elpneedsfriends

[jayeshapatil]

Rat flood and the bad omen (part - 1)

As usual the watch guards on the city wall were alert for enemies and beast attacks. Everything seemed normal as usual. It was then that guards noticed someone riding the horse towards the city gate, at first they became alert, all Archers were ready to shoot down that unknown man. However When the man came near guards relaxed, because that man had the symbol of the city head on his…

[asteriskemily]

The fact that Ruben doesn’t remember what happened is absolutely sending me.

Like, imagine your name is Ruben Hopclap. You wake up in front of a ruined school gym wearing clothes you don’t recognize and missing your favorite necklace. You don’t remember falling asleep. Your chest hurts.

Uncle Henry is there talking to principal Auegfort over scraps of a robot. For a moment he looks at you like you’re a ghost before wrapping you in a tight hug. He asks what you remember. You tell him you remember packing your bag to go to the mountains of chaos for your spring break quest. You don’t remember anything after that. He hugs you again.

Your party’s there too. Most of them at least. Along with another party that you recognize as the Bad Kids, the most infamous party in your grade, maybe in the whole school. You tamp down any jealousy you might feel about that when you see the way that Mary Ann Almost-but-not-quite smiles at their barbarian. Instead you go to where Oisin and Ivy are huddle together, speaking softly to each other.

You ask where Kipperlily is. They look uncomfortable. For a moment you think about asking after Buddy, but then you realize you don’t know who that is. They keep avoiding answering the question, so you walk away. You almost go to talk to Lucy, but you see how uncomfortable she looks, how she flinches away when you start to move towards her. You decide to leave her alone.

Eventually Henry takes you home. On the drive home he turns on the radio and you hear yourself singing a song you’ve never heard. It’s loud and chaotic and so so angry. The sound of it makes you want to throw up. You turn it off and ride in silence back to the house.

The walls of your bedroom have been painted a deep, bloody red. There’s an electric guitar that you don’t know how to play leaning against the wall. Your desk is covered in notes and plans, some of it written in codes you can’t decipher. That doesn’t really matter because you don’t understand the stuff that’s not in code either.

Your parents look almost scared of you when you ask where your normal clothes are. They tell you that you got rid of them. They keep apologizing, like they think you’ll get mad at them. You tell them it’s okay, but still search your closet for something a bit more your style. You find a box shoved into a corner, under some clothes. Inside is your puka shell necklace and your ukulele. The string on the necklace is broken like it had been ripped off. The body of the ukulele is cracked like it had been thrown to the ground. You decide to deal with that in the morning.

You fall asleep and you dream of a girl. She’s a tiefling with red and black raccoon streaks in her hair. She smiles at you with lips painted black. If you stare at her for too long you can see blood dripping out of those lips and a crossbow bolt lodged in her side. You look at her and feel longing, feel grief, feel betrayal. You want to stop dreaming of her, but some part of you knows that any other dream would be filled with blood and crystals and rage. You accept that you are doomed to Wanda.

[glossysoap]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was going to school again instead of doing virtual but my school got flooded and so they moved to holding classes in Walmart. I saw my old friends and tried to talk to them but they were to busy eating rats that I decided were actually spaghetti.

[letoscrawls]

No one:

Italians: *casually being the most gorgeous athletes you've ever seen*

[randomprose]

He "My Brother Will Hear About This" Tian

[the-knight-of-destiny]

Okay, so long long ramble under the cut about the nature of Ratgrinder Discourse™, I'll preface by saying that I don't want any of this to get hostile with anyone, because I think that's frankly silly to do over a webshow. That said I am also open to critical discussion so if anything I say doesn't make sense, or doesn't track I'm open to critique on it! Obviously spoilers up to Episode 19 of Fantasy High Junior Year underneath. Also it is a VERY long post, several pages, so don't click read more if that'll be overwhelming/too much at once. I just had to get my thoughts into words.

So, this will be long but I'll try to break it up. For clarity I want to establish my main point and give a quick TL;DR here, so here's the short version, long version even further below. My main points are as follows: 1: It is okay to not be happy with how a narrative is going in a show/story you enjoy. Critique is not hate, if anything it's a form of praise in a way. People wouldn't be having such long and frequent discourse about D20 and it's current season if they didn't feel strongly. 2: Similarly, we as an audience have a very different perspective of the entire story unfolding compared to the Intrepid Heroes/Cast. I think a lot of people jump to assumptions about the cast's thought process when that really isn't something we can gauge beyond what they say in episode and on Adventuring Party. 3: For me at least, even if I am left unsatisfied by an ending it doesn't ruin the fun I had in a work. Now if you just wanted my bullet point thoughts without elaboration, there they are! The rest of this is going to be an insanely long ramble (seriously, exit now if you aren't up for that, it's pages long) that I don't expect anyone to read, but I like to get my thoughts outta my brain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, in regards to the Ratgrinders dying in the fashion they have, there's been a lot of discussion on literally every place there is to discuss Dimension 20, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, I'm sure other places as well. Really it all comes back to one thing, Dungeons and Dragons is a game, but Dimension 20 is a show. We as viewers have some level of narrative expectation, now for everyone that's different. Some folks have specific hopes for plot and character arcs. Others just want a general vibe, but the cast are players. Sure they are performers, but they are players in a game in equal measure. I've alluded to this before but a lot of the sincere vitriol to antagonists thus far (and especially the Ratgrinders) comes from the fact that the players have been fully immersed in a world and as characters where the Ratgrinders have been a constant thorn in their side for tens of hours of play time. Obviously one can still not like how they've engaged with them (I'm still not sure how exactly I feel about it,) but a lot of it is coming from that distinct perspective. When Fig took Ruben out, she specifically was frustrated because she 'wasted her season' on him. There's a meta level of Fig being angry with Ruben as a character who shares a world with him, versus Emily being frustrated as a player that a lot of her in-game actions did not hash out. That's actually totally natural, by the way. The interesting way that DnD serves both as a narrative of the characters in the setting, but also of the players rolling dice is part of what makes actual play like Dimension 20 so interesting. It's why I think SOME of the disappointment with Brennan and the Intrepid Heroes comes from a strange place, we literally cannot experience the story the same way the cast have. We get a week between chunks of story, they film the episodes in batches. We can think for as long as we want about our critical thoughts, they have to improv on the fly. We get to watch the Ratgrinders as antagonists in a story, the IH are actively hindered in their gameplay by the Ratgrinders as enemies.

That said I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about some aspects of Protagonist Centric Morality™ in this. Oisin having a mildly flirty conversation with Adaine once when he had ulterior motives is a deeply awful manipulation, but Fig catfishing Ruben the better part of an entire year is her trying to reach out and understand him (?). Kipperlilly threatening to desecrate Eugenia's grave is deeply fucked up, but Riz openly advocating mutilating Oisin's body for tactical reasons, and Fabian loudly declaring he intends to do the same to Ivy for literally just his own self-satisfaction are 'fun unhinged moments'.

Before I go on, obviously the Ratgrinders are the bad guys. They're taking part in an evil plan, they've done villainous things throughout the season, especially very recently, etc. This isn't some argument that the Bad Kids are secretly the real monsters or something, obviously not. I just think it's odd that people read into the Bad Kids' actions in the best possible light at all times and the inverse for the Ratgrinders. This protagonist centric morality also comes down to the true reason behind any and all of Fantasy High's villain redemption. Ragh gets redeemed because the player characters think he's possibly useful and/or endearing. Aelwyn gets redeemed because she personally helps Adaine. The only one that Brennan really pushed forward on his own was Zayn, who they barely engaged with. People compare the Ratgrinders to Penelope and Dayne a lot, and understandably so. However I think this is sort of the complication and in my opinion, the silver bullet to understanding what's actually happening with the Ratgrinder's narrative place, Dayne more specifically. He does very little evil on screen. I mean, he injures Fabian and is most likely the one who killed Zayn, but comparatively to Aelwyn, he does almost nothing. He gets killed without so much as a thought, and in a fun (?) parallel to current Ratgrinder discourse, does actually have his body desecrated after death by Fabian. Because he hurt Fabian personally. Aelwyn gets forgiven of doing a lot of terrible shit (and this isn't Aelwyn hate, she's like my favorite NPC.) because it didn't directly affect any of the Bad Kids besides Adaine, and even the bad stuff that did affect Adaine can be sort of off-loaded onto their parents. So it's why I say this discourse is tough, people inevitably say "Well, the Ratgrinders are villains, of course they'll get killed." And this isn't inherently a wrong statement, they look at the bad things the group is doing and understand they must be stopped, why are people upset clearly bad guys get beat and/or killed in DnD games? Because they aren't actually getting killed in such brutal ways because they're bad guys, it's because they personally annoyed or hurt the Bad Kids. This is also why Ratgrinder fans often feel both frustrated and vindicated at once (I speculate, but I feel it's a safe assumption,) because on a meta level Kipperlilly is literally right. Her friends and likely herself are getting ripped to shreds because they crossed the special protagonists, because they started to really frustrate the Intrepid Heroes. The Bad Kids have forgiven atrocities before, but the Intrepid Heroes are really quick to dismiss and kill people they find annoying.

The ultimate example I feel of this, is Mary Ann. Ruben gets blasted into hell because his actions personally annoyed the players, Ivy gets stabbed to death while being repeatedly insulted and threatened with mutilation because her actions personally annoyed the players.

But Mary Ann is the one they all think they can redeem or save, because her personality is more cute and endearing to the players. That kind of says it all better than I ever could.

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

Hi again, here's a different sort of ask to round out the reading requests! ☺️ I had (what I think is) an interesting thought rolling around in my head, and I thought that you might enjoy weighing in on it (no pressure to respond to this ask, of course), as you're someone who is likewise queer and polyamorous, but much, much more experienced with deity work. I'm just beginning to reconnect with someone who I've been loosely acquainted with for a while, and I'm aiming to grow a much deeper friendship with her (or maybe more! 🩷💜🩵) - AND I'm aware of who the major deities in her life have been (Apollo and Dionysus). I was considering whether it might be a fun and beneficial idea to connect a smidgen with her deities at the same time? I don't mean that I wish to begin working with them - I, as a beginner, have already adopted more deity friends than I should have - but would it be a good idea to introduce myself, have a friendly chat with them over a cup of tea, and announce my positive intentions towards one of their fave children? What's your opinion?

Heyo! Fucking adore this ask, you have no idea how needed an ask that WASN'T a reading request was needed lol. (Love the reading requests though!! Super excited for them, I just will need time to get through them!)

I fully understand "adopting more deity friends than you should have," my craft began with Persephone tbh and I had to just let go of the idea that a beginner can't do deity work and have recently had to make changes to the way I perceive deity work when it comes to how many I'm "allowed" to work with. That's just a side note, though-

HOLY SHIT I, for one, think you're a genius. That's such a green flag in my opinion, I think just having a chat with the deities she works with is a wonderful idea!! It vibes like getting the parent's blessing, letting them know you value their kid and want good things for her and such. I absolutely love using witchcraft as a love language of sorts, I literally just recently asked Apollo to go help out my partner's pet and he was happy to do so. My opinion is 100% go for it that sounds so fucking cool, friendship or romance it's seems to me like such a genuinely caring thing to do to specifically make the effort to reach out to her deities!

[vamprlestat]

i won a raffle today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that never happens finally a win

[3leafstem]

My favourite sunsets have always been with you.

[jayeshapatil]

Rat flood and the bad omen (part - 1)

As usual the watch guards on the city wall were alert for enemies and beast attacks. Everything seemed normal as usual. It was then that guards noticed someone riding the horse towards the city gate, at first they became alert, all Archers were ready to shoot down that unknown man. However When the man came near guards relaxed, because that man had the symbol of the city head on his…

[softmeetscreatureplz]

Hm.

My stuffed animal collection is not. Nearly as big as it used to be.

I need to fix this immediately

[s0fter-sin]

finally getting my act together and moving my not!fics over to ao3, starting with my dance au!

[tev-the-random]

I haven't actually managed to watch Pirates SMP yet, but from what I've been seeing around Tumblr, "psmp" actually stands for "Polycule SMP"

[rtprsd3nt]

i dont actually know a lot about hiyori can you tell me about them

hiyoris been living in his older brothers shadow for most of his life. his brother was the "better child", the heir of the tomoes business and everything

so since hiyori values family very highly hes always been obedient and never rebelled against how things were. he dreads the thought of being hated so he just accepted the whole thing

his arrogant attitude is a facade most of the time, hiyori actually deeply cares for others and is more than happy to help others when they're in need. he hates it when he sees those he loves being in conflict or feeling down which was why conquest was incredibly difficult for him(and if i remember correctly, this live is his least favourite TT). he literally criedd my babyyy

hiyori always tries so hard to make other people happy, so much that sometimes hes forced himself into smiling and acting cheery, not just for himself but for those around him(thats pretty much what his first solo song about).

soo to sum up he just wants others and himself to be happy, wants others to know he loves them and he wants others to love him.

look how stupid he is his right eye wider than his left one

[disorganised-bagel]

btw my rtc fixation has in no way faded

i am simply contractually obligated to spread ros propaganda whenever i am given the opportunity