#the level lords

[archie-sunshine]

first time anon o//o but am big fan of your Spire ocs!!!! gwah the designs are marvelous 💖 would love to learn abt each of the floor lords’ whole schtick and what their level is like, i would really love to learn more about them!!!!!

AAAAA SO I REALLY APPRECIATE THIS ASK TYSM I SCREAAAM! but, there are like. 15 of them and i want to go crazy in detail about them, so I drew them all little face thingies so that people can ask in more detail about the ones they're interested in. SO! In order, here all of them are!!!

there are a lot of them, but i promise i have thought meticulously about every single one because i'm completely fucking insane.

[lornaka]

Dad

[gorofeet]

Yuri on Ice officially going down in history today as the most insane fumble of a franchise that i’ve ever seen in my life

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

I’m obsessed with Kate and Anthony just having their arms interlinked while playing charades

Because there is literally no need for it, they’re already sitting right beside each other, shoulder to shoulder, and they’re playing charades, which is not something that requires them to move in coordination??? And, you can see the empty space on the couch beside Kate, so there’s plenty of space

But does any of that really matter to Viscount and Viscountess Velcro? Not even a little bit!

They will be interlinking their arms through a game of charades, because simply sitting next to each other is not enough, they must have, at least, four points of contact between themselves at all times

[eliounora]

elrond and celebrían💫

[bereaving]

LINGLING KWONG & ORM KORNNAPHAT Only You The Series Promo Shoot BTS

[butadailovehim]

sometimes i imagine young elrond (relatively young, you know for elves) grieving the loss of his brother, trying to respect his decision to die a mortal death, really respecting his decision, but still feeling sour about it from time to time when everything becomes too much, sorta thinking you left me alone, why did you leave me alone and celebrian, galadriel, everybody around him is saying something along the lines everything happens for a reason and sure, elros becoming the first great king of numenor should be enough reason and elrond understands that? but it still makes his heart ache, but he lives on, he keeps an eye on his brother's line, protects the middle earth where it counts, and that's how it goes for a couple hundred years

and then there comes a human woman with a little boy, and sure there were many before. he kept an eye on his brother's descendants before, but this one is so small and his little feet take him all around rivendell where he somehow always manages to find trouble, and his eyes are the shade achingly similar to his brothers, and sometimes he calls him ada because he learned it from his other kids

and one day he's reading little estel a story (maybe a legend of an old king who rose to greatness before he faded away) and he looks at the child snoring away on his chest, a child that wouldnt be here had elros made a different choice

and he thinks. oh. that was the reason.

[starry-bi-sky]

yall ever think Shen Yuan went through like, internet withdrawal after being transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu? Like, he's canonically a NEET shut-in who did nothing but spend his time online, you can't tell me that for the first week or first few weeks of being SQQ he wasn't twitchy.

Like, reaching instinctively to his pockets for a phone that wasn't there, having an obsessive itch in the back of his mind that he should check and see if X or Y novel or webcomic has updated -- only to realize he can't anymore and being irritated by it. Wanting to go and see if there's new posts about this or that, but again realizing that he can't.

When he's bored or uncomfortable or just feels like wanting to escape he tries to go for his phone to distract himself, but oops! Not there anymore, and now he has to find a new and different way to distract himself from his feelings. And going through system notifications, quests, etc only does so much.

And there's that Tetris Effect too. SQQ makes a mistake while writing and instinctively goes to backspace on it except hey-ho that's not a keyboard and now he just dipped his pinkie into a bottle of ink or on a still-drying letter.

With him scrambling to fix his reputation and learn how to be a peak lord, I think his abrupt cold-turkey from all things internet would just be another straw on the camel's back that he promptly Ignores until it goes away on its own after he acclimates to his new surroundings.

[felix-krain]

in honor of the countless times this guy kicked my ass (wym I was underleveled???? lies.)

(sketch version under cut)

[stealingpotatoes]

hands you all this cal to announce i’ve FINALLY finished fallen order (by which i mean i finally picked it up again after those couple hours i played a few months ago and then finished the whole game in 2 days lol)

[ghooostugs]

ok this is horridly unfinished but i am giving up on it so now its whatever. methinks modern au jinx is like, a top tier enjoyer of scene culture and i have an entire wardrobe of outfits i wanna draw her in stored in my mind palace™️

[novuit]

Bnuy Engerland for the soul :)

[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.

[sunderwight]

Considering how popular Qijiu and Liujiu are as a ships, and that a lot of people seem to headcanon Liu Qingge as having at least crushed on Yue Qingyuan for a while, I'm surprised there aren't more throuple/OT3 fics for them.

I mean not actually because it would be such a bad idea. They would have so many problems. There would be so many hurdles, like even just getting two of these guys to hookup usually involves some degree of truth serum or cosmic intervention or fuck-or-die scenarios, but embroiling all three of them in something like that would just let their bizarro brain worms thrive. Each of them is convinced that they are somehow the third wheel. Shen Jiu thinks that the only thing stopping Liu Qingge from plotting to kill him is that he's not clever enough to plot, and that Yue Qingyuan is enduring his inclusion under sufferance of guilt. Liu Qingge thinks that Shen Jiu is definitely actively plotting to kill him to get him out of the way, and that Yue Qingyuan is enduring his inclusion under sufferance of guilt. Yue Qingyuan is sure that any day now Liu Qingge and Shen Jiu are going to figure out that they're actually perfect for one another and then eject him from the polycule. They are all not speaking to each other but also regularly having furniture-shattering sex. Despite everything, the sex improves their dispositions so much that none of the other peak lords dare to intervene.

[galstelperion]

[hazelfoureyes]

I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

GO LOOK AT THEIR GODDAMN PAGE AND THANK THEM

UPDATE THEY HAVE A NSFW PATREON