batsdapenguin101

Latest Posts by batsdapenguin101

"Whitestone Endures..."

HAPPY SATURDAY I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE DONE THIS!!! And it's not DONE done, not yet. I still need to make the armor, but the clothes are pretty much done and I am THRILLED! I got so excited to finish this because it reminds me of when I first started cosplaying. I bought the accessories, but I am not a seamstress so I thrifted/found the clothes and painted the jacket for this.

When I wanted to cosplay Neon Katt and Nora Valkyrie from RWBY back in 2017/2018, buying the costumes outright wasn't really an option so I had to buy/find regular clothes and alter them. I still don't OFTEN outright buy full costumes and even more rarely do I use EVERY piece of a bought costume, unaltered, but getting together a bunch of unrelated pieces and making them a cohesive costume just feels like so much more of an accomplishment to me! So I'm thrilled I got to do this like this! I found the white jacket at the thrift store for LITERALLY a dollar and painted the collar and then a friend sent me the blue dress because she ended up not using it for level 13 Imogen.

The armor is NOT going to be quite this simple but I have a bit of a plan and we'll see how it works out! I'm also starting on Level 20 Percy for my fiance so HOPEFULLY Lord and Lady de Rolo will be out and about for Anime Frontier! (Why so late in the year? Well, you'll see 👀🤫)

when you're talking about the character and the person who likes the character starts typing for a long time

I've never been much for ships but Exandria has opened my eyes. They're literally perfect for each other.

The most gorgeous woman on Exandria vs her little feral husband

I had a vision

Kill is a strong word

But not support it, definitely Don't use AI folks, it's bad for you

E p i c

sorry for being gone so long. here’s some oc art

this is pumpkin (they/them) :3 might share some of their lore at some point idk

ref for second piece of art will be under the readmore (it was initially just supposed to be anatomy/pose practice using a ref but i ended up drawing pumpkin instead. oops. looks a little messy cuz im too burnt out to draw actual lineart so i just cleaned the sketch up a bit, hurriedly coloured it and left it with no shading lmao).

tbh burnout has like. been kicking my ass hence lack of posting + changes in art quality but it is what it is

do not use, trace, repost, feed to ai or in any way steal my art‼️ (reblogs are okay though :3)

(ref found on pinterest)

Thanks Tumblr for further depression.

Does it ever drive you crazy just how fast the night changes?

Lifespan angst you will always have me

The Gunslinger

I just wanted to sketch the boy~

Friendo art,check it outtt

been watching a friend play lobcorp, and have been requesting characters and ocs to be added as nuggets with some other friends :D tord ofc got made and was immediately put in the magical girl ego equipment

no shading cuz im tired and burnt out, im sorry </3 click on the art 4 better quality cuz tumblr fucked it up again. badly

do not use, trace, repost, feed to ai or in any way steal my art‼️ (reblogs are okay though :3)

Hello! I've just joined tumblr, so to start off I decided to post some Untertale drawings I've done before!

Power of friendship...

Thinking about Asmodeus being reborn as Jester and Fjord's kid. A red skinned tiefling who everyone says takes after his grandmother.

Asmodeus totally having all the plans to regain his powers and destroy all the prime deities. But... well no plan survives contact with Jester.

Him delaying plans just because... what in the hells is she going to do next... he kinda wants to find out.

Jester being the most loving and chaotic parent. Because of course Jester would 1000% still go off on adventures bringing the baby along. Him just watching the pure chaos and expert trickery.

Having Fjord as a dad who is the most caring and excited dad, and trying to balance out Jester's insanity 'No Jester we cannot take the baby to the fae realm I know Beau is opening a new Beau bar but we also shouldn't be taking a baby to a bar opening'. Also who was in a deal with darkness but found his way out.

Him just being along with the mighty nein as extended family who are all chaotic and loving and not what he's used to with adventures he's dealt with. He's stuck with emotions for them and he hates it.

First time he pulls tricks and lies Jester just hugs him she's so proud of him and so his uncle Artie. His trickery and lies becoming far more Jester adjacent.

Also him pulling pranks just to freak Braius out when he visits

Bonus: Beau and Yasha end up unknowingly adopting one of the other gods and the first time Asmodeus and the other see each other it just being that always sunny scene in the restaurant. (Neither saying anything or blowing cover because they like this family not that either will ever admit this)

Not sure about Cad,but by the gods these are all fucking accurate

I got bored so I put the m9 into the random headcanon generator

Lmao Bane got jumped by three gods

Good Night Bells Hells

Good Night Mighty Nein

Good Night Vox Machina

also, my wife used the phrase “general, exandria” and my brain transformed that into General Exandria instead of Captain America and now I need fanart of Grog in spandex doing the sexy hero turnaround pose saying “Dat’s Exandria’s ass”

Sometimes you have to frantically doodle a mini comic after the show ends b/c that moment was TOO GOOD XD

The Knowing Mistress to Vecna: Become human so i can fist figth you in the Taste of Tal’Dorei parking lot

I was wrong.

Something, something Vesper representing heaven as an assimar and being Percy's best qualities while Gwen is hell and possibly having the worst parts of Percy's qualities while also being Percy's almost favourite child-

(also thank you our lovely Dani Carr for confirming Vesper's race)

Maybe I am a minority here but I really don't want the world to view BH as villains. They genuinely do not deserve that and in my eyes, it would be both unfair and unwarranted. This group of outcasts, who are made up of their pain and trauma and have barely been making it through life, lost or left alone. This group that claws itself through life, day after day, feeling unaccepted. Nobodies, all of a sudden pushed into the spotlight of the world. A group that continues to sacrifice and worry and hope and fight and a group that just wants the best for the world in a complicated situation with no perfect answers. It wouldn't be right at all to say they are betraying Exandria, in my opinion. They are trying to subdue the threat of Predathos permanently, at the cost of their own lives, their own safety and sanity. They are trying to bargain, with fate, with gods. For people and the gods themselves. They stopped Ludinus, but there is no stopping the change he has brought. No stopping the fact that the world knows and looks to the moon and the cage and the godeater inside.

They are just trying. They are tired, they were chosen and pushed and pulled and they are trying.

As someone who has spent a year and half watching C1/C2/C3, is now finally caught up, and as a result is finally allowing myself to look at fandom reactions to episodes... Boy, critical role discourse is weird.

People will spend days arguing about who's evil and who isn't, which decisions made sense and which ones did not, whether the plot point is solid or not, what's the consequences of that fake action in that fake world, who's a psychopath and who isn't, which group is better than the other, etc etc etc.

Meanwhile I'm there enjoying every single episode of that show. For ten years, this group of friends has met every week to roll some dice. They've created characters that made them laugh, and cry, and smile, and frown, and shout, in excitement, fury, terror and joy. Through them, they've lived adventures, drama, tension, trauma, in a sandbox world they'll never put a foot in. They've created wonders in Exandria, then destroyed them just to see what would happen (shout out to Emon and the Chroma Conclave arc 🎉).

Their world had mystical artifacts, so they created lost civilisations to justify both their existence and rarity. It had Gods, so they gave them backstories and myths, to make this world feel real. They understood that history in itself is flawed, so the knowledge of the past is changing. Each campaign, they went on bigger questions, bigger challenges. From very early on, Campaign 3 has been questioning the status quo between Gods and Mortals, and what we know of the deities has evolved as a result. Why should I care, really, whether Bell's Hells are right or not to challenge the Gods. It's obviously a storyline that Matt and the rest of the cast were curious to explore, so they're doing it. Maybe it'll work out great, maybe it won't, they don't know, and that's fine. After all, what is the point of a sandbox world if you cannot push a few red buttons.

And of course, not every plot point or decision is going to be resilient to scrutiny. It's an improvised ttrpg game, with 100+ episodes per campaign, and we're almost at 500h in length for C3. Yesterday, in my ttrpg, I forgot who my new vice purveyor was, after I overindulged a few months ago (... It's a Blade in the Dark thing). Last week, I invented a drag persona for my character because I was trying to find a distraction and I panicked. Ttrpg are soooo random, mate. Even with professional players like the Critical Role folks, it stays a ttrpg. Things get forgotten. Some things get developed and others don't get the time to. Discussions happen, and sometimes they happen again six months later because maybe characters have changed or maybe not. It's not a scripted TV show, where things can be planned in advance and you know the characters will stick to the script. Inconsistencies will happen, and that's fine.

(Contrary to my ttrpg though, the CR folks are absolutely mind-blowing improv actors and watching them every week stays absolutely thrilling to me. Some of the things you all have apparently fought a long time about are some of my favorite moments, in any of the campaigns. See swordgate, a masterpiece of dramatic improv and bonkers choices. Those players are *not here* to stay safe, they want to feel the highest highs and the lowest lows and I am there for it 🥺.)

Watch as this page shifts from hating on Zehir and solely talking about the pantheon into me talking nonstop nonsense about the De Rolo family. One must imagine Percival happy.

There won't be another Aeor now, because Aeor was a very specific kind of tragedy, wherein the gods prioritized their own survival over the survival of huge swathes of mortals. They had choice after choice after choice where they could have diverted to a more merciful path. Even in the very last moments, they could have just destroyed the Factorum Malleus and spared the rest of the city, and found another way to deal with the knowledge that had been disseminated. But they chose their own immediate security over the lives of every regular person in Aeor, every refugee and civilian and child. The Primes may love mortals, may work to protect them, but when it comes down to it, they will choose themselves (and their Betrayer kin!) every time. It is love with a very big caveat.

Two thirds of the world's population died in the Calamity because the Betrayers were initially banished, not destroyed. The gods say they cannot let any of the Betrayers die because they might need them if a bigger threat arises, but what good does that potential possible protection do Exandria if their warring wipes the world out now? Why should anyone, god or mortal, expect that the Betrayers would help fend off such a threat anyway, when they very clearly want the Primes and all mortals dead? There was so much emphasis in Downfall on how, despite it all, the Primes and Betrayers are family and the Primes cannot let that go. It's hard to take Ayden at face value when he says that they need the Betrayers, in the light of that. SILAHA says "That's all our problem. It's all about ourselves. At least I have the, well, confidence to actually accept it." And that's the truth of their motivation that their actions indicate in Downfall.

The Arch Heart and the Matron explicitly told the Hells that the world was on the cusp of another Calamity. Except for those two, when confronted with the possibility of Predathos, the gods wanted to chose, once again, to sacrifice the lives of countless mortals in order to protect themselves. The Divine Gate is meant to stop another Calamity, but now we know that they are willing to tear it down to save themselves. So Calamity is the threat that hangs over the world much more immediately than potential cosmic horrors.

I don't think anyone is out here saying that this plan with the gods becoming mortal means that there will never be any danger to Exandria again. There ARE terrible threats that exist, like the Chained Oblivion and there are almost certainly more that exist out is the cosmos that are currently unknown. Predathos might eat those or it might not, we don't actually know. There absolutely will be more evil mortals, just as there will be mortal heroes to stop them, as they always have. This is not the creation of utopia. It's the aversion of another apocalypse.

But something that struck me, at least, about Aeor, something that I think often get lost underneath all the other debate, under the focus on hubris, is the stark fact that mortal understanding grew to the point where they could create a weapon that could kill a god. That's incredible. If the gods saw mortal understanding reach so far and instead of saying "you are children and cannot comprehend and so we will strike your knowledge from the world because it is too dangerous for you," said "you are our children and you are growing up, perhaps we should help you understand" what might mortal innovation have accomplished? What solutions would mortal creativity come up with that might have surprised their creators? If the gods chose to treat mortal attempts to understand with encouragement instead of condescension, what might the Cassida Previns of the world built?

You say that level of power has to exist to fight off the next eldritch horror that arrives. Why does that power have to be concentrated in a small handful of gods above any sort of accountability? Why can't it be power distributed amongst a larger number of mortals, defending themselves? Why can't it be mortals, no longer children to be shielded but instead come into their ascendancy to fully inherit the world and its responsibilities? Why can't mortals be equal to the gods, not in the sense sought by those power-hungry mages, but as a collective, with the gods reborn among them and treating them, as it were, as adults, who might come to understand?

In the final narration for Downfall, Brennan says:

"In short, brief life can even the infinite change, realize, recognize, commit to something new, singular. To move forward on the paths of destiny and fate, changed."

And I think this choice being given to the gods to become mortal again, beyond just giving them the ability to survive at the cost of their power, is also offering them the chance to learn and grow the way mortals do again. Being mortal in their quest to destroy Aeor, ending even as it did in something horrific, did actually change them enough that they created the Divine Gate. That was a sacrifice and it was better than what was before it. But it was not enough and now that the flaws in that approach have become clear, it's time to look for another path. Mortality offers that. And I think seeing how mortality could change them further will be a hell of a story, and I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, I don't particularly think this is going to convince you or anything, you seem pretty mad, but it's fun to talk about this stuff, and you gave me an excuse, so thanks.

I think It's safe to assume all the De Rolo children know how to hunt (maybe not Gwen since she's more of Percy's kid). I wonder how many of the kids asked Percy for a gun at one point in their childhood and what they actually know about his reputation as "the terrible tinkerer of Tal'dorei".

I'm still thinking about the proposed next step for the gods and-

It's actually so interesting that Bell's Hells - voice of the people lmao - have come up with a solution that has the possibility to be better for the gods than mortals.

It always struck me as kind of tragic that the gods were forced to change from these shapeless beings of endless possibility into static icons of their domain, possibly incapable of further change.

For them it's a chance to be something different! It's a chance to be back on Exandria! It's a chance to be closer to their children! It's a load off their backs! A nice break!

But you know who gets the short end of the stick?? Their worshippers. The people who depend on their god to answer their prayer? Ooof, who knows how that would work.

Even if we assume they can copy the Traveler model - that still leaves like. a 15 to 20 year gap from birth to adulthood when they wouldn't be able to act as gods! And that's ignoring what the vast majority of people actually want out of their god! Because most of them aren't clerics, or expect a real answer to their prayer - but they do want the comfort of praying to their God. And not a secretary.

Gruumsh: I AIN'T TOUCHING THAT SHIT YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN.

Vasselheim soldier casts divine intervention to The Ruiner, but gets scared off by Imogen

“Discuss with who” -soldier

“Certainly not you, why don’t you step aside” -Laudna

I've already said it in the Beacon Discord-

Why just not have Tharizdun and Predathos have a kaiju battle and kill each other while the gods just chill on Exandria?

I wish you would write a fic where Percy and Vex need to get warm.

Do with that what you will. (It is effing cold here so it’s on my mind) lol

This welcome has been, so nice and warm

900+ words | Gen | Perc'ahlia | TLOVM s3 and C1 compliant, set in the 1-year timeskip.

I wish you would write a fic where... prompt game

EDIT: Now cleaned up and on AO3!

--

Vex loves Percy. I mean, it’s a simple, straightforward fact. So much of him is reflected in Whitestone that it’s impossible not to love the city too. 

She might just love it a bit less right now, though. Apparently something about turning Whitestone into a necromancer's paradise impacted weather patterns (guess it’s hard to raise undead in frozen ground?) - because Percy remarked, during Winter’s Crest last year, that it was an unusually balmy winter.

This one is not unusually balmy. It’s cold. It’s skin-prickling, hair-frosting, finger-tingling fucking oppressively cold. 

Vex never knew it was even possible to be too cold for snow. But she’s definitely fucking familiar with the concept now!

It sure doesn’t feel like the Dawnfather smiles on her when the dawn was several hours late, and she woke up to several feet of snow, and to have any hope of catching anything she had to leave her very cozy bed and even cozier Percy.

Another thing to hate about this weather? Dressing up. Gone are the days of throwing on boots and bounding off for a hunt. She needs not one but two hosen on her legs, and a sweater and a jacket and a cloak on top, and gloves, and big huge boots that make her feel like the clumsiest thing in the whole fucking Alabaster Sierras if the rest of the outfit didn’t already accomplish that.

And a hat. A knit, tight hat that she has to drag over her ears or the points will freeze. It feels like she’s going deaf when she wears the thing.

After several hours of vigil in a tree - a third of them taken before sunrise when even that couldn’t warm her - Vex finally just gave up and trekked home. Because even for the Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt there was only so long she could fight off shivers to stay still. And feel every breath sharply. And watch her scarf and fur collar and stray strands of her own fucking hair slowly prickle with frost. 

She must have frostbite. Even if her magic doesn’t seem to catch on any damage. She’ll get inside, take off her gloves, and see that her fingers are black and falling off and Pike will have to leave the bakery to put them back on.

Not like she has any use for those stupid fingers; they’re stiff with cold, and she doesn’t have any game to haul back.

Everything sucks even more knowing she - don’t forget, the Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt - didn’t even hunt anything. Not even a rabbit, or a turkey, or a glimpse of that Grey Render. Funny thing: the wildlife has the sense not to be out in this weather, even if she doesn’t.

(The worst part is that Trinket, for the first time in his whole life, has decided to hibernate. Because the Parchwood is the sort of place bears want nothing to do with when the days start to shorten. And it means that Vax is in Zephrah, where it never snows, and Trinket is soundly sleeping in the warmest part of her mansion, and Vex is out here alone.)

(It means there’s less body heat to keep her warm out here. Of course.)

Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt who sucks at hunting in the Parchwood for a third of the year. It’s times like these where she’s really giddy the mansion was completed not long after the first frost; she can avoid the (surely super judgemental) stares of the townsfolk.

She just… has to fight through knee-high snow to get back. Or awkwardly step through the tracks she left in the morning. Or test the thin sheet of ice on the top of the snow, make it a few strides before crashing through. And no matter what she does her socks end up cold and wet!

By the time the lights are in sight she’s exhausted, and sweaty, and pissed, and really itching to kill something. And above all else, freezing. It’s almost enough to dull the ire - almost.

A petty part of her heart hisses that she never, ever should have fallen in love with a clever, thoughtful, nerdy, proud, cynical, and extremely sexy man who happens to live where it gets fuckoff cold for a solid third of the year.

Except as she trudges closer, she can see his silhouette in the window. And the moment that interruption in the light jerk upright because he’s seen her, too.

Except he leaves that warm, cozy home they’ve made to meet her outside with his coat and slippers. And he kisses her burning cheek and steals her hunting gear and rambles about some idle nothing - and notes he’s got hot chocolate on the stove. 

Except once they’re in the mudroom, and her cold skin prickles at how balmy it is in here, he’s taking her hands and warming them in his. And he’s taking off her boots and grimacing in sympathy at the packed snow and agreeing it’s awful out there, she’s entirely correct, and he’ll be sure to have those poor cold feet in his lap as soon as possible. Yes, by the fire, of course, he’s not a madman.

Except he’s so delighted to have her back, so happy to have an excuse to pamper her. And Percy, with an impish delight, cocoons her in thick blankets and tugs her along to the little nest he’s made by the hearth. And Vex, impossibly, falls a little more in love with him every time he leads her through this dance.

Because Percy, as a man of fuckoff-cold Whitestone, has getting warm down to a science, and Vex can almost forget she was ever cold in the first place.

(She has her own thoughts on how two lovers could warm eachother up, of course - but she did fall in love with a clever man.)

I do not care for Zehir.