On a desperate mission through the wilderness, Vex’ahlia hitches a ride on a moving castle.

1: breaking and entering – ominous portents – an accord reached – your safety, my sanity – without a list – a surfeit of names – ill dreams

Vex is hiking along a ridge that overlooks a deep valley when she hears it—a deep, laborious groan accompanied by a rhythmic chuffing. Too aware of the dangers the Stormcrest Mountains contain, she pauses to search for the source. She sees the smoke first and almost thinks there’s a fire, but then her gaze tracks it to its origin, and her eyes widen.

It’s a castle, sort of. As it draws closer, ambling along the side of the valley on four massive iron legs, she can see that it must have once been a castle, but the structure had been pulled apart and slapped together again in great shifting segments. Its clawed feet move with surety, digging into rock as easily as earth to find purchase on the slope, and inky black smoke billows out of its chimneys.

She has five thoughts in quick succession: it’s getting dark soon; shelter may be hard to find; this contraption is going the same direction she is; this contraption is going faster than she is; and surely nothing in there is worse than whatever is out here after the sun goes down.

[continue reading on ao3]

Favorite thing about renaissance faires is that they have fuck all to to with the renaissance. This thang is not about historical anything this is about dressing up like a fairy and watching a joust

sometimes I think people think "narrative parallels" means "exactly the same" and like...that's not the point, actually, the point with narrative parallels is that they're variations on a theme that are meant to illuminate something about each variation. a narrative parallel that is just a precise reiteration of another thing isn't saying anything. it's just redundant.

on the other hand this also does not mean every narrative parallel is meant to be a sort of goofus and gallant "this one good, this one bad" didactic moral lesson. so jot that down too

I love how we got the introduction to TREE LAW a few weeks ago, when that story went viral on Twitter about the person whose neighbor illegally had all of their trees chopped down because they wanted a city view, so that we would understand what was happening when Universal thought it would be funny to deprive strikers of shade by "trimming" city-owned trees to the point of destruction.

This is an excellent example of organically teaching concepts without relying on tedious tutorials or forced, immersion-breaking expository cutscenes.

A++++ game design. 10/10, no notes.

Good time for a periodic reminder that "butch" does not mean "has muscles" and it does not mean "sidebuzz haircut" and if you look at a cartoon girl who wears makeup and skirts and high heels and decide she's butch purely on the virtue of "she's kind of buff" or "she's got short hair" or "she's rude to men" or "she knows how to fight" then you need to delete futchscale.png off your hard drive and talk to an actual butch for once in your life

ghost trick is a beautifully written and designed puzzle/mystery game about timeless and important themes like regret, repentance, and how your pet literally loves you so so so so so so much

My favorite new feature on the app is the one that pops one of these notifications up whenever I reblog something with an image in it. I find it especially charming that they stack up and don't go away on their own.

Tumblr users and staff are locked in an eternal battle