#neverafter npc

[joanna-fake-name]

I'm in my Cricket Era (I'm so dehydrated right now)

[andi-o-geyser]

[pineboots]

the thing that i can’t get over is gerard *told* elody he didn’t want to leave her, that she had a place in his adventuring party when shit hit the fan, and that if he went to find rosamund the princesses might stop him from coming back to get elody, but she told him to leave so he left,

and he DID the hard brave thing and ventured deeper back into the castle to find elody when everyone else ran, but immediately got almost killed in one turn and was FORCED to run away this time, there was no fighting back, staying would have meant leaving elody with his dead body for a SECOND time, but the princesses are so wrapped in their own misery they’ll never tell her that

[lovevalley45]

they named this week's adventuring party "the orange fairy in the top hat" bc they couldn't get away with "murph sends the cast to horny jail"

[greatpistachiopie]

It's Snow White from Neverafter 🍎

Day 11 Prompts for Dimension Twentober & Colorber!!

[lilssketchbook]

Been watching the Unsleeping City lately! Obsessed with this little guy!!!

[nico-is-a-corn-plant]

Just finished neverafter which means I'm gonna talk about mother goose's poem

Specifically I'm gonna talk about Jack

In the adventuring party they talked about "a plain looking lad; He was not very good, nor yet very bad" and they talked about it sort of negatively which I have a hard time understanding, cause to me it's actually a really beautiful passage.

Jack was not very good nor very bad, he was just a kid. I actually think that Jack is the perfect example of what Pinocchio was striving for the entire campaign, being allowed to be a kid that wasn't perfect, wasn't very good, but not very bad either.

And at the end of the poem, though Jack is not very good and not very bad, Mother Goose calls him a good boy and said it was well. He doesn't need to be very good to be a good boy, especially not to be her good boy.

You don't need to be extraordinary to be loved and cared for.

Idk maybe it's the former gifted kid in me that's rambling

[polarsirens]

(haha no i am not at all terrified for episode 8 ha ha. )

[operationslipperypuppet]

“where has this bitch been in initiative?” is an apt and correct reaction from beardsley to knowing an ally has silently been hanging around and hasn’t done shit in dnd

[pawthorn]

I’m so glad that Tomas is going to be part of Neverafter next week, so glad we may get more Pib moments, more of his story and what makes him tick.

Because Pib is another in a long line of Zac’s characters that stand slightly apart from the rest of the party, out of focus and out of the spotlight.

Let’s break it down.

Note: I don’t know Gorgug as well as a character and haven’t finished sophomore year, so I’m not going to go into depth with him, but as an Orc raised by Gnomes, I feel like he fits this too. Also leaving out Coffin Run because that, while great, is its whole own Thing. Anyway, here’s the rest.

Ricky Matsui. When the story starts, he’s neither an established part of the Unsleeping City like Kugrash, Kingston, and Misty, nor brand new like Sophia and Pete. He holds more allegiance to regular old New York than any of the others. This position of being caught in the middle is amplified in TUC 2, where he is no longer a firefighter, no longer a fighter at all, but in between and separate. And he recognizes this same feeling of separation in JJ, and that connection helps save the day.

Lapin Cadbury. The sole full caster among warriors. Not royalty or family. Keeping secrets from the Church and the other PCs. Unwillingly indebted to the Sugarplum Fairy. Left behind and gone too quickly.

Cumulous. Quite literally an outsider. The only PC with a connection to the Hungry One. He strikes off on his own multiple times to give the party the best chance possible. In the end, when everyone is discussing allegiances, Cumulous never chooses sides. There was an assumption that his ties to magic put him on Saccharina’s side, Saccharina and Theobald approach him, but he is the only one who never commits one way or the other.

Norman. Grumpy asshole captain, betrayed by his former commanders. His entire crew is fine with him being brain-slugged. No one is on his side.

Skip. Slug prince who chooses the crew over his kingdom. Who couldn’t fully communicate who or what he was to the rest of the characters for a good chunk of the show. Who had more compassion for his host than anyone else ever had. So much compassion that he and Norman become something new together.

And now, Pib. Who is not a character in the same way the others are. Who is not just Puss in Boots, but the Cat. Who explores Drosselmeyer’s carriage and the Lines Between, alone. Who spies on the Fairy’s servants, alone. Who talks to Alphonse, alone. But who also will not allow Tomas to be eaten by Fox, or Alphonse to be killed. Not fully character or archetype, but something of both, in between and separate.

I love Zac’s characters so much. There are plenty of outsider characters in D20 history, but Zac’s hit different. They’re never clamoring to be heard or understood, or wrestling violently with the concept of self. They have this quiet, almost expected loneliness coupled with a deep well of compassion. It’s incredibly beautiful and never quite the same, and so enthralling to me.

Anyway, I’m in no rush to jump into Pib’s story, because I know we’ll get there eventually. Even if fandom tends to dismiss Zac’s characters, Brennan never does, so I know big things are coming for Pib, one way or another.

Because Brennan's stories are almost always about choosing compassion against all odds, and that is the core on nearly every Zac Oyama character.

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

mira: local new yorker of the Neverafter

[joanna-fake-name]

Candle Wick is my platonic here me out. Like I can fix him platonically. He is my best friend. He's so skrunkly I love him

[figscigfigs]

my favorite moments from ep. 4 of neverafter:

everytime brennan welcomed someone in he said “wanna play some dnd” and that was pretty okay for someone who just killed all his friends while playing a game of pretend

lou shaking the chairs when he got the nat 20

the aussie trickster rabbit

zac’s cat mannerisms

the idea that every version of every story exists in the neverafter and can be lived through which simultaneously created and broke the neverafter (depending on who you talk to) is just a really sexy plot

siobhan and emily’s outfits killed today (very sad we didn’t get to see them in the adventuring party)

cinderella as a whole is so wonderful (and gay *fingers crossed*)

“i can ring for tea”

“oh. ah fffffffffff…. freak. really?” (…) “i’m sorry i said freak at you. oh! i’m saying it again. freak!”

grandma (possibly a werewolf????)’s description being “eyes, ears, and teeth of a normal size”

ylfa and her grandma but especially”we’re pulling a grandma heist, okay?” "you're the one who says we can have black tea after two pm” "am i" “yea that's why you're my best friend" and “does that mean i’m a princess” “you’re my princess, we’re still broke so”

gerard talking about the theoretical book and his sequel and trilogy

“and then you yelled at me… which is rude. i am a prince”

ally’s continuation of nat king cole

"we don't know if for sure he stole... anything" "it's hard, kids are hard" "he killed a guy" “honestly i'm still proud"

and that we still got a hi intrepid heroes at the end <3

[hypahfixations]

(and if you have another character you wanna put in a jar and shake violently, list em in the tags and maybe I'll have enough targets for a part two 😌)

[charizmaticgukgak]

She's always been like this and I love it for her

[brionbroadway]

Elody has never believed in unconditional love.

She learned early on in dating that her love came with strings attached: you must be kind, you must be generous, and you must also love someone other than her. She did not exist to check true love off someone else’s to-do list. She wanted to build and execute that list together, partnering in spreading love to their kingdom. What was the point in containing true love to a fucking castle?

She thought Gerard understood conditions. After all, meeting them is what turned him from a frog into the handsome prince she’d always seen. She did not realize it was a means to an end for him, that he was not becoming who he truly was but acting like who he thought he needed to be.

And maybe that wouldn’t even be so bad, because actions inspire intent. She was not brave until she faced what she was scared of. She was not selfless until generosity became a habit. She was not loving until she tried to be—

If Gerard has stopped trying, he’s reverting back to who he truly is, and not the person he convinced Elody he was. She can’t deny the evidence of that anymore, and she’s embarrassed that it took him eating a fly in front of her to get there.

Sitting with her advisors, one sentiment of Gerard’s echoes through her head. Not anything about the ball, or impolite dinner talk, as annoying as it was—he’d always been vain and frivolous, but that was fine. She could tease him about that, and anyway, she also had those qualities in herself. She liked that she could have fun with him.

No, it was that he thought they were through the tough part. How he could even think that, let alone say it, when she was barely eating or sleeping through the night? When there was suffering outside the castle walls worse than either of them could imagine, and certainly worse than getting turned into a fucking frog?

There are two kinds of people who overcome hardships: one reaches their hand out to help, and one puts their hand in their pocket to protect it. Elody cannot love the latter, even if she wants to. 

Elody is not, and never will be, through the tough part.

If Gerard won’t go through it with her, she may as well be alone.