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"i'm gonna give my moth a little meat" is another series of words that should not be put together

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travis back to getting visions in his sleep, feels good

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Watching the first episode of Age of Umbra and specifically watching Marisha play Brixton solidified something I've been thinking for a while: Marisha thrives when her characters have an external scaffolding of some kind that she can build off of and occasionally chafe against. Brixton has this in the form of the Order of the Pyrekeepers that she grew up in, and in her devotion to the tenets of an ancient order of knights that she discovered and became obsessed with. She desperately wants to embody the ideals of nobility and knighthood from the old world, and she feels stifled and bored by the life of a Pyrekeeper, even as she acknowledges the work is important and the life itself is charmed.

As a side note, it was an incredible choice by Marisha to tie this character conflict to an older character, feeling constrained by your life and wanting to do and be more is a conflict often given to characters in their teens or early twenties, so seeing it given to a slightly older adult is nice here.

Marisha's other characters (bar those appearing in one shots) have this same sort of scaffolding that both provides a defined place in the world for her character and something for her to rub up against. Keyleth has the Ashari and the Aramente and the expectations that puts upon her and her fears that she won't measure up. Beau has the Cobalt Soul and the fraught circumstances that saw her entering the Order. Patia has her family and the mage hierarchy of Avalir and how her slavish devotion to that ultimately impacted how she relates to others. The two real exceptions among her roster of characters, in that they are not part of any institutions in a defining way, are Laudna and Beatrix.

In the latter's case, instead Marisha defined her by her connections to Sean and Maggie Finnerty and the tragedy of losing her husband in the attack that started the Great War. Losing her husband provided an emotional base for Marisha to build of off and the Finnertys gave her people to play of off to express that. Sean's personal feelings about himself and his place in the world being so counter to Beatrix's views on the same ended up providing a springboard for great character moments for both. As far as I can tell, she tried to do something similar with Laudna, where she defined the character emotionally with the tragedy of being murdered and raised by Delilah Briarwood and socially with her connection to Imogen but it didn't end up working out as well in her case. My best guess is that a combination of Matt simply not developing the patron side of her relationship with Delilah strongly early in the campaign meaning there wasn't a lot to work with there for much of it, Laura generally being conflict averse meaning that she wasn't as willing to challenge Laudna's perceptions of Imogen as Brennan was challenging Beatrix's of Sean's, and Laudna deeply lacking in any solid connections to the people and institutions of Exandria otherwise meant that Marisha ultimately ended up without the scaffolding she uses to really ground and build up her characters, and Laudna ended up easily her weakest character as a result. Because that scaffolding is what she uses as a base to build out her characters; it sets the groundwork and conditions out of which they will grow as people. I'm excited to see what she does in Age of Umbra given this groundwork for Brixton has already been so solidly laid out.

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We got there eventually! XD

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Thank you to whoever put these two together again

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Well, I'm looking respectfully at the 8ft tall statue lady with 8 wings, that's for sure XD

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Watched age of umbra and misty is litterally everything to me

I sense a new blorbo

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Meet the characters of the Age of Umbra!

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the "don't be suspicious" meme but one of you is a spider guy and one of you is an 8 foot tall statue of an many-winged angel

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8ft tall living statue with 8 wings immediately attempts to hide behind a tree this is a Quality Ashley Character

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"crow's feet from a life of smiling" feels like a particularly notable detail in a setting like the Age of Umbra

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Love how I took one look at Snyx's art and went "Ah, Shaggy" and nothing Sam has done vocally or in his actions has proven me wrong.

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Character sheets

Sam Riegel as Snyx

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Matt is bloodthirsty and we love it

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what's great is this isn't the first time a fake-blood ad bit has backfired on sam, and he didn't have spare clothes then either