#every campaign needs a character who's another character's ex at some point

[uselessgaywhovian]

Aabria, after making PVP flowcharts for her Calamity character to maybe not die instantly against The Bird Designed Specifically to Kill Wizards: no. this time Travis will be the one who fears.

[dr-docktor]

Local Docktor thinks its a fantastic idea to crossover his two biggest interests at the moment.

First for some context (don't worry, I'll keep it brief). One of my best friends has been working on a table-top RPG since like high school called Percentile. And its the main game that the group plays for our campaigns. Thus, it never leaves my head.

You know what else doesn't leave my head? Spies are Forever.

So here I am. Planning out what theoretical character sheets would look like for Owen and Curt. I'm so normal. I swear. Below the cut includes my insane ramblings on this topic.

I will also be playing a little fast and loose with some of the rules here because making character sheets in this game, while fun, is LENGTHY. And I'm insane but I'm not THAT insane

Ok so I want to start with Owen because I'm making him a mage and I LOVE building mages.

For the sake of simplicity I'm gonna keep 'em both human. (boring I know. but the list of ancestries is so long it almost overwhelms me for this)

To quickly explain the percentages: That is basically your rate of success on any given skill/action. So the higher the number, the more likely they are to succeed!

Owen's Stats

Power represents magic. POW is just another word for mana. And size mainly only impacts things like how easy you are to tackle/grapple and what spaces you can squeeze into.

So he's got 10 HP

14 POW

2 Soak (armor, it takes 2 points off of whatever damage they were hit with)

+28 initiative bonus (initiative dictates who goes first in combat. The higher your number, the more likely you are to go first)

and can move 5 squares per turn (turns last 6 seconds), or 6 if he runs.

All fairly standard for a human mage. The interesting stuff starts with choosing his spells.

In Percentile, the standard mage can have a few collections of spells called Spell Schools. They can only have one spell from each school prepared at once but can spend 6 hours a day switching them out safely (or do it within seconds if you wanna feel the consequences)

So here's the spell schools I think he'd have

BLAST -> its in the name, you get several spells that are just different types of blasts. So magical bullets, lasers, etc.

CHANGE -> He'd probably use this spell school mainly for his DMA disguise but instead of a mask he can physically change his appearance for several hours a day.

VISION -> Great for espionage and detective work. Spells include making you really good at looking for stuff, being able to see events that transpired previously within a room, and gathering information.

WOUNDING -> Gives him access to several magical bladed weapons. Good for Torture and homosexually sword fighting your ex lover.

really good... ouch.

Skills/knowledges are another story and are one of my least favorite parts of character building so I'll briefly go over it.

High intimidation, spot hidden (looking for stuff. almost every percentile character needs a decent spot hidden), move quietly, resist, and rapine (rapine is like sleight of hand, pickpocketing, handling small and/or delicate things)

Middling physical skills like jumping, climbing, etc. first aid, hide, and survival

Low grapple.

His knowledges would include

High performance (haha actor man), espionage, and literacy

Middling lore

Low cooking. and everything else. He can cook its just all post WWII British food which I think should qualify for being bad at it.

OK NOW FOR MY FAVORITE PART: Traits and Scars.

SCARS

his scars include more physical stuff like reduced hearing and chronic pain (player would roll a dice to see how bad the pain is that day to see if he needs to use a mobility device). But also include

Untrusting - CHAR INT based - compelled to roll an idea check to see if someone is lying every time he starts a new interaction with someone. On a fail he believes they are lying no matter what

POSSIBLE TRAITS

Magic Hair, for my long-haired Owen fans. Basically he has hair that's so cool it makes him more charismatic.

Strong Promises. Whenever the character makes a promise, they get a bonus to whatever stat that will help them achieve that promise.

Plotting. Whenever characters with this trait record or speak out a plan, it functions as if they practiced it for an additional day. Perfect for villain monologues.

Pull At Soul. Characters with this trait declare a goal during each level up. These goals can be something like “plan with everyone in the party about the mission & use that plan”, it can be “avenge my fathers killer” “seek out & find the sage” or more abstract things, “Die & be born anew in the eyes of my community” or “See the moon as it truly is”. They cannot tell any other characters about this goal. Once they achieve this goal as determined by them & the GM, anytime they are at 1 HP they can choose to level up.

Buddies! -> Select another character. Decide on a secret handshake, set of gestures, or exchange. It does not have to be uniform, but does have to be meaningful. Anytime you perform this with them, and one of you gains exhaustion, instantly both of you gain 1d3 to a stat. They do not have to be the same stat, select them when you take the maneuver. If the other dies, this trait is removed, granting the character back the trait points, and the character gains a -1d3 to that stat forever.  (THE FUCKING HANDSHAKE)

I think that's all for Owen!!

It's Curt's turn!

God I was SO tempted to make him a Ragamuffin for this. But I'm sticking with humans. I don't even know why. I just think it would be funny. Something fun about the 'brute' being made of fabric and fluff.

Anyway. Stats!!

12 HP

8 POW (not important given he's a fighter and not a mage)

3 soak

+27 Initiative bonus

and can move 4 squares per turn, 6 squares if he's running.

Instead of spells, fighters get weapon proficiencies and maneuvers! Maneuvers are basically fancy fighting styles and actions.

Possible weapon options: Short sword (what they fight with in the show), a gun, and fisticuffs. Mages also get a weapon or two and tbh these could all apply to Owen too.

Possible maneuvers:

Taunt -> It is what it says on the tin, mock your opponent to try and make them get sloppy and target you instead of your allies.

Reckless Strike Back -> When dodging an attack, you can take one extra damage to attempt to hit your opponent back. If you fail you take extra damage.

Induced Sloppiness -> Make yourself unpredictable! on a success you get bonuses to damage and to land hits. Those attacks are really difficult to parry and dodge. On a fail your opponent gets a bonus to parrying and dodging.

Dodging into My Blade -> you must have this maneuver readied. If you opponent dodges your or your allies attack while this is readied, you can basically say "Lmaoooo" and attack them again

Skills!

High physical stuff like jumping and climbing, resist, move quietly, hide

Middling intimidation, spot hidden, repine, and grapple

Low first aid (scared of own blood) and listen.

Knowledges!

High linguistics, cooking, and espionage

Middling riding arts (for cars and stuff)

Low almost everything else (doesn't mean he's dumb. Fighters just aren't built for having a ton of knowledges)

Possible Scars!

Alcoholic - CON based - Roll a withstand check upon the GM's orders to see if you feel the urge to take a drink. On a fail you either take a swig or suffer withdrawal

Bad With Magic - POW and CON based - Anytime characters with this scar roll a check involving power expenditure, the GM describes it as if they are deeply unsettled by it, that it seems strange, random and scary, and that they are somehow making a mistake, regardless of what the magic does, how it functions, or if they succeeded or not. 

Possible Traits!

Buddies! -> Select another character. Decide on a secret handshake, set of gestures, or exchange. It does not have to be uniform, but does have to be meaningful. Anytime you perform this with them, and one of you gains exhaustion, instantly both of you gain 1d3 to a stat. They do not have to be the same stat, select them when you take the maneuver. If the other dies, this trait is removed, granting the character back the trait points, and the character gains a -1d3 to that stat forever.  (THE FUCKING HANDSHAKE AGAIN)

Poison Blood -> Anyone eating characters with this trait takes 1d6 necrotic damage per SIZ consumed, and the character can take 1 HP from themselves to coat weapons in their blood, which deals 1d4 necrotic damage or stuns the enemy for 1d4-1 turns. It will add this effect to 1 attack until it dries in 3d6+CON turns. (something something alcohol-poisoned blood)

Sturdy ->  While at max HP characters with this trait cannot be reduced below 1 HP in one hit.

Natural Jester -> Anytime characters with this trait crit fail any check, anyone who witnesses it must roll a withstand check or be stunned for 1 turn. 

Fast to The Fight -> Add +3 to initiative rolls (can be taken more than once)

There's actually a TON of traits that could fit Curt but I'm capping it off here because I will go overboard.

Anyway thanks for reading! Sorry if any of this is incomprehensible.

[rollforimagination]

Campaign Idea

Knock Knock it’s COMMUNISM. BITCHES.

Description: You (players) sad (capitalism) so you (players) spread happiness (communism)

Tip: Make one character the DnD version of fucking Karl Marx, it doesn’t matter the class or the race but make them a philosopher/writer that’s working on writing a book about their ideals, and during the campaign they could cite some passages (the player has to read the book)

Functionality: If the player reading the book (so Karl Marx) bought the actual Das Kapital they have disadvantage on all rolls involving the book, if they have it by some “other” ways they add a d8 to the rolls.

If the player doesn’t have Das Kapital, but another player does and they give it to the player, they will have advantage on the rolls involving the book.

Tip2: You could make that, one time for long/short rest, if the DnD Marx’s player uses the book the player who gave it to them will receive either 1 inspiration point or 2d12 Temporary HitPoints, or other shiny looking stuff

Characters:

Karl Marx (Mage, y’know, using the book for two uses? Paladin, finally the communist one?)

an ex underpaid server of an inn that quit to join them (very nice if the race of the character is one of the hated ones, or even better if they’re a half tiefling half elf, doubling the racism, to add a little bit of flavour to their backstory and to the setting) (class? Either Monk or Rogue. I mean, someone who gets attacked everyday for their race? 99% of the time that shit results into being able to punch back)

An ex knight who saw how corrupted the monarchy is and it’s tired of it (additional points if it’s the big bear of the group, tall, muscled and hairy and always ready to take a hit for Karl Marx) they are the first two of the group and known each other for a long time (maybe Karl was the mage of the king?)

A Druid who was stuck in their dog-cat-animal form/someone who was cursed to be polymorphed into a dog for the last 15 years, now that the witch who cursed them has been killed they are free but unable to afford anything because for all this time they obviously didn’t had a job, and their family thinks that they died long ago so they would never believe them to be the same person (maybe also because mow they have some dog-cat-animal facial traits? Not too weird but enough to not recognise your own child) and so they have no money, and were forced to live on the streets begging for some food and money.

Tip3: Maybe now they are Shifters (the race), or Tabaxi or they still randomly transform into that animal (roll a d100 every turn of combat and after doing something that the DM or them thinks is important, on a 10 (up to 30) or lower they transform into the animal they were polymorphed for 3d8 minutes (the d100 still needs to be rolled while they’re an animal, and if they roll a “turning into the animal” number, they roll the 3d8 again and add that to the total). Also they should be able to know the language of the animal that they were since they spent 15 years as one.

An artificer who is a genius but since their inventions are not enough “profitable” or “gives too much to the poor” and “damage the economy” as some rich ass bastards always say before scrapping the idea of founding their creations. They are sick of this and just want to create things to make life better for everyone, who cares about economy and money? They sure don’t!

A warlock who once was a healer in a temple, Ka’rl revealed them (since they couldn’t leave the temple for religious purposes) that those who couldn’t afford to be healed were left to die and that they healed only those who paid an invent price before even simply entering the temple. Due to the shock, they not only lost any faith in their cause (their religion didn’t involve a God or at least not an existing one) but their anger caught the attention of a Celestial Being with whom they made a pact with to make this nonsense stop. (Maybe make that the Celestial Being proved to have the power to do so by healing everyone in the entire city, since the warlock from now on should be filled with trust issues)

An earth genasi/elf ranger, that witnessed the exploitation of natural resources by the ruling class, that hurt not only the lower class but also animals and other creatures. They now seeks to reclaim the land for the people and help Ka’rl establish a society where nature and its resources are shared equally.

A Robin Hood parody, but who steals stuff instead of money (like food and other goods) because they were the accountant of a Duke and now how to fuck up economy (double points if they become best friend with the artificer and use their inventions to steal more stuff)

Inspiration: this (sad) meme ⬇️

Thanks to @guerrillatech (and to @wizard-kisser that always reblog good materials that I feed my brain with and doesn’t even know)

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E114-115 (Nov. 10, 2020)

My wi-fi’s gone distinctly shaky, so it must be that time again! I don’t think I’ve ever watched the pet montage with sound on, and the sheer majesty of Henry snoozing on a Nicolas Cage pillow is somehow ever better with a swelling orchestral score.

This episode’s guests are Liam O’Brien and Taliesin Jaffe!

Brian: “How’s everyone feeling?” Taliesin: “...god.”

There’s a brief discussion about sports. Liam and Taliesin agree that they like the cowboys. Not the Cowboys the sports team, just cowboys.

Taliesin, on episodes featuring him and Liam: “We have a dark sad energy that I think works well together.”

Brian leaps out of his chair. “My pants kind of match the wall!”

Also Brian: “You guys fuck with Barney?”

Okay, okay, okay. First question of the night at 7:09 PM. What was it like to find Vess dead? Liam had a lot of avenues of conversation he was planning with her and was disappointed to lose access to those. Taliesin notes that it’s ten days before they can talk to her again.

Another contemplative digression. Liam: “Google ‘fartiste’.” Lots of talk of sphincters.

Brian asks what it was like to see Molly committing such heinous acts. Taliesin: “I have a nice wall built because I understand the mechanism by which Molly is Molly, and knowing the mechanism, I understand what Matt’s doing. It’s only Molly so far. I always knew that whatever was going on in the background was sinister and a little bit iffy. And, you know, Molly was never actually against a little skullduggery. He’s not a moral person, just, you know. Situationally kind.” Taliesin genuinely isn’t sure how much Lucien knows about Molly’s life, but he looks forward to someday being able to talk about the initial conversation he and Matt had about Molly at a Starbucks by a tattoo parlor.

Brian wonders whether Vess’s death has made Caleb start thinking about how other Assembly members may not be all that untouchable after all. “It’s totally surreal and absurd to him. I still think of them as powerful, though. Story-wise, Caleb thinks of them as dangerous as fuck. All of them.” Getting to know Vess might have helped him figure out what to do next about Trent - now there��s even more uncertainty there.

On potentially having to explain Vess’s disappearance: “Clay’s just gonna peace out. By the time this becomes a problem, he feels this is not his problem. If there’s a good path to everyone working out, sure, but boy it don’t look like it right now.” Caleb’s “just in con-artist mode at the moment.” They’re both more focused on what’s going on at the moment.

“I will actually say, it wasn’t until halfway through that even I noticed [that Clay was being flirted with]. I really appreciate it, just because very, very early on, from the beginning, I was very much like, I’m just going to play him ace. He’s got no interest in this shit. All that energy gets directed into other places. I was like, it’s a shame that it will never come up organically.” He was pleased to have an excuse to bring it up in-game. He does note that because of the costumes “it was like being flirted with by Ganondorf.”

As soon as Laura was actively interested in reading Der Katzenprinz, Liam knew he wanted to put the whole book together. Taliesin: “I can barely take a walk every day. Who the fuck are you?” 

Cosplay of the Week: a fiery Caleb! (lilac.cos on Instagram, photo by fourphotoscosplay on Instagram)

Everyone’s a fan of Dagen Underthorn. Liam: “I love him because of how salt-of-the-earth he is. We’re a bunch of weirdoes.” Taliesin figures he’ll wait for the M9 outside the cave, but “three days, tops.”

“Clay’s seen a lot of things go down when people are mourning. This is a new one, so he’s definitely not sure what to do, and hasn’t really had an opportunity to be like: a little trepidation would be advised, because this could go really poorly, and you’re all a little weird about this. He’s assuming that Molly was another nice guy like the rest of these nice people, but after the Traveler he’s a little more wary of trusting his friends’ judgement on the character of others. It’s a lot like hearing about somebody’s ex and they’re like, oh, they’re coming to visit.”

Why was it so hard for Caleb to walk away from the necromantic emerald? “The first answer is that, Caleb, who is humble in many ways, is also cocky. I’m the best at it, I’m really good. One thread in Caleb’s personality is his hubris. The other answer to it is that Liam thought it was hilarious.” 

Taliesin: “I could’ve possibly stayed a little longer.” Brian: “How much longer?” Taliesin: “Until we had to resurrect someone.”

Brian asks what it was like to have a battle de-escalate to the point of “dinner and friendship”. Taliesin: “It’s been a hard year and I was tired. I don’t want to hurt anything for a while, I just want to have cocoa on graph paper.” Caleb invited the yetis in because “one, that’s amazing. But also they said they would escort us and be our bodyguards for a little bit.” He thought he could entice them to stick around longer, having plied them with cats and pastries.

On Caduceus getting to be a mammoth: “The same way that Caleb is a creature of hubris, Clay is a creature of self-control, and is really invested in his ability to maintain himself and to not get lost in the situation; even in a heightened situation, he’s still very much himself. This was uncomfortable. Eventually, with some hindsight, he’ll enjoy the notion, but at the moment, it’s definitely a lot of, that did not feel okay.”

Fan Art of the Week: the kitties in the kitchen! (kristen_felan on Instagram)

Why was it important to Caleb that Veth stop touting him as a leader? “It’s never really bothered him intensely, but it’s been a thing for a very long time. It wasn’t worth making a thing about it, but it was never true for him. He just doesn’t feel like a leader, he never did. He went from being an A-hole to one of the knights of the round table.”

Who does Clay think needs the most guidance? “Yasha. He’s feeling at least reasonable about everybody. He feels like Jester doesn’t quite have her shit together, but she’s fine, and Fjord’s doing just great. Everyone seems to be coming together. Yasha had a breakthrough but hasn’t really processed yet, so it’s a lot of, like, hey guy, so. You know. Now that we’re feeling more healthy, maybe it’s time to make some healthy decisions?” Liam suspects some of the characters will continue evolving even after the campaign is done. Taliesin: “Life doesn’t have an act structure.”

Taliesin: “I’m looking forward to playing the Tomb Takers after they TPK us.” Liam: “Dibs on Cree.”

[arotechno]

Jughead (2015), Issues 1-6: Discussion and Commentary

"I am like unto a god, Archie Andrews. Respect me as such."

Recently re-typed and ready to go, here is a broad discussion of the first volume of the Jughead reboot comic series. I was originally going to review each issue individually, but given that the first six comprise one story arc, I decided to do the whole volume in one go. That means this is a bit crunched for time and therefore not quite as in-depth as I wanted to go! But I encourage you to read the comics for yourself, if you are able.

This will not be spoiler-free, for the record! The images here are taken from my own copy using my phone, so they're not the best quality! But they also aren't especially crucial to this commentary, so you'll have to bear with me.

I just really like the inside cover art for this volume, alright (it's also the cover of issue 5)? I can't help it, I'm aro, I see heart imagery and something in my brain goes haywire.

When we first meet Jughead at the beginning of Volume 1, he comes off as lazy and apathetic, at least on the surface. After an all-nighter of playing video games, Jughead is dragged to school by Archie. There, they find that Betty has started a new campaign to save Fox Forest, a beloved local greenspace that is being threatened by Veronica’s wealthy father, Mr. Lodge. Jughead is… not very interested in Betty’s cause, to put it politely. It’s not that he doesn’t care about Fox Forest, but he does not believe that Mr. Lodge would be convinced to change his mind by a petition. He tells Betty as such, and she remarks that he lives a very hollow life.

“Man, you’re so cynical,” Archie tells him. “Is there anything you’d actually fight for?”

The answer is yes. What ultimately gets Jughead to fight for something? Food—well, kind of, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

When Archie and Jughead get to class, they learn that the principal of Riverdale High, Mr. Weatherbee, is being replaced out of the blue by a new guy called Stanger. Stanger is a stiff, serious type, and he immediately starts making changes: new uptight teachers, a strict dress code, new bootcamp-esque curriculum, and most importantly, supposedly nutritious slop to replace the food in the cafeteria.

This sends Jughead down a bit of a rebellious path—he’s not a rule-breaker, but he’s perfectly comfortable with bending the rules in his favor while narrowly skirting around getting into trouble. He starts selling burgers in the cafeteria, with the proceeds benefitting Betty’s fundraiser for Fox Forest.

(Hell yeah, Jughead, unionize that student body! Sell those burgers! You have nothing to lose but your chains!)

This stunt gets Jughead on Stanger’s bad side immediately, and a slowly simmering feud between them ultimately boils over when Stanger plants a knife in Jughead’s backpack to get him expelled. Thankfully, his dad is able to talk his sentence down to a week’s suspension, but that doesn’t stop his friends (and his mother) from worrying about him.

As an aside, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate Mr. Jones.

“Something’s off here and I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure Jughead didn’t bring a knife to school. My boy’s weird, but he’s not a criminal.”

I really like this line from him to Betty. He clearly knows his son and is willing to stand up for him, and it’s comforting to me, especially viewing the story through the lens of Jughead being aroace, that Mr. Jones is not at all bothered by his son being a bit on the strange side, as long as he’s still a good kid. Nothing but respect for Forsythe Jones II in this house.

Something fun and unique about this volume in particular is that in every issue, Jughead either falls asleep or passes out, and has an elaborate imaginative dream about the events of the story. In one he’s a pirate, for example, and in another he’s visited by a descendant of Archie’s from the future, who belongs to the time police. But towards the end of the volume, the line between these daydreams and reality seem to blur for Jughead. He comes to the conclusion in one particular nightmare that Stanger is trying to brainwash them all into becoming mindless agents for his evil organization—and then he realizes he may not be that far off from the truth.

Jughead brings this realization—that Stanger is using the school as a sort of training ground for secret agents—up to his friends, and understandably, they aren’t convinced. They worry that the compounded exhaustion of multiple all-nighters playing games and the stress of being suspended has started to get to Jughead, but he vows to prove it to them.

I mean, damn, Betty, that kind of hurts. (Don’t worry, Betty is actually a good friend, as I’m sure we’ll get into later in the series.)

To make a long story short (and to avoid spoiling the entire plot for those who haven’t read it!), Jughead does find proof, and once he does, his friends are immediately on board. They are ultimately able to save the day, and once it’s revealed that Stanger and the new teachers are ex-CIA trying to brainwash the students (no, seriously), Mr. Weatherbee is re-instated as principal and things return to normal.

I’m leaving out a lot of nuanced details, mostly for the sake of time, but there are a lot of surprisingly weighty moments to this first arc, and Zdarsky’s character writing is incredibly endearing and funny, while still hitting the serious moments when it needs to. There’s an interesting underlying commentary in this arc about military recruitment and U.S. propaganda; Stanger says that he specifically chose Riverdale because the students are so average. There’s something to be said here about the way the military industrial complex preys on average or underprivileged teenagers to convince them to serve when they feel they have no better path to take. It’s an almost funnily serious commentary for Zdarsky to make with a seemingly silly and off-beat comic series, and I respect him for that.

(If you recognize this panel, it’s because it appears on the page where Jughead’s asexuality is canonized. What a good page. So good that nobody ever points out this panel.)

By the end of Volume 1, we see that Jughead maybe isn’t as apathetic and careless as he seemed to be. Sure, he got up in arms about food of all things in the beginning, but it stopped being about food very quickly, once he realized that something truly messed up was going on. And it bothers him, deeply—at one point, the gravity of the situation begins to weigh on him so heavily that he nearly gives up entirely, convinced that there is nothing they can do and that they ought to just lie low until they make it out. But he does end up making things right, with the help of his friends, and in the end, he does decide to help Betty out after all. It’s the least he can do, really. You do get the impression that although Jughead’s friends often don’t take him seriously, they’ll always have his back when it counts—and he’ll do the same for them, even if he’ll insist on being a bit snarky about it.

(That slightly cynical attitude is still there, though, and truthfully, Jughead wouldn’t be the same without it.)

To close out, I am just going to share some of my favorite panels/quotes that didn’t fit elsewhere, including some choice Aro Moods. I hope this (admittedly brief) discussion of Volume 1 convinces you to read the comics, and to join me again when I cover the next arc. Until then, cheers to Chip and Erica.

Jughead’s attitude towards Archie’s romantic problems will never not be funny to me. He’s just like “RIP to you but I’m different.”

Kevin. :/ Kevin come on, man. Mr. Zdarsky, sir, this is character assassination. (Jughead’s face in the corner is a reasonable reaction.)

This one’s gone around so many times before (as have a bunch of other aro moments that I don’t think I need to bother re-posting here), but I just think it’s neat. Don’t worry, Betty lets go.

Aaand lastly, I just really like this line from Jughead. “The world is out of our hands, pal. You just gotta make your own weird way in it.” That we do, Jughead. That we do.

[msfbgraves]

Potterverse - when God is an idiot

Crimes of Grindelwald was clearly a mess of a film. I didn’t expect much, after the Graves reveal of film 1, but one can hope, right? What makes this mess feel very modern, however, is that so much of it is due to Rowling’s inability to shut up on social media.

Take, for instance, the clusterfuck of Percival Graves and the Dumbledore family.

“Where is Percival Graves?” could have been part of the marketing campaign of the next film, even if Jo had had absolutely no use for the character. Since Grindelwald is revealed to reside in a big ass castle in film 2, it is quite plausible that this is in fact where Percival Graves has been all along. They could have killed him off screen - wasted away in the Nurmengard dungeon during Grindelwald’s own imprisonment in the US. It’s gruesome, but hardly implausible and the mystery is solved - Graves is in a shallow grave, having died of starvation 17 hours after the end of the first film. Grindelwald hadn’t exactly anticipated his own imprisonment in America, after all. Suck it up, fandom!

Why not make him an accomplice, though? He would have been as relevant to the plot a Vinda is right now, but you would have had some very happy fans, and it would fit, thematically - a bit like Hydra infiltrating SHIELD in Marvel. Of course, this being Colin, he would probably upstage Depp’s Grindelwald, so best ‘put him on a bus’ so to speak - off screen, but ready to be used at your earliest convenience. He could still give us beautiful infodump scenes, say as a messenger from Grindelwald to Dumbledore.

Too complicated? Colin too distracting? You hate the man for being a clearly better person/superior creator? Fine. Pull a Moody. Save Graves, send him back to MACUSA off screen. You need only show him coordinating Grindelwald’s transport at the beginning of film 2 to show us where he is at. Would give the audience some idea of the dangers of this Grindelwald man, to see Graves all worse for wear, plus it would make for some beautifully repressed anger between them. Ah, you don’t want to upstage the bleached pineapple Colin is unavailable?  Have Seraphina merely mention him: “Do not underestimate Grindelwald. Our head Auror is still in a coma, and he’d never lost a duel in his life.” 

The one thing they should not have done is spout Word of God contradictory nonsense about Graves never existing. Honestly. Simply gauge the audience reaction, write in a single line of exposition and in the meantime, tell the audience to wait and see. Whatever it turned out to be, fans might have clamoured it was a massive letdown given this buildup, but not a gigantic plot hole. The reason it is, is largely due to Rowling’’s desire to feel clever. Her Word of God making the film worse than it, taken at face value, needs to be.

Same with the Crendence-is-a Dumbledore storyline. It simply can’t be true. Dumbledore’s father was in prison, Dumbledore’s mother died without having any further children. No Aurelius was mentioned by anyone in Harry’s time. Moreover, there is a Quill of Acceptance in Hogwarts, writing down the name of every magical child born in the UK and Ireland in the Book of Admittance.

If there had been an Aurelius Dumbledore, might Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts and thereby in possession of that book, not have been made aware of that fact? True, this being Dumbledore, he could have ignored it, but really, to what end? All tormented about Ariana, would he really have been like: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to learn he has a magical brother in the USA? When there’s all kind of Obscurial disturbances in the US at the latest, wouldn’t he have been like... “Best look into that?” And yeah, he sent Newt, but whatever Newt was doing - he wasn’t actively looking for Credence. He only learnt about Credence from Tina.

Also, in the first film, Grindelwald himself had no idea who Credence even was. He’d seen him in a vision, and thought the Obscurial was much younger. Even if you have never read the books, people who have watched the first film would remember that. So why would he now know exactly who Credence is? He’s been detained for months, who told him - Abernathy?!

And yet, the one who canonically doesn’t know any of this? Credence. He has no idea who Dumbledore is. He doesn’t know he’s met Grindelwald before. What we, the audience, do know, and Credence can only suspect - Grindelwald is a manipulative liar. Grindelwald knows about Ariana Dumbledore, another Obscurial, and would be able to describe her to Credence, making a familial connection sound plausible to him. Again, the boy has nothing else to go on. What he does have is a need for a provider, a burning desire to be part of a family and probably a tremendous rage directed at the people who he feels have rejected him. He would be very willing to unleash all that rage on Grindelwald’s ex and nemesis. This, for an audience member who has more information than Credence (even if you’ve only seen the first film), is actually quite riveting. It is a trainwreck waiting to happen, and, unlike Queenie’s ‘conversion’, it is psychologically plausible.

So of course, instead of trusting the audience’s intelligence - which she once did when it came to Snape’s loyalties, she goes blabbering about Credence really being a Dumbledore before the third film is even out. Honestly, with these pandemic delays, she would have time to revise her whole timeline, but noooo - logic be damned, prior information in her own canon be damned, human psychology be damned - Credence has to be a Dumbledore because I Can Do What I Want, Now Pay Up!

Sure, there might be something poetic about Grindelwald using Dumbledore’s own brother against him, but given that Rowling doesn’t care about the structure and rules of her own story or how humans actually tick (looking at Queenie) I do not trust her to actually dive into that. And  Credence as a willing, terribly misguided, and deadly instrument of a lying Grindelwald is a strong enough setup for conflict for film three without all this Dumbledore nonsense. If they’d just have not commented, the ending would have actually been quite strong. Now, rather than a cliffhanger, it is an even bigger plot hole than in film 1.

I mean, maybe that is the point, and we learn in film 3 that Dumbledore indeed is a time travelling Harry. Otherwise, I just can’t see why JKR keeps ruining her own endings on social media. “Where is Percival Graves” is a fantastic cliffhanger. “OMG, poor Credence has no idea how badly he is being manipulated into becoming a weapon of mass destruction” is psychologically very suspenseful, and maybe a few people will even fall for the Dumbledore red herring. That is totally OK too.

But for the love of storytelling: can someone shut this woman up already?

[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?

[mourntheantagonist]

I'm so sorry to hear that you're sick 💛 I hope things are as good as they can be for you. Take care of yourself 💛

And OH, Harringrove and the Party headcanons?

I love the idea of the Party playing D&D at Steve's (because he provides the best snacks and has a big TV they can watch later and a proper rec room and El and Max come round and go in the pool when they get bored instead of trying to drag the boys away BUT mostly because they love Steve!)

And anyway. Steve joins in sometimes, but only for causal games because he never really had the attention span for it, so mostly he and Billy just do their own thing. Cuddles on the sofa or cooking together or something like that.

Except one time.

When they're watching a movie and Billy's getting distracted by the argument the kids are having over their plan for the super important quest. And Steve wonders if he's getting upset by the raised voices (because Dustin and Mike especially have pretty heated arguments at times) but then Billy growls in annoyance and strides into the rec room.

And Steve panics, thinking he's angry at the kids for making so much noise.

But instead he sits down, calls their plan stupid, points out all the things they SHOULD do (which are all these things Will had been quietly suggesting but he'd been ignored) and basically shows a LOT of very detailed D&D knowledge.

He ends up getting totally drawn in to the game, and by the next campaign, Will's made him a whole character sheet with a lil illustration!

🍒

oh I adore this !! also thanks for sending this when I was sick 💙 I’m feeling a lot better now

also, preface: my knowledge of d&d is 🤏🏼 minuscule

they’d totally make the switch from mikes basement to steve’s house. their ever expanding party can no longer fit it the cooped up space under the wheeler house and there’s also the added benefit of being able to be loud and obnoxious and not have to worry about ted wheeler shutting it down. and steve house is just so much better for a good time. it’s like it was built for parties. the big new tv, the pool, ping pong and pool tables in the garage. they spend as much time there as possible. and yes of course, the main reason is they love steve!! steve is the only adult they can all stand to be around, despite will’s defense of jonathan, mike doesn’t see the enjoyment in spending time with his older sister’s boyfriend. just don’t remind him that steve is her ex.

steve pretends to be annoyed by it. greeting the party with a scoff whenever they show up to his house unannounced, but he truly did enjoy having them around, bringing life in the once dead and empty house.

steve typically watched them do their thing from afar, sometimes hang out with el when she didn’t feel like playing. they’d watch a new movie together that steve brought home from family video and snack on the wide variety of chips and crackers and dips that somehow were always stocked on his shelves. sure his parents weren’t home much, but they were sure to keep him well fed.

but other times, he’ll just be so intrigued in what they’re doing that he’ll join in on the fun. It’s not really his thing, however. he likes games that have a solid end and don’t go on for hours. that’s why you’ll never convince him to play monopoly. it also just requires too much focus and engagement for his liking, he prefers more mindless games. It’s sometimes still lonely for him even with his house full of teenagers, because he’s often listening to them scream from the rec room from the comfort of the couch in his living room. popcorn bowl in hand, watching back to the future for what seems to be the hundredth time.

that’s until he starts dating billy and soon there’s another frequent visitor to his house.

they tried to keep things between them on the downlow for a while. billy only coming over at night after all the kids had left to ensure no unannounced guests arrived. but the one time they decided to veer from that system was also the same time the whole party barged in through his front door and heard some... unsavory sounds coming from the top of the stairs. and there was no denying it at that point. billy’s camaro was parked out front and they’ve already scarred them for life.

it wasn’t necessarily surprising that they were all cool with it, but it was surprising when they constantly told steve he should invite billy over when they were all hanging out. he felt weird about it for a while, and so did billy. they never considered the idea they’d get to actually be with each other publicly or in the presence of others so it was a foreign idea for them. but one day billy decides to drive max directly to steve’s house instead of dropping her off at the wheeler’s. and he decides to stay, as if it wasn’t the plan all along.

it takes a couple of occasions for the two to progress from just sitting on the couch beside each other, to holding hands, to cuddling, all the way to kissing in front of the group. every time they made a little step forward in that arena it felt really good when the kids didn’t even bat an eye. except for kissing, but they would have that reaction no matter who they were. and the gagging noises it elicited made them only want to do it more.

billy never seemed to show much interest in the games from steve’s point of view, always seeming so content with just the two of them lying on the living room couch watching whatever movie he snagged that day.

but this time he looks pissed off. he’s got that same expression on his face when someone cuts him off or is going too slow in the passing lane. the kids are being a little rowdy, he’ll admit that, but it’s not more than usual. but maybe this was billy’s last straw.

when billy gets up from the couch, steve would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried for what he might do. but he was also just as scared of standing in his way because that man walked like he was on a goddamn mission.

billy gently pushes dustin out of his chair and takes a seat, earning a confused ‘what the fuck dude?’ out of him.

and he basically calls them all a bunch of idiots and tells them what they should be doing. and they all want to argue with him (except for will obviously) because billy doesn’t know anything about d&d!! except what he says makes perfect sense and they can’t argue with him if they wanted to.

and then he doesn’t leave where he’s sitting at the table. excuses it as him needing to be there to keep them from arguing. except the reason he stays is because he likes it. brings him back to the days when he was around their age playing the same game in the basement of his own friends house.

and eventually he does start joining in on future campaigns. by now he’s got his own character and everyone is always talking about how it’s great having a barbarian in the group because “steve made a terrible barbarian”. that would always come with a loud “hey!” from the other room, because they always said it loud enough to hear.

at first steve thought he’d be upset that billy started playing with the kids and not spending the time with him, but he just loved watching billy get along with everyone. it made it worth it to see billy so loose and free like that, and it wasn’t like billy didn’t make time for him afterwards...

[cadaceus]

C3E16

More liveblogging catch ups! Here are my full thoughts and feelings for Campaign 3, Episode 16 of Critical Role. Spoilers below, with also small spoilers for Campaign 2 as well in a reference I make... beware!

- NORDVERSE

- “I was excited, and then presentory” I feel like Matt is always one of those people who is so casually hilarious, for some reason this phrase took me out

- LIAM CAN’T JUST BRING OUT HIS CALEB VOICE LIKE THAT, I MISS MY BOY TOO MUCH

- Ooh, I forgot about the brumestone! It’s so clever to bring it back now, also Laura always pieces things together much more quickly than I do LMAO (ie this thing with the brumestone, the children’s disappearances related to the Dynasty in Campaign 2, etc.)

- THIS MAP LOOKS SO COOL, the lava and darkness vibes are so intimidating and beautiful, Matt really outdid himself with this one!

- 20 POINTS?!

- “Orym?” “It’s a fail, dad” 

- She can control them through the poison? That’s amazing and also terrifying

- “What are you doing, FCG?” “I don’t know...I need Nord VPN!” LMAO SAM, the sponsor grind never stops

- Laudna’s facing some insecurities... mood but also NO DEAR

- Wait, I had to leave for a minute (to make popcorn hehe), and both Travis and Taliesin are gone?? Please tell me they just went to get more water or something and that nothing bad happened to their characters...

- LIAM COMING IN CLUTCH

- The Redbubble Roast??? LMAO 

- Is FCG glitching?? If so, I wonder what triggered it, but this is such a cool character detail for Sam to add! Intriguing, worrying, and vaguely unsettling which is exactly what I live for

- PRETTY IS BACK..... ANOTHER AWKWARD “EX” ENCOUNTER

- “I might have company...” “No you won’t...unless you hire a nurse” THEY ARE SO FUNNY ASHTON DOES NOT HOLD BACK

- Laudna always using “us” when referring to her sleeping situation, I love how Laudna and Imogen don’t even have to ask each other if they will sleep in the same bed (also: them inviting Orym is sweet)

- MATT’S FACE WHEN CHETNEY PROPOSITIONS FEARNE I AM CRYING

- Okay but why am I kind of digging the Chetney and Fearne thing LOL every Travis and Ashley character dynamic is gold...

- “how hard are you?” “HURT” we got a dm facepalm let’s go

- Orym is so protective of FCG this episode  🥺

- Orym speaks to FCG a bit like how Caleb spoke to Veth in a way... speaking of player-character dynamics, Sam and Liam’s characters’ dynamics are always sooo important to me, my beloveds

- All these sleep convos are beautiful

- Uh oh, ending on a cliffhanger with Imogen... I hope that nothing bad happens here eep!

[rhosyn-du]

Never make a mess when a total catastrophe will do - Epilogue

Pairings: Jimon, past Clace, background Clizzy, a bunch of other minor background pairings Rating: Explicit Art: @cor321​ Beta: @all-thestories-aretrue​ Tags:  Alternate Universe - College/University, fake dating, oh my god they were roommates, friends with benefits, idiots to lovers, pining, miscommunication, holidays, drinking games, mistletoe, symbolically significant Oreos, domestic fluff, brief mention of past character death, Jace’s self-worth issues deserve their own tag Summary: What do you do when you find out your sister is not only dating your ex and love-of-your-high-school-life but is also bringing her home for Christmas? Bring your annoying, hot, annoyingly-hot roommate as your fake boyfriend to show them you're totally fine with it, obviously! There's no possible way this could backfire. Link: AO3 , Tumblr Master Post

Epilogue

“How is this the third store we’ve visited that’s out of cranberry sauce?”

“Because it’s eleven in the morning on Thanksgiving Day?” Maia threw Simon a look that clearly said ‘duh.’ “I’m honestly surprised we managed to snag those last two pie crusts.”

“I should never have let myself get distracted while I was doing my shopping on Monday.” He fixed Jace with a stern glare. “No more distracting me at the grocery store.”

“You were pretty into my distraction, if I recall correctly,” Jace said with a lazy grin.

“You’re laughing now, but you’ve never seen Bubbe Helen when she doesn’t get cranberries on Thanksgiving. You don’t even know.”

Jace wrapped his arms around Simon’s waist, pulling him close. “Hey, we’ll find Bubbe Helen her cranberries. We’ve still got a hundred miles left between here and New York. There’s bound to be a store along the way that still has cranberries.”

Simon relaxed in his arms with a sheepish smile. “You’re right. I’m being dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” Jace corrected gently. “It’s tradition, and it’s important to people you love.”

“Wow, holidays make you really sappy,” Simon teased.

“You make me really sappy,” Jace corrected, reaching for Simon’s left hand. He brought it to his lips, placing a kiss on the knuckle right above his father’s ring. The same ring he’d used when he actually proposed two weeks ago, at the same table in Java Jones where they’d made their list of fake dating rules all those months ago. He’d hidden the ring under his muffin, knowing Simon would steal the last bite like he always did, and even though it wasn’t the kind of grand, romantic gesture his siblings had suggested when he asked for their help, it was theirs, and the look on Simon’s face when he said yes was really all that mattered.

“You make me pretty sappy, too,” Simon said, drawing him into a kiss.

“If you two start making out in the middle of the canned goods aisle, I’m stealing the van and going to New York without you.”

Jace pulled away from the kiss to give Maia an unimpressed look. “No one’s making you watch.”

“Yeah, but every minute I have to spend waiting for you is one I don’t get to spend with my girlfriend, who I live two-hundred miles away from and only get to see maybe once a month if I’m really lucky.”

“She does have a point,” Simon said. “Plus, Becky can be really vindictive when she wants to be, and she’s got easy access to the room we’re sleeping in tonight.”

“And the longer we stand around here, the longer other people have to buy all the cranberries at other stores,” Maia pointed out.

“Fine,” Jace relented, releasing Simon. “Let’s go find some cranberries.”

Simon took his hand, and Jace could feel the warm metal of his ring pressing into his skin.

~~~

“We have cranberries!” Maia announced as they entered the Lewis home.

“Oh, thank god,” Becky said. “Someone was starting to get a little agitated.” She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head significantly toward the kitchen.

“So, you’re only happy to see me for my cranberries, huh?” Maia teased.

“I’ve got a whole list of reasons I’m happy to see you.” Becky gave her a quick kiss, then turned to poke Simon in the ribs. “But I’m only happy to see this fool for his cranberries.”

“Hey!” Simon protested, poking her right back.

“I guess I just don’t even rate, huh?” Jace asked.

Becky turned a wide, mischievous smile on him. “Oh, no. I’m happy to see you for an entirely different reason. I want to offer you a trade.”

“Don’t do it,” Simon said. “She’s sneaky, and she will rip you off.”

“I am sneaky,” Becky agreed, “but this is totally above board.” She turned back to Jace. “I hear that you and Maia are drinking buddies.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going,” Maia commented.

“That’s probably a pretty accurate description of our relationship, sure,” Jace agreed.

“Which means you’ve seen Maia drunk,” Becky continued. “Which means you probably have embarrassing stories about my girlfriend. Stories that I’m more than willing to trade embarrassing stories of my brother to hear.”

“See?” Simon pointed at his sister. “Sneaky.”

“Yeah, babe, I’m not sure you’ve actually thought this through,” Maia said.

“No, I have,” Becky told her with a smirk. “I’ve also thought up all kinds of ways to convince you to forgive me.”

“Please don’t elaborate,” Simon said.

“Okay,” Maia said, “but I have an even better deal for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“How about we both tell embarrassing stories about Simon and Jace over dinner.” Maia leaned in and finished in a low voice. “And then you can show me how you were planning to get me to forgive you when we get back to your place tonight.”

“Oh,” Becky said. “Yeah, that’s a much better deal.” She turned to Jace. “Sorry, got a better offer. No hard feelings?”

Jace shrugged, biting back a laugh. “I mean, I can’t really blame you.”

“Is it too late to do Thanksgiving with your family?” Simon asked Jace. “Or we could just sit in the van and eat cranberries out of the can. That’s also an option that would be preferable to this.”

“Oh good, you found the cranberries.” Bubbe Helen emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She walked over and pulled Simon into a hug. “I knew my grandson would come through.”

Behind her, Becky shook her head emphatically, mouthing ‘lies.’

Simon kissed his grandmother’s cheek. “It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without cranberries.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” She turned a critical eye on Jace. He was pretty sure she still held a bit of a grudge over him supposedly proposing to Simon in a storage closet. “And what are your thoughts on cranberries?”

“Oh, uh.” Jace was pretty sure he’d never thought much about cranberries before this morning’s frantic search across half of New England. “I’m definitely pro-cranberry.”

“Speaking of which,” Simon interrupted, “we should get these groceries to the kitchen and get started on the pies. You’re going to love Jace’s pecan pie, Bubbe Helen. It’s the best I’ve ever had.”

“Pecan, huh?” Bubbe Helen gave Jace a considering look.

Jace nodded. “With browned butter. It’s a family recipe.” Technically, it was Alec’s recipe, but Alec was family, so he figured it counted.

Bubbe Helen nodded. “You’ll do.” Then she turned with a wide smile to greet Maia, and Jace let out a relieved sigh.

As they made their way to the kitchen, Simon bumped Jace with his shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “It’s cute that my grandmother makes you nervous.”

“It’s not cute,” Jace muttered. “She’s terrifying.”

When they arrived in the kitchen, Simon’s mother was checking the turkey.

“Another half-hour, I think,” she told them as she closed the oven door. “If you work fast, you can put the pies in as soon as the turkey comes out. I cleared some counter space where you can work over there. Do not touch anything else.

“Hi, sweetie,” she added as an afterthought, giving Simon a quick hug.

Simon returned the hug. “Hi, Mom. Pie plates still in the same place?”

“Bottom cabinet to the left of the sink,” she confirmed. “Is there anything else you two need to get started on the pies?”

“Pie plates to the left of the sink, half an hour, don’t touch anything,” Jace repeated back to her. “I think we’re good.”

“Perfect. I’m going to go toss the linens in the dryer. You boys get started on those pies, and I’ll be back to check on the turkey in,” she checked her watch, “twenty-eight minutes.”

Jace watched long enough to make sure she was out of earshot before saying, “If we’re ever crazy enough to do joint holidays, she and Maryse cannot be allowed in the kitchen at the same time.”

Simon chuckled. “Mom can be a little intense about holidays being perfect, but I think it’s just because she wants us to enjoy them.”

“I get it.” Jace knelt down to retrieve the pie plates from the cabinet. “I mean, you saw what Maryse and Alec were like just over Christmas dinner. Military campaigns are less well-orchestrated than Thanksgiving at the Lightwood house.”

“Is it weird having Thanksgiving here instead of with your own family?” Simon asked as he rolled out a pie crust.

Jace set the pie plates down next to the pastry mat. “I am having Thanksgiving with my family. I’m having it with you.”

Simon smiled without looking up from the pastry mat. “If you keep saying romantic things, I’m going to kiss you, and then we’ll never get the pies ready to go in the oven on time.”

“I wasn’t being romantic,” Jace insisted. “It’s just, it took me a long time after the Lightwoods took me in to really start thinking of them as family, to accept that they thought of me as family. I’m not sure I ever would have if it wasn’t for Alec and Iz. They taught me that family can be people you choose, not just something you’re born with.” He shrugged. “And I chose you.”

Simon looked up from the now perfectly-rolled pie crust. “That was super romantic.”

“Maybe a little,” Jace conceded. He lifted the crust into one of the pie plates and began smoothing it into the corners.

“That’s actually part of why I wanted us to do Thanksgiving here this year,” Simon said as he began rolling out the second crust. “I know you haven’t always felt like you had a family, and even though I know you do now, I wanted to show you that you get to have my family now, too.”

Jace wound his arms around Simon’s waist. “Now who’s being romantic?”

The pies were not ready to go into the oven on time.

[pointnumbersixteen]

My Personal Ranking of Ghosts Episodes and Why

So, here’s my personal order for all the current Ghosts episodes, from best to worst, with a bit of an explanation as to why I think so. I included who wrote each episode because the writing pairs tend to have consistent strengths and weaknesses that affect my enjoyment. These are, of course, just my opinions, and I recognize that different people have different tastes.  

1) Moonah Ston (Larry and Martha)

This episode is hilarious and it continues to be hilarious through multiple viewings (some of the jokes in other episodes start to wear thin after multiple viewings, but this one remains entirely solid through dozens of rewatches). Barclay and Bunny are my favorite guest characters throughout the show. Also some of my all-time favorite bits are in it: Cap stealing Thomas’s role doing the reading, the shooting of the pheasant with Cap, everything to do with Mary and the cooking of the pheasant, the way Alison yeets the pelaverga as soon as it’s handed to her, the juxtaposition of the eclipse ritual and the dinner party, Bunny’s ‘sobriety test.’ Also, there’s a strong A plot and a strong B plot that tie together, and all of the characters are fit into these two plots well, which is something the creators sometimes struggle with.

2) Getting Out (Mat and Jim)

I love everything about the Captain’s portion of the plot and it’s a nice big portion, too. His scene with Kitty is one of my favorite scenes in the show, brilliantly written, well-acted, and gorgeously shot. I can feel for Mike and Alison in it. Fiona’s another really funny guest character. My only major complaint is that the plot with other ghosts after the Captain’s left the group starts to drag after enough re-watches, particularly Thomas’s bad erotica and the jewel scene. I found both very funny on the first several watches, but the payoff to both is ruined with enough rewatches. With the first, the payoff is with how surprisingly bad for a ‘professional’ writer his story is, but after you’re well aware that Thomas is a bad writer, it’s just listening to bad writing over and over again. And the bit with Fanny’s jewel has such a long lead up, to get to the surprise payoff that the jewel was secretly pawned by George forever ago, but once you know the jewel is gone, the long lead up gets progressively more tedious with every watch. At least for me.

3) Reddy Weddy (Ben and Simon)

I’ve written extensively about this one before, so I won’t include much, but: I love everything having to do with the Captain in this one, particularly the completely wonderful flashbacks with Havers. Mike and Alison were very well done, and I enjoyed Martin as a guest character. But I really didn’t like the whose-turn-is-it-to-pick-the-movie subplot, it just seemed sort of unnecessary to me and detracted from the tone of the rest of it. I assume they just had trouble finding a better integrated role for Pat, Thomas and Julian, which, as I said under Moonah Ston, is an occasional weakness the creators had.

4) Gorilla War (Larry)

I love Cap’s campaign of attrition. And his singing. Everyone had solid, funny bits, all tied into one main plot in it. Mike and Alison are both well done in this episode. It’s the first episode where Alison is able to interact with the ghosts and I think they did a great job capitalizing on her coming to terms with it and Mike’s such a supportive husband in it.  

5) About Last Night (Mat and Jim)

I love the spat between Cap and Pat in this one, because the focus of their subplot is their relationship dynamic and I enjoy their relationship dynamic- even though it’s close to the breaking point in this instance, all is well because they make up in the end. Everything about the state of the house and trying to remember what happened to it-as well as the flashbacks to the party- is pretty funny. The bits with Dante were very funny as well. The Robin-Mary subplot was a bit meh for me, but I didn’t dislike it, I’m just not sold on the idea. I didn’t enjoy Mike being sidelined on the roof for most of the episode when Alison needed his help and all the criticism he got from the other characters for not being around to help Alison, though.

6) Who Do You Think You Are? (Mat and Jim)

This is a really strong introductory episode with some good, funny bits in it, but it doesn’t rank higher since the ghosts can’t interact with Alison yet and Mike and Alison don’t know they’re there, which is where a lot of the fun of the concept of the show comes in to me.

7) Bump in the Night (Larry and Martha)              

The robbers were funny as were the ghosts’ utterly inept attempts (save Robin) in stopping them. I loved music club, particularly the Captain’s performance. I appreciated the return of Barclay and his bitches. Humphrey was actually reasonably included in the plot, which is always a nice change. There weren’t any bits I found particularly outstanding (except maybe Cap’s musical performance) but there weren’t any major bits I disliked, either. Everyone’s included in one main plot and it continues to be just as enjoyable on rewatches.

8) The Thomas Thorne Affair (Mat and Jim)

I greatly enjoy examine-the-story-from-multiple-viewpoints-to-illustrate-unreliable-narration plots, so that went well in this episode. I also really like regency romances, so this ticked another box for me. Humphrey was given an important bit again, which I appreciate. The bit about Francis was a nice twist at the end, because otherwise it would have been a bit too predictable, with Thomas being shot in a duel over a romantic misunderstanding- that was the most obvious solution to his death, after all. It felt a bit contrived, though, that the characters who died after Thomas all went to the group meeting on time, while the characters who witnessed Thomas’s death were all still wandering around upstairs and just happen to wander into Alison’s room in time to contradict the last telling of the story and provide the next. And of course, the fact that half the cast is just sort of sitting downstairs waiting for a significant portion of the episode always seemed a bit lacking to me. Also, Mike starts the episode being unusually stupid (not knowing Elizabeth II is the current queen- at least in the US, not being able to answer who the current President is frequently used as shorthand for ‘having brain damage’) and spends the rest of it being insecure about Alison’s ex (this seems to be a Mat and Jim thing).  

9) Perfect Day (Mat and Jim)

I loved all the Cap bits in this. Pat’s plotline was good, too. Humphrey actually had a substantial role, which I appreciated, and more so since he actually managed to bring Fanny around to the gay wedding. I was of course thrilled that it was a lesbian wedding. But I’m not a fan of ‘miscommunication causes drama’ plots in any medium and I disliked how once again how insecure Mike is in this episode (Mat and Jim again) and how poorly he handles it.

10) Happy Death Day (Ben)

I love all the Pat bits. I liked the interactions between the Captain and Julian, they had a really enjoyable dynamic in this one, although they’re being rather disappointing human beings in their plotline. I like Kitty’s plotline, too, and the garden scene between her and Fanny is very funny and beautifully framed. I don’t think this episode did a particularly good job with either Mike or Alison, though. Mike ditches his probably still concussed wife who is plagued by ghosts to manage the building work he started because he’s spending hours a day out of the house because there are too many people in it and he’s apparently potty-shy and Alison thinks trying to convince people to do probably thousands, if not more, pounds worth of free labor by making them tea is both a plausible idea and an appropriate thing to even try (it’s bad enough when the people asking you to do free work for them are actually your friends, contriving a friendship in order to do this just sort of seems a bit contemptible to me). Some of the jokes get less funny with time- Fanny with the butt cracks, for instance. I considered the Thomas subplot another weak ‘well, something needs to be done with this character’ subplot and I can’t even remember off the top of my head what Mary was doing most of the episode despite having seen it at least a dozen times, besides the bit where Alison throws the teacup at her head (and if I were Terry, I would have called it quits then).  

11) The Ghost of Christmas (Ben and Simon)

Mostly fluff, and a decent amount of it was rather predictable fluff, but I’ve written more on that elsewhere. Mike’s sisters were the worst. I was hoping Ben would write himself a bigger role and he didn’t. In the Bleak Midwinter was gorgeous, though, and there were enough smaller bits that I found endearing to prop it up over the next two.

12) The Grey Lady (Larry and Martha)

I enjoy the ghosts’ routine as shown at the beginning of the episode. I found Pat’s radio show amusing. I liked the basement scene with Nigel. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Captain’s ‘stretching’ subplot (although I do greatly enjoy his  ‘for king and country’ running), it just seemed a bit silly to me, like they couldn’t decide what to do with him for most of the episode, so went with ‘eh, squats, I guess.’ Also, I feel like they had trouble placing Mary and Kitty, too. Mary spends a lot of the episode staring at a wall and Kitty spends all of it just following the group and occasionally wailing about the ‘ghost-ghost.’ Also, I think Alison went a little too far with her simulated haunting when she dressed up as the Grey Lady; it wasn’t smart because there was no way she was going to get away with it after anyone turned on the lights and it seems a bit more like attempting to defraud people than the rest of it did.

13) Free Pass (Mat and Jim)

Alison actively puts people in danger for money, misrepresenting the house as structurally sound in order to get a movie contract, when in fact the floors are held up by hope and happy thoughts and could (and eventually do) cave at any moment. If the floor had fallen through in the letter scene, before Mike braced it, when they were using the heavy equipment, there likely would have been serious injuries. Also: Toby Nightingale is the worst. Also: the solidity and supportive nature of Mike and Alison’s relationship is the best part of it and I dislike the choice (Mat and Jim again) to make him so insecure in this episode (this was the first in the episode order to do so).

To speak on general tendencies, though: I’m not a fan of doing morally questionable things for monetary reasons unless the situation is life or death, so all of the episodes where that’s Alison’s primary purpose get major demerits from me. That’s a matter of personal taste, but there I am. As for the writers (I recognize they all come up with the general story arcs together, but the writing pairs are responsible for execution), everyone struggles a bit sometimes to get solid roles for everyone into the plot, to be expected when the cast is so large, but some instances are worse than others. I think Larry’s (well, Larry/Martha for most of them, but they’ve both joked that mostly she drinks and he writes when they’re working on their episodes) still the strongest writer in terms of having mostly cohesive plots that standup consistently as solid to multiple viewings, but he also has the most experience as a writer, so that’s probably to be expected. Ben and Simon have both stated that they like jig-sawing a bunch of little plots together to make an episode, and while it is a bit impressive that they can make episodes with like, nearly as many plotlines as characters come together to make one reasonably sane episode, I find this strategy detrimental in that to me, when they do this, there’s always one or two plots that are really, really good, a few plots that are pretty good, and then one or two plots that I just don’t enjoy, that to me drag down the rest of the episode (most apparent in Reddy Weddy, but it happens to some degree in all of their episodes). My major criticism of Mat and Jim is with the way they write Mike. I actually really like Mike when he’s well done, but his portrayal seems to vary a lot between episodes, and (with the exception of Ben’s Happy Death Day, but his problems in that one are different) the episodes he’s written the weakest in are all written by Mat and Jim. They’re the only ones who I think write Mike as insecure in his relationship with Alison and his most incompetent and/or useless moments also tend to be written by them. I don’t know if they have a slightly different concept of Mike’s character than the other four or what, but I think Larry/Martha and Ben/Simon’s portrayals of him tend to be significantly more flattering.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #59: Jeanne d’Arc

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re finally finishing up the original roster of servants with The Maiden of Orleans, Jeanne d’Arc! As you might expect from the holy maiden, Jeanne is 100% a Cleric, protecting her soldiers as she leads the charge.

Check out the level-by-level breakdown below the cut, or the build summary over here!

I’d also like to thank everyone who likes or reblogs these posts; I thought this would be a really niche topic, but this blog now has more followers than my main! We’ve still got plenty of servants to go after this, so I hope you’ll continue to enjoy them.

Race and Background

Like most servants, Jeanne’s a Human. Rather, she’s a bundle of magical energy roughly based on the impact a human made on history, but that’s a mouthful, and also not a race, so we’ll stick with Human. This gives her +1 to all stats.

Jeanne’s your typical Folk Hero; came from humble beginnings, achieved great things through sheer determination, and died a fiery death at the hands of those she saved. That last part’s not typical, but it’s also not part of a person’s background. Being a folk hero gives you proficiency with Animal Handling and Survival. You grew up on a farm, so that’s not too wild.

Stats

You receive visions from a higher power, and know other servants’ True Names on sight. That’s pretty wise, so your Wisdom has to be pretty high. Despite having zero formal education, you can argue theology with the best of them through sheer conviction- that’s Charisma. Third is Constitution; you have a martyr complex, so it helps to have some health in the first place before you go throwing it away to save others. Fourth is Dexterity, because it’s just more helpful here. Your Strength isn’t great. I know canon Jeanne can fold street lamps like pretzels, but sacrifices had to be made somewhere. Finally, dump Intelligence. Remember that “zero formal education” thing from earlier? Yeah.

Class Levels

1. Being a Cleric is a given, but being a catholic complicated our choice of domain a bit. Since you’re a monotheist, God falls under every domain, but your personal power set fits best in the Protection domain from an Unearthed Arcana. First level clerics get Spells, which they cast and prepare using their Wisdom. Protection clerics also get a Shield of the Faithful, letting them react to stick a shield or arm between an attacking creature and their target within 5′ of you. This makes the target harder to hit, imposing disadvantage on the attack.

You also have proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as two cleric skills. You’re a part of History, and I’m sure God’ll fill in any blanks you need to know. Religion is an option, but you’re not educated, just really persistent. That’s Persuasion. 

For cantrips, Light will help your dumb human eyes see in the dark and make your flag all glowy for your noble phantasms. Mending will help keep the soldiers’ uniforms in one piece while on campaign, and Spare the Dying will help keep the soldiers in one piece while on campaign.

Clerics prepare their spells, so your exact spell list isn’t a part of character creation, but I’ll still go over some to keep in mind. Compelled Duel and Protection from Evil and Good are part of your domain spell list, so you get them for free. The former can keep your squishier teammates safe by forcing an enemy to target you, while the latter can keep a key member safe from aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. Given the number of golems you end up fighting most events, this is a good spell to keep on hand. Some other spells to keep in mind are Bless and Shield of Faith for combat support, and Healing Word to keep everyone on their feet.

Finally, the question of what weapons to use. The closest thing to a flagpole on the simple weapon list would probably be a Spear, used two-handed. However, your strength isn’t going to be great; you’ll mostly be using this to wave your banner around. You should also keep a Dagger on hand as well. I’d prefer a shortsword, but a dagger’s is the only simple finesse weapon, so it’s what we have to put up with.

2. At second level you can Channel Divinity once per short rest. As a protection cleric, you have two options to pick from.

Turn Undead forces a wisdom save on undead within 30′ of you or they have to run away for a minute or until it takes damage.

Radiant Defense channels holy energy into an ally within 30′ of you as an action. The first time they take damage in the next minute, that energy is released on the attacker, dealing 2d10+your level in radiant damage.

3. Third level clerics get second level spells, including your domain spells Aid and Protection from Poison. The former increases three creatures’ HP totals by five for eight hours, while the latter does exactly what the name describes. Some other spells to look at include Prayer of Healing for when you can’t quite take a short rest, Lesser Restoration for disease and conditions, and Augury to start getting some divine visions.

4. Use your first ASI to become a Heavy Armor Master. This reduces all nonmagical slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage by 3 while wearing heavy armor.  Calling what you wear “heavy” armor is a bit generous, but you’re throwing yourself in front of the enemy with d8s for hit dice, you can be a bit generous with yourself.

You also get another cantrip this level. Resistance adds a d4 to an ally’s saving throw, for when you need to be sure Spartacus doesn’t get charmed.

5. At fifth level, your Turn Undead transforms into Destroy Undead. Now when undead of CR 1/2 or lower fail the save, they just die instantly. 

You also get third level spells, including domain spells Protection from Energy and Slow. Sometimes an idiot lizard is throwing fire all over the place and you just don’t want to deal with it, and sometimes the DM gives you a maralith with seven extra attacks. These spells help protect the party from those situations. Some other spells to check out are Aura of Vitality for health regeneration, Beacon of Hope to give your party something to rally around, Daylight for the aesthetic, and Mass Healing Word for when your whole party plays barbarians.

6. You can now Channel Divinity twice between rests, and you are a Blessed Healer. Rather than just healing Brian Blessed, this means that whenever you cast a spell to heal someone else, you also gain life; 2+ the spell’s level, to be exact.

7. Seventh level clerics get fourth level spells. Your domain spells are Guardian of Faith and Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere. The former isn’t that in-character for you, but the latter gives a creature Invincibility at the cost of trapping them inside a hamster ball. Another spell to look over is Divination to ask the big man a question that burning you up inside.

8. Use your next ASI to become an Inspiring Leader. Give the party a 10 minute speech to give them temporary hit points equal to your level + your charisma modifier. You may not know anything about tactics, military history, who you’re fighting, or why you’re fighting, but you’ve got heart, dammit! And that counts for something! 

Also, your Destroy Undead kills at CR 1, and you gain a Divine Strike. Once per turn, you can add 1d8 Radiant damage to an attack for some extra holy favor.

9. Ninth level clerics get fifth level spells, including your final domain spells Antilife Shell and Wall of Force. The former can protect you from other creatures, so long as they aren’t forced through the barrier. The latter creates a solid wall between your party and danger, and is likely the closest you’ll get to invincibility at this level. For other spells, Dawn creates a cylinder of radiant damage you can move around the battlefield, and Mass Cure Wounds cures massive amounts of wounds.

10. You learn to call upon Divine Intervention. You use your action to beg the DM for a literal Deus Ex Machina, and roll percentile dice. If you roll lower than your level, you get some help. You can use this feature once per long rest, but if you succeed you have to wait a week before you use it again.

You also get another cantrip. Guidance lets you back seat game with the help of God, giving a creature a d4 it can add to one ability check.

11. Your Destroy Undead cranks up to killing anything CR 2 or lower, and you can prepare 6th level spells. Find the Path is another form of your Revelation skill, letting you find the most direct route to a chosen location, as long as that location stays in one place on the same plane. You could also check out Heal for, you guessed it, more healing.

12. Use your next ASI to become a leader on the battlefield with Tandem Tactician. Now you can Help as a bonus action with a range of 10 feet, and you can help on two attacks if they’re aimed at the same enemy. You’re not that accurate, so why not help out the who are?

13. Thirteenth level clerics get a Divine Strike Improvement, adding an extra d8 of radiant damage when you use it. You also learn seventh level spells! Divine Word can cripple weakened enemies, and more importantly it forces extraplanar creatures back to their own world for 24 hours. Regenerate is even more healing that you won’t have to pay attention to.

14. Your Destroy Undead increases to affect CR 3 undead. Now Mummies and Wights will tremble before your might! ...Isn’t it weird how the other Channel Divinity option doesn’t get any stronger?

15. Fifteenth level clerics get eighth level spells. Holy Aura will protect your party from anything Wall of Force won’t, Antimagic Field will give you a command spell to counteract most of the nonsense the other servants might be using.

16. Use your ASI to bump up your Wisdom for stronger spell saves.

17. Your Destroy Undead now destroys undead of CR 4 or lower, letting you instantly banish any ghost that comes your way. You also gain an Indomitable Defense. At the end of short or long rests, you can resist two types of damage from the following: Bludgeoning, Necrotic, Piercing, Radiant, and Slashing. You can also use your action to pass these resistances to another creature, who’ll hold onto them until your next rest or until you spend a bonus action to take them back.

Finally, you get 9th level spells! Mass Heal and Power Word: Heal will maximize your healing powers to help the rest of your party stay not dead.

18. You can now Channel Divinity three times per short rest.

19. Use your last ASI to round up your Dexterity for more accuracy and better saves and Charisma for more rousing speeches.

20. At your capstone level, your Divine Intervention Improvement means your calls for some holy help are always successful.

Pros:

You can set up a very strong Defense, shutting down and blocking out enemy attacks and spells. You can impose disadvantage, physically block their advance, counter any magic within 30′ of you, or make their attacks blow up in their face with some Radiant Defense.

Whatever damage does go through won’t be a problem thanks to all your Healing, keeping the rest of the party on their feet until the battle’s won.

Intelligence might be your dump stat, but you’ve got a hotline to the one who knows all, so it’s not a big deal. Spells like Divination and Find the Path will help keep the party pointed in the right direction.

Cons: 

You can’t really do all that much on your own, offensively speaking. Your highest attacking stat is a 14, and that will only help you swing a dagger around.

Your physical stats aren’t that good in general. 143 HP isn’t bad for a caster, but you want to be on the front lines, so it could be an issue. Aid is a great way to cover this weakness, but that does mean you’ll be spending spells to do so. Your low strength also means you’re stuck with the weakest heavy armor available, so your AC isn’t amazing.

You don’t need to worry about getting hit if the enemy has to shoot through a wall though, so stay on the defensive and pray your allies will take up arms with you.

Next up: Animal Abuse!

[sambinnie]

1. Happy Mabon! Every autumn, I forget that the darkness comes clanging down in a great rush in the mornings. One day, I am greeted by a pinking sunrise. 48 hours later, it’s so dark on my run to the river that I have to stop a passing runner and check the time, in case my disturbed sleep sent me dressing and leaving the house at 2am. This summer may not have given us those mornings where it’s so hot I can barely get out of the water, where those early hours feel like full silent days carved out just for me to sit in the light and wait for everyone else to wake up, where the only extra thing I put on to run home is my trainers — I look at my waiting winter gear, neoprene socks and gloves, head torch, two more thickening jumpers, hat, thermal mittens — but every season, every day, is beautiful.

Today we go early for celebrations, and the water is silky, and Orion hangs over us with his phallic sword dangling and Betelgeuse winking on one shoulder. The near-full moon spotlights us and I feel almost ready for the shortening days.

2. Hilary Mantel continues to be a literary god. How does she write with that clarity? How can I ever speak with her calm good sense and wit? 

3. We have two main problems at the moment, as far as I can see. a) What we’re doing (“curating” our lives; twitter spats; purity spirals; division and isolation; wanting ‘debates’ that can only be won or lost; encouraging people to buy more things; trying to buy our happiness; letting marketers tell us how we feel about the world rather than encouraging major moral lessons from throughout the ages to challenge us on our weaknesses; refusing to accept that life is suffering; asking self-care to be a plaster for everything we don’t have) and b) what we’re not doing (joining together to stand against those with more money and power; protecting the people who have even less power and voice than we do as a matter of course; learning from history; protecting nature above all else; prioritising going for walks; learning to repair things and campaigning to make things repairable; having a basic belief in human dignity for all, not just those with whom we agree; accepting that truly, we are all different and no amount of shaming or disgust will change that; working to shape our societies, culture, economies, production, food supplies and communications around improving — not just sustaining — the air, water and land, and fighting to ensure all of those new shapes protect women and children).

Individualism has morphed into something so completely self-destructive that we’ve forgotten we need nature more than anything — literally, more than anything — and we need to unionise and unite and put aside differences and work together even with people we don’t like. 

Because when there are wicked people in power, when it’s genuinely exhausting to think about all the corrupt, venal, toxic, divisive, false, and cruel things they have done since coming to power, those people love to watch everyone below pointing their fingers at one another, saying, You, You’re The Enemy, You’re The Problem, while corrupt populist leaders rub their bellies and chuckle at another promise broken, another mass death on their hands, another building site on a protected forest. Do you understand the stakes here? Do you understand that it’s actual survival? It’s not about being right any more, it’s not about besting someone in the argument. It’s about having decision makers who can not only ensure there is still food to eat and air to breathe, but that relations both within a country and between countries are built on care, and support, and compassion, and believing in human dignity. And while it sounds wishy-washy and hands-clappy it’s the schmaltzy, sentimental truth. It’s the only one, really. 

If we instead continue to believe every single day that my feelings are the most important, that my beliefs are the right ones, that I’ve got to prove those baddies there are evil and awful and wrong, then honestly, what the fuck? If we’re happy to live in a country where hostile architecture is the starting point for all public builds, where we send refugee boats away from our shores, where affiliate links are a career goal, where we haven’t stormed the Daily Mail offices with accounts of all our lovely immigrant friends and family and had a huge feast together and compared our long and tangled family trees, then come on. It’s only a race to the bottom if we all keep running. 

Because, pressingly, whatever the spark of a major global conflict — assassination, fuel shortages, hyperinflation, invasion — the kindling is almost always a populace fed pure hatred for months, for years, until they can’t even taste it anymore but are ready to spew it out again, and are ready to use another populace as the receptacle. And hatred is brewed up in silence and isolation, and in the ashes of bridges burned between disparate groups. 

And on that note, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, mainly because I don’t believe governments are generally competent enough to manage Grand Plans, but it’s annoying that technology and social trends and culture have developed in such a way that no one knocks on anyone’s door for a chat as a matter of course now, that it’s a given that a ringing phone triggers anxiety, that it’s not the norm for cups of tea with your neighbours, that we don’t know each other’s neighbourhoods, that we don’t even talk on the phone, with live words and intonation and synchronised laughter, but in text, in WhatsApp chats, in tapped out words and symbols that we know can be screen-grabbed and misinterpreted, that we know are kept, filtered and sold by the tech companies. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a reality that every single one of us can choose to do differently. 

Sometimes exactly the right thing comes along at the right time. All of us here watched About a Boy at the weekend, a film which is so wonkily weighted and oddly rhythmed, but a perfect depiction of everything I’m banging on about here. Hugh Grant’s character likes being alone. He’s happy that way. It suits him. It’s his choice. Then, between one thing and another, he finds himself drawn into a world of a suicidal single mother, a duck-murdering young boy, more single mothers, more tricky teens, plus exes and mothers-in-law and awkward support groups. And it turns out that actually, being with people is better. Being uncomfortable often develops you as a person. Constantly prioritising only yourself produces a waxen, pointless baby. Making shared sacrifices might just be the point of being alive. Remember that to be human is to be flawed. That no one is ever completely right, and no one is ever completely wrong. That the boring stuff makes us feel good, and the glossy stuff, if all we strive for is gloss, doesn’t. 

If you want anything practical, here are the things that have really helped me over the last few years:

Writing a letter or email regularly to my MP, to CEOs of organisations, to anyone I want to communicate my strong feelings and how I’d like things to be done better. Tweeting eats your soul. It’s a horrible myth the media pretends is important. It really, really isn’t.

Inviting people to go in front of me in queues, in traffic, getting on to buses and trains. It lowers my stress levels right down.

Learning the names of my neighbours and people I meet regularly on walks and letting them learn mine. (I definitely haven’t just decided I loathe a neighbour because they cut a bird-hatching tree down in their garden on the last day of the year it was legal to do so. It’s fine.)

Joining a few political parties, and the closest thing I have to a union

Making something, anything — everything can be done with love, and learning to not get sucked into the capitalist conceit of having to make it perfect, sellable, exhibitable is a genuine gift to yourself; making a cake or a film or a coaster and not putting it on social media, letting it be ugly or serviceless and loving it anyway. I felt extremely overwhelmed the other evening, but instead of doom-scrolling I knitted a… I don’t know, something flat and woollen, and it helped to have my hands and eyes working on directionless introspective creation. 

Trying to stop hating. Every time I want to tell a negative story in my head about someone, I attempt to turn it into something positive: how unhappy that person must be, what they must be missing out on. It’s so nauseatingly Pollyanna-ish, and of course it isn’t always successful, and of course every single day brings a hundred thousand examples of cruelty and injustice and wickedness, but the alternative only makes my life feel worse, so why would I indulge that? 

Teaching myself the names of birds, trees, flowers, clouds and constellations. I’m still at the most basic levels on all of these, but the difference one feels in the world when you can name things  — let alone use them and know their stories — is a very real sort of magic. (For that reason I hope to read this book very soon.) This episode of The Cut is also good on the wonder and power of learning the names of the weeds that grow in your nearest pavement crack. 

4. Creating anything is always a gamble, isn’t it, but writing a book you actually like for once and seeing it slowly and beautifully sink to the bottom of a river never to be seen again is ever so slightly crushing. However, it turns out even Thom Yorke feels that way, so I am comforted. 

5. I’m sure I’ve mentioned plenty of these before, but if you want some suggestions of where to find joy, here are my favourites from the last year or so:

I was given Lucy Easthope’s book, When the Dust Settles, for work recently, and I was surprised and delighted to discover the most uplifting, hopeful, human and rightfully angry book I’ve read in a long time. Do yourself a favour and preorder it. I bought this other book for my own birthday, gave it to a housemate to give to me, forgot about it, and was delighted to later unwrap He Used Thought As A Wife. Laughed a lot, cried twice. Marvellous. 

Now even the youngest housemate here can recite John Finnemore sketches and sing the songs. Has also taught them various composers, gods, logical fallacies and gothic story tropes. Also v funny. Oh, Kate Beaton! Her two books (Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside Pops) are a bit like a comic-book version of Finnemore, but swearier and sexier and utterly unsuitable for all the housemates who have read it and been educated about the Brontes, Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, Tom Longboat, Nancy Drew, Ida B. Wells, Sacagawea, and the Borgias. 

Had to give Inside a restraining order against me for the sake of us all, but Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a masterpiece of writing, acting, sound design and optimism. Spy is dumb action comedy polished to perfection, and Yasujirō Ozu’s Good Morning seems like the inspiration for almost all US arthouse films since 1990, and is also beautiful, funny, thoughtful, and good. 

Taylor Swift’s Evermore, like all brilliant albums, isn’t completely perfect. But most of the songs are. And Hole’s classic Live Through This is still just ideal for turning up very, very loud after a tricky day, for the enjoyment of any neighbours who may have hacked down a bird-friendly tree on the last day of February. 

Watched both series of Liam Williams’ Ladhood when I had a week off this summer, and really relished the location, the intention, and the writing. More please. 

Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards continue to be my comforting bedtime listening in In and Out of the Kitchen. Has it ruined Nigel Slater for me? Well, a bit, but no more than any of us deserved. 

I thought this would be a book I’d mumble through the first chapter of, then let get buried in my To Read pile, never to re-open. Instead, I found Whatever Happened to Margo? laugh-out-loud funny, drily written, and full of humanity. Excellent Women has made me want to read everything written by Barbara Pym, a goal I am slowly but surely working towards. 

6. I’ve spent the last few years trying to find hazelnut trees, and finally found a copse between a car park and a play area, full of nuts the squirrels hadn’t noticed. Now I’ve found them, the spell has been cast and I see hazel trees everywhere, on walks and on pavements and running along motorway slip roads. A tray of green and brown frilled hazelnuts now dries with the laundry. They are so beautiful. 

[inthedarkofficial]

Stats at 25

I did this at 18 and at 21 because they felt like milestones, and... well, so does 25, I guess. It's going under this time though, because you know what that is? Growth.

Novels Written: In the Dark (no, really, it's done this time!), Dragons, In the Flames (which was meant to be In the Know), and I'm about 31,000 words into the real In the Know

Poems written: 40+

Agent Rejections: 21 this year alone (and I at about 30 total? Fuck)

Agent Requests: On their way, of course

Works planned: 15 novels, 4 short story collections, 1 encyclopaedia. 1 poetry collection, 1 short play, 1 nonfiction essay.

Publishing credits: 1 that we talk about (FourxFour baby!)

Characters: where do they keep coming from?

Lives lived: Why did I phrase this in the past tense? It's still happening

Life path: One step at a time, but an author, always

Books Read: Not as many as I'd like

Books to Read: A lot more than I'd like

Concerts seen: 27

Grades in piano: 3 (why do I keep including this?)

Memories: Treasured and painful and apparently something I have to fight for

Time: Lost all meaning this last year

Nickname: Still going by Padfoot, call me Roro and I will cut you

Clothes: So! Many! Clothes! but they make me feel better than ever

Style: It changes every day because I change every day

Friendships: How did I make new, incredible friends during a lockdown? I don't know, but gods bless D&D

Parents: We survived together in one house locked down for over a year, I'm so grateful for them

Family: I miss you Kali. I miss you nan. I want to hug you, Maddison. I want to give all of you a hug, honestly.

Enemies: I'm still coming for you, Derek

Sexuality: I keep looking closer and closer to see what the ins and outs are, but I'm bi and queer and that's enough

Gender: I fucking came out as genderqueer and I've started playing with pronouns and gender presentation and honestly? Never felt better

Hair colours: Literally could not tell you anymore. How many? Who knows. I want another.

Education: A in 11+, 2 A* and 8 A GCSEs, 1 A* and 2 A A Levels, 2.1 English Literature Degree, and I will finish this fucking proofreading course! Also, that masters degree is really calling me like a siren...

Tattoos: 2, and as soon as Covid allows it, I'll be getting more

Continents : 3

Countries: 10

Cities: I clearly counted this wrong and now? no clue

Homes: About to be 9!

Places to visit: I just want to go and see (and meet!) my friends, honestly

Vaginismus: Diagnosed! Fucking diagnosed!

Dilators: size 2!

Relationship status: Not going to be fucking decided by what some fucking Western doctor thinks I should be using my vagina for holy gods.

Standards: I want to be loved right down to my scalp. I enjoy my own company too much to settle for less.

Tears shed: My eyes hurt

Laughter: My ribs hurt

Jobs: 5, +writer, always. Fingers crossed for some sweet, sweet income soon though.

Readings: More! Let me do more! Covid, you bitch!

D&D campaigns: 1 abandoned, 1 shelved, 2 ongoing, 1 beginning soon

D&D Podcasts: R.I.P. Edge of Night

D&D characters: Where are all you stupid bisexuals coming from? (Not you, Caleb, we're thrilled to have you here)

Clean: Been a daily struggle this year. Not quite succeeding sometimes. But never fully relapsed. I can be proud of that.

Mental health: Ups and downs, but I'm taking back control

Physical health: Ready to fight doctors, but I'm getting there

Height: 5′2″, do I really need to keep recording this?

Shoes size: 3 (uk), I totally need to keep recording this

Weight: Most days I like my body, and that's a big improvement

Puns: cannot count how many times I got kicked out of skype calls this year

Beliefs: Maybe it's better to have ideas, but I've found names to give power to, powers to give love to, I have principles I live by, the faeries in the garden still get offerings, hawthorn trees carpet the garden in flowers, and I am enough. The worls is on fire, and full of people doing harm for no reason, so it's hard to believe that the world is good, but my life, at its core, is a good life. And I'm so grateful, even when things are hard.

Happy memories: even in the darkest and hardest of times, I have had moments of pride, and moments I felt loved. I know what unconditional love is. What could be better

Sad memories: Reclaimed, remembered, and not going to fucking control me.

How the things I planned to do at 21 panned out: actually learned what it takes to find an agent and though it took longer than I planned, I am now doing that process. Gave up krav maga, no regrets. Did finish my third novel (at least, first draft), then learned it was the wrong novel. But I did write a whole other novel. Graduated UEA with a 2.1. Successfully left Norwich and never have to fucking return! Have done freelance editing work and got a job at Debenhams, though Covid fucked those a bit. Wrote that fucking dissertation and it's fabulous. Did see Hamilton. Did put more hats on Cicero before he broke (but he's now getting repaired!) Decided a TEFL was an insane idea, I hate teaching. Did, indeed, continue to live and did a whole lot else.

Goals at 25: Keep submitting to agents, finish In the Know and work on the faery books, continue my physical and mental health journey, keep working with the dilators, move into my own house (!), find a steady source of income, start getting my poetry and other writing out there, finish my vaginismus article, visit my friends, get a new tattoo, keep volunteering at Pride, play enough D&D to justify all these fucking dice sets, get Cicero back, keep building the life I want.

Life at 25 years: when I wrote my "Stats at 21" post, I didn't know how much denial I was in. I'd totally repressed the memory of being sexually assaulted and I didn't even know about a condition that I've just learned has likely been impacting me in multiple ways all my life. I hadn't even met a person who would become one of my best friends, and then my boyfriend, and then my ex, and then totally out of my life by the time I write this. I barely knew the guy who is now one of the most important people in the world to me. I was only beginning to question my gender. I'd not questioned my sexuality in years. I've been through counselling, learned to stand up for myself, worked on so many projects I couldn't even imagine being a part of back then, been on a huge vaginismus journey that's still on going, started playing D&D, went to the graduation ceremony I never planned to attend, and I'm about to have my own house, just to point to a select few things. There's been a global pandemic (still ongoing), movements and trials that helped me find my truth and broke my heart, Brexit fucking happened, I lost my best, dearest and oldest friend (I love you Kali) and my nan... I could not have imagined what 25 would look like on the night I turned 21, just like at 18, 21 was impossible to picture.

So I guess... hi future Rowan. Happy 27th birthday (of course it's going to be 27). What does your world look like now? Did we fall in love? Did we make good dilator progress? How's the house? Did we decide on kids? I cannot begin to wonder what your world looks like, but I swear, I'm working on making it good.

"Soft and slow/Watch the minutes go/Count outloud/ So we know you don't keep them for yourself." - Halsey

[gaiapaia]

Kermit and Friends: Lucas 6:27

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. - Luke 6:27-36

This Bible verse is essentially the ‘Golden Rule’ we’re all taught in elementary school - treat others how you want to be treated. However, treating others kindly is very hard to do when the other person is bad to you. Perhaps the toughest part about being a Christian is the fact we’re supposed to love and pray for our enemies like Jesus would.

Elisa apparently has an enemy in Lucas, Andy Dick’s lover and ex-boyfriend. Lucas has been on the show a couple of times now but their animosity has taken place away from Kermit and Friends.

When Elisa first met Lucas, she heard a lot of good things about him from Andy and they seemed to get along fine. Unfortunately, Andy would throw fits any time Elisa and Lucas were around each other, with Andy accusing Elisa of sleeping with Lucas. Elisa would invite Andy somewhere and Andy would show up with Lucas, only then to berate Elisa later for always inviting Lucas on their dates.

Elisa could tell Lucas was in a bad spot and had some connections to get him a job interview. She set it up for him and sadly, Lucas wasn’t hired. Elisa claims this led to Lucas screaming at her at a Hookah Bar earlier this week, with Lucas blaming Elisa as to why he didn’t get the job. Elisa ended up screaming back at Lucas this time instead of just taking his abuse. Knowing Elisa like I do, it takes a LOT to get her fired up for her to get into a confrontation in public, so she definitely reached her boiling point with Lucas that night.

What’s Elisa to do at this point? The Bible tells her not to hold resentment, to stay kind, to pray for Lucas, etc. It’s very, very tough, but the best way to handle it my opinion is to avoid Lucas at all cost from this point on. Say one little prayer for his well being and then eliminate him out of your life. And if you come across him again, be cordial and just walk away if his behavior starts to bring you out of your true character. That’s my advice.

Anyway, this incident between Elisa and Lucas is where the show got its title from this week. Luke is obviously short for Lucas, and I thought it was creative the way Elisa tied the situation together. Further on in the show, Elisa would play a clip from Andy Dick’s new podcast aDICKted where Andy explained his toxic relationship with Lucas. Andy alleges that Lucas beats him, beats up all of Andy’s male lovers, has stolen from him, etc. Just because Andy says it doesn’t necessarily make it true (like when Andy says Elisa sleeps with Lucas), but if those allegations are true, Lucas is a very bad guy and I would personally prefer Elisa not to hang out with Andy anymore if Lucas is forced into the arrangement. But Elisa is a big girl and can take care of herself - I trust her to stay out of bad situations.

In better news, Elisa’s new song My Fiancé is a huge hit among the KAF fanbase. Literally everyone loved it, except for Andy that is. Regardless of Andy’s irrelevant feelings, the song is now available on Itunes, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere else you can listen to music.

My Fiancé was such a huge hit that it got three remixes in just a week! Two were from Eric Riggs, one from Andy Dick. Eric’s first remix was him just masturbating to the video, while the second remix was Eric singing about dancing like Michael Jackson. Andy’s remix was simply Andy cursing Elisa out to the beat of the song. Andy really needs to work on his songwriting ability, his version of My Fiancé wasn’t flattering at all!

Sharmin Smith ended up being the main focus of the show this week. She opened up to Elisa about the hardships she’s faced since she decided to run for President of the United States in 2020.

According to Sharmin, she was accused of sex trafficking and orchestrating a gang rape by QAnon members she hired from LinkedIn to help her with her presidential campaign. Sharmin’s teenaged kids somehow ended up hearing about these accusations and have had little contact with Sharmin since.

Sharmin bared her soul and you could tell how grief stricken she is over this, rightfully so. Sharmin obviously loves her kids very much and it’s not just the fact that they’re forced away from her that hurts, it’s the fact that they were led to believe these horrible things about Sharmin that aren’t true.

I wish there was something I could write to make Sharmin feel better about her situation. I do admire her strength to be so honest and sincere, and I appreciate she’s so willing to share her story with the Kermit and Friends audience despite how painful it is. But Sharmin if you’re reading this... it is very important to remain patient. I know it’s hard, especially this past year when we’ve had so much downtime to just ourselves, but you will be rewarded if you sit tight and allow the truth to be revealed naturally. You can’t force anything. Let God or fate or the universe, anything you want to call it, run its course and eventually justice will prevail and the good guys will win. You’re one of the good ones, Sharmin.

One positive note from Sharmin’s explosive interview this week was her acknowledgement of how Kermit and Friends entered her life at the perfect time. Sharmin emphasized how much fun KAF has been for her and how badly she needed some fun in her life. Kermit and Friends brings a lot of joy to the people who regularly watch and participate in it, and that alone makes the show a massive success if you ask me.

If you love Kermit and Friends, you can now donate during the show to have a comment displayed on stream. Elisa monetized her Youtube last week and received some nice donations. Capt Muttley, KAF’s dashing pilot, kicked things off and then Supertramp, Kleenex, and SaiyanZ Entertainment all generously contributed too. There’s so much going on during a KAF broadcast that Elisa can’t properly acknowledge the donations each time, but I know she appreciates it, and I also appreciate anyone supporting Elisa and KAF to such a strong degree. If you donate, you will always get a shout out in my reviews.

Chris Christine blessed Kermit and Friends with another appearance. She said a prayer for Elisa and Sharmin, and then let God choose a Bible verse to share. His finger landed on 1 Samuel 17, which is about brothers David and Saul coming together. Christine then beautifully correlated the verse to her, Elisa, and Sharmin as sisters coming together. Chris is wonderful every appearance she makes.

There were lots of awesome musical guests this week. We met a nice guy named Hud Isaacson, a rapper who Elisa claims is Andy Dick’s most normal friend. He performed a couple for raps for us and then shared how mean Lucas was to Elisa last week. Click soundcloud and Instagram to hear Ian’s songs and to follow him on social media.

Another new musical guest was Miranda Moore, who performed two beautiful original songs. You can check her out on Youtube and also follow her on Instagram.

Lastly, Johnny B returned to perform two karaoke classics, including one of my all time favorite songs, Hurt by Johnny Cash.

I really enjoyed this week’s show. It had less comedy than your typical Kermit and Friends episode, but the way the show was filled with love, thoughtfulness, deep conversations and interesting stories made it a really enjoyable experience to watch. Please be sure to tune in next week for a potential big guest and a huge update on Trumpster Bob that you absolutely do not want to miss.