This books spends its entire length talking about the vampire blood magic community as “The Scene” and oh my god I could not take it seriously.
Regardless, fun mix and crunch and fluff. One of the things I’m liking a lot about the 5e books, including this one, is the inclusion of “meta-mechanics” for the Storyteller on how to structure the build of stories themselves. Which are useful tools for a bunch of things, not just tabletop sessions. So. Multipurpose!
Read in the library when I needed to kill some time. Basically “what if zombies but goldfish” which, in theory, as fan of both horror and aquariums, should be exactly my jam? Except this manages, somehow, to be . . . kinda boring?
You know you read a thing and you’re like, “Well. Can’t unread that . . .” but also you know exactly the person you’re going to give a rec to? This is that book.
You’re basically going to know if this is the book for you just by reading the blurb and the content warnings, and if they sound like a thing you want to read, you will have a good time. I will say this was more explicit and visceral and fourth-wall-breakingly surreal than I was expecting, and the satire here is not subtle, though nor is it supposed to be. You know JK Rowling when she shows up. Sympathetic characters are also thin on the ground, though the messiness and the cruelty are recognisable and understandable, and you’ve seen them before to some degree or another if you’ve spent any time in queer alt …
You know you read a thing and you’re like, “Well. Can’t unread that . . .” but also you know exactly the person you’re going to give a rec to? This is that book.
You’re basically going to know if this is the book for you just by reading the blurb and the content warnings, and if they sound like a thing you want to read, you will have a good time. I will say this was more explicit and visceral and fourth-wall-breakingly surreal than I was expecting, and the satire here is not subtle, though nor is it supposed to be. You know JK Rowling when she shows up. Sympathetic characters are also thin on the ground, though the messiness and the cruelty are recognisable and understandable, and you’ve seen them before to some degree or another if you’ve spent any time in queer alt spaces. People also drink piss. It’s that sort of book.
Brainwyrms is not going to be for everyone, but if you’re looking for a messy, visceral, surreal, trans cosmic horror . . . then yes. This.
Bought this on a whim as a coffeetable book and enjoyed it more as a straight read than I thought I would. It’s kind of a moodboard of various gothic tropes, interconnected by brief articles. It doesn’t touch on anything in particular depth, and there probably won’t be much new here for anyone who’s ever paid even half-hearted attention to the psychosocial aspects of the horror genre. But it’s a good overview to anyone who hasn’t, as well as a solid “further reading/viewing” list.
“Here is an early lesson: the poles of the normal and the pathological can be swiftly flipped in value, and what any social order excludes as monstrous can become an unexpected point of identification for the outcast and abused.”
