Samuel is dealing with the horrors just fine! hes fine. just needs a lil laudanum to take the edge off. Just a little, tiny, several bottles of laudanum,

wheezes and collapses HI HELLO I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED..... THIS!!!!.... I don't know what possessed me to make this out of pixels but im v pleased with how it came out!!

[Everyone has been extremely cool abt this!! but just to be sure: no Fallen London spoilers/suggestions/hints in tags, replies, etc. please! I'm still in the middle of some of the stories referenced here and I'm excited to discover it all for myself! ]

Nightmare sources referenced here:

omg, where did this come from? im suddenly worried ive accidentally given him some sort of American tell that I didn't notice LMAO. But no, he's English! The only particulars I've decided is that he's northern (think 9th doctor) and makes no attempt to hide his working-class accent. I don't think anyone would be horrified by him being clergy; the Church has a pretty strong presence in London! But he might get some side-eye for being Catholic in a place where "The Church" means the Church of England, so he usually keeps that part to himself.

Aw, thank you so much!! I'm having an absolute blast, and I've been uTTERLY DELIGHTED by the response from the fallen londons here on tumblr; you guys are the best. I got so many tags on recent art of Sam that were along the lines of "this guy is always ending up in situations" AND MAN THATS IT ISNT IT, that's one of the things I love about Fallen London, it's just a place to put your guy in so many situations LMAO

LMAO IM SO DELIGHTED AT ALL THE BISHOP ENJOYERS COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK, THANK U

Fallen London is a browser game you can find here! Basically, you go through stories, make choices, unravel the consequences of your choices, and slowly learn what's going on in this very strange world where Victorian-Era London has SUNKEN INTO THE EARTH and found a world of supernatural strangeness down in the 'Neath. The writing is sort of horror + darkly funny + very British, and the story/game is HUGE; I've been playing for a few months and feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

Samuel Ashman aka The Bloodstained Deacon is my Fallen London character, a wayward deacon of the Catholic church who ran away to London and immediately got involved in monster hunting and illegal fighting rings, as one does. I based him on Sammy originally because I thought that would be a fun character to explore this world through (and I was just in one of those modes where everything revolves around your blorbo), but I adjusted his name so that he could be his own character rather than just a silly fandom reference. Through the choices I've made and intriguing possibilities the game has presented me with, Samuel has become a completely separate guy to that source of inspiration I started with.

i have several fallen london sketches that i need to scan in but INSTEAD of doing any of that i seem to have created some sort of speedpaint portrait of Samuel so that I could make a fake feast of the rose companion for him:

important priorities

When my friend Giandark joined Fallen London his character, terrifying gentleman Lord Bertrand Palomo, IMMEDIATELY began Seeking The Name, the optional and infamous fallen london story where you become gripped by a supernatural hunger and a search for the forbidden that convinces you to eat ever more deranged things and eventually destroy yourself!! Its all quite horrifying and I'm having a great time enjoying it vicariously through him.

anyway at one point the list of deranged things to eat includes "teeth", which is so wonderfully upsetting that I became obsessed with it, and wondered if this guy might've ever tried to solicit some involuntary donations………???? AS ONE DOES….

Deacons can't actually hear confession but Samuel's not really in a position to explain the finer points of church hierarchy. I just really love the idea of Bertrand getting in his head that eating part of a pious man should grant him some sort of absolution for his many horrible sins.

Bonus scribble:

i, uh, finally drew the bishop of southwark,

continuing his trend of catching feelings for every strange man who threatens to pulverise him, samuel ended up buying two "marriage phantasie" dreams of the bishop during the feast of the rose (highlights include RIGHTEOUSLY WRESTLING IN FRONT OF THE FIREPLACE IN A GOD-FEARING WAY), for cOMPLETELY NORMAL AND PIOUS REASONS which im sure he has no reason to be ashamed of

anyway, here, take…………………….whatever this is,

SO UH………………………….. SAMUEL GOT, BURIED ALIVE, IN FALLEN LONDON………….. what a horrifying delight. a little treat just for me. OBVIOUSLY I HAD TO DRAW THIS

(rambling about Fallen London ambitions under the cut)

[sighs tiredly]

WELL.... obviously im not thrilled about the AI deal tumblrs involved in, or the fact that you have to opt-out manually rather than existing accounts being automatically opted out.

I understand the idea of leaving/deleting in protest, sending the message that this kind of behaviour will discourage people from putting content on your site. And I respect that, I don't think it's necessarily misguided. Here's my cohost, for people who'd like to find me elsewhere! At the same time, protest seems like really the only reason to do that -- like, I don't think doing so preserves your stuff. My art is likely in the machine already, not because automattic made a deal with midjourney, but because my tumblr posts come up on google image searches -- they are not hard to snag. AI companies have already pulled content that was freely accessible and put it into their machines without asking; that's like 80% of my problem with AI art in the first place!

So, like, if I go "I'm moving to my own site" or "I'm only posting on cohost from now on!!" then is my data or my work any safer, beyond security through obscurity? It's wrong to use my work without consent, but practically, I'm not gonna be able to track down every generative model that uses my data to train without asking. As much as "we're making a deal to give your data to an AI model" sucks, especially when it's done so sloppily..... a situation where there's an explicit contract in place where the AI company (theoretically) has to get your agreement to use your data IS... WEIRDLY, a tiny step closer to what I want to happen???? Like it's not... GOOD..... but I dunno if it's actually Worse Than It Was Before? IDK....... just turning it around in my brain while I try to decide and I can't make a strong case for packing it up atm

I'm not a professional artist rn, I'm just here for fun, and I've opted out all my blogs, so for now I'll probably stick around and just keep an eye on everything and see how things go. BUT YEAH, if you're skeedaddling and want somewhere else to follow me, my cohost is shazzbaa and I have a carrd over here that I try to keep updated, so feel free to find me there too!!

LMAO SO, I FAILED TO ROB THE BRASS EMBASSY,

I decided that after the Shallows, Sam finally had a Motivation to do some Shadowy Tasks while he's trying to figure out what the HECK is up with the afterlife in the Neath, but uh, well!! For his trouble Samuel got branded with a hell letter that apparently glows through four layers of clothing for a while, which I'm choosing to interpret as the devilish equivalent of one of those shame signs you put on pets.

He got invited to tea by a friend directly after getting out of jail and the idea of him showing up and just studiously ignoring this glowing brand like "yes. hello im here. i will not be taking questions at this time." is entirely too amusing to me

my delicious friend phosphor gifted me the fate needed to play the exceptional story The Shallows!! I HAD A GREAT TIME AND SAM DID NOT, and I decided the events of this story (which included Samuel having to do the Boatman's duty for a bit) were a great excuse to make him come out of it a wee bit more skeletal than he went in.

Here is some of my context-free liveblogging under the cut (some story spoilers):

did a lil birthday doodle a bit ago for Mochi and Boo of all our Fallen Londons hanging out. Jack Bell (honey-sipping poet and benevolent thief) is Mochi's, Samuel Ashman (and all the scars from his terrible choices) is mine, and Drew Wells (scandalous disaster who is going to seduce every boy) is Boo's!

"is drew even helping here" they are helpfully unbuttoning sam's shirt obviously

FELLAS IS IT GAY TO,

hilariously I actually initially won against Feducci, and went back to find out what happens when you lose. IT TOOK SIX TRIES (apparently sam REALLY didn't want to permadie for some reason, idk) which I am headcanoning as Samuel just going back over and over again because WHY DIDNT KILLING HIM WORK???? But this means that the big shock for me on actually finally losing was that Feducci makes 0 effort to justify the fact that he didn't permakill you. He lances you and you're immediately dead and he absolutely COULDVE just hacked u to pieces and he just???? didn't I guess????? Feducci what r u DOING

Anyway we all had a great time thinking about how very gay it is to impale a guy with an entire lance and pin him to a tree and then decide not to permanently murder him.

I had been planning to do more of the Persuasive route next; I'm sure Sam will be So Normal in high society after this.

(I'm having fun discovering Fallen London myself with friends, no info/explanations/future knowledge in reblogs, please! AND OMG THANK U TO EVERYONE WHO LEFT SO MUCH LOVE ON MY LAST SKETCH... YOU ARE ALL A DELIGHT, i had no idea there were so many feducci-likers LMAO)

FEDUCCI???????????? SIR????????????????????????????????

anyway ive done some more of the black ribbon storyline in fallen london and honestly this has been an INCREDIBLE development...........

(I'm having fun exploring fallen london for myself with friends, no explanations/hints/info in reblogs please!! i know this fellow has a lot going on haha, but I'm enjoying not knowing everything yet)

tremendously inspired by @tofupixel's pixel portrait work lately and wanted to play with some big pixels myself so....... I SCRIBBLED MY NEW FALLEN LONDON GUY....... Deacon Samuel Ashman is a obvious Sammy expy former clergyman who ended up joining the Black Ribbon Duellists and is DEFINITELY not experiencing ANY cognitive dissonance about his actions in the Neath,