagara Falls was confirmed by the UN to be the very same that had gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle, an easy thing to check considering the Robo-Ships were experimental arsenal ships and very few had been made. The entire crew including Yomiko was still missing. While it was possible to steer an empty submarine remotely, getting it into Niagara Falls in that way was improbable.

As for the cartel shooting case, that man who took away the skull had used a Blue ID Card registered to Amagi Hyouma, but was apparently an imposter, as the real Hyouma had been in Japan at the time of the incident.

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Around that time, Juku told Yasha about his plans to visit Jounosuke in Ryuuguujou. He planned to go there with Nemu and Fumonji Jouka, as well as Christmas Mizuno and Hikimiya Yuuya who were about to return from France. Yasha had to stay home, but asked to pass his regards to Jounosuke and prayed for his survival.

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SEVENTH ILLUSION

02 Nov 1996 — 15 Nov 1996

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Sayo had been working for the Inugamis since over a decade before Yasha’s birth. He didn’t know her age, but she had been school friends with Hiyama the priest, so she would have to be in her fifties. Most people called her Nekoma [猫魔, literally “cat demon”], which Yasha suspected came from her love for neko-manma (a dish made from leftover rice), or perhaps was a joke about how a “cat demon” would work for the Inugamis, “dog gods”. Asked about her real last name, Sayo just answered that she had forgotten it.

Yasha tried stealthily asking Sayo about Saruzou, but she instantly guessed that he actually wanted to know about the possible connection with the Monkey Mask. Sayo had known Yasha since his birth and so was able to tell what he thought at all times. She claimed that when you’re as old as she was, using all the life experience you have is in itself a sort of a detective reasoning method.

Yasha tried asking his grandmother Tamayo some questions. She told him that Saruzou had passed away a few years earlier, and that there were two chrysanthemum dolls of Saruzou—one made by the man himself shortly before his disappearance and portraying him in his old age, and a later replacement portraying him in his youth.

When Yasha then found the older doll in the storage, he discovered it was lacking its monkey-like head.

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On November 2nd, a strange case happened in Indonesia when an old blind man walking through Borobudur tripped over a skull of the Billion Killer, fell down the stairs and died. The skull was then taken away from the scene by someone. What looked like a strangely trivial incident turned out to be very complicated indeed: the man didn’t actually trip over the skull, but miscalculated his path when the stairs had somehow grown a single step more. While only one person died, the mystery was just as mind-boggling as the other Billion Killer cases.

On November 9th, an Air France Jumbo Jet suddenly disappeared both from the sky and from the radars, only to reappear right over a major Parisian street on a collision course with the Arc de Triomphe. Quick attempt at an emergency landing let some passengers escape before the impact, but the event still resulted in over a thousand dead and nearly five thousand injured. Once again a Billion Killer skull was found.

Yasha was a bit too busy with the Monkey Mask to really think about these cases, and Juku didn’t call him much because of his visit to Ryuuguujou.

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In order to solve the Monkey Mask case, Yasha decided to use his insomnia reasoning, which required him to go several days without sleeping. It always worked the best around 90-95 hours since the last awakening. Of course staying awake for this long required a lot of training and the right physical and mental preparations, and after a certain time Yasha would inevitably have to recover by sleeping for a long time, which would both reset the insomnia timer and put him out of commission for days.

And so Yasha stayed awake for a long time, trying to deal with the impulse to fall asleep, enduring Sayo still nagging him about leaving the house at night, and also marveling at how different his face in the mirror looked with a harsher expression, sunken eyes, and a somewhat disconcerting smile. Maybe the name Yasha really fit him, considering he really looked a little demonic when not sleeping.

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EIGHTH ILLUSION

16 Nov 1996 — 29 Nov 1996

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After eighty hours without sleep, the time was perfect for Yasha to head back to the shrine and solve the case. Sayo was still so determined to keep him in the house at night that she moved her mattress to his room and even escorted him to the bathroom, but he finally managed to outsmart her and sneak out.

Yasha and Hiyama met up at the shrine. They waited in hiding for a good hour until the Monkey Mask showed up, and then Yasha ran towards him from behind, caught his head—actually a mask made using Saruzou’s chrysanthemum doll—and pulled it off.

The Monkey Mask slowly turned around…

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On November 15th (so a few days and a lot of sleeping later), when Yasha explained the case at a press conference, he announced that the culprit was—no one. Monkey Mask the scary villain had never existed, and the case was mostly a mass illusion.

All those Billion Killer cases illustrated pretty well that while people would not believe a strange phenomenon without tangible proof, if a convincing proof did exist—like the Nessie recording—they would be happy to believe in the weirdest things.

There really was no proof for the Monkey Mask’s existence other than eyewitness testimonies, but the coincidentally rising crime rate was the “proof” that made people believe.

What many eyewitnesses “saw” was just an optical illusion, a game of shadows at night. Others have fallen victim to someone’s prank—here Yasha showed everyone a monkey-like mask and said he had found it on the ground by the local shrine, apparently discarded by the bored jokester. It was a weak piece of evidence, but Yasha stated that the only proof needed would be that no one would see the Monkey Mask ever again.

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As soon as Yasha got home, he watched the entire press conference, which proud Sayo had of course diligently recorded on tape. She kept talking about how cool Yasha looked on TV and how nicely he managed to hide the truth.

The Monkey Mask that Yasha had caught a few days ago was—well, no, not quite Sayo like his reasoning had told him. Instead it was a man he’d never seen before, apparently a mutual friend of Sayo and Hiyama. Sayo had come up with the whole Monkey Mask plan, started spreading rumors around the time Yasha came back to Japan from China, created the message from “The Man in the Shadows”, and even walked around in the mask, employing her friend or Hiyama to take over her role whenever she needed to stay home at night to create an alibi. Her plan had just happened to start right before the Crime Olympics, so everyone assumed a connection.

Sayo’s entire plan was simply to make Yasha stay at home with his family for as long as possible.

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After the Monkey Mask case was settled, Yasha finally left the town and headed towards Kyoto, where he would meet with Juku again after over two months of working separately.

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[>>>NEXT PART>>>]