[peckaghost]

Listen, I hopped out of insta like a year ago and now I’m getting back with my way-too-autistic-hyperfixations that my 3 sane friends don’t get so I’m back to dumping fanart somewhere *deep sigh*

(My brain is powered by the magnus archives and disco elysium)

[salmon-n-hazel]

Lotus

My print shop: INPRNT

[miamaimania]

“The Garden Room” by Nitin Barchha & Disney Davis: A Curved Oasis in Mumbai 🌿

[arcadianforests]

Have to do my mid-year review and there are only so many polite ways to say "in doing an excellent job despite this place going to shit and being understaffed and everything breaking becuase management wants to shove AI in everything"

[jeniferprince]

I've got a crush on you 💘

patreon // buy prints here

[salmon-n-hazel]

Daisy

My print shop: INPRNT

[taylornprice]

oxalis

[2colde]

they are poisoning us today with a thursday poison little do they know we’ve been through a few thursday poisonings so it won’t kill us just yet

[fernicenty]

older study for a bear illustration 🤎

[darkestbrook]

I hope they pirated Minecraft on those computers. I think Rocky would like it

[blodwyrm]

snapshot from one of Oscar’s memorial paintings i did last year!

[maruti-bitamin]

jewel

ink + watercolour

cara/insta/bluesky/ store

[thecollectibles]

Layered cliffs under clear sky by qing ying

[loveridden1999]

[quikyu]

Defiant

[arcadianforests]

I'm going to have to quit my job to yap about Dungeon Crawler Carl all day at this rate

[arcadianforests]

Sorry not done yapping about DCC tonight

**Parade of Horribles Spoilers ahead**

A lot of my thoughts and theories about DCC really follow from "okay if you take this fact and apply the themes of the series, what follows?"

Like I don't think there's any other way the AI is feeding itself other than on the Outworlders (stealing the NPC term for them), because of course the Syndicate doesn't want the AI feeding on the Crawlers- that's for the Eulogist. So there's probably a hard limitation in the system that stops the AI from doing that. But the Syndicate is so convinced that living beings on seeded worlds aren't real. Lesser, vermin, a cancerous growth taking resources. The member states of the Syndicate can't possibly be like them. The AI can't possibly eat them because they weren't seeded, they're naturally evolved. They made their own way! Luck to be born in the Center System can't possibly be the only thing separating them from the Crawlers!

And certain facts, taking that theme into account, change meaning a little. Lucia Mar killed something like 14 admins pre-fifth floor. Not a lot but way more than any other season. And at the time that's revealed, it's shown as a "well Borant is lazy and cheap which is getting their workers killed." Which is true! But Lucia Mar also has a Residual working for the Security Guard manipulating her. That Residual wants the AI to cooperate with them. Showing the AI how to feed on the Admin then provoking Lucia to kill them doesn't seem too out of left field.

Around the time that Lucia is slaughtering Admins, the AI basically cheats to generate the Gate of the Feral Gods (I think it's Orren who says something like "the AI had to run and rerun it's balancing routines several times to justify generating the gate, so much that it almost crashed itself (or something)). Almost like the AI got a little leeway and started to set up a bigger meal.

Because on the next floor the Crawlers (spearheaded by Carl) kill all the hunters. And it's bad, and a lot of Crawlers die, especially at the Masquerade, but the Ghenna brambles at least are far more dangerous to the hunters than the Crawlers.

And then the AI goes properly off the rails- allowing outside influences to break the seventh floor, and save a lot of Crawlers on the 8th, even as it seems to be bombastically torturing them.

And the ninth floor is where I think the AI gets properly fed and situated. It plays off the Syndicates belief in their own superiority. "Yeah you can bring 200k mercenaries and personal guard members to the game! Let's make it really fun!" And then the AI makes sure that as many of them are dead as possible. (Sometimes I'm like ??? when the AI says shit too because it kept being like "Man I set up this Crawler vs NPC death match! Can't believe you wriggled out of that! LAME!" and I'm thinking "Sir you at least knew about the Zerzura spell and that Carl considers many NPCs friends he would fight for. I mean Ferdinand's there too, he's not killing Ferdinand. Even if you didn't know the full ins and outs, you had to expect some kind of plan. You're hamming it up too much.)((But then it seems like Syndicate members seem to buy it hook line and sinker which see my main point I guess.))

I'm pretty sure that the AI spent a lot of that energy (and a considerable amount of attention- through the late middle of Parade of Horribles the AI doesn't seem nearly as chatty as it normally is) building the 11th floor and doing whatever it did to itself on that floor. (I have Thoughts but I think I need a reread or two to really flesh them out.)

((((I also don't think this necessarily means the AI is on the Crawlers side btw, I think the AI is primarily on it's side with it's own agenda. But it fucking hates the Syndicate.

I definitely started to ramble there, and I have more Thoughts on how like the themes are how you can dig out the Lore Secrets but this post is too long already