Rose Red and the Huntsmen

Rose Red and the Huntsmen is a story written by shukyou and illustrated by the Winter Cynic. It ran in Issue 87 at https://www.shousetsubangbang.com/mirror.

Summary

Two men wander into the Great War to find a vampire.

Author's Notes

Spoilers for the story follow, so don't read this until you've read that.

Massive thanks upfront to the Winter Cynic and Sparklebeard for all the help getting this story off the ground and keep it flying, particularly with attention to my treatment of transmasculine issues. Having Dan do the art for this story was an extra delight for how much he loved everything about short king Maxwell Devereux. I could not have asked for a finer cheering squad.

I went through all that pronoun fuckery in the flashbacks in part to make sure that Max's pre-"Max" name never comes up. Frankly, *I* don't even know what it was. It definitely didn't have a fun and mysterious x in it, though.

There's probably a lot wrong with my depiction of late-year 1917 Belgium, and I apologize for my lack of exhaustive research on the matter.

A beefy blond guy and a cranky little dark-haired guy is absolutely what happens when I try to craft a story and watch LPs of Pathologic at the same time. I actually didn't realize what I'd done until I was halfway through the story, and it tickled me when I figured it out. The personalities don't really map beyond the most superficial layer, but if you're familiar with the game, you can absolutely understand what I had in mind while I was describing Aris' sexy bigness.