Hey, do you want to try a really <cool/wacky/terrifying> paranormal investigation game That I've been obsessed with lately ?
Do you want to drag your friends into a spooky rundown motel in the middle of nowhere to investigate a series of mysterious disapereances? Featuring mold that grows from the idea of fear, a hautned stuffie, and a group of meddling ghosthunters who TOTALLY aren't the Scooby gang.
How about running a mission with a bunch of cool, GM facing systems that makes playing a new system an absolute breeze?
Then you should absolutely Try TRIANGLE AGENCY, more specifically, my fanhack of the mission One Night at Shelterwood Inn. I've used it to introduce more than a few of my friends to this system, and they've had an absolute riot of a time.
https://sporadicdialogue.itch.io/one-more-night-at-shelterwood-inn
https://unenthuser.itch.io/one-night
https://hauntedtable.itch.io/triangle-agency-delta-test
I'm on a spree of reading and re-reading Jeff Vandermeer books and I felt like drawing something appropriately cheerful featuring Borne. Rachel having a cig after a fight with Wick.
niche subgenre readers of tumblr, arise!!! A Writer Calls for Aid,
i am more-than-idly percolating on how to pitch my book, which i intended to be upper YA (17yo protag, written backward toward 17yo me). liminal spaces, not quite SF or fantasy or horror, little bit of all of the above. good, fine, phenomenal.
however, because of Who I Am As A Person, it's a fucking weird book, by which i actually mean New Weird, the hazy but somewhat formalized genre (think VanderMeer, think Mieville, think WtNV). this is, unfortunately, THE most accurate genre designation i can slap on the manuscript, and--as far as i can tell--it is not a thriving YA subgenre, by which i mean: i'm afraid it doesn't exist At All, in YA spaces lmao.
i know that both VanderMeer and Mieville have written books for younger audiences, but!: as i set about drafting my pitch, i am wondering if there are other New Weird books for teens that i have overlooked. this is where i need You, beloved fellow denizen of Our Spectacular Hellsite. we'll do this like a poll, because i know where i am
have you heard of the New Weird genre, and do you have YA examples for me?
yes to both! i'm leaving examples in the notes
i've heard of it but have no YA examples
i hadn't heard of it, but now that i've read the wiki link, i have YA examples
i have never heard of this and have nothing for you. good luck out there though.
A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.
masterpost please no editing! I'm just sharing some of the first draft for motivation <3 (But if there's somrthing you like or find interesting I'd love to hear.)
Pasco resisted the urge to sigh. How did things always seem to come back to that rubber snake? It’s what had gotten him tossed out of the mail room too. The ‘snek’ had kept showing up in mail tubs and carts and envelopes it shouldn’t have fit in, but most only in things headed to, or at least through, Pasco’s station. Apparently the easiest way of dealing with it was to send Pasco back with the snek to the NO Section.
And now because of the snek he was in SC.
“Not to… disappoint,” Pasco said cautiously, as things had been going well so far, “but I don’t see how a rubber snake get me from Non-sentient Objects all the way to Special Containment. That’s a… very big leap. I haven’t even had any of the training past the basic standardization.”
Holy shit.
He hadn’t even had any of the training.
He was going to be dead in days.
(Maybe that was the point.)
“You haven’t?” Chief Carrasco asked. “I thought NOs got up tp at least Level Fives.”
“Budget cuts. We only go up to Level Three in containment now,” Pasco explained. “Which I think is a mistake given—sorry, ma’am, not my place.”
“Really it should be, you’re the one on the floor,” she said. She stood with a rocking sort of hitch and headed towards her desk. “We’ll get you scheduled. I’d like you up to Seven in containment and Five arms and armaments.”
“I was Six in A and A last tested, ma’am.” At her curious look he shrugged awkwardly. “Three older siblings, fourteen cousins, and ex-army. They had me in sniper training.”
She hummed and made a note in a rather robust looking planner. “What made you leave the army?”
“I was transferred here directly,” Pasco said. He bit the side of his tongue to leave off that he likely would have been discharged for insubordination anyways as soon as he had gotten into any action. Not that he liked either, but there was a difference between civilian casualties and office incompetence.
“Ah. That tracks,” she said, as if it did. “Well, I’ll give you the tour at lest, follow me, Argall.”
Pasco murmured a soft ‘yes ma’am’ before falling in step with her. It was still too easy to fall into the rhythm of someone else’s steps. Pasco didn’t know if he’d ever be rid of the habit or if boot camp had baked it into his soles and, well, soul.
“The first thing to understand about Special Containment, is that it isn’t all about actively dangerous entities. Sure, everything in the sector could kill you, but I could also kill you right now,” Carrasco explained (which Pasco had absolutely no doubt about). “The sector is more about the fact that everything here needs unusual levels of oversight. These types of oversight could be anything from unique means of containment to OOOs who take up too much time from other sectors or, yes, dangerous entities. We try to keep the first two separate from the third.”
Pasco nodded. That made sense. Trained agents had to be expensive to replace.
They had reached the atrium floor now. Pasco took a moment to admire the trees. The shade of purple did look different from down here. It also made the whole light of the space feel slightly… off.
“You get used to it,” Carrasco said, as if reading Pasco’s mind. “Just maybe don’t take your meals here for a bit, the purple makes food look… off.”
“Right, good tip, ma’am,” Pasco said. “We’re sure that those trees don’t lure people in?”
“That’s what the Books and Tubes say.”
Pasco tilted his head a little, glanced from the trees and back to Carrasco. She turned sharply on her heel. Pasco barely had enough time to stop before he ran into her.
“What does your gut say, Argall?” There was something too sharp about her gaze again. Something a little feral in her smile.
It made Pasco be a little more honest than he would normal be to someone above him (which was everyone, really). “I think they’re wrong. I mean, not wrong, maybe, but I think there’s something that they’re missing.”
“They’re the best,” Carrasco argued.
Pasco gave a little shrug. “The bureau's whole mission is dealing with the unknowable. I think it’s… unwise for us to assume that we already know everything to test for. Ma’am.”
Carrasco cracked a grin. “You mean stupid.”
Pasco cleared his throat and hoped that he wasn’t blushing. “Not the word I used, ma’am.”
With a little, hopefully amused snort, Carrasco turned back around and kept walking. “But it’s the word you meant.”
“But not what I said, ma’am.”
“Cutting some fine lines, Agent Argall?”
Pasco steps faulted just for a beat. She was teasing him, he was pretty sure, but she wasn’t wrong. His whole conversation had been cutting fine lines. Because… “That’s what the bureau does, ma’am.”
“That’s an interesting take, Argall,” she said. “You sound a little like a Trapper.”
And didn’t that make Pasco almost lose his rhythm again. Him, a Trapper? “No ma’am, I’m just a center agent through and through. I’ve never even been out on a ground zero.”
“Really? You have been wall bound, aren’t you? That’s interesting. Very interesting.”
I am absolutely in love with your music! Myth is easily my favorite album I've ever listened to of all time but I've noticed through a lot of your music you have inspirations of lovecraft/cosmic horror (Not to mention deep fried which is ridiculously fun), But what's your favorite lovecraftian story or what brought you to be inspired by those kinds of stories?
I can't remember what first made me fall in love with the v͖i_̨̡̧̱̣͖̻͈ͬ̆ͫ͗̔̽̕b̮̳͜ē̴̵̶̡̧͔̠̭̠̯̘͖͎̦͍̫̠͓̻ͨ̊͊̾́̏ͩ̑ͭ͗ͤ̊̀̑ͥ͗̑̎̍̔̒͜͜͠͞ͅs̴̶̴̫͓̭͈ͥ͛̏͂ͬ̀́ͤ͂͘, but here are some examples I love
Solid Geometry (Ian McEwan)
The 50 Year Sword and House of Leaves (Mark Z Danielewski)
The Dreams in the Witch House (H P Lovecraft)
A Warning To The Curious (M R James)
The Hounds of Tindalos (Frank Belknap Long)
The Night Wire (H F Arnold)
those are all short stories. There are movies too (Dark City, I'm Thinking Of Ending Things, Pontypool, Vivarium, Lobster, Donnie Darko) and games (Disco Elysium, Bloodborne, Kentucky Route Zero) but the genre never really translated reliably well into a visual format imo
The thing that frustrates me the most with cosmic horror is how tied it’s become to space, tentacles and the deep sea. A tragically reductive interpretation. Sometimes it’s an alien god, sure; but sometimes it’s a house, a heart, sycamore trees or even a single word. Stop trying to make your own Lovecraft and start taking these themes and making something Your Own. Be more creative. You can make something stranger than a squid monster.
