#still not feeling 100%

[soaps-mohawk]

Happy Birthday Tris!! Hope you get better soon and get to enjoy some birthday festivities when you're well! 🎊🎈🎈🎈🎂🎈🎈🎈🎊

-🩰

Thank you, love. I've got at least part of my sense of taste and smell back so I call that a win!! 💚

[puppppppppy]

who is your favorite AA character? 👁️👁️

ziska… I hope capcom brings her back someday

[hinamie]

big fan of panels where they look like they wld beat me up

[linterteatime]

the shade lord and some corpses- i mean guys i almost forgot about

More gijinkas here!

[alicornze7]

get stupid sauced, idiots

This is, quite possibly, dumbest post I’ve ever made

one could even say the stupi-*gets shot*

Pretend zooble isn’t there, they’re here for completion’s sake

[chrliekclly]

——————

it’s been 6 years exactly nd i apologize for everything about this

[tw: implied csa]

[eshithepetty]

Characters who are a black hole. Characters who would see the infinite wastness of space and see themselves. Characters who are so immensely powerful, they could kill you without blinking. Characters who can't be defeated, no matter how hard you try. Characters who are angry, teeth gnashing, a swirling mass of a hungry void beneath their skin. Characters who are paradoxically, helplessly, vulnerable despite that. Who are kind. Who are gentle. Characters who will take that desperate endless void inside their heart and do their damnest to fill it with desperate endless love. Characters who, despite being a knife, have the softest edges of them all.

Yes, I am talking about Shigeo Kageyama.

[taro-wong]

On learning to feel.

Sequel.

[acearchivist359]

you know that feeling of wishing you could go back in time and read your favourite book again for the first time? watching pjo tv feels like being able to do that

like i’ll never be 11 years old reading percy jackson for the first time again but i think this is the closest feeling i’ll ever get to that like i feel like 11 year old me got to watch that and i’m so happy for her and that’s a feeling that i am so grateful for right now

[egophiliac]

the lovers, reversed

(aka I'm still freaking out about Jou)

[kedreeva]

I don't know what it is about fresh sugar snap peas but i see them and go into a fugue state where i must have them i must i will hunter-gather them from the side of the road and start wolfing them down like a starving feral dog happening upon a carstruck moose and then it's ten minutes later and I've eaten half a pound of them (or loaded 2lbs of them and two packages of growing seeds into my cart somehow???). last summer we went strawberry picking so I could make jam and stuff, and on the way back in to pay, I saw sugarsnap plants and had to restrain myself from swerving to a stop, but I still parked and just started grabbing handfuls of them as soon as I was out of the car and my partner didn't have to drag me off of the plants but only because i only have so much space in my hands, and we then had to admit to my crimes at the pay window because we didn't get a container at the start to harvest them but the guys just waved us off and I ate them like candy on the way home and I would do it again in a heartbeat with zero forethought what is in them that my body is lacking because it's gotta be something

[into-the-feniverse]

It’s Dabi’s birthday over here in the states now so have some doodles 🔥

[doctorsiren]

reigen you should tell him he’s not supposed to eat the green part

[alicornze7]

Silly guys goin' on silly adventures:]

@rorydrawsandwrites's puppeteer au but the only difference is that jax gives consent

My contribution to this wonderful au has been long overdue:')

Rambling in tags ehe (cw: ribbun:p)

Well maybe it's not the only difference

[blorbologist]

Y'know, I think I figured out why the Hells still feel like a new low-level party to me, even though they're level 13 and almost 100 episodes in.

I don't quite think it's the lack of conversations, or the fact half the party's plot hooks are big ties to past campaigns - though that definitely plays a part.

... Bell's Hells still primarily rely on quest givers.

Most of their goals are given to them and do not feel organic to the party, and constantly remind us that the Hells are pretty much never the most powerful people in the room. Which is usually something you see with a low-level party.

NPCs offering jobs is not a bad thing; it's a very common plot hook. Matt has been extremely skilled with using NPC quest givers in those two campaigns. Not only do they provide an obvious plot thread, but they can put the party in the path of others (say, the Nein running into the Iron Shepherds while doing a job for the Gentleman and everything that came of that). And the Hells had a solid start with it too - Eshteross was an excellent quest giver!

The problem is that Bell's Hells have never really not had a quest giver.

Maybe it's a byproduct of the more plot-heavy structure of this campaign? But while prior parties have felt like they decided on their course of action and what they prioritized, Bell's Hells feels less like level 13 (13! Level 13!) experienced adventurers and more like an MMO group clicking on the exclamation point over an NPC's head. Where does the plot demand we go next? Who do we report back to?

They're level 13.

At level 13, Vox Machina had just defeated a necromantic city-state to clear their name and Percy's conscience. And, you know, the Conclave just destroyed Emon. No one was explicitly telling the group to gather Vestiges and save the world (though Matt guided them there), and they were usually among the most powerful people in the room. They chose which Vestiges to prioritize, which dragons to tackle when, even if the over-all plot was pretty clear.

At level 13, the Mighty Nein were celebrating Traveler Con (another PC goal, I'll note) after brokering peace between two nations, accidentally becoming pirates and heroes of the Dynasty. The Nein regularly chose what to do based on personal goals, not grand ones. Though definitely smaller fish than Vox Machina at this level, they were very independent and gaining solid political clout.

While we're at it: level 13 is one level lower than the Ring of Brass, who had a huge amount of sway over Avalir. They ended the world, and also saved it, while in the grand scheme of things being only a smidge more powerful than Bell's Hells are now.

Can you really see the Hells wielding that amount of influence, when they're constantly being told what to do next?

The god-eater might be unleashed, so Bell's Hells have no time to do anything but what is asked of them. No time for therapy unless stolen from Feywild time, no travel on foot and late-night watches. They haven't even had time to grieve FCG. Percy was grieved in the middle of the Conclave arc. Molly was grieved when half the party was still in irons.

Matt is in the very unfortunate spot of not being able to give the Hells the same agency as the other two parties. Not only because of the world-ending plot introduced so early on; they are surrounded by characters they know (and the cast knows) are stronger and wiser than them - the familiarity of the past PCs and NPCs is to their disadvantage.

Why would the party reasonably ignore Keyleth's task that will help save the world and go off on a romp? Why would the cast when they know well Keyleth has to be sensible and with the best intentions in mind? The stakes are just too high.

It means that the Hells still feel like they're running errands instead of pursuing their own destiny. Their accomplishments are diminished as just being parts of a to-do list, and any stakes feel padded by several level 20 PCs/NPCs standing 5 steps away ready to catch them.

This isn't Bell's Hell's fault, nor is it Matt's. It could be amended, I think, if the Hells are really left to their own devices for a long period of time without support and shortcuts (like during the party split)... which would be really tricky to pull off at this point in the campaign.

They're level 13. They're big fish, but they're stuck in a pond full of friendly sharks, so they don't feel big at all.

[ragingtrees]

sleepy sappy doodles