no i lied one more thing before i hop off because I Cannot Stop Thinking About it, and its everything about Fearne asking her parents, quietly, thoughtfully: "Was I something that you gave?"

Its about- up until now Fearne has earnestly been trying to think the best of her parents, forgiving these things or that and- generally giving benefit of the doubt.

It's about- Fearne, thinking, clarifying: "In order for Morri to do favors, you have to give her something."

Its about- Fearne, thoughtless and carefree and easygoing. Fearne, thinking this through and asking so, so carefully: "Was I something that you gave?"

its about the phrasing, its about the use of the word something. Its about Ollie and Birdie both describing Morri as a collector, and they mean objects, maybe, but they used it to explain Morri keeping Fearne, too. "Took a shine to you." Its about Fearne, saying she likes to collect things, introducing herself with these terms, its about how the way she loves people also has that edge of possessiveness. Its about how- something fey when it comes to loving people like they're treasures, about collecting them and keeping them close when you like them too much to let go. because you love them too much to give them up, to give them away. (a virtue and a vice).

Its about- a double heartbreak, of loving people like loving things, (something you gave), and even then- taking the thing you love (the one you love) and being willing to let go of it. (something you gave).

i just cannot stop watching that scene and the way Fearne reasons it out and asks, and the heartbreaks behind that question in the first place,

and then. the way she watches Ollie, and Birdie, when they cant answer, the way she keeps her gaze trained on them as they stutter. and.

the way they don't say no. they can't.

Quiet. So, so quiet. "This adds a bit of a wrinkle to the story."

Fearne. Fearne :(

One day I’ll have the thoughts to write about how Laudna sees power as elevation, a chance to finally sit at the table with the lords and ladies, how Fearne sees power as corruption, her birthright being something she rejects and the scars that Lolth left on her, and how Imogen sees power as a responsibility, a destiny she has to keep in check

I can't stop thinking about the developing dynamic between Essek and Fearne, especially since Fearne seems to have discovered a particular joy in needling him, possibly because a lot of his sarcasm has been aimed at her.

But then there was that little moment where Fearne said, "I thought you said don't touch anything" and Essek gave her that little smile and replied, "I'm not touching it, am I?", and I thought - oh. He's starting to like these little shits, especially the faun who won't stop giving him trouble. From Fearne's reaction to this - the mocking that turned into a grin, calling him cheeky - you can see her starting to understand Essek's particular brand of humor in return.

It would be so hilarious if Essek comes out of this adventure having been adopted by an entirely new adventuring party who have forced friendship on him. I can think of nothing I'd wish for him more than that.

Laudna going through a spiral about whether Ashton is a bad person because he wanted the power of both shards and did something stupidly dangerous to do it vs. Laudna deliberately feeding Delilah by using Hunger of the Shadow on Bor'Dor and Willmaster Edmuda.

Absolutely love it. Girl please keep projecting your worst fears about yourself and destructive habits on your friends and get scared of them without ever stepping back and assessing your own actions, it is delicious.

Bonus points that Imogen and Laudna are the biggest enablers of each other and not at all inclined to check each other's negative behaviors. Imogen still has a healthy fear about her powers, though, especially right now.

Meanwhile Laudna is still convinced that Orym is fine and the stable one while no one questions how Orym got Hex or that he's willingly using Ludinus' Quintessence Array to drain Edmuda of her life force. A totally normal stable good guy thing to do. Definitely no nosedive here. Although Laudna is irritated at him for pressuring everyone to keep going and not back down, and that he got the Quintessence Array use and not her. (Because again, she is trying to feed her own need for power.)

Somehow Fearne is the only one who's beginning to think they all might be going too far and getting scared, but they're not really listening to her. She saw her potential to become Dark Fearne and actually reevaluated her life. (Even if she's still a chaos being.)

Bell's Hells are great because they're like NPCs who ended up as the B-Team who keeps happening to be in the right place at the right time to be in the middle of all these events leading to this cataclysmic events that are so much bigger than they are. It's FUN that it's happening faster than they can recon with it and they're getting more and more desperate to not go under in a way that is actually making them go under faster.

They're seeing it in each other but not in themselves. That's the tragedy. They're so desperate to win it doesn't matter at what cost anymore. They're all just competing to see who can sacrifice themselves for the cause first while dragging their enemies down with them. They're going to end up being the monsters someone else has to fight, even though they kept trying to do good and fight the darkness.

" I realize I'm not as good at lying as I thought. Which is weird because I do it all the time! " x

Because I am who I am (very obsessed with flower language), my friends sent this to me and I simply must talk about it;

Of course, I know these definitely weren’t chosen with floral language in mind, but they’re fun choices and accidental symbolism is even more fun XD so!

Edelweiss: devotion & courage, nobility, daring

Borage: courage/bravery, bluntness/abruptness/rudeness

Bird’s foot trefoil: revenge/retribution, recantation

Cherry Blossom: education, deception, kindness, feminine beauty, faith, intelligence, love

Magnolia: nobility, love of nature, perseverance, determination, dignity, beauty, magnificence, peerless and proud, sweetness, natural

Gardenia: refinement, purity, sweet love, "you're lovely", secret love, joy, good luck, ecstasy, emotional support, peace

Wisteria: regret, welcome, love, poetry, protection, youth, "let's be friends,

There's a lot going on here, so I'll break down my thoughts in order below a cut.

Edelweiss is a rather short list and largely fitting for Fearne, in my opinion! Devotion plays very well into what others have discussed as the Hells being hers in a very fey way. They are her people and in fey terms of ownership, that makes them belong to her. Devotion fits within that quite well. Nobility suits in terms of her being the adopted granddaughter of an archfey, as well as her Titan connection. And Fearne is certainly not lacking in courage and daring, not in the slightest.

Borage is an even more well-suited pick. As I just said, courage is something Fearne definitely shows and even more than that, she is blunt and abrupt and maybe a touch rude, and we love her for it.

Bird's foot trefoil is an interesting one! It's not present in all of my sources and as such it has a much shorter list of meanings. I don't see Fearne are particularly vengeful, though tied to that fey ownership and devotion from before I can see it. Recantation is a weird one and I think may be more tied to what its use was in Victorian flower language may have been; taking back a sentiment previously expressed, whereas the rest of these are sentiments.

Cherry blossom has a lot more to work with. Education and intelligence can sort of be paired together and also largely set aside, given Fearne's 9 INT. She doesn't have proficiency in Deception, but she certainly loves to lie, so that meaning fits. Feminine beauty certainly works as well. And kindness, faith, and love can all be wrapped up with her bond with the rest of the Hells.

Magnolia has the most meanings to look at. Nobility comes back here, which already works because of Morri. Love of nature, she's a druid, it works, same for natural. Perseverance is specific to swamp magnolias in the older sources it appears in, which is rather fitting considering Ligament Manor is located within a fey swamp and beyond that just for how the Hells keep on going, one fucking thing after another. The same goes for determination. Dignity maybe not as much, said with full affection. Beauty, magnificence, and "peerless and proud" all work for sure, in the same and similar ways as feminine beauty does. Sweetness is a similar case, working well with kindness, faith, and love from before.

Gardenia! There's a few here that don't quite work, I think. Purity is a no, Fearne is too fey and free with her affection for people for secret love, I think refinement is a similar case as to dignity for not fitting, and peace conflicts with how chaotic a person Fearne is. We already have sweetness, so sweet love works. "You're lovely" goes hand-in-hand with our other beauty meanings. Joy and ecstasy pair well and fit well within Fearne's chaos, I think. Good luck and emotional support are interesting ones and while I don't think they're entirely wrong, I wouldn't call them perfect fits either.

And finally, wisteria! Regret is interesting, as Fearne has said she's begun to feel guilt from time-to-time while traveling on the Material Plane and the feelings are adjacent. Love, protection, and "let's be friends" all fit within that same collection of meanings for Fearne and the Hells. Youth is very interesting, given Fearne being pulled out of the normal flow of time by Morri and as such remaining young while a century went by. Welcome is another that's not a great fit but neither is a poor one, in my opinion. Poetry is the only one I wouldn't really give her.

All in all, Victorian flower language has a lot going on, especially for certain flowers but the ones Fearne wears largely suit her quite well! A very happy accident. This was very fun to breakdown, if you read of all of this thank you and I hope you found it neat!

Also, for fun, which of these are poisonous? Borage, bird's foot trefoil, some cherry blossoms, gardenias, and wisteria. So most of them, meaning Fearne's whole "all the plants I wear are poisonous" thing from EXU still fits!

Sources: allflorist's flower meanings list, wikipedia's list of plants with symbolism, The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems, Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway, The Complete Language of Flowers: A Definitive & Illustrated History by S. Theresa Dietz, Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux

Several of the big moments in the last episode couldn't have been possible without specific level-up choices.

Orym sticking with Fighter gave him all the attacks he needed to lay the smackdown on that reiloran juggernaut.

Fearne taking her second level in Rogue gave her the cunning actions she needed to close the distance AND assist Ashton in liberating the Shard from its resting place.

And Laudna choosing to max her Charisma is what put her spellcasting modifier at just the right threshold (+5) to be able to effectively counter Ludinus' 9th-level spell drop.

Funny, how all that worked out.

I want Imogen to go the absolute fuck OFF at Liliana the next time they meet. I want her to show her mother what Otohan did to Orym, to Fearne, to Laudna, to Chetney, and to FCG.

I want Liliana to grovel because Imogen has grieved more for relationships that have existed for a few months (a few years in Laudna's case) than she has for her own mother.

I want her to finally choose which side she's on.

And I want them to end it once and for all if she chooses wrong.

*oh*

Ajit saying that the problem with being in charge of a lot of scared people was that you had to act ok and Fearne commiserating about how it was hard being the strong one

Fearne, who was holding Imogen together while she was spiraling over not knowing if Laudna was alive, who kept Imogen from being sucked up by Ruidus and said NO OF COURSE WE AREN'T LETTING HER GO when FCG wondered about it, who kept her visit to the wildmother shrine about orym to herself, at first, who didn't make a big deal about Deanna not seeing Orym or Ashton in the scry, even though, oh, she wanted to know *so badly*

Who kept all her fear to herself because otherwise Imogen might break, who got upset when Laudna thought Imogen wasn't thinking of her and saying no, she was thinking about you the whole time. Who cast blight the second someone tried to take chetney away because she's not going to lose anyone else

Fearne knowing now what it's like, to be the strong one, to be the one keeping an even keel, *to be like Orym*

A difference between Ashton absorbing the Spark and Fearne absorbing the Spark that I haven't seen discussed is that Fearne had the ability to ripcord out until the end of the 6th round/start of the 7th round while Ashton only had to the end of the 1st round.

Now by "ripcord out," I mean they could have halted the absorption process by either removing the Quintessence Array or potentially pulling the Spark out of the Array's funnel. Essentially, the Spark's crystal vessel had to still exist and be a separate receptacle, much like how the Quintessence Array cannot fully transfer a creature's magical essence without proper absorption time.

For Ashton, the Spark's crystal crumpled to nothing by the end of the first round via CON Saves (Ashton's early rounds were weird in that Matt rolled multiple damages against him instead of just one, especially the second CON Save round). All they had were those initial moments where it didn't seem impossible, didn't seem like anything they couldn't handle, to back out. 36 Damage and unaware they had to go for 9 more rounds where one pulse of Damage could do up to 60 Damage.

Fearne, on the other hand, besides having a much gentler time of it with zero CON Saves and able to use her own magic to help keep herself up from lower Damage rolls, had until the end of the sixth round or the start of the seventh round before the second Spark crystal finished crumpling into nothing. She had time to assess if it would be too much for her to finish, time to say "No, this was a bad idea. I don't want it."

I'm sure part of that difference is Ashton jumped in on a bad idea and was being forced to deal with the Consequences while Fearne's was a much more measured decision and the "safe" route. You know, game mechanics and penalties.

But consider it narratively.

The way I read it, one of two things happened: Ashton's body is so attuned/ready to be a vessel of great powers that it just slorped the Spark right up, no hesitation. Or, Rau'shan was so eager to move in with his old partner, that he jumped right in (and later backed out because it was too crowded to be tenable). And honestly? Both have interesting implications.

If Ashton is just a higher power absorbing machine, that can mean some interesting things for how he ended up with the Shard of Ka'Mort. Like that the Hishari ritual wasn't meant to bestow the Shard to anyone, but through whatever fuck up happened, Ashton chomped it up. Or that it was about bestowing, but Ashton was such a better vessel that it fucked up the ritual. And the Potion of Possibility giving them a half-beacon brain just happened. There's no explanation as to why it didn't just give him a Mote of Possibility to essentially reroll a Death Save into stabilizing himself rather than die, which makes sense with what the Potion does. Instead it made Ashton a permanent well of dunamis. Maybe that happened because Ashton is titan-blooded. Maybe it's because they are uniquely suited to being a vessel of great powers, that they possess a body hungry to hold more power.

On the other hand, if Rau'shan wanted in to reunite with Ka'Mort with all haste, that makes Ashton his first choice of vessel. Then Rau'shan backed out because three's a crowd and a quality vessel does no one any good if it breaks trying to use that power (because Ashton did manage to contain it all). And maybe he goes a little slower when a second vessel attempts to hold his Spark, just to make sure she's not going to blow up on him.

Or even Fearne just doesn't have the same draw for the Spark as Ashton, so it crumbled at the rate the Quintessence Array drained it at instead of being sucked straight through to it's new home.

I'm just saying, it's a very interesting difference that didn't need to exist to show how much easier absorbing the Spark is for not-Ashton.

oughghh feeling some type of way looking at This bottom table rn

feeling some type of way that all three of them—Fearne, Imogen, Ashton—have now met reflections of their terrible selves one way or another.

Fearne, at the gate, meeting face to face with her mishappen twin who was sad and angry and everything she didn't want to be. Fearne worrying whether that version of her was a possibility or a promise.

Imogen having to face someone who looks exactly like her be consumed by search and purpose that whatever reason her mother began with became an excuse to clean leftover conscience.

Ashton who met Ashton in a dream of possibilities where everything went well for the Hishari, Ashton with elven ears and normal skin who gets to inherit every bit of destiny and more. but so cruel, so vicious.

it is Fearne running from a future, Imogen fighting the present, and Ashton mourning a past.

Fearne looks at Imogen and asks "Are you sure it wasn't intentional?" and, oh boy, like-

Ashley says that Fearne is dealing with all kinds of new emotions since leaving the feywild- anxiety and fear and a gutwrenching feeling when someone you love is- not there anymore. However briefly. Fearne is still learning about the ins and outs of these emotions, the way they can take you over.

But it also means, I think, she lacks a certain kind of shame about it, about the way fear cracks her voice when Orym disappears from her sight, about the way she gets a little frantic at the thought of losing him- of losing any of them.

(And Fearne still feels bad about the coin toss- still grappling with it when she looks at Laudna. Because that was a snap decision with other people she loves on the other side, and maybe Fearne is still figuring out what to do with this kind of regret- what you can even do, in the throes of that kind of fear. but. i think that's its own meta.)

and Fearne has never been one to fear power, on its own- just marvelled in it, in the way that enemies fall and the air grows heavy and the world turns darker. It's a beautiful thing, isn't it? Just stunning. Gorgeous.

Fearne watches Imogen, who has been growing quieter and more frenzied and on edge, who is beautiful and powerful and who was, she knows, at some point hovering above them all, as their bodies lay strewn about a battlefield, so many of them ripped away from her and lost. And asks: "Are you sure it wasn't intentional?"

Referring to levelled city blocks but. Maybe thinking of- the bottomless pit that opens up if she thinks of a gap where Orym should be, of "Orym is dead" and a body in her arms, and maybe thinking of that threefold, crackling power in her veins, thinking of a panicked coin toss that tastes sour, weeks later, and all the other decisions a person might make, with that kind of fear in them.

And I don't think there's a world where Fearne would hold Imogen's answer against her.

But Imogen- Imogen who has been hearing, over and over, warnings about giving into the storm, about searches for answers going wrong, danger on their heels, who has power tinted red churning inside of her and keeping her friends safe, keeping everyone safe, who has been sneaking out to try to get answers from a mother who is- working with the enemy. Who can't even say the words, that Laudna was. dead. (Laudna is back now, Laudna is okay, Laudna is back.) Who has new entities she can summon that hurt her and the people around her but get the job done.

Who has all of this power, and all these reasons to use it, and all the ways it could hurt everyone if she does. Or maybe if she doesn't.

(Or maybe- maybe the choice isn't even in her hands at all, right?)

And there's a long silence, there's a long pause, where she doesn't look, she doesn't move,

and she says "I don't-." and she says "It just happened, Fearne, after Laudna-

It just happened."

And I don't know if she believes it, and I don't know if Fearne does, and I don't know if it matters (it probably does?) and- oh boy.

bouncing off of this wonderful post mentioning how zathuda expects to be the main character because he would be in many current stories, as well as my own thoughts about fearne & her family ive had for a while: i think it is interesting how fearne is representative of the different ways folk portray fae in modern media.

first off, id like to note how many fae in cr feel like they are an homage to fae stories embedded in our cultural consciousness. for example, artagan was most definitely based off of jareth in labyrinth, and his moniker of the traveler may be an homage to the fable of the satyr & the traveller. so, what is fearne?

one of the first 4-sided dives featured ashley & matt discussing how they based fearne's story off of a guillermo del toro flick - and this definitely clicked to me. morrigan, ira, & all her bizarre animal friends at morri's mansion would fit so easily into a del toro film you wouldn't even blink at them. in del toro's work (namely pan's labyrinth & hellboy 2: the golden army) faeries are fundamentally strange, offputting, & wonderfully weird. they are goblins with wagons as legs, and trolls with talking tumors, and terrifyingly skinny entities with eyes in their hands that eat children. you can practically see doug jones in an intricate suit & makeup to play ira like he did the pale man or the faun (i swear matt's hand usage as ira is an homage to jones's iconic hands in costume), see the puppet of morrigan that weighs over a ton controlled by five folk at once. del toro's work as well as matt & ashley's plays into a fae that is more complicated than a human imagines at face value, something you must work to imagine & understand (& create). something playful, integrally bound to oaths, ancient, mischievous. it is happy & natural to be gross & incomprehensible and that is part of what makes these films (as well as other bizarre puppeteered dreamscapes like the dark crystal, labyrinth) almost comforting even when sad. pan's labyrinth also features a young girl as a protagonist, ofelia, who sees these creatures as respite & destiny, who is a fae princess amidst mortal war. fearne couldn't be more ofelia if she tried. (side note - god does the scene of the pale man eating the pixies in front of ofelia feel like fearne learning what lud does to her people. someone even made a meme of it.)

on the other hand, zathuda & birdie's story is obviously based on a fae romance novel that populates shelves today - sarah j maas's or holly black's work comes to mind. zathuda is (or was - he seems a ghost of it) clearly a looker, a fierce & sexy hunter, a handsome & strong unseelie royal who somehow takes in & courts a random nobody girl, birdie. but cr notably frames the love story narrative as a classist manipulation, that leaves birdie running for the rest of her life, falling for a weirdo nobody like her over zathuda, and leaves fearne without parents that would show her this incredibly popular kind of romance as an answer. she cannot fall back on a family of kisses drawing blood, of hunter & hunted as a beautiful meet-cute, of a throne & power. she can only fall back on the strange, the grotesque, the raw. they are ugly compared to a promise of a masquerade ball or leading a wild hunt, what folk expect of fae in a barnes & noble book haul - but they promise a safety in the outcast. because a guillermo del toro film will always fundamentally be about the human condition. "monsters are the patron saints of our blissful imperfections." every monster in his stories is a person as much as you or me is.

fearne was born of a fae romance novel but raised in a puppeteer-and-vfx fairytale film. she holds not only exandria's fate in her hands, but the feywild's, too. fae see themselves as higher beings while squabbling in courts as much as mortals do. they refuse to accept their chaos and try to maintain order & royalty with courts and bloodlines against each other. try to keep fae out of exandria because they cant know they are alike to their mortal counterparts. they cant be wild like a party of puppets at the end of labyrinth dancing with the human girl sarah. they wish to be as mysterious as if they lived in a ya dystopia. and it is clearly leaving them worse. fearne is the literal unity of all the ways fae are potrayed in a modern landscape. what will that mean for her and her home in the end?

ashton saying “I think it’s important to realize what we’re fighting for, and that’s us. so it’s not worth it if we’re going to lose somebody.” and laudna carefully saying “I feel like we all have to accept, or at least be aware that that is a possibility, though. right?” and fearne stating “no, no, no, no, no, no. we’re all going to get out of this. we’re all going to be alive. we’re going to be so happy.” and orym saying simply “I think about it a lot.” whew everyone’s trauma is so present in this conversation,,,

ashton, having lost almost everyone they ever loved or were loyal to, refusing to even entertain that as a potential outcome again,,, laudna, having died tragically over and over, reminding the others that death is a real and present possibility,,, fearne, who was made to choose which one of her two dead friends to bring back, who is continually forced to face feelings of grief and guilt in this realm,,, and orym, who lost his father and his husband in an attack he now knows was nothing more than practice for a power grab, who is never not thinking about his dead father and his dead husband or all the other people he’s had to say goodbye to and how present loss always is for him,,,

The thing is, Chetney barely brought to life using his turn to scramble across the battle field to give Imogen his healing potion could have been every bit as suicidal in that fight as FCG blowing himself up. He was dropped to 0 in one turn.

If he was attacked he would have been dead dead. Maybe a smear on the pavement. Chet knew that. Travis knew that. But he took a big gamble on his own life to keep his friends alive. And it worked and was clutch. Imogen turned the tide getting the backpack off.

Ashton was being suicidally reckless taking the shard and was lucky to get away with a worse disability than he started with (by doing something equally reckless). FCG was pissed at Ashton but did not learn from that himself.

Imogen could have also exploded. Laudna could have surrendered control to Delilah. Ashton could have smashed himself up. Orym could have reached for some greater power, bargained more, or been reckless. Fearne did explode but it was controlled. They were all ticking tomb bombs.

This campaign even more than the others is about very reckless outmatched people gambling their lives to protect their friends and the world and pushing past all their reservations. Something like this was so inevitable.

Ashton and Fearne.

Ruled and ruined and reborn through chaos.

Fated to bear the weight of the might of the emperor and empress of the primordial titans.

Chaos incarnate.