combocon. bet you cant guess which prompts i picked! ok byebye
Tower Lantern Cleans the Temple of the Allmartyr / Discussion
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"I am Custodian 993. I am Tower Lantern by deed, and Tothen Slore by birth. My lamps hang in two hundred and nineteen temples."
I know you're gonna post a banger piece just by the first line. I'm going to take this and print it out and save it in a box under an old elm tree. Masterful work, custodian.
I watch the yonder hills
See foodwrenches toil in dust
Let their cacophonous calls
Rend our bodies to rust
WOW!!! This is amazing! Viscera Cleanup Detailish — in the best ways. So much blood! So much history! So much worldbuilding in the most delicious of ways. This work is a cozy jacket, just tight enough that I can feel it but loose enough that I can move in my full range of motion, and I want to snuggle inside it every day. The names, the prior custodians, the formatting that only at this point writing this comment do I realize is lantern yellow cutting light truth through the choking mists of the void. The prose! The creativity on display; the ingenuity! So much character in so few words, so much personality on display with the makings of the chemicals to dissolve evil but retain a sword. So much that changes in so little time with the taking up of a sword on the truck (an animal! I love when old names are retained for new things that serve the same or similar purpose). So much good. So gorgeous. The prose is light at first and then dives headfirst down into the pitch black and can still be seen as clearly as when it stood on the ice floes in its divers gear with its ghostlights aglow like tiny suns on its belt otherwise tugged down with leaden diving weights. So gorgeous. I love the viscera, I love the meat, I love the detail stuffing every sentence so it tastes like The Shadow of the Torturer. The prose reminds me most of all of that, and elevated. Sometimes I wondered what was real, saw through the work to find connections and my own vision. And sometimes I took what was said as absolute. What glorious work this is. What love.
I am assigning foods to every work. This is pomegranate whose arils are retained and everything else, from skin to pulp, has turned to mints and cheeses.
-Styg
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?
unbelievably good. just mind-bendingly good.
you have a particular facility with using words in such a way that i've never seen them used before but know instantly what they mean in their new contexts. oftentimes in this piece it makes me chuckle: "castigator beam" and "hostile entity defoliant" are two phrases that come to mind — in the same paragraph no less! — that brought me delight. the prose sparkles throughout with that same sense of dark humor, with playful word choice, with sentences that are exactly as long as they need to be and which connect seamlessly. the piece is 5000 words and feels like so much less: it absolutely flies by.
and this is all to say nothing of the balance of structure and thematic strength of the piece. a piece about will and self-determination, about establishing your place in the cosmos by knowing with certainty you are doing what you are meant to do. about burning away temptations, attachments, corruption, and pride and living as true as you can to yourself. the power of elevation of something so humble as a janitor to a station of inner holiness and peace is exceptional. and in this world of creeping horrors, where it's never quite clear what is right and what is not, for tower lantern to remain resolute?
In this time of doubt, the acolytes deserve the gift of old wisdom - to cherish or incinerate, as is the enduring privilege of the young as they remake the world we give them.
wow.
His Excellency knows he does not need ostentatious curses to work his will - the real hex is already within us all, waiting to be unlocked by violence, tragedy, riches, or simply the right word.
wow.
+1
Your craft continues to be most excellent. I am without words to describe the satisfaction that has washed over me. This is exactly why I always leave your work for last — it might be the best that the Wanderers' Library has to offer. Yours is the writing I envy the most.
It is nothing short of the highest indulgence to see you post again. I had tremendous fun reading this, for the aesthetic, the worldbuilding, and the honest message of self-determination and incorruptible motive. It hooked me from beginning to end, making me laugh out loud at some points and rub my chin in thought at others. Spinters, you've done it again. I would be interested in seeing more of this universe, if you're so inclined.
Ashy +1.
Holy balls batman! This is so good. Not much I could say that hasn't already been said. Praise! Praise and applause. Your works are always incredible. Well done, +1.
-Oli
Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.
Personal ComboCon Reading Progress: #13
I think one of the main things I always love about your writing is how there's always something new to chew on. Either it's a word I've never seen before (which this piece had plenty: vouchsafed, mawkish, and narthex being my favorites) or a unique concept or design or whatever else. There's always something new and it feels like you really let concepts stretch. Your language is tight, His Excellency and Tower Lantern are great characters, and I love the subtle choice that this is meant to exist as a guide. I'd love to see this world and city of temples again one day
hostile entity defoliant
There's a lot to love about this — and people have voiced much of it already — but I think what really struck me was how much this piece plays with and orbits around contrast. You have the contrast of the setting — unabashedly religious, mystical, spiritual, crossed with high-tech arms and armor, incense-censers and mechanized servants, hymns on railguns. It's something that comes up a lot in your work, something I've come to appreciate as your signature, but this piece plays with it by also having the contrast of Tower Lantern taking a near-religious dutifulness in his work of cleaning. Even though he seems an emotionless character the writing sings with emotion and implication — what he chooses to comment upon, what he doesn't. What he lavishes attention on describing and detailing, like cleaning procedures and the physical environment, and what he chooses to leave, like his thoughts on these gods and demons. And then of course you have the contrast of Tower Lantern — quiet, stoic, noble in asceticism, and His Majesty, loud, confident, and arrogant in ostentiousness.
It's a lot and I like all of it. And of course your mastery of tone and voice and vibe is as stellar and skillful as ever. The jump-backs between describing this fucked up Viscera Detail ass environment and TL giving cleaning tips in particular, I really enjoyed — but then there's also just some incredible powerful and hard as hell prose here, like the bit with the brain. Great stuff.
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