#CR-10

[kitsunecrows]

gods (and their reluctant wingmen)

[briskchips]

I love her awakened form so much

[f0xx1n3]

“Maybe in another universe… we both escaped. but tell me, why couldn’t it be this one…?”

Click for better quality

[my-smial]

thank you brennan. i am excited for "more of you should have specced into survival: the game."

[sunny-sourzii]

They make me sick

[teddyberr]

A little mighty nein doodle page to express my love for them

[piratespencil]

FRIDA saying “you made me” and Chet saying “that’s so strange, I swore I would never make anything out of metal” was INCREDIBLE.

[thatdrunkarchon]

Two sides of the same coin. || Shadow Milk/Pure Vanilla relationship headcannons || SFW ||

Hi. Venti back from the dead here I'm mainly only posting because for once I'm actually not busy and my head is absolutely racing with ideas for these two I'm honestly probably gonna rework this acc and add a proper masterlist attached to my account but I'll cross that bridge when I get there

SM/PV x gender neutral!reader

How they took the confessions and how the relationship is currently going:

Shadow Milk

At first, if anything, Shadow Milk thought you were pathetic.

He's not really one to dabble in romance, plus, even if he were to fall for someone, he's pretty sure they'd end up dead at some point in time, anyways.

Most likely Aroace.

So hearing some small, random, puny cookie professing their love to him? God, was it such a laugh.

But, what a surprise, he'd actually accepted that offer.

So, now you two are dating. What does that entail exactly?

I'm so glad you didn't ask. He does absolutely nothing to show his 'love' for you. He's, in all honesty, mainly just using you for his own gain, sort of like Candy Apple cookie.

If he hasn't already killed you, later down the line is when he starts getting... possesive.

You're his most obedient toy after all. What good would you be if you were corrupted by those foolish heroes? Not like you weren't already corrupted like him, but it makes no difference.

Around maybe a few months of him acting like this is when he realizes that no, he's not just doing this for personal gain anymore.

For his lies that were once potent and firm started to blend uncontrollably with the truth- That he genuinely likes you.

At first he lies to himself, as expected. He's not sure how to feel about this realization, but he doesn't like it. Not one bit.

Suddenly he's catching himself wondering how you were doing when you weren't in his sight, asking you if you'd eaten that day, actually caring.

Of course, this doesn't change his attitude. He's still as cruel and silly as ever, just..

Maybe not as much to you.

He shows his affection in either little or grand ways, like giving you a puppet or two to mess around with, ranting about anything and everything to you, or making grand plays that make you two the stars of the show.

He's grown an indefinite soft spot for you and he hates it, but he can't deny it at all.

And god damnit, he can't say he minds either.

You've corrupted him, body and soul, but he can't find it in himself to care.

Pure Vanilla

Pure Vanilla, of course, is the exact opposite. But similar nonetheless.

He's honestly a little.. weirded out at first. Of course, he's had maybe one or two relationships, but none where the person was someone he barely talked to.

He's more on the panromantic side, he could care less about looks. And he can't say that the cookie in front of him wasn't dazzling, and he also could never say that he wasn't charmed by your bravery.

But, again, he still doesn't know you.

So, he politely refuses, making a small comment on how maybe if he got to know you better he'd think about it.

And to be honest, that might've been the best thing he'd ever said if he looks back on it, because holy Crispia, you certainly took his offer.

He'd spent the past few months falling head over heels for you, and that's an underexaggeration.

He often finds himself thinking about you so often it's probably deemed unhealthly.

He just can't help but feel a little bit bad when he's feeling possessive, you aren't even dating yet after all.

After a good few months, he's actually the one to re-confess. He'd been a little bit worried that what you felt for him was just a passing crush, but he's glad it's not.

Whenever he can, where ever he can, he absolutely loves lovebombing you.

Of course, he makes sure it's not overwhelming, but just kissing you all over, giving you little reminders of how much he loves you, practically worshipping you- It feels so right.

You might be the best thing to ever happen to him.

Would gladly rant about you to anyone who'd listen.

He also tends to micromanage, but not exactly in the way you'd think.

He wants dates to go absolutely perfectly- Even if it's not perfect, however, he knows you won't mind.

He hates it whenever you get bothered by something, so he tries to limit that, whether that be by going to another room with you because the people in the old room made you feel uncomfy, or throwing himself in front of you to take an attack you couldn't block.

This has caused a small number of arguements, but Pure Vanilla is a stubborn little guy. Most he'd do is parry the attack when he can, but no promises.

He'd rather die than have you harmed in any way, shape, or form.

Because he loves you, body and soul. You've influenced him in a way that he absolutely loves.

[essektheylyss]

Honestly it's so funny that we know Essek's intelligence score. We have so little else about his stats, but we do have his exact intelligence score pinned, cuz he happened to get roped into being thrown into one of if not the only scenario in the entire dang game where that exact number is relevant. Otherwise we could've gone on forever with, "Well, as an NPC wizard he sure does have a high int mod."

But no, now we know that he's the smartest boi because he happened to get dragged into the Astral Sea with another wizard with whom he was engaged in flirtatious competition. 😌

[montic0]

finally got to chapter 8! oh also I'm a little obsessed with Lady in Azure

[laurasbailey]

[maisdarkredbow]

Got a little too creative 🔥🔥

[briskchips]

How are you feeling about Hollysugar

after ep 10?

Consider my mind 100% changed. Hollysugar has equal to if not more sauce than shadowvanilla. Oh my god. The obsession. The tragedy. Sugar's willingness to dedicate every second of her life to Hollyberry even after having her soul jam ripped away. The LAUGH. HER BEAUTIFUL MANIC LAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHHH. Holly's patience with her. The promise. SHIELDING HER FROM HER OWN HARM'S WAY. THE LOVE-DRUNKEN GIGGLE AND BLUSH FROM SUGAR. I am going to lose my mind

[shorthaltsjester]

endlessly thinking thoughts about cr characters, morality, and selfishness (likely place for me to be, given that my day job includes endlessly researching ethics and meaning of life) but in light of bell’s hells most recent illustration of their insularity and individualism, I’ve been really like. Trying to unpack why I find it particularly egregious in this party when obviously mighty nein were notoriously self-interested, especially at the beginning, and when vox machina had quite a few moments where their horses were far higher than they had any reason to be. And again, I really want to make it clear her that I don’t hold self-interest or selfishness to be some abhorrent and unforgivable thing, in fact I think its incredibly normal especially given the context of main characters in a story told through game mechanics that flourish on the interest of the individuals making the choices. I’ve written before about how one of the throughlines that I’ve seen in laura’s pcs (since I’m someone who particularly enjoys looking at the moral outlooks characters develop) is a common thread of morality that’s highly dependent on their own interests. And like, this is a positive throughline to me! Without getting into my own views on morality, it is particularly compelling to me for characters with isolated upbringing (which applies to vex, jester, and imogen, each in different ways) to develop a moral code informed by that isolation, and in vex we see her moral code is ‘anything goes if it protects those I hold dear’, in jester we see a moral code that doesn’t care about morality as much as it cares about the chance to care and be cared for, and in imogen we see a moral code developed in response to her very unique experience of hearing the darkest parts of people and judging them on those (which to be clear, i am not judging her for that fact, I think it makes extreme sense for someone who hears the thoughts the people have to be horrified by those things, but it does mean her moral system is almost completely backwards, where intention holds more weight than action, which perhaps makes sense of the popularity of defending all of her ideas and choices and the Right Ones by certain parts of the fandom that insist leftism is hidden in the dnd real play). And that’s all to say that, out of the cr parties we’ve seen, I don’t think any single member of bell’s hells is uniquely more or less selfish or more or less of an asshole than previous characters. And in fact, I tend to be quite fond of selfish characters, I have a well documented history of cherishing them well beyond the cr fandom. But the point is that my calling something or someone self-interested is not a value judgement in this context, it's a descriptive claim about the traits a character exhibited.

Imogen, who has insisted time and time again re: the values of the accord that she would not be swayed by the temptation of predathos because she recognizes the importance of this fight, only to turn around and pretty immediately open herself up to predathos to fulfil the most threatening part of ludinus’ plan is self-interested. I cannot conceive of any other way to describe her choices. And her being self-interested doesn’t mean she can’t also be altruistic at times, but I will be clear that I don’t think her risking killing herself as she attempts to bring down the god-eater that she released is particularly selfless. In my best faith interpretation I’d say she’s pretty middle of the road in that choice. But I bring all this up because a comparison I’ve been seeing is that bell’s hells aren’t as mean as the mighty nein or even vox machina in certain moments and that it doesn’t make sense for the fandom to view bell’s hells as likely to be villains when the same wasn’t true of the previous two campaigns, and I think I have to pretty emphatically disagree, and not because I don’t think there aren’t moments in both campaigns that feature extremely high levels of assholery and villainry from pcs – I mean, some of my favourite cr characters are percy and jester, both of whom i’d say are ‘good guys’ due to the pure luck of the found familys they fell in with and both of whom often suggested plans that were. Not okay. To say the least. But ignoring the difference between suggesting fucked up plans and walking your god-eater infused bestie back towards the troops sent to support you in keeping that entity contained, the other big difference I’ve noticed in my own introspection on how I react to bh vs mn and vm, as well as which things i cherish about previous campaigns that were really missing from c3 to what I think is the story and the character’s detriment (staying away from the shape of the narrative, just because others have made posts that put words together better about that than I can) is that while members of vm and mn remained self-interest to the end of their campaigns and have reasserted those habits in appearances since, the parties as entities working in exandria had both, to echo ashton’s apt suggestion to ludinus, grown up.

Like one moment I think of is beau and fjord’s convo in the nein hells episode, because beau is being her asshole self and fjord is being his ‘I care about My People and I’ll think about the rest later’ self (i say affectionately but certain parts of the fandom I recognize would view derogatorily) – clearly they’re not the kindest people as they discuss bell’s hells, but two notable things are (a) they still treat the hells with the respect and use their means to help them prepare for the battle coming, even when they hear the horrifying thought that the hells aren’t certain they’ll choose to save the gods, all the nein request is that they choose the kind option (b) they say none of their doubts to the hells themselves – likely because they have the empathy to realizes that its a high stress situation that won’t be made better by a reminding the hells how small and likely ineffectual in the universe they are – and their comments about cannon fodder are ones made in jest to each other. Even taking that in the worst faith interpretation, the jokes that beau and fjord make in a private conversation has absolutely zero influence on bh. This is quite different than bells hells, after like. as clearly betraying the accord they promised to assist (even if their intentions are ‘good’) as is possible, belittling the religious armies sent to support their endeavor to keep predathos sealed as they all feel the weight of an irrevocable change occurring in exandria, one bells hells has first account knowledge now that it IS incredibly willing to eat mortals, and laudna and ashton, the members of bells hells most often cited by certain fandom spaces as characters who have gone through so much and it only made them kind and strong, look into the faces of people facing literally existential threat and laugh and mock them. That is, mighty nein as individuals is comprised of some of the, perhaps, most asshole pcs, but The Mighty Nein as a party is committed to treating others the best they can, to leaving things better than they found them (a quote that I think is particularly exemplary of the dynamics of self-interest at play in the mighty nein, since it originated as a blatant illustration of molly’s notion of self-importance but developed to become a kind of commandment that the nein became committed to fulfilling). The opposite is true of bell’s hells, where orym and dorian at least both seem to have motivation beyond themselves, imogen’s changes but has shown she is capable of letting go of her ‘intention reigns’ requisitely individualistic perspective, and chetney plays up his selfishness but has shown himself to care quite a bit for people beyond their party but bell’s hells as an entity is uh, pretty self-interested.

To clarify some of my thoughts here in the spirit of the wicked renaissance happening rn, I’ve always felt that for good was an incredibly apt song for the mighty nein, because it really nails that feeling that perhaps they didn’t change each other as individuals to become better people on the grand scale, maybe they’ve just changed each other permanently, but they (and I would agree with this) view each other as having changed each other for the better (e.g., I don’t know if I could say whether jester is a morally better Individual at the end of the campaign, but I can say with certainty that she fulfils and makes moral choices in her work as a member of the mighty nein). And I don’t know if this can be said about bell’s hells – I think they have certainly influenced each other and changed how alone many of those characters felt, and that is not a slight on the story, it can be a great centre for a story to focus on how a relinquishment of the feeling that one is alone in the world can change them. But for the most part, that hasn’t been bh’s story, their story instead has been about validating their refusal to become anything beyond what they insist was out of their control. And not to get to annoying philosophy student about it but bell’s hells are maybe some of the most explicit examples of sartrian bad faith I’ve seen in fiction in a hot minute, because their insistence that they treat their wounds as incurable and entirely out of their hands has led to them limiting their own potential because many of them ignore their responsibility as people to make choices in their own lives. In contrast, at the end of the campaign, mighty nein are still assholes as we all like to refer to them as, but in the context of an apocalypse, I think I’d prefer the assholes like fjord – who is certainly being truthful when he says he doesn’t care about what harm comes to 200 people when jester is at risk but who also, as they traverse into aeor, is insistent that their group won’t be running away from whatever apocalyptic threat awaits them, even if that means dying in the fight – than I would an asshole like ashton – who promises to fight for the little guys but who then turns around and acts upon a philosophy that says the strongest will survive. When you look at the mighty nein, it is incredibly easy to see the fingerprints of change they’ve left upon one another, and even to see the boundaries they place on one another’s asocial behaviours through their presence in one another’s lives (more recently the group chastising jester’s fond words about ludinus is a good example, but others are yasha’s pressuring caleb and essek to move on from their wizard talks as they collect paper in aeor instead of venturing further toward the battle they have to fight, or fjord and jester’s frustrated conversation in the ukotoa reunion about how fjord made a stupid decision and he doesn’t regret but he feels dejected and jester checking him on the fact that they still need to figure out a solution). It takes some extrapolation to see how bells hells have changed each other in more than aesthetic ways, if they have at all. Because the catalyst for change is pressure to do so, and aside from moments where it was truly change or be left behind, bh doesn’t challenge each other unless forced to by morri’s trials or delilah’s interruption and on the very odd occasion an interesting game of rollies-spin-the-bottle. 

And it’s interesting because the asshole behaviour of the mighty nein, like bell’s hells, stems from being left on the outskirts of society and the mistreatment that comes with that, so seemingly the change from being alone to being with others is one that actually insists upon being challenged to grow and change. I mean, just looking at the starting points of the characters, there’s an intriguing amount of stark similarities between their pasts; jester and fearne were both people loved dearly by the family they grew up with but who were loved within the confines of a gilded cage, ashton and beau both have an glaring self awareness that their anger at the world has a very particular source (their parents) but use that as justification rather than a means of self reflection, yasha and orym are trying to navigate a world in the wake of an incomprehensible loss and a sense of duty, fjord and imogen are both seeking out knowledge of their own powers and unknowingly retreading the paths of their missing and presumed dead parental figures. The idea that bell’s hells are uniquely mistreated by society in the history of cr player characters is, politely, laughable. Absolutely they’re mistreated, and I think it could be fair to say these characters are more defined by their isolation than others but I think that has more to do with the lack of downtime rp than it has to do with the context of their suffering.

What I have loved about the mighty nein is that in their realization that the bonds they forge with each other are undermining the truths most of them had taken to be true – that they were alone and without a place in the world – they are also forced to realize that no longer being alone and isolated comes with the weight of social responsibility. And this was born out of a willingness the mighty nein had to call each other out and that the players had to allow their characters to be wrong and get called on it. Because that’s the friction of living with other people on the small party scale and the large world scale – in the mighty nein’s ability to survive as a people who cared for each other even when they didn’t agree or when they made decisions that they couldn’t understand, they were constantly developing their ability to care for the very same world that left them alone. Because in campaign two, the world as a whole had the role that the gods have in campaign 3 – why should a party of nobodies, treated like shit by the world and the people in it go through the effort of saving it?

And the mighty nein answered, in their own imperfection and assholery, that nothing is ever just one thing – one of the things I cherish most about campaign 2 is its commitment to ambiguity, allowing the complexity of the world to go unsolved because there is no solution to the fact that life is immense and sometimes incoherent. I don’t think its a coincidence that I’ve seen some of the people lamenting the idiocy of fandom members like me who think that it actually isnt a leftist win to destroy the world in the hopes of spontaneous justice arising in c3 are the same people who criticised c2’s conclusion with the cerberus assembly for not being leftist (a word which for them means . the aesthetic image of a rebellion sparked and not the unending commitment to doing what you practically can to make life more just for those around you – whether they’re particularly kind to you or not) enough. The conclusion of c2 emphasizes that the choice to make the world a better place isn’t something that can be achieved in one single sweeping action that will wipe the boards clean – there is no murder of all the members of the cerberus assembly that would’ve solved the problems that caused the assembly’s power. There is no forcing of the god’s out of exandria that will deal with the actual issue undergirding both bh and their blorbo-moralized fans' criticism of the gods, which is that mortals are cursed with the burden of free will, and being mistreated by other mortals means constantly having to try and make sense of the fact that someone chose to do something cruel to you (and, sometimes, that you made a choice that allowed that cruelty to occur) – a burden made much heavier when the person who hurt you is your cult-indoctrinated mother, or your cult leader father, or the person in the mirror. The mighty nein take up this fight, and the complexities of their individual identities begin to heal in the light of a commitment in their relationship as friends and as a team to improve the world, even on the small scale. Bell’s hells remain gridlocked and stagnant and unwilling to change in an unspoken turf war of self-interest because they’ve insisted (influenced in part by the context of the campaign 3 narrative but, as others have aptly pointed out, that narrative was much more influenced by bh’s lack of curiosity regarding anything except their own minds) upon finding a solution to a problem they’ve decided is earth-shatteringly (quite literally, to the people of ruidus) unjust based on, aside from encounters where fellow mortals were the primary oppressors, their own testimony of the god’s not listening to them and the obvious villain’s parallel testimony. Something I’ve really been chewing on lately is caduceus words to fjord about his role as a paladin of the wildmother – that maybe it just means that someday, someone will pray for a miracle, and there fjord’ll be and the weight that has given that fjord’s bond to ukotoa came from his desperation not to die and his willingness to accept whatever help would be offered, that fjord could now be the person that reaches out to someone in need, and that the hand he offers won’t come with a curse.  And I think that’s really the poignant difference between bh and mn for me, that for bh, their experiences of injustice, though did make them personally bitter, did not make them morally misanthropic.

Comparatively, Bell’s Hells chose to ensure that, because the gods never answered their prayers, they shouldn’t be permitted to answer anyone else’s. Is this an understandable position? Sure, for the walls of a preschool, not really for a group of characters that I will ever be in any way inclined to view as something close to heroes. While it’s true that there are parts of life that are beyond our control – somethings happen to us that we have no say in, and they cause injuries both physical and mental that we are left to heal without any rhyme or reason, it is still our responsibility to heal them. And if you choose not to, well, then you’ve chosen not to, and are responsible for the consequences and judgements that choice might amount to.

Anyway, sorry this is all over the place but TLDR: calling bell’s hells as a party self-interested is actually just descriptively correct – they can save members of the party made up of their close friends and still be self-interested – and while the individual members of bell’s hells actually aren’t all that uniquely self-interested in the history of cr pcs, the party is uniquely self-interested in how they’ve chosen to navigate the world an their responsibility to the people in it.

[randomthingsthatidointhedaytime]

Crk/Cookie run kingdom beast yeast. !SPOILERS!

Ginger brave at the end:

WHAT HAPPENED, WHATS GOING ON W GINGERBRAVE :CCCC

[sunny-sourzii]

He didn’t hit puberty, puberty hit him