#project desolation

[choiraugur]

old sketchy… au where sinclair gets fucked up by the flesh fear from tma

[trainwrecksys]

Aghhhh headcannons headcannons based in fanfiction ideas I’m writing this is based on that this is. Because of that. AGGQGHHH TW for mentions of abuse and gunss

[tinyratdeer]

This was a long project of mine, to design a dress for every Entity within TMA. With my limited knowledge of the series it turned out really fucking cool. Close ups of each one will be under the cut Outfit base was made by scarlett-knight on deviantart

[wouldtheybecomeafearavatar]

would heathcliff from limbus company become an avatar of the desolation?

[karamell-sweetz]

you know what? screw it. a rui for this trying time

[cauls-antique-pepperbox-pistol]

Happy birthday to the evilest man alive

Edit: oops wait I forgot he‘s dead

[hajihiko]

what’s your hc process? is it like, see something irl and go “oh that character would deffo do that” or like, just knowing they’d do something when you see them

Usually? No process just a stream of consciousness

[st-just]

Opinions on the novel and novella categories excluding Elder Race?

Okay so, uh, 3 months late finally answering this (sorry - but I DID read Elder Race in the meantime!)

So, novels-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine The central metaphor of how an empire can only understand something by consuming/assimilating it into itself was imo well-done, one of the better uses of a hive mind alien I've seen in a while. Mahit and (especially) Three Seagrass continue to be delightful. The whole palace drama plot in the City leaned a biiiiiit too close to 'the Empress is just and good! Sadly scheming ministers and self-interested officials have attempted to mislead her for their own ends' for my tastes, which absolutely made me start rooting for scheming vizer guy out of spite. Still kind of confused what happened to the Judiciary Minister who vanished 2/3 of the way into the first book without comment. Excellent read, would recommend

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers Absolutely my favorite thing Chambers has written, but that is a very low bar. There were a few pages of actual interpersonal conflict that wasn't just a silly misunderstanding! (Even if they had apologized and agreed to disagree by the end of the next chapter). In principle I approve of any sci fi with no human characters in major roles. Aeleon demography continues to give me a headache (how do you spend so much time on worldbuilding and just mess up the basic math?) - though honestly Pei's whole conflict over the societal expectation to have a kid would have had a bit more tension/drama to it in a setting where her species was legitimately endangered and at risk of extinction (the sheer angst potential!) Anyway, yeah, well-executed but Not For Me.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki I did, uh, not much like this book. In a 'spent a couple hours cathartically ranting about it on discord after finishing it' sort of way. The central romance didn't work, every character arc was perfectly predictable, the whole incessantly hammered home bit about the magic and wonder of home-cooked food just makes me want to gag, I can kind of see what Aoki was going for with the sci fi half of the worldbuilding but it just didn't work at all, and so on. Still not entirely sure what to make of the fact that if you did the 0.5 degree shift necessary to turn the finale into a Christian morality play the quirky alien family plays an identical structural role to where the angels would be. The cursed/demonic-violin repair lady was fun, though.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark This was fun! Nothing hugely ground-breaking and extremely trope-ey, but in a good way? Like the process was clearly 'buddy cop story in into steampunk urban fantasy Cairo' more than anything that evolved naturally out of the characters or setting. But like, eh? The finale involved a giant robot controlled by enslaved ifrit and a mad sorceress trying to restore the British empire attacking the city, nuance and subtlety clearly weren't the goals here. The central mystery was barely a mystery, though. You could pick out the villain by the end of the first act like three or four different ways. Still, yeah, great time. Very pulpy.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir If you don't know that this is by the The Martian guy going in, it will be extremely clear by the time you're 50 pages in. It's a writing style with a real personality bleeding through - if you don't like it, the book will I'm sure be torture. But anyway, I'm a sucker for first contact stories and properly weird but still sympathetic and agentic aliens, and that's the beating heart of the story so I mean, of course I enjoyed it. The science also all seemed plausible/not-obvious-bullshit to me, and Weir did a really good job of getting tension and drama without ever making anyone a villain, with all the threats being faced being natural/environmental. Fun read, assuming very high tolerance for technobabble and also magic amnesia that you don't apply anywhere near the standards of the rest of the books' science to.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan I mean the whole premise of 'mythic/low-fantasy retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty but with lesbians' feels like what you'd get if you simmered down my reading consumption of the last year or two and poured out the reduction. So like, yeah, of course I liked it! Probably would have been my vote for winner, though not at all sad that Desolation got it instead. As a character type, I really, really love the whole 'arranges everything to work out perfectly through desperate, furious scheming, then absolutely never breaks character and insists it must be providence and they're but a simple monk/scholar/whatever" so Zhu's whole bit there was just catnip to me. The whole melodrama in the mongol court was great, too. And how can you not love a book that ends with the heroine murdering the messiah in cold blood?

novellas-

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire The only other thing I'd read by McGuire before this was Middlegame, which may have given me unrealistic expectations but, like, this was fine? Or, like, I get the sense that this is very much a YA/Middle-grade book, insofar as it really feels like the literary equivalent of a tv special you'd watch with your kid niece and nephew because hey, it's not painful for you or anything? Really funny that this exists entirely independently of the apparently-a-real-thing cartoon Centaurworld, though.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky This was fun classic sci fi. Like, really classic - I kind of thought 'fantasy setting that's secretly a post-apocalyptic sci fi setting where all the 'magic' and 'monsters' are just poorly understood hypertech' went of fashion with the millennium. Anyway I adore things that play with POV and have different people see the same events and process/interpret them radically differently, so the whole book was catnip that way, and it managed to authentically feel like just a small slice of a vaster, weirder universe, and both deuteragonists really work for me. Don't have a solid pick for my preferred winner but this is one of the two I'm torn between.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard First and so far only thing by de Bodard I've read, which I should probably fix given how big a name she is. Anyway, this was fun! Nothing too groundbreaking, but that is 100% down to my reading habits rather than, like, 'lesbian court drama in a fantasy analogue of an asian country under threat of colonization' is an over-filled niche, or anything (really the only surprising thing was that I hadn't read this already).

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente The other one I might have voted for. On the level of stories she's a bit hit and miss but on the sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph levels Valente is seriously one of my favorite writers working, and this was no exception. Just an absolute delight to read. Also, 'post-apocalyptic magical realism on the city-sized garbage heap floating in the ocean populated by a culture of survivors after the world drowned' is just a great premise. And my shriveled husk of a soul appreciates just committing to the character study and the ruin and the elegy without giving into the urge to make a grand redemptive quest of it all.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I, uh, liked this significantly less than Galaxy and the Ground Within. Utopias are basically necessarily didactic but, like, you really don't have to lean all the way into literally having the heart of the story be conversations between the protagonist and a sacred and innocent alien whose always correct about everything. Also the whole 'we 100% could be immortal but we chose not to because, like, nature or something. Aren't we so amazing?' thing with the robots is bullshit. Which, combined with the entire aesthetic of the world just left be feeling peevish and asking questions which really weren't the point (Where are the mines? The foundries? You can't make solar panels or modern antibiotics in a basement workshop! And you sure as hell can't cobble together and repair fully mobile and sapient robots in a cave with a box of scraps.)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow So it's not that this was bad, exactly. But, like, I feel like it should have come out sometime in the '90s? (Okay without the explicitly gay bits but that's a matter of a few sentences tbh). Like, the deadline for metafictional feminist retellings of classic fairtails being genuinely novel or subversive was sometime before Disney got in on the game, sorry. Also, like, I'm sure it's just down to me being a weird morbid kid, but the whole shocking revelation about how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty myth is was, like, something I knew before I hit puberty? Only other thing of Harrow's I've read was the Ten Thousand Door's of January and I'm really, really disappointed comparing them, honestly. (Also, as a general rule I dislike anything where it's very clear whether you're supposed to like or trust a character from the scene they're introduced and this is never wrong)

In other categories L’Esprit de L’Escalier should obviously have one novelette, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" short story, Terra Ignota series, and Monstress comic, based off the foolproof criteria of 'those are the ones I've read'

[straightuppotato-art]

OC-tober Day 7: Personality

It's!!! Some lil love interests from my wip!!! Quick blurbs on their personalities under ze cut!

Raya (she/they): Have you seen that post about sun-coded characters being like a raging burst of passion and joy and brightness. Yeah, that's Raya!! She's my ambitious wildfire who's going to change the world!!!!!

Bastian (he/him): is straight up a tree. He's sturdy and quiet!! And he's supportive and!!!! He's just so sad LMAO an absolute weepy willow lil guy

Noa (gender selectable, he or she): My little guy goes with the flow!! He's very creative and is a hugeeeee dreamer <3 He lovesss his daughter more than anything and he also loves traveling! Uhhhh he's also depressed <3

Cass/ia/n (gender selectable, they or he or she): MY LOVE!! They're a meanie pants <3333 The connection with water comes from her charm + natural ability to... slowly erode your patience lmao <3 Sure, he's whiny and annoying, but have you also considered they're canonically the hottest 💕

[sudden-stops-kill]

desolation

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[archive-of-fear]

Name: Scorched Girl 

Source: Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina 

Category: Avatar/Creature (depending on your definition) 

Alignment: The Desolation 

Description: Scorched Girl is an Abnormality, an inhuman creature born from the collective human consciousness, one of many contained by Lobotomy Corporation and used for the creation of energy. There’s little directly stated about her backstory, but it seems that much like the Little Match Girl she’s based on, she had dreams of a happier life she saw in the lit matchstick’s flame, but either became overzealous in her attempts to make the dreams last longer and enter the happy world she saw within, jaded at the people around her who were happy while she wasn’t, or some mixture of both. In any case, she burned herself to death, possibly taking the rest of her town with her. Upon breaching, she will target a random employee and attempt to self-detonate in their vicinity, often killing other employees standing nearby in the process. This is implied to be done out of resentment, as reflected by a few of her Abnormality quotes:

“I am coming to you. You, who will be reduced to ash like me.” (LobCorp)

“If I must perish… Then I’ll make you meet the same fate.” (Ruina)

Additionally, here’s a quote taken directly from her Abnormality story log:

Excerpt from Abnormality Specialist Doctor ’s Research Log> “The charred body represents the child’s crumbled hope, while the ever blazing flame represents the obsession for affection. It’s always in conflict with the contradiction between these two.” “We paid a boatload and that’s all they have to say?”

Finally, here’s the flavor text for her unique E.G.O. equipment, Fourth Match Flame:

The archetype was already charred at the moment of extraction. Although the exterior is scorched, it has no adverse effects on the E.G.O’s performance. The ashy design reminds one of the hatred against all the merry things in the world, and the desire to burn it all. The light of the match will not go out until it has burned away the happiness, warmth, light, and all the other good things of the world, so there’s no need to worry about it being quenched.

– Lobotomy Corporation Artbook

[livewildlivefree]

Happy Birthday Creator and the Desolate Paradise Blog!

Happy Birthday to the Desolate Paradise Project!

This project would have never been possible except for an odd birthday gift I received years ago that inspired me to create this AU.

A simple idea that I never thought would've got this far.

I'm glad for the progress I've made so far and have followers that enjoy the content and even inspired a few to create their own.

I'm quite thankful to share this AU and art content I provide, and appreciate everyone loving it and sharing it.

So thank you guy's, this project would never become possible if it wasn't for you.

The Desolate Paradise Project will continue...

See you guy's later and hope you all have a wonderful day!

[corvidarcana]

I’m pretty godawful at making cool looking covers jfjsjfs but whatever. Desolation issue 3 cover aint my best work but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[wouldtheybecomeafearavatar]

Der Freischütz from Lobotomy Corporation for the Desolation, pls? (sorry if i submitted this already memory isnt the best)

YES LOBOTOMY CORPORATION!!!! THANK YOU ANON I LOVE YOU -Mod Alchemie ⚖️

[balkanradfem]

oh apologies! im the 4 silly websites anon. you were saying you wanted to host 4 websites somewhere because your old free website host shut down. i was just wondering what those websites were

oh! It's just my personal websites, you know how you could make a website about anything back in the day and it was ~normal~?

Like back when we were using msn messenger to speak, we would often add custom emoticons, and I was good at making them, so I had a whole gallery of custom-created pixel animated emoticons, appropriate for expressing the entire range of human emotions. One of the websites was just all of my pixel animations and emoticons, it was so cute. It's the only way not to lose them, because I frequently lose all of my data.

Other stuff were just as personal, photographies of flowers that grew in my old home, portfolio with paintings, images I created for a project and felt they deserved a website of their own, and there were some for college projects.

I can't link any of that because it can be tied to my other online identity, and we can't have that, for obvious reasons.