#but it explains in one fanart piece why he was horrified of her

[zenkindoflove]

🍓 🥐 🎨 🧩

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

The first time I ever wrote fanfic was when I was 16 in 2005 and in That 70s Show fandom shipping Jackie/Hyde. I wrote a canon divergence fic called "Anything For You, Doll" that took place during the episode "Vanstock". I ended up being in that fandom for over 3 years and wrote a lot of fics which now no longer exist on the internet as of this year. 😩 I actually am really proud of a lot of those fics (my favorite being a Sixteen Candles inspired AU) but what happened with Danny Masterson these last few years was just too horrifying and disgusting for me to ever consider returning to that ship or show. And even though I know when I wrote those fics I of course knew nothing about his crimes (no one did) it was hard for me to imagine new fans or old fans ever coming back to fanfics for Jackie/Hyde once they learned what kind of person Danny Masterson was during that time playing Hyde. And I felt icky having them there. I know this was supposed to be probably a fun answer, but now in 2024 I have such complicated feelings about my time in T7S fandom from 2005-2008. It was literally the best of times and I grew so much as a writer with the stories I attempted and the friends I made. But that bastard ruined a lot of those memories.

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 

Bentley!!!

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

I love this piece by brielyasmin. It's how I picture Elucien and I just love their expressions while he's carrying her and they're kissing. And I love the little details like her shoe falling off and the flowers in their hair. ❤️

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

For Elucien, because they're my OTP, if they are with anyone else. Lol. I'm very monogamous with my OTPs. I can get into non monogamy and swapping around if it's a couple I only casually ship. But OTPs are off limits. Something that happens a lot in Elucien fic is casually mentioning Lucien is fucking Jurian and Vassa in threesomes while he's waiting for Elain and NO THANKS.

Oh also when people write Elain too mean or antagonistic to Lucien. It's always felt OOC to me. I have a very specific vision of Elain in my head and it's hard for me to get into fics if she deviates too hard. I have some wiggle room but ultimately I like what I like! So when I start picking up that vibe, after a lot of experience of trying and not enjoying that depiction of Elain, I just DNF pretty quick these days.

[the-blind-geisha]

I'M GOD DAMN CRYING...

Demiurge got so desperate in a drama CD to knock Albedo free from her daydreaming about Ainz that he punched her in the abs...

Albedo: Eh? Did you say something, Demiurge?

Demiurge: "Why are her abs so damn hard"...was not what I was thinking...

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor). 

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

[nanamis-bigtie]

🏰 👾 😭 😳 🍎 🍏 💓

🏰 - Fave marine?

Answered in previous edition, I’ll copy~

Oh damn, this is much harder question than I thought. My first take was Smoker, but then I realised a lot of characters I adore are in fact Marines, I just don’t think about them as Marines, because they’re not plot-wise put in a role usually taken in the story by Marines.

In the end I will go with Coby, mostly because of the character development he went through and the possibilities the plot already revealed for him. From the point of view of OP universe he - not Luffy - has the biggest chance to be the one who will change the old order for something better. Well, Coby is in fact Luffy, in the meaning of the role he has in the plot - but on the other hand he’s his complete opposite and yet individual character with his own progress and history. I simply love him - as a character and as a representation of Oda’s genius character writing.

👾 - Fave villain?

Answered in previous edition as well~

Doflamingo.

Oh, how I love and hate this wicked monster. He’s one of the best written villains ever and for me a peak of Oda’s master character writing. The perfect backstory which explains but not justifies, which makes you understand and pity him, but doesn’t draw your attention away from all the bad things he had done. The way he matches the one of the main messages the plot of One Piece has - that injustice creates monsters. His design - from his chaotic bisexual style, to his Devil Fruit. His relations with his Family. All those parallels he shares with Law, giving them both amazing plot-wise depth. Oda, in my opinion, is very good in writing villains - but for me Doflamingo is perfect example how every villain ever should be written. And can’t wait to see why Oda spared him - because I’m sure there’s a reason for that. I just hope Law won’t have to be involved in said reason, he had enough.

😭 - Saddest scene?

Oh boy.

Okay, first of all - I’m a person who is capable of crying over a toilet paper commercial. I’ve cried over One Piece so many times I can’t possibly count. Heck, now when I know what scene is coming next, I cry even more, so re-reading takes me so slow I’m sure Oda will end the manga before I’ll get through it for a second time xD

This being sad, I still think Sanji’s backstory in general caught me the most. Even now when I think about my hands shake a bit as I’m writing. A lot of personal agenda, so I won’t get into details.

But Jesus.

To harm a kid to this point just because he didn’t match expectations...

... Holy shit, now I want to hug Sanji T^T

😳 - Any crushes?

Okay, but listen. The only reason I started reading One Piece is a friend of mine showing me fanarts with Law. Damn hot, need to check it out. 50 volumes till I see him...? Okay, I can do that.

And then I saw Zoro.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Law, he’s like still the part of my shameless selfpoly but - Zoro is something different.

I can’t even explain why. There are a lot of characters I’d like never ever let out of my bed. Robin, Drake, Smoker, Okiku, Denjiro, Barto, Hina, Rocinante... I can count till tomorrow.

Law already is a different level, since he’s like an epiphany of a fictional character for such a lost soul like me.

Zoro is even more. I just look at this dude and that’s it. It’s over. Bas is dead, Readers, Bas is dead.

Also tiddies. Those are the best tiddies.

🍎 - Fave Devil Fruit power?

I love Robin’s Hana Hana no Mi. It’s so aesthetically pleasing, yet absolutely horrifying and powerful. Robin is a goddess AND eldritch abomination in the same time thanks to her DF and I absolutely ADORE it.

🍏 - Would you eat a Devil Fruit if you had the chance to?

As a kid I fucking took a solid bite of a soap and ate it just to prove my cousin he’s a coward. What is a Devil Fruit comaring to eating soap? xD Also: I can’t swim anyway  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

💓 - Which character do you relate to the most?

Again, a lot of personal agenda, so I won’t get into details but... I’ll just tell I’m so glad I had a chance of meeting my own Corazon, my beloved aunt, who dragged me out of shit and thanks to whom I’m still alive.

And I hella miss her, I haven’t seen her since the self isolation started and phone calls and facebook are just not the same  .･ﾟﾟ･(／ω＼)･ﾟﾟ･.

Thanks for asking ( ´ ▽ ` ).｡ｏ♡