“Okay. Well, hi. My name is Nott the Brave and I am a little goblin girl. But, once upon a time, I was Veth, a young halfling woman and before that, a halfling child who grew up being told that she was not pretty and not brave and not coordinated and not smart, and just…not” MONOLOGUE OPENER OF ALL TIME

Laura and Travis with matching shocked expressions to Nott’s Veth reveal is very fun. 

Counting the Mighty Nein

Let’s see..... *checks clipboard*..... that makes 2 orphans, 2 people using fake names, 2 widows, 3 people who have died and been resurrected, 3 people with full or partial amnesia, 3 people with missing or absentee parent(s), 2 people who were relentlessly bullied as children, and 9 brain cells between them. Good.

nott’s character arc be like

Talesin Jaffe, an immortal being, fears the death stare from sir Matthew Mercer

wait wait wait wait.

so what we heard last episode is..... Caleb was Hazel from RWBY?

ep 49 final thoughts

I fucking love Jester. She’s my absolute favourite.

Beau is an asshole but we stan.

Everyone in this group needs therapy.

I really think this is a terrible idea but that is so on par for everything that the Nein have done so it’s appropriate and I’m on board.

Second episode in a row with no combat has me mildly afraid of future episodes.

Is it Thursday yet?

This whole fake name situation feels like a galaxy brain meme

Like we got nott who is veth

Nott has gone by bren

Caleb's whos name is bren

Also their family like bond just doubled that shit

Twelve things I noted about CR2E49 “A Game of Names” and the Talks Machina about it :

Time for some BACKSTORY, a.k.a. what Jester said : "What the fuck, Nott ???"

Matthew, that's the music of the epilogue of campaign 1, the saddest music ever, are you kidding me, I didn't need this to cry !!!!!

Nott's backstory... I can't write about this, this is too powerful, I have to digest, I have to think, the fear of water, the hate of goblins, the mother instincts, the alchemy abilities, the parallelism with Caleb's fire, oh my god ! (That's such an interesting use of Reincarnate, though. The magic woman who has done this is of high level)

Jester, to Beau who wants to be honest : "Are you in love with me ?" Beau : "Well... in a way." Me : "haaaaaaaaaa what is happening ????!!!! what are those feelings ????!!!!" Later, Jester to Caleb : "Are you secretely in love with me ?" He did not respond. Oh my god, he is, isn't he ?? They all are ! Well, Beau, Fjord and Caleb are !!

WHAT WHAT ??? DOES EVERY ONE OF THESE SHIFTY MOTHERFUCKERS HAVE A SECRET NAME ???

Sam's flask : "The X-Files. The truth is out chair." Amazing

Matt, I feel your pain on everyone giving you shit for having a soldier named "Jeff". In one of my session, I panicked after a player asked me an NPC name and I came up with "Denis".

Beau : "Guys. Hot take. The Kryn are not the bad guys." Mmmmmmmmh I feel like she's right. I feel like at the very least, they're not 'not good guys', because a beacon was had by the Empire and they went to retrieve it... And also kidnapped Yeza, who was working on the beacon. While the Cerberus Assembly is suspiciously coming and going, but not doing anything to clarify the situation or save the day.

Matt and Marisha started to sing the Secret Tunnel song from Avatar the Last Airbender, and I love them so so much (also I'm not surprised because Marisha once said she is a huuuuuuge Avatar fan)

Caleb talk about his new item, a light-creating ball. Marisha : "Keep it away from Fjord" (Travis thens pretends to stab her in the ribs in retaliation)

Sam discussing Veth's quirk and character traits (the collecting, the drinking) that are, in Nott's globin form, upped to 2500%, is such an interesting take !!

Can you imagine, if Nott's backstory had never come up ??? The way Sam talks about her changing, she could have reached a point where she would have forgotten her old life and just... lived the rest of her life as a goblin...

The reveal that Nott was not, in fact, a goblin who had picked up her self-hatred because society at a whole said her people were naturally violent and vicious and disgusting-

Everything about Nott’s arc of finding herself to be as ugly, dumb, and pathetic as she feared she was is going to be deeply relatable, but I’m going to mourn the arc I thought I was getting.

comparisons in the lives of nott and mollymauk

#cr spoilers #cr2 spoilers #cr2e49 spoilers

remember when molly was forced to reveal his true past to everyone? he has little memory of who he was prior to two years ago, then died after some mysterious ritual, and came back to life and as an amnesiac adopted a new identity and life.

molly himself was afraid of his past catching up to him, more than anything. his new identity was all hed known and he never wanted it to essentially die and be replaced by someone he had no clue about.

now we know nott ALSO died, and by magical means was forced to be revived and given a new identity. but the difference here is that she remembered her former life. she had a family she loved so much she sacrificed herself to keep them safe. she is desperate to be able to go back to the life she knew.

when molly revealed his past to the group, nott, drawing on her own experience, was one of the most vocal about her confusion. how could he not want to know about who he was before? what if he had loved ones, like she did?

of course, due to the difference in their perspectives, molly lashed out from stress over the situation at her specifically. in his words, what if his former identity is a bad person? what if he eats goblins like her?

and nott, who was killed, tortured, and enslaved by goblins? she didnt say much about that.

one of my personal greatest regrets is that molly may never know why she reacted the way she did. he may never know how close his story was to hers.

but i think now, its a lot more clear why nott was one of the ones most shaken by his death. not as vocally as beau, but she knew now that a lot of these people (i.e. the mighty nein) have no lives to return to. and the best thing they could do for each other was to take care of one another as a family.

I love just how AGGRAVATED Laura looks when Liam reveals Caleb was also using a fake name. She’s huffing, she’s puffing, she’s looking around at the table like “do the rest of you motherfuckers see this shit?” she is BOTHERED, it’s fantastic

I think one of my favorite things about Jester is that she manages to see the good in so many people without really becoming jaded by disappointment, because even when she’s disappointed, she still sees the good in them. Partially because it leads people to believe she’s far more naïve than she actually is. But also because it speaks volumes when she doesn’t see the good in someone at all.

Duality - Nott the Brave

I’m going to be honest. Initially, I didn’t really like Nott. She was definitely great in the earlier episodes as the comic relief of the party, but I couldn’t really get into her character as much as some of the others. And after Jester began to replace her (at least in my eyes) as the primary comic relief, I just didn’t end up liking her. She came across to me like an asshole side character to Caleb, and only existed in the party to do dumb shit and act annoying. Boy, was I completely wrong. 

Nott’s duality, her constantly switching from emotional, protective Nott to “let’s stab a manticore baby” Nott was what initially put me off her character. I just sort of chalked it up to Sam not being sure whether he wanted to play a protective mother hen character, or the reckless, chaotic stupid, asshole character in this campaign. But that duality in her character wasn’t a characterization failure on Sam’s part, it was her entire character. 

The protective instincts, and caring nature come directly from Veth. She cared deeply for Luke and Yeza, and was willing to do anything to protect them, even lay down her life. When it came down to it, she let herself be killed to let them escape. However, despite everything she’s lost as a result of her caring for the people in her life, she still lets her kind personality show, and it is evident that she cares deeply for Jester and Caleb, as well as the rest of the Nein (though the jury’s still out on Fjord). 

And then her death happened. Calm, caring Veth, with a loving husband and infant son, was killed and her body was replaced with a goblin’s, a creature feared and hated by most of society. She feels alone and trapped in a body that isn’t hers, so what does she do? She starts emulating their behavior. All her reckless, chaotic behavior that she displays, and even changing her name from Veth to Nott, nost likely came from Nott attempting to cure her dysmorphia. She feels like the only way to be truly comfortable with who she is is to act like society’s perception of goblins as a whole. Though Nott hates them for all that they did to her, she still can’t reconcile who she was with who she is now, and so likely turned to drinking. Months, years, (depending on how the timelines fit) of this behavior would turn anyone, even motherly Veth, into a destructive, reckless “kill a manticore, trash a temple” person.

And it hurts her. This constant divide between “dirty, nasty, goblin” Nott and “loving, joyful, cares for her friends” Nott is what drives her entire character. This constant jumping between personalities is Nott waging a war in her mind. Her constantly hating her body, and knowing that society hates her for her body, is in constant conflict with the inner Veth telling her to be open, and love herself for who she is, and it plays out in her interactions with the world and the party. 

But there’s hope. Already she has an incredible friendship with Jester, and is fiercely protective of Caleb and the party as a whole. Maybe, in the future, as Nott sees that more and more people don’t give a shit about the fact that she is a goblin, she will reveal more of her caring compassionate side, and become the Team Mom she was destined to be. And, heck, who knows, when inevitably given a choice between changing back to a halfling, and staying a goblin, she might even finally choose to accept herself and choose to remain as she is.

cr2e49 be like. BONK.

“I have been using you.”

-Caleb (Bren)

S H I T