#xen slough

[theallegedbird]

thank you jonny sims for consistently providing accurate trans representation

[mattdevil]

I noticed no one made any designs for Xen from Family Business and that’s criminal. @jonnywaistcoat is this anything like what you imagined? I took some liberties

[spiciestmarinara]

'Looks like we're all done here,’ Xen said, already halfway out of her Tyvek suit, revealing her most casual look: a black T-shirt printed with a nuclear warning sign composed of three gender symbols, splashed in the colours of the trans flag, all above the words ‘This is the age of sin. Reject the order of creation. Revel in the annihilation of Man as the image of God. Destroy. Plot designs of death. Disfigure the face of Man and Woman.’

- ‘Family Business’ by Jonathan Sims

———

Cut to me reading that just going ‘Nice! Nice! Nice! Nice! Nice!’ Jonny is so real for this one.

[hassamkhalidsaidfuckyet]

Xen Slough 🤝 Alice Dyer

absolutely unfazed hot colleague in absurdly morbid job

[semper-legens]

104. Family Business, by Jonathan Sims

Owned: Yes Page count: 317 My summary: Diya has had a rough year. Her best friend died, and she switched jobs to work for the people who cleaned up the scene. It’s an odd profession, but she finds some solace in giving other people the service she received. But all is not well with the Slough family. They are carrying a grief they won’t speak about, a grief they might not completely understand. And a stranger keeps appearing at their jobs... My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Jonathan Sims! This one’s been a long time coming, I actually got it as a Christmas present last year. But because I literally cannot stop bringing books back from work, I haven’t managed to get round to the books I actually own yet. It’s always the same story - “I’ll just read through the whole library pile, and then I’ll do some of my books!” - but the library pile never decreases. Anyway. I’m a huge fan of The Magnus Archives, and I really liked Thirteen Stories, Sims’ debut novel. So of course I’m going to read this one. And, spoiler alert, I liked it a lot! Sims has a talent for bringing the spooky into the mundane (granted, cleaning up after traumatic death is hardly mundane) and this is no disappointment on that front.

Our protagonist is Diya, a young woman who feels completely isolated by the death of her friend/roommate and tries to find solace in her new job with the Slough family. Which consists of the spooky neo-pagan esque Mary, boisterous and irreverent Xen, and their father, quiet Frank. All of these characters were a delight to read; Diya both manages to have the everywoman aspect of being the audience relatable character and having her own personality at the same time. Xen is fun, I loved every moment she was in the narrative, she’s exactly the kind of person who would be right at home in my friend group. Mary is intriguing, I always wanted to know what was going on with her. Frank is also a mystery, one that unfolds over the course of the novel. There are various auxiliary characters, but this quartet is our main gang, and they’re all both interesting and distinct. Poor Diya is fighting for her life through so much Spooky Shit that she didn’t sign up for and doesn’t quite understand, and yet she both holds her own and makes sensible choices, which is always nice to see in a horror protagonist.

And then there’s Bill, the Spooky Threat of this novel. One thing I really like about Sims’ writing is how his threats are both spooky things and social issues, and in this case, Bill both is a creepy serial killing monster and the issue of people being forgotten by society and falling off everyone’s radar. The idea that you can be targeted by a monster that literally makes the world forget about you before digesting you and your memories is absolutely horrifying, and the fact that the best way to beating it involves keeping souvenirs from the person’s home and life in a way to remember them, even a tiny bit, even though you didn’t even know them, is delicious. The thing with it, as well, is that I don’t think I consciously realised any of this while reading? It was the best kid of subtle and unsubtle, the metaphor being right there for people to see, but also you can just take it on the surface-level reading of being a Creepy Thing That Happens, and I find that really interesting.

This book is really good at setting up tension. Even when you know that Diya is going to hallucinate how the person they’re cleaning up died as she’s cleaning, the transition from Diya’s regular POV to her acting out the experiences of the dead person is chilling. There’s a sort of enhanced reality going on here, where you’re not really sure if everything that’s happening is in Diya’s head, or if it’s really happening, or if there’s something between the two that’s going on. It’s a mindfuck, as Bill gaslights Diya as well as the audience. It’s effective as hell and I love it!

Next up, a woman sets herself alight, and her spark burns across the world with deadly consequences.

[curiouscrux]

Trans rights win!

The evil creature your family has served for generations affirms your gender!

[endless-bestiary]

ANTLION WORKER

Was reviewing HL2 a thinly veiled excuse to talk about Antlions? Yes! It's nice when life's mysteries are so easily solved. All of the variations of Antlions are so interesting to me, and I'm glad there are so many of them. I would honestly play a colony management game about these alien bugs, hopefully complete with different adaptations and Xenian explanations for many of their strange traits. That must be why Valve hasn't released HL3 - they're busy working on Antlion Farm!

The Antlion Worker was always an outlier to me in terms of appearance. The others are matte greens and browns with rough textures, while acid ones are a strange glossy blue. This is more important than it seems. Typically, a creature brimming with so much corrosive fluid that it explodes when it dies would choose a color that advertises the danger involved in hunting it. Earth creatures prefer yellows and reds to shout "HEY! I'M BAD TO EAT!" So why is the Antlion Worker blue? As far as I can tell, blue is the danger color in Xen. Antlion Guards have blue feather protrusions that bristle when unwelcome guests approach. Houndeyes are marked with blue stripes that glow when they're threatened. Blue electricity arcs across many locations, either from natural or artificial sources. I might just be cherry-picking, but with Xen's overall lean towards fleshier, brownish-red tones, blue makes color theory sense in the same place that orange and yellow do in a green environment. 

According to supplementary material, the Antlion Worker's role in the hive is to quickly carve out tunnels in the dense Xenian rock to expand their hive. I posit that they have several other indirect roles with this behavior besides just guarding the tunnels with neurotoxic blobs. Most video game designers like to believe corrosive fluids go away when the thing they're melting is gone, but most strong acids don't denature very quickly. This means the tunnels carved by Antlion Workers are absolutely slathered in skin-melting neurotoxin. It's pretty easy to defend a burrow when your predators find their feet sloughing off the moment they step inside! Additionally, the burrowing habits of Headcrabs would probably be a nuisance for Antlion hives to deal with. Having their digging method be utterly destructive would remove the off-chance of a Headcrab getting loose in the hive and attacking workers. Hell, liquefied Headcrabs could even be an Antlion's favorite snack. Slorp!

On the whole, I really enjoy the color and texture variety the Antlion Worker brings to its hive. It fits in the established color palette while still offering something otherwise unseen in the greens and browns of their allies. The larger head and tiny, cylindrical body feel like the bizarre proportions of real-world ants, while still not varying too far from the basic Antlion body plan. I'd say this is my grandmother's sister, because this is a pretty great ant!

Eh? Ehhh? No? Alright then.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 7/10 DESIGN COHESION: 9/10 SMOOTH ANT: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 9/10