#the unsleeping city 2 spoilers

[fandomgeorgiana]

Josefina Gatsby is really cool because idk if Brennan did this intentionally or not but she has some connections to Zelda Fitzgerald.

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby. So, yes Josefina Gatsby has obvious connections to Gatsby but Zelda was an inspiration for Daisy. She also loved to throw parties and exhibited “chaotic” behavior. There are many stories about both Scott and Zelda and their many parties. Zelda herself is an intriguing part of 1920s history and I think all these connections are pretty neat.

[operationslipperypuppet]

wherever he is.

[chungledown-bimothy]

"I think the most impressive d4 roll I've ever seen was in this episode."

Brennan, I'd like to remind you of Pete's Bend Luck on Kingston's Divine Intervention in the last episode of The Unsleeping City Chapter II. The one where a d4 made the difference on a d100 roll.

[haydenthewitch]

god the words "the smile of a devil you never belived in." are so thrillingly horrifying.

i've noticed something on my current binge of d20 seasons and that is that brennan likes the idea of an un-named being that is larger than the world and that you can not see as a concept. he likes it or is terrified of it, honestly.

season 2 of both fantesy high and the unsleeping city have it, and i see moteifs of it all around brennan's gaming.

the idea of coming into contact with something so big you can not name or understand it - the idea of coming into contact with true nothingness - the utter void. i see it everywhere in brennans storytelling (or ART).

in conclusion, brennan, you okay, bud?? did you see the face of an unnamed deity on one of those nights you didn't sleep for five days? Are you just interested in the concept, or do i need to call someone??

[dropoutconfessions]

you will really will just uncritically publish the most transmisogynistic slop, but whenever someone speaks out about the transmisogyny in the fandom and creative side you always gotta give a note. and i know youre a trans woman, which makes it worse tbh

okay so i'm lowkey oblivious, so just wondering if you'd link me to which posts you're referring to where people actively say smth transphobic and i don't respond to it. appreciate it in advance

and yeah i give notes. you wanna tell me a detail about a character's star sign is transphobic? yeah sure i'm gonna remind you that there's a running trend where ally confuses the hell out of people with spiritualism n stuff (see mirror work from the mice & murder adventuring party) and brennan finally getting to turn the tables might be a thing he chooses to do.

you wanna tell me that a bunch of cis people should not parody harry potter? i'm going to remind you erika is trans and therefore not cis, and that people do not owe you their identities to earn your permission to create art. rabid fans spend enough time badgering creators and forcing them to out themselves and then 3 months later y'all say how awful it is that happened to them, still spouting the same "only this sexual/gender identity can write about this, or play this character, or do this, or do that" bullshit

you wanna tell me that mismag 2 shouldn't happen because harry potter parodies are bad (regarding posts that were sent in before it started airing)? i'm going to remind you that we don't know if it was going to be one given that the holiday special and live show were drifting away from said vibe.

i always cite my sources when people accuse me of this shit and i am waiting for a single on of y'all to do the same. so, here we are. it's your move. i can wait. i'm a patient woman.

and just letting the rest of y'all know, the next person to send in accusations calling me a transphobe without the metal to back it up, is getting blocked. i am tired of your shit. cite your fucking sources, it's not that hard, you can't just say random bullshit, we don't do witchhunts here.

[arabella-strange]

Matt's Halloween (4SD) costume is Cody "Night Angel" Walsh swordguy and I love it

[lestatslefttit]

This man DID NOT just have Sofia meets Jesus Christ

[cat-chthesehands]

thinking really hard about Brennan getting. honestly pretty choked up?? talking about Kingston (a 60yo man) imagining a baby with his wife (around his same age) and it making him glad enough to fly in Nod even though it's not possible for them biologically anymore*.

Looking at the date. 1-6-21.

Checking Wikipedia. Announced engagement to Izzy Roland 1-21-21, 2 weeks later.

Doing some googling. Game Changer S1 E1: Lie Detector, 9-19-19.

never a moment in the history of dropout has Brennan NOT aspired to be a dad. i fuckin am so soft hearted for him. You and me both dude 💖💖

[dizzyizzystiddies]

The Kristen 2 FHJY divine intervention is the antithesis of the Kingston Brown UC2 divine intervention

[silly-goofy-mood]

Never in a million years would i have expected "man sells his soul to a devil in a hot topic" to be a plot point in a dimension 20 show

And in the first episode of a season!

[daisytrails]

defeating the manifestation of nothingness that is hellbent on destroying not only the present but also all of history and all potential futures by saying “once upon a time there was a man who dreamed of having a child” while standing next to your friend who just had the baby he always dreamed of and two of your other friends who are pregnant and their respective partners, saving their future by cultivating the past and telling their stories is one of the most beautiful things i’ve ever seen

[dimension20npcofalltime]

Round Four - Bracket Three [Dimesion 20 NPC of All Time]

Dale Lee vs Jawbone O'Shaughnessey vs Ragh Barkrock

Descriptions under the cut

Dale Lee - He/Him

Campaign: The Unsleeping City, The Unsleeping City: Chapter II

Who is he?

Dale Lee is the husband of Sofia Lee. It was originally believed that Dale left Sofia for Isabella Infierno, but it is later revealed that Dale is deceased.

Why is he the NPC of All Time?

He literally beat up a bunch of Angels just for a chance to see his wife, on a weekly basis. He is so supportive of Sofia and so completely in love with her.

Submitted by: Anonymous

Jawbone O'Shaughnessey - He/Him

Campaign: Fantasy High, Dimension 20 LIVE, The Seven

Who is he?

Jawbone O'Shaughnessey is a werewolf and former drug dealer for The Black Pit. He is now employed as a guidance counselor at Aguefort Adventuring Academy.

Why is he the NPC of All Time?

"He’s a werewolf, he’s a punk, he wears cardigans. He’s here to fuck shit up and help children. He once have head to a border patrol agent with genital warts. He’s a former drug dealer, current school guidance counselor, and your friend’s hot adopted dad. He definitely had passionate sex with Garthy O’Brien at least once. He’ll jump into a dragon’s mouth to protect a bunch of high school kids after giving you a hug and an unethical amount of anxiety meds. What more do you need to know?"

Submitted by: Anonymous

Ragh Barkrock - He/Him

Campaign: Fantasy High, Dimension 20 LIVE

Who is he?

Ragh is a huge, beefy-looking half-orc barbarian. Like most of the members of the Owlbears, he wears a letterman jacket.

He is a stereotypical dumb jock and is very violent most of the time, but he is much more insecure and friendly than he first seems. He had a crush on his best friend, Dayne Blayde, and struggled with his sexuality for a long time until he began to come to terms with it in Prompocalypse. His home life is stressful as his mother is unwell, and he still struggles with his anger a lot, but with the help of the school counselor, Jawbone, he's learning to deal with it in healthier ways. He helps run the LGBT+ alliance at the school and found some great friends in the Bad Kids, especially his fellow Owlbears, Fabian and Gorgug. Dayne and Coach Daybreak were never very nice to him, seeing him more as muscle than anything else, so he's very grateful for the kindness and support he receives from the Bad Kids.

Why is he the NPC of All Time?

"Reformed bully becoming proud of who he is and protecting his fellow bad kids"

"GLASS-EATING HOMOSEXUALISM KING."

Submitted by: @xvynth and Multiple Anonymous People

[operationslipperypuppet]

lou rolling divine intervention for ankarna immediately is the dice paying him back for the 22 attempts in tuc2 when he only succeeded with the help of pete

incredible

[vox-phantom]

not to talk about the unsleeping city again but. sofia and dale's story. sofia who thought her husband left her for some girl only to be awakened to a magical new york and find out he was killed by that same girl (who was also an actual succubus). sofia who avenged dale's death but still couldn't cope with it until ricky gave up his questing blade so that dale could break out of heaven every 3 months and be with her for a little while. sofia who wanted nothing more than to bring dale back because they live in a magical world and if she can't do it now, then when- and dale who wanted nothing more than to be with sofia but didn't want to hold her life back. sofia who never gave up even if hope was all lost until she literally travelled into the stories about dale she wrote for her (angelic) baby and managed to fucking bring dale back to life against all odds. love is fucking real and it's two monks from staten island in a magical new york

[haydenthewitch]

i'm literaly in love with the way mr.lee mulligan takes the mirror of "waking/dreaming" with the voxes from season one of the unsleeping ciry and turns it into a linear "past/present/future" in season two.

in season one, it was all about how dreams and waking and both essential to any city, and in season two he refects that by turning "waking" into "present" and "dreaming" into "future". it is literaly insane in the best way, and allows for another charcter to be in the center of the season (iga becomes the past with her box of stories, myth, and legend).

like i know the whole cast is the main charcters, but when you put kingston brown next to cody "nightangel" walsh one seems kind of over-powered and the creative camera almost instinctualy focas's on them. by allowing iga to come in and become so pivotal to the plot it open's up the story more and doesn't feel repetitive.

there is also something so important to be said about how both waking and dreaming are driven by the past. our family's past (iga), our city's past (kingston) , and the past of our more recent lives (pete). it is done so perfectly and almost subdued, but if you think about it for like ten seconds you can almost see a portal open into brennans mind and you can see how declatly and carefuly he crafted the message of each of the stories he tells. it's just so... *mwah* chefs kiss.

[dropoutconfessions]

This is a SUPER spoilery confession so here is your warning to scroll if you want to avoid nsbu, neverafter, acoc, and trw spoilers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I don’t know if this is the case with all of Brennan's campaigns since I've only seen and finished the forementioned ones, but one thing I've really disliked about all of them are the endings. Not like the final episodes, but the last ten minutes or so, where everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow. Which is what I don’t like.

Brennan has a trend of making the endings really sweet and sugary. I know it’s comedic, but c'mon, the characters get their happy ending immideatley.

For acoc and neverafter, which are the darkest and grittiest Brennan-led campaigns so far, the cartoonishly happy endings feel especially jarring. He and his players like to explore deep and complex themes and conflicts with his players during the game, but as soon as we hit the epilouge they speedrun the last remaining chunks of character development and everyone lives happily ever after, very literally. It’s a little bit easier to buy with nsbu since the whole campaign is a crackshow but the pattern continues nonetheless.

Which. I get that that’s the point. They’re comedians at the end of the day, and they can wrap up their stories how they want. But... would it hurt to have just a liiittle bit of bitter with the sweet? Like, does everything have to wrap up neatly? Brennan goes out of his way to make sure everything is absolutley prefect in the end, which is probably really nice for the players, but imo flattens the story to the ground.

I think acoc is the worst offender, for a couple of different reasons, one being the amounts of unresolved trauma that was within the group at the end. Just a line like "it takes time and a lot of trial and error, but the Rocks does stay together as a family and get a little better at loving eachother each day" would have gone such a long way instead of: yup everything is fixed and they’re all happy now. Also revivification is suddenly possible, tf is that about. And also! The campaign started after a "happy ending" and showed how everything didn’t automatically fix itself after the war was won. Why stop there? Why not carry that over a little bit to the end?

Ok this became a bit more of a rant post than I intended. The endings don’t have to be tragic, I just think it’s good to leave a story on the '...', whether it will continue or not.

And, personally, i do like a little tragedy. Shoutout to The Ravening War

As a fellow tragedy girlie, I completely get that, fucked up ending me beloved. I do think D20 has a couple things blocking it from doing it right every season

Seasons with heavy themes of tragedy are emotionally tough on the cast. By the end of Neverafter and A Crown of Candy (especially ACOC), the whole cast was fucking tired and stressed out of their minds. In Adventuring Parties for ACOC, Lou straight up admitted that he picked up smoking cause of that season, and Siobhan and Emily were in tears on camera. By the end of it, it's likely that's all they wanted.

The themes of Neverafter lent themselves to a non-tragic ending given the pcs won. The whole culmination of the story was the pcs getting free will, which means their victory meant they all got their wish. They literally gave everyone the ability to give themselves a better story, it's hard to make that tragic without cheapening their victory.

And the same goes for A Crown of Candy. The campaign ended with Liam basically casting Wish. Generally, a DM does Wish fuckery when there's more campaign, if you're pulling that shit where it goes wrong at the end of a campaign during the wrap up when you have no plans for a sequel? You're an asshole.

And speaking of sequels, tragic endings make people smell sequels in the water. If a campaign's epilogue has a bit of tragedy in it, it typically lights the fandom up for a sequel. And it definitely happens with d20 shows, given how much speculation there is for a Fantasy High Senior Year. Generally (probably to avoid rabid fandom) they avoid sequel bait, especially with A Crown of Candy. Ravening War is immune to a lot of these factors given it's a shorter season so there's less emotional wear and tear, the story was designed to possibly end poorly, it's a prequel so sequel bait isn't an issue, and the players honestly remained pretty fucking powerless on a world scale the whole time because they were never supposed to deal with the largest problems of the world.

But yeah no, in general, I'm not super big on the epilogues either, the last one Intrepid Heroes one that I really liked was like, Starstruck or Unsleeping City II.