#aNYway

[may12324]

Quince, Blis, and Lady Pomelo. Just a few more characters from my sapphic fairy comic

[94erz]

Color Psychology, Red;

Love, Power, Passion, Confidence, Aggression, Dominance, Attraction, Persuasion, Performance, Energy, Risk-taking, Unapologetic, Intense, Fiery

❤️ Happy Birthday j-hope ❤️

[ghostlightsahead]

They just *sob* they just mean so much to me 😭😭😭😭

Anyway they're so unbelievably in love your honour

I need them to race HARD against each other this season your honour

Yes I believe they are soulmates your honour

[galaxymagitech]

Tim: *confidently* You’re not going to kill me.

Jason: *pointing a gun at Tim’s face* Uh…why not, exactly?

Tim: Because you’re not homophobic.

Jason: …I’m not following.

Tim: I’m the gay Robin. Or bi Robin, but you get the idea. You can’t kill off the token gay Robin, that’s bury your gays!

Jason: …Dick is pan. He can be the new gay Robin.

Tim: No, no, no. Dick is the first Robin. I’m the gay Robin. Duke is the Black Robin. Steph is the girl Robin. Damian is the cute Robin.

Jason: What am I, then, the murderous Robin?

Cass, who has snuck up on Jason during the conversation: No. Loser Robin. *knocks Jason unconscious*

[kare-valgon]

If I told my younger self that one of her favorite artist would reblog our post in the future and do this she would have fainted

popular follower

[parkercore-69]

hey its the cute, marketable versions of sam and max!!

[scriblesandbits]

They had a nice long conversation about everything once the game was over trust me

[lonelysa1lor]

[the-acid-pear]

@funnier-as-a-system

normalize not knowing anything about yourself. like who’s that guy lol

[emotoangel]

thinking thoughts ,,,,,,

[0nlyhere4phil]

sorry i need to get this out of system: PHIL LESTER HAS SUCH A SLUTTY WAIST!! ITTY BITTY WAIST! HE IS BUILT SO FUCKING WELL! AND HE HAS NICE SHOULDERS! DAMN

[asavt]

[ Intertwined ]

Another illustration I made for the event I was in! The sonic phase hit for a few days and I had to take advantage of that.

[slaygirlpower001]

Can’t afford nothing right now 😍

[paunchsalazar]

cupid's arrow

[utilitycaster]

I've been a pretty harsh critic of Dr. Friedman and Polygon's general Critical Role coverage in the past, and while I think her latest article for them critiquing Campaign 3 is a fairly good one, it does in many ways cast an even harsher light on her kid-gloves handling of D20 and WBN. However, I want to talk about these two excerpts, because I think she hits on something I've increasingly noticed in Actual Play:

"This is where Critical Role’s strength — that Exandria often feels like a real, complex world — collided with the needs of a D&D campaign (a clear adversary, clear plans of action, forward momentum)."

and

"But the confused way D&D handles religion and divinity — polytheism as imagined by midwestern American Protestants — turned the question of how to handle this particular cosmic horror into a glue trap, paralyzing the players for dozens of hours of circular existential debates. Gods once mechanized (or digestible) become just another power bloc, and for players used to a system where in the end you are “basically gods,” the line gets blurrier still. And as D&D’s messy cosmology added friction to much of the campaign, D&D’s mechanics also don’t have the necessary friction for the interpersonal beats that make Critical Role compelling."

I agree with both these statements, as someone who, to be clear, enjoys D&D 5e. D&D supports a range of narratives, but all are ultimately a story of gaining power and fighting off or through a series of adversaries; if your characters are not doing that, it raises the question of why you picked a system that gives you few other options. (This is also, I should note, an increasingly loud question when it comes to Worlds Beyond Number; I fell behind for personal reasons after the Coven arc, but Brennan's initial statements about D&D as scaffolding were perhaps too true; almost every interesting mechanic, in a game with minimal combat that has thus far felt primarily focused on how the three protagonists have fundamentally different adversaries, has been homebrewed, to the point where the cosmology and baggage of D&D has felt like a liability rather than an asset).

D&D also has, in part due to such programs as D20, developed a reputation for being world-agnostic, and that ultimately isn't true. D&D does struggle to make the lines between "real divinity", an archfey or similarly powerful entity, and a L20 character feel sharply defined on a mechanical level; once you give a god a stat block, it can be killed (and on a metanarrative level, revealing the gods' statblocks in Downfall serves to make them both immense, yet also more fragile. The hit points are many, but still finite.) There are a number of questions most D&D worlds simply fail to address - and to be clear, this is not a flaw provided you have buy in. A level 2 warlock in D&D is, in most societies, an one-person lethal force unless the entire town swarms them at once, knowing that many of them will lose their lives in the effort; a level 2 warlock PC, however, is almost never, in-world, treated this way, and indeed is framed as an underdog in a harsh world despite usually having the ability to destroy the entire tavern.

D&D has also developed a (not undeserved) reputation as being The Dominant TTRPG put out by a massive corporation, and has developed a (not deserved) reputation as being itself uniquely problematic as a power fantasy, particularly by people who conveniently forget where Pathfinder came from. I've previously covered that, for all people demand non-D&D actual play, the viewership drops precipitously whenever a big AP show that made its name with D&D dares to branch out, and, related to that, I've seen an uptick in people who are excited for D&D to subvert itself. They wanted Campaign 3 to subvert these norms of divinity and heroic fantasy, cheered for it...and ultimately it was unable to do so. I don't think it's accurate to say that D&D's lack of interpersonal mechanics was the problem here, given that Campaigns 1 and 2 (and again, D20) have no such issue; but rather that since D&D's lack of interpersonal/RP mechanics require more effort from the players to initiate, the debates on the nature of divinity in a world and system that could not sustain them sapped any energy for the late-night watch conversations D&D can support when you're not fighting against it.

I think one of the many lessons we can learn from Critical Role Campaign 3 is that if you go up against D&D with an attempt to destroy it from within, your story will instead find itself conforming to the shape of its container, often to its detriment.