#werewolf noir creatures

[ultrainfinitepit]

All the Film Noir Monsters pins! These will have black nickel enamel.

The Cowboy and Film Noir Monsters will be available individually, as blind bags, and as full sets in limited amounts.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Songs for Eureka Sessions: Investigation Scenes (tense/creepy) Part 1

Masterpost of Eureka song lists & how to choose good music for any TTRPG session.

Neve (Versione Integrale) - The Hateful Eight

Opening Credits - Prince of Darkness

The Underground Church - Prince of Darkness

The Night Stalker

The Werewolf - Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Ghost - Stealth Music Avery Alexander

Save Room - Resident Evil 2

Shadow - Deadly Premonition

And Hell Followed - Randal Collier Ford

The Lady Circles - Little Nightmares

Shape - The Thing

Darkness - Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Humanity - The Thing

Solitude - The Thing

Main Hall - Resident Evil

Nebula - Lugensa

Dining Room - Resident Evil

The Gramophone - Crimson Peak

A Clockwork Killing - The Sexy Brutale

Vanessa Wants to Play - A Hat in Time

Watchful Eyes from Above - Silent Hill 4

Laudanum – Atrium Carceri

The Underground Laboratory – Resident Evil 2

The Suspense Is Killing – L.A. Noire

Nightmare – Max Payne 2     

Left Alone? – Resident Evil 2

Max Hurt: Danger and Consequences – Max Payne 2

Anomaly – Cities Last Broadcast

Fabiana – Max Payne 3

The Jail – Resident Evil 2 Remake

Clues 05 – L.A. Noire

Fate of the Damned – Blood

Clues 03 – L.A. Noire

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble – Blood

Police Station Basement – Resident Evil 2 Remake

Find a Way Out – Resident Evil 2 Remake

Den – Resident Evil 2 Remake

Jill. You Are Alive! – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Lisa’s Lair – Resident Evil 1 Remake

What’s Going On – Resident Evil 2 Remake

Barry’s Betrayal – Resident Evil 1 Remake

The Marshalling Yard (First Half) – Resident Evil 2

The First Floor – Resident Evil 2

Weapons Don’t Give Us Relief – Resident Evil 2

Lab Entrance – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Contanimated – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Wesker’s Master Plan – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Underground – Resident Evil 1 Remake

A Statue with a Map – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Fourth Floor – Cities Last Broadcast

Guardhouse II – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Neptune Tank – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Macabre Hallway – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Track 1 – Nightmare Creatures

The Bottom of the Well – Parasite Eve II

Lost in Fog – Phonothek

Blood Red – Silent Hill 4

Track 06 – Galerians

A Ruined Village – Resident Evil 4

Moonchild – Silent Hill 1

Disfigured Reality – yatakiya

Inner Most Part of the Shelter – Parasite Eve II

The Sleep Ensemble – Atrium Carceri

the White – Kairo

Twisted Emotions – Silent Hill 4

Fear of Heights – Silent Hill 4

Ghost Room – Martha Is Dead

Stares Back – Cities Last Broadcast

Gloomy View – Silent Hill 3

Wind Chime – Silent Hill 3

Vagues - Benoit Pioulard

Lisa Trevor – Resident Evil 1 Remake

Disembodied – Cities Last Broadcast

Totentanz – Musica Cthulhiana

The Sitting – Cities Last Broadcast

All Things Nocturnal – Atrium Carceri & Cities Last Broadcast

The Death of a Lover – Heroin and Your Veins

[leothil]

fic recs: archive edition 19

Well well well if it isn't Wednesday already. Why didn't I post this on Monday you ask? Well you may have noticed a little something went down on 911blr on both Monday and Tuesday. A few articles got published and such. A little launch party happened. A tiny bit of insanity took over the fandom. Kept me a bit preoccupied. But we're here now! One (or two) days more to enjoy some fanfic before the new episode takes over our brains for at least 24h!

This list has absolutely no cohesive theme, except they were all published around Halloween 2021.

rainbows have nothing to hide by @hattalove Buck and Chris come to the conclusion that memes about Kermit the frog fit Eddie a little too well, and a new secret language between them is born. Per the author: this is no contest the stupidest thing i've ever written, this show makes me sick in the brain. Personally I love a little silliness in my fics now and then! 3.7k words, rated T

The Monsterfucker's Symphony by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels The fic, the myth, the legend. 17 chapters of one-shots where one of Buck and Eddie or both of them are some kind of mythological creature. You will definitely find something you like, and maybe discover something new about yourself along the way. I'm not going to claim favourites, but I'm quite weak for the werewolf and witch chapters. 57.2k, rated E

Like Any Unloved Thing by @hmslusitania A noir urban fantasy AU where private investigator Eddie gets hired to find Maddie Buckley's lost brother. Hands down one of the best AUs I've ever read, with what might be my favourite use of magic and the supernatural in a modern setting. The atmosphere will burrow its way under your skin! 18.1k words, rated M

who's afraid of the little plastic pasta man? by lecornergirl (@clusterbuck) Technophobe!Eddie makes a glorious appearance when Buck buys a pasta timer in the form of a little chef that starts singing when your pasta is done. Incredible silly vibes! 1.5k words, rated G

Start the list with silliness, end the list with silliness, have a perfect balance. Enjoy your week, and may we all survive the season seven premiere!

[vodika-vibes]

Alright! I promised that I was going to make a list of up-and-coming fics, and tonight I actually have the time to do it.

It's gonna be a long list, so it'll be under the cut.

This is accurate as of July 18

Crosshair x F!Reader - Crosshair with a crush

Commander Neyo x F!Reader x Commander Bacara

Masquerade pt 2 - Wrecker x F!Reader

Alpha-17 x F!Reader - Same-faced Gods AU pt 2

Echo x F!Reader - Same-faced Gods AU

Crosshair x F!Reader x Tech - Same Faced Gods AU

Echo x GN!Reader - Western AU - proposal

Jesse x F!Reader x Kix - Soulmate/Werewolves AU

Misfit (OC) Fic

Dogma x M!Reader - Proposal

Delta Squad x F!Reader - Criminal AU

Sev x F!Reader - Same-faced Gods AU - Part 2

Fox x Reader - Demon AU

Tup x GN!Reader - Monster AU - Reader is a shadow creature

Boba x F!Reader - Same-faced Gods AU

Fives x F!Reader - Western AU - Part 2 of Previous Fic

Echo x Reader - MerSoul AU

Boba x Reader - MerSoul AU

Clone of my choice x F!Reader - Beauty and the Beast AU

Mayday x F!Reader - Fairy Tale AU

Sev x F!Reader - MerSoul AU

Fox x F!Reader - Regency AU

Tup x Reader - Modern AU

Bad Batch x Reader - Undersea AU

Tech x F!Reader - Enemies to Lovers AU

Fox x Reader - Snow White AU

Wolffe x Reader - Western AU

Fox x Reader - Soulmate AU

Fives x Reader - Modern AU

Plo Koon x Reader - Western

Colt x Reader - Gryffin Industries AU

Wolffe x Reader - Sleeping Beauty AU

Wolffe x Reader - Monster AU (Werewolf Wolffe)

Gregor x F!Reader - Regency AU

Fox x Reader - Soulmate/Noir AU

Alpha-17 x Reader - Horror Apocalypse AU

Jesse x Reader x Kix - Mermaid/Soulmate AU

Rex x Reader - Mermaid love story

Crosshair or Hunter x Reader OR Rex x Reader (I have options here)

Bardan Jusik x Reader - Bardan with a crush

Crosshair x Reader - Reader is Pregnant when Crosshair leaves the Batch

Boss (or Delta Squad) x Reader - Barracks Bunny Fic

Member of the Batch x Reader - Reader goes nonverbal (will probably be a Tech fic)

Clone of my choice x F!Reader - Reader gets a massage

Rex x Reader - Rex gets hurt

Echo x Reader - Fives tries to convince Echo that Reader is in love with him

Clone of my choice x reader - secret admirer - 500 follower event request (my bad)

Crosshair x Reader - Crosshair has a crush

Sev x Reader, Gree x Reader, Wilco x Reader - handcanons for catching her bathing

Jango x F!Reader - Smut

Alpha-17 x Reader - Pregnant reader - headcanons

Clones of my choice x Reader - Hearing I love you during sex for the first time (will also be smut)

Go (OC) x Reader - fluff

Alpha-17 x F!Reader x Fordo - Smut

Walon Vau and Delta Squad - father and his sons

Fordo x F!Reader -Fordo comforts the reader after she tells him about a trauma

Alpha-17 x Reader - Reader gets harassed by a stranger

Darman x F!Reader - Continuation of Jealousy

Dorian (oc) x Reader - Fluff

And that's all of them! If you sent me a request and you don't see it here, it's because I never got it.

[harlequinoccult]

This might be a total coincidence but are you prince lapin? Your icon is familiar from other IF discords. what are your favourite ifs??

ah shit lads ive been found out Yeah, thats me !! the hyperfixation got so strong i needed to write my own

SPEAKING OF. you have opened pandoras box. god have mercy on you. Woe, Interactive Novels be upon ye.

CHOP SHOP by @losergames i fucking love crime. And they way everything is written? mwah. byootiful. like im watching a fucking movie.

WOLF SET FREE by @wolfsetfree-if WULFEBOUND by @wulfebound WEREWOLF NOIR by @canismaxim-games BLOOD MOON by @barbwritesstuff

I AM SO GAY ABOUT WEREWOLF SHIT YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

THE EXILE by @exilethegame I was (and am) hyperfixated on this singular game for a very very long time and my commander is the poorest little meow meow that i love repeatedly throwing against a wall and into a meatgrinder 💖

FIELDS OF ASPHODEL by @chrysanthemumgames I am so deeply unwell over Hades. but also i never noticed the simiarities that persephone and dionysus have and it makes me go insane to think about.

THE NAMELESS by @parkerlyn not only is my own bastard cat thing on an mc the most fun to draw, but it has reawakened my feralty over fae settings and fae creatures. also parker is just like. one of the sweetest people ever created??? illegal. how are they so nice.

THE NORTHERN PASSAGE by @northern-passage not only am i deeply unwell about Lea, but i adore deeply inhuman mcs <- (the transgenderism speaking). I also just like. respect the hell out of kit fr. takes absolutely no bullshit. absolute inspiration.

GREENWARDEN by @fiddles-ifs Bautista. I am unwell. do i have a type? perhaps. shut the fuck up about it. mc is deeply neurotic and a freak (complementary) (affectionate)(relatable)

SPEAKER by @speakergame one of the BEST writers of sibling interaction, hands down. one of the first twine IFs i have ever played and god it is so fuck quality. my god.

EVERYTHING BY @heart-forge oh my god. oooohhhh my fucking god. where do i begin. all of their projects are so fucking good and distinct. i can tell you i am unwell about trigger siruud and valerian and you could probably diagnose me with something but i dont care. i am going to fucking explode their shit is so quality.

EVERYTHING BY @pdrrook how do they do it. no seriously how the fuck do they do it. magic? are they fae? did they sell their soul to the devil? banger project after banger project after banger project. ALL of their shit is quality AND THEY DO NOT MISS. EVER.

THE GRAND HEIST by @thegrandheist-if BRO I FUCKING LOVE CRIME. LOVE BEING A BASTARD.

EVERYTHING BY @jaunefleurwrites fun highschool detectives!!! :) AND THEN MY FUCKING HEART GETS SHATTERED.

LEGEND OF A SAVIOR by @legend-of-a-savior-if THE DRAMA.....THE INTRIGUE......i loved fucked up cults. I loved fucked up shit. I hate my mom. thank u.

EVERYTHING BY @leftski-if bro......the softness of orcs......leftski gets it. everyday i thank them for my FUCKING life. (wolfsbane has werewolf shit, and as you know i am. Gay. About. It.)

VIRTUE'S END by @virtues-end you already fucking know who the fuck i am unwell about if you read the rest of this god damn list. dont fucking @ me. (barghest best helvling)

VENDETTA by @vendetta-if ok hear me out guys. have i mentioned the i love crime. that i love being a nasty crime boy? well jokes on you fucker im a vigilante.

THE KING'S HOUND by @the-kingshound Mordred is my fucking son and if anything happens to him i will kill everyone in this room and then myself.

BASTARD OF CAMELOT by @llamagirl28 the drama.....the fucking drama......my mordred, a literal ten year old has their shit together better than his fucking parents. this is my fucking soap opera. i have my fucking popcorn at the ready.

THE BALLAD OF DEVILS CREEK by @devilscreekballad Okay no jokes, i absolutely and genuinely hope the author of this IF gets to be in a better spot financially and health wise. This IF is so fucking phenomenal and the dedication to the time period without shirking away from sensitive topics is honestly insane. i absolutely wish them the best. 🌻

And finally, what might be the first twine if i ever played-

SCOUT by @anya-dev im crying. im scratching at the floorboards. im crawling on the walls. im barking in a cage. scout is such a fucking interesting post apoc story. the reason is unclear but at the time of the story it doesnt particularly matter. but at the same time it does so much. i want to know SO MUCH. Oliver was the fucking blueprint for my god damn brainrot.

[liminally-charged]

Warlock patron who's a noir movie narrator. It constantly narrates the warlock's actions, who's getting really fed up with this nonsense. Only the warlock can hear the narration, though sometimes the patron allows everyone to hear. This is entirely to the patron's amusement.

"The warlock stepped into the shady tavern, his weariness getting the better of his judgement. The air inside smelled of cheap ale and pipeweed. Judging from the bent floorboards and the grim look on the barkeep's face, this was the kind of place where a gold coin would get you a warm bed, or a shanking."

Warlock: "For gods sake man, I just need some rest for once."

-----

"He knelt down and examined the body. Slashmarks across the back, deep gashes. Blood and guts all over the floor. No doubt about it, the murderer was one cruel sunuvabitch, whoever he was."

Warlock: "Yes. I know. We're hunting a werewolf. We already know that."

"What sort of creature could kill a man like this? An owlbear perhaps? Maybe a dragon? The plot thickened. Where would they hide a dragon in the middle of the city? The warlock got back up and took a deep breath. This case ran deep, he just knew it."

Warlock: "A WEREWOLF. IT IS A WEREWOLF."

-----

"Goblins. He should've known. No dirty trick was too low for these lowlife bastards. Surely they would've set up traps around here."

Warlock: "Yeah! I'm well aware due to the DART sticking out of my LEG! Thanks for the warning, dickhead!"

"He'd have to *barely stifled laughter* he'd have to be really careful not to step into any, that would spell bad news for sure."

[knights-unwelcommentary]

These are my notes about the movies we've seen so far

Con air

Dad gets taken to jail (Dad Crocker and Dad Egbert?)

Heartfelt letters that are at the same time lacking some emotion and too verbose for a little kids (All the letters between the human players)

The stuffed bunny

Squeal like a pig

Dumb explosions

A murderer that's very murder-happy (Jack?)

Bunny back in the box

Needing to piss at a bad time (Dave?)

Flying car gone wrong

Failure to launch

Mysteriously violent animals

Rogue feathery asshole

Awful friend group sticks together anyway

Way too many meddling people spying on their friends through a computer

Saw

Puppets, among them one controlled by the bad guy

Spirals on the cheeks (the cherubs?)

Want to play a game (Bro Strider?)

Weird traps

Generous amounts of blood

Not very smart law enforcement

Dark room for photos

Two people chained to keep the opposite ends of the room unreachable (the cherubs?)

The story skips back and forth in time every other scene (homestuck's flashbacks, future snapshots and whatnot)

One of the two people trapped is a dick and also cuts off his leg to escape (Caliborn?)

The previous bad guy was a cover for the real bad guy (Doc Scratch?)

Game Over

Hook

Grandma was the heroine of her own story but then decided to retire to start a family (Nanna Egbert?)

Animal Nanny (part of the deal with lusus and trolls and Jade with Bec)

Tinkerbell/fairies

Hey listen (WV?)

Clock room (and vicious clock destruction)

Pirates

Stupid goons (the Felt?)

Kissing as a plot device

Crowd of longevous orphans (all the players and ghosts?)

Rufioh (as Rufioh)

The villain tries to brainwash a little girl, unsuccessfully

Creative insults

We're doing it

Neverending story

Mounted wolf head

Protagonist's kind of a friendless loser with a disconnect with his parental figure (John?)

Fascination for horses, and it being presented as weird (the author, Equius and Dirk?)

A story about a story about stories that blends with reality

Snake and ouroboros symbolism

Something's obiterating existence and killing everything on its path

Giant creature posses an existential quandary to the hero, tempting them to make a selfish choice (denizen)

Werewolf in pursuit of the hero to kill him (Bec Noir)

The one reading the story can give commands to the hero

Giving names to the characters as a rite of passage

Reality breaking down as the unstoppable force spreads

I failed. (Game Over Dirk?)

Ivory tower with a sphere contains a girl's bedroom (Jade and Kanaya)

The reader is a character in the first narrative layer, and is the one the quest was all about

Falcor makes the bullies pay (exact same thing happens in homestuck as a non sequitur bit from the author)

Hitch

Beloved pet kidnapping

The guy's too intense to keep a relationship going for long

He starts coaching others on romance and has better results than with his own love life (Karkat?)

There's a heiress involved and she's dating a "loser" (the narrative presents him as a loser because of his appearance)

Attempting to drag a woman into a committed relationship and going way overboard

Guy gets into slapstick and awkward situations mostly because of poor foresight and a bit of bad luck (yeah Hitch sounds a lot like Karkat)

Making it happen

Silly dance moves

Food allergies as a plot device

50 first dates

Eridan's pants

Check out this dude's muscles (Actually this dude's the story's joke character and has a lot of traits from the troll guys and a lot of bigotry's directed at him)

Memory shenanigans, the girl has to be reminded of her life since an accident a year before every signgle day (dream bubbles?)

Egg head portrait (Doc Scratch?)

Weekend at bernie's

Skulls

Falling down stairs

Necrophilia as a shock value joke???

Dead guy's a puppet

Hog tying the murderer (Gamzee)

Zany rich guy keeps getting into trouble after death (Grandpa Harley and Poppopos Crocker)

Serendipity

Absurd coincidences and predestination

Romance theory of fated partners

Papping

Bromance but with feelings jams (moirallegiance?)

Indiana jones

Complete disregard for preserving ancient artifacts (Grandpa Harley)

unconventional uses for a whip

Baddass archeology

Ancient magical artefacts

Mysterious ruins

Stupid gun deaths

Angels are dangerous light thingies (homestuck angels?)

Good luck chuck

The stoner's morally bankrupt

A guy gets a curse laid on him through ludicrous circumstances

Goths are actual witches

A girl has some supernaturally shitty luck

Vodoo pin doll

Tomb raider

Double pistols and skimpy outfits to the point of being impractical (Jake?)

Fighting some overpowered training robot (brobot?)

Evil corporation's behind the death of the beloved parental figure (Grandma Harley?)

Robotics guy/tech expert (Dirk?)

Complete disregard for preserving ancient artifacts (Jake)

Dumb triangle conspiracy (the illuminate joke with Hal and AR?)

The explorer has a dangerous fall from pretty high (Jake)

Dangerous creepy guy tries to manipulate a young lady and leverages his knowledge for it (Doc Scratch?)

Dangerous giant gears (LOHAC?)

My best friend's girl

One character has a front of emotionally detached douchebag dudebro type

He's roomates with a romance obsessed guy that's very serious about his girlfriend

The girlfriend cuts things off with her boyfriend cause he's too much and has no chill (karezi?)

The other guy offers to wing man for his roomate but ends up taking things too far (reminds me of the Hal, Dirk and Jake situation)

The other guy starts fooling around with the chick and somewhere along the line starts a serious relationship with her (daverezi)

The ex boyfriend's desperate to get back together and starts doing stupid shit

Regular love to hate love (quadrant vacillation?)

Avatar

Conscription in space

High ranking crew can do whatever the hell it wants

Imperialism in space

The disabled character prefers his dream self to his waking self (Tavros?)

Blue lady on a big fucking tree (Aranea?)

Big monsters with a visceral and symbiotic relationship with the aliens (partially what troll and lusii have going on)

Dragons

Bomb cube made of cans (shaving cream bomb that killed Jade?)

[adarkrainbow]

Fables: The Ultimate Catalogue! (A)

Here it is! A complete list of all the fairytale, nursery rhyme, mythical and literary references in Fables, both the main comic book series and its various spin-offs! This “catalogue” was created by me looking throughout the series and collected editions, adding to my personal knowledge quick Internet researches, and completing it all with the Fables Encyclopedia (which despite its official status has several things wrong in it). I didn’t get absolutely everything - some references I did not get, but I will keep a separate post for them. Enjoy!

SPOILERS AHEAD, SPOILERS AHEAD!

This post will cover the issues of Fables, the main series, 1 to 59 (from “Legends in Exile” to “Burning Questions”) + A Wolf in the Fold story + The Last Castle one-shot + 1001 Nights of Snowfall 

Note that I might have missed a few references, which I have placed in my series of posts “Searching for the reference” - if I ever find additional things, I will update this post.

The main characters

# Snow-White: The princess from “Little Snow-White” by the brothers Grimm, but also the sister of Rose-Red, from “Snow-White and Rose-Red” by the same brothers. She is the “civilized child”, “good sister”, “refined princess”, “order” to Rose-Red’s “wild child”, “disobedient sister”, “crude peasant”, “chaos”. 

# Rose-Red: The character from the brothers Grimm fairytale “Snow-White and Rose-Red”. She is Snow-White’s counterpart in many way. She is the peasant girl to her sister’s princess, she is the wild child to her sister’s obedient/civilized child, she is the ruler of the Farm and its animalistic realms where Snow-White governs Fabletown and the human Fables. 

# Bigby Wolf: The Big Bad Wolf. An “archetypal” character representing the “Western myth of the wolf as a voracious killer, man-eating, cunning, terrifying beast” - even tough real-life wolves are actually shy and do not attack men in normal circumstances He was the wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood” and from “The Three Little Pigs”. His original fairytale incarnation, as the giant, all-devouring wolf-son of the North Wind, was revealed by Willingham to have been inspired by the Fenris Wolf of Norse mythology (Willingham wanted his depictions of fairytales to have roots in ancient myths, the same way the “oldest Sleeping Beauty is Brunhilde’s circle of fire”. His human persona in today’s Fabletown is inspired by a bunch of detective and spy characters - most notably by the detectives of the “film noir” genre, though he has a disheveled Columbo-like appearance, coupled with a gruffness and inherent violence typical of a “wolf” like character: he has been described by people as “Dirty Harry meets Wolverine meets Humphrey Bogart’s detective roles”. His position as the love interest to the main female protagonist/Snow White-related woman is also clearly inspired by the character of “Wolf”, from “The 10th Kingdom”.

During his adventures in World War II he happened to become Fables’ equivalent of “The Wolf-Man” from the Universal Horror movies (he even lived through “Frankenstein meets the Wolf-Man” as he had to fight the creature of Frankenstein - Willingham confessed being a big fan of the Universal classics). In fact, we know he was the main source of the werewolf myth in our world (or maybe the reverse, it is unclear with Fables), since he is a shapeshifter able to turn into a giant wolf, a human being, or an in-between, he can only be killed by silver, and he had a friendship and alliance with Count Dracula (see below). We also learn from his backstory in “1001 Nights of Snowfall” that he used to be a twisted version of the “ugly little duckling” of his family, the runt of the litter mocked by his brothers, then turned into the biggest, baddest, most powerful of magical wolves.

# Boy Blue: Snow-White’s assistant comes from the nursery rhyme “Little Boy Blue”. On a play of him being tied to the color blue and playing the trumpet, he is also a talented musician of blues music. Also an expert in jazz, his favorite song is “Blue Skies”, and he apparently will always refuse to play “Tijuana Taxi”. When describing his tragic love story with Little Red Riding Hood, he calls it a parody of an “insipid O. Henry tale”. His adventures in the Homelands, with a mask on his face, the Witching Cloak and the Vorpal Blade, turned him into a legendary figure mixing various influences - his mask, cape and sword evokes the character of Zorro, he calls himself at one point the “Blue Avenger” (which seems to be a comic book nod, as Boy Blue is seen to be a big fan of comics), and he is called by many the “Black Knight” which, on top of being a reference to the archetype of the “Black Knight/Dark Knight” in typical Arthurian tales, might be a reference to Batman aka the “Dark Knight”, another dark super-hero with a half-mask and cloak that fights in the shadows of the night. Rose Red later describes this new persona of his as “the swashbuckler supreme”, “better than Errol Flynn” (the actor who played the most famous cinematic version of Robin Hood). 

# Jack: Of his full title “Jack of all Tales” (a pun on “Jack of all trades”). Jack is ALL the Jack of fairytales, or almost all of them. He starts out as the Jack from the English Jack tales (Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack o’ Lantern) but he is also promptly revealed to be the Jack from nursery rhymes (Jack be nimble, Little Jack Horner, Jack and Jill). He is also the “Appalachian Jack”, or the “Mountain Jack of American folklore” - the Jack of those folktales carried from Europe over to the Appalachian mountains (the issue “Bag O’Bones” is a retelling of the Appalachian story “Soldier Jack” or “The Man who Caught Death in a Bag”). AND he is tied to the “Jacks” of card-games, aka the four Knaves, that he can summon in his hand during any card game (he even sings the gambling song “Jack O’Diamonds”). The Fables Encyclopedia notes that the oldest Jack tale would be “Jack and his Stepdame”, and mentions how Jack is the English version of the stock-character of fairytale known as Ivan un Russia, Hans in Germany and Juan in Spanish-speaking American countries. Willingham also mentions in the Encyclopedia that “Jack who jumped over a candlestick” is another one of the nursery rhymes part of the character. 

Jack is one of the tricksters of the Fables world - though he represents the “dark gray” kind of trickster. He is a chronical liar and thief, always acting out of selfishness and base desires (greed and lust), constantly throwing himself into “get-rich-quick” plans and not truly caring about anyone else but himself. This anti-hero is also constantly stuck into a cycle of failures and successes: while by essence he has luck on his side, as he is the very embodiment of the “designated hero” or the “non-heroic protagonist”, chance alway provides him the opportunities to fulfill his dreams and to escape his ordeals, his character however also means that every time he puts together a succesful scam or gets where he wants, he will lose everything and be forced to begin everything from scratch again. The Fables Encyclopedia does point out that this isn’t part of the traditional Jack character, who is usually an “unlikely hero”, the simpleton or the weakest of three brothers, who, with courage and resourcefulness (and luck) overcomes obstacles. But Willingham explained he wanted a “trickster without the charm, a bad boy who never learns despite his frequent comeuppance”. The only Jacks that aren’t him are Jack Sprat (from the nursery rhyme) and Jack Ketch (the executioner).

# The Black Forest Witch, or Frau Totenkinder: She is introduced as the witch from “Hansel and Gretel”, who survived being burned in her own oven, but she is revealed by “The March of the Wooden Soldiers” to have been in truth much more than that. She is an “archetypal” character who was the anonymous, unnamed or barely-mentioned witch of numerous other fairytales - and she even was involved in several stories where she did not appear as a character, since her desire was to keep herself hidden from the world. Her two titles are mere aliases: “The Black Forest Witch” refers to the deep, dark forest she lived in, the Black Forest of actual Germany, and the type of cake “Black Forest” all at once. Frau Totenkinder is a German name meaning “Miss Child-Killer”, formed of “Toten”, to kill, and “kinder”, “children”. In general, I also suspect she was influenced by the character of the Witch from “Into the Woods” (notably for reasons we will see in later parts of the series). 

We get her full backstory in “The Witch’s Tale” (1001 Nights of Snowfall) and we learn she has been  the witch from Rapunzel (though this version of Rapunzel is quite different from the one we know) and the witch who cursed the Frog Prince and the Beast into their monstrous shapes (it was a hobby of her to turn handsome, rich noblemen into various animals under the pretense of “helping” them finding their “true love”). She also participated in the creation of famous stories/characters, though she never appeared in them: she blessed Lancelot of the Lake with the ability to win any combat as long as he remained pure of heart, she created the Three Billy Goats Gruff to get rid of a bridge infested by trolls, and she gave the Pied Piper his enchanted flute to lure the children of Hamelin away as a personal revenge on the town.  She played the role of an haruspex in a city similar in design to Ancient Rome (before, she was a shaman for a Prehistoric tribe), though the prophecy she delivers through her gore-reading are biblical in nature (Joseph’s famous “seven years of plenty, seven years of famine”). And finally we learned that she caused one of the “good daughter rewarded, bad daughter punished” type of fairytale, in the likes of “Diamonds and Toads” or “Frau Holle” - except her “punishment” was killing the vain, mean sisters, cooking them into pies and feeding them to their mother. 

# Beauty and the Beast: A couple from the fairytale of the same name, first written by madame de Villeneuve, but rewritten and made famous by madame Leprince de Beaumont.

# Prince Charming: THE Prince Charming of various fairytales. He isn’t all the princes of fairytales, but he was (in chronological order), the prince-husband of Snow-White, who after his divorce with her became the prince-husband of Briar Rose, and after his divorce with her became the prince-husband of Cinderella. His womanizing ways lead him to be compared to the famous Casanova (though his modern behavior evokes mostly a nicer Don Giovani). I suspect he was inspired by the characters of the prince brothers from “Into the Woods”. He also technically makes an homage to the character of Harold Hill from “The Music Man”, as he uses some sentences from his song “Ya got trouble” during his campaign for mayor of Fabletown. 

Fabletown citizens and buildings

# King Cole: The mayor of Fabletown is Old King Cole, from the nursery rhyme of the same name.

# Bluebeard: From Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” fairytale. 

# Trusty John: He is Faithful John, from the same name fairytale of the brothers Grimm.

# Ambrose/Flycatcher is the Frog King, from the brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name. He usually sings various folk-songs and nursery rhymes tied to his frog state, such as “Frog Went A-Courting” and “The old lady who swallowed a fly”. Due to him being not pretty-looking, not very bright or intelligent, and usually dismissed and pushed into lower positions, he is also explicitely referred to in the story as “the village’s idiot” of Fabletown. The reason Willingham chose “Ambrose” as his name is revealed in the Fables Encyclopedia to be: Willingham simply likes the name Ambrose ever since he discovered that Merlin the wizard was sometimes called “Merlin Ambrosius”. (In fact, Willingham, by choosing this name, indirectly predicted Flycatcher’s future Arthurian character-arc). 

# Grimble, the troll security guard, is one of the several bridge trolls of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. I say several because, when Buckingham drew the “Animal Farm” arc, he kept putting in the background an orange-fur covered creature with a green hat - the Encyclopedia reveals that it was Buckingham’s reusing another of his designs of the “Bridge Troll”, taken from the “Merv Pumpkinhead” comic series, a spin-off of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” that was the first collaboration of Willingham and Buckingham (Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of D.R.E.A.M.). (Similarly, in Frau Totenkinder’s backstory she explains that when a bridge troll is killed, another soon takes his place, as they are an entire species). The Encyclopedia also reveals that Willingham originally envisioned Grimble as a big burly security guard, but Lan Medina (one of the artists working on Fables) rather drew him as a “Wally Cox, Barney Fife sort of fellow”, and Willingham adored the dichotomy of the glamour and true character. 

# Bufkin is one of the winged monkeys from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, by L. Frank Baum.

# Cinderella is from Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella” (and not the Grimm version since her slippers are here of glass, not gold).It is in fact the name of her shoe-shop: The Glass Slipper.

# Pinocchio is from “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi. 

# Fabletown itself (and the Fables as a whole) are named after the genre known as “fable”. The Woodland Luxury Apartment, Fabletown’s unofficial town hall, refers in name the typical fairytale forest, and in role the main castle at the center of every fairytale kingdom. In its gardens we find statues of Alice with her kitten and white rabbit (from “Alice in Wonderland” AND “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”) and a statue of Humpty Dumpty (from the nursery rhyme of the same name, plus Alice in Wonderland). (My notes mention a statue of Dorothy and Toto from The Wizard of Oz, but I am not certain of it?)

# The streets of Fabletown are named after various authors. Bullfinch Street is named after Thomas Bullfinch who wrote the famous “Bullfinch’s Mythology”. Kipling Street is named after Rudyard Kipling who created classics such as “The Jungle Book” or the “Just so Stories”. Perrault Street is named after Charles Perrault, who wrote the famous “Mother Goose’s fairy tales”. Andersen Street is named after the fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen. 

# The “I Am The Eggman” diner, on top of being a pun due to being owned by Vulco, one of the crow-brothers, is a reference to the lyrics of the song “I am the Walrus” (itself a reference to “Alice through the Looking-Glass”). The Edward Bear’s Candies shop is a reference to the teddy bear that inspired the creation of Winnie-the-Pooh. The Branstock Tavern is a reference to the Barnstokkr tree appearing in the Völsung saga. 

# While not part of Fabletown, Gottfried’s Steak House seems to be a reference to Gottfried von Strauss, a poet famous for his work on “Tristan and Yseult”. The waitress there, Molly Greenbaum, serves as a reference to the folk song “Molly Malone”, that Prince Charming actually sings as he leaves her (I also mistook her for a nod the nursery rhyme “Miss Molly had a dolly”). 

# The Knights of Malta Hospital is a reference to the real-life Knights of Malta/Knights Hospitaller. Working in it, we find Doctor Swineheart (from the Grimms’ “The Three Army Surgeons”) and Nurse Sprat (actually Miss Sprat from the nursery rhyme “Jack Sprat”). Jack Sprat himself lives with his wife in Fabletown.

# The Forsworn Knight, the undead hanging knight haunting his rusty armor, has his identity secret up to this point - but the “Fables Encyclopedia” explained that his title was a reference to how the knights of the Arthurian mythos are only known by their nicknames: The Knight with Two Swords, the Dolorous Knight, the Green Knight, the Savage Knight... 

# Briar Rose is the character from the brothers Grimm’s version of the “Sleeping Beauty” story (though the fact she was blessed by fairies as a baby comes from Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty”). 

# Bluebeard (and then Charming’s) goblin butler, Hobbes, has been identified by several as a nod to Thomas Hobbes. However I think it might rather simply be a reference to the “hobgoblins”.

# The Lewis Antiques shop seems to be a reference to C.S. Lewis, the inventor of Narnia (given it is “antiques”, an old wardrobe comes to mind), though it could be also a nod to Lewis Carroll. Nod’s Books has been identified as a reference to “The Book of Nods” by Jim Carroll. The Chateau d’If Fencing Academy is a reference to the real-life castle made mythical by Dumas’ “The Count of Monte-Cristo”: in fact Edmond Dantès himself runs the Academy. The Web ‘n Muffet Market is a reference to the nursery rhyme “Little Muss Muffet” (she lives now as Mrs. Web, having married the spider Mr. Web). The Yellow Brick Roadhouse is a reference to the Yellow Brick Road of Oz. 

# There are two shops seen in the comics but who’s true owners are only revealed later. One is “Ford Laundry” which is a laundromat runned by the Scottish bean nighe, Mrs. Ford (because she is “The Washer-Woman at the Ford”). The second is the Grand Green Florist shop, revealed in “A Wolf Among Us” to be the shop of Auntie Greenleaf, from Schlosser’s “Spooky New-York” anthology. 

# The 13th floor witches include (beyond Frau Totenkinder), the “Fairy Witch” or “Great Fairy Witch” (actually the witch from Andersen’s “Thumbelina”) and Mr. Grandours, the sorcerer-king from “The Wizard King” (Willingham took the translated version from Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book, though the fairytale origin is actually the knight of Mailly “Le Roi Magicien”, in his “Illustres fées” - the Illustrious Fairies of Le Chevalier de Mailly). When evoking Mr. Grandours in the Encyclopedia (which falsely refers to The Wizard King as having been invented by Lang), Willingham also said when designing his character he thought of all the various magical bears in fairy tales, good or wicked - and his human form is meant to evoke a “Leonid Brezhnev-kind of character”. 

# Thrushbeard is from “King Thrushbeard”, a fairytale of the brothers Grimm. Mark Buckingham designed him after comic book creator Alan Moore.

# Kay is a character from Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”. 

# The boy who cries wolf is from the Aesop fable of the same name (and lives on the seventh floor of the Woodland Luxury).

# Ichabod Crane is a character from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. Willingham insists in the Fables Encyclopedia that he wanted to depict Crane as he perceived him when reading the original story, aka as “kind of an ass, of the prickly, pompously self-impressed sort”. 

# The Stone Soup restaurant is a reference to the very widespread and famous folktale “The Stone Soup”. The Andersen butcher shop is another nod to Hans Christian Andersen (here mixed with the word “Delicatessen”). The reparation team/company in charge of remaking Fabletown after the March of the Wooden Soldiers is called “N Rhyme” - aka Nursery Rhyme. 

# Gudrun is the goose that lays golden eggs - made famous by the “Jack and the beanstalk” fairytale, but finding her roots in one of Aesop’s fables “The goose that laid golden eggs”. As for her name, it is the one of the wife of the Germanic mythical hero Sigurd/Siegfried. 

# Barbara Allen, one of the victims of the rogue zephyr, is from the folk-song of the same name, “Bonny Barbara Allen”. 

# Mowgli is the main character of Kipling’ “The Jungle Book” (he is also explicitely compared in-universe to “Tarzan” (from “Tarzan of the Apes”), though Willingham in the Encyclopedia explains he prefers Mowgli over the other because he was “Tarzan before Tarzan”. 

# Rapunzel is the character from the brothers Grimm story of the same name. 

# Fair Katrinelje, Vulco’s part-time girlfriend, is from the brothers Grimm fairytale “Fair Katrinelje and Pif-Paf-Poltrie”.

The Farm residents and buildings

# The Farm plays various roles. In design it is described by Rose-Red as “Old Macdonald meets Walt Disney meets Munchkinland” - Old Macdonald had a farm being a traditional children song (later quoted to describe the Farm), the Disney reference being related to Disney Land the amusement park (the architecture of some buildings has been noted to be similar to the Neuschwanstein castle, which inspired Sleeping Beauty’s castle for Disney) , and Munchkinland being a reference to the colorful landscape of the MGM movie “The Wizard of Oz”. In terms of role it also fulfills the idea of the “farm” where pets are supposedly sent when they die and parents want to hide it to their children. In its first appearance, the “Animal Farm” arc, it plays the role of the titular “Animal Farm” from George Orwell’s book of the same name, and Goldilocks purposefully makes a gory reference to William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”, comparing the Farm to the island of the story.

# Colin, Posey and Dun are the three pigs from “The Three Little Pigs” (Posey and Dun coupling as the pigs from Orwell’s “Animal Farm”). They are later replaced by three giant brothers turned into pigs, Johnny, Donny and Lonny. The giant brothers notably recite the iconic lines “Fee fi fo fum [...] I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!”, coming from “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

# The Farm hosts the Rhinoceros from “How the Rhinoceros got his skin” (Kipling’s “Just So Stories”), the Three Billy Goats Gruff (from the Norwegian fairytale of the same name), Henny Penny (from “Chicken Little/Henny Penny”), the Owl and the Pussycat (from the poem of the same name), the Hare and the Tortoise (from the Aesop fable of the same name), several flying monkeys (from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”), a red-cap (from English-Scottish folklore), and Puss in Boots (from Perrault’s fairytale of the same name).

# The buildings of the Farm include a pumpkin-house similar to the one of Jack Pumpkinhead in the “Oz” books ; mushroom-houses taken straight out of the “Smurfs” comic books and cartoons; the shoe-house of the “Old Woman who lived in a Shoe”, as well as Baba-Yaga’s chicken-legged house.

# Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Boo Bear) are from the fairytale of the same name.

# Weyland Smith, the original caretaker of the Farm before Rose-Red, is a character from Germanic legends, Anglo-Saxon folklore and Nordic sagas, present “from the Poetic Edda to Beowulf” to take back the words of the Encyclopedia.

# The B’rer Fables are animal fables taken out of Afro-American folktales (most famous through the “Uncle Remus” books): we have B’rer Rabbit, B’rer Bear, B’rer Gator. In “Sons of the Empire” we also find out B’rer Wolf is here. 

# The “Jungle Fables” or “Kipling Fables” are characters of Kipling’s The Jungle Book: Shere Kan the tiger, Bagherra the panther, Kaa the python, and Old King Louie (the latter was a mistake of Willingham who forgot King Louie was a character invented by Disney and not from the original story). We later learn Baloo the bear is also at the Farm. 

# The Farm hosts several characters briefly caricatured in the background to avoid the copyright of Disney, such as Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, or Bambi.

# All the birds of the nursery rhyme “The Death and Burial of Cock Robin” are present in the Farm - since the events of the nursery rhyme are enacted in “Animal Farm”. Cock Robin itself is actually a Fabletown bird - and the Fables Encyclopedia notes that he is actually the protagonist of a whole cycle of nursery rhymes, including “Cock Robin got up Early”. 

# The Farm hosts various characters from “Le Roman de Renart”, “The History of Reynart”, the Reynart stories of medieval France. Reynard the Fox and Noble the Lion are the most noticeable one, but we also see Brun the Bear in the Farm (identified by Buckingham’s sketch-notes). Ysengrim the wolf also appears in “Sons of the Empire”.  Reynard the fox is here notably much more pleasant and amiable than his medieval counterpart - in “Fables Encyclopedia”, Willingham explained that the first trickster of his childhoo was Bugs Bunny, a “monster of chaos”, and that for Reynard he wanted to create a “slyer, wiser and more subtle” form of trickster. 

# The Farm has numerous nursery rhymes characters. From “Hickory Dickory Dock” we have the mouse that ran down the clock. From “Hey Diddle Diddle” we have the cow who jumped over the moon, the dish and the spoon (plus in King Cole’s “Fair Share” backstory we learn there’s also the Little Dog who Laughed). We also have the Three Blind Mice (from the nursery rhyme of the same name). As well as “Mr. Sunflower”, from a nursery rhyme by R. André. 

# Three characters from “The Wind in the Willows” are here: Mr. Toad, Mr. Mole and Mr. Badger.

# Numerous small-sized humanoids live in the Farm: Tomb Thumb (an archetypal character of English fairytales), Thumbelina (from the fairytale of Andersen of the same name) and a community of Lilliputians (from Swift’s “The Travels of Gulliver”). The Lilliputians have created a “mounted police” riding “field mice” (which I believe to be some of the field mice from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”). In the Fables Encyclopedia, it is noted that the idea of the Mounted Police of Lilliputians, of tiny sergents riding on mice to do cop duty, actually comes from the song “And the Mouse Police never sleeps” from Jethro Thull’s “Heavy Horses” (even though the original song referred to a cat). 

# Several characters of the Alice books can be found here, most notably living playing cards, the Cheshire Cat (from “Alice in Wonderland”) and the Walrus (from “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”). 

# When the rebels have to be executed, the one called for the job is Jack Ketch, a historical figure turned “archetype/stereotype/common nickname” for executioners in England. He is also revealed to have been the executioner of Prince Charming’s realm, and the Fables Encyclopedia has Willingham explaining that, for him, Jack Ketch isn’t actually a citizen of Fabletown but rather the name given to whoever takes the role of the executioner of the Fables community - it is a job, a position. 

# John Barleycorn is from the folk-song of the same name.

# Mary and her little lamb are from the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb”, while Miss Mousey and her frogs are from the folk-song “Frog Went-A Courting”.

# Peter Cottontail is present at the farm - “Cottontail” being the alternate name of the famous character known as “Peter Rabbit”. And while Peter Rabbit is most famous by Beatrix Potter’s writings, the character’s alias of “Peter Cottontail” comes from the novels of Thornton Burgess, such as “Old Mother West Wind” or “The Adventures of Peter Cottontail”.

# There are lot of little detail-characters that are here merely to evoke common sayings or beliefs. For example we see at one point a snail with a roof and chimney on its shell, evoking how it is said that snails carry their house on their back ; and at another point we see the duo of a snail with an umbrella and a ladybug, which is a reference to how the two animals are used to predict the weather to come (rainy weather for the snail, sunny weather for the ladybug).

The Adversary and his forces 

# The Adversary/The Emperor was designed to evoke the archetypal “evil overlord/dark lord” of epic/high fantasy. To be more precise, he draws a lot of inspiration from Sauron/Morgoth of “The Lord of the Rings”. A tall, dark, gigantic creature of darkness clad in a terrifying armor, whose plan is to conquer by blood and slaughter the entirety of the universe, whose armies are made of all sorts of awful monters (mostly goblins, with some trolls, giants and dragons thrown in the mix), and who enslaves evil sorcerers as top-agents... The reference is pretty obvious.

# The Adversary is also meant to have a devilish symbolism. The monsters creating his armies are noted to have been summoned from hellish dimensions or to be demonic in nature. He is served by sorcerers and witches. His name, the Adversary, can be translated as “Satan” (the Accuser, the Enemy). And in flashbacks he is depicted as a satyr-like entity, with one theory calling him a divine being cast out from heaven - a fallen god, or maybe fallen “angelic” entity.

# The last attack/invasion of the Adversary onto the European Fable-realms, the events of “The Last Castle”, are noted to coincide with the Napoleonian Wars over Europe - meaning the Adversary is also a fairytale version of Napoleon somehow. Though the way the Empire rules its conquered countries through the “illusion of freedom” and “puppet-kings”, the way they exist through a vast bureaucratic system confiscating all magical artefacts and enslaving or killing sorcers, their method of invading/annexing countries to their rule, imposing a strict list of permitted holidays and sending spies in the countries resisting them... It is all meant to evoke the Soviet Union and its Eastern Block during the Cold War. 

# The wooden soldiers sent by the Adversary to Fabletown are meant to evoke the “Men in black” from American urban legends/alien tales/ufology. The idea of an army of wooden soldiers created by an humble person that rose up to the rank of great evil is also an accidental parallel with “Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers”, the second book of the “Tales of the Magic Land” series by Alexander Volkov (a Russian rip-off of the Oz books). 

# Baba-Yaga, the witch from Slavic folklore and Russian fairytales, is one of the top-agents and “right hands” of the Emperor. She oversees for him the land of the Rus (the Fable equivalent of Russia), and she has alongside her three magical knights - taken from the fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful”: Bright-Day the white horseman, rider of the dawn ; Radiant-Sun the red horseman, knight of midday, and Dark-Night the black horseman, rider under the stars. Willinghma noted that if he played into the most horrifying and frightening aspects of Baba Yaga, it was because she was his personal bogeyman and “nightmare monster” as a child. One of the rulers of the Rus lands, while under the Adversary’s control, is Ivan Tsarevich, a recurring character of Russian folktales. 

# The leader of the Adversary’s forces against Colonel Bearskin and the Last Keep at the End of the Known World is the Count Aucassin de Beaucaire, from the French medieval story “Aucassin et Nicolette”. 

# Chernomor, used to serve under Aucassin de Beaucaire (or alongside him) and became the governor of the “world of Kardan”, one of the frontier-worlds of the Empire. If you go to the Wikipedia article, Chernomor is listed as coming from the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” which is partially true - but the Fables Encyclopedia reveals that this version of Chernomor actually comes from the poem/fairytale “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by Pushkine - in fact, it is this poem that Chernomor reads to himself during his first appearance. 

# In quite a twist from his Sauron-like appearance, the heart of the Empire isn’t some Mordor land. In fact, as it turns out the Empire is a vast thriving bureaucratic empire meant to evoke the Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire, due to the very bureaucratic nature of the management of the empire). The land at the heart of the Empire shares the same name as the Capital City of the Emperor (or Imperial City): Calabri Anagni. This name is made up of “Calabri”, the name of the region of Italy forming the “point of the boot”, and “Anagni”, an ancient town of central Italy. It is indeed the Homeland equivalent of Italy, and in fact the Imperial City was drawn based on the sketches and illustrations of Ancient Rome by Piranesi. Plus, the situation of the Fables living in an “exile” and a “diaspora” because of the Adversary’s conquering Empire is meant to evoke the destruction wrecked by the Roman Empire against the Jews - more specifically the Jewish-Roman Wars. 

# Willingham takes some time to explore the life and day-to-day activities of the lower-ranked goblins and soldiers of the Empire, humanizing them in their usual duties (such as tax collecting). I first I thought it was just a reference to a similar thing Tolkien did with his orcs (see “The Return of the King”) but then it clicked when I realized the “day-to-day story from the point of view of lower-ranked members of the evil empire” +  the evil empire recruiting and enslaving sorcerers and wizards as its “new nobility” + Willingham’s love for military stories and dark, gory battles...  There is definitively here an influence of Glen Cook’s The Black Company. It would make the Adversary influenced by another famous duo of “evil overlords” of fantasy: The Lady and the Dominator.

# Buckingham explained that Ogren and Throk, the goblin duo of issue 36, were inspired by the numerous British humor comics he grew up with as a child.

# The Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale of the same name is another one of the “great ladies” and right hands of the Emperor, just like Baba Yaga. In this version of the tale however she seems to be heavily tied to the evil mirror of the tale - she has a mirror above her throne, Buckingham revealed that the fragments of the shattered mirror are ornating her queenly outfit, and it is because of her that Kay ended up with a shard of the mirror in his eyes. Willingham sneaked a “Song of Ice and Fire” reference in the comic as, when she arrives in the Imperial City, the guards keep shouting “Winter is coming!”. Her name, “Lumi”, is the Finnish word for snow. And in the Fables Encyclopedia, Willingham revealed that the reason she became such an evil character in “Fables” is because through her he wanted to evoke a famous fictional character he could not have the rights to: The White Witch of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia. 

# The true identity of the Adversary (the Sauron/Morgoth-like Emperor being merely a “puppet”) is revealed to be none other than Gepetto, from “The Adventures of Pinocchio” who, after being enroled in a “benevolent conspiracy” against the megalomania and stupidity of local lords, slowly climbed up the ranks and became corrupted into the machiavelic, bloodthirsty tyrant he is today. In the Encyclopedia, Willingham notably said he wanted to get as far away from the Disney’s version of Gepetto as possible, and return to the character as described by Collodi, as a “cantankerous old grump”. The situation of Gepetto, a little old man behind a fake, artificial all-powerful imperial figure, is also very reminiscent of Oscar Diggs/The Wizard of Oz’s situation from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. 

# Gepetto takes his powers from the Blue Fairy that he kidnapped and locked away - the Blue Fairy is Willingham’s strange mixture of the Fairy with the Turquoise Hair, from Collodi’s original tale, the Blue Fairy (Disney’s version of the previous) and the “original” folklore of fairies, aka the “fair folk” of the British Isles: Willingham insists on the fickle, capricious, strange and alien behavior and mindset of the Fairy. 

# The other two main agents of the Emperor, beyond Baba-Yaga and the Snow Queen, are the Nome King (a recurring antagonist from L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, now governor of Oz for the Emperor) and Hansel - the boy from “Hansel and Gretel”, who grew up into a witch-hunter and Great Inquisitor. He isn’t just designed after the Puritan witch-hunters of the “witch trials” of America: he actually was a key part of those trials. During his brief time in the Mundane World he participated in almost all of the witch-hunts throughout Europe and America. He did not start them, but he followed the witch madness everywhere it went, and took a key part in the trials and executions of the so-called witches. He is said to have been in France, Germany and Switzerland, with the Würzburg witch trials and the Salem witch trials being explicitely cited (in the latter case he was the one who encouraged the execution of Susannah Martn). Trieste is also said to have been one of the places Hansel dwelled (though I never heard of witch trials in Trieste? But there were so many I can’t possibly know them all...).

# The Snow Queen’s plan to invade Fabletown, relying on four steps being “Pestilence - Fire - Winter - Famine” is of course very reminiscent of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Christian lore - Pestilence/Conquest, War, Famine and Death. The Snow Queen’s plan for an “eternal winter” are explicitely compared to “Fimbul” - aka the Norse winter predicted for Ragnarök. Among the creatures that serves her and that she plans to send in the world, she mentions the “ice giants”, which is actually a term designated a category of creatures in Norse mythology (the rest are however non-specific entities, not exact reference - frostlings, boreal spirits, fire imps...). The sorcer used to illustrate the “Pestilence” part of the plan, Tom Harrow, was actually designed after Neil Gaiman - it was Mark Buckingham’s gift to Gaiman, who had been the best man at his wedding. Finally, of the two fictional diseases the Snow Queen mentions (the Skold brownpox and the Red City Plague), the later seems to be a reference to the “red plague” from “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe.

# A last note, taken from the “Fables Encyclopedia”: the armor of Lieutenant Oakheart, a random character among the wooden soldiers of the Empire (seen in issue 52), was actually inspired by the cover of the album “Want One” by Rufus Wainwright. 

Magical artefacts:

# The Seven-League Boots, from Charles Perrault’s Little Thumbling, are kept by Fabletown.

# The Vorpal Blade from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem (and “Alice Through the Looking Glass”) is in possession of Fabletown (and becomes Boy Blue’s weapon later).

# The magic beans, from Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack keeps trying to scam people by pretending he still has them, when in truth he lost them a long time ago. It is revealed in “Happily Ever After” that in truth Fabletown got hold of the last magic beans, which form the only way to reach the Cloud Kingdoms where the giants live. 

# Bluebeard keeps a hook in his office - it seems to be the hook of “Captain Hook”, from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. 

# Snow-White’s office contains a sword in the stone (from the Arthurian myth), various Arabian oil lamps (a reference to “Aladdin”), as well as several Greco-Roman statues (a copy of the Venus de Milo, statues of Mars and Neptune...). 

# The Fairy Witch’s magical barley seeds from which little women are grown are from Andersen’s fairytale “Thumbelina”. 

# Bluebeard might have owned “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” - because there is the painted portrait of a man we keep seeing in his castle, that is not him, so... 

# The magic mirror of the evil queen from “Snow-White” is kept in Snow-White’s office, as well as the torn of head of the Frankenstein Creature (nicknamed “Frankie”). 

The Last Castle one-shot

# The titular “Last Castle”, of its full name the “Last Keep at the End of the Known Worlds”, is actually the castle from the Norwegian fairytale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, located by those directions, and beyond the “House of the Four Winds”.

# Little Red Riding Hood is from the fairytale of the same name (the brothers Grimm version, since in her story the wolf was defeated by a woodsman).

# Robin Loxley, or Robin Hood, is from British folklore and English literature. We also see two of his Merry Men: Friar Tuck and Small John. 

# Colonel Bearskin is a higher-ranked version of the titular character from the brothers Grimm fairytale “Bearskin”.

# We have two characters from Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”: Lady Britomart, the “warrior damsel”, and the Red-Cross Knight (Saint George by another name). 

# The twelve crow-brothers are from the Grimm fairytale “The Twelve Brothers”.

# Old Pellinore is a king from the Arthurian legends.

# Tam Lin, the “lover of the fairy queen”, is a character of English folklore and folk-songs (the “Ballad of Tam Lin” is his most famous depictions).

# Herman von Starkenfaust is a character from Washington Irving’s “The Spectre Bridegroom”.

# The Little Tailor that “got seven at one stroke” is from the brothers Grimm’s “The Valiant Little Tailor”.

# The Kings of Madagao and Bornegascar are the rival kings from the piece of Ambrose Bierce “Two Kings”, from his “Fantastic Fables”.

# Beaucaire and Bearskin fought many battles against each other, two of which I got the reference of: the battle of Boxen is an homage to the fictional world created by C. S. Lewis as a child, while the battle of “Oakcourt” is a reference to the legend of wise, fair and just kings holding their courts under an oak. When Blue Boy confronts Chernomor in the beginning of the “Homelands” arc, he also mentions the “battle of Vesteri”, which is apparently the battle told in the poem “Tsar Saltan”, the one where Chernomor appeared with thirty-three warriors (though the events described in the poem are apparently a false retelling of the actual events, which were the invasion of the Adversary’s army, and unlike what the poem claims Chernomor lost the battle). 

# Possibles references I am not certain of: Among the refugees at the Last Keep, there is a white-bearded wizard with a pointy hat all dressed in grey, that I think might be an homage to Tolkien’s Gandalf. There is also a solidly built young man with a goat near him that I believe to be “Blockhead Hans” from the brothers Grimm fairytales. 

The Homelands:

# The Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead, The Scarecrow and a Munchkin, all from the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, are seen fleeing the invasion of the Adversary in the “Legends in Exile” flashbacks.

# The flashbacks of “Legends in Exile” also reveal Don Quixote and Pancho (from the novel “Don Quixote”), and a queen on a sleigh pulled by swans - which I believe to be a reference to Andersen’s “The Wild Swans “fairytale.

# The two first conquests of the Adversary (after his “native land”) were “The Emerald Land” (The Land of Oz, invented by L. Frank Baum) and “The Kingdom of the Great Lion” (Narnia, created by C.S. Lewis). We even see an unnamed version of Aslan, killed by the forces of the Adversary. 

# The world of the Rus is the Homeland equivalent of Russia, the land where Slavic folktales dwell. It is drawn in the style of Ivan Bilbin (a famous illustrators for fairytales such as “Vasilisa the Beautiful” or “Prince Ivan, the Fire-Bird and the Grey Wolf”). When Boy Blues travels through the Rus lands, he comes upon the “Mice Burying the Cat”, a recurring motif and scene in Russian lubok and folktales. 

# In the arc “Arabian Nights (and Days)”, the realm of Karse is name-dropped as one of the lands conquered by the Adversary. Some people think it might be a reference to the kingdom of Karse, from Mercedes Lackey’s books “The Heralds of Valdemar”. 

# The Cloud Kingdoms, located in the sky, populated by giants and only reachable through magic beanstalks, is a reference to “Jack and the Beanstalk”. Cinderella calls it mockingly “Cloud Cuckoo Land” - an insult to the absurdity of the kingdom itself, but a subtle literary nod to Aristophanes’ famous play “The Birds”, where Cloud Cuckoo Land is an utopian city in the city. The giant squirrel friend of Cinderella in this realm, Radiskop, is revealed in the Fables Encyclopedia to be Willingham’s version of Ratatosk, the squirrel of the Word-Tree from Norse mythology (the poem “The Saying of Grimnir” is evoked by the Encyclopedia). Cinderella also plays on the expression “castles in the sky” when describing the Cloud Kingdoms - an idiom meaning an unrealistic plan or impossible dream. 

# In “The Sons of the Empire”, we follow the side-quest of a group of Fables stealing food from the imperial table: these three Fables are the Gingerbread Man (from “The Gingerbread Man” fairytale), and Mr. Porky Pine with Chicken Ripple (characters actually coming from Neil Diamond’s song “Porkupine Pie”, from the Moods album). 

The Great Powers:

# The devil himself appears in “Bag O’Bones” in a “Southern USA folktale” incarnation, as an old, disheveled black man waiting in the bayou to play card games with souls as the final bet - he is called here “Slick Nick”, or “Mr. Nick”, but due to his old-looking appearance, he quickly is called “Old Nick”, a very traditional nickname of the devil in the English language.

# Death, aka the Grim Reaper, appears in “Bag O’bones”.

# The North Wind, father of Bigby, is of course the very embodiment of the North Wind. Personified winds pop up from time to time in fairytales, and the North Wind most notably appears in “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” (a fairytale already referenced by Willingham previously). But “Mr. North”’s depicton as an old man ruling over snow and coldness is also clearly meant to enter into the archetype of “Father Winter/Old Father Winter” or “Father Frost/Grandfather Frost”. Buckingham noted that while he originally drew him inspired by Peter Wyngarde playing Jason King (see the television series Department S/Jason King), he then decided to prefer the way the character was originally drawn by Mark Wheatley in “1001 Nights of Snowfall”, as more “Norse god-looking”.

The servants and affiliated creatures of the North Wind are called after different types of winds: Mistral is a violent wind of southern France, Squall is a sudden or violent gust of wind, Whiff is a puff of air, and the Zephyrs are light breezes.

# The d’jinns are here a very dark reinterpretaton of the djinn of Arabian folklore and fairytale, reinvented as amoral creatures of pure magic that have to be bound for the sake of the entire world. These d’jinns were purposefully designed as dark parodies of the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin: like him they have blue-skin, black hair, and a “tail of smoke” for legs. As per the common legend most carried on by “1001 Nights”, the d’jinns were trapped in magical bottles by “Sulymon the Wise”, aka King Solomon. However, unlike the tradition presented by the “Arabian Nights”, in the Fables world King Solomon co-worked with Daedalus (a genius-inventor of Greek mythology, reinterpreted as the “greatest sorcerer-scientist” of Sulymon’s time) to create the magical bottles. And, Sulymon had to trick the d’jinns into getting inside the bottle, by using the same ruse displayed in the fairytale “The Fisherman and the Jinni”.

# Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, of the American Christmas lore, exist in the Fables world, and while it is strongly hinted in the main series, the Encyclopedia confirms they are “god-like” entities in the Fables verse, close to the other Great Powers.

The 1001 Nights of Snowfall one-shot

# “Be careful what you wish for” seems to have been loosely inspired by “The Little Mermaid”, or rather forming an ironic inversion of it (especially of the more modern retellings like Disney’s), since it is about a girl wishing to explore the world, and asking a witch to turn her into a mermaid to discover the sea. The Fables Encyclopedia mentions that the girl’s name, Mersley Dotes, is only similar to the song “Mairzy Doats” by pure coincidence.

# The seven dwarfs of the Grimm “Little Snow-White” are present in “The Fencing Lesson”, and their entire system of “being an underground realm digging constantly for ore and gems” is inspired by a very traditional depiction of dwarfs ranging from Norse mythology to Tolkien - the way John Bolton draws them as ugly; misshapen, bald beings with bulbous heads or strangely-proportioned limbs reminds me of the art of Brian Froud.

# In the “Diaspora” story, Snow-White says she bought a magical stone that makes soup - it is another reference to the folktale “Stone Soup”. 

# The “Christmas Pies” storyline takes place in the world from which Reynard hails from - a medieval-time valley filled with speaking animals (the setting of the Roman de Renart). I will not name all the characters we see here, but if you know your Roman de Renart, you will recognize several such as Brichemer the deer, Noble the lion, Fière his wife, Grimbert the badger, Couar the hare, etc etc... The legend of��“the miracle of the Christmas pies” seems to have been invented by Willingham here - but not out of scratch. If you know your Christmas lore, you know that miracles happening during the “nights of Christmas” are very common, that pies are tied to Christmas in the English tradition, and that magical food or miracle-food in Christmas is also a staple of folklore. An interesting note is that you can see the version of Christmas celebrated in Reynard’s homeworld is not the one celebrated in our world, because they have “Seven Nights of Christmas” - whereas we have the “Twelve Nights”. Filling the pies with stones so that, after eating it, the animals will be too heavy to move is also a recurring motif in folktales and fairytales involving capturing or killing devouring monster or gluttonous animals (most famous of which being the Big Bad Wolf stories). 

#  Colonel Thunderfoot and the talking rabbits of the “Thrumbly Warrens”, in “A Mother’s Love”, have been revealed by Willingham to have been inspired by the rabbit-society of “Watership Down”. 

The Arabian Fables:

# The Arabian Fables are clearly all coming from the most famous collection of Arabian fairytales, “One Thousand and One Nights” - they notably have a very common use of flying carpets, items mostly found in this book (and the Arabian legends of king Solomon). They also have manticores - creatures of Greek folklore, but believed to have lived in Persia (another manticore, giant-sized this one, appears in the non-referential world of Skold in “Homelands”). 

# In “1001 Nights of Snowfall”, the frame-story is literaly the frame-story of “One Thousand and One Nights”, but with Snow-White taking Scheherazade’s place as the one trying to survive Sultan Shahryar. 

# The delegation arriving in Fabletown in “Arabian Nights (and Days)” is centered around Sinbad - the famous Sinbad the sailor whose stories are told in “1001 Nights”. He has two companions which I have yet to identify as references or pure invention - but one, Yusuf, is very clearly the embodiment of the archetype of the “evil vizir” of Arabian tales coupled with the “wicked, scheming sorcerer”. People online have identified him as a possible take on Disney’s character of Jafar from their version of Aladdin, but Buckingham revealed that his design of Yusuf was actually inspired by Doctor Who’s The Master, as played by Robert Delgado. 

# Aladdin and Ali Baba, two heroes of the most famous Arabian fairytales, are said to live in the Homeland version of Baghdad, where Sinbad also dwells.

# One of the co-conspirators and allies of Yusuf is Sid Nouman - aka, Sidi Nu’uman from “The Caliph’s Night Adventures” (sub-section “The History of Sidi Nu’uman”). The identity/appearance the d’jinn takes to reach out to him is the one of “The Fair Persian” - one of the two main characters of the 1001 Nights tale “Noureddin and the Fair Persian”. 

Other things:

# In “Legends in Exile”, Rose-Red forces Bluebeard to keep their engagement secret for a year. This evokes a common trope in fairytales where a character is asked to keep a secret, or a vow of silence, for a given period of time - or where a character has to hide their marriage for a given number of years. 

# “A Wolf in the Fold” reveals that, when Bigby first arrived in the human world, he stayed in the 17th century Carpathians, and became friend with a certain “undead count” - yes, Count Dracula, from Bram Stoker’s novel.

# Before Willingham decided to have the European Fables be Christian in religion, he seems to have considered a more fantasy-like religion for them, as the chapel seen in the Knights of Malta Hospital in “Animal Farm” doesn’t have any religious imagery. Instead, its stained glass depicts fabulous beasts: a dragon, a unicorn, an hydra and a phoenix.

# The desk of Grimble has two books inside of it which are references. One is titled “Shreck!”, a nod to the Shrek movies, while the other is literaly titled “Troll Bridge by Neil Gaiman”, a reference to Gaiman’s reinterpretation of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” fairytale.

# During Bag O’Bones, Jack (as a Confederate soldier just out of the Civil War) sings the minstrel song “Gwine Run All Night”, aka “De Camptown Races”. 

# At one point, the trio formed by Flycatcher, Boy Blue and Pinocchio go buy a series of Fabletown-produced comics, which are all parodies of actual super-hero titles. The Uncanny Oz Men are “The Uncanny X-Men” for example, the Fairytale Four are the “Fantastic Four”, the Tin Man is “Iron Man”, and the Stalk Thing is the “Swamp Thing”. “Red Hood - Little Riding Returns” might be a reference to “The Dark Knight Returns”, while the Un-Mundy... Maybe it is “Superman”? 

# When John Barleycorn explores one of the Emperor’s towers, where stolen magical items are kept, we can see the head of Baphomet sculpted on a disc. During the same quest, the other Lilliputians left behind believe that John must be with “some elf-king’s daughter” by now: this is a reference to Lord Dunsany’s “The Elf-King’s Daughter”. Finally, as John Barleycorn goes searching for the old cottage of the Fairy Witch, he orders his mount to go “Straight ‘til morning” - a sentence lifted from “Peter Pan”. 

# Kevin Thorn is compared by his colleagues to agent Mulder, from the show “X-Files”, due to being the only Mundane immune to the Fables “do not notice us” spells.

# During the “War Stories”, the project of the Nazi scientists couple two references: on one side it is named Volsüng (after a character of Norse mythology, tied to the Volsunga Saga), on the other the topic of mass-producing artificial soldiers raises the fear of it being too similar to the golem of Jewish folktales.

# In-universe, Jack took an opportunity out of the great hype surrounding fantasy movies caused by the (then still new) release of the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy - in turn, he himself plans to do a “better” version of them, centered around his own tales. 

# The Witching Cloak does not come from a precise story, but gathers various elements and powers usually attributed to magical cloaks and capes. For example, its powers of invisibility are similar to the Germanic tarnkappe of Siegfried, while its teleportation powers can remind of the flying cloak of feathers of Freyja in Norse mythology, and its invulnerability can evoke Herakles’ famous Nemean Lion pelt. In a similar way, the Witching Well (which is the Fabletown equivalent of a cemetery AND afterlife) is not coming from a precise story, but is born of a general rule and belief in the world of fairytales and folktales that wells are gateways to the otherworld and the dwelling of supernatural beings - as well as closely associated to death and the afterlife. One famous fairytale that has a well perceived by theoricians as a gateway to the afterlife is the brothers Grimm “Frau Holle”. 

# Willingham loves to play around with the topic of numbers in fairytales. For example, Bigby was one of seven brothers, tried to kill his father seven times, and himself has seven children. Meanwhile, when Cinderella has to fulfill a mission in the Cloud Kingdoms, everybody involved in it forces her to wait three days for her services - much to her annoyance as she wonders exactly WHY everybody asks for three days. 

# In “The Sons of the Empire”, an annoyed Prince Charming calls ironically the Beast “Gunga Din”, after the character from Rudyard Kiplng’s poem (later adapted into a movie).

# In “Jiminy Christmas”/“Father and Son”, the children of Bigby mention numerous fictional equivalents of cartoons and toys - but one in particular was talked about in “Fables Encyclopedia”, “Ranger Danger”, aka “Ranger Mike Danger”, that Willingham explained to have been the Fables equivalent of real-world G.I. Joe or Action Man. 

# As a last note: the original plans of Willingham for the Adversary’s identity and origin story was to have him be Peter Pan. This is why the descriptions of the Adversary in “Legends in Exile” are so strange in retrospective: he is described as “wood sprite” that became something much more bigger or dangerous, or a fallen god cast away from divine realms, while being depicted in the flashback as a satyr-like being - it all points out to Pan of Greek mythology. Couple this with the fact the Adversary was said to come from “beyond the shores of Never”, aka Never Land, and you understand it is Peter Pan. Willingham’s plan was to have an evil, corrupted, demented version of Peter Pan that wanted to expand his Neverland/playing ground to all the worlds nearby, hence the creation of the Empire. The same way Peter Pan would have been the “big bad”, Captain Hook was also supposed to appear as a heroic figure fighting the Adversary - he notably would have had a plotline about saving the Lost Boys, who as it turns out are an army of children Peter Pan stolen away from the worlds he visited and conquered. However Willingham discovered that the characters were not in the public domain at the time, still under copyright, and so he had to change his plans - limiting himself to having them depicted in battle in the front page of “1001 Nights of Snowfall”. 

[ran-orimoto]

Do you have a Junzumi AU in mind? Net has go no AU for them except a werewolf and vampire one

I know that fic!!!!! However, I’ve never read it because I have no interest in supernatural creatures…I say when I like Digimon, digital supernatural creatures🤣.

EHM, a Junzumi AU, you say? Idk Anon, I came up with some in the past, such as the mermai- *cough* merman AU and the ATLA one (I still need to dive in properly!), but if you want a new one…I wonder if you would like an alternative take on Frontier.

Like, imagine if the kids had had the appearance of the spirits throughout the whole season. They never get to know the others’ appearances because Ophanimon turns them into Digimon as soon as they set foot in the Trailmon.

Now imagine Junpei, a stout kid, being the beefy, muscled, vigorous Blitzmon for the whole time being and exploiting the “benefits” of such a body at 360º. He would feel even more confident about hitting on Izumi / Fairymon. We do know how he canonically acts when he gets Blitzmon’s spirit, how he suddenly becomes so pumped up about the strength and agility being Blizmon gives him. So, yeah, he would get used to that mighty shape and probably Izumi would have less prejudices about his appearance, because, -let’s remember this even if it sucks-, our girl “would like Junpei if he was as thin as Kouji”, according to the writers. Then, the unavoidable happens and the kids have to return to the real world, so they also have to reassume their usual appearance, which means Junpei has to reveal Izumi he’s…Who he is.

I really would like to draw or write something similar agahah, even if I think I would want the kids to be teens in such an AU. It would be more interesting. In an old ask I had also said I would draw Junpei and Izumi in some sort of Ladybug and Chat Noir AU, but I think that idea mixed with this one. Or maybe I should also try going for that AU too🤣. It would be too cute for my heart, okay?

LISTEN, ANON, THERE ARE GALAXIES OF JUNZUMI AUs OUT THERE. THOUSAND!

[handma1denofvenus]

What kind of stuff do you like to write?

This is a good question and I have a lot of answers, depending on how you mean. UNFORTUNATELY this is going to be a long response, so I apologize in advance.

On the broader scale, my goal as a writer has been to write (at least) one work for each genre and medium.

So my last book (my fifth one finished) was a collection of fantasy short stories that all take place in a fictional city on Halloween night with a different fantasy creature for each story.

The short stories went something like this:

A play about a girl trying to rescue her sister from fairies and falling through a fairy circle to the fantasy world linked to their city,

A dialogue between two skeleton sisters buried in the same coffin,

A Second Person POV about a werewolf transforming and trying to tell some really lousy cops that she just killed her friend,

A Third Person POV about two witch cousins and a stranger to the town (also a witch) trying to commune with their (cursed) dead parents,

A vampire love story because I really wanted to write a supernatural YA romance 😭😭😭,

And then the worst of the bunch,

A micro story about a fucking tree person (who's also the mayor) trying to stick his dick in some dirt because he's in love with the personification of the city they all live in. Also he dies 😐😐😐 (which was probably for the best)

Basically, for that project I wanted to do something small scale for what I plan to accomplish big scale.

My last few books have been an array of things though. But USUALLY I find myself drawn to writing LGBTQIA+ characters, usually women and/or genderfluid characters, who go batshit fucking crazy and do the absolute most. I personally love writing strong female characters who are unhinged, whether it be through anger or depression or any other expression of emotions, and also mega gay.

I'm a HUGE fan of character studies.

I do try to include things that kinda interest me/things I know about. For example one book that I've been writing for awhile is a fictional autobiography by a gender-fluid ballerina who suffers with eating disorders, trying to understand their gender-fluidity and sexuality, and FAME.

Another was a multi-POV about a punk rock girlband getting abused by their management and all going through their own things (asexuality, psychosis, bisexuality, pregnancy 💀, fake dating).

And after that, I wrote a trashy boarding school series for rich kids with disabilities and/or disorders. Because I wanted to do something Pretty Little Liars/Gossip Girl/anything CW vibes. Like something that 13 year olds would EAT UP even though it's the most ridiculous thing ever.

Also, lately I been writing a lot of poetry and short stories, some that have been noir for my boyfriend because he loves the 1930s private detective era and Philip Marlowe. I've also been writing a PROSTITUTE story based in the 90s in the Southern USA about sexual abuse and MURDER. So that's been wild. Also, a mermaid/siren soulmates spin-off story in the same world as my fantasy anthology.

But when I first started writing at like 11 years old, it was mostly fanfiction. And stupid teenage pregnancy stories. *cringe*

So to sum up this wildly and cruelly long answer, I plan on writing LOTS of things. And I LOVE writing lots of things.

My writing has been a fucking roller coaster of literally everything, mostly trash. And I've been trying to widen my comfort zone and dip my toe into things I've never tried. I hope to write a little bit of everything one day.

And the one thing they ALL seem to have in common is they're gay as shit and slay as fuck. And there's usually some wild fucking ladies in them.

Anyway, thank you so much for the ask! I haven't really had a chance to talk about my writing on here, so that means a lot. I truly hope from the bottom of my heart that this answer didn't kill you wasn't the worst thing you've ever read.

Xoxo,

Handma1denofvenus

[casspurrjoybell-22]

The Art of Sin - Chapter 17 - Part 2

•Noir Laurent (Dark Elf & Sun Elf)

•Bain López (Werewolf)

*Warning Adult Content*

"Please don't do this," I whimpered as the man backed me into a corner. 

"I don't want a master, I want Connor."

I saw it then, the mask fall. In an instant, he had rage practically rolling off him. 

"Shut up, whore. Did you forget who sold you? That bastard lover of your's didn't care about you. He only wanted you to fuck and then sell to the highest bidder which was me, I might add, so shut the fuck up and take your clothes off."

I trembled as I curled into a ball, shaking my head quickly.

No, Connor wouldn't have left me, this was a mistake,

I was kidnapped, Connor tried to stop them.

They just took him away, He was a human so he couldn't put up a fight.

Of course he wouldn't have gone willingly.

He loved me right? He said he did, he said we were in love and that we would be together forever,

We would get married and raise a family of our own.

We were even on a date, it was was a special one where he said he had a surprise but then, but then, they showed up.

"I want Connor," I cried out as he yanked me by the ankle, staring at me with a mixture of barely concealed lust and anger. 

"Now you stop talking about that human. I'm your master now."

He smiled a sickly sweet smile that didn't reach his eyes as he tore at my clothes.

"We're going to be the best family. Just you and me. Now, show me that I didn't waste my money."

********

Oberous let go of my arms to instead grab my hip, his other hand lining himself up.

I squirmed, trying to get away but he held me in place, his strength far exceeding mine.

My head snapped up when I heard sobbing.

I looked straight into the eyes of Blue.

It shocked me to see him openly crying.

A ghost of a smile graced my lips as I saw how much he cared, how much the rest of them cared.

It was replaced with a look of terror when I felt something at my entrance.

"Wait..." I was cut off as he plunged into my tight, unlubricated hole, tearing it open with force.

The tears that I had tried to keep at bay overflowed as I bit into my arm to keep from screaming, blood pouring onto the floor as my teeth sunk in, hitting bone.

Pain, more than I've ever felt before, exploded as his thrusted into me.

He didn't care that blood spilled from it.

He didn't care about the agony that I was in.

In fact, he loved it. 

I felt his member inside me get harder with each cry of pain that I tried to hold back.

He dug his fingers into me as he brought us together, his fingernails easily puncturing my skin.

All the blood seemed to put him in a frenzy.

He easily flipped my body around, sitting back so that I bounced on his lap and picked up speed.

I had to use both hands to hold onto him, clutching the back of his shirt in a death grip and my head rested on his shoulder.

My body was starting to go numb.

The pain was still there, I knew but I blocked it out, using a bit of my magic to ease it.

I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream.

More importantly, however, I didn't want the others to hear.

I could hear them, their yells to stop and well as their cries of anger.

Though they struggled, they wouldn't be able to stop Oberous.

He was too strong, too fast.

They would be dead.

He knew this and that's why he was doing this know.

He wanted them to feel helpless.

'He wanted to show them that Lord Nikoli couldn't save them.' 

"That's right, pet," he whispered.

"So why don't you give in, hmm? Maybe I'll decide to let you live after all. I hear great things about having an incubus for your own pleasure. You are creatures of sin, after all, and make an art out of it."

Oberous picked up speed, slamming me down as his breath came in short puffs.

His fingers dug into me even harder as he threw his head back.

He let out a throaty groan as he came.

I didn't stop moving, drawing out his orgasm. 

I lifted my head, looking at him through my tears, my expression blank as his words played through my mind.

It was true, what he had said.

For centuries our kind was brought up to master the art of sin, to evolve it in ways never thought possible and we had learned so much.

We evolved to harness it as a power itself.

It was a weapon.

One I had planned to use from the very beginning.

"Did you know that it's said that incubi can make one feel both heaven and hell at the same time," it was a whisper, barely audible to even myself.

I leant forward, calling on everything I had as my lips brushed against his ever so slightly. 

Oberous froze, surprised by my action.

His eyes, glazed with lust, narrowed in suspicion.

It was too late, however.

His body tensed and I saw it then, a slight spark of fear.

He couldn't move his body.

I could see the reflection of myself in his eyes.

My eyes were glowing.

I tilted my head, a small smile on my face and then the screaming began.

From his mouth came an almost smoke like substance.

It was as if it was illuminated, glowing with an intensity close to the sun.

It floated to me, my mouth parting slightly and allowing it to enter.

I knew exactly what it was, I was stealing his very life force.

My body tingled all over, filled with neither pleasure nor pain.

I was frozen just as he was.

Power surged through me as memories that weren't my own flash before my eyes, too fast to comprehend.

It grew hot as more of his power, his very soul, flowed into me.

My breathing became ragged, turning into desperate gasps similar to the dying Oberous for that was what he was, dying.

Pain rose its ugly head then.

It was too much.

I had to unleash my true form, my claw and wings protruding and my tail whipped back and forth.

I felt like my very blood cells were about to burst from the amount of power I was getting.

Oberous' scream ended suddenly, his face frozen in a painful expression.

The last of his life force glided past my lips.

It was over in less than ten seconds but it felt like hours.

My chest rose and fell at an alarming rate.

I slipped off him then, puking up blood.

I couldn't stand.

I couldn't even sit up.

I laid on the ground, spitting up blood and my body spasmed.

Through the blood, I smiled.

I was sure to die but I had performed something that was rare in my world, something that had only worked out a handful of times in the history of my people.

It was too deadly but even so, I did it.

I would die but at least the others would live. 

I vaguely heard the sound of fighting, in too much pain to pick out exactly what was happening.

The men Oberous had brought were nowhere near as powerful as he was.

With their boss gone, they could be taken down.

They might even flee. 

I heard a howl and smiled before coughing up more blood.

They would be alright without me.

I just wished that I could have said I'm sorry and that I wish they didn't have to see me like that.

That I loved them.

I thought back to all the times I wished to die, all the times I tried to end my life and smiled once more as I laid on my back and closed my eyes, letting the blackness wash over me.

'Yeah, this is a good way to die.'

[rentumblsstuff]

#i dont know shit about mh but i kinda want to draw it#any tips???#gimme references how those types of creatures look in the og or something

OMG SOMEONE ASKED TO DRAW IT OMG <333

List of characters to look up for references:

Poltergeist Pete: Porter Geist (Invisibilly is the invisible man’s son but he also looks pretty ghostly if you want a second ref; look up Jackson Jekyll if you want a nerd character to go off of though)

Mummy Steph: The DeNile sisters Nefera and Cleo

Freshwater Monster Richie: Lagoona Blue, Gil Webber, Finnegan Wake, Lorna McNessie (Gil is a freshwater monster too but I don’t like that he doesn’t have hair so screw that detail cause Richie’s hair is one of his signature character design details)

Frankenstein Ruth: Frankie Stein (she’s the only Frankenstein’s monster in this gen of monsters)

Vampire Grace: Draculaura, Elissabat, Gory Fangtell, and Batsy Clairo are the first four vampire girls that came to mind :)

Jekyll/Hyde Max: Jackson Jekyll (this is a nerdy aaa character because he’s basically just a human; this would be regular old Max) and Holt Hyde (Jackson transforms into Holt when he hears loud music and stays as Holt until the music is gone; some combo of Holt’s design and Ghost!Max would ROCK)

Vampire Jason: Kieran Valentine and Bram Devein (Vampires in MH are usually a pale pink but it’s gross to whitewash characters so he’d probably be more mauve!)

Werecat Stacy: Toralei Stripe, Purrsephone and Meowlody, Catrine DeMew (GREAT PICK FOR DRAWING STACY!!!), and Catty Noir

In another post talking more about this AU, I actually changed the monster types for Brenda and Kyle to better fitting ones IMO but I’ll list both

Yeti Kyle: Abby Bominable is the only yeti with a full design but there’s also like a single pic of one named Ricky?? Related creatures in the universe are sasquatches so if you need more design inspo go for Marisol Coxi or Sansquatch but I specifically pictured Kyle being from a snowier climate :D

Werewolf Kyle: Clawd Wolf and Romulus are the two most notable male werewolves but there’s also Clawd’s sisters Clawdia, Clawdeen, and Howleen

Werecat Brenda has the same references as Stacy’s

Nighthawk harpy Brenda: Quill Talyntino and Avea Trotter (who’s half harpy half centaur). This one is a bit more of a challenge because you gotta nighthawk-ify the harpy design AND apply it to Brenda :0

-Instead of white and blue their school colors are black and hot pink

-A lot of their character designs incorporate details from their lineage/popular styles from the early 2010’s so fashion design is gonna be extra fun if you’re into that!!!!

Any other q’s and I got the a’s!!! <3

Here’s the link to the second post abt this AU btw where I talk a little about Grace, Ruth, Max, and Steph’s designs a little and where I change Bryle’s monsters

Hypothetically…. NPMD Monster High AU……….

Pete: A poltergeist. Peter Geist just wants to be invisible but he’s constantly getting into mischief with his friends that draws too much attention to himself!

Steph: Mummy cause she’s gotta keep family secrets UNDER WRAPS ;) and in MH the DeNiles are also a powerful family so having the Lauters be mummies is just so…

Richie: Freshwater monster!! He wishes he was a Ningen from the western Pacific but actually he’s just from Lake Michigan lol he loves swimming and sushi and you can tell when he’s dehydrated when the blue on his hair starts to turn brown!

Ruth: Frankenstein’s monster. Kinda a given with FrankenRuth. I imagine she’s constantly altering her body parts to try to be as attractive to others as possible. The bolts are on her temples and her headgear attaches to it

Grace: Vampire. It’s funny because she doesn’t get to touch a cross AND Angela is Italian so no garlic for Grace :(

Max: A Jekyll and Hyde type creature. I imagine his Jekyll side is the Max we see in the Waylon place, and The Jägerman persona is the Hyde, and the Hyde half is easily triggered when he’s overwhelmed or intimidated and is hard to control. Not necessarily kept at bay without music like Jackson and Holt, but hey what are you gonna do, amiright?

Brenda and Stacy are definitely werecats that roll in the same pack, Jason is a fellow vampire, and Kyle is a werewolf which is part of the reason Max wouldn’t let him date Brenda

Talk about being a literal monster lmao

[canismaxim-games]

Oh I would love to learn about what kinds of creatures r in ur world!

So there's quite a few XD I'll try to keep the descriptions short enough so this isn't too long (tho of course if yall ever want to know more just let me know). So basically these are the main ones MC will interact with in the game, some based on myths, a lot I added myself as i think they're cool. Werefolk:

The one that's most prevalent in the current demo sounds like a good place to start. Lycanthropy, and its counterparts), can be passed down by werewolf saliva getting into someone's bloodstream. There isn't a "cure" for lycanthropy, as the search for that was ended when people stopped looking at werefolk as feral beasts and realized they still have their consciousness, it's just that their adrenaline has been cranked to the max and it can be terrifying to suddenly have your senses be 10 times better than they ever were. Nowadays there are plenty of over the counter meds to help with "full moon hangovers" and even some that dull your senses down to "human" level. On full moons when the change is unavoidable, there are plenty of forest/parks that allow werefolk to let loose without having to worry about accidentally damaging buildings or hurting people. Were-attacks are rare, but still occasionally happen, depending on if the were knew they'd been turned or not punishment can be as little as a fined ticket, or if the attack was planned/done with intent to harm or kill, it can lead to said were getting life in prison.

Animal Headed people: (minotaurs, chimeras, etc)

There are many versions, hence the classification of general animal headed individual. These folks can also have claws, animal lower legs, tails etc. It can be difficult for these folk to speak human languages, many use sign language instead or speaking aids on their phones, or if they've got the money for it they can commission a mage to make a piece of jewelry that "speaks" for them. (it connects to a magic symbol on their neck and translates their vocalizations into a specified human language). Some do prefer to use glamor to appear more human, but glamor can be quite expensive. Animal headed individuals have heightened senses based on what animal head they have, so some might have amazing hearing but terrible vision, or thermal vision but not the best hearing, etc.

Vampires:

Vampires are considered undead as the actual vampire transformation stops the human heart before completely altering their physiology. It's not that they're dead persay, but they no longer need a heart, or lungs really. They do need to drink blood, but nothing even close to the myth of drinking humans dry. Modern vampires will pay hospitals or consenting blood donors for a pint of blood and it will last the vampire a solid month or two. Vampires don't burst into flame if they touch the sunlight, but they are sensitive to it. They are nocturnal and as such harsh bright lights will give them quite the nasty headache. As for other abilities (flying/hypnosis/transforming into bats or other creatures) it depends on the individual. If someone who had lycanthropy was then turned by a vampire they would be a vampire with the ability to transform into beastly creatures. If a mage were turned into a vampire they would have more of the persuasion/hypnosis abilities. If a vampire does bite you, you're not going to turn into one. Vampires have two sets of fangs, the one for biting open a wound for access to blood, and the second set which act like a snakes fangs, venom enters the bloodstream and that is what triggers the transformation. You would know if you were bitten by the second set of fangs from the intense and sudden burning as if acid was injected into you.

Ghosts:

Ghosts are undead, spectral beings of those who once lived. There's no rhyme or reason as to who becomes a ghost and who doesn't. Sometimes a ghost forms simply because they wanted to make sure someone they loved lives a long happy life, other times it is because of vengeance. Ghosts do not need to eat, and the sudden transformation from living to being a ghost can be quite the shock. If a ghost lets their emotions take over any rational thought they become a poltergeist, an embodiment of whatever emotion overtook them. Exorcisms are only used in the most extreme cases, as there are ways to calm poltergeists down and help them pass on. Ghosts get a sort of therapy to try and help them figure out why they're still hanging around, and to teach them coping skills to minimize the possibility of new poltergeists. They can possess bodies, but most will seek a willing host and only use the body for a few hours at the most. This is either to experience a food they enjoy, or a sensation they miss, etc.

Demons:

As humans can't accurately pronounce their true name, demons go as such. They aren't sins given form to torture humans, they are simply inhabitants of another plane, one more firey and hostile than the mortal plane. Demons don't normally travel long in the mortal plane as its colder than they're comfortable with among other reasons. Demons who do settle in the mortal plane are usually trying to start a new life for themselves, though then realize the mortal plane has its own hardships to deal with. Some use glamor to blend in, others feel no need to. They do have magic, though its different from what mages have and use.

Taurs: (centaurs, basically any animal body and then human torso and head)

Similarly to animal headed individuals taurs are those who have the lowerbody of an animal. the majority have hooved animal heritage, though there are some mammalian and reptilian taurs as well. They can use glamor but some find the sudden change from four legs to only two quite jarring. Those who do find it too jarring may use mobility aids to simulate four legs and keep themselves stable, others simply won't use glamor. Taurs can have animal-like ears and other features, it depends on the individual. Taurs who don't have hooves will tend to wear coverings on their paws to protect from glass/sharp debris of the city roads.

"Angels": (Winged folk)

Similar to Demons, humans could not pronounce their true names and thus call these individual angels. In reality the plane they call home is quite mountainous and cold, and therefore their kind evolved to have wings and thick warm fur. Their wings greatly depend on the individual, though most are avian, you can find angels with bat wings or even insect-like wings. Angels usually have a halo, in reality this halo is their horns, as angels horns conjoin upon maturity. Another interesting fact is that angels have a glow about them especially when in dimmer enviornments. If you befriend an angel, expect them to be quite touchy/cuddly, and to be given shiny gifts as angels find their own by looking for their glow.

Mages:

Mages are genealogical cousins to humans despite their very similar appearances. Mages have a different internal makeup, including a few more organs that convert food and water into energy that can be used for their magic. This energy is stored in their magical reserve (an organ nestled right next to the mages heart) and depending on how big this magical reserve is determines how weak or strong a mages abilities will be. Mages can usually be discerned by unnatural eye colors, or their magical birthmark (usually on their chest or back its color and shape is dependent on their magical reserve and how their magic develops. i.e if a mage is more drawn to plants it will be similar to plantlife, if a mage is drawn to the elements it make look like a lightning strike or a flame, etc.).

[juquidessine]

[residualself]

Beware... Creatures are out there.

[theflyingpimphat]

May 2024

Falling in Love on Falcon Station - Omnibus (5 books); The Fifth Season; Midnight at the Well of Souls; The Lovers; Strange Relations; Axiom's End; Dogs of War

Falling in Love on Falcon Station, Isla Noir

Consisting of: Galactic Gambling Games, RRRR, Not Afraid of the Wolf, Tentacles and Suckers, Surprise Surprise

Language: English

Synopsis: Gia, a conventionally attractive woman, gambles and fucks aliens. Among them, a poisonous hermaphrodite that lands her in a hospital, an overly-possessive jaguar politician who sees her as his betrothed and can't take no for an answer, a horned yeti-werewolf shapeshifter and an octopod, in the end she marries the shapeshifter.

Review: I liked the first one of those, as the alien featured was pretty imaginative, unfortunately the others were let-downs in comparison. It was also nice to see a book referring to reproductive organs with their proper therms and mostly avoid the cats and the roosters. Outside of the porking and maybe some fairly amusing aspects of the setting, the series had little to offer; there was an above-average amount of typos and a particularly annoying part was how the card game, which is the protagonist's source of income, gets described in a rather repetitive manner, yet there is almost no mention of how it actually works.

The Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin

Language: English

Synopsis: The book follows three storylines: Damaya, a little girl who is discovered to have orogene powers and gets brought to the Fulcrum, a school that trains such children; Syenite, a young woman tasked to go on a mission with the Fulcrum's most powerful orogene to clear the corals out of a harbour, but ends up activating a damaged obelisk; Essun, a middle-aged woman following her husband and the killer of her son, who has abducted her daughter, all the while a cataclysm from the continent having split consumes the world.

Review: If there is one word to describe this book, it would be "exceptional". This is a perfect example of how a worldbuilding-driven book can work. It is also scientifically pretty solid for a fantasy story with magic; the magic has to extract energy from the surroundings to work and the side effect of the temperature drop is often used for various purposes by itself. The book was especially delightful to read for this Earth Science graduate due to its focus on geology and I would certainly recommend it to anyone involved in geology and being interested in fantasy. My only gripe is the use of second person perspective in Essun's parts, and while there is a reason behind it, it still made reading those sections rather tedious.

Midnight at the Well of Souls, Jack L. Chalker

Language: German (Die Sechseck-Welt)

Synopsis: A spaceship's captain and his passengers end up on the Wellworld, an artificial planet left behind the Markovians, near-omnipotent precursors, which is covered in a grid of hexagons, each containing an unique biome and native intelligent species. Anyone who enters the Wellworld is assigned to a random hexagon and transformed into a member of the intelligent species inhabiting it. The captain and the passengers find each other as well as the two people who had activated the portal to the world in the first place, and travel to the Well of Souls, which is basically the universe's control room, and the only way to leave the planet.

Review: The setting is unusual and the present creatures range from standard fantasy (centaurs) to truly imaginative (a floating crystal bowl communicating with bells and carrying an orb of light that can predict the future). It is one of these "the technology is so advanced that it looks like magic" settings and most of the time, it does indeed read like a fantasy novel. The amount of transformations happening to the characters does raise a few eyebrows, apparently the author had a thing for it.

The Lovers, Philip José Farmer

Language: English

Synopsis: Hal Yarrow gets the offer to take a spaceship to Ozagen, a newly-discovered, inhabited planet as a language expert in a mission to genocide its intelligent species and clear the planet for human colonisation. He encounters an attractive, French-speaking woman there and falls in love with her, unthinkable for someone raised in an insanely strict theocracy as he was. The genocide plot fails because the native species was crazy prepared due to its history with commensals and parasites, the woman is in fact a human mimic of an all-female insectoid species that dies upon birth and Hal had her knocked up because he didn't like her alcohol consumption that works as a contraceptive for them, so he ends up with a litter of larvae that have his face but a dead girlfriend.

Review: The bad part was that it had none of the promised bug-fucking. Jeanette looked like a conventionally attractive woman with some superstimuli added in and the weirdness only involved the species' evolution and life cycle. Also, compared to the books I have read previously from the author (the Childe duology and Flesh), it was pretty tame. The good part was the imaginative worldbuilding: Earth is politically very different thanks to a global genocide done by the Martian colonies in a distant past and the main species of aliens, while absurdly humanoid in its appearance, still has a fairly fascinating anatomy (it's the only book I've read so far mentioning the hypopharynx) and I really liked the way their species has plenty of commensals, symbiotes and parasites, an element based on ants. It was also unintentionally funny to me, since I couldn't take one of the characters being called 'Pornsen' seriously.

Strange Relations, Philip José Farmer

Language: English

Synopsis: It's 5 stories: first is about a man and his mother being the only survivors of a spaceship crash being captured by the planet's sapient species, sessile, boulder-like organisms communicating through radio signals, with the man becoming essentially one of their son and also mate; the second features one of that organism's offspring growing up and using her "father's" lessons to successfully deal with her species' predator; the third has a spaceship ending up in a location they didn't plan to go, discovering an odd planet where life appears to be perfect and every individual seems to be 100000 years old, everything supervised by a humanoid with god-like powers, who also wants to leave the place and appoint one of the ship's two clerics as his successors; the fourth is about a claustrophobic American captured by an intelligent Russian submarine during the Cold War; the fifth has the last survivor of a Mars mission end up in a hive of its native inhabitants with a researcher from a different star system, learning about both the Martian live as well as the marooned researcher.

Review: I did like stories 1, 2 and 5 quite a lot for the imaginative creatures and their interactions with the human protagonists; 3 was a bit confusing due to me assuming it was a continuation of the second story like the second was a continuation of the first, but had some interesting discussions on religion; 4 was ehh, but at least it was short and to the point.

Axiom's End, Lindsay Ellis

Language: English

Synopsis: Cora's family gets a visit by an alien and she ends up being used as a puppet by said alien, gradually coming to an agreement to cooperate instead of being just used. Contacting her aunt, who was involved in a semi-secret organisation studying and and caring for the alien's conspecifics, who had landed on Earth decades earlier as refugees, they stay for some time at a bunker, where the aliens are held, until the bunker is attacked by an alien group attempting to exterminate the refugees. The bunker's inhabitants flee in different directions, Cora ending up with with one peculiar alien individual and after some time reunites with her companion shortly before the final confrontation with the pursuer, which she barely survives but also plays a crucial role in its resolution.

Review: It can be best described as a classical alien contact story that had been thought through thoroughly, with the consequences of those thoughts leading the events and interactions. The pacing is slow, but it's made up for with the discussions of the concepts behind the story and raises some interesting questions regarding human/alien contact and coexistence. The alien design is solid, too.

Dogs of War, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Language: German (Im Krieg)

Synopsis: Rex, the leader of a bioform pack, genetically-modified and cybernetically enhanced animals serving as war machines, commits war crimes for the company that created them. The war crimes get uncovered, Rex gets captured and ends up on a trial that on one hand exonerated the company's leader due to insufficient evidence, on the other hand gains the bioforms rudimentary rights. The book follows him and the other surviving members of his team as he fights for the UN, and bioforms and the technology related to them evolve.

Review: As usual, Tchaikovsky excels at nonhuman psychology and the way Rex was written was fairly convincing, avoiding many of the dog behaviour clichés. The other bioforms were similarly great, like the literal bee hivemind or the off-model bear who ended up far smarter than originally intended. It starts out as a straightforward story, then more and more turns into a discussion on the ethics and possibilities of the bioform and cybernetic enhancement technologies, like dog bioforms being employed in the medical field to use their superior sense of smell in diagnoses, bioforms' role in colonizing Mars, but also corporations rigging humans with control implants to produce obedient workers.

With me trying to reduce my ever-growing literary pile of shame by finishing at least two books per month, is anyone interested in me doing brief reviews of them? It's sci-fi and fantasy for the most part.