#it's mostly fearne who is attached to this by way of ashton

[luddlestons]

when you're 'just a little guy'-sized, you can be a clothes thief with every single person you date. they can't even do it back. it's the perfect crime.

(sometimes i like to relax while thinking about a modern au where Will is alive and Orym has a husband AND two boyfriends.)

[beauregardlionett]

m'kay in light of the most recent cr episode i got thinking about this post of mine again because it's relevant and i am SO excited for whatever happens this week with the hells. brief tl;dr for that post - it is so fascinating to me personally how the m9 and bh treat vulnerability and trust as two distinct concepts in complete opposite ways. the m9 trusted each other to an insane degree and were only vulnerable when held at metaphorical gun point. meanwhile bh trauma dumped on each other the majority of their shit before we were even 50 episodes in, but they have yet to display constant, true trust in one another.

and the trust exercise is the last to happen, and it involves two people being replaced with doppelgängers who intend to impede the group's progress. how much personal bias is going to bleed through? how much will recent events blind their choices? how well do they actually know each other? is this going to actually relieve tension or increase it?

fifty episodes into the campaign, orym asked fearne if she would help him stop imogen and then leave the group with him if it came down to it. laudna lost all faith in ashton and some faith in fearne after the shard stunt just two/three episodes ago. orym just admitted that he has planned out how to take down every single member of bell's hells. they did a poll once on who they thought would turn on the group. they still fumble their way through combat doing mostly solo attacks because they don't know half the shit everyone else is capable of. the m9 weren't perfect but they were further along on that front by this point in their campaign.

and maybe it's on account of the lack of downtime they've had thus far - but one would think that if they were vulnerable with each other and had been through several, consistent fires with each other facing a force that could end the world, trust would have developed somewhere along the way! but instead - we're here.

and personally, i think it's because these are all the people who were left behind. who cares about being vulnerable when you've already been broken? putting your broken pieces on display is a lot different than allowing someone to handle those pieces and try to put them back together. because then you run the risk of shattering again.

they have all been left behind by someone. trust doesn't come easy after that. chet and his family, laudna and her parents, f.c.g. and dancer and his whole life hundreds of years ago, fearne and her parents, imogen and her parents, orym and his husband, ashton and his parents and the nobodies.

chet put it perfectly - "i don't want to get attached again"

too bad. you're in this now and until you decide to back out, you have to learn how to trust at least these people. they've all decided to at least stick around and that's the first step. the rest of the process will be painful, but worth it.

i hope they never have to cut each other down.

[thecavernsabove]

okay now i just want to talk about my expectations versus why i have ended up liking certain characters because i am just so intrigued by everything these people and characters do. for bells hells, i went into it knowing i would love ashton because they are the reason I started watching, i didn't think i would really latch onto any other character, apart from maybe fearne because she's a satyr and i am particularly partial to satyrs, and imogen because i mean it's laura bailey!

but what actually happened, is that yes i did get super attached to ashton of course i did, but my top three quickly became ashton, orym and laudna (and as someone who started being able to watch live at the split you can imagine how devastated i was). and recently chetney is really creeping up there. i do love all the characters dearly though.

ashton just reminds me of myself so much, apart from the fact that they are much braver than i could ever be, and blunter too. i wish i could be them and also see all my faults in them. its a lot.

orym was my first introduction to liam o'brien and his devastating little guys (more on caleb later), and just his backstory and the way he deals with people intrigues me so much and i want to see him happy so bad.

laudna oh laudna. marisha ray you have ruined me. even going into this with my minimal knowledge of the briarwoods, her backstory reveal was so intense and it hurt. also, creepy unnerving girlies stick together! she's iconic.

chetney is so wild to me i love him so much. he is so intensely gender as well i love him so much. i love gruff and grumpy characters that are actually nice once you are more friendly with them.

imogen. i will say it took a little bit for her to grow on me but i do love her. i think the bassuras dusk stuff really helped me like her more. also her immense power and lightning scars are pretty cool if you ask me.

fearne. i love how sweet she is and the stuff like being bad at lying and also just stealing little things here and there was really fun. but what made me like her more was when she got more serious and i didn't expect that (foreshadowing for later!)

fcg. now, i still have, mixed? feelings for fcg. in a sense of i dont hate the character but i think the character arc is not something im too interested in, but i do still like them. the stuff with frida was very nice, and i do like the bits that they do - but i think there still feels like there is something missing for me somewhat.

now, with the mighty nein, i had an inkling on who i would like. i thought caleb certainly because we seem very similar, molly maybe because i liked ashton so hey i might like this taliesin character too! and that was it really. going into it though, because i had seen so much of jester (talking about her and cosplays mostly) i thought that she would be probably my least favourite because her personality didn't seem to really gel with what i usually like in characters. but here i am, on the other side with my favs being caleb, fjord, and jester! it was so much watching everything for the first time, even with knowing the big spoilers and then looking at more minor spoilers so i knew somewhat what would happen - but i do that with a lot of things, its different knowing what happens versus actually watching and experiencing what is happening.

caleb. caleb widogast is such an intense character and i loved every minute i spent with him. i spent so much time checking when i would finally see the nein sided tower of his and watching liam describe everything for an hour was so incredible i was in awe. i truely love that dirt wizard so much.

fjord was a truly unexpected character for me to fall for. the first time i realized that i was going to love him though was when they were in the one politicians house early in the campaign and he held his sword to caleb to make sure he wasn't fucking with them. then seeing his growth, the accent change, and just his whole deal i was enraptured. i do miss the southern eldritch blast though.

jester oh my goodness did she creep up on me. i think her initial cuteness that i had experienced throughout just existing on the internet put me off for some reason but i don't know why. however i did quickly fall in love with her, when she had one of her more sinister/serious moments early on. i don't remember what it was but i remember thinking oh. /oh./ okay. i love her. and then her relationship with her mama, and artie, gosh i just loved watching laura bailey do literally anything. the cupcake bit! also the sprinkle bit is quite funny. i also just love doing her voice when im talking to myself. she is also the reason that i take a decent amount of damage spells with my current cleric.

beau. i think i thought that i would have liked her more than i did (don't get me wrong i liked her a lot but she is not in my top three), but she is incredible. as a fellow monk pc i do love going the extra mile with those stunning strikes, and also seeing her relationship with yasha blossom was so lovely. and her bro relationships with fjord and caleb were also some of my favourites.

yasha. after starting with campaign three, it was really hard to not see ashley all the time and i remember having to look on the wiki while watching to check when she would come back every time she left. i think i really started to like her more after her she got taken, and went through that big arc, and we were around her more often. i loved watching her dreams. i loved watching her so much.

veth was so unexpected are you kidding me?? i will say i have yet to have a sam character be in my top three but god he knows how to throw an emotional punch and i love that kind of stuff. i love her relationship with caleb, the detective agency, the chaos crew. i love her arc of getting herself back, of seeing her family again. ough. im a big lover of families.

caduceus. goodness gracious me what a character. i just absolutely loved the aesthetic and caduceus's whole relationship to how he approaches death. he is also the reason i started playing a grave cleric in a newer campaign. but truly, has made me think differently about death - which was especially needed for me this year.

mollymauk. i knew he was dead. i knew he would die. but that didn't make me any less upset when it happened! i think about him often, what could have been. especially since i was so sure he took the wrong amount of damage in that fight and should not have quite have been knocked out at that time. but his whole maximallist aesthetic is something i very much enjoy, and i love the through line of his cards with jester.

wow okay this has gotten to be very long but i need to get my thoughts about everyone out somewhere!! if you've read this far im so sorry this is so much of my own ramblings.

[vethbrenatto]

favorite cr c3 character?

For a while it was pretty solidly Ashton, but now I'd say I'm evenly split between Ashton, Chetney, and Fearne.

(Apologies for long ass answer)

Ashton is just such a fascinating character, I've been drawn to them since the beginning. Like many Taliesin characters, they have a superiority complex, or at least a sense that they have a better understanding of the world than others, and yet, they also show true compassion and care for their allies. I think the Laudna/Ashton conversation from last Thursday is a top 5 moment from this campaign so far for me, and that's mostly due to Ashton. The way that Taliesin portrayed it in Ashton being completely real with Laudna but only under the caveat of being drunk and letting their raw emotions shine through. And then to cover it up with "Oh, I don't remember, I was drunk" and have Laudna shut it down. I'm fascinated by some of their statements "I know loneliness you don't, I know the truth of people that none of you do." Not statements that I think are true, but statements I deeply want to understand more from their perspective.

Chetney is very within the mold of characters I tend to like. I'm drawn to comic relief characters that have more depth than they appear to at the surface (Grog & The Gnomes in C1, Veth in C2). Maybe this character wasn't intended to be that deep at its inception but became that way via roleplay and organic growth through the campaign, ala a Scanlan. I think Travis plays Chet in a wonderfully comedic way, while also never letting us doubt that they're not just there to be the haha funny grandpa. I also love someone finally playing something different on the age spectrum. D&D races can literally live hundreds of years- why is every adventurer in their 20s-30s (or at least in the equivalent of that for their race like the gnomes in C1)? Much like Veth, I enjoy the ability to more deeply analyze and look into a character that much of the fandom my pigeonhole into a small box or being "just one thing."

Fearne is a delight for me because truly, it just shows that Ashley Johnson Has The Range. Pike was looks like cinnamon roll, could kill you. Yasha was looks like she could kill you, is a cinnamon roll. Fearne is sort of another looks like a cinnamon roll, could kill you but in a COMPLETELY different way than Pike. I have been ITCHING for someone to play Fey and Ashley is tackling it so beautifully. The sideways morality, the impulsiveness. That is a HARD thing to pull off as a player, it's taking your better instincts of "No, that's not smart, that's a bad idea" and going "My character would do this, regardless of potential consequences." While I'm not that attached to Orym, I think Fearne's relationship with Orym is fascinating. Because of their EXU connection, she so clearly has a fondness and attachment to him that exceeds her connection with anyone else in the group and I think it's with an intensity that most others can't match. If push comes to shove, I feel she would prioritize him not just over everyone, but in spite of everyone- I think in connection to her Fey-ness, there's this sense of "This is my person" that goes above and beyond others who also have a person. It's why in the Laudna/Orym res, regardless of the coin flip (which is not me saying I think Ashley cheated it), I was confident Orym would be res-ed. It's why on Thursday despite her care and hesitancy to go up against Imogen, when Orym asks, "Are you with me?" The no hesitation answer is "Always." It's intense in a way that I don't even think is reciprocated- Orym of course loves and prioritizes her, but I think there's an intensity in the way that Fearne cares about Orym that's unmatched and that to me is fascinating. A very, who and how many would you throw in harm's way to save this one person situation.