#i love the abernant sisters your honor

[renegadeontherunn]

AELWYN 😭😭😭 I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT GOD YES AELWYN REDEMPTION IM SO HERE FOR IT

[supercantaloupe]

your top 5 dimension 20 PCs (sidequests included) & why? (also, how was your day today? 💖)

hmmmm

1. Adaine Abernant (fantasy high) -- listen. listen. i was a horribly anxious honors student with few friends and an older sister i Did Not get along with. i've been stanning since the moment i first watched her intro

2. Lapin Cadbury (crown of candy) -- absolutely ADORED watching zac Kick Ass playing at full intellectual potential. as much as i love his hot dummies like gorgug and ricky, there's something about lapin's razor wit and intuition as well as his dour attitude that just GETS me. rip king you should've lived longer

3. Kugrash (unsleeping city) -- this rat can fit so much love and character depth and swear words in him

4. Myrtle (pirol) -- i love a bitch with strong (yet not necessarily good) motivations and morals. also Aabria Iyengar my FUCKING beloved

5. Ruby Rocks (acoc) -- :'(

[ask meme]

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

OK, here's a question for when you wanna kill some time in quarantine: For each D&D class, who is your fave character of that class in any D&D actual play?

oh INCREDIBLE question. and VERY needed. let’s do this. in alphabetical order. under a cut because fun fact there are fourteen D&D classes and i’m incapable of just saying my opinions without explaining them.

Artificer: For a second I thought I’d have to put Taryon Darrington despite not actually being up to those Vox Machina episodes yet, but then I remembered–my sweet boy! Gorgug Thistlespring! brilliantly pulling off a late-game multiclass that feels in-character, develops a side of him that had been coming out throughout the whole season, and is clutch in those last couple episodes. and got us the Hangman back! stan artificer gorgug and gorgug in general. 

Barbarian: honestly, it feels like a little early to be making proclamations like this since it’s only been 3 episodes, but King Amethar of House Rocks is up there. an old solider who loves his troublemaker daughters and misses his sisters and hates being in charge? who’s going to need to learn who he can trust and what it really means to be king? yeah…….plus i like storm herald. 

Bard: Figueroth Faeth-the-Insatiable, baby!!! power of MUSIC power of REBELLION power of FRIENDSHIP power of BISEXUALITY power of LOVE and that is how you play a BARD!!!!

Blood Hunter: i only know one blood hunter so Mollymauk Tealeaf wins by default. i think it’s how he’d want to win. 

Cleric: there are so many clerics who i love so much, but….Kingston Brown from Uptown beats them all. the quiet leadership, the devotion, the love for other people. the responsibility and the taking of responsibility. the self-sacrifice, not in grand gestures but in little things every single day. don’t get me started or we’ll be here for hours. 

Druid: Moonshine Cybin!!!! the druid by which I measure all other druids. the character by which i measure all other characters. again we’ll be here for hours if I get started talking about Moonshine but anyway things that don’t belong find a way of belonging when she’s around......

Fighter: this made me realize what a varied class fighter is. Like, Percy de Rolo and Theobold Gumbar and Fabian Seacaster are all fighters. that said, my favorite is the most beautifully basic fighter of them all, Hardwon Surefoot, who I would not have expected to be my favorite based solely on character descriptions but who rolled up in Episode 1 drinking in the sound of the fiddle and caring deeply about the Green Teens no matter how much he tried to hide it and i was in love. The Tender Emotional Bullshit Of One Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz--

Monk: brief shout-out to loml sofie bikes, but it has to be Beauregard. I loved Beau from the second she stumbled into episode one as a rebellious, impulsive, self-described asshole and immediately started flirting with the first big strong woman she saw, and I have only loved her more and more the more she has grown and changed and developed. marisha ray KNOWS what she is DOING and it is a pleasure to watch her work. i love beau so much. 

Paladin: Beverly Toegold V. like, the “joke” description of Bev is “a very good boy” but like....[SPOILERS] this kid got thrown off a tower, watched his dad almost get executed, watched his home get destroyed, has been mind controlled multiple times, has almost died multiple times, saved his dad, killed his dad, watched his friends die in front of him, accidentally helped kill his own god, had to see his boyfriend dead in front of him and then watch him get kidnapped, and he is still good. he is still trying every moment to do the right thing. “what an honor. what an injustice.” 

Ranger: oh, no contest with this one, it’s Vex’ahlia. best and most underrated member of Vox Machina, lady of Whitestone, champion of the Dawnfather, glue that held Vox Machina together, good-aligned always, light of my life, queen of my heart,

Rogue: Riz!!! Gukgak!!!!!! a lawful good rogue, baby. i love detectives and i love kids who are trying so so so hard at everything all the time and i love protective characters and i love intelligent characters and i just love riz, okay? 

Sorcerer: I think it’s Pete the Plug, actually! I was high-key skeptical about Pete in the early episodes, because he really was slinging extreme power around like it was nothing, and also selling drugs to teenagers, two things which now that I type it out seem very connected. but watching his growth and development over the season, watching his relationships with Nod and Kingston and the rest of the Dream Team and the way they changed him…..yeah. Pete is very very good. 

Warlock: FJORD. i have loved this texblade from episode 1 and i love how far he has come and how many hidden depths there are to him and how he is flawed but still good and protective and loves his friends so much and is low-key holding the M9 together even if none of them realize it and. listen. i love Fjord so much. 

Wizard: and last but not least, my baby girl Adaine Abernant, who has come SO far over the past two seasons while also remaining exactly who she is. who has learned to channel her rage, how to extend forgiveness but also exact brutal revenge, how to be the Everyone Oracle. “maybe there’s hope for us yet,” indeed. (also I did seriously consider putting Alanis for this one even though she is....not a pc.....which should say something about how much i Love Her)

[supercantaloupe]

ooh, director's commentary for 25th Annual Solesian National Spelling Bee?

trying to get me to reveal secrets about upcoming chapters, perhaps? ;P /lh

well, regarding what i’ve already posted, i guess i should talk about my inspo for writing this one. definitely takes a lot of inspiration from the musical the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, though it doesn’t really follow the same plot at all. i grew up as a really busy kid in high school, the honors student in a ton of extracurriculars who grew up the younger sister of another very busy and accomplished sibling in a relatively small scholastic community, so i’ve always seen a bit of myself in the abernant sisters and wanted to explore that in writing (especially focused on aelwyn’s perspective, which is not as close to my own). also it’s kind of a fun excuse to re-explore a lot of the memories of the shit i did in high school. academic competitions like mathletes. ap tests. chem day expos. music festivals. not just the actual events themselves either but the downtime: riding the bus early morning and late night to and from events, chatting with friends or napping or studying; trying to keep calm and not stress out in between events or tests or awards or performances; interacting with other students from other schools in both friendly and competitive contexts; etc. etc. in a way it’s a love letter to my self left behind after graduation, if you’ll excuse my waxing sappy about a fanfiction.

i did very much set out for this fic to explore aelwyn’s developing relationships with each of the bad kids and with others as this new version of herself who still has a tangible and unpleasant lingering legacy. i think the inhabitants of the manor are the quickest to warm to her -- being around her and adaine the most helps, which is why i think fig and kristen are the warmest and most empathetic/able to read her, especially in chapters 2 and 14. gorgug seems like a forgiving sweetheart to me so i didn’t think he’d hold much of a grudge against her, and anyway does not have the patience for people being assholes to his friends (or their friends). fabian and aelwyn have a...funny sort of relationship, joking and charged and very very awkward which i definitely tried to capture in their interactions. and i thought riz would have the most reservations about trusting aelwyn, which is why i gave them some very tense interactions, as well as resolving them in silence through a game of chess: they’re both deeply traumatized and not so open to trusting people quickly, but they’re also both smart and recognize that in each other, and respect that. plus, they’re both calculating and strategically-minded, so working through whatever tension that exists between them through a game liked chess felt like a very fitting way to explore the beginning of their relationship (and i do think, eventually, they’ll become really good friends). and finally i think adaine and aelwyn theselves have a complicated relationship: they’re both deeply invested in being better sisters to each other, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to just immediately get along perfectly well as soon as spring break is over; they’re both very stubborn, traumatized people with strong, sometimes opposed personalities. yet even if they continue to butt heads from time to time, they can still love and care for and support and lean on each other for help. the road to recovery and growth is not a straight path and it’s not an easy one, but they’re all still making progress.

i had to make up a lot of new characters for this one too because i really wanted to explore aelwyn’s relationship to her past as a hudol student. i think she was a champion at this kind of event in her own past, and in a similar way that me writing this is an exploration of my own experience, her being back at the Bee is her walking through and literally confronting the person she used to be. her name on the trophies. her old teachers. her old classmates. (even if you didn’t dramatically drop out of school in disgrace after being busted for running a massive, world-threanening conspiracy, how many people in your high school do you really ever want to interact with in the slightest once you graduate/d? for me it’s like two people, tops.) and i certainly hope i’ve been (and/or will continue to be) successful at using those invented new characters effectively, but i suppose you’d have to tell me if that’s the case or not :P

anyway! you can check out the fic here, and i do hope to update this soon once i get some other projects out of the way first!

[ask meme]