#maybe just a little less terrified bc i was so scared of lesbian sex + everyone felt predatory until i met my partner

[frankieslaboratory]

Excerpt from Bechdel's Fun Home, page 214

This is Alison Bechdel’s coming out story as featured on the Oberlin College website. 

[obeetlebeetle]

Do all the dnd asks!

1. A favorite character you have played.

done!

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

o my god.. this is so hard, my group makes really good characters! for each of them:zach - nickels!! trauma child kenku weirdo who sold their soul to talk.. who grew up to be an angry pirate who adopted a child on impulse.ari - lael, obviously. they have a half-elf complex, a good chunk of their personality is being the kid that catches lizards, and they have a robot arm.lemon - honestly? jj devinyl. i mean, john mulaney as a tiefling cleric who loves his wife and is also going completely insane? yeah.bree - i.. love layla. she’s a good-aligned cleric to an evil god and her and kellan are the cutest couple in dnd tbh.connor - guardian is a robot.

3. Your favorite side quest.

o fuck!! y’all.. it’s bufo. it’s the fact that my talking toad npc was so lovable that they unlocked the quest in which his mother hunts him down and tries to kill him so that she can live forever. they killed her ofc and bufo was untransformed into a handsome.. halfling.

4. Your current campaign.

i’m running a murder mystery set aboard an airship! with strong cosmic horror elements! and i’m playing in a large-scale epic about spies caught up in the very start of a continent-wide war.

5. Favorite NPC.

also a very hard question. on one hand, jean is my actual boyfriend and also a literal angel assassin. on the other hand, nika is a child god trapped in an amulet whose super god power makes people trip which is so fucking funny. back around to the first hand, which is now the third, aengus is so well-done as a villain that he’s almost scared me in my real-life actual heart and yet he’s an a huge loser with breakup trauma, which is objectively also so fucking funny. on my fourth hand, fela is my most important npc who i’m probably in love with and she’s been in every one of my campaigns. on my FIFTH hand--

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

done!

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

done!

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

that time nasuada beat lumley up in her own dumb-ass head, and lumley’s response was to find this super hot.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

getting together and spending time with my friends! or maybe that it lets me be creative without the stress writing gives me.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

fav enemy is def aengus!! like wow he’s fucking terrifying!! and i hate yin&yang the most, they were so creepy and cruel and they were never really punished.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

i dm once a week these days, and i play sporadically. thesis year has been hard on me! but ideally i would love to dm twice a week and play in one or two steady campaigns, or dm once a week with regular one-shot sessions!

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

o.. there’s a lot?? my favorite is “honeyclaw pissed on lenthol” bc our barbarian thought it would be a good idea to climb into the robot piloted by the “big bad” (or so we thought at the time), and then to sell her bluff that she was looking for the bathroom, she just...... pissed herself >:(

13. Introduce your current party.

as a dm: lael (half-elf magitechnician who bases their mad science off of cool bugs); guardian (robot paladin on his third life, basically robocop with light existential crises); senhora (brash and kind-hearted by turns, an elf who [REDACTED] before becoming a ranger and bonding w a wolf); jj devinyl (a tiefling cleric who does stand-up comedy and loves his wife); and percy (an android with identity issues, driven by curiosity, and love for magic, and literally no qualms about threatening to kill her friends).

as a player:rowan (the last prince of a lost kingdom and also the saddest, gayest boy in town); ko&kokumo (my elf boy whose soul split in two after leaving his warlock patron, driven by nosiness and romance respectively); honeyclaw (a tabaxi pro-wrestler who deserted her life as a child soldier, pissed on lenthol); peitho (the surprisingly wholesome god of sex, was kinda into the tactics of being a spy before he got distracted by p*ssy); and lumley (the dumbest baby lesbian ever o my god, she’s the daughter of a powerful river goddess and she still can’t get a date).

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

that would take me one million years.

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

yeah!! traditionally we take a halfway break at 9 and all go get snacks together, it’s great.

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

i prefer in person, but we play online a lot, and we’ll have to be only online once we graduate.

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

we round up score mods from odds and we don’t pay attention to like.. most of the little rules. it’s more abt the storytelling. (which is why we may switch to a different system if i can seduce them away.)

18. Does your party keep any pets?

o yeah, i think almost every group has had an animal companion. and if not, zach always plays a furry.

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

a lot of us roll specific sets for each character! 

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

i got into dnd in high school bc i liked a boy who watched community, and then i watched community, and the dnd episode fucking rocked. never got past making characters and one botched attempt at a session. then in my first year of college, i joined the dnd club and i’ve been playing since! so like, three years and some change.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

ya lol i play very much how my character would act and tho that usually goes well for me.. ko wanted to break his pact with aengus despite the Consequences and i didn’t. but overall i think the outcome has been a lot of fun!

22. What color was your first dragon?

silver! just introduced them, actually!

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

all original, baby.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

a ton. as a dm i write........ a lot. i want to have a lot of vivid characters, solid plots, and a huge interwoven world. so my docs are always huge and take me months to finish. 

as a player i do less bc players just inherently have far less to do. but i still try put a ton into really developing my character so i can play them more naturally.

For DMs

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

in my first campaign, i used a lot of weird memory spells to keep characters from remembering the big bad, because him being unremembered was a HUGE plot point for me. i had two different groups playing in the city at the same time, and one of them.... had this dragonborn who just liked to talk to plants and who hated nobles, and who fucking cast MAGIC MOUTH on their FANNY PACK to record that big bad so that it COULDN’T BE FORGOTTEN. MAGIC MOUTH. THAT’S THE SPELL THAT BROKE ME.

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

i’ve really liked a couple, but i know i haven’t topped the finale for my first campaign. after finally the groups finally came together and killed Shargaas, the city began to crumble around them, and they all watched me set a ten-minute timer for them to figure out how to get away with their lives.

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

o yea, i adore MFOV particularly.

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

o there are always a couple kicking around.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

we don’t really.. do... that second thing....

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

yes.

For Players

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

o fuck. uh probably wizard. and i love................. half-elves.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

i really like long-distance damage dealers.

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

i always start with a concept and then i just write an entire novel ell em ay oh.

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

done!

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

like, 70% rp, 30% jokes,