At least NJ started having feelings for you after that muddy fall lol. Is he like a sadist?does he torture you sometimes??đ¤
Living with him is torturous
Although he claims to be so much better at cooking than me, it's really not by much and the smoke alarm has set off many times
And the walls are pretty thin, I sometimes hear him practicing his "malicious laugh" and stuff like that
So does he have his own room or not-?
Do you and devious exer sleep together or does he have his own room?
Sometimes we sleep together, sometimes...
this websiteâs easy watch. *dangles a bunch of greek gods like keys*
It looks perfect to me
Sweeett Pamelaa
When writing stories with ensemble casts do you find yourself liking/writing more for certain characters? How do you write for characters that arenât necessarily your favorites? Like I know Lenore and Annabel are more main than the rest so how do you manage the others? And how do you make them all so unique from each other?
If there's ever a character I feel like I haven't connected with, I just assume it's because I haven't "found" them yet. Like, sometimes you need to do a little searching to find the thread in them you can latch onto, if that makes sense? So whenever I feel disconnected from a character, I try to go back to that thread, and I don't proceed until I can feel it and am able to follow it myself. I name the threads as I go, like - it might be something like "paranoia", "mask", "disgust", "worthless" - like, core character themes/trajectories/feelings? - and naming the threads keeps them really different from each other. Because once you know the core of a character, you can stick to it really closely and then it's easy to notice if there's too much overlap with others. That's all really floaty and weird, how I described that. I don't know if I sounds insane or what, lol. But I swear that it makes sense in my head. tldr; I can more easily connect with certain characters than others. But I connect pretty deeply with all of them once I am able to "find" them. And after that, they're all very fun to write.
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If you're a regular reader of my nonsense, you may have noticed that on more than one occasion I've referred to the Deans as "Nyarlathotep Tumblrsexymen": no, I didn't have a stroke on the keyboard, this is a reference to an entity that appears in the stories of Howard Phillip Lovecraft. A writer who is widely known because there were even people who thought that the Necronomicon, a fictional text part of his work, actually existed (and because he was such a recalcitrant racist that it has become a meme about how extremely racist he was).
And since I'm still going through my pile of papers on Gothic fiction, let me take a moment to talk about Lovecraft's work, why I have reason to believe that the Deans have something in common with these creatures, and what that might mean for the development of Nevermore.
To understand a little bit about the kind of creatures we are talking about, I have to stop at a brief (seriously brief) description of cosmic horror: This is a type of horror that takes elements from the scientific publications of the time (which makes it close to science fiction) to give it verisimilitude, it has at its core a deep nihilism, the breaking of scientific canons, the fragility of the human mind and societies contrasted with the vastness of the universe, an enormous fear of "the unknown" for the white man (fed by his racist paranoia), and seasoned with tentacles and creatures that remind us of sea creatures, because Lovecraft had an enormous fear of the sea.
The gods in these stories represent, on a symbolic level, the vastness of the universe, the terror of the unknown, and the fragility of the human mind: they are entities older than time itself, contact with them tends to shatter the mind, and humanity must be very, very grateful that most of them are locked away or incapacitated in some way. Also, the way to access them is through very specific rituals that have been lost over time, so thankfully they're not very easy to contact either.
Let's start with the most obvious: the Deans, like the Lovecraftian gods, seem to operate in their own plane of existence, beyond what humans understand as "life" and "death": Nevermore is a kind of limbo, but we know, thanks to the Raven, that these guys came from another place and had enough power to kick the crap out of psychopomps without any problem.
However, just like Lovecraft's gods, these enormous powers don't make them able to do whatever they want; as I said, these entities are usually locked up or incapacitated in some way and can only have contact with humans under certain circumstances (like being summoned in rituals), and getting out of their prisons usually requires vague events like astral alignments that are completely out of their control.
The Deans, like Lovecraft's gods, seem to be subject to rules that are above them, and while they can bend them a bit to achieve their goals, it's not like they can do much about it.
Another thing they have in common with Lovecraft's gods is the ability to create servants that function as extensions of them to fulfill their designs. There are many creatures that follow this line in the stories that speak of The Myths, but the best known are the Shoggoth that appear in the novel At the Mountains of Madness: artificial beings created by the Old Ones to rule the Earth, described as amphibious, amorphous masses similar to amoebas.
Although the Deans prefer their minions in the form of animated dolls. I suspect this decision is based on the story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman. I have no proof, but no doubt.
Now for the joke that brings this essay to life: the creature in Lovecraft's universe that most resembles the Deans is a being called Nyarlathotep. This creature belongs to the category of "Other Gods" (not the old ones like Cthulhu) and gets very nice nicknames like "Crawling Chaos".
Nyarlathotep is a being who enjoys causing chaos, death and madness wherever they go. They can communicate with humans, which they use to psychologically torture them and make them lose their minds. Something they seem to enjoy quite a bit. In the same way that the Deans view this sadistic battle royale, they have set up a fun game.
Then there is the ability to manipulate and alter the human mind, which is called into question in stories like Nyarlathotep and The Rats in the Walls (where it is apparently Nyarlathotep who messes with the protagonist's mind so that he tries to kill his friend).
This is something we've seen manifest in Nevermore in two different ways: the ability to trigger or unlock memories.
And the ability to change them. While we can't know if what was shown to Annabel is 100% real, we do know that showing her the end of her life caused a permanent change in the way she retrieves her memories: from the end backwards. If this memory is somehow altered, we also know that the Deans are capable of photoshopping people's memories.
Finally, Nyarlathotep has the ability to shape-shift, which allows them to appear as humanoids in several stories, such as The Oniric Quest of the Unknown Kadath or Dreams in the Witch's House. His human form is considered "unnatural", "strange" and "disturbing" by those who see it (remember that Lovecraft was extremely racist, so he always presents himself as a black man). As a pharaoh in the Randolph Carter cycle and as a charcoal humanoid figure in the second story cited).
Here, the human form of whatever the Deans are is also quite atypical: not only are they ridiculously tall (7 feet), they have heterochromia with a white-colored eye (which I would venture to say may be a reference to the cataract eye mentioned in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe), and their synchronized movements are amusing on paper, but possibly strange to look at for the characters.
Otherwise, there are two other entities in Lovecraft's universe whose descriptions can be loosely associated with the Deans: Yogg-Sothoth and Azathoth. Both are beings of dual nature.
The former is an entity associated with omniscience and appears in stories such as The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror. and is described as "the key and the door".
Azathoth represents omnipotence, is the center of the universe, and is described as "the beginning and the end" or "the alpha and the omega.
The fact that the Deans have elements in common with Nyarlathotep brings up an interesting point: although Nyarlathotep has far greater freedom than other beings, they is a servant of Azathoth. In other words, them powers are subservient to a more powerful being whose plans they must follow. They may amuse themselves in the process, but they is still essentially a butler.
On the other hand, the Azathoth connection might be vague, since this creature is a lobotomized god, so he can't do much. But if the reference is to Yogg-Sothoth, it gets a little more interesting, because that entity is the one who is supposed to release the original gods when the time is right.
And I don't know about you, but these references have me wondering if the Deans are working for something much more messed up than they are, or if they're using the souls of the students to bring back something much more sinister.
Happy Mootsgiving, everyone!
So, technically, I know Thanksgiving is an American holiday⌠history⌠yadda yadda. However, this is not Thanksgiving.
This is Mootsgiving, and what I say goes âcause this is my holiday. Anyway! Mootsgiving is all the basic ideas of Thankgiving but better because Iâm great like that.
I just wanted to show everyone how grateful I am, since gratefulness is a key principle of Thanksgiving.
I want all my moots from different countries to be able to have the picture-perfect movie-esque Thanksgiving of being surrounded by friends and family with all the care and love and gratefulness that can be poured into a single human. And, as the ever-dramatic Runar, what better way to do that than to organize a huge event?
So! Rules!
State what food you brought
State one thing youâre thankful for
My name is Runar, I brought the eggnog, and Iâm grateful for each and every one of you đđŤś
Really sappy and really long paragraph/speech under the cut!!
Soooo⌠to start off my big long speech⌠*clinks my fancy wine glass thatâs filled with a mysterious substance* (Itâs eggnog)
When I first started this blog, it was off a whim. I wanted to do something, something that involved putting my work out there, as I was just starting out. I wanted to mean something. In any sort of way, I wanted to leave a sort of mark. Not just any mark, though, no. I wanted to add a bit of joy, a spark of life that comes from creativity, and adding words and love into the space we occupy on this floating rock in space.
I wanted to write because it made me happy, and I wanted there to be a possibility of someone who was who got joy from reading to maybe stumble upon it, and get joy from me. Get joy from something I was able to provide for them.
I was also incredibly lonely. I had no friends, I had nothing, pretty much. I didnât talk much. I was reclusive. I was okay, but I was empty. I didnât have a purpose. And while I wasnât expecting much, nothing at all really, I was overjoyed at the prospect that maybe just one person would stumble upon something I wrote and for a moment of their day, maybe they got peace from it.
Maybe they felt a little less lonely. I would have been at peace with just knowing the possibility of it was out there. And then⌠it did. And I got more than I bargained for, even, I got a friend. My first friend.
From there, everything⌠clicked. Slowly, but ever so surely, things were falling into place. I was gaining something that had not even crossed my mind. A family.
So, my silly dream born from a whim became friends, connections, and family, it became life-altering. It had ups, it had downs, it had in-betweens. It was beautiful and messy and happy and sad and fucked up and so wonderfully⌠human?
Yeah, this is online, this is a silly mootsgiving idea I thought up three hours ago because I wanted people to know I love them.
But to someone who had nothing, this is everything. You are everything.
Even if weâve only talked one time, you have a special place in my heart. The character growth has been⌠one hell of a ride. Iâve gone through many eras, and made new friends in each and every one of them. So, with the end of the year closing soon, I suppose in a way this is not just a silly mootsgiving.
My bigger end goal, really, was to make sure as we get to the end of this ear, you know how genuinely important this whole year has been to me. How important you have been. I got an anon ask,
What does it feel like to be wanted?
It was beautiful poetry. I replied, said I wouldnât know what it feels like to be wanted. But really? I think maybe I do. I think it feels like having enough people that you love to organize and invite everyone to a huge event online, to write out this heartfelt paragraph and trust that at least one person will care enough to read it.
My beginning goal has changed so much, and not at all. My biggest purpose in life has been, and I think will always be, to add something into this world.
Creativity, joy, happiness, compassion, I want to ensure that no matter what, as long as you know me, you know you have one person on this earth who loves and cares about you with as much feeling that can physically be felt by one person without exploding into a bunch of tiny little runar pieces.
But moreso, I think maybe my goal has changed from wanting to put stories out there, to putting myself out there. I donât want to write stories that are just fiction, just crafted ideas meshed together to create a blob of fiction.
I want to write pieces of myself into everything, which i think might genuinely be impossible to not do. I want my heart to pour out of my fingers into the things i type out for you, and i want to not only feel things, but to maybe make you feel something too. Something warm and fuzzy, something good, as good as you deserve.
AaaaannndâŚ. to end thisâŚ.
I love you guys, thanks for being here <3
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