stickandthorn

[stickandthorn]

it’s always the no tag off the dome posts I write in under a minute and don’t edit that end up going super saiyan viral. Truly can never predict it and you can bet I never, EVER ask for it.

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Ozzy Osbourne’s death is like the death of a crusty white 3 legged no toothed dog in it’s mid 20s. It’s shocking and heartbreaking, but the shock mostly comes from the fact that it lived so long and through so much bodily strain that you kind of subconsciously assumed it was immortal.

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In all seriousness I am a little worried for the M9 animated series. I truly do want it to go well, but frankly, I wasn’t a huge fan of how tlovm turned out. I’m sure C1 must’ve been a nightmare to try to adapt from actual play to the 22 minute episode format, and that worries me, because I feel like C2 will be even harder to adapt. C2 used its crazy runtime to make each character and their relationships with the characters around them extremely detailed (which is true of a lot of actual plays), and it’s from these intimate character studies and relationships that a lot of the general plot flows (which isn’t always as true). Even if each arc isn’t necessarily critical to an overarching plot in a mechanical beat by beat sense, each arc is critical to the character’s development, and the character’s development is critical to the overarching plot.

For instance: while the climatic arc with Lucien does tie into world lore and a larger story, the real core is about The Mighty Nein’s relationships to each other, to Molly, to Lucien, and to concepts like change and redemption. That emotional core holds up because we’ve seen each character change, grow, and wrestle with guilt and forgiving themselves in great detail. We’ve gotten to spend time with each character on their own individual arc relating, and watched the Mighty Nein embrace them at every stage, even when there are bumps in the road. The final fight doesn’t hold weight if we haven’t spent enough time with each character to create that emotional through line, to make having to kill Lucien so fundamentally at odds with the emotional fabric of the M9, yet so critically necessary. It’s not that I think they can’t write well enough to adapt those themes to a TV show, I just don’t think they’ll have enough time.

I’m sure it’s possible to adapt M9 well, I just know that the story will have to change a lot to do so. I’m totally ok with that, I’m just a little hesitant to get as hyped as I want to.

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I’m a holistic Essek lover. He did bad things and not only am I ok with loving a character who did bad things, I’m excited to see him do even worse on the silver screen 👍. If Essek bashes an innocent civilian over the head with a beacon and then makes out with Ludinus with tongue in the new animated series, I’ll sit back and go “awesome sauce.”

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I know the horse is already long dead, but a thematic issue with C3 that has stuck out to me more and more as time has passed is class- especially when compared to the C2.

While C2 wasn’t necessarily explicitly about class, class was a huge underlying theme in both the larger narrative and for individual characters. We see a lot of examples of class disparity, like when Caleb was barred for entering the Tri-Spires because he looked too lower class to enter, and then had his cat kicked by the guard barring him. Much of the plot of the early campaign is driven by the Mighty Nein trying to earn enough money to make do, but beyond that, class disparity becomes a crucial part of the ealry plot.

The Knights of Requital are a group fighting against corruption in Zadash, and they explicitly lay out how these corrupt officials create poverty, suffering, and injustice amongst the lower classes of Zadash. While this story line isn’t followed up on iirc, it connects to the larger questions of corruption in Wildmounte and the Cerberus Assembly the campaign deals with on a larger scale.

Class is also baked into many of the character’s backstories. Caleb is a very obvious example, his years of homelessness, his background in a poorer rural area that (at least in part) made him an easy target for Trent, but he isn’t the only one. Fjord and Veth’s struggles with poverty are foundational to their characters, and contrast with Beau and Jester’s wealthier upbringings. We see these disparities in the party dynamics, such as the conflict that arose over Jester seeing 50 gold as nothing, when that amount of money was more than Caleb’s family made in a year.

Even as class becomes less relevant to the characters and the overall plot, the themes of class built up in the early episodes shape how the Mighty Nein interact with the world through the whole campaign. While I’m not arguing C2 does an especially good or thorough examination of class (I have critiques for another post), nor an especially bad one, it’s a clear element of the story and the world that is engaged with.

C3 sets up a lot of the same stuff as C2 does. Jrusar has clear class disparity, with wealthier sections of the city literally being built over the poorer sections of the city lower in the spires, and the characters both see these disparities and interact with the systems that create them. Class is baked explicitly into many character’s backstories. Ashton is an orphan from a very poor area, and is directly coded as a crust punk, a real world subculture that (afaik) largely came out of struggles with real world class disparity. On the other hand, Dorian comes from an extremely wealthy and sheltered upbringing. Laudna was a farm girl killed as a powerplay by the elite of her city, and Imogen comes from a rural background that is comparable to Veth’s.

But all of this set up is completely neglected throughout the larger story. Bells Hells almost immediately get monetary sponsorship and never have to worry about money, the issues with class and the government in Jrusar are abandoned in favor of a large scale fantasy story, and the characters work happily with governments and leadership across the globe without any thought to the systems they run. While there are a lot of nods to class in Bazurus or in the Ruby Vanguard’s recruitment of impoverished and neglected people as a vague metaphor for class or other systematic disparities, these nods never turn into anything more. The character’s don’t even have to think about money for the majority of the story.

I think the best example of this Laudna. When she died and was taken to Whitestone, her story line had nothing to do with why she was killed, it was all about who killed her. Laudna was killed because she, as a poorer citizen of Whitesone, was considered disposable. This theme is nodded to earlier on, but her arc in Whitestone, her murder is fully removed from any larger context. Her death is narratively attributed to Delilah’s cruelty and not any larger systemic issue. The resolution to this arc is fighting the specter of Delilah with the help fo Whitestone’s current rich elite. Therefore her death is framed as the bad deeds of one bad actor, motivated by general villainy, and not any systemic issue that could be connected to the current or past rulers of Whitestone. Class is inherent to her backstory, it is at least implied to be a thematic part of her story by the players and by Matt that will be explored, but it never is.

I’m not saying C3 has to be a story about class. If it hadn’t engaged with class at all, I wouldn’t be mad. But C3 set up class as an element of the story the exact same way C2 did, more so even with the weird vague metaphors of the Gods and the Ruby vanguard that can vaguely be interpreted as about class, and then refused to actually engage with class in any real way.

[stickandthorn]

maybe the single funniest twitter comment I've ever seen

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Maxwell being a pugilist is so funny to me because I used to take pugilism classes and, from what I know, pugilism is one of the most definitively rowdy forms of hand to hand combat for him to practice. As it was described to me pugilism is the way less regulated far more dangerous grandfather to boxing. Minimal or no rules bare knuckle beat your face in on the cobblestones kinda stuff. My man IS a rowdy.

[stickandthorn]

During Maxwell’s conversation with his father, there was an implication he was still in university, because his father mentioned going to his school to find out about his “rowdy behavior” real time. Maxwell is 29. So there are three options. The first, university just works different here. The second, Maxwell went to school later in life. The third, Maxwell is a haggard PhD student who is still getting into drunken undergrad style fistfights. I choose to believe the third.

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An component of DM style I feel gets overlooked a lot is DM as person vs DM as world. Some DMs frame themselves as the player who is the DM- someone who is making choices about the story, someone you can interact with on a person to person level. Other DMs frame themselves as an embodiment of the world- when they’re DMing, they’re not another player, they’re a vessel for the story to flow through, and you don’t interact with them the same way as you’d interact with them outside of the game. I think Aabria or maybe Brennan are good examples of a person DMs, and current Matt is a reasonable (but not extreme) example of world a DM. Not saying one is better than the other, but I think having an awareness of which style you gravitate towards, or which style suits your current game best, makes you a much better DM. It also helps establish a consistent set of expectations for players, which is a critical aspect of DMing.

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The term unhoused is absolute condescending bullshit. Across the spectrum of homeless people, I have never met a single person who’s used the term unhoused, and I’ve met a lot of homeless or formerly homeless people who’ve told me they hate the term. It was not created by homeless people, it’s not used by homeless people, it was created by progressives on Twitter who wanted to feel like they were doing something while doing nothing. And applying a new “more correct, less offensive” label to a group of people who do not like that label is just another example of how homeless people are not treated like real people with agency. It’s more important that other non-homeless people think they’ve got the right beliefs than it is to actually help or talk to a homeless person.

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Siobhan understands on a deep level that daring outdoorsy white women are always this 🤏 close to realizing their secret dream of opening up a stomp and holler neutral tone deconstructed sandwich served on a wooden cutting board gastropub.

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Cloudward Ho is making me do something I thought I would never do: genuinely enjoy steampunk.

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"My name is Greta Thunberg and I am from Sweden. If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel." (X)

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If the world of Midst had pride month the Trust would release special limited edition rainbow valor and make Jonas and Phineas do a queerbaity photo shoot to model it. They’d have a pride float and Weepe would fastball the valor directly at the faces of any queer couple he sees making out in the crowd. He’s not doing it because he’s homophobic (though he might be) he just thinks it’s funny. Imelda would get a performative undercut.

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maybe I’m just drunk right now but I feel an indescribable rage about Benson Boone. Not just because he’s Mormon or annoying or his songs are bad. But because he was factory made in Utah’s evil soda drinking sunshine (I know he’s not actually from Utah but he’s Mormon so same thing) to create the worst most retail-friendly songs that are already being drilled into my head every god damn day at work. And I know it will only get worse. I know his marketing friendly TJ Maxx advertisement ass is going to be haunting me for the next five years of my minimum wage job life. I want to kill his back flipping glittery suit wearing stupid face. I don’t ever want to hear “PLEEASE. STAAAY. I WANT YOU I NEED YOU OH GOD” or “moonbeam ice cream taking off your blue jeans” ever again in my fuckign life, but I will, I must. Do not come near me Benson Boone. It will be your end.

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Just rewatched the movie and lol she definitely CANNOT play, I’m even more sure than before, and my guess is that the character was an insignificant enough role that they didn’t feel the need to find someone who could actually play. Her musical scenes are tiny and not focused on her, the only reason I noticed something was off is cause I played the violin, and specifically Celtic fiddle music, for MANY many years so I know what to look for.

the racist white woman vampire in Sinners (great movie btw) does NOT actually know how to play the fiddle. I know a lot of fiddlers who hold their fiddles on their chest and not under their chin, so I can forgive that, but I saw her sawing away from the shoulder with no elbow extension. Fake fiddler right there.

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sometimes watching Twin Peaks really gives me 12th century French romance. Strange rambling quest with a bunch of strange and sometimes random feeling happenings, a lot of odd side characters, magic thrown in here and there, sin, doomed love, adultery fucking everywhere… now where have I seen that befor?