#GUEST ROLE

[djkerr]

All right, need, uh, one triple-pump, upside down chai, machi-something drip. That's not a thing, Agent Parker.

(Gary's co-star, his daughter, Mary Cole. ✨💗)

NCIS 22x08 Out of Control

[1000sunnygo]

Shanks and Rosinante are the same age.

Bless this tweet for putting their ages together.

These two men were born in the same year. At the same place. As younger brothers of morally corrupt older brothers proud of their Celestial lineage. Both became deeply involved with a young "D" approximately around the same time. Both stole a legendary devil fruit in the exact same year, 13 years before the start of the story, when Luffy was 6 and Law was 13.

I've been thinking about it all day.

[clar-a-m]

I can't believe that after everything, chet did not die in C3. Travis rolled that d100 god knows how many times and that old man DID NOT DIE

[wolfofproendos]

hey guys. roles are not hard-wired things that can never ever change and one alter always has the same role. they can change, grow with the alter. you're not restricted to the roles you have right now.

[olyphant-tim]

THE GUEST (2014) dir. Adam Wingard

[tes-gala]

[The courier delivers you a gold-filigreed envelope - in it are two cards. You read the first.]

House Nivulirel Extends an Invitation To Our Esteemed Guests,

To the Bold, the Curious, and the Cunning, Once a year, beneath ancient stars and shadows that remember, House Nivulirel summons the world’s most elusive souls to partake in a celebration that defies time and reason. A gathering of artistry, decadence, and boundless transformation, of visionaries, and souls untethered by mortal convention. Start Date: 15th of Midyear Duration: One Week’s Time, from Sundas to Loredas (though your stay need not span the full length of the revelry) Theme: [Daedra and Divines (of any pantheon)] We finish the week by encouraging total creative freedoms to our patrons on Loredas. Attire: To embody the ineffable For seven days and seven nights, the halls of Nivulirel shall pulse with music, art, and indulgence beyond mortal imagining. Each dawn will bring new wonders, each dusk a deeper descent into the surreal. Feasts of forgotten flavors, performances from beings who tread the edge of reality, and whispered truths that echo through ancient stone await those who dare step through our doors. Only those who receive this invitation shall be granted passage. Come for a moment. Stay for eternity. Or merely lose yourself in the dream between. House Nivulirel awaits your presence.

[You move to the next card.]

Due to the failure of one of our scribes, we lost part of the full guest list. If you would be so kind to help us find the missing guests, we would forever be in your debt.

[What shall you do?]

[Accept] [Decline]

[bimney424]

10 years ago today, a small internet show with a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors streamed for the first time on Twitch. At that time, they weren't sure what would happen. Three campaigns, dozens of one-shots, & numerous other projects later & here we are. I discovered Critical Role in August of 2020 when life was a battle for me. I will forever be grateful for this silly little show. Because of it, I have met some of the best people in the world (literally all over the place) some of which have become some of the best friends I have ever had. We bonded over Critical Role & our love for characters like Beau & Yasha & Vex & Kyleth & Imogene & Fern & Essex & Opal & Aabria (she's a character all her own lol). Congrats on 10 years Critical Role. Here's to 10 or 20 more.

[cassafrasscr]

Vex: "I tie ropes."

Percy: "Can confirm."

Me: Well, yeah. As was established by Opal in EXU Prime, all the girls in Byroden do rope training. 😂

[september-skeleton]

andrew garfield chicken shop date video of all time to ME. somehow simultaneously has the most (seemingly) romantic and natural chemistry while ALSO being the one that most blatantly acknowledges and almost criticises the pretence and orchestration fundamental to the format of the show. like it’s inherently paradoxical which makes it so FASCINATING. despite their flirting and dropping lore of their real life previous encounters (quote unquote meet cutes thanks for that one mr garfield) they also explicitly mention the facade of the show AND break the fourth wall- when he repeatedly touches the boom mic between them, and when they keep looking at the camera.

they deliver more successfully than ever on the central idea of the show while also actively deconstructing it! while breaking its established conventions! absolutely insane media experience 10/10

[mannequinswithkillappeal]

nothing new here I just need to remind everybody that assad is in a friend group with anjli mohindra, sacha dhawan and anjana vasan

[forsakenswappedau]

Some important facts about each killer!

Noob is mute due to being a glitched virus. Elliot can somehow however, understand what he’s trying to say, and usually translates.

Builderman is a cyborg built by an unknown creator, and one day tried to overclock himself. This obviously caused him to go insane.

Unlike most variants of him, my swap 007n7 tends to be a little less merciful to his son. In fact, he actually likes to be more manipulative than normal to him because he knows that he can be very gullible.

Shedletsky is the most powerful of the 10. Just wanted to make that clear.

Dusekkar doesn’t rhyme anymore (this is mostly due to me being too lazy to figure out how to write his dialogue and also because I feel like it wouldn’t fit with this version of him)

As I’ve mentioned before, Two Time believes Azure killed him on purpose when his death was actually an accident.

Elliot is constantly on fire, though the flames don’t hurt him. They can still hurt others though…

Taph is always in pain, and is probably the tamest killer, mostly because he tends to also injure himself in the process.

Chance’s minions are loyal to him and Chance is the one who gave them their nicknames

Guest will spare someone if they give him a good reason to, but for the most part he’s like the general from The Last Guest

[king-lena]

[clar-a-m]

what if when (if?) the bells hells and the crown keepers reunite aabria gets to DM at least the first half of that and for the first time in almost 10 years matt gets to be a player in a main campaign and gets to interact with his friends as a player WHAT THEN

[mareastrorum]

I’m working on a post that compares the main villains of C1, C2, and C3, but it made me think that perhaps one of Matt’s weaknesses as a DM is portraying recurring opponents in pursuit of the party.

Narratively speaking, a villain (as opposed to an antagonist) carries significant weight for the story themes (that’s why they’re the villain!), so every time they make an appearance, they should be doing something that develops the themes over time, especially in a long-term story. Villainous organizations might have several unique members that each highlight different aspects of the same theme, or maybe they each have their own, but that same principle applies. This can get challenging for recurring villains, but it’s not impossible. It’s just that their appearances and confrontations should clearly involve a reason that this specific villain is there instead of a nameless mook.

In C1, there weren’t many characters who actively pursued any of Vox Machina.

Hotis (the rakshasa) had a grudge against Vax for killing him in Vasselheim. Hotis simply wanted revenge. When he reconstituted in the Hells, we got an amazing reveal that Hotis (disguised as Gilmore) had lured Vax to a balcony to attempt to assassinate him. There wasn’t any deeper narrative meaning to it; Hotis was simply an antagonist with a grudge, no real time limit on achieving it, and a devious threat that would come back until he was stopped. It made for some great tension and gave an excuse for Vox Machina to go to the Hells, but that’s really as deep as it got. Good fun on a game level, and not much else.

The Briarwoods hunted Vox Machina during the final arc, but only once Vecna discovered that the team had infiltrated the undead earth titan carrying his city (which had been obscured by Vex’s magic ring). This wasn’t a recurring pursuit so much as acting in defense of their master’s base.

The other villains never really sought out Vox Machina in particular; the team went to them instead, or they happened to be where the villains were up to no good. But man, that Hotis thing was fun! I could see why Matt would want to recreate that.

In C2, we didn’t really get many persistence hunter opponents either—but not for a lack of trying. Lorenzo was supposed to be a persistent threat, but the Nein fried him at the Sour Nest before he could escape. Lucien was supposed to be a persistent threat, but Molly died, so that never even began. Caleb was worried that the Assembly was hunting him, but given how he was treated in Rexxentrum after the Angel of Irons arc, it’s hard to say whether that possibility was actually on the table. The Nein had also done a good job at avoiding Empire attention and territory, so there wasn’t all that much opportunity even if Matt had planned for it. Avantika returned as an undead to steal one of the Cloven Crystals from Fjord, but she was dispatched and the crystal was retrieved; there wasn’t any repeat after that. The Tombtakers chased the Nein once they stole a threshold crest, but they stopped bothering after the forced avalanche (and it wasn’t like the Tombtakers had a serious chance of catching up without something like Polymorph). The Nein were chased by Trent Ikithon after the Vergessen heist, but it was short term, and then the Nein avoided him until they were tracked down at the Blooming Grove. All of the possible ongoing chases ended after 1 full encounter—if they even got a full encounter.

The one entity that could arguably be repeatedly hunting any of the Nein is Uk’otoa, but it wasn’t that really an ongoing chase. After all, it’s sealed away. The whole point of the Cloven Crystals is to release it. There was definitely narrative significance to having Uk’otoa and Fjord interact, but it’s a different circumstance than what I’m addressing here, particularly because Uk’otoa loyalists were the ones after Fjord. (An alternative to the main villain doing the chasing, and a good decision IMO.)

In C3, we had numerous people hunting various members of the Hells, and it didn’t really work out well for the narrative.

Otohan Thull was a good antagonist (terrifying, powerful, strategic), but an underdeveloped villain. The Hells never got her full story, so the most we know about her is that she loves violence, she wanted the glory of killing powerful enemies like in the Apex War, and working for Ludinus got her that. Unfortunately, that personality doesn’t work well for instigating audience thought about any themes; it’s a straightforward assessment that “hey that’s a bad way to be,” and there’s no new facets to explore in later appearances. Her death due to FCG’s sacrifice worked out well as a foil to the PC’s journey, but it was pure happenstance that it worked out that way. After all, Otohan was chasing Imogen, not FCG, and the timing was that Sam needed to step away from the show for medical reasons, not because this was the best time for FCG’s arc to end. Great improvisation! But Otohan didn’t carry much narrative weight even with how much she harried the Hells. Why should we care that it was her other than the fact that her stat block and items were intimidating? The answer is that we shouldn’t. That’s disappointing.

Fearne was being pursued by several factions, and none of them were very good at it. The Summer Court didn’t send anyone after her, apparently, and it was never clear why they wanted her in particular. The Unseelie Court had an eye out (presumably on behalf of Athion Zathuda), but Yu Suffiad was more interested in the crown than Fearne, so it was only info that she was alive… and then nothing happened for dozens of episodes. Like, divination magic is a thing, so why didn’t anyone other than Zathuda do anything to find her if she’s so important? Zathuda nearly succeeded in a kidnapping attempt, but a short time later, the Hells killed him (comparatively easily, I’ll add) and his lieutenants. This was all without us knowing much of anything about Zathuda other than that he’s ambitious and intended to backstab Ludinus. The only meaning it had to Fearne was the exact same questions she had addressed upon finding the Calloways: did they care about their daughter? Why did they leave? Was she a person to them or just a tool? So what was Zathuda supposed to mean to the audience that hadn’t already been resolved? This bone had no meat on it; just strings of fat.

Ludinus appeared to the Hells several times (either as himself or as Simulacra), but he never really pursued them… which is very strange given that Imogen and Fearne were both potential vessels. There was motive to do it, but Liliana’s work to hide Imogen’s strength from him also worked against that Watsonian justification. Ludinus’s choice to do so much himself (and therefore provide other, less threatening reasons for the Hells to encounter him) also didn’t make sense; this guy has lived for about a thousand years manipulating entire countries, and he can’t get lesser villains who can do stuff on his behalf? And the Hells repeatedly didn’t care what he had to say beyond figuring out what he was up to. We didn’t have a narrative, above-the-table answer to “why are you here?”—so it shouldn’t have been Ludinus. (The Uk’otoa method would have worked better, I think.)

Hunter opponents can be a great tool to steer protagonists back to an ongoing thematic question, but Matt has never really used them that way. Like, on a RPG level, it’s lovely to have tension that a terrifying entity is after you. But for a story, there needs to be some purpose beyond just scare tactics. The theme needs to be sufficiently complex for these multiple encounters to feel like we’re not just playing a song on repeat. Has something changed? Is there new information that makes this feel different? Are the PCs trying a different goal? None of those questions are really addressed. It’s just the same thing again, and this time the PCs are a higher level with more items. And a different map. :/

I’d rather a bone with meat on it. I want narrative significance to chew on.

[divineandmajesticinone]

ESCAPE 탈주 (2024) Song Kang as "the bastard I used to love"

[dumpster-fire-sapphic-failgirl]

One thing about Laura Bailey:

She respects consent. Not just physically. But emotional consent too. She might make the most adorable blurbo every, one specifically aimed at romancing a character, but if the player isn’t into it she gives them plenty of room to back out. (based on C2 and C3, I haven’t seen C1)

Winning isn’t kissing the other player and having them accept it. Winning is having them kiss your character and mean it.

—————

Side note, I gotta acknowledge how cute Laura’s “I know, I’m sorry!” response to Marisha’s “I made a dead lady who was unromanceable!” statement

it means that their session zero involved Laura sitting there as Marisha described their friendship and closeness and was thinking the whole time “I’m gonna make a Sapphic that is going to Pine So Hard”

And honestly I think she, as a player, would have been delighted to play the heartbreak of being rejected. To take that leap and fall flat? BAFTA award winning actress Laura Bailey not making something amazing out of that? No fuckin way.