Death Always Wins. Good story that manage to make all the gods very different. The detail with Pluto/Hades as split personality was smart and made me smile. One slight issue for me was that the description made me think of Disney at this kind of ruined the buildup of dread.
The best moment I think was when Hel played a hand of 5 aces and the others just continued playing until the interruption. As the gods gets busy at the end it was interesting to learn how they manifest their power, but some of the tension is gone when you realize the gods does not really risk anything here but is just here to feast.
The Halloween Pilot. I think this story feature a good setup and is making clever use of the Halloween theme and some mythology that is unknown to me. I don't normally read m/m so its not like I was really looking for such...but I think the story could have benefitted from making the sex part of story a bit longer. The missing keys was a great way to end the story.
After Party. I have been looking forward for this story for quite a while after I heard InBrigthestDays talking about it and it was well worth the read. The descriptions as Cody approach the house was a very good and set the tone well. I am suddenly very keen on rewatching Inuyasha...
Anyway the actions as he enters the house had me thrilled and the scene both succeed with being creepy and very sexy. I would say the ending was a perfect plot twist and I say please write more like this, this was awesome.
What Nightmares Might Come. This story was seriously creepy, but I had some problem to actually understand what is real or not. It reads to me like some spooky places from Bloodborne, but other parts of the narrative did not feel like a nightmare. I would have liked some more erotic twists to the story but the actual ending of the story had the lead character as pretty bad ass.
Day of the Deadly. I must say...wow...this was very impressive read that both succeeded with building some serious tension and a very good erotic moment at the end. This is probably the story that I enjoyed most to read.
Damn the land. This story had no sex in it but I don't mind very much with the langauge so flowing and well written. On the other hand I found the first half kind of confusing since there without reading the first parts was hard for me to make sense why the viewpoint shifts between these particular perspectives. It is quite possible it reads more coherent if you have read the previous parts of the series, but as newcomer as me I don't really have a connection to characters relation and this remove quite a bit of the fun out of it.
Death Always Wins – By TCR
Excellent interpretation of the various Gods of the underworld. I liked their glamours and their real forms presented. And the game they play just feels like something they’d do. Toying with the souls under their domain, switching them from punishment to punishment, prison to prison.
The political commentary was quite on the nose, and fitting for the tale. Despite all the death, this turned out rather tongue in cheek style, and it was a solid first entry for the anthology.
~***~
The Halloween Pilot – By PlagueClover (or whatever she wants to be called these days)
That got intense very quickly. Welcome to Serbia Mother Fuckers.
It was certainly sexy in the parts were the eroticism was put on display. But that twisted quickly into that intensity that good horror can garner. The descriptions were good, and your dialogue as always was excellent.
I’m on the fence about Elijah as a character. On one hand, he was a prick and I didn’t get any sympathy for him. On the other, it felt like a nod of sorts to slasher flicks. Watch the asshole teens get slice and diced. Rowan was a lot more sympathetic and was easy for me to root for.
I think the only downside to this was length. Because it was short, and it all melted to the horror aspect very quickly, there wasn’t any time for dread to build. Though, that ending is a good solid horror ending.
Damn the Land
I'd been thinking that the Halloween Party wasn't the same without BronxWench, but here you are!
Another Halloween, another bunch of doofuses messing with forces they don't understand. It figures that the know-it-all-pseudoneopagan crowd would find the circle eventually. And it was good to watch it happen through the eyes of two characters who used to be among those doofuses until they gained wisdom the hard way. Sad about Connor, but he's always seemed resigned to his fate.
Thanks for giving us another look at your creepy Irish world. :)
Damn the Land - BronxWench
They're back! And still creepy as fuck. No, not the Irish words, the sidhe. My recommendation to anybody who hasn't done so is to go back and read the previous parts. They aren't that long and they add a whole lot of extra texture to this continuation. Sure, it stands alone great but that way you can see just how long Dubhlainn has been acting the prick. I mean, uh, following ancient Sidhe ways.
Conor getting his head down and doing the studying and not even realising how much time had past felt like a very "dealings with fairyland" tip. Going in and coming out decades later is so often the way right?
Just like the previous parts you absolutely nail the atmosphere of the night where the old barier is thin and something like that happens.
I first thought the witches seemed a little like those horror movie extras who're just too stupid to live - except that actually having real sidhe turn up and blood spilling would absolutely be an outside context problem for someone who has just done the empowerment and ritual side of things. Maybe should have looked at the local folk customs instead? I guess we have to wait for next year to find out if there were any survivors?
Good on your man Sean for not laughing out loud at the name "Hecate Nightdaughter" mind. Can't imagine she was knocking out too many dog meat dinners at the crossroads.
There will be a continuation won't there?
Damn the Land
Well, Clover had a story about Serbian fey, I had a story about a yÅkai, which are kinda like Japanese fey, and now we have a story about Irish fey.
Looks like it's a fairy-themed Halloween!
I was worried at first when you mentioned that this was the latest in a series of stories, but it turned out that even a newbie like myself was able to follow it, although I could tell that there are things followers of the series will get more meaning out of (the past history of characters and such).
She had called him pet, which might not have been as awful if he had been able to convince himself it was only an endearment.
That's an amusing coincidence, though here I imagine Orlaith calls Connor her pet human in a way that is neither sexy nor sweet.
The characterization works quite well, even considering my lack of knowledge of the series, and I love the implication that Dermot really was hoping to see Hot Lesbian ActionTM in that stone circle.
The whole sequence with the Sidhe arriving and their reaction to the Wiccans perfectly encapsulates what makes all these fairy creatures unnerving: they have rules. The rules are ironclad. But you don't necessarily know what the rules are, not until you break one and pay the price.
Sean had not so much as blinked, but he never saw the Sídhe move. Three of them were just there, surrounding Fiona.
I absolutely love how creepy this is, simultaneously emphasizing the magical nature of these creatures and their "like humans, but not" quality. You also got an interesting little character moment there for Fiona, that she reacts far more angrily to men touching her than to what these creatures are or the fact that she's likely about to be murdered. It could just be a really funny joke about skewed priorities, but it also made me wonder what's happened in her life to make her react like that.
All in all, really cool, and thank you for sharing it!