[ID: a banner for a game called "you are thinking about silver". it shows a brown toned vintage photo of the moon. the top half of the moon is visible. the image is split in half, and a transparent bar in the middle has the name of the game in light tan font. end ID]
you are thinking about silver is an autofiction lyric game. this really happened, more or less. if you wish to pretend it didn't happen, you may plug your nose against the stench and think of happier things. are my family really werewolves? jury's out, i tend to believe it. it's harder not to when you've lived through the evidence. try to really play along, or don't. what's happened has happened and you rolling your dice is not going to change that. but it might make you feel better to be in control of somethingÂ
[ID: a screenshot from the game. it shows a spread of pages with the setting and witnesses section. the background is dark with light tan text. over more than half the page is a vintage tan-toned drawing of hunting dogs attacking a wolf. end ID]
you are thinking about silver was made for the literary game jam on itch. purchase includes a 20-page formatted zine, a plaintext document, and dyslexia friendly document
Der Wikipediaartikel ĂŒber Wespenspinnen klingt wie ein Ratschlag aus der kognitiven Verhaltenstherapie. "Ich kann ihren Frust darĂŒber, dass ihre Frau versucht sie zu fressen, verstehen. Aber haben Sie die Situation schonmal aus evolutionĂ€rer Perspektive betrachtet?"
Ich unterbreche meine Flucht vor der gigantischen Kannibalenspinne um meinen Skillkoffer auszupacken, da mein Anspannungslevel gerade ziemlich hoch ist
the kids are calling them "stone fruits." they start off smallâthink cherries. then they're hooked and they need a quick fix, they get peaches, maybe some nectarines. it's all they can think about. before you know it, they're trying the really hard stuffâapricots, plums. once they taste a mango there's no going back.
Suddenly I saw in front of me the Statue of the Faun, the Statue that I love above all others. There was his calm, faintly smiling face; there was his forefinger gently pressed to his lips. In the past I have always thought he meant to warn me of something with that gesture: Be careful! But today it seemed to mean something quite different: Hush! Be comforted! I climbed up on to his Plinth and flung Myself into his Arms, wrapping my arm around his Neck, intertwining my fingers with his Fingers. Safe in his embrace, I wept for my lost Sanity. Great, heaving sobs rose up, almost painfully, from my chest.
Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, south-eastern Mexico.
Rex is a genetically engineered Bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.
But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?
science fiction
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.
Dogs of War Propaganda: It has wonderful platonic and non-human relationships/perspectives that are super fascinating to read! While there are some very background... romantic feelings? The important relationships are all gen and much more interesting! Also surprisingly fun to read: I read this after getting it from @friends-recommends and I was super sceptical because I usually really dislike books about war, but I am so glad I gave it a chance! It has a pretty good mix between heavy themes and good, lighter and/or hopeful moments.
Frankenstein Propaganda: Come for the gothic horror- stay for the philosophical rambling, homoerotic subtext, motherhood reinterpretations, beautiful nature descriptions and, of course, also the very good gothic horror.
Piranesiâs house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the houseâa man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
fantasy, literary fiction
Propaganda:
The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindess infinite.
Oh if you HAVEN'T read this book yet you are missing out So. Much. It's about Piranesi, who lives in the House. He lives to explore the House, filled with little but endless rooms, statues, waves and clouds.
I think about it very regularly, it is so beautiful and lonely and grand and frightening and surreal and comforting.
Itâs gorgeous! A man lives alone in an infinite House over an equally infinite ocean, and the book is slowly unravelling the mystery of whatâs going on here. The mystery is well-done, the imagery is vivid, the beauty of the House is immeasurable, its kindness infinite.
The Seed from the Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith
Deep in the sweltering jungles of South America, two explorers â Falmer and Thone â stumble upon a forgotten ruin, hidden beneath centuries of tangled growth and silence. Within its shadowed chambers lies an ancient tomb, undisturbed, its secrets sealed in stone and time. But something lingers in the sepulchre.
Something old.
Something alive.
Something that does not sleep.
As one of the men becomes obsessed with a strange, unidentifiable seed found within the tomb, the boundary between plant and predator, dream and nightmare, begins to rot and dissolve. What blooms from ancient soil may not be content to remain buried.
horror, short story
Propaganda:
An early and SO WONDERFUL botanical horror short story. It made me like grind my teeth in disgust
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that youâll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.
Baxterâs name isnât George. But itâs 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but heâll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with âGeorge.â
On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxterâs memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he canât part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.
historical fiction, literary fiction
Propaganda:
The Sleeping Car Porter is SO good- It is a very sleep deprived way, but in an extremely positive way: Just a bit of a haze all the way through!
The Villains Series by V.E. Schwab
A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.
Victor and Eli started out as college roommatesâbrilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.
Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can findâaside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revengeâbut who will be left alive at the end?
In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.
fantasy
Propaganda:
It is, to this day, one of the most fun and intriguing and actually morally difficult main characters I know and the relationship between him and the other main character, Eli, is SO intriguing and good without ever being romantic (while being much more lifechanging than non-romantic relationships are usually depicted as, which I love because I feel like the relationships that could truly tear me apart are my friendships)
adding to the Villains propaganda: To date it's the only series I've read about people with powers that has a sensible and universally applicable explanation for not only how people get powers, but why each person gets their specific power.
Also, sometimes a family is a supervillain, the henchman he didn't want, the dead girl he found on the side of the road, and an unkillable dog. đ
Also, yes, the original submitter is right that Eli and Victor's platonic relationship and all its messy nuance is one of the highlights of the series.
