Happy 1000th Day Of Alectopause

Another meme I had to make about dead boy detectives

Hello esteemed mutual. If you are reading this, then that means my propaganda is working. But you might still have questions, so I am here to answer them. Well. Actually. My propaganda already worked without the help of Captain America, but I also like writing these posts and SOME OF Y'ALL haven't bought it yet after I posted a lot so here I am after all.

What is Spiritfarer?

Spiritfarer is a management game by Thunder Lotus Games about death. Yup, death. I have... an interesting history with this game, that you can ask me about later, but I read multiple times that it's a great game to deal with grief and yes, it is. Also, apparently it's been renamed to Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition, but that basically means that the game is complete. After release, there were some major free content updates. Now that the game's been finished, I might replay it as the full package.

You play as Stella, who upon her death, arrives in an afterlife of sorts and takes over from Charon (yes, that Charon) to become the Spiritfarer. In life, Stella was a palliative care nurse in charge of helping increase the quality of life of patients with a serious illness, who stayed with these patients till the end in order to ease their pain. That's why she is fitting for this role. Stella inherits Charon's boat and sails around, picking up spirits of deceased people who haven't really moved on 'to the great beyond' just yet. Stella houses them on her boat, makes them feel comfortable, helps them with unfinished business, and eventually lets them go.

Yup. You need to let them go.

Anyway, have a trailer:

What's so great about it?

Personally, I think this game excels at the combination between story and gameplay. As in, I am usually fine if a game prioritises one over the other (like Tears of the Kingdom's gameplay is better than its story, and Night in the Woods's story is better than its gameplay), but this game is just right. It's a management sim, so you need to care for these spirits, update your boat for more rooms with activities to do, collect resources, farm, cook etc. Your management influences the mood of your spirits, which in turn impacts the game.

Once you're off your boat, there's some platforming and 2D exploration. There are also special events for certain kinds of items that lead to a special mini-game.

It would've been a cosy and relaxing game if it weren't, you know, about death. I mean, it's still relaxing and chill. It's really nice to play. The impending goodbyes just loom over you.

And aside from satisfying gameplay, the story is just amazing. The amount of characters that Stella meets is great and everyone has their own story. It's a game about death, as I said before, and it shows how death can occur in different ways. Prepare to weep. A big part of this game is about saying goodbye. The game simulates a grieving process. You may foolishly believe that it's just a game, and you control it, and you may hold on to some spirits, but in order to progress, you need to let them go. Oof.

The story is well-done in a way that it surprised me, but looking back on them, all those surprises were predictable. Those kinds of stories are the greatest. It still makes you feel something, but it wasn't a left field either. It's just good shit.

Where can I play this?

Thank you Wikipedia for listing it: Linux, macOS, Windows, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Stadia, iOS and Android. I think the mobile port is done through Netflix Games. I played it on Switch.

Can we play together?

There is local co-op. Stella is joined by her cat Daffodil, even in the soloplayer mode. But in multiplayer, the second player controls Daffodil. I have never played it in co-op, and Daffodil cannot do everything that Stella can do. I think he's like a better Cappy. But again, I have no experience with it myself.

Are there content warnings?

It's about death, and as I said, it's about different ways death can occur. Death isn't always natural. In fact, people unfortunately die from illness, unnatural causes, or from self-inflicted harm. And not everyone reaches old age. Also, you delve into the lives of the spirits, and not everyone had a rosy life. Topics like abandonment issues and unhealthy relationships are part of the story.

Is there DLC?

Nope. That's because the content updates were free. I do have, you know, things to say about content updates in general, but I have more to say about paid DLC so I respect the hell out of Thunder Lotus for not charing extra money for it.

Are there German characters in Spiritfarer?

It's heavily implied that Stella is French. Is that close enough?

if you want to get really mad, one of the writers for Dead Boy Detectives confirmed on twitter today that the Season 2 script had been WRITTEN AND COMPLETED when the cancellation news went out.

This is really untenable, not just as people watching these shows for entertainment, but as people who care about art and workers being treated fairly.

#netflixcancels is trending because people are so angry about several other wonderful, highly praised shows getting axed for the same reasons - especially Warrior Nun, another LGBTQ show with 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and winner of several awards.

⭐️ I can only recommend, if this is important to you, streaming the hell out of Dead Boy Detectives and getting others on board, or you and everyone you know unsubscribes from Netflix. You can let em know on social media too.

There's also a petition, it's at 14k signatures, which is not nothing.

Anyway. I'm just stunned that Netflix bothers to make these shows which are positively received and artistically groundbreaking, just to destroy them after 1 season. It's unfair to everyone, not just fans, and an alarming sign for creative professions on the whole.

TLT Theory: Pyrrha was the Necromancer

No get back here, hear me out. I'm not saying Gideon didn't become one as a Lyctor. But I've been noticing a lot of things adding up weird here...

In Ch6 of HtN, when preparing for the first trip through the River, they call it Pyrrha's trial.

Much later, when Pyrrha is mad at Palamedes for the soul fuckery he and Camilla are doing, she refers to it as one they designed together, but that doesn't negate Mercy calling it Pyrrha's first and foremost. And...

She's worried about Camilla's brain, and okay, sure, they only have Camilla's body. But with Cris and Mercy, it was Cris getting cracked open. With Harrow and Gideon 2, it was always Gideon in danger, not Harrow. And with Gideon 1 and Pyrrha, it was Gideon's skull, Gideon's brain, getting the testing done. No mention of the same kind of testing or Mercy or Pyrrha. The principle of it is the necromancer's consciousness being overlaid onto the cavalier's brain, right?

But okay, maybe Pyrrha just doesn't mention herself, and Gideon's "a control variable" to compare herself to? But there's more.

Pyrrha fights with guns, prefers them. Gideon fought with not just a sword but a whole ass massive spear for an offhand, and has easily more physical prowess than any other necromancer we've ever seen. His stomach is still desiccated in typical necromancer fashion, he's dehydrated and not a scrap of fair fat on him, but he's a wall of muscle and sinew. Yes he looks "like an idiot's construct", probably because John regrew him from an arm when he was still getting the hang of using that level of power, but he's distinctly not built like other necromancers. If he wasn't a necromancer prior to being a Lyctor, his build might make more sense. Moreover, we've seen other cavaliers turned into sort-of-constructs, with both Protesilaus and Kiriona.

I also want you to look at the Saint of Duty and tell me that man isn't the walking essence of what it means to be a Cavalier.

And he rarely uses necromancy. He can travel in the River, and he drains thanergy, but he never really uses theorems or sets up wards. His necromancy is used pretty exclusively in passive ways or to remove obstacles between himself and his weapons. But Pyrrha is extremely knowledgeable about all kinds of necromancy. She tells Harrow fresh thalergy is harder to drain. She sees Ianthe's brilliantly inventive combination of wards creatively mimicking the effect of Mercy's trial and can accurately tell what they're going to do, as well as how to break them. Among other things. She also says she walked the Eightfold. Maybe that means being led willingly as a cav, but what if she was in control of the process?

With Harrow, Gideon was constantly in and out of awareness, watching from Harrow's subconscious, things that Harrow was fully conscious for. Palamedes doesn't have that with Camilla, and both of them being conscious is rare and dangerous, as detailed above. Pal and Pyrrha are frequently compared with their situations. How did Cam and Pal work out how to do the switcheroo, especially while Pal had extremely limited ability to move or perceive? How did they work out a safe time limit before too much irreparable damage was done? Could they have had guidance from someone who's done it? Done it with a necromancer's knowledge, letting him know where he can safely go under in the brain, how to come out at will, what to watch out for?

On a separate note:

Lyctor names are sacred, but the Houses were founded before Lyctorhood was achieved. Anastasia did not become a Lyctor, so her name was not removed from history, and became common in her House. Judith and Marta are part of the Dve Territorials, and while that doesn't prove anything or could even be evidence against, I feel like it would make sense to have named prestigious military groups after the House's "main" Founder, before there were Saints and the decision to erase the Saints' names.

On a more meta level, I think it would be weird to have "their names were meant to be forgotten", history knowing jack shit about the cavaliers of old, and even emphasis on the Lyctors forgetting each others' House names, only to have a cavalier's House name in active use somewhere, if that information wasn't supposed to be serving a narrative purpose. If we weren't meant to question why.

"But they call her his cavalier. She calls him her necromancer."

Sure. And maybe that's straightforward; this is a theory, I could be wrong. But switching titles after Lyctorhood doesn't sound too out of the question to me. What's a bit of revisionist history in TLT? John knows where memory lives in the brain, and on Pyrrha's end, at least after Lyctorhood Gideon was the necromancer, after all.

(Edit to add: Augustine calls attention to how astonishing it is that Pyrrha never divided opinions, that not one of them has ever had a single bad thing to say about her. She's great but we've met her. We've seen John rant about her calling out his bullshit, in the dream. Not one bit of annoyance or criticism, from anyone? I'm just saying, if Something Happened that led to John needing to tweak memories, making everyone remember her nothing but fondly feels plausible.)

"So why can't she do necromancy when she's in control?"

"He took more from me than got taken from you" feels like explanation enough to me. He got her aptitude and more. She's a partial soul. If anything, she could even still has an ounce of it, to retain the body's healing capabilities. If Gideon was fully giddy-gone and the soul that was left had zero aptitude, what would the furnace be burning? But if Gideon's consciousness is dead and what's left of his soul is in the furnace with a (partial) necromancer at the helm, well, that's not far off from Lyctorhood working as intended.

"Why though?"

And there's the part that gets really tricky but interesting. My best guess short answer is, one of them was dying, and it was an act of desperation.

Maybe Pyrrha was dying and so brutalized her body wouldn't have healed right even becoming a Lyctor, but given what they're like and the Cam/Pal parallels, I feel like an even more likely answer was that Gideon was dying. Cris and Alfred had already put Mercy and Augustine in that position, and they took their souls to preserve something, but Pyrrha would have seen how well that worked, assuming the third ascension wasn't immediately after the first two. So perhaps in her own desperation, with endless adoration for the man so willing to burn for what he believed, she said no. You don't get to throw your life away. If you're going to keep throwing yourself on things, I will make sure you can survive it and keep surviving it, even if it kills me instead. And then walked the path in reverse, pinning her own soul to his instead of pulling his into her.

I've seen a post around here pointing out how when Pyrrha tells Nona about her first tantrum, she's laughing with her mouth but not her eyes, and it looks like it reminds her of something her brain doesn't want to bring back, and the post proposes maybe Alecto killed Pyrrha. And I do think there's a solid possibility it was Alecto's tantrum that mortally wounded whichever (or maybe even both!) of them and prompted them to ascend. If Pyrrha didn't blame Varun for Gideon recently, I doubt she'd hold it against Alecto either.

Either way, wouldn't something like that more than earn the title of Duty? Wouldn't it be beautiful that they both fit the title if both had in ways been the cavalier? Wouldn't it be fitting to allow the name Dve to stand in the military as a monument to such a woman?

I know this might still be a long shot, but I definitely think there's enough little things sprinkled around to at least to warrant some solid suspicion. And it honestly would explain a lot.

Let’s go guys. We can do this. I’m a ball of anxiety and nerves, but I believe in us. We just need to keep trucking, keep trying, keep being noticed.

"Deny, Defend, Depose"

Luigi sticker spotted on a Boston train

☠️ punk butch / teddy bear butch 🧸

happy pride month! this is also me testing gl@ze for the first time lol

(as usual, posted early on ptrn)

a non-exhaustive list of butch literature

a (very ad-hoc) list of butch reading and writing, (mostly) by butch authors. books I've read myself in bold; take the rest with a grain of salt. additions, addendums, and commentary welcome :)

(you can find my list of femme literature here)

general/literary fiction:

mrs s by k patrick

stone butch blues by leslie feinberg

boulder by eva baltasar

running fiercely towards a thin high sounds by judith katz

tipping the velvet by sarah waters

a crystal diary by frankie hucklenbroich

godspeed by lynn breedlove

cha-ching! by ali liebegott

the ihop papers by ali liebegott

greasepaint by hannah levene

lucy and mickey by red jordan arobateau

the bull-jean stories by sharon bridgforth

development by bryher

notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

america is not the heart by elaine castillo

the slow fix by ivan coyote

the swashbuckler by lee lynch

old dyke tales by lee lynch

sci-fi, fantasy, and horror:

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

the unspoken name by ak larkwood

vermilion by molly tanzer

metal from heaven by august clarke

scapegracers by ha clarke

the unbroken by cl clarke

fire logic by laurie marks

the seep by chana porter

these burning stars by bethany jacobs

feast while you can by mikaella clements and onjuli datta

non-fiction, memoir, and autobiography:

hijab butch blues by lamya h

gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon

fun home by allison bechdel

butch is a noun by h bear bergman

female masculinity by jack halberstam

burning butch by rb murtz

when we were outlaws by jeanne cordova

leaving isn't the hardest thing by lauren hough

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

another mother tongue by judy grahn

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky and madeline davis

the persistent desire ed joan nestle

persistence: all way butch and femme ed ivan coyote and zena sharman

dagger: on butch women ed lily burana

everything eats and is eaten

And she’s correct.

nav be like “can’t read. sword heavy. harrow mean. vibes off. arms huge. tits out. moving on.”