ladymanticora

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the magnus archives is a good podcast

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Inspired by Critical Role episode 107

Meta Jokes are the highest form of comedy; I don’t make the rules

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Mom: we might get new neighbors and I’m worried. the ones we have are nice and keep to themselves. 

Me: I think the neighbors thattaway are creeped out by me.

Mom: because of the bones?

Me: …I was gonna say because I keep offering them eggs from the bushes at six in the morning, but now that you mention it, it might be the bones.

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yknow theres a lot of pressure to be successful, particularly on artsy kids whose professions are seen as useless unless theyre famous, but life is fucking hard and sometimes things dont turn out

but i think thats not bad. my dad has wanted to be a musician forever, and hes rly pretty good. but then he joined the military to get away from an abusive family, and then he got married, and then he got divorced, and a lot of horrible shit HAPPENED. he has ptsd and severe anxiety and he could never really get back on the horse. and he never made it as a musician, and now hes 53

but i grew up in a house full of instruments, and he can play all of them, and some of my earliest memories are of him playing guitar on the front porch and me thinking there wasnt a better musician in the world. so. even if you dont get to the stars, exactly, what you do isnt worthless. its not a waste of time if life is difficult and you cant make it, or if you arent famous, or if your work doesn’t influence thousands of people. it will influence someone

there are a million ways to be happy and a million ways to be a successful artist. we create what we do to enhance the human experience and relate to each other and improve ourselves. theres something to be said for just doing that,,,for the sake of doing it, yknow

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Concept: Visually impaired spells. 

For example, colorblind mages cast fireballs with colors only they can see – if they see only yellow and white, then everybody else sees yellow and white fireballs too.

Far sighted mages have blurry fireballs up-close, and blind mages have semi-invisible fireballs.

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Trees, like animals, can also experience albinism, though it is extremely rare.

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who keeps giving her these things

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campaign 3 seating arrangement i think would be funny

travis-liam-taliesin-ashley

sam-laura-marisha

reasons why:

travis and liam are really good at playing off each other and have some great scenes together, but when it’s just the two of them in a scene they immediately lose all brain cells, regardless of how smart their respective characters are. sitting them next to each other would increase the chaos to unknown levels

liam and taliesin get to sit together bc they are the cuddliest and i wanna see what happens when they have a hug buddy who isn’t marisha

(i predict it will end up how they end up answering all talks questions ie like this)

i’ve already written about how there’s an unspoken rule in cr that people sitting next to you are your best friends/siblings, people sitting across from you are your love interests (corner people get to be either or both), and i’ve also covered how i need ashley and tal to keep playing weird queer best friends in everything ever. for this purpose i am sitting them next to each other again, just to see what new duo i’m gonna immediately fall in love with

ashley and sam get the corner. i cannot predict the result of this. but it will be powerful.

(also for the first time liam isn’t in the corner and i cannot predict the result of that either. who is he supposed to gaze lovingly at now)

(the answer is still probably sam but maybe this time sam and liam will finally live out their dreams of romancing each other in dnd)

keeps laura and sam together for the chaos crew, which is another dynamic i will never get enough of

actually with this layout laura gets to sit in the same spot for all three campaigns. her seat now.

laura and marisha is another extremely powerful and unpredictable dynamic that I Would Like To See

and funniest of all - all of the good note takers are on one side of the table. no more looking over laura or marisha’s shoulder! no more sam helpfully writing lists for the people sitting next to him! bottom table’s got this on lock. top table gets 0.5 of a brain cell between them at any given moment and they have to share

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medically accurate muscle chart:

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One thing I do want to say before we dive into the narrative of Jester Lavorre, radiant harbinger of the Third Option that destroys the barter of misery in its tracks (even though, yes, Jester is glowing and amazing and wonderful, yes, of course, of course) is…it matters, the way Jester did this.  It matters that it wasn’t just sweetness and light and a cupcake shared in friendship.

This isn’t a story about Jester the fairytale princess convincing the hag of the worth of friendship and baked goods.  That would be a wonderful story, but that’s not what this is.  (It’s so much more interesting.)

Jester pretended to be that girl, that naive little girl who would offer a cupcake in innocent kindness and cut off her own hands for a friend.  She pretended so, so well, and she was lying the entire time, and she lied so well that Matt did not even think to call for a deception check.

Jester Lavorre, in the middle of a swamp in a pretty dress, feeds an evil hag half a cupcake, and it’s sweet and fluffy and full of sugar both literal and metaphorical, and also it is fucking drugged.  Jester reaches her fingers into somebody else’s mind and changes their memory, their intentions, controls their very will, with a sweet smile and a baked good and an insistence that everything is wonderful and delightful, no really.

Jester’s never used Modify Memory before; she uses Charm Person, rarely, but we know she thinks messing with somebody’s memories is a Big Fucking Deal.  Between Yasha, and what little she knows of Caleb’s past, and everything Obann did to those around him, Jester who cares about demons in cages and tried to befriend the Caedogeist and meant it and offers cupcakes to everyone, almost without limit–Jester cares about this shit.  She took a step tonight that matters to her.

She didn’t sacrifice her happiness, or that of anyone she cares about (she did sacrifice the witch’s happiness, but the witch probably would’ve died had it come to a fight so maybe it’s a fair trade after all).  She didn’t sacrifice very much.  Jester is going to be fine, possible future vengeance attacks aside, and they’ll probably be less exhausted and better-grounded to deal with those when they come anyway.  But as much as it looks like Jester saved the day with sweetness and light in the face of all that darkness…there was some very legitimate darkness in what Jester did, too.  And I love it that way.

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Happiness Will Come To You.