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You're Invited—to The Wedding of the New Epoch!

Jester Lavorre and Fjord Stone cordially request your presence... in a zine about their wedding!

In honor of the 2025 NYC live show, I will be your humble MC for a collection of short pieces set at, during, and around the Fjorester wedding. Everyone who's anyone will be there—and probably interacting in the most unusual of combinations! Maybe Allura Vysoren will get roped into a conversation with Athesias Uludan in his Comeback Tour Era. Perhaps Deirta Thelyss and Oliver Schreiber are having a night of cold war-intrigue trying to deliver the most extravagant gift on behalf of their respective monarch. Might the Nightmare King derail Isharnai from her quest for fairy tale vengeance... by asking her for a dance? Whatever you can imagine (and write in under 600 words), it can happen!

Your RSVP is requested by July 31st, 2025, via the form below, wherein you will also find further details about the parameters, including how to express interest in submitting art.

Please use the official wedding hashtag, #FjoreverToJester, to follow along!

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Hello, I am GAUGING INTEREST for a CR FIC ZINE.

I sent @ariadne-mouse this prompt (which she wrote a DELIGHTFUL ficlet for) a week and a half ago, and had the thought that one could make a VERY fun zine purely with ficlets of random encounters and scenarios at or around the Fjorester wedding, considering half of Exandria's invited, and wedding interactions can get wild. So I'm considering running one!

I am talking Shoestring Budget Production level zine. First ever Critical Role episode production level. Mid-tier but not bad "professor's scan of a PDF" level. Legible, but definitely minimal effort DIY. This would be super basic, on basic letter paper folded in half, none of this "zine that is basically an art book" stuff—I'm thinking all ficlets would be required to fit on at most one spread of pages, which is a bit over 600 words, so I'd probably cap it at 600 just to be safe. No fancy formatting, all fic for easier printing purposes (sorry), as the ultimate goal would be to print a bunch of copies to bring to the live show.

For this reason, if there was a ton of interest and submissions beyond the feasible scope of what I could print, there would probably be two versions; one comprehensive digital version that people can print at home if they want, and one shorter one to print for the event itself, prioritizing writers who are attending the live show because it's fun that way (with some kind of link or QR code for the full version). No money exchanged in any direction, no limitations based on taste or quality. It wouldn't really matter if some of them contradict, and there would be no expectation of consistency in terms of wedding details, but I would encourage ideas that are, if not wholly canon compliant, somewhat realistic within the confines of Exandria lore—i.e. Cerrit coming back from the grave to attend a random Borderline Celebrity Wedding doesn't necessarily make sense, but if there was a concept involving Dairon dragging along an Agrupnin descendant OC who is also an expositor because they know that Beau is going to be occupied with best man duties and needs someone to talk to so she doesn't have to make small talk, that could be funny as hell.

So, to recap, the general parameters:

takes place at or around Fjord and Jester's wedding

fics of 600 words or less

open submission

no continuity or consistency expectations or requirements across submissions

very loosely canon compliant (roughly up to the end of c3)

* I'd consider putting art into the digital version, but again, given this is meant to be as minimal cost as possible, I would not include art in the printed version regardless—especially as it would be printed in B&W.

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and if I said Midst is one of the finest pieces of storytelling I’ve ever experienced I would be speaking the absolute truth.

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☀️🦄 long may chaos reign ✨🌈

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Haha no, don’t be a major catalyst for the apocalypse, you’re so pretty

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As epic, fucked up, and heartbreaking as the episode is, I kept thinking of this meme.

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“If there is light behind her eyes, it’s out now.”

Worlds Beyond Number always makes me want to draw. This time I pushed myself to not leave it unfinished.

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Shit man, this Battle of Twelve Brooks is fucked. I just saw a guy clap his hands together and make tens of flesh sorcerers emerge from a dreadnaught and decapitate imperial wizards faster than the eye can perceive. The camera didn't even go onto him, thats how common shit like this is. My ass is casting firebolt and level 2 erulian bolts. I think I just heard the sword of the citadel yell "VOLLEY" two skyships over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.

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What do you see?

The Mighty Nein meets the Bells Hells

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I do think the funniest part of the Coven of Heart subclass in the WBN Witch class is that they can replace spell components with things like the laughter or tears of a loved one because I know the wizards fucking hate that shit.

I had to do the equivalent of a magical thesis defense, and memorize a million spells, and keep track of a trillion different spell components; and yet those fucking Witches with their TWEE BULLSHIT get to make their friend laugh instead of growing mushrooms under the exact right conditions in a process that can take months at a time and is incredibly easy to fuck up?

At that point me and the entire metaphorical concept of magic itself have to scrap.

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so when we look at the titles of the seven birds, Lucretia's and especially Davenport's stand out — The Lonely Journal Keeper, and The Wordless One. they're less applicable to the Stolen Century than the titles the other birds — Lucretia was always the journal keeper, of course, but back then, she was surrounded by family. you could possibly still characterize her as lonely in the last few years of the century, when her family rejected her plan (and that does provide some delicious angst), but that still doesn't explain Davenport. he wasn't "wordless" until the very end.

and the reason this jumps out at me is because for everyone else, almost the opposite is true: their titles fit their Stolen Century incarnations better than they fit our heroes post-Voidfishing. Taako does not have any idea that he's a twin. Barry is left alone with no one to love but memories of his absent family, and sometimes, he doesn't even have that. Magnus fails to protect Raven's Roost, and grapples with the guilt. Merle can't even make peace within his marriage, much less with an aspect of an eldritch force like John.

so this all feels like an odd discrepancy... until you realize that the Seven Birds prophecy came from Maureen. who knew Lucretia, and most likely Davenport too, in person after the Voidfishing — but never met any of the others, and only perceived them through the Cosmoscope in her dying moments. she described the five birds she didn't know as she saw them at their best, but the birds that she did know as she saw them last. it makes me wonder what she might've called the others, if she'd met them, too.

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lucretia adventurezones is genuinely one of the best conceived characters of all time and the tragedy that taako and by extension so much of the audience cannot forgive her for her selfishness driven by her steadfast belief in what is right and her immediate decade-long lonely punishment where thirty two years of her life were burned away from her, completely alone, makes my skin ache

i get to this point in the stolen century where lucretia is maybe 18 years old and also 100 years old, so dedicated to preserving life but terrified of living it, and i hear second-hand in less than two minutes about how she fought and ran and salvaged and nearly died entirely alone for an entire year when the six remaining people alive who have ever known her have been frozen into statues. we see her again and she is out of breath and sweaty and completely broken and relieved and changed forever and i think: of course she made that decision

of course she would do anything in the world to save her friends. of course she would take it into her own hands and be selfish and burn the world down and she would do it to save them. she would do it to save the world and she would do it to save the universe. it's so selfish and so unselfish.

and it's like. of course taako can't forgive her for making him forget lup. but i can also imagine years and years and years going by while the world descends into chaos and barry and taako nearly kill themselves and never stop looking for her and never find her. especially because if lup had made it back from that mission she would have immediately been there with lucretia trying to undo what they had done

lucretia is so beautiful and amazing and fantastic because she is the big bad the entire time. she pins them all against each other. she is who she warns them about. she got them into this situation in the first place. she cursed the entire world. she gains their trust by lying to them and she leaves them all so defenseless against the hunger until the second it comes for them.

but she was right. she was right the entire time. she loved them. she made sure they had each other even when she was all alone. she did the only thing that she knew how to do in order to save them all and she was right and she did it all out of love and it worked and some of them will never ever forgive her and she knew that and did it anyway. and i love her so much

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🖤🩷

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thank you third person for looking out for me, someone who does often number among the daredevils listening to midst while driving