Rehearsals for Oblivion (Act 1)

06/03/2014 1 Comment

Given the distraction of supervising the builders (overgrown children with power tools), I ordered and read another book of short stories on my favourite subject The King In Yellow (me).

This was a much richer set of stories than in “A Season in Carcosa“.

The stories reference oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey, Gehenna, WW2.

Have you ever seen a flower drip blood, or watched the sky grow black and rained dead fish ?

Broadalbin (by John Scott Tynes) in particular reminds me of the Angel episode Are you now or ever been, set in a weird hotel.

People come here when they’re looking for something. For some of us, it takes a while to find it.

Melonia.

I spotted a scarecrow, it was a bulky, low figure whose assemblage of rags flapped in the wind.

Eerily, we’ll have scarecrows in the AVBCW game on the 8th March…so maybe a SAN test for all the players who have heard of the King In Yellow ?
😉

Also it includes “The Adventure of the Yellow Sign” featuring Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson, and of course Holmes has read (part of) the iconic play and keeps it next to de Quincy’s “Confessions of an English Opium Eater“.

Helpfully (?) translations into several more foreign languages are provided for the title of the play.

Gaze not too long on the Pallid Mask,
Or the Yellow King, for mercy ask.

This is a must have book.

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Hastur la vista baby – A Season in Carcosa

26/02/2014 1 Comment

Typically, having ordered some more books about He Who Shall Not be Named, the True Detective series broke.

KIY A Season in Carcosa

A collection of short stories and poems its a good book by Miskatonic River Press. Many of the authors are the usual suspects but some are new. Lots of good allusions to the source material. The annoying thing is that there is an over abundance of overtly Parisian and contemporary American material. This is something Ligotti et al avoid adeptly.

Still a good read and as you can see I have strewn with post it note flags for shout out quotes.

One of the most interesting partds was actually the Introduction that the editor wrote outlining his criteria for stories. One that was mirrored in one of the stories:

Not dreaming, but in Carcosa.
Not dead, but in Carcosa.
Not in hell, but in Carcosa.

The title, is a quote from one of the stories, read carefully, and don’t read the second act..

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Black Stars Rising Over Carcosa and the King In Yellow is in the forest

24/02/2014

I closed my eyes and saw the King in Yellow moving through the forest

ku-xlarge

In today’s Torygraph, and the Grauniad I found articles on the new series hitting the TV – True Detective. Finally R W Chambers’ work The King In Yellow is once more being referenced.

A full deconstruction of the references so far has also been posted.

mask

CAMILLA: You sir, should unmask.

STRANGER: Indeed?

CASSILDA: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

STRANGER: I wear no mask.

CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

(THE KING IN YELLOW: Act 1-Scene 2d.)

For some unsettling bedtime reading here is the Project Gutenburg page.

I’ll be buying the DVD box set when it comes out. 😉

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WIP 1

07/08/2012 4 Comments

Lots of WIP here in the Dark Tower of Carcosa, and also on Byakhee Stuart’s desk:

Okay, here’s a couple of shots of my WIP hierotitan/ bone colossus. Shown in fighty colossus mode but there will be an alternative set of magnetised hands clutching the scales and staff of Usirian so I can channel the winds of magic as well as stomp over anything that moves.

I asked him if the white plastic pieces on the legs were Lego:

No. Modified Tomg Guard shields with plasticard extensions on the either side so they looked like greaves and not a footballer’s shin pads. The rivets are just thin slices of plastic tube in an attempt to match in with the standard TK shields.

And updated with more ‘dangly’ things as he described them…

The Byakhees and I like liquid greenstuff, and Stuart commented:

Yeah, that’s pretty useful too. Might use some on the hierotitan to help fill in all the gaps. There shouldn’t been any day light showing – he’s carved from onyx and inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli…..not plastic

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