filipmagnuswrites

[filipmagnuswrites]

Helldivers 2 Bucks Live Service Trends for Super Democracy! | Game Review

Super Democracy! You might call it a lie, you might call it filthy propaganda, you might suggest its striking similarity to fascism. If that’s the case, the firing line’s this way – let the bullets hit you on your way out. For all my fellow loyal citizens, I congratulate you: together ,we have done much to defeat the threats that surround our very own Super Earth. We’ve gassed bugs (without any…

View On WordPress

#Arrowhead Game Studios #Gaming #Helldivers #Helldivers II #live-service #live-service games #Third-person shooter #Video Games #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow is a Love Letter to the Gothic Genre | Book Review

How might a love letter to the gothic genre look? It might, first, be in the novel form: nothing less would capture its grandiose themes, its dark and brooding atmosphere. Then, there must be a house. Not just any house will do. You know the type: a tangle of rust-covered metal gates and fence, and behind them a jagged, dark marvel of Gothic Revival architecture, “like a vast animal from its den:…

View On WordPress

#Alix E. Harrow #book blog #book review #Fantasy #gothic #literature #Starling House #writer #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #128 - Born a Ghost by Nadia Bongo

Previous | Next What a beautiful, tragic human tale Nadia Bongo tells! “Born a Ghost” follows a small ghost girl’s life from birth until her twelfth year. This story is a kind of ontology of the ghostly life across this period, a magical tale that hides reality under a thin layer of fiction. It’s not difficult to read Bongo’s story as analogous to class and social conflict (in fact, I find it…

View On WordPress

#Apex Magazine #Apex Magazine 142 #book blog #fiction #ghost story #horror #literature #short story #The Short Story Reader #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #128 - Born a Ghost by Nadia Bongo

Previous | Next What a beautiful, tragic human tale Nadia Bongo tells! “Born a Ghost” follows a small ghost girl’s life from birth until her twelfth year. This story is a kind of ontology of the ghostly life across this period, a magical tale that hides reality under a thin layer of fiction. It’s not difficult to read Bongo’s story as analogous to class and social conflict (in fact, I find it…

View On WordPress

#Apex Magazine #Apex Magazine 142 #book blog #fiction #ghost story #horror #literature #short story #The Short Story Reader #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #127 - Spread the Word by Delilah S. Dawson

Previous | Next This psychological horror packs the punch of peak Stephen King, and its subject matter is reminiscent of the master storyteller’s own interests. A strange, religious obsession befalls the dads of Will’s new friends, transforming them, turning them violent and cruel. Will’s no hero, he’s just arrived to town after his own share of troubles with his dad; what’s he, a small kid,…

View On WordPress

#Apex Magazine #Apex Magazine 142 #book blog #fiction #horror story #literature #short story #short story review #writer #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

Lil' Guardsman's Top Six Characters! (With Spoilers?)

Lil’ Guardsman presents a veritable treasure trove of memorable characters, but today, we at the Filip Magnus channel are going to talk about and celebrate the six best characters across all this lil indie game! Spoilers for Lil’ Guardsman follow, so if you haven’t played it – turn away! Why top six?! Because…shut up. There are many criteria by which to pick excellent characters: you can judge…

View On WordPress

#2D #adventure #Casual #Fantasy #funny video made by an imbecile #humor #Lil #Lil&039; Guardsman #Point and Click #Puzzle #Top List #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #126 - Nothing of Value by Aimee Ogden

In “Nothing of Value,” Aimee Ogden renders a future where teleportation throughout the Solar System has become commonplace. What are the ethical and moral implications of what is called “transit” and involves the translation of information across vast amounts of space, information rearranged in just the way it was sent out in the first place. SO our protagonist believes, and so do many others,…

View On WordPress

#book blog #Clarkesworld #clarkesworld 208 #fiction #interplanetary travel #literature #Sci-Fi #Science Fiction #short story review #solar system #The Short Story Reader #writer

[filipmagnuswrites]

Lil' Guardsman Is Beyond Charming | Video Game Review

Lil’ Guardsman takes the core concept of Papers, Please! and places it in an irreverent, colourful setting that oozes with charm and an endless amount of humour. If protagonist Lil, short for Lilith, was just a sarcastic little imp, it would not have worked as well as it does. But because she has heart–because the whole of Lil’ Guardsman has heart in spades–this game turns into one of the most…

View On WordPress

#adventure #Casual #Colorful #Fantasy #fiction #Funny #Gaming #hand-drawn #humor #Lil&039; Guardsman #Multiple endings #Story Rich #video game

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Pale Beyond Challenges You to Survive (on) the Ice | Video Game Review

The age of the Earth’s exploration–or of its mapping, rather–is long since over. Yet the age in question continues to fascinate. And arctic expeditions, those journeys into the most inhospitable climate on the surface of the planet, hold a special place in the public imagination. For millennia, European peoples believed (and searched for) an ice-free polar sea supposedly acting as a shortcut to…

View On WordPress

#2D #adventure #character-driven #Choices Matter #game review #Gaming #interactive fiction #psychological #single player #snow #survival #The Pale Beyond #unforgiving #video game

[filipmagnuswrites]

American Arcadia is Biting Social Satire | Video Game Review

Now and then comes a narrative game that will glue me to the screen. 2023 has been excellent at offering me those, and all of them different experiences: from the survival narrative of The Pale Beyond to the fantastic saga of Baldur’s Gate 3 to the metanarrative mind-bending horror of Alan Wake 2, I’ve played through more unforgettable narrative experiences in the last half year than across the…

View On WordPress

#2D #adventure #American Arcadia #Cyberpunk #Gaming #indie #Point & Click #Retropunk #Sci-Fi #Side Scroller #Simulation #singleplayer #Story Rich #third person #thriller #video game #video game review

[filipmagnuswrites]

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree is Cozy Fun with a Necromantic Edge! | Book Review

My Legends & Lattes review! The Dark Lord’s Legends and Lattes review. Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes was the cosy fantasy the book-reading world needed in 2022; but does its prequel show that Baldree, former games developer and full-time narrator, can catch lightning in a bottle twice? The short answer: Yes. Yes, it does. It’s not the same lightning, and it’s not the same story. A…

View On WordPress

#book blog #book review #Bookshops & Bonedust #Fantasy #fiction #High Fantasy #humor #Legends & Lattes #literature #slice of life #Travis Baldree #writer #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

A Brief Poetry Recommendation - TROOP NO. 80085 by Marisca Pichette

Here’s something I don’t do much of – recommending poetry. Marisca Pichette’s piece for Deadlands #32 is too much fun not to, however, with its gay girlscouts riding out the afterlife for a good time: our death is the latest badgestitched to rotting skinluminous beneath the moon. sitting cross-legged in mosquito poolswe learn the names of the shadowswho lead our immortal troop: hecate,…

View On WordPress

#Deadlands #Deadlands 32 #Death #girlscouts #Marisca Pichette #poetry #Troop No. 80085

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Dragon Beckons the Fish

Last month, I shared a pair of drawings; since I’m busy writing my Starling House review and don’t have the time to read or write my daily short story review, you get another pair of drawings! I continue to follow along with 21draw’s excellent lessons, taught by Mark Kistler. Oh no, I forgot to shade all the fingers!

View On WordPress

#art lessons #drawings

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #125 - Dandelions by Martin Cahill

Previous | Next What happens when strangers from the stars come and their physiology interplays with ours in so unique a way as to invite nothing but murder. Martin Cahill’s “Dandelions” is a flash piece that offers a refreshing reimagining of the alien invasion. Never mind that was exactly what they wanted to happen, what they had evolved toward like a molten length of steel beaten into the…

View On WordPress

#alien invasion #book blog #fiction #literature #Sci-Fi #Science Fiction #SF #short story #short story blog #short story review #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

Água Viva by Clarice Lispector | A Short Vignette of My Experience

“I know what I am doing here: I am telling of the instants that drip and are thick with blood.” I read Clarice Lispector’s work Água Viva at what might have been the most serendipitous time, during personal heartbreak that saw me submerged into a well of grief. It proved slippery to get out of, every step or two leaving me breathless and looking back my shoulder, wistful, lost. Lispector’s…

View On WordPress

#Água Viva #book blog #book review #Clarice Lispector #experimental novel #fiction #literature #novel #personal #writer

[filipmagnuswrites]

What I Talk About When I Talk About Books In November - Part 2

Previously on What I Talk About When I Talk About Books In November… Hullo again! Time to cover a few more of the by-gone reads of yestermonth! Last time, I went on a Greek play binge! This time around, I reckon it’s time to cover a few weirder reads from the Ancient and Medieval world, yeah? Daphnis and Chloe by Longus Disclaimer: Couldn’t quite make it through all of this. Not that it’s…

View On WordPress

#A True Story #Ancient Greek novels #book blog #book review #Byzanthine novel #fiction #Hysmine and Hysminias by Eumathios Makrembolites #Longus #Lucian #writer #Writing

[filipmagnuswrites]

A Gentleman and a Scholar's Short List of Books I Hope To Read Before Year's End

Hullo, hi, Filip here. I take this valuable reading time to notify you that I have a few too many books I’d like to read before the year comes to an end, and I’m, frankly, drowning under the sheer weight of paper stock. Prepare yourselves! Starling House by Alix E. Harrow The new Harrow novel is ace, and I’ll probably burn through it over the rest of the night because I am a maniac who cannot…

View On WordPress

#Alix E. Harrow #Bookshops and Bonedust #Ed McDonald #Infinity Gate #M. R. Carey #Richard Swan #Starling House #Traitor of Redwinter #Travis Baldree #Tyranny of Faith