#the cage of dark hours
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HEY LOOK IT’S A HUGE LIST OF BOOKS!!
This will probably tide you over until..... Every Book Coming From Tor in Summer 2023?
But really, Winter 2023 is the publishing equivalent of a no-skips album 😎
#tor books#books#new books#science fiction#fantasy fiction#the terraformers#annalee newitz#arch-conspirator#veronica roth#pinocchio#carlo collodi#gris grimly#hopeland#ian mcdonald#under the whispering door#tj klune#in the lives of puppets#the cage of dark hours#marina lostetter#rubicon#j s dewes#the cradle of ice#james rollins
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I have a book out today tumblr!!!
Not only is it Valentine's Day, it's THE CAGE OF DARK HOURS pub day! Get yours and share it with someone who's hot. <3
#apologies to everyone seeing this same pic on a million platforms#the cage of dark hours#the helm of midnight#the five penalties#writing#writers#author#authoring#krona x thibaut#valentines day
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Review: The Cage of Dark Hours by Marina J. Lostetter
Series: The Five Penalties #2Author: Marina J. LostetterPublisher: Tor BooksReleased: February 14, 2023Received: NetGalley
Book Summary:
For a moment, it seemed like the Charbon (the long-dead serial killer) was finally in the past. Naturally, they were wrong. Once again, Krona and her Regulators will have to step up to protect the city. However, it’s never as easy as it sounds.
To protect the…
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#Book#Book Review#Books#Fiction#Literary#Literature#Marina J. Lostetter#Net Galley#NetGalley#Review#The Cage of Dark Hours#The Cage of Dark Hours by Marina J. Lostetter#The Five Penalties#The Five Penalties 2#Tor#Tor Books#Tor Publishing#Tor.com
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Title: The Cage of Dark Hours | Author: Marina Lostetter | Publisher: Tor (2023)
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@ladymer Putting this in its own post for space and tidier notes.
Really? I haven't seen him say that before.
I'm pretty sure he still has his soul and that Karlach is being metaphorical when she tells unascended Astarion that he kept it (or she's referring to the fact that it's still his and unbranded by "property of Mephistopheles" as souls are when you make a deal with the infernal.)
Making a deal with a devil at all corrupts your soul because it always involves doing something evil that shifts you towards the Hells, shown mechanically as an alignment change which may be instant or gradual.
You are twisted towards the end goal of becoming like a devil yourself, the embodiment of cruelty, ambition, lust and tyranny - destined for the hells and likely to corrupt those around you and take them with you.
As ever, this isn't necessarily what Larian had in mind, but this is how I'm reading/headcanoning it, based on the D&D lore available to me:
I imagine it would cause the Vampire Ascendant to be what vampires say on the box, no nuance left:
"Dark Desires: Whether or not a vampire retains any memories from its former life, its emotional attachments wither as once-pure feelings become twisted by undeath. Love turns to hungry obsession, while friendship becomes bitter jealousy. In place of emotion, vampires pursue physical symbols of what they crave..."
With the traits of a devil layered on top (which is honestly pretty much exactly the same as the drives possessed by vampires):
"The psychology of devils can be summed up in a single word: Ambition. Almost every devil constantly wonders how it can win advancement [...]
The cleverer devils invariable perceive themselves as cool, calculating, and abundantly logical. [...however they] act based on emotion, without regard for their true long-term self-interest.
Devils enjoy inflicting misery - be it physical or mental - on others. They hate suffering defeat or humiliation..."
They're not necessarily "more" evil than any other vampire, but incapable of being more than their curse the way another vampires are theoretically capable of. They may not be soulless, but they might as well be.
The inherent evil/corruption of vampirism is maximised and overrides any existing humanity. Violence is the highest pleasure. Power is all. They only see things (including people) in terms of possession, jealousy and envy. The way they experience love and other emotions is superficial and sometimes, due to their ego, obsessive (this thing/person is theirs, so any challenge to that claim is not allowed because it's an attack on them). etc.
What the Vampire Ascendant mostly reminds me of is Abyssal Ghouls - and more specifically the original 1e FR version from Lords of Darkness, which was Ghasts, another form of sapient undead "improved" by the Lower Planes, courtesy of demons. They're undead and partially fiends. They're more powerful than regular ghouls, naturally dominate them as leaders of the pack, and, in their Lord of Darkness write up, Ghasts cannot be repelled by the usual anti-undead means (you have to repel them using cold iron, as you would a demon), so they have a less weaknesses. They're extraplanar in nature (no longer considered native to the material plane, but to the Abyss) and their souls are likewise bound to the Lower Plane that made them when they die, so they're... kind of minor demons themselves, in a way.
Replace "ghoul" with "vampire" and "demon" with "devil" and it doesn't seem far off from being similar.
Devils are also known for their mortal-like lusts and desires (such as food, despite not needing it) - it'd be interesting if the source of the Ascdendant's newly restored "mortal appetites" was from becoming a devil (or partially one).
Ghasts were described as the "Hounds of the Abyss" used by demons to track quarry, and I imagine the Vampire Ascendant is serving this purpose for Baator (which is also very devil-esque):
"Powerful lawful evil mortals are often more valuable to devilkind as living beings operating on the Material Plane. When alive, they can bring about the damnations of hosts of other souls, or pursue other goals of the hellish hierarchy."
#Choosing the Dracula+ ending and not getting damnation in the package is incredibly boring imo#It's the usual deal: You bring victims back so that their souls can be consumed by your master. But this time you get a nicer cage. For now#One does not pick the edgy dead dove ending if one does not want darkness and angst#Or maybe some people do but I don't#headcanoning.#/ascended astarion#/astarion#edgelord hours#long post
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fucking HATE those goddamn foxes
#just put the hens in the day cage bc its getting dark out but not enough for them to go to their coops#then a fucking MASSIVE son of a bitch comes outta NOWHERE the second i step foot inside. and i've JUST got my boots off so.#mind you it was raining all last night so it is /muddy/ but i went out there barefoot and chased the fox away#it was tryna get a hen thru the holes in the chicken wire which is like?????????#and now they are ALL in a tussle so i have to go sort them out#and these bitches ARENT GOING INTO THEIR GD COOP. it took HALF A FUCKIN HOUR TO GET THEM IN THERE.#they deserve it for being idiots honestly
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Everything is actually a big Chess Pieces refrence ?
Alway have been.
#hachi doodle#You ever thought of the moment you even removed Vlad from the main antagonist seat#all the other villain imediately got billion time more personal and scary#due to them becoming enemies during The duo dumb naive teen phase#Like for real u could have a whole desended from trying to save his wife to trying to make her a halfa after she die so she could be back#with him only to grow too greedy for power and lose her completely and in an attemp to keep her with him he got all that he want#halfa power his wife with him but at a morbrid cost of those two merged together#for freak show#Ghost royal dynamic and more fleshed out Aragon and Dora as well as pariah dark him self#Aragon have been groom and train to be the next Ghost king of the dark age section#he envy Dora carefree child hood while he got thrown in brutal trainning and lock inside the studied hall for hours without any real connect#he work is darn hardest to be a good prince evident by his battle scared dragon form#but the moment he make a hiccup#everyone already preparing to replace him with the more well beloved Dora#all mean while Dora also undergoing her own problem dispite the caring facade she feel caged by her own overprotective father#and unable to understand why the distant between her and her brother keep growing to be so big as they used to be so close#More lore for the Yeti and far frozen being the point Zero of ghost zone explain why majority of importance artifact are held there#with the addition of Yeti working with the observant into making Danny their puppet king#that only changed with Frostbite breaking the tie due to the bonding he made with the two boy#Ghost Writer being the casual looking ghost but actually one of the ommipotent one as he represent the Writer and artist working on the stor#with the libary being the ghost of Alexander libary#and it basement contain the world history silk constantly being weaved by misery vex and million of other ghost born soul#Ghost Writer the God of Story#Clockwork being master of time since his frangment is scatter across the mutiverse to keep the universe in order#Soujourn being god of space and maker of infinity map#his existence is a myth as he exist and don't exist at the sametime
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good morning ^_^ who else wanna die even during the day time
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“Why is it called a See Sea Temple?? I haven’t seen anything for years!!”
-Vos probably idk I didn’t watch the movie
#kinda dark in those cages#one of my favorite incorrect quote drafts hehe#mcsm#minecraft story mode#mcsm vos#bermuda brainrot hours#bermuda draft roulette
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“Ever since Maven was barely old enough to walk she was called the ‘Treasured Jewel of Norta’ and Mare had never thought it fit as much as it did right now, in that garden, at midnight in July”
ID: Three similar pictures of gender bent Maven Calore. In each, Maven is wearing a silver triangular crown with a red jewel in the middle, and a cowl-neck red dress in the midst of a rose bush at night. Maven's shoulder-lenght hair is black and wavy. The first photo is dark and in night lighting, the second only the eyes and red gem of her crown are highlighted and in the third is soft lighting. end ID]
#Maven Calore#Red Queen#glass sword#Kings Cage#War storm#Broken Throne#My art#Fanart#Fem!Maven#Genderbent#sorry for reuploading this :< I used a bad bad word in my last post and Tumblr decided it wasnt safe for human eyes :<<<<#Thank you Drewtanakagf for the ID btw! I dont know if we have many visually impaired people in the RQ fandom but its always great to be-#-overprepared rather than ruin someones experience#I guess i will talk more in the tags than I did in the last one#This work took me about 11 hours of work time and Im mostly happy with the results. The dark one is my favorite but only because you cant#really make out her hair which i didnt put much time into the shading of lmao#I like how the crown turned out. It was going to be gold for a minute there but then she looked like wonder woman#Funfact about Maven's name#Maven is already more often a womans name so no need to change it when gender bending him
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OKAY I GUESS.
#my hands are full of narrative threads WHAT am i supposed to do with all of these threads???????#anyway finished 1899.#squinting#there's still four hours of this shift tf am i supposed to do with myself now#i could finish dark i guess it's only been like three years lmao#god i thought i was following the threads they were leaving pretty well but now i'm a little concerned#and no longer have any idea what's going on#overall enjoyable experience but finding myself deeply dissatisfied LOL#rattling the bars of my cage like I KNOW WHY YOU DID THAT BUT WHY DID YOU DO THAT#dont think they gave themselves enough space to create something that feels complete and ALSO i know that the intention is Second Season#but goddamn
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Yo, excerpt from THE CAGE OF DARK HOURS audio book!
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Sansa had a great time visiting my parents’ for Christmas, everyone loved her so much and she was so calm and content the entire time. we especially did great in the car and she was so unbothered!
totally comfy with the travel home and the dogs, and we took a nap together this morning and she cuddled right in! so happy with her this whole trip, everyone was so enchanted by her and she wasn’t stressed at all 💙
#shhh sharkie#Sansa tiel#cockatiel#bird blogging#every time i’m so worried about her but she’s proven herself to be like#the most adaptable bird ever. she gets scared by new stuff but is never overwhelmed#and is so easy to calm down. like she knows i’m safe and when she wasn’t sure about other ppl she’d just come back to me#i don’t have her on the bed at home home cause the living room is her room there#but her cage was in my bedroom when i was in CT so like. that’s where i’m hanging out.#and i had her out but then i was laying down and tired and she just. snuggled right up. so we had a light nap together. it was lovely.#anyway this whole trip has made me a lot more confident for like her entire future#whether she comes with me or stays with someone else when i travel#she’s clearly very comfortable and/or just not super bothered by the whole process#did need to go to bed like. as soon as we got home. but tbf majority of our drive ended up post-sunset#so she just needed to sleep she’d already been in the dark for a couple hours#ugh anyway tldr i have the best lil bird in the world and i love her so much
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The Helm of Midnight Review: Oh, What a World
The Helm of Midnight Review: Oh, What a World
I’m late to the party on The Helm of Midnight, published last year alongside so many other pandemic-delayed books. But please don’t let my tardiness imply anything negative about Marina Lostetter’s dark fantasy debut, a sleek mystery that rushes through a wildly inventive setting at a breathless—but remarkably sustained—pace. The Helm of Midnight could have …
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i am like one of those animals who chews off their own paws when stuck in a cage
#i forgot what type of animal it was#and why they were in a cage#but i get it#me when i walk home while tired and in pain in the dark instead of waiting 10 minutes for the bus#and get lost and confused and scared and is in pain#but at least i wasnt doing nothing for 10 miutes#maybe i got home an hour later than I wanted to#but im home
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#i'm very pro danny accidentally adopts a whole bunch of talons previous installments
*
The next day, the body was back.
The green was gone from its eyes, but the awareness wasn't; it spent about an hour watching people go around outside Danny's apartment, which was new behavior. None of the corpses that shadowed him had shown any interest in garden-variety humans before. Now it sat at the window and watched families come home from school or head to their afternoon shifts.
That went into Danny's notes.
After that hour, it taught itself to flush the toilet repeatedly, rearranged the contents of Danny's half-assed linen closet (again) and then stood hovering over the safe where Danny had stashed the ectoplasm.
"...Okay," said Danny.
The dead body croaked. It was a new sound, but there was no context for it. Danny just kind of...wrote it down and hoped for the best.
The day after, Danny woke up at a very reasonable ten forty eight in the morning to find stray corpses feeding each other spoonfuls of ectoplasm in the kitchen.
At that point he kind of had to throw out the notes on how much each one was dosed with, because what the fuck.
"Really?!" Danny shouted, spooking the bodies into fleeing behind chairs and doors and back into his closet again. The only one that didn't flee was Danny's ringmaster corpse of the hour, of course. "You really couldn't wait??"
It stuck out a withered black tongue out at the mortician, who was, really, the victim in all of this. A victim to his parents' whims and a victim to the dead people who followed him around all the time.
This was how Danny found out that, when it doubt, the corpses could just tear through solid steel if they were motivated enough. The finger-marks were so deep and so embedded that they actually looked more like rough claws in the metal.
Great.
Danny ordered a new locking cage for the fridge on Prime and darted off to work. One of his regulars was on the table, though, so Danny just ended up doing what he would have at home— sewing up a gash in its neck and reattaching dead fingers back onto dead stumps.
On the third day, in which four of Danny's frequent fliers had learned from the first how to flush the toilet (and therefore raise the water bill immensely) Danny got a ring from a dark voice he (almost) recognized.
"Is he here?"
Danny squinted, jerking the phone further under his ear as he whipped up some scrambled eggs. The dead girl leaning over his shoulder leaned a little closer to watch the egg froth up. "Is who here? Who is this?"
"This is Batman. Is— the body requisitioned from your facility currently at your place of residence?"
Danny fully let go of the whisk. It landed haphazardly in the glass bowl he'd been stirring in. "What on Earth is a Batman?" he asked, incredulous.
"I visited your workplace previously."
Oh! "Yeah, the cop's friend. I remember now." Danny pulled the whisk out of the liquid eggs and held it out to the body. The unusually animate cadaver mostly prodded the whisk wires and paid no attention to him. "No one's here but me, though. Not that it's your business...?"
"And there are no non-living bodies currently in your apartment?"
Danny ignored the flushing noise in the other room. "I don't know, dude. They practically live in the walls at this point. Don't come over unless you have a warrant."
The call ended with a click.
His omelette turned out amazing, by the way. In case you were wondering.
On the fourth day, the ectoplasm was gone, because the corpses had apparently all taught each other how to lockpick the container in the fridge.
"Okay, some of that was meant to be my dinner. No more lotion at the funeral home now, okay? Now you all can be ashy forever. I'm so serious," Danny complained to the only visible dead person in the room.
The dead person held up a cracked egg. It was probably a gesture of peace, but now there was egg on his vinyl flooring to deal with. And. It wasn't exactly all that comforting in the end.
On the fifth day, Danny awoke to the sensation of a hand jamming itself through his neck until it punched into the mattress beneath him.
Fuck.
#dp x dc#I'm very pro Danny accidentally adopts a whole bunch of talons#could absolutely be an excuse for#talon!dick#talons#faer fic#dpxdc#dcxdp#death tw#well. the funeral industry anyway#medical tw#corpse tw#dead people#dcu crossover#the original post is free to a good home but I'm just chugging along here
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