mollyknewthings

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From

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The Randomizer

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Liam: I'm distracted, I can only think about Pussy now

Marisha: For a second I thought you were Imogen

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Freaky Thursday, or Imogen's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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Screaming at the mass deflation when they found out Ira was there as a threat and not as an ally

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So funny to watch the cast unsure if they want to roleplay the other players characters (which is fun) or if they want to roleplay THEIR OWN characters in the other PCs bodies (ALSO fun). So they make kind of a mix of both??? And it's priceless

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Sam's dudebro Whisper-wielding Orym will live forever in our hearts

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You’ve heard of sharknado

Now it’s time for T-Rexicane

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- Do you have Knock?

- No, I just knock

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if predathos do not dangerous to mortals explain to me why it has digestive juices that dissolve human flesh

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ROUND 1, POLL 35

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*bells hells, holding like half a dozen legendary artifacts consecrated or directly given by gods*: what have the gods ever done for us????

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Ira Wendagoth arriving in Ruidus to murder Ludinus

[mollyknewthings]

One of your recent posts talked about the way BH have essentially "run out of plot" in following the Red Moon/Predathos plot and the way that the PCS are being played.

I was also curious about your thought on the interparty dynamics in the end game, particularly with recent developments. One of the issues I've had with Bell's Hells for a while now is the way they don't challenge each other (or at least not in the way previous parties have)

Yeah; they don't. And honestly I think this is a combination of just...luck of the draw of the characters they created combined with that lack of room for those characters to develop because they've been in an environment that hasn't allowed much time and space for anything but rushing to the next task. Like, as mentioned, a lot of characters are kind of here to hang out or have goals that aren't specifically tied to personal change, if they have specific goals at all. That's not a bad thing! Grog, Jester, and Fearne all share that quality and are all fantastic executions of it - and Grog and Jester do change quite a bit despite that because the story gives them many opportunities to do so, and yes, because their fellow party members challenge them. But it feels like the bulk of Bells Hells if not all of it is kind of in that boat.

I remember an early panel in which Marisha said "I don't want to think anymore" and I know Travis has mentioned something similar for Chetney, of wanting to play someone much more chaotic after playing someone so highly controlled as Fjord. Liam also talked about stepping back from being a major decision maker at some point, and built Orym to be someone who had a viewpoint but didn't specifically assert it (as we've just seen). Like, I think most resentment C3 fans have towards C2 is just jealousy and bitterness but perhaps a fairer grievance is that the cast really brought their A-Game to the Mighty Nein with a lot of incredibly complicated, driven, messy characters and due to the smaller nature of the company then combined with the scaled back production of the pandemic focused intently on them; and then nearly all of them made a bunch of fairly go-with-the-flow or chaotic characters as a breather and (not unfairly or unreasonably!) thought they'd be in a story that would give them space to become something else or that would suit them, and it didn't. As someone who likes actual play I think if nothing else this serves as a look into how fantastic overall cast chemistry doesn't translate into compelling party dynamics.

To be clear, I think Bells Hells like and care about each other, but none are really the type to both strive to be better and challenge those around them to be as well. Even their defenders in the fandom are kind of leaning on the party of NPCs line from very early on [which is funny because a lot of people HATED that line at the time; I got hate over thinking it was apt] but the thing is yeah at this point in the campaign, they shouldn't still feel like a party of NPCs. Perhaps this is a personal preference, which, to be clear, does not in any way invalidate it as criticism, but as someone with a bit of a comics background, I've never been terribly into "Suicide Squad"-esque stories but I am into stories of Person Who Has An Opportunity And Rises To The Occasion Despite Not Being The Best Choice On Paper. Ultimately, my issue isn't that Bells Hells come from humble backgrounds and tragedy (this is also...not untrue for the Mighty Nein, incidentally; in fact they had even less endorsement from powerful groups. Molly died 26 episodes in and he just stayed fucking dead because no one had Keyleth's phone number so this is another case of "your defense just makes me think the Mighty Nein achieve this in a far superior manner"); my issue is that, as Laudna put it, they kind of just walk through doors because they're in front of them. I don't need them to become classically heroic; but I do need them to have some sort of intention. And they don't. Why are you walking through doors? "Because they're there" doesn't cut it. You're here because the Exandrian Accord gave you a whole bunch of support so don't play that "i'm just a nobody with nothing" shit anymore, it's demonstrably untrue.

I had this in the tags originally and I decided, perhaps unwisely, to move it into this post because I think it's relevant, but: in case it's not apparent, I think "You! Are! Valid!" culture is fucking awful; this is what that weirdo who thinks I'm from Reddit is mad at, I think (honestly I'm not sure if they're angry, they might just be very unwell). Like, it has roots in something true and helpful; you are valid for things like your race, gender, sexuality, ability/disability, and things that have happened to you in the past. But actually no one is automatically valid for their actions. Being incurious or inconsiderate or incapable of taking constructive criticism, even if this is tied to your past? not valid. Your trauma and pain is valid; what you do in their name very much might not be. And I think a lot of people who love Bells Hells do not like this message (which, Bells Hells don't like this message, hence the repeated "whatever you do is fine" conversations) and kind of romanticize a "NO ONE IS ON OUR SIDE WE MUST DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR US THERE'S NO GOOD ANSWERS" state in which one cannot be held responsible for action nor inaction and that's a lot of why they respond so dramatically to the increasing sense within the fandom that this party lacks the juice and does judge them for inaction. Like, I've been talking about character agency and how a lot of people's enjoyment of Bells Hells hinges on how they HAD NO CHOICES and I think we're seeing the fallout, which is that a TTRPG story (ie, a medium defined more so than anything else about player choices) about characters who were stripped of choice kinda sucks ass, and anyone who doesn't look to actual play D&D to valid their personal morality (which, in this case, usually is "the world is unfair so I can do whatever I want" anyway) would rather see a story about a character who fucking had a viewpoint and did things with it, even if it were a "bad" viewpoint. I know I'm hard on villain stans because a lot of them are actually people who are like "what if the VILLAIN were the HERO...I am very intelligent," but actually, this is the crux of why Darth Vader was very popular. It's not because people thought he was a good person; it's because he drove the story more so than the heroes much of the time, and people responded to that. Purely reactive characters are boring and to get back to your original point do not challenge each other unless someone else starts the reaction chain, and there just haven't been too many opportunities of the external nor internal variety to do it. It's mostly bad luck and again, a session zero could have fixed this, but it is what it is.

[mollyknewthings]

I think a lot of people - especially people who are trying to fill some self-imagined moral deficiency and/or have failed to escape a Calvinist upbringing and are making it everybody's problem - judge the quality of a fictional villain on whether they are sympathetic or justified in their actions and that is truly not the case for me. Or rather, you can be a sympathetic villain, but there's also the "no, their cause fucking sucks, but they are fun as shit to watch" and to be that kind of villain you only have to have flair and you have to have precisely the right amount of screentime. Like yeah, there's some atrocities that will turn me off more than others, but given this is fiction, really it's "do you have The Right Villanous Vibes" and "when the heroes kill you, are we left wanting one more pithy one-liner or petulant screech or are we like FINALLY THAT BITCH HAS SHUT UP" And here's the deal. Campaign 1 Delilah Briarwood hit this mark flawlessly and bringing her back for Campaign 3 utterly killed the entire vibe on every level. Ludinus Da'leth had this once and lost it by being the BBEG for so long and for talking too much. Raishan and Ripley managed it but Thordak never really did in the original, though he did for TLOVM. Vecna definitely had it. Lucien is debatable but now that the dust has long since cleared, despite my "when will the nonagon be nonagone" tag I think he put in a respectable showing. Avantika did a low-level version. Trent technically achieves this but his vibes are so rancid that it's a little overkill. Personally I think Lorenzo manages but he's also a very low-level guy. Uk'otoa has it. Asmodeus has it. Otohan and Ozo utterly lacked it on every level and Ratanish had a different kind of charm, that of the bumbling henchman. Zathuda could have had it with a bit of work but he sort of missed the mark and was a bit too much of a creep for me and also too talkative. anyway that's enough of that, this post is about how Johanna Hezenkoss DATV manages to be this perfectly even when she gets to make pithy one-liners for eternity, and we do stan.

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on the one hand I think quarreling about Dimension 20 vs. CR fandoms is kind of dumb because there really is a significant amount of overlap and the casts collaborate constantly and the people who are acrimonious are ultimately a tiny group of people with an inflated sense of importance. However I actually think that, while CR has always had extremely parasocial fans, D20 specifically has a crew of deeply parasocial fans who also seem to think that Brennan personally invented leftism whereas CR's parasocial fans are just, as I've said, the actual play equivalent of Gaylors.

[mollyknewthings]

Jinx (Arcane)

Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials (the books))

Denna (The Kingkiller Chronicle)

Sansa Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Yeine (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms)

Essun (Broken Earth Trilogy)

Laerryn Coramar-Seelie (Exandria Unlimited Calamity)

Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Agatha Harkness (Agatha All Along)

Name ten female characters you like, you get zapped if it's jsut a male character you call a babygirl or other feminine nicknames because I can't see people calling Lestat coquette again