#this setting has such lovely lovecraftian elements to play with

[honourablejester]

Blades in the Dark Crew Concept: The Motes of the Void (Moteys)

Okay. I just really want to sketch out a Cult crew. And I specifically want to sketch out a Cult crew on a theme of the Void Sea, the stars in the deep, leviathan blood, electroplasm, light in darkness, the radiant plants and eels that feed the city, the North Hook lighthouse, a radiant thing calling from the deeps. Not a leviathan. Something else. Because if I’m playing a cult, I’m playing a lovecraftian cult. And all the ingredients are already here!

So. A cult of a forgotten god. A god that is radiant, and sinister, and transcendent. A god that appears in dreams in the form of a radiant serpent or eel, but no mean thing like those found in the canals and fields of the Radiant Farms down in Barrowcleft, no creation of alchemy and electroplasm and leviathan blood. A thing that predates the leviathans. A titanic shining eel, swimming through the stars in the depths of the Void Sea. A thing that was released by the leviathans in the cataclysm that shattered the world and that, perhaps, created those stars in the depths of the Void Sea.

The Maw of the Void. A star of the deep that will swallow the world whole to remake it anew.

(We’re gonna do something so damn occult to that lighthouse. I just really wanna. It’s powered by leviathan blood. It’s a beam of eldritch light powered by the blood of demons shining hundreds of miles out to sea. There’s got to be a ritual that will turn that into a navigation beacon for something else, no?)

The Motes of the Void are a small group that have heard (felt) the calling of the Maw in our dreams. Perhaps initially we thought the figure we saw was the radiant wildlife of the farms, some human creation, and perhaps that is a test that the god sends, but the ones who came together to form our crew and cohort were the ones who reached a deeper communion and realised that the god was something far larger, far older, and far beyond the reach of human artifice.

Our initial reputation is, obviously, going to be Strange. We will be doing some very bizarre things.

The lair. I do think I want to be close to Barrowcleft initially. Many of us might have thought that the call was towards some strange creature in the farms at first, and so we gravitated southwards. But Barrowcleft itself is too clannish and insular for the likes of us, and the Ministry of Preservation too strong. Lets set our sights slightly northwards, somewhere more shadowy and genteel and accepting. Lets head to Silkshore, and the hill of dreamers that is Fogcrest. A small, abandoned house on one of the narrow, twisting stair-lanes of that venerable outcrop. Yes.

Our favoured operation type, at least initially, might be Augury. We want to attract our gods attention and counsel. We want to know what it needs of us.

For hunting grounds … I suspect our ‘hunts’ are going to be a bit more abstract. It’s not the places that matter so much as the materials. But nominally speaking, I’d say we’ll start in Silkshore itself, and the northern section of Barrowcleft along the river. But the gang we’re stepping on the toes of isn’t going to be the Wraiths, because although they work the same territory, they work very different sorts of jobs. No, I think the group we have to contend with will be either the Dimmer Sisters or Lord Scurlock, in their pursuit of arcane mysteries. Let’s say it’s the Sisters, as Scurlock tends to be more circumspect. And I say we don’t pay them off. These are riffraff playing with bottled spirits, while we pursue true majesty. We’re not going to kowtow to them!

For our special ability. There are several more practical, sensible options. But we’re not going to pick those. We’re going to go straight for Glory Incarnate. Our god sometimes manifests in the physical world. For its own inscrutable ends, of course, which may help or harm us as it wills, but who would worship a god expecting anything else? What could be a better sign of the truth of our faith than, say, a glowing eel appearing in a waterway to defend our retreat? Oh, would that we might earn such favour!

For crew upgrades. Cults automatically get Training: Resolve, and a Cohort, a small gang of Adepts. Adepts are scholars, tinkerers, occultists and chemists. Starting at Tier 0, we’ll only have one or two of them in it, but it’s good to gather a small circle of like-minded individuals. Ones who have dreamed the right dreams, and heeded them. To start, since we’re in Fogshore, lets say we have an occultist and a chemist. Cohorts have Edges and Flaws. Lets say our little coterie has the Edges of Loyal (can’t be turned against us) and Tenacious (won’t be deterred from a task), but the Flaws of Principled (each has their sticking point in terms of behaviour that they won’t cross) and Unreliable (they have day jobs, and aren’t always available to us).

For our two free upgrades. I think we want a Ritual Sanctum in the lair, which will function as a workshop for occult/arcane/sacred practices and rituals. And I think, since our god is a god of the deeps, we’re also going to want a boat. So a Boat House, with small boat, dock and storage shack. As for the factions impacted … We were always going to run into Lord Scurlock. Always. So I think that while acquiring the materials for our Ritual Sanctum, we happened to acquire several items that he was also interested in, earning his ire. We weren’t initially aware of this, but once made aware, in a much more intimidating fashion than the Dimmer Sisters managed, we were persuaded to give a Coin to mollify him slightly. And for the boat house … I think we keep it on the north shore of the Dosk in northern Barrowcleft, among the fisher folk on the eastern side of the Barrow Bridge. And I think we have a good reputation among those fisher folk, a sense that we’re good luck charms, so they helped us set it up. The Barrowcleft Citizenry have been decently helpful to us.

And then finally, our favourite contact. And look. Our god is a shining star in the depths of the Void Sea. We’re going to pick the astronomer. Bennett. A scholar at Doskvol Academy, studying Void Sea Navigation. An astronomer studying not just the stars above, but the stars below. Because perhaps they can be navigated by. And divined by. Perhaps they might show the shifting migration paths of leviathans? The Leviathan Hunters have a fervent interest in his research. And perhaps Bennett has caught glimpses of our god’s design in the course of his work. Enough to reach out because of it. Which has … annoyed. Certain other factions that had hoped that he might join them instead. I thought perhaps the Circle of the Flame, being jealous like that, but actually … Perhaps the Ministry of Preservation, instead? As part of their crusade to gain control of the Leviathan Hunters. Because that will dovetail nicely with Radiant Energy, with radiant eels, with the farms in Barrowcleft as well. Yes. Let’s say that Bennett, by his association, has won us the distantly benevolent gaze of the lords of the city, the Leviathan Hunters themselves, but also the aggravation of the Ministry.

(For those keeping track of factions, that puts us starting out at -1 with the Dimmer Sisters, Lord Scurlock, and the Ministry of Preservation, and +1 with the Barrowcleft Citizenry and the Leviathan Hunters. All subject to change, given that our god’s true goals are unlikely to align with most of them).

And there we are. The Motes of the Void (or Moteys, for short). A nascent cult of the forgotten god, the Maw of the Void, a radiant creature shining among the stars in the depths of the Void Sea. A god that might pull together the leviathans, the cataclysm, leviathan blood, radiant energy, the debt of blood that protects and feeds the city around us. A god that initially appeared in the form of a lowly, man-made, alchemical creature, one of the radiant animals that light our waterways and grow our crops and decorate the houses and aquariums of our nobles, but that truthfully is something much, much older, and bigger, and more cataclysmic. Perhaps there is a debt calling due for Doskvol. A debt of blood, and a debt of light, and a debt of life.

Also I just really want to do the occult thing with both the Radiant Farms and the North Hook Lighthouse. Because come on. They’re right there. You know? Heh.

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: Queer horror, part 1

We all like a good horror story, right? You know what's even better? A queer horror story!

A note: queer here does not necessarily mean “guarantee of an f/f or m/m ship with a happy ending”, but rather simply a significant presence of queerness. Some of the books feature no romance but has a same gender attracted/trans/ace spectrum lead, or features an m/f relationship with bisexual, trans or aro/ace characters, or simply features a world-building which is heavily queer inclusive in ways that don’t always compare to our own ideas of sexuality and gender. I have however disqualified works where the only queer presence is along the lines of “gay best friend” or a blink and you’ll miss it confirmation that never comes up again.

For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with * are my personal favorites. And as always, feel free to share your own recs in the notes!

If you want more book recs, check out my masterpost of rec lists!

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle*

Rose, like her parents, believes strongly that homosexuality is a sin, and holds great pride that her home town hosts Camp Damascus, a successful conversion camp for young teens. But Rose is also experiencing strange and terrifying things: memories of a beautiful girl, a demonic figure that shows up if her thoughts stray, flies crawling out her mouth. Something has happened in Rose's past that her parents won't speak of and that she herself can't remember, and Camp Damascus is at the center of it all. Sapphic, autistic main character, as well as a really cool take on demonic lore that is both inspired by and a subversion of christianity.

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland*

Young adult. Something happened to Iris Hollow and her two older sisters when they were little; after having gone missing, they were all returned with no memory of what happened and identical scars on their throats. Years have passed since then, and though seen as strange the girls still lead mostly normal lives - that is, until the oldest, Grey, goes missing, leaving strange clues in her path. As Iris searches for her, a strange man with horns starts stalking her and memories start to rise to the forefront in her mind. To save Grey, Iris will have to find out the truth of what happened all those years ago. Features wonderfully morally grey characters. Bisexual lead, but little to no romance.

Winter Tide (The Innsmouth Legacy) by Ruthanna Emrys*

Aphra and her brother are the only survivors after the government raided their home, Innsmouth. Their only living family are the amphibian people of the deep, whom they will one day join, but until then they are bound to land where they struggle to build new lives for themselves after the great loss of their home and loved ones. Then rumors start to spread of a russian agent seeking dangerous and ancient magic, forcing Aphra to involve herself as they try to stop it. Does contain horror elements but is generally a much more optimistic look on cosmic horror than most lovecraftian stories, told from the perspective of one of his monsters. Lots of focus on found family and rebuilding of community. Asexual main character (however I don’t think that becomes in-text confirmed until the sequel) and multiple queer characters in the supporting cast.

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Young adult. One year ago, Sara's sister went missing. Since then, Sara has drifted away from her friends, but when she receives a mysterious text inviting her to "play the game" - the same game that supposedly stole her sister away - Sara and her estranged friends all come back together to find her. Together they set off on a path that legend says appears only once a year, leading them toward the ghost Lucy Gallows and, hopefully, Sara's sister. Bisexual main character, told in a faux documentary style.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

A young pregnant woman flees a cult that left her body strange and changing in terrifying ways. Hiding from both a world wanting to oppress her and the cult seeking to force her back, she does her best to raise her children while trying to find out the truth of the cult and being pursued by a hunter in a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Bleak and scary, Sorrowland is a book that will creep under your skin with horrors both fantastical and very, very real.

Otherside Picnic (Otherside Picninc lightnovel series) by Iori Miyazawa

Sapphic light novel with a surreal and episodic horror vibe. Following the directions of an urban legend, university student Sorawo finds her way to a reality populated by horrifying creatures from ghost stories and modern urban legends (of which I’m sure you’ll recognize many). Here she teams up with fellow explorer Toriko, both to find out more about this strange world and to help Toriko find a missing loved one. Also available as a manga and (one season of) an anime. Sapphic.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Amrfield

Miri thought she lost her wife Leah when her deep-sea mission ended in a catastrophe. But Leah was miraculously returned to her - or so it seems. Because something happened down there, deep in the ocean, and whatever it was, Leah has brought it back with her. Surreal and strange, Our Wives Under the Sea will not answer all your questions, but it will give you a unique experience.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Novella. Alex Easton, retired soldier, travels to visit their childhood friends, siblings Madeline and Roderick Usher, after finding out that Madeline is dying. In the siblings’ rural, ancestral home, Madeline walks in her sleep and looks to be fading away, while around it wildlife seems to be possessed by a strange force. With the help of a mycologist and an American doctor, Alex attempts to save Madeline and reveal the truth of her illness. Nonbinary main character.

Alien: Echo by Mira Grant

Young adult. Twin sisters Olivia and Viola’s parents are both xenobiologists, bringing them all over the galaxy. Most recently they’ve settled on a new colony world to study its wildlife, but it proves more dangerous than they could’ve ever imagined. Under attack from alien monsters, the sisters must keep each other alive while also coming to terms with a dark family secret. Sapphic horror. Part of the Alien franchise but stands well on its own.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant*

A research vessel heads towards the Mariana Trench in search of answers of what happened to a ship which mysteriously lost all its crew some time earlier. In the deep dark, something intelligent and hungry awaits them. Very much mermaids of the horror variety. Sequel to a novella, can be read as a standalone. Also contains a sapphic romance, however that is a pretty small part of the plot as a whole.

Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink

Based on the podcast by the same name. Keisha Taylor thought she had lost her wife. She even held a funeral and attempted to move on with her life. But then Alice started to appear, all over America, in the background of every single major tragedy in the country. To find her missing wife, Keisha gets a job as a trucker and sets out on a roadtrip, not knowing what horrors awaits her.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Young adult. Over a year ago, the Raxter School for Girls was hit by the Tox, a strange disease that killed off many and left the survivors’ bodies slowly changing in terrifying ways. The island the school is on has been in quarantine since then, and the girls dare not leave the school grounds lest they become victims of wild animals changed by the Tox. But as they wait for the promised cure, one of the girls goes missing, and her friends are willing to do anything to find her. Unsettling, spooky, and sapphic, this is a unique read featuring body horror and messy, dangerous girls.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Once, Andy, Kerri, Nate, Peter and their faithful dog were known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club, until they hit their fateful final case in 1977. Now, the year is 1990, and the group hasn't gathered in years. Tomboy Andy is wanted in at least two states; Kerri, former kid genius, is tending bar; and horror nerd Nate is in a mental institution in Arkham. At least he still has the company of jock-turned-movie star Peter - except Peter has been dead for years. Now they must all come together to find out the truth of what happened all those years ago. Lovecraftian horror with a sometimes absurdist vibe and adult scooby do inspiration. Sapphic romance.

Contagion by Erin Bowman*

Young adult. After receiving an SOS, a small crew is sent on a standard search-and-rescue mission. But what they find are not survivors awaiting help, but an abandoned site, full of dead bodies and crawling with something… monstrous. No romance, but features one sapphic co-lead and one who can easily be read as demisexual (however this doesn’t show up until book two, which has more romance).

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand*

Young adult. The isolated island of Sawkill Rock has secrets. It hosts the legend of a local monster, and the very stark reality of decades of girls going missing, never to be found again. Now, three girls stand at the center of the horrific mystery - if only they can come together, perhaps they can save future generations of girls from a monster that may very well be real. Asexual and sapphic main characters, including a sapphic romance.

Salvation Day by Kali Wallace

A decade ago, the massive ship House of Wisdom was abandoned in orbit after its entire crew was killed in an outbreak in a matter of hours. Now, Zahra and her family of outcasts hope to claim the ship as their own by kidnapping the sole survivor to gain access. But the danger of the House of Wisdom is far from gone. Horror, no major romance but one of the main characters is gay.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling*

Possibly one of the most unstintingly claustrophobic books I’ve ever read, and definitely the most claustrophobic. Gyre, a caver on an alien planet, ventures into the dark and dangerous underground, guided only by a woman who has no compunctions on using and manipulating Gyre as she sees fit to obtain her secretive goals down in the caves. Sapphic in the most messy of ways.

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb series) by Tamsyn Muir*

Gideon, raised as a swordswoman by unfriendly nuns, would rather run away and make her own life, but her services are needed. The Reverend Daughter, Gideon’s childhood nemesis, has been invited to a trial to win a place as an immortal by the Emperor’s side, and she’s in need of a bodyguard. Listen, if you’re on tumblr I probably don’t need to explain this book to you. Trust me when I say it’s exactly as good as people claim. Humorous and spooky but also absolutely gut wrenching and clever with a lot of political commentary. There are also, indeed, lesbian necromancers in space.

Family Business by Jonathan Sims

By the author behind the Magnus Archives. When Diya's childhood best friend and roommate unexpectedly passes away, Diya falls apart and, among other things, loses her job. When she's offered a position at Slough & Sons to clean up after the deceased, she sees no other recourse but to accept. Her new job is grisly but important, and Diya starts to get back on her feet - until strange visions of a terrifying man and the dead's last moments start to haunt her. Slough & Sons are hiding something, and it's up to Diya to find out the truth. No romance, bisexual main character and trans woman side character.

Sodom Road Exit by Amber Dawn

Starla didn't want to return to her childhood home of Crystal Beach, Canada, but growing debt has forced her to move back in with her mother, despite the trauma hidden in her old home. But Starla is haunted by more than trauma; she is, in fact, literally haunted, by a ghost that may understand her, but may also consume her. Not overly scary, but handles dark subjects such as childhood sexual assault. Lesbian main character and romance.

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson*

In a world where the rich drink blood to preserve their health, Marion applies to a position as bloodmaid in a notorious noble house far from home. Suddenly showered with luxuries and debauchery, Marion soon gains the interest and favor of Lisavet, countess of the house. A fresh take on the idea of vampires and deliciously dark sapphic romance inspired by the horrific real-life Elisabet Báthory.

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

Dracula inspired novella, following Constanta, who’s turned from a medieval peasant to an undead bride. As time passes the relationship between Dracula and Constanta grows all the more strained and potentially dangerous. Teaming up with his two other consorts, she seeks to unravel her husband’s secrets. Sapphic and polyamorous.

Dread Nation (Dread Nation duology) by Justina Ireland

Young adult, alternate history. In this world, the war between the American states is interrupted when the dead start walking the earth and hunting the living. Jane McKeene has been trained at Miss Preston’s School of Combat to become an attendant, skilled in combat as well as etiquette to protect the wealthy. But Jane wants a different life, and in her search for it stumbles headfirst into a conspiracy. Bisexual main character, aroace side character (who becomes a POV character in the sequel).

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

In a future where those with high testosterone are afflicted by a zombie-like disease, bloodthirsty men have become the enemy. Trans women Beth and Fran and trans man Robbie do their best to survive in this brutal world, where TERF movements seek to exterminate them and monstrous men hunt in the wilds. VERY gruesome and bleak, but also very timely in the present political climate.

Leech by Hiron Ennes*

Unbeknownst to humanity, a sentient hive mind has taken over the entire medical profession to ensure the health of their host species. One of their doctors is sent off to an isolated location where they’re cut off from the rest of the hive mind, only to realize they’re faced with a rivaling parasitic entity. Leech hands you only just enough information to get by, and whether its historical fantasy, an alternate timeline, or futuristic post apocalypse is hard to determine. It’s spooky and a bit weird and wildly creative, and does some neat things with gender.

The Outside by Ada Hoffman*

AKA the book the put me in an existential crisis. Souls are real, and they are used to feed AI gods in this lovecraftian inspired sci-fi where reality is warped and artificial gods stand against real, unfathomable ones. Autistic scientist Yasira is accused of heresy and, to save her eternal soul, is recruited by cybernetic ‘angels’ to help hunt down her own former mentor, who is threatening to tear reality itself apart. Sapphic main character.

The Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne

Nix Marr is a soldier and damned good at it, but that doesn’t prepare her for her next mission: bodyguard for Subarch Kessandra, beloved royal and Nix’s bitter ex. The two venture toward the underwater city of Fall to seek the cause of a bloody murder spree and a possible deadly contagion. But Kessandra has enemies, the answers she seeks marking her as a possible threat for the nation’s rulers. On their way in an isolated and enclosed underwater ship toward Fall, the contagion catches up, and Nix will have to put her hurt feelings aside if the two are to arrive alive. Sci-fi with flavors of horror and the supernatural and a sapphic romance.

[mediamixs]

Suitable Flesh: a horror story by Lovecraft

Suitable Flesh is a 2023 American horror film directed by Joe Lynch and written by Dennis Paoli, based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Thing on the Doorstep." The movie delves into the realms of horror, mystery, and psychological thriller, featuring elements of body-swapping, ancient curses, and Lovecraftian themes. Starring Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton, and Judah Lewis, the film is described as wild, kitsch, campy, bloody, and steamy, catering to fans of Lovecraftian horror and the works of director Stuart Gordon. It has been noted for its entertaining, twisted, and cheesy nature, which is characteristic of Lovecraftian adaptations. The movie is set to be released in theaters and on Shudder in early 2024, offering a blend of supernatural, body horror, and psychological horror, adapted to suit the sensibilities of modern-day audiences. Despite some mixed reviews, it is anticipated to be a suitable choice for fans of horror stories with dark, deadly, and provocative concepts.

Key elements of the plot include:

Dr. Daniella Upton (played by Heather Graham) is a psychiatrist who visits the morgue where the mortician is dissecting the body of an unseen figure, having been brutally murdered.

Upton becomes obsessed with her younger patient, who has multiple personalities.

After murdering one of her patients, Upton's life takes a nightmarish turn as she encounters supernatural forces, seemingly connected with an ancient curse.

The film is set to be released in theaters and on Shudder in early 2024.

"Suitable Flesh" is described as a gory, horny, and outlandish Lovecraft adaptation, reminiscent of the typical 80s-style "raunchy" horror films. The film is aimed at audiences who love Lovecraft-derived work and Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond".

[friendzonefrog]

Movies:

Anatomy of a Fall (crime/courtroom drama)

Clue (one of my favorite comedies AND mysteries of all time)

Se7en (crime thriller where two detectives search for a brutal serial killer with a twisted M.O.)

See How They Run (goofy whodunnit set amidst the cast of a theatrical play)

The Hateful Eight (Tarantino western with whodunnit-ish elements and also a very specific spoiler in common with TRN)

Zodiac (crime thriller about the search for the Zodiac Killer)

TV:

Fargo (crime dramedy with an extremely eccentric ensemble cast)

The Mole (reality show where one of the contestants is secretly sabotaging the group. You won't find out who until the finale! The reboot is good, but the original S1 is my fav.)

Board/Card games:

Bang! (cowboy social deduction card game where different roles give you different abilities and different goals. Reminds me of the saloon slots game in SHA hehe.)

Clue(do) this one should go without saying.

Codenames (team v team card game where, out of a massive grid of words, players must prompt their team to guess their words only.)

Decrypto (very similar to Codenames. Team v team, both teams have 4 words and must get their teammates to guess those words in a specific "encrypted" sequence without giving it away to the opposite team. Hard to explain but fun to play.)

Mysterium (co-op card/tabletop game where one of you plays as the ghost and the rest play as psychic detectives trying to solve your murder!)

One Night Werewolf (social deduction game where the villagers must determine who amongst them is secretly a werewolf. Different roles=different abilities. Kind of reminds me of a game that'd be in CAP.)

Video Games:

Alan Wake, especially the second one. (It's horror, I can't express that enough, but top-tier crime investigation elements)

Darkside Detective (beggingggg yall to play this. episodic point and click adventure mystery. goofy cases with supernatural elements.)

Guilty Party (an old Wii game I used to be OBSESSED with, it has a story mode as well as a competitive party mode. you have to interrogate suspects and gather evidence so you can accuse the culprit. It's made for families so it's innocent (to my recollection) and exTREMELY campy with silly minigames, eccentric suspects, a theme song and everything. ugh love)

Heavy Rain (choice-based narrative game. has so many flaws. so many. but the crime thriller themes warranted an honorable mention.)

Life is Strange (drama/mystery choice-based narrative game. reminds me of WAC kind of, with the school gossip and drama hehe)

The Sinking City (Lovecraftian horror crime-noir mystery!)

can we gather a mass list of clue crew mysteryish/thriller/nancyish media recommendations? i'll start:

shows: columbo, murder she wrote, psych, x-files

video games: ace attorney, pentiment, return of the obra dinn, ghost trick

books: the 7 1/2 deaths of evelyn hardcastle, omniscient reader's viewpoint, (honestly that's it other than nancys I need to read more mystery novels)

movies: knives out series of course, the handmaiden

board games: (idk any I'm sorry just thinking of media categories)

trrpgs: monster of the week, city of mist

[demifiendrsa]

Alone in the Dark | Announcement Trailer

The remake to Alone in the Dark is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.  A release date was not announced, but the game has been in development since late 2019 and is currently in the alpha state.

A playable teaser, dubbed “Grace in the Dark” and featuring its own original storyline, will be playable at Gamescom 2022 from August 24 to 28, 2022. A prologue to the main game, it will star Grace from Alone in the Dark 2. THQ Nordic has not said whether it plans to release this playable teaser outside of the event, but it is a completely separate story from the main game, so it will likely see a home release.

Key visual

Screenshots

Overview

About

Return to Derceto Manor in this reimagination of Alone in the Dark, a love letter to the 90s cult classic horror game. Discovering that her uncle has gone missing, Emily Hartwood goes looking for him with the help of private investigator Edward Carnby. Arriving at Derceto Manor, a home for the mentally fatigued, they encounter strange residents, portals to nightmarish worlds, dangerous monsters—and ultimately a plot of rising evil and its followers.

Key Features

A classic horror experience, featuring combat, puzzle, exploration, and story.

While presenting a completely original story, we incorporate characters, places, and themes from the 90s original trilogy.

Play as Edward or Emily and uncover Derceto’s mysteries from two perspectives, including completely different cutscenes and levels.

Set in the gothic American south in the 1920s, the game features a noir-setting with classical Lovecraftian horror elements, where the familiar meets the surreal.

Experience a deep psychological story that goes beyond the realms of the imaginable, by Mikael Hedberg, cult horror writer of SOMA and Amnesia.

Trapped inside the gothic mansion, you encounter mind bending anomalies and fight back the evil that has infiltrated the house…

Staff

Development: Pieces Interactive

Director and Writer: Mikael Hedberg (Amnesia, SOMA)

Doom Jazz Legend: Jason Kohnen

Monster Design: Guy Davis

Cutscenes and Characters: metricminds / Gate21

[btranmuses]

last updated 2023-02-06

Hello!

My name is B, 28M, Vietnamese, cis male he/him, and gay. Currently living in Sydney, Australia, and working on my first novel!

This tumblr is for me to connect with other writers—I don’t have any friends who are also into writing, so hoping to make some here :)—and basically to use it as a chiller timeline. Tag games, asks, DM open! Aside from writing stuff I also reblog general tumblr content I come across and like. I have a website too; all my original writing are on there, with layout and organisation for reading in mind.

I'm into gay stories, SFF stories, especially gay AND SFF stories. Lovecraftian horrors? Yes please. I'm going through my TBR, very slowly, of books about those things; faves include TJ Klune, Terry Pratchett, Alexis Hall; Winter's Orbit, A Marvellous Light, Heartstopper.

Outside of books, I love TTRPGs (Chronicles of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, PBTA etc.) and general geekery. Recently discovered The Magnus Archives and Welcome To Night Vale, and god I have a LOT to catch up on!

I'm anti-terf, anti-musk, leftist, vegan, and into occult/esoterica stuff.

Main WIP: Impossible Wreck

It’s an urban fantasy novel featuring a technomancer set in a fictional city in modern southeast Australia, with heavy Lovecraftian undertones and strong gay romance elements. I'm working on it atm, and there's a dedicated page for it on my website, and tagged #impossible wreck here.

Rosa City, modern southeast Australia. The Arcour Maritime-Antarctic Institute discovered in the depths of the southern seas an inexplicable shipwreck. While researchers attempt to solve the mysteries of the Impossible Wreck, strange events unsettle denizens of the city’s supernatural underground.

Nic Li, technomancer and fugitive, knows from bitter experience that to survive in that underground is to stay low, in line, and in protection. Fresh in Rosa, Nic struggles for membership in the mages' East Bloc for exactly that. But when a mysteriously injured local spirit was brought to his door, Nic's reluctant help ended in a disaster that threatens his entry to the Bloc and puts him once again in hunters' path. Desperate, Nic needs help from Phillip Cluett, a sentient droid-monster with a human form and a questionable past: a former servant of an enemy to the supernatural world itself.

Hunters on his feet with companions he struggles to trust as strangeness becomes danger in Rosa, Nic has to work with Phillip right under enemy noses, scrambling together makeshift technology and brittle alliances, all barely held together with magic and lit by despair, to discover how the Impossible Wreck is the last of a plot as old as the nation itself that if unstopped, will usher in the end of all they hold dear.

Shorts

I wrote a few short stories based on a City of Mist TTRPG game I played in. Meet Han Yu, the Sewer Doctor! The campaign is over, and there are 6 stories total, the last one being Restore. They are tagged here as #han yu. Let me know what you think if you check them out!

Beneath the streets of Payne Town where waste sludges through plumbing like clotted blood, where underdwellers tick their days by, surviving, preying, or festering, the Sewer Doctor holds his base of operations.

Do you want a grotesque trophy to impress your innermost circle of elites? Perhaps alien warmth to sate your darkest desires? Maybe seek the help and care everyone deserves, the help the powers that be withhold from you, for they deem your wellbeing unprofitable, your existence a simple statistic?

Seek out the rats in alleyways, behind the everyday filth daywalkers cannot bear to acknowledge. They will see you, and they will hear what you have to say. Speak to them, follow them, to the Clinic where the Doctor waits. May your pain be relieved and yourself made whole, no matter your perceived dollar worth. But if you do bring your shameful desires’ worth… the Doctor does not judge. He delivers.

@local:han simon is this the fucking reason why ive been getting fleshlight requests on the market?

@local:simon Modern solutions for modern problems, boy. ( 👎1)

I’m currently playing another City of Mist campaign featuring Liam An, marketing executive by day, manwhore by night, and an absolute psychic terror after midnight. The stories are tagged here as #liam an.

Welcome to Glacial Holdings Group. Liam? Of course, right this way. You’ve heard of Liam, you’ve met Liam, you’re here to talk to Liam. Why wouldn’t you? He gets you deals that by all considerations, are good for your business. No, more importantly, Liam gets you. Don’t worry that the Group benefits from these deals, it’s just business, you understand, right? After all, you get him, too.

You saw Liam. Caught glimpses of Liam, perhaps stole a few glances. At the gym? At the bar? Just getting breakfast at the Ornament, the definition of prestige dining? No you didn’t, he was looking for you. Yes, you. Why don’t you get a drink with him? It would be nice to get a drink with Liam. It would be nice to dance with Liam. It would be nice to kiss Liam. It is nice to kiss Liam. You won’t know until you try. You know you want it.

You don’t need to spill blood to make deals with the Devil from a mirror, but you still need to pay. If you’re a man and he likes you, you can fuck him, like literally, but whatever you’re willing to give, make sure you hold up your end of the bargain. If you don’t, well. Enjoy your time left before the Shard Reaper comes collect his dues.

[onlydylanobrien]

Director Christopher MacBride must relish in screwing with people's minds. His previous film, 2012's The Conspiracy, found two documentary filmmakers drawn into the world of conspiracy theories and wondering what was real... or not. His latest endeavor, Flashback – formerly entitled The Education of Fredrick Fitzell – is another head trip.

The movie follows Fred (Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien), a 30-year-old man suffering from violent flashbacks that harken back to his youth. Brutal and scary, the visions lead him on this journey to uncover the truth surrounding the mysterious disappearance of his high school classmate, Cindy. To get answers, Fred hunts down his former teen drug buddies. One night, they end up at a crazy drug-den party, where these strangers are all strung out on the substance Mercury. Everything spirals out of control from there, as past, present and future versions of Fred come into play.

SYFY WIRE has been following the film's progress throughout production, visiting the set as far back as 2018, where we chatted with the cast. As the film gears up to finally hit theaters, and in the wake of a delay caused by the pandemic, here's our chat with MacBride from that set visit in Toronto. The director sat down with us to discuss the project's bigger themes, high-concept science fiction, monsters, and casting O'Brien.

The original title of the movie had "education" in it. What does Fredrick learn along his journey?

The "education" definitely has multiple meanings. One of them is exploring the idea of how a human being is educated in a broad sense. How do we learn basic building blocks of life that affect us 30 years later? Experiences you have as a kid, as a child, how do those basic educational building blocks that get instilled in you. How do they then influence you when you are a grown man? Another part of it is a chunk of the story is about growing up. There's a coming-of-age aspect to it. Fred is a guy approaching 30. He's on the cusp of full-blown adulthood, in a lot of ways. He's in his first serious relationship. Is he going to commit to his girlfriend? Is he going to give up his dreams of becoming an artist and take up an office job? Is he going to become a responsible adult? His mother is also on her deathbed, which is another rite of passage when you are no longer a child. So, the education is about how to be an adult, but it's also him learning about the forces in his life that control him.

Can you talk about infusing the science-fiction element into this narrative?

Sci-fi is my favorite genre. The type that I gravitate towards most is the Philip K. Dick-type mind-bending science fiction. I love stories like that, whether it's novels or movies… high-concept, brain-teasing sci-fi. Flashback is definitely influenced by Philip K. Dick. The idea of not understanding your own identity is really interesting to me. Mind-bending sci-fi is such a great way to explore these themes of identity. A Scanner Darkly is a great example. It's stuff that could be pretentious or not fit in a straight-ahead drama. But in sci-fi, it gives you license to explore it in that way.

Where does Flashback's shapeshifting creature come into play?

The creature is a mystery in the film. I wanted an antagonist that wasn't a conventional antagonist. It's not a horror monster that is trying to gobble you up or kill you. It's something the main characters perceive when they are on this drug, that seems almost godlike. It seems to be everywhere at once. It has a Lovecraftian vibe to it. He often has creatures referred to as "you can't fathom what they look like, and you would lose your mind if you did." This is my attempt to build something like that, that looks and moves and acts like no other monster in any other movie. We are still in the process of putting it together, so we will see how it ultimately comes out.

Are the effects practical or computer-generated?

A combination of both. Audiences have seen every kind of CG monster. No matter how good the technology gets, there's always that uncanny valley where you always know it's not really there. I like things that have a Cronenberg, sticky-tactile nature to them. I want the creature to feel like it's made up of something that you don't understand, and it moves in a way you don't understand.

How did casting Dylan O'Brien as the lead come about and what did he bring to the table?

When we started casting, we wanted a good actor. But we also had certain criteria. We needed somebody who could be 17 and 30 realistically, which is tough. One of our producers, Russell Ackerman, brought up Dylan O'Brien and asked what I thought. I said, "Yes," and I went and watched American Assassin. I could see how he had formed a real character in the movie. I could see it had boundaries and limits. I could see he was a real actor. We met and he got the script. He not only got the role, but he got the whole story, so I was really impressed.

Flashback premieres in select theaters and VOD on June 4.

[iturbide]

Is there any game you really like but never had the chance to talk about?

gosh I have a lot of very quiet game interests that just never come up because basically all the asks I get are about Fire Emblem (not that it's bad, because I certainly write a lot of it)

The big ones I've already talked about at least in brief. The main ones are Pokemon, which I keep doing crossovers for; and Ace Attorney, which I think I've been into longer than Fire Emblem (and I have at least a hundred thousand words of ancient fic to prove it). But I've also been a big fan of the Assassin's Creed series since the first game, and that's definitely not something that comes up all that often: I do have one crossover between Awakening and Assassin's Creed generally, taking a lot of elements that make the series what it is and weaving them into the Awakening setting, but that's about as close as I've come to really talking about it.

The really big one at this point has to be Dragalia Lost, though. It's another Nintendo mobile game that doesn't seem to get a lot of press, but it's somehow everything I really wanted in a mobile game I think?

There's actual meat to its story: it takes a while to play through even one chapter because there's so much to read and engage with, and it has an interesting plot that develops through both the main story chapters and the other events

The events are also amazing. They do some really interesting, really unexpected things with their events, including several that are basically Lovecraftian horror stories (lookin' at you Accursed Archives) -- and they're gradually making these old events available to all players at any time through the Event Compendium, rather than forcing newer players to wait for a re-run or just retiring them entirely

It doesn't do the dark is evil thing. The Shadow roster is incredible and I love the main Shadow Dragon so much I can't even also the main dragon pseudo-deity is handled in a way that seems like it was basically made for me

It gives out a lot of free characters, both through the story and through a specific class of event, and they hold up well in the game's meta

They also put in the effort to keep old characters relevant rather than just phasing them out: the power-ups from those upgrades have made some of the free and launch characters the best in the meta for certain content

Virtually every character has a unique story that you can read to get a better understanding of who they are as a person, and some of them are really intensely emotional

They also show their main story characters a lot of love. Not only do they feature in every chapter, giving attention to the bonds and interactions between their core cast, but most of those main story characters have multiple alts at this point (which is good for me, because I love Luca so much he's a character I will always go for broke on when I see a new alt)

It's primarily co-op rather than competitive, meaning you're working together with other players from around the world to achieve a common goal

The developers actually pay attention to the game's balance and address issues, up to and including boosting the power of all characters outside of the Shadow roster when they realized people were just using their Shadow teams to clear everything because they were so outrageously overpowered compared to every other element

The developers also pay attention to feedback and overhaul old systems to make them more streamlined, intuitive, and user-friendly (which they've done with both branches of the equipment system within the past two years)

The game is constantly updating with new challenging modes for high-level players to take on and newer ones to look forward to meeting once they progress

Those same modes also keep throwing new challenges at players that can cripple some of the main meta contenders, letting characters that might have fallen out of use to find a niche where they excel.

It's unbelievably generous when it comes to summoning, compared to other games I've seen. They set new players up with a 5-star character and give them challenges to earn guaranteed 5-star vouchers for dragons or adventurers to get them started on solid footing. On top of that, not only do they give out a free tenfold summon voucher with every major update and for pretty much every major event, they give players TONS of single summon vouchers, lots of wyrmite (including log-in bonuses, new quests on every difficulty level, returning events, adventurer and dragon stories, and endeavors), and not-infrequent free summon events -- there's one starting Monday where we basically get 250 free summons (14 days of free tenfold summons and one day of 100 free summons). AND THERE'S A SPARK SYSTEM.

There's no advantage for whales. No, seriously: when you summon a duplicate adventurer, you get Eldwater instead of the character, which is used to promote 3- and 4-star adventurers, enhance their abilities, or upgrade equipment. If you see someone with a strong character, you can rest assured that with enough effort, yours can be exactly as strong as theirs without paying a cent (which I know because that's literally how I did it).

I could go on for ages about Dragalia okay it's just a really enjoyable game and I engage with that more eagerly on a daily basis than I have with Heroes in several years.

[apinkblueberry]

How to go about a Bright Fantasy?

[To Long? TLDR at the bottom]

So I have an inherent issue going forward. My D&D campaigns keep getting darker despite me not wanting them to. I am hoping to write a Bright Fantasy campaign but I am having trouble doing so in the context of a D&D campaign.

I think this is because of the inherent mechanics of D&D support a darker setting. There are many official or WOTC supported classes that tend to lean towards these darker perspectives. It's not that they can't be brighter but players that play these usually end up sending their characters down a darker path them being: Blood Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Barbarian and very often Sorcerers. For races: Dark Elves, Half Elves, Orcs, Half Orcs, Tiefling, Dhampir, Goblins, Goliath, Aasimar, Bugbear, Hobgoblin, Kenku, Kobold and Changeling. Now that may be just my experience but I think both lists should give some perspective. Now many of you may say that they are not inherently dark and I would agree but I think many players just enjoy the darker perspective of this sort of character.

Blood Hunter is pretty clear, the concept boils down to controlling people and becoming more monstrous to kill monsters. It is by no means a bad class but it does rather strongly tend towards darker characters. If you don't believe me I encourage you to Google Blood Hunter and just look at images. Rogues I personally dont think have to be dark but their tendency towards Stealth by far tends to lean people towards playing them darker and playing them with that perspective in mind. Warlocks in my experience tend to play off a dark patron and a darker world as a result. Looking at the Player Handbook subclasses for Warlock: Archfey, not inherently dark but many tend to lean towards characters like the Fairy King who tend to be quite dark rather than a brighter fey, The Fiend, I mean Demons I suppose they could be written brighter but that writing is rather rare, and Great Old One, ah yes what part of Lovecraftian horror isn't bright. Barbarians are often played as dumb brutes who only care about bashing things to death. Now by no means is this the rule but in my experience thats how people tend to play their characters. For Sorcerers very often how their power emerges in their backstory often kills loved ones and does a lot of damage. I personally see why but I think that it can very often lead to a darker character. I won't go over every race but I can make a seperate post later on if some of those aren't clear. They just tend towards darker characters.

This is by no means me saying that dark characters are a bad thing because it isn't but it does make the campaign darker as the campaign should be centered on the characters. So now the issue is how does one while still using D&D and not blocking half the classes from the players do a brighter fantasy setting. In addition, there are very few resources online for writing better bright fantasy but if you search on Youtube Not Grimdark Fantasy you get a series of Grimdark resources. Now obviously it sees the Tag Grimdark but seach Bright Fantasy you get a song. My point is there are limited resources for a Brighter setting but many on a darker one. So how do we go about writing a brighter world, unless anyone has found a brighter title I'm calling it Bright Fantasy. This is because Grimdark is Dark Fantasy so the opposite would inherently be Bright Fantasy.

Well, one primary example of a brighter Fantasy is the earlier pokemon games. For many of these pokemon they use bright and colorful animations and have fun cute stories. Now obviously there are many with dark Poke Entries but to find those you have to dig. The bad guys tend to be evil without really any remorse or if they have a reason its completely ridiculous like Team Magma and Aqua. But, and I recognize many people will be frustrated by this sentence, Generation 4 was the generation to move away from this brighter fantasy. You can catch several gods and even move through the distortion world and even catch the embodiment of death. Now its still a great game, however, from that point on in the series it never really returns to that brighter beginning. It seems like a lot of series that start bright turn dark. Obviously comic books are a great example where now everyone wants to be Dark Knight x Watchman. Even Jak and Daxter the first game is a very bright game but by the second it becomes super dark and depressing where Jak's first words are about murder.

So let me ask, how do I move my campaigns in more of a direction of Bright Fantasy. Some major elements that many stories use to move to a brighter setting is brighter characters. I can make the NPCs brighter but if the main cast is inherently a dark group than the bright fantasy will be too contradictory. It would be like Anakin Skywalker in the land of Teletubbies. Many stories add visuals that are brighter and more pastel colors but since I dont use maps and the like that would be very difficult to do. Many of the things used in other stories aren't options here so if you have any ideas please let me know.I almost forgot one final thing. Villains. So Grimdark villains tend to be morally gray but they do things so bad they can't be forgiven. Brighter Fantasy villains tend to be evil for the sake of being evil so that is something I may use but if the rest of the campaign isn't bright then it may just come off as edgy for the sake of being edgy.

TLDR? It's hard to do a a campaign of a brighter tone because so many mechanics inherently lean for a darker tone, so how do I write a Bright Fantasy in DnD?

[karmotrinedreams91]

Nine Legacies: The Balefire Rekindled Masterpost

Prelude:  Magic’s resurgence has changed almost every aspect of life. The “mundane” world cannot deny magic’s existence, and is both fearful and all too curious about its capabilities. Despite public and private pushback against the forces of Olde and Arcane, society must come to accept the presence of Fae and other magical phenomena as something “normal,” just as it did during the golden age of magic. But with the benefits of magic’s return comes the many horrors fueled by it: Vengeful dead have begun to rise, monsters stalk the lands, and legends of old reveal their long denied truths to the “modern” world. Luna Nova itself faces one these emboldened threats now, as a shadowy coven that has plagued the legacies left behind by The Nine Old Witches for centuries plots their destruction yet again. The New Nine and their companions stand firm against the darkness, but it will be the dare-devil firebrand Amanda O'Neill, and the reserved and calculating Constanze Amalie Von Braunschbank-Albrechtsberger who must first answer the call of Olde Legacies. When fate calls them to action, they waste no time in taking up the torch, and light Luna Nova’s way to a brighter tomorrow.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22429150/chapters/62068246

Author’s Note:  Hello, and thank you, first off, for reading this post! I hope that I’ve piqued interest! To explain further though, Nine Legacies: The Balefire Rekindled, is the first installment in a series of fanfiction I plan to write, titled under the series name Nine Legacies, as one might expect. This fic, and all of the fics that follow it in the series, are/will be a deep expansion and exploration of the Little Witch Academia world. The main focus of the OG series/ovas was never world building. It was focused on Akko and her journey, and that’s amazing. The original series is possibly one of my favorite and most beloved pieces of media. But it leaves much for the viewer to ponder on, doesn’t it? Who were the Nine Olde Witches? As in, who were they as people? What were they like? What was life really like during the golden age of magic? Where do the Fae come from? How did magical societies organize themselves? How will they do so again now that magic is returned, and how will non-magical, or “mundane” society, as I call it, react to such a sudden paradigm shift?  These questions and more are what drove me to write this fic/series. It’s not just an exercise in world building, of course. While that may be one of my great loves when it comes to writing, Nine Legacies is primarily a story about Found Families, love (for the self and others), and how those two things are tested by a world around us that, at times, feels wholly uncaring and apathetic to your very existence. It deals in the above themes as well as in political struggle, fighting for the right to live as you are, with trauma and how to overcome/live with trauma, and especially with the first installment, Balefire, with Vengeance.

It features some horror elements, lots of action, and cosmic horror elements (IE Lovecraftian horror elements; think Cthuluhu, if you’re not aware). 

(Credit for above image goes to Alexis Kennedy, and all of the artists who worked on the Weather Factory game named: Cultist Simulator)

It’s not all gloom and doom though; I’m not here to write an unsatisfying story. It may be gritty and grim at times, but I try to balance that out with humor and fluff, both dark humor, and much more light hearted fair that you’d expect from LWA. And yes, it is VERY gay (I’m a trans lesbian woman, if this wasn’t extremely gay then I would have failed myself). This might sound like quite the departure from what you usually read for LWA, and it probably is, but I hope that this is an enjoying and stimulating experience! While it is very much my own canon, I’ve based just about everything I’ve done with the setting on the original series’ material, as well as materials adjacent to the canon, such as mangas, light novels, and the OVAS. 

This series will be a four-five part installment of novel length fics. Nine Legacies: The Balefire rekindled, is currently, as of August second 8/2/2020, unfinished, as I write chapter 20 of what will like be 27-28 chapters in total, and it is already the third longest LWA fic on AO3 (archive of our own) at 442,068 words. I began properly writing this fic in full in January, for reference, and started planning out the whole story/what I wanted out of it in november of 2019. I try to update every other week, or every week if possible, and do weekly/two weekly updates on my progress, all posted to this tumblr. 

Lastly, and most importantly, there are two things to note about Balefire, and about Nine Legacies as a whole: I give antagonists their own scenes and perspectives quite a bit. I feel it is imperative to my story that the antagonists all get screen time to help better flesh them out. And secondly, each installment in the series will focus on 2-3 of the “New Nine” witches (The New Nine in this case being Red, Green, and Blue teams. Chariot and Croix are NOT New Nine in this, but will play important roles for various characters throughout. Think of them more as mentors for the New Nine). Balefire specifically focuses on Constanze and Amanda, but it also sets up the plots and development for just about every other New Nine witch, and you can expect to see other OC characters in important side roles that will develop and enhance the story, as well as lesser used characters from LWA, such as Wangari making appearances as important side characters. I can’t say much more on the specifics, but I’ll leave this section off with something to entice you: ALL of the Nine Olde Witches (as written by my own canon, essentially) will be fleshed out in full. Their origin, who they were, why they were important, all of that is crucial to the story, hence the series title, Nine Legacies. 

“Perhaps they, the new blood.... Perhaps they hold the strength to rekindle our flame.” 

I hope all of this has you interested and ready to read! ITS FINISHED NOW! All the main chapters are done, but I intend to go back and do a FULL re-edit, with criticisms, suggestions, and corrections in mind from YOU GUYS, the readers. PLEASE: Never hesitate to send me asks, comment, leave kudos, etc. ALL of that stuff shows me whether or not I’ve done good work, and even if I haven't, telling me HOW I may have failed will always be helpful. I want to make this the best fic it possibly can be, but I can’t do that without reader participation. 

Without further adieu: Nine Legacies: The Balefire Rekindled

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22429150/chapters/53589904

[honourablejester]

That Exandria quote, every EXU GM gets a betrayer god in a goody bag, I feel like there’s an interesting sort of character test element to this: which betrayer god appeals to you as a campaign/story basis, and why?

And looking at the list … While I do enjoy Thardizun, I think I would probably go with Torog myself? Like, as a set-piece villain, as a thematic background element.

Possibly this isn’t surprising. I love cosmic horror, so the Crawling King, the noisome thing in the depths, does look like a shoe-in for me. Which, fair. There’s also a lot of opportunities with Torog to play around with that thing I have about non-dystopian subterranean settings. Because Torog is the epitome of dystopian undergrounds, the noisome, maddening, slaver god of tunnels and caves, but that lets me use him as the arching thematic villain, lets me show the struggle to build and protect a non-dystopian underground realm when Torog is always lurking. Yes, outside there is a worm that crawls in maddening darkness, but that’s all right, because here there is also wonder and beauty and joy, and he cannot take it.

There’s also some fun themes around darkness and light with Torog. One of the things I really love about the Twilight domain is the idea of the sacred darkness, the place of rest. Torog is interesting in that regard, both for his commandment to seek out and hallow those places untouched by light, and also his defeat by being seared by Pelor and Sarenrae. There’s a thing you could do there, a thing about bringing people down into the dark and keeping them there to keep them safe from the searing reach of the light, but twisted then into captivity and agony in the dark. There’s trickery and lies, but possibly a thread of genuine belief and betrayed hope once upon a time that could be worked with. And also, there’s … possibly an interesting tension that I enjoy about bringing light into an ecosystem built around darkness, bringing a foreign thing to this place. Desecrating sacred darkness. There’s a way there to give Torog a point, while also remembering that he is a maddened deity of torture and despair.

And I also do have a thing about captivity. Freedom vs captivity, as a theme. And yes, you can do Bane or Asmodeus for that, just as well, but Torog just has that more lovecraftian element to him, coiling prisons carved from rock and rusting manacles imbedded and abandoned in the twisting passages. The pale arms reaching from the darkness to take you captive. Despair vs defiance, the violence of freedom. Linking it back up, can you find safety again in the dark afterwards, or must you flee for the light? There’s some nice meaty things in there.

And there’s the thing of pain and healing and despair. Embrace pain, because you can’t escape it. Similar to the reason I feel like the Life domain makes for a great villain god, there’s a thing there with Torog. He’s a crawling, agonised, maddened thing. For him, there’s pain in the darkness but even more in the light. He could have made the darkness a sanctuary, but instead he chose to embrace pain as a bedrock instead, to fill the darkness with just as much agony. There’s … some things to work with, there. Definitely.

So … Yeah. I think if I’m picking one of the Betrayers, on a thematic level, Torog would be my choice.

[aion-rsa]

Chinese-Inspired Fantasy Books That Reframe Familiar Fairy Tales

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Reframing fairy tales has long been a common subgenre of fantasy fiction and, at the end of 2020, three authors put their own spins on stories (or fairy tale structures) familiar to most Western audiences by incorporating Asian mythology and settings. S. L. Huang combined European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood with the Chinese tale of Hou Yi the Archer to form a story of redemption, love, and family in Burning Roses. Chloe Gong cast tragic English characters Romeo and Juliette as gangsters in 1920s Shanghai—pitting them against a Lovecraftian monster rising from the depths of the Huangpu River in These Violent Delights. And Nghi Vo continued her Singing Hills cycle, set in a world inspired by Imperial China, with an original story reminiscent of Middle Eastern folktale The Thousand Nights and One Night in the novella When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain. While none of these books are intended to be read together, all three make an excellent combination of courses for your literary meal, especially if you’re looking to dive into more fantastical tales written by Asian American authors.

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang

Fairy tales frequently feature young protagonists, especially young women, in peril. Some are able to evade dire fates through their own wits, while others must be rescued. Readers seldom see what becomes of them in their middle age, but that’s exactly what Huang takes on in her novella, Burning Roses.

Red Riding Hood, here called Rosa, survived the wolf attack that killed her grandmother. The event convinces her of the evil of the grundwirgen, speaking animals whom her grandmother had tried to teach here were just as much people as humans, but whom her mother had raised her to hate. Her mother’s point proven right, she sets off on a quest to rid the world of grundwirgen, teaming up with Goldie (whom she rescued from bears, and whom she later realizes is a thief and a con artist). But by the time readers meet Rosa, she’s left that life long behind, and now accompanies Hou Yi, the famous archer of Chinese lore, on a quest to keep people safe from unthinking monsters. (Hou Yi is traditionally described as male; here she is female, and she complains that Westerners from Rosa’s lands “insist on calling me a man.”)

Hou Yi, like Rosa, has her own demons to slay, and not just the literal ones. As Hou Yi and Rosa fight off a group of sunbirds, nearly dying from the smoke and fire, Hou Yi is confronted by her own past—the apprentice who turned against her. That apprentice is now a sorcerer, and has raised the sunbirds against Hou Yi in a twisted act of revenge.

But of course, it’s not that simple, either. Hou Yi and Rosa both acknowledge their own troubled pasts, and the wrongs they’ve both done, especially to those they love, weigh them down so heavily they almost cannot bear to move. The relationship between these two women, who truly see each other because they recognize a kinship of regret and repentance, is powerful. Without revealing too much in the way of spoilers, the feeling of the novella is that even in the midst of despair, it is possible to hope—especially when someone else can help carry the burden of your past.

Along with nods to Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood, there are additional mentions of Western fairy tales like Puss in Boots and Sleeping Beauty. Hou Yi’s story also closely mirrors the traditional tales, but familiarity with them isn’t required; those who already know the story may catch hints in the story earlier about where the tale will end, but Huang’s use of folklore from both Europe and China is complete within the story, and no additional outside sources are needed to get full enjoyment from the tale.

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

What happens when you mix 1920s Shanghai with The Sopranos, Lovecraftian horror, and Romeo and Juliet? With Gong at the helm, the result is a chillingly violent romance that readers may hope, despite the source material, will come to a happy ending.

In These Violent Delights, Juliette and Roma are the heirs to the two gangs of Shanghai, crime families who once controlled the city but are both losing ground as more foreign interests—and communists—rise to power. Juliette Cai is the future leader of the Scarlet Gang, the only remaining Chinese power in the city. Roma Montagov is a White Flower, son of generations of Russians who fled the Bolsheviks, and now in a dangerous predicament as his father has begun to favor another Montagov over his own son as the possible heir. Years ago, Juliette and Roma met in secret, determined to defy their parents, pledging that together they could bring peace and prosperity to Shanghai.

But those years are long past, and now nothing exists between them but hatred—or so each of them claim. They would continue to be solely enemies if not for a contagion sweeping through the city, hitting Scarlets and White Flowers with equal severity, that causes the victims to rip out their own throats. The contagion seems to follow sightings of a monster—a creature that witnesses claim drives people mad. Investigating on their own, they are chasing their own tails. Together, they could be unstoppable…

Before you say that the story isn’t really a fairy tale—it long predated Shakespeare’s play—and while it includes no fairies, the element of the poison that emulates death borders on the supernatural. Gong’s addition of a monster that rises from the river and compels people to suicide brings in enough additional supernatural elements (mixed with a healthy dose of 1920s science) to include it within the genre. At the same time, the novel is just as much a crime drama; the feuding criminal families are vibrantly, violently drawn, and their ruthlessness makes it difficult to consider heroes (even while readers root for Roma and Juliette’s romance).

One of the delights of the story, for those familiar with Shakespeare’s telling of the tale, is watching Gong’s naming conventions give clues to the role the characters play. Lourens, a scientist working with the White Flowers, is an analog to Father Laurence; Benedikt and Marshall are Romeo’s friends Benvolio and Mercutio, while Juliette’s hotheaded cousin Tyler is Tybalt. But though they don’t always play into type (and they have their own motives far beyond the traditional tale), readers will still be waiting for that moment when Tyler and Marshall face off, and Marshall lays a plague on both their houses. That the story, while self contained, leads directly into a subsequent volume will have readers waiting to find out if fair Shanghai will one day see a glooming peace, and whether Roma and Juliette must both be sacrificed to achieve it.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

Vo’s novella is the second story featuring scholar-cleric Chih, who collects stories from far off places in order for them to be recorded for the archives at Singing Hills. In Chih’s first story (The Empress of Salt and Fortune), they and their recorder bird, Almost Brilliant, had an adventure; now Almost Brilliant is tending a clutch of eggs, leaving Chich to journey on their own. Luckily, Chich has guide Si-yu, a mammoth corps scout, to lead them through the mountains.

Unluckily, there are three tigers hunting in the mountains, and a lone mammoth and a few humans seem like a tasty meal. Si-yu and her mammoth, Piluk, reach safety, and Chih calls an uneasy truce with the tigers: Chih knows the tale of Ho Thi Thao’s marriage, and they ask the tigers to correct it for Singing Hills. The tigers refuse to tell their version—the true version—but they’re willing to let Chih tell the version they know, and correct the cleric when they get things wrong.

And so Chih tells the story of Ho Thi Thao and her human wife, Scholar Dieu—all the while, during the tale, keeping the hungry tigers from eating the humans. Chih weaves elements of ghosts—and the tigers add fox spirits, correcting the story; Chih gives a version in which human Dieu has most of the agency, and the tigers correct the tale to make Ho Thi Thao the hero. The story always feels very tightly organic to the Singing Hills cycle: the mammoths are a particularly delightful element of the setting, and the talking tigers, who can take the form of humans, feel a true part of the setting once readers (and Si-yu) become accustomed to the idea of conversing with them. In fact, Si-yu often takes the side of the tigers, preferring the details they give the story to Chih’s version.

But while the world is very much its own, the story is very reminiscent of the traditional tale of Scheherezade, who staved off death with her stories night after night. While When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain feels very much a new story, it also feels familiar, the way that being tucked in with a familiar bedtime story might, especially for readers accustomed to bedtime stories with the threat of being eaten by tigers.

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For the two stories with already familiar characters, the Chinese (or Chinese-inspired) settings offer a new perspective for readers less familiar with East Asian mythology, and help readers to see those tales in a new and different light, enhancing the old tales with a new point of view. For the original story, embracing the feel of older tales lends it the feeling of being at once both new and comforting. In all ways, these three tales offer the sense of meeting old friends for the first time—and coming out the other side enriched by the experience.

The post Chinese-Inspired Fantasy Books That Reframe Familiar Fairy Tales appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[my-lady-knight]

Favorite Reads of 2020

I take back everything I said last year about how 2019 was a comparatively bad reading year for me. 2020 was even worse. I only read 48 books, I could barely focus on reading even when I did find a book I liked, and, just like last year, I ended up with fewer favorites than usual. Starting in August I’ve been having trouble reading any written media that isn’t TOG fic. And some of my eagerly awaited releases by favorite authors ended up being disappointments (Deeplight by Frances Hardinge and Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee).

2020—the year that keeps on giving.

I sincerely hope 2021 will be a better year in all respects, including my reading habits, but, as with everything else, who knows.

Regardless, here’s my list of favorite reads of 2020, in chronological order of when I read them:

Network Effect by Martha Wells

I’d read the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas when they first came out and enjoyed them, but I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with them. Maybe because they were novellas, and too short to get fully invested? Possibly. As it turns out, Network Effect is the novel-length fifth entry in the Murderbot Diaries that turned me into full-on squeeing fan—SecUnit, aka Murderbot, continues to be its delightfully acerbic, antisocial self, SPOILER makes another appearance and oh how I’d missed this character, the supporting cast is fun and endearing, and the novel-length story means there’s time and space for the brand-new corporate espionage/colonization/alien civilization murder mystery to unfold and spread its wings. (Sounds like a Sanctuary Moon plot tbh). SecUnit is possibly my favorite non-human fictional character atm, and I am now fully on-board for every and any new story in the series.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

When I first heard about this book and read the words “time travel romance”, I immediately went, “Nope, not gonna read.” I don’t like reading time travel stories, and honestly, I was imagining it to be something like The Time Traveler’s Wife, which granted I haven’t read but also sounds like it’d be the opposite of my cup of tea. 

And then I went to a reading where Amal and Max took turns reading chapters – letters written by Red and Blue, enemy agents who repeatedly taunt and thwart the other’s plans to ensure their side is the one to win the time war and who can’t resist smugly outlining just how they’re staying one step ahead of the other – and the prose was witty and gorgeous and clever and intricate, and Red and Blue were snarky and arrogant and talented and fun. I had to read it. And I ended up loving it, this enemies-to-lovers story that is a meld of fantasy and science fiction such that they’re indistinguishable from the other, where the past is as equally fantastical and alien and imaginary as the future, where Red and Blue’s power play transforms into something different and scarier and more intimate than either of them imagined. 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers has done it again, writing a gentle, hopeful story about humans working together out of a share a love and fascination for scientific exploration and wonder for all the possibilities the entirety of space can hold. With the advent of both space travel and technology that alters human physiology to allow them to survive otherwise inhospitable environments, a team of four astronauts and scientists have embarked on a mission to ecologically survey four distant planets and the life forms that inhabit them, from the microscopic to the multicellular—not to conquer, but to record and to learn and to share the gathered knowledge with the rest of Earth. In the meantime, lightyears away, Earth is going through decades without them, and the four of them must also contend with a planet that may have forgotten their existence—or that’s abandoned the entire space and scientific exploration program.

Reading Becky Chambers is the literary equivalent of sitting down with a warm mug of my favorite tea on a bad day – I always feel better at the end and like I can imagine a future where humanity does all the wonderful things we’re capable of doing.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

I started reading this book right as NYC was gearing up to go into lockdown, which should have made this a terrible choice to continue reading since part of the premise is that a combo of multiple stochastic terror attacks and a brand-new, deadly plague upend the world as everyone knows it by causing the U.S. to pass laws that keep people physically apart in public for their own safety and make concerts, theatre, and any other kind of artistic gathering obsolete.

But that’s largely just the set-up, and the real story is that of Luce Cannon, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who played the last major concert in the before times who twenty years later performs in illegal underground concerts, and Rosemary, a younger music-lover who’s only lived in the after-times, and who’s taken a new job scouting out talent to add to the premier virtual entertainment company’s roster of simulated concerts.

It’s a love letter to live music and what it feels like to connect and build community via music in unusual and strange and scary times, the energy involved in making music for yourself, for an audience, exploring the world around you, imagining and advocating for a better tomorrow, and embracing the fear, the possibility, and the power of change, both good and bad. This was the book I needed to read at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’m thankful I ended up doing so.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edited by John Joseph Adams and Carmen Maria Machado

When I end up loving half of the stories in an anthology and greatly enjoying all but two of the rest, that’s the equivalent of a literary blue moon for me. My favorites included the following;

"Pitcher Plant" by Adam-Troy Castro

"Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women" by Theodore McCombs

"Variations on a Theme from Turandot" by Ada Hoffmann

"Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good" by LaShawn M. Wanak

"The Kite Maker" by Brenda Peynado

"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" by P. Djèlí Clark

"Dead Air" by Nino Cipri

"Skinned" by Lesley Nneka Arimah

"Godmeat" by Martin Cahill

"On the Day You Spend Forever with Your Dog" by Adam R. Shannon

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

No one is more surprised than me that Harrow is on this list, given that I am one of approximately three people in the universe who did not unequivocally love Gideon the Ninth. 

And yet the sequel worked for me. 

Maybe because this time I already knew and was used to the way the world and the Houses worked, and I knew to not take anything I read for granted because I could be guaranteed to have the rug pulled out from under me without even realizing. Maybe Harrow’s countdown/amnesia mystery worked better for me than Gideon’s locked room mystery. Maybe the cast of characters was more manageable and fewer of them were getting murdered left and right before I got a chance to get used to them (and some of them even came back!) Maybe it’s that Harrow blew open the potential and possibilities Gideon hinted at and capitalized on just how fucking weird and mind-blowing the whole premise is in a way that felt incredibly and viscerally satisfying.

Also SPOILER happens three-quarters of the way through. That was pretty fucking awesome.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

P. Djélí Clark is a master of melding history and fantasy in ways that are in turn imaginative and clever (his fantastical alternate-history, early 20th-century Egyptian novel A Master of Djinn is one of the books I’m most looking forward to in 2021), while also using fantasy to be frank and incisive about the history of American antiblack racism (as in the above linked story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019). Ring Shout combines the late-nineteenth and early 20th-century history of the rise and normalization of the KKK with Lovecraftian supernatural horror, in which the release of The Birth of a Nation summoned literal monsters (called Ku Kluxes) that became part of the KKK’s ranks. Maryse Boudreaux is a Black woman who’s part of a grassroots organization hunting both the monsters and the human members in order to keep the Klan at bay. However, there’s soon to be another summoning ritual atop Stone Mountain that will unleash even more Ku Kluxes into the world, and Maryse and her friends are running out of time to prevent it from happening.

Maryse is a fantastic character, as are her two friends—brash, unapologetic Sadie and WWI veteran, weapons expert Chef—her mentor and leader of the Ring Shout group Nana Jean, and all the other members of the group who work and fight together as a team and a family. Maryse’s past and the journey she goes on in the book to uncover the truth and stop the summoning is harrowing and heart-stopping, the supernatural elements are both horrific in and of themselves while also undergirding the real-life horror of the KKK and the hatred they engender. It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s eye-opening, and it’s also being turned into a TV show starring KiKi Layne. It’s really, really good.

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

“Stick to the brief.” This is the maxim given to Dietz and all the other soldiers who join the war against Mars, where soldiers are broken down into light to travel to and from their assigned battlefields instantaneously. Only Dietz isn’t experiencing the jumps like everyone else – Dietz, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, has become unstuck in time and is experiencing all the battles in the mission briefs out of chronological order, to the point that Dietz starts to build a picture of a war and a reality that’s been sold to Dietz and everyone else on Earth as pure fiction. 

I’ve always appreciated Kameron Hurley’s stories, but this is the first book where she fully succeeded at writing the book she set out to write—it’s fast-paced science fiction thriller in the form of a loaded gun that takes brutal aim at late-stage capitalism, modern military warfare and the dehumanization of everyone involved on all sides, the greed of ungovernable governing corporations, nationalistic and military propaganda, the mythology of citizenship and inalienable rights, and it’s viscerally bloody and violent without being grotesque in the way all of Kameron Hurley’s books are. Especially important for me, I loved that Dietz went through the entire book not being gendered in any way, shape, or form (those last five pages didn’t exist, what are you talking about), and I love in general that Kameron Hurley is committed to writing non-male characters who aren’t less violent or fucked-up or morally superior to men just because they’re not men.

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Middle grade is a hard sell for me these days, as are books in verse, and I wouldn’t have known this book existed if it weren’t for the Ignyte Award nomination list earlier this year. As it turns out, this book, the story of Jude, a pre-teen girl who wants to be an actress who leaves Syria and the encroaching civil war with her mom to go live in the U.S. with her uncle and his white wife and their daughter while her dad and older brother stay behind, is full of beauty, curiosity, humor, confusion, grief, pain, and joy, and the poetic prose is both lyrical, nuanced, and perfectly fitted to Jude’s voice. I devoured this book in one day, which is the quickest amount of time it took me to read any book this year, including novellas.

Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram

The first book Darius the Great Is Not Okay was one of my favorite books in 2018, and I’m ecstatic that the sequel is equally as amazing.

It’s been approximately half a year since Darius went to Iran, met his maternal grandparents in person for the first time, and found his best friend in Sohrab, and in that time he’s come out as gay, joined the soccer team, got an internship at his favorite tea shop, and started dating for the first time. Darius is also working through some things though—when and if he wants to have sex with his boyfriend, his grandfather’s worsening illness, his dad’s recent depressive episode, his emotionally distant paternal grandmothers on his coming for an extended stay, the fact that he’s getting to know and growing closer with one of his teammates who’s best friends with Darius’s years-long bully, and a bunch else. 

Darius the Great Deserves Better has the same tender and vulnerable emotional intimacy as the first book, more conversations over tea, new instances involving the mortifying ordeal of being a cis guy with a penis, even more Star Trek metaphors, and so much growth for Darius as he works through a lot of hard situations and feelings, and strengthens his relationships with all of the people in his life he loves and cares about. I can’t think of any other book that’s like these two books, and I love and treasure them dearly.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

I had zero awareness of this book until a bunch of SFF authors started praising it on Twitter a couple months before the release date, and I was intrigued enough to get a copy from the library. I loved this book. I happened to be reading it right at the time of the presidential election, and it phenomenally served the purpose of desperately-needed distraction from the agony of waiting out the ballot counts.

It’s book about the power behind borders, citizenship, exploitation, and imperialism, set in a late-late-stage capitalist future, in which a prodigy invented the means to access and travel to slightly divergent parallel universes to grab resources and data – but only if the other universe’s version of “you” isn’t there. It’s the story of a woman named Cara – poor, brown, born in the wastelands outside the shelter, security, and citizenship privileges of Wiley City – who’s comfortably employed to travel to all the parallel worlds no one else can visit, because all her counterparts in those worlds are dead from one of the myriad ways Cara herself could have died growing up. It’s the story of Cara traversing the muddied boundaries between her old life and her new one, the similarities and differences between her own life and that of her counterparts, as well as the figures of power who defined and shaped her and her counterparts’ existences, and solving a mystery involving the unexplained deaths of several of her counterparts and the man who invented multiverse technology.

It’s a story of the permeability of selfhood and self-determination, and complexity of power dynamics of all kinds – interpersonal, familial, collegial, intimate – and the interplay between violence and stability and identity, and how one can be both powerful and powerless in the same dynamic. It’s a story with literary sensibilities that is unequivocally science fiction, written with laser-precise prose that flays Cara open and puts her back together again.

I worry this description makes this book sound dry and removed when reading this book made me feel like I was coming alive every time I delved back into it. This is a book I cannot wait to reread again to experience the brilliance and skill and thoughtfulness and emotion of Micaiah Johnson’s writing. I have no clue what, if anything, she’s writing next, but I have a new favorite author.

Honorable Mentions

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Stormsong by C. L. Polk

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (I feel bad putting it here and not in the first list – it is undeniably a modern classic and a brilliantly crafted book! But I had zero interest in any of the Italy chapters, and I found the way he finally figured out how to access fairy magic by essentially making himself mad to be both disappointing and narratively unsatisfying.)

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi

For my yearly stats on books written by POC authors, in 2020 I read a total of 24 books (one of which was co-authored by a white author), which is fewer than last year (30). However, because I also read fewer books this year overall, this is the first year ever that I achieved exactly 50-50 parity between books written by POC and white authors. I honestly wasn’t expecting this to happen, as I stopped paying deliberate attention somewhere around April or May. Looking over my Goodreads, the month of September ended up doing a lot of heavy lifting, since that’s when I read several books by POC authors in a row for the Ignyte Award nomination period. But also, it does look like the five or so years of purposefully aiming for 50-50 parity have materially affected my reading habits, by which I mean even when I’m not keeping my year’s count in mind, I’m still more likely to pick up a book by a POC author than I was five years ago when I had never kept track at all. My goal for next year is to once again achieve 50-50 parity and to not backslide.

[moviesrotbrains]

DANIEL ISN’T REAL... but I’m so very glad this film exists.

After dealing with increasing anxiety and fearing a grip on reality, a college freshman turns to his childhood imaginary friend for comfort and confidence boosting… only to realize that his much cooler and carefree pretend buddy has an unsettling violent darkness about him. Could Daniel possibly be something more than a figment of his imagination?

DANIEL ISN’T REAL is an utterly surreal fever dream, channeling the best in cosmic horror, body horror, and psychological horror while also taking a bold look at deeper issues. It comes from Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision imprint, the same company that gave us such gems as MANDY, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, and COLOR OUT OF SPACE...  and this one’s right up there with those modern classics. And you can watch it now on SHUDDER!

Full review and some seriously kickass poster art below:

Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer (and based on Brian DeLeeuw’s book, In This Way I Was Saved), DANIEL ISN’T REAL is a wonderfully fantastical ride through fucked up subject matter. It tackles mental illness, trauma, dual nature, identity, male toxicity, and empathy… with a good amount of Lovecraftian madness and trippy, yet terrifically disgusting Cronenberg-esque visuals thrown in for good measure.

It’s an engaging story too, about a young man, Luke, overwhelmed with life as his mother’s mental health condition worsens. He’s dealing with that on top of everything else college kids go through, lack of confidence, anxiety, etc. There’s also a fear of his own sanity. He keeps hallucinating and blanking out. His therapist suggests that maybe he should try to tap into that creativity he had as a child, where he’d regularly play for hours on end with his imaginary friend, “Daniel”. Only things got very weird and unsettling the last time he played pretend with his fictional playmate.

Once Daniel re-enters his life, things start to change. Luke’s mother issues get better. Luke suddenly feels more confident in life. Luke is finally doing well with girls. Luke’s getting creative again with photography... and all of his problems seem to go away… Only Daniel seems to want more credit and recognition. And Daniel seems to be getting angrier. And that’s when things get really fucking messed up.

This film is wonderfully acted by a mix of up-and-comers and veterans of the scene. Luke is played by Miles Robbins (HALLOWEEN 2018) and gives that immediate likeable and kind, yet also meek, portrayal that perfectly conveys what kind of a person that Luke is. There’s a lot of range in emotion in this performance, from hurt and confused to confident, to something else entirely. I always get a kick at seeing an actor completely flip their performance and style midway and totally embody something else, and this film has that and more.

Contrasting that likability and meekness is Daniel (played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, SCREAM QUEENS), the titular imaginary friend who’s pure Freudian Id. He’s cool, slick, charismatic, and always knows the right thing that Luke should say, or do, to get ahead. He’s helpful… when he wants to be… but he also has a lot of darkness. A scary darkness that seems to stem from… something else. Patrick excels when he taps into this dark alias. He’s evil as fuck. There’s a sinister glee in his manner. Epitome of “Chaotic Evil”. He’s such a great asshole. He really kicks it into gear when the audience fully know what we’re dealing with… 

Yet even then, nothing is over explained. And that’s the beauty of this film. There is no expository dialogue or wasted scene. Everything is laid out there and the actors just bring it. This film lives in a world of it’s own and the audience is a passenger for the unholy ride. It’s a very slick flick full of world building and the kind of outstanding performances that really make everything shine.

Rounding out the supporting cast is Luke’s troubled mother (veteran Mary Stuart Masterson, who powerfully played a similar and memorable role in BENNY & JUNE), Sasha Lane (HELLBOY) as the love interest, artist, and really, the heart and soul of the film, and Hannah Marks (DIRK GENTLY) as the other girl faced with Luke’s dark side. again, all perfectly played and perfectly cast, giving a much needed balance in this heavy film.

And it’s a very heavy film. The story was a deeply personal one for Mortimer (as he explained to us in 2019, when he brought the film to the Montreal FANTASIA film fest). The director drew from his own experiences from his youth, when a friend was similarly dealing with mental health issues. Mortimer had to help him, because his friend was “falling off the rails”, with no one around really helping him out, “not friends or professionals”. He talked of his friend’s life being in ruins, and how it just “spiraled off into mania”. 

That experience deeply impacted Mortimer. It was from this that Mortimer wanted to make a film about empathy and compassion for people going through severe mental illness issues. While Luke’s troubles stem from something more, the parallels are still there to people in real life going through non-otherworldy issues. The overall sense of helplessness, and a desire to be understood and taken seriously, is still there, and still a universal theme. Especially right now.

This film also tackles a lot more than just matters of wellness. Mortimer also wanted the film to deal with the “increasing danger” young men are in these days. “The Dangers they face and the danger many are to themselves”. 

Mortimer talked about them, “Living in a world where men have been driven insane by society. A society where many men are both the product and the villain of it.” A lot of this is seen on film when Luke battles for control with Daniel. Daniel representing that alpha and that Id. Luke grasping for control and trying to be that voice of compassion and reason. It’s a wonderful character study that is only heightened by the horror elements that come into play.

And yes, it’s an absolute horror fan’s delight and it’s visually stunning to boot, mixing psychological & psychedelic horror together. It felt like I was watching HELLRAISER again for the first time, but if that film was shoved in a blender with FIGHT CLUB, JACOB’S LADDER, and copious amounts of mind altering drugs. But comparing it to anything else does no justice to the wholly original eye-gasmic feast set before us. I keep saying this, but it truly is an utterly wonderful surreal fever dream. It’s so very layered and out there. 

It’s refreshing to see new films like this come about with something to say and looking as great as it does. Yes, this film looks very different from most things that are currently out there, with it’s violet texture throughout, and otherworldly feel. Mortimer, who came from a music video background, wanted his second feature to have a distinct look to it, saying that the “violet hue throughout had a very futuristic and contemporary colour about it”. He wanted to create the feeling of a manic episode, and overwhelm the viewer with colours and density. 

And he totally does. It’s such a beautiful looking film, and one you’ll definitely go back to just to soak in the wonderful hypnotic visuals. Much like MANDY, from the year before, DANIEL is a cinematic treat for your eyeballs.

And there’s also some deeply messed up visuals that mix in with that beauty. The FX on a whole are amazingly bizarre. There are visuals that are so jaw-droppingly good that you’ll permanently have them etched in your brain. It’s the kind of film where you’re watching and you immediately want to rewind and see that scene again.

From faces being merged into each other in a pink tentacled mess of VIDEODROME-esque flesh, to other visages literally being mangled like putty! Pure body terror. People crawling into other people’s mouths– I could go on, but I don’t want to spoil it. It’s icky and wonderful all at once.

And I can’t go on about the FX without mentioning the nightmarish and hellish creature design by Martin Astles (who also worked on the brutal and classic nightmare fuel that is EVENT HORIZON). The creature FX are so fucking out there, each very distinct and very memorable. The kind of things that if you confronted them in real life you’d be quick to claw them out your own eyes. 

One beast looks like a hellish death beast with a fleshy castle for a head-- an absolute architectural artifice. Mortimer said they attempted to convey that a whole universe was in its face, and it existed outside space and time. Another Face looking like piercing bullets poking through the flesh and protruding from his cheeks, like a moment frozen in time. They’re all so freakishly creative and disturbing. I can’t even describe them right. I’m not sure I want to, but they’re seared into my mind. Body Horror and Cosmic Horror at their best.

In addition to the visuals, this film also brings it on the sound design and score front. It’s got an incredible score by Warp Records act Clark. It contains synthy goodness along with manipulations of actual orchestral pieces. And it was Clark’s first time working on a film score, something Mortimer preferred. 

He wanted someone that wasn’t used to working on horror films, or films in general, so they’d throw everything they had into it from the get go. Mortimer told Clark to make it sound like Bernard Herrmann got stuck in some horrible industrial accident. A relentless sonic assault that tries to capture that same feel that Clint Mansell did with REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. The results are a superb original work of music that completely enhances and already spectacular looking film.

I was a fan of Mortimer’s SOME KIND OF HATE when I caught it six years ago at FANTASIA FEST, but DANIEL is an entirely different beast and next level filmmaking. He’s easily grown as a filmmaker and I’m totally on board to see more. I can’t wait to see what he tackles next, because DANIEL was easily one of my top Fantasia picks for 2019.

DANIEL ISN’T REAL is one of those dark films that will most likely be seen as a cult classic in a few years, right up there with DONNIE DARKO and movies of a similar ilk. It’s full of so much imagination and gusto, all while tackling important issues and core themes. All that and it remains highly watchable and engaging. It’ll satisfy any horror junkie while also winning over fans of thought provoking art. Daniel isn’t real, but I’m glad it exists.

-Theo Radomski, Movies Rot Brains 

Seriously how fucking awesome are these posters?  Why can’t more horror films hire the people that made these posters? Why can’t film in general hire these people to make better promo art? 

This article was previously seen on Mobtreal.com

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Movies and TV Shows in the Book

While the series is close to reality, there are a few movie and TV series that exist in the book’s universe. Here they are for all your background information needs!

The Handy & Ydnah Show

An odd show centered around two talking hands with googly eyes, one named Handy and another named Ydnah. Ydnah is characterized as being able to only speak in reverse and being the crazier and more unhinged brother, while Handy is the brains and the voice of reason. The two get into many comical misadventures, many of which rope in their friend and neighbor, the fairy cat Blue.

With its absurd humor, cheap-looking special effects, and goofy voice acting, the show has become popular with both children and stoners alike. Oddly, very little information about the production of the show is available anywhere, and nobody knows who even plays Handy, Ydnah, or Blue, let alone the numerous other characters.

The Journeys of Arya Mournblade

 A series of films starring  actress Maggie Fair that began in the early 80s. they are centered on the eponymous Arya Mournblade, a wandering warrior woman in the fantasy land of Urgonn. The following films were made:

The Lair of the Serpent King: Arya goes to stop a strange cult that wishes to resurrect an ancient and powerful serpent god. Despite its low budget, it managed to win over audiences with the cheesy script and solid special effects for the budget. Released in 1986, it has a solid 6.8 on IMDB.

Hellfire of Dagoth: Arya faces an evil warlock bent on releasing demons from Hell. Here it was noted Iris’ acting was greatly improved, and the plot was tighter and more original. Dagoth is widely regarded as the least interesting villain in the series in terms of characterization and motivation. His actor, Gordon Brand, makes a valiant effort to make up for it by chewing the scenery, but to no avail in the eyes of the fans. However, Fair’s better acting combined with the better effects and a decent supporting cast, including a beleaguered henchman and a sensual bard, helped to make this a well-liked movie. Released in 1988, it holds a 5.9 on IMDB.

The Ebony Tower: An evil overlord wages war on the land from atop a mighty tower, which Arya promises to scale, not knowing all the dangers inside. This one was the first critical darling of the series, gaining good reviews from critics and audiences alike. A big help was getting Dane Grayson of the Dick Kicker: Ace Detective series to play the villainous overlord Celsior, who is widely regarded as being the best antagonist of the series. The clear inspiration from kung-fu movies combined with the tightest plot to date and a cast of colorful oneshot assassins populating the titular tower led to this movie getting great reviews. It was released in 1989 and has a 7.4 on IMDB.

Starchild of Avalor: Beings from beyond the stars beg Arya to help them stop a coming invasion which threatens to wipe out all life on Earth. This is widely regarded as the lowest point in the series. The addition of UFOs and sci-fi elements really soured a lot of fans, with them finding it did not mesh well with the series. However, it is widely agreed the villain, Xendru the Conqueror is one of the most fun villains the franchise had to offer. The special effects in this movie were shockingly subpar, and the story was rather confused in a lot of parts. Still, the fun villain as well as Iris’ seasoned acting did end up being praised, and the movie does have a small cult following WITHIN the cult following, with most fans viewing it as a “So bad it’s good” movie. Released in 1993, it has a 4.9 on IMDB.

Marked in the Stars: Released in 1996. This entry was the first one in the series to go direct-to-video. It’s viewed as a step up from the previous film, which isn’t really saying much. It has a 5.8 on IMDB. 

The Final Crusade: Released direct-to-video in 2000, this was intended to be the grand finale of the series, but it was met with overwhelmingly poor reception due to its lackluster plot and unsatisfying conclusions. It holds the lowest rating of the franchise on IMDB, at 3.6.

The Demon’s Head: After a decade in limbo and Fair constantly talking about how she’d love to return to the role, the franchise returned to theaters with this first entry in the Arya Reborn trilogy, as it would come to be known, and it was a resounding success among fans. Released in 2010, it holds a 6.8 on IMDB.

The Wrath of Mouurnblade: While seen as a bit of a fanservice stunt as it brought back almost every antagonist in the series to fight Arya again, most fans agree the movie is a lot of fun and has great performances that redeem even the weaker villains. Released in 2014, it holds a 7.0 on IMDB.

With Strange Eons: The finale of the series. Arya must fight against the apocalypse as the Great Old Ones are awakened from their eternal slumber. This movie is the second film in the franchise to win great praise from both audiences and critics alike, and is widely hailed as a swords and sorcery classic. Fair is at the top of her game, and the story is excellent and finely woven, with the Lovecraftian influence working wonders after the divisive use of aliens. It helps eldritch horrors mesh better with fantasy settings than UFOs. The villains Ktulu, Yargog, Nephilethet, and Azeroth are some of the most frightening special effects the series had ever achieved, using all sorts of techniques from animatronics to stop-motion to bring the monsters to life. The film ends with Arya dying while sealing the Great Old Ones away forever, with Arya becoming a legend on Earth and having a constellation put in the sky, with the strong implication the gods granted her some form of divinity so she may watch over Earth for all time. It is widely considered the best film in the franchise. Released in 2017, it has a 7.9 on IMDB.

Dick Kicker: Ace Detective

A series of tongue-in-cheek hard-boiled detective movies from the late 60s/early 70s starring Dane Grayson as the eponymous private eye, a hardboiled badass who plays by no one’s rules but his own. Five films were made:

Dick Kicker: Ace Detective: The first film in the series. It featured Dick investigating the mysterious disappearance of a mayor’s daughter. Things were obviously not as they seem. It’s widely regarded as the best entry of the series, though most of the sequels have fans. It was released in 1968 and has a 7.5 on IMDB.

The Rain Falls Hard: A string of murders during a rainy spring rife with flooding, and Dick is on the case again. This one is seen as a bit of a step down from the first film. Released in 1971, it has a 6.7 on IMDB.

Time and Time Again: A rich, eccentric clockmaker is found murdered in his mansion at a dinner party, and it’s up to Dick Kicker to figure out who the killer is. This is the most highly regarded sequel of the bunch. Released in 1974, it has a 7.0 on  IMDB.

The Hardest Nut to Crack: A factory worker and union leader turns up dead, so Dick Kicker is on the case to get to the bottom of this. Very good ideas and a solid message, but the execution lacked any flair and some find the film hamfisted. Released in 1978, it has a 6.0 on IMDB.

The City Sleeps Tonight: A death during a severe power outage is investigated by Dick. Usually regarded as the weakest entry in the series. Released in 1980, it has a 5.8 on IMDB.

Mercenaries

A series about, you guessed it, a group of mercenaries. It is a trashy, crazy action series well known for two things: The immortal lines “There’s nothing better in life than the feeling of a woman’s tongue coiling around the tip of your dick” and “I’m going to make you sorry you ever slid out of your mom’s vagina” (both uttered by the main character, foul-mouthed Max Viper) and the single fight scene involving Venus Crowley (under her pseudonym Scarlet Love) in which she performed unscripted combat moves whilst riding a motorcycle. 

[badbookopinions]

The City We Became - N. K. Jemisin

The Broken Earth Trilogy blew my mind. This is not the Broken Earth trilogy. On one hand, this is good - Broken Earth was brutal and sad and I don’t think I’d want to put myself through the emotional turmoil of it again. On the other hand, this is not quite as good as Broken Earth was. I think a series like that is the sort of thing that comes along rarely and isn’t something you can do twice - and that’s alright. For one thing, this is a lot more fun.

Featuring...

So we knew N. K. Jemisin could do some goddamn prose. We knew this. What we didn’t know is that she could be clever and witty, too. I decided I liked this book on the very first page where I read the sentence “In my head, there’s an orchestra playing “Ode to Joy” with a Busta Rhymes backbeat.”

Some A+ prime social commentary and some A+ prime riffing off of Lovecraftian tropes.

I’ll talk about this later, but this book is a letter to New York and every bit of it was suffused with such powerful love for the city it was a joy to read.

I’m so excited for the second book of this trilogy!

Plot: fast-paced and exciting. On one hand, I read this in a day because I was so excited I couldn’t put it down. On the other hand, I tend not to like fast-paced plots that take place over a couple of days because it isn’t enough time for characters to develop or relationships to form. It read like an adventure story, and that made it so much fun. I think that’s the biggest difference between this and Broken Earth - this isn’t as deep or impactful, but it’s much more enjoyable. 

Characters: as individuals, excellent, but their relationships were an issue. When stories are fast, you don’t have time to have your characters undergo development or let relationships form without it feeling rushed and strange. This meant that we know the basics of every person but not much about who they really are, and the relationships between the different boroughs are slim to none (which I still prefer to the lazy and clumsy insta-love some other people try). That doesn’t mean that what Jemisin told us I didn’t wholeheartedly enjoy. My favourite character was probably Padmini/Queens, largely because she’s brown and a nerd and I’m brown and a nerd. I still had so much fun reading about Brooklyn, Bronca/the Bronx, and Manny/Manhattan. And Aislyn absolutely fascinated me - one minute she was being a typical protagonist and the next she thought something unbearably racist. I was so curious the entire time I was reading about her to see where her story would go, even if I didn’t like her. I will say that even though Jemisin wasn’t able to develop her characters, she made sure we saw the beauty and the poetry of them - Bronca, Brooklyn, and Manny especially (I could talk for ages about the violence lurking under Manny). The relationships between characters was my letdown, although I have full confidence that next book when everyone already knows each other this will be fixed. Bronca and Veneza’s relationship (mother-daughter, superhero-sidekick, and mismatched-best-friends rolled into one) was a lot of fun and proves it’s just a matter of time.  Still, I wouldn’t have minded Brooklyn and Queens interacting more with their families if only so we had some people who knew each other alongside all the meeting new people. I’m fascinated between the relationship between New York and Manhattan and would love to seem more. 

Setting: oh New York please let me come see you at some point when the world is not in a global pandemic because this book made me fall in love. There’s something so special about works of art composed out of love: it shines through in every bit of it. This is even more obvious when it’s about the places we live, because our homes inspire such a powerful feeling of this - and that feeling is shared by so many. And of all the cities in the world, there are few more adored than New York. Every single description of a New York landmark or person had me grinning - I could almost picture it, even if I hadn’t been there, but I could feel the love Jemisin had for it all and that made it even better. I thought the Lovecraftian elements were very good, although I think Jemisin could have made them a bit more scary - there’s this scene where Starbucks storefronts are turned into monsters that I mostly just found comical. And I am obsessed with the concept of cities as people - check out thecitysmith on tumblr for another take on this idea. I can’t even articulate why I think it’s so fantastic, but it’s something about love: people loving their homes so much their home creates an avatar to love them back. Or something. The one thing that disappoints me is that only really massive cities spawn people. On one hand, it fits with Jemisin’s plot that New York only spawns in the present day as opposed to during its creation. On the other hand, please spare a personality for Toronto because I love my city very much and think we deserve it but we didn’t get one and it makes me sad.

Prose: Jemisin has moved beyond ripping your heart out and making you think to making you laugh and making you think - and then ripping your heart out. First of all, I’m obsessed with the expansion of humour that comes with Jemisin’s new ability to put references in her story. The Ode to Joy with a Busta Rhymes backbeat is probably my favourite example. She’ll occasionally write a character doing something that skewers a facet of the real world or the particular city so perfectly and I love it. (Mentioning again how her love for the city shines through here because it’s her prose that makes it possible.) She’s got quotes that are less comedic, though: I liked, “[Bronca] had a gentle soul wrapped in razor wire, but the sharp edges are not her fault. The world trained her to violence, to ferocity, because it hates so much of what she is. This isn’t the first time Bronca has been surrounded on all sides by those who would invade her, shrink her borders, infect her most quintessential self and leave only sanitized, deadened debris in their wake. It’s not even the first time she’s had the power to fiht back. This is just the first time it’s happened since she became the goddamn Bronx.”

Not-great things: N. K. Jemisin, ma’am? Spare a personality for Toronto because I think we deserve it? I just want to see Jemisin’s take on other cities so badly and I’m disappointed we’ll only get a few. Also there seems to me so many more cities with their own personalities that would manifest their own creations besides just New York - was it really only the seven or eight mentioned that get their own personalities? Also, my above-mentioned problem with the lack of interpersonal relationships.