#general rococoa rocks

[operationslipperypuppet]

oh my god it's my other best friend. can't believe nothing bad will ever happen to her and especially not at the battle of pangranos

[mayapapaya33]

(2:05:13) Is it bad that I'm actively rooting for General Rococoa and Prince Amethar to find out that Deli killed their Mom and Sister and for them to absolutely annihilate him? I don't think that's what's going to happen; (Because Amethar can't die right now so Matt prooooobably won't use him for a PC confrontation to avoid to either an egregious railroad-esque OP-Amethar OR accidentally fucking up the timeline by going OOPS Amethar is dead, I guess resurrection magic has to exist in this world now lol).

But if Deli gets killed by Amethar and or Rococoa that will be the funniest thing I've ever seen and it's 100% deserved. Lou on Lou violence! Fingers crossed!

--------------------------Fanfiction prompt-------------------------------

If it doesn't happen in the campaign, it should ABSOLUTELY happen in Fanfiction. I haven't looked yet because I don't like spoilers so I'm waiting until I'm done to look for Ravening War stuff. But if there isn't anything about Delissandro and the House of Rocks on Ao3 I will be both Shocked AND Appalled at the state of fandom lmfao. The drama and angst potentials are off the charts! Sure, shipping is great fun, but this level of murder, manipulation, and vengeance is so juicy! (And it's not like you can't throw a ship or two in there if you're so inclined, though personally I'm equally as interested in Gen).

Imagine Deli and Rococoa or Deli and Amethar or all three of them, fighting side by side during the war. They're becoming friendly acquaintances or becoming actual friends even, except deep down, Deli knows. He hides a dark secret, he killed his friend's mother, and their sister. And for what exactly? To unite the Meatlands! Yes... right, of course! Maybe Rococoa saves Deli's life and smiles at him or laughs at a joke of his and his much-shriveled conscience twinges. Amethar pats him on the back and jokes that he caught Deli with his pants down, which means they're finally true allies and Deli feels like shit, literally and metaphorically.

There are so many ways you could play it. You could go from Deli's pov and have him slowly devolve into a sort of Lady Macbeth-esque figure as the guilt eats away at him more and more with every act of kindness and friendship. Once he finally realizes the true extent of what he has done. Not just to the House of Rocks, but to the world. The Death of the Queen of Candia is what finally kicked off the continent-wide war, she is the Franz Ferdinand of Candia and I'm not sure he's fully internalized that. I think it's too big.

Or he could be unrepentant to the last, as Rococoa and Amethar find out and turn on him, he could villain monologue about the greater good and being a tool of destiny as they cave his skull in and weep at the betrayal of a friend who was never truly their friend (or was he?)

Or it could be from Amethar's pov (or Rococoa's pov, but I assume most people will pick Amethar because he's a PC played by Lou up against another PC played by Lou so that's more intriguing than an NPC who was mostly just a ghost and a memory in ACOC). And you could follow the story as Amethar and Rococoa meet Deli before a battle. They all end up fighting in the same area and fight well together.

Through various circumstances they keep being brought together. Or forced together in Deli's case. Meanwhile Deli is SUPER uncomfortable lol, but Amethar isn't the most observant guy in the world, he doesn't notice. It's from his pov after all. And we can watch the relationship unfold. Somewhat like what happened with ---SPOILERS FOR ACOC--- Calroy, but different. I do think once you have Amethar's trust, you have it, he's a pretty simple man. Rococoa is more of an unknown to me, but I do know she's smarter than Amethar (not that that's a particularly high bar, sorry Amethar). So maybe Deli saves Rococoa or Amethar because there are a lot of witnesses around and he can't conveniently let them die because that would look really really bad, and he ends up earning their trust.

However you want to do it, it is the perfect set up for a Shakespearian tragedy. The audience already knows that confrontation and doom are inevitable, yet if you play it right, like all good writers you can give the audience temporary amnesia and delusion and make them hope that everything will be ok as you show them having fun and joy and comradery together. It's like walking into the movie theater to see Titanic, even if you know what's going to happen, you still have a good time when they start dancing, and you're still screaming at them to steer the ship in a different direction or not get on the boat in the first place and you're still sad when they drown. (Or for the CR fans out there, it's like walking into EXU Calamity knowing Exandria's history and still getting attached to those characters and rooting for them because you can't help it lol).

[supernaturalcharlie11]

Do you know how many things would have to have gone wrong for this to matter?

- Sapphria Rocks

[honeyhauntart]

six fanarts: dimension 20 edition! 💕 who’s ur favorite?

[my-unsolicited-thoughts]

another year another chance for me to scream from the hill tops to the powers that be at d20 to give us a crown of candy prequel focused on the rocks siblings and everything around them. laz and caramelinda. sapphria and amethar dynamics. rococoa and citrina. ugh i'll give you all my money please

[wyfrn]

the princesses of house rocks

[sapphicfog]

[sweetsmalldog]

So who’s gonna write the Rococoa lives au where Rococoa marries Caramelinda and they have an understanding but non romantic relationship and Amethar puts everything into being a good dad to Saccharina because he’s lost so much family and the tiny baby girl in his arms is so fragile and he’s her father and it’s his job to defend her and she’s alive. And when little Saccharina talks about seeing Lazuli in her reflection she’s believed and her gifts are nurtured to the best of their ability because they’re in Candia and magic is real and good and she’s a princess even if she’s fourth in line for the throne.

[princessprotectorhornet]

Yeah boss sorry I’ve got to call in. Yeah I thought too hard about “do you know how many things would have to go wrong for this to matter?” again. Probably will be out for a couple weeks

[smokinghotpastorswife]

ok so one of the PCs is definitely killing rococoa on that final battlefield I’m calling it rn

[operationslipperypuppet]

obviously there are many ways the pcs’ involvement in the battle of pangranos could play out, but here’s my thought.

as we know, rococoa will be riddled with arrows behind her own lines, due to the actions, both direct and indirect, of one calroy cruller.

deli will see. see that a candian killed the crown princess in cold blood, and see that he used ceresian weaponry. he has no love lost for candians, he maybe would say nothing, but who could truly know that?

calroy catches him. makes a move. takes the shot. kills deli.

later, whether it’s hours, days, or weeks, he addresses it with amethar. mentions he saw a carnish warlord behind their lines who had ceresian heritage as well. that the man was fleeing as they could hear amethars anguished cries at the loss of his last remaining sister. that calroy was able to connect the dots and take him out then and there.

“it’s okay, your majesty. we don’t need to continue fighting this. the war truly is over. and the man who killed your sister has suffered for it.” securing his place at the right hand of a future king he cannot wait to betray.

he never finds out that he was telling the truth, just a different version of it.

[seaside-hysteria]

When I watched acoc, I didn’t look that close at Rococoa’s art, so until I got to ep 4 of trw I fully thought the chocolate was armor

[wethairmessyface]

like imagine this cast

gm - aabriya

rococoa - siobhan

lazuli - erika

citrine - brennan

sapphira - surena

amethar - lou

i would love a prequel to a crown of candy/ravening war focused on the rocks siblings growing up (like teen age), like focused on their sibling dynamic and life in pre war candia

[supernaturalcharlie11]

Gone but never forgotten - the Rock sisters

[thepringlesofblood]

Relevant Dates for The Ravening War

in the trailer, it says “Two decades before the events of A Crown of Candy” and shows a banner counting back from 1210. This is because the war was from 1190-1195, though the conflict that led to it started in 1188

ACOC takes place in 1215, beginning on the 20th of Highbright, the Rocks twins’ 18th “Saint’s Day” (birthday).

I saw a post about a potential discrepancy here bc of the whole “2 decades” bit

I think they did this bc it sounds more impressive to say “two decades before” than “25 years before”

we can extrapolate the twins to have been born in 1197, one year into Amethar and Caramelinda’s marriage. (17th of Harvestdusk, 1196)

the war ended 20 years before ACOC started (1195), but it seems like The Ravening War [campaign] will start at the beginning of the war, in 1190, if the spinning back from 1210 is to be believed.

Archmage Lazuli Rocks died in 1190, at age 32-33, sacrificing herself in battle.

she had recently married, and was deeply in love with, Duchess Caramelinda of House Meringue, a match made before the war. Caramelinda was 28 when her wife died.

the wiki might be wrong - in episode 7 of ACOC amethar remembers a conversation b/w all of his sisters, including Lazuli, where Rococa mentions “Our one ally, the Dairy Islands, half of them wanna kill us for entering the war this late”

but she does die first of the sisters.

Princess Sapphria died in 1195, at age 31-32, killed by Carnish assassins

Saint Citrina died in 1195, at age 34-35, killed by Vegetanian knights ordered by a young, not-yet-Pontifex Belizabeth Brassica.

General Rococoa died in 1195, at age 39-40, shot by Ceresians (on the orders of a certain fancy-pants cakeboy) during the final battle against Imperator Focaccia.

King Jadain [the king of Candia at the time, Amethar’s dad] died a few months post-war, but Queen Pamelia died during the war, before all of her daughters. She was from Fructera (House Pomegrana) and had very different political opinions from her daughters and Amethar.

Amethar (currently a Prince) was born in 1167, and thus is 23 at the beginning of the Ravening War.

the exact dates of the deaths of the Rocks sisters aren’t super set in stone, except for the order of the last three - it wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of them die during the campaign.

lmk if you can think of any other important dates!

[utilitycaster]

What ACOC fanon are people getting so upset over?

Come traveler. Let me tell you a tale. For I, too, was unaware of it until they went absolutely bugfuck all over Twitter. But if you don't want the whole long-winded epic: people shipped Belizabeth Brassica and Saint Citrina and while there has been no evidence indicating this will or not be confirmed or even mentioned they FREAKED OUT about how Matt would OBVIOUSLY destroy the "widespread" fanon (it is not widespread), specifically implying he'd do so in a bigoted way. Then some D20 guests noticed because the people saying this are not like, unknown fanartists (in fact one implied they had been asked to create art for the season but forgot to check their DMs) and were like "this is entitled and stupid and needlessly cruel to Matt, who is like, a guy we personally know and generally like." The people then, rather than saying "my B" and taking this to the DMs like a normal person who wants to talk shit, repeatedly doubled down. As of a few hours ago they were accusing Jasmine Bhullar of subtweeting them when she was in fact merely promoting an entirely unrelated show, it's sparked both a heartfelt discussion about how Matt's discussion of body dysmorphia has helped people and a conversation about how there's toxicity in all fandoms but the D20 community refuses to even acknowledge it; and also I think they've burned their chances of ever doing fan art for an actual play of any size in LA, Chicago, New York, London, or the centroid that represents an equidistant point from all the McElroys which is, I believe, hilariously for Amnesty fans, in the Monongahela National Forest.

Anyway POV we're around a campfire, I'm drinking something lightly alcoholic, and you wish to hear of The Drama At Length:

Do you remember Belizabeth Brassica, aka Broccoli Pope loosely based in appearance on Queen Elizabeth I (technically renaissance rather than high medieval but like...people constantly mix those up in D&D so it's fine)?

Great. Now do you remember the Rocks Sisters? Not the twins played by Siobhan and Emily; Amethar's four older sisters who died in the Ravening War, before the story started: Rococoa, Lazuli, Citrina, and Sapphria. Rococoa was a general; Lazuli an archmage (and Caramelinda's wife before she died; Caramelinda then married Amethar because while Lazuli had been a love match, this was a beneficial marriage for political purposes); Citrina a devotee of The Bulb; and Sapphria a spy and diplomat. They get talked about a lot, for sure, but their presence in the story is to be absent and to haunt the narrative.

Anyway the fanon is that Citrina and Belizabeth were in a relationship. In canon, I believe all we know is that both were devotees of the bulb; that Citrina held positions that might be considered heretical by some (she was a passionate believer in love matches and supported Amethar's marriage to a commoner in the Dairy Isles) and that Belizabeth ordered that she be killed.

Here's where this gets fun. So ACOC aired pretty much exactly three years ago, and while I think it's considered by many to be a high point in D20's oeuvre, a lot of fans have, you know, kept up with D20 on the whole and not dwelt on it in depth. But a small group of people have been consistently focused on this ship between an NPC who is vitally important to the narrative but shows up in fewer than a third of the total episodes; and a character dead before the story ever started. Which, I need to stress, is fine; the joy of headcanons is playing in the empty spaces.

Flash forward to 2023: a creative director who was generally opposed to revisiting past campaign settings and preferred standalone has just amicably parted ways. Neverafter has gotten mixed reviews (I have to see the last 8 episodes; this is anecdotal but some of the editing choices, plus the both dense yet meandering plot, brought the momentum of a truly fantastic TPK and resolution early on to a shuddering halt), and really nothing but A Court of Fey and Flowers has truly stuck for some time. The fandom has been clamoring for Fantasy High Junior Year for quite some time to no avail. The switch to 10-episode sidequests from 6 episode sidequests has met lukewarm reception. In short: D20 could use something flashy to revitalize their next sidequest. Enter: Matt Mercer as DM.

Now, a lot of D20 fans who are not part of the (significant) overlap with CR fans hate Matt Mercer. This is in part because a lot of people who got Big Mad about ships in Campaign 2 went to D20 and proceeded to badmouth Critical Role, a show they happily watched and made art for until roughly episode 107-ish of Campaign 2, proclaiming it homophobic (wrong two women kissed); racist (one of the women who kissed is a dark-skinned woman played by a white woman, which would have still been true if she kissed the other woman but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯); and probably problematic in other ways. To be clear I am not saying Critical Role is above criticism, and it has made its missteps, but like, the fact that these complaints showed up conveniently only when a ship didn't happen and mostly from like, white teenagers who proceeded to simultaneously call the cast transphobic and deliberately get their names wrong means this is not the criticism that is valid and worth considering, as is the fact that technically Matt had nothing to do with the ship not happening, but they've realized being an asshole to Marisha about her character's romantic choices will rightfully get you flayed alive. Also some D20 fans just hate Critical Role in the way that if you live in Boston you're supposed to hate New York and vice versa but if you say "why? what if I just want the baseball boys to have a good time together?" no one can answer.

Anyway here's a diagram to illustrate the group I'm talking about; they're the green dot:

So: a couple of them decided a smart thing to do on Twitter in front of God and everybody was to say that they were worried Matt would contradict this "widely established" fanlore because he is not plugged into the ACOC fandom. They then proceeded to specifically (jokingly, but like, in a shitty way, still where everyone could see it) say that Matt would probably introduce Belizabeth as being married to her husband because she is 100% straight.

Now there's a bunch of problems here, and people pointed them out. Namely:

This is a weird thing to assume Matt would do, ie, automatically make an arbitrary NPC definitely straight, even if you're joking about it; like, he has a pretty decent track record for making NPCs of varying genders and sexualities, especially by C2 and C3.

This is not even widely established fanlore; this is a tiny group of fans of ACOC. See below for more on that.

Even if it were widely established fanlore, it's unlikely Brennan would know either.

Even if it were widely established fanlore and Matt or Brennan were aware of it, they are under no obligation to adhere to fanlore, because it's fanlore, not the established canon of A Crown of Candy. This does not make fanlore bad! It just means that creators are allowed to ignore it in the same way that fan creators are allowed to ignore canon; this is a two-way street.

Therefore, because this is fanlore, even if Matt did say "here is Belizabeth and her husband, and she has only ever been involved with men" this would not be homophobic because the character's sexuality has never been established and straight is one of the possible sexualities she could have. Obviously if he went super hard on her straightness that could get weird but that's a fucking bonkers stretch.

When people pointed it out, this group and a few other people who just fucking hate Matt kept dismissing them as CR fans. Then it caught the attention of various D20 guest cast members or people in the broader TTRPG scene, who have pointed out that like...the actual play and TTRPG industry is a place where basically everyone in a particular region knows everyone else and they are all good friends and this is shitty. The D20 fans mad that Matt is DM-ing The Ravening War kept doubling down and started making outright ad-hominem attacks on Matt (notably his appearance and dress which is like, shitty and irrelevant to this fanon thing anyway even before you consider the body dysmorphia) and whining that because they've made some charity fanzines, a thing people have been doing since the dawn of Star Trek TOS, they deserve...something. People rightfully called them out as 1. entitled brats and 2. needlessly cruel. They keep whining that CR fans are dogpiling them when in fact like, the entire TTRPG community including, as far as I can tell, the D20 community who overlaps with CR fandom and even the D20 community that does not but is neutral on CR, is like "you suck, you started it, this fandom is not exempted from typical fandom toxicity, and you will look back on this in 5 years and vomit from embarrassment."

Anyway this is all kind of tiresome, but also pretty funny because literally I'm expecting a bunch of fanartists who are immensely high on their own farts to be 100% blacklisted from ever receiving a commission from like, any Actual Play of note and also a lot of fans; there's an outpouring of support for Matt that far outstrips what there would have been without a handful of idiots starting shit; and also the season is fully filmed anyway so if this ship was confirmed noncanon, it happened a few months ago anyway and there's nothing anyone can do.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, pretty much all these losers are still 100% going to watch The Ravening War anyway so like, this has all amounted to a net positive for everyone but them.