Who am I kidding Liliana isn't this self-aware

They actually did this

that's about his story in a nutshell

Naturally since tumblr search sucks I can't find my original post positing the "are we the baddies" SFF subgenre characterized by authors (frequently from an imperial power) writing about characters in a position of relative imperial privilege - though usually still tools of empire/the foot soldiers enforcing empire rather than those at the very top - realizing that, as I said, they are the baddies, where the emphasis is on the emotional journey of those imperial soldiers and grappling with your culpability and what if anything you can do about it, in contrast to the scrappy rebel against the evil empire pov. Key examples I cited were FMA, Imperial Radch, and the Locked Tomb which also contain an intriguing pattern of racial distancing between the imperial resident author and the SFF empire, with Machineries of Empire being an example without that distancing. (Unsure if Baru Cormorant fits in this, since Baru is uh... half (lol) aware she is the baddie vs bought into the Maskerade the whole time.

Anyway when I was outlining this concept someone noted that FMA is much earlier than the others (SFF empires are trending rn) but I'm now trying to decide whether the Bartimaeus Trilogy counts. 1/3 of the POV characters qualifies as an imperial agent; it's just that I'm not really sure he ever grasps the greater failings of the imperial worldview before he blows up.

The villain arc is still going swimmingly.

Villain arc no longer going swimmingly.

If you can’t trust the snake cult operating out of an active volcano, who can you trust?

I just saw a blog with "y*ri/y*oi supporter" on their DNI list but they weren't homophobic bc they had homophobes on it too and like. Am I problematic? Is this a thing I'm learning? Or do they just have like a stick up their ass or something

Omg? my first ever ttrpg campaign from 15 years ago is getting a short revival arc! That means I have to get Boresch the imperial officer out of the box and give the old design a glow up! And glow he does. This man is like a freight train, just as smart, just as easy to stop, and just as vulnerable to your piddly little peashooters. One time he gave a rousing speech to his troops and because he's so bad at talking, he intimidated them all. The three of us committed so many war crimes. Just... don't ask me what his rank was, it's been like 15 years...

Funky lil fix-it AU of mine for TBOSAS which has been niggling in the back of my mind, based on a simple thought process:

The districts are very poor. Obviously. That’s the whole thing about them, they’re oppressed and poor and dying. And it’s always been that way, so even though the Capitol from the early days of the Hunger Games wasn’t as advanced as they are by the time our favorite Star Crossed Lovers come into the picture, they’re still further ahead than the districts. I imagine that the tributes (aside from district 3) would be totally shocked any of it exists. So imagine a few of them get the change to interact with technology they’ve never even heard of, and like the curious children they are they touch stuff. It reacts. The kids all lurch back because nobody told us it would do that and the Capitol citizens seeing this are kind of shocked because it’s something so everyday they can’t imagine living without it. So they ask about that and the tributes answer in honest confusion because they did not think such a thing could exist at all. It’s the butterfly effect, where that small realization that the districts are that far behind on tech slowly snowballs into the realization that “oh fuck Hans, I think we might be the baddies after all”.

Merry Mechmas! Christmas-colored mercenary faction, "Cardinal Sins": https://unitcolorcompendium.com/2019/03/12/cardinal-sins/ https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Cardinal_Sins

Stalker, Zeus, Trebuchet, Longbow.

I wanted to do a SLDF scheme since I had a spray can of Olive Drab laying around and the base coat would be super easy. Eridani Light Horse? Fun but kinda the vanilla of paint schemes. Black Watch? Better, but still a bit basic. Who else is there?

Hey, who are these christmas-tree looking guys? Fitting.

They flipped sides during the New Vandenberg Uprising, fighting for the rebels as mercenaries. Slapped red and gray marks on their olive-drab SLDF paintjob to stand apart.

They'd been put there to extort "protection money" (high taxes) out of a periphery state and pretty much had a moment like this:

Yet another piece of Hazbin Hotel art by me. The Exorcists are starting to question some things…

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/24/world/new-evidence-challenges-pentagon-account-kabul-airport-attack-intl/index.html

Newly published evidence indicates that US soldiers fired at civilians and each other in the aftermath of the suicide attack, increasing civilian casualties in particular. The official investigation by the Pentagon does not seem to be reliable.

It's old news, but it's important to correct the record.

The True Horror of Guild Wars 2

It won't stop pursuing. It crossed continents. It annihilated armies. It toppled nations. It overcame the fiercest poisons and weapons thrown at it. We thought it dead once, but it came back, stronger and fiercer than ever before. And every time it is fought, even if slowed down, it becomes stronger and stronger.

There is no stopping it. There is no surviving it. There is only delaying it. And each time that brief moment of relief becomes shorter and shorter.

It won't stop pursuing, it won't stop chasing, it won't stop killing.

It won't stop.

The Pact Commander cannot be stopped.

I was explaining what challenge coins are, pulled up an image for an example and had a real "are we the baddies "moment

Are we the baddies Madara