#fun levels of hell

[lassie-farce]

writing fic for the pitt is not for the weak because like 99% of the fandom works in healthcare and it feels like being grilled at grand rounds by the whole attending staff tribunal whilst you present your work - your blorbos having wicked sex - and the attendings nod along, but the moment you mention in passing treating a nosocomial staph infection with Cefalexinum and all the eyes turn on you and you know you done fucked up

[dezerex]

[mareastrorum]

I love villains, and I especially enjoy Brennan Lee Mulligan’s take on them. His version of Asmodeus in EXU Calamity and Downfall really highlights the reasons why.

A villain is the embodiment of the wrong conclusion. They aren’t always an antagonist; they aren’t necessarily meant to obstruct the protagonist of a story. Hell, they might even be helpful. Villains don’t even have to be evil, per se, they just have to be on the wrong path in the context of the story.

Asmodeus is a brilliant villain and as evil as it gets. He’s the Father of Lies, and he indulges in it deliciously. The lies are always half truths so that the protagonist fills in the blanks with assumptions and gets it wrong. He matches their energy to give them what they want to hear. He plays along with naivety and hope. He doesn’t take anything from people other than lives; they give the rest willingly because they want to believe him. Asmodeus finally reveals his deception when he has someone cornered because he wants them to know they did it to themselves. Asmodeus wants everyone he hurt to come to the realization that “I knew better and let this happen anyway.” He did it to Vespin Chloras, Zerxus Ilerez, and Sarenrae.

From EXU Calamity episode 4, after Zerxus realizes he’s been had:

Asmodeus is the embodiment of the desire to punish, and he’s the villain because he’s wrong. That mentality is rooted in hatred. He is convinced that everyone deserves eternal torment, and he wants everyone to agree with that conclusion.

The purpose of Asmodeus is that we shouldn’t inflict punishment based on some idea that the person deserved it. Yes, revenge and victory feel good. Yes, there are often valid reasons to be angry or defensive. Yes, we can come up with a reason to justify punishment. But hurting people because they deserve it is exactly what Asmodeus does. There is always a way to rationalize that someone deserves punishment—so the right answer is that this feeling cannot be a sufficient reason to do harm. That isn’t good enough.

It’s so easy to say “they deserve it” when we know the end result is that Aeor will be destroyed and the surviving legacy is ruins full of monsters. It feels good when we think people deserve to suffer and then we get to see it happen. It feels righteous.

Vespin Chloras deserved to be remembered as a traitor because he was arrogant enough to think he could replace Asmodeus—in an age where another mage already replaced the god of death and yet another mage created a machine that killed two primordials. Zerxus Ilerez deserved to be a thrall of Asmodeus because he chose to take up the mace and contributed to the problems that got him in that dilemma—because he so fervently believed that under all that hatred was a person who needed a chance to change his mind. Sarenrae deserved to lose her followers because she decided to trust the Father of Lies—because she loved her brother and offered him mercy.

It’s so easy to conclude that someone deserves pain. Asmodeus is here to remind us specifically that it’s not the right way to handle anything.

Asmodeus is also a rather effective villain because he is supposed to be irredeemable. Archetypal villains are wonderful tools for setting audience expectations. Whether Brennan plays that straight or decides to subvert it, there isn’t as much work needed to persuade us that Asmodeus is that evil or cruel. We already believe that he’s capable of doing the worst things imaginable. Toying with those expectations is a great storytelling exercise.

Asmodeus didn’t shock us in EXU Calamity because we didn’t expect him to be evil. He was shocking because he is such a skillful liar that we wanted to believe him. It would be such a satisfying story that a well-meaning paladin was the first person to show kindness to the Father of Lies and managed to atone him. Brennan’s portrayal made us want that subversion so badly even though we knew better. Asmodeus lured us into the same trap as the characters, and then we saw the outcome: punishment—because Asmodeus will use any reason to justify it and every opportunity to inflict it.

In Downfall, Brennan could have easily rationalized that the protagonists wouldn’t agree to the truce if Asmodeus was on the infiltration team. The audience would have absolutely found that plausible. He didn’t have to be here. The decision to include Asmodeus on the side of the protagonists gives us a heads up that the story will grapple with questions about punishment.

What do I need to see before I am justified in destroying a city with no survivors? Do I have to concern myself with bystanders? Do the fearful deserve to die for choosing to oppose me? Don’t they deserve it for creating such objectionable technology and magic? Don’t I deserve the chance to live without fear of those lesser than myself? Don’t they deserve to die for corrupting those I loved? Don’t they deserve it for being loved more than me?

Why isn’t hatred a good enough reason to hurt someone?

Again, villains are tools to highlight the wrong conclusions. Asmodeus is involved to highlight that the desire for punishment isn’t a sufficient reason to destroy Aeor. The other characters, villains or not, are here to show us what other justifications there might be. Their interactions are going to brush across these themes over and over again.

I fucking love villains, and no one plays a villain quite like Brennan does.

[kagooleo]

happy new years 2025! it's been nearly a whole year since I started posting about fluffyriceshipping here, and my art has changed a lot since then! what better way to start the new year than with some sweet potatoes with their partners 🍠🌅

[shadesofmauve]

Alliance Normandy SR-2 redesign: Deck 5

We've finally arrived at the bottom: deck 5, home of the hangar, the Kodiak shuttles, and now, Marine Land!

There are some oddities with this deck, because I was guessing at how fast the hull tapers towards the bottom at the back (I'm working off references that show front and rear elevations, but that only shows you the broadest points). I messed up something with my core chamber measurements and had to make the entire rear end (heh) slightly bigger here before posting, but the deck design errs on the side of narrower.

Hangar

When I wrote A Star To Steer Her By I ignored the silly shipbuilding because I was focused on a relationship (and because it wasn't supposed to be a door-stopper novel. Oops), but as I went on things like "this hangar should be regularly exposed to vacuum, how can you leave gym equipment in here" bothered me more and more. By the time of Sunset and Evening Star I couldn't let that state of affairs stand. So: this hangar is regularly exposed to vacuum. No fancy force fields that keep in the air but let out shuttles. You don't leave anything in here that isn't protected from vacuum and strapped down.

The hangar is the limiting factor in the size of the entire ship; it has to fit between the central elevator and the hangar door, and it must fit two Kodiaks. To reach this size I had to make the Kodiaks boxier; my drawings are taller for their length than the game models. They still seat twelve, and there's room for one to do a 180 on it's axis while the other is in its cradle. The hangar floor slopes down slightly towards the door in the middle, and the Kodiaks are 'shelved' to the sides.

Cortez runs the flight deck from the exact same place he is in game, but now he has bulkheads and windows between himself and the cold death of space. Airlocks on either side give access to the flight deck. There are also giant doors straight into the deck 4 cargo bays, but those won't open unless the hangar is pressurized.

Marine Land

Jack's Sulking Pit is now a gym, with weights, treadmill, stationary bike, heavy bags, and mats for sparing (and occasionally making pillow forts for evacuee toddlers). Mats are usually stored stowed against the wall, and other equipment can be moved as needed.

To port are the marine berths. The usual compliment of marines is a dozen, including their unit leader, but there are twelve bunks as well as the officer's tiny cabin (because there's no point wasting the space, and you never know). Other than their semi-privacy, the marine racks are no different from the enlisted racks on the two decks above.*

*"Except for the smell." — the rest of the crew, probably.

Berthing the marines on deck 5 is all about quick access to their arms, armor, and transport. Directly across from the marine berths is the entrance to the locker room and armory. After armoring up they grab their weapons and can get to the shuttle through an airlock entrance in the armory. On the way back, they reverse the process; stow weapons, strip off armor — often dropping damaged plating into the recycler chute as they go by — strip down, and shower.

The Alliance military is gender neutral, and nowhere is this as obvious as the marine lockers. The marine unit regularly strips down in front of each other; it's just part of getting ready for work. You can't be body-shy and be an Alliance Marine.

(I like to think the separate bathrooms on the crew deck were the Illusive Man's weird traditionalist decision. Sometimes the gendered-bathroom thing starts to grate on Bo Huan, the third-watch pilot, so they come down to deck five to use the locker room showers, leading Joker to quip "Ah, the third gender: marine!")

More engineering, and the answers to a few questions

Ladders from deck 4 lead down to another engineering area on the hangar level. It's not connected to the main areas of the deck by conventional corridors, but it is accessible through the warren of service passages that run throughout the ship. More of those access-ways lead aft of the eezo core chamber to the fusion plant (not shown). Because the core chamber narrows faster than the ship, it's easier to get around it here than it is on the engineering deck, where the core chamber is at it's widest but the hull has started to narrow. These access tunnels are rarely comfortable to get through, though they often open out into areas that are easier to work in, or into surprising pockets of unused space. They may require crawling or climbing, or clambering over obstacles.

All the maintenance accesses are kept pressurized and aired up, but the habitable area shown on these posts is wrapped in an inner hull, and the doors for maintenance access are all pressure doors: if a hit damages the tunnel you use to access the ship's innards, it won't kill all the crew in the room next to it.**

**It will obliterate the illicit still and the not-actually-a-secret-make-out-nest, as well as anyone stupid enough to be distilling and***/or fucking in those locations, which is why we don't lollygag between the hulls in combat, private!

***AND?****

****Some people are remarkably talented.

Normandy redesign posts

Intro

Loft

Command

Crew

Engineering

Hangar

[arthur-lesters-spinal-cord]

I view Kayne as outside gender due to him being a god so human concepts of gender really dont matter to him. He just prefers to use a form that presents as male around Arthur but within the Bellaverse she uses she/her around Bella and has a form that matches.

I was chatting with @grayscale-sparks about this and woke up to some absolutely amazing dresses they found, which I had to go draw immediately!!

[shorthaltsjester]

Imogen Temult, Exaltant Hope of the Red Storm

Heroes and Monsters by Penny & Sparrow // Critical Role Campaign 3

[edwinisms]

you ever think about how edwin got like. no warning, no time time to process, nothing, when he reappeared on earth faced with the fact that virtually everyone he knew in life is dead. his parents? probably died in the 1950s or so (at best) almost forty years prior to edwin’s return. if any of his classmates were still around, they’d have been elderly, possibly senile, and in a few years they’d all be gone– except, of course, edwin. nothing looks the same, cars look like spaceships, there actually are spaceships, he can no longer see the stars, and everyone he knew is dead.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[luckyartdrawer]

(Warning: Body horror, Dead bugs, Blorbo in bad shape, Sap that looks like blood)

Putting the art below since I think a good chunk of people may not wanna see their blorbo be stuck in a tree covered in bugs. :)

(Apologies for the 10 seconds of dead air, Tumblr won't upload music without it!)

I am the honeybee

Drink the blood of the tree

I can't breathe, I can't see

Evil wind comforts me

Buried deep inside of me

Acarine

Buried deep inside of me

Acarine

vvv Alts and Yapping below! vvv

(Wish we could do more than one break rip)

No Bees, No Post Processing

Goofy ahh starting sketch

HEHEHE BE SUBJECTED TO THE MIND OF A CYCLE PATH

But actually you are being subjected to my music tastes, literally this whole idea comes from my interpretation of lyrics from the hit band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. ✨✨✨

Like imagine this: You wake up one day after years of being offline, only to find that you've been abandoned for so long that a full on tree grew through you. (Like how some do with stop signs or other posts.) The sap is all mucked up in your gears and all over your body, and then you notice all the little bees eating the sap. But oh- they aren't moving. With a quick scroll through the ceaseless database in your mind, the answer finds itself. You, the tree, and these bees are infested with Acarine.

Hope y'all enjoyed the art and the little snippet of the song I added in! :3

It just didn't feel right to not add the song I mean C'MON THE MOOD OF THIS MAN- THE SONG IS SO MOODY

AND ITS ONLY A TRANSITION SONG UAGHHH- I love this band <3

Anyways, combining both of my hyperfixations has proven to have done magic for me, so follow your heart lovelies. lololol

(Definitely not the last time Imma do that either oop-)

I have multiple art projects I already started but I cranked this one out in 5 hours because I needed it out of my head. I also thought it would be an amazing lighting practice and a good excuse to try new brushes and techniques. :333

It seems like with how busy I was in both October and November, I didn't get all the spookiness out of me yet. I've been thinking of horror stuff so much lately. o3o Hopefully this lets me embrace the holly jolly now lol

Man I'm so glad fall semester is over, I needed this-

I also need to go to bed 2:30 already uagh-

[paulorlac]

really big fan of this clip where you can practically hear the writer's thought process of solving a story beat issue with a little bit of fourth wall breaking but then realizing that beetlejuice would be too stupid understand how act structures work and just deciding to do both jokes at once

[vaguely-concerned]

idea: mourn watch student beds are often basically just repurposed or leftover coffins and sarcophagi. (omg. younger novices sometimes sleeping communally in unoccupied catacomb niches like they're bunk beds.....) the only thing that makes emmrich's romance scene remarkable as to the usual sleeping arrangements of a watcher is that a) they're sleeping and ahem enjoying other activities on like. just the naked bedframe with no sheets or mattress or anything. rare L for emmrich's rizz going on here unless he thought the full coffin experience would add something for rook (they are dating him specifically; he might be right in his priorities here honestly) and b) it's emmrich doing it (by the time you've reached the seniority he's at most watchers have taken steps to make their quarters more comfortable and easy on the joints and back than the equivalent of the sad folding bed from your college days. i fully believe emmrich has a luxurious double bed with silk sheets somewhere further up in the necropolis but such is his commitment to sweep rook off their feet goth style and by all means it seems to be working flawlessly, I won't embarrass myself by presuming to teach a master how to practice his art, as you were professor volkarin)

[th3archivisst]

Things I've started noticing in media as someone who recently developed a not yet diagnosed chronic pain disorder that has fucked up my life.

- seeing rep for any. Any. Disability makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

- in fandom, every time I see another disabled person discuss a disabled character, they actually like analysing the character in terms of how they function with their disability. But I only ever see ablebodied people make aus in which "everything is fine".

- seeing arguments about what is and isn't good representation is extremely draining. This goes for any minority, many of which I'm part of. It's an important conversation to have, but so often the focus is on tearing down the character instead of building them back up yourself. The approach is too focused on rooting out the bad apples, not on planting the seeds for better ones.

So often I see complaints, and those complaints are entirely valid. I agree with most of them. But wouldn't it be more productive to point out what was done right and suggest what could've been done to make it even better? If there's one thing school taught me, it's that constant criticism just leads to resentment.

Make up ocs with disabilities, draw them as well as you can or commission someone to draw them for you and post that shit with a detailed explanation. Someone is bound to see it. Write fanfiction of your favourite character and go in depth on the struggles they face and how they still find happiness alongside those struggles. Make videos or write books or animate something and include your story there, because that won't make you miserable. Force people to see you for who you are. It's far more effective than getting into arguments online.

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is telling us one cool thing you did or learned about today?🥺please?

[ingihasextra]

toby fox and co youve done it again

[glassrooibos]

Cheeky sneak peak at a bad kids piece?! Fantasy high was the first ever dimension 20 show I ever watched, I can’t believe I’ve never drawn them before.