siliconereptilian

androidmaeosauridae

  • they/them

tabletop rpg obsessed, particularly lancer, icon, cain, the treacherous turn, eclipse phase, and pathfinder 2e. also a fan of the elder scrolls and star wars, an avid gamer and reader of webcomics, and when my brain cooperates, a hobbyist writer.

 

the urge to share my creations versus the horrifying ordeal of being perceived. fight of the millennium. anyway posts about my ocs are tagged with "mal's ocs" (minus the quotes). posts about or containing my writing are tagged with "mal's writing" (again, sans quotes). posts about my sci-fi setting specifically are tagged "the eating of names". i'd pin the latter two if they were actually among my top 15 most used tags lol. fair warning, my writing tends to be quite dark and deal with some heavy themes.

 

avatar is a much more humanoid depiction of my OC Arwen Tachht than is strictly accurate, made in this Picrew. (I have humanoidsonas for my non-humanoid OCs because I cannot draw them myself and must rely on dollmakers and such, hooray chronic pain)



autumnbramble
@autumnbramble

hey if you don't know i'm writing a really long complex Caves of Qud fanfiction about the ethics of violence and personal identity and sexuality and moral obligations and shit. all that good stuff. if you weren't following me over from tumblr and missed out on this give it a read ok. ok.


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in reply to @autumnbramble's post:

hey i found your fanfic while looking for caves of qud fanfic a while back after finishing what was out of Peregrine Phoenix at the time

one things my friends have often talked about with QUD is that in it's... reaction to shithead facist idiot assholes, pushing back and going "no the templars are evil and you cannot play against them" as loud as possible, the game sometimes loses it's material function, fails to ask "well how to the templars actually exist, why are they here, what's their orginization like, how do they exist in this larger world" because it reduces them to villains (sometimes. not always. sometimes it's very good at this)

all this to say your fanfic is absolutely incredible at taking those sorts of things and turning them into compelling, fascinating, beautiful story that really dives into the intense complixity, strangeness, and tragedy of a world like qud. good fucking shit great job as an escapee from a christian cult it's good as fuck

Something I love about CoQ is how little it has "default evil badguy." No one really exists just to be murdered, to be a stepping stone for your path to Being Cool Dude. No one's life is disposable. There's no sense of "well, it's fine to kill these people, they don't count, fuck them."

Even snapjaws, the basic trash mob, have little civilizations, sometimes form peaceful NPC settlements, and those that don't are in a world of intense resource scarcity where even the local bugs and salamanders kill them. Of course they're violent, what else is there in the snapjaw's life but struggle? That specific concept-theme-example is going to come up in a few chapters actually, the issue with the snapjaws and their status as trash mob aggressor faction.

Templar canonically commit like, some really, really bad atrocities, and it's so easy to say "Well, they're evil, case closed." It is so utterly dangerous to assume that some people are evil beyond redemption, beyond humanity, because if nothing else that lets you think that YOU are good. Your lapses and crimes can be forgiven. Your bloodlust is fine, so long as it's for the right Bad Guys. You're the Good Guy, so you can clearly and justifiably decide who to destroy from the homes of this-and-that. Annaface keeps facing that temptation to be the good guy and decide who is Bad and should be killed, and she's horrified by it, because, well, that's what she grew up in, just pointed the other way.

I honestly wish I had spent more time dealing with Annaface decoupling herself from her past, but like, this is also a fanfiction I'm not putting 100% of my best energies into it, and her journey isn't over yet either. It's gonna come back around and she's going to have to confront what she was and who her people are. It's going to be awful for everyone, because life is just kinda like this.

it's a complex journey. i think a lot about the fact that like. if i hadn't had people caring for me while i was trapped in a cult i would not have gotten out, i might still be there; but also that i really wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to be around me while I was in a cult! it's a fundamental contradiction, one your story really hits at the core of, along with a lot of other messy cores. good fuckin job

also it's like. hot and sexy XD

mood mood

i have been through my share of this sort of thing myself and coming out of conditioning and sort of having to kill your old self and rediscover a new self is pretty rough! i won't lie i'm not going into it nearly as intensely in proselytize as i could be doing because mostly i just don't wanna relive that kinda thing too closely in my own writing right now lol. i am like. honestly half-hearting the detail of her recovery arc and speeding up her progress entirely because i don't think right now i can mentally handle writing a character going through it in TOO accurate a detail without feeling too shitty to want to work on the project

suir and annaface are gonna kiss in the next chapter though so things are looking up

Hey i mean that's like, the wonderful balance, right? you can tell a story that deals with trauma and horror and pain in a real and compelling way that really gets to the heart of it while also like... cutting out the endless cycles, some of the misery; it's not "less realistic" it's the parts that really hit home without the drudging pain.

and also like who knows if i could have turned my body into a fucked up cyborg monstrosity and hung out with a plural taur I wanted to kiss maybe i would also have recovered from being in a cult way faster you never know

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