Feeling proud of my Darksiders fanart

Most of these can be found at art.smehur.com and some in the local gallery.
The top row is this year’s stuff.

Darksiders Verse Series: Introduction

I decided to write down, “tell, not show”, outright spell out, my Darksiders Verse in a series of posts. By “Verse” I mean my reading of canon mixed with outright headcanon (HC). Some might argue that “my reading of canon” is HC, but I disagree. Canon can be controversial, and Darksiders canon in particular was put together with less care for consistency and continuity than it could’ve been, so diverse readings of same content are sometimes possible (and I often favor those less literal, obvious and consequently, less popular). If I called this “Darksiders HC Series” I would be conceding points in the discourse that I have no reason (nor wish) to concede. So Verse it is.

Anyway, it’s lately become something of a guilty pleasure of mine to write long posts about why I want to write other long posts instead of writing those long posts I actually want to write — and this is one of them! There will be no Verse here: just all my thoughts and feelings about the act of spelling it out.

Tl;dr: I want to write it down because I no longer care enough to “save it” for rendering through stories; and also because I fear I might forget it.

Which isn’t to say I won’t be writing any more Darksiders stories. At the very least, I plan to finish the Legendary Series, but I may do more eventually. I’m still interested in this franchise (which is more than I could say about Mass Effect, nowadays) — just not as much as before.

Hail, Gunslinger

https://www.tumblr.com/smehur/714967638378446848/an-amazing-shot-of-strife-by-the-amazing

As Meat Loves Salt: On the meaning of the title

This is the second post in the series about the book As Meat Loves Salt by M. McCann, which has wounded me so deeply that months after reading it, I still can’t pass a full hour awake without thinking about it. In the first post, I made some introductory remarks and then talked about the cover and the blurb. In this one, I’ll talk about the title, and what it means.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

As Meat Loves Salt: On the cover and the blurb

I read As Meat Loves Salt, a historical novel by M. McCann, in December last year, finishing it (unwisely) on Christmas, so that I found myself barely able to communicate with the merry aliens around me during the family feast. The book confused me, shocked me, charmed me, warmed me through, worried me sick and in the end, shattered me. For a while I was so distraught that I wasn’t even sure if I liked it or not.

But I have since come to my senses. As Meat Loves Salt (AMLS from now on) is the best book of my adult life. No other has affected me this profoundly, nor stayed on my mind so long. Three months into this new obsession, I’m almost done reading it the second time; I’m drawing fanart, and writing fanfiction for it. Yet somehow I’ve not yet managed to put my thoughts and feelings in sufficient order to blog about it. And I may never write a comprehensive essay: there’s just too much to say, and I lack the patience, and my writing time and energy are better invested elsewhere. But there are some relatively standalone bits and pieces for a series of shorter posts.

One thing I do not plan to do in any of them is retell the book. I will also make no attempt to avoid spoilers. These posts are addressed to fellow fans.

I’ll start with front and back matter: the amazing cover and the dismal blurb.