#endless neverafter

[counterspelling]

Endless Neverafter

[chalkbird]

btw they build castles so that we can be in here. if u even care

[freaky-little-genius]

SHE

[angeloncewas]

Rosamund has vastly more "times" because Sleeping Beauty is such a popular story to be retold, fascinating.

[fiovske]

the sheer jubilation and glee i felt when brennan dropped scheherazade into the narrative orbit....

[the-butter-churner]

rosamund fucked up arc is something that can be sooo personal

[magical-misfit]

The idea that the characters will rise up and literally kill the author is one that I desperately hate for a few reasons.

1) Authors are not inherently evil. They’re storytellers who are often telling the story they wished to hear or read as children with characters they have put pieces of themselves into. They write the ink which dries but it is for them.

2) If there is a force which demands more suffering or more drama, it’s editors or publishers not authors. I know from personal experience all the stuff that’s hurt my characters has been exacerbated from the first draft because other people have enabled me to do so. My original ideas weren’t as traumatizing as what hits the page.

3) already you guys are forgetting what one of the central themes of this season is. The lack of agency. Pinocchio cannot do anything morally bad or he becomes a puppet, Rosamund is destined to sleep for a hundred years. Ylfa must always be eaten by the wolf, Gerard is always a frog. The horror this season is a lack of agency, even provided by Brennan himself in so much that the PCs choices have had very little bearing on the storyline so far imo. So I think we’ll finally see our characters take their stories into their own hands and drive them off the rails like so many authors like to joke about

And Finally?

4) The Itsy Bitsy Spider. If Brennan’s whole ethos this season was “needless suffering of fairytale characters is bad” then he would’ve had the itsy bitsy spider go into the book. But he doesn’t. And even before Ally shuts the book the spider is wary. Because he knows that he needs the rain for the sun to come again. He doesn’t want it to be all sunny all the time. Because yes suffering sucks, adversity sucks, but you can always overcome it. And if you constantly live in a world where it’s happily ever after all the time, you never grow nor do you appreciate the sunshine when it is all you see.

Anyway it’s not as black and white as other people are making it out to be and no it’s not capitalism.

[pineboots]

is it petty of me to say that I really liked how this episode confirmed that the stepmother is NOT the evil fairy, because I’d seen a lot of people buy into that theory and accept it as fact but I don’t think there’s even evidence to suggest the stepmother is a fairy at all. she’s fucked up for sure but she’s not a fairy

[jerreeeeeee]

brennan literally describing the mice as a swarm… i’ll be so disappointed if rosamund doesn’t end up a swarmkeeper with woodland creatures

[minotaur-in-my-labyrinth]

Yooooooo!!!!

My girl Scheherazade and the Endless Nights?

I am so fucking in love with this season!!!

[hamletteprinceofdenmark]

I’m intrigued by the golden bridle ngl 

[counterspelling]

Endless Neverafter

[bisekcual]

im not really invested in neverafter rn since i haven't been keeping up with the episode drops but i will say that if theories are right and it IS a time loop where only ylfa remembers what happened that will be a massive win for the soul of the community. time loop based media my beloved

[undefeatedcrabking]

why pay $30 for duties when I can make my own subpar merch for the low low price of over $300?!??!

[deconstructthesoup]

I think the reason that Dimension 20 really scratches all those itches in my brain is that it really shows what you can do with D&D---and TTRPGs as a whole.

Fantasy High, by itself, is an incredibly compelling concept. What would D&D look like in a semi-modern setting? What would a high school that's all about teaching teens how to be adventurers look like? And the way it's done is beyond inventive, especially if you look at all the encounters in the first season---we've got a literal food fight, a high-speed road chase with tiefling greasers, a nightclub brawl with zombies, vampires, and werewolves, a skating match with a bunch of dwarven middle schoolers and a concrete golem, a high-stakes game of football (ish) with undead jocks that give off major teen slasher vibes, a fight done in an arcade where characters can get trapped in the consoles, and the final battle is done at prom. PROM! How cool is that?

And then we get to the Unsleeping City, which takes the urban fantasy elements that Fantasy High already had and elevates it. The way the D&D lore and magic is interpreted in a modern New York setting is excellent, as is the whole take on the "American Dream," magic literally coming from dreams, ideas, and the imagination. I know that I need to actually finish the UC saga, but from what I've seen and experienced, it is truly fantastic.

And the same energy carries through to the other seasons---my personal favorite outside of Fantasy High being A Court of Fey and Flowers, just because I'm a sucker for any Fey Realm content and I've been raised on Jane Austen---where the genre mashups shine through in the best way possible. I'll admit, I haven't seen A Crown of Candy, purely because I know how heartbreaking and devastating it is and I don't think I can physically handle it, but the concept of Candyland Game of Thrones is so beautifully bizarre that I totally get why people love it so much. Escape from the Bloodkeep hitting that workplace comedy vibe that we love to see in villains. Misfits & Magic being a love letter to the "magical boarding school" genre while also calling out all the weird contradictions inherent in it. A Starstruck Odyssey literally being an homage to Brennan's mom and exactly the kind of madcap and unhinged energy I need from my sci-fi. Neverafter perfectly encapsulating the true horror of fairy tales. Mentopolis hitting my noir-loving heart and personifying hyperfixation in the best way possible.

I'm not even kidding when I say that, if it weren't for Dimension 20... I probably wouldn't have even started my own campaign. I'd had snippets and ideas ever since officially getting into D&D and joining a game with some old friends (and getting back in touch with them in the process), but after I saw the Mentopolis trailer, I realized just how much variety TTRGPs had to offer. I could do a time-blending, history-meets-future campaign. I could go out-of-the-box. I could have endless amounts of options available to my friends and still tell the story that I wanted to tell. And when I sat down and watched Fantasy High---and when I got that Dropout subscription so I could consume whatever I wanted---it felt like the show was actually giving me advice. It's fantastic.

Also it helps that the episodes are usually only roughly a couple hours instead of being, like, an entire afternoon long. And that each season is 20 episodes, tops. No offense to Critical Role, but the sheer amount of content literally makes it impossible for me to get into it.

[applebees4prez]

the stepmother from neverafter is one of if not my favorite villain(s) of all time. she’s so truly and genuinely horrifying but you also completely understand her motives. while i can barely even comprehend the imagery of maybe millions of people inhabiting one body while simultaneously many clamor to escape AND more are (non-sexually) vored into joining them, it is exactly what i would want from horror dnd and is just so fucking cool yet disgusting and terrifying to me. yet you’ve kinda gotta be like yeah of course she went insane. she doesn’t even have a name! she’s written to be the villain, given no depth or story. she’s a side character. she’s not even real. endless amounts of people know who she is and hate her.

honestly brennan crafted this story so much better than any other “villain origin story” we’ve ever seen. most of those disney live action ones are like “actually here’s a different side of the story and they’re not that bad. and we’re going to throw away a bunch of plot to get here.” but in neverafter, the stepmother is full evil! she fucking sucks! she’s abusive and she eats people’s stories. but also you can’t help but feel bad for her at some level. she has real depth and she’s interesting. i will forever be obsessed with our stepmother, minerva.