#scrollingdown

yes, absolutely!!

the Deceivers believe they're in it to save the unfortunate people who are trapped and inexorably entangled with reality, framing it like they're pitying the poor suckers who believe they need noses and hands and gravity and air and all this "existing" business. all of that is a cage, in their minds, keeping us all trapped in a world of suffering, locked away from the "true thing" that would make it better. they're very charismatic, and they act like they sincerely think they're being compassionate, but you can see me putting down all these weaselly qualifiers, because the deceiver philosophy professes to love us creational mortals dearly, but doesn't love any part of us that we would recognize as ourselves; not our bodies, or our minds, or the things we value as ideals, nothing. which is a pretty shitty kind of love.

every deceiver has a particular trick that represents the unique crack in the way they perceive the "lie" of reality; they've got a hook they can tug on and manipulate that lie in a localized way. it's summarized in a pseudo-Estate, the title of which traditionally includes their name to emphasize how it's personal and not naturally-arising. they can apply the properties of their pState to whoever and whatever they want. i usually think of pStates like "Those Who Listen to Coriander Hasp" and "The Adoration of Phasael Mery-Harumaph" as the most stereotypical, the ones that can create instant disciples, but there's a good spread of variety.

(mechanically, warmains have a pseudo-estate as well, described with a single word (pain, void, loss, etc) which they mostly use to administer their test. they summon and control their pState directly.)

some fraction of deceivers grew up human, or at least creational, and became excrucians when they spontaneously perceived something wrong in their perception of the world; referred to as a breakthrough. a first person account of this process exists in the novel Fable of the Swan. the causality is a bit jumbled - it's not clear if the person becomes a new excrucian, or if they do a thing that fits the right template and an existing-but-formless concept from the Not latches onto them and takes over, or if they were an excrucian all along and just needed to realize it.

(sidenote, strategists often derive from humans, etc., in a superficially similar process, but their first hint that something is wrong is when reality begins to violently reject them and they start repeatedly dying and resurrecting. being a strategist sucks.)

Aww thank you so much! this was a great message to wake up to!!

Main issue with SVSSS is that you’ll have to find a translation to read it in English, which can mean some things are lost in translation. but the basic story is that a webnovel reader, gets sucked into the world of the novel he’s reading and takes the place of the plot’s Scum Villain, so he goes around trying to fix what he sees as plot holes and also get away without meeting the original Scum Villain’s fate. 

Bibliophileap Reads turns two today! I didn’t do nearly as many podfics this year as last year, and I’m going to be pretty busy this year as well, so we’ll see how this goes! Here are the podfics I’ve done this year!

“I’ll Be Here”, by haikujitsu (1 Oct 2017)

“Again”, by scrollingdown (04 Nov 2017)

“For Want of a Life”, by anthropwashere (13 Jul 2018)

And two songs:

Excerpt from “A Walking Song”, by J.R.R. Tolkien (09 Mar 2018)

“Here Comes a Thought”, by Rebecca Sugar (02 Jun 2018)

Again by scrollingdown Summary: Over and over, they prep the dissection.

"For me, it's very interesting to take one object and really dissect it to as many layers as possible." ~ Christian Cota

Thank you, @scrollingdown, for letting me podfic your story! And thank you, @darknessandterrorandkittens, for listening to this first! To everyone: thank you for giving my reading of "Again" a chance! Even if you don't like my reading of this story, please go check it out yourself! I love how different each scenario presented is, even though they all begin so similarly. I hope I did this story justice.

And thank you, shortlifelongroad, for letting me borrow your Blue Snowball USB microphone and making the crispness of this audio possible!

Music composed by bibliophileap:  Something Strange, Yet Calm

N I C E you have no idea how happy it makes me to see these two things I love also being loved by other people!!

I try to keep things organized and tag posts to make finding things a little easier. I tag posts with “bloodborne au” for this one, and I also use “AUs” for general au-related stuff. But this post holds the most info, it’s basically quick descriptions of some characters, things like weaponry, fighting style, character traits, etc.

AND because I’ve been playing lots of Dark Souls lately (not Bloodborne but I love the lore of both) I’ve got lots of ideas floating around, I will list some here!! (Under the cut because my nerdy ramblings can be long ;w; )