#the rifter series

[achillean-heartbeat]

do any of my mutuals know the rifter series?

[itachi86]

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books Presents: The Rifter #1 - Rifts: City Creation

Ready to build your own city in Rifts? 🏙️ Discover innovative city-building rules in "The Rifter #1" by Palladium Books. Transform your gameplay with our detailed video overview. Click here! #RiftsRPG #CityBuilder #TheRifter

The Rifter #1 As a wise master unveils ancient city-building secrets, so too does our latest video guide you through the new urban landscape rules introduced in “The Rifter #1” for Rifts. Understand the foundations that make a strong city and the strategies that protect its people. Let your journey to becoming a master city planner begin here, where knowledge becomes power and creation shapes…

[larissa-the-scribe]

Behold, Thaendric!

Another character who was sorely in need of an update/color/actual ref.

This masked vigilante is going through the multiverse and trying to undo the damage that his adoptive dad has done, and is planning on being an angsty loner about it (fate has other plans).

[larissa-the-scribe]

adsfjks I love this sm, like the coloring and the framing and also the everything asdlkjf

An illustration I did for a scene in the story @larissa-the-scribe is writing. The first version is more accurate to the setting, the second is easier to see lol You know those therapy sessions at 3am...

[christian-oc-tournament]

Please vote based on the picture AND the description!

Doctor Victor P. Henley [Empire Reimagined—-a Star Wars au series @musewrangler]

This man is always the smartest person in the room. No no. THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM. Ahem. That singular eyebrow raise that Henley gives has been known to reduce medical interns and junior doctors to floods of tears. There is thus a reason that Lord Vader chose Henley as his personal physician. This Doctor has no karks to give---even for a Dark Lord of the Sith [ESPECIALLY for a Dark Lord of the Sith] and voices his opinion, medical or otherwise, whenever he wishes. Ultimately however, he is also loyal down to his molecular structure and shows that he cares about the crew of the Executor by giving them the best doctor in the galaxy. [Himself, in case that wasn't clear]

Eabennor (Benn) Bethaz [Rifters @larissa-the-scribe]

Grew up trained to be a super-powered weapon, but then got too close to someone on an infiltration mission so now he's a loving husband and father (whoops). Used to be Angsty (tm), now widely considered to be the Voice of Reason(tm)—but that's mostly because of the people he's being contrasted against. 

[wiltkingart]

What queer books do you recommend?

oh honey i have a whole rec page here if you're up for anything, but i mostly read adult m/m fiction. lots of weird and old stuff with dark tones more often than not. if you want some specific titles as a flavor list, here's a few favorites! i'll link their storygraph pages so you can read their synopses too:

Fantasy: The Rifter by Ginn Hale (dark fantasy featuring a romance that spans years and time and space in decaying world with a destroyer god, and bones. so many bones. has one of the most interesting and well written story structures i've encountered. very moody and dark, hits just right).

Scifi: Body after Body by Briar Ripley Page (erotic adult scifi novella with transmasc and transfem MCs. dreamlike and grotesque, delicate and stomach churning, it's about a group of mind-wiped laborers tending genetically engineered mutant bodies.)

Historical: The Still by David Feintuch (my book series of all tiiiiiiime. it's fantasy too but mostly medieval military fiction. don't even talk to me about Rodrigo if you're not ready to be hit with a twelve page verbal essay i'm not joking, that is a threat. not a typical romance, expect heartbreak and plenty of it and to never recover.)

Horror: Hexslinger series by Gemma Files (planning a reread of this one soon to see if it still holds up but this series has stuck with me like a fly to molasses. it's a fucked up time full of desperation, Mayan gods and godessess, faggotry, blasphemy, and witchery) go with the Bound in Flesh anthology instead if you want good trans body horror, or Down by Ally Blue for deepsea suspense horror.

Contemporary: All for the Game by Nora Sakavic (you probably know about this classic but for me it still tops most everything else i've read. it's got sports, mafia drama, and trauma). for something a little different (but still traumatic) try Mo Du / Silent Reading by Priest (dark mystery set in China that follows several disturbing cases and the psychology behind them + romance between a detective and a rich pretty boy)

but yeah i talk about books a lot on my personal/main blog @wiltking (in lieu of updating my actual rec pages these days, it seems) if you ever want more real time recs! i'm a book guy. i like books a normal amount :)

[star--nymph]

the weekly inquisition book club has commenced; the book is swords and shields chapter 14 by Cassandra's request; she goes on an eighteen minute rant about the Knight-Captain being demoted and how the Commander's actions are antithetical to his character arc. Dorian has notes and they're all critical of the book; he gets into a screaming match with Cass just for the thrill of it. Josie mentions that she finds that the romance scenes having been lacking lately--Bull adds he wonders if the main love interest even know where the clit is. Sera is on the rifters; she's stolen Cass' copy and started doodling in the margins--most of them are about her getting anally fisted (she made sure to give her the best cheekbones). Vivienne is simply there for the wine and the drama; she finished the entire series and already wrote to Varric. Right before Cass can reach over and throttle Dorian for saying the Knight-Captain is unrealistically written as woman, the door to the tavern opens up. Someone shuffles in wearing a Lion helmet and takes his seat next to Bull. He clears his throat and says his name Dullen Wutherford. He also thinks the romance scenes were lacking and have very little development between that and the smut.

somewhere in another tower, varric is writing the world's most awkward sex scene out of pure spite--he uses the term 'flower' for vagina at least twenty seven times and sips with his ale with glee.

[innominaterifter]

I realized that essentially all of my favorite book characters have autistic or ADHD traits. Taylor Hebert (Worm) and she's the same from the funfic "A Wand for Skitter", Murderbot ("The Murderbot Diaries" by Martha Wells; there is also a coincidence in my agenderness and grey/asexuality), Lenie Clarke and Ken Lubin (Peter Watts' rifter book series), Harry Potter and Hermione from HPMOR ("Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Eliezer Yudkowsky), Miles Vorkosigan ("The Vorkosigan Saga" by Bujold), Ciaphas Cain and his loyal assistant Ferik Jurgen (Warhammer 40,000, Sandy Mitchell).

Overall, this is not surprising given my personal history of ADHD and autism. The funny thing is that I began to reflect on the topic of my own autism precisely after I read the Murderbot Diaries and came across a discussion of the character’s autistic traits. I was undermined from within by the thought, “What if all this bunch of coincidences are not just coincidences?”

Much was the same, but some things were not characteristic of autistic people, but at the same time, they were clearly not characteristic of the majority of people around me. I don’t remember the first time I heard about ADHD, but I immediately recognized some of my traits. When I read that ADHD and autism are often combined, I decided to take tests online first... and got high scores on both topics. Then, the doctor officially confirmed it for me. Bingo.

[lucrezianoin]

Okay I'm gonna reread the Rifter series

I read it years ago and I basically devoured it and loved it and adored it. I want to see if it stands the test of time (I mean not much time has passed but I remember nothing of the main plot... It was truly a fever dream)

I just remember that thinking about it makes me cry but I don't remember why

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Thank you for posting all those rare/out-of-print lesbian books!! Do you have any all time favorite romance or fantasy recommendations?

Aww you are welcome !! I’m so glad you enjoy them ! 😊

I do! I have some reviews for them on my blog under the tag “lesbians and gays of the past”

Favourite Romance:

- Galveston 1900 Swept Away by Linda Crist

- The Grase Widow by Nanci Little

Fantasy:

- The Rifter series by Ginn Hale

- The God Eaters by Jesse Hajicek

Thank you so much for popping in! I hope you have a wonderful day ♥️

[dreamofhircine]

okay so here is the 2023 books year-in-review, this is going to be v. long because I ended up reading & re-reading a lot of my backlog after rebuilding the bookshelves in our house. This is going to be roughly sorted, and I'll try and say a little bit about each thing.

Hazel Jane Plante

Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) - I adored this! It's a slimmer book, closer to a novella, but it was maybe my favorite piece this whole year. The central premise of this is that in a haze of grief after the death of her bestie a woman gets way too into their shared fandom and writes a combination of TV show fandom zine, obituary & love letter. The two-part narrative structure is something that Plante would go on to play w/ more in

Any Other City - also a great book! This is written as the memoir of a trans punk rock star split between her journal style letters in the 90s as she navigated an art scene as a woman who doesn't realize it yet, and then picks up again in the 2020s after her own celebrity was cemented.

Casey Plett

Little Fish - Really rad slice of life about a mennonite trans woman in Canada who has a lot of feelings about that. This feels more than anything like a strong expansion upon several of Plett's short stories in A Dream of a Woman.

A Dream of a Woman - I got lost in so many of the stories in this anthology, Plett writes the lives of these women so vividly it feels like you know them. You probably *do* know them.

A Safe Girl to Love - Plett's first anthology, recently re-published. I was not *as big* a fan of this one, but it still holds up very well and is a good example of her style generally.

The Locked Tomb - I am gonna talk about all three of these in one go, actually. These were really sweet, really nice, I really like the approach to necromancy as just sort of another kind of science or physical force, worked through a process very close to magic. I've been seeing art of these characters around for a long time now and it is nice to finally put a personality to the faces. The pool scene in GtNth especially really hit.

Gideon the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth

Nona the Ninth

Peter Watts - This is also gonna get a block review because so many of the things here are interconnected to one another. Starfish to Behemoth are all in The Rifters Trilogy, and Blindsight & Echopraxia are a pair. Watts has a really great way of tearing down the human brain and playing with all the ways that trauma can influence it, how adaptational quirks can be weaponized. Starfish is probably the single best way to get into his work, but if 'vampires in space' sounds more your speed then Blindsight has it covered.

Starfish

Maelstrom

Behemoth

Blindsight

Echopraxia

qntm

There Is No Antimemetics Division - This is a republish of qntm's large body of work on the SCP wiki, sharing the same name. This is really solid, and the use of narrative negative space is interesting.

Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories - A slim collection of short stories and an overall much better showing from qntm, no longer tied up w/ SCP stuff. The things that delve into the implication of human mind based AI constructs especially is really strongly written and will leave you thinking for a while after.

The Division - Broken Dawn is the older entry and did not really capture my attention very strongly, it felt phoned in more than anything else. Recruited & Compromised by contrast could stand on their own w/o The Division branding though both are very well integrated into the game, w/ events going back and forth between the two now that the game is getting more narrative content to it.

The Division: Broken Dawn

The Division: Recruited

The Division: Compromised

D&D - You can probably guess why I jumped into these and what game got me to do it. Drizzt is something I avoided for a very long time because of the associations in the fandom and that was probably not unwarranted tbh. I probably won't continue w/ the series after Exile. It is competently written but these things are creaking w/ their own age and just don't have enough going on to stand on their own unfortunately.

Drizzt: Homeland

Drizzt: Exile

The Devil You Know - Another entry in the Brimstone Angels series, which is my favorite of any of the longer running D&D series. Centered around the misadventures of a Tiefling Warlock and how she gets pulled into the big-dick-swinging matches between various devils trying to make their weird little power plays.

40K

Horusian Wars: Incarnation - This was stellar. Great look at the Inquisition and how insular and back-stabby it can be, I hope more comes from this.

Kasrkin - A mostly by the numbers book that was written entirely to promote the 'kasrkin vs necrons' Kill Team box that came out a bit back. Competent but doesn't have anything new or interesting to say.

Pariah - Eh. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either. Abnett has long been one of my favorite authors in general, not even just in 40k specifically, but I don't think it is controversial to say he has fallen off lately. Compared to his earlier stuff w/ the Inquisitors, hell even compared to stuff like that Horusian Wars book and Pariah just doesn't do enough and the whole Bequin sequence right now feels like it is mostly being done to shift things around in the meta-narrative rather than be good books that stand on their own feet.

The Armour of Contempt - I re-read this one recently and it was just as good as when I first picked it up in high school. Abnett is at some of his best here.

General Fiction (Unsorted)

The Archive Undying: The Downworld Sequence Book 1 - Homosexual activities in a sci-fi fantasy world once dominated by city-scale god-king AIs that went critically rampant a long time ago. This is a really great start to what I hope will be an excellent series.

The Darkness That Comes Before - Re-read after initially reading this when it was new and I was like a pre-teen. Definitely not a book a pre-teen should read and maybe some of that explains why I am like this now. Let's not look at that *too* closely, yeah? This still stands on its own after all these years, though I hear the series in general kind of flagged after a while. If you're into nihilist fantasy check it out.

Burning Chrome - Re-read and enjoyed yet again. Classic Gibson, lays the frame upon which the rest of his body of work would be built.

Pattern Recognition - Re-read this and it still holds up. Gibson is at his height here, calling shots that would start to land almost *immediately* after he published it. Reading this may re-orient your fashion sense entirely so be forewarned and have a bit of space in your wardrobe first I guess.

All You Need Is Kill - Another re-read! I got back into this after realizing that a lot of that traumatized mech pilot pornography I was writing drew so much inspiration for this. I still love the story, I still love the framing, I still love the short and brutal way it is written and the translation is very solid.

Wasteland: Stories of the Apocalypse - Yet another re-read. I originally read this in high school and I owe a great amount of creative debt to some of these stories, hugely influential works and I recommend picking this up.

This Shape We’re in - A tiny little novella by the author of Motherless Brooklyn (which is currently sitting in my 'to do' pile). There is no adequate way to describe this that wouldn't sound like a joke, it is Lethem's most unusual and maybe his best for that.

Poetry

In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth - Mostly translated poetry, this was solidly collected and a great example of Global(tm) Poetry.

One Hundred Apocalypses and other Apocalypses - More microfic really but I liked this. The different ways the world can end, be it physically from bombs or emotionally in a bad text message.

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound - Simply beautiful collection of work by torrin a. greathouse, I *adored* this.

Non-Fiction

Underlands: A Deep Time Journey - This was beautiful, simply put. A deep dive (hehe) into places beneath the earth and the people that spend more time beneath the surface than above it. I especially loved the travelogue in the cordoned off sections of the Paris catacombs, you can really feel the claustrophobia and danger of it all.

Bitch: The Female of the Species - I picked this up solely because it had a picture of a hyena on the cover. I do not regret that, it was great and that is something I seldom stay about pop-academic gender books.

Emergence: Labeled Autistic - Temple Grandin's first autobiography. This has been heavily dated in how she talks about being autistic and she has changed her views on this several times, to the point where depending on the version you pick up there may be several introductions from the author in a sequence reflecting on this. It is rare to see autobiographies from notable autistic women, it is rare for there to *be* notable autistic women, so I am really happy that I read this.

Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us - Mostly a photo book that I picked up while on a trip to MFABoston w/ my girlfriend. This is a great little table book if nothing else.

Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure - A somewhat dry but well researched dive into massive infrastructure projects and the death cult attitude that empowers them.

Queering Mennonite Literature - A university press publication, you know the drill w/ these. Good base to start from if you want to get more into the intersection of queer & menno literature, which is why I picked it up after reading a lot of Casey Plett's books.

David Graeber

Bullshit Jobs - Maybe the best that Graeber has been, and also an example of him leaning really hard into the pop-science aspect of his public persona. If you've got an office job that feels completely fake please read this.

The Dawn of Everything - Graeber's last work before his death and... Well I think it is really good, well written, broadly researched, but much like Debt you're going to either agree w/ his premise or not. There are some rather radical takes here. I highly recommend it though.

Debt: The First 5000 Years - There has been a lot of back and forth on this and there will never be a solid answer. I think the arguments made here are fairly strong, pretty convincing, but if you're involved in this academically in any way you're liable to have a lot of strong opinions one way or another as you read it.

LitMags

Clarkesworld: Every sci-fi enjoying homosexual has a Clarkesworld subscription these days so I don't have a lot unique to say about this. Great year for work, I love the regular infusion of translated works as usual, and I hope that the recent business hits they've taken don't impact it too hard. Definitely re-subbing.

Alaska Quarterly Review: There were some good entries to this but for the most part it kind of felt like an 'eating your vegetables' situation. I probably won't renew for the next year, but I don't *regret* picking it up this year either.

McSweeney’s: Solid as ever, though I found the 'halloween' issue they did to be kind of boring overall. Everything else was primarily hits, and I'll be carrying this forward next year.

[itachi86]

i forgot how funny the rifter series is

[legionofmyth]

Palladium Books Presents: The Rifter #1 - Nightbane: New Morphus Tables

Transform your Nightbane character with the new morphus tables in "The Rifter #1" by Palladium Books. 🌑 Explore how these changes can revolutionize your gameplay in our latest video. Watch here! #NightbaneRPG #TheRifter #RPGGaming

The Rifter #1 Like an ancient scroll revealing transformative powers, our video unveils the new morphus tables for Nightbane in “The Rifter #1.” This arcane knowledge grants you the ability to reshape your Nightbane character’s destiny with unprecedented depth. Let not this wisdom pass you by, for those who wield it will command the shadows and light. Click the image to claim your guide to the…

[larissa-the-scribe]

POV: you suddenly don't want to be watching the monitors at your supervillain boss's base

(another repost from the tournament. also I just like how it turned out)

[larissa-the-scribe]

Guys you should check out August's redbubble I have a sticker of this and it's so great I love it

"Break me with the truth.

Take all my fractions.

Shaping something new out of the fragments."

- Fractions by Juniper Vale

Lyn belongs to @larissa-the-scribe