Fantastic work by KnuckleBone

Summertown and The Mall were once two separate concepts that I played with going back to around 2006-07 or so. Originally designed for an X-Files-ish RP I was doing with a partner about investigators finding strange phenomena. One was a house that was "consuming" people and reworking them into residents, growing with each victim and budding into more houses/places within a false happy/wholesome neighborhood. If you stayed too long, a person's soul was consumed by the town and they would warp and gain a new identity as part of the people living there. The Mall was a fae location based on modern pop culture creating a realm for itself. A modern take on the "land far far away" where faerie tales happen. The Mall was a sentient location dedicated to recreating urban legends, rumors, archetypal plots from the proliferation of teen/college comedies of the 70s-00s.

Then many years later and Foxxy and I are talking time shifting, reality warping AR as a means to re-experience things missed out on the first time. Not really a specific nostalgia, but a deliberately fictional nostalgia for what hasn't been. And after she did that particular sequence for me, I sort of backended it with my old setting concepts. Which eventually birthed Summertown as a setting that people play in.

Which is a long winded build up to explaining the book title style of this art piece. It's meant to evoke those Fear Street style series, as Summertown is a fictional fae place of shifting time and geography. And part of showing that was thinking of a series of titles for a fake book series for the place, all of which had a lead up title. "Welcome to. . .Summertown", "Always a Vacation in. . ." Living it Up in. . .", "Life's a Beach in. . ." and so on. With the group potentially discovering some of the more curious elements and sinister potential of the location and their place within it being titled "No Escape From. . ."

Here, the cast has uncovered a curious mine on the outskirts of town that wasn't there before. It reminds them that a lot of things seem to move around in town, as do their jobs, their relationships, living situations, their behaviors and personalities. Something draws them into investigating and uncovering the secrets of their perfect town. Some secrets that may haunt them forever. . .

Or it's just Summertown creating a mystery for them to solve because it feels like doing that genre for a beat.