#Mechanisms of Truth

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[zoneofsmites]

Im of the full (possibly delusional) belief that Durge is not the species that they physically appear to be.

You’re telling me this being crafted from nothing but bhaal’s flesh and his blood - this demigod - is actually a dragonborn/tiefling/human/elf/etc.

No. This thing is bhaal’s flesh and it just happens to look like that. They’re an imitation of a species, they’re not truly a (full)mortal being, they have no heritage aside from bhaal.

As a result I’m sure there’s some…oddities.

For example, a demigod child, not fully mortal. I doubt they adhere to the lifespan of whatever species they look like. Looking younger than they should. (less so perhaps with long lived races like elfs and half-elves where that is par for the course).

A dragonborn durge that by all accounts looks like a blue dragonborn but their breathweapon is acid. A tiefling durge that seems to be a Mephistopheles tiefling but they cannot cast mage hand, instead smiting like a zariel bloodline tiefling.

An elf or tiefling durge that doesn’t read as fey or infernal trough identification spells. Because they aren’t either of those things. Perhaps they could read as divine but not quite.

Members of a race that durge is supposed to be looking at them and sometimes when making eye contact they read as wrong. And some kind of uncanny effect triggers in their brain.

Give me more freaky durge who isn’t really what they appear to be at all. Just a little murder demigod crafted from dead god flesh to be the shape of something else.

[cheesenchalk]

i never know how to phrase it but something about the way beatles biographers and people in general view paul's reflexive placating persona and determination to smooth things over as manipulative or duplicitous and john's reflexive barbed persona and habit of lashing out as brave and subversive despite both being equally defensive mechanisms to shield themselves from the world that resulted in them saying things that weren't true says more about how we culturally view kindness or friendliness as inherently untrustworthy or flimsy and anger and carelessness as more believable as someone's true nature than it says about either of them in actuality

[r26yz]

You are the wind at my back and the sword at my side

[unicornpopcorn14]

Remember when Dazai being honest for 0.00001 sec had him tweaking so bad he needed to lie about lying?

[that-androgynous-lightweaver]

[kandicon]

Everyone should say thank you to Miss Ivy Alexandria for the reasons all y'all can throw around your various Persephone headcanons. Because if she had been with the mechs in the City there is not a doubt in my mind she would have been Persephone, what with the wealth of knowledge the Acheron would give her and the relatively cushy position (plus the heavy association she has with the color red). She would fuck with the Acheron so hard.

If she were to find out Tim (or anybody else really) took on the role of Persephone and was just wasting it away, lounging around in formal wear and occasionally killing, she would beat the shit out of him in a jealous rage.

[b1gwings]

the first episode of fhjy was such a fucking blast. one of my favorite moments was most of the bad kids succeeding on their saving throws against being Frightened by the Night Yorb but Adaine failed, and when Brennan asked Siobhan how this looks/feels for Adaine, Siobhan was answered “i feel a panic attack coming on.”

and it’s like. as much as Adaine has changed since the beginning, it’s really refreshing to see that her anxiety disorder didn’t vanish with her character development. like, they’re acknowledging how that kinda stuff doesn’t just go away — you can’t really get over it so easily. Love u forever Adaine & Siobhan <3

[ripplefields]

the world loved my protolampscag from yesterday HERE TRY ANOTHER

(lampert design heavily inspired by @/sketchingdemonss!)

[kingjasnah]

cosmere wide you guys GOTTA stop listening to voices in your head that tell you killing people is ok

[malthedreamer]

The Humanisms AU

Where every naturally born living creatures stopped existing centuries ago, the cosmos is now filled with mechs, androids and AI programs in their chosen vessels.

Our crew are the last living cyborgs, (part roborts, part humans) preserving in themselves the last fragments of humanity in the universe

[sigyn-foxyposts]

"Sigyn in media"

A little something dedicated to Sigyn.. I'm honestly surprised no one has done this trend yet?! (On tiktok mostly, because that's where it's from) I'll be most likely be making more of these for other deities depending on how much I can gather :) Credit to all artists, paintings, music and books alike! <33

[balkanlila]

i also find it interesting how elena minimises her own romantic and sexual encounters in book 1 and thinks of lila as more fortunate and almost epic in terms of her own romantic conquests when in actuality they are both experiencing something very brutal they're processing as innocent when it's good and their fault when it's bad. it's all hidden in that conversation at the beach, when lila shows up with stefano in her red bathing suit, and elena discovers lila and stefano have only kissed without taking it any further and lila is immediately worried about elena being more knowledgeable than her in this department. they always think of the other one as miles ahead and the knowledge of that not being the case brings both pleasure and sadness. pleasure from establishing superiority (a temporary sense of victory) and sadness from being isolated in their experiences. think of elena and donato and how knowing that lila hasn't had anything even approximately similar to that happen to her at the point in the narrative i am referencing and how that must bring some of the brutality of the act into focus for elena, if only subconsciously. it's like with that, minimising the impact is the desirable outcome. she initially wished to tell lila about it because it was finally something that matched the scale of lila's life and elena immediately decides against it instead.

[pocket-ghostie]

I wanted to do something new with drawing today, so I used my pens and mechanical colored pencils <3 I didn't want to feel like I Had to finish a drawing, and this was really fun to do <3

Also, yeah, shadowvanilla doodles because I cant get them out of my head... The doodles are also related to my au :3c (I haven't made my ramble post about it yet, but I will soon... probably)

Close-ups bellow the cut <3

I really like how they all turned out!!! <3

Lol I reached the tag limit

[time-is-restored]

do you guys every think abt death vs immortality as a thoroughline in like. literally all of the mechs albums.

old king cole is explicitly warped by immortality (never to forgive he would eternal live, his hands dyed red by gore - can be read a few ways depending on where u place the emphasis, but at the very least communicates that his wrath is facilitated By his immortality), and the olympians commit attrocities in order to hold onto their wealth and the immortality that it grants them (murdering arachne, yanking heracles' chain the second he tries to go freelance, having a monopoly on the acheron etc). the value they put on immortality and living forever, and the fear they have of ever possibly losing it, has completely warped their morals and priorities.

and while it comes up less in tbi, there's still significant emphasis placed on how odin has been in power for a century (both thor + the narrator bring it up, and there's also an emphasis on how long ago the bifrost project was started, and how 'no one left living' can explain its science). her villain monologue in rangarok iv places the extinction of asgard as an honour - a ruin that no one can possibly rebuild from is called 'apotheosis'. and as she says at the end, the idea that no one can possibly outlive her is a key draw for odin. asgard dies with her.

in hnoc, the only really immortal character is brian (and we only really know that bc of knowledge we get from outside the album), but the axis of life and death as a privilege vs a curse is still very present. 'mordred's gift to Arthur could be love in his own eyes / fating him alone to keep the life to which he clings', not only posits that the gift of survival isn't inherently good + kind (which the audience would immediately recognise as love, not possibly love), but places emphasis on the fact that arthur is now utterly alone. the station's death at the hands of mordred is hardly a happy one ('Its people damned, doomed by a man who's lost all his regrets'), but arthur's fate is arguably worse. severed from the finality and closure of death, what does he become? [insert that one cool theory abt hnoc arthur becoming old king cole here]

it's like. on a meta level, the reason we as fans don't put much emphasis on the depravity + cruelty of the mechs is bc the people portraying the mechs are all charismatic + skilled performers. in live gigs they're all portraying the fun side of their characters - roasting each other, bantering with the audience, making fun of the characters they're singing about, referencing off-screen violence - bc if they portrayed their lore too literally they'd be comitting felonies LMAOOO

but narratively, its like. literally every album is a meditation on the ways that the glorification of immortality can ruin civilisations - can ruin galaxies. whether its rooted in the fear of you specifically dying, or of being outlived, or overpowered or forgotten, or if its done for the sake of someone else's survival... it's all corrosive. if u refuse to accept the indisputable impermanence of life, you lose the ability to value it, and u numb urself to the reality of just how fucked up it is to cut another person's life short for any reason.

like. i do think some of the mechs started as good people, and some of them even might still have ethical standards, but i REALLY cannot stop thinking about how fucking. fascinating it is that this group of immortals who are KNOWN for basically considering nothing but how fun and/or violent any given activity will be, have basically filled their entire discography with songs about how their continued existence is corrosive and brings tragedy + ruin wherever they go.

so how self-aware are they? do you think those old morals + ethics still linger in their mind, when they're writing down these tragedies? they willingly self identify as liars + thieves + bastards, etc etc, and they seem to have no trouble identifying the 'bad guys' in the various albums (ie: humanising snow + cinders + rose, but not king cole), but do those concepts actually mean anything emotionally, or even theoretically, for them all beyond their dramatic potential? do they remember their lives before they were mechanised as it actually happened, or do they remember it as lyrics to a song? is it possible to be entirely self aware abt ur own capacity for violence (as jonny in paticular claims to be), if you no longer relate to violence as anything other than a narrative device - a means to an end, whether comedic or dramatic?

[tyrastafr-ttrpgs]

Saw another questionable take on Noir in TTRPGs, this time about Noir and violence/combat systems

I'm about to sleep so I can't post at length about my thoughts on that subject, so I'll leave it at this till I get to revisit it hopefully tomorrow: violence in Noir is a framing device. There is surprisingly little actual on-screen violence in classic Noir, because the violence itself isn't the *point* - the characters' response to it, the reason it happened, and the narrative consequences is. And it only makes the potential of violence feel even more like an actual threat, when it's minimised like this! A lot of Noir violence is either off-screen, or at the beginning and end of these stories (often off-screen here too).

I'll detail it more in the future, but because of this nature of violence in Noir, I think TTRPGs and games that aim for Noir as a genre/style do best when they limit actual mechanics for it. That's of course a personal opinion, there's no such thing as an absolute truth in game design, but I feel Noir games would be stronger at genre-emulation when they merely allude to violence, and if they do need mechanics for it, making them few, simple, and evocative. No need for realistic or TTRPG-typical combat systems with initiative, action rolls and all that - find other ways to bring in Noir's violence. A realistic, detailed combat system generally doesn't use violence as the framing tool Noir does.