#choice words

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

[text id: my fist has always been clenched around the handle of an invisible suitcase. / i am always ready to leave. / there is not a single room in this world where i belong.]

[erinfulmerwrites]

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with contract law, IP licensing, or legal aspects of publishing can comprehend why CR has not said more than they did about the OGL debacle. If you’re an author, you should understand too.

Exandria is Matt Mercer’s baby. Essentially his life’s work. An extraordinary amount of painstaking attention to detail, thoughtful development, and stunning imagination has gone into this setting. Thousands of hours of work. The man is a worldbuilding dynamo.

And WotC owns or has rights to significant chunks of his creation. Though CR has almost certainly maintained IP rights to the Exandria setting (Tal’Dorei Reborn is published by their indie press), WotC currently holds publishing rights to The Explorer’s Guide to Wildmount as well as at least one full prewritten campaign.

As a author, getting rights back once you’re signed a publishing contract is no joke. These deals have terms in years. You can ask for them back or sue to get them back, but it’s a painful, lengthy, and expensive process. It means your book goes out of print, you often have to get all new art, and there are usually noncompete and nondisparagement clauses to contend with. I know authors who have gotten rights back and they never talk about it publicly until the severance is complete.

This affects the rest of the cast as well, by the way. They’ve spoken often about how their characters are a living part of them. This is extremely personal to them. The thought of losing that kind of creative legacy to a soulless corporation has got to be a crushing weight.

This is likely an incredibly scary and painful time for them and everyone in the company. WotC’s new OGL directly targets their livelihood. Note that taking 25% of net receipts from independent creators is an absolutely egregious royalty scheme and a blatant cash grab that could result in creators owing WotC more than they are making in profits.

I would be shocked if CR isn’t preparing for legal action on multiple fronts, but speaking as a lawyer, if you want to win in court you don’t go making statements on Twitter that could be seen as breaking existing contract terms. CR is a force in the TTPRG community but they are still a privately held small business and Hasbro is a large corporation with lots of cash on hand for litigation.

In addition, CR renewed their D&D Beyond sponsorship last year which likely muzzles them further. Even if they have severed the sponsorship deal (and there are some indications they may have) they would have likely had to sign a non-disparagement clause to do so.

With all that said, CR3 will almost certainly be the last campaign they do in D&D. In fact, I think Matt saw this coming and has been building to a canon split to a new game system, but didn’t expect this to go down until 2024 with the release of OneD&D/6e.

It’s no coincidence that they increasingly refer to the D&D 5e gods by different names (Matron of Ravens, Wild Mother, Changebringer), use tons of homebrew builds, and don’t include any copyrighted terms in the animated show! The Whispered One will never be named Vecna if they get to that arc in TLoVM.

CR3 also has few vanilla D&D monster, using terminology shifts like “katari” instead of “tabaxi,” “shade creepers” instead of “darklings,” etc. (Note I’m not 100% caught up yet, so there may be some exceptions here.) Ashton, FCG, and Chetney are all using homebrew builds. Imogen’s powers are reskinned and evolving into something that could go almost anywhere. As for Fearne and Laudna, no one fully knows wtf is up with them.

(Fearne could be a hag in disguise! Laudna clearly has a soul! Orym is the most 5e vanilla build, but fighters also have fairly un-copyrightable abilities.)

What was it Matt said as Planerider Ryn last episode? “That moves our timeline a bit…Some of the things we hoped to use to slow them down have fallen through the cracks.” And, as Ludinus:

“We are the seeds they plant, and till, and water. We struggle in the maze they shaped…return to their private gardens to be harvested and feed their power and dominance, because they told us there is no alternative. But all children outgrow their parents, and they came to fear our development, our potential…

“We’ve never needed them. They’ve always needed us.”

(That whole speech was the real statement IMO, in an ep filmed after WotC sent the new OGL contracts to creators but before the leaks.)

(And when Imogen asks, “Will it go away?” Da’leth answers, “Some of it will.”)

Anyway, I am very interested to see what happens next. And I look forward to hearing those choice words sometime in the future when certain terms expire.

This is the best response to Critical Role’s vague statement alfjskjf

[numbuh424]

check your speech bubbles before doing your victory monologue

[t-hirstreview]

[brian-kinney-apologist]

the most insane part of the whole episode if you ask me

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico referring to his mom as "Mama" implies he most likely at least used to refer to Hades as "Papa" and i 100% headcanon he still does but mostly in the manner of him having the entire Underworld wrapped around his finger for being the baby of the family

[mischiefbuckley]

eddie “I just hate being forced to date. feels like I hate to perform” diaz we will have you out so soon don’t you worry

[reliabledragon]

To me, the best embodiment of modern capitalism is in the phrase "please hold, we are experiencing higher than usual call volume". I know it's a lie. You know it's a lie. But you still hear that line every time you call, regardless of the day or time, because it shifts the blame. It tries to prompt you to blame the other callers instead of asking, "Hey, why are they deliberately understaffing their call centers and making it so difficult to get help?" It takes a failing caused by a deliberate, profit-focused management choice, and turns it into a problem with the people using the system, rather than one with the system itself. And that pattern, to me, is the epitome of the modern corporate system.

[rosarysgarden]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

[text id: i have the everlasting tendency to ruin everything i love.]

[phewgitoid]

ive been putting this off for a bit ,, eerhehrhere im gonna crumble

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

[text id: i often asked myself / do i want love / or do i want proof that i am loveable?]

[astrallar]

"the WHAT"

[mobius-m-mobius]

#happy anniversary to remembering this actually happened 😘✌️

Loki S2 Anniversary x Episode 5 - “Science/Fiction”

[quietwingsinthesky]

im just saying that if i had been in charge of s6 of doctor who, i would have fully leaned into the horror of amy's pregnancy, the loss of her own agency in it, the way she was used as a vessel to create a child she would never hold again, amy pond who never indicated once that she even wanted a child and was made to have one anyway against her will, and once they were done using her, they even took away any choice she might make about it in the future.

and i would have had this be a factor in amy and river's relationship going forward. how do you interact with a child you never knew, never got to decide if you wanted to have, and she's also already your friend, you love her as this miraculous, insane woman who has saved your life more than once. she's always known more about you than you could about her, but now you know exactly how much she was keeping from you. it's not like she could have told you, could have stopped it, but all this time, she was your friend and she was your daughter, and how do you learn to live with her?

[qiinamii]

old men's little guys