Kai525h - Sin Título

banjo and shamisen

Destiny Architecture

I went on a whole ramble about the architecture of the various factions in Destiny and thought I'd share it here. I'm not an architect, so my knowledge is basic when it comes to technical things, but hopefully it is interesting!

They did a fantastic job with the architecture of the different factions and what it says about them.

The Red Legion and Caiatl's Ascendency are all pragmatic, organised military designs - fortifications, the round buildings with windows on each side linked by trenches. Watchtowers. In the Arms Dealer strike, you have areas where there are loads of vehicles meticulously organised. They are prepared for the long haul, dug into the planets they land on, and they are proud of their machinery, both literal and metaphorica - it's all on display, the pistons and furnaces and engines. There are service shafts and hangars! It's all very practical (and makes the Glykon even more unnerving because the passages and service shafts don't make any practical sense in the way that they connect!).

Calus on the other hand... the Leviathan has the same base in terms of doors and the like, you can recognise some of the same basics - like the shapes of the doors etc. but the pragmatic things are hidden away - they're reminiscent of the servant quarters in old British stately homes - you need them for the place to function! But the people in charge don't want to see them. Calus wants to be surrounded by gold and riches and luxury and not think about the things and people that make it possible. It's always been something that I've thought of when it comes to his empire – he acts like all of it was a place of luxury and hedonism and art, but like the Roman Empire that inspired the culture, that luxury is truly only available to a few people, and is only possible because a much greater number of people are working to provide the materials and labour. We don't really hear or see much about the people the Empire conquered beyond the Psions, but were they living in such luxury? Probably not.

The Eliskni architecture all feels very cobbled together and makeshift - there are visible seams and bolts, spots where colours don't match. It's makeshift, which suits their history as a people who have been forced to flee and exist on scavenging for a long time. And there's always a lot of nautical theming going on too - rigging and nets and hoisted awnings like sails. They feel like places made by people who are expecting to need to pack up and leave at any minute. Everything tends to be rounded, which is particularly obvious when you see the Devils in Rise of Iron - everything is more angular because of SIVA and the Rasputin influence, even the shanks. I'd love it if we could get a look at the original Riis architecture.

The Hive are very gothic architecture with a dash of Gaudi (take a look at the Sagrada Família for what I'm thinking). High chambered ceilings, flying buttresses, all the carved figures and motifs - except when you get closer you realise that it's also uncomfortably organic. And it's also decaying – once you get inside the dreadnaught especially you find it full of piles of festering debris, wormspore growing from the corpses of thralls. There are spaces where anything could jump out at you. It's like a civilisation mocking the grand architecture of other species by warping it into something rotten (and also very gothic literature as well - the grand imposing gothic mansion with the dark secret and unpleasant history). The names of the locations in the Dreadnaught often tie-in with the architecture since a lot of them are religious: the portico, basillica, the crypts, the Cathedral of Dusk. They are a species worshipping Oryx, the very real and tangible god.

The Moon under Crota has a similar style, but where the Dradnaught is organic, the areas under the surface of the moon (outside the Red Keep) are more technological - there are still the flying buttresses and supports, the spikes and and pillars around the Hellmouth, but they're blockier, less rounded, stone and metal rather than chitin.

Savathun's Throne World has similar architecture, and returns to the organic feel of the Dradnaught, but in blinding white and red rather than browns. It's similar to the Leviathan in a way – the public areas are much cleaner feeling, regal and filled with Light, but when you dig down you can find the same rot and debris as the Dreadnaught (thinking especially of the 2nd mission of the Witch Queen campaign). Where the Dreadnaught was a mockery of other species, the Throne World feels like it's trying to copy them – this is what Savathun thinks the Light is, look she's changed, really! But in the end, it's more like a coat of paint slapped over a wall with a bad mold problem. The names also switch from kind of Catholic, to more magical and alchemical - Apothacary, altars, temples etc.

The Awoken are really doing the whole fantasy elf thing in a lot of ways, but more with stone than woodland than in Tolkien when we see the Dreaming City. Everything fits in seamlessly with the landscape (which makes sense since it was essentially created with wish magic to be exactly what Mara wanted!). The buildings follow the lines of mountains, pathways carved into crystal caves, the bridge which has supports like the branches of trees like they've grown up from the ground. And there's nature everywhere! But it's not a natural environment. Even when it seems like you're in nature, it's very cultivated - like the garden of a stately home which wants 'wilderness' so has landscaped it. It's also deceptive in the way you go from the 'wilderness' to these very high fantasy buildings, and then as you walk you see these technological marvels like the Oracle Engine, just integrated into it. The Dreaming City is very much portraying an image and is a very finely tuned machine in itself. I kind of wonder what the other Awoken settlements beyond the Dreaming City and the Vestian outpost look like.

Clovis Bray facilities are very minimalist and very obviously designed to make you think 'lab' and 'high technology'. He really wants you to see his stuff and have you think 'this is the future' in a way that draws 70s sci-fi ideas of the future - the way all the sharp edges are rounded off, the bright blocks of colour, the way all of the technology is very conspicuously on display, the massive windows that make all the conveyors and machinery visible. He wants to show off his stuff, and also make everyone who works there know that they're being watched. There's also the huge open spaces and massive drops like Eternity and Creation, which are utterly impractical but also feel infinite and are designed to make you go wow.

You see similar architecture on Neomuna (since Clovis was involved with the colonisation efforts) but on a much more human scale. They have a lot of the same components – the pillars and display screens, the curved bases of the walls – but they're softened with plants and murals, places to sit and socialise. It's not a lab, it's a city where people live. And also it's Neptune, they are a long way from the sun, so everything is bright and vibrant to make up for that. I think you can also see a lot of influence from the Ishtar Collective locations on Venus in Neomuna - they also tend to have a lot of display screens and neon and lots of spots for plants to grow. And then you get outside of the City and see the Veil Containment bunker and see the concrete and metal pragmatism that underpins the city.

The Iron Temple/Vostok is a place that is trying very hard to be a medieval castle with all of the statues and bonfires and the whole aesthetic of the Iron Lords. The statues of the Iron Lords all bear axes and swords. But when you look at it, you can see the very Soviet brutalist foundation of the place. So much of it is blocky concrete - the walls are squared off and unornamented, the observatory is concrete and metal. Every time I go in to where Tyra stands, I'm surprised that the pillar she's standing by is not round, because it's very easy to buy into the illusion they're projecting. There's also the concrete pillar that serves as vault and lights up when you approach - it has the technology, but like the Dreaming City, it's integrated into the landscape. Unlike the dreaming City, they really don't want to show you it.

Raputin's bunkers are just fantastic design in so many ways. They have a very clear shape (you can see the shape of a door and know immediately that this is something Warmind related), everything tends to be at right-angles. It's all very pragmatic and logically laid out. There is definitely technology there, and it's not really trying to hide, but it isn't showing off like Clovis does. Where Clovis is 70's aspirational sci-fi design, Rasputin architecture has a very Cold War vibe to it - none of the technology is flashy - it's chunky terminals running the most basic looking command line UI. It's thick cables and pipes and probably a million redundancies. The kind of tech which is designed to be found in a few centuries and still be reasonably functional. Also unhackable unless you are physically present. Rasputin is an AI so advanced that he can out-think the Vex, but his facilities are built to have the resilience of a Nokia 3310 phone, and are inspired by bunkers designed to survive nuclear war.

(I also think it's not accidental that the Warsats are made up of many angular shapes, especially triangles, trying to be a sphere, considering the whole motif of the pyramids vs the Traveller)

Pyramid Architecture is really really trying to pull off the sword logic 'pared down to remove anything extraneous' and present the idea of a universe united as one in its final shape... and is failing miserably at that. At first glance it's all straight clean lines, black stone, leaning towards brutalist, but they just can't keep it up – they're full of pillars serving no purpose, statues, coloured stone insets. Rhulk's pyramid is full of artwork painted onto the walls. There's so much symbolism built into them. They're incredibly ornate! Because as much as the Witness wants everyone to believe that it is one united force with one specific goal, it kind of isn't. It's made up of many many individuals. Even if those individuals that made it up all agreed on the final shape, it's nearly impossible to get one person to have a 100% consistent view of the universe, let alone hundreds! And especially in the Witness' pyramid ship in Root of Nightmares, you get the impression it's something of a mausoleum for its species and the other species its destroyed. There's lots of coffin-shaped and sized objects in there, and relics hidden away. It isn't as clean and focused as it would like the universe to think.

sometimes you just gotta make that guy a dog

Vee redesign for my AU, 'Snakes and Mirrors'.

Look at this little happy childhood haver (her ass is unaware of the horrors behind her creation).

Could you draw Kanako watching cartoons with Axis?

I really like to see them as siblings.

I've been wanting to draw them doing sibling stuff for so longgg 😭

I know I missed the Undertale Yellow stuff but I did do my own sprites of the main five to eight. Standard NPC sheet stuff will resume. lemme know if you wanna see them doing stuff

Looks like someone want’s to die on holidays XD

Happy holidays YEET

ψ(｀∇´)ψ

A Broken Promise

WitteDad Timepool AU

Chapter 1: Carving and Craving

With the steady grip of his knife, Caleb whittled away at one of his newest palisman creations. His muse? An earthly robin. Five years had passed since Caleb and Phillip traveled to the Boiling Isles in the demon world. Around that same time, he fell in love with a witch. 

His gaze softened when he heard his wife sigh contentedly after she sipped her tea. She was a creature of habit just as he was. Since he was young, he was early to rise, to work, and then settle into the day-to-day doings. She liked to sleep in, whining when he disturbed her, only for her to pull him back into bed with tempting kisses and soft touches. 

He had never met someone so kind and beautiful in his life. He was raised to hate witches and for what they represented. Witches were vile, horrifying creatures. They attacked human villages, ate their babies, and cursed the children they did not find nearly as scrumptious. She managed to change his beliefs. Perhaps the people back at home would cry foul of witchcraft. That somehow, Caleb was subjected to her evil sorcery. 

He knew better now. She made him a better person, a better witch, and allowed his heart to be full of love instead of malice. She set him free, and those same bubbling feelings had resulted in his palisman, Flapjack. The red cardinal was currently chasing his daily catch of rattleworms, but if Caleb stilled, he could hear his bird’s sweet trill in the forest.  

Caleb hoped to bring many birds to these woods. Birds from his old home to his new home. They were free to fly and find witches to bond with just as he and Flapjack bonded. That was his mission. With each bird, he breathed a new sense of purpose into them. To make friends, to be brave, to show tenderness. All of these birds shared a trait of his beloved. All of their feathers carved delicately were a testament to his love for her. 

Then, like clockwork, Caleb dropped everything he was working on the moment his wife tried to stand. He stood by her side, hand around the small of her back, the other instinctively over her rounding stomach. Their child—the soon-to-be bundle of joy of their love was a songbird's call for freedom and spirit. Being a father, a husband, a palisman carver—he did not realize these were dreams he could ever entertain with such mirth and warmth. The idea of duty had been so cold before. When he walked in tandem with Phillip's methodological approaches, his excitement at the future dimmed. 

With her, he could dream again. The sun felt warm on his skin. His heart was no longer heavy. 

"Dear… You can let go. I'm fine." His wife wore a bemused smirk. Caleb knew she was capable, far more than he was at matters most of the time, but it did not stop his apparent need to dote. 

"Sorry! Would you like anything? Do you want me to accompany you anywhere?" 

That smirk of hers melted away into a delighted smile. "Why, I think some apple blood would do well." 

Caleb shudders. "Apple blood?" 

She stretches and lets out a yawn. "Mmhmm. Do you think you could bring me some?" 

Caleb knew how tedious it was to produce freshly squeezed apple blood. That and how despite his fascination with the demon realm, he much preferred the earthly equivalent of apple juice. His wife said they were not the same. Truth be told, they tasted different, so she was right without even knowing how. 

The very idea of fruit bleeding always disturbed Caleb. The added spices to the concoction were also troublesome to create. 

"Of course. I'll get you anything you ask for." 

Her grin widened even further. "Even fire bee honey?" 

Caleb bit his lip. "D-Do you want fire bee honey?" 

"It is very nutritious. Good for a growing witchlet." 

He steeled himself, taking a deep breath. "Then I will go and bring—" 

"I’m kidding." She laughed so hard a small, adorable snort made its way to his ears. He blushed furiously. She had a way of being that made him fall in love with her in new ways. Others would say she was imperfect. She was loud, and noisy at times, rebellious to the bone and so bold. The people back home would see her as uncivilized if they could ever look past the pointedness of her ears. Caleb wanted to change that. She was gentle, caring, kind, protective, and thoughtful in ways no one back on Earth ever could imagine. 

"I know you are a human, and I'd much prefer my husband to be alive and a father to our baby. But if you could make some apple blood, that would be wonderful." 

He kissed the back of her hand. "You will have that apple blood." 

"Is that a promise?"

He offered a mischievous wink. "A promise indeed. Don't worry, sweet wife of mine. I’ll be back before nightfall.” 

She giggled. 

Caleb stole one more look at his wife before bringing his fingers in to whistle. “Flapjack, old pal, let's head out!" 

From the forest, Flapjack emerged, quickly swallowing his meal. Fluttering his wings over to Caleb, he transformed into a staff. From there, the duo soared high above, catching a glimpse of the titan’s skull, hazy in a golden purple mist from afar. 

For his wife, Caleb would give her everything. His soon-to-be child was no different. He had a family again, one where he felt he could be his truest self. One where he could love openly and unapologetically. 

He promised her that apple blood. If there was one thing truly important, it was that a promise must be kept.

Delusional women, my favorite!

my kanako design :3

(click for better quality !!)