#neverafter analysis

[youarealwaysontime]

i definitely just reblogged this quote but it won't stop rotating in my brain so here's my fun little analysis of brennan's iconic "There is no moral. The wolf eats you one day, and until then the forest is beautiful" from d20 Neverafter

humans are afraid of death, afraid of dying. afraid of missing out, of leaving what they love or what they've created or what they never got the chance to do, the person they never got the chance to be. it is natural, and it is normal, and it is encouraged. people don't want to die, but when they do die they want there to have been a closed circle in their story, a plot fleshed out and a great achievement made. perhaps a lesson to be learned, or other wisdom to be passed on and circulated.

but the truth is that not every life is like that. the lives that leave us with wisdom and truth and new beginnings are incredible, and wonderful, but they are few and far between. most people's lives are just... small. and not in a nihilistic, "nothing matters" sort of way, but in the way that is contained. my life is full of love and joy and pain and worry and hurt and kindness and so much more, but it is still small. i am just one person. there is no moral in my story that i can determine. but my life is still beautiful. the forest of my life is beautiful. full of surprises and danger and secrets, yes, but beautiful and mysterious and begging to be explored.

it is scary to take a step off the path, it is scary to leave what is known and traveled and worn over time. it is so, so very terrifying to decide to do something different. people think that by straying from the path in the woods, they are inviting danger and will not live up to what they were "meant to." and yes, one day, the wolf will eat me, as it will eat every other person. and when the wolf comes, there may not be a great lesson to be learned or a moral to internalize. but despite it all, despite that, my forest is still beautiful, rich, and worth living in.

the wolf comes when the wolf decides, not when your heel sinks into soft dirt and wild foliage.

so until the wolf arrives, do not be afraid to stray from the path.

[dramaqueer-commie]

oh my jesus fucking christ????

neverafter spoilers

everyone trying to talk to the princesses is the funniest shit ive seen in my goddamn life?!?!!!

Gerard nervously babbeling about the apocalypse while insisting its not a sex thing and then EXITING THE ROOM DANCING AND SINGING HER HAIR IS EVERYWHERE AFTER SERIOUSLY DECLARING "if i dont come back its because Rapunzel GOT ME!" is the funniest murph bit ive ever seen???

Cinderella seriously went "thats how sight works"?????? omg are yall trying to kill me???? but also like what was she supposed to say?? "does that sorts work in... in reverse?"???? hello? Pinocchio?? what are you DOING???

I was like "omg Mother Goose trying to match Rapunzels energy is so smart this is gonna be good" COMPLETELY forgetting this is Ally Beardsly, its gonna get real weird, real fast. "so we're both kinda just doing this creepy thing, all right..."??? oh so you know its creepy? but also yes why did Rapunzel go "this person is acting really strange, i better do what hes doing"???? arent you supposed to be some social genius??? whats happening???

"THIS HAS BEEN... LONG"!?!???!? ALLY YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD there is nothing i respect more than making a worse choice bc its a million times funnier

i started this episode like "wow being stuck in this castle and having to trick your way out without making them realize you know their plan and they can hear everything is the scariest part of this season so far well done" and i guess to comedians all of their brains clicked at the same time "time to break the tension"

by gods you did. and it was magnificent

[passingnights]

Our ragged, bloodstained girl in red. Flesh stained teeth, earth crusted nails. An animal-girl.

Girlhood knows red. She knows of blood and the hollowing hunger that resides in the pit of stomachs. She knows her way around organs and the fresh scent of danger. Girlhood knows of red eyes, red hands, red tongue licking a full, satisfied smile.

Red waits with the Creature resting on her grandmother’s bed. It lies with one paw over the other. It yawns and sleeps and bares its neck. It waits for inevitability. Fear wears the clothes of love.

“If you cannot eat, you will die. This is the Law.”

Tears swell at the corners of the girl’s eyes. Who are these tears for, my child? Humanity lays at the corners of her eyes. She wipes them with the back of her hand.

Hunger and hunger and hunger grips the girls stomach. Starvation. Instincts. Animal.

She lays the iron weapon into the Creature’s skull.

Red Riding Hood devours her shadow. She rips apart fur, finds the critical spot where the meat comes apart the easiest, where the heart pounds and fades the quickest.

She splits the skull apart, pulling the strings that have tormented her Story many times told. She strays the path and follows her instincts. Animal.

She eats. She eats and drinks and swallows. Bright red. Raw meat. She picks the fur and guts out of her teeth. She wipes her mouth on the collar of her white dress and her hands at her thighs. “My teeth were made to eat you”.

Unrecognisable child. People fear you the way they feared the Big Bad Wolf. What have you done? Predator claws and ears grow from her body. Alien, familiar. Maturity, mortality, humanity, innocence— the blood at the end of girlhood.

“I met death, and Death wants me to live.”

[dramaqueer-commie]

adding a "lake elsinore-hot" guy with a gold tooth zapped into the body of a pink haired cat burglar and experiencing pussy rage

the gender of ally beardsley’s pcs has never missed! we have a high schooler who only wears tie dye and birks embracing her lesbianism, a trans man who’s the voice of dreams and got his top surgery from a mob doctor, a peppermint boy, a literal german shepherd in a pink suit who uses they/them, their first character after going on t being a cis lesbian who is just a mess in every way, and an old gay man who goes by mother. fucking with gender in every direction and it’s so fun and great every time 🏳️‍⚧️

[dropoutconfessions]

I feel like people who complain about Emily or Ally are noticing an overall tendency in the IHs, but not following it through far enough so they unfairly direct their hate at them. It's a pet analysis that I've nursed for a while.

I think the IH's have a pretty clear divide between performers who are comfortable demanding the spotlight (Emily, Ally, and Lou) and performers who need a little coaxing to step into a more lead role (Murph, Zac, and Siobhan). There's nothing inherently wrong with this table dynamic. But after x number of seasons, it can start to feel a little strange. And I would say table management is one of Brennan's serious flaws as a DM (as opposed to, say, Aabria). So he tends to lean on his more extroverted players. To the point where he's just more likely to throw them big moments. And not do much to pull in his more introverted players. Even in seasons where those more introverted players are sort of being set up as leads (Fantasy High, ASO, Neverafter, and sort of ACoC). Emily and Lou try to bring in other players, but that's not really their job and they have their own characters to focus on. I think we saw improvement in Neverafter, especially from Murph and Ally, as Murph put himself forward more and Ally did a better job of pulling others into their scenes. But Fantasy High JY allowed everyone to backslide. (That said, Ally really impressed me with their refusal to take the spotlight in NSBU. I don't think it was the right choice for the season. But I thought it showed tremendous growth in them as a player.)

I kind of want everyone who thinks they don't like Emily to listen to her on NADDPOD, where the other two players at the table are also extroverted performers. I think it really demonstrates how much the dynamic of the IH seasons are the result of this particular table make-up combined with some seriously weak table management

-

[utilitycaster]

Dimension 20's Failed Genre Experiments

(This is the "Has Dimension 20 lost its touch?" post I’ve alluded to; please enjoy some genuine criticism masquerading as a riff on those sorts of articles for other shows.)

Dimension 20's debut and flagship burst onto the scene with a simple and elegant premise. What if a John Hughes movie were set at a high school for D&D adventurers? Its next full length pre-recorded season was the similarly strong urban fantasy The Unsleeping City, which in turn was followed up by the channel’s most ambitious outing yet: the Game of Thrones in Candyland mash-up, A Crown of Candy. 

Widely considered to be a watershed moment for the show, A Crown of Candy explored darker themes on a famously comedic platform, was the first on the channel to have permanent player character deaths, added new mechanics and limited what the players could choose to fit the world to support this more serious tone, and on a structural level, was a welcome departure from the prior rigid alternation between episodes of combat and episodes without. It was filmed prior to the pandemic but went to air in early April 2020, when many livestreamed actual play shows were on pause and even some podcasts were scrambling to figure out remote recording. D20 introduced their talkback show as a way for the cast to hang out remotely and chat about each episode, and Adventuring Party has remained a companion to the main show. The channel had hit its stride.

Its House of the Dragon sidequest, The Ravening War, aired three years later. Despite a complicated reaction to its announcement, it was a well-received outing, but one on what had by that time become a noticeably bumpy road.

Sidequests like The Ravening War are what D20 calls its shorter, 4-10 episode seasons that do not feature the main “Intrepid Heroes” cast in full nor necessarily feature Brennan Lee Mulligan as DM. We've seen everything from the perspective of the villains in both a Lord of the Rings clone (Escape from the Bloodkeep) and a Dracula homage (Coffin Run); to a Regency romance in the Feywild (A Court of Fey and Flowers). In addition to Mercer, Jasmine Bhullar and Gabe Hicks have each run a sidequest, and Aabria Iyengar has run three. And while the Intrepid Heroes' only venture outside D&D so far is the D&D-inspired Star Wars 5e, sidequests have been run in various Kids on Bikes hacks and Hicks' own Mythic system, as their shorter format makes it even easier to experiment with the parodies, pastiches, and mash-ups the channel is known for.

There have however been two notable failed experiments, and their close proximity (both released within the past year) could be a hiccup, or could be a sign that D20’s ambition, while admirable, could use some serious reining in. They are Neverafter and Burrow's End.

Marketed as the horror season, crossed over with fairy tales, Neverafter started out strong. Only three episodes in, there was an unprecedented (for D20) total party kill. The subsequent episode is the zenith of the season, in which each character is brought back, most of them changed and twisted by the experience, playing out an analysis of their role as an archetype within these stories: Sleeping Beauty and the classic roles of The Princess (introducing such NPCs as Cinderella and Snow White), for example; or Puss in Boots as The Trickster.

Unfortunately, the quality dropped soon after. It was revealed that the darkness spreading across the fairytale multiverse was due to the influence of The Authors, and the story began to be one about the concept of stories...while still trying to incorporate not only the plotlines of the fairy tales the main PCs were from, but also an intertwined conflict between the fairies and the princess NPCs. With this, the horror, with a few exceptions, melted away: violence and monsters are standard D&D fare, and when heroes race to save the world and victory seems not only possible but likely, any distinction between horror and a typical D&D heroic fantasy is lost.

It’s not the first overstuffed campaign, but it certainly is the first one that fails to land on several levels. Starstruck Odyssey is similarly chaotic and rushed at times, but it consistently sticks to a broad message of personal autonomy and freedom within late-stage capitalism. Mulligan is famous for his capacity to spin endless dense lore off the cuff, and if it at times overcomplicates the plot of the packed and colorful comedic space adventure, at least it contributes to the baked-in excess of the setting. But Neverafter's postmodern flourishes against a horror backdrop desperately needed an injection of sparseness and silence it never received. 

This is enhanced by the nature of actual play: with a few exceptions, even when filmed and even with the elaborate production values of Dimension 20, it is first and foremost primarily an auditory medium. We only know what is narrated to us. Neverafter did not permit its audience the time and space to fear the unknown. The existential horror of the metanarrative, of being a character doomed to a specific ending, while touched on by some of the cast (particularly Siobhan Thompson’s Sleeping Beauty), took a backseat to models of giant spiders and tales of undead dwarves. The story lacked the room to build real tension, but also failed to adequately create the claustrophobia of being truly trapped within its narrative. It feels more stuffy than unsettling.

Burrow's End is far less airless, but profoundly disjointed. Neverafter thought it knew what it was, but Burrow's End went through multiple identity crises by the halfway mark, and the marketing for the series reflects this.

The initial trailer makes it seem like a cute if dramatic story about a family of stoats - think Redwall, think Wind in the Willows. The first episode was excellent, however, and sold many who had been unimpressed by the trailers on the series, with its well-played setup of the clear Watership Down/Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH parallels with a unique twist in the form of The Blue.

The promotion took a strange turn, however, with the second episode and its infamous bear carcass battle map. It was hyped as uniquely horrifying, with a teaser video posted of the cast shrieking as the map, unseen by the audience, was wheeled past them. This seemed rather cavalier of the channel once the episode was posted, accompanied by a gore content warning covering a period of well over an hour...which was then further undercut by an exquisitely crafted, but ultimately rather tame display of a bear's innards. It was left out on the table during Adventuring Party as well, further reducing the idea of any meaningful shock factor (or any attempt to accommodate those in the audience who were triggered). The combat this map was for was a creative one, and the episode itself high quality, but it furthered the sense that Dimension 20 itself was unsure of what they were trying to get people to watch.

The series continued on with two more excellent episodes as it reached Last Bast, a clearly man-made structure full of thousands of stoats, with a strong dash of the police state. The actors immediately clocking the flaws of this society, but their stoat characters having no similar sense, led to a fascinating tension. However, the Blue (called the Light in Last Blast), previously described as some animating force and driver of magical power, and mysteriously concentrated in the brain of the dead-but-animated bear, was then revealed to be ionizing radiation.

At this point, the details of my own life become relevant. My career is in the field of health physics. I hold a master’s degree in this specialty and have served as a radiation safety officer, though not at a reactor. I don’t think that this background is a requirement to understand the structural issues of this season; but it certainly made me particularly attuned to the flaws.

Before you claim that this is just a show and who cares: In addition to my love of actual play, I am also a fan of comics and all sorts of speculative fiction. I am well aware that Spider-Man’s “radioactive blood” would not realistically grant him spider powers; I know that going into a high radiation field would not create Doctor Manhattan; I know that Superman does not actually have ‘x-ray vision’, and I know that radiation creates neither kaiju nor rad roaches. This is fine. In comics, radiation is a shorthand for “mad science” or “mysterious powers” with a sense of the lethal and the eldritch and the hubristic. The story is not so much about the source of these powers, but rather the great responsibilities they require. Godzilla, meanwhile, is clearly a metaphor for the very real nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Fallout is an anti-proliferation and anti-war message with nuclear annihilation as the set up for its post-apocalyptic setting. These works understand that radiation is a limited-use plot device, and, wisely, they keep it simple.

Burrow’s End, by placing radiation front and center, has lost the message. The themes of the story are irretrievably muddled: what seems like a tale of family displaced by human intervention now positions a man-made hazardous material as both sinister corruption and divine boon, and engages neither with a fitting narrative of both the pros and cons of technology, nor of human and animal symbiosis. The finale establishes the latter in a rushed cut scene reliant on a single persuasion roll, and the two episodes prior to that meanwhile establish that while the humans first introduced radiation to the ecosystem, the first five stoats were the ones who sought it out and disseminated it and built the police state, and their true nemesis was Phoebe, one of their own. This culminates with Phoebe, the previously unseen fifth of the first five stoats (who have by now already been killed by the heroes), piloting the body of a 20-years-dead human, threatening to somehow cause global radiation contamination as her grand Evil Scheme. Unnecessarily, from a narrative perspective, I might add; this occurs after the final combat has already begun and she is magically controlling two of the party members. They’re already going to kill her. It’s a hat on a hat on a hat, and the humans are incidental.

When I was a child, I was enamored with the sort of stories in which children are sent to another time or place and then return with seemingly no time passing, and at one point excitedly told my mother I had an idea for a story, of what happens back while you’re time traveling. My mother, a fan of speculative fiction herself, and never one to coddle, told me “nothing, honey, that’s the point.” I wonder if something similar happened here; an attempted deconstruction of those radiation-granted superpower tropes, focused so hard on being clever it overshot into something anything but. Other elements of the story - particularly the weak pun of “copper” to hammer home the already obvious theme of population support being the arm of the police - make me think this was indeed an attempt at cleverness that missed the mark.

I am happy to elaborate on the flaws of the science elsewhere but I think the most succinct way to put it is that while the biology and habits of stoats sans radiation has been considered with what seems to be at least a modicum of love and care (their use of pre-existing burrows, Viola’s pregnancy), the radiation science/understanding of recent nuclear history can only be described as abysmally neglectful, in and out of game. They let a Loss of Coolant Accident go on for three days with a remarkably casual attitude? This disaster was sufficient to result in what appears to be an exclusion zone (of which there have been three, ever, in human history; two of which are the immediately recognizable Chernobyl and Fukushima) and yet it isn’t being monitored closely enough for someone to notice that there’s been penned animals next to the building for years (let alone that the building itself is teeming with stoats)? For that matter, they’re opening the site only twenty years later? After the “radiation dust”, apparently present on the fully maintained roads by the reactor, but neither within nor in front of the reactor, just now made 14 people bleed out (not how Acute Radiation Syndrome works; also 14 deaths from ARS in 1982, when the series is set would in fact be an unprecedented disaster. In our world, Chernobyl - which had not yet happened in 1982 -  is the only nuclear accident that exceeds that ARS death toll.)

Radiation becomes an all-purpose plot engine with no internal consistent logic: it kills humans swiftly and brutally (though based on statements by Dr. Tara Steel and the fact that she seems fine in only a hazmat suit - which shields from contamination but will stop neither gamma nor neutron radiation - only via inhalation). But it infects chipmunks and bears with corruptive and bizarre neurological effects, turns wolves into horrifying but loyal hybridized monstrosities, and conveys to stoats not just human intelligence, but mastery of human language, magic spells, and the ability to come back as a revenant through force of will…though it also can immediately kill them, but also extend their lifespans, but also cause them to slowly mutate into wolves (but not through DNA splicing transfer, that would be silly). It kills 14 humans nearly instantly with off-site dust, but another survives a fiery attempted core meltdown with no apparent ill effects.

There is an excellent and thoughtful story about family, generational trauma, and political structures somewhere under here, and the incredible cast does its damndest to sell it, but it is all but lost beneath a sci-fi whodunnit that would make Ed Wood cock a skeptical eyebrow.

Neverafter and Burrow’s End’s respective collapses under the weight of ambition coincide, perhaps unintentionally, with some of the more dubious film editing choices on Dimension 20. Filmed actual play can be visually unexciting, and Dimension 20 has used simple shot/reverse shots, as well as some sound effects (notably for critical hits and fails) throughout its run to break it up. Neverafter, however, is marked by deliberate hisses and glitches, fractured split screens, echoey vocal effects, and nails-on-chalkboard screeches. This did not add to the atmosphere as intended; at best they were irritating and for many made it actively harder to hear key dialogue. Burrow’s End’s editing has been simpler, mostly relying on some, to be fair, well-placed cuts to black and voice distortion to indicate taped or radioed segments; but a key moment - Jaysohn’s potentially fatal rush into radioactive waters - is undercut with a frankly cheesy montage. Others I spoke to compared it to Indian soap operas, 1960s Doctor Who, The Oscars In Memoriam video, and reality show farewell reels. It takes what could be a tense potential character death - something D20 already handles wonderfully with their iconic Box of Doom - and makes it cheap and tacky, particularly jarring given the beautiful and haunting shadow puppet animation the season had previously delivered to convey the stoat creation myths. (And then, when Ava falls into the waters herself saving him, she merely comes back as a revenant with no ill effects. The stakes were never there to begin with in this smoke and mirrors season.)

Praise for Dimension 20 often hinges on its original innovative structure; most actual play shows skew towards more longform storytelling. However, the short format comes with a price. The fixed length of D20 seasons and the elaborate, custom made maps require a deft GM that can guide players to the exact right place without it seeming forced. Threading the needle is harder than it looks; even the otherwise iconic Fantasy High debut season stumbled towards the end when the players were too good at uncovering the mystery, and Mulligan had to place their characters in an inescapable prison in order to pad out a pre-scheduled episode before the finale. Perhaps the strain of this constant need to live up to a reputation as high-concept innovators, rather than simply create something good and cohesive, is beginning to show. The higher production values in Neverafter and Burrow’s End cannot hide their messy plots and confused messages, and indeed only highlight them. One interview said that for Burrow’s End, Iyengar wants the audience to trust her; after Burrow's End, I can’t say I do.

The next Dimension 20 season after Burrow’s End is a long-awaited return home to the flagship: Fantasy High Junior Year. Let’s hope this reminds the channel where they came from, and what magic they are capable of making when they keep it simple.

[lily-valley-hyperfixates]

I’ve been thinking about Mira from D20 Neverafter.

For one, I absolutely love her. She’s amazing and can do no wrong and I would’ve loved to spend more time with her.

But to do a little *analysis* I find it particularly interesting that she never goes back to being a mermaid. The story of the little mermaid works very well as a trans allegory and the fact that Mira never reverts back to being a mermaid in neverafter feels very respectful of this reading.

Mechanically, keeping her a mermaid or at least giving her water powers would’ve added flair to her fighting (similar to Rapunzel’s prehensile hair), but that never happens. Mira never returns to her original body, because it’s not her true body. Instead of experiencing humanity and realizing that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, that the grass is always greener, Mira gets to keep her legs and truly become the body she always wanted, even if that comes with pain.

And the most important thing is that she never even asks to be a mermaid again. When she has her moment with the sea witch, we never hear (and her body language never shows) her begging for a tail again, to go back to the water. It may be painful, but Mira’s body is her body and she never tries to change it once it fits how she feels.

I’m not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet or if this even makes sense, it’s just my ramblings too late at night, but idk to me this is something that really stands out about neverafter’s take on the little mermaid. As a cis woman obviously I am less qualified to talk about this stuff, and I’d love to hear trans people’s perspectives on this.

Anyways huge props to Mr mulligan, he’s done it again.

[esote-rika]

Officially just sent my proposal for my thesis. It's going to be a feminist analysis of body politics in the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty and Stepmother across two written versions (Perrault and Brothers Grimm) and their adaptations in Neverafter (and maybe how the horror-fantasy theme of the season plays into this aspect, like Ylfa becoming a hybrid werewolf/Teen Girl, Rosamund becoming one with her thorns, and the Stepmother becoming an entirely new, lovecraftian entity because her original stories depict her as nothing but an unnamed villain). idk idk it's still a proposal, my professor just wants a clear subject. I'm just genuinely very excited about this.

[nightyoorb]

doing a statistical analysis of dimension 20 seasons for work because i’ve got no access to actual work files

anyway i’m getting a neverafter tattoo tomorrow

[starstruckodysseys]

things i have somehow gotten to write about for my college education:

chef boyardee commercial analysis

mpreg via weird centipede monster thing

boston molasses flood (nine page essay)

the insane man that is dj sendler

ylfa snorgelsson

other assorted neverafter references

lady lazarus analysis in which i somehow managed to sneak a poe reference

howl’s moving castle (the film. i did write about the book in middle school though)

queer themes in nightmare on elm street 2

and this was only for my associate’s degree!

[dramaqueer-commie]

i dont think ive ever laughed as hard out loud watching dimension 20 as the in the land of giants episode of neverafter

spoiler

when cricket fires a firework at alphonse the mule, Pinocchio doing everything to kill him and instead rolling a nat 20, killing everyone around him, saving his life and freeing him from captivity, alphonse - who has been *so* useless until now- doing some epic fucking gymnastics, landing with two hitpoints as Brennan completely improvises that he was a cursed prince. and i get that that needed to happen to truly reward that nat 20 but that means the fairy who cursed this prince Alphonse to be a mule (extremely specific btw) set the event to break the course to be some combination of a dehydrated familiar cricket on the verge of passing out shooting a toy island firework at him, which would under normal circumstances definitely kill him. who was that fairy i need to meet her

[fallenangelblade]

having lots of dean winchester/ylfa snorglesson thoughts as i’m working on this spn/neverafter metanarrative analysis and now all i’m imagining is a post-canon ending where dean takes over as death

[loosebaron]

FUCK IT blog overhaul:

‼️ block ‘dimension 20 live spoilers’ if you don’t want to be spoiled for tonight‼️

eaves peeping - talking/original post tag

toxic masculinity is dead I queue now - queue tag

Rolling up the hill - favourite posts tag

fanart - fan art/creations

meta - meta/analysis posts

fic - fanfiction

rb - reblogs

gc - Game Changer

fh - Fantasy High (all seasons)

tuc - the Unsleeping City (all seasons)

acoc - A Crown of Candy

mismag- Misfits and Magic (all seasons)

aso - A Startstruck Odyssey

acofaf - A Court of Fey and Flowers

na - Neverafter

dndq- Dungeons and Drag Queens

trw - The Ravaging War

time quangle - the live show(s) Time Quangle ❤️

nsbu - never stop blowing up

[queenjulia11]

I should probably have a pinned post, huh?

Hi! I’m Julia. I’m an Off-Broadway actor and playwright. I also write short stories & microfiction, and am also obsessed with TTRPGs. (I’ve appeared on some actual play shows!) That’s what I hyperfixate on the most ‘round these parts, so if you like media analysis of that nature + general tomfoolery you’ve come to the right place!

I’m always down to make new internet friends but I’m not great at starting online conversations. Feel free to ask me anything! (within reason lol).

Aroace & demifluid. Any pronouns! Feel free to mix it up.

My favorite fandoms are as follows:

• Critical Role (mostly Mighty Nein & Bells Hells)

• Pokémon

• The Dragon Prince

• Midst

• Musical Theatre

• Candela Obscura

• Dropout/Dimension 20 (ACoFaF, MisMag, Neverafter, Burrow’s End)

• Shakespeare

Nice to meet ya, hope you stick around ❤️✨

[thisisnotthenerd]

thought it would be good to create a place where i can find all of my works without having to extensively search my tumblr. also a way for me to see if i can summarize how my writing has changed over the course of time.

also: hi! i'm thisisnotthenerd. i came to fandom around 2016 and i've been writing fanfic since ~2018. recently i've gotten into data analysis and meta for dimension 20, so you'll probably see a bunch of that from me. to see some of my work, click through this post!

FANWORKS:

FMA:B

Edward's New Groove: crackfic where Ed gets genderbent after the Promised Day and immediately gets thrown into solving another mystery about Xerxes. discontinued, though i may go back to rewrite and update when i have the energy.

The Alchemist's New Groove: the promised rewrite of Edward's New Groove.

A:TLA

The Spirit-Touched Series: AU where Raava isn't the only Great Spirit to take on a vessel. focused on the Gaang and their adventures as a troop of living spirits.

MDZS/The Untamed

Unconcerned With Worldly Pursuits: Lan Wangji decides to start acting like Wei Wuxian after his death as a memorial. Chaos ensues. Comes with an author-read podfic.

D20

fic:

bands of iron, bands of gold: Elody's perspective on Gerard's disappearance and what she saw of the TPK in the original Neverafter

bigger and better things: an exploration of the bad kids as children and what it means to be destined for greatness

Songs of the Celestine: a gift for Finn (@shakespearestolemyurl) for the 2023 D20 Gift Exchange that became an original song with lots of academic/theoretical scaffolding. another fic that includes recordings, this time of the song.

Dostī: a gift for Krish (@krishpycreme) for the 2034 D20 Gift Exchange that became an exploration of Fig and Riz as Desi kids growing up and sharing in their culture. Has lots of cultural notes and original composed prayers.

meta:

thisisnotthenerd's d20 stats: a statistics series that i started after i finished watching every season of dimension 20 (at the time this was during mentopolis, and i've kept up live since then) that catalogs a wide variety, from episode runtimes, to level progressions, to character ages, and more. you can check out the #thisisnotthenerd's d20 stats tag here on tumblr, or look at my magnum opus of a spreadsheet.

Musings on the Solisian School District: my thoughts on the structure of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy as we come back to school for Fantasy High Junior Year. lots of theories on leveling and how the quest system works.

the perils of xp leveling: a subseries to Musings on the Solisian School District, which considers the difference between milestone and xp leveling in fantasy high, using the bad kids and the rat grinders as case studies.

the legend lore database: a list of entries into the theoretical Legend Lore database of the world of spyre. the greatest of feats, the most known adventurers. an exploration done after Adaine realized that KLCK was not covered by Legend Lore.

the art of conspiracy: a comprehensive meta about the various schemes of villains in the world of spyre, and a comparison of the difficulty of the various quests we have seen thus far.

the Polls: I've done a fair few of these, so check out the tags to see the winners: #level 20 battle royale, #ultimate d20 class fight, #battle episode of all time, and most recently, who has their shit together?

the d20 episode randomizer: what its says on the tin. if you can't decide on what episode of d20 to watch, pick one with the click of a button. also includes options for alphabetical, chronological, and other cursed sorting methods for watching.

CR:

Divinity in the Face of Calamity: post-Apogee Solstice flash fics that incorporate mechanics into the storytelling. some have specific word counts, some don't.

smaller AUs: this is stuff I've considered but haven't made into full fledged fics of their own yet: the bell's hells leverage au and the cr regency au.

PJO/HOO:

The Rise and Fall: an Athenide AU wherein Percy gets sent to the fountain while ascending during the battle with the giants.

[tyrantisterror]

Yeah shit I took a shower after posting this and immediately thought of some more that I should have mentioned.

Like, the biggest one that I can't believe I didn't include was Hellboy, which not only has MANY arcs that are explicitly about its pulpy cambion hero fighting fairy tale characters (with Baba Yaga being one of his most deadly recurring villains, even!), but ALSO is responsible for introducing me to many of the more obscure fairy tales and, indeed, myths, folk tales, and works of fiction in general. Mike Mignola's notes about his research materials in the trade paperbacks of Hellboy played a big role in teenage me developing a keener interest in researching this stuff in depth, I owe so much to Hellboy.

Coraline is another modern fairy tale that I love, a take on the Disobedient Girl archetype where the girl gets to win in the end (albeit after facing a LOT of peril), which is a rarity. And speaking of Neil Gaiman, I really love Stardust, another movie that hits that Princess Bride snarky romantic fairy tale itch.

You know what fairy tale series I really wish I could get a proper DVD box set of? Ever After High. No, seriously! You might think it's just a giant toy commercial, and yes it definitely is that, but it's also got this meta narrative analysis of fairy tales and their legacies that's really intriguing. See, in Ever After High, every character in fairy tales is basically a part of a legacy, with different iterations of each tale being literal generations of these families. There's a dynasty of Snow Whites, each of whom have a daughter that is then persecuted by an evil queen (who is the daughter of the previous evil queen, who's the daughter of the evil queen before her, and so on and so forth) and ends up in an enchanted sleep that is broken by true love's kiss. Some of the current crop of fairy tale characters think this legacy rocks - the current Snow White's daughter, Apple White, is stoked to be menaced by the hot goth daughter of the current evil queen, and can't wait to fall into that enchanted sleep so she can find true love. The daughter of the evil queen, though, is less enthused, and wonders why they can't break out of their roles - does she HAVE to be an evil queen just because her mother and her grandmother and so on were? That's a really engaging premise, which plays with the fact that fairy tales are told and retold so often yet rarely change the big parts of it (something that Dimension 20's Neverafter also explored, by the bye). Also it's pretty gay - like, after a point it's clear to everyone except Apple White herself that her desire for her destined nemesis to bully her is, uh, not just about fulfilling a story requirement. It's a shame the dolls themselves were ugly pumpkin-headed things that didn't sell for shit, dooming the series to premature cancellation and obscurity.

I want to give honorable mentions to Rango, which while very clearly a Western pastiche rather than a fairy tale is nonetheless an adaptation of the fairy tale "Seven in One Blow, and Strange Magic, which is about fairies but feels less like a fairy tale and more like... I dunno, a weird George Lucas-helmed romantic comedy jukebox musical that I'm nonetheless very endeared to.

Finally (for now), I want to include Tale of Tales, an adaptation of the fairy tale collection of the same name that has a wonderful gothic horror vibe to it, which @bzedan mentioned in the replies of this post while I was in the shower and made me kick myself for forgetting it. And I should put the 2017 movie Erementari, an adaptation of "The Devil and the Blacksmith," here too, especially since you all know how I love Satan.

What are your top favorite fairy tales? Either classic literarily stories, adaptations of literary fairy tales, wholly modern fairy tales, or even just stories that you think are structured like fairy tales. (Roald Dahl books, Studio Ghibli movies, even Shrek and Puss in Boots movies, etc.)

That is an unfathomably vast genre of fiction to try and condense into a ranked numbered list. I think... I think that may be impossible to actually answer as requested. But I can ramble about some of my favorites I suppose.

Let's do this sorta like the Oscars and divide things into categories.

Category 1: The Heavy Hitters

Some fairy tales are significantly more famous than others, so this category is for them: the heavy hitters, the classic fairy tales that are most well known, as defined by my own nebulous perception of which fairy tales are more popular than others.

Of the heavy hitters, my favorites are Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Little Red Riding Hood is such a spooky story no matter which telling you're looking at, and has contributed a lot to both the fantasy and horror genres thanks to its simple yet evocative premise and visuals. Jack and the Beanstalk, meanwhile, is just a really solid story of a trickster fool, which is one of my favorite archetypes in all of fiction. Love a good trickster fool.

Category 2: The Obscurities

As I said, this ask is covering a HUGE amount of fiction in its topic, especially since the border between a fairy tale and, like, ANY folklore isn't really well-defined (not in a way anyone can agree too, anyway). But there are a lot of obscure folktales I love that are at least sometimes lumped in as fairy tales, and I'm gonna list them here:

The Lambton Worm - a classic tale of dragon-slaying and getting fucked over by prophecies

The Lindworm Prince - queen can't concieve and consults a witch, ignores witch's directions, gives birth to human baby and dragon baby. Dragon baby grows up and demands a wife before human baby can get his, and a clever girl decides this is her chance to get rewarded for monster fucking.

Maud and the Dragon of Mordiford - the story of a girl who adopts a dragon only for it to end tragically, which inspired one of the novels I'm gonna write one of these days

Tam Lin - the story of a woman who wanted that elf dick and wasn't afraid to do some weird shit to get it

Biancabella and Samaritana - a story about a girl and her sister who is a snake because her mother had trouble concieving

King Odd - a story about an odd king who's actually an exiled fairy queen in disguise, and the man who wins her heart after surviving her attempt to execute him. It's like a Nordic medieval Tenchi Muyo.

You've probably noticed some themes about my favorites right now - lots of stories with dragons, people being transformed into monsters, and heroes who are into that monster shit.

Category 3: Archetypal Pieces

Ok, so for this I'm going to focus less on individual folktales and more on recurring plotlines, character types, and story beats, which you begin to notice the more you read up on Fairy Tales in part because many of the more obscure ones take beats from ones you're probably more familiar with and mix them together in new ways. So, my favorite plot beats in fairy tales:

Any sort of monster, obviously

The villain who literally removed their heart out of fear of being vulnerable

The baleful polymorph (i.e. a human who inhabits a beast/monster body against their will)

Monsterfucker protagonists

Trickster Fool protagonists

Disobedient Girls (examples: Little Red, Goldilocks), though I don't like how this archetype is treated

You want to have a baby and seek a witch and she gives you VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS which you ignore because you really want this baby and oops you've got twins and one of them is some sort of monster good job asshole

The hero helps three (or more) people/creatures in need, and when shit hits the fan, they return the favor

Category 4: Modern(ish) Adaptations

Our penultimate category focuses on adaptations of fairy tales from, like, the 1900's on - anything made in a century I've lived in part of, basically. These arguably shouldn't be divided from "normal" fairy tales, but my brain regards them differently than, like, Victorian era fairy tale retellings, because hey, I lived in the age of these, more or less. They're "modern" for whatever nebulous definition of that word my brain's decided on.

And there's a lot for me to put in this category. Sleeping Beauty might be my favorite of Disney's fairy tale retellings, though Beauty and the Beast is a strong competitor for that role (and maybe Mulan, if we count its source material as a fairy tale, but I'm not sure we can). I think overall I like Sleeping Beauty's more stylized animation and character designs as well as its less conventional story-telling structure a bit more than B&B's, but Beauty and the Beast is still gorgeous and kind of perfectly scripted, so it's a tough competition.

My alltime favorite adaptation of fairy tales, though, would be Jim Henson's The Storyteller:

Using the magic of 1980's muppeteering, it adapts several fairy tales, many of which are more on the obscure side, and sometimes mashes a few different ones together to make sure each episode has a good three act structure. It's wonderful and fully captures the weirdness of fairy tales, while also having a lot of heart - The Heartless Giant is my favorite of the whole series.

Category 5: Works Inspired By Fairy Tales

I almost lumped the following stories into the above category, but while the division is, again, purely in my mind, there's something different about modern works that claim to adapt fairy tales 1:1 and ones that take fairy tale characters or concepts and throw them in entirely new tales with different directions, so that's what our final category will be.

I've gushed about Puss In Boots: The Last Wish enough that I don't think it'd surprise anyone that it would end up here - the same goes with the works of Rankin Bass, which is why I doubt anyone is surprised I'd put The Last Unicorn here too (technically based on a book, but it still fits the "has big fairy tale vibes despite not being based on one specific one" that I'm using to justify this category).

Pan's Labyrinth would also go in this category, with a protagonist who's both a trickster fool AND a disobedient girl, as well as a beautifully gothic take on fairy tale motifs. I'd put Company of Wolves here as well, being a very multifaceted riff on the Little Red Riding Hood story and a movie that sets both my analytical and creative parts of my brain on fire each time I want it.

I'd also put The Path, a short video game explicitly inspired by Company of Wolves, on this part of the favorites list. It's a game about, like, a DOZEN or so different takes on Red Riding Hood and her story, all with different flavors and subtext to analyze. It's unsettling but good.

Dimension 20 had a whole season focused on a horror-themed crossover of fairy tale characters called Neverafter that was fantastic, with one of the best riffs on Little Red Riding Hood I've ever seen, Puss in Boots and Pinocchio working together as con artists, and a vampire Snow White, so yeah 10/10 there, no notes.

And while I've only seen scattered bits of it, what I've seen of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, a sequel series to Disney's Rapunzel adaptation, is pretty great, though maybe I just think Cass is hot.

If you put an angry woman with a sword in your work of fiction I will at least stay for a few episodes to see what you do with her.

Given how much it consumed my brain in so little time, Revolutionary Girl Utena has to rank among my favorite Fairy Tale things ever - like, this is too chaotic a list to really rank things, but if I were to try, it'd at least be in the top 10. The same is true for Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which in addition to being a big fun crossover between a bunch of the Heavy Hitter fairy tales, is also one of the best musicals ever written - and indeed, one of the best stage shows of all time.

Shit, where do I put A Midsummer Night's Dream? It feels like it should be here, but it predates the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, whose works my brain categorizes as "old fairy tales" rather than "modern fairy tale retellings." Well, it'd be somewhere among these categories, being one of the best tales with fairies in it ever told.

The Princess Bride would be up high like Utena no matter what - it's one of the best works of fiction about love that we've got. Same goes with Galavant, which I consider its spiritual successor, although I think one could argue Galavant isn't specifically a fairy tale pastiche and is more just a lampooning of fantasy in general.

Oh, and The Hazards of Love, a concept album by The Decemberists, should be here too. That's the last one I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll think of a few others later that I like enough to regret not putting on here.