mgouker

basalt-dnd: Gourmet magic, a simple first draft of a more complex crafting system I’ve been working on. I’m most likely going to be changing up the system, but I wanted to post this just in case it turns out to be helpful for someone. Anyways, have a nice day or night, everyone! The images used […]

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Color Synonyms

asterias-confused-writings: humunanunga: decorxtiveocean: missgoal: amphyria: damselwrites: White also: pale; blanched; sallow; pallid; waxen; spectral; translucent; albino;  Grey also: dust; stone; pepper;   Black also:  coal; slate; dusky; ebon; shadow; murky;  Tan also: flesh; khaki; cream; tawny;  Brown also:  henna; russet; sepia; chestnut; cocoa; drab; bronze;  Red also: terracotta ; rouge; carmine;  fire-engine; ruddy Orange also:

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Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha LeeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Brilliant story. The worldbuilding of Ninefox Gambit comes to fruition here. The story also packs a killer plot twist & reveal, though there is plenty of foreshadowing of the possibility, so it’s both surprising and inevitable. One of my favorite 2017 sci-fi novels. 🙂

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A Conjuring of Light – last installment of the Shades of Magic series.

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. SchwabMy rating: 5 of 5 stars I loved the Shades of Magic saga. The world building was unique and made sense in the story. The characters are memorable, their positive and negative attributes. The magic system is coherent and well-matched for the world, and this author isn’t afraid of

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#winning

It’s no wonder Mom couldn’t live with you. You always think you know everything, but you can’t learn common sense from a book. “They’re not crisis actors,” you, my younger brother, said. We sit in Mom’s living room, in the tiny house she bought after fleeing your home in Florida. I leaned forward and pounced.

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“You Must Come With Me, Loving Me, To Death”–Sexual and Gender Tropes in Carmilla

From its inception, Gothic literature provided a vitrine for presentation of taboo subjects, especially forbidden love. Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, for example, tells of Manfred’s pursuit of an incestuous relationship with his ward. Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, written during the Victorian Era of adamantine sexual repression, features a steamy same-sex relationship, veiled as

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Falling Faster Than a Helmet From the Sky.

As I ponder Walpolian and Radcliffean female characterizations, in an Airbus bound for Los Angeles, a prospective couple in a seat behind me attempts pairing. After casual chit-chat, the y-chromosome bearer asserts to a candidate for a computer science master’s program at University of Southern California, how surprising her success is, given that women are

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Some Gothic Impressions

The Gothic is a wide umbrella, able to encompass stories as varied as Anne Radcliffe’s The Italian, a passionate romance of young lovers set in “exotic” Italy against the backdrop of a corrupt Catholic hierarchy, and Bram Stoker’s epistolary Dracula, a horror tale where undead bloodsuckers are repelled by Van Helsing’s little cross. Common to them is an obsession

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