#Empire Extreme

[jdrespling]

Shinedown/Papa Roach/Spiritbox Pittsburgh Show Review

[ruubesz-draws]

Minus One is a menace

From (link):

[vaguely-concerned]

sometimes I think of all the on-the-surface warm, well-meaning but deeply ineffectual advice and attention john gives harrow through harrow the ninth (make some soup and get some sleep! get a hobby! don't be so hard on yourself! self care harrow! as long as I need take no actual responsibility in this relationship whatsoever I would have loved to be your dad!) set up against the stark truth that with his other hand he has been staging her attempted horrific murder again and again and again like a living nightmare on the logic that it will 'put her down or fix her'. and then I find that I wish there is a hell. a special hell where twitch streamers turned necromantic death emperors go

[solargeist]

AG YOUR SHELBY DESIGN IS SO CUTE!!!!! pls draw more empires shelby 💙

THANK U this was meant to be a small doodle but i liked it too much omg

[fluffylord]

Look how far I went, for fear of losing you.

[boatem-probler]

been chewing on this conversation between pearl and gem this week:

Gem: I know you didn't kill me!

Pearl: So what are you cranky about?

...

Gem: I'm just- you know, I wanted some drama! So, this is the drama, you're welcome.

Pearl: "This is the drama". You're telling me we could've been friends this whole time but you're just like "yoohoohoohoohoohoohoo... I hate you!"

Gem: Yeah, I mean, why not!

and i'm connecting it to gem in empires season 2, where like. in the context of the fiction everyone else had been living in that world their whole lives and that's their reality, like, it's real to them.

and meanwhile gem is just roleplaying. like, she was a being from another world who just came there because she wanted to play at being a human princess for a while. and then when she's called away she's just like. anyway i was never actually a princess or a mortal being from this dimension and we're never gonna see each other again, sorry for the existential crisis, bye!

and anyway i think she has a similar deal in the life series. like, everyone else is there because they're trapped in the Torment Nexus, gem is there because she wants to be.

[adm-starblitzsteel-4305]

BRO'S REALLY PISSED TODAY AND SAYS "FUCK OFF YOU LITTLE SHITS"

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[thanatika]

so, one thing i've noticed about the writing of pathologic 3 is that they're using a lot more real world proper nouns, which is interesting. the first game avoided this, which is why the game is set on the backdrop of The Town, The Capital, The Inquisition, The War. they don't explicitly establish the town as being in the russian steppe, or call the capital st. petersburg or moscow, or refer to the inquisition as the okhrana or cheka or kgb, or explicitly name the great war or the russian civil war. i don't think the first games ever even confirmed that the setting is in russia, though it pretty obviously is.

i think the lack of proper nouns was a better approach that fit the allegorical, fairytale tone of the story way better. that said, if it were going to feature in any of the character's routes, it should be the bachelor's, since he's more connected to the outside world. and the historical references do allow us to make more inferences about the setting of the world, which is fun. like, the mention of okhrana agents (along with other mentions of "empire" throughout the demo), cements that the game takes place during the rule of tsarist russia (or at least a proxy for it), which i always suspected but was previously left ambiguous. the Okhrana was the secret police force of the russian empire. as for what okhrana agents do...

that last tidbit feels extremely reminiscent of how the inquisition is described, with a very small number of inquisitors. from yulia in P2: "An organization of geniuses. I believe the Inquisitorial Corps is nineteen strong. Or was it eighteen…? No, nineteen, unless Orff resigned."

though in the game's case, the small number of inquisitors is framed more as attributable to the extremely high, "genius" standard required of an inquisitor, rather than underfunding. i'm not sure if we're supposed to read the okhrana as actually existing in the world of P3 separately from the inquisition, or perhaps if the inspector from the demo is meant to be an agent of theirs, but it's interesting.

[jdrespling]

INTERVIEW WITH TWIN TEMPLE

Being Married and being in a band together. Do you feel that makes it easier or harder? We love to do the Devil’s work together so for us its a match made in hell.  What’s your favorite horror movie? That’s hard to narrow down but the first few that come to mind are Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil Rides Out, Wickerman, The Devils Reign featuring Anton Lavey, Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, anything…

[circle-around-again]

wwoww i wonder why he's so messed up

[archivistofnerddom]

I’d love a short about Omega being a teenager on Pabu — and she’s just a normal teenager dealing with puberty, hormones, normal teenage melodrama, and her brothers just being so embarrassing and the absolute worst!

Hunter is also there, but he’s having a protracted anxiety attack and existential crisis because what happened to his sweet, curious, and compassionate (and mildly chaotic) little sister?

Crosshair and Wrecker get to be the peanut gallery and provide updates on this family drama to Echo. (He thinks it’s hysterical.) The only reasons they avoided Hunter’s meltdown are because they found Tech’s notes about what to expect during human puberty and because they actually listened to Shep about the eventual pitfalls of parenting a teenager.

[sforzesco]

lmao the rival dynasts are fighting and they're fucking it up for everyone else at a record pace

this tweet made me laugh, and I frequently make political comparisons between these specific groups of people, so now it's finally a comic

regarding the OctavianOctaviaAntony Uniteam Alliance

Octavia Minor and the Transition from Republic to Empire, Katrina Moore

in the red panel, which is an obvious anachronistic soup of events happening all at once: we have on the left: messalla corvinus

Alternative Memoirs: Tales from the ‘Other Side’ of the Civil War, Kathryn Welch

and then octavia (in despair & weaponizing that sacrosanctity to turn rome against antony), some kids (the two closest to antony are the twins, but tbh you can just kind of. pick whoever from the soccer team of kids antony had)

octavian and antony's back and forth is referencing suetonius augustus 68 and 69 (specifically: Antony also writes to Augustus [...] "What has made such a change in you? Because I lie with the queen? She is my wife. Am I just beginning this, or was it nine years ago? What then of you — do you lie only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you read this letter you have not been with Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it matter where or with whom you take your pleasure?") and also the whole. thing. about antony's will. that sure was something.

the herod comment from kleopatra is referencing all of this

Mark Antony: A Biography, Eleanor Huzar

AND FINALLY. the art in the inset panels are from The Roses of Heliogabalus, Lawrence Alma-Tadema

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[righthandedleftturn]

Ghostbusters

[brokehorrorfan]

Hero Complex Gallery has released a Real Ghostbusters 17x11 giclee print by Andrew Kolb. Priced at $35, it's limited to 10.

[egonspenglerectoplasm]

No, we're not homosexual, but we are willing to learn 🥸