#leadhelmetcosmonaut

[dudeiwannasleep]

What the horrifying food tiktok ladies are doing is art, no different from Méret Oppenheim's Breakfast in Fur

hold on lemme look something up…yeah this is funny (fucking grotesque)

the kitchen’s a stage and all the white lady food tiktokers in it merely players

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

💬💬💬

Thanks! :D Here are three excerpts from Totentanz:

1.

The air rippled. Time seemed to stand still. Karandren waited.

The gates and walls on the other side of the courtyard blurred and shifted. Gradually they faded away. The air pulled apart like a curtain. Karandren stared through into the Óhreinnjǫrð.

At first it was a confusion of colours that didn't exist on this side of the Veil. Shapes moved at the corners of the opening. Gradually it resolved itself into a square space. Calling it a "room" suggested it had furniture and served a purpose. This didn't look like anything of the sort. Karandren wasn't sure if it even had walls.

In the middle of the space, staring directly at him, was a figure he recognised from Diarnlan's story.

Karandren grinned, showing all his teeth. "Hello. Vanadel, isn't it?"

2.

Vanadel managed a smile. It was a vague, abstracted sort of smile. Karandren recognised it only too well. Back at the academy he'd seen Professor Islafer wear a smile like that every time someone spoke to her. Professor Islafer had lectured on Science and Magic: How They Combine -- when not experimenting with foul-smelling powders and liquids that had a nasty tendency to explode if you took your eyes off them for a minute.

In fact Vanadel's whole demeanour was oddly reminiscent of Professor Islafer. They both had an abstracted air, as if their minds were absorbed by much more important matters than whatever was happening in front of them.

Oh no, he realised with dawning horror. Vanadel's a scientist.

Like the beings in the Óhreinnjǫrð, Karandren was sure "scientist" was a polite way of saying "lunatic".

3.

An uglier building than the temple would be hard to imagine. It had been built with a roof shaped like a capital U. Apparently this had some significance in the original religion. It had also turned the roof into a miniature lake every time it rained. The Bone-Worshippers had attempted to redesign the roof. At some point they'd given it up as a bad job and had placed statues of skeletons all around the edges. The result looked like something crawling out of a grave.

Karandren had levelled the place to the ground in three different lifetimes, just so he wouldn't have to see it when he went up to the palace's tower.

The temple had a heavy oak door carved, predictably, with bones.

"Everyone in this country is insane," he heard Diarnlan mutter.

[emelkae]

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

A wiped memory, a weakened personality. He was going to be a different man, then. Not a man at all, maybe, but the machine he was supposed to be. The realization stole the breath from his tightening chest.

“Engineer,” he asked in a voice so soft and sad that the Engineer raised his brow, “I’m not going to see them again, am I?”

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

Would you ever write a story with no characters at all?

Hmm... Probably not, since the characters tend to be the most important part of my stories ¯\_(ツ)_/¯