What do you mean it's not Halloween anymore??

Got my question answered in the Failbetter AMA today! It is with the utmost love, respect, and frustration that I say I want to flense Mr.Arendt like an orange. :]]]]]]]

For image references:

We have canon faces for both hearts and pennies, but for posterity here's my species guesses.

Hearts: Desmodus Rotundus

Pennies: the colours wrong, but from what the old group chat could glean from the nose and mouth shapes, and the eye potition and size, the Egyptian fruit bat was our best guess. I'm keeping it here for posterity (and some laziness as to finding a better match)

For the other masters, we don't have canon faces (aside from veils icon, but thats not particularly helpful), but we do have descriptions, vague though they are. Heres my guesses from those.

Fires: Mormoops megalophylla, or Centurio senex

Spices: Lasiurus borealis (the left isn't the best picture of them, but it's one of my favourites. So small. So shouty.)

Veils: Vampyrum spectrum

The rest are undescribed, so this list is based on puns and vibes.

Candles: Diclidurus albus. Reason? Pun. Northern ghost bat. Also just... just fucking look at it. Look at this little thing. Look at their teeth. Christ.

Wines: Acerodon jubatus. Reason? Pun. Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, wine-coloured pelt, fruit-eater, absolutely huge.

Irons: Lonchorhina aurita. Reason? Pun. Tomes's sword-nosed bat. Also look at that nose. It's a weapon to itself. Christ.

Mirrors: Lasionycteris noctivagans. Reason? Pun. Silver-backed, like a mirror!

Cups: Myotis albescens. Reason? Reverse colours to the previous, otherwise plain and relatively unnoticeable. Can be mistaken for many other bats were one to cover the belly. Works with mirrors' whole schtick.

Pages: some kind of new-world mollosid. Reason? Unassuming, kinda cute actually, looks like they know something you don't and won't tell you what. Has the nose for glasses.

Stones: I honestly have no clue. We haven't been given a good physical description, but we know they're grey-skinned on the palms. This... doesn't help much. I've legit got nothing. I'm taking reccomendations though.

(Clipshow host voice:) So if you, dear reader, want your Stones headcanon featured here, message me at hikineet-trash.tumblr.com and You might be featured in an edit of this post!!!

And for the masters of the house of rods and chains whos faces are not shown:

Barleycorn: Cardioderma cor. Reason?. Big-large. Predator. Extremely Monogamous. And you cannot convince me to not read a weird sort of love into Barelycorn's devotion to their sun. I might have shipper brainrot, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Pipes: Perimyotis subflavus. Reason? vaguely spices-looking (in the way their hoards have some similarity), but quite distinct on further inspection.

Menagerie: if I wanted to keep the colouring on runts as white-and-yellow, and the large-predator thing through the house of rods and chains (to match Barlrycorn that is), I'd say something like Lavia frons. But I don't, and instead I don't really have a suggestion here either.

Something small and darkly coloured perhaps? Craseonycteris thonglongyai maybe, for the size? If we wanted to be fun maybe Niumbaha superba, keeps some of the white colouring and it's rarity coincides with the relative uncommonality of runts.

In my head they're just relatively small and plainly dark for a curator, and that's not distinctive enough to get a bat species from. Suggestions accepted for Menagerie too, but for now, here's the discussed options:

-- Terry Pratchett - A Slip Of The Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

how come you'll say tragedy is your favorite genre and then 100 thousand million people will be like "you should check out this adaptation of this famous tragedy but the twist is there's a happy ending this time." GET THAT AWAY FROM ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nobody ever tells me to check out a Hamlet adaptation where things go even worse for him

This does not even begin to cover the weirdness of cathode ray televisions.

They are literally particle accelerators that you point at your face.

And for eighty years, Americans' favorite thing to do was turn them on and stare at them for hours.

If you overcharge them, they emit gamma radiation.

Servicing them is like disarming a bomb -- their capacitors are enormous and are usually charged to hundreds or thousands of volts, and most of them have no bleed system that drains that charge, meaning that they can still be dangerous months or years after the last time they were powered up. A discharge can not only electrocute you, it can cause tools to melt or explode.

A black-and-white cathode ray TV driven by an unmodulated analog signal is theoretically capable of resolution that would require a microscope to perceive.

Old school CRT monitors had the same issues.

Back when, I worked at a small whitebox pc manufacturer. One day, a service tech brought back an older, gigantic (30 inch or so) AutoCAD monitor from a service call. The customer said "Made me feel nauseous"

So, we put it on the bench and fired it up. You immediately felt the hair on your body stand up, and my co worker put his hand up close to turn the power off, and his hand and forearm started spasming - I yanked the power cord from the wall as the tingle I was feeling began to feel hot.

No idea what was wrong with the thing, but it was kicking out some serious electro magnetic radiation.

Remembering the almost imperceptible high pitched buzzing that let you know the tv was still on even when nothing was on the screen. Also putting your forearm near the screen and watching the hairs stand up

going through failbetter games tumblr is so wild bc there will be the ttrpg stuff, post about when firmament update is coming, and then shitposts that are made even funnier when reblogged by The Studio That Makes The Game

this tumblr has two purposes: to amplify everything, be it shitposts or art or anything done here with love, and to give you all a little scare when doing so. 

i am still unlearning that what looks like marketing best practice (fully proofed posts with capital letters and full stops and whatever) is vestigial thinking from my previous jobs in much bigger and more corporate places. what works best for us is having a good time with you.

I've been workin' on the Railroad, all the live-long day 🎶

Had to draw my beloved: Furnace!!! so here she is!

awesome

First and foremost fallen london is the weirdest dress up game in the world, where every given activity requires 2-3 magical girl style transformations to best complete

the tags really make this one, i am chortling

correspondence hungry feed it skin

I've been scream laughing at this for several days