#visceral imagery HAD TO DRAW IT

[mothmothwoth]

underrated moment where they looked at each others faces half covered by the rose ramón put down and giggled,, it was just so sweet truly the distillation of them being stupid

also have extra comic for the image but it’s a sketch bc I’m very hungry

#The image of pac stopping because of a rose in his face and breaking character to laugh about it has been in my mind all day #visceral imagery HAD TO DRAW IT #anyways I hate them #they make me suffer so much #Also I was gonna draw the silly Tazercraft reunion but again busy #Qsmp everybody! #they make me insane #qsmp #qsmp fanart #fanart #art #pactw #qsmp art #qsmp pac #fitpac #qsmp fitmc #fitmc #hideduo #qsmp pactw

[colliholly]

Spamton “Busting his ass into a scented candle” gave me such vile and visceral imagery I had to draw it

#spamton #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2 #spamton g spamton #fanart #art tag #sorry guys

[sapphickocho]

SPOILERS FOR COIL CHAPTER 19

Wow. Just wow. After reading the most recent chapter of Coil by Allegory_for_Hatred, a BSD x HP crossover fic, the tragectory of my life has changed. This may be really niche talking about this fanfic (if you haven’t read it already, go read it!!) I honestly am not being dramatic when I say this might be one the best chapters. The set up, the dynamics, the potential, the twists, all perfectly executed. This may be really niche talking about this fanfic (if you haven’t read it already, go read it!!) but we need to talk about the symbolism! I adored the likening of Dazai to a rabbit and Mori to the snake, this coiling metaphor fitting into the literal title of the fic.

The whole scene at the end was so vivid and powerful, Dazai's white dress being stained red with his own blood represents the idea of turning to a hero into a villan, pure into the impure and white unto black. And Mori waltzing with him was so perfect. The Allegory writes Mori is so unsettling yet perfectly creepy. Calling Dazai "my dear" telling him he looked cuter in red is insanely disturbing. I can just imagine Mori with a borderline possessive grip on Dazai as they danced which is especially unsettling when, in a traditional waltz, the leading partner has a hand on the following partner's waist or just beneath their arm.

Imagine your Dazai in this scene, your waltzing with your abuser next to the corpse of your crazy father who that said abuser killed after your eye was stabbed out yet your being forced to dance in a gore-soaked dress all while slowly falling unconscious due to blood loss. This visceral imagery is so unsettling and powerful that I knew I had to draw it.

I can’t help but ramble about how much I love this series. Never would I have thought I would enjoy the series as much as I did going in. But hear I am drawing fanart for its most angstiest moment. I have to thank the author, this fic has been consuming my every waking thought. I can’t wait for the next chapter. Seeing everyone’s reactions too Dazai’s missing eye is going to be insane....

the fic of which this is based off of: Magic and Mystery ,Coil

#loved the chapter so much I had to write a analysis and make fanart #Cant tell you how much I love this fanfic #dazai #bsd dazai #bsd #ao3 #dazai osamu #bsd mori #mori ougai #magic and mystery #magic and mystery dazai #coil dazai #coil #bungo stray dogs

[elwenyere]

Crafting Comments on Fics

So with Comment Fest approaching - and with the possibility of bot-generated comments undermining the value of reader-writer engagement - I thought it might be helpful to provide a short explanation of some different approaches I use in crafting comments, in order to identify a few places to get started for anyone who has wanted to leave more (or more detailed) comments but who feels unsure how to get going. 

This is far from an exhaustive list, and the categories are designed to allow for a mix-and-match construction with varying levels of development (from basic to more elaborate). At the heart of it, I think of commenting as a practice of paying attention to what I notice in a story and then crafting language to share those observations with the writer. So each of these categories starts from something we might notice when we read.

1. Affect: how the fic affected you/made you feel

This is a great place to start if commenting feels intimidating, because you’re drawing from your own emotional responses. A basic template might be something like “_____ made me ________.” You can pick a particular moment (the scene with the tooka infestation, the kiss in the Denny’s parking lot, the moment we realize character x was dead the whole time, etc.) or focus on the fic as a whole; and you can describe the effect in simple terms (made me cry, smile, laugh, feel soft, etc.) or extravagant ones (made me want to roll myself into the sea, made me feel like I had ascended to a new astral plane, shook me so deeply it registered a 10.3 on the Richter scale). The idea is to take one or more responses you had to the fic and let the writer know what they were/what about the story produced them. 

2. Memory: what from the fic has stuck with you

If a story has an especially strong effect on you, you might also let the author know what particular moments, lines, or images are going to linger in your mind after you finish reading. After identifying the detail(s) you want to flag (if you were going to bookmark this fic with a note to remind Future You which one it is, what image or scene or plot premise or line of dialogue would go in the “the one with the ___________” slot?), you can describe the way it’s sticking with you in general terms (I’m still thinking about it, chewing on it, rotating it like a Hot Pocket in a microwave), or you can point to some of the reasons why it’s sticking with you (it captures character x’s whole deal so well, it reminds me of y moment in the film/tv show/comic, it crystallizes a larger theme in the story so effectively). 

3. Appreciation: what in the fic seems beautiful, artful, striking

In this approach you’re giving a writer a sense of what stood out to you aesthetically about the story: the moments that made you feel like “put a frame around that fucker because I want to keep staring at it.” This category can feel tricky because there might be terminology specific to the form that we’re not familiar with, so it can feel hard to describe what exactly makes a moment strike us as well-crafted. But we might think about the appreciation approach as having a basic template: “_____ is so ________.” The first slot can be either general (the whole story, a larger scene, the way the author writes dialogue or description or a major character) or very specific (copying and pasting a particular line or passage, identifying a pattern of imagery, pointing out the way the author narrates a specific kind of experience). And the second slot can be just one adjective (beautiful, visceral, unsettling, powerful, stunning, lyrical) or a more elaborate evaluation (so effective at conveying emotions, so hard-hitting after the slow build-up, so vivid I feel like I’m actually there). 

4. Discovery: what the fic showed you/made you think about

Sometimes you read a fic that makes you think about the media/the ship/the characters in a new way, and that’s a really powerful thing to share with the writer. As with the other approaches, you can frame this in terms of the fic as a whole or pull out particular lines or plot points, and you can either describe the effect on your thinking in general terms (this changed my brain chemistry, this blew my mind, this is canon for me now) or in specific ones (I’d never thought about x moment in the film that way before, but now I’m going to think about it that way every time; the line where character x says y was like a lightbulb moment for me - it clarified so much about x’s motivations; I would never have thought about this show as being about z theme, but after reading this fic, I’m seeing z everywhere). 

------

So there you have it: a non-exhaustive list of things we notice about stories and some ways to talk about that. I hope it’s helpful. And of course, when in doubt or when pressed for energy, a string of emojis, a keyboard smash, or an all-caps “I LOVED THIS!!!” are also wonderful ways to share a little love with fic writers.

#ao3 #comment fest

[ashesandhackles]

Fic recs

Other Women and of Purer Blood by @saintsenara

Summary: Narcissa is adrift, rattling around Malfoy Manor, when an equally lonely man comes into her lonely life.

Thoughts: I have been wanting a story that contextualises the sexual charge and familiarity we see between Snape and Narcissa in Spinner's End for ages (canon compliant, that is) and this story is a lovely backstory to that. It also captures Snape in transition: Snape still ironing out his northern accent, how his movements are still spider-like. He is in the process of becoming the adult Snape we see in canon: whose speeches are a performance, and how he irons out the awkwardness of his movements in adulthood.

Excerpt:

Snape looks completely wrong in the flowery bower where Dobby has set out tea. His sallow awkwardness seems to repel the summer, even though Narcissa suspects he must be baking in his layers of shabby black robes. 

He doesn’t have the fine manners of the sort of person who normally comes to tea with the Malfoys. He eats quickly, and slurps his tea, and looks at the cakes with the greedy eyes of a boy who isn’t used to treats. Lucius would be disgusted, to have a greasy half-blood at his table spraying crumbs everywhere. She imagines the expression of horrified confusion on his pointy face and giggles.

Snape immediately goes scarlet and puts down his tea-cup.

In Infinite Remorse of Soul by @perverse-idyll

Summary: Albus Dumbledore never makes the same mistake twice. Certainly not in love.

Thoughts: My very first Snumbledore, which is a frightening meditation on the very vast power dynamics between Snape and Dumbledore from the hilltop scene in Deathly Hallows and expanding the very personal reaction Dumbledore had towards the wayward young Death Eater. Perverse Idyll is among the best writers in the fandom, brimming with words and fantastic imagery that just stays with you.

Excerpt:

"My boy," Albus says almost kindly, because kindness is something that mystifies his young servant. Severus' eyes dart upwards, apprehensive, accusing, and Albus can see the darkness inside the boy clawing to reach him. Guilt calling to guilt.

The moment quivers and thins until he judges that Severus has had enough and is about to rebel. A harsh rasp draws his attention. He looks down at the bruised, blackened fingernail scraping across stone.

"My boy," he sighs. "You never fail to disgust me."

The ritual word strikes Severus down. His obstinate body shrinks, wings of hair flapping forward to shut his scowling face from view.

To Build A Home by @mblematic

Summary: 1978-1981: Sirius stumbles on something in the woods, Sirius and Remus stumble into each other, everyone stumbles into the war.

Thoughts: First War hijinks, dysfunctional Wolfstar - I was fed! I cannot rave enough about the gorgeous, subtle writing of relationships (the author really captures this raw, visceral vulnerability between two friends who are attracted to each other and how it explodes in heightened tension of war) and there is some fantastic world building and mirroring. Excerpt: Later, Sirius would remember almost everything from this night with crystal clarity except the sky, which in reality was clouded but in his memory would be open, star-studded, expansive and unknowable as the future. He’d remember, correctly, that the wolf was different than it had been at Hogwarts. He’d remember the restless, brutal, snarling fury, all of it undercut with a fear so intense it had its own meaty weight. The night took Sirius by surprise and he spent the whole long stretch of it trying to put himself back on track, trying to reacquaint himself with the wolf, and trying to convince them both that they remembered each other. At one point he found himself literally between Remus’ jaws, helpless and pliant, mewling like a supplicant. This, too, he would remember for the rest of his life. 

Second Life by Cassandra, nwhiker Summary: What happens when two men are given a second chance.

Thoughts: I finally got around to reading one of the most recommended Snirius fics out there. Beautiful, understated, deeply emotional - the authors take you on a journey with the two of them post war. It also feels....old?? As in, the kind of perspective this fic has is the perspective of someone in late 30s (which both Snape and Sirius are in this fic, post war). There is a fragile, "who else will understand what our generation went through?" running through the vein of this fic.

Excerpt:

It was like walking into a tiny garden in the tropics, and he was reminded of some of the places he'd visited while on the run after his escape from Azkaban. There were hundreds of plants, most of them unfamiliar, and a large table was filled with orchids. There was a tree, which turned out to be a frangipani, its white flowers soft and sweet. A delicate white flower with an exquisite fragrance that Snape said was bouvardia. Along one wall were plants Sirius recognised from Potions classes, wolfsbane and asphodel, wormwood and sopohorous, a shrivelfig tree, and others he'd seen but didn't know the names of.

"I'm not supposed to have them," Snape said.

Sirius turned to him. Snape was staring down an orchid, brushing planting mix from the edge of its pot.

Al Aaraaf by eldritcher

Summary: There is a place between heaven and hell.

Thoughts: An unsettling, poetic horror fic featuring a grieving Walburga Black. The whole fic is structured like a poem, with rhythm and repetition and metaphor shining through.

Excerpt:

He had her face. He had her scowl. He had her loathsome, loathing heart that mourned and loved. Hell dwelled in him, as a warm and heartful thing calved of mother.

The last of earth's make she held was son. His hands were placed in prayerful clasp over her belly.

The lamb in her was of Tartary, born of son fed and killed with milk and honey, birthed of widow's mourning.

"It is all right," Sirius said, and held her to him as if she weren't damned.

Runaway Boys by Delphi

Summary: Severus dreams of pirates, and Lily closes the nursery window. Thoughts: I'm not sure if I have recommended this fic before, but I am recommending it again, just in case. This is a wonderfully strange coming of age, a tale of puberty told in dreams/ fantasies featuring Snape and Captain Hook. Excerpt:

"Severus S—" He cuts himself off and then tentatively amends: "Prince. Severus Prince."

It's a better name, he's decided. His new friends at school know the Princes, but they've never heard of any Snapes.

"That is a fine name, Mr. Prince," the man says. "As for me, I am Captain James Hook."

A large hand extends into the branches, and after a moment, Severus carefully leans down and shakes it.

"Pleased to meet you," Severus says.

"Are those friends of yours?" the captain asks, nodding towards the neighbouring island, where the boys are now riding wild ponies bareback, jousting with each other using lances made of hollow reeds.

Severus shrugs. Of course, he thinks, the man would rather know them.

Note: Please check the pairings and tags in each of these fics and keep in mind your own triggers :)

#hp fic recs #hp fics #since i am in my reading phase #largely snape-centric recs #but some other content also sneaks through #severus snape #narcissa malfoy #snarcissa #snumbledore #snirius #sirius black #remus lupin #wolfstar #walburga black #alastor moody

[unsoundedcomic]

Sorry if you answered this before, I couldn't find it here. When you designed Lady Ilganyag, did you draw on any folklore? My sister was recently wondering why Ooccoo from Legend of Zelda (Twilight Princess, I think?) had so many titties and it reminded me of your multi-tittied bird lady. I'd assumed the LoZ creators drew from a Japanese yokai for Ooccoo, but all I found was some fan theories that they actually drew from Escher's "Another World." The bird lady in that doesn't even have ANY titties though! So I'm wondering if you drew on some folklore that LoZ might've also drawn on? Or if two geniuses separately thought "what if I gave this bird lady like 10 titties"?

Harpies are a pretty old concept, you see a lot of harpy imagery in the ancient world, particularly from Greek mythology. I looked up Ooccoo and she looks pretty cool but yeah. Just another take on a harpy, same as Lady Ilganyag.

It's been a while, but I remember LI was originally more birdy - black-skinned with downy feathers everywhere, even in her more human form. She also didn't originally have her cool transformation, which is what I think really sets her apart and put me down the path of the visceral red skin and the boney, framing extensions. In the comic, Bastion said she looked like an internal organ, all shiny and red.

[sweetdreams-aremade]

On Berserk and Takayuki Yamaguchi.

I'm making this post to vague about a stranger, and also to talk about Takayuki Yamaguchi, who rules.

Someone once said that, in the wake of Miura's untimely death, Takayuki Yamaguchi should take on the mantle of writing and drawing Berserk.

No offense (OK, some offense) to the guy who wrote this, but I can't think of a mangaka with a more diametrically opposed creative voice to Miura's, even if they both had similar root influences (Go Nagai, Fist of the North Star, Phantom of the Paradise and henshin heroes like Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Kikaider) and aesthetic interests (intense gore and violence, muddy textures, weird and often extreme sexual imagery).

For one, Takayuki Yamaguchi is a man who IIRC has directly stated that he's not great at subtle or nuanced emotion and thus excels at creating narratives built off of repressed characters unable to fully express themselves and asking him to illustrate a manga whose identity is partly defined by its creator's mastery of expression and subtle emotion isn't a great idea, really.

He was good at rendering subtle emotions once, during the early chapters of Shigurui, and he then promptly abandoned that skill in favor of intense stoicism for good reason.

One, he makes it look good, two, his work is defined by its detached, clinical tone. He deliberately views characters at a distance, by either using impersonal, novelistic third-person narration, viewing his protagonists through the lens of others within the narrative, or through something as simple as avoiding language and explicit information, valuing weighted silence over exposition. This dovetails *beautifully* with the narratives he handles.

Gekikou Kamen is about a tokusatsu enthusiast's relationship with Imperial Japan as reflected in the art he consumes, Shigurui is a critique of rigid class structures and loyalty to the state, and Exoskull Zero is his version of Casshern Sins I.E a manga about a former superhero in a doomed, fantastical landscape at the end of time out to save people who might not even exist.

They're manga that require an ambivalent approach to function: any kind of emotional scrutability or visceral intimacy would contradict Yamaguchi's novelistic style and frank examinations of flawed social structures and the people they produce.

Shigurui's macroscopic critique of Edo Japan doesn't work as an emotionally intimate narrative, and Gekikou Kamen's critique of the imperialist subtext behind much of tokusatsu doesn't work if you were immediately sympathetic to or understanding of its wannabe imperialist lead, for some examples.

If you asked Miura to draw a Yamaguchi manga, he'd have failed spectacularly because of his love of intense, emotionally intimate storytelling and illustration. He was simply not capable of (or perhaps more accurately simply uninterested in) the kind of emotional ambivalence that Yamaguchi excels at.

Hell, as I'll discuss later, intimacy vs. ambivalence might be the best summation of the differences between Miura and Yamaguchi's respective styles.

I don't think Yamaguchi would be a great choice for Berserk's action scenes either. Yamaguchi displays his mastery of action illustration by dilating time to show every individuated step of the process of movement, making his action feel intensely deliberate and methodical. Every step, and every step within that greater step, matters.

Kentaro Miura, meanwhile, often did the opposite with Guts, depicting the beginning and end of a sword swing and deliberately excising everything in between to generate a sense of speed and kinetic intensity.

#berserk #kakugo no susume #exoskull zero #shigurui

[kittlesandbugs]

Just a little BG3 Dark Urge drabble. About 300 words. I had a wild hair for some imagery. Dark Urge murder warnings and visceral violent dissociation apply lol.

You watch the child run and laugh, his eyes as bright as the future that's ahead of him. There's something… poetic about ending such a life so full of promise so far before its time. You feel a familiar itch in the back of your skull, the need to draw your quill from its scabbard and ink it in his entrails. Your gauntlet coils around the hilt of your dagger, a shiver of anticipation vibrating through your spine. You can already hear the siren sound of his screams, an orchestral accompaniment to craft your art by. 

There's a hand on your gauntlet, stopping you from drawing your blade. You glance to the side and see a familiar tuft of white hair below your armored shoulder. You almost want to kill him for staying your hand. 

"Not the time," he whispers, equal parts amusement and exasperation tinging his tone. There's a familiarity to the words and tone that scratches at a scab in your brain, and you don't know why, but it helps settle the itch to kill the boy. "It's broad daylight. I don't fancy dealing with the entire town guard coming down on us just because you can't control your rabid twitching."

You can feel the eyes of the others on you as you inhale low and slow through your nose, stilling your gruesome need to paint something red. The edge in the air dissipates as you release the hilt of your dagger, and you nod. 

"Of course," you say smoothly as your unknowingly coiled form straightens and relaxes, the hunt abandoned… for now. "We should resupply while we're in town." You say it with a passive, easy, smile that masks the bitter disappointment knotting in your gut for reasons you cannot even fathom. 

#kitbug writes things #bg3 #bg3 dark urge #the dark urge #nox #tidbits and snippets #i am rotating the urge in my head like a rotissarie chicken

[epiolatrys]

sins within the veins, grief painting a face of pain.

𓆩 ♱ 𓆪 ; even sinners shrink at the words of guilt. nikolai gogol was a man who had ended an intimacy, and this is the aftermath of a vice.

❛ dead dove do not eat ; religious imagery, gore, fyodor dies, nikolai crying !!

lowercase intended, not proofread.

a sudden ache, a blossoming twinge in his chest.

silently, a streak of sweat carved from his hairline to the arch of his brow, he stood with layered trepidation weighing him down.

sinewy palms fist a handful of ashen locks, anxiety gnawing at nikolai's rotten heart ; it bares its fangs, sinks into the singular pulse of an anomaly wedged between the cavity of his ribs—a symbol that marked him as human in flesh.

sparked irises widened, a stroke of pain edged into him—breathing ragged, hysterical ; delirium carves at his head ; cranium shook between palms as sweat licked at ivory skin.

a grotesque requiem, just barely tearing through clenched teeth, it slips past bone—white ; the curve of his lips end up between his fangs as the jester pierces skin and draws vermillion.

his figure shook, blurred vision darting around the gothic interior with an expression that distorted, like a gale imbued in embers : burning the path until it births onyx.

and only when an inkling of his sanity devours a fragment of consciousness that he thinks—what a wileful man he was, that holy monster.

even in death, he continues to bloom as a flower of agony. and god, was it beautiful.

so terrifyingly beautiful.

abruptly, nikolai pauses. finding himself satiated.

the pit of guilt that echoes the tremors of his crying soul, as by his hands did he eviscerate an excerpt from the bloodied book titled with his name.

with his own very hands, he tears pages upon pages of chapters labeled with this accursed phrase : fyodor dostoevsky. opting to bury the symbol of his attachment within dirt and soil, putting up a gravestone above the resting place of his affections.

and truthfully, it pained him.

physically, it was as if a gun tapped against the laceration above his sternum—cutting through the bones where his heart housed, with a gentleness unfit for such a sanguinary gesture.

strangely enough, even as the metaphor imbrues itself bloody—it was a notion that graced itself with an opposing mercy.

he expected violence, he was given clemency.

it was almost as if he were the one to be stripped of life, and dos—kun was the one who emerged as the angel of death.

or, before he even knew it—fyodor had already become the source of his oxygen. foolishly intaking the addicting air in his lungs, twisting the man into a lifeline that had become both the poison and the cure to the ache bubbling beneath the surface, as would air across the vast ocean.

nikolai had been juggling with life and death ; slowly as his insides decayed with time, the seeds of fyodor that implants itself into his brain—he had come to the conclusion that maybe he had expected this. like a bird in a cage, it was as if he had been trained to live only with fyodor by his side—completely and utterly unable to function without him.

it wouldn't be outside the capabilities of his brilliant mind, and for once, he cursed the man for being so utterly flawless.

he could only wish that, at the very least, the organs that entangle themselves internally—a ribbon of fyodor's visceral mark—he wished he'd find the means to open his stomach and scrape the sullied tendrils out, letting him bleed dry with a dying wish fulfilled.

because, at least, he'd die free.

wouldn't he?

nikolai gogol smiles to himself. dryly, a laugh surfaced from his throat. the eccentricity that he was felt almost like a corpse—pallid and morose. really, it was above him, expecting such a bittersweet parting to not cloy his senses.

as the clown drowns in a pool of his own sense of self, he hadn't half a mind to decipher that rain had started falling—nor that he had stepped out of the cathedral like a fool. wasting away as clouds dripped down on him, the dull firnament weeping as if it had done so in his place.

as if the stars sighed in unison, scintillating with a gleam that replicated the shine of an eye from above.

when his nerves register the needle like quality of the sky's tears—his mind wanders, ' would my sins be washed away with this? '

the remnants of vice that cake itself underneath his nails, the pads of his fingers, and the ghost of carnage on his skin—it almost made the man reciprocate with a weeping of his own.

but, he resisted. grown used to the stinging that brim in his lashline, eyes heavy with the weight of unshed tears.

well, he had been satiated.

the hunger that delved into his stomach, becoming an ache that slowly grew unbearable—it dissipated like the mist of morning dew, allowing him the freedom to move. unlocking the shackles that weighed him down : giving him a sense of control back.

although, it allowed only another pain to grow. this time, it settled in his chest—his heart.

unlike the wound that were carved into his torso, this was a mark of fyodor's existence.

he had become the stone where he could engrave his name, to make the world bear witness. to make these wretched lands know that fyodor dostoevsky had once roamed this earth, and that nikolai gogol was his living proof.

but a demon's claws scar even the soul.

an evil that had worn the skin of a holy vassal, martyrized by a mere sinner. the crucifixion of an existence whom had overwritten the constrictions of humanity.

and the one who had slain him, had shed tears in his name.

@deadromanticism ; do not reproduce, translate, nor copy my works.

#bsd fyodor #bsd nikolai #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #fyodor x gogol #fyodor x nikolai #fyolai #nikolai gogol #nikolai gogol bsd #nikolai gogol bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs fyodor #bungou stray dogs

[blogtaculous]

I read The Deep by Nick Cutter and I have some thoughts. I’m also going to spoil the shit out of the whole thing.

The first 100 pages are almost sublime. I couldn’t read fast enough. The world literally falling apart from the seams from the disease feels so real. People are just losing the ability to be human and everyone else is trying to carry on like normal. It feels eerily prescient considering it was published years before the same thing would happen during the first heights of Covid-19. The Disease itself is very cool, and only teased at (eventually it’s revealed that it’s basically Colony Collapse Disorder in humans, but the cause and transmission are not explained), but for the first 100 or so pages it feels like it’s going to be a dynamite reveal (it won’t be) and it’s so exciting.

The characters are interesting and the conflicts as initially presented are memorable and even fun. The terror of the deepest depths is so visceral, and the backstory lore teases are well done.

Unfortunately, it fucking unravels fast.

The things I liked:

- Luke’s son vanishes and has not been seen for years. It’s spooky and haunting, a parent’s worst nightmare. The conflicts that arise from that aftermath feel grounded and it is a good bedrock of terror that’s much more real than, say, being 8 miles underwater and having hallucinations.

- Luke’s mom is evil, and at the start she truly feels like the actual antagonist, the 11th hour see, she was the real horror all along, and the delight she takes in being awful was good. She sucks but it made for good reading. This will change later.

- The technical details feel grounded enough to make you think that a research base in the Mariana Trench could be possible. The Ambrosia, also, is well introduced and seems like a neat macguffin that will play a cool part in the story to come. It’s just sinister enough to get the ball rolling, and I was really looking forward to more.

- The body horror was (mostly) very good. Sick, twisted, and flirted with The Line enough to be fun instead of just uncomfortable. I was squirming in a few sections. Alice’s body being incorporated into the evil beehive and her face peeled open and birthing some monster was a highlight, but the scars upon scars corpse was also good.

And now… The Bad

- Killing the dog for shock value is stupid, and it’s also stupid to draw out that entire incident into like four pages.

- Luke’s mom is revealed to have sexually assaulted his older brother numerous times, and then he poisons her to death. This is how the story acknowledges Luke’s brother is a psychopath. It wasn’t the unspeakable experiments be performed on animals, or how he didn’t care for anyone else on earth, or how he tried to make deals with extradimensional evil… it was when he killed his abuser, a Good and Right thing to do.

- The plot just fucking derails. It does this in two ways. First, the actual plot doesn’t take very long once Luke and Alice (I’m not calling her Al) get to the Trieste so the length is padded out with an absolutely insane number of dreams and flashbacks. They exist to feature some creepy imagery, but most of it has no bearing on the plot or characters. And they’re long! Let’s talk about the goddamn tickle trunk, as an example.

What is the tickle trunk? The short answer is it’s a fairly innocuous toy box with some clowns on it that Luke’s abusive mother forces into his bedroom. That’s it. Does she use it as a torture device? No. It literally just sits in his room and is vaguely creepy. The worst part about it is that while Luke is having his little dream-flashback about it Alice is also having one… about half of a corpse of a submariner she worked with in the Navy plaguing her with guilt about his death. Which do you think would make a better spook? The box, or animated bloated corpse? Like… come on. Alice is like “wow I had this horrible dream about this gross dead body chasing me with my own guilt” and I had to sit there and think about how instead of diving into that I was reading about a toy box.

I’ll bring this toy box up later, don’t worry.

Other bad flashbacks include Luke gathering frogs for his scientist brother and seeing a spook in a gated tunnel and anything to do with the “millipede.”

And second, the Big Reveal sucks. I’m just gonna dive in because it’s so bad.

Ambrosia is a tease to get humans to build a research base in the Mariana Trench. Why? Because two extra dimensional beings of terror have been banished there. Most egregiously, how do we know this? Because they literally fucking sit Luke in a chair and explain the entire thing like a fucking Scooby-Doo villain. The entire scene reeks of Dumbledore talking to not-quite-dead Harry fucking Potter. It’s so fucking bad. And the worst part is these motherfuckers somehow planned the whole fucking thing. There were three researchers on the base, and all of them were specifically groomed by the baddies to be there so they could manipulate them into going looney so that Luke could be brought down there to free them. That’s right, Luke was a Chosen One all along.

It’s further revealed that the monster in the tickle trunk and the gated tunnel were real the whole time. The extra dimensional horrors, despite being banished 8 miles under the ocean for being evil can force project monsters to terrorize people. They do this to slowly torture all the researchers their whole lives to lead them to the Trieste. In fact, they fucking kidnapped Luke’s son.

I cannot begin to describe what a stupid thing this was, and how fucking stupid it was for the extra dimensional horrors to just flat out explain it to Luke like it was a college lecture.

Like, what even keeps these motherfuckers down there if they can so easily do all this? They also reveal the following complete bullshit:

- The Disease was a happy coincidence for their plot. Just background noise. Shrug!

- All the torture and dreams and bla bla bla was just for fun. To quote the extra dimensional horrors: “For fun. And games.”

That’s right, literally less interesting than fucking Jigsaw. Just for funnies. Jokes, even. Their presence, often described as curious, was just silliness. They already knew everything there was to know and were just having a ball.

All right, so prior to Luke being soft-captured to witness this monologue of total garbage, he had grabbed some Go To Sleep medicine (that he knew how to administer since he was a veterinarian) and it just sat in his pocket. He didn’t use it to spare the dog from being Assimilated into evil, or to spare Alice from her ecstasy of pain and suffering, so when he gets captured I’m thinking “okay, here it comes, this is important.”

The extra dimensional horrors reveal that they’ve kept Luke’s son “safe” (he’s a monster now, by the way) and they want Luke to merge his consciousness with it. They explicitly tell him they need him to do this and that it will help them escape to the surface to bring horror and madness. I smiled, “Aha! Luke will use his Go To Sleep chemicals to kill himself, preserving life on earth and rejecting the Thing That Is Not His Son, showing how he has grown and healed.” I was confident in this assessment because Luke literally tells the bad guy that he won’t do it. He knows that this monster isn’t really his son and he’s ready to die.

NOPE!!!!! !!!! !!1! That motherfucker does it! He just fucking merges with Not Zach and lets them out. No big moment, no deep breath, no clarity. Just “yeah I guess.” So what happens? The unholy amalgamation of Luke, his son, and two extradimensional horrors goes to the surface in the only submarine and they get out. The last line is like “what emerged was unspeakable” but what I thought was unspeakable was how fucking stupid this plot was!!!!!!

Read the first 100 or so pages then chuck it in a bin.

#the deep #Nick cutter #book review

[nerves-nebula]

I'm the anon who asked about how you had the idea. It's very common and very healthy to process your trauma through art and play, and it's like an instinct for children due to being cathartic and putting them in control of the imaginary (but not really) past situatio.

I'm not saying or implying you're one, I just wanted to draw the parallel between making up stories for your fave characters and playing house bc I think it's adorable and wholesome and I'm glad you can do it to feel better.

However, and please forgive me if I'm being too pushy or personal... You don't need to make your trauma "useful". I know many people think they need to use their stories to prove they are the bigger person or that what they've gone through wasn't for nothing but... Look i just wanted to make sure you knew it's okay if your trauma doesn't "make profit" or "changes something".

Your story is amazing, but please remember you don't need to showcase your trauma if it ever becomes triggering for you, or if you start feeling bad about it.

I love your au and wanted to make sure you're okay and safe. Please forgive me if this was too pushy of if I'm out of place or being idiotic. Have a wonderful day ❤️

not idiotic or pushy at all. its very sweet, actually, that you're concerned about me.

I know I don't NEED to do it, but this kinda twisting of characters made me feel better when I was younger. Like, it was nice to know that there were people out there who knew what I'd gone through and took my favorite characters and wrote them to match our experiences.

And I love when people say my work does the same thing for them. I can assure you that I wouldn't keep doing this if I didn't really want to. But what I'm doing with this AU is what I do with my OC's too, and it's what I've wanted to do all my life. ripping out parts of myself and sewing them into stories! ok kind of a concerning analogy but I'm a fan of visceral imagery and really do love it.

and frankly I don't care about being the bigger person or anything. My parents suck and they'd deserve it if I acted like the pettiest bitch ever to them, but that's exhaustingggg and stressful, and drawing turtles is fun and relaxing.

anyway yeah, don't worry, I do this stuff for me (i so do enjoy compliments) and people like me so! I'm good, at least for now.

#nnstuff #ask #asks are sweethearts #teenage mutant neglected turtles

[thecurioustale]

My Use of Alliteration in Writing Prose

When I returned to Tumblr last week I mentioned that I would really appreciate some suggested topics that people would be interested in hearing about, and was prompted by the excellent @fipindustries with several ideas. One of them was my relationship with alliteration in my fiction—something I had talked about in the past and which can perhaps be expanded upon today.

When I was in high school, senior year I believe, we read a good amount of Beowulf, which I found to be a very inspiring story because when I was young I loved old-timey Celtic mythology and folklore. Gregor, one of the Guards of Galavar in The Curious Tale, got his entire species name, heathodwarf, from the heathobards of Beowulf, and there were not one but two characters in ATH the RPG named Grendel.

Anyway, one of the things we were taught about Beowulf is that it makes extensive use of alliteration as a literary device. Together with some audio readings I heard a few years later of the legendary Seamus Haney reading Beowulf, I became convinced of the power and beauty of alliteration as a storytelling ornament. Ever since then, I have been both liberal and deliberate in my application of alliteration, as well as the related techniques of consonance and assonance, throughout ATH. I consider it aesthetically pleasing if the same sound occurs two or more times in close proximity together, especially if the rhythm of the spacing of these instances is thoughtful and itself pleasing of figure.

What makes alliteration (and its ilk) aesthetically pleasing? That's mostly subjective, but I like it because it creates structure out of structurelessness. In generic writing, there is no attention paid to the sounds of words. Indeed, the medium itself is meant to be as transparent as possible, coloring the substance of the words not at all. Alliteration draws a little bit of the reader's attention back into the artifice of the medium—the physical words. And I find I like this. That little bit of coloring...is just pleasant on its own.

In turn, this deliberate...let's call it an "opacity" (as distinguished from the transparency of generic prose)...this deliberate use of opacity in places also becomes able to be used for other literary purposes: namely, for drawing attention not just to individual words themselves but to certain ideas in the text through the focus on those words.

For instance, take the phrase "dithering dandelions." It sounds sort of like a Looney Tunes euphemism, doesn't it? But put that aside for the moment and consider the following passage:

The morning was sunny but cold as stone, and a biting wind crossed the field of dithering dandelions.

I made this up for demonstration purposes, but here the invocation of the alliterative term "dithering dandelions" is meant to make the coldness and windiness of the morning more visceral to the reader by virtue of drawing special attention to itself through alliteration and then leveraging that attention to emphasize and deepen the image of the dandelions shaking violently in the wind, as if they were trembling with cold (which is one of the meanings of the word "dither"). Odds are that you've been in such a morning at some point, cold and windy and buffeting the young spring flowers. And if you can remember that image, then you can feel it all the better here and now.

There is other consonance in that passage: The occurrence of the "s" sound in "sunny," "stone," and "crossed" can be selected, if desired, as focal points for one's enunciation when reading out loud (or when reading silently but imagining the sounds of the words). The word "crossed" in particular is the most powerful word in the sentence and deserves any and all attention you want to give it, and it also makes consonance with the word "cold."

If read thoughtfully, the alliteration (and consonance) present in this sentence can elevate the text, making the imagery come alive in the mind's eye.

So I like alliteration both as an aesthetic end in itself and also as a subtle tool of emphasis to reward readers who engage with the text using more of their own faculty.

I especially lean into this in The Curious Tale, whose fantasy world tonality lends itself more easily to romantic prose. In Galaxy Federal, with its more literal tonality, I still do employ alliteration more than most writers would use in their works, because that's just a hallmark of my voice at this point, but it is noticeably lesser than in The Curious Tale. In particular, the really heavy alliteration—with multiple instances of a single alliterative line, often interwoven with one more other lines simultaneously—is quite rare in my science fiction, while being merely uncommon in my fantasy.

I don't know if I lean into it so heavily that scholars would bother to mark it as a key characteristic of my writing, the way they do of Beowulf. Probably not; I probably have other esotericisms and eccentricities that stand out more baldly. But I should be very pleased indeed if I were noticed by readers for my use of alliteration, and all the more if they appreciated it.

#Alliteration #Alliteration in prose #The Curious Tale #Beowulf #Galaxy Federal #Mechanics of literature #Literary devices #Dithering Dandelions

[theinsatiables]

AP: Why do you think you were compelled to go to the trial [of Fabienne Kabou, who one night in 2013 left her 15-month-old daughter on the beach to die]?

DIOP: I went to the trial because I had a very strong intuition. But for a very long time, I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the trial and make a film about it.’ I think as a woman, as actually many other women around me, I was completely fascinated by this story. I really went as a woman. What struck me was a sentence that the defendant said to the police. When the inspector asked, ‘Why did you kill your daughter?’ she said, ‘I laid my daughter on the sand because I wanted the sea to take her away.’ For the French, it carries a very profound, psychoanalytic dimension because in French, the mother and the sea are the same word (mère and mer). In my head, I had the fantasy that she offered her daughter to a mother that was more powerful than she felt. It is this imagery of this mythological concept that became a magnet for me. But during the five days that I listened to this trial, I had no idea that it was going to draw me to the deepest, darkest place of my being.

AP: Having a child myself viscerally changed how I processed movies and stories about children in distress. Did you have an experience like that too, as a mother thinking about a story like this?

DIOP: I can’t exactly say that. But it is true that my partner was very concerned by my obsession with this story. Even for me it was a complete mystery. I did not understand why me, as a Black woman, could be so fascinated by this story of a Black woman that had killed her child. That was incomprehensible to me. I’m going to tell you something very personal, which I never talk about. I actually had a very deep postpartum depression when my child was a baby. And I believe that this trial is what helped me heal out of that depression. I not only forgave myself, but I also forgave my mother. It’s as if this trial was helping me, killing all this trauma.

#Film #Saint Omer #Alice Diop #Perfect Films #Favorites #I'm not crying you're crying #Guslagie Malanda #Kayije Kagame #Pier Paolo Pasolini #Maria Callas #Medea

[pammydawes]

Wow! Sry for the wait folks I’m at 4:31 hours left in Hell Bent and I have Thots

🛑!!!SPOILERS BELOW!!!🛑🛑

It’s been so long that tbh I’m a little fuzzy on the details of where I left off but DANG…….that trip to hell???? Everything I hoped it would be!

I absolutely loved getting so many of the main team’s POVs, I’m hoping that on the return trip we can maybe get some more!! I am so curious abt the meaning of Babbitt rabbit being threaded through all their…..dreams? Visions? Experiences? Idk it’s hell man

The insight into Turner’s background left me feeling pretty broken. Cannot personally speak to the accuracy of Bardugo’s representation of the experience of a Black detective, but I thought it was moving.

Tripp’s backstory was intriguing! I actually know how to sail so the whole thing was pretty visceral to me, I wonder if Leigh has experience with boats bc the accuracy was impressive! Also Spencer can eat shit!

Whew….hellie’s POV. That was excellent. Just hearing how much she loved Alex already had me, but it’s rly the details of their relationship that I think Bardugo hits uk? Loved hearing abt Alex from the perspective of someone who loved her, because in NH darlington was predisposed not to care for her, and 90% of the other insight she hears comes from people who are underestimating her, judging her, or trying to kill her! So I’m glad that we got a glimpse of a diff perspective. Still hurt to re-live ground zero tho

In turner, Alex, and to some degree pammie’s cases, I can understand why they meet the criteria for murder, as justified as it was in some situations. It’s a little blurrier with Tripp, though, and I think an argument could be made that Pammie didn’t really murder her victim. So that leads me to think that maybe the murder requirement to get into hell is based more on a person’s own feelings of guilt or regret rather than some objective external judgement, which I think could have some interesting implications!

LOVE that darlington’s personal hell is trying to rebuild a ruined Black Elm, I feel like that illustrates both his love and hate for the house really well!! Nice nod to Sisyphus in Greek mythology also!

FINALLY some good wheelwalker content!!! Basically crumbs but I LOVE the imagery of Alex and the blue flames. I wonder why they’re blue?? Blue fire is supposed to be the hottest after white, right???

Anselm has rly done a magnificent job of disappointing me, which is somehow still very satisfying!! Honestly if he’s the next murder victim…….my condolences to his family ig

Love how everyone basically drags themselves out of hell completely distraught, having come so close to success only to fail, and Mercy is like great job team let’s get them in the next half!!

The demons………oof. Alex reuniting with Hellie was ROUGH man. Kind of cool how as the reader, Leigh put us in hellie’s head, which meant that when you start clocking that something’s off it’s not just like “next logical plot point”, it was like actually realizing something was wrong the same way Alex did. The hellie we got a glimpse of would NEVER say those things to alex!!! And we knew that not just bc Alex told us, but bc we actually got to read it and draw those conclusions ourselves.

I would bet my entire family that my prediction abt Lionel and the praetor is correct. They were 100% in love back in their school days and now demon Lionel is gonna kill the praetor via some gruesome/emotionally manipulative manner as literary comeuppance for his misogyny!

The talismans? Excellent. Superb. Dare I say, delightful. MORE COSMO EASTER EGGS. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I cannot wait to learn what that little guy’s deal is!!

The vampire’s visit…..uh oh. My theory is that Michelle is working for him, bc I feel like I remember her having a white umbrella at some point?? It’s a toss up whether she’s being coerced or doing it for her own benefit, I really couldn’t say. Maybe he’s turning her into a vampire?? And that’s how she’s connected to the murders???

I paused halfway through the return of Eitan, which I have mixed feelings abt tbh. I still keep feeling like his storyline is kinda tacked on needlessly, but I also do think he’s a fascinating character, so we’ll see how the rest of the convo goes. It’s also just like….Alex literally killed a room full of people that WERENT actively out to get her. What is the hold up here.

Love a good Lauren tidbit!! I’m curious to see how the rooming issue resolves. I would like for them to bring her into the fold somehow, but I also feel like the direction they’re going in is that Alex and Mercy are ultimately going to leave her out for her own protection, thereby alienating her and sacrificing their friendship. That’s definitely NOT my ideal outcome, though. Ideal would be Lauren getting to join them and get some character development. What can I say, I have a soft spot for the vinyl girlies bc…..I am one.

Now, to see what eitan has to say for himself! Next you hear from me will be, gasp……the end. I can’t believe it, I’ve been waiting for this book so long and idk if I’m ready for the next wait!!! Hhhhhnnnnng ok bye

#alex stern #leigh bardugo #ninth house

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, fiction not by Charlaine Harris -

Kerstin Hall, Star Eater - a young woman who is part of a magical order of women who maintain their magic through slowly consuming their mothers comes to question the nature of power in her world. This didn't work for me. I found it unwilling to commit to the intrinsic horror of its world-building premise, and instead winds itself up in un persuasive YA-type political plotting (I don't think it's marketed as YA but reads very much as if it is); I also wasn't a big fan of the way it engaged with gender, which seemed facile to me. I appreciated the effectively visceral descriptions of the protagonist's hallucinations, however.

C. Gortner, The First Actress - historical fiction about the life of Sarah Bernhardt. It was fine? Felt extremely 90's in tone and pacing, which was in some ways a pleasant throwback. Chose to emphasize Bernhardt's early life rather than her period of greatest career success, which was a weird and disappointing choice; also in general not very strong on the theatrical drama.

Ava Reid, Juniper & Thorn - very loose retelling of "The Juniper Tree" as the story of three sisters in a vaguely slavic/Central European setting trying to break free from their abusive wizard father. This had some considerable strengths - I liked the imagery, a lot of Reid's prose, the way she draws characters - but it fumbled its climax, which didn't land as intensely as it should have. I also found myself confused by a lot of Reid's adaptation choices, when "The Juniper Tree" is such a tight and iconic story - why totally change the specified family configuration in the story, elite the stepmother, throw out so much of the symbolic tapestry of the story's imagery? Why write it in a slavic setting rather than a germanic one? I would have been interested in a novel more closely connected to the fairy tale, which I think would also have been more unexpected and new feeling in many ways. The choice to have a Nijinsky-esque young man as the love interest was a curious one, which I sort of enjoyed.

Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart - the novella on which Hellraiser was based (or maybe it was a novelization he wrote after writing the screenplay? not sure); very close to the film in pacing, dialogue, imagery. It was fine, not the most exciting Barker reading experience because there are no real surprises. We do get the detail that the Marquis de Sade traded the puzzle box for paper on which to write 120 Days of Sodom, which is sort of amazing.

Matthew Griffin, Hide - an aging gay couple, living extremely isolated lives in a rural North Carolina town, have to contend with illness and mortality. I appreciated some of the things Griffin was trying to do here about loving someone as they lose functioning, but it was just a largely unpleasant reading experience; I kept wanting more to happen to jolt the protagonists' out of their self-isolation. I don't know, probably just not for me.

Susan Mihalic, Dark Horses - a teenage girl seeks away to break away from her father's sexual abuse without losing the competitive riding career in which he coaches her. I really liked the frankness and psychological complexity in this book's representation of sexual abuse, and particularly the nuanced attention to what it means for a survivor to be coming not her own sexual maturity while the abuse continues; I remained engaged as a reader despite knowing nothing at all about horses. It has a truly weird ending which I think acts as a very peculiar kind of wish-fulfillment but neither worked for as a realistic outcome for the protagonist nor as a satisfying narrative conclusion. I am fascinated by Mihalic' choice there.

Linsey Miller, Mask of Shadows - I don't know. I think I should just take a step away from YA fantasy because it has been boring me so much lately. This was about a young gender-fluid thief competing in a contest to be an assassin for the queen; I never felt invested in the characters or the outcome of the contest, and came very close to giving up midway through. I can't say how much of that was the book's fault and how much my lack of interest in a lot of YA at the moment.

#books

[scarletooyoroi]

❝ the only way to defeat a superior enemy is to stop at nothing." Hold nothing back, stoop to whatever low you needed, spill as much blood as need. An eye for an eye. The look that the FLAME MANE gives to her companion is nothing short of inhuman, the icy gaze of a god and the burning flames of the divine tool that bent to her will. Her Prowess- "to become what they fear. ❞

The raw severity within such a declaration stops him cold within his tracks. Biting, conscious, there were multiple layers that caused their once amiable surroundings to grow thick with apprehensive tension after hearing such a bold declaration. It causes such a pained and alien feeling to pulse within Thoma's heart as the sight of those eyes, once warmed and fair now being replaced with this wild intensity succeeds in leaving him speechless.

Part of him couldn't help but question if there was an underlying feeling within all of this. If Dehya's mannerisms were moreso a test than a genuine belief that she ripped from the war torn memories of her soul. It causes his body to shudder with some sort of feeling as he immediately loses any desire to remain stationary, quickly making his chair scrape against dusted ground as he draws himself up and onto two firm feet.

A tinge of fear found itself mingling contently with the bubbling frustration as the answer strikes true at his heart. Allowing for his jade eyes to flare with the remnant growth of humanity's own divine strand, he quickly pushes to the challenge, stepping forth in a way that could be confused for an entirely different gesture; a manner of challenge. "And then what? Reap and revel in that satisfaction despite closing that divide in personalized strength?"

To enjoy that poisonous hand of cruelty?

Something about the depths of such thought struck something worrisome. It gives him vivid imagery of the vile and dangerous extremes that the Vision Hunts took. Where no life was innocent or excusable enough, where any means to net the advantage, to suppress and annihilate their enemies would happily let the masses pay a price they never even knew existed once upon a time.

He'd keep his stance firm despite the visceral, almighty stir of power tucked within the fangs of Dehya in this very moment. Resolving himself to become equally immovable, this part of his heart had to be shared.

"Becoming an antithesis is enough in my eyes. Taking their lives if it fits the situation is enough, but to break them down into raw terror as some sense of getting even is an aspect I absolutely refuse."

"For those I fight against, I burn my lessons of the world onto them, to challenge madness as someone with reason."

@aiiouros

#aiiouros #| Tucked Letters #| meme #I love how there's this clear divide despite #the many things they can agree on #The way they burn being fundamentally different